The Art of Non-Conformity: Chris Guillebeau on Living An Unconventional Life & The Power of Divine Moments

In the mid-1800's, this radical dude living alone in the woods famously wrote, the mass of men lead lives of quite desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. As set forth in the enduring Walden, the words of Henry David Thoreau were revelatory for the time. But it's an idea that more than holds up. Not only do I consider it daily, I would contend it perfectly encapsulates what has become the unfortunate, yet defining affliction of modern man. This week's guest has devoted his life to helping others avoid Thoreau's foreboding lament – a self-experiment in purposeful living he calls The Art of Non-Conformity. Ripe with wanderlust after a 4-year stint as a NGO volunteer executive in West Africa, Chris Guillebeau embarked on a multi-year quest to travel to every country in the world, all 193, before his 35th birthday. Along the way, he decided to share his adventures on a newly hatched blog. But what began as a rather ignored and somewhat turgid travelogue soon morphed into a globally revered portal chronicling the personal experience, lessons and wisdom earned and learned not just by Chris, but by a dynamic multitude of unconventional people overcoming conventional social mores around work, life and travel to achieve personal goals and greater life satisfaction. The blog exploded, capturing the intrigue, trust and fascination of people all across the world thirsty for the brass tacks steps and inspiration required to pursue more adventurous and personally fulfilling means of working and living outside traditional paradigms. With the success of the blog, it's not surprising that books soon followed. The Art of Non-Conformity* was translated into more than twenty languages. His second book, The $100 Startup*, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, selling more than 500,000 copies worldwide. His third book, The Happiness of Pursuit*, was also a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book, Born for This*, will help you find the work you were meant to do. When he's not writing bestselling books or traveling to parts unknown, you're likely to find Chris diligently working on his World Domination Summit — an annual gathering he founded six years ago that brings thousands of creative, remarkable people together. Everybody loves a good travel hack. The basic steps to launch a new business. Or the path to overnight success. If you're looking for Chris' answers to those questions, you're in the wrong place. I'm more interested in the man behind the work. What makes Chris tick. How he sees himself in the world. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  For me, the goal is genuine empowerment and affirmation. And I think there's value in that, like, helping people understand their self-worth, helping people understand their potential, and not just understand it, but then actually do something about it, taking the action that we touched on briefly earlier. That, to me, is the value. Whenever it has shifted to become like this personality-based thing, then that feels a little bit less comfortable, you know? And so, I just kind of, for me personally, I will deflect a lot of that stuff. And if people have a question about, you know, how to ask for a promotion at work, or how to start their little side business while they have their day job, great, I can tell you exactly how to do that.

• 1:45Rich Roll?

  That's author and entrepreneur Chris Gilbo, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:05Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? Greetings. Welcome to the show, or welcome back. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is the Rich Roll Podcast, the show where I go deep and long form with some of the most compelling, some of the most thought provoking, some of the most inspiring thought leaders and paradigm breaking, positive change makers all across the globe. These are not interviews, not merely interviews. They are conversations, conversations intended to elucidate the wisdom, the experience, the practices, the knowledge, the approaches of all of these remarkable people as sort of a vehicle to inspire and incite you and me to unlock our innate potential, to unleash our collective best, most authentic selves. How's that for a mission statement, you guys like that?

• 2:49Rich Roll?

  In any event, thanks so much for tuning in, for sharing the show, for reviewing the show, for subscribing to the show on iTunes. And of course, we're always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Doesn't cost you a cent extra, but Amazon kicks us some loose commission change, and that really goes a long way towards helping us do what we do here. So we really appreciate everybody who has made a habit, made a practice out of doing that. If you're inspired to support the mission even further, now you can do that. We have a Patreon page, and you can find that by clicking on the Patreon banner that's right next to the Amazon banner on every episode page at richroll.com.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  All right, I got a really cool show for you guys today. But before I get into that, I wanted to kind of share a quick thought with you guys. Julie and I just got back from a weekend in Tucson. We were attending the Mind Body Green Revitalize Conference, which was really extraordinary. It was basically 200 wellness leaders and wellness seekers and wellness pioneers congregating at this beautiful resort in the desert nestled up against this mountain to basically cultivate community around shared common ideas, to have talks and panels and... Meditation sessions and eat together and what else? Go on hikes and trail runs, et cetera. And it was just a beautiful event. It's the third year in a row that they've done it.

• 4:17Rich Roll?

  And I just came back. I came back revitalized. What can I say? It was really amazing. But I think one of the highlights for me, beyond just really seeing my friends and being able to kind of go deeper with a lot of people and meet new people and really kind of tap into this community. I remember at one of the dinners, looking around the room, and I think I saw no less than like 10 people that have been on the podcast. There was Jason Walker, Dr. Joel Kahn, Charlie Knowles, Light Watkins, Doug Evans from Juicero, David Flynn, one of the Happy Pair guys and his brother, but his brother had to leave early because his wife was having a baby. That's a whole other story. Hillary Biscay, Rebecca Sony, Marco Borges from 22 Days Nutrition, Ben Greenfield was

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  there. I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody else, but the bottom line was, it was really cool to look around and see all these people who have, you know, basically trusted me to share their story with you guys. And today's conversation is no different. It's a conversation that's long, long overdue. I've been a fan and an admirer of Chris Gilbo for a long, long time. And I finally got the opportunity to meet him in person in Portland when I was up there a couple of weeks ago. And what came out of this definitely does not disappoint. All right. So if Chris is brand new to you, how to describe this guy? Well, on a surface level, I think it's fair to say that he is quite the accomplished multi hyphenate. Taking it back a few years, after a four-year stint as a volunteer executive in West Africa,

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  Chris took a stab at blogging. And he did it initially just to chronicle this quest that he had set out for himself to travel to every country in the world, all 193 of them, and get it done before his 35th birthday. Spoiler alert, he made it. We talk about it in the podcast, so you can look forward to that. But in any event, as his quest matured and he was kind of checking the boxes on these countries that he was visiting, so did his writing. And his Art of Nonconformity blog, which is where he shares how unconventional ... "unconventional people" battle against conventional beliefs in work, life, travel, in order to achieve personal goals. Well, this blog exploded. And what happened is, he

• 6:27Rich Roll?

  ended up cultivating this vast global audience of people thirsty for not only the brass-tack steps of how to travel the world, but the inspiration required to pursue more adventurous and more personally fulfilling means of working and living outside traditional paradigms. And so it's not surprising that as his blog continued to blow up and increase in readership, that books would follow. So, his first book was called "The Art of Nonconformity." It was translated into more than 20 languages. His second book, "The Hundred Dollar Startup," was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, selling more than half a million copies worldwide. His third book, "The Happiness of Pursuit," was also a New York Times bestseller.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  And his most recent book, "Born For This," is all organized around helping you find the work you were meant to do. And in furtherance of Chris's devotion to cultivating community around all of these powerful ideas, six years ago, he founded something called the World Domination Summit, which is this really cool gathering of creative, remarkable people, and like thousands and thousands of people attend this event. It's pretty amazing. And this is a really special conversation. It's less about Chris's book specifically, and much more about what makes Chris tick, like how he sees himself in the world. The importance of purpose, of cultivating community, of giving back, and the strength required to

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  continually grow and evolve. And so throughout this conversation, we get pretty honest, we get raw, we get real, we went deep, we get a little emotional at times. And these, of course, are all of my favorite things to do. It's why I do the podcast, and it doesn't always happen with every guest. But at the end of this, I really felt like I found a new friend, a new confidant, which is really special. And it's why I think this episode really stands out. So, enough about that. Let's drop into Portland and tap into the psyche of one of my new favorite people. Enjoy this conversation with Mr. Chris Guillebeau.

• 8:29Rich Roll?

  This is long overdue. We should have made this happen quite a long time ago. I apologize to you for that, but I'm glad that we're finally sitting here together.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Here we are.

• 8:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we have lots of points of commonality and interest and lots of mutual friends. We shared an editor, a book editor, and Rick Horgan, the fabulous Rick Horgan. How many books did he work on with you?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Rick and I did The Hundred Dollar Startup and The Happiness of Pursuit together. And he's, as you said, fantastic guy.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  He's an incredible gift for vocabulary. He always has the right word for everything. And he's truly wonderful.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  He was my editor on Finding Ultra, and I just felt so privileged. I mean, that was my first book, and I had no idea what I was doing. And I just couldn't even believe that he was interested in editing my book. I remember I had an initial call with him when I was pitching the book, and he wanted to do it. And I told my book agent, I couldn't believe I had a book agent.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, same.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  I couldn't believe I was having any of these conversations, that anyone was interested at all. But I said to her, "So Rick's not really going to edit my book, right? He's just going to assign this to some junior editor who's like a year out of Vassar."

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:39Rich Roll?

  She's like, "No, he's going to edit it." And then when I was writing, I was very sheepish about bugging. Like, I didn't want to bug him unless I was, you know, had, could send him a, you know, a copious amount of work, or whether it was something super substantive. So I actually don't feel like I took as much advantage of his wisdom and knowledge as I could have.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Did you get any 10-page memos from him?

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  He does this single-spaced, you know,

• 10:04Rich Roll?

  More than a few of those.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Dear Chris, you know, and then it goes on and on and on and on. And it's all frustratingly helpful.

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  In the sense that, you know, he's providing all this constructive feedback. And I read it, and I'm like, "Damn, unfortunately, he's right."

• 10:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  In the sense that I have to go back and do a lot of work.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  But offer the better product hopefully.

• 10:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he definitely pushed me and was instrumental in helping try to get the best, you know, version of my book out of it. And I think he succeeded in that, so I'm forever grateful to him.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  So when I think about your work in a global sense, one of my favorite quotes comes to mind from our esteemed poet, Henry David Thoreau, who once said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and what is considered resignation is confirmed desperation." And I feel like... A lot, if not the great majority of what you do speaks to that great malaise, what I think is actually kind of an epidemic in our culture these days of people living lives that perhaps they don't even feel like they consciously chose and feeling powerless to change them. Is that a fair estimation?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I like that description. I think I try to do a lot of my work on discontent, broadly speaking discontent with life, discontent with work and probably comes from just my own life of being discontented in different ways and trying to make changes and maybe choosing a different path and seeing what happens there and what opens up.

• 11:36Rich Roll?

  And you've often said that that kind of what you speak to is trying to help people live lives of perhaps not non-conformity per se, but living a little bit more outside the box so that people can connect with their higher purpose, I guess.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, perhaps.

• 11:57Rich Roll?

  Use a jingoistic.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. Yeah. I mean unconventional lives, living unconventional lives of their own choosing. So obviously it's never about telling people how to live, but maybe providing opportunities and showing people like, hey, if there's something you've always wanted or you had this crazy idea or this dream, you're not alone. There's other people out there who have similar dreams and you can do this. And not only can you do this, but you have something to give as well. You have something to contribute. So it's like one part invitation. It's one part like, come and welcome, like, you're one of us, so to speak. Maybe other people don't understand you, but we do, globally speaking, broadly

• 12:40Speaker 01

  speaking. And then the second part is that is the challenge. It's like, hey, if you're listening to this, if you're reading a blog or a book or something, then you're a pretty privileged person, which is great. It means that we all have opportunities that a lot of other people don't have. So what are we going to do with those opportunities? And if we are discontented or if we have that malaise, what is our response to that?

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  Right. Inciting people to action is the trick, right? Like, I feel like, and I've said this before, but... Inspiration can come in many forms and sometimes it can be easy. It's easy to post something on Instagram with some kind of

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Lots of likes, you know.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  Statement or whatever, but actually trying to get people to implement the advice and put it to work on a consistent daily basis is a much taller order.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Of course, and they have to do it themselves. You know, I think they have to obviously understand, okay, here's this option, but I have to be the one to take it. So it's maybe a short-term value versus long-term value or something.

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  So how do you bridge that gap for people? Like, what is your approach in trying to get them, you know, like off the, you know, away from the computer screen and actually into, you know, investing in their life?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Maybe it's through telling stories. Maybe it's through community of showing people, you know, again, you're not alone. Other people that are like you, and maybe your life is not going to be like Rich's or like Chris's or so-and-so, but look at what this person did. You know, they had this opportunity, they pursued it. What does that look like for you? All right, so it's not so much prescriptive, step-by-step, you know, here's your 10-step program. Although that can be helpful for some things too. But it's providing examples and maybe helping people think a little bit differently as well. Because, you know, obviously, most of us come from this certain mindset of this is the normal order of things, the normal progression of things.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And there might be a shortcut to those things, or there might be a totally different way of doing something. And so I think if you can shine a spotlight on that, then a lot of people are going to be like, yeah, I'm going to do that, I'm going to grab on to that. But it's very much, it's not like about, you know, convincing people or persuading people. To me, it's about all those people who are in the lives of quiet desperation, who are like, yes, you know, I want to make a change. I'm listening to this podcast like all the time. I'm trying to do different stuff, but you know, what do I do? How do I do it?

• 15:09Rich Roll?

  Right. And the way that you've kind of done this in your own work is you infuse your books with your own personal story and

• 15:18Speaker 01

  For better or worse.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  And experience, no, you're This is what I did and this is where I went wrong and here's where it worked and all of that. And then kind of compiling, you know, a massive number of case studies and then curating those to provide, you know, illustrative examples of how other people have done it. All the way from, you know, extreme examples like, you know, the guy in the happiness book about, you know, taking the vow of silence and only walking.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Right, for 20 years or something like that.

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  Which are, you know, that's an inaccessible example for a lot of people because they're not going to do it. It illustrates a point very well, but also people that are, that are doing it in ways that I think, you know, the average person can really relate to and say, you know, that guy did that. Like, I can, I can step in that direction. And I think that's empowering, right, to provide the everyman kind of example of how people are changing in, in small and sometimes bigger ways.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you mentioned Rick Horgan. I remember when I was writing that book, the story of the guy who took the vow of silence for 26 years. You know, he says like, you know, take out all these references to that guy. It's like, I want one reference to that guy in the whole book because nobody's going to relate to that. You know, he's like, nobody's going to say like, I want to take a vow of silence, you know, for 20 years, whatever. But even though it was a great story, there's also this guy who ran a marathon. How many marathons? Did you run like 100 marathons in a year or something? Maybe that was you.

• 16:38Rich Roll?

  No, it wasn't. I remember that guy. Mad Dog?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Martin Purnell, I think, from Canada.

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, there's another one. You have two ultra runner examples in the book.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, everyman examples, um, I think are maybe more interesting in some ways. And try to just provide this barrage of case studies, as you said, because I want people to be able to relate to somebody, um, to be able to say, okay, like, uh, you know, if I read this book, like I, maybe I can read a book and like it, but I'm not like the author. I can't do what he did or what she did. Or even if I read this story, you know, biography of somebody else, I'm impressed, but there's this distance, you know, between us. So wherever we can kind of break down the distance and say, okay, well, here's like, you know, I wrote about $100 startup, which has all these case studies of people who started a business without going into debt, without borrowing money, you know, without going to business school. And it was like so many examples of people who've done this that there's no excuse.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, it's accessible. At least that's my goal.

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that book was extremely successful. I think I still see it in airport bookstores. Like, that book is still ubiquitous and everywhere.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I have to give credit to Rick Organ again for that, too.

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  Well, we're gonna make this the honorary Rick Organ podcast.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  You have to send him a link to this afterwards.

• 17:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because one of the things that he said to me early on in the writing process was, you know, I was sort of confounded, again, that I had this opportunity to write this book. Because I hadn't, you know, as a sort of athlete memoir, there's also the addiction story and all these other, and the sort of, you know, sort of diet manifesto aspect of it. I was kind of walking a tightrope between three different genres and trying to make it all work and trying to figure out how all those puzzle pieces were gonna fit. At the same time, from the athletic, you know, perspective of the story, I'd never won a big race. You know, I wasn't like a world champion. And at the same time that I was writing my book, Scott Jurek, who's the world's most famous ultra-runner, who also happens to be a vegan, was writing his book.

• 18:32Rich Roll?

  And I was thinking, who in their right mind would buy my book when they can buy his book? Like, what can I possibly say that he isn't gonna say better? And I realized very early on that the only way that my book was gonna work was gonna be directly related to the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable and very personal about what I was doing. And one of the things that Rick said to me that made all the difference was that it was this distinction between aspiration and inspiration. He's like, Scott Jurek is inspirational. You're aspirational. The average person can see themselves in your story, and that's the key here. And in a similar sense, I see that in what we just spoke about, like the guy who takes the 20-year vow of silence.

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  That's perhaps inspirational for certain people, but it's extreme. Whereas, you know, what you did, or some of the other examples, you know, of businesses built or, you know, lives transformed are aspirational. And I think that's a qualitative difference. And I think it's important, when you're writing in this genre, to be bearing that in mind.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, going to every country in the world was actually not that difficult. It was, uh, I mean, it was long. It was a process. I had lots of setbacks. But I, I liked it because I always knew what to do next. Like I had this linear kind of thing.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  Very tactile.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I kind of related to that. And it's like in the beginning of when I first started writing about it, had a lot of criticism from people who said, oh, you're just kind of like checking things off a list. So of course I'm defensive and like, no, no, of course not, you know, but then um, kind of over time realized like there's actually value in having a list and, like being able to see this visual progress as I go along and checking them in my Ever Notes. And so I feel in some ways, you know, people are always like, wow, that was such a big thing. I'm like, well, it took 11 years. But I had this really clear outcome. So, I mean, it was just a matter of kind of connecting the dots and following it along the way. I think the creativity was in more in the idea and then in the pursuit of it.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  It was different than maybe some other kind of goals. So, and also I'd been traveling for a long time before I picked up that, that goal. So it's not like I was, I had some, some sort of expertise or experience that other people couldn't have for themselves.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  And that, uh, you know, that quest, which is a word you, you've, you know, you've, you've sort of used throughout, the happiness of pursuit and the importance of, of having a quest and pursuing a quest. That quest really in many ways, I think, is the genesis of everything that has followed. Like you started out as a blogger, like you made this decision, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, initially it was just 50 countries, right? And then 100 countries. It wasn't, it wasn't from the outset, I'm gonna do every country. It just kind of organically grew out of that.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 21:18Rich Roll?

  And this decision to blog about it, but not blog about it from a perspective of a travel blogger, like explaining those places that, that you were visiting, but more from a perspective of how to do this. Like this is how I got it done. And here's my, you know, kind of experience for other people that are interested in following in my footsteps.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  I'm interested in, you know, we can get into the backstory behind that a little bit more in depth, but, I'm interested in,

• 21:49Rich Roll?

  in how that, um, like how, how the journey of doing that has, has sort of blossomed into, you know, what you do now. Like this sort of, you know, communal enterprise that you've brought over. And, and I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of people. They set out, maybe they have an idea for a huge goal. But they don't want it, they won't even begin until they think they have the entire thing mapped out in their head from beginning to end. And it, and it turns into like a paralysis and then they never get to it. They never start because they don't have all the answers. Right? And in my experience and from what I gather in your experience, that's not how this stuff works.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  Like on some level, yes, you want to be prepared and kind of understand what you're getting involved in. But there's a ledge that inevitably you're going to have to jump off of and, and have some faith and spread your wings and fall where you may.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I completely agree. I think if you have a small goal, then you can have a strategic plan and everything kind of laid out, you know exactly what it is. But you know, if you want to have a big vision or if you have this discontent that you're trying to respond to, then you're not going to necessarily know. Like, once you go down that road, you don't know where you're going to end up necessarily. And for me at least, it was, it was for the better. But I had, I had, there was no strategy in doing this. There wasn't any business model behind it. I had been to about 70 countries or so when I started writing about it. And before that, it was just my own kind of, kind of thing.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  And you mentioned like, I'm not a travel writer. Well, I tried to do travel writing and I was pretty bad at it. Like, I really was. Like, I mean, there are people who do wonderful work, you know, great photography, you know, photojournalism essays, all about these wonderful experiences they have and, and you know, cultural, you know, encounters and interactions. And the few times I tried to write like that, I was just, I was just terrible at it. Right? And so for a while, I thought the goal was I'm supposed to improve in that. And finally, I just kind of let that go and say, well, I'm going to, I'm going to be myself. I'm going to be vulnerable, as you said, I'm going to write about the process. And maybe some people are going to like that, maybe some people aren't. But that's what I can do, so.

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  But you couldn't have known that that was what your voice was.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  No, not at all.

• 24:03Rich Roll?

  Until you tried on a few hats.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  And so as somebody who I know loves planning and writes, you know, annual reviews and likes to make lots of lists and create visions for, you know, how the year is going to unfold, there's a balancing act between doing that and, and that leap of faith. Right? So where do you find that balance?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  I guess, you know, you find the balance when you're excited about something. When you're motivated to do something, even if you don't see what's all the way at the end of it. When I thought about that quest, I was excited about it. And I could quickly then move to that level of planning, even if there was some uncertainty to it. The same thing with beginning to, you know, connect with people around the world through the blog, which is now eight years ago. I didn't necessarily know where it was going. I thought I was going to be a travel writer. Turned out to not be a great one.

• 24:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  But I was excited about it. So, I think, try to kind of respond to, you know, what am I motivated to do? What do I have resistance for? And of course, there's different kinds of resistance. Sometimes there's resistance to something you have to do, you want to do. But, I guess, when I look back at all the things that I've attempted, and some have succeeded and many have failed, the ones that have succeeded have been when it's, you know, whatever my true self is, when it's something that I, you know, can do somewhat well, but I also like have this belief about.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, the idea of being a travel writer seems to be something that, you know, might have crossed your mind as, well, this is what people want to read.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  This is what I want to say.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  This is the format, right? Like, here's the format, how can I do this?

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  And, you know, you can replicate, sure.

• 25:40Rich Roll?

  Try to fit yourself into that box.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Sure, and you can replicate. But yeah, I mean, I don't think, the best possible scenario there is that I would have become a decent travel writer. I wasn't going to like reframe that whole narrative or that whole format. And I don't know if we'd be having this conversation now. So fortunately, I did something different.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  What was the initial drive to visit all these countries? You're laughing because you've probably had to answer this question a million times, but I'm interested in, you know, what sparked that and what you were looking to get out of that experience and perhaps in retrospect, you know, how that, how, what you actually got out of it may be different.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Well, I smile because I want to not give you a rote answer. I want to respect your listeners, right? I don't want to give you like, oh, well, here's what I've said 100 times. No, I really want to kind of consider it. I mean, the first part was I loved travel, just travel by itself, exploration, discovery, probably like many people who are listening. But then for me, where it became something greater was when I connected it to this structure of the quest. And that's when I got really excited because it seemed, it seemed not quite impossible, but whatever is right below that, you know? And it seemed like I can do this. It's going to take a lot. There's going to be a lot of costs, you know, time costs, money costs,

• 27:02Speaker 01

  you know, sacrificing other projects, other things. But I guess I just couldn't get it out of my head. And that's another thing that I have written about a couple of times, like if you have this idea and you can't stop thinking about it, there's probably something to it. Like, we all have crazy ideas, you know, they go away, we kind of realize like, oh, not going to do that. But if it stays with you over time, then ultimately, I think what led me to say, okay, yes, I'm going to go for it, was this fear, healthy or otherwise, of regret. And this fear of like, looking back and saying, like, I remember when I had this idea. And I went to a bunch of countries.

• 27:37Rich Roll?

  Why didn't I do that?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I never tried, you know? I never tried to do it. And I have, I have thought about that a lot because, like, there was no guarantee of success, obviously. And if I had failed, that would have been disappointing. But I think it would have been far more disappointing to just have never tried it, right?

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  And how, how were you supporting yourself during that 10-year of time? I mean, it was a very extended period of time, obviously.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. I wasn't traveling like, nonstop for those 10 years. It was more like 11 years. But, you know, for the first few years, I was an aid worker, living in Sierra Leone, Liberia. That's where I got comfortable traveling in different, you know, parts of the world, which aren't always easy. And then I'd always been an entrepreneur. I'd always kind of worked for myself. I did freelance writing, did lots of random online kind of stuff. I did affiliate programs, started these small little businesses. I wrote a lot about that in $100 Startup. So I was never like building this huge scalable business. I didn't have employees. But for a long time, I did have this lifestyle that kind of allowed me to, you know, take some time off and travel. And that became more and more over time. And then eventually, there was a business model that came out of that blog I was writing, but that was also very organic.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  In the beginning, when you, when you launched the blog, like, what was the readership right off the bat? Was it like your aunt and your mom?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, my joke is like, it was, it was five people and one of them was my grandma. And then I found out that my grandma had two email addresses that she had signed up, you know, for twice. I was like, damn, it's not just 20%, it's 40%. Thanks, thanks grandma. You know, you can go back and read the very first post on my blog. I kind of outlined the vision of the blog. And it's, it's so funny, because I look and read and I'm like, I'm gonna, like, my goal is like, one day, I want to have a thousand subscribers. You know, that just seems like, you know, phenomenal and fabulous. Like, I would love to have that. I think it's always good to, to go back and look at, like, if you like a podcast, if you like a blog, go back and look at that person's like, first few entries, that first episode. It's probably gonna be crap, you know? And that's really, that's inspiring

• 29:39Speaker 01

  to me. That's aspirational to me, because you can see how they, how they developed and how they, where they came to crossroads, what choices they made. And, you know, unless they've actually gone back and cleaned that stuff up, because, but who has time to do that?

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  So.

• 29:51Rich Roll?

  How do you think the blog, the blogosphere has changed? It seems to me that, that now, because media is so disintermediated, that the idea of starting a blog now and ultimately trying to create a business out of it is a much taller order than perhaps it was in, you know, 2006 or '07?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Sure. I do think it's changed a lot. I think in particular, over the past couple of years, maybe. I think, I think that model held up for a long time. And I think it is still feasible, but maybe it's not as accessible, at least in the same way. But, you know, media is always evolving. I mean, as you know very well, there's lots of people that are being very successful with podcasts now. There'll probably be something else that's coming out.

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  Right. I feel like podcasts in certain ways have, have sort of succeeded the blog, like, it's sort of fit that similar niche. But even that, it's not about... You know, like, I would say a tiny fraction of the people that listen to this podcast actually go to my website.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? They just get it on their phone from iTunes or what have you. So, the idea of having your own website as a destination seems far less important than it once did.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's not, it's certainly not critical. It's like, depends on how you're approaching the conversation. Like, do you have to have it? Absolutely not. But for me, you know, I'm learning a lot about podcasting, but I was always a writer. That was my format. For me, writing a book was not a means to an end. I actually wanted to write books. I wanted to write a blog. So I think people, people will still learn in different ways. You know, some people are not auditory learners. Some people actually do want to read, you know, whether on a screen or on a page. So, I think to me, what, what matters and what's relevant is, is ideas. And ideas and community.

• 31:36Rich Roll?

  They don't go out of style.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, hopefully.

• 31:50Rich Roll?

  So, from all these countries that you visited, I'm gonna ask you the tropish questions.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Great, ready. What's my favorite one?

• 31:57Rich Roll?

  No, not your favorite one. I mean, you're gonna say-

• 32:00Speaker 01

  It's always the worst question.

• 32:01Rich Roll?

  Australia or something like that, right?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  I have an answer, but it's not the greatest question.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  The most, maybe the most challenging. Like, one of the, one of the countries that, that I didn't see come up in, in any of the, you know, sort of articles that I read about you was North Korea.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, North Korea, Yemen, Iraq, Iran. The countries that were actually the most challenging are not those like, you know, half dozen countries that people think of. There's, there's, there's always a way, or there's almost always a way, you know, to get into any part of the world. If you kind of work on it, especially if you have a US passport, Canadian passport, British, you know, European Union, etc. For me, the challenge, the greatest challenge were some countries, particularly in Africa, that had- You know, visa restrictions and basically just did not want Americans coming essentially, or any outsiders, any foreigners coming. So those were Mauritania, Eritrea. Saudi Arabia

• 32:58Speaker 01

  is not the easiest country to go to if you don't have a valid business reason to go.

• 33:01Rich Roll?

  I actually have been, that's, I'm not nearly as extensively traveled as you, but I have been across Saudi. I've been to three cities in Saudi Arabia. I have done that.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Did you go to Yemen as well?

• 33:12Rich Roll?

  I didn't. I went to Pakistan though.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  That's good. And then also there's some countries that are just inaccessible. So they don't, it's not like a politically difficult or security concern, but they're in the middle of the South Pacific and very few flights. Nehru is one, one flight a week that brings in like a dozen people. So some of those.

• 33:33Rich Roll?

  You have these great stories in The Happiness Pursuit about playing, basically playing roulette with the visa and, you know, flying to New York and getting your passport back like just in time and all that.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sometimes I would show up without a visa. I mean, I did that in Pakistan, actually, which is not something.

• 33:47Rich Roll?

  That they're gonna let you in.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't actually recommend that to people, but for me, it's not like I was arrogant and I didn't assume. I didn't know if it would work or not. But for me, I wanted to do everything I could because if I did fail, I wanted to look back and say, you know, I tried everything I possibly could. I got on that airplane even though I didn't know. So.

• 34:06Rich Roll?

  When I went to Pakistan, I did have a visa and I had a valid, you know, sort of reason to be there. I was doing a speaking engagement there. But I remember, like I'd never been so far, like I didn't have this background in travel. So for me, this was brand new to go to this part of the world. And it was before I'd been to Saudi Arabia and these other places. And it didn't dawn on me, like I had a layover in Dubai and that was all very exciting. And, but it wasn't until the plane was descending into Karachi and I looked out the window and I had, it just hit me like a ton of bricks, like, wow, I am like really far away from home and very much out of my element. I was the only Westerner

• 34:47Rich Roll?

  on the plane. And, you know, everybody on the plane was kind of looking at me strangely, not aggressively, but just curious, like, what is this guy doing? Like, is he with Blackwater? And then when I got off the plane.

• 35:02Rich Roll?

  And I was walking down the hallway towards customs. I hadn't gotten my bags yet or anything. There were two military dudes with rifles and the whole thing who, who, uh, who looked at me and they said, Mr. Rich, Mr. Rich. And I said, yes. And I mean, they're literally just two guys standing in the middle of a hallway. Like, we hadn't gotten to any, like, gateway or anything like that yet. And they just said, passport, passport.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  VIP welcome for you there.

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  Well, at the time, I'm thinking, this is one of those moments, like, once I give these guys my passport, like, who knows what's gonna happen? Like, but I don't know that I have a choice, right? So I gave it to them and then they walked me down the hallway, but they stayed very, very close to me. And I thought that was odd until later I realized, like, oh, they're like protecting me. And then they walked me to the, to the far end of the customs. There's all like, you know, you go down to customs, there's all the lines, like you see everywhere. And on the far right was this other desk and they walked me over there and some, there was like a discussion slash argument between these guys and some other guy. That felt like it was, uh, out of the movie Argo.

• 36:10Rich Roll?

  And just that feeling of like not knowing what's going on and feeling very out of control. I remember like, you know, being, I wasn't scared, but I thought like, oh, this is what it feels like to be really out of your element. And, you know, I think it's a good lesson. Of course, everything was fine and all of that, but, you know, a very interesting experience. So I guess, you know, what I'd like to know is in retrospect and now having, you know, I know you still travel extensively. Like, what were you in Doha?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Doha, Cairo, Bangkok.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  So you're still continuing this, you know, love of travel, but having put a little bit of time between yourself and the completion of the quest. You know, what is your, you know, how has that colored your perspective of, you know, how we live in America? And in general, you know, how you conduct yourself throughout your life, having immersed yourself in so many, you know, basically every culture across the world.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Right. You know, in some ways, we talked about blogging being different than it was. I feel like the world is even different than it was a few years ago when I was doing this more actively, because I am still traveling, you know, now, but I'm not going to Pakistan all the time. I'm not, you know, crossing Saudi Arabia into Yemen. I think for me, I mean, some of the lessons sound kind of superficial. I'm trying to think about not to, you know, say them in the usual trite, "Well, before I, you know, didn't know about the world, and then I went and saw that there were people that were different than me." But in a lot of ways, that is kind of what it comes down to, is just an awareness and a respect of, you know, different perspectives and not just in terms of like geopolitical things or religious things, but ways of life and culture and,

• 37:51Speaker 01

  you know, body language and how people communicate and how life is lived. And I'm kind of set in my ways, you know, like I think there's this perception about me that I'm like this big risk taker and did all this stuff, but I actually have a pretty, you know, kind of standard, routine life, and those things can be disorienting when you go and... but you have to, as you said, right? And so for me, it was, you know, first of all, the part of the quest, like embracing that discomfort, embracing that disorientation and saying, "Okay, what can I learn about this?" Not just about the world, what are my big lessons of the world, but what, how is this affecting me? As you said, like what do I carry, you know, with that? And then, like, what's different now? You know, what's different now? When I had that focus of going to everywhere, it was great. I loved the focus, but now

• 38:36Speaker 01

  I, you know, have something different.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Right. But you are in the rare, you know, position of having exposed yourself to more cultures than almost anybody walking planet Earth, and with that comes a wealth of experience that I would imagine, you know, allows you to, you know, probably have a little bit more empathy for different people and perhaps might change, you know, is...

• 39:03Rich Roll?

  We're so centrist in America, right? You turn on the news, like, I would imagine if you watch the news, that you have a different perspective on the information that's being conveyed than the average American.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't watch the news. I mean, I read the news, like, I read the New York Times, or the Guardian, or whatever, but watching news always depresses me, regardless of the network, pretty much, it kind of, it's just the way the story is told, the narrative, the filter, and it's not just that that is wrong, quote unquote, it's that it's just so limited, like, there is more, there is another story, there is another perspective, you know, for a lot of these things, so maybe just being aware of that and understanding, you know, how the world perceives America, how the world might perceive a foreign traveler, you know, as he's going about doing different things. It was during the height of the Iraq War, the invasion, George Bush presidency, when I was doing a lot of this travel, so that would always, always come up, 100% of the

• 39:58Speaker 01

  time, in any taxi, whenever I talk to, you know, anybody, it's like, you know, what's going on with this, like, I have something to say about your president, or your country, or whatever, and so, had to figure that out.

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  And you never had any issues getting into a country because you had a stamp on your passport from another country that perhaps was not so friendly to the country you're trying to enter?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  No, that doesn't actually happen that much. I mean, it's a whole issue of, like, Israel and the Arab states, or other Muslim countries.

• 40:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because I've been to Lebanon, and now I'm thinking, well, they might not let me into Israel if I want to go there.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  No, the opposite would be the question, but not that, not the other way.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  So if you go to a country like that, where you maybe not want to have a stamp in the passport, you can just tell them, and they won't stamp the passport, like, they're used to that, basically.

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  This is one of your travel hacks. But if you're going out, if you want, you want that stamp, right?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I didn't care about the stamp, no, Rich, I honestly, at the end, I didn't care about stamps at all, because I was actually getting so many stamps, I had to juggle my passport, I already had all the pages added to it, and, you know, it used to be that you could add a whole bunch of different sets of pages to a US passport, and for a while, it was free, and then it was a charge, and I had sent mine away three or four times, and finally, they sent it back, rejecting it, because it was physically impossible, you know, to, like, bind more pages into it, so I was actually trying to be conservative with the stamps.

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Well, let's take it back a little bit, I'm interested in your upbringing, and, you know, your kind of evolution to...

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  Present day, you know, you grew up, I guess your dad was in the air force, right?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, stepdad.

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  Like an army brat, growing up, living in a whole bunch of different places and, you know, hit some rough patches as an adolescent and ended up dropping out of high school.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's somehow found a way to still get into college, though?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  After dropping out of high school.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, college hack. Well, I, so I always liked learning. Like, I liked, I loved to read books, loved to play video games, which may or may not be learning, but, you know, I always liked learning, but I didn't do so well with structure in high school, and I was a juvenile delinquent and had that whole history. So, high school was not good for me, but I wanted to go to college. So, I kind of snuck into a junior college or a community college, and there wasn't a whole lot of prerequisites to registering, and by the time they finished, by the time they figured out that I actually hadn't graduated, I was already kind of in the process. I had already, I had done well in my first quarter. So, like, we're not going to kick him out, like, he's...

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  Did you have to go back and get your GRE or anything?

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 42:36Rich Roll?

  No?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  No, I never did, because I stuck with that, and then eventually I transferred to a four-year institution. Because I was a transfer student, they were just looking at my college records.

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Right, so, yeah, I kept, I mean, it's funny, because I went all the way and got, like, a master's degree and all this stuff, but without ever having a high school degree.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  That's fantastic, right?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52Rich Roll?

  And so, when you graduated from college, was, was the idea that, did you know that you wanted to be an author or a writer?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no idea. I mean, I graduated really young, which is a whole other story, because I took as many credits as I possibly could, then I registered at another college and took, so I was taking, like, fifty, you know, credit hours each term and somehow, like, juggling it all. So, I did the whole college experience in about two years. So, I was, I was nineteen when I graduated, and then it's like...

• 43:18Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I don't know, I don't know what I learned, because it was all about, you know, maximizing and efficiency. My grades weren't the greatest either, I should say. But I don't know if I had a great idea of what I hoped to be at that point. And I had this day job living in Memphis, Tennessee. And I was kind of like schlepping boxes around in the middle of the night. That was the last job I ever had because I discovered this new website called ebay.com. And started selling things online and realized like, this is, this is pretty good. Like, you know, I'm working in the middle of the night at the warehouse for like $8 an hour. And I just listed some things on this auction site, which I have no, I don't know how to write HTML.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  I don't know how to take good photographs. I don't know how to do, you know, I'm a copywriter. But yet I made like $15 an hour. Let's do that, you know?

• 44:10Rich Roll?

  So that was your first, like, you wet your whistle.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  That was your first little entrepreneurial venture.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:17Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:18Rich Roll?

  And did you, did you ultimately, you were working for FedEx, right?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  So did you quit FedEx?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just never showed, I just never went back, basically. Which was actually the normal protocol of quitting. Like, I don't think anybody ever gave like two weeks' notice in that job.

• 44:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And then you decided to go off on this like sort of service adventure, right? Sierra Leone, is that where you were?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I was living on a hospital ship that was kind of deployed in the region. Docked, you know, partly off the coast of Freetown, Sierra Leone, partly off of Monrovia, Liberia, and a few other countries in that, in that region.

• 44:49Rich Roll?

  What was the impetus for, for, you know, embarking on that chapter?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  It was a post 9/11 experience of, you know, being depressed like a lot of other people and asking myself like, what can I, how can I contribute to the world in some positive way? Because even though I was pretty young, like, I was still aware that, that I had it pretty good. Like, I had a life of privilege in the sense that, you know, now I no longer had this day job. I wasn't making a ton of money, but, you know, I was, I was making like $24,000 a year. And that was, that was a ton of money for me at the time, like 21 years old. And I had freedom. You know, I could, I could choose like what to do with my day and my priorities. I was a musician. I did that, you know, had all this kind of stuff, but I felt like there was more. So I felt that malaise that we talked about in the beginning. I felt that discontent. And I thought if I want to contribute to a service

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Project, I want like the, I want the most hardcore one. Like if I'm gonna go overseas or something like, what is the poorest country in the world? So I Googled poorest country in the world, and at the time it was Sierra Leone on the UN Human Development Index. And I knew of this organization that had been working there, and I read the story of a surgeon from California who had been there for something like eighteen years at that point. He met his wife there, who was another volunteer, and they raised their two children. And so I felt personally challenged, you know, by that story. I was like, okay, if this dude, you know, can do all that and essentially give up this very lucrative, you know, career back in America, I, I'm probably not gonna do it for eighteen years, but, you know, sign me up. So, did two, made a two-year commitment and then extended for a third and fourth year.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  So you're on that, you're on this hospital boat.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:25Rich Roll?

  And treating what kind of patients?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  So the, the doctors and surgeons and the whole medical team of the ship, they're trying to do procedures that are not normally available in those countries. So there's a lot of prosthetic stuff, there's tumor removal, cataract repair, cleft lip and palate, vaginal fistula. So they're trying to kind of correct some pretty serious stuff.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  You know, it's not primary care, it's not any kind of first aid, it's all more advanced things.

• 46:54Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and your job was what?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my first job was to schlep boxes around, once again.

• 47:00Rich Roll?

  Back to the boxes?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I know. And it was, but it was different because, like, I'm actually in this warehouse and, like, managing these supplies and I could, I could physically see a connection between what I was doing and people who were being helped, which is very rare, like with charity, most of the time you write a check, you don't know. Or maybe you see a video or something, but you don't realize, like, your direct impact. So I did that for a few months and then somehow I proved myself capable. And through a kind of a strange set of circumstances, ended up kind of, you know, moving like way, way up the ranks, you know, from, I don't know, number four hundred out of four hundred people to the number two or number three person on the ship. And I started working with the host governments that our organization was partnering with.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  So that's why I started traveling in the region, met and worked with the president of Liberia, various ministries. Years of health, various other people like that. And I learned a lot, like very quickly.

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. And it was around that time that you first met Scott Harrison, right?

• 47:57Speaker 01

  That's right. I knew Scott his very first day in Africa.

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  That's so crazy.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  When he came, yeah, when he came to the ship, I remember when he arrived and he and I used to hang out a lot in Liberia. We would drive our Land Rovers around. And I remember before he left, he said, he and I went to lunch and he said, I'm going to start this like this thing, you know? And I have to, I'll be totally transparent. I said, well, that's good, Scott, but you know, like, there's probably like 30 water NGOs like right here in Monrovia, Liberia. You know, there's like hundreds of them around the world. Like, it's good that you're going to, you know, do something with it. But I had no idea, you know? No idea. I mean, that it was, it would become Charity Water.

• 48:38Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy. Yeah. For the listener, Scott Harrison is the founder of a wildly successful charity called Charity Water. And he initially moved to Africa as sort of a self-imposed purgatory to atone for his many years of being a debaucherous nightclub promoter in New York City. And had this sort of epiphany, much like your own, I would imagine, where he decided that, you know, he really wanted to change his life and to create, you know, to sort of contribute and create meaning. And Charity Water was born out of that. And it really has redefined giving across the world and created new parameters for what charities can be and do. And it's, it's very inspirational what he's done.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  And the success is extraordinary.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I love how you describe it like that. I love how you say it's like, not only was it, is it amazing charity, which of course it is, doing all this great work in Ethiopia in particular, but elsewhere. But also it has changed the model of charity. And I think that's a, just a huge testament to what he's done.

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, through transparency, you know, sort of this souring that I think a lot of people have about giving because we feel disconnected from where our dollars go. And he created a model whereby you're incredibly connected to where your dollars go. Every 100% of every dollar donated to Charity Water actually ends up doing what, you know, the giver would like. I get to do. And I think what do they they they raise capital just for operating.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. They separate their separate their programming and operating expenses, which is also kind of a groundbreaking thing when they did it.

• 50:09Rich Roll?

  Right. And it was very difficult for him to create that. And everybody told him that it couldn't be done.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had to hustle quite a bit. I mean, in those beginning years, I do remember, you know, that because he was so persuaded by that model of like, all the money that's raised is going to the field. It's going to programming. But then obviously, you have to pay for he's in New York City, you know, and he wants to hire more people. And he had to hustle quite a bit for those operations. But I think it was obviously well worth it for many, many ways.

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  And then you ended up donating the proceeds from $100 startup to Charity Water. Is that correct?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  The first book I did, The Art of Nonconformity. And then Scott actually came and spoke at World Domination Summit, which is an event that I produce here in Portland. And he was there for year number two. And he did a big challenge with the audience, asking everybody to stand up and give up their birthday, which was a big thing they were really pushing at the time. And the audience responded very well. And I think we raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars or something. And that made me happy.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  That's fantastic.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  So I felt that was my repentance for like, not believing in him in the beginning, you know, it's not like I didn't believe in him. I just had no idea of the scale. Like, I'm sure I thought he was going to have like a small little organization. So but obviously, I was wrong.

• 51:21Rich Roll?

  And the birthday campaign was massive, right? Basically, getting people to instead of get, you know, getting gifts for your birthday to donate the dollar amount of the age that a person is turning. And people have created viral videos out of that. And it's been wildly successful. It's very inspirational.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  And I assume you've guys have stayed close ever since then. It's just crazy that you're both of your lives have taken on this wild trajectory, you know, that that began in a small African country.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, back in those land rivers.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so what, you know, what drew you to return from that adventure on the hospital boat?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was there four years. First two years, absolutely loved it, was completely immersed. I felt like I gave 101% or whatever. And year three and year four, I don't want to suggest that I wasn't working hard, because I was, and I did like it. But I didn't love it as much. And I felt like it was not the kind of environment to be in unless you were like fully, fully committed. And I had kind of seen, like with the exception of the surgeon I mentioned who'd been there for 20 years, seen people that kind of stayed on and on, maybe get a little cynical, maybe get a little bit, I don't know, demotivated or de-energized in some way and like losing their, their passion for it. And I didn't, I guess I just didn't want that.

• 52:41Rich Roll?

  Right, becoming a little jaded.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. And I was like, this is a wonderful experience. I'm so glad I've had a chance to be part of it. I feel like my life has changed, you know, because of it. I always tried to correct people when they would say like, oh, you know, such a wonderful thing that you're doing. I'm like, well, hopefully other people are helped through it, but you know, if nothing else, I am. Like, my life has permanently changed because of this. But then I was excited about doing other stuff. I wanted to travel in other regions. I had this inkling of being a writer and sharing some ideas with the world. And I knew to kind of move to something else, I'd have to be off that environment.

• 53:14Rich Roll?

  This notion of contributing to the betterment of society, you know, being of service through your work is a theme of everything that you do and it kind of infuses, you know, all of the work that you do. And, you know, one of the things that you always say is, you know, you can be successful and contribute to a better world at the same time, that these are not mutually exclusive principles. And you've remained true to this idea of contribution as an integral aspect of the work that you create. And how do you, so how do you maintain that? And how do you help other people like access that for themselves?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  I think contribution is essential to well-being. I think contribution is, it's, it's part of the human condition. It's, you know, as we kind of give, we ourselves benefit. So I use this phrase selfish generosity. Like, let's be clear, like, it's great to give, but you're gonna, you're gonna receive something about, about, you know, through it too. And I think, you know, you mentioned you can be successful and still contribute. I almost wonder like, how can you really be successful without contributing? Because obviously people can be financially successful or whatever that kind of definition of success, but I do believe that, that most of them are probably going to feel that something's missing without that element of, of contribution. I, I think that is, that's kind of the missing link.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  And different times in my life, I've struggled with depression or anxiety. Still haven't got that all figured out, but you know, I have noticed when I go into these periods, you know, getting back to contribution and getting back to service helps me at least.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  You know, so I don't know.

• 54:55Rich Roll?

  It's a fundamental principle in, in addiction recovery, you know, service is absolutely, you know, non-negotiable, but one of the adages or sort of, you know, aspects of, of staying sober and sort of heightening your sobriety is getting out of yourself by giving, right? So if you're depressed or you're not feeling yourself, or you're not feeling good, or you're have a lot of anxiety, or you're in the throes of self-obsession, which is something that I like to do.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Sure, same, same, totally.

• 55:25Rich Roll?

  The ultimate, uh, the ultimate way out of that is to avail yourself to somebody else, right? Just pick up the phone and call somebody who perhaps is less fortunate than you. It doesn't have to be some grand gesture, it can be a simple thing, but just to get out of your own self and invest yourself in somebody else in the most simplistic way is always a way for me to change my mindset and my mood and anchor me in what's most important. Um, and that's a different, you know, a different example of, of what you just said. But in, in thinking about service, you know, culturally, we live in a very kind of binary dualistic society. It's like, you know, you're getting or you're giving and, and those don't overlap and, and

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  you know, being somebody who's in this world of startups and entrepreneurship and, you know, building businesses, it's all about the hustle and, you know, you gotta get yours and, you know, who's working the hardest and all of that. And that is, can be interpreted at being at odds with service because if you're giving, then you're not getting, right?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  So how is that reconciled for you?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  You know, sort of.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  It's kind of a trap to think that way. I mean, I can see how you have, you know, people do, obviously, and, and I mean, let's be clear, I can look at my life and say like, what was that phrase you used about the throes of self-obsession or something like that? You know, I have that, whatever that is, uh, too, and I can, I can see lots of times where I get off course and, and kind of just neglected that whole area, but I think whenever I do, it's like, there's a signal, it's like something's wrong here. Uh, and I'm actually probably not going to be actually as successful in whatever else, you know, my career goals are, uh, because I have the wrong motivation or something. So. I don't know, I think maybe just awareness of that, awareness that there is this principle, this guiding principle that, you know, should be with us like throughout our lives and it can take on many different forms. There's lots of different ways to contribute, you

• 57:19Speaker 01

  know, if you're, you're super busy, if you're working 80 hours a week for some project or something, maybe you can't, you know, volunteer 20 hours a week at whatever the local charity is, but there's probably something, you know, there's always something. You can, like you say, you pick up the phone, you call somebody, right?

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there is a bizarre, spiritual, mystical, universal equation at play here that I can't, you know, begin to understand, but I know it to be true. And that is, you know, when you, when you are in the mindset and the activity of giving, that you are always repaid, you know, twofold, tenfold, whatever it is. But never once in my life experience have I ever suffered as a result of giving, you know what I mean? So it's about broadening your perspective about how these, you know, rules, for lack of a better word, you know, function in our society. And again, it's, it's not about dogma or any kind of religious, specific religious perspective per se, but just understanding

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  that that is almost the fundamental law of, of how the universe operates, uh, you know, should be a guiding light and a north star for, for people. I mean, it's, it's changed my life tremendously just practicing that.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Right. And so I guess-

• 58:28Rich Roll?

  And I'm not always so good at it.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think it's the same, same, of course. I think it's, you know, part of what I've tried to do with Art of Nonconformity is to show that, yeah, it's not binary, as you just said, you know, contribution is necessary, but it's also okay to follow your own dream. And it's also okay to, you know, if you've got this, that crazy thing you want to do, like, go and do it. And the, the service connection, I think this is important, doesn't necessarily have to connect directly to everything else. And I think in our culture, one thing we also have is like, if somebody is doing something kind of wild and crazy, uh, then there's a, there has to be a reason for it, you know? Like, I wrote in the book about this young guy who walked across America. And he had this vision of like, I'm gonna,

• 59:11Speaker 01

  you know, leave Maine and walk to San Francisco. So, a few months later, he did- That and I loved what he said. People would always ask him like, are you raising money for cancer research? Are you like, whatever? And he's like, I'm just doing this for myself. You know, I something I feel like I have to do. I think there's a purity in that. I think that he's a better person now because of that experience. And, you know, he's going to contribute so much more in his life along the way. So I always want to challenge people like, there's the dream, you should follow it. And how is that connected eventually to other people? But it doesn't have to be directly.

• 59:42Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, he seemed like a very, almost sheepish about even talking about what he was doing, like almost embarrassed to even let anyone know that he was doing it. But obviously, the, you know, the collective wisdom of having had that experience, you know, the bear attack and whatever else happened to him along the way, is going to allow him to be able to contribute more fully the rest of his life. That's a beautiful thing. You know, along the lines of, of, you know, the hustle that comes with entrepreneurship and and the hashtags and all of that, there's also this idea that gets thrown a lot around a lot and very cavalierly of chasing your passion, you know, that we should all have a passion.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  And you should live your life passionately. And for those that are already passionate, they don't need to hear that.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:35Rich Roll?

  For the people that are having difficulty accessing something they're passionate about, I would imagine that that makes them feel lousy about themselves.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  You know, can be depressing to

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Make something's wrong with them because they don't know.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  Be bothered with that message.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:00:49Rich Roll?

  So how do you, you know, navigate that and, you know, linguistically and kind of intellectually?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So linguistically, I guess I try to be careful about some of these terms and some of these phrases, just because they have kind of taken on a different meaning. And there's nothing wrong with the word passion. I mean, it's good to be excited about something and to believe in it and to pursue it, you know, with all your heart. But because of this phenomenon that you just discussed about how like, we feel there's something wrong with us, if we don't know, like, here's my thing, I'm gonna run ultra marathons, I'm gonna go to every country in the world. I think we talk about experience. You know, it's not about follow your passion, but can you follow different life experiences? Can you follow your skill? What are you good at? What do you like to do? What did you like to do when you were 10 years old?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  You know, are you still doing some of those things? Is that something that you want to get back to? Just kind of helping people explore. And I think it's through the exploration that the broader thing comes out. At least it was for me.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not about some lightning bolt moment where you're darting out of bed and you're like, you know, suddenly you're converted into Tony Robbins or anything like that.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  You need like a trampoline by your bed.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  I did this event once where I've never actually met Tony Robbins, but I did this event once where he was also speaking and there was like a trampoline in the green room. Like that's what Tony requires. Like it's part of his rider. He has to have a trampoline. And I was like, wow, I need to start getting that myself.

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And unless you're, you're sort of walking in his footsteps or behaving the way that he does, that you're not living passionately.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:02:19Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's also an extreme, you know, extrovert expression of that.

• 1:02:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  And so you may, you may be just a quieter person or you're more, more focused on your inner world or more introspective and that's also okay.

• 1:02:44Rich Roll?

  This distinction between passion and purpose, you know, Ryan Holiday speaks to this quite eloquently. Like he, he sort of refers to passion as like the, the, you know, the flame that burns out quickly, you know, and might lead you to make, you know, sort of impetuous decisions or, or, you know, act spontaneously against your interest or flame out as opposed to kind of the slow burn of, of living purposefully. And linguistically, like at the very least, that seems to make more sense to me. And I, I think the idea of trying to connect with purpose might be more accessible for, for, you know, certain people than the idea of like finding your passion.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I like it, but I also think like finding your purpose also feels a little bit overwhelming or intimidating to some people. Like what is my purpose? What's the meaning of life? You know? Oh, Rich has got it figured. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't, you know, right?

• 1:03:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So. Yeah, it's true. It's true.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  It almost sounds heavier, actually. It sounds heavier because like passionate, you could just, I'm passionate about whatever, you know, thing is in front of me. But purpose, like, that's defining. That's like, you know, can my purpose change over time? Is it, do I have it for life? Like, you know, but I understand what you mean.

• 1:03:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a very good point. I mean, all I could, all I know is my own experience.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:59Rich Roll?

  Right? Like, and my experience is that I wasn't struck with a sense of purpose, you know, overnight. And I don't know that I ever, you know, sort of consciously embraced some idea of passion. I slowly navigated towards investing myself in things that I enjoyed doing. And I trusted and had faith that, that, that my instincts were leading me in a positive direction without knowing where it was leading and certainly having no idea that it would ultimately translate into some kind of business or anything like that. I had nothing to do with that. And, you know, I'm not somebody who creates vision boards or creates five-year plans or anything like that. It was about sort of, on a day-to-day basis,

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  really just trying to pay more attention to myself and listen to that, like have the confidence to be able to trust that that was a good choice for me, when perhaps external evidence might suggest otherwise.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Or commentary might suggest otherwise, right?

• 1:05:02Rich Roll?

  Of course, friends and family, like your external environment, you know, not smiling, you know, upon that in the way that maybe you were internally. And I think the only way I was able to do that was because I had spent 10 years doing internal work, you know, to try to get myself right with myself, like really, you know,

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  doing the inside job in a very profound way to connect with myself in a way that I could be the healthiest version of myself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I think that's what gets lost in this conversation about, you know, living purposefully or living passionately, or, you know, finding your dream job or any of these kinds of things. My, my personal opinion is that in order to really do that properly.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  You have to commit to that, that sort of journey of self-understanding and self-knowledge. And that's not very sexy. And it's not really necessarily bloggable, and it's not going to show up on Instagram.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  And it's messy, and it's scary, too. And it's different for different people, and it looks different for different people. And there's no, no one way of doing it. You know, mine was motivated out of pain and, and crisis. But I don't necessarily believe that you have to suffer in order to do that work. But I think in order to really be able to trust those instincts, you have to do that. Because otherwise, if you have some goal, like, I wanna run an ultra marathon, or I wanna do whatever it is, it doesn't matter what it is. If you're not right with yourself, then that instinct can very easily lead you astray. Because you don't really understand why it is that you have that impulse.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. My question for you was going to be, how do you, because you were talking about how you had to learn to trust yourself. And so how do you learn to do that? But you basically answered it by saying, well, I spent 10 years, you know, on inner work. I spent 10 years before all the other stuff, so.

• 1:07:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I also spent 10 years before that, making decisions that ultimately got me, you know, locked up in a mental institution. You know what I mean? So.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  We had a lot of experience.

• 1:07:16Rich Roll?

  Getting arrested and, and all of these ideas that I thought were great at the time, that, that ultimately were destroying my life. So, so there was a long period of time where I felt like I couldn't trust my instincts. Like, how do I know that the decisions that I'm making for myself are, are leading me in the right direction? I have a wealth of experience that says that, you know, my decision-maker, my picker is broken. And in order to really be able to trust myself again, I need to fix that. So it was compelled by, like I said before, a crisis. But, you know, most people, you know, don't have to, you know, sort of go through extreme examples of that. But I think to the extent that you can hone that antenna.

• 1:07:56Rich Roll?

  And really know like when that impulse arises in you that that's a good idea for you is priceless. But the cost is that work, right?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is also something that I'm learning about myself. It's kind of new to me in a lot of ways.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  I know that you're going through, you know, a fair amount at the moment. You know, I know that you recently suffered the loss of your brother and that's led you in kind of this direction too. So I was interested in kind of knowing where you're at with all of that at the moment.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's a process. It's a journey. And for people who are listening, my brother died maybe just a little bit more than a year ago now. And the circumstances of that death were not good. He was 31 years old and he made a choice to end his life. And so it was something that for all of us, you know, family, friends, was a complete shock, like never saw it coming whatsoever. And so in, you know, kind of examining, not just examining that, but like where do we go from here and how does that entail for my life, both in retrospect and in present tense and in future?

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  And I realized that I was lacking a lot of skills, essentially, a lot of these kind of emotional skills that you talk about and the ability to trust yourself and to know that you're on the right path, whatever that is. And as for where I am in the process, I'm still kind of working through it. I went to therapy, which I hadn't done before, actually started some medication for depression and anxiety, which I'd always been kind of, you know, I don't know if morally opposed, but just kind of personally not excited about. But it finally came to a point where basically I was like, I need a baseline, essentially. And so I've been doing that for maybe about six months now.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  And it was interesting when I began that process because I had a new book come out and I went on tour to promote the book. And the tour was really good, like I felt like I was giving a good stump speech and connecting well with people. And so like the career thing is happening and that was all positive, but at the same time, I'm like dealing with all this kind of emotional stuff. And it's not like either one was inauthentic. They were both true in my life. And so now book tour is over, working on some new stuff. But I don't think I could say that I have learned, you know, the same kind of lessons that you've learned. I think I'm still kind of figuring it out. And in some ways, I'm a slow learner, which is very frustrating because, you know, throughout all the random

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  stuff that we talked about, about selling things on eBay and like getting visas for countries, like I'm pretty good at that stuff. I'm pretty good at figuring out these processes and, you know, decoding and deciphering. But it doesn't always kind of work the same way when you're thinking about these kind of things.

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  It definitely is a different, yeah, it's a different animal.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  The five-step, you know, thing doesn't always, you know, apply.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so what has come up though? Like what have you confronted that, that maybe you didn't understand about yourself prior to this experience?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I used the word regret before. I do, I do feel like a deep sense of regret for, not that I'm responsible, of course, for what happened, but, you know, I do, like, I do feel like a lot of regret about not spending more time with him. And so tried to learn the lessons like from his life. And one, one central value of his life was kindness. And he was extremely kind, you know, to everybody. And now it's kind of like we look back and we realize like he actually wasn't very kind to himself. But he was like very kind to all of his friends and never forgot a birthday, you know, planned ahead for those kinds of things. Like he would put his, he would put people's birthday

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  on his phone like three days before their actual birthday, so that he would remember, you know, and it's like set reminders to get something from him. So, you know, long story short, for all that we've talked about contribution and service, I felt like a lot of ways, I was kind of off kilter with that. And maybe I had contribution in the sense that I'm giving, you know, X percent of my dollars or something to charity water. Great. You know, I believe in the work that I do. I think that a lot of it does help people. But still, like, these things will pass away, right? These things will go, you know, what, what remains? What is essential? And I felt that there was some kind of gap there. And so I'm trying to fix the gap. That's one thing.

• 1:12:26Rich Roll?

  Was he in the service?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  He was. Yeah, he was a veteran, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Army veteran. And then he was an NCIS special agent when he passed away.

• 1:12:35Rich Roll?

  Wow. So I would imagine, you know, post-traumatic stress is something that

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  We think so.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  Might have been a contributing factor.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  You know, we're obviously like diagnosing from a distance and we're not qualified to do that. And unfortunately, in those kind of careers, you know, if you are struggling, you know, with some kind of mental health issue, it's actually very difficult to get to get help. You know, I mean, he's like, he's in law enforcement. You know, he's essentially like an investigator for the government. And if you report, you know, that you're struggling with depression, you very well could lose your job or be reassigned or something like, it's actually a real thing. So, um, obviously was going through some stuff that we didn't know about.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. But like everything, you know, it's an opportunity for self-exploration with you. I would imagine it sounds like you're taking advantage of that.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  There's no other choice.

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  You know, like the choice is you kind of like wallow and remain stuck or never go anywhere with it, or you do something with it.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  You know, it's not, like, it's not the choice you want to make. Like, you would love to go back and make a different choice to change the whole situation.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  But since that's not possible, what are the options available?

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a, there is a gift in there, I think, you know, for yourself to, you know, explore and ultimately discover. But I'm, I would imagine that that would have been, it was, it must have been very difficult for you to get up and, you know, sort of sling your book and, you know, like, talk about your book and, and have people projecting onto you this idea of who they think you are as this, you know, sort of person who has lots of answers to life's questions, whether it's entrepreneurship or self-discovery, while you're simultaneously dealing with this very personal and private pain.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Well, I tried to be honest about it. I tried to be relatively transparent in terms of like I wrote about on my blog. And so people who, people who like want to know can know. And people who might not care, might not be important in their life, they don't have to. And so for me, it's not false to talk about career development and help people with their side hustle, to help people make these career decisions. Like I'm actually somewhat good at that, having gone through a lot of different experiences and all the research I've done. So for me, it was actually kind of good to focus on that. But yes, it's also simultaneously in the back of my mind, the other thing. And I did the 30-city tour.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  And I never got emotional during my talks or anything, but like right before I would go out every night, I did kind of think back about Ken and just kind of dedicate the night to him in my mind. And then I never said anything about that. I just went out and did my talk. So that kind of worked for me.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I appreciate your honesty on that.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  I noticed that, you know, one of the things I mentioned to you before the podcast, when we were kind of talking about like, well, what can we talk about that would be interesting? One of the things that's been on my mind that I'd love to get your perspective on is kind of the state of the self-help industry, you know what I mean? And this proliferation of self-help gurus, for lack of a better word, who, you know, I think there's a lot of well-intentioned people and there's a lot of people doing amazing work. And this is not a slight on anybody, but just a general observation of perhaps a lack of authenticity and, you know, of people trying to hold themselves out as maybe a little bit more than they are, as having answers to everything.

• 1:16:19Rich Roll?

  And just kind of paying attention to how this is going on on the internet causes me some concern. You know, and I'm interested in...

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to go from there. I feel like, you know, self-help is one thing. Self-help gurus, the self-help industry is kind of another thing. And I don't know, I tend to gravitate more toward voices like our mutual friend Jonathan Fields. You know, he is a great example to me of someone who, you know, is in personal development, quote unquote, self-help, but yet is kind of, you know, the opposite of being that guru telling you what to do or kind of uplifting himself. He's very much about uplifting others. And so he's someone that I've learned from for many years and kind of noticed that like

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  when I'm, when I'm, at least for my work, like if I'm helping, like for me, the goal is genuine empowerment and affirmation. And I think there's value in that, like helping people understand their self-worth, helping people understand their potential and not just understand it, but then actually do something about it, taking the action that we touched on briefly earlier. That to me is the value. Whenever it has shifted to become like this personality-based thing, then that feels a little bit less comfortable, you know? And so I just kind of, for me personally, I will deflect a lot of that stuff. And if people have a question about, you know, how to ask for a promotion at work or how to start their little side business while they have their day job, great, I can tell you exactly how to do that.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  If people start asking me some like really big questions about life that I don't have, I don't have, I'm just gonna say that, I'm like, I don't know. Dude, I don't know.

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  How dare you?

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  No, I mean, but that-

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  How dare you say you don't know?

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  It's probably disappointing to people, but I'm like, what am I supposed to say? I don't have the answer. Like I affirm your question, like I understand that you're seeking. Me too. You know, let me know when you figure it out. So, I don't know, I think self-help is this complicated thing because it's like passion, like we can be very cynical of it and we should in lots of ways. At the same time, like we can probably all think of people in our lives who have helped us in different ways, who've kind of led us along a path and, you know, kind of pointed the way towards something. And without that resource, whether that's like counsel or mentorship or a book or something like without that, we wouldn't have been that far along, right?

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I think it's, I think that was a great answer. Thank you for that.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  That was not bad.

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  And by the way, I absolutely love Jonathan Fields. I did a podcast with him that's not going to go up until October, but you know, he's one of my favorite people. I just think he's fantastic. And I think it's the distinction between,

• 1:19:02Rich Roll?

  well, I guess, I think, I think it's about authenticity, you know, and I think it's about transparency. And I think as, as people become more savvy consumers of the internet, what you see is a much more finely attuned radar for BS, you know what I mean? Which I think is a great thing.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  That's good. And the quality, I think the quality also BS first of all, and then quality second, maybe. Raises people's work because everybody's got a thing, a lot of noise out there.

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it's, it is disturbing to me when I, when I can clearly identify from, you know, a mile away, when some of these, you know, through their language, I can tell this is like some kind of crazy sales pitch for some, you know, product that probably isn't so great. And I see it working and profiting and it, it upsets me.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  That's when it's scary, when it's working. When you see it not working, it's like, well, people are, people are smart. They're using that radar. That's interesting.

• 1:20:02Rich Roll?

  But I'm, I'm hopeful that the internet is self-selecting, you know, that, that this economy, you know, online will,

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Over time.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  That the quality will raise to the top. And, you know, I think that you're, you're a great and shining example of, you know, putting out phenomenal content at like an alarming rate. Like, I don't know how you create so much so consistently. I know you write at least a thousand words a day, but your output is pretty tremendous.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  I've had some slow periods, but thank you.

• 1:20:30Rich Roll?

  But it's, it's like, it's all very,

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Useful advice, you know.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Well, hopefully, that's the goal. If it's not, if it's not useful, if it's not helpful, then then it is kind of BS, right? So I got, and I think everybody has a certain amount of BS in their life and their writing. So I guess I want the BS quotient to be very low, you know?

• 1:20:49Rich Roll?

  Well, I think, I think you're succeeding in that. Um, how many, like, so is, are you still doing a thousand words a day? Is that still a practice?

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Yes, but it's not, it is a practice. It's like a gratitude practice or something in which I try to be consistent with it. But I also kind of get off track, so it's my goal. Um, I would say I'm probably at about five days a week, five out of seven.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  And is that, how much of that gets published?

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  It depends, you know, when I'm writing a book, well, I mean, obviously, you know a lot about writing books as well, probably write two to three times, you know, more than what's actually used in the manuscript.

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Online might have a lower standard, right? Because it's online, so.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  And when you're writing a book, how do you balance writing for the blog versus writing for the book?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  The blog suffers. Pretty much. I mean, it's, it's nice of you to say that I'm prolific, but, uh, you know, things will always suffer. You can't do, you know, everything at once.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Can't do everything, you know what I mean? Despite the pressure on you to be constantly uploading. I mean, one of the things that I, that I appreciated, um, that I heard you say was when you were, when you were traveling, you initially felt this pressure to be photographing everything and to be sharing this and, and to, to kind of have that level of transparency, to be this, you know, sort of social media presence with what you were doing. And then ultimately coming to a place of, of saying, this is not for me. I don't have to share every aspect of my life and alleviating yourself of that pressure. Cause there is that kind of thing of, that takes you out of the moment of the experience. Like if you're not sharing it, it's not happening.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  And the illusion of that.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think my social media in general is something that I actually don't do a really good job at. And at least at this point in my life, I'm okay with that. At this point in my life, because in other seasons, I've been like, oh, I really need to like get on my game with this, I need to have my calendar for all this different stuff. And it, speaking of authentic, that to me feels inauthentic. Um, I know people who do that very authentically. Um, but for me, it didn't, didn't feel good. And I thought like, ultimately, if I'm going to change the world or my small little part of the world. For me, I should be writing, I should be thinking about ideas. And then if I'm actually doing something of value, hopefully other people are gonna share it, right? As opposed to this grand strategy of here's like the X number of Instagram posts or whatever a day.

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think that speaks to balance, too, right? Like, and you have some interesting ideas about balance. I've been thinking a lot about balance lately, but you know, how do you perceive balance in your own life?

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for years I've said I like the word alignment better than balance. And maybe it's like a small distinction or something, but balance just, um, balance to me is kind of, I think of life-work balance, which leads me to like some corporate, you know, corporate speak, corporate benefit, like we're a corporation, we're taking your life away from you, but we want you to feel good about it. Because there's free yogurt, you know, in the fridge or something, so therefore life-work balance. So I have been, for better or worse, very focused on like what I've been trying to make or create. And I like that, I enjoy it.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  But I don't know if I have a lot of balance, whatever that is. I guess I feel okay right now. I mean, I'm all right. And the time that I was like, just speaking of depression and anxiety, I don't know if that was a reflection of lack of balance. Like, maybe it was, maybe I would have, if I went out for like more walks along in the woods or something. But I don't know. Not sure.

• 1:24:16Rich Roll?

  Well, I feel like there's a cultural pressure to live a balanced life and eat a balanced diet.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:24:23Rich Roll?

  This is the key to being a happy, successful person. Uh, and, and that is at odds with basically every example of every human being that's achieved something extraordinary. Because those achievements are birthed out of, you know, being out of balance, for lack of a better word. And maybe it goes back to linguistics, maybe that's the wrong word for it, you know?

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  And I struggle with this because if I'm writing a book or I'm training for Ultraman, or you know, my life by its very definition has to be out of balance, at least for a period of time.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  I can imagine it's a very balanced thing to run an ultra. You know, I did a couple of marathons and that was unbalanced for me, so.

• 1:25:03Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's not a sustainable equation for your life. It is for some people, but not for me as a father with four kids and other things that I'm doing. But I look at it more like a pendulum swinging, you know, and I'll allow that pendulum to swing way to one side as long as it's going to come back, you know? And so in the macro, you know, over the course of a year, my life will look in balance, but on a day-to-day basis, like, I'm, I'm not a multitasker. I like to go deep into something and that's how I get the results that I'm seeking. But that does require, you know, sort of being slightly obsessive, not to the point of, you know, harming myself or being sort of self-damaging or any of that, but, but

• 1:25:48Rich Roll?

  giving myself permission to do that, I think has been important to me. And I think that I'm a better servant as a result of it. But I don't know that I'm doing it the right way.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  It seems to be working.

• 1:26:01Rich Roll?

  You know, I don't know.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Not just, I mean, obviously successfully, quote unquote, but also you seem happy. I think there's value in being, you know, obsessed is also this word that people can, you know, seems very negative, but I think there's a lot of value in being like, here's this thing, I'm going to go after it, you know? Whatever this thing is, I'm going to, I am going to devote a lot of my life to it because I believe in it.

• 1:26:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Oh, that guy's obsessed.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:24Rich Roll?

  Like, and there's a negative connotation associated with that.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Sure, but.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  But you could say, he's passionate.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Rich Roll?

  Like, now you're like.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  He's found his purpose, you know? He's found his purpose. You can't say he's obsessive, you know?

• 1:26:33Rich Roll?

  So what's the difference?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Is it kind of like this whole thing about pornography? Pornography, you know it when you see it, right?

• 1:26:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think obsession connotes like a level of.

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  Myopia, maybe, where you're discounting other aspects of your life. I don't know.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Or maybe what you're doing actually is not going to lead to the results that you think it will.

• 1:26:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Perhaps, right?

• 1:26:55Rich Roll?

  It's a self-destructive passion.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:57Rich Roll?

  Or ultimately, maybe.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  Right, like when you come to the end of it, you'll actually look back and say, why the hell was I doing that? That would be obsessive in a negative way.

• 1:27:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Whereas if you come to the end of something and you're like, man, that was really hard, that ultra, whatever it was, you know, at this point, I wanted to quit. At this point, I had this physical problem. At this point, I had this emotional problem. But here I am, I'm so glad I did it.

• 1:27:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  You know, that seems to me like passion or a good obsession or whatever you want to call it.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  I think it goes back to self-understanding as well. You know, like I'm, I'm an alcoholic, you know, like I just can't help it, but I'm magnetized to extremes, you know, and this is how I'm hardwired and I can deny that and try to repress that or I can try to harness that and put it into, you know, a positive direction for my life. And, you know, I contrast that with someone like Ryan Holiday, who seems to me to be an incredibly balanced person, like he can wake up and he sets aside certain hours every day where he writes and then he stops writing and he goes home and he's with his wife and he takes care of his goats. And it's all very functional.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  And he runs like an hour a day too.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  And he runs and it's all, you know, it all goes very well for him, but I just, I function differently. You know, like, you know, when I'm writing a book, I do have to kind of go into a little bit of a cave to do that. And that means, you know, long writing streaks late into the night and then days of pulling my hair out because I can't write anything and the like, you know, so it's not a function of just, oh, between, you know, 11 and 4 is when I, it just, it doesn't work for me. I've tried to do that. So how does that work for you?

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Well, I also don't have a time-based schedule. For me, it's much more about like deliverables, outcome. What am I trying to, you know, accomplish? And then how do I adjust, you know, to make, what are my peak periods? Not just of the day, but of the season. Like, am I, my book writing season is different than, you know, business building season or tour season, you know?

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  So I don't know if I have like a hack or something for that. I just, I do know, I have learned for all that I have yet to learn about myself and all the other emotional like areas that we touched on, I feel like I know myself pretty well in terms of how I can do, how I do my best work. And so maybe one thing is I do try to kind of siphon myself off and like I'm enjoying this conversation very much, but I try to actually limit like the number of phone calls or meetings I have during the day because I am pretty introverted. And so I know that if I have a lot of conversations, it's actually going to take my energy away. I'm not going to be able to do that thousand words or whatever.

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  So tend to say no to a lot of stuff. Maybe that's, that's a long kind of rambling answer to say I tend to say no to a lot of things.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  And I think somewhat of your stature and the position that you hold, like you're in a, you're in a place where I'm sure you have to say no a lot, right? To opportunities that probably sound interesting and cool.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's no fun, actually.

• 1:29:49Rich Roll?

  In alternative life, it would be cool to do all of them, but...

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  It's, I would say in the first like three years of my blog, even after it was like full time, I made it a business, I still actually had a very like say yes perspective and I was kind of counter to that whole thing about should always be selective and have this filter and say no. And it's, it's interesting because like a lot of the great opportunities, you know, or things that have happened since then have been because I said yes to things. But then maybe it's like as your life seasons go on or something, as you kind of figure out a little bit more about what you're really good at, then you have a higher filter. So now I do, I do say no to stuff.

• 1:30:23Rich Roll?

  Right. And as you continue to grow, those opportunities are only going to increase in volume, right? And ultimately, taking advantage of those means less time writing the next book. So you're undermining, you know, ultimately what you're trying to achieve.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:36Rich Roll?

  But you cranked out four books in a pretty short period of time, like 2000, the first one came out in 2006?

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  2009.

• 1:30:43Rich Roll?

  2009, okay. So

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Wasn't that...

• 1:30:45Rich Roll?

  Four books and that's, that's a pretty good pace.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  I was, I was late on one of them though. We talked about Rick at the beginning. I was late on my delivery.

• 1:30:53Rich Roll?

  Shame on you.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Well, I felt bad about it. I actually felt really guilty. Took it seriously and then I failed, so.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  No one asked Herman Melville if he turned in Moby Dick on time.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Well, maybe, I don't know.

• 1:31:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe, I don't know. Well, probably his editor did.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:09Rich Roll?

  So, so punctuality, important.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, you know, if you, if you're like, I'm gonna do this.

• 1:31:16Rich Roll?

  By the way, I was on time on my books.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Great. See, I'm sure you were. It's a thing. Well, you know how publishing works. It's like, it's different if you're self-publishing, and that's, that's great too for lots of things. But if you're working with a traditional publisher, it's not just about you. Like, you're the author, right? Like, you are the bottleneck. But there's lots of other people that are involved in the process. And if you kind of let down the team, then yes, in the end, it will be okay. But they're gonna have to scramble to pick up after you. So I don't like that.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  They might be a little less enthusiastic about, for helping you out next time.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:31:46Rich Roll?

  As somebody who kind of embodies this, you know, alter-chuian, James alter-chuian, choose yourself ethos, why have you not self-published?

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Well, I do self-publish every day.

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  Right, but, but like a book?

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Well, I have self-published, like, I've written a couple of manifestos. I wrote one called A Brief Guide to World Domination. That's how I got started way back, and I put that online myself. So I think there are different avenues for different projects. That's probably the short answer. And, and then I would also go back and say, well, I've always liked books. And yes, I know books can mean different things, but for me, growing up, books were like a print book that came from a bookstore. And I still, you know, find a lot of value in that. And when I go out on book tour, I meet a lot of people who go to bookstores and don't necessarily know me online. They don't necessarily read blogs, or even listen to podcasts, although, of course, that's changing. But I guess I still believe in that medium.

• 1:32:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting times. I mean, there's no denying that self-publishing is now a very real thing. And, and that's very exciting, and I think it's fantastic. And yet, there still is something about, you know, having that book published.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's good. I remember like, eight years ago, when I was first talking with David, my literary agent, who I'm still working with now, all these years later. And at the time, I asked him that, I was like, "But David, like, is publishing going away?" You know, like, and he said, basically, everybody he talks to always asks that question, every author. And he's like, you know, publishers are still buying books, you know, for some reason, the cycle, you know, still continues to work. And so, you know, eight years later, still writing books, you know, still happy about it.

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  I want to shift the conversation a little bit to community. One of the things that I so respect about what you do is you have built this unbelievably passionate and engaged community of people through the books and the blog, of course, but also through the World Domination Summit, which is like this amazing event that you've been, how many years have you been doing that now?

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  We just finished year six.

• 1:33:48Rich Roll?

  Six years. And you get, how many people come to this thing?

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  It depends.

• 1:33:53Rich Roll?

  Lots of people. Lots of people. And this community of people that you have taken care of and that you cater to and have become deeply connected to is really kind of an amazing accomplishment and achievement, perhaps, you know, more impactful than any of the other things that you've done. And, you know, it's led me to do a lot of thinking about how I can cultivate community better in the work that I do. You know, you've created some amazing examples that have been very instructive to me. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm trying to, I'm playing with ideas about how I can do better in that regard, because I think there's an opportunity for me there that I have yet to really step into.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  And so I'm interested in the evolution of this community that you've built and kind of your perspective on that.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I like what you said about how, you know, your perception is that it's probably more impactful than anything else, and I would agree, and I would hope that that's the case. Because as I said, you know, your book is going to go away, your blog is going to go away, but if you legitimately make an impact on people, that's good. Evolution, I would say like right in the beginning, started writing the blog, didn't know who was out there, there was grandma reading, and then tried to be a travel writer, didn't work out so well. But probably within the first six months, a lot of people did start subscribing, reading, engaging, and I was like, who are these people? And so, you know, right from the beginning, every time someone subscribed, I would write to each person. And I did that, I did that for three years, and there'd probably be between 50 and 100

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  people a day that would be subscribing. And so I'm not like writing a long thing, there's some copying, pasting, you know, involved, but it is just kind of like, hey, Rich, I saw you subscribe, you know, hey, thanks a lot.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  Literally 50 to 100 of those a day.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not automated. Like, it's not like a thing that happens, like I'm actually, you know, doing it myself. And a lot, and lots of people would write back. And so it's not like I had these extensive conversations with every subscriber of the blog, but I had a lot of conversations and began to learn a little bit more. And then I started doing meetups. I did one in New York City with Jonathan Fields. And, you know, it was like, for me at the time, it felt like a very large number of people who came. It was like 50 people. And I had never done anything like that before. And I went away and I was like, I was just blown away. It was like, I had these conversations with people. I heard what they were doing. They were traveling and starting businesses and like they were pursuing their own alternative lifestyle, whatever that was for them. And I got so excited about it. It shifted my whole focus.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  It shifted my whole like, you know, what am I doing for people? When I, then when I thought about what I'm writing, I thought about those people. I thought back to that conversation, you know, I had with somebody and thought, how is this relevant to them? Not just like these faceless, you know, nameless people out there in the ethernet or whatever. But so, and then I did more meetups, found them very engaging, like very draining for me as an introvert, but actually still very like positive. And then we started WDS in 2011, which was a kind of an outgrowth of my first book tour, where I went to all 50 states. That was also great, you know, lots of small groups, different places and big groups, but mostly small groups. And, you know, that first time we did that, that event, we just felt it was very special.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  And the team that I worked with, like, we had no idea how to produce events. Everything's, everything's been a learning curve. But we, you know, came back the next year and did it again. And then we've been doing it ever since then. So it's, it's something that I take a lot of joy in.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. You know, I think that, that I'm in this place right now where I'm starting to connect the dots a little bit with respect to the work that I do and the impact that it's having on people. And I think I've kind of sort of brushed it off or said, oh, whatever, you know, people listen to podcasts. But, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm hearing from people with increased regularity about, you know, changes that they've made in their life. And I just get amazing emails of, you know, people who have, who just tell me. Incredibly detailed, you know, stories about very private stuff.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Isn't that very motivating?

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  It's incredibly motivating. It's emotional. It's very touching, you know? And even on the walk over here, I walked across town to come to see you, stopped on the street a couple of times, listened to the podcast, like that just like my head explodes, you know?

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Rich Roll?

  So what to do with that, you know, like, how can I, how can I better serve these people? Who, who really want to be part of this community, you know? And I, my wife and I started doing these retreats, but they're small, you know, and they're expensive. So how can I create a more populist, you know, inviting scenario for everybody else? And I'm just, you know, I don't have the answer to that yet, but it's just something that's on my mind right now. And, and the model that you've created and what you've accomplished with that, I think is really something special and cool.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  I love the awareness that you have of, of, you know, you have this awareness that you have this desire and you have a curiosity about how to figure it out. I think that can only lead to, to really good things. And, and a lot of people have, have done community a lot better than, than I have. One, one thing that I am just now starting to do that other people have done much better is local community groups in different cities. So I wonder if that could be something that's worth exploring because obviously like that is populist and it is open and is accessible, you know, to people.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  And it's self sustaining without your personality having to be involved, right? How do you transcend, you know?

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  If you do it right.

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like that's the idea. Like, I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about the ideas, you know? And I want other people to take ownership of that outside of my, you know, my personal involvement. So.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  I think it's a good question to ask.

• 1:39:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what should I be doing that I'm not doing?

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, awareness, curiosity, where does it lead? How can you gather people together? I think there's a lot of value in being a connector and. You know, I'd be the first to say that of WDS and all the meetups I've done, the book tour stuff, focusing it on like, how can it not just be like one to many, but like everybody speaking to each other and providing platforms, especially for people who are maybe sensitive or quiet, or they wouldn't necessarily be the ones to speak up, but they have something to say. It's really interesting. Anything you can do to pull that out is good. Then a lot of it happens on its own. And that's the beautiful thing about it is you can look back and say like, well, maybe I was a little bit of a catalyst here or something, or maybe I was an amplifier at parts of it.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  But really, it's its own kind of thing. And that to me is really beautiful. Like when I hear those stories of people who've connected with my work in some way, like I was just like, how can I do that more? How can I do that more? How can I bring these people, you know, something of value?

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, very cool. What was the first, you know, initial spark or idea to put on the summit?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  When I did those small little meetups, I thought, this is pretty cool. What would it be like to bring people together, not just from one city, but from like all over the world? And that was, that was the spark. And I actually hadn't been to a lot of conferences. I hadn't been to, you know, I didn't really have a model that I was starting with. And I kind of went out to all my friends and Jonathan and other people and it's like, hey, come in, come in, let's do this, right? You know, and it's kind of funny because we were all coming up at the same time and they, they also, like everything was new to them too. So it kind of felt, you know, it felt normal or organic. And I just really enjoyed the process. I enjoy, and I still do. I still enjoy the process of like

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  curating and planning and all the logistics. And it reminds me of working in Africa on the hospital ship of like coordinating things and like, it reminds me a little bit of like pulling the boxes, you know, from FedEx, except I'm actually helping people. I'm actually doing something I care about.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Trying to get visas so you could travel.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Right, but for a much better cause, right? Because me traveling on my own, that's great, but that's for me. Whereas, you know, putting together like community groups, that's for them.

• 1:41:57Rich Roll?

  So, we touched earlier a little bit on this idea of having a quest and the importance of having a quest in your life. So, you've had a couple quests in your own life, but what is the current quest? What is the, you know, 2016, you know, vision board for Chris look like?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Right now, I have a focus. I don't have a quest. And that focus, well, personally, the focus is like this internal work that we've been talking about, and continuing that process and seeing what I can learn and how I need to apply that in my life. But otherwise, the focus is community, what we've just been talking about. And I don't have like a little metric that goes with it. I don't have like, you know, I will have accomplished this goal when X occurs. But after I finished like the Every Country quest, I knew I wasn't going to do another big travel quest. Like, I want travel to always be part of my life, for sure. But, you know, at one of my events, somebody like raised their hand and said, I know what you should do next. You should go back to every country in the world, but in reverse order.

• 1:43:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  I was like, that sounds terrible. I was like, you can do that, dude, you know? Thanks for volunteering. Let me know how that goes. So, I didn't want something like that. And I wanted to shift to like, okay, that was then, where does this bring me? Where are we going? Great power, great responsibility. Like, I do feel very fortunate that I've been able to do all this stuff. So, how can I truly contribute, you know? So, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

• 1:43:25Rich Roll?

  So, that sounds a little bit more amorphous than perhaps your guiding arrows in the past.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Yes, which is frustrating.

• 1:43:35Rich Roll?

  So, you're in the contemplative phase, it sounds like.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  I guess so, yeah. I guess so. Like I said, I would love it if I could connect it in a way that was similar to what I did, that linear progress of like, checking things off. But I don't know if it's going to work that way, because... You know, it's, it's not like there's a, it's not like you're gonna reach the limit of people or whatever. It's not like I could say I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna do a community group or a meetup in X number of cities, but there's always more cities, or there's always more, you know, so I don't know. And that's not necessarily the outcome either, so. The goal is to strengthen community.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  Right, and it's okay to, like, you have comfort in, in, in, in that sort of lack of complete understanding of what that's gonna translate into, right? Like, the ability

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  I'm having more comfort.

• 1:44:21Rich Roll?

  To be patient with it.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  I'm starting to have more comfort. That's what I'm learning.

• 1:44:24Rich Roll?

  Okay, good.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  You can't control all my circumstances, as I have learned. So I'm starting to have more comfort.

• 1:44:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So for people that are out in the world, in the podcast o-sphere, or whatever you would call it, who, who are, you know, stuck in that cubicle, or are starting to question, perhaps, like, the trajectory of their professional career, or are searching for that thing that's gonna infuse their life with purpose, what's the first step?

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  Accept the discomfort. Accept the discontent. Don't try to fight it. Don't try to ignore it. Make your peace with it, because it's gonna be what leads you into something better. And maybe a second step is, what is that for you? What does that look like? You know, if you, you feel like you're stuck in that cubicle, what would life be like if you weren't stuck in that cubicle? If you're stuck in some other thing, like, what, what is it that you want? And maybe you don't have, like, all the answers, as I said, but you have something. Like, and then it's, to me, it's about execution, implementation, how to go from one to the other. But if, the first and foremost is, you know, do not

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  try to just fight that discontent, because it's gonna be your friend, I think.

• 1:45:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think there are very few people who are gonna have all the answers. You know, in your own case, you started selling things on eBay.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:50Rich Roll?

  That was not your passion.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. That was not my purpose.

• 1:45:52Rich Roll?

  But that was a tiny step that infused your life with a little bit of freedom, and a little bit of self-governance that you didn't have prior to that. You know, in my own case, it was... You know, riding my bike in the middle of the workday and not telling anybody, you know, that's not a good business plan for anything, you know, but it was a tiny step that I took that that gave me a little sovereignty over my time in my life that that ultimately was a step that led to another step. And, you know, I couldn't see past that two hour bike ride at the time, but, you know, fundamentally, it was a, it was a, it was something that I did almost symbolically to say like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna step outside the norm a

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  little bit here and give myself permission to do that. And I think that that's really important to provide people with the, like a sense that it's safe to express yourself in that way. Right? Like, one of the things you always talk about is like freeing yourself from the peanut gallery of social expectations. Like, can you get to a place where you don't care what other people say? And that's a very tough

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say

• 1:47:03Rich Roll?

  thing for a lot of people, myself included.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  It's not like today you care and tomorrow you don't.

• 1:47:07Rich Roll?

  My whole life was premised upon, you know, making sure that everything I was doing would be socially approved.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Most people's lives are.

• 1:47:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  But I think as you, you know, as you find more of that authentic self, I mean, ultimately, I think more people will approve, probably because you're going to be helping more people. But if some people don't, well, you still have to do it. You still, you don't want to be stuck in that place wherever you are stuck in.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  Who were some of the mentors that you looked to during that time, or perhaps still look to for a lifeline?

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  They aren't celebrities. They aren't like other authors, other bloggers, public figures. They're more like people who have impacted my life in a personal way. The surgeon from California, Gary Parker, his family, Scott Harrison. I mean, he is, he's kind of a celebrity, but it's more like personal friends. And I would say like people in the in my community who have these stories of intersection, they, they are very inspiring to me. I don't really go to people for advice. I might go to people for some specific technical advice, but I'm kind of busy with what I'm already doing.

• 1:48:21Rich Roll?

  Right. But when you were kind of in your emergent phase.

• 1:48:25Speaker 01

  I read a lot of books.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what were some of the books?

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  I read a great book called Wishcraft by Barbara Sher. Wonderful book about finding your purpose and very practical terms. That was great. I read a good book called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder about Dr. Paul Farmer, who did all this work in Haiti. Some practical books. I read Getting Things Done by David Allen. It's like still affects my life in terms of how I like organize my tasks and projects. Tried to just, you know, read broadly, learn broadly, different fields, different topics. It's one thing I feel like I don't do very well anymore. I don't feel like I learned broadly. I'm so focused on what I'm doing.

• 1:49:09Rich Roll?

  But what you do is, is learning in and of itself, right? Especially when you're canvassing all these people and collecting all these case studies, right? You're learning.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm learning for sure. I just feel like I'm learning in a more focused manner and maybe that's okay.

• 1:49:22Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  But I do sometimes long for the days of when I was like in this emergent phase, as you called it, and I'd have like, you know, 10 books, you know, next to me and the topics were all like totally different.

• 1:49:34Rich Roll?

  I think you're in an emergent phase in a different way.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Uh huh, maybe.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  Are you working on a book right now?

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  I am, actually, yeah.

• 1:49:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, can you talk about that or no?

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:49:43Rich Roll?

  It's a top secret?

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  It's not a top secret. I'm, one of the concepts that people really responded to the most in Born For This is this notion of having a side hustle, having something that they do apart from their day job. And I've noticed that this resonates with a lot of people, even people who don't want to quit their jobs, they don't want to be entrepreneurs, a lot of people who love their job but would also love to have another source of income. And I have seen like how disproportionately happy it can make people when they have another paycheck, even if it's a small amount of money. They have more confidence, they have more security, they're like, I did this, you know, I have my day job, but I made this other thing. So, I mean, I've done that in different ways, but never had a whole project focused on

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  that. So, the new, the new book is going to be about helping people with a side hustle.

• 1:50:32Rich Roll?

  I like that. You know, I feel like with the, the advent of, you know, startup culture and the sort of ascendancy of the entrepreneur as rock star, it's almost like if you're not an entrepreneur, there's something wrong with you.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  This pressure to be, you know, some, you have to be an entrepreneur and a self-made man and, you know, not everybody. Is hardwired for that and not everybody wants to do that.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:50:56Rich Roll?

  But the idea that you could recapture a little autonomy in your life by monetizing a side project and creating some side income and perhaps enhancing your personal fulfillment through that, I think is really cool.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's what I'm working on.

• 1:51:11Rich Roll?

  Good, man.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:51:12Rich Roll?

  Well, I really appreciate you, man. That was a great conversation. Thank you for being open and vulnerable and your work is exceptional. All of your books have been very instructive to me and I hope that you keep doing it. Keep cranking out these books.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  Thank you, Rich.

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  You're raising the bar. I'm still trying to figure out what my next book is going to be. I'm feeling the pressure on that, but thank you for your time, man.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  It's beautiful.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  It's a big honor, thank you.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  So if people want to connect with you, obviously the best place I would imagine is the blog.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Chris Gillibow. It's Chris Gillibow on all social media and no one could ever spell my name, but if you just type in something close to it in Google, you'll get to it.

• 1:51:57Rich Roll?

  But your Instagram is like 193 countries.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  193 countries, yeah, exactly.

• 1:52:03Rich Roll?

  And everything else is through the blog and best place to buy the books?

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Wherever people buy books, bookstore, Amazon, whatever.

• 1:52:10Rich Roll?

  I would suggest beyond the books, the first place to really dive into Chris's work is through one of your several manifestos. How many do you have now, like four?

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  Oh, just three.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Three of them. And they're easily...

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Sure, they're all free on my website, yeah.

• 1:52:25Rich Roll?

  Right, they're great, so thanks a lot, man.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:52:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, dude, we did it. What'd you guys think? I was really touched and moved by Chris's honesty, his rawness, his realness, and I hope you guys got a lot out of that as well. As always, please make a note of checking out the show notes at the episode page for this episode. I've got tons of links and resources to help you guys learn more about Chris and what he's up to and what he's done in the past and all that good stuff, so tap into that. And take your podcast edification beyond the earbuds, why don't you? We got great plant power, plant-based schwag at ritual.com, signed copies of Finding Ultra, signed copies of The Plant Power Way, we got cool Plant Power t-shirts, we got tech

• 1:53:16Rich Roll?

  tees for working out, for going to the gym, for running, all kinds of other cool, sweet schwag and merch. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production, Shawn Patterson for graphics, Chris Swan for production assistance, and a lot of help compiling the amazing show notes, and theme music by Analemma, as always. Thanks for all the support, you guys, I love it, and I will see you guys soon. Peace. Plats.