482 Decoding the Myths of Success with Eric Barker

"Believing yourself is nice but forgiving yourself is nicer." - Eric Barker If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/482 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 482 with Eric Barker.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  I'm so grateful that you showed up today, whether you are waking up in the morning right now, you're making your breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You're on your workouts, you're working out on the cardio, on the elliptical, you're running on a track. You're listening during work, during your commute, or while you're going to bed. I just want to say thanks. So many people message me on social media and they'll post a photo or their video of where they're listening to this during their day routine and how it's inspiring them and lifting them up. So wherever you're listening to this right now, thank you so much. And I'm very excited about this episode. And before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to the review of the week over on iTunes.

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  And this is from SocksBoy56. "The podcast is life-changing," he said. "I began listening about a year ago and it has been one of the biggest difference makers in my life. Lewis is an inspiring person and no matter what walk of life or background you have, he finds guests who can relate to all. These guests bring the most inspiring messages you could hope to find anywhere. Lewis does a tremendous job with his questions as these guests share what has made them so successful and achieve greatness. I love this podcast, even the guests who I'm unsure on who they are. I hit the play button and of course, am amazed by their message and what they're sharing.

• 1:53Lewis Howes?

  This is an absolute must subscribe podcast. Your mind, body, and inner greatness will thank you later. Now let the class begin and subscribe." SocksBoy46, thank you for being the review of the week, for acknowledging all the incredible guests we have on as a It's my duty as the dean of greatness to bring only the best professors in the world who can teach you how to unlock the greatness within you. So I continue to be the curator to make sure that I bring in only the best of the best. I'm constantly researching, I'm constantly building relationships and I'm staying on people sometimes two, three, four years to get them on. So I'm doing my best to bring the best. And today we've got someone who's incredible.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  His name is Eric Barker and his humorous blog is called Barking Up the Wrong Tree and it presents science-based answers and expert insights on how to be awesome at life. That's right, another person searching for greatness. He's got almost 300,000 people who subscribe to his newsletter. His content is syndicated by Time Magazine, Business Insider, Insider and The Week. And he's been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Financial Times, and he's also been all over NPR, spoken at MIT, Yale, West Point, all the big places. He's a big shot. And what we talk about today are how to really find the science behind the success and the myths behind the success. So there's a lot of research that Eric's done that we talk about and we cover some

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  of these main points, which are what happens when introverts act like extroverts and how they can be successful. Also, one of the biggest elements of success and what you need to do if you want to be successful, how the paradigm of confidence is broken. What is nicer than believing in yourself? We're going to reveal the answer. And also how to keep going when you want to give up when things are so rough, how you continue to keep going. I am super pumped for this one. I hope you guys enjoy it. As always, make sure to share with your friends, LewisHowes.com/482. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Eric Barker.

• 4:03Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got Eric Barker in the house. How you doing, man?

• 4:08Eric Barker?

  Great to see you, buddy.

• 4:08Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, man. I'm excited about this. You're kind of the mad scientist of breaking down success. And you've got a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and it's the surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong. And it's out right now. Make sure you guys go pick this up. I'm excited about this because when we were talking about this before, you said it's kind of like the Mythbusters of success, where each thing out there, each principle of success, you go see if it's actually true or not in the real world. Test it, you apply it, you get research on it, and you figure out what works and what doesn't work.

• 4:44Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  And you've been writing a blog for over eight years, right? It's got almost 300,000 subscribers. You've been featuring it everywhere you can think of. And you've been starting, you started to write about these things on your site.

• 4:56Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  And what did you notice when you started to write about some of these ideas out there? What did you notice as a feedback?

• 5:03Eric Barker?

  Well, it was just crazy to see that a lot of the questions that we all have actually have answers. William Gibson has this awesome quote I love, that, you know, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. And there's a lot of questions we have about success that, you know, academic research, experts already have the answers to, and we just don't know them. And we get caught up in many of these maxims that we hear that haven't been tested, have never been put to the metal, and they're just pithy. So, nice guys finish last, you know, winners never quit, quitters never win, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And, you know, me personally, it's like, I've had

• 5:44Eric Barker?

  a bunch of career changes, I've had a bunch of shifts. I tried following these things, and it just was never that simple. It was never that easy. There always seemed to be exceptions. There always seemed to be different cases. There always seemed to be... We all know people who, you know, maybe network fantastic, but aren't good at their job, or great at their job, they don't network. What is really the answer? So frankly, these are things I was struggling with, I've been wondering about. And so, I decided after eight years of doing the blog, of talking to experts, and trying to get the real answers to questions we all wonder about. It's like, to really go down the rabbit hole, put a book together, and, just like you said, Mythbusters, go to each one of these maxims, look at the research, talk to the experts, and say, you know, let's give this thing its day in court, and let's see, is it true? Is it not true? When is it true? When is it not?

• 6:29Eric Barker?

  So that we can actually start getting what we want.

• 6:32Lewis Howes?

  Right. What was the most surprising thing or what's the thing that people are always curious about the most?

• 6:37Eric Barker?

  I mean, one thing people are always curious about is, you know, the, the whole issue of, of networking. And you know, is it what you know or who you know? And, you know,

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  I've, I've always thought it's about who you know and who knows you.

• 6:49Eric Barker?

  Yeah. Well, and those are, and those are two very separate things where it's like, you know, you know, who do, who do you know versus who knows you? Is a whole different shift because who you know, that's fine, but a lot of people, you know, I mean, President of the United States, you know, in any situation, you know, somebody's going to know him, but you know, who does he know? I mean, it's how big's your audience in that sense, but what you see down the,

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  You want to have both. You want to have relationships with a lot of people that are, could be key partners or key allies in the future.

• 7:19Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  And you want also, I think a lot of people to know who you are.

• 7:22Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Lewis Howes?

  So that you can create opportunities for yourself. Either way.

• 7:25Eric Barker?

  Oh, fantastic. Yeah, though, that's exactly what you want because what you see with the trade off with extroversion and introversion is, you know, extroverts, it's fantastic. It's easy to build a network. They make friends wherever they go, you know? And extroversion is one of the most key things that's been proven over and over again in personality research is extroverts are happier. They've got friends around them. They've got bigger support networks. You start to look at all the stuff, you wonder, why would anybody want to be an introvert? Then you see, and one of the most damning, uh, studies you see is that when introverts pretend to be extroverts,

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 7:56Eric Barker?

  They are happier.

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 7:57Eric Barker?

  Yes.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  Wasn't there a whole book about like quiet, like Susan Cain and talking about like the power of introverts or something?

• 8:03Eric Barker?

  Yeah. And then you look at the research on introverts and you see the difference and that is that, what was, what was the, the line from the study was, uh, there with its academic jargon was, was, uh, was, um, what high, higher levels of extroversion are, are, are what inversely correlated with individual proficiency? Which is, which is academic speak for the more extroverted you are, the worse you are at your job.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:30Eric Barker?

  Because introverts have more time to get good at what they do. And one of the craziest things is you look at studies of Olympic athletes and top athletes and you see more. More introverts because less time partying is more time in the batting cage.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  There's machines of efficiency. Constantly mastering their craft, like kind of their inner world. Working with like one coach and just like repeating the process over and over, right?

• 8:52Eric Barker?

  Absolutely. It's like the, you know, you want to talk about 10,000 hours. Okay, you've got more hours to work on, to work on your stuff. So you see a lot of experts in their field are more likely to be, to be introverts. But the truth is that most people are not at the extremes. Most people are what's called ambiverts or somewhere in the middle. And those people have a superpower too. What's funny is people assume that, oh, extroverts are going to be the better salespeople. And the truth is that extroverts are often, you know, too, too pushy, too engaged. Introverts, too laid back, not a serve enough. Ambiverts, the people in the middle usually have that wiggle room to actually be able to say. It was, it was Adam Grant, an interview. So the ambiverts can kind of say, who do I need to be here? What skills do I need to bring to task?

• 9:36Eric Barker?

  And they have that, you know, they're not at the extremes. So they can actually navigate certain situations better because they can call on different aspects of their personality.

• 9:45Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like they're more aware of who they need to be in a situation with someone else.

• 9:48Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 9:49Lewis Howes?

  They're aware of that person's needs, or if they're introverted, they're extroverted, so they can kind of match them.

• 9:54Eric Barker?

  Yes.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  A way where they feel more comfortable and more light.

• 9:58Eric Barker?

  Yes.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Which could potentially get a better result.

• 9:59Eric Barker?

  Yeah, it's all about that connection.

• 10:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Eric Barker?

  When you're thinking about the other person.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So which one are you?

• 10:04Eric Barker?

  Oh, I'm definitely an introvert. I'm, I'm definitely an introvert. That's, that's how, that's how this book got done was, was, was me, was me head down.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Any blogger who's that detailed and does that much research as well and like writes long posts, you always know they're an introvert.

• 10:18Eric Barker?

  Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, yeah.

• 10:20Lewis Howes?

  It's, it's the extrovert who's just like, let's just have a conversation and get it out there.

• 10:23Eric Barker?

  We'll, we'll talk about it. We'll, we'll figure it out as we go along. Let's have some fun.

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 10:27Eric Barker?

  No, I mean, you know, everybody's got their advantages. Everybody got their things. The thing that comes up, you know, again and again in the book and in the research is just, you know, knowing thyself. Goes back to the Oracle Delphi. It's like knowing yourself and then picking the right pond. You know, as Boris Groysberg, uh, you know, at Harvard Business School was talking about, you know, that perfect environment. Cause context matters so much. So if you know who you are and you're getting yourself in an environment that is aligned with your skillset. That's a key element of success versus somebody who doesn't know themselves or knows themselves and put themselves in a situation where their skills aren't vital.

• 11:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Eric Barker?

  So a really big element of success is just alignment between you, your skills and where you're at.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 11:09Eric Barker?

  Another myth that I want to learn about from you is the myth of never giving up. Yeah. Should we never give up, or should we fail fast? See, that's, and that's really critical, because right now, you know, grit is having its big moment. Uh huh. And it's grit, grit, grit, and you know, but if you never quit anything, if I never quit anything, I'd still be playing T-ball. I mean, you know, it's like you, you've got to let things go. Yeah, if they're not working for you. No, and so there's, there's that balance where on one hand, you know, you look at key elements like optimism, like stories, like framing things at a game that can really help increase resilience. But on the flip side, something people don't talk about is how do you figure out what you can let go?

• 11:49Eric Barker?

  You know, and one of the stories I tell in the book is a, a friend of mine, really fascinating, very accomplished guy Spencer Glendon, who, this guy's enormously accomplished, runs, he's director of research for one of the biggest wealth, biggest wealth management fund in Massachusetts. Um, has done so much in his life, and for the majority of his life, he's been seriously ill. But he managed to accomplish some incredible things. And that is because, pretty funny, he's a PhD in economics and he firsthand got a lesson in opportunity cost. And being able to say, every time I pick one thing, I'm not picking something else. So when you're, when you're physically compromised, you only have a few hours in every day. Yeah. You have to really ask yourself the hard question. What, what am I going to do with my time? I don't have time to waste.

• 12:33Eric Barker?

  And so that builds incredible focus. And quitting here gives you more time for grit there. And that level of opportunity cost of saying, what's important to me, what's number one? When you know you only have so much time, that, that brought it to the forefront for him. But that's a question we can all ask ourselves. And there's, you know, a number of other tools, but kind of like, you know, what you're saying where, uh, Peter Sims wrote a great book, Little Bets, you know, all about, uh, basically looking at your life, uh, almost like a, like a, like a venture capital firm would. Where I'm gonna, I'm gonna try a couple of different things. I'm almost going to be a flake. I want to try 10 things, I know I'm going to quit seven of them. Two might be fun, and, and one is going to be my venture capital, it's going to be my Google or my Facebook. Right, right. But by always taking 5% of your time and trying something new.

• 13:18Eric Barker?

  Maybe I quit, maybe I don't. You can find that next big thing.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:22Eric Barker?

  You can find great opportunities, meet great people. We all, we always need to be open to new things.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  We don't have to go all in on something all the time and never look at anything else.

• 13:31Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  Right? And we don't have to like try something and go all in right away. We can have our main thing.

• 13:35Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Lewis Howes?

  That's kind of like our bread and butter that continues to grow and then try other things. I feel like I'm that way.

• 13:40Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  In a lot of ways, you know, my podcast is very consistent.

• 13:43Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  Three times a week. It's like constantly getting better, but we're always testing and trying other programs and products and things where we want to see what works and what doesn't work.

• 13:51Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  Some of these things bomb big time. We put like a lot of money into it and we're like, ah, this was a bad idea.

• 13:57Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  But I would rather try something that I'm curious about or interested in.

• 14:01Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  And then end it quickly, then always be thinking, you know, like, I wonder what if.

• 14:07Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  Personally.

• 14:08Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Lewis Howes?

  With my personality. So I'd rather be like, ah, this would be a cool idea to just do someday. I'd rather just try it.

• 14:13Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't work. Okay. We know it doesn't work.

• 14:15Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  And that can move on to something else.

• 14:17Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  But I don't know, maybe people think differently.

• 14:19Eric Barker?

  No, no, no. I, I think you got the right attitude there because even with the blog, I, I'll do the same thing where it's like, I know there's, you know, there's, there's bedrock stuff that people are always curious about productivity, happiness. That's great, but it's kind of like you get that attitude of one for the pope, one for the people where it's like, here's a safe thing and then I'm going to try something crazy. Sometimes they fall flat. Other times, you know, you find a vein of interest, something that people are really key on, or take it something at a different angle. And that really connects and clicks with people. And the only thing constant in the world is change. So if you're not trying new things, you know, eventually you're going to be, you're going to be horse and buggy in a car world.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 14:55Eric Barker?

  You know, so no, I think you got the right attitude.

• 14:57Lewis Howes?

  Constantly gotta be innovating in some ways, right?

• 14:58Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  What's a, a post you did that you thought like, eh, I don't think many people are going to be into this, but it was actually like a massive hit for you. What was the topic? Do you remember?

• 15:07Eric Barker?

  Uh, two years ago, I, I wrote a piece on imposter syndrome and I just didn't know if this was something that was really going to resonate with people. And it just exploded because of, you know, uh, we, we, cause I think that's, that's inherent in imposter syndrome where, you know, you think, oh my God, I'm, uh, how did I get here? I don't deserve this. I'm, I'm, I'm a fraud. I'm not really, and the truth is everybody's wondering about, they're not talking about, if they talked about it, it might not be an issue. People might be able to say, oh, no, no, no, look, here you, but we don't, we hold it back. And so, you know, everybody's feeling that to some degree or another, but because we don't share it. This and because people aren't talking about it, I'm wondering, is this something that only affects 2% of my readers? It turns out it's something that every, everybody feels, everybody feels.

• 15:51Eric Barker?

  And that is something, you know, to be able to open up and talk about that, then we can get verification. You know, we can have the reassurance, the love, the support we need. And, you know, simply having somebody say, look at your resume.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:04Eric Barker?

  Look at what you've done, you know, we all need that.

• 16:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What can someone do if they feel like they're an imposter, they're not ready for the greatness that's supposed to come to them or that they want to achieve if they feel like they're years behind? What are they, what's the approach?

• 16:16Eric Barker?

  I mean, the, the first step is, you know, is opening up, is being able to talk to people, talk to people about it. Because very often, we use a different lens with ourselves than we do with others. And, you know, that's a, you know, was it a fundamental attribution bias where, you know, it's, it's like when, when, when somebody else cuts you off in traffic, they're a jerk. When you cut somebody off in traffic, well, I had to. You know, it's like we, we use different lenses and in that same way, we'll look at what somebody else's accomplishments and say, oh my God, it's amazing, amazing. But we discount our own because, oh, I got lucky. Oh, I got this, but everybody gets lucky. Everybody has their moment, everybody. And to share that, to talk with people, to hear other voices other than the critical one in your own head.

• 16:58Eric Barker?

  You know, that's really the first step to, to, to making some progress and, and getting out of that fear.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. You talked about poisonous personalities.

• 17:07Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Lewis Howes?

  And the qualities of poisonous personalities and becoming performance enhancing drugs.

• 17:12Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by that? And how is that possible?

• 17:16Eric Barker?

  It's, it's really interesting. It's a part of that was on the, the research by Gotham Akunda at Harvard Business School on the different types of leaders. And what you see is that at the extremes, there are some things that are negatives in one situation, positives in another. You know, sometimes we need, you know, a placater, a negotiator, and sometimes we need somebody who's, who's hard as nails. And in some situations comes back to the issue of picking the right pond. You know, in some situations, that negative stubbornness trait. That we call it grid. Sometimes, sometimes weirdness is eccentricity.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:54Eric Barker?

  And, you know, so sometimes when we're at extreme situations, extreme personality traits are really sometimes they're, they're vital. You know, um, I, I talk about one time, um, was it when they, uh, Pixar? They had just finished up Finding Nemo. Brad Bird was gonna do a movie for, for Pixar and they, they weren't sure about how to do it. Steve Jobs at that point was very concerned that Pixar was losing its edge, that they were getting complacent. And Brad Bird said, give me all the black sheep. Give me all the guys who are headed out the door. Give me the crazy people that nobody wants. Put them on my team.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  At Pixar?

• 18:31Eric Barker?

  Yes.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:32Eric Barker?

  And, you know, he got all of these crazy guys, the difficult ones, the problematic ones, and he let them try their crazy theories. And for a vastly smaller budget, they did everything better Finding Nemo and the movie they ended up creating was The Incredibles, which won the Best Animated Picture Oscar, made over $600 million.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:51Eric Barker?

  So those difficult traits, those problematic people, given license, given the right environment, were game changers. So in some situations, those people might be the problems. They might be the difficult. But in a situation where you're trying to creatively solve a problem, you need somebody to shake things up.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  I like that. That's pretty interesting. Huh. So how many people were on that team, do you know? These people they were gonna fire? They were actually gonna fire this group of people?

• 19:16Eric Barker?

  These, these were the black sheep. These were the people that, that nobody wanted, who were probably gonna quit, who were probably gonna leave.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  No one like listened to their vision or no one like?

• 19:23Eric Barker?

  This guy's got a crazy idea. This guy doesn't wanna do it the way we always do it.

• 19:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:27Eric Barker?

  And, you know, the funny thing was is that Pixar was facing the issue of complacency, of turning into, you know, Disney to the other companies that have been around for decades.

• 19:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Eric Barker?

  And so they started listening to the rabble rousers, the prob, the problem children. And what they ended up doing was winning an Oscar and, you know.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  Making a ton of money.

• 19:44Eric Barker?

  Exactly.

• 19:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Um, let's talk about confidence.

• 19:48Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Lewis Howes?

  Now, there's a, there's a part in the beginning of the book where you talk about confidence and how training for confidence, what did you say here? Training for confidence, uh, or trying to increase that confidence fails, but there's a Buddhist philosophy that holds superior to the solution.

• 20:03Eric Barker?

  What's really interesting is the, is, is with a, with a lot of the issues of success, it's, it's, oh, is it this side or is it this side? Is it, is it, is it, is it the people who stick with it or the people who quit? And with confidence, what you see is that it looks like the whole paradigm is kind of broken because confidence doesn't lead to success as much as it follows success. And gain confidence when you create a result. Exactly. You earn it. You don't, you're not just confident before you do anything. Yeah. You gotta prove something to yourself and to whatever situation. Certainly. And then the more you have little wins, if you win a game, you're like, oh, I, I can do this. Yeah. And when we try and train people for confidence, and this has been done, California had a big initiative a while back. You don't actually, the kids don't get better grades. Really?

• 20:48Eric Barker?

  The kids don't stay off drugs. The kids don't, all you're doing generally is increasing narcissism, you know? I'm the best. You haven't done anything. Exactly. Increasing entitlement. And with confidence, the danger is that people get overconfident. And Dan Ariely did some research, it was fascinating, where they gave people a test and they, they let them, they, they let it kind of be known that there was a way to cheat. And so the people who cheated, obviously did better. Uh, they didn't know that the researchers could, had a way to detect this. Then they said on a subsequent test, how do you think you'd do? And the people who cheated felt that they would do

• 21:30Eric Barker?

  better on a subsequent test. They had succeeded by cheating, but they now had believed, I'm good at this. So it's like, it's like flying a plane on autopilot and then thinking next time you get in the cockpit without the autopilot, you're actually going to be a, you know, a good pilot. Right. You know, so you're, the confidence isn't necessarily connected to actual skill level. So not only can you become dangerously overconfident, you know, where, you know, there's no such thing as a pretty good alligator wrestler. You know, you're either good or you're not. And being overconfident, that's an area where it's very dangerous. And by the same token, these people become, you can become a jerk. And obviously, low confidence, we, we know what happens there. So the, the Buddhist element, and this has been tested

• 22:14Eric Barker?

  extensively by Kristin F. at University of Texas at Austin, is self-compassion. Instead of lying to yourself about how awesome you are, it's having a more realistic notion and forgiving yourself when you screw up. So those people have a much more realistic vision of reality, but they're not, you know, crushed when bad things happen because they're able to forgive themselves. Yeah. You had a quote in here, I have it in the other book. It said something about like,

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's around confidence, something around like training for confidence. Let me see this. I highlighted it here.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  You said, you said believing yourself is nice, but forgiving yourself is better.

• 22:51Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Lewis Howes?

  Kind of goes into that.

• 22:52Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  It's like having self compassion.

• 22:54Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Lewis Howes?

  It's like forgiving yourself. You're like, it's gonna be okay. Like, we're harder next time.

• 22:58Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Lewis Howes?

  But just having belief in yourself and be like, I'm gonna do it when you've never proven anything to yourself.

• 23:03Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 23:04Lewis Howes?

  Or put in the reps or practiced. And just saying, I'm gonna wrangle a alligator.

• 23:09Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to have the confidence, right? Yeah.

• 23:11Eric Barker?

  Yeah, you don't have, you don't have to lie to yourself. You can, you can just forgive yourself instead. And both of those allow you to keep going when things are tough.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  I also think like training for confidence, you know, I used to be terrified to speak on stage.

• 23:23Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Lewis Howes?

  And I remember it shifted for me a while ago, and I still get nervous every now and then. Now, it's not like I'm a pro or anything, but I, uh, it shifted a while ago when someone said, you know, you get so nervous that you're focusing on how you're gonna look. Instead of focusing on how you're gonna do or how you're gonna look, focus on how you can help others.

• 23:41Eric Barker?

  Exactly.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  And not, don't make it about you. Make it about everyone in that room and how you can impact them the best way possible.

• 23:46Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  And forgive yourself afterwards for not saying all the right words or stumbling or forgetting something like, it's gonna be okay.

• 23:53Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  As long as you focus on giving your best to the room as opposed to wanting all the praise afterwards.

• 24:00Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be good. So I think it's like a way to believe in yourself, kind of tricking yourself like, yeah, I'm gonna believe in myself by helping others.

• 24:06Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to having to look the best in this situation.

• 24:10Eric Barker?

  Yeah, you're focused on the outside rather than the inside.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I think that's cool.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like has been your biggest challenge in being successful or reaching your goals or, achieving what you want to achieve?

• 24:23Eric Barker?

  I mean, a big thing for me was, you know, like finding the, finding the answers, finding the path, finding the mentors. Because. You know, I've heard so many different things. That's, that's why I started the blog. It's why I started the book because I knew there were answers to a lot of these questions and you know, I just felt like I was getting bad roadmaps. And I'm following them down. They're not working out for me. And it's like you, you start to learn a few things, but you know, you just, you hear that, oh, just, you know, oh, you know, being smart or being creative or beating this, but, but there's no one metric. You know, it's one of the things I talk about in the work-life balance chapter is that, you know, is that the problem is, it's called a collapsing strategy. When we collapse everything and we have one metric in life and we say, as long as that number goes up, everything's going to be great.

• 25:05Eric Barker?

  And it's, it's just not the case because if you're just focused on happiness in the moment, you're probably not thinking long-term. If you're just focused on achievement, your relationships and your happiness are probably going to suffer. So it's, you know, just collapsing everything into one metric, that doesn't really work. There's an issue of balance. And for me, I was like, what path do I take? Who do I listen to? And so I just started trying to cobble together everything and talking to people far smarter than I am to try and get some answers about, you know, what were the best steps to take?

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Yeah. What's the, what's your belief on balance? You know, is there such a thing as balance?

• 25:38Eric Barker?

  There's definitely a thing on balance, but uh, you know, I think the, the first step is really having a personal definition of success. Because when you take it whole cloth, the difference between a tailored suit and a suit off the rack. I mean, if you just say, our culture screams, you know, money, success for this. And you gotta kind of ask yourself, you know, what's really important to me? What's going to make me happy? Because otherwise we just get caught in these loops. And you know, we, we, we sacrifice family for money. You know, we sacrifice, you know, happiness for progress or progress for happiness. And you know, to really sit there and say, what's important to me? You know, what do I need? Because if we follow somebody else's roadmap, we don't end up where we want to go.

• 26:20Lewis Howes?

  So it's kind of defining at first, your vision, your dream and what it's going to look like for you to be happy and fulfilled or achievement.

• 26:26Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Lewis Howes?

  What does that look like? Cause for you, it might be, or for a mom or a woman, it might be like to have a family and have a couple of kids and be active in our community and

• 26:33Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Lewis Howes?

  Feel like she's making an impact on that.

• 26:37Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  That could be her measure of success, right?

• 26:40Eric Barker?

  No doubt. So uh, for me, I looked at uh, uh, there was uh, some great research by uh, two Harvard Business School professors. And they were some of the ones who talked about that collapsing strategy. The other mistake a lot of, a lot of people make is the sequencing strategy where first I'm going to work really hard. Then I'm gonna fall in love and have a family. And then I'm gonna do something fulfilling.

• 26:59Lewis Howes?

  And I'm gonna make a lot of money, then I'll do this.

• 27:01Eric Barker?

  Then, and you never, you never, you never get there. Or, yeah, I'm gonna do this for that, and I'm miserable. And then all the relationships, but now, you know, my kids are 15, they don't even know me because I was too busy working. It's like you can't break it up like that. So it was, it was Stevenson and Nash were two professors who looked at this. And what they found among the people who had balance was they looked at four, four key metrics were consistent with them. Happiness, achievement, they had, they had, they had a legacy and they had significance.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:32Eric Barker?

  And those were the fours. Basically happiness is, are you enjoying what you're doing? Are you enjoying your time, having fun? Second was achievement. Achievement was progressing goals, making money, you know, success in your career. Third was significance. To the people you love, the people who love you, you know, are you making a positive impact on their life?

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:48Eric Barker?

  And then legacy is, you know, am I, am I making the world a better place? Am I contributing to the future and to, to others? Because it's, it's easy to just hit two or three of these and miss out on another. And it sounds like a lot to balance four, but it's, it's not that hard actually to like, look at your calendar, look at the hours and say, which, which, which buckets is this making a deposit? Is this towards achievement? Is this towards happiness? Is this towards significance? Is this towards legacy? And then you can start to, you know, almost like, almost like a boat, you know, you don't go totally straight. You gotta tic tac, tic tac and make sure you're putting a little bit in each one of the buckets. You know, that's a good way to try and find balance as opposed to just, as long as I do this one thing. It's not gonna work.

• 28:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I kind of think that's interesting. I've saw a mentor of mine who I've actually had on here. He gives himself a rating at the end of every day. He has a calendar where every single day he looks at it and rates himself on kind of his own categories.

• 28:45Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  Similar to that, but some other things as well, like his health is in there, like,

• 28:48Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  How did I do in my health on a scale of one to 10, you know, my relationships, my business, all the things like, did he have fun today?

• 28:55Eric Barker?

  Exactly.

• 28:56Lewis Howes?

  And he rates himself and he has a whole score by the end of the month. And I thought it was fascinating.

• 29:00Eric Barker?

  Oh.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  That way it gives you like a guide and every day, week, month, you can look back and say, well, what do I need to change?

• 29:06Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to just like, I have no clue what I'm doing every day and I'm not sure how to get out of this. Well, when we track these things, it's a little easier.

• 29:12Eric Barker?

  Oh, no. And that's, I think that's, that's critical. When I spoke to, to Mike Norton, who's another professor at Harvard, he was talking about, that's the problem with money. You know, the problem with money is it's very easy to count. Versus, you know, so you can say, am I making more money than I was last year? Yes, I'm doing good, but I'm a good brother, I'm a good boyfriend, I'm a good husband, I'm a good dad. There's no number for that, so it's very hard to track. And so I looked around, you know, are there ways we can, and just like, just like you were saying with, you know, giving yourself a ranking on these other things, I think that's a critical thing. There was one venture capitalist who, what he did was, uh, he had his assistant not only track his schedule,

• 29:53Eric Barker?

  but he had his assistant track at the end of every month, how many times did he have dinner with his family? And that became his metric. Because if there were too many times where that number fell under a certain thing, as a father, as a husband, he was screwing up. And he knew that number, just like all of his investments needed to go up. Uh, another, Kevin Boland, who was a director of strategic investments at KPMG. He created a fun little game for himself. He knew he needed to spend more time with his family before his sons graduated high school. So he basically set upon himself, I want to lose my frequent flyer status. Because if I'm still platinum status, that means I'm flying a lot. And if I'm flying a lot, I'm not home with my kids. So I want to see platinum drop down to gold next year. If I'm still platinum, I'm making a mistake.

• 30:38Eric Barker?

  I'm not at home enough.

• 30:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 30:40Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  Well, there's other ways you could do that. Spend a lot on your business card and get platinum points, you know?

• 30:45Eric Barker?

  Take more buses.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Interesting. What's the thing that you've learned that surprised you the most out of all this stuff? Where you were like, huh, I can't believe this was actually true.

• 30:57Eric Barker?

  Uh, what was, one of the things that was really shocking to me was, uh, in terms of the work-life balance issue, was, you know, we all think that, um, you know, it's like, working, working harder does produce results. Just, you know, that's, that's the problem.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Work harder, work smarter.

• 31:13Eric Barker?

  I mean, well, yeah, well, there you go. And the, and the funny thing was that there's the threshold hypothesis in terms of IQ. And what that means is we often think that, oh, IQ points, the higher it goes, the smarter you get, the better you'll do. No, not the case. Uh, when Mahaly Chakse Mihai looked at, yeah, creativity, studied eminent people across the arts, business, everything. And what he found was, when people had an IQ of 120, You know, they could, they could be one of these people who won Nobel Prizes, National Book Award, anything like that, but the difference between 120 and 180 was almost negligible. Because once you had the basic toolbox, once you had the basic things, it was the hours you spent, it was how much time you put in. So while there's certainly an argument for balance, you know, spending more time does pay off. So that's why it's tricky.

• 31:57Eric Barker?

  If it was as easy as, "Oh, after, after eight hours a day, it's fine." No. Once you have that personal definition of success, you can say, "How much I want to achieve." Because more does produce more results, it just comes from one of the other buckets.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And it's also, you know, if you want to be the best chess player, the best basketball player in the world, you can't just be like, "I want to practice an hour a day."

• 32:16Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  It's just not going to happen.

• 32:18Eric Barker?

  No.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  So you've got to put more time on achieving something if that's your main priority.

• 32:22Eric Barker?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:22Lewis Howes?

  You've got to put more energy and time into that.

• 32:23Eric Barker?

  Oh, absolutely. One of the, one of the most fascinating stories I came across was, blew me away, was, uh, the thing is Nigel Richards is the French Scrabble champion. And, um, you know, spent enormous amount of time.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  That's a tough game.

• 32:37Eric Barker?

  It's very tough. I mean, and, and French actually has, I forget, 10, 20, 100,000 more words than the English language does. So it's even harder. Uh, but this guy spent a crazy amount of time working at it. In fact, he spent such a crazy amount of time that I guess I should mention Nigel Richard, Richards does not speak French.

• 32:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:58Eric Barker?

  He was the English Scrabble champion. He did that, and then he said, "I want to do the other thing." So he knows all these words. He doesn't know how to speak the language. When he accepted the award, he had to have a translator give the acceptance speech.

• 33:09Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 33:10Eric Barker?

  Yes.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  Why didn't he just do this in English?

• 33:13Eric Barker?

  I mean, that was the thing.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  He spoke English?

• 33:15Eric Barker?

  He, he spoke English.

• 33:16Lewis Howes?

  Why didn't he just do the, the English Scrabble? He was already the champion.

• 33:19Eric Barker?

  He was already the champion.

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so he needed a new competition.

• 33:21Eric Barker?

  I gotta take it to the next level.

• 33:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 33:23Eric Barker?

  So he doesn't know what the words mean, but he can spell them. And so

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:27Eric Barker?

  It was, it was crazy.

• 33:28Lewis Howes?

  It must've taken so much time to memorize that many words.

• 33:30Eric Barker?

  I can't imagine what that takes, but it's like when you're that ambitious, when you work that hard, you know, you can do things that just sound patently ridiculous.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 33:40Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Now, here's one we talked about previously before we came on the show last time we met. And you're kind of winning this with the IQ. Do grades matter? Towards being successful, like if I'm a valedictorian 4.0. Highest IQ, everything else like that. Is that the factor towards being successful in a career? Or as an entrepreneur or generating, you know, a certain result in life?

• 34:07Eric Barker?

  Sean Aker, bestselling author, he did some research that basically showed your college grades. It's about as much of a roll of the dice.

• 34:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:16Eric Barker?

  Yeah, and if you look at another study of American millionaires, the average GPA among American millionaires is 2.9. Yeah.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  That's a C minus average, right? Is that what it is or no? B minus?

• 34:27Eric Barker?

  It's, yeah. It's less than, yeah, it's less than, less than a B. And the thing is that what you, when Karen Arnold at Boston College did a study of valedictorians. And what she found out is that basically they're, they're playing by the rules. They're not trying to learn. They're usually just trying to get good grades. And that means to some degree kind of gaming the system. They're just focused on doing well. They're, they're complying with rules. And what happens in their longer term career is exactly the same thing, which they end up doing well. But they end up fitting into the system. They don't shake up the system. These are not the people who are going to be world changers. These are not the people who are going to take huge risks. They're going to be a part of the system. They're not going to question the system and improve the system.

• 35:11Eric Barker?

  So it's one of those big questions where, you know, are you the kind of person who follows the rules versus breaks the rules? You know, so valedictorians do well. And the truth is they do very well in areas where strict compliance, follow, follow the rules, everything. But when life has a lot more options, a lot more possibilities, opportunities in the arts, entrepreneurship. You know, this is where they're not as suited because life doesn't have clear boxes. Fill in the, the. Exactly. It's not that simple and straightforward. So, you know, just get good grades is not, not at all a prescription for success.

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  So do you think you'll have kids one day?

• 35:53Eric Barker?

  I'm sorry?

• 35:53Lewis Howes?

  Do you think you'll have kids, kids one day?

• 35:55Eric Barker?

  I don't know. I don't know. Maybe.

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  If they, if you did kid, if you had kids, would you push them to get really good grades?

• 36:01Eric Barker?

  I mean, I, you know, I don't think it hurts, but I, but I, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't put that above all else. Because again.

• 36:10Eric Barker?

  You know, what if, what if your kid wants to do something that's not, that's not a subject in school? What if, when they start to get to know themselves, you know, they realize that again, they want to do something in the arts. They want to do something that's a little bit different. They want to, do want to be an entrepreneur. School doesn't train you well for that. So you have to think about, you know, what's there? What are emerging opportunities? So I, I, I think that's, that's the simple and quick path, but you know, life has many options and possibilities. And we need to think a little bit broader.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  If you could go back to, let's say, grade school or high school and there was a class that hasn't been provided for you, but you could create a class to learn one of these skills or principles to help you be some more successful in life.

• 36:56Eric Barker?

  Absolutely.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  What would you wish that class would have been on and teaching you would have been social, uh, soft skills would have been public speaking? Would have been training for confidence? What would it be for you?

• 37:08Eric Barker?

  I think, I think training for soft skills would be very valuable. Um, uh, another, another thing I really wish that I don't think would be hard for schools to implement is, uh, at, you know, in high school, I would have, I would have loved to learn more about economics. Just that as a lens to look, you know, through the world, that idea of, you know, opportunity cost of trade offs, of realizing, you know, supply, demand, option. There are so many theories and just concepts, these tools and way of looking at the world that come from economics that, you know, most people don't learn at all. And some people learn too late to really apply those tools to their life. And, you know, I, I think looking at the world in terms of trade offs, opportunity cost, those are valuable things, especially when you're young,

• 37:52Eric Barker?

  you're starting to make decisions about school, career, you know, it's a valuable tool that we don't provide to students.

• 37:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think that's powerful. I think the soft skills are so important. Cause if you don't understand how to connect with people.

• 38:03Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Don't understand how to finesse a conversation and relationship and understand and be empathetic towards people, then it's.

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  It's hard, you become more of a robot, right?

• 38:13Eric Barker?

  And, well, I, I think that's, it's really, it's really tricky because we, that's something I don't think we ever get formally exposed to.

• 38:22Lewis Howes?

  Unless your parents are teaching you, but.

• 38:24Eric Barker?

  I mean, hopefully, but it's like, you know, formal training to kind of understand that, I mean, be great as opposed to, you know, we've had, like I said, California's initiative to increase self-confidence, you know? Could we have some to increase empathy? You know, that would be really nice is just to have people thinking more about others, rather than just trying to build themselves up. Because it's not something you experience and, you know, I don't, I don't think the world needs any more selfishness. We've got plenty. We're all stocked up.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. We've got a lot of that. Why should someone get this book? What do you think is gonna help them the most by getting this?

• 38:59Eric Barker?

  I think we've, we've just got a lot of myths out there and I think to be asking the questions, I think is a very powerful thing. But to think you have the answers and they're wrong is far more dangerous. So, I mean, in terms of understanding, cause, uh, cause I'm not just sitting there saying, oh, do this. There's definitely prescriptive advice, but you know, in that's, are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert? Are you more of somebody who plays by the rules? Are you somebody who can't help but break the rules? Understanding who you are, looking at the environments you're in and starting to align your personality with where you're at, you know? That's the real goal here. So I think a lot of people aren't thinking about that. They're, they're thinking that, you know, you know, hey, nice guys finish last.

• 39:43Eric Barker?

  Well, okay, well then, what, what, when we push that too far, what does that mean? What should I be doing? So I would rather be asking the questions than have the wrong answers. So I think this, at least we can see the research, the experts, what do they have to say so that, that we can have, at least have better answers.

• 40:00Lewis Howes?

  Better understanding. I got it. Uh, final few questions for you.

• 40:03Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  Uh, this one's called the three truths.

• 40:06Eric Barker?

  Okay.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  And you've written, how many articles now?

• 40:09Eric Barker?

  Oh God, probably about 5,000 at this point.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  5,000?

• 40:11Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. You've got a bestselling book that's out right now. It's gonna be a bestseller. You've, uh, had how many 200,000, 290,000 email subscribers? But how many millions of downloads or hits, reads on your site, do you know?

• 40:24Eric Barker?

  A lot.

• 40:26Lewis Howes?

  Millions and millions, right?

• 40:28Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Lewis Howes?

  Um, let's say this is your last day, many years from now.

• 40:32Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  And you get to write three things down that is the only three things that people remember you by.

• 40:37Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  5,000 articles, I don't know, millions of words you've written. But it comes down to three truths. Three, three things you know to be true about everything you've learned in your experience that you'd pass on to everyone else.

• 40:51Eric Barker?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  What do you think those three truths would be for you?

• 40:56Eric Barker?

  I think the first one would be that issue of, of self-compassion, of, you know, forgiving ourselves. We're all gonna make mistakes. You know, it's like this, this book is about the mistakes a lot of us have made. And I think, I think forgiving yourself is

• 41:11Eric Barker?

  a lot of the anger, a lot of the problems that we deal with in life come from, you know, not. Uh, the second one actually comes from not only the issue of happiness, but also the latest neuroscience research, which is when we focus, just like you were saying about with public speaking. When you focused on others, when you focused on the audience, you were good. When you let the voices in your head start talking to you about, oh, I'm concerned, I'm worried. Is when we're focused, much like in meditation, and we're seeing this verified in neuroscience research. When you're focused, that's when you're clear. When you're unfocused, two things happen. Number one, you get a lot more negative thoughts start to come up. And number two, we become self-focused. You know, we just start thinking about who are we, am I right, am I okay?

• 41:56Eric Barker?

  Things get more, they get more me and they get more negative. But when we go out, when we think about others, when we think about what we're doing, when we're in a flow state, we're much happier and we're better at what we're doing. So that sort of focus on the outside, on what we're doing, on other people, you know, creates that. And the third thing I would say is gratitude, where gratitude, if you look at Sonia Lubomirsky's research, it's basically, it is, it is hard to feel unhappy.

• 42:25Eric Barker?

  When you are feeling gratitude and it's something that's very simple. You don't actually have, what's fascinating about gratitude is that it's a perspective. You know, you don't have to have more money, more anything to feel it. If you said, anything you have, you can feel gratitude or you can take it for granted. It is merely perspective. Nothing in your world has to change, just your attitude towards it. I am so lucky to have this versus, yes, of course, I'm entitled to it. Having that attitude of gratitude is just something that creates enormous happiness in yourself. It bonds you to others, makes you thankful to others. And it's the easiest thing to do because you don't need any things to get it. It's just a shift in how you look at the world and it can make you and others around you much happier.

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I love that one. That's good, man. Uh, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is Mostly Wrong. Make sure you guys go get this right now. You can go in the bookstores, you can go online, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Um, go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere else, go to your website as well. Just Google Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Um, before I ask the final question, are you on social media and everything else as well? Should we connect with you? It's all Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• 43:40Eric Barker?

  They search for Eric Barker.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Eric Barker, gotcha, okay. Um, before I ask the last question, I'll acknowledge you for a moment, Eric, for going on the journey to find the solutions to all the things everyone's been looking for. And you do the hard work, you do the research, you've been doing this for years. And I think a lot of people are confused and for you to create relief for people through your words and your hard work and your research has helped so many people who read your message. And it's going to help a lot of people who read this book, so I'll acknowledge you for that.

• 44:09Eric Barker?

  Thank you very much.

• 44:09Lewis Howes?

  You're welcome.

• 44:10Eric Barker?

  I really appreciate it.

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  You're welcome. Final question is what's your definition of greatness?

• 44:15Eric Barker?

  My definition of greatness is basically is, is finding out who you are.

• 44:25Eric Barker?

  Using that to define your goals and using that to help others.

• 44:30Eric Barker?

  You know, it's not as simple as you've got to act, you've got to know who you are, you've got to act, you've got to get where you want to go, but in the end, if it's just about you, I don't think it's, I think that's, that might be success, but it's, it's not greatness. It's got to impact people beyond, beyond you. So knowing who you are, using that to achieve your goals and having those goals positively impact the lives of others, to me, that would be greatness.

• 44:54Lewis Howes?

  Eric, thank you so much.

• 44:55Eric Barker?

  Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it.

• 44:58Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my greatness family. I hope you enjoyed this one. Eric Barker was a delight. Make sure to check out all of his information back at the show notes, at lewishouse.com/482. You can learn about his book there, you can watch the full video interview, and all the other stuff that we talked about is back at the show notes, lewishouse.com/482. Wherever you're listening to this, make sure to share this out with your friends and tag me on Instagram story or on your Instagram page. Tag me in the photo or in the video. Post this on Twitter, I'm at Lewis Howes, or over on Facebook as well. Let me know what you enjoyed most about this. And as always, share it with your friends. I appreciate you guys so much.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  We've got some big, big interviews coming up, like Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, one of the original founders of Shark Tank and the inventor of the infomercial. He's done billions in sales on his infomercials. We've got Andy Frisella, the MF CEO coming on as well. An incredible story about how he built a $100 million plus empire in the fitness and nutrition space. We've got some amazing people, Rob Bell coming on the house back again. He's been on a few times, but he's coming back with a powerful message. One of my favorite people in the world. It's going to be an amazing next couple of weeks. So if this is your first time here, make sure to subscribe at iTunes.com/greatness. And as always, you know what time it is.

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  It's time to go out there and do something great.