1019 Build a Global Community, Leverage Viral Video & Change Lives w/Zach King

“It’s not about these surface-level achievements, it’s about being a person who’s putting good into the world.”Master of digital trickery and visual illusions, filmmaker and internet personality, Zach King joins Lewis for a fun, yet deep conversation on today's podcast. They discuss finding your niche, staying focused on your vision, how Zach rose to fame, stayed successful and pushed through self-doubt, and so much more! Read Zach King’s Magical Book Series: https://www.zachkingmagic.com/For more go to: https://www.lewishowes.com/1019Kobe Bryant on Mamba Mentality, NBA Titles, and Oscars: https://link.chtbl.com/691-podKevin Hart Breaks Down His Secrets to Success: https://link.chtbl.com/956-podKatherine Schwarzenegger Pratt on the Power of Forgiveness: https://link.chtbl.com/925-pod 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?

  What was the comment you remember right now you see in your mind that affected you the most in the last eight to 10 years?

• 0:07Speaker 01

  The comment that changed my whole career trajectory was.

• 0:13Lewis 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.

• 0:36Lewis Howes?

  American author Harriet Jackson Brown Jr. Once said, "Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you." An English novelist Terry Pratchett wrote, "It's still magic, even if you know how it's done." Welcome to the School of Greatness. My guest today knows what it takes to share the joy of magic and illusions through a digital medium empire that he's built. Many of you might know Zach King from his early days on YouTube, sharing advanced tutorials on filmmaking techniques and mastering visual effects. Or you might know him from Vine, using a six-second platform to inspire wonder and awe in millions of people with his sharp editing skills and visual gags. Or more recently, from his viral TikTok

• 1:21Lewis Howes?

  videos where he takes practical effects to the next level to create mind-blowing illusions. Zach is a filmmaker with over 8 million subscribers on YouTube, 50 million followers, and growing on TikTok, and hundreds and hundreds of millions of views across all platforms. And in this episode, we talk about how to keep yourself focused on your creative vision as a creator, where to start as a content creator today with all the noise, what's happening, all the different platforms. Where do you begin? How do you grow your platforms? The life lessons Zach has learned from his wife and kids, the YouTube comment that changed the course of Zach's life forever, the importance of finding your specific niche,

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  especially when you're starting out, Zach's passion for family life, foster care.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  And adoption and the first steps you can take to become a foster parent that and so much more. I am so excited. Zach has got such a big heart. I aspire to be as talented as him one day. If you're enjoying this, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button over on the School of Greatness on Apple Podcast, as well as give us a rating and review. Okay, after a quick message, the one and only Zach King.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Super excited for our guest today, the legendary Zach King is in the house.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Dude, thanks for having me.

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, brother.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It's good to be here.

• 2:48Lewis Howes?

  So excited. We were just talking off camera about how I discovered you on Vine seven, eight years ago, whenever that was.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  The Vine days, those were good days.

• 2:55Lewis Howes?

  And I think everyone kind of discovered you then who was on the internet. But then I remember you kind of went away, at least in my perspective. When Vine went away, I remember almost like, maybe it was a year or two years ago, seeing people say, when your content came back, people saying, isn't that the Vine guy? It's almost like you went away, at least in my perspective, but you were still not gone, but it just seems like you weren't as mainstream awareness for maybe a couple of years. Is that true? Or is that just my perspective?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I didn't go away, but it's, it's, it's kind of that, the syndrome of you, you get so popular, it's, it's hard to top that. And then it's only downhill from there for a little bit. What I found, having a career on the internet, it's ups and downs because you know me from Vine, but there'll be people watching this who know me from YouTube 12 years ago, when I created my first YouTube account and I was teaching filmmaking, that, and then that had to die. And to this day, it's, there's never been a video on that YouTube channel. Um, so there's a still an audience that's like, where'd that dude go?

• 3:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Um, and then the recent uptick has been with TikTok, which is interesting. And it was kind of a little bit like you, you question in the back of your mind as you're creating, whether it's, I imagine artists have this, filmmakers definitely have it, like you're, you're as great as your last work. And as Vine went away, um, I was still doing grinding on YouTube and making stuff every day with my team.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  But you know, it was, it just didn't hit the same as Vine. It was a different platform.

• 4:16Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't going as viral.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  It even though it was going as viral, like people, you never know if it was like a repost, people just. It wasn't the talk of the town, which was what Vine was.

• 4:26Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't like culture. Vine was like, this is happening.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Cultural moment.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  TikTok is like, this is what's happening in culture. Everyone knows like the dances, everyone knows the songs, everyone knows the magic.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yes. And it was kind of a little bit exciting to see that uptick on TikTok once again, because it was kind of like, you're like telling yourself, I'm relevant again. Not that you weren't relevant, but you just kind of had confidence that what you were making was evergreen. And now that I've seen that that up and down, you know, three times with YouTube, Vine and TikTok and even other platforms like Instagram. There was a time when we were one of the top three creators, right behind Taylor Swift in one year.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  When was this?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  In video views. That was 2014 or 15, the first year that they had, first two years they had their video feature. Because we were one of the first ones to jump. Everyone was still using it for, you know, pictures of their food or their dogs or whatever. And.

• 5:15Lewis Howes?

  And you were coming off Vine high and you were like, let's go create here.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Well, I was, I was coming off that and it was like Vine was 6.2 seconds or whatever. And then Instagram, when they launched, it was 15.

• 5:26Lewis Howes?

  You're like, give me 15 seconds.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  At this rate, we're going to be making feature films in eight years if we double the length every, you know, two years.

• 5:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, we are continuing to, it's never been about the follower count though. I think there was a period where, and it was, if you actually measure, I think it was between like one and seven million followers on Instagram. That was the most fun rush. It was like, you would check the social blade or the graphs and it'd be like 40,000 followers. I didn't know a way 70,000, 120,000. And then around seven million, it's kind of just became a, it can't be about this because then you're going to pivot the content. And you're going to be creating stuff for the audience and you could lose yourself and your, your own voice and your creativity in that. And I think your whole fire for creating can die because you're all of a sudden serving this machine.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  The audience feels like a beast in a way to continue to feed it and keep it growing.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  How do you keep yourself focused on your vision, your creative process, the artistry of it as opposed to numbers following growth?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Engagement?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think I'm in a lucky place where I don't have to worry about growth and it's, you know, even if you look at that number metric of growing one to seven million followers, like you kind of tap out in terms of even the brand deal size at seven million, like brands aren't there to, they don't need somebody with 50 million. If you have seven million, it's probably like the same engagement rate. It's just an extra bonus. And so there wasn't a reason to continue to grow. It's all about making the next video is better or more exciting or a better story or crafted in a more unique way. And the thing that got me into filmmaking years ago was watching Spielberg. Like I went to film school knowing that I wanted to try to make movies like Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. It was these giant blockbusters, but all of them had

• 7:10Speaker 01

  a theme of practicality where, you know, you look at those old behind the scenes and they have the real dinosaur head there, like

• 7:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  the man, you know, or the jaws shark, which gave them a ton of headaches, but like that made the iconicness of that film. It wasn't like a CG or claymation.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  You're still talking about it 20, 30 years later.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they were breaking ground with what they're doing practically. And so the fun of filmmaking to me isn't showing up on set and having green screens and like this fake little tennis ball to look at for eye line. It's actually having some of the things there and that's what I'm, what gets me up in the morning now. It's like, how can I make this video? A hundred percent practical. What if there was zero editing? Because I've known for a lot of my digital trickery, but my favorite stuff is like, I just did a video with my kids and we were thinking of it, like what I make blanket forest with my kids all the time. And I was like, wouldn't it be sweet? Almost like a Narnia thing where you go through and you could go through.

• 8:02Lewis Howes?

  It's really cool.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  And did you see the behind the scenes?

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  No, I don't think I have.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I'll show you later, but it's, it's one of my favorite things. I've never posted behind the scenes. Not a magician, but I live by the code of like.

• 8:11Lewis Howes?

  That would crush on TikTok.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did. It did.

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  The behind the scenes.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  So we showed the behind the scenes because it was a hundred percent practical, zero editing where we, we, you know, we go through the, the tent and I lift up the back blanket and we're in a forest. And everyone's, I see a million theories when we post a video up on the forums of Reddit. Here's what happened. Yeah, like it was some jump cut crazy thing where he got all two of his kids who are, by the way, under three years old, like to line up in the same position when they went to a mountain and it was like, no, we had a set and the doors opened up. When the camera was inside the tent, you just didn't mentally realize it. The doors opened up and we built the set on top of a mountain top. Shut up. The set is in a mountain. So there's no editing. Yeah, it's just like the most simple explanation. But I like, it's beautiful to me because the problem that we were solving is how do we make this real?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Like it's, it would actually be too hard to edit that video. And so I get a kick out of whether it's like Fred Astaire did a decades ago, a tap dance number. And he was dancing on the walls. Like he walks up, dancing on the ceiling and is hanging around in impossible ways. And you know, they used a rotating room, just like they used in Inception. And so we were like, well, to do that, like we could walk up a wall and someone could hold me in a green screen suit. It would just look funny and, and kind of be a cheap way to do it. So we figured out how to build a rotating room. Shut up. So that we could, you know, do those moves and be, I always want to be like Spider-Man as a kid. And so like, that was the video concept we ended up doing. Wow. But. How much do these productions cost to build some of these sets? That's where the. What's the rate? What's the lower?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  That's where the brand deal money comes in to pay for it. We're like, you know, I mean, building a rotating room is incredibly expensive. Um, you know, it can be in the six figures to build something like that. But it's worth the payoff just because I, those videos to me last for a long time. They're evergreen. They're evergreen for, until the day I die, like kids will probably always want to be Spider-Man and walk on a wall, you know, or, or. And they'll reference your video of that, like you're referencing Jaws. Maybe. I've referenced a lot of stuff from Charlie Chaplin, like it's, I'm not, a lot of people are like, oh, you've created this new style. Um, but there's a lot, George Milliers was a filmmaker in the early 1900s. He was doing jump cuts. I watched a lot of his stuff often, which are funny because they're reminiscent of vines.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  They're sometimes six seconds long and they would be played in Nickelodeons, which were like these little machines. You put a quarter in or a nickel, um, for five cents, you could watch this. It was like up to literally seven seconds, a little like you watch somebody punch somebody or like you watch a person sneeze. That was like one of first Edison's first films and it's so, it seems so trivial, but in Georges, he was doing jump cuts. He would like go like this and then a piano would appear.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  And like people back then were blown away like what, cause it all looked choppy. So you could almost barely see the jump cut. But I always wonder what if Charlie Chaplin were alive today or some of those early filmmakers who had such primitive technology, what they would be doing.

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Maybe they, I don't know if they would, I feel like they'd be more Oscar filmmakers, but maybe they'd be down to make some TikToks.

• 11:10Lewis Howes?

  TikToks. What is the biggest fear you have as a creator right now? You've got, I think it's over 80 million followers across platforms. You've got billions and billions of views. What's the fear? Is it that I'm not going to be as good as my last video, that I'm not going to stay relevant, that I'll lose myself in all this? What is it for you?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting as I see my, my fears come out in the comments and I know it's a real fear when it pings me. So I'll, and I don't spend a lot of time in comments anymore.

• 11:38Lewis Howes?

  When it triggers you.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  When it triggers me. I'll read a comment, I'll say, this guy's not relevant anymore. And I'll go, oh, that's a real, like, okay, I must actually believe that's a fear of mine if it pings me. Another one that happens is when people say, when are you going to make your next thing? And I'm always fearful of like, I'm not going to be able to, not that it's a pivot, but make something longer. Maybe I, what if it's actually a, a lack of ability to go beyond 15 seconds? You know, what if I can't go a full hour and a half, which has been my dream, which I've been telling people since I was a kid growing up, making movies. And so now the weight of it, which isn't right, but for many years I put it on me like I need to fulfill that and succeed in that. Cause I've, I've got my whole hometown family rooting for like, we're excited about your TikToks,

• 12:23Speaker 01

  but like, let us know when you make a film, you know?

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  And so being content is, is something I'm working towards.

• 12:29Lewis Howes?

  On a scale of one to 10, 10 being the most content ever, where are you at right now?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  In terms of family life, fully content. I love where I'm at. With work, I always want to push it. So it's not that I'm not content, but I'm ambitious to see if I could do something else.

• 12:45Lewis Howes?

  You're happy, it's not satisfied.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I am, see, it is, there is satisfaction with the work. When we post, it feels great to have finished something and made something because there is an energy I get and a lot of my team gets from finishing, whether it's a video, any kind of project. It feels great to kind of look back at the process and it's not as difficult as a birth that I saw my wife go through, but it's a, it is a similar process where you created nothing, something from kind of nothing, like just an idea.

• 13:14Lewis Howes?

  Your imagination.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and used resources or creatively along the way to get that out to become something that millions of people can watch. That's kind of a weird process to think about that in a way that it is magical that you're creating that physical experience and hopefully it can have an emotional experience when people watch it, whether it's adding wonder or inspiration in their lives.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  But yeah, so I'm contentment, contentness, I don't know.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  Where are you at there in career-wise then, one to 10?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  I'm gonna give it a seven, somewhere in there. Like, there's a lot more ambition in there. I don't know where that line.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  So you've never done a full hour, hour and a half film yet?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Not even close. If you add them up, well over that. It's like a director's length, you know, three and a half movie.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  What would the film be if you could do any film?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I don't know. I don't know what the story is. I want it to be, I don't want, I used to have this thing in film school. I was like, well, the first film I do is gonna be the best thing ever. It's gonna be the Damien Chazelle La La Land that wins an Oscar. The first, you know, like, super jealous of that guy's talent.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  He's amazing.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And, but, you know, when I look at, I need to take that pressure off myself and over the years I've learned to do that. That pressure has never been healthy for what I'm producing and who I am as a person. And so I know there's a long-form story in there. I don't know what it is because I'm looking for it. And that's, and that's just allowing the curiosity to continue to ask questions like, and I think it'll have something that actually maybe, I never, I loved documentaries growing up, but I never thought I'd make one. I used to actually say like, I don't know, I don't want to make a documentary. But I don't know, it could, I love the idea of like, exploring a topic deeper and immersing myself in that for a couple of years. But I also don't have the Those projects take a lot of time.

• 14:58Lewis Howes?

  So much time. We did a documentary, it took two and a half years of my life. It's a lot of money. We haven't made any money from it. And we haven't like, it's just hard. It's more of a creative process of love.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:08Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And that's why it has to be that because I love the, sometimes I'll make these videos, especially for YouTube, that'll be five minutes. And that's a lot of energy that goes into a five-minute piece. But when we hit publish, it feels good to be at peace. And a couple of times, we've said this, where it's like, if this literally gets 10,000 views, it's okay. Like, I'm proud of what we're putting out there. Because I learned so much in the process of making that, that it's not even about seeing the response to it. It's like, it's done once it's published, that whole journey. And, yeah, there's a longer-form story in there. Don't know what it is yet.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  I feel like a documentary on the, on like, magic as a whole.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:52Lewis Howes?

  Like, studying great magicians.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And that fascinates me.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  And then you kind of throwing in your spin and twists as a host, kind of storyteller could be interesting.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're hitting on some strings there. That's where my curiosity goes at night. I'll Google like, and there's all these rivalries of magicians and selling the secrets and these shows that, you know.

• 16:09Lewis Howes?

  The dark side of magic. Ooh, I like that title.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Could be a catchy title. Could be on some co-producer.

• 16:16Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Now, I like to challenge people when they come on the show.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  Who have already achieved big things, but they have something missing. And it sounds like the film is something that you would regret not putting out in the world over the next five to 10 years, is that right?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Before I die.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  Before you die?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  I think I'm gonna be making what I'm known for now, this idea of magic. And, you know, it's very, magic is very on the nose. Not a magician, and I try to say that a lot, too.

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  You can't do any card tricks?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Well, it's partly an insecurity, but also like, it's just, magicians get mad. They're like, well, you're not a magician, because you didn't do. I did magic growing up, but I know it's a totally different skill. So to me, it deserves a different title. But I think to the audience, they see the wonder, the same wonder of like, they would see in a magic show. And they don't care the process, whether it was edited, or you practiced the actual card sleight of hand, or whatever the trick is. They just know the experience brought them to that. It took them out of body, and for even three seconds, they spiritually believed that magic was possible. And... Kids today don't really care about whether, how it was done. If it was edited or produced on stage. And so that's why people call it magic.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And, uh, but you know, when I meet people like David Blaine, it's like they can, they can still get you that spiritual place.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  In with their cardistry or with their, their tricks or um, their stunts in person and that's somewhere I'll never get to. Like you have to watch my stuff. I have to show you a video, you know?

• 17:47Lewis Howes?

  For sure. But that's still magic. You create awe and wonder in those moments.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  For people like, wow, how did he do that?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  So you're a magician in your own right.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  There was a big problem for me was still when kids come up. And it happened years ago too, when Vine was first getting popular, they'd be teenagers and they'd want to see a magic trick.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  There's a video.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It was like the biggest disappointment. It was as if I told them the behind the scenes of Disneyland or something and said like, uh, cause this happened to me. I went to shoot at um, one of the parks and you know, I saw the cast members like take off the solely head. And I was like distraught.

• 18:21Lewis Howes?

  Don't show me this.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I'd like, yeah, I want to be on the other side of Disneyland. But I would tell them like, no, it's this whole process. And I was breaking it down and they kind of walk away like shoulders. They'd get the photo, but like that's, they'd walk away bummed.

• 18:33Lewis Howes?

  It's almost like you should learn one coin trick.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  You can always do.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  And just have something simple.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I ended up, um, for the little kids, like a lot of kids, I had kids cry. I would tell them, you know, oh, it's, it's this whole editing thing and you can do it too. And they didn't care. Like they were just bummed. And um, I, we ended up making a kids book just to solve that problem. Cause we wanted to hand them something. Cause I couldn't deliver that experience. And so we did like an AR book, which is cool. Cause you could scan it and all the art came alive.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  But it was like the backstory to how this kid was magical and where the magic came from. And so, that's been my thing. I keep them in my car or in my backpack when I walk around just to like, so when the kids are like, see a magic trick. I'm like, check out what this AR app can do on my book.

• 19:14Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Yeah. I saw that on your website. Where can uh, parents get books for the kids?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  You can find it on Amazon or you know, wherever books are sold, Target.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Just type Zach King. Is it Zach King comics or what is it?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Uh, just like look up Zach King and it'll, it'll pop like book and it'll come up.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious about how many views do you think you have total in all your videos in the last 10 years?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Couple billion.

• 19:37Lewis Howes?

  Couple billion.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Couple billion, yeah, we've never tallied them, but.

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it interesting, I think it's probably more than that with all like TikTok and Vine and everything there, but isn't it interesting that you're probably one of the most watched filmmakers of all time, who didn't get into film school?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It's pretty crazy.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  I have a theory why I didn't get into film school as of recent. I remember I talked to a friend who applied to the same film school and I was like, can I see the application? Like, I don't remember it. And it was like 10 pages of essays and then submit your DVD. And as I was going through it, I was like, I don't remember writing essays. And I, and I, I'm pretty sure, I, cause I remember filling out, there was essays and I hated writing growing up. I like, I could, I, I'm not dyslexic, but I, I feel like I'm on the border of it where I just can't, I, I don't like it, I'm bad at it. I only have like one word to describe things, which is like beautiful.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Awesome.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, um, but I was looking, I was like, I bet I didn't write any essays. I bet I just wrote like a sentence for each answer. Like, why do you want to make movies? I love movies. Like, that's all I do. And, and I bet that was part of the reason I didn't get in. But yeah, I mean,

• 20:47Speaker 01

  that was a bummer for me because I grew up, I was one of those people, same as I know when you talk to Liz Gilbert, she said it like she, she knew her passion from early age. And I was that way, I resonate with that where like seven years old, camera goes in my hands, I'm like, if you find her, I'm a director, I can, I can do this, this is fun, I want to do this for my life. Found it. And so going to film school and, and having the application denied, it was the biggest bummer. It was like, cause I knew from such a young age.

• 21:13Lewis Howes?

  This is what I'm supposed to do.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I was gonna go to LA and make movies.

• 21:16Lewis Howes?

  And you live, you're from Portland, right?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I'm from Portland, Oregon, grew up on a little farm area and, and drove down anyway. And I got, I went to Biola and so they still had general ed, I could take math, science, I could be at the school.

• 21:28Lewis Howes?

  So you got into school?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I got into school and I lived across, who are now some of my best friends on the dorm, other filmmakers. And I got to know, I was like, what, what assignments are you doing? So I actually did a lot of my assignments like a year earlier, because I just kind of did it with them, but I wasn't in the class.

• 21:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And I had started a, I wanted to re- Apply, I missed the, I got denied for like the, the winter term, you could like, there's a last chance application, didn't get that. And so I ended up sitting in the back of the classes because, and I guess this is a hack for school today, like you, I think you could sit in the back of class and teachers will never ask if you're enrolled.

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  So I, I sat in the back of classes and got the teacher's signature to like get added to that class. And I would just sit and learn and after four years, they were like giving out the diplomas and they were like, oh, you're, why do you have all these units for film? Like, we only see you as a general ed student or whatever. And I was like, oh, I was a film major, it must be a mistake and they broke me the.

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  No way. So you never became a film major till the very end.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Until the very last week of senior year, when I was, before I was gonna walk and they were gonna give me the graduation thing. So that's a hack for people who wanna go to college and get the, I don't know, I can't guarantee that'll work.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  So you never actually still got admitted into film school, even all the way through, you just graduated from film.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  I graduated from film school.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's interesting.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  But you know, got the same experience and for me, film school is all, I get asked all the time, is it like, do you recommend film school? What if I have to go on a bunch of debt? Cause you could also buy, if you're heard arguments of like, I could buy a whole studio for $200,000 education price. And go out to LA and move there and try it for three years. And that's also a great option. So for me, it was about meeting people. I mean, one, I met my wife at the university, so worth the, the tuition there, but for the film experience, it's, if you're not motivated to get out and meet people and network and go jump on projects or have people jump on your projects, film school is a great place for people to kind of be that extra push.

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  To be thrown into it, yeah. When was the time you doubted yourself the most since you graduated film school to now?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Along the way, doing the business part of my, my work. So business, I didn't, to do business school.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  My dad was an entrepreneur, so I watched and gleaned what I could from him, but for me, that's the self doubt. Like I knew my, in terms of the filmmaking craft, I know what I enjoy seeing and the tweaks that can be made there. But for the business, it's always a self doubt along the way of like, oh, is that the right call or in the worst, so it's.

• 23:54Lewis Howes?

  Like doing a business deal, char. For something like

• 23:57Speaker 01

  In the beginning, that's always you're awkward and you're learning that. But no, it's probably more that now I have 15 people on my team. And it's fluctuated over the years. But it's making the business decisions of do we need to downsize now or do we need to scale up now? Or is that too risky or should I take a loan or like is are we going to be out like what if we don't? What if for some reason people don't hire influencers in a year from now like where are all these families going to be? And a part of that is I've taken too much over the years on myself and part of that's just there's a natural system of life that happens and people will be okay if you know they'll they'll figure out something. So it's taken a little pressure of myself there. But there's always a self doubt. It's like I wasn't trained in this like is this the right? Whatever business it could be not really about the deals, but just a more about how the business operates like.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  What if we need to diversify, you know, you have a different coaches come in and they're like, well, I see you only do one thing like you need to have eight things that bring in revenue and in case this one thing, but we're all in on this one thing, you know, for the most part, there's like some different revenue streams, but it's it's it's those things that I question.

• 25:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, making those decisions, what routes to go down, who to hire, all that stuff, right? When was it? What was the comment you remember right now you see in your mind that affected you the most in the last eight to 10 years?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Well, in a positive way, there's a there's a comment that really changed my career like I would love to. I should go back and I don't think I'll remember which one it was because there were several of these comments along the way, but back when I started YouTube, I was making tutorials. I was teaching people. I had just started the films going into film school. And so I was teaching what I was learning for editing and putting that out there was it was really nerdy. I was screen recording my my screen and posting pretty much editing down the ums and putting it on YouTube. And the comment that changed my whole career trajectory was, hey, you should show us with these like a short film. The demo, like so if you're teaching lightsabers like show us.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  Make it.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Make a two minute short film about with lightsabers and then like break it down. Cause they wanted entertainment. It was also like probably just stale content.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  And it wasn't just how to, they wanted like, show me the end result and then break it down.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was those comments and I literally read it and was like, one night in my dorm. I was like, oh, I could totally do that. Like I'm working on a lightsaber thing for next week. I was gonna break down like a Star Wars thing and how you could do it yourself. And I was like, the demo film would be like two kittens. My buddy had just adopted kittens with his girlfriend. And that was fresh on my mind. And I was like, oh, well, if we had them play and just like add it in and film them for like a night. They would, it'd make a funny short, it'd be stupid, you know?

• 26:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  It's one of those ideas you don't think about and you don't give yourself notes. It's just like, let's go do it. And we shot it that night. I had posted the tutorial a couple of days later with, and had kind of made its own teaser, like just posted the.

• 26:44Lewis Howes?

  The video.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Jenna kittens by itself. I just called it Jenna kittens. Yeah. It was 45 seconds long and I think I even in the captions was just like tutorial coming next week. But little did I know, like the viral potential that YouTube, it was kind of, YouTube back then was a little bit like TikTok now where. You just, if you posted stuff every 20, it might go viral and viral would be a million views. And that was actually, it's. Oversaturated now. There's been a lot of inflation, but back then a million views was like a lot of views. And you could get a hundred thousand subscribers for that. It was like a crazy conversion rate. People were just signing up for the site. And it was on the news and the video, my parents called me and I had been asleep because I, I stayed up all night to make, to edit that video.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And I just posted it, skipped my classes and went to sleep. My parents were like, you were on Good Morning America. They just played your video. And.

• 27:32Lewis Howes?

  You had no clue.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  And they're like, did they pay you for that? And I was like, no, like, I don't know. I don't know. And so it was just thrown into that whole world and it wasn't, there was a few people ahead of me doing it. The first wave of YouTube creators, whether it was, I mean, I remember early days where it was Smosh, I just Dean, Freddie Wong.

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  I just team was crushing. Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Incredible creators who were well beyond, like they paved the way for figuring out what this looks like. And. It kind of started gleaning from them and like figuring out like, oh, so I should post every every week, I guess, every Friday. So that was my schedule throughout all of colleges. Let's do tutorials during the week and then Friday. And over time, by that second, third year, it turned from, ah, the tutorials are kind of like, people are now confused because there's like a million, there's a half a million people here watching for the short films. And every time I posted a tutorial, they're unsubscribing or they're just like, what is this? So it evolved pretty quickly. And then by the time I was graduating film school, you know, my peers, that's, I think another time I had a little bit of question or self doubt,

• 28:35Speaker 01

  where it's, hey, 95% of my peers are going to go into Hollywood and do PA work. They're going to be screenwriters. They're going to work their way up for 15 years and become directors. I might get left behind here if, because I'm doing this weird thing where my, my parents were really supportive and they actually called it out with like, hey, this is unique. Like, just go with it. See, what is a year or two of failing on this YouTube site? And just try it out. And also they're like, your living is cheap. It's like 400 bucks a month in LA. Like, just, just go do it. And

• 29:03Lewis Howes?

  Who pays 400 bucks a month in LA?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Orange County. Orange County, it's over the line. So I ended up committing to like, I'm going to do YouTube. I'm going to go hard and

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  Go for a year or two, see how it goes?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yes. See, and then I hopefully can catch up to where my friends are and who were out ahead of me in LA. And I continued to do that and slowly it turned into, you know, brand, I had been exposed, barely exposed to a brand deal. And did a few of those and was like, I can't even do these. Like, I need to, I need to hire people to help me. So slowly hired on staff. And then, then Vine took off and that was a, a different beast. I remember my YouTube channel went from half a million subscribers to a million, pretty much in like three months. And Vine had gone to 2 million followers in just a couple, in about a, less than a year. So it was a different level of exposure.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  And you could feel it too. And there'd be like, one person a week who'd come up to me in the store from YouTube. But once Vine happened, it was like everybody in the store, the checkout lady, it'd be everybody. And

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  She became like famous in like a month.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Vine was the, even, it's kind of compared to TikTok, I think, a little bit, but it's hard to know where they know me from at this point.

• 30:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  But Vine was the, overnight, you could feel the difference in person. And that was

• 30:24Lewis Howes?

  You'd go to the store, you walked down the street and somebody like, oh.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a weird experience.

• 30:30Lewis Howes?

  How did you not let that get to your head? Or did it get to your head for a while and you had to learn how to humble yourself in a way?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Well, I'm naturally an introvert. I love being by myself, so it was, it's really uncomfortable. Not anymore, but in the beginning when people come up, like I don't know how to have conversation. Like I edit by myself for 12 hours a day. I work through the night. And I had a girlfriend at that time who ended up, I became engaged and we got married. But she went through that whole journey and she'd be the person who talked. She's like so bubbly and she loves talking to people. That's her. She loves figuring out like what are, who's in the room and what are their needs and like, let's talk about it.

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  And so she was like, whenever I had her, I was comfortable. It was like, hey, this is Rachel. Like carry on the conversation here.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  I'll take a photo of you guys talking, yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, it was, it was different. And I think it's funny when you can see that. Where you mentioned in the beginning, the relevance went down or people, it kind of went to, felt like I wasn't around posting stuff.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  After Vine went away, right?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  That just went to show the power that Vine, it was just a different level. And you see it rise again with TikTok. It was actually like, less people did recognize me on Vine after years had died. Died years ago and TikTok came around and people would start, you notice when the title changes, they're like, first you're the Viner, then you're the ex-Viner. And now you're the, now it's like, some kids only know me from TikTok. It's weird. Yeah.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  Man, did you have a period where you were like feeling less relevant and you felt insecure about that?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  I mean, you, I would, not insecure from, um, in my soul, but insecure from a business perspective. Wondering, ooh, was I over leveraged in Vine? And now will advertisers really come for YouTube brand sponsorships or for the main revenues that we support the business? That's where I always questioned it. And that goes a little bit in line with my questioning the business skills that I've developed over the years. It's like, oh yeah, you can't be over leveraged in one thing.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  Diversifying more, yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it turns out that fear wasn't even valid. It, there was a lot more, I think, as people, filmmakers especially, build for photographers, build their brands online. You should go hard in these apps.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  You should leverage it.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  Go all in. If TikTok is working for you, go all in on one thing.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 32:51Lewis Howes?

  And then try to diversify later, right?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Diversify as you go if you can, but if you're really thinking of diversification from the beginning, you're gonna have less focus on that one thing. And I told one of my buddies early on, like, go hard on TikTok. And he has a couple million followers now. But, you know, a lot of my other friends who I said the same thing to, they were like, well, as I'm building this, I gotta also do a podcast. And I gotta do, and they ended up doing the kinda half-assed in the podcast and like.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Half-assed with everything.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then they never grew on TikTok because they didn't. Also, you need to learn the culture of TikTok and how to speak the language or see what's trending and really, is it too late to hop on that? Or is it funny and does it fit? Do I jive with that and can it feel in my style as well? So.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

  What's your vision of TikTok moving forward? If someone's listening or watching, should they go on TikTok now all in? If they're a creator or if they wanna create content? Or is it too late?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I would be so overwhelmed if I was a creator starting now. I'm so thankful that I was able to start what I did when there was, you know, it's kinda like going in real estate. You're one of the first ones there and you can build bigger property and kind of, and then along the way, I think TikTok is still, if you look at it from a big picture, there's massive exposure you can get. I still have friends who, my sister posted a video the other day and it was for her graduating and it got a couple hundred thousand. Not because I never, my audiences know, you know, she has an account. It's not from me. It's just the algorithm is so powerful. If it's funny or good or hits with people, it works. So over all the platforms, TikTok still is giving the best exposure. You gotta go there. Also, you gotta, Instagram Reels, brand new feature.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  You know they're gonna be giving like probably 70% of their real estate for that explore page to Reels, so jump on that.

• 34:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  But YouTube is the scary one. Like, I don't know where I would start.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  So hard, man. Yeah, we're just consistent. We're finally starting to really grow now. I think we're like 700 something thousand subscribers. And I think we had three and a half million views this month in terms of like, but we have hour-long content or hour and a half long content. And so it doesn't go as viral and some stuff, but we finally started to figure out a process and a system where it's now growing at a nice rate. But it's like, I've been on there for years doing it.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  But the thing that you're doing, and I always, I love it, and I'm telling people a similar thing, like you're coming from a place of giving.

• 35:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Like you're giving, you're getting like, it's, you're called a school of greatness. For a reason, like people could literally get an education watching your stuff and that's so valuable. It's in depth. And I always tell like, that's the place I would start is going back to almost my.

• 35:25Lewis Howes?

  How to.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, how to like teaching a niche and in really giving value and for free. And then you can, and people, and I did, I paid through film school by selling my like DVD courses. I was manufacturing these two disc things that were eight hours long on top of my, it wasn't, I wasn't packaging like my YouTube tutorials. I was making like new training and selling it every quarter.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  Final Cut Pro trainings.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, different, yeah, motion graphics softwares or different special effects packs. It was a great business and that's, that was gonna be my fallback. If YouTube failed, I was gonna go back to that because that was working great.

• 35:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And it's just, but providing value was the simplest business model for it and it's still, that still works.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  Still works, creating content that helps someone solve a problem. We have a very similar story in the fact that I got started in 2008, 2009 and 10.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  Broke as a joke. I was playing professional football, making 250 bucks a week. So it wasn't really professional in the sense of like making a lot of money. Got injured, had to kind of recreate my identity and I got on LinkedIn to try to find a job. And I started spending all this time on LinkedIn. And after six months, people were like, hey, can you show me what you're doing on LinkedIn? And so by me learning a skill, I started teaching people one-on-one, kind of like with you, teaching one-on-one. Then I ended up creating a book and a course around LinkedIn and I started making money around it. I was like, wow, this is, this is amazing. And I went all in on that, become known for that one thing of just trying to help people. And then I evolved it into, well, what do I really want to create? I want to do more inspirational stuff, but that's what got me started, just like teaching got you started. You created a course.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Yep. And I think that's where a lot of people kind of take a misstep is when they're creating their accounts, I see.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  I have a lot of friends either trying to break into it and they go too big.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  Too broad.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  They try to hit everybody and in doing that, it obviously hits nobody or very few people. And so the niche, I mean, you were literally teaching LinkedIn.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it wasn't social media.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you like.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  It was one platform.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Go more narrow, especially now. And then, and then you'll figure out from your audience, like that mix of what you love doing. And then it'll naturally be coming out in the comments. They'll be like, LinkedIn, what about Pinterest? I really need to trend on CEO, SEO on Pinterest. Like, and then you, if you love it, you.

• 37:34Lewis Howes?

  Evolve it.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  Because the people that are working on TikTok that I'm inspired by, they're teaching something specific. They're not teaching photography, they're teaching like iPhone photography. Like what are the hidden things on your iPhone?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:45Lewis Howes?

  To make your photos better.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:46Lewis Howes?

  Not like, here's how to be a great photographer.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  The more specific you can go on specifically TikTok or any platform, the bigger you can grow. And I think that's important for people to know, especially starting out. I love that you're, you started teaching, then you started creating, and then that became your business model.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:04Lewis Howes?

  You also are, um, no, I guess not known for, but you, we have a similar story in the fact that my dad had seven exchange students live with us when I was a kid, from five years old to about 12. We had seven people from around the world come and live with us. So we kind of fostered part-time, six months at a time.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Was that all at once or over the years?

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Over the years, yeah. Like every year would be like a new exchange student.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:28Lewis Howes?

  Who was like their senior year coming in, small town Ohio. And so I learned about culture from people from Brazil and Japan and Germany and France. And I would learn the language and experience it. And you started getting into the foster care movement years ago, but you haven't adopted. You fostered first and then you adopted.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yep. So my wife was a social worker and she was working a desk job at a social work, at an agency where they place foster kids and they do adopted kids too. Sometimes that means kids, you know, are on straight track to adoption or they need to go through the foster care system and then figure out if they're going home or if they're going to be adopted. And as she was doing that desk job, this is right around the time Vine was kicking up for me too. So, um, we weren't, we, early on in marriage, we were traveling everywhere together and then she had her job. And, um, you know, she felt like while she enjoyed helping get kids placed, she wasn't really in the field. She wanted the hands-on and she wanted to be, and she wants to be a mother. And so she wanted, um,

• 39:32Speaker 01

  To feel like she was hands on. We had just moved into a new home at the time. And to us, it was, it had an extra room and we were like, oh, this is too much for us.

• 39:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  I, I, at one point, I had all my Legos in there and it was, because I'm a massive Lego like fan. It's almost embarrassing how many Legos I have and I won't let my kids touch them to, to this day. It's like, if they're on the shelf, like, don't touch. You can play with these ones, but you know, already broken. But I had all my Legos in there and it just felt like, nah, I don't think I need that. And we were like, we could clear it out and, and she could quit her job and then end up doing foster care. We could try it out. We'll, we'll have one kiddo. She came from a family that was adopt, uh, she was the only biological kid. There was two adopted kids. And I had, my youngest sister was adopted into my family.

• 40:17Lewis Howes?

  From China, right?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  From China. So we both had that experience of having siblings that were adopted and we knew, early on in dating, we knew and talked about it like, hey, because I wanted to marry a girl that was, you know, do adoption and be open to that. And she was likewise with her spouse. So we connected on that. And this felt like, you know, you're in the marriage, um, a great way to figure out if we could do foster care. I didn't know what that was. I thought it was.

• 40:42Lewis Howes?

  You were what, 24, 25?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  I was, uh, yeah, 20, I think 24. And, um.

• 40:48Lewis Howes?

  And you're still a kid in some ways.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Still a kid, just start, you know, really just, my business was just picking up. I was just growing a team. Uh, and a lot of people would just think, oh, you're too busy. Like do it later in your life. But for us, it was, it was really a strong tug on our hearts. It was a, it felt like a mission that we needed to do. And we opened up that room. We had our first kiddo and it was a baby. We signed up for zero to two. So you can pick ages.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  You could do, and it sounds a little strange, but you do go through an application of like, during this first, you know, next placement, do you want zero to two? Do you want two to five or? And it's really based on what you think you can handle. So me and Rachel felt really guilty saying, I don't think we can handle, like we. Couldn't take on a mentally handicapped kid. I haven't been trained in that. Maybe in the future I could, but it takes extra care, probably not only just a full-time parent, but maybe a little bit more support. And so you go through an application process and you go through training. And then literally the day you you get signed up and it's it's free to sign up. But you get a call and it's like, hey, you want to take in, you know, here's the baby. Here's their story. Here's a little bit of like how long we think they're going to be with you.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  And if it's going to go adoption or if it's going to go back to they have like little pulses on the story. And you either say, yeah, I'm open. I can come drop off or I'll pick up that day. So we got a call four days before we finished the application. Like that's how how much they need.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  To come pick up right then?

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Baby from the it had been in the NICU, but

• 42:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  We went to go pick them up and had our first baby for six months. And so overnight.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Within a week?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the the process was six months to get certified, but like within four days of us finishing. It was like four days before they were like, we already know who you're going to have. Because they they have so many kiddos that they get to they have to put in homes. And so we became parents overnight and it was we had a lot of friends tell us like, oh, so you didn't. You didn't have biological like this is your first kid. And it was like we didn't have that nine month window of like anticipation and going to the hospital and birthing and being taught how to do it. It was just.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  You're an instant dad.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Instant dad. There's a great movie, Instant Family that with Mark Wahlberg. That shows it's it's lighthearted. So because foster care is such a serious thing. It can be really heavy. That's a great film. I recommend to people to watch and just get like a sense of like what is involved. And their their story is kind of intense because they had, I think, three kiddos at once siblings.

• 43:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So what is being a foster? So you fostered one child and then you then adopt?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  One kiddo and then they went home. Our first kiddo went home to their family.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  What is that like?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  It's.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  I've had so many friends with different experiences of it. There's a whole range of them for us. It's obviously terribly, on one hand, bitter because you have raised this kid for six months and you're taking on the responsibility of parenthood. Like, we're calling ourselves mom and dad. We're their attachment. We don't want to be like a babysitter and they're getting half-love or we're holding back love because they're getting the full, like, as if they're our child. And for that period, they are our child, our love. And so, it's heartbreaking to give back. But at the same time, their story was really amazing. And I was really, I was so proud of their family because, you know, if someone has kids in the foster care system, most likely their parents have been in the foster care system and it goes down generations.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Just because it's a rut that, you know, it's hard not to have judgment. But when I was, before I was educated about foster care, I had a lot of judgment. I was like, why can't you just kind of fix yourself?

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  And take care of these kids, yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, they're humans and you're not taking... But they just weren't trained. Like, it's not to give them too many outs, but this family went through the training. They did, I mean, it's hard work to get back on course from where their life was. And so, we were celebrating them. And that's the goal. Like, you want to be celebrating the birth parents the whole time. It's not easy to, the whole process, because there's just decisions that are made that you're like...

• 44:48Lewis Howes?

  Why'd you do this?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Like, you were so close and now we had to go another six months. And your kiddo needs to be with you, like, you're a bio-parent. That's probably what's best for them. But along the way, it's just like, you have so much grace for yourself, but also just the families. Because it's not easy for the parents to actually get... There's a lot of work they have to do to get their kiddos back. And so, our second kiddo joined the family and we ended up, it just, the story turned where he joined our family. And we were just so, we were thrilled. Like, he was our son for the first two years that we had him. And the fact that he got to join our family was like, forever, son. Like, so cool.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  How old was he when you joined?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  So, he was two when he was adopted.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And...

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  What's his name?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Mason.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  And what has Mason taught you about being a better creator?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Kids are the most creative things in the world. Being a dad has changed my eyes and actually re-inspired a lot. I think you can see it in my work. When you see, if you were to go back and see when my kids were somewhere around the age of one and a half or two. So just about a year and a half ago, I can track back that my work was more inspired, that the ideas were slightly better. Because, you know, I was on the ground with my kids. I'm every day on the ground when I get home at five, looking in grass, looking for bugs, looking for ants, whatever that new thing is that week. Looking for toads is our whole winter experience. There was a pond near us that has, looks like thousands of toads. And we'd catch them and to them and they were these scary, we had these stories going.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And that's so fun and kids, you can, you can see their innocence and you can see that it's really in the best creative, there's no no yet. They haven't been told no. And, you know, I catch myself, I'm like, no, you can't cross the road. And instead of explaining like, well, you can, you can do anything, but here's why it's not safe to cross the road. It's a yes and mentality. But I'm, yeah, but I'm always yelling, no, like, no, no, don't, why do you have to touch the coffee thing? Like, why did you spill this morning? We made espresso. My, both my kids by the age of one and a half have learned how to make me a full espresso. They eat that espresso. Besides putting the thing in and like turning it with the force that it needs, they can make and hit all the buttons and grind it and everything. That's cool. And, and that's our ritual in the morning, but he just spilled this morning.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I'm like, no, like, why did you bang it on that thing? It's like, you know, the process and really it's, I'm catching myself, so I, I don't want to be the no person. I want to be the expansive and teach them, sure, there's boundaries of life that you can, that you need to be safe for your own physical wellbeing, but other than that, like, anything should be possible for the kids as, as long as possible. I want to, I want to be there cheering them on and saying, yes, and how do we do that even better? Do they watch your videos? What do they think of your work? I, so I did a magic trick for them, just a simple coin trick early on. I think they were like a year and a half or maybe two years old. And they started crying. It was, it was too much to handle. It was like, where did it go? Well, I pulled it out of their ear after.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  You know, it's a classic, like, it's almost doing, like, I've done this one to them where I pull off their nose. They're really scared. They scared. So I stopped doing it for a little bit. They've seen a few of my videos when, when they're in. Because Mason's old enough to know what a camera is and he actually enjoys filming and taking photos. But I do show him the videos that they're in once in a while, because like the camping video. Just so that they can full circle know what we were doing if they remember like, oh, that's why we were on the mountain that day. Like, oh, we made a video. Cool.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  But they have no idea, the followers, and I don't know what raising kids amongst fame will look like. So I'm gonna have to meet mentors that have done that successfully and then take from them.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  How old are they now?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Three and a half and two and a half.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow, yeah, so they fully don't understand it yet.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what's weird is, and we've stopped putting them in videos because of this. People would come up to take pictures with them. Like, I wouldn't be around, they'd see him in a store. We had one just a couple of months ago. A kid came around in Target and was like, Mason? And I was on the other edge of the, they didn't see me.

• 48:53Lewis Howes?

  Another kid?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, another kid and their family. And the dad recognized him too, he's like, is that me? And they're also probably like, why is he alone? But I was on the edge of the aisle and I could see him. But they're like, oh my gosh, it's Mason, let's get a photo. And I was like, one, I was like, hello, like other parent, you should know, like, that's weird. Because the kid's like three and a half, but it made us like, oh, they're gonna, they know, they're aware of like people coming up to me and taking photos, now people are asking them. So we're figuring that out, we're navigating, like, we've kind of gone the opposite of like, we're gonna take most, unless it's such a cool concept and they're gonna watch us when they're older and just be proud of it.

• 49:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  We're pretty much taking them out for a while, until they can make the decision and we can guide them through what that looks like.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Do you really want to be in a video? This could be some consequences long term.

• 49:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure. The video did where it was on the mountain, it was kind of like seeing the back of them, so you weren't really seeing too much. Which is pretty cool. What advice would you have to creators who are young creators that want to make a career out of this? Or want to try to make money out of this?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:51Lewis Howes?

  Should they focus on, early on, how to learn about business? Or should they just focus on their craft and making great art?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  It's focused on the part that they love the most. So, and it's not necessarily what they're gonna be good at the most because they can hone it. So, for me, I'm not like, I have people around me who can help me with the business. If I really wanted to, I could hire a firm and they could, I could plug and play with them really easily. Like, there's a lot of ways to find the thing that you're not good at. And it'll complement you even better, make you stronger. So, I would focus on the craft, focus on the thing, well, it could be business, but probably the people joining social media do have a knack for filmmaking or creating video.

• 50:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And then showcasing, you know, what they're doing with that.

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  What's the mistake you see a lot of creators making, especially right now, whether it be on TikTok or YouTube or any platform, what are they?

• 50:44Speaker 01

  I mean, the really common one is people joining just to get famous or just to make money or they know it's the cool, popular thing to do. Those are too shallow and those won't take you very far. And they'll lead you making decisions that, like, it's tough because when I make a video, I know the things that could make it even better. But sometimes it's compromising things that are already part of who I am or what my brand stands for. Or it's jumping on a trend that just doesn't feel right, but it's so popular, it's like, I should do that one. I don't know, but it's

• 51:15Lewis Howes?

  Give an example, what's a recent thing that, here's a trend I could have done, but I decided to go a different way because it was not aligned to my brand?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  So, there's one where a gal, and she's incredibly talented with her face movements, and it's Bella Porch, and she does

• 51:32Lewis Howes?

  The big one with the like boom, boom.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, it's got this, I love the creativity of it, it's amazing. And, you know, I think maybe there is a version that I could do.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  It's the most watched video on TikTok, I think, right now, right?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  And so, on TikTok, if you use the sound and it's a double whammy because it's a popular sound, so that'll trend, but then there's the hashtag, there's her, if you take her account, there's just the fact that it's an effect, it's a face zoom.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  And so, all these things

• 51:57Lewis Howes?

  It all compounds.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's compounding and it's like, I need to do that. But I would be forcing myself to do it just for the sake of a trend versus there's not a great, at least we haven't written one yet, a great magic trick in our version of surprise and wonder that would pop out of there. Now, there could be, we could sit and really force it, but

• 52:14Lewis Howes?

  I think you did a great one similar to this with, who's the singer?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Oh, Selena Gomez.

• 52:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. You did something like that. We did like a magazine and then she was there.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  But that wasn't, yeah, and that was great because it wasn't a trend. It was just like, it was a natural idea. So like, we were just talking about, I think we had seen her on the cover of a variety magazine. It's like, oh, we should work with Selena. You know, it'd be funny if I was a hairdresser and just like this girl came in and she was like, I want this look.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  And we were like, oh, we will just put it over her face and it would transform. And that's kind of a natural, like, that works. But forcing it into a trend is the thing that can get us way more views. But if it doesn't feel right over time, if we do it 20 times, the brand will feel different. It'll feel like-

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  You'll be a trend chaser.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to an originator.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, we're not, our goal isn't even to originate trends. It's just to like put out some fresh ideas. And it's really for other, you know, our thing is if people are scrolling through the feed and they get a dose of 15 seconds of like magic that takes them back, you know, whether they're an adult, takes them back to like, oh, I like that feeling of seeing a magic show and that like anything's possible. And they take that somehow into their work that week or what they're doing. Like, that's awesome if they're just surprised for three seconds.

• 53:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  And take them out of their routine of just going through the feed.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, go ahead, sorry.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  And same for kids, like for the first time, if they're seeing magic or they're seeing this wonder that inspires them to maybe go make films. You know, we get sent clips all the times of kids who try these. I have a simple one, it's like a jump cut. And it's the one where you keep the camera on tripod and I go like, and then I freeze and my friends bring, you know, another t-shirt and I throw it off. And it's like, you cut out the middle section and then there's your jump cut. And we get so many videos from kids and families that like make these together. That's the fun part. It's like if that inspires them to go from being a consumer of the content to being a creator of it, that's the goal. Cause I, I don't use social media myself, but I do get caught in whenever a new app-

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  You don't use social media yourself?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  I don't use it for, there's, it's too addicting for me.

• 54:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  And so I've just gone off. And also I just don't, text message is so practical. Like, that's all I need is just to ping my friend and say like, are you coming or whatever? Like, coordinate. I don't need, I don't need to post a picture of my family or what I'm doing to, and maybe a part of that is just like-

• 54:36Speaker 01

  The numbers don't mean, they used to mean something to me, like it would buzz to get a thousand likes on a Facebook post or whatever. But maybe, maybe it's hitting, when you hit a million, it's just like, it's that one to seven million range.

• 54:46Lewis Howes?

  It's numb, it's numb, yeah.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Well, you just realize that's kind of, it's just so surface level.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  But I don't use social and, but TikTok is one where, like, I can see how addictive it is. I can, I can be, I can continue to scroll. And so the goal is like, let's put something a little edifying in that feed for people and, and pull them out of it just for a second.

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, that, that trend, whether it's a trend or just a style of like the jump cut with the shirt and clothes. I feel like so many people do that now on TikTok.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  Is that something you were doing many, many years ago?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  No, I started that on Vine. That was a, that was a natural, like, when Vine, I love creative constraints. And that was one of the best things Vine gave me was, at the time, I could make YouTube videos that went up for two hours long or whatever. And I was never gonna do that, but when an app came around and said, hey, it's six seconds, like you're, literally can't go over that. That was actually freeing. It was like, I need to consolidate what I'm gonna do. I went back to my magic roots as a kid and I was like, oh, I always loved how magicians would do this disappearing act, but I never understood the story. So let's just like beef up the story a little bit, kind of copy some of these same ideas of trick techniques and put it in six seconds. And slowly, you know, you learn, oh, well, it needs to be funnier, it needs to have a better beginning setup to get the ending. And you build that story arc even in six seconds.

• 56:01Lewis Howes?

  What do you think's missing from your life? You've got one of the biggest creators in the world, some of the, you know, 80 million subscribers on all platforms, billions of views.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  The, the biggest thing that I crave is time alone to, to really think, whether it's coming back to like figuring out that longer term story. What, like, finding those moments. You know, I do have my writing time in there. But really, to simmer on something, which is what, when I was on YouTube and Vine came around, it was a simmering moment. It was like, I'm not doing anything like I have, when you have free time, it's like, I might as well try this Vine app. And even with TikTok, like, we were just doing YouTube, but it was like, we should try TikTok. We were in that moment of simmering. And so it's the simmering period when you

• 56:48Lewis Howes?

  You don't have that time.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  No, and it's a cause of wanting to do too much, or, you know, we just, for the most of the year, didn't have any work, and now we need to make up for it.

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  We have tons of opportunities.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  And so the simmering time is gone. It kind of comes out of a time of, I think you've talked about this before. It's a postseason rest.

• 57:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  From creating, like, we're creating all the time, every week, weekly, different pieces of content. You never stop. It's not, even, I think, music artists can take breaks after their tour, before they go into the label for the next recording. At least, that's what it looks like from my perspective. It's probably not true. They're probably also creating all the time, but creating is, you need a break. And that's what I kind of call that simmering time, where you do nothing. And you're not having to think of, you know, when I post my next video tomorrow, I'll then go into thinking about the next video, but I don't get a break. And so that's what I'm missing.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  How strategic are you in planning out the next weeks, months of content? Do you have stuff, film that's already banked for a month? Is it week by week, we're coming up with new ideas? What's that process like?

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Some ideas are, we leave space for a trend. There was actually one going on this week. It was, it's kind of a silly one. I don't know if it's gonna hit, but it's just a photo shoot with a ghost. And what people do is put a sheet over their head and put glasses on, and we're doing our Twitter. A ghost is just so obvious for us, like, oh, it's how you disappear. So we keep time for like, a quick trend like that each week. Like, we'll have a half day open for a shoot. The rest of it's really pre-planned for a couple of weeks ahead. Or like, we have most of our shoots for the rest of the year planned, just because they're kind of bigger. They're like, we need to build a set.

• 58:33Lewis Howes?

  Productions, yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Like, right now, we're like, can we take, can we build a set in, probably not Antarctica, but that's like, the dream. Because you, I won't say that idea, because someone will, it's a good one. But You know, can, can we, for big stuff, whether it's like the David Blaine project, you just need months to prep that. But usually we're like two weeks out and in the can, ready to go.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  Two weeks ahead, you've already recorded. You've got content for two weeks.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  For two weeks and then, but it's always scary. Like if you don't, if you're up to that point, it's like you're working, it's so frustrating working that week for the next week's thing.

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

  Same thing with a podcast. We have, we have three episodes a week come out, so we're always trying to get ahead to keep feeding the beast of like three times a week.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:14Lewis Howes?

  But when you have a month ahead, it's like, okay, the producer's happy, the team's happier, we're less, less stressed. But what about when you do the trend stuff? And you said like a half day shoot. If you see a trend and you're like, okay, we have a half day window to shoot something, do you just make it up on the spot? Cause some of this stuff takes like time and production and props to.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  Can you, what's the quickest you can make a video in that actually has the magic element?

• 59:37Speaker 01

  We could, we could do it in a half day if we have kind of all hands on deck and we think of, an example is there was a trend that came out like a year ago called the Bottle Cap Challenge. And I don't know how it's, I still don't know how it started, but I saw a video of Jason Statham, that was the first one I saw, slow motion.

• 59:53Lewis Howes?

  Kicking it.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Kick it off. And did you do one of those?

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  I was wanting to, but I wasn't cool enough.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  It was like too late?

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  It was too late.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Oh, bummer.

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  And when is it too late to get on a trend?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on the trend. Like some trends are technically, they go for a couple of months.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  Months, really?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Sometimes. But that one, like that one had a little bit of longevity.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I remember seeing one with a guy who like used like his hand with like a sock over it and like took it off.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  There were so many clever ones. That's when we get the hunch that it'll be a trend when you start seeing people take really clever twists and it just gives you a ton of ideas and you're like, okay, we'll skip most of those because people are going to do those. Like what's the one most people aren't going to be able to do, which is, you know, we do a lot of stuff that is very difficult to do and takes time. So people kind of will never do those ones.

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  What was that one like? What'd you do?

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  So the Bottle Cap Challenge, I was like, well, what if, you know, I think we saw similar of like, oh, they're, they're kicking it with their feet, but it's really their hand. But what if when I kick it off, I kick it off with my, it is my feet, but I'm really small in perspective. And then when the cap flies off, I fall into the bottle.

• 1:00:54Lewis Howes?

  I remember seeing this, yes.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  And I'm kind of drowning and then I. Have a friend pick it up, the cameraman, and drop it and the water goes everywhere.

• 1:00:59Lewis Howes?

  I remember seeing this, yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  So like that video, we talked about in the morning, it was just like, hey, the water bottle or the bottle cap challenge is happening. We gotta do something. We start filming and the key for us is to get into blocking. You can be in your head so much when you're writing an idea and especially if you have even just four people in a room. Everyone has a slightly different version or a different idea of that, of what it should be. And unless you're with a camera and like acting it out and blocking it, you're not really, there's a point where you don't get anywhere. And so it's, the idea isn't sharpening. So we just jump outside and that's our go to.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  Just practice it.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Our phrase is like, let's get into blocking. Let's move from like the table to like doing it because we're going to get nowhere.

• 1:01:35Lewis Howes?

  Kind of write it on the fly almost.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  And so we, we block it and I remember that the one that, I'll never forget that video because we had a kombucha drink. That was just in the fridge and we're like, let's throw it in. And a kid comes out, one of our team members is like, well, you know what would make this even better is like GT's kombucha was just training, trending last week. For this video that Cody Co did and that's the true kombucha. Like we should get that because people will talk about that more than even this trend. Which ended up being the case.

• 1:02:03Lewis Howes?

  So you went and bought a bottle.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  He went to the store, we put GT Dave's in and it was last minute. Like he barely got it in there. We shot the thing, we posted it that night or the next morning. And then GT Dave called us and was like, hey, one, we're sending you like a, like we're, we're stocking your, your studio fridges with kombucha. But also that was like super cool. Thank you. Let's do something in the future. But those videos, you know, they happen fast. It's like we get all hands on, if we have all of us doing it, we can get it done in two days.

• 1:02:33Lewis Howes?

  It's almost like you need a business sponsorship salesperson who's with you, who's like guy, calling the owner of the brand saying, we're about to do this video. Do you want us to keep the label in or take the label out? And here's the rate.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  It's something like.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  We're about to call this other beverage company.

• 1:02:48Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  We, you know, we, we've done that in the past and we've, we've talked about that. It's, it's actually a little un.

• 1:02:55Lewis Howes?

  It's unorganic.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's not organic. It can be organic. That one was super. A lot of people saw it. My friends called me and were like, "How much should you get paid for that?" And I was like, "Oh, it wasn't it. It wasn't an ad." But it was so front and center, like it should have been an ad. But it's, the internet moves too quick for brand deals to get made on the fly. It'd be, that needs, I,

• 1:03:14Lewis Howes?

  That'd take a month.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  There does need to be an agency that does that. Like, they have it ready to go. Like, they're just waiting for the trend to happen and they have a client. They just need the connection and the contract's already in place. That's the problem is by the time you do that. And then you get other, I love brand deals because they pay the bills, but you also need to meet their like,

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  Well, you need to say it this way. You need to put the bottle here.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Well, you just get more, you know, sometimes you get on a call and there's 10 other creators from their team.

• 1:03:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Giving the ideas.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  And you're like, "Get out of here."

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  It just slows down the process.

• 1:03:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  And it can taint the idea from, especially those trends. They need to be like your fresh idea, untainted.

• 1:03:49Lewis Howes?

  If brands understood that they need to trust the creator and just say, "We trust you. Make it great. Do your best." And have like one stipulation or something, you could probably create a much better video.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Those are always the best, uh, best videos. I mean, I had Coca-Cola approached me years ago. It was one of my first brand deals and they're like, "What do you want to do? Like, what can we help you do with finances that you can't do now?" And I was like, "Fly." Like, I've always wanted to hire the Iron Man stunt team and fly. And you know what? We'll just say Coca-Cola made me fly by putting Coke on my feet and shaking it and like opening it or a Coke and Mentos thing. And then like upside down and flying. And they were like, "Sweet. We'll hire the stunt team and we'll pay you." And, and so that is the best. And that video's been seen over a billion times on various platforms. It's been copied everywhere. And you're right, it's genius because they just need to say, like, "Here's what you're great at doing. We're going to provide finances to go next step,

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  the direction you want to go." And that, and that's kind of it. But it is limiting to like the amount of brands that you can work with because that level budget is, they need to be just for general awareness. It can't be like a call to action.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Link in bio to sign up for whatever.

• 1:04:58Lewis Howes?

  Brand awareness. What's the biggest lesson your wife's taught you about being a better creator?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  She's taught me a lot of lessons. And she's probably going back to your question about how you stay humble during a rise of fame. Like, that's the only thing I can attribute to. You know, her keeping me grounded and family and friends. And she's taught me so many things, but one is really just to not go numb to the journey. There's a lot of things, whether you're traveling and you're used to speaking to her or whatever, meet and greets. And you can, you've probably done the meet and greets where you do 300 people in two hours. And it's like, by the end, you're a robot. And you're saying the same things and then you catch yourself when you say the thing and they didn't even ask you that question. And she's taught me to really be present. And like, every person that's meeting you has a need.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  They wanna, they probably wanna, they obviously think they're your friend, but it's really your moment to like, talk to them about them, whether it's 30 seconds or a minute. Like, be present, don't go to the robot version of meet and greet Zach.

• 1:06:04Lewis Howes?

  She seems very emotionally intelligent.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  She is. She's the, she takes, yeah, I have none, so she has, she has to be over capacity.

• 1:06:12Lewis Howes?

  Where do you think you'd be without her? Or if you were a creator who was more single in the last seven years?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  I'd probably be doing a lot of the same stuff, but family life would feel very empty. I don't think I would be... She's pushed me to challenge. Like, she's kind of the voice of like, hey, we have an extra room, like, what are we doing? We could be doing more. She's the push of that. You know, where I get pretty content with like, oh, work's, I'd probably be somewhere like, work's going well, I'm just grinding still, single, Zach, if I hadn't met her. But she continues to push to the deeper purpose of life in the areas of, it's great to be famous. She's, she's a whole question, like, what are you, what are you doing with it? Like, whether it's the one-on-one interactions or when you're speaking or being more present with people, what are you doing with that?

• 1:07:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the impact you're making with it. What do you want people to really think about you, about your work? When they see your work, what do you want them to think about?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  I want them to be taken back to that spot. Like, I have a vivid memory of as a kid going, I was visiting Boston and just going about life, but kind of uninspired for a little bit of time and seeing a guy. It was the goofiest costume, but he was, he had a hat on and he was obviously just, just ducked like this. You know, but his, his hat was floating. It looked like he had no face and it was like the invisible man. And I was just mesmerized and he was doing magic too, like without looking or he had no head. It looked like invisible guy doing magic. And I meant, I remember getting that dose of inspiration. And so that, when people watch my work, that is the number one goal is that they feel inspired and, and hopefully take it into whatever they're doing.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  You know, it can be a business person watching it and they go, oh, it's, it's like a perspective shift. Which is funny because we do a lot of, you know, forced perspective stuff, which is kind of on the nose. But it is that, like looking at the world differently and taking a new path that next day. You know, that's, hopefully people can find and tap into their, you know, I, it's like the Ratatouille. Everyone can cook. Like, I really think everyone has a creative bone in their bodies. Just how much they've used that muscle and how much they've tapped it and trained it. And also following that curiosity to go actually execute an idea based off of what you may have a question about.

• 1:08:33Lewis Howes?

  I've always been fascinated by artists because I never was good at art or like painting or all these things. So I just love watching it. I love appreciating it and I'll dabble a little bit here and there just for myself. But I look at myself as an artist in the sports field or as a, an interviewing artist. It's like, how can I use creativity and think that I'm good at and make it art?

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Lewis Howes?

  So whatever that is for you, like bring your creativity out in the world. It doesn't have to be video making or art, but you can make something art.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm not an artist in the sense of I, my paint, I can't do storyboards for the life of me either. Like I try to sketch out, it's one of my biggest problems is like, if I could have one gift bestowed upon me by the muse, it'd be like to make me a beautiful pencil artist and being able to at least draw a storyboard frame with the nose, like looking in the correct direction. And, you know, but I think to me, people limit art and artistry and say it applies to only painting or only filmmaking or writing, but it's, it's, every craft can have an art to it.

• 1:09:34Lewis Howes?

  I 100% agree. And what is your biggest fear? Right before you launch a video? Is your biggest fear that it will fail? And it won't do as well as you think? That it'll succeed beyond your wildest dreams? It'll be the biggest thing ever? Or that everyone will judge and criticize it? Failure, success, or judgment and criticism? Which one's strongest for you? Or you're afraid of the most?

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  The biggest fear when I hit publish is that my last one? Not is it as good? But is that the last? There was a period too where I really was believing that I'm gonna be out of ideas. Like, were 2,000 of these short videos in? Really, is there any more than that? Like, are we just gonna do more of the same thing? And mix it up a little bit? And for me, when I post, not much anymore. But, you know, because I'm planned out for three weeks or four weeks. So I know there's more. But like, it's in the writing room now. It's when we send it off to production and then I have to sit there with my team and we're thinking of the next idea. There's always a little piece of a moment of like, was there anything as good as that last one though? Because we just did like a banger.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  And that was, we felt it as we made it. And then we might have just been drained. And that's where even longevity of the business, you think, how long can this go before I run out of ideas?

• 1:10:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. If I'm not creating hits, is any brand gonna wanna pay me? And then I'm not gonna pay my team and continue going?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:03Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Is it a banger? It's almost like you need an idea person, just full time, who can come up with ideas.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a writing team and we are always coming up with ideas. But you can tell when the idea is good enough to like, we're raising the bar too, a little bit. Not every time, but every couple of months, we're slowly raising the bar. And it's, are we gonna, the new fear is kinda, can we continue to top it at this level? You know, is it?

• 1:11:31Lewis Howes?

  Or are we going backwards?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  At the end of this, are we gonna have to be building like, sets on Mars to be really impressing people?

• 1:11:37Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right. Going in outer space, yeah. Hanging out with Elon Musk up there, yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Which would be cool. And that, I gotta put that on the bucket list then.

• 1:11:44Lewis Howes?

  Mars.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Vine on Mars.

• 1:11:46Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That could be good. How can we support you the most right now? What's the thing that you're inspired by the most that you're doing?

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  I'm most inspired by, really inspired by family life. By figuring that we're just about to open our home again to foster care.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Which is, we had a break once we had our biological son Liam, because we were trying to figure out like, what is life with two kids? While doing the rest of our life. And so we stabilized the aircraft there. And now it's, let's jump into foster care again. Maybe, and too, by the end of this year, I can see us, or next year, going in with older kids. We haven't tried that. We haven't had, I want some more training in that first, to figure out how to talk about what they're going through with them. Because it's a little easier with babies, because they're not going to tell you all their issues.

• 1:12:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  They'll give you a little warning sign with crying, but like, I don't know what it's like to talk to a four-year-old and explain why their parents, they can't live with their parents.

• 1:12:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  So, I'm excited to develop what that, and we're trying to figure out our home situation. Like, what would it look like to have a really safe sanctuary for our kids? Like, is there a version of living on a farm? Where you could have a bunch of rooms, over time, learn to have a bigger capacity of kiddos?

• 1:13:02Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Like, I always loved movies like Cheaper by the Dozen. And I was always inspired, I have a family friend up in Oregon, they have 10 kids. That's a crazy amount of kids. And I don't want 10 kids right now. But I always loved the energy of it. I loved that there was older kids helping younger kids and just, it was just a really fun vibe. And so for me, that would be, the dream is figuring out, especially with my wife, like, how can we create a safe sanctuary where really, whether you're a teenage mom, maybe you're raising even a kid in our home, and we're helping teach that, or we have a baby, or a bunch of kiddos. How do you make it safe for them? And give that, like, every kid deserves a safe childhood. It just feels wrong that it's possible that kids can't have that.

• 1:13:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  And so... Is there a version of it's kind of like my creativity always goes to filmmaking. And now I've lately been thinking applying, you know, the even yes and is like the most basic thing we start in writing a new concept. It's like we always start meeting one is yes and like let's blue sky it. So doing that with family, not just my entertainment business, but it's was our family and yes, and like, how, how, how cool could this be?

• 1:14:11Lewis Howes?

  How can you evolve it? And for people that are listening or watching who might have a might be connected to what you're saying, who've been thinking about fostering, what recommendation do you have for them? Or are there any resources they could check out?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Look up, uh, look up an agency in your area. I think it's really helpful to not go directly with the government, but go through an agency because they'll help guide you and and be a little bit of a filter to the process.

• 1:14:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  And, you know, for me and my wife, it's really simple. And when we adore people like mother Teresa, who really just saw an issue and helped. It wasn't like there wasn't a huge thought process. It wasn't like, let's really map this out for 18 years. And what's this going to look like? And how is this going to impact? Like, if you, it's not as hard as people think. It's really, you can give your, your home space to a kiddo.

• 1:14:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  And if you're up for raising a kid at this point, and if you have a year of time window that you can be open for like.

• 1:15:06Lewis Howes?

  Because you can do it for six months, a year, a couple of years.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  You can, there's a bunch of options.

• 1:15:10Lewis Howes?

  How many foster kids are there in the USA?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  In the US, there's a last that I read was it's always a lag by a couple of years, but it's over 600,000 foster kiddos in the US. I know LA has 30,000 and only 9,000 or 10,000 beds. And so the rest have to be in group homes or go to extra family or it's kind of messy.

• 1:15:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a lot of kids that need some support, that's for sure. I want to ask this question. This is, we're getting towards the end here. This is called the three truths.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Three truths.

• 1:15:38Lewis Howes?

  So I'd like you to imagine it's your last day on earth, many, many years from now, and you've accomplished all your dreams. You've got 30 kids in foster care. You've got farms of kids. You've got all the films you've wanted to make, like everything you've done it. And it comes down to the last day. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your creative work with you. All of your videos got to go to the next place, wherever that is. So no one has access to this interview, your books, or any of your creative work. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you've learned from your life that you would share with us.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  So all history, meaning the race, and now I'm leaving the last podcast, right?

• 1:16:14Lewis Howes?

  The last three, yeah, the three things you know to be true about life that you'd want to leave behind and share with other people. Three lessons. So put yourself in that hypothetical situation.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:25Lewis Howes?

  What would you say would be those three truths for you?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  The three truths, you have to be full of grace. You gotta be graceful to people. I think everybody needs, could use a little bit more grace. Even driving here, I was so mad at this one guy who just cut me off and I, you know, I was like, you know what? I don't know what his day is like, but it's like, he needs grace and he doesn't need my judgment. Like, I'm okay. So it's, and maybe that needs to be one of them is judge less. Like I'm always, if the one thing I'm lacking is I'm constantly judging myself, but also people. Yeah. Like, it's so, it's so easy to do. And, and just judge people less. I think everyone, you have, it's, it's, it's even in the Bible, right?

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Like, get the log out of your own eye before you take, talk about the speck in somebody else's eye. The other one is, and this is the one I like, will tell my kids, but my wife's, my mother-in-law, she always says, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. And I would say, invest in great people around you, like, and try to pick up on that. Like, you could probably ask yourself, like, who are the three best people that I should be around for as long as possible and soak up with them? And just surround yourself, I think it makes a huge difference, like who you surround yourself with.

• 1:17:48Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. It's a big personal growth, saying you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:17:56Lewis Howes?

  Invest in people for sure. How can we connect to you online? What's the best place? TikTok?

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  You can search, it's whatever your jam is. We may be, if you have any social media account, we're probably there, but just Google my name and.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  You can

• 1:18:12Lewis Howes?

  They're probably already following you. There's 80 million people that follow you already. So Zach King everywhere, right? It's the same name everywhere. Yeah. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Zach, because you have had such an interesting life and the fact that you constantly show up for yourself. You show up and you just take the next step of creativity. You have an idea, let me try this out and see if it works. And maybe some things work and they don't, but you keep moving forward. And I really want to acknowledge you for your heart, because I think it takes a special heart for someone to want to adopt, foster, and keep thinking about kids who don't have a quality family life. And I know you grew up with a pretty quality family life.

• 1:18:50Lewis Howes?

  And I think it takes a great man to think that way and open your heart and truly want to help as many kids as possible. So I really acknowledge you for that gift that you have. More so than the video work, which is amazing talent, but the gift to want to help young kids, I think is really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for that, man. And I want to see you make a film in the next couple of years. I want to be at the premiere.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Don't give me that pressure. Not in a couple of years. We'll say

• 1:19:17Lewis Howes?

  The next 10 years.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  10 years.

• 1:19:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay, okay, okay. No pressure. No pressure.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Lewis Howes?

  But I want to see it happen.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Lewis Howes?

  Whenever is right for you. So within 10 years, can you commit before 2030?

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  We can, yeah, we can probably work on that.

• 1:19:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay, good, good, good. I want to see the film, The Dark Side of Magic, or whatever you want to call it. We'll take the credit for that, but you know, it's a good idea. And my final question for you is what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Oh, definition of greatness? To me, I look at the resilience of so many kiddos who've gone through hard lives. Teenagers, adults, who've gone through trauma. Greatness is the resilience and coming back from that trauma and just going down the journey of healing. Doesn't mean you get fully healed, but that you work, you're ambitious towards some sort of healing. Those are the people I look up to who are, I'm like, how did you come from this family life and turn out the way you did? It's just incredible. The resilience. So I think greatness is having

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Incredible capacity of that resilience.

• 1:20:24Lewis Howes?

  And have you, what's the thing you've had to heal the most in your life?

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  You know, I think a lot of it is proving, I grew up in a family where it's very performance based. And, you know, similar to your story where, you know, for me, it was piano. And that was, when I look back at why I love film, when I was four years old, watching Jurassic Park. And I wanted to, when I was seven, I got my hands on the camera. I would play those films for my family. And just kind of recently, in the last couple of years, I realized what I loved about showing that work to my family was the gratification of them saying, "Good job."

• 1:21:00Lewis Howes?

  Good job, validation.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  I was earning, no, but I loved the craft, you know, there was like, I love doing the thing, but then the extra special like moment, the reason I gathered the family on Friday night to play it on the big screen for us was at the very end, when they would say, "Good job." Or when it was like, "Oh, but you could work on this," it was kind of like a bummer and I could, you know, I was only doing those premieres for the good job. And that's a dangerous place to do your work for, for the praise of others, because I think it'll lead down some very uncreative places and just, it's not going to be your best work either. And it also is not lasting, like you can't sustain yourself over a career, just always looking for, when I post it, people love it, you know?

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  So, the healing is learning, it's not about these, these surface level achievements. It's about being, over your life, a person who's putting good into the world. In whatever way that looks like, it can look like being a nurse, it can look like creating movies, but, yeah.

• 1:22:00Lewis Howes?

  Zach King in the house, appreciate you, man. Thanks for being here.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:22:04Lewis Howes?

  My friend, thank you so much for being here. And a big thank you to Zach King for sharing his wisdom, opening his heart, and teaching us some practical things that we can do to become better creators. And better human beings. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Make sure to tag Zach King over on Instagram or Twitter or YouTube or wherever you're listening to this and you share it out. Make sure to tag him when you share out stories on Instagram and all that other good stuff and tag me as well to let me know that you're listening to this or watching this. Also, would love it if you click that subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts. When you do that, it truly helps spread the message to more people when you click subscribe and when you leave a review. Would love to hear your feedback, thoughts

• 1:22:45Lewis Howes?

  of how this inspired you, helped you and improved your life. So click the review button, leave a review and click that subscribe button as well. If you want to continue to support me and the mission of spreading greatness to more people, that would be amazing. And if you want inspirational quotes and messages from me every single week to your phone, then text me right now the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with this quote from Charlie Chaplin, who said, "You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down." I'm telling you, if there's anything I can learn about this and Zach, I've been following his videos for years. The guy is always looking up. He's thinking, he's creative.

• 1:23:28Lewis Howes?

  He's always got some wonder and awe and thinking, how can I bring joy to people in this moment? Think about what you can do in this moment to bring joy to someone in your life and then go do it. I'm so grateful for you. And if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.