998 Turn Passion Into Profit (The Psychology of Money) w/Adam Davidson

“Marriage is hard, but I think business partnerships are really really hard.”Lewis chats with Adam Davidson, award-winning business journalist and host of The Passion Economy podcast, to figure out how to make it in our evolving economy. They discuss how to create a successful business doing what you love, why so many people have complicated relationships with money, and the crucial entrepreneurial skills you need to develop as our world continues to change. Daymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-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?

  This is episode number 998 with Adam Davidson.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Steve Jobs once said, "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." And Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." My guest today is an award-winning journalist who has been part of the podcasting world since it began. Adam Davidson co-founded NPR's Planet Money, and he's a contributing writer to The New Yorker, covering business, technology, and economics. And there are few people on earth who have studied money in all of its forms more closely than Adam. And now Adam is out with a new podcast called The Passion Economy, which examines entrepreneurship in the modern world and how you can make a living from whatever you love. And in this

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  episode, we discuss why we shouldn't be scared of the evolving economy, how you can take your passion project and make a living out of it, what the first steps are for a budding entrepreneur, the one thing about personal finance that we should all know about, and so much more on money mindset. Make sure to share this with someone who needs to hear it, as you have the power to change someone's life when they get one piece of wisdom out of this episode to help them in their personal life. And quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness, as well as give us a rating and review. And coming right up, this is the one and only Adam Davidson.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest today. His name is Adam Davidson. He is a longtime podcaster, co-founder of NPR's Planet Money, and he's got a new book out called The Passion Economy, which I'm super excited about a couple of things, which is passion and money. That's what we're talking about today. And you've been, you've been studying this for, for some time now. And I'm curious, my first question for you is, why are so many people afraid to follow their passion and afraid to think about how to make money? Why is it like a, for some people it's super easy and they're excited about it. Other people, they're afraid about money. They're afraid about going after their passion. Why do you think that is?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  I think that there is actually, based on American history and world history, there's a well-understood but wrong, or no longer true, it used to be true, view that pursuing money meant surrendering yourself to the market, to a boss, to, you know, to a corporation, whatever it might be. And I do think that was fairly true for much of the 20th century, that there were people who were able to both live their passion and make money. But for a lot of people, certainly my parents, my family, it was binary. You could live your passion on your own terms, or you could put that away in a little box and, and make a living. And in my

• 3:20Speaker 01

  view, the economy has changed in a way that puts them together in a way that hasn't existed ever in human history. It's great. And now, I think there are more and more people getting it, but there's a lot of people who haven't quite clicked into that yet. They're still operating according to outdated models.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  Right. You said that you believe that passion is the key to success, but there's a lot of people that might say, you know, really it's possible to follow your passion. I think Cuban has a quote, Mark Cuban, who says, "Everyone tells you follow your passion", but he says that's bad advice because you may not excel at what you're passionate about. Should we go follow what we're good at or what we're passionate about?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  One thing I've learned, because I've been, you know, I have the book The Passion Economy, I have the podcast The Passion Economy, I've been talking about passion obsessively. And I realize it's a word that means different things to different people. And the way I see it is, you have your unique bundle of things, both the things you love and want to do, and the things you're good at, which aren't necessarily the same. Hopefully, there's some overlap. And then separately, there's a marketplace of potentially passionate consumers, whether that's people who want to buy the product you make, or if you're an accountant or a lawyer or whatever, providing your services in a different way, people who are passionate about what you uniquely have to offer. And it's finding that mix. It's finding out who you are and what makes you different,

• 4:40Speaker 01

  but then it's finding the customer. And not all, it doesn't mean it's going to work immediately. And it doesn't mean it's going to work for every single thing that you do. You do have to listen to the market, listen to your customers, adapt and adjust. But I would strongly disagree with the idea that if you're good at something and you don't like doing it, that's a good path. I don't think that's a good path for just human satisfaction reasons, but I also don't think it's a good path for money reasons.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, well, I think Steve Jobs has a famous quote from an interview he did. And he said, "You need to have passion for what you do, because if you don't, it gets really, really hard, and any rational person would give up." And I'm paraphrasing that, but he said, like, "You've got to have passion, because it's going to be hard to launch anything. It's going to be really hard. There's going to be so many challenges, adversities, that you're going to want to give up, whether you love it or you don't love it. So you might as well love it and deal with the pain, as opposed to, you know, 10x the pain if you don't enjoy it."

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, I think a lot of times when you talk about having a passion career or a passion business, people think that what I'm selling or pitching is a self-indulgent, easy life. But I think it's the opposite. If you're doing stuff you really care about, and it really, truly matters to you. I mean, I'm running a podcast company right now, and I care a lot about podcasting.

• 5:55Lewis Howes?

  Is it super easy for you to launch?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  It's not. It's not. I am worried more than I've ever been. And I'm up at 3:00 in the morning, stressed out, because when things don't work, it doesn't work on the business side, but it also, it like speaks to my like core and my heart and my soul. So I don't think-

• 6:14Lewis Howes?

  What's it telling you personally when something's not working or getting the results you want? How does it make you feel? Is it like, "I'm not good enough, or maybe I was good here, but not here"?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it all of it. I mean, it it actually like somehow goes back in time and finds past successes and undoes them because I mean, I I've never I'm the CEO. I have a co-founder and the two of us really run the company. It's our vision. And I've always worked for other people. And so I always felt like I knew what I was like if they only listened to me, then everything would go right. And if there was something not going well, I could all I always had that out in my brain like, oh, well, if only they listen to me. But now it's all on me and Laura Mayer, my co-founder, and and if it's not working, it's because we didn't foresee something, we didn't do something. Now, I do think there are days where I take that really hard and I'm really discouraged.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Of course, part of starting a company or just living a life is really is integrating those hard lessons and realizing that's how you grow and and learn. But sometimes on the day of the bad news or the surprise, dark surprise, it's it's not easy to remind yourself that you're learning and growing.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  What do you I mean, how have you from all the people you've, you know, interviewed on on your shows about this and from your own personal experience of of launching this and dealing with failure and letdown? What's the best ways to manage letdown on a daily basis?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I do think that something consistent in the people who I admire and the people I see successful is to know that core thing. And sometimes that what what are the core things you won't give up on and that you really fundamentally believe in? So like, for example, with the podcast we do, you know, we really believe that podcasting can create a profound connection between the host and the listener and amongst the listeners. And we want shows that aren't just and I think I would guess you feel the same way. They're not just a generic true crime show that kind of paint by numbers, but something where there's a real passion from the host and a passion in the audience, and they work together. And and we know that, like, to the point where

• 8:23Speaker 01

  If we haven't been offered opportunities with celebrities and others who wanted to do shows that we decided didn't have that, and even though we might have made money, we said no. And we've even said, like, if this company fails because of that core value, that's okay. We're okay with that. And I think knowing that, then there's a million applications, like, what do we do today about this show? What do we do tomorrow about our marketing plan? What do we do about this or that? Those things can, you know, you can be more nimble and less, you know, strict about those things because you have that core. And that is something I see in folk. Sometimes the core, it takes a while to define it. I still think ours might be a little vague. I think we know what it is in our hearts, but it might be a little hard to define it with precision to others. So

• 9:06Speaker 01

  that, to me, is really important, to know what you want. I also think, I mean, you mentioned wanting money. I come from public radio. I grew up in subsidized housing for artists in Greenwich Village. So I grew up in a world where pursuing money was explicitly evil, like,

• 9:22Lewis Howes?

  It was bad.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  It was bad. You could do whatever you wanted, sex,

• 9:25Lewis Howes?

  How dare you go make money?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  But if you make money, it is evil. And

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  Why, why is that with artist mindset of like, no, you have to be this pure artist and not receive money for your craft? Why is that? Where does that mindset come from?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  It, I mean, first of all, it's, I do think that for a certain kind of artist who has, who is truly fed by a genuine vision and has made a choice, I don't want to compromise my vision and I'm willing to live with less. Like, I'm, that's fine. You get to decide that.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  To not be, to not be a sellout, essentially.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  To not be a sellout, and also to not make money. You know, I will tell you, being the child of such a person as I was and other people I grew up with were, is a challenge. It's hard to grow up in, I mean, my dad's an actor. He's a great guy and a loving father, but we didn't have what other kids had. But, you know, I'm glad my dad did it. It made his life much more meaningful. But I do think that for a lot of struggling artists, it's a dodge and an excuse. And it's not

• 10:22Lewis Howes?

  An excuse for what? To take responsibility or to have structure in your life to actually make, earn a living?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, You're taking me down a path I wasn't thinking about. Um, but I'm excited to go down that path. I was having this conversation today. I mean, as a writer, I value feedback. I value people telling me when my writings, what they think of my writing. I value editing. I think that, in my view, less secure artists don't want feedback. But if you really have a core vision, you can listen, you can hear, you can be doubtful. So I think it's a bit of a dodge in, I would say more cases than not. I know a lot of artists. I grew up where literally every grown up I knew was an artist. And a lot of the kids I grew up with are artists. And I would say there's a mix of what I would think of as, people really living, you know, like deciding to live a religious life.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  You know, they're making a choice and they should live and be well. That's great. But others, I think more than half are, there's like a self-righteous denial that comes in putting on the, the fake armor of I don't care about money.

• 11:25Lewis Howes?

  What are people really saying when they say I don't care about money?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  I think what they're saying is I don't know how to manage my own sense of self when other people are valuing what I'm offering. The process of bringing something to market, whether it's an iPhone or a painting or your own abilities as a young person starting out in the world. I'm a believer in capitalism and I'm a believer that price contains signals and signals of value. And it can be a loud but subtle message what price is conveying. That you, you know, you go to a workplace, you graduate college or whatever. You have all these thoughts about who you are and you're making $23,000 a year and you know you're smarter than the other people, but you don't know how to make more money. You don't know how to do better. And the answer is you need to prove yourself.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  You need to kind of de-risk the investment that your bosses might make in you. Or if you're starting a product, a company or start, you're an entrepreneur, whether a garage entrepreneur doing something fairly small or a big venture back entrepreneur. You have to know how to communicate the value that you bring, how to listen to what the marketplace is saying about value. And I find that once you click into that, it's actually, it's fun, it's art, and you can go in a lot of different directions. It's freeing and joyful.

• 12:40Lewis Howes?

  Making money is an art in itself.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Money, money and listening and presenting is an art in itself. And, and yes, there's a sellout version of whatever you want to do. There's a, there's a short-term version of whatever you're trying to do, but there is an integrity-based, but more lucrative version of what you want to do. But, but it's, there's that barrier to just getting there. Because the first signals, when you're first entering a market, when you don't know how to communicate your value, when you don't know which market you should be selling to, it's gonna be ugly. Like, if you're, if you're the greatest 24-year-old whatever, and you're just like getting a job, they're gonna be like, I don't know, we got a thousand 24-year-old bright kids. You're not worth, I don't need.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  You haven't proven anything yet.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  You haven't proven anything. Yeah. So that first message is terrible. And you could respond and say, oh, I hate that messenger. I hate the message, and so I hate the messenger. Or you can respond and say, huh, I don't like that message, but I can tell other people are getting different messages and getting different price signals. How do I do that? And once you figure that out, it's, I find it's really fun. It's exciting.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  In your new podcast, you say that the current economy is terrifying. I mean, everyone's losing their jobs, businesses are folding, who knows what's gonna happen in the next two years. Why should we not be scared?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  You should be scared, but you should not be scared to think in a different way, I guess. So, I mean, I think that there is a mega trend happening, like a big, kind of, once a century kind of trend. And then, in addition, there was the financial crisis, and now the COVID-19 crisis. There's these specific crises, but, but in a sense, I mean, COVID-19's its own thing, but they're part of this overall crisis. So. The way I would put it is, starting in, say, the 1880s, we see a massive shift from agriculture to industry in some countries and eventually more countries. And that is a total ripping apart of the very fabric of how society works, how family works, how cities work, how politics work, and how you make money.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And for quite a while, like 50 years, it was hard to understand the opportunity broadly. You had a feeling of crisis and difficulty, like this great institution of the family farm is falling away. And how are we going to make money? Only a small number of people are making money, and our kids are going off to the city, and they're not marrying the neighbor kid, they're marrying some strange person, and it's very fear-inducing. But by the 1920s, we really see the development of these new institutions, these big corporations with sort of this whole new thing that never existed before in humankind. Set corporate jobs, a career path, the very idea that like at 18 or 22, you'd start on

• 15:22Speaker 01

  a career path and you would like at a regular interval, go up that path, that you would pretty much as the normal order of things, make more money at 50 than you did at 20, and make more money than your parents did. All of that was a new thing, but it was built on the back of mass manufacturing, mass production, massive scale. And that economy didn't care too much about who Lewis is, or who Adam is, and what makes you unique. It was the opposite. You didn't go to become a draftsman or an accountant at Procter & Gamble in 1953 and say, "But I have my own unique song to sing." You know, you had to do the job. I would say what we've been seeing since the 1980s, but rapidly ever more, is anything

• 16:03Speaker 01

  that can be clearly defined, anything that can be reproducible, is done by computers, robots, or is outsourced. And we're seeing that climb and climb and climb up into, you know, what we thought of as uniquely human, white-collar jobs. And that path, which probably you, certainly me, were brought up thinking, that's just how the economy works, that's just normal. It turned out that standard path was a blip. It was like this little moment in human history that's dying. And I think that's scary. It's scary for a new system to appear, and it definitely has caused real pain, but it means there's this new thing. This new thing where there's a vast number of people who can find their own path in

• 16:44Speaker 01

  this economy, listen to the market signals, craft a unique way of being in this economy. And I think increasingly, it's not just you can, but you have to. You're screwed increasingly if you think, oh, I'm just gonna play by the rules. I'm just gonna do the thing that my college degree told me or my boss tells me. We don't need that person so much. Maybe some of them, there'll always be some of them, but but there's more value. So I think if you click into that, you can have a more successful, more playful, more joyful career or business than anyone has ever had. It's amazing. It's a great time.

• 17:19Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like anyone can invent their dream job or can turn their passion into money? Or is this just for half the people? Or is maybe is it seasonal? Maybe this season of your life, you need to develop skills until you can then execute it two, three years later? Or is this available at any time for anyone?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I think it's available to a lot more people than realize it. And I don't know if it's available even to half the people, to be honest with you. But it's certainly available to anybody who's like pursuing podcasts about how success works or even asking the question. We used to have a joke at Planet Money that if you're worried about your place in the global economy, you're fine. If you're not worried, then you're totally screwed. And what we mean is if you get that there's something to be worried about, if you get that there's something about how you're framing your life that's scary and not working, just follow that a little bit and you'll be okay. What I worry about, and I have family like this, is people who only often only have

• 18:21Speaker 01

  a high school degree, who really are not understanding that the economy has changed. And a key thing is you need some capability for risk. That doesn't mean you have to be a billionaire or a millionaire's son or daughter, but it might mean that, you know, you got parents who, worse comes to worse, you can sleep on their couch, that you could go a couple of months or you could invest in education. You know, some people seem to think what I'm talking about only applies to the very rich and the very privileged. Definitely not. It applies to a lot more in my book and my podcast. It's almost all people who are not born rich or not born privileged.

• 18:53Lewis Howes?

  What are the skills that these people need to have or need to develop in order to go out and launch their passion and potentially to make it successful enough to make a living? What are the mindset skills?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  The terrible thing about now is that whatever you do, someone else or a computer can do it faster and cheaper. The great thing about now is all the crap you don't want to do, a computer or someone else can do it faster and cheaper. And so if you and I like right now came up with an idea for a toy or a new kind of calculator or whatever, like literally within weeks, we could have a company in another country prototyping it. We could have a drop shipper shipping it to people. We could hire a marketing person.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  We could do a Kickstarter and raise and sell it before we even have it.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Before we even have it, exactly. And we can hire an accountant or do it automated in an automated way. Like we, there's not a lot of those hard skills that we would desperately need. But what we would need is that mindset. And I'd say the mindset is there's some like passion and curiosity. So I speak a lot of colleges. The kids who just have a million questions often are the kids who are the most like tortured with self doubt and worried. But I'm like, I'm not worried about that. Like if you're constantly, you know, puzzling over stuff, that to me is a hugely positive sign.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  An ability to leap a bit, you know, it doesn't mean you have to like go to Silicon Valley and pitch your billion dollar startup. But like challenging yourself to like, okay, so we have this new toy. How's that going to work? Who's going to want it? Is it that good? Can we test it? Can we explore it? And that the iterative, the kind of lean startup stuff, I think is also really crucial. The kind of, it's a weird combination in my mind, the mindset. There's, on the one hand, there's this confidence that like, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out. But there's profound humility that I'm going to need a lot of information. I'm going to need to gather a lot of data. So for example, I don't know why I'm thinking about toys. I guess because my eight year old son's going to come home soon and I'm thinking about toys.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  If we came up with the idea of a toy, we could go to all our parents and friends and put hundreds of thousands in. Or we could, you know, throw 500 bucks in each, get 30 of them and go.

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Test it.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  And test it and see what kids like and what they don't like. And then we could test another version. And then we could start with a website and then we can use Facebook ads to start figuring out which kids respond to this. And that iterative process of giving and listening, giving and listening, that, that to me is the part of the real special sauce of now. That you don't, you don't need that huge startup cost before you find out. So I think it's that mindset, that's a combination of confidence and humble listening.

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  What if, what if you don't feel like you're a good, um, you know, leader or number one and you're more of a number two, three or four, you know? For me as a, as a football player and an athlete in the past, I was, I was just telling my producer before we jumped on about how I didn't feel confident leading and I wasn't the vocal leader, even my senior years when I was like the, the all-star on the team or whatever. I didn't, still didn't feel confident leading the team because I was a receiver on football. So I was just like, hey, just throw me the ball, let me go make a play and be the, and be the hero. I don't want to have all the other responsibility of like managing everything because it's a lot of pressure and everything falls on you. Whether you win or lose essentially, if you're the quarterback or kind of the lead on the team. And for me, it was more about a necessity of launching like my first business because

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  I didn't have any money. It was 2007, 2008, when the, the economy crashed. And I was trying to figure out what else to do with my life. My dad, the, the main factor for me is my dad had gotten in a really tragic car accident. The year prior where he had a brain trauma, was in a coma for many months. And he, he's still alive today, but he's never fully recovered. So he's emotionally not and mentally not all there the way he used to be. And I always had him as kind of like this backup, like, okay, I'm going to go play football. And go for my dream. And then when I'm done, I'm going to go work for him and his insurance company. And you know, he'll give me the business one day type of mentality. When that was gone as an option, I was like, I gotta go figure this out. Otherwise I'm going to be, you know, sleeping on my sister's couch for 20 years.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Waiting for someone to give me the opportunity. And that's when I, and I think right around then, 2008, 2009, was when social media started to come around. Where I was able to see, oh, I can promote my passion online and it was working. You know, I used LinkedIn early on. Now it's like everyone sees the opportunity where you can build a following and do this. But 11 years ago or 12 years ago, I was like, okay, I'm going to use social media because I understood it as being one of the college, first college kids on Facebook and just like being in that space.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  I was like, okay, I'm going to use this to promote all day long, my passion and it worked. And I was like, oh, okay. Let me just figure out now, how do I hire someone? How do I build a team? And I failed along the way, but it's what's allowed me to get here 10 years later. So. How do people do this if they don't feel like they're a leader or they? Or number one, they're more of a role player. Like, how does someone build that skill, that confidence skill or that leaping ability?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great question. That's something I struggle with personally. Like, I'm now leading a team. I think I have some leadership skills, and then I have lots of major leadership deficits. Like, now I'm desperate to fill it in with other people and with other resources, but even just to acknowledge it, to listen to your own staff, but not over-listen to your own staff, because sometimes if you give them everything they want, you know. So I would say a few different things. So one thing I would say is, you cannot outsource your vision. That is something that I think is really important. That core piece of how you want your life to be, you can outsource helping on it, you can outsource defining it. You know, I think there's some great coaches and peer groups of other leaders.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  You know, you can have people challenge your vision, but you can't outsource your core vision. But you can outsource almost everything around your core vision. And when it works, and it's working wonderfully for me, a good partnership, I think, is a wonderful thing. So my partner Laura Mayer, we share, like, to a shocking degree, such a similar vision for what we want to accomplish, to where I have no problem with, you know, her responding to a podcast I've never heard, because I know I'm going to agree with whatever she says. But we have really complementary skills. And partnerships are very, very hard. I mean, it's like, I would say, my partnership with her, my partnership with Alex Blumberg, who I created Plant Money with, I was going to say it's right up there with my marriage.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  I think my marriage is easier. You know, like, marriage is hard, but I think business partnerships are really, really hard. But you might not be that natural genius leader, but it's worth putting the time in to acquire those skills.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Or at least to get out of your own way of those skills. Like, I'm not an expert finance spreadsheet guy, but I know enough not to bankrupt the company. The other thing I would say, though, is, we're still in the early stages of what I call the passion economy, this new economy. And that means we're still developing the institution. So if you think back to that 1880 to 1920, like, 1880, the world is still a lot like it was in the Middle Ages, or even in the ancient Sumerian times. You know, most people lived in villages, most people knew almost everyone who

• 26:12Speaker 01

  They would interact with in a marketplace. The biggest companies were maybe a couple dozen people. Maybe there were factories, new factories that had thirty people working for them. But you had, you know, the world existed. I mean, there were, there was the beginning of rail and telegraph, but it wasn't everywhere. Those were like special cases. And it's really the eighteen eighties. You start getting Ivory soap and Hershey's chocolate and these mass-produced consumer goods. These huge companies that, you know, where your economic life is in this much bigger context, where, you know, your boss's boss's boss might live in another city you'd never visit. You'd never meet that person. You'd never really know anything about that person. And it takes two generations at least to start figuring this all out.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  You know, and it's a fascinating history. And then there's a reaction. There's labor unions, there's anti-child labor laws. There's all this new stuff that comes in to kind of soften the harsh edges. I do think that we're seeing very rapidly, and you, you just pointed out that just in a decade, our economic lives have been transformed probably more than in almost any century before, or two centuries. So I think we're going to see more and more resources for people who have a great idea, but don't know how to do all the pieces. We're going to have outsourced management tools and outsourced corporate hierarchy tools. You're already beginning, you know, there's business plan management software. And so I think this continues to get easier and easier over time.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Just like app design, you don't have to be a coder to do an app. You just can kind of create an app fairly quickly.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  If it's easier and easier now, why is it still hard for people to launch their passion?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  It is hard to find your passion. It is hard to refine your passion, to, to really hone in on it. It's hard to find an audience. It's hard to, you know, a buddy of mine was saying like, imagine you didn't know what love was. And then someone's like, so starting around twelve, you have these like overpowering feelings. And then you like spend years and years like meeting people where you like feel so weird, you don't even know how to interact and you cry and your heart is like ripping apart. And then you start like. Hanging out with them and like going, getting a relationship with them and it, and they're just mean to you and wrong and they cheat on you and then after 20 years,

• 28:33Speaker 01

  you finally are with someone and you're like, okay, I'm gonna just decide you're the only one. Like it's, it's, it seems insane. Why would anyone go through all of that? And I think you're not born with a passion. You don't get a passion on your 18th birthday or the day you graduate college. It's something you have to work at. It's something you have to refine. And once you start knowing your passion, you're not granted, okay, and here's the audience that loves your thing the most and is willing to pay the most. That's like a whole other thing. So yeah, it's hard. It's easier in a lot of ways to be 18 and go down to the plant where your dad works and get a job just like your dad and your grandpa and maybe if you're lucky, you know, get, become a supervisor when you're 30 and like that, there's fewer questions, there's fewer,

• 29:17Speaker 01

  there's less uncertainty, you know, just like maybe getting an arranged marriage at 18 or 16 was easier in some ways than falling in love. So yeah, it's more time, it's more uncertainty. There are periods where the thing you love most in the world doesn't love you back, you know? The market isn't there, the audience isn't there, you have profound, deep self doubt. So I'm, I'm definitely not pitching a bed of roses, but I am saying that, and, and you don't have to, it's not all or nothing. You can follow a career path. I mean, what I tell, like, cause college kids get obsessed. I don't know what my passion is. Just go to any, get a job that's kinda like something you think you might like and pay a lot of attention. That's step one. Just pay a lot of attention to what parts of the job do you like? What parts do you hate?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  If you can, if there's some cooler, older people who you can talk to, just try and get a sense of what you seem to be good at, cause it's often we don't even know what we're good at and what you seem to be bad at. And it might take a decade. I mean, I think I was 38 before I could really define. My passion with any certainty, although I was working all along and making steps, some good, some bad. I had some bad years where I hated my job and don't know how much I learned, but overall I was moving in a direction. So.

• 30:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I feel like what just came up for me when you were sharing this is I feel like launching your passion, you could be a fan of football or whatever, a fan of soccer, basketball and watch it and enjoy watching it, but actually launching your passion would be similar to saying and trying to run a business. It'd be like, okay, I'm actually going to be the starting quarterback for the team that I love the most.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Right, right. Exactly.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  And be thrown in on day one to say, okay, learn us, snap the ball, run the play, manage the team, know when to replace people, know when you have to cut someone, inspire people, don't be too hard and you know, manage the salaries of everyone who's coming in, buy new, you know, all this stuff. It's like trying to be the quarterback or the head coach of a team when you've never played the sport.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  You never played. But we also, this is the big thing, I think we're only developing and hopefully I and you are part of this, is a language. So we have a language. Like my son is eight, he doesn't have a sport yet. He kind of likes a lot of sports. He kind of doesn't like some, he doesn't have a sport yet, but we have a language for that. And you can have a sense that at some point, maybe he'll have a sport and maybe he'll have two sports. We'll see. And then at some point, there's kind of a sizing, like is this going to be a big thing or is this not going to be a big thing in his life? And then, you know, I have a couple cousins who they were good enough to think about being pro basketball players, but not good enough to actually be pro basketball players. But you have that moment and we have a language around

• 31:54Speaker 01

  that. And we also have a language around like you could be a sports fanatic and not be the quarterback for the Patriots. You could be, you could be a sports commentator. You could open a sports bar. You could open a sports memorabilia store. You could be a sports agent. And I think we need to develop that language so that when your kid's 26 and you kind of are embarrassed that they don't, you know, it's like, oh, they're figuring out their passion. They've figured out it's in this kind of area, but they haven't quite nailed how that's going to work. But you're exactly right, that you're accumulating skills and abilities. It's just, we don't all need to be the quarterback of the Patriots. My family's from New England, so sorry to bring it up. I don't know. There's lots of ways

• 32:36Speaker 01

  to be. And I feel like my audience, the audience I care the most about are people who can have a really good life, like, but somewhere between, say, making 200,000 and 5 million a year, that kind of, which is a lot. That's great. That's way above average. But I'm not thinking of like, the future CEO of Microsoft or something. Like, they have other books, they have other ways, you know. I think there's a huge opportunity to have like, really good, rich lifestyle businesses, but still businesses that are rooted in principles and values. And you can make real, real money there, but you don't have to just be Steve Jobs. You could be a lot of things.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure. When should people launch their passion, whether it be on the side or all in? Is there a timing of this that they should know? Like, now's the time? Is it a feeling? Is it a necessity? When do you think that is?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I can only think about it in two ways. I think there's probably things in the middle. So, there's the kind of baby step version I did, and there's the all in version. So, the baby step version I did is, I was a reporter at NPR, National Public Radio. I was a business reporter. And I felt like everything I did was so boring. You know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.6% today on late trading out of Asia. And I was thinking about like, my parents and the people I grew up with, and I was like, they don't know what that means. They don't care about what that means. And I find business and economics so fascinating and so compelling, but I'm not doing it. I'm not, it's not in the work I'm doing. And I talked to some older people I work with, some mentors. And they were like, yeah, your work is really boring.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And but when you talk about it with us, you're really interesting. So you have the ability. And I just started sneaking in little moments of excitement, little tiny things just in my radio reports. I just try and put a joke in or an observation slowly at first. It took like years.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  But over time, I was, I had more life in my stories. And I came up with this idea of Planet Money, but I didn't like run out and start my own company. I like sort of built a coalition at work and allowed it as a little trial project. And it took years and years to build it into something real. I think that can work if you work at a place that can support that. But I'm really jealous of and think it's pro. Like I look at kids that when I went in, I graduated college in 92. I worked in public radio. There's no podcasting websites, not like the only way you could communicate to the world was to convince someone who controlled one of the very small number of radio stations to let you talk into a microphone, you know that.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  So I'm so jealous of the kids today and, and, and I find it exciting to meet a 24 year old who's on their third podcast. So I guess what I did worked well. I mean, I, I, I always had a job until I was confident enough at 48 to start my own business.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  But I think if I was giving advice to a bright, curious 23 year old, I would say, don't worry about money for the next couple of years. If you can, if you can, and just hone that voice. Don't, don't that, that combination of confidence and humility. I think that it just, I just think you'll learn so much more by trying and failing and trying again. That, I don't know. What do you think?

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  I think, I mean, for me, that's not everyone has that opportunity. When I was 23, 24, I was just got done playing arena football, which paid $250 a week. But it was my passion, my dream. Then I was like, I'll do this for free essentially because I love it. And I, I led with that passion and I, I pursued that because I knew that I didn't want to live with regret and saying, oh, I wonder what would have happened if I would have actually tried to go for it. And I went as far as I could until I got injured. And then I was, you know, uh, had to retire that dream essentially, which was devastating to retire the dream that I'd had for so many years. But I had about a year and a half, two year window where I was on my sister's couch for a year and a half. Then my brother's place, I paid 250 bucks a month to live there for six months, about two years where I had minimal expenses.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Some support of like, okay, you're not gonna sleep on the street and you can eat the leftovers for two years. Right. Where I got to test things constantly and try things and I had, I've reached out to mentors and it's also a period of my life where I was like, okay, school was miserable for me. Miserable. The only reason I was in school is so I could play sports, but I was just horrible at everything. That I said to myself, what are all the things I actually need to learn for my life now? And public speaking, I remember someone saying, you need to learn how to communicate your vision. If you don't have that ability, no one's ever gonna believe in you and buy into whatever it is you're trying to promote, whether you're trying to get married or whatever, meet new friends or be in a boardroom of an office you're working at or you start your own thing. And that was my greatest fear at the time when I was 24 was, was public speaking. So

• 37:17Lewis Howes?

  I said, now that I have this free time, let me go find a public speaking. I found Toastmasters, I went there every week for a year. And overcame the fear and developed the skill at the same time, which became a very useful tool uh later in my life. And I just said, what can I learn? I started devouring every blog I could on online marketing. And reading all these books about online marketing and just like human psychology and human behavior. So I just researched everything and then I would test it. On LinkedIn, on Twitter, Facebook, and I would just try stuff out. And that two-year window was my real schooling. And it's hasn't stopped. That hasn't, it hasn't stopped. That was like the, the beginning baby steps of like the last eight years of okay, how do I really master this? And I still haven't stopped because I haven't mastered it.

• 38:01Lewis Howes?

  So it was um, it was a period of, okay, I have this time. Not everyone has that time and flexibility or, or opportunity to do that. Where I was willing to live off of nothing and luckily had a family member that allowed me to stay there. So I was willing to sacrifice and look stupid, I guess, or not look cool in order to learn and, and build something. Um, and I think that's It was a decision I made just because I was like, I'm already at the bottom. So let me just at least learn while I'm down here.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  I mean, to me, that that is exactly why I I hope that there comes a language, a language of that that's a productive time. That's a really productive time. And the word adolescence was invented literally in 1904 by a professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. And it wasn't an idea. Like, you're on a farm. Most people in America didn't go to high school. So like, you know, started working on the farm a little bit at seven or eight. And by the time you're 13, you're just a crappy grown up, you know, you're just. And and then as we started industrializing and realizing that you weren't going to essentially apprentice with your parents, your or and just match your parents, that that there was a whole suite of new tools and new skills you needed to develop.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  This idea of a period of exploration of of chaos, of mental chaos, as you shift from being dependent on a family group to being an autonomous person needed a name, and the name was adolescence. He actually said it was 14 to 24. He used, he extended it much longer than we do.

• 39:30Lewis Howes?

  Probably took me till I was about 30 till I started to figure out who I was, so.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I I think that's the age. I think like 30, maybe you, if you're, if you're nowhere near it, maybe, maybe you should start feeling worried. But at 26, like you, you should be deep in the search and we should feel, parents should feel comfortable with that. And like, I actually think you should almost be uncomfortable with a 23 year old who knows exactly, I want to do this. I want to.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  Be worried is what you're saying.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  I had these buddies in college when we were graduating who were really worried about, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what to do. And a bunch of them became lawyers and kind of got, one of them became a doctor. But it wasn't out of love. It was just, I want to know what I'm doing and that's a guaranteed thing. I just go to school, I get that, and then that's what I am. And I don't, I, not to say there aren't happy lawyers and doctors, but well, there's not a lot of happy lawyers, but there are happy doctors and some happy lawyers, but. That's the wrong move, but I think we do need a language for it. I think it's the language we have now is like, you're a loser. You're lame and it's not, it's productive. It's awesome.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  One of you know, I mean, also in society, it's like you hear all these women who say, I just want to meet a guy who's got a steady job. It's like, if he's got a steady job, then he's a great candidate. And so you think you hear this all the time, you know, I've got, I've got a relationship and it's not something I think about, but it's like, okay, well, no girls want to be with me because I don't have a real job. And if I'm going after my passion, it's not a real thing. And will anyone love me? Will anyone want to be with me? So there's a lot of fears of society. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying there's a lot of fears that society has around money, jobs, launching.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  And they'll say, oh, he's an entrepreneur. They'll, they'll just say like, oh, he must not make any money or he's, or he's super rich, right? It's like an extreme.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  If you think of the agrarian world, like you meet someone at seven and you kind of know how rich or poor they're going to be for their whole life. Cause you just look at the family they come into. And of course there's the occasional exception, but as a general rule, there was very little mobility across generations. So, so, and, and family marriages tended to happen sort of in kinship groups. Like, you know, you, you, you know, sometimes your cousins, but often just, oh, that's the, we marry that family, but we would never marry that family.

• 41:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Um, then you, you enter the 20th century and that falls apart. If you read the literature of the 1890s, early 1900s, it's obsessed with women wearing pants. Women out there, like this idea that like young men and young women are somehow hooking up, getting married. And there's not like a system, a family system controlling it was freaking people out. It was like terrifying. And, and the whole idea that young people would form their identity, form their economic opportunity completely unmoored from their family context. That was free, that was completely confusing. Now today, for most of us, I, I spent time in Iraq as a journalist where arranged marriages are very common.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  And we look now at arranged marriages or family based marriages as horrifying, but our great grandparents felt the opposite. I, I think you're exactly right. I think you. He didn't know something I hadn't been thinking about, but this idea of family formation, of self-identity, in the 20th century, it wasn't at seven that I knew what you were gonna be, but certainly by 25, I probably could, in most, not every case, but in most cases, you could sort of figure out where someone was gonna be at 55. But you can't do that now. And it's gonna be more volatile. And weirdly, as we were just discussing, it might be the person who's a passionate but unsure, who is a better bet than the person who's calmly, confidently certain.

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's true. I'm curious, you've been through, it seems like three stages, I would say, of money, economy, where you grew up, from what I'm hearing you say, in this kind of rent-stabilized, self-deprecating artist mentality, neighborhood environment of, don't be a sellout, you know, just work on the craft and the art or the acting type of mentality. Then you went to good school, you got a great job, and you worked at the job for many years, and kind of played in your lane in that role of making money. And then you ventured off and said, "Let me go do my own thing and try this experience." It's kind of three different levels of money mindset. In your opinion, what's the one thing that you wish you would have learned about money,

• 43:52Lewis Howes?

  growing up in school, that they don't teach us about, personal finance or money mindset in general? Based on these three levels you've kind of been through.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I love that question. I think it's this idea that making money is an understandable thing, that it's something you can play with, you can learn about. I think a side effect of being raised by people who reject money is that money actually gains far more power. It's just this force out there deciding who will be, who will have stuff, who won't, what gets to happen, what doesn't get to happen, and it just feels big and... Untouchable and unboldable. You know, I mean, I worked in public radio. I worked at the New York Times. I worked at the New Yorker. And journalistically, you know, I feel so proud and lucky to have worked in all those places.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  But these were struggling businesses. You know, media has not, journalism has not done very well. And it was a similar like money was this scary force that just meant you couldn't get what you wanted. And I'm now learning, it's not like, if anything, my money life is harder than ever. I mean, I'm actually responsible, not just for myself, but for a team of 20 people and a whole business. And we have investors and commitments. And so like, in a certain sense, the pressure has never been bigger. And it's not like I'm a master. I mean, I, you know, I'm afraid I'll screw the whole thing up. And I certainly make plenty of mistakes here and there, but it's, it's playful. Like I remember in my 30s, I finally took a cooking class and I learned that like making a good meal wasn't this like mysterious skill that only a small elect have.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Like I probably was never going to be a Michelin star chef, but I could grab a piece of meat and some salt and pepper and some spices and make, make a decent meal. And, and I wish that definitely how I want to raise my son is like definitely my son's like, I want to be an artist and I don't care about being rich. Great, but still be playful with the money. Still know that you can control your financial destiny more than you realize. And I don't know that that's true for everyone. You know, there are people in America who really are living on the margins, but I think it's true for a lot more people than feel that. Money's under, money's simple. Money is actually simple. It's infinitely varied, but it's simple. And, and that's the other thing. It's fun. It's not just evil. It's also fun.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  But why do people put so much pressure on themselves in terms of making it, saving it, investing it, spending it the right way? Why is it such a pressure filled thing? If you're telling me now that it's fun?

• 46:18Speaker 01

  I think that we were trained that way. Like before this phase I'm talking about in the 1880s, 1900, basically everyone who ever lived, except maybe a small number of like kings, lived directly on the margin. They, they lived and died. They consumed calories based on what the weather did, based on constantly changing and immediate variables that they were. They didn't have a choice. They weren't deciding to respond. They were just fully responding. And you know, the money economy in the Middle Ages or pre-modern ages was fairly tiny. I mean, we're talking about single-digit percent of people who actually like traded goods or made goods for sale. Most people were farmers. But those people really lived and died on a day-to-day basis. There wasn't

• 47:00Speaker 01

  it was very hard for the vast majority of people to make long, you know, it's like this whaling voyage either will sink or will bring money. This bread I'm making today, if it goes bad, I'm screwed. Or if the wheat prices go way up, I'm screwed. It's this weird period, the 20th century, where we had these large corporations that really buffered us, shielded us from those constant fluctuations in the market. You get a job at DuPont or Procter & Gamble or General Motors at 22, you don't have to think about the price of steel or who's buying toothpaste. Like, you just got your salary. It was untied to the day-to-day fluctuations. And then we had this kind of benign growth in America. And, you know, we had a couple of world wars, a depression, but generally you see life improving

• 47:44Speaker 01

  for the vast majority of people in developed world. And this fiction that like the natural order of life is like you're kind of on an upward escalator and you sort of have to screw things up to fall down. I think I think our brains got confused. We misunderstood how the world works. And so in a sense, we're reverting to that norm. I mean, take podcasting. I know some people at NPR who are among the greatest radio talent in the world and they're still making whatever it is, 120,000 a year, whatever they make. Neither of them, I'm like, you will definitely, definitely make millions. Like, no question. You are above the level where people are making millions. And they just can't take that step. And I really do wonder about that. This, this kind of

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Conservatism, but I see it, I feel I see it less in younger people. I feel like.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Right. They're more willing to take the risks. They're more willing to.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  And I.

• 48:37Lewis Howes?

  I'm already broke. I'm already broke. So.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Who cares as well. Exactly.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  Might as well go for it and try it out. When you have the responsibility, you've already paying the rents. You've got your kids. You've got whatever. It's like, well, it's hard to leave something that's already good. It's taking care of the things that I need to take care of.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  I spent thirty years in the twentieth century. Like I was raised in that old world and it took me like twenty years of covering this changing economy to finally believe the reporting I was doing and take the leap. But, but I think someone who's twenty now, twenty-two, I like to think they're more ready. I hope they are because if they're not, it's going to be a tougher life for them.

• 49:12Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. At the same time, I just see a lot of late teens, early twenties, just fixated on bad addictions of just being on their phone all day, mindlessly, as opposed to putting it towards something that they're excited about in order to create a transaction around money. And that's, that's the worry that I have as I'm seeing a lot of the youth, interacting with them, just consumed by the addiction of what the passion economy has allowed for so many to go launch something on a social media app or TikTok now, or whatever it may be. Instead of using it to make money, being used.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, for someone else to make money. No, I agree with that.

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  Because of the addiction loop that it's causing. And it's just like, it's so easy to be entertained on a loop. And then four hours go by and you're like, what did I do with my life? So you've got to be willing to like, get yourself out of that. But your whole, your, your, your podcast is all about this. The Passion Economy. It's, it's based on the book with the same name and explores how individuals from all walks of life have overcome these kind of professional and financial roadblocks and then created new paths of fulfillment with this entrepreneurial endeavor that they might have. So people can check out your podcast, The Passion Economy, if they want to learn more about this. Got some really cool stuff there. And you're over on Twitter as well, Adam Davidson. Are you on Instagram also, Adam?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I think I have an account, but I never use it. I think it's @DavidsonAdam, I think.

• 50:31Lewis Howes?

  Twitter is your main tool?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:33Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  That's where I go to town. Yeah.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Where you go to town.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I encourage everyone to go check out the podcast because you do a great job of really showcasing how people can do this on their own and following that process.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  With concrete examples. That's the goal is here's someone who did it. Learn from them.

• 50:48Lewis Howes?

  Step by step. I like that.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  Um, I want to ask you a couple of final questions before we finish. Uh, the first one is, it's called the three truths. So I want you to imagine a hypothetical scenario for a moment that it's your last day on planet Earth, not planet money, but planet Earth. It's your last day. And you have accomplished everything you want to accomplish and you've seen your family grow into, you know, an amazing uh, family and accomplish what they want to do. All the things that we want to do, they, they came true. But for whatever reason, it's your last day and in this hypothetical world, you've got to take all of your content with you. So everything you've ever put out in the world, written, audio, video, it's got to go with you to the next place. So no one has access to your information, but you get to leave behind a piece of paper and a pen where you can write down three things you know to be true about all of your experiences.

• 51:33Lewis Howes?

  And this is all we would have to remember you by. What would you say are these, these three big lessons you would leave behind or what I like to call your three truths?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Wow, that is awesome. Um, and you're giving me two months to come up with them or?

• 51:46Lewis Howes?

  Two seconds. Yes.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Two seconds. This sounds maybe trite, but that real satisfaction comes from a connection with people, which starts with your family, but can extend much broader. And incidentally, that, that's tied to why I think making money in an authentic way is actually a deep and profound human spiritual engagement. If not always, but it can, it really can be. I, I've known some narcissists in my life and I've come to see the tragedy of their life, not, not, not focus on the pain they've caused others, but they didn't get that. They didn't get to feel that joy of connecting with someone. I think that life can be playful. Like there are very few

• 52:27Speaker 01

  rules that you have to follow. You can, you can play in, in the broadest sense of the word. So if those count as two, engagement, play. And the third one, I guess you're going to fuck everything up a lot. Sorry. Can I say that? You're going to mess everything up a lot. That sucks, but it's okay.

• 52:43Lewis Howes?

  It's a powerful, that trite is good. I want to acknowledge you, Adam, for your incredible courage to continue to evolve yourself throughout these kind of three stages of your money life. And it's really hard to break a mindset that you've been around for many, many years. So to have the mindset that you grew up in, that was your whole belief system. That was all you knew until you realized like, okay, this isn't what I want. Let me go and follow this different path. And then that became your life for two, three decades or whatever, until you realized, okay, there's something else. And most people stop with where you're at a few years ago. They don't actually take the leap and constantly keep taking new leaps. So I really admired you for not only researching the things that you were excited about and curious about, but then also saying, you know what, I'm actually going to take the leap

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  myself and do this and set myself up to win and show myself that it's possible to continue to evolve your mindset to, you know, be the symbol that you want to be for your child, your family, and for your listeners and readers. So I really acknowledge you for constantly being a curious mind and taking the leaps. People can go listen to the podcast, The Passion Economy, they can get the book, they can follow you on Twitter. And the final question I have for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  I think when I've seen greatness, I think of my friend Adam McKay. I worked with him on the movie The Big Short, which I thought was great. I've worked closely with Ira Glass and the folks at Serial who've done great work, worked at The New Yorker where you would see real greatness. And I think what I note is it's not about a genius hurdling greatness out of them. It's about just a tireless pursuit of something that's out of your grasp. But just staying, you know, in these cases, writing and rewriting, but trying and retrying, trying and retrying. And these are all people who are, I mean, they're self-confident, but they're also certain

• 54:39Speaker 01

  that they will never achieve the full greatness that That they can imagine, it's always just out of their grasp. And that's what I really admire. And I'm grateful for what you said because I do take pride in, I've met some people who achieve greatness at some point in their career and then rode its coattails for decades. And I find that tragic and just heartbreaking. That just seems awful. And all the people I talked about are people who continue into their 50s and 60s to pursue that greatness. I guess it's a pursuit. I guess you have to achieve something, at least approaching it every once in a while. But, but you're never, you never nail it fully.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Amazing. I appreciate you for being here and for, for sharing all your wisdom, Adam. Thanks so much.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  No, this was a joy. You're awesome, man. You're really good at this.

• 55:26Lewis Howes?

  You've been, you've been doing an interview a lot longer than me. So I'm just trying to learn from the master.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  No, this felt like a frigging psychological, intellectual, emotional journey. It was awesome.

• 55:35Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode again. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Just text a couple of friends right now. Post it on your Instagram stories, post it on social media and get the message out in any way possible because you have the power to change someone's life just by sharing this episode. You can use the link lewishouse.com/998 or just copy and paste wherever you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or anywhere else. And we are almost coming up to our 1,000th episode. I'm so excited about this. We have a very special episode for you. You are not going to want to miss this. Make sure to again, subscribe to the School of Greatness if you have yet subscribed and leave us a review. And if you want weekly inspiration from me, I send out text messages to a group of people

• 56:18Lewis Howes?

  that want to be motivated, that want to be inspired. All you gotta do is text the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960. And I want to close with a quote from Abraham Lincoln who said, "Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end, you are sure to succeed." I want to remind you, you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. You know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.