97 Kevin Kelly: How to Master Technology to Create True Fans

"We are both the parents of technology and children of it at the same time." - Kevin Kelly Get the show notes and more at LewisHowes.com/97 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 97 with Kevin Kelly.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone? Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm very excited about this interview with Kevin Kelly. And if you don't know who Kevin Kelly is, he's the founding and executive editor of Wired Magazine, former editor, publisher of The Whole Earth Review. He's also been a writer, photographer, and a student of Asian and digital culture. He's got a number of books out there as well that we talk about. And I first learned about Kevin through Tim Ferriss. And he recently had Kevin on his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, and did a three-part series with him. And I thought it was fascinating. And in this interview, we dive into different questions. So if you've already listened to that series with Tim, awesome. This is going to be completely different. And if you haven't listened to

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  it yet, then make sure to go subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show and check that out as well. But I'm very excited to bring you Kevin today in just a moment. But first, I want to ask you guys, if you're listening to this episode, and if you've listened to the show for a while, I want you to do me a favor. I want to do a little experiment. I want you to send this episode to one friend, just one friend who you think it could be inspiring for or uplift them. And I want you to email them and CC me in the email. So my email address that you can send it to is [email protected]. So again, find one friend you want to send this to. Email them this. The link will be LewisHowes.com/97. That's where

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  the show notes will be in the episode. CC me in the email. I would love to know why you're sending it to them, the message you want them to get from this interview. So again, CC me and one friend with LewisHowes.com/97. And my email is [email protected]. Very excited to see how this experiment plays out. But without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this interview with Kevin Kelly.

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about today's interview with the one and only Kevin Kelly. How are you doing Kevin?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you know, I've, I've heard your name for a number of years. I think back probably like in 2009, I started hearing about your name with, from Tim Ferriss. And he just put out a podcast recently. If everyone, if the people listening have not listened to that three-part series yet, make sure to check it out because it's incredible. And I said, you know, you keep coming up in my mind. I want to bring you on and, and bring you on in front of my audience. So I'm very excited to interview you. And you're really like one of the most interesting men in the world. You know, I was just reading and doing a lot of research about you and I was just like, I don't even know where to, where to start. Because there's so many interesting, inspiring things about you. So what I did want to start with is what I originally heard about you first, which is 1,000 True Fans.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  I remember Tim talking about this concept and this article you wrote called 1,000 True Fans. And my brother is a, the number one jazz violinist in the world. And when he started kind of going out on his own as a musician, he was trying to grow his business. He was trying to get fans to buy his CDs, his DVDs, you know, come show up at live events. He had music that he was creating, all these different things. And, uh, you know, I told him, check out this article and he said it was really helpful for him understanding what it means to be a performer and to make a full-time living. So can we talk briefly about this topic? I know you've, uh, you know, talked a lot about it before, but a lot of people on my podcast are entrepreneurs or they're solo entrepreneurs.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  They're creative types and they're trying to build their business. They're trying to grow and make, make a, make a living around what they love. So can you talk about that a little bit?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  The idea of true fans, it came out of the realization that while it's wonderful to have a million customers and audience in the, you know, six, seven digits, it's not absolutely necessary to, to have that with today's technology. So the idea is, is that if you are able to have a direct, unmediated relationship with your customers, in other words, you, you had their emails or some way to communicate with them in a direct way, not through, indirectly

• 5:03Speaker 01

  through like a label or a publishing house, but if you had direct relationships with those fans and, and that you were able to curate on an ongoing basis, something that they were interested in, say every year, or more often, that you could use a plain arithmetic to actually support yourself. So the idea is, is that, um, let's say you were able to sell a hundred dollars worth of something to a thousand fans, a thousand true fans, that would be a hundred thousand dollars. And that's sort of a big number and selling a hundred dollars per year is a big number, but I'm just trying to give you a sense. Of

• 5:45Speaker 01

  course, if you did half of that, then you'd need twice as many, but between a thousand and two thousand, that's, that's, you know, we can understand that. You don't need a million fans to have a livelihood. And I define a true fan as someone who, you know, buys any version that you produce or will get the paperback, the hardcover and the ebook, who will drive 200 miles out of their way to see you sing, who, um, wants not just the, um, the CD, but wants the box set and wants, you know, people who are going to purchase and support you no matter what you do. That's your true fan. And of course, outside of that circle of true fans are kind of like just your fans. And then there's

• 6:28Speaker 01

  kind of, you know, the occasional people. So that's not your full audiences, but you can make the calculation that if you had a thousand of your true fans who really, really supported you, you could probably at least make a living. You're probably not gonna make a fortune. And I think it was the shift of like not aiming for a fortune, but just aiming for a living. And then secondly, using the technology of today to actually have that relationship with those true fans. Because when you're selling a book through a New York publisher or through a label, you actually don't know who those fans, you don't have a relationship. They're, they're being mediated by the, the studio or the publishing house or the art gallery or whatever.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  So it requires that you have a direct relationship, which by the way, is not to every artist or creator's liking. I mean, if you are basically tending your thousand true fans, that's, um, that's almost another job. I mean, that's, that's certainly another skill set, but it is another role that you have to play. So the cost of the thousand true fans is that you are, you, you have a fan base that you're interacting with and you're engaging with, and it requires a kind of a skill set to do that. If you're willing to do that and you're willing to have a livelihood and not necessarily a fortune, somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand, two thousand, five thousand, whatever it is, it's not a million.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  You don't need a bazillion fans.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  To have success. You can have a different kind of success with a more manageable numbers. You might even be able to recognize a thousand names. So, so, so it's in that kind of scale. So what I'm trying to suggest is that there's another scale to then hit bestsellerdom. There is this other scale, which is a little bit more approachable and maybe even achievable for most people.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  You know, one of the things that I hear about when I'm, you know, talking to different artists or musicians is that they only want to do the art. They don't want to do the business. They didn't want to do the marketing or kind of the fan engagement necessarily to push the business side of things. So you're, you're saying that you really got to learn that skill as well, or have someone on your team to do that with you, right?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm saying somebody has to do it. So you can either have a partner who do it and then maybe you just have to multiply everything by two because you, they need to be supported. Or you hire someone who probably not going to do as effective you, but they're going to do it pretty good. Or you employ, you know, you split, basically, you you surrender that to

• 9:12Speaker 01

  professionals who are running labels and studios and broadcasters. And but then that that that sort of increases the the numbers that you need to have

• 9:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  a success. So, so I'm not adverse to that, to that. And I do it all different ways. I self publish books and I use publishers for books. Both are valid venues, but there are, you know, there's a cost and there's a benefit. And you have to kind of weigh that. And different projects might require different things. I think the message for your listeners out there is that this is of if if you want, or if you choose this, this is a viable path.

• 10:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And it's also, I mean, it's actually a good path for beginning because there's no barriers. You can, nobody to tell you no. Maybe after you have some success, you might want to move away from that and have someone do the stuff you don't want, which is actually a very good idea. You know, Tim and others talk about outsourcing stuff. And so that's what you're doing. And so it's not that everyone has to do this. I'm just saying this is an option that is available and it's very easy to start when you're starting at zero.

• 10:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. And did you have you used this yourself for a number of different, you know, books or things starting out? Did you use this model? Or is this just something that you you noticed and you saw that people could use?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Originally, I conceived of the ideas in theory and then I went to hunt for examples of people who actually were able to do that. And and I had been using since I wrote, I wrote it almost, I think, I don't know how long ago, at least seven years ago.

• 11:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Since then, I have been using that as well. We did a Kickstarter program, but I wasn't using it as an individual. I was using it as kind of like a with some partners.

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  But we did a Kickstarter campaign that was successful for a graphic novel and trying to employ these same kind of things. And I have self-published another book recently, which was also successful. So I think the amount of income coming in that way is, what I'd say would still be, if I was relying only on that, I don't think that would be enough. But I have, you know, multiple different sources of income, which is a healthy thing to do these days. And so, but it's significant. So it's not insignificant. So I think that I would say, yes, it's a success. I don't have only a thousand true fans. Again, that's

• 11:59Speaker 01

  part of this concept, which is that you have your thousand true fans, but it's not like those are your only fans.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Nobody, no artist, no creator will ever turn away an audience.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I've got a thousand. I don't need any more. Thanks, guys.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you want to have as many as you can, but you can focus on those, if you focus your mind on it, you realize that you don't have to have a million of them. And so I think it's, when you're starting out, everybody often dreams of bestsellerdom and being a hit. And I think that can be toxic for people starting out because it seems so distant when you have a thousand, or you know, say you have your Twitter and you have 500 people. It's like, how am I ever going to get to a million? Well, you don't really want to get to a million, believe me. So I think what I'm trying to convey to people

• 12:59Speaker 01

  is that the scale that you need to maybe even to be considered successful is a lot closer. And of course, if it goes beyond that, yes, you should welcome it and also harness that. But you can have success at a much more intimate scale than we might think at first.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  And I would say that even as a business owner, not an artist or Or creative type, but as a business owner or a freelancer that you really only need, you know, 10 to 100 true fans. I mean, if you're a business owner that you have clients that pay you $5,000 a month to do consulting for, you only need three of those, you know?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 13:38Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  I tried to, I had my assistant and researcher try and actually uncover what the typical number of customers for a small business in America would be like, say like a restaurant or a dry cleaner or a florist or whatever at the local level. Because I suspected that in fact, that they were in the thousands, the total number of customers that they were serving, particularly say the regular customers.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  So, so it's probably between one and 10,000 total customers that might support a local business. It's not millions again. Again, it's, it's, it's in, it's in the thousands, it's some thousands of them that, that you need. And that just, as you said, you know, you don't have to be an artist. It can be a business trying to support a family or, or a small group of people. And you again, don't need a lot. You can take your energy and really focus on, you know, developing those relationships of a, of a much fewer number. And if, if they

• 14:49Speaker 01

  become your true fans is which is what you want. So you basically want to turn customers into true fans.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Exactly. I like that. Now, you know, have you seen the Dos Equis commercials? The most interesting man in the world? Have you seen those?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I haven't. I don't have TV. So.

• 15:05Lewis Howes?

  There are these great commercials called the most interesting man in the world and he's traveling the world. He's got all these one-liners that are, you know, hilarious and, you know, does everything extraordinary, the most interesting man in the world. And basically what I'm trying to say is they should have casted you as that role because as I looked at your bio, I was just like, this literally is the most interesting man in the world. And you've just done so much. And so what I want to ask is what is your favorite, you know, people, when people say, so what do you do, Kevin? What's your favorite hat or title that you like to wear, I should say? And, or what do you like to talk about the most?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Those are kind of probably two separate answers, but the the most common description of say my profession or my role is is actually as editor. And I mentioned that because that is what I enjoy doing the most. I do write, but I hate writing. I don't like. I mean, I don't. It's painful. It's I like I like having written.

• 16:12Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that what most writers like doing to say they have written?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I have. I have some friends who actually like that and and are only happy when they're writing. But that's not me. I am only happy when I'm editing and packaging stuff and cutting stuff out and rearranging and I mean, I can do and it's not just writing. It's like when I'm editing images or making working in design, designing pages and putting things together. That's when I could just get into the zone and I could do that for eight hours and not even be aware of it. So that's that's what I love to do is that process that we in the word Smith called editing, but it's it's really

• 16:56Speaker 01

  packaging ideas, whether it's a PowerPoint, a brochure, a website, a book. That's what I'm happy in doing.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  What is it about packaging that you enjoy the most over everything else?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  It's a good question. Let me think about that. I've never been asked that. So

• 17:16Lewis Howes?

  Thank you, Tom.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  I think it's the here's what it is. One of the reasons why I do write is it's through writing that I learn what I think and the same process of editing. By having by putting things together and packaging, it requires me to actually have an opinion, to have a point of view, to have an idea. There has to be there's structure. This is all about structuring. One of the huge lessons about magazine editing is that the entire success of an article is really in the structure of the article. How how it comes about, what's the sequence, what's the logic, what's the flow? Stuff that you're really not even

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Aware of when you're reading it. In fact, if you are aware of it, it means it's probably not working because it's sticking up. And so you want this structure that's invisible and yet is propelling something along. And so they think, wow, that's fantastic. And they don't even notice the editing. But it was through the editing that it actually made it work. And that, to do that, requires you to have a very sophisticated or a very sound mastery of the thing at hand. And so there's, there's, it kind of forces me to comprehend the material. It's a way, it's a way of comprehension. So it's like the old dictum that you can't really teach something unless you understand it or by teaching it, you understand it.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  So it's a form of teaching and it's a, it's a means for me to try and understand something. So that's what I get through the packaging is the joy of understanding it.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Interesting. So there are a lot of things that you actually edit that you don't know originally. And then they, and then you're able to dive into it and learn more about it as you're editing and researching it. Is that part of the process?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So let's say I'm doing, um, I don't know, I'm editing. Uh, I mean, I think this would be true of, uh, this is something I haven't done, but I'm going to make a guess. If you're editing, um, some music, right? So, so the, the understanding is not like, it's not like a conceptual news, but to, to edit music and, and, you know, produce what they call producing, to produce a song in the end with the hooks and the, and the music and all the accompaniment to make it really good. You have to, in some ways, not only kind of comprehend what the song is about, but you're, you're offering a point of view about it.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  You're offering some opinion in shaping that melody into this song and editing and saying, well, this doesn't belong here. This does. There's no right answer in that sense. It's a kind of an expression, but you are coming away with something big and unifying it from all these parts. And so there is, it requires that you have a. A stance requires you have, so that, that, it's that stance that is brought out that was not there when I began. So it often comes in the process of putting something together. When you go to any website, if you pick up something about that website, like instantly, you don't know what it is.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  There's a atmosphere, a feeling, a personality, something cool, whatever it is. If that's working and that's deliberate, that was put into there by, by the design. That was, that was engineered into, to, to give you that, whatever that feeling was. Well, often before that began, nobody really, I mean, that, that idea would only come about in some process of creating it. That, that's sort of the beauty of, of creating it is, is that you, it often takes the act of creating it for the idea to emerge. Often it's not there at the very beginning. You know, someone's writing a script for a Pixar movie. It's not until the very end, when everybody has signed off and everything has been done, that everybody really understands what it's about. Right.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  See, it's like, I mean, I always joke about like a book. It's like I, I said, I always wished that I could have, could write the book after I do the book tour. Cause after the book tour, then I realized what the book is about. Right. That would be a good time to write it because when I'm writing it, I didn't know what it was about. Oh. Okay. So, so this process, and, and it's that larger scale process of assembling all these pieces and creating it out of nothing and it's, and more than just the words, but everything else. That process is the process that actually makes it alive and makes it worthwhile.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  And it's not just the, the moment of, of creation, but it's the moment of, of synthesizing it with all the other pieces that are necessary. And then putting a stamp of a, that unifies it overall. This, this, that, that is the higher level of editing. So when I talk about editing, I'm not talking about like correcting grammar. That that is type of that's called line editing. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about this idea of um.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  Putting it into the flow.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Putting in context. So so so what you're trying to do is you're trying to situate this new thing that you've made, whether it's a photograph or film, a song or a web app. You're trying to situate it in the context of everything else that exists out there. And show how it relates to the rest of things in people's lives and why it may offer them something, a different point of view that they didn't have before.

• 22:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Do you have a specific process that you follow for each thing that you edit or, you know, let's say, produce? Is it or is it different with writing an article or in a magazine or your website or a book? Or how do you get in the zone and in the flow to create?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, you know, that's a fair and useful question. I think um. I have some tricks, I recall, or heuristics that the programmers would would use that word. Kind of rules of thumb. One of the, then I have a style, which is sort of independent of that. I my style is a minimalist. I I like a very minimal style of trying to do the maximum with the least amount of intervention or guidance. And so in terms of even visual design, I would I would go like, you know, what? How much of this can I take away and still have it work? And if something is there, I have to absolutely be doing some useful work.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  That's not everybody's style. It's all people like decorative and they like to fill in things. And actually, I can enjoy that too. But that when I create, I'm on the minimalist style and that's and that's true for the number of words I'm using, you know, um. You know, how it's presented, whatever. But some of the tricks in trying to to to bring this to process is my role is I'm always trying to service the the viewer, the reader, the watcher, the listener. So I'm I'm trying to.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Be empathetic with the receiver and saying, do I, will they get it? Do I get it? So when I'm, if I'm editing something that's not my own, I'm representing the other and saying, I don't understand this. And if I don't understand it, they won't.

• 24:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  But when you're trying to do your own work, the heuristic I'm always asking myself is, what am I trying to do here? What, what, what am I, what is this little piece trying to accomplish? And if it isn't doing something, then I remove it and/or alter it. And so there's always, so every part should be working towards something. And so you're constantly asking yourself, what am I trying to do now? What is this about? Does this move it forward in any way? And that's sort of this recurring question that you're always asking. It's not like, is it pretty? No, that doesn't matter. Is it, does it, does it sound cool? That doesn't matter.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  It's always like, is it moving the thing towards a goal? And then what is the goal? So that, that alone is probably the, the, the main job that, that you're always asking.

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now I want to ask you, have you ever thought about actually doing a book tour? Six months or a year before actually launching a book? And doing what you just said, where you're talking about what you want to talk about, but then really discovering what the book is going to be about through the conversations of the book tour?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and I have.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Really? And how do they go?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Well, here's what I did is I gave talks about it. I made a, um, I, I started giving talks. I did that with the new rules book. I, I, I was giving talks for almost a year or more before I even wrote an article. And then I wrote an article as a way of kind of outlining the book. And so, yes, that was the easiest in many ways. Because for almost a year beforehand, I was, I knew exactly what it was about. And I highly recommend that, by the way, is, because when I first started giving a talk, I didn't know what it was, but I got this constant feedback. Over time, I evolved it. So then when I came to write a book, it was like, yeah, I know. I mean, it's like I just sat down and wrote it. It was like the easiest compared to my other ones.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  I mean, again, I, I, I have difficulty writing fast, but it, for me, it was the easiest one for me to write.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Now, did you end up taking pre-orders during those speeches?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  No, this was in another era. This was in the nineties.

• 26:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  It was, it was a New York publisher. It was Penguin.

• 26:54Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  And I, I tell you, it's really hard to imagine how backwards I had to fight to get them to accept my manuscript as a digital manuscript and not re-keyboard it.

• 27:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Okay. I mean, can you imagine that?

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  So, so, so, so this was definitely a, a different time and there wasn't any, any, any thought of that.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Um, that now, of course, I would, I would do things like pre-orders and, uh,

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  and things like that.

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure. And how many books have you, have you written and published and also self-published?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, I don't know, maybe fifteen or so in total. I have done a lot of self-publishing at a very small scale. And I also do things where, um, I do a lot of travel and on most journeys, I actually produce a book after the journey, which goes to anybody who's, who's on the journey with me, the kind of private books. And so, uh, and some of those journeys, like we've had sixteen people and stuff. So I think some of the people come just because they want the book at the end.

• 28:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  So, so I, I, I'm a unabashed, obsessive book maker. Making lots of books that, um, aren't even available for sale. Um, I have others that have self-published at the very small scale and sold on Amazon. I'm making more eBooks now. And then I'm, I am publishing books on paper. So right as we speak, I'm finishing a huge, I mean, physically large, many pages. It's a four hundred and sixty-four oversized paged gra- graphic novel.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Wow. And What's that called? It's called The Silver Cord. And it's about angels and robots. And it's about a half angel, half human girl who discovers that the newly conscious, the robots who are going to be newly conscious with a quantum computer chip inside them, that their souls are going to come from dark angels, and so she has to save the world from them. Hmm, interesting. Um, yeah, so we're getting kind of rehearsing the implications of what happens if robots have souls. And it's a coming of age story and it's epic saga about the million different species

• 29:22Speaker 01

  of angels in the other world. And so it's anyways, it's a great, great thing. This was the Kickstarter campaign. And that's going off to the press probably next week. Wow. Hong Kong. Congratulations. But in addition to the book going to the backers, the book is also going to go into onto Amazon and bookstores. And so I'm serving as the publisher and we're having extra copies printed and, you know, it's, it's, it'll be a self-published book available to anybody out there who was listening, who wasn't part of the Kickstarter fund, you'll be able to buy it at on Amazon or a bookstore.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  And that, that's again, something that would not have been even thinkable five or six years ago. Hmm. First of all, Amazon, you know, makes it really easy. And then, you know, in design and tools like that, um, make designing these things really possible. A lot of the people who are working on the artists, we are hired through DeviantArt, which is a website on the internet that artists, young artists, comic book artists can put their portfolios up. Hmm, I like that. That's how we found the artists who we've never met. DeviantArt.com? DeviantArt, yeah. Okay. Interesting. And so we actually have been, you know, we hired on DeviantArt and then the kind

• 30:45Speaker 01

  of globalization of printing it in Hong Kong, where, I mean, we wanted to print in the US, but it was not, no US printer could actually. No, they no longer can can print at that Wow. art scale. But but you know, working with Hong Kong is in working with China is really no no big barrier anymore like Alibaba and places like that. Yeah. Make it easier to have a one person global corporation. Sure. So, uh, that's one thing. And then the other thing that I'm proudest of is book that I just finished before this called Cool Tools, which was entirely self published.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Again, another very, very large, oversized catalog of cool tools. What type of tools? Tools in the broadest sense from, you know, the best pair of pliers to, you know, the the best glue gun to tools that you could rent, like a bulldozer or a wet saw. Cut tile. People don't realize that you don't really have to buy these things. You can rent almost any tools. And some of them are pretty cool, like, you know, a auger, you know, huge auger for post hole

• 32:08Speaker 01

  digging or something that will like a laser cutter. Sure. And the other kind of tools are tools in the broader sense of being things that are useful. Like I, I think that meetup, the the web based tool that allows you to coordinate and start physical meetups in your locality is is incredible tool for anything you're trying to do with a group of people. It's it's it just makes self scheduling, people who are interested can kind of self schedule the the gatherings. It's it's it's just, it's just a really fantastic tool for communities. That's a tool. Sure.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Um, and then tools can range from how to books, how to videos, how to how to build a house, how to build a log cabin. How to sail around the world, live on a boat. Those are all tools. And so basically, anything that's useful for self-education or useful in making things or making things happy is a cool.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  I like that. So that's gonna be, so the book is coming out soon, but you also have a website for this as well?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  No, so the book is out.

• 33:24Lewis Howes?

  Book is out.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  The book is out. It was based on a website that's still going. It's called Cool Tools. It's been going for eleven years.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Or twelve years at this point. Every, every weekday, we review one cool tool. And there's something about that. One is that all the tools are written by users.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Actual users are not like a lot of these gadget blogs. They're not using them. They're just pointing, they sound cool, they, they point to it. No one's ever used them. Ours are all tools that people have actually used and loved. And at best, they are comparing them to others. And then secondly, we only have positive reviews. We only review things that are great. We don't bother negative reviews. Do, you know, if it doesn't work, we're not even gonna mention it. It's like, life is too short. Why not just deal with the best? So.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  We have only recommendations is, is basically the way to think about it. And so, um, we took the best of those ten years worth of recommendations and went back and reevaluated them and put them into a book with there's about a thousand five hundred.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Different things from, you know, the best foldable ladder to the best foldable bike to, um, you know, you know, stuff that'll help you, uh, uh, study. But, you know, I don't know how to, you know, disappear.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  Improve anything.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Improve anything or how to grow edible mushrooms, you know, um.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Publish an ebook or maybe you want to heat your house with wood or maybe you wanna design your own fabric. So here's a place that can print fabric in small runs. You know, you, you, you design it, it'll, it'll make, um, fabric or, um, how to put on a house concert if, again, if you're a musician and you want to. Uh, when alternative these days to either playing in bars or even playing in stadiums is you are played a people for your true fans will they'll set up a concert in their home for 20 people. They'll collect the money from all their friends and they give the money to you and you play a very intimate 20, 25 people in someone's home and those are called house concerts and you can set up a little tour.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  So anyway, you can learn how to about, learn how to do those kinds of things. So it's um, almost it's tools for anything that people want to make or want to make happen. And I think uh, it'll greatly appeal to your readers. It's available on Amazon.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  It's a huge oversized book. It weighs five, weighs five pounds. It's in color. And anybody who's of a certain age will recognize the style as the old Hallworth catalogs.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  If you're young, that won't mean anything to you. So just ignore it. But this was, this was a publication that I used to work for. It was, it was the first user generated content for the hippies. And it was a catalog of tools that were very hard to find um, at that time, like um, you know, to, to grind your own flour or to um, uh, you know, build your own log cabin in the woods. People would look at this catalog and it would give them the right information to do that.

• 36:43Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. I like it. Sounds like a cool book.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  It is. Cool, cool tools.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  Cool tools. I'll make sure to link that up on the show notes. Now, you just describe yourself as a college dropout and a self-given PhD in Asian studies, right?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  So you left school and you went to Asia and traveled around with a, a camera and wandered for a bit and, and got your own PhD. So how did you know that I guess college wasn't for you and that this was your path to learn in a different way?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, again, the context is, this is 1969 or so. I went to uh, I went to a school in the sub suburb of New York, New Jersey, where people had moved to this town because the schools were good. 98% of my classmates were going to college. It was not really even an option at that point not to go.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  But I was interested in, I couldn't decide whether to go to art school or MIT. I was interested in art and science. And at that time, there were, it was a kind of a binary choice. You either went to college and you suffered through classroom work, or you didn't. There was no interning, project oriented, gap year, any of this kind of stuff. Mentorships. Mentorship. Had all that existed, I probably would have stayed. But at that time, it was grade 13. It was, it was another year of sitting in a classroom. And at that age, I needed to make something or do something. And I think a lot of people coming out of high school can kind of resonate with that. You're, you're just so, you just want to make something happen.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  The idea of sitting in a classroom, again, for some more bookwork, it just wasn't working for me. And it wasn't as if I had, I didn't really even have an alternative other than I knew that I wanted to do something, wanted to make something. So I was interested in photography. I dropped out and went to a photography commune. It was kind of a live, it was a farm taken over by a bunch of photographers. We had our own darkrooms collectively. We cooked together, slept together, basically. And what it was, was we were all doing photography at that time, which was black and white and the big format where you develop your own film and prints and all that kind of stuff. And you critique each other very ruthlessly and constructively.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  But that was the kind of thing that I, that I wanted to do. And so I just knew that I could not survive, you know, four years sitting in a, in a classroom. I only happened to go to Asia because I had a best friend who was studying Chinese in Taiwan. I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer. He invited me to come over while he was there. And, you know, I could call it up National Geographic. I called up one of the editor, photo editors, just found his name in the, you know, directory, whatever it was. And I called him up, said, I'm going to Taiwan, do you need any pictures? And he said, well, that's not how we do it here.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  But when you come back, show me your stuff. And so I set off, I had, you know, the minimal, cheapest, dumbest camera. I had a lot of film and I started going and then I, and I, when I was in Taiwan, I met two Swiss travelers. They were not tourists, they were travelers, which is what they were called. And they were saying, they go, well, they just come from the Philippines and they just come from Indonesia before that and then India. And, and I said, well, who invited you?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  You don't need to be invited, you just go. You don't need to know anybody, you just show up. And that was like, that was a revelation to me. I'd never been out of New England, I'd never met anybody who traveled. This is a very different world at that time. And so I just, you know, I went to the Philippines and I went to the, you know, I went to the next country there and I, and I realized that you could just go and it wasn't that expensive at the time. And I was photographing, making this book in my head. And I discovered that there was this world in Asia where everything was done on the street. It was, it was like turn inside out instead of everything kind of happening inside the back rooms

• 41:11Speaker 01

  or inside closed things, everything was open. There was, they were, they actually literally would make stuff in the street. In their, in their kind of, they have these, they were not like a garage. It was like a, a place that would be open on one side. And they had no inhibitions about me just walking up and watching them work and they were very glad. And so I could see how things were made. I could see how everything happened and one thing led to another. And I just became addicted to learning new stuff very intensely every day by just hanging around Asia, which was transforming before my eyes.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Because I could see not only the ways that had not changed in a thousand years. And then I could turn around and see the future, which was, you know, they were erecting, you know, Asia was just becoming the future, becoming some of the fastest changing cities, cities. There'd be like a Rice fields one year and then the next year there would be a city there just about. And Shenzhen is this huge city, bigger than New York City, that did not exist 20 years ago.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  So that was the education that I got, which was both seeing how the old world worked, understanding how medieval minds and places like Afghanistan, which were literally living in the 15th century, to, you know, Japan and Tokyo, which was this postmodern place where they were ahead in many ways of their use of technology. And for me, that was better than any college degree I could have ever gotten.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  Better than sitting in a classroom for four years?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm afraid so.

• 43:01Lewis Howes?

  Now, do you believe in higher education today for, you know, people coming out of high school? Yeah, so you're in, you're up near San Francisco, correct?

• 43:08Speaker 01

  So that's a question that we had, I had to answer in a very direct way because I have three children. Yeah. So the thing I told them was, look, you're graduating from high school, here's, here's the deal, is you, here are some of your options. If you have a project that you want to do, or if you want to make something, or if you, if you actually have a very detailed reason to, to travel, whatever, we'll support you for four years. But, but you have to have a very concrete plan or, or a project to work on, something very, very specific. And if you don't have that, then you have to go to college.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  So college was a second choice. It was like, okay.

• 43:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  But you have to do, you cannot just hang around and-

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  Sit around and play video games.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Right. And think about what you might want to do. So if you have something you really want to do, no matter what it is, we'll support you. But if you don't, then you have to go to college.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So what did your children end up doing?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they all copped out and went to college.

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow. Interesting.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, I think, um, you know, I, I, they, they, unlike me, they didn't have a, a passion that they really wanted to pursue. They decided that they didn't know what they want to do, so they wanted to take some time to.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  Still in discovery.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  But now, one of my daughters, the second daughter, has since graduated. She's doing what we call her gap life, which is that she's, she's, um, on her own. She's, you know, we're not supporting her, but she has been traveling around the world, working as a web developer as she travels.

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  So she's been supporting herself in, as she goes around from, you know, Greece, islands of Greece, and Bulgaria, to, you know, Cambodia, Vietnam, wherever, Japan, and she's working with her boyfriend as web developers along the way.

• 45:09Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  And that's amazing to me. So she, you know, instead of doing that, she did, she's doing that now, but she did go to, um, four years.

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure. I would say that, you know, my college experience, it took me like six years to finish, and I left for a while to go play uh, professional football, then came back just to graduate to please my mom. And I would say that I didn't really learn anything from the classes, but I learned a lot about people and uh, relationships and just working hard that the experience was a great learning experience, but the information I learned in the classes was really irrelevant for me.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  That's, that's true for, I mean, I would say that's a pretty typical response about, it was the friends and networks, the relationships and the, the people skills that, that they, people learn, but, but what, I mean, of course, that's in a world that changes as fast as ours is and where careers change as fast. It's very unlikely. In fact, when I was at Wired, I was, I did a lot of hiring as we were growing very fast. And so I had a lot of, um, college graduates coming in and, um, looking for work. And the kind of heuristics that, that we use, which I think is now pretty common in Silicon Valley, which is that we hired for attitude, not for skills.

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Okay, it was sort of like, um, whatever skills you had are probably not the skills that we need.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  But.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  But what's your positive attitude?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Attitude, meaning like, how are you a fast learner? How do you learn?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  And then, you know, are you, are you easy to work with? Those are your character. Those are the things that are much more important. And they can be developed, as you said, in college. And you have opportunities for that, but I don't think it's only in college that you could develop those.

• 46:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  So it's, by the way, one of the things that I had, there was a couple of people who came to Wired as interns. Were good enough that we hired them. And were still there when I left. And I kept telling them, why are you here? I don't understand it. You're like 20, you know, whatever. And you're, you worked right out of college and you're still working. It's like, when you're young, you should be wasting time somewhere. You should be wasting in the sense that you should just be pursuing something, not trying to make a living. You should be exploring. You should be trying stuff that fail. This is the time to do that. You shouldn't be in a career.

• 47:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  With a down payment and a mortgage, or whatever it is that you are. You should really be trying crazy stuff right now.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  Learning new skills.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking, taking chances and not trying to optimize your strengths per se. But you should be kind of exploring, you should be exploring rather than to optimize. And I think there's a tension there between everybody, every artist, every creative person, between optimizing what you know and exploring what you don't. And I think some of the people I met that were kind of going through college, you know, on kind of like a schedule, graduating, getting your job. And proceeding up the ladder, that to me had more optimization in it than it did exploring. And so there was, I needed to balance that with taking some more chances, doing stuff that had a lower

• 48:41Speaker 01

  success rate and were crazier and, you know, I think that's part of what you should be doing while you're young.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Yeah, you mentioned how, you know, everything is changing so much, so much faster now. Uh, and what you learn in school probably is going to be irrelevant, uh, you know, in a few years later, based on your, your environment, your changes that you're making. And you wrote an article, I believe it was called Amish Hackers. Correct me if I'm wrong. Um, but in this article about Amish, you talk about, uh, you describe the use of technology or the lack of and the debate about in the Amish community. And you, and you wrote, uh, you quoted an Amish man saying that the problem with phones, pagers and PDAs was that you got messages rather than conversations. And what do you, what are your thoughts on modern technology or technology today?

• 49:31Lewis Howes?

  And do you think it has set us back in any way from connecting and having real conversations with humans?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Well, I have, I have, I think there's, I think I have the kind of same two minds about this flood of technology that most people have, which is there are some things about it that we want to embrace and we can't help but embrace. And it's like, yeah, bring it on. And at the same time, we're really kind of cautious about not letting it take over. And I think that's baked into our inherent relationship of humans and technology that is going to be true for the next 10,000 years, which is that we are both the parents of the, of, of technology and the children of it. At the same time, we are both the masters and the slave at the same time. So both these relationships where we are

• 50:23Speaker 01

  making technology and it's also inevitable that that tension.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Is inherent in the technology will always be there and we're always going to feel it. So, so I would say that there's two, two things going on in our heads, which is, yeah, this is really cool. This is great. It makes me more productive. I can do things I can never do. And oh my gosh, I've got to stop doing this. And so I think there is no formula for, there's no escape from that paradox. And we just have to accept that it's going to be there and we have to kind of manage those. And, and here's what I know is that we're going to have different answers to this paradox at different times in our life, at different times of the week. And the, what's it, what I wrote about the Amish, what's

• 51:11Speaker 01

  interesting about them is the untold story that, that most people don't know about them is that they are not lunatics. They have not rejected technology at all. They have just, they're just very selective in the stuff that they use and they have a surprising mix of things. And so it's not, so they're not like saying no to

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  Against everything, yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  They are just saying, yes, they're saying, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes. They're saying yes, in a very deliberate way because they have a criteria for how they select and, and what they use. But the point is that they're not rejecting it. And so one thing about the technology is that anybody who's going to give this all up, I just, there's nobody who does that.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  No one gives it all up. Okay. And there's very few who even give up substantial portions of it for very long. And I think that's actually okay. So one of the things that I promote is the idea of either vacations from technology, or Sabbaths from technology, or Sabbaticals. So it's okay to stop using it for a while, but understand that you're going to come back.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  Have you done that before with technology?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  And what did you experience during those, how long were those periods for? And what did you experience?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Well, so our kids And we still don't have a TV at our house, but we have, and I was one of the first subscribers to Netflix, I mean, when it first launched. So no TV, but Netflix from the beginning. So we could enjoy the, some of the content. And it wasn't like we had anything against the content, but we can enjoy, we, we, we could manage the format and delivery. So it was on our, it was on demand versus whenever they wanted to show it, we, we could watch it on our demand. People understand that now, but we were doing that very early and that transformed the context. And so for a long time I didn't, uh, I didn't have a cell phone and that was because I didn't want to be on a leash.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  People, when I was, you know, the call of anybody who wanted to call, um, smartphones and the ability to kind of filter and do those kinds of things changed that for me. So now I do, you know, I didn't have, I didn't own a car for a long time, had a bicycle only. Um, and a lot of people in New York City still don't have cars. So, so, but they might later on. So, so it's not that they have anything against cars, it's just that cars weren't working for them at that time. They now with Uber and Zip Cars and stuff, that's a viable option. So there isn't, we have sabbaticals, um, and Sabbaths. And that's, there's actually a growing trend to do a Sabbath, which is like one day a

• 53:59Speaker 01

  week you go offline or you, you, you, you darn online or you don't use a keyboard or you don't use a screen. There's different ways people do it, but it's very healthy to step away once a week. Because when you return, you can return with greater enthusiasm and perspective and energy. So it's not like you're stopping, you're not using it once a week because it's horrible. You're stopping once a week because it's so good. Right. And so that, anyone who's talking about, well, I'm going to do this because it's toxic or that it's addictive and all this kind of stuff, I think that's the wrong framing. What you want to talk about is stepping away because it's so good, because it's so powerful,

• 54:43Speaker 01

  because it's it's it's so sweet, because it is so um rich that you that's why you want to step, not because it's so evil.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Now, I'm curious about, you've done all these amazing incredible things since after college or the one year of college and you've, again, the most interesting man in the world. You've got so many different titles and books and a lot of different amazing things you've created. But what I want to know is, what was the biggest fear that you overcame growing up? You know, in your childhood from five to 15, did you have any major fears that you really took on? And overcame, and if so, what were those?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I had a really happy childhood. I I kind of um had had very supportive parents, though for a long time, my father and I, who was, you know, were two straight arrow. Um, we went through the sixties. That was a very turbulent time. He was um, he didn't get the hippie part of me at all. And I think the one obstacle that I had was probably my father. Um, not that he didn't support me, but that he um, it took him a long time to kind of um, come around to accept my unorthodox uh approach. And so that took a long time to kind of overcome,

• 56:08Speaker 01

  but uh uh it it did. So, and I also, I was one of five kids, and I was the oldest of five kids, I should say, and and I didn't necessarily uh, wasn't advocating that my brothers and sisters all follow my unorthodox path either. So I had some concern about uh, I mean, I wasn't a preacher. I wasn't trying to preach anything. But I think I I I was never really governed by fear very much. I I think I I I had had an um, a hope of um, doing something that was significant or that people would appreciate. And I think when you're young and starting off, like myself,

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I was a I was a nobody. I I I I had no kind of a um, portfolio or anything. So so I think maybe trying to be accepted or um, in some ways.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Appreciate it was the thing that I worked on the most. And that took, frankly, it took a long time. It took twenty years. And, and, and I think a lot of people will relate to this because I was creating things and working on things for all that time without really much recognition. And I think what I kind of started to do was really making stuff because I wanted it to be made, hoping that other people would appreciate it, but really trying to, in some sense, you know, make it for myself, make it, and, and kind of

• 57:45Speaker 01

  accepting that, in fact, no one ever, you know, no one else may ever buy this or whatever, but I want to make something that I enjoyed making and I enjoyed having done and I was proud of. And I think, and not paying attention to the money very much because I didn't have money. Um, I had more time than money, but I, I kind of was resigned to the fact that I'm not gonna have any money. But I just really wanted to kind of do it right. So the book of Asian photographs that I always wanted to do, it took me almost, wow, at least twenty more years until the technology came along where I could do it on my own.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Because if I was, you know, the way photo books were done before, you had to become a big famous photographer, which I was not. But I waited until the technology came along where I could do a book and make it myself and it didn't have to be famous. Right. And I think that's why I'm so enthusiastic about the technology today because I think it can enable people like myself who are trying to create things. And you can, you don't have to get other people's permission to, to do this and to make copies of it. You, you, you don't have to wait until someone says, yes, you can just go and do it.

• 59:01Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Well, I know you've got a, you're writing another book right now. So I've only got, I've only got two more questions for you.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  But I want to make sure everyone goes and checks out Cool Tools and go to KK.org. You've got a lot of the links that you've got there. I'll link it up on the show notes as well. Over on the podcast show notes. But the final two questions, one is, what are you most grateful for recently?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Hmm. I love that because I think gratitude is what powers our humanity and our place in the cosmos. And, you know, I, we say a blessing at every meal, what we're grateful for. And there's so many things. I have to say that I remain grateful that I'm still in good health. And I am grateful for the, for my kids who are not in jail. And, you know, basically, they came out okay.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  And specifically, more specifically than that, I have an opportunity to travel, to still travel. And I go to China a lot where I have a lot of fans. And I am really grateful that I have the opportunity to do that because I can, traveling is still my biggest teacher. I still, it's still the most intense mode of learning that I know about. And I really, I try to get out of the cities into the country. And there's, I mean, it's just, it's just one huge university there. And so I have the privilege of being able to do that on a frequent basis. And I'm really grateful for that.

• 1:00:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. I like that.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  And by the way, I should let people know that there's two ways to travel. You have a lot of money or a lot of time. And the two, it's better to have a lot of time. You don't, you don't need a lot of money to, to travel to distant and exotic places. You may think you do, but there are many ways to do that without a lot of money. And if you have a lot of time, it can always make up for money. And so if you're willing to put some time, it will always reward whatever time you invest into it.

• 1:01:14Lewis Howes?

  Any resources on the best way to travel that you like?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  There's a couple of really good books, like Potts, Ralph Potts, I think, his Vagabonding series. There's another book on, well, I mean, there's, there's things like, there's practical things like the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forums, Lonely Planet books you know about. The Thorn Tree forums are the kind of places where, you know, people who are on, they're in Laos at the border are saying, yes, the border is open right here and it takes, you know, three hours to do it, this is how you do it. And so you get on the ground, immediate currency. And that's really good for, that's a great resource that I use a lot, trying to find

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  out what's, what, what, what, you know, the guidebooks are a couple of years out. This is like weeks old. And there's also, there's a couple, I'm trying to think of the name, there's a couple of websites, I think it's called Bluewing, I'm just thinking, where you, where the mileage hackers hang out. Sure, yeah, to get the free flights and all that type of. Yeah, right, there's all kinds of tricks and things, some of them are more troublesome than others, but the idea there is that you can, it's like travel hacking a little bit about how to rack up miles that you can then turn into flights, because that is, that

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  is the biggest expense usually for these kinds of remote places where it's very cheap. There is actually a book I recommend in Cool Tools called The Cheapest Destinations. So it's like, his philosophy is if you're going to travel, why not go to the places where you get the best buck, best bang for your buck. And so he kind of did a little list of the places that have the best bargains for your, for your dollar. And there's also a book called World Stoppers, which is for the really low end travelers, and I define that as for the travelers who don't care where they sleep at all. I mean, it's like, you know, if you have to kind of camp out somewhere or couch surf

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  or you're not that picky about where you sleep, then this is a book for you because it's kind of, it's like rock bottom, absolute cheapest way to go. That's not my style anymore.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:03:38Lewis Howes?

  You like to have a nice bed.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, I had so much bed, but it's kind of something without bedbugs. Let me put it that way.

• 1:03:46Lewis Howes?

  I hear you.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  So that's, that's another resource in the Cool Tools book or the website.

• 1:03:53Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. Okay. Very cool. Thank you for those tips. And the final question, which is the question I ask all my guests is what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, good. First of all, I think greatness is overrated. Okay? Greatness is we commonly define it or in a kind of a celebrity way. Every person I know who has a reputation for being great was a deeply flawed character.

• 1:04:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Okay. And in a certain sense, greatness is another term for extreme. And they're extreme. So, so they have, their, their characters are extreme, which means that they often have very extreme, they're unbalanced in a certain sense. So they're not, they're not rounded, they're angular. And I'm not saying, uh, we shouldn't seek out to be great, but I'm just saying that in a certain sense, it's not all that it's cracked up to be because it comes along with a lot of other, there's a price to it. And the price is that, is that you are extreme. And so, you know, Steve Jobs is a great example, a person that I have, you know, I can, I was not his friend, but I'd met him on numerous occasions and he was a brilliant jerk.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  So he was brilliant, he was a jerk. So the, those were linked in his case by the nature of his thing. So, so, you know, he really should not be anyone's really role model as a whole. And I think what's, the way I would maybe define greatness or the kind of greatness that I'm seeking is a specificity to my life so that you're in the class of one. And what a lot of people do is they're trying to make themselves, you know, whether they want to be a Michael Jordan or a Michael Jackson or

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  Tiger Woods.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Tiger Woods or a Bill Gates or somebody like that. They're basically They're participating in someone else's movie. And I think what you really want to do is you want to star in your own movie. And that's very, very, very difficult to do. Because we don't know what our movie is about. I mean, and it'll take you basically all your life to figure out what your movie is about. So it's constantly, it's an ongoing process. But to me, the way I would define, to answer your question, greatness, is that it's, it means that you are in a class of one. And it's not so much whether you are the most brilliant or the most whatever, the superlative.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  It's the fact of whether you're being kind of really developing that blend that you have that nobody else has. And from afar, that may not seem great because maybe what you have is the, you know, the ability to empathize with people, or maybe you have extreme sensitivity to poverty and others, or something that may take you away from center stage. But in my book, you actually might, you know, you might not stand out in a certain sense in a crowd. But you would still be great because there would be no one else like you.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  And I think that's being unimitable is probably closer to the idea of greatness in my mind. Whereas like, yeah, that he or she, there's like, they're the one and only. Nobody may know them out of their neighborhood, but no one will ever forget them either because they are just, they have sort of maximized who they were. And who they were is this weird combination of stuff. But they have really kind of, they have managed to bring that to the front and star in their own movie.

• 1:07:40Lewis Howes?

  I love, that's a great definition. So thank you for sharing that.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for asking such great questions and for being a great listener. Thanks to your podcast listeners for giving me attention. And I hope I said something that was useful to them.

• 1:07:55Lewis Howes?

  That was great. Yeah, I loved your wisdom and I appreciate it. And we'll have everything leaked up in the show notes. So thank you so much, Kevin.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Good thing.

• 1:08:11Lewis Howes?

  There you have it guys. Thank you so much for joining me today. And again, if this is your first time joining the School of Greatness podcast, welcome to the podcast. Feel free to subscribe over on iTunes.com/SchoolOfGreatness. Leave me a review. Let me know what you think about the show and check out some other episodes as well. And again, if you are listening to this episode, share it with one friend that you think could find some enlightenment or be inspired by this. Email to that individual, that friend, and CC me, [email protected]. I'd love to see why you sent it to them and what you want them to get out of this interview. So again, send it to one friend and CC me on the email, [email protected]. I am very

• 1:08:54Lewis Howes?

  grateful for all of you for listening, for subscribing. We're at episode number 97. Can you believe it's almost 100 episodes? And I started this in the end of January 2013. So make sure to check out this specific show over at LewisHowes.com/97. We're gaining on 100 very soon. So I'm excited to share with you guys what is coming next. There's a lot of great things coming next. So, thank you so much for joining me today. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.