973 Creativity Hacks and Building Mass Influence with Hank Green

“Curiosity is the only way we bridge gaps, the only way we build knowledge.”Lewis is joined by #1 New York Times best-selling author, multi-billion viewed YouTuber, and Internet entrepreneur Hank Green to discuss why attention is the most valuable commodity in the world, why it's smart to think of ideas as business models, and why we need to break down the walls around vulnerability and curiosity. 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 973 with number one New York Times bestselling author Hank Green. 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. Napoleon Hill once said, "The ability to influence people without irritating them is the most profitable skill you can learn."

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  And Walt Whitman advised, "Be curious, not judgmental." I'm super excited today because my guest is a true Renaissance man who has lived a life of both curiosity and influence. Hank Green started making YouTube videos way back in the day in 2007, and you might recognize him from Vlogbrothers, which he hosts with his famous author, Brother John. And now he runs an educational media company with multiple online channels, over 10 million subscribers, and more than 2 billion total views. He's also an entrepreneur who founded VidCon, among other highly successful enterprises, as well as a podcaster and number one New York Times bestselling author.

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

  His new novel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, is coming out this July. And honestly, this was one of the most surprising and wide-ranging interviews I've done in a while. Hank's brain really works on another level. And in this episode, we talk about the power of attention, and why it's the most valuable commodity in the world, the concept of creativity, and what drives its production, how we should break down the walls between vulnerability and curiosity, why it's smart to think of ideas as business models, why donating money to charity is just like buying a new shirt, and so much more. I'm telling you, this is exciting. And if you're finding value in Hank's wisdom, make sure to share this as well with someone

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  who needs to hear it. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode with the one, the only Hank Green.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness. I'm super excited about our guest today. Hank Green is here. He's a famous YouTuber, podcaster, extremely successful entrepreneur, educator, number one year time bestselling author, and he's got a new book coming out really soon, which I'm excited to talk about. And the book is actually all about how we devote our attention and spend our time in a modern world, and kind of the new attention economy is defined by Google and Facebook and these social media applications. And I wanted to, I wanted to ask you to start, why is attention the most valuable thing in the world? Because I think this is a, what everyone wants right now is more attention, more likes, more followers,

• 3:09Lewis Howes?

  more people looking at their content, at their businesses. Why is this so valuable?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's a, there's a really objective reason. And that is that it's the, it's the most finite resource. There's, you know, ultimately, maybe there's a bunch of gold on the asteroids and we'll be able to find that. And there will be way more gold and like the price of gold will drop. But really, the, the thing that there is only so much of is our own human lives. And how like, how I spend my attention, whether that's on my work, or whether it's on someone else's work, or like something that I'm like loving and enjoying, like that's really the only choice I have. It's the only thing I do. And a lot of my attention is spent internally. It's my, my brain sort of like monitoring

• 3:56Speaker 01

  and conversing with itself. But a lot of it is external. And we will kind of let our attention, you know, allow it to be hacked in a lot of different ways by creators like, like ourselves, but also by platforms. And I'm very aware, as a person who makes content, and like my job is often to capture someone's attention and hold on to it for as long as I can, whether I'm trying to teach them something, or, or just make them laugh. There's a, there's a bit of a science to it. And it's, it's work, and it's, it's hard, and it's interesting, and it's a great nut to crack. But like, it is. Especially if we actually head into this future that a lot of, you know, futurists kind of predict,

• 4:41Speaker 01

  where there's a lot of abundance in terms of like, food is very cheap and housing is very cheap. And like, we sort of get there. The, the thing that we will not make any more of is just, is, is the time in people's lives. You know, we can make more of that by making more people and by making them live longer. But like, to some extent, that's a finite resource. It's also very clear that what we care about is often not attention specifically. It is attention of the people that we sort of consider to be part of our, our in-group, our culture. Like, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the attention of people in, um, you know, India. Despite the fact that like, my content actually reaches a lot of people in India.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I just don't think, I don't think about it.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And so like, that, that, you know, it seems like it's objective. And there's a really objective story to tell about it, but it also has this element of subjectivity to it. The other reason is that you can do things with attention. You really, it's getting harder and harder to turn money into attention. We're watching this with a lot of people who are trying to like, launch platforms and, you know.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  Like, like Quibi is like spending all this money, but they only got a couple million subscribers, right? And people aren't sticking and they have the best content, but it's, something's not working.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they got all, they, they did the traditional media thing where you get the famous people and you spend money marketing it and it didn't work. So it's kind of getting harder. Oh, why, why is that?

• 6:11Lewis Howes?

  Well, why, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about why is it harder and harder to monetize attention? Even when you have seemingly the best things lined up to grab attention.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And so, so that's like spending money to try and get attention. And, and we know how it works now. It's not a mystery anymore. We are very aware of the ways, more and more, every person is becoming more aware of the ways in which our attention is like, being attempted to be captured. And we are really wary of it and we are, uh, and we know when it seems fake. You know, if, if, if like, you're paying Rachel Brosnahan to say something nice about something, I can tell the difference when she's being paid versus when she's actually excited. And I just picked a name out of a hat there. I haven't actually seen.

• 6:59Lewis Howes?

  Is that the actress from?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Marvelous Mrs Maisel.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I actually loved her in House of Cards.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:07Lewis Howes?

  I don't know if you remember watching that from the early.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, early on in that series. Yeah.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. You're saying you can tell the difference between someone giving an authentic when they just say, you know, I'm not being sponsored by this product, but I just love this so much. I wanted to share it on my Instagram story. That probably does better than someone sitting there all professionally like, check out this product that's so, so I'm really excited.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  People are super aware of it. They like, we're really culturally sensitive to authenticity now. That's sort of the word that we use and I'm not entirely clear on what that word actually means, but we all have a kind of good idea of it. But it is always, it remains fairly easy to turn attention into money and that's actually getting easier. And so if you can have like, it, you, if you can build up the, the capturing of attention, the, the sort of relationship with an audience and actually provide them with value and they trust you, then there are ways to, you know, like even if money is the goal, there are ways to turn that into money.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  But ultimately I think that money doesn't need to be the goal because I think that there are lots of values to having that attention that aren't money.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's the goal?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  You could be shifting the world in a way that you prefer. I mean, I think that this is ultimately why we want money. It's to create a, a world that you prefer and.

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  Create an environment to create a experience that you enjoy more with things or places.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  It might be shoes. It might be charity. Like this is the thing people like, we do a lot of charity projects and people are always like, Hank and John are such good folks. And I'm like, I'm just buying the world I would prefer. It's the exact same as a new shirt. Yeah. I just would prefer a world in which fewer moms die.

• 8:47Lewis Howes?

  Because that, that world brings you more joy, more happiness.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it's a more stable world for like the future and for my children and, you know, child, I only have one child.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  With not children. Yeah. And.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And that is actually, to some extent, easier to do with attention. And that's why they call people who have our jobs, sometimes they call us influencers. Because what we actually do is like, we can affect things. And that's what attention can do, you know? And I think that attention, along with like the capability for good storytelling, which it's kind of hard to have our jobs if we aren't able to sort of capture like ideas into good stories.

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's the difference between attention and time?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  That's a great one. That's a great one. Yeah, I talk a lot about, in the first book, I talk a lot about this sort of two qualities of fame. There's the number of people who know who you are. And then there's the level of devotion that they have to you. So like a cult leader-

• 9:52Lewis Howes?

  So it's a breadth versus depth.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So there's the cult leader who has like 20 people who like think he's God. And then there's David Schwimmer, who like everybody knows who David Schwimmer is, but there's no like David Schwimmer fan club. And now I've picked on David Schwimmer.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  Maybe there is online somewhere, but it's not-

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Somewhere, yeah. Yeah, not the biggest group of people. And that's sort of, to me, a similar thing. Whereas like, time doesn't matter if the attention is being divided between five different things. So that's just a math problem then. Like if I'm playing, you know, if I'm looking at TikTok while watching a TV show, then like neither of those things are really getting my attention. And a lot of my attention is sort of being poorly spent because just like refreshing my TikToks to see how well they're doing isn't giving me- Did I just hit a nerve there?

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh no, I'm just laughing because I could see myself doing this and other people doing this. Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Isn't it like that attention isn't being spent on anything useful, but it is distracting me from something that might be a good, a good source for my attention. So attention is actually when like the mental activity is being devoted to something that, devoted to the thing that you are actually spending time doing.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  So attention is devotion, time is?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, um, you know, it's like acceleration, like you have to have both of them. You know, you have to have the, the movement and the, and the mass.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  They're both, but I'm hearing you say they're both limited resources, right? Cause you said attention is kind of the main limited resource.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, ti- time is ultimately the limited resource because we're all gonna die and we only have so much of it to spend. But we can be paying less or more attention during every moment of our lives. Like right now, I'm paying a ton of attention because I'm trying to seem interesting and I'm trying to really listen to you and also understand what I'm saying. And now I'm like doing that at a meta level, so I'm getting confused.

• 11:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And whereas a lot of my day, I spend, I, I spend time, but I don't spend a lot of attention.

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  And, and I sort of.

• 12:00Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean? You spend time, but you don't spend attention?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Ah, because I, I maybe, like, there might be a lot of inward stuff going on or things that I'm trying to distract myself from, or that I'm trying to find something interesting. Um, and this is the sensation of, that we all, we all know of wanting to be on Twitter, but not enjoying being on Twitter, or whatever the equivalent of that is.

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  We're sort of like searching for the next thing that will make me like have a sensation that like sensation seeking and, and that, that attention is not being spent well. The, the, the value of that attention is not converting to, yeah, the, the attention is not converting to value.

• 12:42Lewis Howes?

  Right. What do you think is the danger of monetizing attention then?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Um, well, I guess that's, there's two different ways to think about that. So, so as a creator, I'm, the first thought I had was monetizing that attention, meaning monetizing the attention that I have been given by people. So they've, they've given me a certain amount of their time and their respect. And I think that there's a huge danger in monetizing that in ways that are that I don't believe in or that I don't. And I think this is, this is a big balance with influencers, which is a word I hate, but it's when we're talking sort of in the marketing world, that's, that's what we're called.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  That you need to find the things that are actually going to help the people that are your people. And not the things that are, you know, like, like either of us could start a, start a pyramid scheme and make a bunch of money. Right. And like, we, we might eventually go to prison, but probably we just would lose all our credibility.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  That, that would most likely, but like we'd, along the path of, of losing our credibility, we'd probably make a bunch of money. But like, you don't want to do that because well, one, money isn't the thing anymore. And I think people are more and more aware of that. Two, there are actually ways to help people and make money along at the same time. And for me, you know, I, I, and I think like, I know that you're the same way. Some of that is like, there's this product, people should know about this product. This is why advertising actually exists is to tell people about a thing that exists that they don't know about that might help them. They're going to buy it if it helps. They're not going to buy it if they don't want it.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  There's also like making your own thing. And this is the thing that I love the most, like I have opportunities to create a business or a product that.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  You know, I have this asset that no one else has access to this like amazing group of people who trust me, whose trust I've earned. And who, who I take, I take them very seriously and like, they understand, like we have these shared values. And I can imagine a thing that might help them and then have it become real. Because that's becoming more and more easy these days, whether it's a physical product or, you know, an, an experience or something. And. And then, you know, I can like make that for them and it can deepen their experience of, you know, the community that they're a part of, but it can also be a big helpful

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  like like add to their lives.

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  As I mean, as someone who is, I mean, it seems like you've achieved a lot in many different areas of business and life. How do you manage time and attention on all the different companies, YouTube channels, podcasts, businesses that you're flipping events? How do you manage time and attention to accelerate the value and monetize them at the same time?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't do a good job of this. I'm not, I'm not, um, I, and I, sometimes I think that the people I hear who say that they're good at this are just lying because I can't imagine, I can't imagine actually being, um, careful or, uh, like serious about time management. My time management strategies are what is the thing that I'm most excited about and what is the thing that I'm most worried about? And sometimes those two things are weirdly enough, the same thing. Like I love solving hard problems. And so sometimes the thing that I'm really worried about is also something I'm really excited about. Oftentimes, because we are, you know, we are working, the thing that I'm most worried

• 16:24Speaker 01

  about is something that I would much rather not do. But I, you know, I find ways to, to, to do it. And I think that to some extent that's driven by anxiety. Um, and to some extent it's driven by obligation. Like I care about the people I work with. I care about my audience and I have an obligation to them. I, I have set it up so that like they rely on me to some extent. And that, a lot of what drives me is fulfilling obligations that I have to, to people who I respect.

• 16:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I think that I'm pretty good at, at working efficiently. I definitely get hyper focused and can drive for, you know, four hours without noticing that I've been hungry the whole time or I have to feed or whatever.

• 17:12Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. You hold your bladder. I can hold my bladder for literally 14 hours without moving on a plane if I need to.

• 17:19Lewis Howes?

  Because I've done it so many times, and I'm always like, why is it gonna help me when I'm like 60?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you just get those muscles real strong. That's how it works. Flexing them. You got, it's great. So for me, it's, it's kind of the, the intensity of the internal passion and the, the intensity of the fire that I need to put out, you know, like either, either compounding or competing.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  So I, what I really, I really do try to set my life up so that I have a lot of free time to screw around and.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  I think this is one of the most important things you just said, because I don't think enough creators give themselves what I call strategic messing around, where you're just, you're just throwing a frisbee, you're walking around the park, you're playing with a friend, you're, you know, I just got a scooter a few weeks ago and I literally scoot around my, my studio in a circle and make a game out of it of like, how many times can I go around without touching the ground? Stupid, time wasting exercises that unlock a potential. How important is that strategic messing around or whatever you call it for you?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's so important. And like for me, it's, it's not usually a scooter. Like I am obsessed with media. And so, downloading TikTok and being like, okay, how do I, how do I get my first 50,000 followers on TikTok? Like to me, that's a fascinating question. Like, and, and also like, not just how I would do it, because of course my strategy is going to rely on the last 10 years of audience building and like, people having some vague idea of who I am sometimes, but also watching how other people have done it, how they're doing it, what's taking off, what's working, what's interesting, and also,

• 18:54Speaker 01

  you know, the different areas, like the different cultures that exist on a single platform. I love to go into parts of Twitter that I don't usually spend time in and be like, the culture is different here. The people are different here. They care about different things. They talk in different ways. And it's like it's open for me to explore and learn about. For me, like that that curiosity about how humans connect to each other is a real driver for me. So I can.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  So so spending four hours on TikTok is not a waste of your time. It's a use of creative strategic time.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  It can be a waste of my time for sure, but sometimes it is not.

• 19:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the research phase of like the first couple of weeks of figuring out a platform, it's a good use of your time.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  Once you're on the platform and you've got content, you're just scrolling to scroll every day.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Lewis Howes?

  It's not a good use of what I'm here to say.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, TikTok is so weird because it really is very siloed and it it seems the people on the on the app talk about how the sort of the different parts of TikTok and the the part of TikTok that I sort of naturally was placed into constantly derives what they call straight TikTok.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Like, it's not, uh, it's not just about.

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

  What's your TikTok handle? I'm I'm on there as well. So I'm curious.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  I'm I'm Hank Green one because I didn't get Hank Green. I was too late, I guess.

• 20:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm following you right now. Okay.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  The uh, the and I think that straight TikTok is to some extent about sexual orientation, but it is more about it is more about like just sort of like normal TikTok. This is where all that like this is where people get, you know, tens of millions of of views, whereas on our side of TikTok, you know, Bean's TikTok, it's only getting like hundreds of thousands of views and sort of there's a pride around like, ooh, I made it to Bean's TikTok. TikTok served me bean content. And so I must be weird enough for TikTok to think I need beans on my timeline. It's really weird. It feels like walking into

• 20:55Speaker 01

  it's to some extent like walking into another country. Like I opened the app and I'm like, I have arrived.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  It's true.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  And a whole new place that I've never experienced before.

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  I know. And learning how to create in a different platform based on YouTube, based on the audio platform, based on Twitter, everything is you got to create specific for a platform if you really want to make off.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  It's just hard because then you have to create 10 different types of video. One for each platform and.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. For me, I like I almost never actually do it. But like what I'm doing on TikTok right now is probably like a month of TikTok and then I will stop forever. But I'll be like, I get it now. And that's what's important to me.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  So you just care about getting it. You don't care about growing attention on one platform.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  I think

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  Cause I just took a quick scroll and like a week ago you had five million views on a video. And so it seems like you're

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm doing okay on TikTok.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I what the question though. So I mean, this is like, I don't want this to be a whole conversation just about TikTok, but but

• 21:54Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  As an example of of how I imagine media, I think it's really important to note that when I get five million views on a TikTok, that's a deeply different thing than getting five million views on a YouTube video.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is just the monetization, like you can't monetize on TikTok effectively at all that and like this is a thing that I I think probably may eventually become a problem for them and they need to to figure it out. But more importantly than that, when I watch a TikTok, it is a very low impact experience for me. And so I know that that's the same for those people who watched my, those five million people who saw that TikTok like that was did not have a big impression on them. It's very hard. I do educational content. It's very hard to imagine doing, you know, educational content that sort of ties together from from video to video that actually sort of tells a coherent story where you learn something kind of deep on that platform.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  I can see, I could totally see doing some like informational bits and that's being done really well on the platform. I'd love to do some of it myself, but the i- it's almost as if, well, it's not just as if they have designed the platform for the content to be a low impact experience, so you don't feel bad about going to the next video. And you don't feel bad about skipping something. You don't feel bad about not liking something. And you're always sort of like thinking, well, maybe the next one will be better. Because sometimes it is and it feels really fun and like that was great. And that's how you spend four hours scrolling on TikTok. And so like TikTok has very intelligently, but and very explicitly sacrificed creator benefits for user experience.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  So as a person who makes content on the platform, the only benefits I get are sort of the dopamine of having somebody see my content or or my channel growing or whatever. But as a user, like, it is really easy. It's so much easier than YouTube where you've got all this content all on the side. The user experience just isn't that great. Like, compared, compared with this like seamless flowing experience, I think it does sort of hurt the, the sort of long-term

• 23:57Lewis Howes?

  The creator.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Ability of, of creators to sort of like build something lasting on the platform.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  I hear you there. I'm gonna be diving more into TikTok myself, but it sounds like you're, you're creating for a month and you're done for a life and you're

• 24:09Speaker 01

  We'll see, we'll see what happens. Give me some monetization tools. I might, might

• 24:13Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. Well, I guess the way you monetize is driving attention, gaining attention, driving attention to the next place and then either selling ads there or selling products, services.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've already been doing a little book promo there. And that's, that's a lot of why I'm on TikTok right now. It's like, well, I need to find another

• 24:31Lewis Howes?

  Got a book.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Other place to tell people about my book.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Now, as a early creator who has created multiple channels, lots of success, and just a creator in general, I look as a creator as more than just content, but businesses, creator of ideas, books, all these different things, who knows you're going to die, and is an atheist, how do you figure out what your purpose is if you don't know why you're here, who the creator is, I guess, or, or maybe, maybe you do know why you're here, what the creator is?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I, I don't. Um, I, yeah, I basically have never been a believer. Um, and my parents were sort of peripherally Christian. I don't know if they would appreciate me saying that. More culturally Christian than, than sort of like believers. Like you

• 25:21Lewis Howes?

  You grew up in Birmingham, right?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  I was born in Birmingham and then I grew up in Orlando, Florida.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And in my brother, who I, I do almost all of my creative projects with, he's, he's religious. He goes to church. He was a, uh, you know, he was in divinity school for a little while. And so like, we, but at the same time, like, we are able to like, not, there's no tension in our relationship about this because ultimately our values are not different. And our values actually probably come more down to a kind of humanist belief than to this, to, to like belief or not belief. So for me, you know,

• 25:59Lewis Howes?

  What are your core values together?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  That suffering should decrease, that community is important, that connection is important, that people need to be appreciated and they need to appreciate. So both sides of that equation.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Gratitude, yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, are super important and we like are are losing touch with them in society. And thoughtfulness, like imagining that other people are as complex as we are, because obviously they are, but it's easy to forget that and trying to be thoughtful and careful with with your actions.

• 26:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Like, that's not always gonna happen, but trying.

• 26:32Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I made a TikTok today that was mean and then I didn't post it.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Very simple.

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  Because you weren't thoughtful.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah, I I mean, it was really funny.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Uh, but I.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  Send it to text it to me separately and I'll be the judge. Yeah. So how do you figure out what your purpose is when you know you're gonna die and you

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  don't believe in in God?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I think it's, you know, you look up and you sort of realize how big the universe is. Like, you just look up into space and be like, wow, we are this one little thing. And it becomes clear that the thing that matters, and this isn't like, this is both, I think, objectively true and subjectively true. Like, we all know this, the thing that matters is other people. And like, how they imagine us, how we imagine them, how we help them, and how they help us, like where we fit into that equation. And and I like, it doesn't seem at all subjective to me, like that, you know, to some people, maybe like you you have like sort of a supervillain idea that it's just like, well, nothing matters. I like that does not read to me. It does not feel at all true.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And maybe this is just about feelings, but to me, like helping helping other people, leaving the world better than you found it, you know, trying to solve more problems than you create, like that kind of stuff is.

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  Why does that matter? And I'm not for or against you, but why is that? Why do humans matter if there's no creator or God or source of creation?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  We decide. Maybe some people think that's too much responsibility to put on on our shoulders, but we have collectively decided that, you know, we just, we as a society, believe that there is a lot of value in a human life and to some extent, infinite value in a human life. We do all kinds of things to help people and to help each other. And and especially when it's people that we know personally, like. It's it. It doesn't seem subjective when I think like I want my wife to be healthy and happy. I want my child to be healthy and happy like that doesn't like the yeah, that's that's sort of an internal thing. It's just in me, but it's a decision that I that that I would never question and have no interest in questioning.

• 28:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. I'm always fascinated by these topics and of just creation and I've been, you know, I've been I've studied in India meditation. And I have a lot of spiritual leaders on, and I know you you listen to a lot of different people as well. And you follow content that ranges on perspectives to continue to learn and deepen. And I think that's important for all of us to do while we're creators and putting out content is to constantly learn and question our beliefs.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  You know, I have I've I've been really frustrated to some extent by a lot of sort of atheist perspective and content in the world. That there's this kind of idea that this is the way forward. And that's not a thing that I feel like it's a to me, this is like a if you find your way to believing that people matter and that we need to protect them and decrease suffering and like create stable society and, you know, pursue justice. I don't really care how you got there.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And there's this kind of idea in the atheist movement, and I don't want to get like piled on for this, but that religion is like a source of a lot of the bad in the world. And I I could definitely see atheism being a source of a lot of bad in the world. Like, you know, I think that any any doctrine can be, anything can be used to to sort of create in groups and out groups and say that the other the the out group is bad and and that is almost always a long term path toward more suffering and less justice.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think the the groups that believe in acceptance, believe in inclusion, believe in.

• 30:16Lewis Howes?

  You know, okay, you can have your opinion and we can still be friendly and not make people right or wrong.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  Uh, obviously, certain things are right or wrong based on laws and, you know, hurting human beings in that way.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:27Lewis Howes?

  But in terms of just like a belief, if it's not hurting me, then

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:31Lewis Howes?

  The group, whether it's a religious group, a non-religious group that supports inclusion, that supports love, being a solution, helping in suffering, I'm all for that.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:42Lewis Howes?

  And, uh, you know, I think atheists could get a bad rap. People who have religion could get a bad rap because they might say, well, they were so judgmental or they were sexual abusers or this or that and preaching something.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  And I think that, yeah, people can definitely be hurt by the structures that sort of they're forced into or that they, that they sort of never know that there's an alternative to that. And I don't want to take away from that for sure, but like

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  People who find joy or, and, and meaning, like, it can be, it can be astrology, like there's, there's a lot of like, so I'd make like a lot of science YouTube and there's sort of a lot of like ragging on astrology, which is like, to me, it's like, well, yeah, but I, but like to, if, if it's, if it's interesting to you, if it's like a way to talk about yourself and discover and connect with other people in your lives.

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  And it brings you meaning and joy.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  It's a framework.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Exactly.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  I feel, yeah, I feel like it's

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying, so you're saying the moment you were born, that day doesn't dictate your entire life and who you are and all your personality types?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I

• 31:41Lewis Howes?

  That you'd be shot here in LA if you said that.

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, um, about, you know, we have a very similar, I guess, ability. And that was our challenge of reading and learning growing up. And when I went to eighth grade, I went to a private boarding school in eighth grade by choice. Most kids get sent away because they're bad. I actually, uh, grew up in a small town, Delaware, Ohio, and I begged my parents to send me away. To this private boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri, because I could see that I wasn't connecting well with the the kids in my town and school. I was starting to do things that I wasn't proud of. And I just knew that I wasn't going down the right path. And I wanted to get out of this

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  kind of small town energy vibe. My parents weren't happy and I could sense it at the time. They were gonna get divorced. And I was just like, get me out of here. My older siblings were off to college. I was felt alone. And so I begged them for a whole summer to send me away to this the school that I learned about. And they wouldn't let me go until you convince someone enough, I guess, you get enough of their time and attention, and you can persuade them. They finally allowed me to go to the school. And when I went there, they tested me for my reading and math and everything. And I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade. And for the rest of my schooling there, I always had tutors trying to get me caught up so that I could finish high school and actually get into college. And I and I

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  almost flunked out of English my senior year of high school, not having the ability to go to college, barely passed luckily to get past the minimum requirements for college. But you struggle as well with reading and

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  and learning, isn't that right?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I was diagnosed with a learning disability when I was earlier than that, when I was in elementary school. And, you know, what sort of went off for special tutoring, special classes. I still do not read fast. Thank God for audiobooks. Thank God for audio stuff. I love to read. But it is and it is not frustrating until I compare myself to someone else. So for me, if I just if I just read at my own pace, and it's like, this book's gonna take me two, two months to finish, that like, I like it the whole time. But then if I like, look over at my wife, and she's gotten through like, 10 books in the same period of time, I get I get kind of down on myself.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And my brother is also obviously like a ravenous reader and consumes a ton, just a ton of books. And there's also in our own community that we've built online, because a lot of it was sort of early on built on John's career as an author. There's a lot of readers in our community. And so there's a lot of talk about like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a hundred books this year, like the 50 book challenge. And it's just like, does not compute to my brain.

• 34:34Lewis Howes?

  I could read three books in a year. It's a huge celebration.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's funny because I'm like the leader of this community, but I can have my feelings kind of hurt by it.

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  When they're, when they're talking about, but, but of course that's like, it's just different abilities. And I, I recognize that I shouldn't feel this way, but I still do sometimes.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is a superpower you gained from not having the, uh, uh, reading ability or dyslexia, which I have?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:02Lewis Howes?

  Still today, when I read, like even out of my own book, if I'm reading something aloud for a video, I still sometimes have to pause, sometimes say the wrong word that I'm looking at. And then just have to accept myself every moment, not be worried about the judgment of other people.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I have to, I read off a teleprompter for a living, one of my jobs.

• 35:23Lewis Howes?

  So hard.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  And that took me, it was, it was, it was, so it's, there's this period of time when you're not good at something where it just like.

• 35:34Lewis Howes?

  Hurts.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it's so easy to be motivated when you're succeeding. And I, like, that early time, and I went home, you know, I, I started doing this and I knew that it was going to be really hard to do this job. It was my own job, so I could have like done it a different way, but I knew it was going to be really hard if I couldn't get this down. And I went home and I would just read poems out loud and I would read, I would just like find stuff and I would read it out loud. I'd read it out loud, weird sentences, the weirdest stuff I could find that didn't make sense. And I concentrated on how my eyebrows would move because like if you're, when you're reading, sometimes your face stops moving all the ways it should move. And I like, like, and it was, I wouldn't have done it honestly if.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  I didn't have all these employees who were gonna be sitting in the room with me while I was recording this stuff.

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  If I was gonna be doing it by myself, I'd be able to just like take all of the time that it took. But instead, I just like pushed through it and and now I'm very good at it.

• 36:37Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting that the more, you know, for me, I was terrified because of my learning disability of public speaking, because in school, when the class, when the teacher would ask us to read aloud, like a paragraph or whatever in class, I don't know if they ever did this with you. We would read aloud in front of the class and I would just tremble and stutter and

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  just

• 36:57Speaker 01

  You're like

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  I'm literally having my pants.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Flashbacks.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, just miserable anticipating the my turn on how I can get up and go to the bathroom and how I could stay pass without them making fun of me, whatever.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  And when I learned to public

• 37:12Speaker 01

  And we know that you can hold your pee for 14 hours.

• 37:14Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  It can't be that.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I I remember after I graduated college, I was playing actually arena football in Huntsville, Alabama, near where you grew up. And I got injured. And as I was trying to figure out what I'm gonna do the rest of my life, now that my one dream, my one skill and talent is over, what am I gonna do, because I have no other talents? I met someone who was a public speaker who said, the greatest skill you can give yourself is learning public speaking and there's the ability to be able to communicate your ideas, your thoughts, your words in some type of format that makes sense peacefully. And whether you have a job, you're a business owner, you're gonna need to be able to communicate ideas.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  And that was the greatest gift I gave myself, which was going to Toastmasters every week for a year, humiliating myself and continually showing up until I could speak confidently enough to make sense. How, you know, I feel like these, the fears we have are the things we need to lean into. The disabilities we have are the things that when we go all in on them and master it, now you're really good at this thing, right?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I mean, I don't, I am not dyslexic. I have what was then called a sensory integration dysfunction. I don't even know what they call it now. And, and so like, there are just pieces of, pieces of information that take extra long to sort of like get from my senses to my brain.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  And not all information is that way, but, but, um, and some, some information is like magnified. And this was extra the case when I was a child where I had to sort of like, was like, physical touch could be really hard for me and like, like that's not a thing for me anymore. But also like, would definitely have been diagnosed ADHD if I was growing up these days. I have a, you know, obviously there's a lot of people with ADHD who are really effective. And, you know, I think that there is, there's like a misnomer that just because like, you might not be perfectly suited for the environment in which you are supposed to learn in this society, that you are not like capable of doing like all kinds of other things. But I, I do feel like I have some, I don't know what these, like, what, what my abilities

• 39:33Speaker 01

  to like synthesize information for other people really effectively. Like, I feel like that comes from me having a hard time getting the information into my head and also being like, like mindful as that process is happening and understanding how my own information synthesis works, how my own knowledge building works. I don't know why I'm really mindful of that stuff. Maybe it's because I've just been trying to teach people for the last 15 years on the internet, but I'm super mindful of how I learn. And I think that that helps, and maybe it's because I had a learning disability and like, I, I was sort of like by tutors told, like, like, as I was learning stuff, we were sort

• 40:16Speaker 01

  of like looking at the ways I was learning it, um, that I, you know, I can sort of like rewind my own process of knowledge building and then like do it again for other people, but explicitly instead of just like. You know, trying to build it, trying to have them build it themselves.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's what I really admire about you. And I think we're similar in a sense that, you know, with your YouTube channel Crash Course, which is like these two-minute, three-minute clips that just simplify something complex.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  That's what I think is really interesting. And you make it visual and you make it fun and you make it interesting where it's like, oh, I can break this down. Whereas when I look at a big textbook that's 500 pages that it says psychology 101, it makes me want to fall asleep in the sense of,

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  I'm not gonna be able to get through this. So because it's packaged in a challenging format, this must be challenging to understand.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:09Lewis Howes?

  And why even try when I can't even read the words on the first page? And I have to read it over and over for 20 minutes to just remember the first page. I guess I don't understand psychology. I guess I don't understand sociology. I guess I don't understand history, whatever the topic is.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  So when you synthesize the information and put it into, oh, here's a dummy's version of videos, I guess, for, I don't know if that's what you guys were going for, but that's what I look at. It's like the how-to dummy guide for

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  life and everything. I was like, this is the answer. And that's what I try to do, which is like bridge the gap from complex ideas of guests I have on to, to people like myself can understand it.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's really effective. Like what you do is also really effective. I, I, I love that format where it's, you know, it's like this, you know, it's not like you don't know stuff. It's you don't know that stuff.

• 42:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  And, and, but also like the lack of shame about it. Where it's just like, of course I don't know this. Like I'm, the, I, I feel like one of the greatest things that we can do is like break down our sort of walls over vulnerability and curiosity, where it's just like, we're not supposed to know everything. We're not supposed to, anytime any person in this world feels shame about being curious about something, I think is like the, the worst thing that society can do to people. Cause curiosity is the only way we bridge gaps. It's the only way we build knowledge. It's the only, like it, to me, it's one of the, the things that's always there for me when I am failing and do feel down and can't really find the way.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  To like continue my my process of self-development is like I always find joy in in discovering new things about the world.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  I used to be uh never raise my hand in class because people would laugh when I would ask dumb questions, right? And um and it made me stop wanting to be curious in in class in school. And it's why I really didn't pay attention in school because I was like, everything is going by so fast. Every lesson plan, I'm not getting the concepts. And so I just cheated my way all through high school. I've I've said this many times before, I cheated on homework, I cheated on quizzes on tests. I I use my other abilities of of vision to see the Scantrons around me and say, how can I hack my way to getting a D plus? And just getting by because there was no other way.

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  No matter how many tutors, how much time I studied a night, we had mandatory study hall for two hours. I just wasn't able to with that system.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  And what I realized is after school is when I said, I don't care what people think of me anymore of the dumb questions I ask. I'm just gonna ask them because I'm curious. And I think for the last fifteen years, that has been one of my best skills is asking the dumb questions that I used to get made fun of for asking. But people still want to know the answers to because we don't know everything. How are we gonna memorize every subject in school and be like this? I mean, except for my producer Ben, who's like a fact wizard. Every time I'm like, who's this guest? And he lists off twenty things about each person. I'm like, you're a machine. But for human beings like myself, it's uh, you know, I gotta ask these dumb questions, so.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know what that reads as as adults? It reads as confidence, you know? It it reads as like, I don't know this thing and I want to, and I'm not ashamed that I don't know it. And that that doesn't read as, you know, stupidity, it reads as confidence.

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  I like that, I like that a lot. Now, you you know, you've chased a lot of, I guess, dreams over the years. You've done a lot of things. Uh, we talked about this for a little bit, but I want to dive in a little more. The difference between the power of chasing one dream and going all in on it versus doing a lots of things, which it seems like you did a lot of things really well. But if you would have went all in on one or two things over the last fifteen years, do you think you would have been? More successful, more financially well off, more a bigger audience, more famous. What is the, what do you think?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. I don't, I, I convince, I say that to myself all the time, that like if I could just focus on this one thing, it would be so big and good and powerful and useful and, but I, but I keep, you know, getting distracted by that other thing over there that I've also, that also requires my attention and I have lots of obligations to fulfill in that space as well. But also with those two things, there's also this third thing that I haven't even started yet that I'm really excited about that I'm gonna go for.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  And then, and then 10 other things that I have ideas around.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so I try not to think too much about it because like I, I think that that's sort of a negative thought that I'm, it's like a self sabotage.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  It's suffering too.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Where it's like, if only I could, if only, but like I can't. Like I have to be, one, I have to be true to who I am, which is like, and, and also I have to use the fuel that I have. And I recognize that I like to start things more than I like to finish them, more than I like to sort of.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

  Grow them. Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, and I know that, um, but that doesn't mean that I don't like it. So I like it. So I'm gonna do it. And, and I also have to be aware, and I'm better at this now, that I need a plan for if this thing succeeds. I need a plan for how to do it year two, when I have less fuel around that idea.

• 46:40Lewis Howes?

  What do you say to the creators? Cause I get this all the time. People ask me in our, in our private membership site, well, Lewis, I've got this business idea and I've got these three other things that I'm so passionate and excited about, which one do I do? What do you say to people that are super creative, want to do a lot of things, but obviously there's only limited time and resources? If you don't have the investment, if you don't have the team and it's you kind of as the solo creator, uh, solopreneur type, what do you say to people like that?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  I say, if you have the, the, the gas in your tank, which is like, it's, it's a usually mostly made out of enthusiasm for the idea. And like where that enthusiasm comes from, it varies. Um, if you have the gas in your tank. Yeah, light it up, turn the ignition, go and, and yes, focus on, on one thing. The thing that is most exciting to you. And when you are, and this is, this is very important, and I know this about myself. When you think, I'm gonna work on that other thing for a little bit. Know, like, know that thought and understand that that thought is self sabotage.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  And it's saying to you, you're not, I'm not sure that this is actually gonna work. So I want to, I want to focus on something else, even though this is much more exciting, more interesting. And I've chosen this to be the thing. That thought that you want to go work on something else, or you want to focus on something else, is coming from a place of, I'm worried this might not succeed. And so I don't want to try, like, I don't want to focus on this anymore because now I'm afraid, afraid of the potential outcome. If you're afraid that it might not succeed, you either have to determine that it won't and say, this will not succeed, and so I'm going to stop working on it. Or I'm going to sort of back burner it, like, maybe sort of like have it in the back of my head and still be working on ideas for it.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Or you have to, you have to convince yourself that you're wrong and that it will, and that it does have a good chance of success. And in general, like, one of my, the, the early creators of online video, one of the first guys to make video blogs, a guy named Zay Frank, he ran BuzzFeed Video for a long time, but before that, he made this show that was not even YouTube, because it was before YouTube, he just uploaded it to his website. He has this idea called brain crack. And brain crack is that idea that you're keeping in your head because it looks so beautiful and perfect when it's in there. And the moment you start to take it out, it gets all dingy and dirty and full of the dust of the world and it's not perfect anymore. And so you keep it in there and you're addicted to it. And you just like, keep coming back to this perfect idea that's in your head and you're

• 49:21Speaker 01

  thinking about the idea instead of doing the idea. And your brain, like, what we understand now, that we didn't really even understand back then, is that you're, like, by thinking about that idea, your brain is getting the satisfaction of kind of actually doing it. We do this with exercise too, where we, if we think about exercise, it actually convinces us we don't need to exercise because we like, thought about it. So if you're thinking about the idea but not executing it, you are actually... Preventing yourself from executing it. You are doing a thing that is slowing you down. You just need to get, you need to get it out onto the table or into the code, or however you're going to execute this thing.

• 49:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  And, and

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  What does it do to us when we think about the book idea for five years? When we think about launching the video channel for two years? When we research obsessively and, and talk about the idea, but we never actually implement the first step? What does that do to us?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yep. I mean, it, what I can tell you as a novelist, uh, which I can call myself now because I've written two novels. When I just written one, I feel like I couldn't use that, that phrase.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Is that thinking about a book and thinking about a story is nothing compared to writing it. Like writing the story is at least 10x the, the creative endeavor as sort of like ideating around it. Like typing is where all of the work gets done. You know, I can, and, and it's important to like, take breaks from the, the typing and go for a scooter ride or take a shower or something. And like work on a problem that you've got with, with your, you know, with your characters or with the plot or something. Because book writing is a lot of problem solving, but all of the best work gets done when my fingers are on the keyboard. And, and I don't know what it does to me internally to just think about it.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  But what I, what I do know is that those ideas in my head, I'm not seeing the real problems with them. I'm seeing them as perfect and that it's going to be great. And it, and like, until I start to actually write, I don't understand the magnitude of the problem I'm trying to solve. The magnitude of the, of the, the plot I'm trying to create or how that's actually going to end up playing itself out. And there is, yeah, doing is at least 10 times as effective as thinking.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  What would you recommend to someone who's got three big ideas in their mind? One's a creative project, one's a business, one's a Whatever. And it's like, okay, my friend Rory Vaden talks about procrastin- he calls it procrastinate on purpose. Where he's like, okay, you've got this really great idea. You want to do this thing?

• 52:05Lewis Howes?

  Don't think about it right now unless you're gonna do it right now and put it like on the back burner where you're not obsessing about it. You're like, I like this idea for the future. This is a six month out goal to start. And then if six months comes, okay, you know what? It's still not ready. It's another year out goal. You put it on the back burner as opposed to talking about this thing.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  What advice do you have to creators who are thinking about all these ideas and aren't doing it?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, so the ideas are not all the same, but I, I tend to think of things in terms of business models.

• 52:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Which my publisher likes, uh, because it, it means that I'm thinking about the marketing of the book while I'm writing the book. I'm thinking about the audience for the book while I'm writing the book. It's a creative endeavor for me, but part of that creative endeavor is imagining how it will reach people. Which is a huge thing when you're making online video like that. Nobody makes a YouTube video. That is successful without, it happens very rarely without like thinking pretty critically about how it's going to reach people. But like, build a business model, like take the time and like, if you've got these three ideas. Spend time on each of them and there's some great tools for how to build a business model. There's like a, I think it's called. Business model generation is a, is a book that I've used.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  And it's sort of like, you know, not every business fits exactly into the sort of like stakeholder. Like, like thing that they've created, but like sometimes you just don't fill in every box on the sheet. But e- even if it is a creative project, I think that it, you know, I think it's, it's worthwhile to sort of like put it into a framework. Write those three ideas down and see which one has the most problems and discard that one for now.

• 53:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  You see which one is the most exciting and that you're most enthusiastic about. Cause like, I really think that, um, that creativity requires a lot of fuel. And, and people's fuels come from very different places. But I think it's very, it's, it's really powerful to identify what thing is going to drive you the most because you need drive. Especially if you're like working a full-time job and trying to do this thing and trying to take care of your family and trying to maintain relationships. Like you need, you need drive.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  You do. And your health and everything. I mean, and your, so your book is coming out, uh, very soon. It's called A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. Appreciative of people who teach lessons in a story like The Alchemist is my favorite book. One that is short and it's easy to read. Um, but it tells life lessons in a cool story.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:33Lewis Howes?

  Should we be thinking about influence? Uh, should we be thinking we need to become famous as a personal brands and build influence to get attention? Or, or not build a personal brand? Isn't personal branding and a business brand mixing a lot now? You kind of need

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:53Lewis Howes?

  Face now with the company to make, to connect to an idea. You can't just have a logo of a brand with no face anymore.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  What, everyone's an influencer like I'm asking a bunch in one question. But what's your thoughts? What's your thoughts on what we should be thinking about as individuals in terms of building a personal brand and businesses?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think so. One of the things about fame is that the, the, one of the reasons why it's so valuable is that is it is inherently scarce because of the inherent scarcity of attention, uh, of attention. And so it's, you know, there are, there are ways. And I like, this is something that I think a lot about. Um, I, I think that when we are like the first, our first sort of exposure to, you know, people who have a lot of attention being paid to them. The tendency is to think, this isn't always, but most people think that looks really desirable. And it's not something that everybody can have. And so there is that, there's that scarcity. It's just like gold where it's like, there's not very much of it. So you want it just by its inherent scarcity. There's also the element of influence.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  There's also like, you know, the, the knowledge that there might be, you know, money and, and power and, you know, who, whoever you're attracted to also might be interested in that. Um, and so like there, there's a lot of, a huge amount of, of value there and we, but we also tend to focus on the ways that it happens that we are paying attention to, which is the people who are most famous. And so that's sports stars and it's musicians and it's actors and politicians. Yeah, exactly. But what I've seen as I've gotten, as I've gotten older is that, you know, I live in Missoula, Montana, not a big town, not a lot of famous people here. I have the most Twitter followers

• 56:41Speaker 01

  of anyone in Montana, which is, which is, you know, not, I would, I would have, I would be like 8,000 on the list if I lived in LA. I have this, and I, and it's one of the reasons why I live in Montana is because I get to like, watch people find value in these really wonderful ways that, that are not about having hundreds of thousands of people pay attention to you. I know I have a lot of friends who are involved in community theater and, you know, we, we have a great community theater here and they make amazing shows and they put them on for audiences of 100 or 200 people and they do that for a couple of weeks and then the show ends. And it's extremely valuable. You know, it's such a wonderful experience to be in the audience. It's also a wonderful experience to be in the show. And I also have

• 57:24Speaker 01

  that experience with like friends who work in organic agriculture and like they are really well respected in the organic seed movement. And like, I don't, I wouldn't know that the organic seed movement exists if I didn't have my friend who works in that, that world.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  And wrote the PDF of the month for the community.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. She's like super influential and important in that space. And, you know, we, and like she gains a lot of value from it, both because she's important and influential in that space, and also because she's doing really important and good work. So, so do we need to build reputation? Yeah. Do we, like, are we now in a world where personal reputation really kind of is going to start to and already is superseding brand reputation? Yeah. And, and, and

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  I mean, even with, I mean, with everyone being canceled and cancel culture, it's like, it's even more important. And it seems like it almost doesn't matter how much good you do. If you say one thing wrong or do one thing against the mob, your whole reputation is canceled. And it doesn't matter if you donated a hundred million dollars and won five Super Bowls or whatever it is. It's like you have to be so

• 58:33Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of times it's like legitimate misunderstanding. I think sometimes it's like, sometimes it's, it's like, People get a little bit too in their heads about how how great they are and so they don't think they can make a mistake. I like to be very aware of the fact that I can make mistakes, very ready to talk to other people about when they think I've done something wrong. But one of the mechanisms of influence is that like it's, you know, one of the ways that you can gain influence is by finding a problem and calling attention to it. And if you think you found a problem with someone and you're like, this person, you know, has said some really hurtful things that I think does society a lot of harm.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And and sort of build a narrative around that, like to some extent, this is another way of influence transfer and it can happen really fast.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  It's like you can be the one to call out one person, have no following, but then get ten views on your video and then all of a sudden have perspective and influence.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and sometimes I've I've seen that happen in both ways where it's like legitimate, like we're legitimately finding something that like, oh, this person is bad. And then I've seen it happen in ways where like they've taken things out of context really intentionally and made a video that has a really clickbaity title and it's getting tons of views and I'm just like, oh, my God. Now I have to like weigh in on this and be like, no, this person is good. And then everybody's gonna be mad at me.

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  I know, right? What's the I mean, I love the quote from Jim Carrey. I just pulled it up. I hope everyone could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of. So they will know that it's not the answer where.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm hearing. There's literally a character in my book who says, who says, who says that one of the characters helps make the other character really rich. And says, I didn't just make you rich and famous so that you would know that, so that you would know that that that won't make you happy. But that was a nice benefit. It was a good side effect.

• 1:00:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Now you know that it actually isn't that great.

• 1:00:32Lewis Howes?

  Right, but the key, what I'm hearing you say is, we should all be trying to figure out creative ways to gain attention to get our work out there.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  And I think to build reputation, yeah, to build reputation, and that doesn't have to be on the internet. You know, like, that's, part of that is in our lives. We should have a reputation in our families for fulfilling obligations, for caring for each other, for, you know, helping out when times are hard. We should have a reputation in our communities as simple as like, that guy is really nice to the barista at the coffee shop. Like, we should build good reputation in ways that we can. And I think that that's one of the really strong mechanisms that actually holds society together. So, eh eh, but then, like, outside of that, as it gets bigger, as you start having, you know, more following, and as fame has fractured, it used to be that, like, there are way more famous people now than there used to be.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  It's just that, like, you know, the number of people and the level of attention that they have from like Bing Crosby days where 50% of America listened to one radio show.

• 1:01:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Like, that has, that has fractured, and there's been a lot of, a lot of that, and it continues. And I think that, you know, that Twitter and TikTok are really sort of effective ways of seeing how that fracturing has happened. But I, I think that it isn't about becoming LeBron James. You know, I think that every time you ask the question, how do I build reputation? How do I build attention? You also need to be asking, why am I doing that? What is the purpose? What is the thing that I'm going to do with this asset when I have it, while I have it? How to use that? The thing that influencers do with almost all of their influence is build their own influence. And that's sort of like ignored, but like, that's what mostly we do. But like, what are you gonna do with that once you have it?

• 1:02:16Lewis Howes?

  How do you get a shift attention towards doing good in the world, towards solving problems, towards helpful solutions?

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and no, I don't, I don't know if this is like, uh, if this is universal, but for me anyway, that actually feels much better than having the attention, like, doing something useful with it.

• 1:02:33Lewis Howes?

  Well, I mean, the science of happiness is all about when you do for someone else is when you're some, some of the most happiest people are because they do for someone else, whether it's their family member, whether it's giving time, whether it's a kind gesture, whether it's money, whatever may be.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  It's the act of gratitude. It's the act of doing for other people. That's when we're the happiest.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:02:56Lewis Howes?

  And

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I have a, I have a friend who's PBS, she's a PBS show that's launching today as we record this. So not today as it's coming out. And, um, and I met her when she was in college and she was just like so smart and interesting and funny. That we've worked together on some projects and I mentored her some and like now she's got a PBS show.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  Ah, that's great.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  It's, I'm so much more happy that Emily has a PBS show than I would be if I got one.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Um, and like I would be extremely happy, but like there's something much more pure about that happiness that it's about like.

• 1:03:31Lewis Howes?

  Seeing others succeed that you've helped and you've mentored.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  And I just know that she's like such a great person and she deserves every bit of it. Um, that I like, that just feels really good. It feels way, way better than any, like almost anything else I've ever done.

• 1:03:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool, man. That means you got a good heart. That means you got a good mission. Um.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Well, and you're, but you're right that like the research shows that this is true. It's not just like good people. It's like people are happier when they help others than when they help themselves.

• 1:03:55Lewis Howes?

  That's it, man. So I, you know, I've been saying this more a lot lately. Is that, cause everyone talks about, you know, I ask about greatness and everyone asks me about greatness. And I've been saying a lot more lately that. Success is for ourselves and greatness is for others. You know, when you achieve greatness is when you go beyond yourself, when your own. Desires, your own dreams for me, for what I want, what I'm not getting, what I want to accomplish. Towards, okay, yeah, I want to accomplish certain things and be of service to other people through that act, through that. Creative endeavor, through that business, through that artistic expression, through that song, whatever it may be. And so I think that intention is what makes people great when they.

• 1:04:38Lewis Howes?

  Create, make, live, be in a place of service.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I agree with you and I think it can be, it can be hard to get to that space because our minds often tell us that the, the main thing is like fulfilling that, that hit. I was actually talking to Ben, your producer, a little bit before this and he had a great point that, you know, I, I was sort of making the case that a lot of people are trying to build influence to, to make money and to, uh, and to build more influence and just have more of it. And, and he was like, yeah, that's true, but also I think you need to recognize that people are doing it just because like, it feels good. They're not even thinking about it. It just feels, and he's

• 1:05:17Lewis Howes?

  The dopamine, the dopamine hit.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, like that short-term feel-good, that like, it's not gonna last at all. It's like drinking a Coke, you know, it's just like, that feels good. I like that. Like, I won't, I will in no way feel better five minutes from now because I had a Coke, but I enjoyed it that instant that it happened.

• 1:05:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How do we get away from, uh, you know, building influence to feel good in the moment towards building influence to impact others long-term?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  I think the, like, the, it, it comes with mindfulness, like, it comes with thoughtfulness, like, actually thinking about it, noticing why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling. And then, and, and sort of thinking, okay, like, I have these powers, I have these privileges, I have these, like, things that not everyone has access to. And it's not about, like, whether I deserve that, because I think that, like, that's a totally wrong frame. I don't know that anyone, it's very hard to sort of imagine deserving being a, a sensical topic when there are, you know, billions of people who can't, don't have clean water to drink.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  So it's not about deserving, it's about what you do with the, the things, the gifts that you've been given, the, the power that you have.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I love this, man. I'm really glad we got connected here and I hope when you're when you can travel to LA, we can hang more. I've got a couple of questions for you.

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  And I want to make sure people get your book because I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be really powerful for people to learn about these things in a story format. And I know your, your last book was a number one New York Times bestseller. So I can only imagine how much better you are.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  This is the, this is the sequel. So if you want to start with the first one, it's extra, it's cheap because it's in paperback. It's called a, an absolutely remarkable thing. So you can start there if you want.

• 1:07:04Lewis Howes?

  There you go. And this is the, the sequel, a beautiful, a beautifully foolish endeavor, which is all about attention and influence and how to get it and why we need it and the evils of it and all these things.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And also the, the platforms that consolidated it, how much dang power they have now.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  Right. And the privacy issues and all that stuff, which I'm sure you, you talk about in the story. You're at, you're at Hank Green dot com, Hank Green on Twitter, Hank Green on Insta, Facebook.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Hank Green one on Tik Tok.

• 1:07:36Lewis Howes?

  Hank Green one. You know what I got earlier? I got at Lou, I'm at Lewis Howes everywhere except for Tik Tok. I got at Lewis.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 1:07:44Lewis Howes?

  What I mean is like, I probably should have kept the branding all the way through, but it just looks cleaner that I want to get on Insta as well that I'm like, you know. So anyways, um, you've got a lot of cool stuff. I loved your video in the past. I think it was four or five years ago about honey badgers. Remember that one?

• 1:08:02Lewis Howes?

  So, uh, you've got some great stuff that people can check out. And if they just go to Hank Green dot com, they can see it all. And the book will be there to get your books, all that stuff.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:08:12Lewis Howes?

  I want to ask you a couple of final questions. This one's called the three truths. So I'd like for you to imagine for a moment a hypothetical question, uh, even though you don't believe in the, the afterlife or, or, or those things. Imagine this is your last day on earth, many, many years from now, and you've created every dream you could ever want to make. You've written a thousand books, you've changed millions of lives, you've done the, the ideas, it's all happened. The family's great, all that stuff. But for whatever reason, you gotta take all of your writing, your work, your videos with you to the next place, wherever that may be for you. So no one has access to your content, businesses, apps anymore. But you get to leave behind a piece of paper

• 1:08:55Lewis Howes?

  where you get to write down three things you know to be true from all your experiences, all your lessons that you've learned that you would want to share with the world. What would you say are your three big lessons or three truths you'd share with us?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Um, I think, yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think we hit all of them in this talk. I think number one, you gotta let yourself be excited about things. You gotta like care about stuff and you know, yeah, I guess that's, that's the simple version, that the vulnerability that comes along with that is strength, not weak, weakness.

• 1:09:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Um, helping others succeed feels better than success.

• 1:09:33Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  And I guess just stay curious. Cause I think that's the thing that we're all born with and I think sometimes we lose it and it's not something that like you should become curious, you should hold on to it.

• 1:09:45Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, I like that one. Stay curious. I feel like that's all I do is just ask questions.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Lewis Howes?

  I'm a curious mind.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Lewis Howes?

  Uh, I want to acknowledge you Hank for, for your curiosity throughout the years of diving into creative endeavors and putting that curiosity out through your, your body of work, your, your artistic endeavors through events to businesses, to videos, to everything you've been doing. You've got an incredible gift of taking ideas and creativity and, and alchemizing it and bringing it to the world. So I acknowledge you for the consistent effort of showing up and putting things out there, which I know how challenging it is, but it's been extremely helpful for the world and it's been a big service. So I acknowledge you for that.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  And I'm just grateful for our time today. And my final question is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Um, this is one I've said before, but solving more problems than you create.

• 1:10:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I love it. Hank, thank you, man, for being here. I appreciate you very much.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:10:53Lewis Howes?

  My friend, thank you so much for taking the time to listen today to this episode. Make sure to share this with someone who you think will find it valuable. You have the ability and the power to change someone's life today just by sharing this message. Then make sure to go follow Hank on all of his platforms and check out his new book, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. Again, please leave us a review. A five-star review is always welcome and let us know what you thought about this episode. And if you want inspirational messages from me every single week, then text me right now. That's right, you can text me the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960. Make sure to check out the podcast description right below this on your Apple Podcasts or Spotify

• 1:11:38Lewis Howes?

  for links to other impactful podcast episodes related to this one. And I want to close with a quote from Barack Obama. "When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." I'm so grateful for you, I love you, and as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.