Jay’s Must-Listens: Making Friends as an Adult Is Hard! (8 Powerful Lessons on Building Friendships That Last) Ft. Trevor Noah and Mel Robbins

24:25Jay Shetty:Like, I think that's what our life is made up of. Like, life isn't just, we're not just surrounded by people that help us grow because we're obviously taking from them as well. And we don't want to be in a position where we're only giving. We want to be able to grow. So it's almost like we have two sets of groups in our life at any real given time. Would you agree with that? Well, I would just say, trust your joy. I think joy is a great GPS. And so, yeah, I'm not in any way suggesting be around people only who fuel you and who help you become you at your best. I'm simply saying it's about what's healthy.

25:00It's about your joy. It's about being around people who you vibe with, who understand you, who have similar values, who support you and who encourage you. So I think your community is definitely a key, an absolutely key form of wealth.

25:14Jay Shetty:and you mentioned this earlier I want to come back to it was this three great friends rule and I love that you talk about having three great friends I heard recently somewhere I can't remember I was browsing on social media and someone said you need 3am friends as well like friends you can call at 3am and they'll pick up the phone how do you know what is the quality of a great long-term friend what is a great friend I'm not sure we even know anymore a great friend is someone you can be yourself with and they still love you a great friend is i had a line in the book you know you're in a foreign country in 3 a.m they hop on a plane and they come get you a great friend is someone who you can laugh with great friend is someone who you're going through your most difficult times and they'll listen to you for hours.

26:08A great friend is someone who accepts you, someone who helps you be seen. A great friend is someone who, when you're with them, you feel joyful versus depleted. So I think it's really important, you know, in this world where we are maximalists, we want to be all things to all people. We want to have so many different friends. Focus on three great friends. We want to read 100 books, master three books. Maybe it's Jobs' – Isaacson's Autobiography on Jobs, like you mentioned. Maybe it's The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. Maybe it's The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Maybe it's Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, one of my favorite books of all time.

26:58But I think just being a minimalist is so powerful. Build your life around a few things. Even in work, I mentioned it. Rather than pushing out a thousand pieces of mediocrity, do one thing incredibly well. Even if it takes five years, ten years, there's a chapter called Make Your Project X in the Wealth Money Camp. And the example is the Duomo in Milan. You know, how long they spent on it. In this world where we want to do something in an hour and they get the rewards, or maybe a week, maybe a month. It took 600 years to create the Domo. These are values of an unspoken age. 600 years of calibrating, refining, optimizing to create the Domo.

27:49And so that's what a Project X is. Rather than doing lots of things, you do one thing. Maybe it's one work of art. Michelangelo took four years of working on the chapel of the Sistine ceiling, but he got the job done. So minimalism is very, very powerful.

28:11Jay Shetty:And one of the things you said there, this idea of we're almost trying to be so many things to so many people that it's hard to find the right friends. One of the things you talk about is do not be a doormat. and I find that that becomes that people-pleasing mentality, that ability that I can mold and I can be whatever you want me to be and I can be lots of things and we feel validated that way but in the end, we're just becoming a doormat. Everyone crosses over a doormat and a doormat welcomes everyone in the same way. So when I read that, I was like, how do we be kind but not be a doormat? How do we be service-oriented but not be a doormat?

28:49Jay Shetty:How do we balance that art of being welcoming but not being a doormat? Well, you know, for many years, like you, Jay, I've talked about the power of being kind. And it sounds so simple, but being kind. Staying in a hotel, remembering there's someone going to clean my room after I leave the room. So put the towels in the bathtub. Straighten out the bed. leave the room service tray clean little acts of kindness not only are a gift you give to someone else it's a gift you give to yourself you respect yourself more so then people come sometimes say to me well if i'm kind people will take advantage of me and i would say people will only take advantage of you if you allow people to take advantage of you let's not confuse kindness with weakness.

29:42There is a time to always be kind, but that doesn't mean you let people walk over you. And that makes me think of another idea that I write about, which is the importance of, you know, in this world right now, it's so easy to live the same year 80 times and call it a life. And there's one chapter called Be a Perfect Moment Creator. And the story I tell in there is of Eugene Kelly. O 'Kelly, excuse me. And Eugene O 'Kelly used to be the former CEO of KPMG, the accounting behemoth. And one day he walked into his doctor's office to get the results of a routine medical, and the doctor came out with an expression you never want to see on the face of your doctor when you go to get your results.

30:29And he was told he had 90 days left to live. He had an interoperable brain tumor. So confronted with his mortality, he realized for the first time he had never in all his years as a corporate titan, he'd never taken his wife to lunch. He had missed so many Christmas concerts of his daughter. He had never spent time with his friends walking through Central Park and having conversations. And so he decided to re-engineer his last 90 days. And he said, I wanted to become a perfect moment creator. And he spent those last 90 days. He actually died roughly 90 days after the report from his doctor. But I think that's so powerful.

31:13You know, when you're with your family, when you're with your work, when you're with yourself, each and every day, find some way to create a perfect moment. Maybe it's giving a gift to someone through a compliment. Maybe it's taking some time to do something that fills you with joy. But being a perfect moment creator, I think is a form of wealth money can't buy.

31:34Jay Shetty:This episode is brought to you by eBay. I'd never owned a vintage camera before. There was something about it that felt almost unnecessary in a world where everything lives on our phones. But I wanted to change that. So I started the hunt for a point and shoot camera. When I finally found the perfect one on eBay, I didn't keep it to myself. I left it out on a table, always within reach. And that's when something interesting happened. People started picking it up without asking family, friends, everyone to take a photo of whatever felt important to them in that moment. A laugh, a meal, someone they loved, something small they didn't want to forget.

32:08Jay Shetty:There was no editing, no retakes, no scrolling back to see if it was good enough. You took the photo and that was it. The moment became real right away. What I loved most was that it wasn't about capturing everything. It was about choosing something, deciding this matters and letting that choice belong to whoever was holding the camera. Even if it came out blurry, the vintage camera didn't belong to one person. It belonged to the room, to the moment, to the people in it. Over time, the photos started to pile up on the fridge, on shelves, tucked into books, each one a reminder that meaning isn't always planned.

32:40Jay Shetty:Sometimes it's noticed. The things we keep can do that. They can invite us to slow down, to share ownership, and to see what the people around us find worth remembering. That's what I appreciate about eBay. It's a place where you can find things that bring people together and pass along things you no longer need so they can become part of someone else's memories. Visit ebay.com to shop your favorite finds. Find what you love, sell what you don't. eBay, things people love. Have you ever thought about what makes a truly good friend? Not just someone you can grab lunch with, but the kind of friend who truly sees you, the version of yourself you might even forget sometimes.

33:18Jay Shetty:Trevor Noah has spent years navigating relationships in a world full of unpredictability and his take on friendship is powerful he shares how his closest friends act as his anchor helping him reconnect with himself especially in the loneliness of stand-up comedy and touring let's take a look how a who are the friends what are you talking to them about like what's your consistency i'm fascinated by that because So who are the friends? Predominantly, my friends are from South Africa. Friends I met doing different things. All organic new things, which I'm a sucker for. I'm terrible at making friends, partially because I don't trust people easily.

34:02I exist in a world where I can be friendly with many people. But it takes me a while to accept that this person is actually a part of my life.

34:12Jay Shetty:Right. And I think for a long time it was because, and still is sometimes, because A, I have an idea of putting something on that person where I may need them means that they may disappoint me. And then on the other side of it, them needing me means I could be in the position to disappoint them. And so as we learn people, I find we learn what they can and cannot do. We learn who they are or are not. and it's always situational for me. You know, that's when I'll call you like a friend is that I know how you are in most situations. Yeah, it's a good definition. You know, that for me is the definition of a friend.

34:55So, you know, I can be, we use it loosely obviously, but you know, I can be friends with you and we always meet for lunch and always meet for, but then I only know you in one way. My friends, I start to be able to, I almost store in a vault in my mind. I can say for a fact, if we're friends, if Jay was here, this would bother him. He would like that. He would probably say this, and that's why he would act this way.

35:24Jay Shetty:Yeah. And that's how I think of my friends. Yeah. So they've been a major part of making me feel at home. My job, stand-up comedy is a really lonely career, You know, and I remember talking to a comedian, it was a few weeks ago, talking about how there was like a period where a lot of stand-up comedians were committing suicide, you know, and would be, you'd hear this devastating story of a comedian that everyone loved, they were in a hotel room, and then they committed suicide. and I was petrified because I always think it can happen to me. You know, I go, if that happened to them, why did it happen?

36:04If I don't understand, then what is it? Another comedian, another comedian, another comedian, another comedian. I think being a stand-up comedian is a really lonely job in that we're traveling, oftentimes alone. We don't have a band. We don't have backup dancers. We don't travel with a crew. Can you imagine you with a backup dancer? And yet every night you're going out there and you're making people laugh. You're having fun with them. They come with their families. They come with their friends. They come with their loved ones. You leave alone. And it's this constant exchange of energy. And what I learned was my friends became that hub.

36:42My friends became my recharge. My friends became the couch I could lie on and say nothing or everything. yeah and thanks partly to technology i've been able to keep in touch with them there's no there's no catching up for us it's literally a running we've got a whatsapp thread that is now i'm gonna say 15 years old yeah like literally i can go back and search something from maybe 10 years ago sometimes i can go back on the whatsapp thread and go what happened and i can search and i can

37:13Jay Shetty:find it that's how long we've had the same yeah group and the same friends and the same everything And obviously it's grown over time, but that core has kept me, you know. I always think, did you end up reading Harry Potter? I didn't ever read it. I've watched all the movies. Yeah, I never read it. Oh, you watched it? Okay. Yeah, I watched all the movies. I'm a big fan, actually, of the movies. So I feel like your friends in life are your horcruxes. Oh, interesting. Okay. You know? Yeah, yeah. I think as people, what we do is we break ourselves into parts. and whenever we meet people, we give them a part of ourselves.

37:49And some people we give more than we give others, but we give everyone a different part of ourselves. No one in your life has the same part that another person has. They may seem similar, but they're not. Your mother and father hold different parts of you. Your uncles, your cousins, your brothers, sisters, your friends, whoever it is, they all hold different parts of you. And the same way Voldemort could use that to come back to life, I feel like we can use that. to come back to life. Do you know what I mean?

38:16Jay Shetty:Yeah, you watched a different movie. I read the book. Yeah, you read the book. I read the book, my friend. That's what it is. That's what you missed in the movie. I read the book. Yeah, and so I always think that. Man, sometimes I can be at my worst. Sometimes I can be lost. Really, Jay. There'll be times when I'll be like, what am I doing? I'm stressed. I'm tired. I'm burnt out. I feel lost. And I can call a friend and no joke, they can say to me, well, the Trevor I know, And I love that they say that. They don't say this is who you are or not. They go, the Trevor I know found his joy here. Hey, I've noticed that you're always happiest when you do it this way.

38:54Hey, I've noticed that you stress more when you're in this position. Hey, and I go, man, I didn't know that about myself. I didn't hold myself that way because I'm always experiencing all of me still through my lens. But thank you. You freed me. You encouraged me. you held me, you loved me. And what then happens is I start to find what I need to get back to my purpose, to my passion, to whatever drives me. And that's why my friends are a big part of that. That is the core of my world. And it's funny, my mom even used to say that to me when I was growing up. At a certain age, she said to me, she'd say to me, my friend, you know and I'd be like I'm not your friend you're my mom and my mom would say just because I'm your mom doesn't mean I'm your friend she said there are many mothers out there that aren't friends with their child yeah and she said I'm your mother and I will always love you as your mother but you are becoming my friend wow and that stuck with me I realized that friendship is a choice every other relation we have isn't and so even your your relatives can become your friends or may not be your friends.

40:10And I think understanding that illuminates a lot of how you interact with people in the world.

40:15Jay Shetty:Yeah, I really resonate with what, I mean, everything you said, but one of the things that stood out was that kind of performer's loneliness. My work mainly started with coaching and working with people. And I work with a lot of musicians and people who tour and travel, not comedians, but artists. And they're performing to like 100 ,000 people, 80 ,000 people. And then they would always talk to me about this. and I didn't really have an empathetic experience of it. I could understand it theoretically. And then because most of the events I used to speak at were like corporate events or like a business event or things like that.

40:53Jay Shetty:And then a few years ago when I did my first ever event with my audience and it was in LA, people who came because they followed my work, not because of anything else. There was only about 2000 people in the audience and I finished the event and I got into the car and it hit me and I was like oh like this is chemical this is definitely chemical because you've just had yeah thousands of people shouting your name and like loving everything you say and all this validation and everything else as what you were saying when you were coming like the dopamine the everything yes and then all of a sudden I was like wait a minute this feels weird like why do I feel like you know a sense of loneliness and it was really interesting because I felt like that pretty much the whole and I felt like calling someone yes and I couldn't because in London it was too early none of my friends would be awake and so they're eight hours ahead because I'm in LA and I'm going I'll go wait another hour for my friend to wake up two hours I'm not going to wake him up in the middle of the night so I'm waiting there and then all my friends in LA were just at the event so I just saw them and so they're probably like going home and it was a week night and so maybe the end I'm like I don't want to and then I get home and my wife had organized a surprise party for me with all my best friends like closest friends in LA and it was like a relief it wasn't even a celebration i was like there's a sense of relief i was like oh thank god because i don't know what i don't know what i would have done tonight man like you know i understand why people turn to drugs i understand why people tend to i understand like it was the first time i was like because yeah you need to numb it yeah you need to numb it because you just don't know what to do with that feeling and that was the first time i'd felt that way and i can't imagine as you're saying for someone who's on tour and traveling every night my drug as i said to you My drug was chocolate.

42:34Jay Shetty:Oh, I love chocolate too. That was like my, I couldn't, it's like my team knew, my people knew. It's like, I'll do the show and immediately, and you probably relate to this more because, you know, coming from the UK, in America, they don't really do it. In South Africa, our petrol stations, our gas stations, right? They have amazing stores attached to them. Like here, every gas station looks like it's already been robbed. You don't want to pour gas. I don't, like, it looks terrible. They all look abandoned. Yes. You know what I mean? Yeah, they all look like a ghost town. They really do. Yeah, yeah.

43:03Whereas where we're from, it's like, oh, you go and you buy a pie. You buy a few drinks. Yeah, there's like cooked snacks. Exactly. It's like, oh, this is life. You can get some groceries. It's a very normal concept. And that would be me after every show. I would drive. There would be the silence. I couldn't listen to music. I couldn't. My mind would just be. It's like I could hear everybody, but they were gone. And then I would go in and then I would buy. Chocolate would be my thing. And then, you know, over the years I would read and I'd started learning that, you know, the chocolate, the dopamine, the sugar, all of these things.

43:35I was correcting a chemical thing without realizing it. Correct. Because it is a shock on your body. Yeah. Everyone, nothing.

43:42Jay Shetty:Yeah. It's so fascinating that experience. And I'm sure people have that in different ways in their life. Like you don't have to be a performer for thousands of people to experience that. I think people experience that in lots of different ways. It's beautiful that you've been able to continue this 10-year WhatsApp chat. Like that's, you know, that's like a brilliant achievement.

44:22Jay Shetty:One of the biggest shifts we experience as we get older is realizing that not everyone needs to be in our inner circle And that's okay. As we grow, we start to see that when it comes to friendships, quality matters more than quantity. Mariana Hewitt, content creator, entrepreneur and co-founder of Summer Fridays, knows this firsthand. She's built a successful brand while also redefining what meaningful connections look like in both her personal and professional life. Let's hear her take on it. You've talked about energy drainers and energy givers before. Walk us through that because I think everyone feels that whether it's people, places, projects, we all feel that certain people drain us, certain projects give us energy.

45:11Jay Shetty:Walk us through your version of that. Yeah, my energy drainers are saying yes to too many things. So saying no to me is what gives me energy. And I know that saying no might seem difficult at first, especially when you have opportunities that come to you and you want to say yes to everything. but saying yes to things I absolutely want to do has been so helpful. I am in a place now where I can say no because I feel like I worked hard in my twenties to get to where I am today that I have the ability to say no to things. But those no's also are important because it's gotten me to the jobs I want to do, the brands I want to work with.

45:44I think if you say yes to too many things, you might dilute yourself doing too many things. So saying yes to the things that are in alignment with the content you want to create, the brands you want to work with, the long-term goals you have for yourself personally and professionally. Other energy drainers that I have are not doing my morning routine and my evening routine. So really setting myself up for the day sets me up for success. I get up in the morning. I usually meditate. I gratitude journal. I do like a little stretch. I drink my water. And even like just a few things in the morning set me up because if I wake up and I just instantly start doing things, there's no time for me just like in myself to turn off.

46:20And then I'm kind of just thinking all day long. Other energy drainers, sometimes it's work and people. And I know that that one's a really difficult one to have boundaries around because you maybe cannot control who you have to be around with work or people that you have to spend your time with. So it's creating boundaries around those people and things to make you feel your best. So maybe it's at work, you don't sit next to that person or you, you know, focus on working on yourself when you're at work so you don't have to be near them too much because I know we can't always like eliminate energy drainers in our life and if it's someone in our life personally it's difficult but as I've gotten older I realize okay this person and this friend is draining my energy when I'm around them I don't feel great I don't feel better after I left them I almost feel more drained just being around them and so I can love you from a distance I still love you I still like you but I don't have to spend a lot of time with you and that's okay I can support you from afar but I know that if I'm around you I don't feel my best and I want more of those energy givers in my life like who do I hang out with and I feel better after I leave them like who makes me feel happier and whole motivated energized and I always love being around you because whenever I see you you make us feel so great you're such a great friend our friend Audrey is another one of

47:29Jay Shetty:I was gonna say Audrey yeah the person that came to my mind was Audrey I was like Audrey she's amazing we love you we love you Audrey and she really is one of those people where you want to be around people who are good like that you want people who make you feel your best and so as I've gotten older, it's less about quantity of friends. It's quality of friends. And I choose to spend time with the people in my life who give me energy and make me feel my best. Because if you notice that after you leave a friend and maybe you're a little bit tired or drained, or you're just like, whoa, and you left them, like it's okay to start like phasing out people and love them from afar.

48:00Jay Shetty:Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I saw this tweet that said, my circle has shrunk in size, but increased in value. And I think that that's the mindset that you're sharing that and i think that's something people struggle with i think we feel guilty because we feel like we're leaving friends behind or we feel bad because we feel people are going to think we're better than them like when you move on from a group you're often worried about the perception that those group of people are going to think or jay or mariana think that they're better and it's like well you're not leaving because you think you're better you're leaving because you want to be better and you want to grow i how how have you kind of outgrown groups or do you feel you've generally had a group that's grown with you but or have you had to let go of yeah friendships relationships and things i have a core like five people who have been with me for like over a decade so these are like that's impressive these are constants in my life like audrey we met in 2006 so that's like 16 years ago so we've been friends for a very long time so it's like i had this core group of people who are very core to who I am.

49:02They know me in my personal life. This is who I want to spend my time with. Like, it's not about content or online or anything. It's just like, who do I want to sit on my couch with, like scroll on my phone or watch TV or just hang out with. And those people are really important to me. I have a lot of acquaintances and people that we know just from work and being around people. And I just know, like, I don't have to be overly close with a lot of people and that's okay. And I think a lesson that I learned now in my thirties was that a smaller circle is fine. In my 20s, I think you move to Los Angeles, you wanna make all these friends, you wanna be around all these people.

49:32And then I'm like, wait, I don't feel great when I'm around them. I don't feel like myself. I feel like I'm trying to have to be someone I'm not or prove to them that I'm something. And I don't wanna do those things. Like I wanna be truly who I am authentically. And as I got into my 30s, I realized it's okay that my circle is smaller. Like it's okay to have these people who I know love me and are there for me no matter what. And then everyone else is a bonus.

49:55Jay Shetty:Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you did that. I think if we started seeing our relationships as degrees of connection, as opposed to like friends and not friends, it becomes a lot easier to know how much time and how much energy to give someone. We all know that staying active and eating well are key to a long, healthy life. But what if the real secret isn't just personal discipline, but the people we surround ourselves with? Research shows our social circles shape our habits more than we think. Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow, best-selling author, and founder of The Blue Zones, has spent years studying the world's longest living communities.

50:37Jay Shetty:He's here to share how connection, competition, and collaboration can shape our well-being. Let's listen in. I actually have one of my little social groups from Los Angeles here. I used to live here. I still have four people, and I hardly know, I've seen them once in my life, but every day we email each other our weight. And it kind of keeps us doing it. We're accountable to somebody. And every one of us, our weight has gone down a little bit over the last decade or so. And for the average American male in 10 years, you can expect to gain an extra 10 years. So even among my little focus group, it's worked really quite well.

51:14Jay Shetty:Competition and collaboration together are really fascinating. Really? Yeah. Powerful. Yeah. It's why Pickleball works for me. It's also why I think I have so many people I know do 10 ,000 step challenges within their family. And most of those people are walking way over 10 ,000 steps simply because they're trying to beat someone in their family. And then everyone's average is growing up. And so I think that making something competitive and collaborative is the genius of the social network, the fitness, the fun in life. So much of it comes from that. And I think we've lost that. One of the strategies we deploy in our cities, it's an idea we took from Okinawa, the notion of a moai, a committed social circle.

51:55And we'll get four or 500 people to show up to a gym. We'll have them circle up according to what neighborhood they live in. We ask them a bunch of questions about, you know, are they religious, what their favorite food is, what they listen for music and have them look at each other as these questions are being answered. And then we have them self-select in groups of five people. And a lot of these people are completely lonely. and once they self-select in these clusters we call them moais we have them give themselves a name and then we organize them around walking together this everybody can walk together and then we offer a little prize at the end of 10 weeks what happens during that 10 weeks is not only are these people walking a lot more than they normally would they're creating a social network or a social circle around walking that that uh in many cases we know about 60 percent are still around four years later.

52:47So as you were starting to latch on to, it's the power of collaboration, but creating a social circle around a healthy behavior, that's what's going to last. And that's what's going to matter over time.

53:00Jay Shetty:Absolutely. I wanted to quickly jump back to diet and food because there's this great technique that you have and you mentioned, and this was popular in parts of India that we're teaching it from this perspective as well, that the method you spoke about was being eight out of ten full when you're eating and when we were trained about that when we'd hear about it from a from an eastern or vedic perspective the idea of how breath is part of feeling full and so food is not the only thing that your stomach is full on was how i was introduced to that idea of being seven tenths full or eight tenths full and the rest would be covered by breath of course there's water as well walk us through that idea of how we can all stop eating at eight tenths full because i think most of us wait till 10 10 or 12 10 east yeah exactly yeah yeah so so it has its roots in confucius the okinawans have this saying harahachibu which is a reminder to stop eating when their stomachs are 80 full and they'll say that like a prayer before a meal so instead of saying grace or whatever that it's a reminder i believe though much of it is actually done at the table.

54:11They tend to preplate their foods and put the leftovers away at the beginning of the meal instead of the end when you might be mindlessly eating. They don't have a TV, so they're not mindlessly eating to their favorite television show. They're sitting around with friends, slowing the meal down. It takes about 20 minutes from the full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain. And if you're wolfing your food down, if you're not breathing, like you say, not drinking water, there's a pretty good chance you're going to overeat before you know it.

54:41Jay Shetty:Building a business with your friends sounds like a dream, right? But as success grows, so do the challenges. How do you protect those relationships while navigating the pressures of making tough decisions, leading with clarity, and scaling a company? To shed light on this, we have Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. be he's built one of the most recognizable brands in the world while staying grounded in the relationships that started it all let's hear his insights i'm intrigued you said something there that really stood out to me you said that the happiest thing and the best thing about being successful is that you get to choose the people you worked with you obviously built this with friends yeah and that's how it started it started in a place of being around people you love with What was the biggest point of challenge in building something with people you love as you grow it?

55:34Jay Shetty:And what is it that you experienced? And what was the biggest lesson that you took away that actually kept it going? Because I can imagine as you're describing highs and lows, all of this changed for 16 years. But here you are still building it together. Think about how many stories you heard of founders. It's like a band. they come together and then eventually the band breaks up and people don't stay together they resent each other maybe things end very ugly it's like a band except like it's become so much bigger than a band because it's not just the three of you imagine a band that starts three people and ends as 3 000 people and that amount of pressure the amount of spotlight the money that changes in people's status and positioning, it can do a lot to break people up.

56:20But also, unlike a band where maybe, not to say you just have to agree on where you perform and what you sing, with a company you have to agree on who we're going to hire, what we're going to call, what markets we're going to go into, what's the prioritization, who we're going to raise money from. I can go down the list of the thousands of things you have to agree to. With Joe, Nate, and I, I often say it's really good to start a company with friends. Not everyone has friends to start a company with, but you want that reservoir of goodwill. And we made a decision. The decision was that no one decision is going to supersede our friendship and our relationship.

56:53That we're never going to have, well, debate, we'll argue, but we'll never allow a situation where winning an argument is the most important thing. because you think about a company as 100 ,000 decisions, it could also be 100 ,000 arguments. And if you get stuck on the first debate or you like somebody won a debate, okay, great. You have 99 ,999 more things to discuss. And so the lesson I learned is, I mean, first of all, Jay, I was lucky. And a lot of people, when I say I was lucky, they think, oh, you were at the right place, the right time, with the right idea. And I said, well, maybe. But there's something I was much luckier about.

57:29And what I was most lucky about, what made me most fortunate was I met Joe and Nate, that we have this unbelievable chemistry. One time we had to do some personality test. It was like one of those core wheels. And we took this personality test to see about our chemistry. And they plotted our personalities. And they formed a perfect equilateral triangle. Not always you're going to find people that are perfect complements to you. I'd say a couple things. Number one, you want to have a team with people that you are friends with or could see yourself becoming friends with, that you have a deep love and respect for, that you're gonna probably spend more time with your co-founders than your spouse or your family if it goes well.

58:09If it doesn't go well, then maybe not. But that's the best case scenario, that people that have shared values, because you can debate anything so long as you're trying to climb the same mountain and the same fleece system. If you have different values, eventually those are gonna become irreconcilable conflicts. But you probably also want complementary skills. skills. The worst case is people with different values and same skills. We do the same job. We step in each other's tolls and we're trying to go in a different direction. And then I think the final thing is just this mutual love and respect and never losing sight.

58:40One of the things I tried to make sure of is even as CEO, I wanted to try to make sure that Joe and Nate were included in things. And I wanted to always make sure that people referred to us together. We thought of us as a unit. When I went public, you write a founder's letter, and a lot of people write the letter and they just sign the name of the CEO. I made sure that it was from all of us and was representing all of us. I feel like they are the heart and the soul of the company. It's like parents. Not every child has the fortune to have multiple parents. Not every company has the fortune to have multiple founders.

59:17But if they're together, they're not fighting, they have a mutual love and respect for one another, that's going to permeate the company just like it permeates the health of a child. And Joe and I kind of thought ourselves as parents of the company as a child, I'd never have had kids, but you know, there's something about that. And I think who you are in that relationship permeates every single thing. If the founders fight, the employees fight, if they have respect for one another, that is going to be a role, a model that other people throughout the organization are going to copy. And that's what I've learned from that.

59:47Jay Shetty:We all crave a sense of security, not just physically, but emotionally. One of the greatest forms of protection comes from knowing that the people around us truly see us, understand us and have our backs. But as life gets busier, careers grow and challenges arise, friendships often take a backseat. How do we make sure we don't lose those connections along the way? Actress and entrepreneur Lala Anthony has built an incredible career while staying deeply connected to her inner circle. She shares her perspective on maintaining meaningful friendships through every season of life Let's hear her perspective Last time you came we were tracking your whole career journey Like you've done, you've hustled, you've worked hard You've done so much to get to where you are today and I want to get to that But for me, as I've been on this journey I've been reflecting on what's changed over time As my external situations changed And what makes me feel protected And you use that word protection and I've realized that of course we have to have our internal protection of how we feel about ourselves our confidence our own practices but I found that the thing that makes me feel the most protected is knowing the people around me who really know me and how much closer we get through that process right like I have to take so much strength in the fact that the people around me not only do they have my back but they actually know me and understand me at a core and I kind of take a lot of energy from that do you do the same i've take so much energy from that i'm like the people who know they know the people that i need to depend on they're always there i'm blessed to have an amazing family amazing group of friends that are like ride or die that i know are there no matter what and it's something that i don't take lightly so it's not about proving to the world anything like if my core group gets it knows me inside and out knows my ups knows my downs and are there for me, that's the energy I pull from as well.

1:01:45Jay Shetty:I want to talk to you about friendship. I think a lot of people feel quite, even when you're close friends, and I'm sure you felt this, it's hard to open up about things that are going wrong in your life. And I think a lot of people are listening or watching. That's something that they can relate to where it's like, I have my friends, but I don't know how to tell them that I'm going through this. Or I know they'd care about me, but I don't want them to feel sorry for me. Or maybe they're going through so much stuff that I don't want to put my stuff on them. How have you managed to keep strong relationships as you've grown in life, as you've built your career?

1:02:18Jay Shetty:How have you managed to keep that core instead of losing it as you get more busy? I think that my friendships have gotten even stronger because of those moments. I don't base my friendships off of, you know, this person has only been around when everything's been great. Or we only talk about sunshine and flowers and cupcakes like friends have to be there through everything and you have to be able to be okay with being raw and real with people that you consider your friend and don't throw that word around lightly if you're saying this is my friend this is my go-to you should be able to share whatever's happening in your life whether it's good or bad and those are the things that bond you you know through those I remember the friends that were there for me when I was going through my divorce when I was publicly you know going through what I was going through as a result of what happened in my marriage.

1:03:03Like I remember my friends that were there. I remember when my son was really young and had to have surgery and who was there in that moment. Like I remember all of that. And those were the strengthening moments of our friendship. Now the fun stuff is great too. I remember my friends who've been on vacation with me and got drunk and had a great time, but it's a balance. You know, the real friendships had a mix of all of that stuff because that's what life is. Life is not always just fun and games. Life is up and down and up and down. That's what life is.

1:03:34Jay Shetty:Adult friendships aren't just about who's been around the longest. They're about trust and the people who truly show up, who understand you and grow with you. If there's one thing these conversations make clear, it's that strong friendships don't just happen. They take honesty, effort and the courage to be vulnerable. And in a world that often pulls us in so many different directions, prioritizing connection isn't just important, it's essential. I hope this episode gave you a fresh perspective on what it takes to build and maintain meaningful connections. If something resonated with you, share it with a friend who needs to hear it.

1:04:15Jay Shetty:I'll see you next time on On Purpose. Remember, I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Hey everyone, if you loved that conversation, go and check out my episode with the world's leading therapist, Lori Gottlieb, where she answers the biggest questions that people ask in therapy when it comes to love, relationships, heartbreak, and dating. If you're trying to figure out that space right now, you won't want to miss this conversation. If it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems. just hold hands as you're having the conversation.

1:04:52It's so lovely. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.