3 KEYS to Your DREAM LIFE (UNLOCK Success, Health, & Connection!) | Steve Aoki

0:00My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled or if you feel exhausted, or if you feel exhausted, you feel exhausted. Our brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller back-to-back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it, and finished it already, and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward.

0:37This is the book I wish I had when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life, 10 years ago at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life, and the book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get your copy today. Again, lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on Audible now, so you can get it on audiobook as well. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode. The power of collaboration to get the best output for what you're doing is really about giving more and also learning and becoming more of a student and listening.

1:27Welcome 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.

1:50Welcome back everyone at School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Steve Aoki in the house. My man. Good to have you back. Good to have you back, man. The thing that I really appreciate about you is the way you think about your life, your career, your business through the lens of art and collaboration. Something I really admire about you. You know, I've seen your stuff a decade ago. I've watched documentaries and seen things evolve. And a lot of it seems to have this artistic expression along with collaboration. And obviously, drive and hustle is moving all these things forward.

2:27You're like one of the most booked DJs in the world, right? And I'm curious, did you always think that collaboration was going to be a big part of your success and learning how to build great art with other people and lifting others up as well? Did you feel like that would always support you in this career, in this endeavor? Yeah, I think when I think of collaboration, I think of your contribution. and so this brings me back to day one for me so when i got when i found music as like okay this is going to be my life my lifestyle my culture everything but when i was like 15 years old that's when i understood this this this term collaboration but more this this idea of like how much can i contribute to something i love to this community and then it's a collaboration because you have to come to the table with something right so if you're going to collaborate if we're going to collaborate it's not like oh yeah i'm just going to be just chilling and you're going to do all the work and it's a collaboration like the best collaborations is is is like the like premium contributions from everyone in that group and then you get a one plus one equals 100 right but if everyone's pat too passive then you're going to get one plus one equals two you know so it's like i learned luckily i learned this this idea of contribution how important that is to my community when i was so young really because because in the punk hardcore scene which is what the music genre i got involved in it was so small that everyone's everyone had an impact and we felt the impact you know how did everyone have an impact because you all had to like bring like two friends and you had to create the experience and the whole thing right like so you think about like this like the way religion works way like you know sports work whatever communities are there that have like you know strong sense of like oh i i you know i want to be part of it this kind of feeling of bonding it's all based on like how do you spread the message how did you get people to understand what you believe in is so strong like i i believe in this so strongly i'm gonna knock on every door and tell everyone about the word of jesus christ or whatever it might be so very similar to that with this scene our scene's so small there's only like a few kids i remember there's like five kids in my high school that listen to this music and no one gets it because it's screaming music and crashing guitars yeah but like once you feel you're like oh this is like this is changing my life i just want to like figure out how do you get the message out you have to write a zine you have to interview bands you have to put on shows in like abandoned warehouses you have to um start a band because you can because there's no one else like else doing it you have to learn music you have like it's all these things it's like you're not you're no longer a passive participant and this is like the main differential i think is when i listened to music before then i was i was a passive participant like listening oh this is cool i'm like i love these lyrics i'm going to sing the songs i'm you know i like this band or this group to like being a creator in the space because you now have an impact like when i make a zine at kinko's and i'm like putting my stuff together and my poetry and putting this in and i give it to someone it actually people are going to care about it because there's not many people doing it right so it was like at that point i was lucky to have this kind of onboarding into contributing and then that essentially that's collaboration so like the more you contribute that's actually a quality service or quality thing that's like actually impacting your little culture you you once you feel it resonates with you then you want to do it again in a different means you know like i first started doing xena then i see a band i'm like oh i could do that too i want to like pick up guitar and and with my friends that don't know how to play and we're gonna we're gonna thrash around and all of a sudden like we get good by the by the nature of just doing it you know and then that same philosophy has transcended in every single industry and every single evolution of my my identity wow like everywhere it doesn't matter what it is it's like i have this ability to just as long as I have this passion to contribute whatever I know, like my toolbox, like I'm bringing to the table.

7:01And then also when you go into a collaboration, when you contribute, you can't be like running the show and trying to, trying to be like the, the big man. But it seems like a lot of people just want it to be easy. They want someone to collaborate with them and them to do all the work, the other person, as opposed to also contributing. have you always had that mindset of i want to add maximum value to this collaboration or partnership or where did that come about whenever you add the maximum value your output is going to be greater than what you think so that's like it's just this is the kind of thing you learn early on so once you put in all the time then you know at least for yourself you know there's obviously like records that I've spent like a lot of time way more time than records that just but naturally float in is a very quick process and they blew up and they and these ones don't happen you know you spend more time on stuff yeah doesn't blow up yeah yeah exactly things it's like one day and it's like the biggest thing ever yeah so what like to manage that okay this is like I'm gonna digress but to manage that I once I started seeing that and it like kind of hurts your ego a bit right you're like I spent so much time on this and it just didn't pop off or make the impact you expect it to make you just have to you have to like level the whole field of your expectations of i mean back then it wasn't streams but you know download whatever yeah whatever it might be how you indicate a success of a song i have i just like at this point i don't even think about i mean we have this managerial conversations which like that's what the managers do is like how do you how do you make this record get more visibility or you know listenership yeah um but for me it's like i just need to know like in my heart like genuinely i'm i'm happy with it whether it gets like you know whatever a billion streams or a hundred streams exactly yeah and then you gotta love it yeah like that's that's the core of it for sure and then like in the then i look retrospectively okay then i could be strategic but like in the moment it i don't want to affect my creative process yes but retrospectively i'm like okay these this didn't work and now i have to learn to pivot and i have to learn to try things and that's the nature of being a uh i i guess an entrepreneur in many ways or an innovator is that you need to learn how to pivot and and with culture being so unforgiving and so fast-paced constantly changing yeah and how how fast how fast the attention spans are going and and how you know you have to be ahead you have to constantly reinvent yourself and and pivot fast so and it's a it's why it's never it's a very tiring it could be very tiring as a creator because you can't just like rest on your laurels or you can't do the same wheel that you've already created you have to i mean you have like this general like general wheel of how you do things but you have to constantly like change change the parts this is fascinating stuff man i want to continue on this conversation about collaboration because i feel like there's a lot of people and i grew up in the sports world playing sports and it was a lot about competition it was like you need to win in order to succeed there's a winner and there's a loser yeah sure you need to collaborate with your teammates, but you're always trying to beat someone.

10:32And I took that into my kind of entrepreneurial journey after sports in my mid to late twenties, where I was very competitive win lose. And I realized that that got me success, but it left me feeling very unfulfilled. And about 10 years ago, I realized that's not how I want to be anymore. So everything became about collaboration, became about how can I interview someone else and make it about them, not make it about me how can i elevate other people and collaborate but it seems to be like a lot of people in business in music in the arts are still there's still a competitive mindset in the world for a lot of people not everyone yeah um why do you think so many people are still in a competitive mindset in different industries as opposed to in this collaborative mindset like you've been so i before we get to that i i do like this thing you're saying like how you would like to elevate who you're interviewing it's like this collaboration is more about elevating someone else so that really is the magical sauce in the studio so when i'm in the studio with with an artist that comes you know now they end up coming to my house or because my studio's in my house um and i have a studio here in LA actually I did I did some legendary sessions here in LA um and it's still here so I have a studio here and I have studio in Vegas but in any case the I think the magical dust in this whole thing is is like to elevate them you know it's not about me like they they're already coming to me that's already enough they already know that like that that they were like I want to work with that Steve Aoki like power production whatever it is that they come for so i like i don't need to i don't need to flex or do anything i'm i'm gonna do it anyways right you're gonna have your moment i'm gonna do it i'm like i don't need to show it it's about like empowering them yes and giving them center stage and giving them this feeling of what you're talking about this this like this is about you letting them shine yeah i want to let you shine and then we can decide how we want to take it what direction what emotion what like you know are we going to go more in your lane are we going to go more in my lane are we going to take a whole new different lane you know and that's that that you find out later on once the creative process is going like oh actually we're going to go more this direction because that flow is more reminiscent of this and now what we want it to resonate with people here right so it's like i think that's like um the power of collaboration to get the the best output for what you're doing is really, is really about giving more and also learning and be becoming more of a student and listening.

13:19So yeah, I mean, it is a power of contribution, what you're contributing, but when you've already kind of made it, you don't need to show that because you're going to contribute anyways. So by the track record, you're like this, this particular person, you could tell they contributed plenty. They, you know, that their pattern is to contribute, at the maximum level, right? You want to work with those people. Because you've already seen the track record. So I want to work with them. And then, when you're in the studio, then the human-to-human connection starts. Right. And if you're overpowering, you're going to take away their creative space.

13:59I'm here to let you shine. And the more and more they feel that, and the more environment I give them to be in that zone, as it's it's them that's beautiful then then the magic will happen but you have like it takes time to get there sometimes yes sometimes it takes a whole like two sections all right sometimes it's like immediate you know it just you just don't know because everyone's different different process for everyone do you feel like if you had more of a competitive mindset for the last you know since you started in this industry if you were more like i'm gonna hoard my secrets and my talents and my skills and I'm going to make it all about me and I'm going to try to, you know, you know, build this thing about me and only me and kind of, you know, work with some people here and there, but really working with people to build my platform more as opposed to shared collaboration.

14:50Do you feel like you'd be more successful financially or have more of an audience if you made it more about you this whole time? I don't think so. I think, yeah, I think if you hoard too much the i mean the world loves like this transparency you know it's like and like now the way the way the world is it's like like they want to see all of it you know so if you're hoarding and you're like i mean there's like there's no real secrets though you know of course like yeah yeah it's like you know it's a secret sauce to pizza and like the sauces and the secret you know like yeah of course it tastes a little different but like the ingredients are all the same yeah you know music's music as it can be made differently you know so at the end of the day it's you know it's like i i don't care to hide any of that because it's there's nothing to really hide there's no like secret in the cakes you know there is there is a six page cake writer that that goes it's sent to like promoters so they have to follow because i need that cake to explode all over someone's face sure sure there's no secrets of my production uh-huh um and and honestly my music i want it to evolve and change so the secret or whatever the the ingredients of of my production is always going to innovate and change anyways and the more people i work with it's going to change even faster and you'll pick up ideas you'll learn something yeah right and i and i want and i and i bring in not just like singers to the studio or other producers i bring in instrument like instrumentalists like musicians i'm like i want to hear a sax player this time i want to hear someone else i play guitar riff i'm like i need to get that played better and different but here's the the base of what i want and i'll bring in it like a guitarist that's gonna like you know take that to the next level wow because at the end of the day i have to remember i'm the producer so as a producer you're listening for what is the best of all the takes and so the best of all takes you got you can't be selfish and be like they're all my cakes no you know there's gonna be a better singer i've seen i sing a line i'm like i need someone else to sing it better you know or i have like a bunch of different people come into my house we do writing camps and take different rooms and and we build like the kind of like the mood board of what we're going for over the day but with freedom to kind of expand and then you know just allow everyone to be free and then as the producer and the a and r the ear which i trust that then i kind of pick my favorite parts and then go we're gonna frankenstein or comp and stein all these together compass that's cool and comp these like ideas into one thing you know and and then and go oh this fits these five different artists i'd like to hit up you know and then then i do some outreach right and then you know and like you know it's like most of the time it's like you can't if you hit up like hey manager can you hit up their manager and like yeah they can but like that usually falls on deaf ears like you got to reach out directly artist artist yeah that starts the conversation because they have to really want it too and then they'll go all right team you guys do the work that that we started this yeah yeah moving forward it's like with me and podcasting it's you know probably 95 of the bookings are through me having a relationship sending someone a message a dm commenting on it say hey i'd love to have you on and then figuring out the timing with our teams of when this is going to happen you know most of the time that's that's the way it goes down um so what i'm hearing you say is that if you were more in a competitive mindset this whole time and hoarding your talents and information you wouldn't be as successful as if you were been collaborating this entire time so i'm absolutely competitive right absolutely competitive i i like everything is a competition not necessarily with other people though right okay so that's like i think that's a major difference interesting so and i i compete with myself with everything you know and this is not just like for music this is like my health i know biomarkers sleep stores everything everything yeah like you know i got my i got like all kinds of data like data is everything right so i love data in this regard because that's how you truly can better yourself compete with your previous self and you know i do my my my blood draws and just check all my levels and go okay i need a little bit more here a little bit less of this how do i tool this i that's a fun game to gamify how you compete with yourself is actually fun and it engages you more and and i'm a big i'm really big into gamifying like i will i i like gamify everything i do because it makes it more interesting and then of course you know you do something consistently over time it's no longer a chore right so i already know understand that you do that it's your lifestyle yeah in the beginning like if you don't gamify it makes it more difficult whether it's like stop eating certain carbs to working out a certain amount of time to doing something that you need to do consistently that's that takes a lot of time uh or doesn't like meditation whatever it might be or reading a book or something like that or you could easily disregard it and carry on through your life and and feel satisfied but you could always be more enriched right so i i gamify competition with myself on all levels but you collaborate with others yes i mean collaboration is part of this competition tell me more about that yeah so like like to be to be more like like at the end of the day i think one of my goals is just one of my consistent goals i i don't i don't say it out loud it's like unconscious i care deeply about being a global artist because i love touring the world i love playing in front of fans from all different like aspects and parts of the world right so i love that i love that i've been consistently touring and playing in front of you know playing all over the place for you know for 15 plus years i want to continue doing it So with that intention, the collaborative process is a huge part of that.

21:16If I go to Australia, I'm booking myself in a studio. Whether it's not, I remember I did that, I worked with Trippie Red there, but I didn't work with Australian artists. But my intention is to work with artists of that region to learn, to collaborate, to try to build bridges and make new kinds of music and new kinds of art. What I'm curious about is health and relationships with you. Because I remember years ago watching the documentary you had talking about, you know, this new obsession of health. I think it was like five years ago or something. And you've really dialed in, you know, the data, the measuring and tracking things with your health over the last, I guess, five years.

22:00You're deep in nutrition, sleep, sauna, ice baths, all these different things. you've set up your life to really optimize health. But with 250 plus tours a year, how do you maintain that with all the travel? For me, when I travel, I'm like, man, it's like hard on the body. It is true. I'm a big guy. Yeah. Even if you've got a private jet, it's still like, man, just being up in the air and feeling bloated or whatever it is. How do you stay healthy is the first part. And then I want to talk about how do you keep healthy relationships in life while you're always on the go. Yeah. So the health part, I think it's about eliminating certain things.

22:41So as an artist, you're pampered. You're a spoiled little brat. So you get whatever you want, really. I mean, it's like you can just get whatever. So you could become a gluttonous human and just be like, just feed me everything I want. You can get to this point. So it's about not having discipline. Discipline is a really important key aspect of survival, one, and figuring out what is healthy for you long term, the long game. Because we all want to have that dopamine rush. We all want to have that luxury of not being comfortable or whatever it is because we have the means and we have the finances and we have the access to be comfortable.

23:33right and there's alcohol and desserts and food and you're throwing cakes at people and you have every type of sugary alcohol gluttonous thing you could have at your fingertips every day it's just it's just easy to do to have it all and but it's just it's a discipline game so like it's about like what's more important to you so i think that question yes you need to answer that question and have a firm understanding of your answer early on and be very clear i think like a lot of these like self-affirmations and things like that are really important for any artists to be like what is it that you really want do you just want to like live fast die young that kind of style and just like be gluttonous and just go through life and then and then but you will be hurting later on i promise you that or you're going to just be burnt out and not not want to do this because you're going to have that lifestyle early on right where it's like i'm just going to go hard and i'll you know just run it to the end and burn the candle on both ends wasn't that kind of like early on that was early on yeah and then what was the switch for you to be like actually i want to live a long healthy life and not die young i think is um was after my father passed away in 2008 a lot of these questions about life and death and you know dealing with tragedy in a way where like death is as real as it gets and then seeing you know friends of mine pass away other djs pass away um artists pass away it's like you could you could have it all and just die you know and then like that's it life's over you know or your career is gone you know like and you're like how do these careers just disappear it might be of their own accord as well too you know you don't you know it could be for any reason but i love what i do and i don't want to see that end and i also don't want to die and I also want to make sure people around me have that same kind of knowledge base that I'm learning on how to play the long game you know how do you play the long game because you love what you do for one I love my life I love the fact that I can do what I love to do and so then it becomes an easier answer for me once I start putting those questions in front of me and then because of you know where I am I was lucky to get the access to like find out not just what everyone already has the access to because the internet is open it's free to learn so much about health i mean a lot of what i learned about health is just like going on like huberman huberman labs podcast or joe rogan or whatever these different like avenues are they're free and there's different people interviewing these experts you know you know giving tips on like oh this could help okay let me try that if it's like in my means you know i you know sitting with brian johnson who's like you know really studying his body on a daily weekly monthly basis on what works what doesn't work and it's interesting because he's like in his own space like always i'm not i'm moving so we had a really interesting conversation of you know how what are the applications I could take from what you're doing that, that like that, that for, for someone that's moving as much as possible.

26:49Right. He's in the same environment every day. You're in a different environment every day. So he's going to always have perfect air temperature, perfect water, perfect food, all these different things. Like, yeah. So his, his, like his biological age might be 20 or 21 or something. Mine's 33, which is pretty good being 45, you know, and I want to reduce that further by tooling and tooling and tooling and then keeping check check up on my metrics on my analytics on on on my blood on on my whole levels and everything so that's where i really spend and i gamify it and i have fun with it yeah and i spend a lot of time on getting the diagnostic checks i always tell my mom that she's 80 now like you have to have a really true sense of your diagnostics because that's the only way you know what was working what isn't working how to like you know stop yourself you know you now with ai you can have these predictive models to to so that you don't get the cancer you don't get certain things that you know will debilitate your energy levels or debilitate you and and and kill you that's fascinating man i love this um and i'm curious about relationships again health is challenging enough being in one environment measurements but you've gamified it and you do the tracking and the measurements and then diagnostics which is powerful which helps you stay aware of where your health is at what about relationships how do you keep friendships business partnerships going intimate relationships going how do you manage to navigate that when you're always on the go yeah friendships is tough as far as like you know these long-term friendships like you know and and like we have a few that always keep tabs on me which like encourage myself to make sure that i I am consistently building, you know, those long-term relationships and keeping, finding time for, for them.

28:41That's difficult. That's like a very small piece of the pie chart as far as my time. And then the majority of my, my friendships are people I work with. I think this like generally just how you're around them all the time. Yeah. I'm around them. So the people I work with, I have to make sure that they're great people. But you like them. Yeah. They're not just like great for what they do, but they have to be great people. because like that energy is going to sink into just me, whether it's my business or whatnot, it doesn't matter just about me. You know, at the end of the day, we have to always work with people that are just healthy for you.

29:14Um, and then intimate relationships. I'm single, which is probably the, the, the, the big deficit as far as my relationships go. I I've like somehow held on to some long-term relationships through my really intense schedule. um but i'm like as you get older you you're you're you're kind of like what you're looking for becomes a little bit smaller and there's a certain it's the window is small so more and more selective yeah exactly so like it's like they have to fit in your world as much as you fit in their world which makes it even tighter for someone like me but i don't mind being single right now.

29:56I'm not like lonely and desperate to find someone. I'm very fulfilled in all these other categories that I think I'll let time eventually just let it ride itself to the right person. Unfold it. Yeah. Because you mentioned, you know, the amount of love that you feel doing a massive show is overwhelming, you know, emotionally overwhelming. You feel it in your body you know you're emoting and expressing yourself in beautiful ways and you mentioned the only other thing that you get that from is love yeah it's actually right it's like the only way i could feel that more on a consistent basis would be love or in a relationship yeah that loving feeling yeah do you feel like you're missing out if you're not having that love also with one person to celebrate all these things with it's true it's true like i do think about that but I'm not rushing it.

30:47Yeah. You know, I think when I was, if I was younger, when I was younger, if when I was younger, for sure, I was like, I really need this, have this person. But then that becomes more of this codependent thing that I've learned to, you know, I understand what the codependency looks like, feels like, and is. It's not healthy. Yeah. And like in a lot of my relationships, they were codependent. Yeah. And it felt so good. But I didn't understand what codependency meant until my last relationship where we got to go to couples counseling and really understand what makes our relationship healthy, how do we sustain through that, you know, and what codependency feels like because I always ended up becoming that way.

31:27So, and once I realized that, then you just, you have more self-love and you just, you don't need to fall or rush for something that might be unhealthy for you. And luckily I have an immense love and relationship with my mom and my sister and my brothers and my my my all my siblings we have a great loving bonding relationship that i get fueled from that and i see them consistently like knowing that my mom is around the corner for me and for my house i see her we have lunch together dinner we we hug we talk and we just and we we feel the embrace like that that's already i'm so lucky to have that that's like a really big part of like really big core of my love bank so i'm i'm so fortunate to have that consistently.

32:16That's beautiful, man. That's really beautiful. This is inspiring stuff, man. I'm excited about everything that you're working on and everything that you're doing. I'm curious. This is a question I've been asking some of my guests because you've had a wild last 15 years. I mean, you've had so much success. We haven't even talked about the entrepreneurial mind that you have and the businesses that you built and the IP you're building and the fashion lines and all these other things that you're doing as an artist, not just in the music, but art and business in lots of other ways that you've done.

32:46But I'm curious if you could go into the future, 15 years, you know, you've had a wild 15 years, an incredible run, but if you can go 15 years in the future, you said you're 45 now, is that right? So 60, right? You turned 60. And, and if you could just put yourself in that emotional mind space for a moment, And if your 60-year-old self could give you three pieces of advice for today, for everything you're about to experience over the next 15 years. And again, I've seen behind the scenes a lot of the things that you've done just in the last three years, you know, being in text threads with you and WhatsApp groups and seeing all the things that you've been doing.

33:25The speed of your acceleration in the last three years has been astronomical. You're also going to plan to go to the moon at some point, which I want to talk about that as well, but I can only imagine what the next 15 years look like if you keep with this speed of acceleration. If that is your vision, I don't know what your vision is, but if you're 60 and you go through everything that you know you're about to go through over the next three, five, 10, 15 years, what would be three things that you would say to your current self to prepare you for what's to come so that you create the best experience possible?

34:02okay so the first one is is is um you probably wouldn't expect but this is what i'm going back to what i would say when i was 15 which is a big one for me what's that wear earplugs like and actually protect your hearing because my hearing we talk about like biohacking and having like a slowing down the aging process and you know like my obsession with health hearing is a big one my hearing is like old as dirt like it's probably it's a 60 year old hearing at this point i have tinnitus i can hear ringing right now it's consistent constant forever so and i've done neurofeedback and i understand like my my markers and my brain um there's two areas of of problems one is hearing because it's like dominating my whole brain it's so loud like all the time 20 plus seven and it just gets louder how do you sleep when it's always i just i can i'm just used to at this point so it's like i did i live with constant ringing in my ears forever so it's just no way to heal it there's no way to no there's no way to heal it like i'm maybe in the future i'm hoping but at this point like i accept that it'll be this way forever because this is how it is and i'm okay with it once you accept it yeah it doesn't just like it's like being in covet like once you accept that you're stuck at home you're actually okay with it like i love being home so i'm i'm almost like you have to accept and like love it like hey ring in you're cool yeah for sure okay so protect your hearing though yeah so i i here's another thing with the neurofeedback that i learned so uh the hearing is an issue my memory is also an issue and uh i did a spec scan of my brain as well with dr amen yeah me too yeah yeah it's fascinating isn't it yeah brain yeah so my um my uh what do you call it my temporal lobes you know they're actually right near my inner ear like they're like they come down like a helmet you know that area that's like kind of messed up and like you can see in the video near the ears yeah so i think that has a lot to do with like the damage to the temporal lopes is the like loud music and the problem i have is when i'm playing shows i need it loud i want to feel it from the inside like like it's so important i can't just be like it's not like i'm playing like you know music listening to home cooking or something you know whatever you know i don't cook by the way but um you know what i mean it's not can you play it loud to the audience but also have headphones and still be loud enough but not damaging i'm like blasting my monitors so you can hear yeah and i have earplugs in so like my god i there's i know there's some level of damage that's happening but i need to feel so i'm blasting and putting earplugs in so i'm like cutting out the highs and lows so that's like issue one but my memory is being affected i think i mean if i'm not mistaken memory a lot of your memory is in the temporal lobes possibly gotcha i think i think that's what he said so number one you'd say to yourself protect your hearing protect my hearing and that's 60 year old yep yeah number two protect my memory which because like those are two uh aspects of my brain that i have issues of aging too right right when you lose memory you you age more right or not part of it just for i mean your life is memories yeah it is your brain is an artifact memories your brain is an artifact of your all your experiences and memories yes and i'm like neurotic about this idea of losing my memory it's like you know kind of unconscious reason why i started my foundation to focus entirely on brain health because i want to find cures for degenerative brain disease for alzheimer's um also to do some really interesting like science fiction kind of stuff um because a lot of that stems with from one our imagination right true and two is a lot of it's like if we can understand how the brain works we're going to be able to do things that are extraordinary you know and we're doing it right now there's like certain things that are happening in you know in the labs and in real life that aren't really being discussed that are very science fiction based but regardless um i'd say like those two okay and the third protect my brain my memory as much as possible by doing whatever i need to do that so at 60 i'm still i can remember everything because memories are so important to life they are so important to life and like it's just like those movies you watch you're like the science fiction movies like okay hey i'm gonna zap your memory of your wife and you could feel the dread you feel when like someone's gonna do that to someone as like a torture mechanism i remember seeing that i forgot what movie it was and he's like if you don't give me this information i'm gonna zap your memory of your wife and or your daughter or something and you're like you're like no i'll give you everything you know it's like such a big part of you know and then like that could just naturally happen all right right and you're you don't want that to happen you don't want to lose memories of things that that give you love and make you who you are so um hearing memory uh are very important and i think the most important is quality time with the people you love because when I really break down what are the highlights of your life they're spending time with my mom my family my sister like and I and I limit that because I'm touring so much you know so when I when I like I talk to my my sisters on the phone my brothers on the phone and we're all traveling doing things like some like a lot of things we say is like we have to spend more time together because life goes by so fast you know so i i think like that is the number one is quality time with family because because life is finite it is i i you know in in this understanding of what life is it's finite until we we reach this technological breakthrough point but as of as it is now it's finite and anyone, any one of us can be gone.

40:30And like, we're like, God, the first thing you say is, I wish I had more time. So the quality time with the people that you love is the number one thing and then memory and then hearing. Wow. That's good advice from 60 year old self. Because I think that, I mean, career, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to excel. You're going to succeed. You're going to fail. You can do all these things and let you're going to do, but that's not really going to be like, if I win a Grammy, I was like, you know, it's like a career highlight a goal of mine get a grammy you know it's not going to change anything emotionally for me that i'm like oh like i if i can say grammy or like having more more like amazing memories with the people i love i'm going to be like the grammy who gives shit about this award you know like it's it's clear that you need like the the time you spend with the people you love is by far you know exponentially greater you've got some new uh music coming out pretty soon yeah can you share more about that yeah yeah yeah so here and you're touring as well and all these different things yeah exactly yeah so this is the second part of my um new ip called hero quest okay and uh it's called double helix um and it's a full list of collaborators on there Like I said, Paris Hilton's on there.

41:50We're going to drop our single next month. I have a song with a country singer named Ernest. It's incredible. It's a really great song. Really excited to drop that. A new song with Dana Paola from Mexico. We're dropping that on the 29th, right before the Canelo fight. Very cool. I think she's going to be out there, too. So we're going to be able to do some fun stuff around our single in Vegas. Every album I do is just tons of different collaborations. Latin, I got Gracie on the album, too. she's a columbian artist um you know like i dropped a bunch of singles already um and it's a the continuation to the hero quest story so what's exciting to announce with this one is uh for the first album i dropped a cd which i mean no one does season right correct but i i put inside a hero quest card that you open in a pack people got so excited to get these packs that the cd sold 30 ,000 copies in five hours.

42:49Wow. Which is ridiculous because most CDs just don't sell. So people were obsessed with these HeroQuest cards. And then I dropped a second series of cards around the remix album, and we sold 30 ,000 packs there. So there's this real interest in collecting this IP and cards of the IP. Right. Is this the same business that you launched recently? Yeah. The card business? yeah so i launched um this comp uh i founded co-founded this company called metazoo and it's uh we create our own world based on cryptids so like you know like bigfoot lochness monster chupacabra you know uh grizzly like uh smoky the bear you know like like things that are made up by human lore like we just make up because we see a ghost in the corner like oh that's the ghost of christmas past yeah yeah exactly that's that's a cryptid so we we made a whole world of all cryptids that's interesting it's all public domain that's so cool and and then we like you know people that are like obsessed with bigfoot now we have 20 million of of the people that are obsessed with bigfoot might capture like 5 million of them or 1 million of them and they'll collect those cards and we we started in february 2021 uh with a kickstarter box with kickstarter and by december 2022 we already grossed like 40 million dollars in selling carts it's incredible building community you know once again the community is this collaborative process of of of how you can you just need to enrich and grow and really believe in what you're doing that's incredible that's metazoo and then hero quest is its own ip that that i created which um combines music culture like my music culture with with like collectible card culture and creating a whole new ip of characters and this new album i'm dropping a book i wrote with jim krueger which i'm still finishing up so like the album's gonna drop and then this you know what's becoming to be around 250 to 300 page book that um that uh me and jim are writing right now um and jim i work with he's an eisner award-winning writer for dc marvel he wrote neon future for me and tom bilyeu so we wrote this together the story of hero quest and it's also coming with cards and the cd and like all kinds of fun stuff and you know i'm that's going to be like the the entree or the onboarding into the world of HeroQuest now.

45:33It was all like pre-IP, you know, what I was doing before. And now I can drop the story. That's incredible, man. Because I want people to read the story of HeroQuest. You get the album, the musical story, the musical album, and how it ties to the story. And then you get the cards that people love to collect. So that's exciting to be able to finally do all that. This is amazing. Where can we get access to all this stuff? So obviously when the album drops, you can just listen to it everywhere you know on streaming but the book and the cards and all that and the cd that's gonna i mean we're gonna have links everywhere and stevie ok.com was like you know stevie.com will have all this stuff yeah yeah it's basically once you know once you follow me i'll see it i'll be it's just gonna be out there you're everywhere on social media i love your social media content steve aoki on instagram tick tock youtube all these places but stevie ok.com for tour dates, the album drop, for everything that you're working on, the cards, the fashion.

46:33I mean, you got 30 businesses, it feels like. You're everywhere. But that's the main hub where they can find everything. Exactly, yeah. Get on the newsletter, see everything. Yeah. And how many tour dates are you doing the rest of this year or nights are you doing? Well, like this year, I'll probably do about over 250 shows. So yeah, it's interesting. Like since COVID, I thought I was going to slow down because when does db okay slow down come on yeah i mean i was doing 300 at one point and then i it was just literally like no time off but two 200 or 250 is like my my sweet spot because then i have at least 100 75 to 100 days at home which i love being home so what i've realized it's a mindset thing it's a mindset shift so it once i i put my mindset into treating the road as my home and my home is my vacation, then it all works.

47:26That's cool. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. I'm excited for you, man. This was very inspiring to hear about your creative process, your collaborative mind, and just the way you think about all these things as an artist. It's really beautiful, man. Thank you. And hopefully I can get out to Vegas one of these days and just come watch the show as well. Yeah, we do the cold plunge sauna. I'm in, man. Let's do it. I'm in. I don't know if I can stay out until 3 a.m. I might have to take a nap and then come for part of it. But make sure if you guys are in Vegas to go watch Steve. I think you're there with 50 nights a year.

47:58Yeah. 50 shows a year right now. So if you go there, look up if he's doing a show there for sure and go support him. Follow him everywhere on social media. I've got two final questions for you. Before I ask them, is there anything else we can do to be of support to you today? No. I mean, I think, you know, it's just, I guess, should I get my social media? I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Check it out. The album, all these different things. I want to acknowledge you before I ask these final two questions. I want to acknowledge you, Steve, for your consistency and your commitment. Because I think you mentioned this.

48:31There's a lot of artists or just people in different industries, whether it's business or writing or music. There's a lot of people that don't stay consistent over time. They might have big moments, but then they fall off. Or they treat people poorly and people don't want to work with them. But I really acknowledge you for, you know, 15 plus years of consistently showing up and adding value to your communities, to other artists, to other business partners and saying, how can I provide value as opposed to only take? And I think in the world of, you know, at least what it seems like in the world of social media and the world of celebrities or big artists who are on social media, you can't always tell if they have the best intentions in mind.

49:15and I really appreciate how you show up for people. I know you're not a perfect human being, but I appreciate your consistency over 15 years and just constantly showing up saying, how can I collaborate? How can I add value? It's really cool, man. So I acknowledge you for that. This is a question, these last two questions. I asked you about your 60-year-old self on the advice you would give your current self, but I have another hypothetical scenario. I'd love for you to imagine that you get to live as long as you want, and accomplish everything you want to accomplish. But it's the last day on earth for you at some point.

49:51Live as long as you want. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. All of your art, your music, this conversation, anything you create, it's got to go with you to the next place. So we don't have access to your content anymore. All your IP, gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the whole world. Three things that you know to be true from all the life you've lived, and this is all we would have to remember you by are these three lessons what would be those three truths what would be those three truths for you i love sci-fi i was like thinking to myself in this this uh there's a whole new world of what where things would be um what would be those three those three lessons of truth that's all we have to i i well one is is to is going back to what i was saying uh the the most important thing is is you have to really give your the best quality time to the people that you love um when you when you give it's so much more powerful than receiving and because like i think it's very selfish to give because it feels better it feels incredible you know when you give something you could see someone's face light up with like like genuine joy and happiness it's the greatest feeling especially when you love them and you want to just continue this this like feeling because at the end of the day that's like life you want to feel amazing in that in that regard because if you can go to sleep and wake up with that same feeling every day you're like what can be better yeah and that's free you know that that feeling of gift is it's a it's like it doesn't cost any money so anyone could do that you know just by just you know helping and being being part of someone's life in a positive way that's fulfilling so that's that's that's like one for sure um i i think i think that's like they're all they're all there it's like one is that and then two is going back to what we're talking about the contribution like always give the most because like at the end of the day when you think about um you know reputation things like that whenever i think about people that have great reputations they're transparent they always they always like offer more and and you know like you know like of course we all we get we get greedy we get selfish and we're like oh but if if i just take right now that i'll have more but if you keep doing that like you're you're gonna lose all like all your relationships right you know i i that's that's a hundred percent certainty if you think short term only for yourself you will 100 have like no future in in with those people that's just that's just unless it's like a unconditional like mom it's like i have to like take care of my son it's like always just taking taking taking taking taking taking you know even the mom might get little it's for you so i think you have to give maximum level of like you know give as much as you can on contribution So I think it's about maximum value of what you, you put out, whatever you do, don't be passive.

53:19Don't give the bare minimum. If you're going to do it, you have to give as much as possible. Yes. And the more you do it, you're always going to be someone that people want to work with, you know, someone that people will remember like, like, Oh, they're great to work with. They're great that they, they give cause they always do more and they don't want, they don't want anything else in return. so that's actually a big thing to remember the people that give a lot and they don't want anything returned consistently they actually do it just to do it you want to work with those people you want to be those people that is like a powerful one it's like giving as much as you possibly can if you are going to do it you don't have to do it all saying no is just as important too Like I can, I can't give as much time, so I'm not going to do it.

54:15Right. So you have to make that decision. So I think how you contribute has to be the best that you can. So that's two. Yeah. And, and three, I think three would be on the idea of collaboration. Let's, let's stay within the box here. Three is having an open mind. to try many different things and to learn and always be a great listener and always be a great student to learn, you know, to receive, you know, and like really truly be present in the, in the receiving side of things. Yeah. And be grateful in that. This is where like gratitude will help you be a great listener because the more grateful you are, you're, you're going to be more present.

55:07because the second you're like oh i'm so i honored to be here i'm so grateful to be here you are 100 going to be present and you're going to receive everything coming to you you know the people that go to school and that they don't they have to pay for it are usually the ones sitting in the front of class right and they're like i paid so much money to be here i have to listen i have to learn i i need to learn this and the people that like like their parents would pay for the education a lot of time they're they're like oh gosh me here oh my god you know so it's like if you you have to be grateful just to be in the room to receive and then you're going to be able to use that information to go to number two you know to contribute that absolutely to give the most maximum value those are those are powerful man i love this um final question steve what is your definition of greatness that's you that's your whole thing right Oh, my God.

56:08I'm winging it right now at this point. I love it though, man. It's great. Yeah, so I have to stop and think. It's all good. What's the definition of greatness? For you, what is it?

56:21What's the definition of greatness? This is a good one. This is a good one.

56:29I feel like I said it already, you know? But I know this is like, you need this one. You need this one. This is all you. The definition of greatness. It can be simple. It can be short. It doesn't have to be long. Yeah, I know. I'm trying to think because it's like, it is like an important one, you know? I mean, the definition of greatness is very similar to like the definition of success. You know, like what is success to me? It's not like up to someone else to define that success. That's really important. That's like, you know, I think it's like it's it's a little bit complicated because I think what we think of what's great is always what other people think is what's great.