Pioneering Your Path & Achieving Entrepreneurial Greatness

0:01Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:44So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there. You want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy. But it's going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you're in a space and a context that's designed to support. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

1:27And 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.

1:44Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful. So let's go ahead and dive in.

2:01What are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should, and if they could do on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone's life around them? What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do? Yeah, three habits that would improve everybody's lives on a daily basis. It's so hard to give an answer like that because obviously everybody's dealing with different stuff. But there are a few things I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from. So the easy answer would be, or the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don't think it actually has to be reading books.

2:40I think it just is the habit of learning something new. So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn't matter what version of that it is. But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that's going to improve your life. And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it's going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you're interested in. So a habit of some small habit of daily learning, let's just call it, learn something new for 10 minutes each day.

3:15Some sort of physical activity. You know, this is, I think an important realization about all habits, which is in most areas of life, there might not be a thousand ways to do something, but there's almost always more than one way. And, you know, I like working out in the gym, but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that's fine. You know, like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever. There's like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle. And you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you. Like in a way, that's the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is have you selected a habit that you're genuinely interested in, that you're actually engaged with?

4:02Because if it's something that you actually care about, there are going to be like endless opportunities for improvement. If you're not actually care, if you don't actually care about it, if you're just doing it because you kind of feel like society's encouraging you to do it, or your parents want you to do it, or your peers are kind of subtly saying, hey, this is something you should do, then even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore. So let's call it 10 minutes of learning something new, some sort of physical activity, whatever is exciting or interesting to you. And then I think the other one is a process, a habit of reflection and review.

4:40So it's very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff heads down, or just have the next task come up, whether it's things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work, that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing? You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use? And boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing. You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot. And so the only way to discover that, like, I know I'm not smart enough to figure it out on the first time.

5:22Like I can't, I can't just sit down, give me five minutes and be like, oh, this is exactly what I should be focused on. It takes iteration. It takes refinement. It takes a process of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, hey, was that a good way to spend my time? Like, did I live a good life today? And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct. And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don't necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time.

5:53You know, like what you want shifts over time, the situation you're in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time. And so you need to keep coming back to this. Maybe it's every week, maybe it's once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this? Am I working on the right thing? Am I working on what actually matters? Um, am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way? Yeah. And how, how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves?

6:29Is it important to have self-accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, social accountability, do those support habits, forming these consistent habits? And what other factors are in play there? They definitely support them or hinder them, potentially, depending on the people you're around and the group that you're a part of. Ultimately, the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability. it's almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself. Like that almost always sets the baseline. You know, if your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept.

7:12Now, it's easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in an unsupportive one. So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard, but ultimately the standard you hold yourself to is going to be the most important thing. Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to influence your habits in a really dramatic way. So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment. We're all part of multiple tribes.

7:50Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian. Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym. But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations. You know, they have a set of social norms. They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this is how you act in this group. This is what's normal and expected. And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more like appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, Hey, look, I belong to, like I'm part of this.

8:27And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them. And if people have to choose between, you know what? I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in. I belong. I'm part of something. Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out. I'm ostracized. I'm criticized. I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve. You know, belonging will, the loneliness will lose to belonging. And so you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

9:06It is so true. And it doesn't mean you can't make it happen. There's a great example that that came up this week. Someone on my team on our team call said, I asked everyone on the call, I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life? Like, what's one thing that's not serving you right now that you want to let go of? And this person said, I want to let go of drinking, drinking alcohol, like, or at least drinking as frequently as I do with the social circles that I'm in. And I thought that was interesting because I've never been drunk in my life. I don't drink. It's not a part of my identity, right?

9:39I never did it from sports. and then after sports, I was just like, why? It didn't make sense to me. Nothing good or bad about it. It just wasn't fitting my values personally. I have other problems, which is sugar, right? It's like I've got that. That's my vice, right? So no judgment here. But I was just like, this never stopped for me, you know, in every until maybe the last four or five years where anytime I'd go out in college, after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, like all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking. And so I had to be so firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it.

10:23I just knew that people were going to try to influence me. They would try to say a joke. They'd be, I can't believe you never drank, all these different things. Try to get me to drink for the first time, all this stuff. I knew it would happen every single week. And I just realized, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I'm in, unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare. And which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend, when we started dating, I was like, listen, it's not going to work. If you like to drink, I don't think I can date you. Like, it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

10:50I just don't want to be in that environment for the rest of my life with the person I'm choosing to be with. And so I had to make a conscious decision. And she was like, well, I don't really need it. Like, Maybe I'll drink a glass of wine once a month. I'm like, okay, that's fine. But if this is a weekly thing, it's just not going to work because I've chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life. And it's very challenging if there's something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability. So I think it doesn't mean you can't do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes, like you mentioned, that are supportive, Even if it's the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be, find those communities as much as possible.

11:36You know, if your family isn't as supportive, find these other micro tribes to support you in that habit form. There's this whole chapter in Atomic Habits. It's called The Secret to Self-Control. And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies, we typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, oh, man, I wish I had the discipline of that person. or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever. But in fact, um, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least.

12:08That's like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are just cookies in your house. You're not going to eat them. Yeah. And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior you're as easy. And if you do that for yourself, sure, you'll still have to put effort in, but it's going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you're in a space and a context that's designed to support it. And that's maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don't need willpower at all.

12:54You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren't willing to do. You spent 10 years writing every week in an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched. And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche and then start branching out in the space as well and do it consistently over a decade without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things. And then you came out with a book. And now this doesn't happen for everyone. But then you came out with a book. And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of the year of the most selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think this year as well.

13:40And it just continues to add value to people. And I think it's a testament to what you created for a decade plus of adding value. So congratulations on everything, man. Yeah, thank you. That's very, very nice. You say it's been a wild ride. There are a couple of things going on there. Like I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value. And if you think about in any business, but like in my business writing books, the amount of what it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book. It's also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on.

14:16and whatever that total cost is, time plus money, that's like the amount they have to pay. And then whatever I get paid is what I make, but what they get in return should be like well in excess of that. So like the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there's some surplus there and we could call it whatever, but I like think about it as like goodwill. And I always want going to have a surplus of goodwill. And so everything that I create, whether it's an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to be, to have this feeling that it's like, oh my gosh, I get so much out of this.

14:54Of course, I would want to open the next email, or of course I would want to buy the book. It's like such an obvious win for me. So I always try to give value before I ask for value. And I don't think that there's any one way to do this. Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example. But the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible. And then I was able, you know, I didn't have any credentials, right? Like I don't have any background for, and there was no reason for me to get a book deal.

15:26I was just a guy with a blog. And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience. and then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal. And then of course you have to execute well on that and create something valuable. And then, you know, ultimately the book being a hit was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever. And then it being released when, when the book came out. So I, in a large, to a large degree, I kind of think that's the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is upfront.

16:02You know, you have to build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan and start to record interviews and execute on that. You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy. And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long. You know, I mean, it's probably depending on how you measure it, atomic habits took somewhere between like three and six years. Definitely at least three years, because that's how long it was from when I got the book deal. But I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal. So, you know, it's just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it.

16:38And so if you're willing to do that, then you can get a great result. You will set yourself up for so much more financial peace over financial pain in the future. But you've got to be willing to face the fear of judgment of what people think about you in order to do this, especially early on when you make these tough decisions. And that's so hard. So hard. And you're so right because we've all been there, every single person. And, you know, I remember, you know, I was supposed to be a doctor, like I was saying. You're such a failure, man. Yeah. You're such a failure being a lawyer and a real estate agent and an investor.

17:15Imagine hearing that, though, when you don't have anything. I know, man. It's scary. And I, before I got it, so I, in between, I also started the sock company. The only way I learned was by doing things. And I was supposed to be a doctor. And now people know me because I'm selling socks. and you know people have these high expectations for you they oh just believe there's going to be a doctor i was a sock salesman and now imagine going to these parties right and and indian aunties they have this like the gossip culture they love to judge and gossip and yeah and so you know critique and they'll say to your face oh so you're selling socks now and then they don't just tell you they tell your parents everyone they tell your grandparents and you know it's a and now you start hearing from every single person around you, why are you throwing away the sacrifice that your parents made?

18:05Your parents gave up everything to come to this country so you could have a chance to be a doctor and you're throwing it away because you want to do this dumb thing called entrepreneurship? Oh, man, the shame around that must be tough. And now you have nothing to show for it. And you're failing at the thing that you're trying. And you're screwing up and you have no idea. Like you just have this vision. You know, when I'm 65 and I look back at my life, 75 85 whatever year you want to put on let's just say 100 hopefully we can make it there we look back at life what are you like are you going to be upset that you tried and failed or are you going to be upset that you never gave it a shot and i remember that was like what i kept telling myself i was like look i'm going to be old one day hopefully and i'm going to look back at life and that's when i'm going to say you know am i happy that i tried and screwed up yeah or am i happy that I never tried.

18:56And here's the thing, pain is the price of admission for greatness. And we just have to ask ourselves, what type of pain do I want to experience? Do I want to experience pain of not doing anything and then feeling unhealthy and sick and bankrupt because I didn't take action and I was afraid and the pain comes to me later? Or do I want to put myself through controlled pain by facing the insecurity, by facing the fears, by doing the challenging things consistently with my health, with my finances to set myself up for more peace in the future. Either way, we're going to experience pain. 100 % man.

19:34But the controlled, conscious, daily, consistent pain is the price of admission for greatness. And we've got to be willing to lean into that if you want to have something in your life that feels like peace. But you know the biggest drug that holds us back from doing that? comfort I know we get comfortable and it becomes a drug and we get addicted to this idea of I need my health care I need my steady salary I need my 401k I need these things to feel safe I need my lattes every day I need you know and and those are the things that then hold us back from then following and doing something else because we can create a million excuses right it's easy to make excuses for why I had the side hustle idea I have this business idea I want to go start investing I want to do something it's easy to make excuses oh I don't have a million dollars my parents didn't give me a million dollars oh I don't have rich parents so I look a certain way look man you know it's excuses are easy yeah and this is right now look sometimes we go through real problems like mental health is a real problem if you are struggling you can't get up because you're depressed you're anxious okay let's start with that right you can't build a business when you can't even get out of bed so you break it down okay if I'm struggling mentally you got to get that taken care of first go spend whatever it costs do whatever it takes start working on that pain creates purpose right and now you you can then start to work towards something else and then you start work but you got to get away from that comfort drug you understand you know what sometimes you got to be willing to be uncomfortable i had this talk with me so it's kind of this is funny i don't think i've ever talked about this publicly but i i remember i used to go through like the worst case scenario i was like worst case worst worst case my parents kicked me out of the house uh i make no money i'm homeless yes what's the big deal okay i can make that work i'm like can i make it work and and so a funny kind of segue from that is later on i went and started a uh i co-founded a community service organization and we did a lot of or do a lot of help we call it seva which is a sick word i'm from the sick faith s-i-k-h that's the name of the religion and seva is a fundamental tenant which means selfless service and so one of the things that we do was we would do a lot of things in the city of detroit to help people there primarily homeless people and kind of as a joking idea kind of as like a serious thing i told a core founders i was like hey you know we're doing a lot of things for homeless people here but we don't know what they're going through why don't we try being homeless and and i like doing kind of different things and putting myself through it and so a couple of guys were like yeah let's try it and so um you know i know i could never experience real homelessness because i know i have a home i have a family i have i have that comfort that i knew i was going to go back to but for four days we slept on the streets of detroit we had 15 a person um and wow we're gonna figure it out and And to kind of prepare myself, I didn't shower for a week leading up to it.

22:41And we just tried it. And this is where now you put yourself in uncomfortable situations. For me, I kind of try to do that because it gives you new perspectives, new ways of thinking. And people call me crazy and all this stuff all the time. But it makes sense to me now because I don't do things the way everybody else does. I don't see the world everybody else does. And I want to try things the way I can see the world from different places. like we were talking about before, people with different opinions. I look for that. Most people, especially in this political climate, if you disagree with me, block, turn you off.

23:16Talk to me. I want to hear what you have to say. We don't have to agree, but I want to learn from you. And that's where wisdom comes from is when you can listen to two different points of view and then come up with your own analysis. Like when we talk about stock market investing, I'm going to tie this back to finances. When people talk about how do you know if it's a good company to invest in? Like one of the things that we talk about is and i talk about on youtube is listen to people's opinions about a company but don't just listen to one side's opinions listen to people that think that the stock is going to the moon listen to people who think that the stock is going down yeah and now you have both perspectives because if you just listen to people that say nothing is going to go wrong you're going to be in this euphoric state of i'm going to buy everything but you have to put things in perspective and understand there's two sides to everything being willing to again it's uncomfortable right especially when you firmly believe something and then you hear somebody telling you that you're completely wrong that you're an idiot that you're a fool makes you a little uncomfortable but being willing to make yourself uncomfortable can teach you a lot so that's we're talking about saving money but it all kind of ties in together of knowing now being willing to handle that judgment because that is hard man huge man it is hard huge which then brings us to then protecting yourself which you know there's a few different things here and protecting yourself and protecting your money And what's the fourth one?

24:32Spend, grow, save. Oh, wait. We completely skipped earning. Earning. Oh, my God. We can't skip. That's the most fun one, man. Wow. I'm sorry for that. So earning now is you built a system. 75, 15, 10. Every time you make money, some of your money is being spent. Some of your money is being invested. Some of your money is being saved. Now it's I kind of like this financial education stuff. How can I amplify the system? You got to put more fuel on the fire. How do you do that? You need to earn more money. Now, this is where, unfortunately, a lot of people look for that quick and easy way. I mean, who doesn't want to get rich quick?

25:11It's very appealing. The problem is most people who try to get rich quick end up losing. And you end up paying somebody selling you a get rich quick service. And it's very unfortunate, but it's very easy to sell this idea of get rich quick. and this is where now understanding that you know we could go over systems of do these five things to build a million dollar business but everything everyone's going to be different and sometimes you just got to be willing to put in the work yeah and there's no bypassing that but now it's understanding how you can work hard and work smart because most of us are taught that hard work is rewarded and it is but you have to complement this hard work with smart work like if the hardest people in america were compensated by their level of work construction workers would be the highest paid people in america yeah but they're not teachers would be making more money teachers would make way more money they're not we're compensated completely differently and this makes a lot of people angry because you say man i put in 20 hours i put in 12 hours i've been breaking my back and this is all I'm making and this is where it's it's why this is why we need to be taught how our financial system works because we're all a piece of this puzzle but most of us are only consumers we're never taught how to benefit from the way the economic system works and so you have to be able to work smart instead of just working hard and now the question is now first you have to be willing to work hard like I when people tell me hey man I want to start a business because I don't want to work that hard, I can't even talk to you.

26:45Like, you can't. It's not going to happen. It's a completely different language. You've got to obsess over something if you want it to do well. Yes. You have to be obsessive. And a business owner doesn't get to turn it off. You don't get to clock out at 5 and say, well, I'm done for the day. Like, I don't have to worry about anything. Like, time to go home and chill and relax and just watch the money flow in. You've got to, it doesn't shut off. You're thinking nonstop about your employees and making sure they're taken care of about Am I going to be able to generate enough money to take care of them and the expenses and running new initiatives and launching your products and making those better and dealing with customer acquisition?

27:21It never stops. I know my dad used to joke around. We had a talk the other day. My dad worked very hard. And he joked around about me because he saw this article on the Internet. And he was like laughing. I was like, what's so funny? He was like, work-life balance. I was like, what? He was like, look at this article. You young generation. people are asking for a work-life balance. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, there is no concept of a work-life balance when I came to this country. It was work. If I didn't work, I don't have money to feed you. And it's like, sometimes you gotta be willing to put in that sacrifice.

27:56And obviously, look, we live a life and you gotta balance this. But sometimes you gotta be imbalanced to have more balance. There's a season of life that you've gotta be imbalanced in order to get to balance. Right. and you know when I like I work a lot but I don't work as much as I used to yes and I have getting comfortable man you're getting soft a little bit man I seriously gotta go back through something that's gonna make me uncomfortable well the economy might put you through that so don't worry I know but if you're not disciplined with your pain the world will bring pain to you 100 % you're 100 % right on that but it's a matter of now understanding when is the sacrifice worthwhile while and when are you going to be willing to do that so it's now okay i gotta be willing to put in the work yes the second thing is now where am i putting that work now some people are born with the entrepreneurial bug entrepreneurial bug some people are not some people can't handle the risk that's okay not everybody should operate a business not everybody should be an entrepreneur i know the internet makes it seem like that's not the case look it's just nothing wrong with working a job okay just understand now what are the different ways that you can earn more money can you work to get a raise can you work to maybe change careers if you don't have that much uh upside potential can you get new skills can you get new skills a certificate can you can you do something to earn more money and it's much more accessible on online now there are so many skills you can learn online that can help you earn more money maybe get a second job right if that's not the case for you maybe now you can create your own side hustle if you have an idea maybe that can become its own business the one thing that i would say about side hustles is a lot of mistakes the mistake that a lot of people make is you try to do too many things and then you end up doing nothing right so it's it's focusing down on what is it that you want to do and working to scale that and really just being willing to learn and being willing to fail like if you have the discipline you have the work ethic you're willing to learn and you're willing to fail there's really not much that can stop you because now you have the recipe to actually go out and make it happen but it's very difficult and you're going to go through a lot of tough times and most people give up after the first or the second or the third and and that's where you know the people that keep standing are the ones that can then have the chance to succeed right man if you're not i forget who said it might have been kobe but you can't beat somebody who doesn't stop getting up that's true right and it's just one of those things where you just got to keep coming back and keep trying keep learning and keeps up man and goes back to the judgment which then brings us now to how do you protect your protect that money baby because now as you build more wealth as you start to do more of these things now you start to achieve more success you don't want to lose it you don't want where the first thing I would say is taxes, because this is probably the most interesting thing about this.

30:56Stop, man. And as an attorney who spent a lot of time studying the tax code, what I can tell you is not all income is treated the same. In general, the IRS has three different categories of income. You have earned income, or your ordinary income. This is the money you make from your job, your W-2 salary. You have your portfolio income. This is your investment income. So if I sell a stock for a profit, that is my portfolio income. And then you have passive income. This is the money you make from something like a rental property, something that you're not operating, but it's generating you cash flow.