


31 Aug 2026 · 1h 6m · 24 chapters

Jim Kwik (Quick Learning) explains how he built a “world-class accelerated learning” brand by turning his mission into memorable soundbites, while teaching practical methods for faster learning, reading, memory, focus, and brain optimization. He also discusses “victim vs heroic mindset,” and warns about cognitive offloading as AI becomes a crutch.
Jim Kwik is the founder of Kwik Learning (started full-time around age 18; company formed in 2001). He wrote Limitless and has a new book, Limitless Daily. His life changed after childhood traumatic brain injuries (a kindergarten fall causing daily migraines and later a second head injury in college). He credits a mentor, a library “wall-to-wall books” experience, and learning how to learn. He donates Limitless proceeds to build schools and support health/water access in Ghana, Guatemala, and Kenya, and to Alzheimer’s research (in memory of his grandmother).
“You were never taught how to learn.” “Same level of thinking that created your problem won’t solve your problem.” “It’s not how smart you are, it’s how are you smart.” “Human intelligence is greater than artificial intelligence” because leaders must decide what matters. “Build before you borrow” (brainstorm before using AI).
He taught a student who read 30 books in 30 days; her mother later improved after doctors expected death. He describes learning to read via comic books, and his own second brain injury leading to studying mnemonics, speed reading, and brain science.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Jim discusses the origin of his brand name and his long history in learning.
“It's my father's name, my grandfather's name.”
Jim shares his early life experiences, including a traumatic brain injury and its impact on his learning.
“as a backstory of pain, where they experienced a sort of pain that they now want to help people not experience.”
Jim reflects on the lasting effects of being labeled as having a 'broken brain' and how it influenced his identity.
“So if we have a story that we're too old or, you know, I can't remember names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because your program, you're literally a computer.”
Jim recounts a pivotal moment when he began to shift from a victim mindset to a more empowered perspective.
“And I want to be their, their Yoda or their Miyagi.”
Jim discusses his journey towards embracing learning and how it shaped his life and career.
“When I was 18, though, I took all these classes because I wanted to make them proud, right?”
Jim shares his first encounter with reading and learning.
“And then he takes me into his home, into a room that I've never seen before.”
After a serious fall, Jim reflects on his learning mindset and seeks change.
“Asked the nurse for a course bulletin for next semester.”
Jim discusses how pain can lead to a heroic mindset and personal development.
“And you see this with so many really successful people.”
Jim elaborates on the techniques he teaches for effective learning.
“It's literally just your view of the world.”
Jim emphasizes the link between speed of learning and financial success.
“I just can't, if I misunderstand you or wonder what you're talking about, the message has failed.”
Discover how effective learning narratives shape customer engagement.
“I've read it once, and a year later I can say the exact soundbite.”
Explore common learning challenges and their emotional impacts on individuals.
“So if it's understandable, it's kind of even fun to be able to learn and see what we're made of.”
Learn how expressing empathy can enhance customer relationships and brand loyalty.
“How many of you read a page in a book, got to the end and just forgot what you just read?”
Gain insights into how personal challenges can lead to growth and purpose.
“again, maybe as my instilled by my parents or something else, you know, from God, I, I, I feel like I went through, so there's something called post-traumatic stress, right?”
Understand the difference between passion and purpose in learning and teaching.
“I would do a book report, like, because I would work hard, you know, back before the internet.”
Discover how personal identity impacts learning and performance under stress.
“Do you ever wonder why some marketing instantly grabs your attention, while other marketing you just ignore?”
Discover core principles that define effective brand identities and strategies.
“I teach you to read faster, remember more, and focus on command.”
Explore how learning is a superpower and the importance of enhancing human intelligence.
“Let me do this because I want to make sure our listeners get to the meat of how you built the brand.”
Understand the need to challenge oneself mentally before relying on technology like AI.
“But if somebody is competent, has character, is capable, it'll scale that also as well.”
Learn about daily habits and practices that can enhance brain function and well-being.
“And I also will do these imagination experiments.”
Learn how to harness the first moments of waking to set a positive tone for your day.
“Last time you and I were together at my house, which was only a couple weeks ago, you said something about the five minutes before you go to bed and how important those are.”
Understand how personal stories and empathy drive successful branding and identity transformation.
“And what I wanted to do for multiple reasons is I didn't want to just write another book that people read in a few days and put on the shelf.”
Discover how reading can transform your self-perception and open doors to new opportunities.
“I mean, the problem was you were never taught how to learn.”
Explore the deeper significance of storytelling in branding and how it connects us to our audience.
“I didn't even get into this during our interview.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On The StoryBrand Podcast, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
0:00Today on the StoryBrand Podcast is my friend Jim Kwik. Jim wrote a book called Limitless. He has a new book out called Limitless Daily. He has an incredible story. On today's episode, we're going to talk about how Jim turned his mission into soundbites that grew the brand, but you're going to hear a whole lot about what he actually teaches. So you're going to get two things, some inspiration on building your own brand based on Jim Quick. And also you're going to learn a whole lot about how to think better, think faster, and transform yourself using that supercomputer up there in your head that is your brain.
0:33You're listening to the StoryBrand podcast based on Donald Miller's bestselling book, Building a StoryBrand. The StoryBrand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea. Your customer is the hero and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now let's dive in with your host, Donald Miller.
1:05Jim, you've got a company called Quick Learning, is that right? K-W-I-K Learning.
1:10Jim Kwik: Yeah, Quick Really is my last name. I didn't change it. It's like a stage name. It's my father's name, my grandfather's name. You could say my life, my destiny was pretty much planned out. Well, that was incredibly convenient. If I called it Miller Messaging, I don't think anybody would have bought it. You had the double entendre there. It was really great. And you started this thing. I didn't realize you've been doing this for, I mean, it's 2026 right now. You've been doing this for 25 years. 35. Yeah, I started when I was 18. So before you started Quick Learning, you started the company in 2001.
1:42Jim Kwik: I've been doing this full time since I learned everything in turn to turn my mess into my mission. Yeah, I'm 53. You are a young 53, my friend. I would guess 35. That's amazing. You just hijacked the show. We're going to talk about what you're eating, what sort of face cream you use. Those cold plunges, yeah. The cold plunges. Yeah, we've just been talking for five minutes about cold plunges. um yeah i i was fortunate enough to to find my dharma my mission pretty pretty early well i want to get into that before we get into the messaging that built your brand that is literally the offer that you put together the way you've productized that offer we're going to get there and i think there's a lot of stuff for our our listeners to learn from that but before we get there we got to get into the backstory of the guide you know you're the guy who helps the hero the backstory usually as a backstory of pain, where they experienced a sort of pain that they now want to help people not experience.
2:42And yours involved a couple head injuries back in the day, because you help people learn. Let's get that out of the way. You help people learn, and you help people learn things fast. And you claim that everybody tells you you need to learn things. In school, they teach you to learn things, but they don't teach you how to learn. And you are the how to learn guy. So how did this start with pain?
3:07Jim Kwik: Well, my inspiration was my desperation. The quick of it is pun intended. My parents immigrated here. My dad was 13. He had a lot of jobs. Six of us shared a small bathroom. We live in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked out. But your dad was 13 when he came over? Yeah, yeah. He had unfortunately lost both his parents. and they came here to live with aunts and uncles and just because they couldn't afford to... I mean, everybody has like... I also want to state this and I think with challenge comes change, that adversity can become an advantage. But we live in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at.
3:47Jim Kwik: She had many jobs. She didn't own the laundromat. She worked in a laundromat and you guys lived in the back room. Yeah. Where at? What state were you in? We're in New York. You were in New York, okay. In the big city? Just outside the city. Wow. Yeah, in the suburb. And, yeah, it's a, I mean, the core of my story is really when I was five years old, I was in kindergarten class, and I had an unfortunate accident, a traumatic brain injury. It took a very bad fall, went headfirst into a windowsill, ricocheted into a radiator, rushed to the emergency room. You know, I was unconscious. Knocked out?
4:28You were unconscious?
4:29Jim Kwik: Yeah, it was bad. I mean, where it really showed up was in school. I mean, I would have these migraines at five years old every single day. I just thought it was normal. I became very shut down. You know, as kids, you know, playful and you're curious, but I became very shut down. Because you were in pain. Yeah, I was, and I just didn't. I was trying to understand what was going on. I had poor focus. I couldn't study. You know, teachers would have to repeat themselves over and over again, single me out, and it just felt different. It took me three years longer to learn how to read. Did you attribute that to your head injury or did you begin to accept an I'm dumb identity?
5:07Jim Kwik: So the transition was when I was, it took me the three years longer to learn how to read. So that affected my self-confidence, my self-worth, certainly. When I was nine years old, there was an incident where I was being teased in class because a teacher kept on repeating herself. and you could tell it was just for me, right? For me to understand. And I was being teased. I was obviously called Slow with last name Quick and worse things than that. And a teacher came to my defense in third grade. She pointed to me and said, from the whole class, and I remember it was like yesterday, Don, she said, leave that kid alone.
5:41Jim Kwik: That's the boy with the broken brain. And I could tell you even saying those words out loud, you know, all I heard was broken brain, right? And that became, adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words. So every single time I wasn't picked for sports because I was only the last one because I had coordination, balance issues too. I would say, oh, because I had the broken brain. Every single time I did badly in school, which was every day, I would always say because I was the broken brain. So while her sentence only took five seconds, that was my story for the next 10 years of how broken I was.
6:18and um that was nine that was nine through 19 then that was nine to your entire high school
6:24Jim Kwik: career throughout yeah till i was 18 um at the same time at that age um my because my parents were working so much my grandmother you know she was my superhero she she was the one that took care of me um she started showing early signs of alzheimer's when i was five and it's very confusing, you know, when she would call me by my father's name, when she would repeat something she just said, especially for a five and six year old. And then she, she passed of Alzheimer's when I was seven. So even with Limitless, you know, when it came out in 2020, we sold, we sold a lot of copies. We donated all the proceeds to charity.
7:05We built schools and, you know, for education,
7:08Jim Kwik: for kids that don't have access to education in Ghana and Guatemala and Kenya, we also provided health care for their families, clean water that kept a lot of the kids out of school. And then also we donate heavily to Alzheimer's research for women because most Alzheimer's, women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. Yeah, most of the research is done in males and in memory of my grandmother. But this is, and this is, everybody has their story. This is mine, you know, and it's interesting. there's a level of grace that's come even now you know as i have young kids i have a three and a half year old and a one and a half year old so i started fairly late um but i'm thinking about the stories we tell ourselves in your work which has helped me so much you know over my career um and just the ideas that the stories we tell ourselves is just like your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk right it's like your brain is this incredible supercomputer and And that story is like our self-talk is like the program I'll run.
8:12Jim Kwik: So if we have a story that we're too old or, you know, I can't remember names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because your program, you're literally a computer. It's a confirmation bias at that point. So much so. And that became, so while the accident was a limitation, certainly I had some learning disabilities that came with it. I actually think the bigger limitation by far was my story about that accident that I told myself. and the story was you know it was given a title or a controlling idea by your teacher that label of brokenness became my limit you know and so you could say that and i i do there was a i do believe you know she she had good intentions you know oh sure she was trying to keep everybody from picking on you but you know but gosh i mean that was i struggled i mean my two biggest challenges were that and my superpower i talk a lot about superheroes because i i couldn't read i taught myself how to read by reading comic books maybe there was a way for me to escape you know this kind of a challenging childhood or you know and something about the pictures the art brought the words to life um so i always reference superheroes and even in limitless like you know it was based even the opening opens with like the whole cover and inside cover was is um joseph Campbell's like that, you know, the hero's journey where I want to take people through and make them the hero.
9:34Jim Kwik: And I want to be their, their Yoda or their Miyagi. And, you know, I found my, my mentor, you know, uh, when I, uh, when I was, when I was 18, I was lucky enough to get into a local university, you know, and I thought a freshman meant you can make a fresh start. So Don, I took all these classes because I wanted to, I wanted to show my... Hold on. I want to know how you got there, though, because that's a victim mindset being transformed into a hero mindset. Was there somebody or somewhere, or was it a chip on your shoulder? I mean, people ask me, like, Don, what's the key to success? And I said, oh, it's so easy.
10:08It's a father wound. You know, it's some sort of chip on your shoulder. How did it transform, though, from that victim to something different?
10:15Jim Kwik: It was. Like, my parents, I give them full credit. Like they, um, they're not the healthiest or the wealthiest or the most spiritual or the, you know, like they don't, they don't do yoga or had ever had a green drink, you know, or probably ever never meditated. Um, but they're, and I'm just, I'm saying like, they're just really good. They're just really good people. They work really hard. They're very kind. They do what they say they're going to do. And, um, you know, so, and they, and they believe, I, even though that we didn't have a lot of external stuff. I never felt like we'd lacked, if that makes sense.
10:50Jim Kwik: So I feel like I won the lottery there. And I credit them. How many siblings again? I have a younger brother and younger sister. So I also had that pressure of being the oldest in the family to set a good example, you know, but it was, it was, it was hard without a doubt, but I attribute anything that I'd done decently well to my parents, everything I've fallen short of, I really, That's on me. But I like it. So they were, I was lucky, very blessed there. When I was 18, though, I took all these classes because I wanted to make them proud, right? I wanted to show the world, show myself that I could do this.
11:26And I did worse, like very worse.
11:30Jim Kwik: And I was ready to quit because I didn't have the money to be in school and better. My brother or sister had it. It was just not for me, right? And when I had told that to a friend of mine at school, he's like, this is exactly what happened. He said, hey, I'm going home this weekend to visit my family. Why don't you come with me and just get some space, get some perspective before you tell your friends and family you're quitting school? I mean, that's a big decision. That's a kind friend. Yeah. And I agree to go. And when I get there, the family's pretty well off, beautiful home on the water. and the father's walking me around the property right before dinner and asked me a very innocent question, but it's the worst question that you could ask me at the time.
12:12Jim Kwik: He's like, so Jim, how's school? Right? Innocent question. And I just start bawling in front of this complete stranger. Like I'm pretty like stoic and reserved, but I start like, I have so much pent up angst, mentally, emotionally, all this stuff. And I start telling my whole story, broken brain. and you can't do cutting in school, I'm ready to quit. And then he asked me a very great question. He's like, well, Jim, what are you doing in school? Like, what do you want to be and do and have, contribute? And honestly, Don, I didn't have an answer. No one's ever asked me that question. I just thought, you just go to school and you get your job and this is the path, right?
12:54Jim Kwik: So I start to answer him after some hesitation and he pauses, he puts his hand out like this and he takes out a journal out of his back pocket and he tears out a couple of sheets and hands them to me and he makes me write these things down. And I don't know how long it took because it probably took longer than I would acknowledge, but I started writing things. He said, like, if anything was possible, you know, you couldn't fail, like, what would you want to be, do, have, create, contribute? I started writing down all these things and when I'm done, I start folding the sheets of paper to put in my pocket thinking, okay, this exercise is nice.
13:30Jim Kwik: It's over. And he rips them right out of my hand. And I start freaking out because he starts reading them to himself. And these are things I've never shared with anybody, much less even acknowledged for myself, right? And he's obviously very successful. I'm 18 years old, very insecure. And when he's done, this is what changed my life. He said, Jim, you're this close to everything on this list. And he spreads his index fingers about a foot apart. And I'm thinking, no way, give me 10 lifetimes and I'm not gonna crack that list. He takes his fingers, he puts them on the side of my head, meaning what's in between is like the key.
14:02Jim Kwik: It's like a movie, right? And then he takes me into his home. Literally Mr. Miyagi. And then he had you wax his car. That was coming up. And then he takes me into his home, into a room that I've never seen before. You'd appreciate it. It's wall to wall, ceiling to floor, covered in books. Now remember, I've never read a book, right? Reading is not like being in a room full of snakes. I've never seen a library in somebody's home before. But what makes it worse is now I'm in this room full of snakes, and he starts grabbing snakes off the shelf and handing them to me. And I start looking at the titles, and there are these biographies of some incredible men and women in history and some very early personal growth books.
14:45Jim Kwik: I mean, Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, like the classics, right? Yeah, I remember the power of positive thinking and enthusiasm makes the difference. All of those, right? And I've never been, like my teacher would have been surprised if I read a book, much less, you know, wrote books. And so he says, Jim, you have to read to succeed. I want you to read one book a week. And automatically I go back to my story. I'm like, have you not listened to anything I was saying? I have this learning challenge. I'm a very bad reader. And he's like, and I said this, I have all this schoolwork waiting for me.
15:19Jim Kwik: I came in, when I said schoolwork, he looks at me and said, Jim, don't let school get in the way of your education. Now, this was 35 years ago, right? So I didn't know it was a Mark Twain quote, but I was like, wow, that's a great saying. And still, I can't commit because my parents taught me anything. It's just I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do, but I can't commit to that. Very smart man. He takes out, he has the audacity, he takes out of his pocket my bucket list, my dream list. And he starts reading every single one of my dreams and goals, my fantasy out loud. Right. And something about like hearing someone who's obviously successful, like in can't out into the universe, like someone else's voice, your dreams and somebody else's voice mess with my mind, my spirit, something fierce.
16:03Jim Kwik: And honestly, Don, a lot of the things on that list were things I wanted to do for my parents, things they can never afford, or even if they had money, they wouldn't do for themselves. and with that leverage because I think things have to go from your head to your heart to your hands like we could have goals in our head but we're not acting consistently with our hands like taking action I think a lot of people are missing the the emotional part the heart part right the purpose the not intellectual but feeling that so I agreed to read um one book a week because I want to help my parents um and so fast forward in the story I'm back at school sitting at my desk I have a pile of books I have to read for midterms, a pile of books I promised to read from this mentor.
16:47Jim Kwik: And I really couldn't get through pile A. So where do I get the time? I don't eat. I don't sleep. I don't exercise. I don't socialize. I just live in the library for weeks and weeks. And one night at two o 'clock in the morning, I pass out out of sheer exhaustion. I fall down a flight of stairs at the library, hit my head again. And I woke up two full days later in the hospital. That's a serious fall. This is a second brain injury. I was hooked up to all these IVs because I was malnourished. I was dehydrated. I was down to 117 pounds, so 50 pounds lighter than I am now. And so I thought I died.
17:24Jim Kwik: And it was the darkest, scariest place because I think part of me wish I did because that's how worthless I felt. And I just said there has to be a better way. And when I did, the nurse came in. This is like out of a movie. She brings me a mug of tea because I'm a tea drinker. I don't drink a lot of coffee. And it had a picture of Albert Einstein on it. And it's the opposite of what I thought I was. But there's this quote on there that we've all heard in different iterations. It said, the same level of thinking that has created your problem won't solve your problem. And it made me ask a new question.
18:00Jim Kwik: Like, what's my problem? Well, I have a broken brain. I'm a very slow learner. I was like, well, how do I think differently about that? Well, maybe I could fix my brain. Maybe I could learn how to learn better. And I was like, where do you do that? Well, school teaches you everything. Asked the nurse for a course bulletin for next semester. I started looking at all these classes, and they're all classes on what to learn. Math, history, science, Spanish. Zero classes on how to learn it. So I put my studies aside, and I started studying these personal development books. And I started really getting curious.
18:31Jim Kwik: I wanted to know how my brain works, how I work my brain. And how does my memory work so I can work my memory better? And after I started studying this, ancient mnemonics and the latest brain science and the art of speed reading, 60 days into it, a light switch flipped on. And I started to understand things for the first time. And I started to get some traction. I started to get admitted grades. My life improved. And here's how I ended up on this path, though. I couldn't help but help other people because I honestly was very angry. I was like, I struggled every day as a kid. and there were simple things that I could have been taught but I wasn't that would have helped me navigate this.
19:10Jim Kwik: And so I started to tutor. And one of my very first students, she was a college freshman, she read 30 books in 30 days. Not skim or scan, she read them. And I wanted to know not how, I taught her how to read faster and remember and understand. I want to know why. I'm always curious about what motivates people. And I found out that her mother was dying of terminal cancer. was given two months to live, 60 days by doctors. And the books she was reading were books to save her mom's life. In that moment, I said prayers. We said prayers together, wished her luck. Six months goes by, and I get a call from this young lady, and she's crying, crying profusely.
19:48Jim Kwik: When she stops, I find out there are tears of joy, that her mother not only survived, but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how or why they're calling it a miracle. But her mother attributed 100 % to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books. And in that moment, I realized two things. I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it's a superpower we all have. That's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. The other thing I learned was my mission, you know, in terms of building better, brighter brains daily. Because I find that it's everything, you know.
20:22Jim Kwik: People are struggling and suffering with their focus, their memory, their overload, their distraction, and all these, and their self-esteem, everything. When we weren't given an owner's manual for our minds, every technology, you have instructions on how to use it, but not this one that's the most important one. So I made it my mission. The story is beautiful. It's just amazing. And you see this with so many really successful people. You see this pain, and their pain is so valuable. I can't remember who said it, but never waste a crisis. If you've ever heard that quote, never waste a crisis. I like that.
21:01And it is so good. And I do find it the number one distinction or the differentiation between very successful people and people who struggle and feel like they are always behind in society. I mean, no judgment against those people. I understand your pain. But I do find the number one differentiation is people who have leveraged their pain for their own success. You call it a chip on your shoulder. Call it the empathy that you develop because of pain. And those who continue to be burdened by it, in other words, victim mindset versus what I would call heroic mindset. I don't mean to label those people as heroes, but what I mean is the people who decide I was hurt, I'm going to stop other people from being hurt in the way that I was hurt.
21:48and I'm going to heal myself and I'm just determined to get past this. And I just find that that's the difference. And it doesn't matter how intelligent they are. None of that matters. It's literally just your view of the world. And it's often very painful. I have a friend who I care about very much. I'm watching go down this victim mindset. And I won't get into the specifics, but it's very, very bad. And it's literally just like, Hey, if you could just, if you could just leverage your pain and move it forward, I want to get, you know, we have a bunch of business owners on this podcast. And if you don't mind, you've, you've made so many little great sound bites that are clearly, uh, part of your vocabulary and part of your, your messaging, you know, the system that you've created maybe accidentally.
22:39But this podcast is about the message that built the brand. Part of that is the same level of thinking that created your problem won't solve your problem, the Einstein quote. At the beginning of a messaging canvas, we have these five foundational soundbites that more or less introduce your brand to a customer and invite them into a story in which they use your product or your service in order to change their own lives. And I sort of ran your brand through StoryBrand AI. And I'm very curious of what you would think and respond to these soundbites as I sort of describe the foundational soundbites, whether or not you agree with them or whether or not you've used them or whether or not, Don, that's not exactly how I would say it, but I figured it's a good place to start.
23:20Yeah, I love that. The problem soundbite, and I just freaking love this, the way it came out. And I think you've used this language on this interview. You were never taught how to learn. Yeah. You were just never taught how to learn. It makes, I mean, as soon as you hear it, you just go, uh, that is absolutely true. It agitates the pain as soon as you hear it. I've never thought about it, but I immediately agree with it.
23:44Jim Kwik: Yeah. It's like going to somebody like even your kids or your coworkers, they focus or study this. That's like going to somebody saying, play the ukulele or play the didgeridoo. It's never taken a class or any kind of training on how to do that. There's no class called focus. There's no class called remembering, right? They teach you three R's in school, reading, writing, arithmetic. Obviously, spelling is not one of them. But what about retention? What about recall? Socrates said learning is remembering. That's why I like stories a lot, because they're memorable. Well, they're also great devices on helping you remember things, period.
24:16I mean, if you can tell a story about your waitress. And, you know, there was a gal who I asked her name, Betsy, and Emmeline and I went out to breakfast. and I'm terrible about remembering names, but I love it when I do, especially if I don't see you in six months and I remember your name, people are always shocked. So this woman's name is Rachel and she looked a little bit like Rachel Weiss, I think is the name of the actress who used to be around. So when she told me her name, I told myself a story about how she hated the fact that Rachel Weiss had told her, had stolen her name in order to get her acting.
24:53Total fiction. But now I remember Rachel. Next time I go in there, I go, hi, Rachel, because it's just such a nice story, narrative version, remember. But you teach people these techniques. You teach them in the book Limitless and also in Limitless Daily, which is a daily devotion of, which we're going to get to in a second, of little five-minute reads. But you teach people in Limitless these strategies in order to remember and learn things. But each of them solves the problem of you were never taught how to learn. and as soon as I say, you know what, you were never taught how to learn, but there's this thought leader named Jim Quick, the immediate assumption is Jim Quick is going to teach me how to learn.
25:33It's just so clear. You know what I mean? It's so clear that it allows you to sort of own the category which you clearly own.
25:40Jim Kwik: Yeah, I think it's important. Our friend Sally Hawks says it's better to be different than to be better. People who create a category, it's kind of like Blue Ocean Strategy. on average actually will own 40%. A leader will own 40 % of the market. Then it goes to 20 and 10, second and third. But, you know, and that's also important to stand out in the marketplace, right? To be different, to be specific. You know, do you have a very specific, you know, problem and a transformation you're helping people go through? But yeah, I use these quickisms as kind of as cognitive reframes. I didn't call them quickisms.
26:18Jim Kwik: Our community does that. Yeah, it's nice. It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. There's no such thing as a good or bad memory, and people are like, of course there is. No, there's a trained memory and an untrained memory. As your body moves, your brain grooves, talking about exercise. So there are hundreds of them in Limitless in our podcast and our courses. But I make them so that they're easily shareable. They're easy to go viral, they're easy to be able to remember and be able to pass on to other people. It's not how smart you are. It's how are you smart? And Jim, I want to talk about what we're literally talking about right now is why you are the 60 % guy.
26:59It's why you own this Blue Ocean territory and may have even to some degree created it. You were never taught how to learn is so much more memorable. And it's so you feel it when you hear it, where if you would have had the soundbite, education matters. Nobody would know who Jim Quick is.
27:20Jim Kwik: Yeah. And you can see how mistakes in messaging are mistakes in building companies and building brands. I mean, you just have to get it right. You know, I've got four rules of messaging, and you were never taught how to learn obeys rule number one, zero cognitive load. I just can't, if I misunderstand you or wonder what you're talking about, the message has failed. The next one is linked to survival. Now, if somebody teaches me how to learn, there's a direct link to my surviving and thriving in life, and it's very obvious. There's a zero cognitive load connection to the link to survival. It's memorable and repeatable, which is rule number three.
28:00I've read it once, and a year later I can say the exact soundbite. And then it makes the customer the hero. It's clearly describing a hero in a hole who you're going to help out of the hole. And it obeys all four rules. Therefore, it works. And it works really, really well.
28:16Jim Kwik: Yeah, the accelerated learning space, and it's there. I feel like I was able to do it without having a master's in education or a PhD in psychology or a medical degree. I feel like I like researching this. I have a love of learning, but I like making it very accessible with a little friction. So if it's understandable, it's kind of even fun to be able to learn and see what we're made of. But I say things like the faster you learn, the faster you earn. Because knowledge, say, is not only power, it's profit. And I think people get that, right? The faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. Because knowledge is not only power, it's profit.
28:54Jim Kwik: You know, that when you can easily remember client information or product information, it gives speeches on stage or on video without notes or a teleprompter. When you can walk into a room with 20 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one of them by name, who are they all going to remember, right? Oh, yeah. These are all things. And I could also, but I also could illustrate the problem people are facing. You know, I'll go on stages and I'll say, you know, get just so people, because I think the more people feel you understand their problem, they feel seen, they felt felt, then the automatic assumption is you know the solution.
29:27Jim Kwik: So if I say something like, how many of you have, and I'm talking to a listener right now, how many of you have books on your shelf you haven't read yet? Everyone raised their hands. Like it's become shelf help, not self help, right? How many of you read a page in a book? These are all the quickisms. How many of you read a page in a book, got to the end and just forgot what you just read? Right? Everybody. And you go back and you read it and you still know what you just read. Right? And how many of you, you know, have ever shook someone's hand, got their name, and seconds later the name just disappears out of your mind.
29:56Jim Kwik: Right? So I think when people see that, they can also see consequence. They feel a little bit of pain. You know, and I don't think most people realize there's a solution for these things. Like I didn't understand. You know, at your mastermind years ago, where you have a special, you know, we've got author friends getting together. I heard someone say something like, you're powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. I think that was Rory or somebody said that. And I just feel like that's who I'm talking to, that person. Yeah, that gets to the second soundbite, which is your empathy soundbite.
30:31Once you identify the problem that exists in the market, it is helpful to empathize with those people and do it directly with words, to say, I used to be you. And for you to be able to say, I know exactly what it feels like to be the slowest person in a fast room. That says to me, this guy cares about me. And you're an extremely caring person. I always emphasize that every customer you have is an angel sent from God. Bottom line. And if you see them that way, that there's a mutually beneficial relationship. You're going to help me feed my family, and I'm going to get you out of this hole. and so they're just angels from God but you have a love for these people it's very obvious it's where you put your money with the limitless proceeds but I think it's a superpower of yours
31:22Jim Kwik: I do coming back to and it's not this came through I feel a moral obligation to do what I do because shame on me if people are struggling or suffering in any way like I was and I could be supportive and I'm not and so I feel maybe again, maybe as my instilled by my parents or something else, you know, from God, I, I, I feel like I went through, so there's something called post-traumatic stress, right? But there's also something called post-traumatic growth. And that's where we go through, I'm sure some people listening or watching, they've gone through adversity that they wouldn't wish upon anybody, but they wouldn't change it for themselves.
32:02Right.
32:02Jim Kwik: Because through it. Yeah. Victor Frankl talks about that. He said, What's the worst thing that ever happened to you? Now, if you could take that away, would you? And he said every time he asked that question to a room, the entire room struggles to say they would. Because they know there was a benefit. I just got goosebumps. I call them truth bumps. I feel like it's that we go through something for a reason, right? And post-traumatic growth is you wouldn't change it for yourself because you found something. You found a character trait. You found a mission. You found some clarity. You found a strength that you didn't know you had, right?
32:39Jim Kwik: Or something that's bigger than yourself. Like, my other challenge besides learning all through school was public speaking because I never knew the answer. Like, my superpower was shrinking, was being invisible because I didn't want to be bullied. So I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to be called out in class. I would always sit in the back behind a tall kid because I never knew. I would do a book report, like, because I would work hard, you know, back before the internet. and I would spend all the time in the library and everything. But if a teacher asked me to present it in front of the class, I'd be so terrified.
33:11Jim Kwik: Some people listening might have a fear of public speaking. I had a phobia. I would shake, I can't breathe, much less speak. And I would lie. I would say in front of the whole class to the teacher that I didn't do it, even if I worked on it for weeks because I was that terrified. Now, God has a sense of humor because my two biggest challenges were learning in public speaking. and all I do is public speak on this thing called learning. And I've done it on 60 countries, like 2 ,200 keynotes for companies and corporations and conferences. But what gets me on those stages or on video is thinking about the person I once was.
33:47Jim Kwik: And books changed my life. Events changed my life. Trainings have changed my life, courses. And I just refuse. you know because they always say like i've never taken five minutes of public speaking training but i understand how people learn their best to make it stick and memorable and actionable but i just feel like you know this is why i'm here and adversity can be an advantage i don't know one strong person that had an easy life right you know because with challenge comes change and whoever's listening to this you know i think there's a difference between passion and purpose meaning passion is what lights me up what lights you up and everyone listening can think about a lot of things that light them up that they're passionate about for me purpose is taking your what lights you up and lighting somebody else up so like learning is a passion of mine it wasn't always but i love to learn teaching people how to learn is my purpose because it lights them up and i think you learn to earn to return right and so my my that and this always in terms of my tithing and you know with church and everything else i do but it just makes me feel like everything in nature has to grow and also give and that just feels more aligned because i don't have to motivate myself because he because when you're doing something not just for a dollar but for making a difference i feel like it it's more sustainable you know for me when i have to be on three consonants in a week for example when it's still a little bit nervous to be able to to do that well that gets to the answer soundbite and we're we've we're you know it's the peace soundbite Problem, empathy, answer, change, and result.
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35:56Download your free copy of those four rules today by clicking the link in the show notes. The answer to soundbite is just, I'm a brain coach. I teach you to read faster, remember more, and focus on command. I mean, that's my solution to you being in the hole. It's the rope you throw into the hole is, hey, I'm a brain coach. I can get you out of this hole.
36:16Jim Kwik: Yeah, it's like someone has a physical trainer to make them more physically fit and strong and faster and more flexible and healthier than I like to be helping them with their brain. And then the identity, the change that you offer to that person, the sound bite is you become limitless. It's the name of your book. I love identity and I love that you bring that up because I think that's where we're moving towards, right? It's not people don't need more information, right? What they need is new habits and a new story and a new identity. I think that people under stress, because everyone could perform well when it's ideal conditions, right?
36:49Jim Kwik: But then when are they ideal, perfect conditions? I feel like under pressure, under stress, that we don't rise to level of our aspirations. We fall to the level of our stories, our systems, and our self-image. It's one of your famous quotes. Yeah, and I feel like you can't outperform your self-image in terms of how you see yourself. And so much of that is driven by the story we're telling ourselves. and that could be a challenge and where did that story come from much less the story we're telling to the world that there's an internal reality of what you're offering to people but then there's this external perception some people have a great external perception but they don't have a great internal reality some people have a great internal reality but they don't have the external perception that matches that in their community it doesn't have to be at a big scale it could be in their neighborhood or in some part of their industry.
37:42I think it's one of the keys to your success, and so much of this is accidental. I don't think you ever intended this. This was not an option by my guidance counselor. Right, exactly. You think it wasn't part of your business strategy, but you literally want to transform people. It's like, yeah, I teach you how to read and I teach you how to remember things, but that's not why I do this. I do this because I'm transforming the way you view yourself in this world.
38:03Jim Kwik: Yeah, and our Slack for our team, like where our communications are, Like we start, their prime directive, you start your day with the channel that says Joy Stories. And everyone in social media or customer experience team or whatever, they copy and paste all the stories. And they read all their stories before they start work. The presence that, these are people, right? These aren't statistics or numbers. These are people whose lives. And there's nothing that lights me up more than that. Like everything in my life, it's not time management. It's mind management. You know, I think the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing.
38:38Jim Kwik: And you're focusing on the most important things. Because I think a lot of people are burnt out, you know, going in their process at work or in life. Not because they're doing too much, but because sometimes we're burnt out because we're doing too little, the things that are lighting us up. Yeah. You know, and I feel like more, so many people are dimming their light in an often dark world when we need people. because they're dimming their light because they don't want to shine in somebody else's eyes, right, or their expectations, their opinions, you know, and I just feel like the person in the arena, you know, that Theodore Roosevelt quote has felt like a lot.
39:14Jim Kwik: It's been in my head rent-free for a long time, but that just, you know, it's not the critic that counts, right? It's the person in the arena covered in dust and sweat and, you know, and some blood that's going through and failing. But I just, I respect people because, you know, they're doing the work. Because the truth is, wherever age or stage we're at, we can't be upset by the results we didn't get from the work we didn't do, right? And so I feel like part of that is the story we're saying to ourselves of why we can't do something. Because the story is probably accurate, right? I can't do this because I had no money.
39:47Jim Kwik: I had no network. We had no education. We had no contacts or whatever. And this could be all true. And then what, right? So I feel like the most important story. Yeah. I mean, you learn this technique that Jim's talking about. I remember having a book on the New York Times for a long time, for very close to a year. Took all the money. I'd paid off my house. I'd put some money away. I sold my house, took the money that I'd put away, and I put it into an investment. It was a movie that I had helped write. Oh, wow. And it was a six-month investment. I was going to get the money back so that I could move to a different house.
40:26The house I wanted to buy fell through, so I just was sitting on all this money. I said, I'm going to put in this investment. That investment, on a Monday morning, I realized I'd lost it all. Every penny. Every penny from a year on the New York Times, every penny of my house money, every penny. I had$5 ,000. I had just started dating Betsy, and I knew I was going to marry her. Now, I think women are attracted to looks, intelligence, and money. I hate to be that shallow. And I only had one. I had money and now I had none. You're a handsome man. What am I going to do? And I remember crying myself to sleep.
41:08And I, by the way, that part was a joke. Betsy was, doesn't care what I look like or anything. She actually doesn't care about the money. But I remember about three days in saying, okay, here's the story. Here's the story. The story is because you lost everything, you became extremely wealthy and successful. Now, how does that story become true? And today, Betsy and I give away to charity the same amount of money I lost on that day, At least that much or more. And it's because I'm convinced it's because I had read enough of Viktor Frankl, read enough of guys like you to understand this story is going to take you down unless you reframe the story and was able to do that.
41:58But the end result soundbite for you, I think, is so you can learn any skill in any field for the rest of your life and never be the one falling behind again. That's the end of the story if you subscribe to Jim Quick's methodologies. Let me do this because I want to make sure our listeners get to the meat of how you built the brand. I want to suggest and find out from you, would this be the controlling idea of your brand? Would this be your tagline? Because AI thinks it could be. If knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. I've heard you say it even on this interview. Would that be the tagline or the controlling idea you think of your brand that built your brand?
42:41Jim Kwik: I've been saying that for 30 years because I was all infatuated with superpowers. Yeah, comic book. I think everything is learnable, right? So I feel like it's a core first principle of what we teach is that you don't take an IQ test when you're 8 and that's your potential when you're 88. We discovered more about the human brain in the past few decades than probably the first few thousand. And I feel like we're grossly underestimating our own capabilities. I think if I could suggest a tagline, I don't think it's better. But AI had one. Let me teach you how to learn. is a really great tagline for Jim Quicken.
43:23It's also a really great name of a book. You know, let me just teach you how to learn. Yeah. If you ever wanted to do, if you ever wanted a tagline for your education material to go into some high schools and junior highs and elementary schools, let me teach you how to learn is a really great, because, you know, you've said there's no course on learning. There should be.
43:41Jim Kwik: No, and they use, you know, they use our systems in some of the top schools in the world, like in South Korea and Finland. And the big thing that we're focusing on, I realize I'm asking a question over the past few years and where my research has gone into and my coaching has evolved into, is that teaching people how to learn faster and read faster, improve their memory, their focus, optimizing their brain with the best sleep and diet protocols and stress management, all that, habit design, what is it all for? It's really for me to enhance human intelligence. And what I mean by that is another thing that I say besides the art of learning is the art of attention, right?
44:26Or I say more of these, your brain is like a muscle, use it or lose it.
44:31Jim Kwik: It's that my big statement now is human intelligence is greater than artificial intelligence because of this. Because there's this thing that's going on. This is why I wrote the new book. There's something called cognitive offloading. And at a meta level, people should be maybe looking at not what I'm doing, but why I'm doing it for their own business or brand or bank account. Meaning that I want to own a category. And for me, it's human intelligence. Meaning that even when I work with companies like Facebook, Nike, SpaceX, the Air Force, whatever, I feel like the bottleneck for the brand or the business is not necessarily talent or technology or even capital.
45:08Jim Kwik: It's usually the cognitive capacity of the founders or the leaders. their ability to be clear on what's important, what things mean. Because AI could compute and process, but ultimately leaders have to decide, what does this mean? What's important here? What are we going to do with this information? And so AI could scale and amplify, but it only could scale and amplify what a human brings. So if a human being is confused and uninformed, it'll scale that. But if somebody is competent, has character, is capable, it'll scale that also as well. So my goal is, I believe HI is more important than AI, that everything that I've taught about focus and reading and learning and memory and brain optimization, it's all to make people more human, like more human intelligence.
45:51Jim Kwik: Because the challenge right now, I'll tell you the big problem that people are going to either feel right now or feel tomorrow, is the cognitive offloading. It's the using AI as a crutch, not as a coach. Yes. Meaning you wouldn't send, you wouldn't go to the gym and ask your friends to lift the weights for you. You get no benefit. but ai is removing the friction from the process and just like building muscles it requires novelty and nutrition same thing with your mental muscles my big challenge because everyone listening to this it's not like the industrial age or the agricultural age where your compensation your your value in society is your brute strength today's your brain strength it's not your muscle power today it's your mind power right and the faster you can learn the faster you can earn because knowledge is the only power it's profit so i i say certain things over and over again for the repetition of it, right?
46:37Jim Kwik: So people could pass it on. But here's what I mean about AI. And I use AI. I'm a big optimist and utilization, but I always want to prime my mind first. Like I teach in this new book, something called build. You want to build before you borrow. Talk about soundbites, build before you borrow. And it's a simple acronym. I give a lot of acronyms. I mean, you could go online, there are a hundred acronyms for remembering names and learning faster and everything because people are listening and working out or driving and they can't write it down and it sticks with them, right? But really quickly, Don, I think this would be a value, you know, for your team, for everyone listening, just as what I'm learning from you is so valuable.
47:15Jim Kwik: The B is in build, before you borrow, you build your own intelligence, is brainstorm. Before I go to an AI platform, I will brainstorm the situation myself, right? It's just like if your apartment or office is on the seventh floor, the elevator is a form of technology, but then you don't take the stairs you don't get the physical workout if you take an uber or a car to go 10 blocks to the bank you know convenient but then is it could be crippling because we're not getting our steps in right so there's always that balance but i'm really concerned about cognitively like and so like the industrial age made it easier physically for everybody the the ai age is making it easy easier cognitively but that's the problem though is comfort there's a comfort crisis right that we We don't challenge ourselves and we don't get the muscles that come with it.
48:03Jim Kwik: So the B is I brainstorm the situation first. The A, I mean, let's go with the U. The U is I want to understand the problem. You know, it's attributed to Einstein, who knows. But he said if I have an hour to solve a problem, I'll spend 55 minutes figuring out what the real problem is. Yeah, I've heard that with Einstein and George Washington both. Yeah, because often the problem is not the problem. The problem is like our attitudes, assumptions about the problem. So I would understand the problem because I think a lot of people are optimizing for the wrong problem in life and everything. They have these dominant questions that they're asking themselves like, why am I not enough?
48:38Jim Kwik: Or why can't I ever do this? Why does this always happen to me? And they get their answers like they would have prompt on AI. If you went into AI and say, why do I have all this bad luck? It's going to give you all the evidence for it, right? So really defining the problem. And then the I in build is I want to use my imagination. Einstein said imagination is more powerful than knowledge. And what am I imagining? Three answers to that problem that I've refined myself. I try to come up with it first before I'm spoon-fed. Because again, if AI removes the friction of learning, like I'll tell you something I haven't shared.
49:10Jim Kwik: We've done about 500 podcast episodes and we can't wait to have this conversation with you because I think this could be one of the most important conversations with you as a guest. I, my team wanted me to interview somebody who's, that's really known online for their sayings and their insights that they're posting. I was like, that's fine. I do the interview and I'm really excited about it. I go through all, just like I always do, read all the book and read all content. And then I got on the conversation and this person was not, couldn't answer anything with any degree of wisdom. And I really didn't even know his own book or didn't.
49:44Jim Kwik: Yeah. Because I think he was spoon fed the information either through AI or through his team is doing it. And he, and this person never had to do the work. Right. And you could tell the life you live the lessons you teach. I really think to do what we do, it takes three things for anyone listening. You have to learn your craft. You have to live your craft and then you get, you've earned the ability to teach it. But I think again, the life you live the lessons you teach, like I could roll out of bed like you can at four o 'clock in the morning and do this because this is what I do to that's what I did to survive, like with the stuff I teach, right?
50:19Jim Kwik: You have to practice what you post. Because I do believe that humans are very sophisticated. Just how we could identify AI slop. People could tell if people are really doing the work. Because it's better well done than well said. It's better, you know, don't promise, prove, right? Don't say it, show it, right? And so I feel like there's a level of alignment and congruency. So for the eye, I'm imagining the answers, three answers to this problem. And I also will do these imagination experiments. I'll be like, oh, how would a five-year-old look at this problem? Because often children will look at it in a totally innocent, non-biased way, right?
50:58Jim Kwik: And see the elusive obvious, you know, or how would somebody 10 times smarter than me solve this problem, right? Or I'll think of a mentor, right? How would they look at this problem? So I'll use my imagination. And then the L in build, after I brainstorm, understand, and imagine solutions myself, then the L is I'll leverage AI. But here's how I use AI. I don't want it to do the work for me, right? I want to do some of the work so I can maintain. Because what happens in a society where we're cognitively not only offloading, but surrendering? What happens to our muscles, mental muscles of judgment, of creativity, of curiosity, of critical thinking, right?
51:35Jim Kwik: And what happens is how easy is it in a society, a community, a civilization, how easy it would be to manipulate that community when they can't think for themselves or sort of through misinformation, you know, or be able to analyze the, you know, other people's agendas or authority, right? So I think this is paramount that the big question, if you're talking about story that we're living in right now, is this story. We're living in this conversation with how do you remain deeply human in an age of AI. If AI is to do faster computing, what makes us truly human? And that's what's going to make us valuable.
52:12Jim Kwik: And I think there are five areas for that. It's not just an AI revolution. I think there can be a human renaissance, an evolution where it'll force us to become more human. Because we're not going to compete with AI, right? But ultimately humans are going to be focusing on certain areas that we talk about every day and limitless daily. but the L is leverage AI and how I use it is not to do the work for me. What I'm using mostly is I'm saying, give me an argument, a strong argument against what I'm thinking about right now. Or I'm saying point out, or I'm asking it to point out my cognitive biases or my blind spots.
52:50Jim Kwik: What could go wrong here? Because AI has an incredible propensity to placate to people, to be a sycophant. It'll talk to the most unintelligent person, make them feel like they're geniuses, right? Because unless you use it to say, hey, stress test this idea, this business idea. Right. A post-mortem, if you will. Right, exactly. And so that's how it leverage AI. And then the D in build, after I brainstorm, I better understand the real problem. I imagine my own solutions. And then I leverage AI to poke holes in it and build on it. And I use it not as an artificial intelligence, more of an augmented intelligence.
53:29Jim Kwik: It's augmenting. It's like all technology is there to help partner and make your life easier. But I don't want it to cripple us, you know, as opposed to where we could build up muscles. And then the D in build is you decide. You know, after all of this, then you decide what's important, you know, what to focus on, what to do with all this information. Because AI also has no stake in anything. The thing with AI, I could spend all kinds of advice for your relationship, for your health, for your business. but it has no responsibility because it has no consequence, right? Ultimately, human beings have to take on the responsibility, you know, because often with human beings, you see the choices they made, but you don't know the, you know, you don't know the choices they had, right?
54:13Jim Kwik: And so, like, ultimately, because AI also has feigned bedside manner, you know, using it as a therapist. I'm not saying don't use that or not, but I'm just saying AI could feign empathy, but it doesn't know how to console a grieving child. It doesn't know what it is like to ask for forgiveness. It doesn't know what it's like to have heartache, right? So like, and that's where wisdom comes from, right? The human experience reflected on it. That reflection is really important too because a lot of people have the same experience, but they have no wisdom because they haven't reflected on, like you have such introspection, right?
54:48Jim Kwik: To be able to go inside and create meaning around like situations or events that have happened. But I always say build before you borrow, you know, and that's another kind of monquickism. Jim, it's clear that you have used language to build a brand. And I don't think you did it on purpose. I think you did it because you wanted people to understand these concepts. And so you sat down and figured out, what is the best way that I can say this? And because of that, you truly, you know, are the leader in the market on how to leverage your brain for the best possible output and the best possible life.
55:29I would be amiss to not mention your new book is called Limitless Daily, 366 Keys. By the way, Limitless is, you know, there was a movie. I mean, the movie came out after you. Who was that? Was that Matthew McConaughey? I can't remember who was in. It was Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper. That's right. That's right. I tend to think they're related, but they're probably not. Limitless Daily, 366 Keys to Train Your Brain, Master Your Mind, and When Every Day. I've got a copy of the book right here. It is 366 five-minute readings. Last time you and I were together at my house, which was only a couple weeks ago, you said something about the five minutes before you go to bed and how important those are.
56:14And we usually spend those sitting on our phone. Yeah. You've given us something to do with that five minutes.
56:19Jim Kwik: I talk about bookends, bookending your day. At nighttime, I tend to read more fiction reading because I don't want to get in my executive brain. And fiction has been shown to reduce stress upwards of 60%, help you have better sleep quality. Those people are reading Stephen King, I don't think. Oh, okay. Yeah. That might be too stimulating. Well, definitely for me. But also, by the way, reading fiction can improve your EQ, your empathy, your storytelling, your imagination. So many benefits for people who just kind of just stick to nonfiction reading. But in the morning, there's something special also besides nighttime where you're kind of embedding ideas.
56:59Jim Kwik: There's something called sleep inertia. And this could be a big takeaway from this conversation that everyone could employ right away tomorrow morning. When you wake up, there's something called sleep inertia. And that's like when you wake up, your computer's rebooting, right? Everything's coming online, right? And all the tabs are closed, so you have focus, your memory, your working memory's not full with other people's agenda and everything else. But when you wake up, your focus comes online, your awareness comes online, your alertness comes online. And it's kind of like you're waking up to like snow, on the ground and people haven't run their cars over it or walked oil tracks everything it's like anything is possible right what what the science is showing something called attentional priming what you put in that early window and that could be anywhere from the first 15 minutes 45 minutes depending on your sleep quality your circadian rhythm what stage of sleep you woke up in like deep sleep or REM sleep so what the science is saying is that that window the mental inputs you choose to allow inside your brain has a disproportionate effect on the rest of your day.
58:02Now, this is huge. The first five minutes, how are you going to frame it?
58:04Jim Kwik: The first 15 to 45 minutes is that sleep inertia. Gotcha. And so what it means is this, where does it have a disproportionate influence on the rest of your day on what you focus on, how you feel, and how you frame the day with your stories. Now, this is really interesting because, so what I'm saying is in that first 15 to 45 minutes of sleep inertia, when you have empty, it's like a clear whiteboard. Nobody else has written their stuff on there, your emails or doom scrolling, whatever else, whatever you choose to put in. And that's why that window is so powerful. Prefer prayer for gratitude, for bonding with a loved one, because that gets magnified in terms of what you focus on.
58:41Jim Kwik: If you do a prayer and count your blessings during that window, I guarantee you, you will see more blessings throughout your day. It's called attentional priming, right? Because you're priming your mind before your focus has been put everywhere else. What do most people use that window for, though? They use it for their phone. Yeah. And here's, what are you magnifying disproportionately? Comparison, conflict, war, like all the, like nobody would invite 200 strangers into their bedroom first thing in the morning. They talk about whatever they want to talk about. But that's kind of like what people are doing with that window.
59:17Jim Kwik: And so I, another thing, a quickism, is I say mind before media, right? That's why I'm asking people to read Limitless Daily so it's going to magnify the good things and what they focus on, how they could feel more limitless throughout the day, how they're framing situations either as opportunity or a crisis. And so you want to protect mind before media. I would say intention, set your intention for the day before interruption. Set your direction before distraction. And this is something we all could do. And so I recommend people read, amongst other things that they do in that window, Limitless Daily, to prime their mind to win that day before the world tells you what's important and what to focus on and what things mean to kind of get your mind right.
1:00:01Jim Kwik: And if you want to win the day, I think you have to win that first handful of minutes in the day. Well, it's a terrific book. it's uh i actually read today's this morning and uh it helped me think about the plans that i keep changing my plan rather than sticking with this one which was your advice is hey what plans do you already have that uh that exists that are there's still good stuff there and you've walked away from it yeah what it is it's meant that like because everybody wanted to follow up for limitless you know or they ask how you i was gonna ask you that you chose not to write a follow-up yeah so it's like they people wanted to know but they wanted to know ultimately this is really great, this 400 pages of an owner's manual for your brain and how to focus and read faster and all that.
1:00:41Jim Kwik: But how do I practice this daily? And what I wanted to do for multiple reasons is I didn't want to just write another book that people read in a few days and put on the shelf. What I wanted to do is create a new habit. Because first you create your habits, then your habits create you. And also, you know, we had this discussion last time, you know, with the group that we're we're talking about that Atlantic article, right? That 16 % of people read daily, right? Like a book or magazine, it's only 16%, you know, 51 % of people don't read one book a year, you know, and that's tragic, right? And so, you know, part of this is it's an identity shift where if people are reading a little bit each day for just five minutes, three minute read, two minute exercise, you know every single day it's like a mental upgrade like you would up you would get the latest version of chat gpt or the new iphone or update your zoom or your apps this is like a five minute upgrade to your mind right that controls everything and it gets them to say like you know what the key is for identity is doing what you say you're going to do and after reading for a few weeks people start seeing themselves as i am a reader and then they'll start opening up It's like a gateway to other readers.
1:01:52Isn't that amazing? Yeah.
1:01:53Jim Kwik: Yeah. Jim, you are such a gift to the world. I just want to summarize for those of you who are building a brand, you know, some things that Jim did right. One, he based his entire service to the world out of his own story. So it was personal. It meant something. It was motivating. He was inspired to do it. He had an extra drive. Second, he defined a problem. I mean, the problem was you were never taught how to learn. And there's a problem that came from his life. He had deep empathy for that problem. He provided a product, Limitless, and we didn't even get into all the apps that you've created that teach people to speed read.
1:02:29We didn't even get into that, but he created solutions, answers to that problem. He offered an identity transformation. He really summed it up in effective tagline, elevator pitch, brand story, and he also just created a campaign around it that we didn't even have time to get to. I mean, live memory demos, your tagline, book title, your quick brain podcast, all sorts of speed reading challenges, masterclasses, webinars, stage strategies, all sorts of stuff you did, Jim. You built a wonderful brand. I think it's obvious anybody who's listened to this, they're going to be big friends of yours, just like I'm a big fan of yours.
1:03:08You're a gift to the world. I'm thankful. Listen, I'm amazed. I didn't even get into this during our interview. I remember thinking I was dumb. I actually think I must have had a low IQ all the way through high school. And I heard a lecture that readers are leaders. And I thought, wait a second, if readers are leaders, then if I read, I could get ahead. And I started with Norman Vincent Peale. Wow. The power of positive thinking and enthusiasm makes the difference. Those are the two books. And then I went through a phase where I was reading, trying to read a book a day. I didn't keep up with that.
1:03:41But I probably read 200 books that week, that year. And very similar stories. I didn't have the brain injury that you had, but the way you have leveraged that, healed from that, and gone on to benefit others is absolutely the American dream, and it's an honor to know you. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it for everybody here, and thank you for your friendship, and thank you for the support of the book.
1:04:08Jim Kwik: I mean, it means a lot. For me, building a brand is more a mission that happens to also happen. Though the great brands are. you know and so yeah it's at limitlessdaily.com and there's some great gifts there but i just want to you know like i just want to say to you also just like um like i think two of the most important stories are the ones that um that we tell ourselves and then also the ones we help others believe about themselves and so i just want to thank you because you you've dedicated your life to helping people communicate with more clarity more honesty you know more more hope and help you know and in a world that's increasingly noisy and very complicated i feel like that's an incredible gift so thank you for being one of those rare people who doesn't just help up certainly a business grow but you help people find and discover that meaning you know in their work and their confidence in their in their message you know and that's the legacy work for me thanks Jim Limitless Daily is the name of the book you get it today on Amazon wherever you buy books and then I think I heard you say there's some free gifts at LimitlessDaily.com yes yes all right I'll go check those out Jim Quick thanks for being on the show today you're the best thank you everybody thanks for listening to the StoryBrand podcast no matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey get the tools the training and the support you need to start clarifying that message at storybrand.com.
1:05:35And don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can impact to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.
1:06:03Thank you.
How would you build a world-class brand around a niche, somewhat intangible service like accelerated learning? Jim Kwik has done just that.
Jim is a speaker, podcaster, and bestselling author ("Limitless"), who's become a world-class voice in cognition and accelerated learning. He's worked with Google, Harvard, Nike, Oprah and Elon Musk to name a few. But Jim isn't just a brain expert: he's also an excellent communicator and loves distilling his message into short, powerful statements his community calls "Kwik-isms".
In this week's episode, bestselling author Donald Miller sits down with Jim to discuss the in-depth story behind his brand, brainstorm soundbites they can use to make his offer instantly appealing to customers, and Jim shares his process for making sure he uses AI effectively and without turning off his brain.
Check out Jim Kwik's newly released book, "Limitless Daily", here: https://www.amazon.com/Limitless-Daily-Train-Brain-Master/dp/1401978940
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