No one is born with a passion, right?
You would imagine me saying that
Steve Jobs was born with a passion for technology, what if he’d been born 7000 years ago?
50 000 years ago? Would he still have that,
would he be dreaming of the iPhone? No, of course not.
So, where you grow up
is going to influence your outcomes far more than who you are.
Like, this is terrifying,
the greatest predictor of your future success is the ZIP code in which you grow up,
it’s not your IQ. It’s all about like,
what are you going to build? Like at what point do you look inside the
brain and go:
“Ohhh, this is how it works”.
And so, I’m going to
build desire. So,
building desire is one of the most misunderstood things
in the world. It’s like when people say,
“Oh my god I’m in love with this woman” and they think it’s gonna be like that forever
and when that wains and they break up
and they keep chasing that initial high without recognizing,
that’s just not the truth of human neurochemistry.
It’s never gonna be like that. So,
it starts with that just all-consuming drug-like quality
and then it smooths out into something that’s long term pair-bonding
and you have to know how to ride those waves. So, desire is very much the same,
you have to learn how to fan those flames, to take an ember of interest and turn it into
a raging inferno. So, when I was at Quest,
my raging inferno, my reason for existing,
was to end metabolic disease. Well, now I’m doing Impact Theory
and I’m not thinking about metabolic disease anymore,
I’m thinking about the
poor mindset and I’m trying to save people from their
ZIP code is an easy way to think of it.
And so, I fan
those flames, which is something I wasn’t even thinking
about when I was at quest , so it’s like,
you can very much pivot, you can decide.
But it has to be something real, like these are real things,
I really did care about ending metabolic disease
because of my family, I really do care
about the ZIP code being a predictor because of people I’ve loved in my life
who have succumb to that, my inability to help them up to this point.
So it’s like, you take that initial spark
and then you cultivate it like you would a fire.
So, “techne” is an ancient Greek word
that is a set of skills, that matter to you,
that you work extraordinarily hard to build so they are unique to you,
that allow you to serve not only yourself, but other people.
So, we are a social creature. So,
I always want people to understand, there are certain things in you,
hardwired into you, that if you ignore,
you ignore at your peril, and if you leverage,
can really propel you forward. Such as helping other people.
It feels good. It’s so immediate,
when you do something nice for somebody, you feel that
right then man, it feels awesome,
and like when you see people, like really,
like fighting and just like,
think of hurricane Katrina
to use an American disaster
where people flew from all over to come and help
and save people, and it’s like,
dude, people working
more than 24 hours without stopping, working until they collapse,
it’s crazy! But,
when you feel like you can help another human being
alleviate suffering, people go all in man.
That is innate to us, we want to do that!
We’re gonna get this neuro-feedback loop of,
“This feels awesome”, “I feel good”,
“I feel urgency”, “I can not stop myself,
I have to help”. And that’s so powerful.
And if you can make your business about that, now all the sudden like,
the thing for me I hate: working with my hands.
I hate it. I hate grease on my hands,
all that. And
I was having to repair equipment which is something I absolutely hate.
So, when I was under equipment, and I’m talking about,
you’re working, it’s 2AM on a Friday
and your knuckles are bleeding from like trying to fix something,
and you’re thinking, “What am I doing?”
I kept saying, “I’m here to save my mom and my sister”
because they were morbidly obese. And I knew if I couldn’t give them food
they could choose based on taste that happened to be good for
them, that I would literally lose them too soon.
And so, I was like, “That’s what this is about,
that’s why I’m here, I’m not here to get rich,
I am here to save my mom and my sister”. When people say,
if you just want it and you’re going after it,
it’s gonna happen. I will tell a very different story.
So the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not.
The money may never come. So,
every great success story has a certain element of timing,
there’s certain amount of luck that goes into it,
now you have to prepared to be able to capitalize on that,
like the inhuman amount of work that we did to launch Quest,
to launch Impact Theory, most people just are
definitely not going to work that hard, that tenaciously for that long,
or get that good and face their inadequacies day after day,
but at the same time, for it to be the kind of success that it was
there was timing involved. So,
it became readily apparent to me that
I may never get rich, but I could definitely
do something that I loved every day. And so,
what I know is, even if I lost my money,
that through simple things like being grateful,
being willing to build from the ground up again,
putting in the work, doing something that’s meaningful,
serving not just myself, but other people,
I can live a life that’s fulfilling and since that’s the only thing that
really affects your neurochemistry, cause I’m always telling people,
look, the punchline of life is not wealth,
it’s not fame, it’s not admiration,
it’s how you feel about yourself when you’re by yourself.
That doesn’t require wealth, in fact wealth can’t touch that.
So, now becoming a badass,
like that will make you feel good about yourself, and that’s something that nobody can take
away. We all have the ability to change.
And if people really knew who I was before, because they have a hard time believing it,
when they see me now, but I’m like,
go ask my mum, who
was surprised that I succeeded. Ask my father-in-law
who did not want me to marry his daughter. Ask my best friend.
All the people who knew me the most, were like,
“We did not expect you to be successful”. My mom recently told me
that when I told her I was going to get rich that,
her and my aunts and uncles used to laugh at me
behind my back, cause they were like,
“Bless this kid, he’s, you know, just a.. a dreamer,
but he’s never actually going to get rich”. So,
when you realise, there is a process to go from hopelessly average
to accomplishing something really extraordinary
and that any human who meets what I call minimum requirements,
so if you do that and you put in the work, you can get the result.
And I’ll say that the result is fulfillment, you’re not necessarily ever going to
achieve wealth, but you can achieve deep fulfillment,
do amazing, serve yourself,
serve other people, like you can do some really really incredible
stuff. I think that’s far more open to people
than they think, going back to my original…
what I was talking about is, I don’t want people focused on the money,
cause the money’s not gonna change how you feel,
but if you focus on the fulfillment, of “techne”,
building up this rad skillset that’s letting you serve yourself
and other people and then marry it to business savvy,
your odds of becoming financially successful skyrocket!
That’s, where I hope people get their heads around,
that fulfillment really is the punchline, but if you wanna express that
in a way that generates wealth for yourself, it is
very very
real! That is a very real possibility.