Dhru Purohit Show - #214: The #1 Predictor of Longevity

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Regardless of what we want to accomplish, from growing your business, creating a great company culture, championing a social cause, or affecting your habits, we can’t do it alone. The people around you define your success (whatever that means for you) and they have the potential to change the course of your life. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Jon Levy, a behavioral scientist best known for his work in influence, human connection, and decision making. Jon specializes in applying the latest research to transform the ways companies approach marketing, sales, consumer engagement, and culture. His clients range from Fortune 500 brands to startups.    More than a decade ago, Jon founded The Influencers Dinner, a secret dining experience for industry leaders ranging from Nobel laureates, Olympians, celebrities, and executives, to artists, musicians, and even the occasional princess. Guests cook dinner together but can’t discuss their career or give their last name, and once seated to eat, they play a game to reveal who they are. Over time, these dinners developed into a community. With thousands of members, Influencers is the largest community of its type worldwide.    Dhru and Jon discuss the art and science of creating deep and meaningful connections with anyone. They also talk about how we develop influence, gain trust, and build community so that we can impact our communities and achieve what is most important to us. In this episode, we dive into:  -The greatest predictor of longevity (2:05)  -Why having close friends increases our longevity (9:53)  -The impact of loneliness on our health (14:15) -How to create deep and meaningful relationships (21:47)  -The Influencers Dinner (34:52)  -The influence equation and how to apply it to our lives (49:39)  -Post-traumatic growth (1:03:34)  -Optimal anxiety (1:05:31)  -How to get an invitation to an Influencers event (1:11:04)  -The impact of social isolation on our health  (1:12:39) For more on Jon Levy you can follow him on Instagram @JonLevyTLB, on Facebook @JonLevyTLB, on Twitter @JonLevyTLB, and through his website https://www.jonlevytlb.com/. Get his book, You’re Invited: The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence at https://www.jonlevytlb.com/you-re-invited. For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at [phone] or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit. Interested in joining The Dhru Purohit Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And so the experience of loneliness towards our health is on par with smoking a pack a day of cigarettes. Welcome to the Drew Perraud podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is John Levy. John Levy is a behavioral scientist best known for his work in influence, human connection, and decision-making.

John specializes in applying the latest research to transform the way that companies approach marketing, sales, consumer engagement, and culture. His clients range from Fortune 500 brands to startups and many more. More than a decade ago, John founded the influencers dinner, a secret dining experience for industry leaders ranging from Nobel laureates, Olympians, celebrities, and executives, and artists and musicians, and even the occasional princess. guests cook dinner together but can't discuss their career or give their last name and once seated to eat they play a game to reveal who they are over time these dinners developed into a community with thousands of members influencers is the largest community of its type in the world in john's latest book you're invited readers are guided through the art and science of creating deep and meaningful connections with anyone regardless of their stature or celebrity and in the book john demonstrates how we develop influence, gain trust, and build communities so that we can impact our communities and achieve what's important to us. Let's listen in with my interview with John Levy. John, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you here, brother. Are you kidding? I've been hearing such wonderful things about you from our common friends that I was like, I want nothing more

than to hang up and kind of just explore ideas with you. Well, I appreciate that. I'd love to jump right in and then we'll come back and set a little bit more context by telling your story and why we're here in the book and the whole deal. But I want to start at longevity. I want to ask you a question because I think that if there's people that are listening to this podcast who are super into health, which there are, you're interested in the topic of longevity. Now, with longevity, there's so many layers. There's our diet, lifestyle, supplements, there's our health span, there's our lifespan. There's so many factors. But in your new book, you have a whole section where you go into what is one of the greatest predictors of longevity. And I think that's a great

place to kick off the conversation. So tell us a little bit about Brigham Young University, some of their work over there, and the greatest predictor of longevity. So I love this topic because I have a lot of friends who are like in Silicon Valley, they're biohackers, and they're doing everything they can to extend their life. And they end up buying these crazy machines and going on these fast and all this stuff. And that kind of stuff may or may not really actually help anything. But when researchers looked at many years of data of what actually predicts your longevity, aside from genetics, which we currently don't have any ability to affect,

it wasn't which papaya cleanse you were on or how much kale you ate. The number two greatest predictor was close social ties, having friends or close family. Number one was social integration, being a part of community or feeling a sense of belonging. And that's crazy because we always focus on like, oh, I'm going to go to the gym, and exercise is important, and it's a predictor. It's just not a big predictor. And so the odd thing is you might be better off taking a walk with a friend to catch up than hitting it hard at CrossFit. And like you said, nothing wrong with that CrossFit component, but one of the greatest examples, you know, we can always learn by looking at modern day versions of either Hunter Gatherer societies or in some work, you know, the work of Dan, I forgot his name from the Blue Zone.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It'll come back to me in a second, but looking at some of the longest living societies in the world, and they're not going to CrossFit. They're not individuals who are doing, you know, planking for like 30 minutes. They have a light level to moderate level of movement integrated into their life. It's integrated into their life. But whenever they're doing stuff, it's also rarely in isolation.

They're doing it with other people. We are designed as a tribal group. And I want to know from your end, where did. the passion and the excitement around community building come from in the first place? Truth be told, it's like so cliche, it's ridiculous. I grew up really unpopular as a child. I didn't have many friends. And I am really extroverted at the same time. I was kind of shy. But I always wanted to be around people. I grew up in a big family. I do best when I have friends around guests staying with me. And I realized that the more I got to connect with people,

the better things got in general. But if you want to get into like the crazy moment, that moment that like things kind of turned around, I'm happy to share that. It was about when I was 28 and in a seminar. Yeah, and actually had a question for you. You never really shared what that seminar was. And I was called. I mentioned it somewhere. It's called Wisdom Unlimited. It's by a company called Landmark Education. Yeah, I'm very familiar. I went to, I've talked about it before on the podcast and listeners know I went through the Landmark forum, the introduction to the world of landmark. I have very nuanced thoughts. It was very instrumental in my life. And, you know, it's not that it's not for everybody, but it can be very aggressive and other components. I'll link to

a show notes where I did, I talked all about it. But set the stage for us. So what even brought you to that seminar in the first place. So I had this general view that I really wanted to have an extraordinary life. And to do that, I knew that I was going to have to work at stuff. So I read every personal development book. I took seminars at multiple companies. I did like the Tony Robin stuff and landmark. And back then there was this guy T. Harvecker who was leading courses on money. And I did it all. And life absolutely. improved from those kinds of things, right? Fundamentally, when you do the work, life gets better. But what was really kind of frustrating is that you can take a lot of advice from business gurus or

authors and things like that. And it's completely not reproducible. Right. So like if today I were to pick up, I don't know, Bill Gates' book or who's this guy that wrote the 10x rule? You're Grant Cardone, right? You pick up Grant Cardone's book and you do everything he says, you're not going to become Grant Cardone. You're not going to become a multimillionaire or any of these things. And the reason is that their advice is built on one person's perspective at a specific time with a specific skill set.

And that's what worked for them. That's not going to be reproducible for you. And I found that incredibly frustrating. And I said, if I'm going to do something, I need it to work for just about everybody. It needs to be reproducible. As a scientist, I care about when we test something, it shouldn't just work once. It should work every single time we do it. And so I was trying to figure out what is that reproducible thing that would actually work for me to, you know, I was completely broke.

I was insanely in debt from college. I went to NYU, which is like $50,000 a year. and I took out a bunch of student loans. And I was overweight and, you know, like I was making okay money, I guess, but barely scraping by. And when I entered this seminar, I was like, okay, I need to figure things out. And the seminar leader said something that really shifted my thinking, that the fundamental element that defines the quality of our lives are the people we surround ourselves with and the conversations that we have with them.

So up until that point, I was doing things like, okay, I'm going to set my alarm for 6 a.m. I'm going to work out. I'm going to eat a healthy breakfast, and then I'm going to do work for X number of hours, and 6 a.m. would come around. The alarm would go off, and I'd be too exhausted to get up, and I'd hit snooze 20 times, and then beat myself up for it when I finally did get up. And I'd feel terrible the rest of the day. And if the seminar leader was right, then there's an easier way.

I could just hang out with a bunch of people who are gym junkies and be friends with them. And then I would naturally go to the gym as part of my routine because it would be part of my social activities. You know, in reading your book, one of the things that I want to make sure that we really sort of tease out. And I've seen this on the topic of friendship, community, which I'm a huge proponent of, is that a lot of times people don't often understand why. they would need help in this area. So I've seen that teasing out a little bit of the problem, like what's the problem that people face?

We talked about it being so linked to longevity. Okay, great, but longevity is also really far away. What are some of the other problems and challenges people face in their life when they don't have a deep sense of connection, belonging, community? Let's talk a little bit more about that. Before we talk about your jump into the influencer, dinners. For sure. So this is interesting. The question is why would social integration be so important, right? Why would have enclosed social friends actually increase our longevity?

And what are we missing out on in life when we don't have it? So there's the clear answer that like, okay, if I'm hurt and somebody makes me some meals, then yes. You know, like that'll extend my life. But there actually seems to be a different kind of mechanism at play. If you actually look, the greatest punishment we can give a person in our society, not talking capital punishment, that's in very specific places, is exile or solitary confinement. It is saying that they are no longer welcome in the group. And if you think about it, it makes sense because 40,000 years ago,

I exiled you, if I said, you are so bad that you don't deserve to be around a community, you would probably die in the wilderness, because you'd be by yourself. And so we are fundamentally driven to connect with one another. We can't survive on our own, especially not back then. And research has shown that a mother with a child cannot collect enough calories to both feed them both and protect them both. And so it now makes sense that we actually need each other. And so if that's the case, we are hardwired to work together.

We are not sole animals like, I don't know, squid or something like that. We're not the fastest, we're not the strongest, but what we are better at is working with each other. and that's what's allowed us to create cities and cruise ships and ridiculous things like the Marvel movies, right, that everybody loves. It's simply because we can work together, probably better than any other species. And so the flip side of it is also true. When we're alone, that has a really profound impact on us. And researchers looked at the neuroscience of it.

They played this crazy game called Cyberball. When I say, I mean, like, it's just kind of silly. You come into a research facility. They scan your brain with an fMRI. And at that time, you play a video game where you're passing a ball to two other people. So you pass the bowl to player one. Player one passes it to two. They pass it back to you.

And eventually, the other two players just stop passing it to you. And all this time, your brain is being scanned. And when you get out, you're like, wow, why did they stop playing with me? And that whole scenario was actually intentional because the researchers wanted to see how does the brain react when you experience social pain. And what they found was startling. When looking at the scans, they couldn't tell the difference between social pain and physical pain. Pain is pain. Now, to take it one step further, they had people take Tylenol for two weeks before they played.

but half of the group had a placebo. The group that had actual Tylenol experienced no social pain. Literally, the painkiller in Tylenol both prevented physical and social anguish. Those who received the placebo still felt pain. And so there's this interesting thing where we relate to physical pain is somehow worse. You break my arm, you go to jail. But there's no punishment for bullying somebody and socially alienating them and having them feel that kind of pain. And that's really kind of wild.

Especially because, and now we can go back to that longevity thing, the anxiety that's created when we experience social pain, the reduction in sleep, the reduction in focus, these things build up. And people can literally die of a broken heart. It's rare, but it can happen. And so the experience of loneliness towards our health is on par with smoking a pack a day of cigarettes. And that's crazy. Like, it's crazy because we're so used to thinking of health as this protein shake that we drink or health as this, you know, booster that we take in the form of vitamin C or something like that, when really the biggest impact might be calling a lot.

friend and seeing how they're doing. And what's interesting about the time period that we're in right now, if I could just interject for a moment, is that it seems to be that we don't know, or many people don't know that they're lonely because there's things all around us. There seems to be people. I can look outside. I could see people. I see people on my phone. So there's not even the recognition sometimes that there actually is loneliness, even if there's that. sort of pain inside, it's not always equated to be. It's not the same thing as being in the woods and not seeing anybody forever. There are people around, but there's not those deep, meaningful

connections, which is what you're talking about. I think Sebastian Younger wrote a book about this, and he shared that historically, there were so many cases of, I think it was British officers who were, when we were first kind of taming the new world, who joined the natives and to live with them in their community structure. But there was not a single case of the Native Americans who were forced into Western culture who actually stayed. And that's fascinating, right? We view this lifestyle that we live as so superior

that we have technology and that we can fly around and do all these things. and that, oh my God, I have so many friends on social media, or I have an entire phone book with 5,000 people in my iPhone, but we actually lose any sense of belonging. And the problem is that, you know, those people who have lots of friends, they seem to keep meeting a lot of people. When you have very few friends, there's a tendency to view the world as smaller and smaller,

and people feel deserving of the loneliness. There's this kind of crazy research that I came across was, I think, done by University of Chicago. In 1985, asked people, how many friends besides family, close friends, do you have? And in 1995, that was just about three. 19 years later in 2004, we were down to two. people lost 50% of their close ties besides family in less than a generation.

I mean, across American society. And this is before social media. We love to blame social media for these things. But the bigger problem is probably that we started moving away for work more often. So the more mobile our society became, the sooner we were letting go of our social ties, our childhood friendships, our close family, and now we're more and more isolated because we have to rebuild our social circles

wherever we go. Which, you know, doing that once, okay, sometimes that could be managed, but we have a lot of, you know, young professionals and older professionals too, who are doing that once, twice, three times. I mean, you know, all with the hope of upward mobility or maybe in some cases lower taxes or whatever it might be. But the question is, people who are moving to Texas right now. What are we losing along the way, right?

What are we losing the long way, especially if, considering that a lot of most people's closest relationships typically get formed where, and you have a whole section inside of the book about this called the IKEA effect is, and I'll let you tell it a little bit more, but they tend to come out of things like college or a sports team or something like that. And as we get older and we don't have those systems, it can become a little bit more difficult unless if we're intentional, as you give many examples and roadmaps in the book, it can be more difficult to make those friends. So let's pivot right now into the IKEA effect.

What is it and why does it matter when it comes to this topic? So the IKEA effect is this wonderful human bias where human beings disproportionately care about their IKEA furniture because they have. had to assemble it. And it turns out to be true for literally everything we put effort into. So you know your friends who are obsessed with their children? The only reason they care about their children is because they've invested so much effort into them. They clothed them and raised them and took care of them when they were sick and it's because they're a pain in the butt that they actually care about them. Now, you can get people to care about virtually anything. I mean,

you have friends who are incredibly supportive of certain causes. How did they pick those causes? It was probably because they got hooked one time by investing some effort or donating to it and then kept going. And so, as we saw, networking really doesn't work, right? And neither does, like, trying to win people over by buying them nice gifts or taking them out for expensive dinners. But oddly, what does is the opposite.

If we can get people to invest effort into one another, they'll care more about each other. And I think that's the magic of being human, is that we build significant relationships through doing things together, and that actually doesn't require any money. You could literally be in the middle of nowhere with no resources going on a hike together, and you'll care more about each other at the end of it just because you've put in the effort into that hike. There's an interesting area that this sort of got extrapolated to. I think you wrote about it before in your previous book, which I haven't read, but I've heard

you talk about it on other interviews as I was preparing for this podcast. And you talked about how this impacts how we think about building relationships with others, just like even there's people that write to me all the time because I've done many episodes talking about the power of friendship. And every Thursday, it's Thursday today that we're recording the interview, every Thursday morning, I have a group of guys for the last six years here in Los Angeles. We get together and we call it man morning Thursday. And we'll usually go up to Will Rogers or we'll go down to like bulletproof coffee,

grab a coffee, head over to the boardwalk on the beach. And we start on time, 7 a.m. We go till 8 a.m. And we literally walk and talk about what's going on in our lives and the challenges. I love it. Just being honest about stuff, right? And it's fantastic. We meet usually at like 52 weeks in a year.

We usually try to meet at least 30 weeks. even during the pandemic, we were meeting pretty regularly, which was great. That's awesome. But people hear that, and they have the question, which is, how do I do that? How do I make friends in my area? How do I connect deeper with people? So take some of the lessons from the IKEA effect that you just explained and turn that into personal relationship building.

For that adult who's listening now, who doesn't have that friend or close friend, or maybe their close friend lives a thousand miles. away and they talk every so often, but they don't have somebody around them that they can lean on and confide in and be vulnerable in, which we'll get to a little bit later on, how can they use some lessons from that to start to build relationship? So I think the first thing is we need to find some people to actually connect with, right? Because the IKEA effect works when we get people to invest effort, but let's find somebody or people that we'd actually want to spend time with.

So let's say you know absolutely no one. Networking events clearly, not going to cut it. We need to remember that human beings connect over shared interests, like if you're both stamp collectors or really like Rick and Morty or something like that. Activities. So is there a sport you play? Me personally? Yeah.

Yeah. Little tennis, a little bit of basketball, soccer. Perfect. So because you participate in that activity, you're more likely to become friends with people who play that sport. And the other option is a culture. So where's your family from? My background's from India. Okay.

So I get an invite every year to go to Do Wally in India. I haven't gotten to go yet, especially not right now with everything going on. But if that's part of your culture, it makes it significantly easier to bond with people. and connect with them over that culture. So one thing I highly recommend, if you're literally starting from scratch, you're brand new to a city, check out the meetups that exist on meetup.com. Frankly, it's a great resource to find people who are obsessed with everything from like this weird folding bike called a Brampton to, you know, AI and whatever, machine learning. And that's a great place to just find people who have to be able to have to be able to be able to.

similar interests, right? You could also, if you work at a company, often companies, especially large ones, have really great interest groups that you can find out about on the intranet. Or, and here's the crazy thing, they'll give you thousands of dollars to start one because they want community to start developing within the organization. And so they're willing to invest into it if you're willing to start organizing it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is then let's find a way to have that activity cause people to invest effort into one another. So what I really love about your walk, your walk is nice. A walk is a great start. But you're making it more novel or interesting by saying, okay, I'm going to pick a problem. And now suddenly

we have a challenge that can cause people to invest effort into one another. So at the dinners I run, people cook together. Now, that's not really mobile. You can't do that while you're walking. But there are a whole slew of things that you can do to make an experience novel. So rather than and to get people to invest effort. So there's a woman in California who loved hosting wine and cheese events, who I've met a few years back. And what she said was for all the guests that come,

each of them has to bring a story about one word. And she would pick the word. It would be like trust or whatever it is. And then each person brought a two-minute story. and that would be a great way for them to invest effort by telling the story and a great way for people to discover a bit about each other. And suddenly, connections are forming. Suddenly, because of that effort, people care about the event more.

That's also true about poplucks. So the key is that if you're going to do something, you don't want to just take care of everything for everyone. You want them to feel invested in it. because if they don't feel invested, they're not going to care as much. It also means that it's really important to ask for favors. So there's this fun study that was done about asking directions. If I stopped Drew on the street and I was like, Drew, and I didn't know him, and he didn't know me,

I said, Drew, I have these really complex directions, can you give him to me? He'd probably say no because we're in the middle of a pandemic and he doesn't have the time to give me complex directions. But if I first ask Drew for the time and then the directions, he's much more likely to give them to me, which means that human beings relate to things like this. Once I've already invested effort into the relationship, a small amount, I'm then willing to invest more. Because once you're worthy of effort, you strike me as the type of person who is worthy of more. And that's how connections are actually formed. is I might ask Drew's opinion on something at the office.

And then I'd say, hey, Drew, I was super helpful. Can you help me with this additional thing? And then I start helping Drew, and that's what the process is of actually relationship building is. Yeah, and people want to be helpful. Fundamentally to our core, as you mentioned, this is baked in to our beingness. And the interesting thing that you had mentioned earlier,

I spent time with a modern-day hunter gatherer group in Kenya called the Samburu. I've talked about him a bunch on the podcast. And talking about sort of excommunication as being the biggest sort of fear, right? There's a long history of tribes like the Samburu and the Maasai and the Hudson and many others using that as the ultimate punishment. Even some societies that didn't believe in execution, that didn't have execution, that would be the ultimate last final tool and the tribe that I visited, uh, certain things like murder were so punishable by excommunication

that they wanted everybody to know that if you murder somebody within the tribe, you are not only yourself excommunicated, but for six generations your family. If they happen to go look up with another tribe, if they end up finding other group to sort of support them for six generations, we're going to excommunicate them. And then finally on the seventh generation, maybe we'll hold a hearing and then that family could end up coming back. So we're both wired to want to fit in. We're wired to want to help and we're wired to want to belong. So much of a sense of safety, security in the world is when we know and our vagal nerve

knows that there's other people around who like us, need us, depend on us. That means safety and security to our bodies. It's interesting that you say that because later on the book, I bring up this example of research out of Google. And the question Google had was, what is the greatest predictor of a successful team? And the traditional models are like, okay, you take a bunch of super geniuses with giant IQs,

throw them in a room together to tackle a problem. And they'll save the world. let's call that like the Avengers model, right? Everybody has like a superpower and with their powers combined, everything works out. It turns out that that's not a very good predictor. The greatest predictor was actually psychological safety, this idea that I can express myself and I don't fear that I'll be exiled from the group if I say something that goes against the common thinking.

So if I'm part of a team where everybody feels unsafe, nobody's going to speak up. And then if somebody made a mistake, nobody will know and the project will fail. But if everybody feels comfortable expressing themselves and knows that their position in the group is safe and secure, then I can spot a problem, bring it to everybody's awareness, and it can actually be explored, discussed, and considered. But without psychological safety, it doesn't matter how much diverse opinions you have, how many geniuses you have, because otherwise whoever's in control or the dominant force will just control everything and everybody else will be scared. And so when you look at exactly what you're pointing to, which is that when we feel like we really belong, like we are part of a community, we have this sense of safety that our interest will be accomplished through our participation. I'm a member of this group, and through my involvement,

my interests will be served, and I will help people who need support, and when I need help, I will be supported. And that's at the base of community. What's beautiful about the examples you share in the book and what the reader can take away is there's sort of like these two through lines that I see. One through line is that social isolation is on the rise to the extent that countries like the UK have appointed, you know, czars of loneliness, right? Because it's so much on the rise. And it's, you want to hear something crazy about this?

Please. There's this rise of, what is it? I think the biggest, biggest growth area in karaoke in Japan or in South Korea is single person karaoke rooms. And it's not because of the pandemic. It's because people are so lonely. I think that Japan's population is reducing. Their birth rate has been going down dramatically because people are just not communicating with each other

and not getting together. That's insanity. That's wild. So people are literally showing up to a karaoke room by themselves to sing by themselves. And like, that's going to be my Friday night. I have no friends. And I want you to think about how crazy that is. if I would have told you that when we were in college that this is a thing, you'd have been like,

what are you talking about? Even like the geekiest most isolated kids have their like social circle. They're just like watching X-files and being geeky and the jocks are being jocks. But this is saying that like that doesn't even exist, right? That there's so many people out there that either aren't creating social ties or are being pushed out. that haven't found each other that they're opting for, I'm not talking occasionally, I'm talking this is a growth area, they're opting for spending their time completely alone. It's mind-boggling. And more than anything, you have compassion because there's so much,

and you've outlined a little bit of it, besides just the health impact, there's the mental health impact of loneliness. And now we see that with a combination of loneliness, super isolation, bad diet, which we know is linked to instances of violence. And then you throw in some other factors.

And now we have a whole population in the West that is super lonely, blaming other people, hyper-inflamed, and on edge, ready to act. out in some sort of way or another. And it's just a very unfortunate situation. I have nothing but compassion for those folks in there. And we need a different solution, right? We need a different solution. And that solution first has to start with us like all things. Where in our own lives

are we missing out on connection? Where in our own likes can we create community, not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of other people around us. And, you know, the through line that I was talking about earlier in the book is you have these two through lines. One is, how can this improve your own life, especially if you are somebody who's feeling a little lonely or you feel like you're not in the right friend circle to help you level up. And the other part is how can you connect with role models, examples, influencers, and I don't mean in the modern day social media version of influencers, but I mean in terms of people who have some impact on your life and will make you a better

person and how can you attract more of them into your life. So I think it's a good time. Now that we've really sort of set up the problem and talked about the lay of the landscape, let's go back to this dinner that you set up and why you set it up. So the influencers dinner, you shared that you brought people together to your house to cook a meal, wash dishes, right? And clean up afterwards. That's the high level opening.

Give us the full breakdown of that dinner and what it led to. So 12 people were invited. They're not allowed to talk about what they do or give their last name. They cook dinner together. And when they sit down to eat, we play a game where we try to guess what people do. So people would meet you, Drew, they'd say, okay, you are a professional juggler at Barnum Bailey Circus. Or somebody might say, I think you're an exited entrepreneur and you're the real inventor of Bitcoin or something. Like most of the guesses are kind of silly. And then the person tells you who they are. And it might be a Nobel laureate, an Olympic medalist, an editor-in-chief of a major magazine, you know, eight-time Olympian, you name it. We've had Oscar winners, Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and so on. And I've hosted over 2,000 people at 227 dinners in 10 cities and three countries.

And I think it's probably like the biggest community of its kind, worldwide. And then to ensure that people actually connected with each other further, we started a salon series that met several times a month. We'd invite 60 to 100 people, and we would surprise them with kind of three highly respected speakers. So maybe we'd have when the roots perform, or we would have Bill Nye the Science Guy, give a talk, or professional athlete or stuff like that. And so it really allowed for like a consistency and for those connections to form with different people from different dinners. And this community really kind of grew out of it and served as an example of how we can build communities anywhere. Break down some of the elements.

You already talked about how the IKEA effect was integrated, which is that if people have to cook, if they have to participate. So that was one element. What are some of the other elements that people can extrapolate for their own life or a community that they want to build that were a key part of the success? I'll give you one that I actually don't think I've talked about on any other podcast in the past like a couple of years. And there's a funny thing called information gap theory. And it works like this. If I present you with a piece of information and there's a gap between that. that and what you know. If the gap is the right size, it'll trigger curiosity, meaning like,

if I tell you my middle name, I actually don't have one, but if you tell me your middle name, that doesn't create any curiosity. It just is too familiar, right? If we start talking about theoretical astrophysics at a cocktail party, there's a gap between your knowledge and that, I think, right? I doubt you studied theoretical astrophysics. And so you might want to avoid that conversation. You want to say like, okay, I'm going to go grab a drink or something and never come back. But have you ever seen those BuzzFeed articles that say stuff like 18 uses for a banana and number 12 will blow your mind? Number 12 never blows your mind, but it creates curiosity. So when I invite people, I tell them that there'll be 12 people there and that the examples of the types of people

are really impressive. And I say those noble laureates and Olympians and all that. And I tell them what's going to We're going to cook together and play this game. But I intentionally leave out a whole lot of information to trigger curiosity. And that accomplishes two things. One is it gets people's attention. And the second is it actually entices them. It makes them think, okay, I want to go and find out who these people are. I don't want to miss out on this.

I'm not going to cancel. And so when I invite people to events in general, I tell them everything that's going to happen, and then I intentionally leave a few mysteries in the email to get them super curious and capture their attention. Now, this is similar to, but slightly different than the idea of doing something that's novel. So novelty is when something is new or different. And there's a section in the brain called the SNVTA. It's the major novelty center in the brain. and when we trigger it, it entices us to explore and understand things.

So the fact that the dinner's design is novel or different than anything else people attend is really important because it's not enough to just invite somebody to go to like get a cup of coffee. And Drew, how often do you get invited to a event? Less so recently, but pretty regularly. Yeah, like before COVID, there was probably, you know, every week you'd get invited to a bunch of conferences that all sounded the same, or some fundraisers that were casino themed. And at a certain point, you're like, okay, I've done all this stuff.

It doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather just stay at home with my significant other. Or go take a walk with your, what is it, your guy group? Man morning. Yep. Man morning, yes. So if you can create something that's novel that really stands out, much like when you create curiosity, it will attract people.

And so just the fact that my dinner sounds different than the other formats that people have experienced automatically gets on people's radar and entices them even more. Your man mornings sound awesome, a super cool group of people, all like taking a beautiful walk in sunny California and talking about the things that they're really trying to grapple with and getting insights around that. that's novel, that's different. Yeah, and another thing that we do there is that there's a different captain each week, and that captain is responsible for picking where we're going to hike or walk,

and they bring a question of the day. So everybody's curious about what is the main question. And then we have a set of rules, right? No sarcasm, you know, other things like that, just to maintain the sense of vulnerability, which I know you write about in the book. And, you know, don't talk about what we talk about in the group, outside of the group, you know, with your partner, et cetera, all that beautiful stuff. I love your man mornings.

I think that they're the perfect example of the kind of stuff that I talk about in the book. And if I would have known about it, I would have probably put it in there as an example. But also notice that you have a third, you have two additional characteristics to your experience. One is it's fundamentally designed as generous, right? People come there and whoever's organizing it that week puts in all this effort, they find a path, they find a question, they organize everything. And they're not doing it because, okay, I'm going to close a deal with Drew this Thursday or Wednesday or whatever it was. They do it because they actually care. They're giving beyond the

point of expectation. And so it makes people feel really comfortable, right? It doesn't make you feel like, oh, this person's after something. The other thing is that if you really look at who most influential people spend their time with, everybody expects it to be other influential people. But really, it's mostly their admins and their assistants or their staff. And so if you can curate an environment with really great people, we'll go far out of our way to go there. So like you look at TED.

You could watch all those TED talks online. You don't need to go to the conference. It costs $10,000 and it's in Vancouver. But Ted does a phenomenal job curating attendees. And so it's one of the few places where you can hobnob with a world famous mountain climber and Al Gore. And so the fact that you've curated a really phenomenal group of guys means that now other people would kill to get into this group because it's novel, it's generous, and it's well curated. they're fundamentally getting value from their participation. And that's like a great starting point to build a community.

One of the pro tips that I want to add in there, as you were sharing earlier, literally if people are starting from scratch, a lot of people move during COVID, right? So they're in a new city. And if you don't have the luxury of having a deep friend group there, a lot of people have acquaintances. It's very rare that people have no friends at all, especially, but it is common. But it's a little rare in this group that's maybe listening. we also, when we first started, I just focused on other guys that also had just moved to the area.

Because one of the things that I found is that the tendency is for a lot of pockets and communities is if you grew up in L.A. and you've lived in L.A., you probably already have your friend circle all set. And there's not a lot of room maybe, you know, for a lot of opening for other people to get there. But if you find other people that have the same motivation as you, which is no different than like the sport that you're all interested. I never did add anybody to the cast of friends, did they? It's like, yeah, I guess like once you reach a certain point, people kind of get locked in, you know. They get locked in into whatever version of routine that is. So just finding highly motivated people who also want to create connection and meaning and joy and friendship.

And I feel like the biggest returns in my life have come from these incredibly meaningful. now going beyond this, just men's group, incredibly meaningful and deep relationships that I have. And the other aspect is, I'd love to hear your thoughts in terms of, especially in this world of COVID where we're not always able to meet up with our friends. How do you continue to maintain those connections,

those friendships, those pockets of intimacy that you were creating before? What are some of the things that you think about when it comes to that topic? So the first is that you have to be a lot more intentional, right? There's this kind of funny thing called the Allen curve that people at a company speak exponentially more, the closer their desks are. So if our desks are next to each other, we speak a ton. If they're 10 meters apart, we speak significantly less. And by the time it's 50 meters, we never talk.

And so if you are friends with your next door neighbor, that's an easy one, right? Like you'll probably stay in touch even, you'll just see each other less during COVID, which means that during COVID everybody's separated. You're not bumping into each other at the gym anymore or at your favorite restaurants or walking down the beach or whatever it is, which means that we have to be significantly more intentional. And what I ended up doing was creating a salon series on Zoom. And there were two or three things that I really saw.

One is that nobody wants to be on an 800-person WebEx, right, like on the tail end of it, listening to somebody drone on, when it would be more entertaining to just see a TED talk or watch Netflix. And so that kind of stuff doesn't translate to the platform. We have to use the platform in a way consistent with what you can do on it. And I think one of the best things I did was during these digital salons was, one, I made them as interactive as possible. Because if we don't have a sense of influence, I don't mean influence, like Instagram influence. I mean like literally if we don't feel like we can have an impact on the people around, it's not very enjoyable.

Like we don't just go to concerts to hear music. When we go to the concert, we enjoy being around other people. And then the other is that we scream or shout or whatever it is at the concert, it has an effect on the people around us. If we start dancing, they might start dancing. And so the key is if you're going to do something on a digital platform, then you need to make it as interactive as possible. So one thing we started doing was each week we would invent a new game to play.

and then I'd invite a bunch of people on and put them into breakout rooms. And then we would have a competition to see which team could finish the challenge first, and that team would win a prize. And because of the community, I built, the prizes were absolutely just silly. So we had the president of Haynes once give the winning team a year supply of underwear as a gift, which is like nobody really needed it, but it was kind of funny. So if you are going to do something, one is reach out to people, invite them, have them participate. And the second is have it be fun and playful.

We are so stressed out these days. We are so overworked that if you can add play to people's lives to do something that doesn't have any consequences, right? to let people laugh a little or connect with other people, then playing games is phenomenal. The other thing we did was we tried to figure out how do we create an experience outdoors that's safe. And what we ended up designing was, this was the early days of COVID

where people were covering with full-bodied PPE was a spray painting class because you have to wear full-body PPE anyway. So we would have people covered head to toe and protective equipment because if you're learning how to do street art, you don't want to destroy your clothing or inhale the fumes. And so rather than it feeling like a crappy version of an experience, it became like a really wonderful experience that was very, very safe. And so that was kind of wonderful.

I love that. Let's get a little action-oriented inside of the tips that we've already given. So in the book, there is the influence equation. And I want to break it down for our audience here because I think that, you know, if you are interested in health, the question is always, what's the point? And I make the argument that we invest in our health, which includes our mental health, our physical health, and in our relationships, so that we can show up strong and give love and attention to everything else that we care about in life. Health is not necessarily the goal. it's the transport mechanism that allows us to give attention to whatever it is that you want to focus on.

You're a nonprofit. Your way that you want to make an impact as being an entrepreneur, your difference, that little stamp that you want to leave and your mark on the world, health is that vehicle. Because when we don't have it, it's that much harder to be able to do it. So if you're listening to this podcast, you probably think of yourself as somebody who has areas in their life that they care about that they want to make a difference in. and it tends to be that if you can have a little more influence in that area, you're more likely to be able to get to that goal and have it be more impactful for yourself and the world. So let's break down the equation because I think the people listening

would love to hear about it. Let's do this. So when I was trying to figure out how to impact my life, I realized that I fundamentally wanted to be able to affect an outcome or a person. That's influence, right? Influence, I mean, I have a ton of respect for people who on social media create great content and it goes viral and all that. But that's very different type of influence. That's more of a followership.

What I want to be able to do is the things like get a promotion or promote a social cause and get people to notice it or, you know, if I need medical advice, be able to reach out to somebody who can give it to me. Now, for that kind of influence, the day-to-day stuff that we actually want to accomplish, the greatest predictors of it are who we're connected to, how much they trust us, and the sense of belonging or community that we have. And here's why. If you're not connected to somebody, it's going to be really hard to influence them. That's just the fact. If somebody doesn't trust you, they're not going to opt in to listen to you or care what you think.

And you may notice that if I know Drew and I know we have a friend Craig in common, then I can have influence on each of them. But if they know each other, then there's more likely that my ideas, thinking, products, whatever it is, will spread. Because otherwise it kind of reaches an end point and I have to hope that they talk about it. but if we're all part of the same community, then my ideas and impacts have further reach. And so the influence equation is that our influence is defined by who we're connected to,

how much they trust us, and the sense of community that we experience. And so if we can become an expert at any of those or all of those, the only limitation is what we want to then use our influence to accomplish. What do you want to use your influence and the new book? What is your hope to accomplish? So I joke around and I say that I want to be the favorite for a week by hitting the New York Times list. And it's really hard because my brother's a doctor. But that's really like just to be silly and joking.

The truth is that I've made a life for myself by bringing people together. And I've experienced much of my childhood a lot of loneliness. and that is a terrible place to be, that isolation, that fear, that feeling of helplessness. And if we look, that's a problem that we can actually tackle. Certain problems feel overwhelming. I don't know what to do about global warming. It's such a complex issue. But loneliness, in most cases, we can probably start connecting.

people. We can probably start inviting and reaching out to people and gathering them, assuming people are vaccinated and safe, right? It doesn't require a PhD to gather people. Or if you're introverted, reach out to one person. It's something that's completely accessible to all of us. All of us can go find a meetup or a gathering or reach out to family. And so here's a whole lot of social issues and health issues that we can actually make an impact on that'll cost virtually nothing. And so if I can accomplish anything from having this book come out, it's that people will hopefully value their relationships more and understand that that's the source of their life. And hopefully in the process, everybody's better off.

It's beautiful. I'd love to throw a thought experiment your way. We've had Dr. John Kelly, I believe his name on the podcast before. He's at Mass General. He was part of a group of researchers that looked at the effectiveness of AA, Alcoholers Anonymous. And their conclusion through looking at a bunch of a meta-analysis was that AA is actually quite effective, when in comparison to not having that and just having, let's say, like one-on-one counseling or treatment that's there. If we had a modern-day version of AA,

something decentralized, small group model-based, but available to anybody to create, that was focused around tackling loneliness, what would you imagine it could possibly be or look like? Wow. This is so interesting. Let me start off by saying that I think A.A.'s models is just incredible, right? They have really clear rules. Anybody can start it anywhere. And relative to other things, as you mentioned, it's wildly effective. I think that there'd be a few things. First of all, it would need to have a whole slew of flavors.

And what I mean by that is that A.A. has a fight that it's fighting, right? It's picked a fight, and as a byproduct, there are people who participate. If it's just loneliness, right, then it would probably end up feeling a lot like therapy. But that's not where the strength of coming together is. the strength of coming together is around an activity. So we would want a standard system that could be easily replicable, and then we would want to pick it in a whole slew of different verticals. So we'd want something for the people who like sports

and for the people who like who maybe are older and can't do soccer, and we need to have something for woodwork and knitting or something. I don't even know what. But it would have to have a whole slew of flavors because we need something that is either an interest activity or something that's cultural. And then we would need to figure out how to do it for as little money as possible, right? So soccer seems pretty easy to do with little or no money. You go to the park, you have a scrimmage, great.

Other things that you might be able to do is like, okay, this is going to be an art class where we only use crayons. The fact that you're only using crayons or you're only using recyclables, right? Makes it a little bit more novel and more interesting. But I think we could then have it be,

you know what it might be more like, frankly? I would actually describe it more like the Girl Scouts of the USA. Where there's different kind of like the equivalent of merit badges or skill sets that people can dive into.

There's set programming that can be shared or downloaded off the internet for the different troops or groups. There's clear instructions for troop leaders, and it probably functions like a Wikipedia page where people can add to it and the community self-organizes around it. And so that way, I think what I'm trying to say is we're going to create an adult summer camp. I love that. I've been to a few. I've been to one in Toronto called Camp Reset, and I know there was a digital detox that was here

in the U.S. called, I can't remember the name, but also a camp, but those are fantastic. First of all, the best part about it is you have to give your phone away, right? And so you're like, oh, wow. Disconnected. It's like adult summer cap. You have to like check in your phone. And now you're just like hanging out, playing kickball, slip and slide, you know, kickball. And you're stinging bunks with people. You're making s'm s'mores. Like, what better way to connect people and then also connect back to that sort of childhood sense of just joy than an adult summer camp. I look forward to those coming back when they get a chance to.

I'm sold. I was getting really excited about the idea of going to Antarctica again, but now you've got me all excited about going to summer camp. Yeah. I feel like I've earned it. I'm going to talk to the misses. We're going to summer camp this year. I want to come back to your story for a second,

because you mentioned something really interesting. And I've heard you on a couple other interviews. I actually listened to your interview with Dave, Dave Asprey. I also heard a quick interview that you did with Gary Vaynerchuk's team for the marketing for the now. And in that interview, you were talking about basically resilience and this idea that going through tough times and tough experiences can make us stronger. And actually being too comfortable can make us weak. week, right? Yeah.

And it was kind of the premise of a little bit of what you were sharing about. So I want to flip that over to, you know, your story and your background, right? You said you went through a lot of isolation and that was very challenging. I don't know the exact nature of that. But I'd ask you is basically how do we continue, right? It's especially for the parents or anybody who's raising or mentoring something. and bring them into the world, how do we both be there for people, create community and not have people be isolated or bullied or take your pick of whatever version of that you want to have?

Let's just call it for general purposes. Adversity. How do we support people, but also let them have the adversity that's necessary that turns them into an incredible human being that is giving back to the world and has a mission and a sense of purpose and what they're doing? I think there's a few things we want to look at. The first is a concept that was popularized by the guy who wrote Black Swan. It's a book called Anti-Fragile.

And the basic premise is if I take a glass and I drop it, it'll shatter. It's fragile. And then there are things that are robust, right? Like you live in a house. If I hit your house, I'd probably sooner hurt my hand than the house. But then there's a third category that we never really talk about. And that is antifurigility. And things that are anti-fragile get stronger when you apply pressure to them.

So, for example, your muscles, right? You work out, your muscles get stronger. Now, there's kind of a range you can apply pressure. And if I threw it literally a ton on you, you'd get crushed, right? That's too much. If I pass you an empty can of soda, that's too little. So there's this sweet spot where it's hard enough that you're getting a benefit, but not so hard that you're collapsing under the pressure.

And that's where the growth zone is. Now, the weird thing is that with helicopter parenting, becoming so prevalent, then kids aren't getting to experience any of these major discomforts. Right? When I say by major discomforts, well, you're shy, great, mommy will make all the introductions for you. Oh, it's far walk home. Oh, don't worry, Daddy, I'll pick you up in the car.

There was a time, apparently, when if you were six years old, it would be expected that you could go to the grocery store and pick up groceries. Now, if you sent a six-year-old to the store to pick up some milk, the parents would be arrested. So we're losing, and the weird thing is that we're also safer than ever, right? Like, statistically speaking, literally nothing's going to happen to your kid as long as they're looking both ways when they cross the street. There's so many safety measures in place. So the key is finding that sweet spot. The other thing is that we also have a mechanism. We're always used to talking about, what is it, post-traumatic stress, right?

PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. There's also something called post-traumatic growth, which is that we experience a trauma, and then we get better because of it. Right? It might be uncomfortable, but it is that willingness to grapple with the discomfort that actually allows us to get over it. And the weird thing about post-traumatic growth is this. Have you ever heard those stories about people going to jail and they're like, wow, it was a glorious experience. It made me a better human. or those people who lose all their money and then make it back,

and they're like, I'm better for having gone through that. Right? And you hear it and you're like, that person is completely insane. What are they talking about? And the funny thing is that they're probably being honest. And the reason is that human beings have this thing called synthesized happiness, which is when you go through something hard enough and you come out the other end,

you remember it positively. Now, we are so obsessed with optimizing our lives to make it easier and less stressful in certain areas and not having to deal with challenges. But that's like saying, okay, I'm going to make your life so easy. You don't even need to walk anymore. You're just going to float around. And then you're going to lose the ability to use your legs. So there is a sweet spot.

You want enough pressure or enough. stress that the person is growing but not so much that they feel isolated alone and completely incapable of dealing with it. Right? And that's kind of an essential factor for people in general. We found that there's also something called optimal anxiety, which is that we're not the most productive when we have no stress, right? Like if you've got nothing to do, you're just going to lounge. We're productive when we have enough stress that that it forces us into action, but not so much that, like, if I told you tomorrow,

I want you to do a pitch for this big company, you'd be like, oh, that's awesome. If I told you tomorrow that pitch was going to be televised to the entire world, and if you screw up, the U.S. is going to file for bankruptcy. That's too much pressure and not fair to do to you, and you'd likely crumble under the pressure. So with human beings, we have this sweet spot. No pressure, we're not that good. Some pressure, we're really good. We're getting better.

We're getting stronger. It's uncomfortable. But that's actually what lets us thrive. And if there's too much pressure, well, that depends on the situation, the personality. Will you accept it as post-traumatic stress or would you take it as post-traumatic growth? Will you choose to have it redefine you and grow in the process? or will it crush you? And listen, some things in life, I'd be crushed by for sure.

Like there's terrible things that go on out there. But there's a lot of things that if you have the right support system, you can really make it through it. One of the examples I share in the book, I don't remember if it's twofold or fourfold, increased chance of surviving breast cancer if you go through it with a group. That's kind of wild, right? And like you could go through something that stressful, that awful.

and it'll quadruple your rate of survival when you have a decent support system with you. Same treatment. And it really seems that difference between the post-traumatic trauma and stress disorders and the post-traumatic growth is, I think you said a very key word, which I think is important to think about, especially in the context of today's culture, and it's providing the resources and the tools to navigate. There are certain groups, certain societies that go through more impact and challenges, and we can't immediately change that, right?

People who grow up in an inner city, people who grew up in really terrible economic situations. We can't always immediately change that. And we can't also assume that the powers to be could just snap their fingers and change that. But what we can do is we can invest in resources, right? We can invest in resources and options and tools so that people could have some sense. There's a great example of this. And this American Life, which is one of my favorite podcasts that's out there, they did a whole episode on it.

And you can type it in. It's called Baby College. Baby College. And it's a school in Harlem. And anybody who's familiar with the studies around ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, knows that kids who grow up in very challenging situations, meaning, there's not a father figure around or let's say a mother figure around or they grow up in the foster care system. They end up going through or if your parent is an alcoholic or all these other things.

You take this quiz and how high you rank shows how likely you are to develop chronic disease, addiction, a whole bunch of other things. And this school, this baby college, I love this example because it felt like one of those stories that as I was reading your book, I'm learning about all these stories. and I felt happy and smart for a second because I was like, wow, this should actually be a story inside of John's book. Like it felt like that perfect example. Anyways, I'll just get to the punchline. They found that if they just taught parents how to communicate and give more positive affirmations and less negative affirmations to their young children and read to them. The other big thing was reading. Just reading to your kid as early as you can.

can, even when it's still inside the womb, that could have statistically a significant impact on the child's likelihood of completing preschool and grade school and so on and so forth into college. So I think that that's something that you hit on that is so beautiful for the times. We can't guarantee equal outcome, but we can provide more resources and tools together, but it's not just going to come from the government. It has to come from all of us, which is why we need to be experts at creating fucking community for whatever we're passionate about. Well said. Well said.

John, this has been a pleasure. Tell us a little about the fun stuff. Are you doing anything available to the people that are listening to this podcast? Is there any fun stuff that you're doing with community when it comes to your book being out there? I think the launch date is May 11th, if I'm not incorrect. you're invited. The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence is going to be out May 11th, pick up a copy. But is there any fun stuff you're doing community-wise?

Yeah, so a few things. First of all, my website is packed with digital games that you could play with your family and friends on Zoom. Feel free to download them, use them. It is literally just a resource for you to help you build better connections. There's tons of inspiration there. And then there's something really that I actually didn't mention on any podcasts. and I think it's kind of funny that I didn't. I hid something in my book.

And if people find it, they could get an invitation to my events. I love it. So the book you're invited is actually a functional invitation if you know where to find the invitation in it. And you could probably, now that you know it's in there, if you saw the book, you'd probably know what to do. I'm not going to give away anything else. This is the only podcast I've mentioned this on.

Wow. So I'm curious to see if you figure out the challenge and how well you do. My first book, Nobody's Been Able to Figure This Out Yet, I put an insanely difficult riddle, and I promised that whoever figured it out would get a, get to go on a trip with me. But nobody's been able to do it, and the book is now, like, completely sold out. this new book, there's a game so that you can figure out potentially a way to get invited to one of my events. Knowing this audience is very much rooted in the world of like personalized medicine, health, chronic disease, living their best life, wanting to improve, especially,

you know, there's a lot of interest in brain health. Is there any particular sections, you know, the book is fantastic and I had a chance to read it. But would you highlight any particular chapter as being an incredible resource for people to go into when they purchase. We talked a little bit about this loneliness stuff. And the experiments that I came across, like Rat Park and what happened with the Vietnam Vets, like I found that shocking to understand the impact of social isolation on addiction, behavior, healthy habits. And then how positively it can affect people when we figure out a way around it. And then there's kind of a fun section where I talk about predicting human behavior

and how Disney designs their theme parks. Because if we can design our life experiences with that same philosophy, you know, I joke around that in the morning I'm really good. at eating a healthy breakfast, but if there's a candy bar on my desk at 6 by 601, that candy bar's gone. Right? And so how do we design our life so that we actually have healthy habits? And there's an entire section in the book that kind of explores how to use it either

to build community or to just build habits that we actually care about. And I think that that's a super fun section. And so if you look at the table of contents, you'll see the Disney reference go there. I love that. You know, listeners of my podcast know that I'm an entrepreneur and I'm big on entrepreneurship as one of the vehicles to make the world a better place and to bring in life companies that we want to see. And my first company was all about and not that I'm not about it now, but it was so rooted in building a community. We actually were one of the first to really introduce this word clean, C-L-E-A-N, as a sort of new modern approach to eating. Like before it was like you're either V-E-E-E-A-N. You're either V-E-E-A-N. or you're vegetarian or you're this or that. And it's like, look, I just try to eat clean when I can. And, you know, that's the thing we focus on. And building community around that business,

help me scale it from literally no investment to multi, multi million dollars in a very short period of time and having every celebrity in Hollywood doing our program and many business influence people and other people. So if you are also separate for the health audience, if you're interested in learning how to think about applying community building to your coaching program, to your superfood, to your new business venture, whatever it is, even if you have ambitions of creating a podcast and you want to build a community around it, there's a ton of great examples inside of the book that talk about how to apply this to a business

that you're starting as well too. So thank you for that, John. Folks can follow you. First, let's talk a little bit about Clubhouse. Are you still active on there? When I was on there, you're pretty active. You know, it's one of those things that I love it. I really enjoy hosting. It's just, that's a time commitment. And I like to give it my all. And so while this book has been in production, I've been in and out. And I think I'm going to be continuing to run some crazy rooms. And hopefully you'll be co-hosting with me. Well, we'll have the link to that. We'll also have the link to your Instagram as well, too. John, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks for jamming out of me on probably one of my most favorite topics. This has been an absolute pleasure.

And I have to really compliment you that your podcast takes a non-traditional route to get through ideas. And it's much more novel. And as somebody who's participated in quite a few podcasts over the years, it's really a treat to participate with you. And for your listeners, I'm not sure you realize how lucky you are that he puts in this much effort. Well, thank you, my friend. I really appreciate that.