Habits and Hustle - Episode 87: Vishen Lakhiani – Founder of Mind Valley, 2x NY Times Best-Selling Author

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Vishen Lakhiani is the Founder of Mindvalley, 2x NY Times Best-Selling Author. After making the tough decision to leave the U.S. and start a company from scratch in Malaysia, Vishen adapted to the teachings and new world around him approaching his company with a “no rules” attitude. He quickly became known for his company culture and thrilling work environment, attracting diverse talent from all across the globe. In this episode he opens up about what he had to overcome and how he built himself up from failure after failure, accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to where he is now. Curious about the man behind “The Buddha and the Badass”? His Mindvalley classes, systems, and lifestyle? The specific challenges of being an immigrant entrepreneur? He’s fierce and unapologetic, and profoundly successful. Give it a listen. Youtube Link to this Episode MindValley’s Website Vishen’s Instagram ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or paid subscription starting at $12.99 per month. Welcome to the Habits and Hustle Podcast. A podcast that uncovers the rituals, unspoken habits and mindsets of extraordinary people. A podcast powered by Habit Nest. Now here's your host, Jennifer Cohen.

We have the founder and CEO of Mind Valley. For those of you who's names this thing, the Kiani. Is that correct? Right, yeah. That's perfect. The name has an American pronunciation, but's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay,

it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, it's like, okay, I'm not gonna say it again, because I just, I don't wanna, just in case I got it right already, so I don't wanna even start again. Yeah, you'll get it. All right, and I, I use this founder of Mind Valley, which is, I think, a very revolutionary educational platform that's really about personal growth and really doing it very differently

than almost any other platform. You are an extraordinary educator. I've, you know, I kind of deep-died into, you know, what happened. It's actually kind of funny. Every time I was looking at one thing that you were doing, it took me down the rabbit hole that took me all the way down something else. So I have like pages of different notes here that I wanted to touch upon with you because there's like just so much stuff that you You add value with so his new book is called the Buddha and the badass great name and Let's let's get dive right into it awesome Yeah, and actually I want to say that you wrote a book before of course another book that I thought was excellent and

That book was I'm not saying I I was like I got so many notes here. Right now the club the extraordinary mind and you speak about something called Culture Skate in there and I want to kind of start actually by you telling us what that is and that can kind of bring us down a whole you know it could be a good doubt tailored to other questions I have for you. Okay great.. So the culture escape is a name I coined in my first book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. A culture escape is that tangled web of beliefs, cultures, rituals, practices that we exist in, like a fish is swimming in water, but there's no it's in water, because water is all around it. Human beings exist

in their own cultural interpretation of the world, that they don't realize that it's nothing more than an interpretation. And so we think that as Americans, certain things about the world are true. We think as Europeans, certain things about the world are true. We think is Chinese, certain things about the world are true, but we forget that very often in our culture, we confuse our beliefs, our rituals, traditions passed down by generations. We confuse what is relative truth, but what is absolute truth. So many of us fall into the trap of believing, believing our culture is infallible, believing that certain things which are often seen as ridiculous by other cultures, we believe that that is real and true for us. Another wrong with this culture is amazing, but we got to be able to separate relative

truth from absolute truth. And when we can do this, we can we just show up and able to make better smarter decisions in the world. Well, I find interesting also. This was not something you are an engineer, right? I saw something that you were like working for Microsoft for like 11 weeks and then you got fired. You got fired. And you were a meditation teacher. I don't know of the chronological order. And then you, with no money, no backing of any venture funds, you started Mind Valley. Now, with like $700, basically, it was much better than I thought. And we just, it now does a long journey.

But honestly, what just happened is we were about to hit a hundred million in revenue, no VC money, and we just this week closed our first investment deal. So now we have a large cash infusion, and we're now about to go public. We're looking at reforming the entire education system globally, starting with the American education system. That's amazing, and that's what I want to really get into. But I want to first, first, how much is it to get?

How much? What was the funding? I'm not sure how much literally I just signed it, but it was, we are on our way to becoming a unicorn company, on our way to becoming worth almost a billion. I'd say where maybe two to three years away from there? That's amazing. And I saw also, I went, I'm gonna talk about this also. You said something, which if we got a huge drag it whole, which was like think 10 years ahead

and speak as if it is, which I think is so smart, right? Because that's how people get stuck. They think how they are in that moment versus the future. And I think that's a brilliant way to kind of present yourself to the world, right? As you want to be. But then, okay, so let's get back. So then, what, what, what, what, what, what, what made you even think, you know, I'm

going to start this amazing revolutionary platform like mine Valley, you got fired, you were a meditation teacher, did you always have these, um, thoughts and ideas or what, what, what, what happened? It wasn't a glamorous story. I, I, I came from, you know, I came from a family where my dad was a manager in the department store. My mom was a public school teacher. We never really had that much money. My dad started a small business, saved up to be able to send me to school at the University of Michigan. A huge college debt. I wasn't an American citizen. I didn't have a scholarship.

I wasn't the smartest kid. But, you know, we really valued education. My mom, especially being a teacher. But when I graduated, I found that life wasn't what it was promised to be. I moved to Silicon Valley, the dot com bubble burst. I got my first job, September 11 hit, that company went out of business.

I was, I remember I worked all of October 2001, company went out of business at the end of October, didn't even pay its staff. I worked an entire month, no salary, because of September 11, because the bubble had burst. It was a shitty situation. I went through failure after failure, after failure. I remember not being able to afford health insurance, not being able to afford car insurance and wrecking my car. I couldn't

afford to fix the brakes. I hit a mini-band. I owed so much money. I couldn't afford rent. I was sleeping on a couch. And I had this glamorous degree from the University of Michigan. A $150,000 University of Michigan, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in college bills. And I was a fucking failure sleeping on a friend's couch two years later. I couldn't even afford rent. Now that's how they started. The question that I asked myself was what was the point of this all? What was the point of that bullshit piece of paper from the University of Michigan? What was the point of working so hard for 12 years? What was the point of a hundred thousand

dollars in school fees? Right? I mean back then in 1999 when I graduated, I remember my school fees were twenty-one thousand dollars a year. It's significantly higher now. I think it's about 50 to 60 percent higher, the average American college grad. So the system is broken and it fucks us over and nobody questions it. So what happened to me was at the height of my failure. I got on Google, it was 2002, I got on Google and I was searching for hope and I found a class on meditation. I took the class and it it transformed me In the next four months, I got promoted three times my life changed and The change the the impact was so powerful at the age of 26. I was all of a sudden

Vice President of Vice President of this company. One year ago, one year, so September 11, 2002, they should be in New York to start a New York office in Chelsea Market, one of the most beautiful buildings in New York. It's the building that Google just acquired for something like 2.5 billion. On September 11, 2002, I opened the company's New York office because my boss was a former military guy.

He wanted to create jobs in New York. One year before that, I was broken sleeping on a couch. What was the difference? I went into meditation. I started learning all of these tools that we sometimes forget that the education system doesn't dare touch, criticalization, intuition, meditation,

mindfulness, listening within, goal setting, all of the tools that are stable to personal growth that modern American education, for some stupid reason ignored. Now, I worked with this company for 18 more months and then I felt that calling, and that calling was, I don't want, but millions of people going through the same, same struggle I did. We need to fix education. And I remember, I remember stumbling upon a quote

by Nelson Mandela. And Mandela said, if you want to change the world, change education. So that's what I started to do. But I have no clue how to do it. First thing I did, I got certified as a meditation instructor. I started teaching meditation. For five years, I was just teaching meditation, tiny classes, 20 people in the class, and stuff, was tough. But then as the pieces started coming together, mind-dally emerged. And now this is where we are today. And we are coming for the American education system. Five years from now, I believe if you are a member of mind valley, you will have better odds of success in life than having a habit or a standard degree.

Now, wow, you know, by that, we are rethinking the entire model from ground up. A degree will not matter. Totally well. We are looking at how to hack the human experience, to get you what education promised you, but that they haven't innovated for over a hundred years. My value is building a system where we deploy into people to write education, so you don't just succeed at your job, but you succeed at the fundamentals of life itself

from your spirituality to your love life, to your help, to your biology, to the way you connect with your children, to the way you connect with your soul, to the way you contribute to the world, to the way you lead all of that, all of the different things that modern education forgets, we pick up and we deliver it in a very sophisticated way. Most of our people, most of my team are engineers because we're building new models

where we allow people to customize the education based on their goals. I can't even go into what Mind Valley is building right now because it's so freaking advanced, there is nothing like it out there. But not my words. Five years from now, you will have the choice of paying 50 grand to enroll your kid in Harvard, 50 grand for one year, four years of Harvard, or 600 bucks for one year of Mind Valley. And I bet your kid will be better off with mind-dally.

Now this doesn't mean don't go to Harvard. Look if you can afford it, do it. But don't not be on mind-dally because you will miss out on the greatest product you can buy on the planet today. I do not expect that. You create it is the number one product because it totally transforms you. So anyway, that's what I'm working on right now. No, I mean, that's a most important. I mean, first of all, I get so passionate about what I'm doing. Well, no, you should.

I mean, first of all, like I said, it was interesting, I have to be honest with you. I just have recently just kind of came to you guys. And I had no idea you guys even existed. The only reason why I knew was I was on someone's podcast who was a person who lives in the UK and she was saying she was now going to do something for my belly and I was like what's my belly and she was telling me about it so then of course I went to look look into it and I was blown away. I'm, how is it that I did not like I had no idea that

I had no idea. Like I the only thing that I kind of compared it to at the beginning was like a master class. You know that, you know, obviously a master class, right? And then I started asking some people in my social circle, if you guys have a favorite of it in the US, never heard of it either. So then they went down the rabbit hole and now we're like, wow, how did I not know? So my question is, could you live in Estonia? Is it something that is a way bigger,

like people just know about it more on your neck? In the woods? Actually, 54% of our customers are Americans, right? But the reason is we're not venture funded. We're not venture funded. Like if you look at it, I calm. I mean, they spend tens of millions of dollars every year just promoting themselves everywhere. So what we have to do is focus on a truly great product. But now it is spreading. So if you go, I'll show you something. If you're listening to this podcast,

just open this up in your web browser. Go to stories.mindbally.com, stories.mindbally.com, stor.res.mindbally, and you will see our own customers are sharing case studies openly of how mindbally has transformed them. And it's amazing to see, once you get in, you wanna bring people in. And so, customer word of mouth

is becoming their marketing right now. But we not just funded, but we just became venture fund that literally unsatisfied. So what is going to happen next? Just what? What's going to happen next? I can go, so let's look, I'm still at fast, I have the fact that, so how did you start gaining traction?

So you have this idea, you really believe that the education system was broken. You were doing meditation. What was, how did you get from that to even the kernel of building such a huge platform where you have now, what, three million users? Like, what, how did you even get to like, thousands of you, it is coming to you? 14 about three million users. Like, how do you think it gets to like, thousands of you, is it coming to you?

14 million. Yeah. Okay, well, I saw something. I was watching you on in half a year. You're on that quickly, right? I mean, at least I saw. But it's three million. It's gone up to 14 million.

Okay, literally, in 2000, like last year, when I saw you were, you're in a half and you were on, I think Tom Bill used podcast Who was online to right it was three million and now I didn't how did you jump from three to 14 in my Thing called mind valley masterclasses, right? So and we launched this before masterclass.com Came into being we actually borrowed the the name from Oprah I think Oprah started using the word masterclass for really powerful classes with that in like 2011 and it got really popular. These

are free one hour experiences with a mind-valley teacher, sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours completely free. And you know, we started getting like in the last one year maybe five million people signed up for a masterclass, the year before another four or five million people signed up for a master class, the year before, another four, five million people signed up for a master class. So that's how we grew so fast in the last two years. So the master classes are free. So I'm saying 14 million, those are users on our system. That percentage of that pace for mind,

valley, or access. And now when you get all access, you get a total immersive experience. It's literally a new type of university designed to elevate every aspect of being human. You get an app where every month you unlock, you upgrade yourself with a world-class coach and you gain a superpower. It may be biohacking, it may be speed reading, it may be improving your love life, it may

be improving your confidence, and you get a private network. You can think of it as a more advanced version of today's social networks. But it's designed to learn with other students to meet close friends, to connect with people all in a safe way, where we are not zucker-burgging your brain. You know, with other things that actually lead to all the unhealthy effects of modern social media. Now those are just the first two pieces. We have so many we are attracting so much tech talent right now. We are building an AI layer that merges everything together so that in a few years Every mind Valley student will have the equivalent of Iron Man's job is

Helping guide them in life. I'm talking about a full-on AI-powered augmented reality interface that helps you navigate the world and learn in the most powerful way. Is it okay? So how is it that you went from zero to even a thousand to two thousand? I know you're just because I you're obviously very passionate about what you do, right? What was that first thing that you had to do? Like how did you take your passion that you're okay, so let me let me break it down to you in 2013. So mine value started in 2003. That's when I registered to make the company.

I That's when I registered to make the company. I started it with a friend of mine and with my dad, wife, Christina. And we didn't know what we were doing. We were dabbling in different things. We were selling meditation CDs. We built the world's second most popular social bookmarking engine. In 2005, we launched an app very similar to Instagram. It was called Blinklife. It ultimately failed because it was too early.

Back then, camera phones just didn't really exist, right? We launched an early version of Facebook in 2004 that we didn't have the venture funding. See, what happened was Mind Valley started in Palo Alto in New York. But in 2003, the Muslim watchlist was enacted in the United States. The exact same thing that Trump in 2016 was trying to launch, right? And I got put on that watchlist and I had to leave America.

So I had to, literally after living in America for 10 years, I had to go back to my home country of Malaysia or to my wife's country, Estonia. So that was a three. That's why you're there. That's why I'm there. That's why I couldn't let you see them. That stupid thing slowed me down. Now I don't blame anyone.

Look, September 11 had happened. I loved the United States. America had to, to enact policies, but it was a very stupid policy, which is why when Trump wanted to bring it back in 2016, like so many Silicon Valley CEOs protested, because brilliant people like me could no longer bought certain flights. We had to go through two-hour interviews before getting in an airport. It was like freaking living on parole every 28 days. I have to report to the government for fingerprinting, for a mug shot. That was my life in America under

this stupid, that stupid Bush era watch list, Obama ruled it unconstitutional in 2008, and it was no more. But I will not go back to America until that reality TV host who's posing as a president is a way because I cannot risk another stupid anti-immigrant law like that disrupting my life. So, when Biden wins, I'll consider coming back. But right now, we are taking on the American education system from Malaysia and Estonia. If I was a peer-fouled employee, and I wish I could employ them in America and create jobs, but because of that stupid situation, we have to build our company in Malaysia. We built an American company in Malaysia. I pay American taxes.

I pay more taxes than the US president, but the entire company is built in Malaysia because that's where I have to start. That is the story. I had no idea, because I was living with kind of like what, I was like, why is it like that? The camera to focus, hang on, this is it.

I know, why is it so, if you've got a focus, or focus, hang on, there's a lot of things. I know why is it so, if you're gonna focus, or if that's better, I was curious why you would dystonia, like I kept on, I was not understanding this. And so, because you started in the,

like the whole university in Michigan, the New York, all the time. So it was the watchlist and then Obama, bless the soul, got rid of it, ruled it unconstitutional.

But then in 2016, when Trump was elected and talked to me for most of the watch list, like, why would I take that risk, you know? Yeah, I get it now. I didn't understand that. And then, so that, okay, so then you, that's, so when you went there, though, even, I would think it would be even more difficult to build what you've built. So then how did you start getting the traction?

I don't know, I't imagine it was very different. This is what I have to do. When I moved to Malaysia, the Malaysian was going through brain drain. Okay. So my friends told me, like, why did you come back? You should have just stayed in the US. Who cares if you have to live in parole and report to the government every 28 days? I couldn't because it was against my principles. I'd given, I loved America, I'd given, and I still do, I love everything about America. But I couldn't live like that. It was just barely unfair.

So I decided that I was faced with a choice. And I remembered the words of Buckminster Fuller. He said, when faced with an intractable problem, you can focus on the problem, or you can create a vision that renders the problem obsolete. So what I decided to do was create a vision to render my problem of being in Malaysia obsolete. I needed talent from the US.

I needed talent from Europe. I was gonna build an international company in a tiny Southeast Asian country with no history of tech or startup. But what's so what I decided to do was set a clear vision in my head. I was going to create the world's greatest workplace by 2020. I got myself a 17 year on-round, right? 2020 just downed it cool.

Now as I started unfolding that idea, it started becoming true. By 2009, we'd moved into an office that was the most beautiful office in Malaysia. We started attracting talent from all around the world. If you go to YouTube and you type in Mind Valley cover letters, you will see video cover letters from talent all around the world applying to join Mind Valley. As we started attracting all of this incredible talent, we soon had 60 different nationalities in our office in Malaysia. And we were ready to take on the world. In 2019, our office got listed in the

Inc. magazine as one of the top 10 most beautiful workplaces in the world. In 2020, I was asked to write a book and company culture. I pivoted it to write the Buddha and the badass. But that's what I had to do. I didn't have PC money. I wasn't in America. I didn't have access to talent, so I had to connect the global order to bring talent to me and reinvent work in that process. So what was it? What's that quality about you that you're able to reframed things and be so effective? Because I mean, this is what entrepreneurs, it's funny. I saw it again, that you said something that you don't believe in hustling, right?

Like, do you think that's an old, updated way of thinking and is about going within, right? But in a way, your path has been, you've had a lot of hurdles like you've had to kind of jump over to kind of become to do this. Now is that something you need in you that you just have such a drive, such a passion that what is it about you? Was that one quality that you would say?

It is the merger of the Buddha and the badass. I mean my latest book, the one that hit number one in the Wall Street Journal is called the Buddha and the badass. It's the merger of those two. Read the review book. Read the book. An Amazon, right? It's like a five star rated book, but what I propose in that book is that we need to shift the way we approach work and business. We need to merge two different aspects of ourselves. Bad ass, right? Now, when you talk to me, you hear the passion, like I am

out the freaking James Bond world. You hear that passion, but if you just have that, but you cannot go inside and source ideas and source creativity and and and and and be able to put yourself in states where you can just sit back and think and relax and not have the hustle, hustle, hustle, then you're not activating both sides of your body. I tried to merge both the Buddha and the bad ass. We all have it within us. But what tends to happen is that we either become too much Buddha and it's all about a personal growth practice and a yoga and a meditation and going within. And let's not bother about politics and, you know, and let's not be capitalistic. Or it's all about bad ass. It's about hustle and disruption and changing the world and running for office and all And let's not be capitalistic. Or it's all about badass.

It's about hustle and disruption and changing the world and running for office and all of these other things. You got to merge both. And when you merge both, that's when something magical tends to happen. It's almost a metaphysical state that I call bending reality. When you learn this metaphysical state

to exist in the state call bending reality. When you learn this metaphysical state to exist in the state of bending reality, it almost seems that luck is on your side, that the universe seems to unfold for you in the most beautiful way. And it's effortless. I literally mean effortless, that there are rules and ways to get them. And this is what I try to unpackage in the Buddha and the bad-ass. I'm not saying I have all of the answers for this form of self-mastery, but I've learned at least nine powerful lessons over the last 12 years or so.

And each chapter in the Buddha and the bad-ass, the nine chapters in the book, is one of those lessons. It is spirituality applied to work. It is what, you know, you think about the great spiritual sages and saints of the world like Buddha or Jesus or Patna Sambava or Moses. If they were alive today, I think they would be politicians or CEOs because that's how you changed the world.

And all of these individuals, they were not just like feeble in the words of Ken Wilber, the great American philosopher. The great spiritual sages and saints of the world were not feeble, minded, milk-totes, they were movers and shakers who rattled with the world with the force of the ego, even Jesus brought a bullwhip into a temple. These individuals instigated revolutions

and created mass social changes that lasted centuries. So, right. The opportunity that we have right now when we merge our Buddha and our badass nature. So do you think that, so people have a certain, you do not believe that people have a certain personality and then you have to, you got to hone that person, you have to hone those things to kind of connect to I feel you're so intense like you're such an intense person I'm actually not I'm just intense now because that is the more that I chose to be in right now I'm in a hyper creative work mode right now well I know and I think I think sometimes you need that intensity I mean look

at my thing behind me habits and hustle. You mean, I felt, I feel like it's that passion, that intensity, that drive, it kind of moves the ball, right? Now, in your book, I mean, you talk a lot about your four values, your transformation, envisioning unity and love. Those are like the core values, right? I guess how does someone who doesn't naturally gravitate, they're implement those to kind of get to a higher self,

to be more successful, not just on a professional level, but on a personal level. Right, so what you're talking about is a concept in the book called Finding Your Soul Print. It is the idea that within all of us, so this is a very, very deep spiritual concept that I learned from a Sudanese refugee by the name of a Dhrima Starlight. He changed his name when he was given asylum in Canada. And interest on that. Yeah, so history is amazing. But he

he thought me a process called the Soul Print. And it's about this idea that all of us are souls that shows a human body. And all of our souls are a unique gift that we want to bring in the world. But most of us never learn to listen to that gift, especially in the Western world, we have used rationality over anything else.

We often shut down what is, what is the unseen, the unruvable, right? But these are the these are important parts of our reality as well. And so the Soul Print technique is a way to understand what are the seeds of your soul, what are those values that your soul put in you so you can give your gifts to the world. And when you can identify your soul, print and implant it in your business or your creation or your brand, that is when magic happens. Yeah, I agree.

Here's the interesting thing. Your soul print often comes from the suffering you experience in life. Your suffering can be the breadcrums towards you finding your mission. This is why Victor Franco said when meaning is given to suffering, it sees as to become suffering. This is why the Rumi said, the wound is the part through which the light enters. Your soul print is often discovered through your suffering. When you go through suffering, it often embeds in you a value. But then that value becomes so, if you dig deep and you find that value is such a part

of you and you nurture it and you expand it and you play with it and then you implanted into your business or your creation, your business or your creation will explode. Remember Steve Jobs was, he never spoke about this idea, but if you look at his speeches, you look at his biography, his value was design. His value was also intuition. Steve Jobs and his famous Stanford commencement address said, listen to your heart and intuition. There's some already know who you are to become.

Steve Jobs when he went to read college, he studied calligraphy. He studied design. Now, if you look at an Apple product, you notice the merger of both of these values. Apple products are just so intuitive to you. They are just beautifully intuitive. They are so filled with design. I believe Steve Jobs was really aware of his soul print and he infused his work with it. Now in my case, I have four values. The biggest one is unity. Unity means seeking

to bridge the world, tearing down walls and building bridges. And you can see unity implanted in mind value. If you walk into our office in Malaysia, it's shut down now because of COVID-19. In a pro-demic day, there would be 60 different nationalities in that office. Now, here's the question though, right? And by the way, the diversity that we celebrate, the diversity of our teachers, the diversity of our community is one of the reasons people flock to Mind Valley. We attract people who are highly international and love culture, love diversity. But can you see, here's a question for you, can you see what would have given me that value, where that would have come from? Can you think about a past suffering that I just shared

that would have implanted this drive for unity in me? Absolutely. You're basically kicked out of the country for exactly. Which is why mind- mind value as a personal growth company is an education company firmly speaks up for unity. We we we have been warning the world about Trump, about Bolsonaro, about Matt Helmi here in Estonia. We don't stand on the fricking sidelines we stand up for what we believe and when we started standing up saying the president of the United States We have to fight his his stand up. I shouldn't say fight, but we have to stand up again some of his policies his policies against refugees his dumb wall building Some people left us, but most of our audience saw that this was the right

way forward. This is part of human evolution from petty ethnocentrism to world-centrism, to seeing ourselves as part of a greater whole. It's a natural evolution of our species, and mind-bally exploded onto the world stage. Right. I mean, it's funny because people always say, stay away from politics because that's your gonna lose. What was that? Actually stupid advice.

75% of Americans want CEOs and founders to have a stand. People who say, stay away from politics, by the way, in people who say, oh, don't bring politics into the conversation, they only say that when you say something they disagree with. Think about it. Right. No, exactly. No, I understand and I agree. But that's why I think everything you do is a little different than the majority, like even the way like your corporate culture. I mean, I was reading in the book, and I was like, I want to work for my valley, that like people don't have to, there's no meetings. It's 11th or yeah, yeah. So this is, this is why, this is why it's beautiful again. I'm just getting my camera to focus. This is why it's beautiful that you asked me about the culture scheme, because when you

understand the difference between relative truth and absolute truth, you start to understand that they are no rules. All the rules are made up. Back to Steve Jobs and one of the most famous talks he said, as soon as we realize that the world around us is made up by people no smarter than you, that you can change things, that you can poke things. Your life will never be the same again. What I did was I realized that corporate culture as I read about in Disney's books or seen on TV, wasn't BS, right? It wasn't necessarily true.

There were no rules about how to dress or how an office should be designed or how you should interact with your coworkers. So I just experimented, I started breaking the rules and I found stuff that worked. And if it didn't work, I discarded it, if it worked. I did more of it. I did the same thing with my meditation practice,

with my health practice, with the way I lived my life, with the way I write books. And one by one, I started hacking every aspect of life. And if I found something I hacked that worked really well or a teacher that thought a really good hack, I brought it into mind-gallion, made it part of the mind-gallion education system. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space!

Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on, like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm. All fuzzy, all self-care, zero self-doubt you. Grab a with love today.

Vitamin Water's zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of glass O. Yeah, no, I saw that. nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. Yeah, no, I saw that. I mean, you just, you just launched, I think the longevity hack with Greenfield. And I was watching that. And of course, you did like Jim Quick a while ago, I think with the reading and for the superlick,

all that stuff. I mean, it seems, what it seems like is like you basically find the people that you have, that you feel have the best hacks or the best way of doing something and then you basically explore it on your page and bring them in as a corporate culture community. Exactly. What we do is when we find so Jim Quake, he's our speed reading teacher, so he's probably the best in the world at speed reading.

The best here. So we develop a program with Jim Quake called Quest. This is a unique mind-dolli methodology. Quest are unique learning systems that anywhere from one week to four weeks create a dramatic change in you. Now, a change that is typically classified as transformation, which means that once you experience this change, you never forget it. You never go back to your old self, your entire world view shifts. And for example, with Jim Quicks test in study after study after study, sorry, in Jim Quicks quest after three weeks of doing it, it's a three week program, your reading speed will go up 270%. Now imagine'll imagine what that does for the average person. When you can read practically three times faster

and still retain the information, you all know life and career changes, right? Absolutely. I mean, you're like a guinea pig. I feel like you try out all these things. And if you really find value, or if it really changes your life, it basically optimizes your life. You will then implement it for your community and for your employees.

I'm like, you've done that. Well, if human guinea pig, everything about my life is beautifully studied and optimized. And yeah, I just enjoy doing that. I'm a human guinea pig for personal transformation. More from our guests, but first a few words from our sponsor. Do you have an idea, but not sure how to bring it to life? Well, you've got to try Canva Pro. It makes designs simple, whether you think you're creative or not, whether you want to create a stunning social media post or make it for some marketing materials, professional presentations and videos, Canva Pro is jam-packed with ways to simplify and speed up the design process.

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and all recipes are so quick and easy, with step-by-step instructions, chef tips, and photos to guide you along. And with green chefs, wide variety of high-quality, clean ingredients, you can feel great about what you're eating and how it got to your table. I've been eating it now for over a month, and not only is it so easy to prepare and delicious,

but the kids love it too. So it's a win-win. Go to greenchef.com slash hustle80 and use code hustle80 to get $80 off across four boxes, including free shipping on your first box. That's greenchef.com slash hustle 80. There's a question that I think we asked you about, like what is your daily, you know, your morning ritual? I know your morning ritual now like the back of my hand,

but not only do you have a morning ritual, you have a literally a system for everything during the day, like everything you do is so systematic to kind of be the most efficient person basically on the planet. We talk a lot, I want to talk to you about that. So let's talk about your systems. Your morning routine, a wine, how you save time, but not just your morning routine. Like I said, every single not just your morning routine. Like I said, every single, you know, part of your day is systematically,

it's basically not just planned, but just, I guess coordinated to be as efficient as you possibly can and optimized. I'm laughing because some people hear about how I live my life. I sound like a freak. No, you don't though, because I tell you, I was watching this finger doing with the,

you know, you were doing your pull-up while you're on a call, right? Yeah. Because when people can't see you, I was doing that like 15 years ago. And people would come into my house for my office and they think I'm like a frappe boy because I had all these weird like apparatus.

But the truth of the matter is, it's efficient and that works, right? And it's like, why waste your time by sitting? That's why I wanted to have you on my podcast in real life, because I don't believe in this type of podcast where we're sitting down sedentary. We do it on a treadmill, and we people, we walk and you talk at the same time,

so you can be as efficient as possible. If. You fell free queue. I like that. Exactly. I don't do anything. I try to maximize my time as much as possible and so you know and that's what I was saying. This is very uncomfortable to be sitting here you know for an hour yapping like, can't move. I have a thing on my door, the pull-up thing. So when I'm more in calls too, I did that forever. And people think I'm crazy. And it's not very like girl-like to do it, but it works.

So, okay, so let's talk about your morning routine and we can kind of go into the other routine. Right, okay. So, I start my morning. Well, actually, let me start by how I go to bed at night, okay? Yeah, the night routine, that's great. Just to get everything right now. When I go to bed at night at a specific time.

So, I, What time? Aura ring. Typically, 11, 30 to 12, 30. I use an aura ring to track my sleep. And so I learn every morning when I wake up, I check my RR ring and I, you know, I kind of learn like over time you start learning. If you ate ice cream while watching Netflix one hour before bedtime, what does that do to your heart rate? I actually figured it out. Like my heart rate goes

out by about two beats per second, but ice cream before going to bed. So not necessarily bad. And as much as I love health, I am not giving up ice cream. So that stays. What is doing to me right now. So when I go to bed at night, I will take magnesium. If I had a really stressful day, and that happens to me at once, right, I will take CBD oil. CBD oil is amazing. I'm waiting for more countries to legalize it. I have a ritual of gratitude. And I ask myself what magic that I notice in the universe today?

Like what did I notice with serendipity, with coincidence, is how did the universe support me today and I give appreciation for that? So it's a little ritual I do. I have a dream journal by my side. I'm keep trading myself a lucid dreaming now. So if I wake up in the night and I have a dream, I write it down. I put in an aura ring.

I take two supplements, magnesium, which really helps you sleep better. Or CBD oil. If I really need it, CBD oil is wonderful. It's a relaxing. And more countries need to legalize it. It is incredible. I wake up. And so I've timed my sleep. And more countries need to legalize it. It is incredible. I wake up. And so I've timed my sleep.

I know I need about seven hours, 15 minutes of sleep. So I always wake up at seven hours, 15 minutes. And for the first two hours, I will meditate. Now the form of meditation I do is called the six space meditation. I designed it myself. It is an optimized form of meditation that has gotten very popular. and it's now used by athletes in every major American

sports team. It's free online, so Google it, get it, but it is, I believe it's the most powerful meditation app there. It's a stacking of six different principles of transcendent practices from a white array, from the silver method, from Zen Buddhism, that transforms the way you show up in the world. So the six faces my secret weapon. So I do the six face, and then I typically will shower. I'll take supplements.

They're about seven or eight supplements I take every morning. They range from vitamin D, vitamin C, multi-vitamins, and a couple of other supplements. 5HTP is incredible. And then you customize supplements based on what your outcomes are. I'm a brown skinned person in northern Europe where there isn't much sun. So you got to take vitamin D, right, especially in the age of COVID. And so you have to hack your supplement practice to your own needs, to your own biology,

but the important thing to remember is that, today, the food that we eat is not as nutrient dense as it was for our grandparents. And so some form of supplementation is necessary, especially if you live in the United States. But wait, why do you take 5-H2T? I mean, that was something I thought you'd take it at night. You'd take it in the morning? I'd take it in the morning. Yeah. So you can, from what I know, from the research I've

done, I don't think the science is exact, but today we know that 80-90% of 5-HTP is produced in your gut, right? Microbiome. It elevates your moods, it makes you less resilient to stress, it elevates your moods, and at night, it helps you sleep better. Right, look at my butt. Yeah, I take it at the morning because it actually gives me better focus and better fluidity at work.

What I mean by fluidity is you can write the bumps, right? When you're a CEO, there's gonna be bumps every day, something may break, something may collapse. You get to write the bumps better, which is why I like taking 5HDP in the morning. Do you ever take Ashwagandha? Is that what my pronouncing it wrong? No. Now, the underlying systems, my nutrition system is very much influenced by WALFIT, which is the best health transponation program out there. It's now part of Mind Valley. And then my life envisioning system is Lifebook by John and Missy Butcher. Again, it's now part of Mind Valley. When I discover something really great, I just want to go and I want to license it or build upon it or work with the inventor and make it

part of the overall mind-bally platform. And then I reduced the price. Like with Lifebook, we brought the price down 95%. With, while we brought the price down by almost 60%, 70%. Because we want to get it, and we make it better, and we want to get it out to more people. So how do you do that? How do you do that?

How do you do that? I find more programs and then I want to change the world. I got a low of the price, so it scales. Yeah, so it scales. You build in economies of scale, you can lower the price. Right, but I'm saying, if you're buying a program from somebody who's already selling another own platform or just we get it now, I'm trying to get it now. A lot of news of rights, while fit is exclusively sold through Mind Valley,

lifebook is accepted. I'm right now. I'm right now. Right? OK. And then we typically grow the programs. So lifebook and while fit and any living human being needs to be on these programs, like just don't do any other diet,

while fit will transform your life. So that governs how I eat. And lifebook is a 100page book of my life vision. So I know exactly how I want to live, how I want to show up, what type of life I want to lead, how, what I want my company to do, how much I want to travel, what is my relationship with my kid,

everything is written down. I don't have a business plan for my company. We have OKRs, obviously, but I haven't written a business plan in many years. But I have a super, pretty clear business, a life plan for my life and how I show up and how I experience being alive. And it's not too long. Not to interrupt you. I just want to ask you a question before we go further into your systems. Wild fit, your diet.

So can you give us a couple of principles that you, how you eat, that people can learn more about it if they go to see wild fit, they go and check out wild fit? Yeah. It's honestly so complex. But basically, so wild fit isn't so much how you eat it's retraining your biology so you become you burn fat rather than sugar. So you don't need sugar you don't need sugar for energy like you know some so many people are fooled into the idea that

you got to go workout and you got to take an energy drink. No that's bullshit marketing. All of us carry a quarter million a quarter million emergency calories in our body, a quarter million. This is why you can go three or four days without eating, right? But our body doesn't have access to those calories because when you are on the American diet, you train your body to expect to burn sugar. A sugar is in 74% of any product in the average American grocery store. That statistic is from Dr. Mark Heiner. So what you want to do is, while fit puts you on, it's not ketosis, ketosis is actually one of

the least efficient forms of dieting, while fit actually retrains your body so you're able to access the extra calories. Now, as a result, you start burning the fat around your body. And as you have access to that fat, a couple of other things happen. It doesn't mean that you give up wine or you give up sugar. I still take sugar, I still take wine, but in vastly smaller quantities, I used to be, I mean, at my worst health, I used to drink two glasses of wine a day, 14 glasses a week. Now, you know, if I'm enjoying a good movie, I'll have half a glass of wine, and that's enough for me. But at the same time, my body is if I'm enjoying a good movie, I'll have half a glass of wine, and that's enough for me.

But at the same time, my body is able to tap into my fat reserve, so it's been four years since Walfit, and I haven't significantly put on a lot more fat. I mean, I've gone up by one percentage point under the pandemic. When you download the Kroger app, you have easy access to savings every day. Shop weekly sales and get personalized coupons to get the most value out of every trip every

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metabolically flexible? Is that what you train people to do or to be? Well, the concept of metabolism is a very inexact science. Calories is just bullshit. I mean, it's a very simplistic way of looking at the world. It's really about, think about it this way, rather than getting your body to expect sugar as a constant source of fuel, you tap into your access fuel reserves. Walfit trains your body to rebalance in a unique way. Again, it's complex.

I'm not qualified to explain it because I'm not being struck that the instructor is Eric Edmits. But go to mind valley.com forward slash Walfit, it's all there. Okay, I'm curious about this too too because here we talk a lot about being metabolic, reflexible and people do a lot of fat, a big fat and I'm sure, and then you talk about it too, about intermittent fasting or just fasting in general. I know that you said that in part of your morning routine is you eat breakfast, it's like what, you eat breakfast two days a week, you fuel two days a week and then you fast two days a week

or something like that. And yeah, but so once you're on a wild fit, you can fast really easily because your body gets the energy it needs from your fat reserves. So if you decide, so sometimes I wake up in the morning at 7.30, I will not have a meal until one. And my previous meal was maybe 10 p.m. So what is that? That's almost like 15 hour fast. And I have no issue with that because my body is well fit compliant. Like everyone, especially in the United States, everyone has to be on well fit. Like it will just change your life. And it also improves your health. My hair got a lot thicker, you know, like most men over 40, you start seeing hair fall out, but my hair got a lot thicker, you know, like most men over 40, you start seeing hair fall out, but my hair got a lot thicker, my skin cleared up, it has been remarkable

for me. I look fun, if you Google pictures of me before 2016, I look like a different person. I know, I saw. Yeah. I saw. I mean, you seem tiny though, like you seem like you really kind of like shredded your body and you're like, like, one little seed.

Yeah, but, but you know what? That's the way the human body is meant to work. If you look at indigenous cultures, like, no one is bulked up. No one is bulked up. No one has, has that much access to that because you don't want to, you, you don't want to buy into this new normal. I used to have a dad board. You don't want that. You don't want, you don't want to buy into this new normal. I used to have a dad board. You don't want that.

You don't want that. No, I don't want that. Yeah, nobody wants that, but we accepted it. But when I had a dad board, I accepted it. I mean, I accepted it. I'm like, oh, this is just normal. I'm the father of two kids. But you can shift that.

So that's really, really important. Now, the next thing is this. I then go and I get on Mind Valley all access and I watch a 20 minute quest episode every single day. Right now, I'm studying Ken Wilbur's integral theory. Prior to this, I was studying speed reading. Prior to that, I was studying Marie Diamond's Feng Shui. On Mind Valley, when you're part of Mind Valley all access, and that's just MindValley.com.

Go check it out. There are so many different programs. You decide what is best for you Um, and every day you watch 20 minutes and at the end of every month So 20 minutes is nothing, but it's the way our teachers teach that makes it so dynamic at the end of the month You're a new person. So by the end of this month, I'll be able to read significantly faster and I will be trained in integral theory and in Feng Shui, which is kind of Me, oh my gosh, really such a renaissance man. Okay, so then continue with your...

I want... I'm gonna ask you more also about your six phase meditation, but I think it's... It's in the book, you talk about it in the boot and the bad ass, but people can go to Mind Valley. But because... Would you say that if someone's doing in your opinion, a form of meditation, that's fine too, because I think you're a big meditation. Meditation, yes, meditation is great, but again, just like exercise, you can optimize it. You know, optimize the forms of exercise. Super-slow, like strength training is what I recommend for the gym.

Mind Valley has a program coming out called Tenex, which is based on the work of Doug MacGuff, who wrote the book Body by Science. You do not, most people over-exercise in the gym. You can get the best results you can get in under 30 minutes a week. That's amazing. I saw that. Mind-blowing for people, but they don't understand. But again, if you think this is hard to believe, just pick up the book, Body by Science by Doug McGuff, all the evidence, all the data are at stake. Okay, so it's super slow, right? It's called super slow training. It's called body by science. It's the scientific approach to optimizing your body. But it's basically doing super slow resistance training.

Yeah, super slow resistance training. So mind Nali has developed a program on that. We look at being inspired by Doug McGuff's work, that also works of countless other researchers and pioneers, and it's called 10x. 10x? Yeah, it's coming out in December. So that's how I used to gym. I go to the gym two to three times a week.

I take jujitsu classes now with my son, one to twice a week, and between. And then I'm not allowed to start work until 9 a.m. So I wake up at 7 and for the first because I'm so I love my job so much, I want to dive straight in, but I do not, I've stopped allowing myself to go to my work. I need to first focus on myself, on my health, on my well-being, work. I need to first focus on myself, on my health, on my well-being, on, on, and you know what's the latest thing I'm really into? Tidy and up. I don't know if you've read and recon those, the magic of course. Of course, yes.

That's so freaking zen, just so I love cleaning my own house. It's kind of weird for a guy, right? But I just kind of like it. And so every day I make a little tweak to my living space. Every single day my home gets slightly better and better and better. And then at 9 a.m. I start work and then I go deep into work all the way until 7 or 8 p.m. 7 30. That's when I go see my kids. Oh, I go out with friends. My kids stay primarily with their mother and that's like a five minute bicycle right away. I walk a lot. As I work, I'm often on my bicycle. I love living in a small little European city because you just cycle everywhere or you walk everywhere. So I don't own a car. I hope I never have to own a car. I will work and I bicycle. I'm very carbon neutral

Wow, so you're big. This is amazing. Maybe everyone should move to Estonia. Yeah, it sounds like a nice life. It's also the city with the highest concentration of Entrepreneurs per capita highest concentration of startups per capita unicorns per capita I don't mean I don't mean the horse with the horn. I mean like Right, there's more density here right now than Silicon Valley and of course, I mean, I love Silicon Valley I used to live in San Francisco, but on Estonia is the place to be and then now you can hack life by getting a Digital nomad visa so the government just announced they're doing the opposite of what Trump is doing Trump is saying we don't want foreign looking people in a country as Tonya saying

Come on right in so anybody can apply to a digital nomad visa and come and live in Estonia start a business here And this is also now the most technologically advanced nation in the world. So everything is super streamlined and super high tech I have never I didn't know that wow there's an app you can call a Tesla to come pick you up anywhere. They have their own version of Uber here called Vault. They are scooters everywhere. You scoot around in some districts. They are testing out robots like R2D2 that deliver mail. They are buses now that are self-driving. You vote. You cost your vote by sticking your own ID into your computer. You pay taxes and five minutes flat. I put my taxes in five minutes flat. How? You stick, everybody has an ID card. Americans have this idea that having an ID

card means that the government can track you, which honestly is kind of bunk. In Estonia by having an ID card, the government was able to save 2% of GDP and reinvest it back because so much inefficiency is eliminated. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I have no idea about that. And now most advanced digital operating system for government, they are now licensing it to other countries.

And then again, it socialized medicine, so it's the best Americans have this belief that socialized medicine is bad. No, it's so cheap here. So I'm getting everything fixed. I just had a torn meniscus fixed in the US. It brought me eight grand here. It was 900 bucks. Oh, I have Canada does like that too. I'm kind of think as a Canadian.

And it's like people don't understand how much better a socialist, like that type of medicine is so much more superior. And then here's the best right people think, oh, socialism, I bet they tax you. I bet entrepreneurs hate it there. No, we have the highest concentration of startups and entrepreneurs per capita in the world. Tell of Eve is second. And guess what my taxes are? Take a guess.

$750. I'm joking. What is it? 20% flat tax. 20%. there's no progressive taxation. It's a 20% flat tax. Are you kidding? Yes. No, I mean, it's not. So why are you? I had no, why are it more people? I guess, maybe the weather. It's pretty cold there, though, right? Well, it's definitely a cold. This is northern Europe, right?

Yes. Definitely cold, but at the same time, it's beautiful during the summer. We're having a bit of an Indian summer right now. So, you know, last week and it was like, it was really warm and sunny, but Estonia is so, it's so Christmassy, right? Yeah.

I've never, the cold has never bothered me. Well, then you're like, how many people actually live there? What is the population? 1.4 million. I lived in Michigan for four years. Michigan is freaking cold. Nine.

Minus 40 in winter with windshield. Estonia never really gets like that. It was, I was saying from Toronto. So I mean, it's pretty, Michigan and Toronto are very, very, it's one of the same weather, right? So I'm used to like minus 40 degrees Celsius with wind shell. So Estonia never gets that cold,

but at the same time, it's Christmasy and it's so beautiful. Wow, I didn't know that. This is a great advertisement for living in Estonia. I'm telling you, Estonia is the place to be in the middle right now in the world. And by the way, COVID regulations here, the government did a really good job making COVID testing super safe, super fast. It's 4.5 minutes in and out to get a test.

You make a booking online, you take an Uber there, or here we call it Walt, 4.5 minutes in and out, and it's free, right? It's free. Um, so. This is amazing. I want to move. No one has to wear a mask anymore. Nobody has to wear a mask anymore.

So life is just back to normal. Wow. So, wow, I moved here from Malaysia, which is in shutdown mode right now. Yeah, exactly. And so you're, okay, so wow, this is, I've got Google. We're listening to this podcast. Google Estonian Digital Nomad Visa. Digital Nomad Visa.

It is this lie in our culture's cake that we belong to a country. No, let countries compete for you. Estonia is competing for you. America right now is doing something really isolationist and stupid They want to cut down H1 visas. They want to cut down the number of immigrants So people like me who run American companies can't even hire an America right now right?

But in Estonia they're like we want the best and bright us here So so many Americans are moving here right now. It's amazing It is kind of backwards thinking if you you really think about that, right? Like you think that you'd want the best in the brightest to be part of your country, right? Not the opposite, right? It is actually quite amazing. That happened.

And venture capital is going up here. Yesterday, I met a member of the government and he's like, okay, we have a $200 million to invest in clean tech. Do you know any companies? And so I'm telling all my friends, look, if you're building a clean tech company, get your butt to Estonia, build it here.

They're building an entire biotechnology neighborhood where they're hoping to attract a thousand startups. I mean, you've got to be able to deal with a bit of cold and winter, but again, it's so amazing. Everybody you meet in cafes and restaurants, the condosations are as thrilling as in Silicon Valley. That's amazing. So then let's get, could we just talk about your system still come

still fascinated by those? And I love the story. And I think it's fascinating. And I think it really is actually something I'm sure from this podcast you'll get a few people Moving there at least if not just me, but yeah, and if you move and if you move here just message me on Instagram at vision So so because I'm such an avid learner I Build mind-valley to suit my learning habits So recently I decided because I was moving to Estonia I wanted an app where I could meet other entrepreneurs and meet other people who see the world like I do and I just passionate about personal growth about building companies about changing the world So we launched a new app called connections by Mind Valley. It's now part of Mind Valley

It is our own social network to compete with Facebook So I'm no longer on Facebook. I have my own social network And I'm slowly letting people in and for example if I need to let's say I'm no longer on Facebook, I have my own social network. And I'm slowly letting people in. And for example, if I need to, let's say I'm bored right now, and I want to have dinner with someone, I can just search and see who's available within, say, five miles from me. Click, see the profiles, send out a dinner invite. And then now we're building an AI algorithm to do introductions.

So every morning when I wake up, I will get introduced to one new person in the city that I can meet for business or because we share a common interest and And I'm opening up this app to everyone who's part of my valley. So I'm doing most advanced human matching engine How do you have to okay? So what do you have time to sleep even at like 11 7 hours and 25 minutes? 7 hours and 25 minutes every single day. So is your ex-wife still involved in my valley? Because you said you guys don't really have a great friend. Yeah she lives yeah she lives like a four-minute bike ride away. Do you have a girlfriend at all or do you see it? Are you repairing? Is it confidential? I mean

I don't know you tell me. She's not in my private? Well, listen, you tell me much to love Estonia. I mean, I would wonder if in all those great people there, you would have met somebody or maybe not. You know, I'm not in a relationship right now. I'm not looking for a relationship. I came out, I mean, dating, yes, but I'm not looking for a relationship. I was married for 17 years and it was wonderful. But as I, you know, I, I chose to be, I chose to be by myself because I felt this was the best way for my soul to evolve and for me

to really embrace personal growth. I still see my kids every single day, but we did what is sometimes called the phrase for it is conscious uncoupling. Yeah, I didn't want to p palatro come up with that life. No, actually the person who came up with it is Catherine Wood-Witt-Thomas. She wrote a book called conscious uncoupling. It's not a program. Oh, right. When it power was just the most famous person who brought that word out, I was the second

person who brought that word out and got it a lot of attention when my wife and I did a conscious uncoupling two years ago. And so it's been working out well for you basically? Yeah, it's more importantly it's working out for the kids, that's the most important thing. So for people, when I got married, Christina was wonderful enough to move to Malaysia with me, right? And then after we did the conscious on coupling, even though I have a massive company in Malaysia,

on the CEO, 250 people, she wanted to move back to Europe, and it's important to us that we are in the same city, so their kids have both parents. So I'm like, okay, no worries. You choose wherever you choose, I will move there. So, she decided to move back to Estonia. I came here and I'm actually at first I wasn't sure of it. I was going to like it, but now I'm freaking

loving it. Wow. Would you ever move back to the US if things changed? Well, right now, it depends on where my ex-wife wants to move because I want to make sure that my children have the same city. So until my daughter Eve goes to college, which is, I mean, until or rather until she moves out of the home because my mother will probably make college irrelevant 10 years from now. So that's probably like 12 years away.

I can't, I can't, what, I mean, I was gonna say your mom, like what did he think of it like, what do they think about? Like, what is your, what do they think about what you've done? No, they must. Most people just think I'm crazy. And they think about what I'm doing. They think, they think a lot of people, they think they thought Steve Jobs was crazy, right? Like, it seems like you're, they thought Elon Musk was crazy when he wanted to

build a world on Mars. You're going to be crazy to want to change the entire global education system. Absolutely. And what is your ultimate goal with that? You want to get into 100 different, tell me what is your ultimate? You want to know the ultimate goal? Two things. Number one, make humanity net positive to nature.

We are going into a self destructive mode as our species, as a species, and we need to become net positive to nature. We are going into a self destructive mode as our species, as a species, and we need to become net positive to nature. Now what this means is that for every of human beings are on the planet, a planet becomes better off. That's goal number one. This means living in compliance in harmony with nature and with each other. Number two, create an earth-centric global identity. This means the number one flag, the number one identity we have is as fellow citizens of Earth. Our nation second. When an American is traveling around the world, first flag is the Earth flag. The American flag second. Now I know that that sounds really offensive to some people, but we have to get there.

If you ever watch Star Trek, Star Trek get a glimpse of that future Earth Federation. We have to get there. It's not going to happen for 150 years, but we want to start getting what is called Earth-centered identity out because only when we start coming together as a species can we start collaborating the soft global problems like climate change or climate instability? And only when we do that, can we have agreed upon rules for politics, so we stop voting in dangerous, fear mongers like Bolsonaro or Trump or even in Estonia, Matt Helmet, who's an absolute clown who power in the Estonian government. and I'm trying to get every entrepreneur here to speak up against him because he said,

he basically said, you know, black people shouldn't be allowed in the country. He said, women shouldn't be in politics. He wants to take away a woman's right to abortion. He wants to take away gay marriage. And so we as a species have to say, I'm sorry, but we're not going back to the 1940s. And an Earth-centred identity is a marker. It's a compass direction that shows us how we can collaborate. Leaders don't build walls.

They build bridges. And that's what we're thinking about. Wow, I mean, this is amazing. I know you have to run to your Jiu-Jitsu, but I'm just going to ask you one more question and then we can finish this some other time, okay? For entrepreneurs and to be for efficiency, can you give me one more system that you do during the day to be as efficient as possible?

We know your morning routine, we got your night routine, but your supplements, your diet is fine, we got it, we got all that. Give me something during the day that you do. Okay, so I don't do phone calls, I don't do emails, I don't even really do Slack. Anyone in my team who wants to reach me, they send me a WhatsApp message, it can be typed out, it can be a 90 second voicemail, I reply. Now that process is a process I design, it's called Uda looping.

It's a rapid way to make decisions in the shortest amount of time. So you make decisions fast, and you move projects forward in the shortest amount of time without unnecessary meetings or phone calls or time wait stage. So that's through what's up. You can use any system, right? Yeah. The idea of UDA looping is rapid decision making,

not when you're making a decision, not when you are 100% certain, not when you're 100% certain, but when you're 90% certain. So making tons of micro decisions every single day to innovate forward. So basically just like a voice message then or just like a text though, isn't it?

If someone asks you a question, you have to respond, isn't that like that? It appears to think, I don't do phone calls anymore. So this is a voice message, basically, you can keep people? Yeah. And there's more new ones to it. There's more signs to it.

I talk about it in one of the chapters in the Buddha and the badass. It's called the unified brain. So I have maybe 400 people working at 9 value. It's a way to be able to have everyone plugged in very rapidly so that we can sync as a team and move forward fast. And especially in the pandemic, it's been really challenging, right? But people have all around the world with borders closed.

So it's allowed us to grow despite the chaos. I love that. I really liked your book, actually, and I'm not just saying that. I'm just sitting here. The boot on the badass. I don't want to say your name again. If I say it wrong. Vision. Lucky on it. You said it right. Yes. Thank God. All right. The founder, he's dropped the CEO. He doesn't like that. I don't ask you about why you dropped it before CEO, but I guess you want to tell us really quickly why you don't want to be called a CEO. All right. Now I'm

back to having that title again now that we just raised a based around and exorbitant amount of money. Okay, so now is the CEO and founder of Mind Valley, which I really can stress enough is a really fantastic online platform for learning differently, personal growth. It will take you down a rabbit hole. I promise you a good rabbit hole. Can you tell everyone where we're defined you?

And so follow me on Instagram at vision, VISHEN, and subscribe to MindValleyAllAxcess at mindvalley.com, forward slash access, ACCES. That's amazing. You've been great. You've been exciting to talk to you. You're fascinating, and that's it. Thank you for coming on Have a It's In Usual. Thank you've been great. You've been exciting to talk to you. You're fascinating and

That's it. Thank you for coming on Have it's an hustle take care. You're welcome. Bye Habits and hustle time to get it rolling stay up on the grind don't stop keep it going Habits and hustle from nothing in the summer all out host the budget of fuck going Visionaries to then you can get to know Reinspired. This is your moment excuses. We haven't had the habits and hustle podcasts I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan, host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP Media Network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network.

Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about my show. We are all about elevating your confidence to its highest level ever and taking your business right there with you. Don't believe me? I'm going to go ahead and share some of the reviews of the show so you can believe my listeners. I have been a long time fan of Heather's's no matter what phase of life I find myself in, Heather seems to always have the perfect gems of wisdom that not only inspire but motivate me into

action. Her experience and personality are unmatched and I love her go-getter attitude. This show has become a staple in my life. I recommend it to anyone looking to elevate their confidence and reach that next level. Thank you! I recently got to hear Heather at a live podcast taping with her and Tracy Hayes and I immediately subscribe to this podcast, it has not disappointed and I cannot wait to listen to as many as I can as quick as I can. Thank you Heather for helping us build confidence and bring so much value to the space.

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