In Search Of Excellence - Ian Boggs: How To Get 30 Million Followers | E92

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Welcome to the second part of In Search of Excellence episode with my amazing guest, Ian Boggs. Ian is one of the most successful influencers of all time. He has more than 30 million followers on YouTube, Tik Tok, Snap, and Instagram. His videos have been viewed more than 30 billion times.Learn about his first million, the importance of having passion in what you do, his plans for the future, and the struggles he had with his mental health. Tune in to hear more from this incredible young man!Time stamps:00:54 Should you be motivated by money as an influencer?Anything you can think of that you can sellAffiliate marketing02:49 Should you be motivated by money as an influencer?You need money to survive, but not make it your end-all-be-allFigure out what makes you happy and then how to make money out of itThe first thing is to build a strong core audience06:27 The importance of passionRandall’s experience with his internsPassion as a life purpose09:45 The feeling of the first millionIan wasn't even looking at the numbersMoney is just a tool to invest into the businessHiring people and building a team 12:18 Growing and planning the futureTypical age demographicPlans for making a movieA written 5-year tenure or 30-year planBuying a houseBuilding a franchise21:58 The importance of extreme preparationWriting down your personal goalsMaking realistic and achievable goalsAn interview for NetflixTrying to over-prepare for other things27:36 Mental health issuesGot stressed, anxious, and depressed at collegeThinking about suicideA help from his dad and a therapistAdvice for people suffering from depressionTake advantage of existing resources, like the suicide hotline34:38 Dating and partiesDoesn’t like partiesThere is much more to lifeThere is more fun in learning and growing37:38 The importance of giving backBuying a house for his parentsGive back to people who helped you and supported you40:11 Fill in the blanks for excellenceThe biggest lesson I've learned in my life isDo what makes you happyMy number one professional goal isTo be a billionaireThe one thing I've dreamt of doing for a long time but haven't doneMaking a movieAnd more43:48 Is luck important for success?Mark Cuban’s thoughtsIan always thought he was unluckyThat’s why he worked hard46:03 Randall’s advice to teens and young adultsAnxiety is normalWrite down your goals5 things you are best and worst atBe passionate about what you are doingWork ethic is vitalSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

Should you care about the money? Hell no, absolutely not. That's gonna pinhole you and drive you to the ground if that's all you care about. Money was a necessary factor. It was a necessary factor because I needed it to survive when I first came out to LA. It was a drive, but what was more important to me

was how can I make money while doing something that makes me happy and makes others happy too? Because giving back is important to me was how can I make money while doing something that makes me happy and makes others happy too because giving back is important to me. Yeah I don't think money should be at the top. I think it should be somewhere in the middle for sure but passion should not be at the bottom. It should be at the top. You're listening to part two of my amazing interview with Ian Boggs. If you haven't yet listened to part one yet, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two of my amazing interview with Ian. So you've got merch, you've got advertisers, you have sponsorships.

Are there sort of fourth or fifth way to make money as an influencer? I mean, it's just endless. Anything you can think of that you can sell, you can do. Right, you get a lot of free shit too. Yeah, you get a lot of free stuff. What kind of stuff do people send you? Shoes, shirts. This shirt was free, Hypland. And they did a Mortal Kombat Hypland collab and they sent me a bunch of shirts.

Shout out to Hypland, they're always sending me some really cool stuff. I don't even have to make a video for it because it's beneficial for me to wear it. It's something that I like too. Something like this where it's going to get exposure anyways. And I'm not selling it. It's just like me. I like this product. It feels nice and I'm going to wear it.

Same with Nike shoes. It's just like, yeah, I'm going to wear them because with Nike shoes, it's just like, yeah, I'm gonna wear them because they feel nice and they feel good. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, there's that, but there's also, there's another one I think. You can do affiliate marketing. I don't do that right now, but you can,

I know a lot of people do it on Amazon. Fashion influencers do it. They have a product they already like that they paid their own money for, but they'll link it to their videos that viewers can go watch it and they'll make a certain percentage, five, 10, 15% on the sale of the product. And if a million people buy that product, that's a good amount of money. Yeah. Um, anything you can think of, if you're being a genuine person and you're doing what you

love, like you're going to end up making money from it. That's what I've learned. Right. Yeah. So I do a lot of coaching and mentoring. I have a summer intern program. We have 36 kids every summer. It's another way to make money as a creator, too.

What, to have an intern program? Well, yeah. I mean, teaching school. Yeah. Sorry I interrupted. But that's like, another thing that people do is teach social media courses. And they make a lot of money from that. I was thinking about doing that soon. But we'll see. So that's sorry i interrupted but that's like another thing that people do is like teach social media courses and they make a lot of money from that i was thinking about doing that soon but we'll see so so that's a great way but i i always ask students to rank what's most important to them right i mean a lot of them have this anxiety most of them 100 i don't know what i want to do

um i'm graduating college i'm entering the real world and i ask people to rank what they're doing and they always rank money number one. And passion is way down on the list. So a lot of social media influencers, I think, have the perception, tell me if this is true or not, but they see people like you making millions of dollars a year, driving Lamborghinis, spending money on jewelry and all this stuff. I don't drive a landlord by jewelry, but sometimes, but it's cheap. But they're motivated by the money. Should you be motivated by the money as an influencer? And can you be successful if you don't have the passion for what you're doing

and you're just in it for the money? Should you care about the money? Hell no, absolutely not. Because that's going to pinhole you and drive you to the ground if that's all you care about the money? Hell no, absolutely not. Because that's gonna that's gonna pinhole you and drive you to the ground if that's all you care about. For me, money was a necessary factor. It was a necessary factor because I needed it to survive when I first came out to LA. It was a drive, but what was more important to me was how can I make money while doing something that makes me happy and makes others happy too?

Because giving back is important to me. And so, yes, keep money in the back of your mind because it is the life energy of this world. You need it to survive. You need it to exchange for certain things. I'm reading this book called, or I finished reading this book called The Seven Principles,

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I don't know if you read that. It was really good. I identified with a lot of it, but it mentioned that like very briefly because it wasn't about money. Like that money is one of the life energies of this world. And it's a tool. Like you need it to to survive you need it to sometimes get the things you need

food not it doesn't always come for free um so yeah you need it but like don't make it your end all be all you have to figure out what makes you happy and become the best of it, become the best at it. Figure out once you're able to get a little success off of it, success being you're happy, you're able to survive off of it, and you're able to help others with it, then figure out how you can make money from it. Because for me, I didn't do a single brand deal between, I think, 3 million followers on TikTok to, I want to say, 6 or 7. Because I wanted to have a really strong core audience. And I didn't want to make them feel like they were following me for me to sell them anything.

And in that way, when I did start doing brand deals, the videos still did well because I wasn't doing one like every single month or every single week. Now I kind of have been and it's been fun, it's been good, but I've been doing it in a way where I think I'm evening it out with its content that I like doing and it's, it's not doing too bad. It's doing pretty good. So, um, yeah, I don't think money should be at the top. I think it should be somewhere in the middle for sure, but passion should not be at the bottom. It should be at the

top. Gotcha. I'm curious, how old were these like people that you asked or they come from school or they're my summer intern program uh our freshman people who completed the freshman year college up at yeah college up until their junior year but i do a lot of coaching as well so i've coached i don't know at this point five or six hundred people throughout the years people coming to me for advice. I mean, I love to get, you know, give back. I mean, I didn't come from a lot and I'm self-made and lots of people help me. I mean, you have to earn the mentorship and earn the help, but I truly love to help people, which is one of the reasons, the main reason I'm doing the show is to influence and possibly motivate people to be the best that they can be. But so many people, mid-career professionals, professional athletes who are finished with their careers, assistants. And I always say, well,

I don't know what I want to do. I'm not happy in my job. Most people are not happy in their job. And they come and say, you know, what would you do? I said, well, what do you want to do? What makes you happy rank the things that make you the most happy what your own goals are yeah so money is always number one when they're younger yeah when they're maybe in their 20s to 30s learning opportunity is is big yeah and people say you know you learn in your 20s you earn in your 30sies. I've, I've heard that before. And I think just people have different perspectives on what's important to them when,

I mean, some people's location, it's city, it's mentorship, personal growth, health of company, risk, but money's always in their top five, but it, it, it skews, it starts at the top and then it moves south from there yeah because like by the way passion's never even on the list until we talk about it really surprisingly i mean people don't use the word passion yeah you know they say well i need to like what i do well there's a difference between like yeah so like could be on the scale i'd like not one through ten because i like getting very granular so one through ten scale i't like, I say one to a thousand, you know, where does passion sit? Right. And it really gets people to focus on, on where passion should be. Yeah. Cause I think like passion is, I see passion

as life purpose. So like, for me, my passion is creating stories creating universes creating worlds and right now i'm writing a movie and it's it's got all the things i'm passionate about like spirituality like uh we don't want to get too into it but it's like it's very it's like it's like young adult dystopian like it's very i don't know it's just all the things that I love in a story that I'm putting together that I want to put a lot of money that I made that I saved up into, but only because it's something I'm passionate about. Um, so it's just crazy for me to hear that because I'm thankful for my parents who always pushed me to go for my passion. And I think every parent should do that, but in a realistic way. Because if you're just like, you can do anything you want to do and not worry about anything, then they might get a little too not worrisome. But I think a little

bit of worry is important because you do have to make money to survive. But passion's got to be up there. So we all have personal dreams in terms of money and we all have some personal goals we'll get into the specifics of that we'll get into the specifics of that in a minute but what was the feeling when you'd made your first million dollars i didn't even know um because i was just like grinding and grinding and grinding and i don't even want to say grinding. I was doing what made me happy, which is making videos. I was like, I wasn't even looking at the numbers or my like bank account until,

I didn't know I made a million until I looked at my like AdSense. And I had seen that in the past year. It had made over a million. And I was like, I didn't know that until my partner manager at YouTube showed me. And I was like, oh, shoot, no way. That's crazy. Cool. But it's not that I didn't care. It was more like the money, it's a tool for me.

It's a tool for me to refund into my business. That's what I've been doing since I've ever made money. Like what did I do with the money I've made in college? I bought a camera and bought a lot of gear and invested it back to my, my products. Like Jimmy, Mr. Beast talks about this too. It's like every piece of money he made from his videos, he just threw it back into his videos and made them better and made more money for those videos and made better videos. And that's kind of like what I'm trying to do right now, where I just hired a editor who is better than me. And I want to keep hiring people who are better than me in certain things that I do, because once I do that, the stories will get better.

The last thing I'll give up is writing and acting, because I love writing, acting, and directing. But eventually I know I'll have to do that to build teams. Calvin's my assistant. He's also my best friend. And he's just been working really hard and I love that my managers work really hard and it took me a long time to find managers that I really really like and say my tv and film agents they're awesome and who else is there people who do distribution work for me like it's just, the team's coming together, and I'm really enjoying it,

and I'm also watching One Piece for any anime fans out there, and that show is all about teamwork. And, like, teamwork makes the dream work. And it's cheesy, but it's so true. So I did everything on my own to achieve my first, I guess, couple of millions, and now I know that if I want to keep going and keep doing what I want to do and not become stagnant, I have to keep hiring people and keep finding people that I want to work for me. Because that's just inevitably going to make the

business better. Yeah. So I could be dead wrong about this, but I don't think people in particular, your very young demographic, are going to relate to you in your videos when you're 35 years old. So how do you think about that? And do you have a detailed and written 5- to 10-year or 30-year plan for where you want to be career-wise and family-wise? Yeah, so right now my videos are, at least on YouTube, geared to a younger audience. For those people who don't know, what's your typical age demographic? It's interesting because

my manager asked me something on a list of like, it was a funny list, I think it was a popular magazine website, and they were like, the most popular and the most popular influencers that your kids love but you probably never heard of and I was on there but my manager thought it was funny because in my analytics it shows that my age demographic is like sometimes even in the 30s and so for me like I try to make videos that

anyone can enjoy and granted like the majority of them are kids because kids own social media like they are the bread and butter social media they're the ones that are on it all the time but in a way I'm kind of glad that that is the majority of my audience because I can grow with them. As I grow out of like making these skits and like POVs, I do a lot of skits, POVs, like storytelling videos, a lot of cool VFX and I just try to make stories that can make someone watch and follow along and be like wow that's a cool story. So I think there's a reason why there are like 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds,

sometimes even in the 60s that are just like watching my videos out of the fun of it because it brings them back to that childhood-like nature and that childlike mindset of like, man, I remember having this cool curiosity about like fantasy worlds and all that when I was a kid. And I like to bring back that nostalgia in my videos. So that's why right now I'm writing a movie because I want to channel a lot of the funds that I've been making into a big budget, high production, high quality. My videos are already pretty high quality, but like a high quality movie that I can premiere to places and just really like take my time on. So, um, eventually that's what I want to do. I want to build franchises and I want to build, because I have all these worlds I've created in my brain that I've written down.

Um, I do write down my manifestations and goals, short-term, long-term, uh, longer term a lot. And ever since I've been achieving all the goals that I've written down, I write little mini goals on how I'm going to achieve them. And so with this movie, um, the reason I don't want to talk about it too much is because I want to put in the action for it. Uh, but currently getting pretty good with writing it and learning about writing for my writer friends who go to like USC or even like have written for these crazy networks and um it's been interesting because I'm learning a new skill and it's building upon the skills that I've learned from social media and making videos on there so when I'm 35 yeah maybe they won't be watching my videos

that I post on YouTube, but I might be making a completely different type of videos that they will want to watch by the time I'm 35 and they're in their, I don't know, teens, 20s, 30s, 80s, 90s. Are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend, colleague, or loved one? Bliss Beaches makes the perfect gift. This best-selling bright and beautiful coffee table book

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They're not going to, they may be popular at 18, 19 years old. They don't think about their future. What they're doing is not going to be popular. They spend all their money. Do you have a 10 year, a five year? Do you have a five year, 10 year year, do you have a five year, 10 year and 30 year old plan for where you want to be? And did you write it down?

That's a good question because I do have the goals written down, but I haven't written the, actually, wait, no, I think I did in my notes Not in this phone, but in the one I have at home. I did write down where I want to be By the time I'm either 30 or 40, I think 40 is more realistic for me. I want to be a billionaire so I I would a by I'm gonna say 40. I'm to say 40. I love it. Yeah. I want to be a billionaire before 30. I mean, before 40. Because not chasing the money,

but because I know that going for a billion will mean that it's going to motivate me to create better stories that'll reach a much wider audience than just what social media can offer me and make me aim to entertain people from all around the world. I know I already do. I know my YouTube channel alone has, I think, over 10 billion views now. But I know that it's time for me to start making like bigger budget franchises and all

these like big things. So I think that's what I'm going to work on. So I've written little goals and here and there for what year I want to achieve, like making this movie, like... Top five. Top five? Yeah. Goals? Yep Top five. Top five goals? Yep. Movie. By what age?

By 27. So you got two years, less than two years ago. Yeah, give myself two years. Well, you're 20, okay, so you're 25 right now. Okay, two years on that one. Yeah. I wanted to be a millionaire before, I think I was like 23 and that happened.

And then other ones, I've achieved a good amount of them. One was 10 million on TikTok and that happened. 10 million YouTube, that happened. Now I'm aiming for- 10 million followers or $10 million. 10 million followers. Okay. That was on TikTok and on YouTube.

And then I want to hit 30 million on YouTube also before 27. And... Do you have any family goals? I want to buy them a house. I just told my parents to buy their forever home in Japan. I'm gonna make a video about that. What a great feeling. Yeah, it was a great feeling. That was one of my goals. That's honestly probably like number one right there. And I want to take another future goal. I just had it in my brain. Build a franchise. Build a franchise like Star Wars or Marvel because that's what I grew up on and that's what I've loved. And that's honestly, Stan Lee was probably my biggest inspiration when it comes to building out worlds and superpowers and superheroes. That's what, I mean, it was crazy because yesterday we were doing a photo shoot at the Union Station.

And this whole school passed by. And one person was like, wait, is that Ian Boss? I just got a haircut. I used to have long, luscious, platinum white hair. Cut it all off. So they're just looking at me like, is that Ian Boggs? I just got a haircut. I used to have like long, luscious, like platinum white hair, cut it all off. So they're just like looking at me like, is that Ian? And the whole school starts shouting like, oh my God, Ian Boggs. Calvin was there too. I just posted a video about it, but I, they wanted to take a picture and I was like, wow, that's crazy. Cause to be honest, I was feeling a little anxious today. I was like, like the past couple of days, I was like, man, like I want to, I want to make this movie, but I know I got to like keep working

on social media too. And I love what I do do but I need to find balance and so when I when this happened it was a good feeling because I was like when you do social media and you're getting these views you don't see them as people necessarily on the platforms it's just numbers going up but when you see them in person I mean it was probably like 30 50 students or so I'm not sure when I saw them they're like 30 50 students just all like lining up to take photos with you like going rushing towards you that that's a lot like it seems like a lot and even when I was doing a like a I was talking in front of a stage for Netflix in front of like 30 no 3,000 people that was a lot I was of like 30, no, 3,000 people. That was a lot. That was like crazy. I was like, what? This is 3,000 people? Like even just,

like imagine filling a stadium with a million people. That'd just be, that'd be insane. And so when a video gets millions of views, I mean, my most popular video has almost 200 million views now. It's like, what kind of number is that? It's uncomprehensible. So when you see... That's nearly a third of the population. It's nearly most of the population of the United States. Yeah, it's insane. And so when I see just 30 or 50 of these kids that are in front of me wanting to take a photo, it's just like, damn,

that gives me the sense of impact that I'm giving towards this community. And so it was a very rewarding feeling. And yeah, I think one of my goals is to just build a really strong community of people that love stories. That's my main goal for sure. I think it's so important to write down personal goals and financial goals. My goal since I was 14 years old was to make a million dollars before I was 30 years old. And that was just a goal of mine. And I had a lot of mentors growing up or people that I would meet with. I met with this guy named Bill Davidson, who owned the largest glass company in the world. He made windshields for 70% of the world's cars.

Detroit, he owned the Detroit Pistons at the time i remember going in to meet him and this big office man was like 10 yards long i remember walking there with my hand out it took forever and at the end of it i said um when you were younger did you ever think you'd be a billionaire and he looked at me and leaned across and said i I never doubted it for a minute. Nice. And that was a huge moment for me because I think we all need personal goals. I think one of the ways to achieve our personal goals, it's something that I've been teaching called extreme preparation. And extreme preparation means preparing in a way that nobody else does. So if someone prepares one hour, I may prepare 40 hours.

Yeah. And I've been teaching this technique and I'm writing a book on it I want to do some paid corporate speaking on it as well How is extreme preparation led to your success and can you talk about? Yeah, some of the times where you weren't so prepared and what happened? I mean you remind me of a story that So During that time that I had the anxiety when I first had a million followers,

and my dad told me, Ian, get your head out of your ass. You can do this. I've always been a profound, like, advocator for writing your goals down. And so I think that night I went to my, like, my journal, and I wrote down all my goals. And one of them was making a million dollars before the end of the year and one of those making a million dollars one of them was getting to five million followers before the end of the year on TikTok wrote down all my goals how I'm

gonna achieve them everything like that and put on a piece of paper and accidentally left that paper out on the table in the in the dining room when I went to go to sleep. When I came down the next day, I was like, oh, shoot, I left that paper out there. Did you guys see it? And my mom was like, yeah, we saw it. Dad thought it was cute. They put it on the fridge, and I was like, oh, crap, I've got to make this happen now. And so I wrote those down.

January rolls by, the end of the year rolls by, and I got into 9 million followers, 10 million followers in January. So basically doubled that goal. And then I made a million shortly after that. And so I think when you make realistic goals leading up to your big goal, it makes them seem that more achievable.

And I try to do that every single, every couple of months because obviously like your mind shifts, you become a different person every like month. And so I haven't done that in a good two months. I'm gonna do that tonight probably. Hit it. Good reminder, yeah.

Hit it. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Even though I already had the ones from like last month but it's like things shift as you learn as you grow so you gotta constantly be doing them so i think that's one of the ways that i do overachieving um i i want to talk about extreme preparation as well though i mean talking about making preparing for something that no one else does i mean that that means you're meeting i mean how how has extreme preparation led to your success now talk about yeah one or two times where you didn't prepare as much and

then what happened um i didn't so with the i did a interview like section for netflix where we had a talk in front of 3,000 people and it was for Netflix's anime event and I didn't get much time to prepare for it as I guess I would have needed but I can't blame it on anyone except for myself because I mean I could have I could have stayed up all night and memorized the cards and all that kind of stuff and I could have been better at preparing myself more to become a better speaker for 3000 people. But I was so focused on my videos at that time that I just didn't give myself much time to prepare. And it was it still did well. Like I still got a lot of like applauds and people coming up to me and saying that was a great job and all that. But

I knew in my mind that I could have done better. so ever since then I've been trying to like really over prepare for so many things because I mean it's better to be over prepared than under prepared um and I had a speech for I think NOS NOS daily they have the NOS summit kind of it's like a TED talk for that they're starting it's really cool and I gave a speech on, it was titled, How Death Led Me to 30 Million Followers. And it was a very catchy title. So I really tried to make sure that this presentation was good, all that kind of stuff.

Didn't have quite enough time to memorize all the cards yet, but I could feel a difference in myself between that speech and what I was able to give to Netflix. And I love Netflix so much and all that, but I just, I wish I could have given a better speech if that's on me. And so, um, it was a learning lesson and learning curve for me to be like, okay, I was underprepared for this. Now I need to be overprepared for everything. And next speech I do do i'm going to try to be off book and plan like weeks ahead and just once that like once the opportunity comes through the window

immediately like write down the speech and just memorize it immediately yeah let's talk about mental health there was a piece in the wall street journal two days ago that said in 2022 50 000 suicides in the United States alone, which is the highest rate in 83 years since 1941. You came close to killing yourself two years ago, jumping off of a bridge. You were there. What were you thinking when you looked down and why were you so depressed that you were thinking about everyone thinks you're you're famous you're good looking you're rich you're seemingly very happy and you're doing what you love yeah so what were you thinking why were you thinking that and what saved you yeah so I think it was actually it's about five years ago um I was in college I was an RA working full time. For those who don't know what an RA is,

an RA is a resident advisor. They take care of the freshmen in the dorming community. So I had about 50, 60 residents, but I had the coolest hall. So that means I had like 100 residents to take care of. And you're basically like the parent, older brother, mentor, therapist to all these students. And I loved the job. It was awesome. But when you live where you work and you're constantly around your coworkers all the time, like they're not your chosen coworkers. And I'm not complaining, but it's just like it was an environment that really like made me have a lot of stress.

Probably for the better because it made me a stronger person. But that, on top of switching from bio to film and media, I had to catch up on units, taking 20-plus units at a quarter-based UC system. It was a lot. I was also doing photography full-time, working a part-time job at the gym, like way too much. Had no time for myself. Wasn't doing what made me happy. So I got really stressed out and really depressed and really anxious and just nervous about life. And when I turned 20, I had all these unrealistic expectations for myself, um, that I was like, I wanted to be like kind of famous on social media I want to be making this

much money and all that but I wasn't and I was really stressed out and had no time to myself so I was at a point where I was walking past this bridge to get from one part of the campus to the other it can be a shaky bridge sometimes so I was like standing at the edge of it and just as I was about to like, just take a step just for like, just to see what would happen. Like, it sounds scary, but just like I was in my mind, I was just so low at the point where I was like, I don't even know, you know, um, a voice in my head was like, Ian, what the hell are you doing? Like, why, why are you doing this? Why are you at the edge of a bridge? What, what is going on in your mind right now? You have so much to live for. And that was just my subconscious

like reaching out to me. After that, I actually called my dad because I was also kind of broke. Like I just, I spent all my money. I was, I think I was 19. I had just turned nine. No, I think I just turned 20. Yeah, that's what happened um so I called my dad and he helped me get out of a little financial rut for a little bit um it was enough to like get me off get you back on my feet and like really just kickstart my photography career and um so I went to my manager for my RA job and she told me I should see a therapist so I saw a therapist for the first time and she basically told like, I told her everything that was going on in my life, exactly what I just said. And she was like, obviously you're feeling this way. You have

no time to yourself and you're not doing what makes you happy. How are you going to be happy if you're not doing what makes you happy? And I was like, shit, you're right. And then she had me list out the three things that made me the happiest and that was being creative at that time, photography, and also working out, endorphins from exercise. And that day, like I had a limited amount of time to do those things, but I gave myself 30 minutes to work out, immediately felt better. Still had to work for my, like residents had a program, take them bowling. Did that, felt better because I had to work for my, like, residents, had a program, take them bowling. Did that. Felt better because I went to the gym.

And that weekend, took a little road trip from Irvine down to my parents' place, my grandparents' place in San Diego. And along the way, just took photos of everything. Like, everything just seemed so beautiful. And it was randomly just a super blood blue moon that night. And, like, I was photographing that. And I was like, what are the odds that this would be happening on like the day that I go drive and like take a chance to myself? And yeah, it was the first time where I was like, man, the universe is like really working out in my favor.

And I think there's a reason for that. It's like, we are all part of this huge universe. The universe itself is a huge organism. Like if we do these things that give us purpose in life, then we're doing what our passion is. And it's what makes our brain chemically happy. Like you might as well do that. I think there's a reason why things tend to like work out

when you work hard for the things that you love doing. It's because it's your purpose. You got so many. This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by Sandy.com. S-A-N-D-E-E.com. We're a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world. More than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. Sandy.com provides beach goers around the world with detailed, comprehensive, and easy-to-use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at home and abroad, and to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sandee.com.

The link is in our show notes. Stay sandy, my friends. Followers out there, people who look up to you, so many people struggling with their mental health, anxiety, depression, what seems normal to people, parents who don't know, people who hide it, talk to everyone who's listening. I would say take a little bit of time, even 10 minutes to do one thing that makes you happy. As long as it's not hurting anybody or being rude to anyone, chances are the thing that makes you happy is going to be your savior. Because it was for me. And take advantage of the resources that are out there.

There's a suicide hotline. People are there to help you. There are therapists out there if you don't have the money. There's clinics that will help people that don't have money. And go seek out a friend because Somebody out there cares about you and loves you. So I think it's very important. Please go get help if you're Depressed have anxiety or thinking about hurting yourself. Yes, so You're good-looking

successful outgoing wealthy guy making millions of dollars a year. And a lot of people in your position who are 25 years old will be out on the town, partying, dating girls, doing so many fun things, but you're not doing that. So you told me that you're not even dating. So why? I mean, I do go on dates, right? Like I'm a human being. But I just told my friend Calvin, like, I think I'm going to stop going on dates for a while because I just need to focus on my work and everything. And whenever I do that from time to time, it's like you got to you got to focus on yourself. But parties I go occasionally like today, there's a Spotify party that I'm gonna go to because it's a business event um but when it comes to parties like oh yeah let's go get wasted at this one

rager at this house whatever even in college it didn't really appeal to me of course I went to them because I was a college student you gotta experience things but I wasn't necessarily happy at those parties I was like I just felt like I was I was wasting part of my life whenever I went to those things same with like if I just like sit around and do nothing for too long like meditation is a different thing that's productive but I'm sitting around just like watching tv for too long or whatever like I'm just like what am I I want to create something I want to like do something and so when it came to party or just fooling around or whatever like it's just it never appealed to me and I

Really care about putting out the stories that I create in my brain and I care more about like leaving an impact and legacy on this world than anything. I think most big creators, actors, influencers, businessmen, like businesswoman, business people will know this and understand it because there's much more to life than going out and getting drunk on a weekend um and i think i attest a little bit of like i test a lot of this mindset to traveling and having grown up around the world because i know that the world is so much bigger than just the club down the street or whatever like if anything clubs in other countries are better than the ones in america so go check out those ones you'll learn more things too about like how how much

cooler music there is around the world like music's great everywhere but it's like people can party in different ways that are honestly like maybe even like business parties you learn things at those things like I don't know it's I care more about learning and growing than I do about partying and getting drunk. It's more fun to me learning. Let's talk about the importance of giving back, which I think is a great responsibility for people who are successful. There's a misperception that young people don't give back. They don't give back to philanthropy charity. I know giving back is important to you. So do you need to give back to your community to be successful?

And then why don't you do a call out to arms for all the 30 million people out there who you can influence to help positively impact the lives of others? Yeah. For me, one of the things I wanted to do as a goal that I never told my parents, I don't think I needed to, was help them buy a house or like buy them a house. And so when my dad called me to ask me to help him buy his forever home in Japan, I was like, what the hell? Of course. Like he, I mean, he's a very prideful guy. He's a military guy. I love him so much for that. It's one of the reasons why I work so hard, but giving back meant a lot to me.

And I was like, how can I provide to the very people who brought me into this planet like that's a that's the greatest gift someone could ask for is life and so I was like okay providing them with a secure safe home that's what the hell like of course I'm gonna do that and I think to the people who have chosen to follow me and have chosen to follow my story and my journey and be on this awesome journey called life, I would say go into things, of course, for yourself. Take care of yourself. Along the way, there's going to be people who help you. There's going to be people who love you and support you, family members, close friends.

Keep them close. Keep the ones that you love close, the ones that you relate with and identify with. And once you're at a place where you understand what they had given you and what they did to help you achieve what you've achieved, giving back will just make sense and come to you naturally

because you're going to want to. Like, you have all this wealth. You have all this success. You have all this, like, maybe even fame. You're going to want to see the people who helped you succeed. And I think I've always been like that. Like, even with Calvin.

Like, this guy is amazing. Like, we went to Molokai together and survived in a jungle. And, like, with calvin like i i this guy is amazing like we went to molo guy together and survived in the jungle and like it's just like of course i want to help this guy and like bring him out because he wants to want to come out to la for a long time and bring him out here and come work for me like work hard and let's make this thing happen and just like i want to see the people that i like i have love for and I see the drive in them, succeed. Because without them, like, who would I be? Maybe someone different. Who knows?

So we're getting to the end of our podcast. I always finish it with a game called fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Shoot, yeah. Okay, fill in the blank to excellence. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is? Do what makes you happy. My number one professional goal is...

Become a billionaire. My biggest regret is... Regret. I like to live without regrets, so I don't have one right now. The one thing I've dreamt of doing for a long time but haven't done is? Make a movie. If you go back in time and tell your 21-year-old self something, what would it be? That was four years ago, so I would say...

Don't worry so much. Yeah. If you could meet one person in the world who would it be? like meet? if you could meet one person in the world who would it be?

I met him so briefly that I want to meet him again The Rock yeah I like his business mindset and his personality the one question you wish I had asked you today is again, The Rock. Yeah. I like his business mindset and his personality. The one question you wish I had asked you today is,

what advice would a billionaire give to someone who has achieved a lot, success in his own terms, and aims to be a billionaire before 40, and is working on it, and kind of knows how he's going to do it, but hasn't done it yet. What advice would a billionaire give?

What do you think they would give? Act on your goals and your and your plan i asked so many people that as i was going through my career i think i told you a few weeks ago that i was a terrible lawyer i set a world record the world the world's worst start to a legal career three jobs in eight months came out to la laid off and fired after five and a half weeks for $3,000 in the bank. I went to law school as a means to an end, hated every minute of it. I mean, I love Northwestern. I'm very involved there. I'm on the board. I give back. Super passionate about the school, but I hated what I was learning and knew ultimately I wanted to choose a business career. but I wrote letters to CEOs when I had nothing, asking for informational interviews, not job interviews, and got a lot of meetings.

And a lot of those were billionaires. And I asked the same question, and it was passion, follow your dreams, don't take no, don't listen to the naysayers, don't listen to people telling you things are impossible because I have a slogan. Anything is possible. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's good to hear because like I'm putting into action a plan that I've had for my YouTube

channel for a while now and it's been working. But of course, like there's some people who like say like this might not work you gotta look at this but in my mind like I just know it's gonna work and that's why I had that like a little bit of anxiety yesterday but then when I saw those kids come up to me and like to see that in-person like fascination from video to in-person I was like what am I worried about like Ian you're killing you're killing the game. Keep doing it. Just do what you do. And that makes a lot of sense. I personally think that luck should not be part of your personal business plan.

When I have my own personal business plan, luck is not on this paper. It's not on the paper. But Mark Cuban was on my show. And he said, you can't become a billionaire if you're not lucky. What do you think about that statement? I've never met Mark Cuban. I know he's very successful. So I can't say anything on his way of achieving success, but I always think that I'm unlucky and that's what made me work so hard towards what I've been able to achieve.

Like, I didn't have a video that I truly loved go viral until one whole year of posting three videos every single day. Like, how unlucky does that sound? Like, three videos for a whole year every single day and nothing goes super viral that I genuinely love? That's crazy. But who knows? that I genuinely love that's that's crazy but who knows maybe I was lucky to have that one video go viral but to me in my mind I think I worked really hard I studied the algorithms I studied like what was going on and then I kind

of said like fuck it let me just post something that I really like did and that went viral. Some people could call that lucky, but I think for me, I see that more as I decided to give myself a chance and it worked out for me after, of course, a year of building up a community too and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, so that's interesting i will say maybe be open the factor of luck coming into your life and then acting on that as best as you can yeah so we chatted a few weeks ago and again i super appreciate you being on my show this is just fascinating i've learned a ton and i I think people watching and listening have as well. Yeah. When we chatted, we chatted for about an hour. Yeah. And you had a bunch of questions.

You had a bunch of questions for me. Are there any questions you want to ask on my show that you think would be helpful to your followers to motivate and inspire them? Yeah. What advice would you give to younger kids, younger adults, teens, twenties, uh, who you've already kind of given like the advice on this podcast, but what advice would you give them that want to find something that makes them happy, but they don't exactly know how to get there yet. So the first thing I would tell them is to tell them that anxiety is normal. Yeah.

And to not have anxiety because anxiety creates more anxiety. Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, people find where they should go and where they need to go. So, but telling someone that at a young age doesn't really help them. Yeah. Right. It's just a data point in the back of their mind. I do believe, and I'm a huge proponent of this, and it's going to be in my book called Extreme Preparation, that you have to write down your goals. All this anxiety, it's like there's clutter in your head. And you have to declutter all these ideas and

what's important to you. So I ask people, what are the five things you're best at? Yeah. What are the five things you're worst at? What are your five dream jobs? What are the five jobs that you would never want to have? Yeah. And what are your best traits and skill sets? And what are your worst? Yeah. And I tell people this should take you at least a week, 20 hours. You should just start jotting it down, moving things around. We've talked about some things already. And it really shakes people out in a big way. But like you said, I think money should rank lower on the list, obviously.

And we live in an expensive city, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, they're expensive. And the cost of living here is very high. So it's got to be on the list at some point. But I ate pizza when I got out here three nights a week, two medium pies for $9.99. Yeah, I ate rice. Came to my house when I was an intern in Washington, D.C. working for the National Crime Prevention Council. I went to the Safeway and GW and the Watergate building, box 99 cents. I got four meals out of that.

I was there to learn. And I think learning is most important, but you have to be passionate about what you're doing. You can't be successful long-term. Yeah. Things won't work out. So the other thing I would say is work ethic is the most important determinant of our success.

Yeah. And all be all. I don't think you can get lucky without working the most. Yeah. And I have a saying which I teach, which is philo. And if you philo it, you're going to be successful at whatever you do. First in, last out. I don't care if you have a regular job. I mean, as a YouTuber influencer, it may not work like that, but obviously you work your ass off. And I think the harder you work, the more successful you be. But for most people who are going to get a traditional job, which is 99.9% of the people who are going to go work for somebody else as their first job, you got to be the first one in and the last one out. And I don't care what you're doing, what job you're doing, you will be immensely successful if you follow that plan. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. And going back to the anxiety

cluster thing, there's a quote in that, the seven spiritual laws of success book that I read, where it talks about meditation a lot, but when you're constantly thinking about these things that you want to do and like, oh, I like whatever, like the anxiety gets clustered. It's like an ocean where the wave is going everywhere. If the empire state building falls into the ocean, nothing will change. Like it's just constant waves, like nothing's going to happen. But if you drop a penny into a still pond, you will see the waves ripple everywhere. And that idea will be so much more prominent in your brain. And when you meditate on these things and give yourself time to like decluster and write out those goals and everything, I think that's what

happens where the ocean in your brain becomes a still pond and you can really identify like what's dropping in there and what the ideas of influence are in your brain. Yeah. It's cool. Any other question? I'm good. That's awesome. I appreciate you being here, Ian. Thanks for being on my show. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate you very much. Looking forward to getting to know you better and we'll be hanging for sure. Honestly. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you guys for watching. Like, comment, subscribe. Yeah. So I really liked how you asked me all these questions before going in, because at first I was like, I was like, wait, is he interrogating me or something? But then I was like, wait, no, he's interviewing me pre-interview to get the best out of his interview. And I think that was really good to do because it wasn't like scripted per se it was more so like you wanted to get the best questions out and the most efficient way of going about them

and I appreciated that as a content creator because I script out my videos all the time like I do scripted content unless I'm doing like a reaction video or a challenge and that's not scripted but I like scripting things because like you can it's it's not a sense of like having to control something but it's more so like you can let the free flow flow better because you have an idea of where you want the story to go and you have an idea of what you want to learn from the person so i like that a lot okay definitely the most prepared interview that i had so i really like that so thanks for um asking those questions beforehand i really i appreciate that i appreciate it thank you for the compliment i appreciate you

being here yeah man, man. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Cool. Thank you.