The Dr. Hyman Show - How Mindset And Community Are Key To Realizing Your Dreams with Jeff Rosenthal

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Pendulum, InsideTracker, and Cozy Earth. Our greatest tool for learning and growing is each other. It might be easy to think that means we should surround ourselves with people who only share our specific interests or professions. But, we may actually gain the most from those we least expect to connect with. I’ve been so blessed to cross paths with many inspiring people in my life who have influenced how I pursue my passions in both work and my personal life. Today, I’m so excited to talk to Jeff Rosenthal, who has been a catalyst for me to collaborate with many others.  Jeff is the Co-Founder of Summit, a cutting-edge organization best known for hosting global ideas festivals and events, and is the co-owner, principal designer, and developer of Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah. He’s the co-author of Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community.  This episode is brought to you by Pendulum, InsideTracker, and Cozy Earth.   Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code MARK20.   InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. Right now they’re offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com/drhyman. Cozy Earth makes the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code MARK40.   Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version):  The two types of people who are “afflicted by ambition” (8:59 / 5:30) How Jeff and his colleagues at Summit approach their events (12:03 / 9:21) The science of altruism and winning at the game of giving (15:57 / 13:16) Applying the mindset of possibility to creating Summit events (22:42 / 19:20) Jeff and his colleagues’ unique approach to purchasing a mountain (28:18 / 25:14)  The secrets to bringing fun to Summit events (33:18 / 28:30) The number-one metric Summit considers as a measure of success (36:16 / 30:20) My life-changing experience at a Summit event (36:48 / 31:56) The power of community and how to build it for ourselves (41:17 / 34:36)  Reimagining our world and dreaming big (53:07 / 45:00)  Get a copy of Jeff’s book, Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community, at summit.co/make-no-small-plans.

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Right now, they're offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com forward slash Dr. Hyman. That's I-N-S-I-D-E-T-R-A-C-K-E-R.com slash Dr. Hyman. That's me, Dr. Hyman. And you'll see the discount quote in your cart. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And if you care about community, if you care about big dreams, if you care about making a difference in the world, I think you should listen up because we're going to have a great conversation today with a good friend of mine and the co-author of

a brand new book called Make No Small Plans, Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community, Three Very Important Ideas in a Very Screwed Up World. Jeff, I've known for a long time. He's a co-founder of Summit. It's a cutting edge organization known for hosting global ideas and festivals and events. And I've been to many of them. They're pretty freaking awesome. And he also is the co-owner and principal designer and developer of the Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain Ski Resort in Eden, Utah, which I've been to. I mean, Eden, wow. To move to a place called Eden and to have a place called Powder Mountain. Did you make that up? That's so awesome. He's a co-author of this new book, Make No Small Pants, which everybody should get. And he founded with four of his buddies when he was a young whippersnapper of 23 years old, this whole new idea of gathering by bringing together people from all walks of life who are thinking about how

to make the world a better place, who are involved in creating new businesses, new ideas, who are artists, change makers. And it's a summit. It's like bringing together people in a summit to gather and learn together and grow together, inspire each other, create new connections and change the world, which has actually happened from then. And I personally, my life has been completely impacted by Summit and the people I've met there, the things that have come out of that. And we'll discuss a little bit about that. It's kind of a fun story. And I just sort of inspired by what you and your friends have done, you know, Elliot and Brett and Jeremy are all really fun, interesting, creative guys. And you built this global organization that is bringing people together from all over the world to do really cool stuff.

So it's called Summit. And you can learn more about it by going to summit.co.com, summit.co. And I'm involved there. I speak at the events. And I really feel deeply that building community and building places where people can gather to think about things differently and gather to learn about things they wouldn't otherwise learn about, to meet people they otherwise wouldn't meet, who are in different walks of life and different careers and different industries, cross-fertilizing each other to create magic it's just it's just so

amazing um you basically say in the book you say you guys you're not you're not the smartest guys in the room but you're the creator of the room and if you were if you were sort of remind me of a joke from what he always was i'd never be a member of a club that would have me as a member. You said you guys wouldn't necessarily be picked for the A-team, but I kind of disagree with you. But that's what you said. I think that's kind of funny. So now, you know, we're kind of in this moment in history, Jeff. By the way, welcome, Jeff.

This is Jeff Rosenthal. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Sure, of course. So we're in this moment in history where things are kind of blowing up. We're seeing amazing strife in the world, conflict, divisiveness in our society in America. It's red and blue, and it's just so scary to me compared to what the world used to seem like to me, which is more of a safe place, and the rise of autocracy, climate change, the increasing wealth disparities, the health

disparities, so many challenges we're facing. And we need big ideas. We need different kinds of thinking and different kinds of dreams to actually solve these problems. And it's really what your book is about. It's about inspiring people to think differently, to dream big, and to build community. And it sort of reminds me of a Margaret Mead quote, which I think many people know, which is, never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. And clearly that's the case with you and your three buddies. So Jeff,

as people are kind of in this moment of post COVID, or maybe we're in the tail end of COVID, you know, we're, we're sort of re-imagining our lives. And, and many people are sort of thinking, what do I want to do now? How do I want my life to be different? I don't want to go back to normal because normal wasn't fun. And people are quitting their jobs to pursue their dreams, or they're told maybe that their ideas aren't great or they don't work or timing is not good or they're crazy. I've certainly been told that. It reminds me of that ad from Steve Jobs about people who just think differently. Think differently.

You gather people who think differently, right? Think differently. And you gathered people who think differently. And a lot of the people who've made a difference in the world, the greatest achievers, including you and your crew, have really made a huge impact. So what made Summit possible and how did it come to life and how has it transformed in ways that actually are fulfilling on the dreams that you and your three co-founders had to create a new world where you can reimagine solving the world's problems, being a community, and actually creating a better life for all of us. Thank you so much, Mark. And thank you again for having me on the podcast. I'll start by saying there's two types of entrepreneurs. If you're high functioning and you're afflicted by ambition, if you have to go out and build, you have to create art, you have to make music,

you have to change medicine. If you have to push, there's two types of people in that category. There are those that are just absolute geniuses. These are like the 0.1%. And they can sign every check and hire every person and do it all themselves. And then there's the vast, vast majority, the rest of us, that really do just a cohort of co-founders. We are insatiably curious about all of these different disciplines, and we see how they're all connected, our health and our wealth, our friendships and our businesses. I think that inconsistencies in one typically raise up in the others over time. And the value of community and the idea of big ideas, I think the world is set up to shut down big ideas. That's what it's supposed to do. Your rational friend is supposed to say, that's a crazy idea, Mark. Just go back to doing what you were doing.

And I think only after those innovators and rule breakers succeed the Steve Jobs of the world, do we celebrate them. They're heretics until they've been proven correct in a sense, right? So having people around you that are entrepreneurial, that are creative, that are nonjudgmental, that enjoy crazy ideas and enjoy the art of batting them around. It's really ingenuity. It's like, how are we going to take this thing and bring it to a place where it's actually near possible? Yeah. It's so beautiful. It sort of reminds me of the quote from George Bernard Shaw. He said, the reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself therefore all progress

depends on the unreasonable man and you guys were pretty unreasonable he was like we want to do something radically crazy and we have no connections we have no money we don't know what we're doing two of you didn't even have a college degree you kind of like dropped out and you've created one of the most remarkable organizations that i've ever experienced which gathers people and and creates magic in the stew of the gathering uh and sort of remind when you were talking reminded me of this book i read that really influenced me years ago by eo wilson called the unity of knowledge consilience the unity of knowledge and it'sience, the unity of knowledge. And it's about the intersectionality

of all disciplines, that both social sciences and regular science are not that different, and that we can kind of learn from this intersectionality how to actually synthesize new ways of thinking and being and creating and reimagining the world, which we desperately need now. So let's sort of jump into some of the things that Summit is about, and then we'll talk more about the book. The thing that struck me there is just the radical diversity of people I'll see on stage. I remember seeing, I think, Jane Goodall with Kobe Bryant or something. I was like, I don't know who was on stage, but it was like these weird collections of people that you wouldn't otherwise see together talking about the world in new ways

that are super inspiring. And so talk about some of the kinds of people that have been there, what you've learned from them, you know, and what are the sort of, what are the things that have really stuck with you as lessons that you've carried through through Summit and some of your co-founders have? We've had 3,000 talks over 14 years across our large and small events. And I think something like 600 or 700 performances of poets and dancers. I think that first I'll say in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man's king, you know, like, I don't know that we're absolute superstars at content, but there's just not many conferences out there. So there's not that many examples that you get to play from.

And for us, um, we really like to shave down the pedestal when it comes to content. We prefer the fireside chat to the Ted talk. I want to know what inspires you. I want to know what you're enthused by. I want to know what you shouldn't tell us, not what you thought six months ago that we would be interested in. I want to know what you were like, I'm not going to say this thing on stage. That's what I'm looking for. And I think that when you approach an interdisciplinary, intergenerational community, you just have to represent a lot of interests.

And the way that we really do that is that we're sensitive to our favorite rappers' favorite rappers, be it in medicine or in architecture or in music or in business. So somebody that we're close with that's brilliant, like you, for instance, I want to know who the doctors are and the practitioners around the world that you would be incredibly excited to see at Summit. So if I have 20 people like you who are at the top of their field in 20 different

disciplines and you tell me the two or three people that you would tear your ACL sprinting to a Summit event to get to see live, that's really how we've done it over the years. That's really how we've done it over the years. And that's how we set and scope whom we have on stage. And so to pick one person in particular, in terms of wisdom that we got to take away from this, it's just impossible.

And what I can say is we were 23, 24 years old when we started this. So we were immediately the youngest, least experienced people in the entire community. And so it made us real servant leaders. It really did. It made us really, you know, value, critique, and criticism from people that wanted to see you win. Silence is when you know you lost them. If they're telling you how you're screwing up, that means they care about you and they want to see it be better because they appreciate what you do. Yeah. So I think it's just like this learning engine, this learning safari we've gotten to go on for the past decade and a half. Yeah.

And in the book, you beautifully sort of map out a lot of the lessons learned and a lot of the little nuggets of wisdom. I just sort of want to read a few of the heading of the chapters because they're just sort of great. I mean, some of them are things we've heard before, like your reach should always exceed your grasp. Ready, fire, aim. That's kind of me sometimes. You just got to go for it. Authenticity trumps perfection. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That's an African proverb. And I think community is exactly what you're building and creating, which we need more than

ever. Opportunities come from anywhere. A single connection can be exponential. And it's like life is a giving competition and we intend to win. That's a really good one. I want you to unpack that because most of us live in a scarcity mindset and yet we are designed to be altruistic. And many of you listening may not know this, but I always talk about sugar and the biological addiction of sugar and obviously heroin and cocaine and drugs. We know all about this pathway of dopamine and addiction and these substances. But what's also true is that altruism and giving lights up the same area of the brain as heroin or cocaine or sugar, and it's a lot healthier for you. And the side effects are all good ones. So talk about

this whole idea of winning at the game of giving, because that is, that's not typically how our society is structured or how we think. It's all about individualism. It's all about every man for himself. It's all about getting what you can. At the end of the day, the guy with the most toys wins.

It's all this stuff that we have in our culture is so destructive. And yet you're putting it upside down and creating a new model for how to think about being together in the world. Well, the quote you, I think you said it was George Oliver, it's the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw, yeah. I'm sorry, George Bernard Shaw. It's the unreasonable men and women. There's no man

that did anything of scale and meaning by himself. That's a total made up construct. So, you know, starting with the idea that like, you know, in the Hagakure, one of the philosophy books of the samurai, it talks about how relying on one man's knowledge is like a tree without roots. And so the idea that, you know, you can get deeply passionate about a topic. So a conversation with anyone in that field is pleasurable. And then you can really just ask questions and build your own expertise in every aspect of your life. I think I was lucky enough to spend a little time with Hicks and Gracie, who is one of the grandmasters of the Gracie jiu-jitsu family, Brazilian jiu-jitsu family. He wrote a great book called Breathe. It's just all about his breathing practice and how he would maintain a lower heart rate through these world title fights. And the way that he put it, the way that he talked about a few of these things that I thought were really powerful and beautiful. First, I'll just tell you, he would do these deep breathing exercises before he would go out for a fight and he would think about lowering his heart rate. When he was at 80 beats per minute, his opponent was at 90. When he was at 100, they were at 110. He could always keep a cool head. break out of unless you remember the process. It's like chess. You have to calm your mind,

surrender to where you're stuck, and have the hope for where you're going and what you're going to go and do and build. And so for us, that made us really fun people to talk to. We're 23. We're somehow in your office. We got on your calendar. You don't want to take the meeting. This is like 2009 or something. And then you're having the most fun conversation you've had all week. You know, like we then built real pattern recognition over time where we could really add value for these people. We could really, you know, connect them into, you know, strategically valuable business ideas or relationships.

And then, you know, we also could pattern match people that would just be great friends. So this is not just at summit events, this is throughout the year. And it would sort of validate the reality that Summit was this place, this platform, this community that, you know, you could connect to and meet these people from all these different disciplines and backgrounds. And so if I'm being honest, I used to be in a reciprocity loop. I knew the power of my giving. I knew what it was for our brand. And people, even if they're aware that you're looking for reciprocity, they still feel obligated for the most part to actualize it. And I think that it came later in my career, this idea that life is a giving competition. If you're counting chips, you're

in a reciprocity loop. You're in a game of trades. You have an ulterior motive for your kindness. And so it also takes some of the serotonin and dopamine out of it. It's not nearly as enjoyable than to just... And think about how lucky you are to get to be a part of somebody's journey who you respect and admire. There was a time where everybody who's somebody was a nobody. And just the idea alone that you can provide insider value to be a part of somebody's body of work or life journey, it's just very meaningful to me personally. And this idea that if you are a giver, you're always going to be on the heavier side of the giving in the relationship. The other person might not have the same dopamine, serotonin pathway or reaction to giving unselfishly. But it does lead to this triangulation of goodwill. That was the language we would use. It's like, you don't have to think

about it as a one-to-one giving. Because if you build a reputation, if you build enough favor economy surplus, anybody will do you a favor. You put yourself in a mindset where why wouldn't you ask for the favor? I'm going to give Mark the gift of giving me a gift by hosting me on the podcast, right? I don't want to deny you this pleasure, Mark. All right. So I think that gifts that don't circulate become poison. Gifts that have an expectation of some return are not really a gift. It's an investment in yourself. It's a selfish act. Masquerading is a selfless act. If you do sit

in giving competition and you do think that, all right, I am going to make sure that I'm on the upside of the generosity of this relationship, I don't know, you always have some love. There's always a seat for you. It doesn't work like that. Yeah, no, it doesn't work like that. It's so amazing. And I see this act out all the time in my life because I'm blessed to be able to sort of be generous with my time and my money. And I just am compelled always to give and serve. It's really what I want to do. And then I kind of giggle because it all comes back to me in ways that i never imagined that aren't in direct one-to-one relationship but kind of sideways that i was like wow i feel so blessed but i think it is just this sort of magic

power of of serving and you know sort of like what uh neem karoli baba said who is ram das's um guru uh who basically said love everybody serve everybody feed everybody which is pretty much what you guys are doing and it's it just it creates this beautiful circle of of um of abundance and and it's hard for people to get out of the scarcity mindset into an abundance mindset but you know um you talk about the mindset of possibility and how you had to face a lot of rejection i mean here you are three young guys you're calling you know leaders of companies jeff bezos jane goodall this one now like al gore and they're like like who are you and what do you want and how do you get to them and it always amazed me how you collected some of the most extraordinary

people in the world to come to your events and speak. And how did that happen? Because it just seems so improbable. Yeah, man. Again, I think that most of these events around the world are really boring and really stodgy. And it's like watching paint dry. And it's all symposium stage. It's all keynote from the stage, maybe some coffee outside.

But for the most part, it's very basic. And so the amount of events that these great people that you mentioned get to go to around the world that they truly enjoy, or they meet other peers, or they get exposed to new ideas, where we have a rule at Summit, don't snub the startup and don't fanboy the big timer. You know, so like both people have to respect each other, both sides of that spectrum. And we are also very thoughtful about timing. And we do our research. I always think it's funny when you're on the phone with somebody or on a Zoom and you're like, oh, so tell me about this thing that you did. They're like, how do you know that? It's like, because I Googled you five minutes before I called.

I don't understand how you don't know how I did this, right? So we don't just say like, hey, come speak at our event and then let's figure out what it is later. We say, hey, this is what we want you to talk about because it aligns with what we've seen you talk about. We know that this book is coming out or this movie is coming out or this partnership is happening or something came out in the news that you probably want to have a counterpoint or another type of like presence to, right? So, or the really thoughtful and fun connections. So like, yeah, one great example is Kendrick Lamar and Quentin Tarantino. You know, we had gotten lucky enough to become friends with like the TDE crew.

They had come out and skied at Powder Mountain. I think Kendrick might have learned how to snowboard at Powder Mountain. I'm pretty sure. And he has a friend and a partner named Dave Free, who's an incredible entrepreneur and director and creative and was the president of TV at the time. And they were very much being kind to us and not just saying no outright, because it's like a million plus a show for anything, for Kendrick to show up anywhere, let alone flying across the country. This is for Summit at Sea. So it's like, leave LA, fly across the country, get on another plane, get on this boat, be on the boat for three and a half days. It's like an obscene commitment. And so I think they were just trying to be nice and let us go. He was like, yeah, we're in if you get Quentin Tarantino.

And you did. That's the thing. They didn't know that we have other... Once you're in this 10-year community building business, you come across other exceptional people that appreciate this blend and so um one of his producers a woman named stacy share who's another incredible entrepreneur and creative in person and her husband carrie brown were neighbors at powder mountain and um chris blackwell the founder of island, actually contributed to this scheme for us to get this done. He has these beautiful hotels in Jamaica. And I was like, hey, if Tarantino and the TDE group, they want to come to Jamaica and stay at Island Outpost at GoldenEye, would you host them?

He's like, oh, of course. It would be my pleasure. So it's all mutually beneficial. Nobody's losing here. And it turned out that Quentin and Kendrick both deeply respect each other's work. So I just wanted to give the listeners like a true window into how an event hustler puts all these people together. I think this is how you like produce movies with a bunch of big stars too.

You just got to like, you know, find the thing that everybody is really seeking and make that the priority of the vehicle. I love that. I love that. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Mark. Now, I don't think there's anything better than waking up feeling super rested, relaxed, and energized. And when we get high quality sleep, this is the norm. But without it, our simple day-to-day tasks can feel impossible and our health suffers. And that's why I'm always looking for ways to upgrade my sleep routine and the bamboo sheet set from Cozy Earth is my new favorite way to get an amazing night's rest.

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But it wasn't always easy, right? You had a lot of roadblocks and you kind of had a lot of bumps along the road. Tell us about some of the biggest things that you overcame in order to succeed at what you're doing. Well, it's never easy. Like even the ones where it's just like, oh, shucks, I minted this NFT and now I'm a millionaire. Those stories are there just to make us all feel like we don't have enough. The truth is that everything is a lot of hard work and you can't minor in anything. And so, you know, for us, our own naivete led to us taking shots like buying Powder Mountain or, you know, building, you know, a thousand person camping trips in the forest or many of these other big, crazy moves.

But it also meant that we had to get our teeth knocked out on the growth of our business over time. So whether it was retaining great people and dealing with having to replace a tremendous partner or team member, or it's like learning about, you know, municipal bonds and, uh, and project level finance and, you know, infrastructure development. Um, I think that's probably the best story to go in on just cause it's so obscene. I mean, seriously, like four, four young 20 somethings bought a village basically. So before, before, yeah. So before we buy it, it's like 2012 and this isn't the book, but we're at Summit Base Camp. We're hosting like an 800-person event in Squaw Valley.

Amazing speakers. You know, like there's, you know, talks with the founder of Burning Man. And then you're taking the gondola up the mountain to see Questlove DJ on top of the hill. And there's like long throw Summit logos that we have on the sides of mountains. And it was just like, you know, and it was a great event. We did well. And there were about 50 people who were just like, Hey, tomorrow morning when the event's over, meet us behind the hotel and, you know, bring all your stuff. And so we put them all on a bus.

We took them all to the airport and they went to an unmarked gate, like some Harry Potter. And it was just, you know, nobody knew, nobody knew where we were going. And we flew them all to Salt Lake, or I think Ogden, Utah. And then we went to Powder Mountain and we watched the sunset on the top of Powder Mountain, which is, you know, Powder Mountain is crazy because it's an inverted topography. So you drive to the top and you ski off our village. Our village now is on the top of the mountain and it looks over the great salt lake and four States and every direction. And just, it's, it's gorgeous. Um, and from that moment for the next two years, we, we were in the process of both buying the mountains. So we didn't

actually own it yet. We had put down earnest money to lock up the contract, but we had to raise, you know, like 40 million plus dollars. Um, and, and we had to, and we had to learn what we didn't know. So we could actually diligence the deal far enough to execute on the trade. You weren't real estate developers. You were just young kids with a crazy dream. Well, even if you are a real estate developer, you need to run like 160 point due diligence checklist against the project and property, the warrants, the rights, the water rights, the land rights, the, you know, the avalanche control. It's just so crazy. There's so much stuff.

And so what we would do is every week we would host what are called charrettes. So we would have a land planning charrette, an architecture charrette, a design charrette. We would have experts come in, consultants, architects, thought leaders, whatever. Some you'd retain and you'd work with for a long period of time. Others would just advise you and walk the land. So we're getting a doctorate in land planning and development. Some you'd retain and you'd work with for a long period of time. Others, we'd just advise you and walk the land. So we're getting a doctorate in land planning and development. And every weekend, we would bring in another group of 200 people.

And at first, it was for free. But we just knew we needed to build the vibe and the body heat out in Utah in order to build enough energy and capital to close on this project. And we literally did that for a year and a half. I think we hosted 60 plus weekends in a row. And then every week we would have these experts come out and work with us. And we would raise the money while building the team, while hosting the people, while learning about how to develop a mountain. And, um, built the plane while you were flying it basically. Well, and there's just no, that's not a wise way to do things. Wisdom means that you have like time and reflection and a plan and a strategy that you're executing

against. This is just like full Gonzo Blues Brothers mania. And the truth is that we're lucky that we made it out the other side. I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of bruises. But you got through it. And a lot of my friends and people have places there, go there. I've been there. It's just, it's just a beautiful spot. And it's just an incredible

way for people to meet and gather, inspire each other and create this sort of intersectionality that is so important to re-imagining the world we're in. And, and it's also fun. So it's like, you know, you, you sort of create a container where people can learn and be exposed to ideas and be inspired and think about challenging things in life, both personal and political and social, environmental, financial. And yet at the same time, it's like fun, right? So like you said, most conferences are pretty freaking boring. Yeah. You want to snooze in the back. How do you kind of bring fun into all this?

Cause it's not easy to do. Uh, well first it's through the people that join, you know, if you're curious and you're, you know, um, interested in others and if you, you know, are, are, it's really self-selecting in a sense, right? Like I tell you it's intergenerational and interdisciplinary and super social and choose your own adventure. And there's plenty of people who are like, yeah, no, no thanks. It's not for me. So I think out the gate, there's a self-selection. And then we have this term, the art of social sculpture.

It's one of the chapters in the book. And the idea is that the narrative and the rituals and then the order of the experience and your smells and tastes and touches, and there's just a thousand touch points that inform the values of what you just went through. And so for us, it literally starts with the invite. Like, how do you hear about it? Who do you meet on my team to tell you about it? What is like the graphic design of the website that you go to for the very first time? You know, all that's, that's when the event begins. So what's the provocation? Why are we coming together? And then we think about the order of experiences, like it applies to roads as it does events as it is, as it does to movies and music that, you know, you want to have a build

and a drop, you want to have a grand reveal, you know, there it's these, these, there are, there is intersectionality, not just to wisdom, but to creation, to experience. We often have dance classes and meditation. We have live music. We'll have a beautiful pianist play something that, totally passive. And then we'll have like a big, you know, deep house dance party at sunrise, right? Like we, we, you know, always, and I guess the key is that, you know, fun, dynamic, shared experiences, that is the cornerstone of long term, deeply meaningful relationships. We're going to hang on this podcast, we're going to become better friends, we spend a little time together, but if we went and robbed a bank today, I guarantee you, we'd be lifelong friends.

I don't want to do that. I don't know. Okay. Jump out of an airplane or like, okay, I'll do that. Go on a wild adventure, you know, go off a waterfall on a kayak or just, or do a holotropic breathing exercise for the first time or, you know, see a talk that's super interesting and inspiring and about something that you don't often get to chop it up with people you don't know who are also interested and introspective about. So that 20 minutes or 30 minutes after a talk, we always protect that. We don't really like to do one after the other after the other as many other

conferences do. So that's our KPI. Our KPI is, you know, the relationships. That's a key performance indicator for those listening who don't know what that is. My bad. The number one metric that we're tracking is like, how do we define our success is really like, you know, what relationships people leave our events with. And if you're overt with that and you're like, okay, let's network or, you know, like we're going to do handshake time and everybody tell each other about like, get your name tag. It's like, that's not what this is. It's pattern recognition from seeing the same people pop up, choosing the same things that you've chosen throughout an event experience

and having it be casual and feel good and not be forced and overt that I think leads to the fun. Yeah. I mean, I want to share a story because I had an amazing experience at Summit in LA a few years ago where I ran into a guy online getting into a restaurant that was sort of allocated for Summit. And you don't know who you're going to sit next to or who's going to join you. And this guy admittedly said, look, you're somebody I never would have wanted to hang out with or sit with or have dinner with. I was like, okay, fine.

We ended up at this table together. And it was Ryland Englehart who's become a dear friend and and he started talking to me about soil and his passion about soil as a solution for some of what what's wrong with the world climate change environmental degradation our food problems and he basically was the founder of cafe gratitude which was a vegan cafe but went to new zealand and heard a talk about soil and realized that we need to integrate animals and then build a regenerative farm with his family and started Kiss the Ground, a nonprofit that's about changing how we think about soil and changing policy and farmers and educating farmers. And it's this beautiful organization. And he started telling me about it in this book,

Kiss the Ground, that was written and became a movie, which I was in. And we have literally become so close and have helped each other expand what we're doing. And because of that meeting, I really got aware more deeply about the importance of soil and health and how I can't as a doctor treat my patients without also going to deal with the problems of agriculture and how food is grown and what's grown. And that led to me writing the book Food Fix. And that led to me creating a nonprofit called Food Fix to Change Food Policy, which you raised $5 million for and we're doing more.

And it's led to a documentary that's coming out on all this stuff that like never would have happened if I hadn't had this random collision with a guy who I never otherwise would have met in this beautiful, fun way. And that's just one example. And I imagine there's a thousand of those stories or thousands of those stories over the years that you probably heard. And that's just one. Well, I'm curious, Mark, why did you say yes to Summit? Because you get paid to speak around the world and we were asking you to do, you know, what you're compensated for, you know, well, for free, right? How do you suck people in to talk for free? Yeah, yeah. Because you asked me and now you're talking about this amazing connection

that you formed there, which is just the best. It's like the greatest thing to hear. And I'm curious, like, why did you say yes to this? How did you adapt there? I think, you know, the notion that I understood about Summit was that it was a place for people who care deeply about the world and about their own personal development and growth, about making the world a better place, and about building community. And for me, that's really at the heart of my life is how do we create a better world for all of us? How do we build community? How do we actually learn from people who are not in our fields? And how do we start to create sort of a different way of showing up together? You know, I can go to medical conferences and I can hang out with other doctors and I can

go to, you know, I can go to milk and conference and it's kind of a very stuffy environment. And I hear about different things, but it's kind of a very stuffy environment. And I hear about different things, but it's, it's kind of like a stuffed shirt environment. And some of it just feels like a giant, like gathering of fun, interesting people who are doing cool stuff. And, and I just wanted to be part of it. I wanted to meet people who were also leaning into life, who were making no small plans, who were thinking big, who were chasing their dreams, who were building community, all the taglines of your book, the name of your book. That's exactly why I want to go and why, I mean, I literally, to go to the summit in Palm Springs in November, I'm going to be flying all the way from Japan to come back for that.

Oh my God. Because that's how much I care about having the chance to be in the soup of these incredibly interesting creative humans who are re-imagining the world together. And I would pay to go to that. It's like I don't need to be paid. And so it's really... And it's I think why a lot of people are drawn. I built some of my closest friendships and community from that world. So, you know, I get asked to speak all the time and I often will say no, but I feel that

this is really sort of a very different kind of community. And I also sort of want to dive into community because it's sort of the third pillar of making those small plans, which is building community. And I've spent a lot of the last 10 years of my life, particularly after I went to Haiti and I worked with Paul Farmer and really understood what he did to change healthcare in Haiti and around the world using the power of community. He called it accompaniment.

We accompany each other to health. And I used that framework to address chronic disease. He was addressing TB and AIDS through building community health workers and networks of people to help each other that were just neighbors, right? And I began to learn about how we call non-communicable disease is actually very communicable. Chronic disease, heart disease, diabetes, all these things. And so I worked with Rick Warren to build the Daniel Plan, a faith-based wellness community where we got a quarter million people. I mean, I have 15,000 people, so there's a quarter million pounds. I've translated that into a secular version at

Cleveland Clinic where we've created a group model of care that has threefold better outcomes and one-on-one doctor visits. And it's really central to my life is this notion of community. And I think it's really part of what you is this notion of community and I I think it's really part of what you're trying to teach and build and create so tell tell us sort of in from your perspective like why is community important how do we build it for ourselves and and and um and why does it matter yeah the the greatest thing that we can give to someone else is to include them in our community to introduce them to our parents and our best friends, to spend time. That's the thing that is most priceless. You don't know how much of it you get and you can't get it back and it's set.

You can't expand or contract it. Right now, I don't want to get into a deeply philosophical debate because I'm not even sure if I agree with my own statement there, if we really start talking about how time feels and how we use it. But the greatest punishment that we have is to take away people's time and to separate them from our communities and send them off to prison. We used to exile people hundreds of years ago. That's the greatest punishment. So the idea that, you know, people to share this life with, it's hardwired in us. I mean, I don't think it's worth debating, you know, like, this is innate. This is like, why do we breathe? Why do we eat? It's, you need it. And, you know, when couples who've been together for a long time, one of them dies, you don't just lose your

partner. You actually lose a large portion of your shared memory, right? Like you have some experience of a experience, your partner or your friend or the person that you're with has another experience of that situation. So those people are more than just the people around you. They're actually part of you. They are part of your memory. And some of your memory sits in them. And I think that this idea that like our liberation is bound up together, the things that we want, like the way to get them is together. You know, like it's this idea that one plus one can equal three.

And I think it's hard to practice. It's hard to not get, you know, jealous and not feel included when like your friends are, you know, crushing it or doing something or having fun or creating without you. You want to be a part of it all once you're in it. Right. So I think that, you know, like when it comes to the thing that I value the most above all else is the community. It's the people that I spend time with.

And, you know, I love the quote, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time around, right? Like you're helping create the values that the small group shares. That is the thing that everybody is actualizing, right? So if we're all into video games, we're all going to be getting better at video games. If we're all into health and wellness, we're all going to be competing in a sense and sharing and sharpening our sword on one another and whatever is the thing or things that our group really celebrates. So I think it's really important to choose wisely the people that you're around and to aim high.

Mentors, I have a mentor that said to me once, it's like, hey, man, if you are just going to tell me that everything's cool and good and we're just kicking it here, not very fun for me. I got plenty of friends. I don't need another friend. If you're willing to tell me the things that you actually need help with, and we can chop it up, and I can use my wisdom that I've learned over the extra 30 years I have on you, that's really fun. So you have to like be willing to share and give and be vulnerable and build intimacy and build trust. And that, you know, again, another book chapter is, you know, there's no better building block than trust. And that's what it's all about. It's like, once we trust each other, we can really help each other. And until then,

it's almost extractive. It's always at arm's length. So for people listening, you know, you've done such a good job of building community. How do you advise people to start to build and nurture these relationships and connect with people in a way that actually matters? And I say this because we don't really have that in our culture. It's really every man for himself. It's rugged individualism. I'm writing a book on longevity now called Young Forever. know a lot of the blue zones where people live to be well over 100 it's it's because they have such a beautiful community i've been to sardinia i've been to loma linda i've been to costa rica i'm going to korea soon and and i

think that you know the central feature of these cultures is that they're just connected to each other throughout life in okinawa they have something called a moai, which is a group of four or five people that you're kind of thrown together with as babies that you live your whole life with, that are your little core group. So how did we get there in a world that's so divided and we're so isolated and we live in little nuclear or disrupted families. How do we get there? I would start by saying that we often think of ourselves as what we're into, not what we do. Like we, we like to judge ourselves by our interests, not our actions. And so I think what you do is a better measure of who you are. like how do you actualize the things that you say that you're into and it's so hard especially when it's like against your your your you know brain like

not eating sugar you know after a meal or whatever when you have the cake in front of you that kind of thing um and when it comes to community when it comes to friendship you know like you need to actually uh uh do the thing so you said you know like the best need to actually do the thing. So you said, you know, like the best way to be invited to the party is to host the party. Well, that's exactly right. And every community has someone that makes it their charge to gather and organize that community to bring people together. And so that's the first step. And then I think that part of the work is on yourself. Like if you want to build community in any space, if you want to have friends that have certain traits or expertise or interests, you have to be interesting in that space. just no interest whatsoever in the things that you do and are passionate about, it would probably be an odd friendship and vice versa, right? It would just be like, okay, nice enough guy,

but like, I'm not going to become friends. I'm not going to start spending time together and hanging out. But if I, you know, like I imagine you talk to people who, you know, are huge fans of your work and have read every one of your books, but they don't, they're not coming up with questions to the ideas, the big ideas. If, if, uh, so for me, you know, if you're saying like, how did this start? Like, how do we begin? It's not about how we maintain relationships now. Um, uh, it's how to like, when you're, when you have, you know, a couple of friends, you're not in a particular field. You don't have cool, you know, the cool people around you who can help you build and grow your life. I love that the word enthusiasm,

the root is in theos. It means with God. And if you can find your enthusiasm and you can learn in enthusiasm, then it's not work. And then you can become great at something. Then you can become knowledgeable at something and start collecting the questions that you have. And then ask your stupid questions to brilliant, knowledgeable people when you get the opportunity. And it's fun for them. That's it. That's the whole ballgame. Now you're a fun friend. Now you're interesting to talk to. And then you take that next step, which is like, you know, you can't take it personally. People are busy. But if I ask you, you know, five times to go and do something interesting, whether it's a small gathering with other people or go for a hike or do

whatever. It's just, again, like, I guess I'll end with this to this particular question. There's a, there's a, we talk about it in the book. There's a guy named Michael Hebb. He's a dear friend of ours. He's like, you know, the artist around the table. He's the one who said that, you know, the table is the greatest, greatest piece of human technology ever created. And the first time I met him, yeah. And the first time I met him, yeah, and the first time I met him, he pulled through your chat and he was like, hey, man, you know, sometimes people say keep it real. And I was like, yeah, duh.

He's like, do you keep it real? I'm like, yeah, bro, I keep it real. He's like, don't do that. What you need to do is keep it surreal and just do things a little bit beyond other people's imagination. Just a little bit of surprise. This is not like rocket science. We don't need you to paint a Bosch yet. We just need you to make this fun for us.

Yeah. It's so great. You're sort of talking about really a key part of building friendships and relationships is being interested and curious and i remember it sort of reminded me of my mother who said to me not what did you learn in school today but what questions did you ask and so i was always the annoying kid in class your mom sounds brilliant by the way who asked all the questions i was a kid in medical school who sat in the front row and wouldn't leave till i understood everything and asked every question I had. And I do that all the time because I want to learn.

I think I read in your book, we have two ears and one mouth, and we should use them in that ratio. And I think that's exactly right. And that's how you build connection and community. Before you move on, when you say that quote, two ears, one mouth, totally agree. But you also have to use your mouth. You can't just use your ears only, right? And I would imagine that there are people in that class of yours who are like, man, Mark is annoying. Wish this guy would just shut up. Yeah, for sure.

But I'm sure there are way, way, way more who were like, man, I'm so appreciative that Mark asked that question that I wouldn't have asked or that question that I wouldn't have thought of. And so now everybody else has a fuller knowledge of this topic. Right. So that's the type of, I think that's why, you know, you come to summit and you're, you know, classmates who are boohooing about it probably are just, you know, doing some, some boring work somewhere.

Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the, um, the, the beauty of summit it's, it's so multidimensional. So you have these big events where you have thousands of people, you have small little weekend events where maybe there's a hundred people. Um, and then you created something called summit Junto, which I recently joined, uh, which is really like a personal board of advisors in a way for your life, for your personal development, for business, for creation, for dreaming. either met or naturally collided with or even maybe even been interested in but kind of unpacking each other's lives and sharing our collective stories and understanding you know where we can

support each other it's just a it's really beautiful so I mean there's different layers where people can intersect with summit and I think it's such a beautiful creation that you've had where people can tap in wherever they whatever they want want. I want to sort of jump to a, to a kind of a question about dreaming big, because a lot of us are taught not to think about the crazy idea, to not think differently, to follow the status quo, to follow the rules, to do the things that we were conditioned to do. And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night about how we can reimagine the world where we kind of leave behind the things that don't work about our cultural norms and frameworks and ideas and conditioning that keep us from an authentic life, that

keep us from having healthy love, that keep us from an authentic life. They keep us from having healthy love. They keep us from actually being happy. And our culture is so screwed up right now. You know, when you think about these indigenous cultures or these ancient communities like in Sardinia or in Okinawa or in Korea or Native American cultures or other indigenous cultures, there's a fabric to those cultures. There's rituals, rites of passage. There's connectivity. We've kind of lost all that. And so we really kind of want to kind of reimagine and dream about a world that's quite different. And most of us are just not very good at that because we're told not to do that.

Like, oh, don't be silly. Like, that's not going to work. I mean, if I had said what I was going to say to the world about medicine uh 30 years ago and gotten permission to you know have a crazy idea which is that basically diseases don't exist and that our entire paradigm is wrong and that we're practicing 19th century medicine that everything we think is right about how we treat disease is wrong i mean people laugh at laugh at me. Like they just laughed, they laughed at me. But I knew it was right and I had to tell the story and it's what's driven me for 30 years.

And now it's finally like coming around. And how do we get people to dream big like that and to kind of let go of those societal norms and conditionings and notions that keep us limited? A big question. I know. It's, it's, it's, I'd first say it's a luxury to get to think big, you know, like if the worst that can happen as you move back in with your parents, it's not that bad, you know, like there.

So I think that to be born on the 50 or, you know, if you could feel goal in from where you started, you know, you're often in the position to really think on the 50, or, you know, if you could feel goal in from where you started, you know, you're often in the position to really think big. And those, you know, but what I'll say is that it's so hard to do by yourself. And I know plenty of people that have and but, you know, the theme of this book and this interview really is community. And, you know, once you can build some shared interests and some care with one another, you don't have to rely on your own knowledge. You're, you know, a tree with deep roots.

You can connect to each other and you can keep each other accountable. You know, it's like going to the gym with a trainer versus going to the gym by yourself. It's like, you're not really there for him to show you, you know, the form it's related for the accountability. So, and I think that being really open to the idea that it doesn't have to be perfect. Once the search is in progress, something will be found, you know, like you will, if you lean into the thing, you'll find the right idea. You just can't be that attached to the specifics because those come later. Those come with the refinement and the deepening of knowledge around the thing that you're doing. And so part of it is just like the bravery to jump, you know, like to be in a

position to jump in the first place. It's hard to be creative when you're being chased by a tiger. So I think that, you know, I do believe that, you know, we have a pretty upside down society, you mentioned, just like the wealth gap and the food gap and the education gap and sort of like, you know, the indentured servitude of student loans. And, you know, like, there's just so many aspects to this that are like unfair by design. And so I do worry about that, because it isn't for, you know, everybody doesn't just get to wake up in the morning and take a moonshot. Unequal playing field for sure. A hundred percent.

But if you are in that position, probably should, you know, because those are the things that actually change the quality of life for people around you. Not just in a direct sense, like you build a business, you have money, you can take care of your family. You can give to the causes that you care about the most. Like you don't have to convince other people to donate their money to do it. You know, like you can be direct. Right. So, um, and then there's doing things that are just in general in service of humanity. So your work and your body of work and, uh, you know,

us in a more indirect way, because we really support those that we think are making huge impact. We really do see ourselves as like a platform. You know, like we're not as concerned with our own legacy. We're really concerned with our experience and the experience of our children on this planet. And I think that there's two, again, there's a big AB where it's like, if I only feel the quality of my own life, then I'm not going to be like globally generous. I happen to feel, you know, that my quality of experience is attached to the suffering of others. And it's selfish selflessness, right? So this idea that like, it's puritanical, or that like, you know, I don't know, I think a lot of us, I'm saying a lot of

things at once here, but you're asking a really big question. You know, like, it's not about it's not about wearing the baseball hat of the team, or like looking the part, it's about doing the work. And it's not it's not an identity. It's, it's, you know, it's a commitment to, you know, wisdom. And if you're going to build, you know, I'll just end with this. Like if you're talking about big ideas, world changing, nobody does that in four years, man. You know, no player that's in the game for four or five years changes the world. Talk to me on year 20 in the game. You know, like you want to talk about wise men and women.

They've been in this for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I got for you, Mark. That's so great, Jeff. Well, Jeff, this is so great that you created Summit with your friends. This book, Make No Small Plans, Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community is such an important book in this moment in time and really fun and inspiring. I encourage everybody to get a copy of it. You can learn more about Summit at summit.co. That's just S-U-M-M-I-T.co

about all their programs and conferences and weekends and the book. And I just can't wait to see where you guys go next. And I can't wait to see you in Palm Springs in the fall and, uh, keep up what you guys are doing. Cause it's really creating reverberations that you can't probably even imagine you're creating. So thank you, Jeff.

And thanks also to Elliot and, and Jeremy and, um, and Brett. And I think, um, it's just great. It's a great conversation.

I hope it inspired everybody listening. If you loved it, please share with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment. How have you dreamed big? How have you built community? How have you made no small plans? And how have you chased your dreams? Because we all need to inspire each other.

Of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do. And introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from.

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