THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Stop Wasting Time! THIS Is Why You're Not Successful Yet (And How to Finally Break Through)

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

What if the real reason you’re not winning yet isn’t a lack of talent… but a refusal to raise your standard? In this mashup, I’m bringing you some of the most powerful voices in personal development to confront a question most people avoid asking themselves. Am I really doing everything it takes to reach my dreams, or am I just staying comfortable? I sit down with Tom Bilyeu, Jesse Itzler, Eric Thomas, and Brendon Burchard to break down what actually separates people who talk about success from those who live it. One of the biggest truths we uncover is that success is not about who you are today. It’s about who you are willing to become. I share openly how I had to rebuild my confidence from nothing by keeping small promises to myself and stacking wins day by day. Brendon Burchard breaks down why accountability is the missing link for most people and how fear of judgment keeps you stuck playing small. And Eric Thomas brings the fire with a message most people need to hear. Either raise your standards or lower your expectations, but stop lying to yourself about the gap. You’re also going to hear something that could completely change how you view your life. From Jesse Itzler, we talk about stepping into rooms you are not prepared for and figuring it out later. That willingness to act before you feel ready is what creates opportunity. Too many people sit on the sidelines waiting to feel confident first, when in reality confidence is built through action, not before it. And then there’s the truth that might hit you the hardest. You already know what you’re not doing. There is something in your life right now that you know would change everything if you leaned into it. The problem is not awareness. The problem is action. I break down why your life is a direct reflection of your standards, not your goals, and why doing one more is the habit that changes everything. This episode is a wake up call. Not to inspire you for a moment, but to challenge you to raise the level you are operating at every single day. Because the difference between average and extraordinary is not talent. It is the willingness to do what others will not do consistently. Key Takeaways: Why your standards determine your life more than your goals How keeping small promises to yourself builds real confidence The hidden reason people avoid accountability and stay stuck Why stepping into rooms unprepared is the fastest way to grow Eric Thomas’ truth about raising your game or lowering your expectations The power of doing “one more” and how it compounds over time Why awareness without action is the trap keeping most people average I want you to walk away from this episode with one question in your mind. Not what you want out of life, but what you are willing to do to earn it. Because once your standards change, everything else in your life will follow. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So many of you have asked how to see me speak live, and for the first time ever, you can come see me speak live in person. All of my speeches have been private events, but now I'm teaming up with Life Surge speaking all over the country. Life Surge is a one-day faith-based event where you'll walk in hungry for success, and you'll leave ready to build your resources to leave an impact on others. We're talking faith-fueled finance, growing your resources, crushing obstacles, and then, yeah, using it all for something way bigger than yourself. I'm joining Life Surge in a few cities this year, and I'd love to see you there. I'll be sharing the stage with legends such as two-time football champion Tim Tebow, star of Duck Dynasty, Willie Robertson, and leadership hero of mine, John Maxwell, pastor and author Craig Groshell, and worship with artists like Natalie Grant.

Tickets are on sale at Life Surge.com. And just for my listeners, you can use the code, ED30, for 30% off a ticket. There will be a link in the show notes, so click through and take some time to join us. Cities are being added all the time, so if you don't see one near you now, check back. I hope to see you there. So hey, guys, I'm calling on all my friends here in the audience for a little bit of help. We're conducting an audience survey at gum.fm slash my let. And we want to hear from you so we can make things here even a better experience for you

and create content that you want. You know, we all know this. There's ads on our show, right? So we want to improve the experience. But in order to do that, we need to know a little bit more about you. So my friends in the audience, we want to improve that experience. So please help us. The survey's quick, easy, and it's a free way to support.

work the show. If you'll take two minutes, you'll be helping us out so much by doing this. So go to gum.fm-fm-slash-Mylet to fill out our audience survey. That's g-um-fm-fmil-E-L-E-T-T. This is the Edmireland Show. Hey, everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Well, the first I wanted to ask is everybody can go online to learn more about your personal story and the massive success you've had. And, you know, I've been to a few of your homes and it's just incredible.

That's why I'm really inspired by the life. But who did you have to become as a person to achieve this? Certainly not who I was. That's for sure. Well, I would say this. I always grew up, I think I've always, I'll brag about one thing. I think I've always been a pretty kind-hearted person. I've always loved and cared about people.

So I think that part of me was foundationally a really good thing. Even before you started working with the boys? Yeah, even before I worked at the orphanage, I think I was pretty decent human. But about everything else had to change. I had no self-confidence. I didn't have a real picture of what success looked like. Even something is seemingly insignificant of having a vision and a dream for what I wanted. Like, I come from a really wonderful family.

Everybody knows. Most people know my dad wasn't alcoholic and a drug addict when I was young. But my family is not material oriented. It's not even really achievement oriented. We didn't take vacations as a family, anything like that. My family is just about loving one another and being a good family member, being a good human being and being generous. So even remember when I got into like the business world, people are like, what are your big dreams and goals? I'm like, I have no idea.

And I would literally, and it's not a bad thing, I would find someone, I kind of modeled their life at first, you know, like I'll test run. I remember one of my first, that fits. How does that feel? One of my first heroes was a guy, Hector was his name, and he lived on Balboa, on the ocean, and then he had a golf house out in the desert. I didn't golf, you know, but I was like, well, that looks like a pretty good combo. I could live on the ocean, and then lo and a whole here's my life. I got a desert house and ocean houses and islands and all this other stuff. But really, I just modeled the dream. So everything from my ability to communicate to self-confidence, to even having a vision for what I wanted.

I was devoid about any of those things. One of the, I went out to my audience to ask them if you could have this conversation. What would you ask? And lady Kelly Pedersen, who actually was at your event in December, October, November, the one with Pete Vargas and them. She asked, do you ever deal with imposter syndrome? Yes. And how do you deal with it at this level? Yeah, I still do.

I've had some situations where I was, you know, I'm coaching somebody who's doing something really, really significant. Maybe they've run like a big country or something like that. And I'm like, why in the world are they listening to me right now? I've literally had those experiences. I won't say which one, but I had a, I feel okay about, I'll give everybody permission to feel it. One of the people that I had, I have worked with was a former president. And he was telling me that his first week in office, they were in a pretty stressful meeting. and he leaned back in his seat,

kind of like just to collect his thoughts, and he looked, and over his shoulder was a picture of Abraham Lincoln. And it dawned on him in that moment. What in the world am I doing sitting here right now? You know, this is Lincoln's been here, you know, Kennedy's been here, Reagan, whoever you admire, right? He goes, it was just like an out-of-body experience.

He goes, I literally sort of floated for a minute, like I'm actually sitting here and I'm the actual president. So even somebody at that level had that experience, and I have that happen sometimes. I remind myself, I had a great conversation when I was young. I just used this word about you with Wayne Dyer. He wrote a book called The Power of Intention. And I met him when he was writing the book.

How did you meet him? I was running on the beach. I won an incentive trip in our financial company. The first trip I ever won to qualify. And it was in Maui. I'd never been there before. And I got up, no one exercised back in those days. I was one of the first ever like business athlete people.

That wasn't a thing. Well, no one did it. I go to the gyms on trips. No one was there. And I read a book called The Corporate Athlete by a guy named Grapelle. And I'm like, okay, I'll be a corporate athlete, a business athlete.

So I'm up running early before the sun's up on the beach in Maui. This dude's running towards me. We both have Sony Walkman's on. You know, like, listen to Cassettes. That's how long ago it was. This guy's bald and he's got like a hairy back and he's getting closer and closer. I'm like, I don't want to bump into this dude's sweat, you know?

Yeah. And as he gets closer, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's Wayne Dyer. And he runs by me the other way. And I go, I took my walkman. I go, Dr. Dyer, are you change? change my life. And he has a deep voice like me. And I'll never forget he turns around and looks at me. He goes, I doubt that. I bet you changed your life. But how did I help you? And he starts to walk towards me. And I spent 90 minutes sitting on the beach with Wayne Dyer watching the

sun come up. And when we were done, we became friends. But when we were done, he goes, Ed, I think you're going to change the world. To this day, I have no idea whether or not he said that to everybody. I don't know. But he made me believe it. And he goes, and it's not because of your big brain and it's not because you're a great communicator. He goes, it's because of your intentions. I can just tell you, intend to really do great things and good for humans. And he goes, do me a favor. Never link your confidence to your abilities, which is very foreign because in baseball or when I, I mean, I do it. Technical skill, yeah. He goes, you'll always be chasing your tail. You'll never be good enough. He goes, when you're under pressure, you're worrying, he goes,

I just want you to focus on your intentions. Get your, get your confidence from your, you intend to make a difference you intend to serve you and tend to do right by people just right now before we started i said i'm going to go over there really quick you see i disappeared yeah i went over there i said a little quick prayer i reminded myself of my intentions to help people today and i sit here pretty confident not in my ability necessarily but in my intent to serve that's all you can bring to the table is your intention so most of my life my confidence has come from a trilogy and my in the power of one more i call it a trilogy, but it's my faith, my intentions, and then my ability to execute is third for me every single time. So my faith, I've got a God who loves me that believes in me, that's

given me great giftedness, that put me here to make a difference, and my intent is to do well, my intent is to contribute, my intent is to serve. I got a lot of confidence from that, and then my ability to execute third. I got a lot of ability, but sometimes you'll find yourself in a circumstance that may exceed your capacity, may exceed your preparation, right? What do you do in those moments? What are you going to rely on then, right? At the highest level in sports when I coach athletes, it's all predicated on ability because everybody was the best player on their high school team and their best league. They were all the best player on their college team. They're all the best. So at that level, the separator's ability, no, the separator's

not ability. The separator is the ability to find your best performance at any given time. And for me, That's faith and intention. So when you unpack that, I'm just going to summarize it for everybody listening. It's beautiful because the imposter syndrome may start to creep up, but you just have to go back to intention. I may not be the president today. I may not be the billionaire. I may not be as skilled to the person I'm helping, but I can go back to the core of who I know I am and why I'm showing up for this moment. And that is undeniable.

By the way, and it becomes very easy to escape it. Most things in your life that you have, one thing I told you today, I used this term with you today, we're working together. I say you're so self-aware. You had said a thing about me too clinical. And I go, that's the exact, that's a better word than I was using to describe something that you need to work on. You're very, very self-aware. Same thing when there's a problem or a thought that doesn't serve you. Awareness makes it lose its power over you.

So part of your brain when you're not in coherence, so under pressure, if we're going to get technical. Yeah, yeah, let's go. Under pressure, what I work with my athletes on is not lowering their heart rate, although I think a lower heart rate is a better for performance than higher. But the truth is that's not really what messes us up.

What messes us up is heart rate variability, where your heart's just at different beats. The variability quotient literally causes almost like a lobotomy for you. when your heart rate's racing like crazy, it's very difficult to think and perform clearly. So one of the things I'm constantly working on is just calming the variability, which is through breathing, which is through intention, which is through gratitude. And one of the powers is when I'm just aware I'm doing it, the thought loses its power over me, the anxiety loses its power over me.

Once I'm aware of something, its power is reduced and then I can use the techniques I have to reduce my heart rate variability so that I perform at a high level. So awareness is a really huge thing for me, just when I know I'm doing it. So if anybody's having that imposter syndrome kick in, just be aware of it, get separate from it, see it, go back to intention. And control your breathing. And control your breathing. One of the main things I work with with my athletes on is breathing and it's rhythmic breathing. That's a conversation for another day.

But when you can control your breathing, rhythmic breathing in and out. So it's smooth and rhythmic breathing. And you actually breathe from your heart because the electrical power in your heart, heart's about 50 times greater than your brain. What begins to happen if you do that for about a minute breathing from your heart, heart's so important because it's where all the electrical power comes in our body. It's why we say, I've heard there's intelligence in the heart. What's that? Intelligence in the intelligence. All of it is centered there. So give an example, your heart is sending messages to your brain. So when you hear guys use the word coherence, oh, coherence really means is lower heart rate variability

and there's a coherence between your brain and your heart working together. I don't know we were going to go this deep, but it's one of the things I work on for performance with people. So one of the very basic things is just to do very rhythmic breathing that begins to get that under control. It's why I like when we say, I love you with all my heart, right? When we hold a child to us, we don't hold them next to our knee or our shoulder. We hold them next to our heart. To the chest. So when you're in these situations, really, faith and intention is from the heart. So then I'll control my breathing from my chest, from my heart. And that combination mixed in with a little bit of gratitude for the moment.

I told that president, I said, that comes up again. Control your breathing. Focus on your intentions. Focus on your faith. And then this may sound silly because everyone in personal development throws around gratitude. Gratitude's just a kicker. Gratitude's the kicker. It's an amplifier.

Yeah, yeah. And I just go, I'm grateful to be in this moment. I'm grateful for this challenge. It's not the main thing. You can't go, I'm grateful. And you're like, I'm grateful. It's three and two hours of energy. I'm not grateful.

You're terrified. But if you can have the other things in place, gratitude is like the kicker to come from your heart. So it's just all little stuff that I do, but it's huge when I'm coaching athletes or peak performers or anybody in life, even my son in his golf game. My daughter, before she takes a big test at Clemson,

I'm like, let's get centered. We've got God's got our back. Our intentions is to do our best. We've done all of our preparation. Let's do our rhythmic breathing from our heart and our chest. Let's be grateful for the opportunity. We're here, and we have the money to be able to afford to go to this school.

this amazing moment. Now let's execute and kick some ass. It's fun for me because you've taught me so many things that I'm allowing God to kind of push me in directions. And he wants me to ask you about faith, but also the energy. Because there's a lot of people say, I'm not religious, but I believe in energy.

And one of the things that I've loved about your message is that you have a faith, but you also believe in the quantum. Big time. Like it sounds for a lot of people, it doesn't make sense. How are they the same thing? If you had to unpack that for somebody

or share your own story of like, where did that? It sounded like, you know, God was always part of your life, but maybe the other side came in or did it come at the same time? That's an interesting question. I don't know what came first.

Probably my faith came first. So I wrote about that in the book, a chapter on it. And I was happy. The chapter on faith in the book took me as long to write as the rest of the book. Because I was so concerned about,

you know, if I was too faith-based, I was being disrespectful to people of other faiths that I admire people of faith in general. And then if I went to sciencey, the faith people wouldn't like it. If I went to faithy, the science, and I just went, you know what, forget it. I'm just going to write what I actually believe.

And that's just going to have to stand on its own. This is who I am, this is what I think. And so I'm a Christian. And so in my case, I have a savior, which is Jesus Christ. That's the foundation of my life. It's the crater of the universe is God. Having said that, though, I believe that there's a quantum field

where there's energy and vibration. I just think it came from a creator. So the notion that there is an energy to me is actually just, it's almost impossible for someone to believe. You feel energy right now. There's a vibrational frequency. When you have a thought that you repeat, it vibrates at a higher and higher frequency,

you end up drawing it into your world. So the idea that you don't sense energy, one thing I'm very intentional about is, I know I'm always making people feel something. Most people are oblivious to this fact. You're always making people feel sense. something. So go back to intention. I'm just slightly more intentional about what you're going to feel and experience when you're in my presence. That's vibrational frequency. So truth vibrates at the

highest frequency. So the highest vibrational frequency is actually your own truth and your own faith. They're correlated. The Holy Spirit, to me, is an energy, as a sense, as a vibrational frequency. And so they're correlated for me. They're not the same thing. They're correlated. If you said, I get to have one or the other, I will take my faith 100% of the time. but to understand that there's this field where I can have a knowing in a zone I'm in, in a vibrational frequency and a depth of wisdom and dimension to me that I don't have without it is silly to me. And so I'm a big energy guy.

I make business deals based on energy confirmed by prayer. When I give a speech, yeah, when I give a speech, it's all about the energy that I'm putting out, confirmed by the prayer and the blessing and hopefully the Holy Spirit gives me the words to use. So these two things together are awesome stuff. And one doesn't, they're not mutually exclusive. No. And I think sometimes people that are really devout in their faith, they're like, well, is that a you-centered thing or a God-centered thing? It's always a God-centered thing for me. But that's like saying that there's an ocean right here. We're looking at right now that's beautiful. Is it not? And it's making this noise behind us. Do you not feel an energy when you're closer to the water? Think about that

everybody. We've been talking about for the last few days. Most people will tell you, man, I don't know what happens when I'm getting around the water or the energy, I feel more at peace. That's because there's an energy coming from it. Now, who created that ocean? You're up to your own conclusions. For me, there's a all-knowing God in heaven that created that ocean that I feel an energy and a peace from. So that's maybe the best description you can ever have in the real world is when I look at that ocean, most things I go, thank you God. It's so beautiful, so majestic. But there's an energy. Ask anybody who serves. There's an energy. Right now we feel the energy of the ocean, right? If we leave my house right now, because it's about 100 yards away, the closer we get to that water, the more we feel the vibrational frequency of the energy from it.

By the way, I want this clip because that was really good right there. Clip that. That's for social. Thanks to HomeServe for sponsoring this episode. You know, owning a home is amazing. I've been fortunate that I've owned a couple. One minute, though, you're sipping coffee. The next, bam, something happens in your house.

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Most plans range from $499 to $11.99 a month for your first year. Terms apply on covered repairs. So you know what, everybody, I really appreciate the comments about, you know, I've gotten a lot leaner and built more muscle this year. And it was really intentional. And I was thinking, how can I get ahead, you know, on my fitness? Because I already pretty fit and worked out. And it was how I'm eating.

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Find technology built for the way you work at Dell.com slash Dell PCs built for you. Well, I mean, but you brought up a something like something that you do so beautifully at is you talked about your intention about how you make people feel. And one of several things you've taught me that this had a huge impact on my life, but will on many generations was I don't want to get emotional about it, but the skill of telling my boys about. them. Right. You tell people about, you know, and I literally started that practice a while ago. And if we call them right now, they'd be like, I don't want to hear it. I was like, let me tell you about you. And I'll take them separate. And they say they don't want to, but then they go, all right. They do. Yeah. And like, can you unpack that for people? Because I think for me, the business stuff's awesome. But wow, your ability to, to, to, because I had much.

my life shifted when a guy named Brian showed up as a teenager and just saw something to me that I didn't see him myself. Well, especially with your upbringing, that's a big, big deal. It was everything. And it's just available to every person to do that. Could you talk about that? Yeah. I'm writing a book right now called Let Me Tell You About You. Are you really?

I'm going to leave something out of it. I want to leave some for the book. However, if you think back in your life, and I said to you for a second, I want you to think about the person who believed in you the most or made you feel the most special when you're a little boy or a little girl. Hopefully there's somebody. Some people there isn't. But for most of us, there's that grandparent or a mom or a dad or a coach or a teacher. They made you feel like all your life when you're a little boy or a little girl,

there is this little voice telling you, I was born to do something great. I was supposed to do something great with my life. And then from the minute we get out into the world, that noise, that whisper starts getting more and more faint. For most people, by the time they're a teenager or 20 years old, they forgot. They don't hear it anymore. And every once in a while when you were a kid, maybe there was one person, they would whisper it back to you. They'd go, you're amazing.

You're special. I love you. You're so fast. You're so strong. You're so funny. You're so handsome. And if I asked you right now, anybody listening to this or watching it, who is that person for you? Are they passed away or are they still here?

close your eyes and picture the precious face of that person. For me, it'll be my grandfather, my papa. For most people, if I made you do it a while, you'd probably start crying. You'd probably start to get emotional. And if you're lucky in your life, there are three or four of those people in your life, maybe one. And you know what? They hold a special place in your heart that no one else holds. Maybe it's your spouse right now, which would be beautiful if that was the case, right?

And so, because that's true, I realized in my life, what if I could be that person for hundreds of people? And all they did was tell you the truth about you. They didn't lie or exaggerate. They told you about you. So it's wonderful to go, you're amazing, honey? Eh, that's kind of hollow. But if you say, you're amazing, honey, because, and then you link that to a natural gift or talent that that person kind of intuitively knows they have, you got it.

Let me show you how it works. Wayne Dyer. I'm sitting on the beach. Ed, you're going to change the world. Basically, you're going to do something great with your life. He barely knew me. And he said, and let me tell you why. It's not because you're that smart, even though you're smart.

It's not your voice. It's that heart of yours. It's your intentions. That's one of the few things with my lack of confidence. I believe to be true about me. I am a kind person. I opened up by saying it to you, as a matter of fact, before I told you the Wayne Dyer's story.

One thing I know. You just do it so. naturally now. So like, man, he said something true about me and then linked it to me being either happy or successful. And so in our lives, if we will study somebody, every human being, I believe, is born or develops one or two or three really special talents or gifts. It could be their kindness, their physical beauty, their intellect, their humor, their nurturing skills, problem solving ability, their clinical abilities, right? They're writing abilities. They're speaking abilities, their touch, whatever it might be. And they kind of know they have these one or two things

about them. And so when you go, I see this in you. And this is why you're going to be happy or successful. That's what great business leaders do. You know, Collins calls it putting people in the right seats on the bus. It's way more than that. It's saying you're amazing at writing code. And because you're so amazing at it, you're going to do something great here. You go, I am amazing at writing The linking part that I think people miss. It's the linkage. You can give a, it's what I'm taken away, and I've seen you do this, and it's inspired me in a big way is it has to be unique to them that they know you're paying

attention. That's right. And you got to link it to their desire that they know inherently is in their heart that they could accomplish. When you're little boy or a little girl, you and I had different upbringings than most people, so you didn't get the benefit of this most. You watch a little kid, if they're with their mom or dad, they'll go, Daddy watch, Daddy watch.

Mama watch. You ever seen a child do that? My kids do that. Every kid does. And before they do anything, they... Daddy watch. What they're saying is, see me. See me.

I don't want to be invisible. See me, see me. And human beings, most of us at some age, it's just we're invisible. And even our friends, hey, bro, hey, bro, hey, bro, hey, bro. There's no depth. There's no dimension to it. There's nothing beneath the surface. Instead of saying, man, you're amazing.

I told my good friend, we were talking about Richard Cabas. I was with him yesterday. And we were in a little group and I said, and I did it for him in front of the group. So let me tell you about him. And I said, this dude and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll give you the story. This is gnarly.

My dog crapped all over a room the other night. One of my two palm ratings. I mean, just destroyed this room. And it was super late at night. It was like two, three in the morning. And this may seem super silly. But my wife and I went, we'll get it in the morning. It was like in a back room in our house.

I want to get up. in the morning. So we go to sleep. I wake up to go in there and it's done. It's gone. He's staying in my guest house. Anyway, he got up in the middle of the night and spent two hours and cleaned up this entire room of my, he's just the most thoughtful. People ask me, why are you friends? He's so thoughtful. He's so kind. He wants to serve. And so we're in a group that next day. And I go, let me just tell you about this dude. He's so funny. He's so funny. I'm like, dude, let me tell you about him. There's more. He's so kind, man. He's so generous.

He's so giving. And he got all watery-eyed, right? Because that's the truth about him. The surface thing is he's funny. The beautiful thing about him was this other thing. And we're super close because maybe 500 times I've told him about him and linked it to something that he's doing. And so I just feel like that's one of the things in my life.

I've been really, really of like maybe a very few handful of things I'm good at doing. It's seeing someone's giftedness, seeing someone's talent, But seeing someone's truth, and man, they feel like the light is really on them when you do that. The surface compliments of, you're awesome, you're amazing, you're incredible. That means nothing. That means nothing. Especially if it can be used for anybody. It's almost like if the sentence could be said to another person and it land, it's not specific enough.

It's not. If you pictured, everybody's got a flashing sign on their forehead that just said, make me feel special, make me feel amazing. Tell me something unique about me to me. If you just pictured that, it's literally what's flashing. You just did it. We're just talking about it, right? You just did this. He sits down in a meeting, you're like, let me tell you, he's the best in the world at this, right?

And by the way, it's true. So it resonates. So the people that you do that with, you'll be connected to them in a way that may be a handful of human beings in their entire life are. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest.

All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So, as you know, every single month, we get to spend time with the great Brendan Bruchard. And today is that day of the month for all of you. And it's one of the most downloaded episodes we do all year are the monthly episodes with this man. And this week, I'm so excited. By the way, he is the founder of the greatest personal development app of all time called Growth Day. If you go to growthday.com forward slash ed, you can get all the information you need to change your life right there and do it affordably. And today, you get to spend some time with both of us for free, which is awesome.

And so today we're going to talk about, by the way, welcome to the show, first of all, my brother. It's great to have you back. As you spend time with us here every month, I'm more and more grateful every time we do it. It's an honor. And man, this time of year to be together, it's so inspiring. It fires me up. So thank you. Yeah, we were just talking off camera about sincerely how fired up we are about the world, about life,

about this being a time and history that could end up being one of the great. greatest times of all time to change your life. And what we're going to talk about today is a couple habits and thoughts that can help you do that. So today is all about self-confidence and accountability. And Brendan's written the book, you know, high-performance habits. And so he's done studies and data and has numerical evidence to kind of back some of the things we're going to talk about today. But if you want to know more about self-confidence, you want to know more about accountability, here we go. I guess in the next 35 minutes with the two of us kind of rifting back and forth on this topic. So let me start with you, because you study this really, really deeply. I want to talk

about the accountability part first, because the part you and I were actually talking about off camera, talk about the concept. Why do you think it's so important? And why does so many people avoid wanting to be held accountable? I love that. Man, I really struggle with that. Coaching people for 20 years. Because, you know, as coaches, you and I both help find somebody's breakthrough. They discover it. They get clarity on a coaching call. They tell us their plan. They're fired up. They feel champion mode. They're excited. And then next Monday, they don't change. And then they change again. And they don't change again. And they don't change again. You're like, what is going on? And what I discovered, which is so almost counterintuitive, is that people suck at making

commitments or setting goals or making big decisions because to do so requires and invites judgment. Wow. Judgment. People hate judgment. If you had an expectation and you didn't do it when you were a kid, your parents got mad at you. If you were at school and you didn't do what you were supposed to do, the teacher got

mad at you. When you feel like you're failing and somebody knows about it, it feels like they're judging you. It feels embarrassing. To judge oneself is terrifying to most people. Because you put your butt on the line. You say you're going to do it. You say you're going to be accountable. It's hard to say you're going to be accountable.

Most people won't even say their real commitments. They won't make bold decisions because it invites so much self-judgment. What if I find out? I really wasn't ready. What if I find out I wasn't willing? What if I find out I'm not capable? What if I find out I'm not good enough? What if I find out by setting this goal,

going after this thing, acting confident, that when I go to hold myself accountable, I end up judging myself as inferior. So if that's a risk, why even take it? I don't want to feel bad about myself. Ed, do you want to feel bad about yourself? Well, you know, of course not. You know, you don't.

I think that all things that seem to be working in people's lives, though, there's some form of accountability. Like you and I were talking about my friend Andy Fricela, and he's created the 75 hard program. And one of the things that comes with that is hyper accountability. Every single day, there's things you've got to do. But every single day, you've got to post a pick online. You've got to post every day you're accountable, not just to yourself, but to the public at large, whether that's two people who follow you or 50 million people who follow you.

you're accountable. And I think that accountability, for a lot of people, it's like a clock kind of right in the back of their mind. Man, I've got to get this thing done because I've got a report. And you said something that surprised me. When I think of accountability, I think of someone else holding me accountable, almost me submitting to, I guess you'd call it their judgment or their assessment.

So do you think that is it different when someone, I recommend when you make a goal, express it to somebody that holds you. accountable that you've got to say, hey, I did it or I didn't do it. Do you not agree with that? And is that why you said holding yourself accountable? Or do you think self accountability is the most important, but it should be backed up and supported by accountability to another person? Yeah. I think accountability is the most important thing for success because we have to stick to our personal commitments and our commitments of people. And what I'm trying to get to is the reason,

because I think everybody listening to you and I right now, they know accountability is important. in their life. But they don't know why they don't hold themselves accountable. Got it. The reason people don't hold themselves accountable is because there'll be self-judgment. What if I don't measure up to what I wanted? And there's social judgment. What if other people who I said I was going to do this thing to and I don't follow up, what are they going to think of me? So I do think there's both sides. There's self-accountability, often just called personal accountability. that is holding yourself accountable to a standard that you have set. And then there's the accountability to other people.

I promised you this. I said I was going to do it. And now I have that social or peer pressure. They're both really important. But I'm here to tell people, if you don't set up accountability in your life, and if you find yourself over and over, why am I not being accountable to the standards or the goals or the discipline or the habits I said I was going to do, I promise, if you dig there, I promise you you will find that you don't like how that judgment feels by other people

or by yourself. And what you need to do is go, oh, I'm probably harsh on myself. And I've probably been harsh on myself so many times I've developed a pattern of not liking myself when I try to do hard things because I judge myself so unfairly, so impossibly, so perfectly. And if instead of self harsh judgment, I could give myself grace and adopt the learning mindset. All right, I love when you guys send messages out on social media about the show. And lately, I've been getting a few of these messages about my wardrobe. I was wearing this sweater, this tan sweater. And I kept getting all these messages from guys going, where did you get that sweater, bro?

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Quince.com slash ed. Whether it's with your besties or date night, get to all the hottest concerts with Go Transit. Go connects to all the biggest entertainment venues and makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. A weekday group pass offers the same week.

weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people up to $60 for five. So no matter what day of the week, Goz got you covered. Find out more at go-transit.com slash tickets. So I have this discipline. I have this goal. I have this dream. I'm going to keep myself accountable. And I'm going to check in on myself or I'm going to get that daily streak as you

reference with, you know, like 75 hard or growth day. These are daily streak activities. If I don't do that streak or if I don't do that habit, instead of punishing myself, judging myself, or letting other people be mean to me or feel like they're being mean, I'm just going to go, I didn't make it that time. What's the next right action of integrity to get back velocity, to get back momentum? Get curious instead of mad at yourself. If you're a person that you just don't hold yourself accountable, you probably get mad at yourself too often. and being mad at yourself doesn't feel good. Give yourself grace and curiosity and get a momentum towards it.

Momentum feels good. And that's a switch mentally for people. We got to get you mentally feeling good about accountability versus being mad at yourself all the time. If you're mad at yourself all the time, no wonder you're not fulfilling commitments. It feels too bad. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Edmite show on Apple

and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Well, I wish this was in person, but it'll still be fire today. I'm with, uh, there is no better motivational speaker of all time. That's what you all know him for. But I got to know him a little better. And I'm going to tell you one thing about him. I don't know a better man. I wish I was around him more so I could tell you more stories. But I will tell you this. When my book came out, very few people stepped forward and said, hey, brother, how can I help you? And this man stepped forward in a way like nobody else did and helped me in ways that I will never forget till the day I die, his support for me and my family. And as great of a communicator as he is, I admire him. I look up to him as a husband,

as a father, as a friend, and as an entrepreneur as well, but particularly as a man of faith and as a husband and a father, I know no better man than him. And I could give somebody no bigger compliment man to man than I'm giving him right now. So E.T. Eric, Thomas, welcome back to the show. I love you and it's great to have you here. What's up, fam, man. I love you as well. And yeah, you know, it's a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people in the business world, you know, but when you run across a couple people, man, who share the same, you know, values that you share, you know, trying to leave their mark on the world, you know. And so, yeah, likewise, man, just coming to the house the first time I remember. My wife still talks

about it in Laguna Beach. He's like, hey, before we die, you need to give me a high. You need to give me a house, a beachfront house. I was like, okay, I'll try. You know, but you could do it. You know, just the way your family was, man, and just the love and support. It's just been rich. And there are opportunities I've had and business things that I've done, you know, because of this relationship, man.

And I'm, I'm grateful for you know what I love the most. It's while it's public, you know, it's private. You know, it's not one of those things where you have to walk around and be like, boom, boom, boom. You know, so I'm just grateful for you, man, public. and, you know, privately, bro. Thank you, brother. You've been around lots of highly successful people, and you are one.

And one of the things that I think most people don't know is the level of work required, of effort, meaning like, I don't know, I think if someone spent the last five years with me in business and they, I'm not trying to brag, but like if they thought they worked hard, there's levels to this game. Or like in the speaking game, you and I talk when the stuff hit the last couple of years, There's just levels to the work ethic and the grind the things you got to do. You look at a Steph Curry and basketball. Oh, he's such a gifted shooter.

Actually, he's not. Actually, it's the grind. Actually, Tiger and Jack Nicholas, the amount of golf balls they hit. Actually, Judge and Otani and baseball, you have no idea the amount of work. And even in coaching, you and I've been around all these great college football coaches, but I think it's one of the hardest jobs in the world. There's a level to where Sabin played at, Dabo Sweeney, who I know you've been with. like, so talk, I think most people are like it about, and you talk about this a lot, like maybe

50, 60% of their capacity or effort. And that is not going to get it done, no matter how much you sit around and do other things that serve you. There's a level to this thing and you've been close to it and you are at it. Talk about that for a minute. Look, I want to say this to everybody is listening. Here's what I think would be the easier thing to do. Just lower your expectations. I'm just being real. Like, you know, when I was with Ed and he was doing the book launch, I'm just being real.

I did the book launch, it would probably 70% on that level. In terms of I wasn't just in the rub. Don't get it twisted. I'm not a good guy, okay? God makes me a better man. I was in the room learning. I wouldn't, I promise you,

I wasn't just in there talking. Listen to me. I don't even know if Ed knows this. after before I did my thing and after I did my thing I was all the way in the back sitting down I didn't know that I was all the way in the back of the room

with a pin in the pad I didn't know that like studying like yo E bro this is being real you're not on this level like you're not one you're not on this level in terms of like maximizing you know your network

like you're not you're not on that the space that we were in listen to me I don't know if I told you this but your guy, he ended up helping me, what would you call it? Like, renovate the church and put beautiful siding on it. He don't even live here. I didn't even live here.

He helped me, he made some phone calls. He called a piece like, if I got to leave Charlotte and come down there, I got you. But I'm going to try to find somebody. This is what I'm talking about, y'all. So I was in the building, learning, seeing who Ed was connecting with, connecting with them afterwards.

So here's my deal. When I was in the room, I had to say to myself, E, if you want some of this stuff, Ed got, E, you're going to have to, got to raise your game some. So you got an option. You can even go, hey, me, be in the room with Ed and watching what Ed was doing. This is strictly for recreational purposes.

You feel me? Yeah. This recreational purpose, bro, go ahead and get out of here. Or, A, E, God showed it to you. He showed it to you. He showed you a level. Are you ready? And so for me, it was like, absolutely I'm ready.

So I just want to say this to you guys. Either lower your expectations because you don't have to do everything you see other people do. You don't have to do it. You could just go, man, it's like going to a basketball game. You're not trying to suit up and do what Curry does. But when you look at it, you kind of thinking, oh, he's human like I'm human so I can't. Watch yourself. Okay, watch yourself.

You might not want to put them sneaks on. You might not want to get in that gym. And when I saw it do when I went back, I was like, okay, E, number one, you got to get more organized. So like you got passion, you got energy. But what you saw in Ed, you saw a system. You saw a structure. You saw people over here and people over here and people doing it and people in the back. And when you get in, people in the parking.

So it's like, when you get to the crib, from a speaking standpoint, you definitely give it 1,000%. Right. But from a structural standpoint, you're not giving one. 1,000 percent. Then I look at the packages in the dick. And I was like, E, you don't got, so y'all might have saw if you watched it. It was a group in here. There was a group out there. And then the level of men that was on stage who are also dominant in their particular area where I was with people who I've only seen in a podcast. I only see these dudes on social media. I ain't never been in the room with them before. I was in the room with them. And so, yes, you know, I had to come home. Not necessarily

to get up earlier, not necessarily grind physically harder, but I had to take my mental game to another level. I had to take my systems game to another level. I had to, this is a grind that you probably don't know, I had to remove people, which hurts to bring in a different group of people to take me where I wanted to go because I realized a group that was with me,

phenomenal group of humans, phenomenal group of people. They probably would get to heaven before I get there. but in order to take me from number four to number one, they weren't necessarily the people that could do that. So to Ed's point, I personally went home and did an evaluation on ET. I personally study ET and said, yeah, you got it going over here. But this seed is an apple seed and orange seed. This is not a watermelon seed.

And these seeds that you're planting will never get you watermelon. So, yep, you got some dynamic. Are you posting every day? you're putting out dynamic stuff, but that will not get what you saw Ed do in terms of systems. And so you got to come home and your new grind is system.

I don't know what your grind is, but I'm telling you, I had to start reading books. I had to go to conferences. I had to shift what I was watching online. I had to shift who I was following. Great humans, great people. They were only going to help me sustain this energy. They weren't going to help me with the structure.

Here's what I realized. E, nobody's better than you, but there are some people who's got better systems than you. And so if you want to see growth, you got to start grinding on the systems level. So I don't want you to get what Ed said, and you miss it.

You're like, oh, I got to get up earlier. I got to grind. Maybe you don't have to get up earlier to accomplish what you've already accomplished, but to get this done, you do have to make some adjustment. And that's what the grind looked like, and that's what the hustle looked like.

And can I say this, Ed? I'm mad. I don't even know. know if I ever said this before, but sometimes, and I don't know if you've experienced this, sometimes, bro, you're putting up 40 with 30 rebounds and you like, whatever, and then you go somewhere and God shows you, and I was talking to my son the other day, and he kind of was hurt because he was like, Dad, you know, you, you're acting like I'm, and I said, hold up, I'm sorry. You're putting up 30. You're putting up 10, but the 30 points and the 10 rebounds have nothing

to do with the assist. You don't get credit for assist. because you scored and you got rebounds. They don't take your points and go, we're going to put those over and rebound. They don't take your rebounds and go, we're going to put those with your assist. And when I left you, you know, there was a part of me that was like, God,

you want me to do more? Yeah. You want me to do more? Am I not grinding enough? He was like, absolutely. And every seed you planted is going to grow. But you just looked at what Ed was doing and you saw there was a gap.

So you have a choice to make here. You got rebounds, you got points, but the assist son, you had zero. So what do you want to do? And there was a moment where I had to go, you're not overwhelmed. You're just rising to the level that God is asking you to rise.

Oh, my gosh. There's no anxiety. The Bible said, be anxious for nothing, but in all things, do prayer and supplication, make your request known to God. But there was a 30-second boy where it was like, man, God, how am I going to be blessed? When I, he said, how, one, that's your boy.

So you can just call. Of course. Then I had a Rory in the back interview with me. God was like, you don't have to do it. You could just, and I did just that. My relationship with Roy, you know, went from a person that, you know, respects him to sitting at his feet,

to listen to the podcast, to studying you guys. I can honestly say after that event system-wise, you know, I've gone to another level. So to me, that's what it looks like when your expectations, your dreams, your goals, and your grind match. And if y'all not ready to work, it doesn't make you a bad human. Just lower your expectations. Gosh, that's so good. And that idea of the grind, I want to say one thing, everybody, when he's talking about

rebounds and points, the application of that for you is this, is that if you're average, you keep giving yourself credit for the things you're already doing. But if you want to be extraordinary, you've got to go, what's the thing, like the power of one more in the book. I talk about your one decision away. I think all of you listening to this right now, if I can be honest with you, you already know what it is. You know the thing you're not doing. You need to be doing that would change your life in your business. You already know what it is. It's having the guts, the courage, the faith to call the shot, like an ET's case. I'm going to go back. I don't need to work harder. I got to get more systematic. Maybe I can even work less hard if I put these systems in place.

For you, it might be something you are doing or that you need to stop doing to get your life. to the next level before we start the interview with my next guest just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on youtube or follow the show on apple or spotify we have all the links in our show notes you'll never miss an episode that way now on with the show welcome back to max out everybody i'm ed mylet today's show is going to be ballistic so i am uh i'm sitting next to the real life dos eckes man um one of the most interesting people i have ever met in my life this man has a resume that is too long to even start the introduction with today. And we're going to talk about that today, like life resumes. But to start, put it mildly, this is someone who started the company

Marquis Jett. He ends up selling that to Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, started a water company that he sold to Coca-Cola. He's run a hundred miles in one day before. He's a father of four. He's married to one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in the country and Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx. And most importantly for me, he is one of the most giving and generous people with his time, his information, and his energy that I have ever met in my life. And I'm literally, look at this. I'm getting goosebumps because I've been really looking forward today. So everybody, this is Jesse Hitzler.

Jesse, thanks for being here. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Have we had good conversations off camera? Yes. It's so good. I wish we were recording the whole time. So, you know, the other thing I didn't say, too, is I also think you're one of the greatest

speakers in the world, too, from the stage as well. So any of you're looking for speakers. This is a guy that you ought to be talking to. So you're going to get a flavor for that today. So let's help some people. Let's do it. Let's do it. So we can go all the way back to the beginning.

I want people to know a little bit about your background because I think one of the things that fascinates me the most about you is your willingness to do things that you're not prepared for. I think like going into the unknown, it seems to be one of these things about you that's very unique, but also as a trait that I see in people that win at really high levels. So talk a little bit about, we could start with any of the businesses you've had, but did your upbringing at all like prep you into being this sort of type of person? person you are, like when you grew up, did you know you're going to turn out this way or no,

not at all? I always was dancing to my own drum. My parents gave me a really long leash, which was a great gift for me growing up. They let me do whatever I wanted to do within reason. And I always, you know, all of us, we always come against this wall of fear, you know, this crazy wall of fear. And you can either go to the wall and turn around, you can go through the fucking wall. And I was, I always, every time I went around, turned around and went back home,

because I was too scared, I had crazy resentment. Or crazy guilt that I wasn't able to do it. Regret, not resentment. Regret. And every time I went through the wall and got to the other side, it was so addicting. And I was so proud of myself. So, let me just give you a quick example.

And I was growing up. I grew up in New York City or in Long Island in the 80s when breakdancing and rap and all this stuff was happening. And I was really into break dancing. I don't know. I don't look like it, Ed. But, you know, get some cardboard out here. We need to do that.

Mike and some cardboard. Okay. And I decided that like I could make more money probably if I went to Washington, D.C., you know, because the kids in Washington, D.C. couldn't be as good as the kids in New York. We invented this whole genre. So I got my friend Myron, who was my partner, my sister just got her driver's license, and I convinced her to drive us to Washington, D.C. And the whole drive down, I was having all that self-doubt.

Yeah. At a young age, 14, 15 years old, like, what if the kids are better? What if no one shows up? What if we get booed? What if, you know, what if we go there and I stink? Yeah. And so I was almost talking myself out. I was building the wall of doubt up, brick by brick in my own head.

Yeah. And when we got there, we went to a little bank in Georgetown, and we set up a boom box in a parking lot of a bank, and we hit play. And my friend started spinning on his head, and he passed it to me, and the crowd gathered around. And ultimately, after I did my thing, more people came, I took my hat, and I passed it around. We made about $200. I paid my sister for the gas money. And then Myron and I split $82, $41 each.

And this guy, you know, he's counting up the money, and he's counting up the money, and he gets all the money, and then he sprints over to me, and he gives me a bear hug. And he goes, Jess, we're fucking rich. And the reason why we were rich is because on that particular trip, despite all the fear, this young little kid that was so scared, I went around that wall and I realized I could be rewarded. And I was like, I want more of that. I was writing sports songs after the Nick song with my partner.

We set up a company to write theme songs for professional sports teams. And I did that for a year and a half. And we sold that company to a public company called SFX. You did. And it was the gentleman that owned SFX that had a timeshare on a jet that invited us as guests. And that's how we got exposed to the world of private aviation. So you're flying on this jet. Was it the first private jet you'd have been on?

Oh, yeah. So you're on a private jet, and you take this flight, and rather than just enjoying the flight, you get off the flight and go, what? No, first I walked on the plane, and it was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color. And I was like, people fly like this?

We want to fly like this. And we literally were like, let's start a private jet company so we can fly privately because we definitely can't afford it. That's crazy. And we were like... But did you know anything about jets? Did you own a jet? No.

Nothing. So you knew nothing about jets, you didn't own a jet, you didn't have been a jet. But I knew that if we wanted to take two or three trips a year to go skiing with our friends or take a college friends on a trip or my partner had a family and he wanted to go away for Thanksgiving, we knew that if we had a need for, not for hundreds of hours, but for maybe 25 hours, there's got to be a lot of people like us. And that's really where the idea started from.

It's like, how can we make flying privately a little bit more affordable, more to the masses, and how can we solve the problem? How could we eliminate all the pain points of owning your own private plane, like the pilots, the scheduling, the maintenance, all that? And provide all the benefits. And that's what we created this 25-hour jet card called, which ultimately was called Markey Jet. Okay, so let's talk about this for this.

So here comes the note-taking time, all you entrepreneurs out there, because there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that have these ideas. So that's great that you had the idea and brilliant. But idea to execution to business, to profitability, to selling it is a completely different idea altogether. How in the world do you get, you end up somehow getting net jets to allow you to use their jets somehow to do this card, right? How the hell did that happen?

Well, first of all, you know, we thought about what's the fastest way to get from point A to point B. Okay. Okay. That was the starting point. Okay. And we realized that we needed airplanes, obviously. You can't have a private jet company on airplanes.

And for us, there were only a couple of, there was only two. games in town or one game in town. It was net jets owned by Warren Buffett. They had 650 planes in the fleet. So we were able to get a meeting, you know, through a couple of phone calls. And in the meeting, we got thrown out of the first meeting in like 12 minutes. They're like the guy, the CEO was like, there's no way we're giving two kids access to our airplane. You got thrown out of the first got thrown out. He literally said, they literally said there's no way we're giving two kids. He said that probably didn't break a thousand on their SAT, which we talked about, which pissed me up. I got a 980. Just so you know in the history of interviews. So he's 90. This is so wonderful. So

you end up being on the same label as young MC. I end up being a paid for free backup dancer for a few weeks for him. People are laughing their asses off. I know right now, rolling their eyes. He gets a 980 on his SATs. I'm in the high sevens. I'm a 780 SAT. And we've both ended up becoming, you know, very successful entrepreneurs. This should give everybody out there hope who thinks their prior resume somehow dictates their future resume and that's not the case whatsoever. And so you get kicked out. He literally quotes your SAT score back to you. I'm not giving you guys you're 28, 29 years old access to my airplanes. Right. And, you know, our starting point is we have to convince them. We have to have a lot of conviction. We're the business plan. They're betting on

us. Yes. And the question we asked ourselves, I think, you know, the starting point for any entrepreneur when you're going to give a pitch what's in it for them what's in it what are we going to say to convince them that they want to do business with us and for us it was like we can they were catering to a much older demo and we were 28 29 years old in my music business I had access to athletes and entertainers just from the videos and just being in the scene I lived in New York I was connected to that world there was that was my demo and age group so we offered the ability to attract much younger

athletes, entertainers that we said, look, if these guys are introduced to your fleet, they're going to be customers for the next 50 years. And think about the lifetime value of that customer. Give us a shot. If it doesn't work, there's not, like no harm, no foul. And they said, you know what? We'll give you guys a shot. So the second meeting they say, we'll give you a shot.

Put up your own money. Okay. You guys will give you guys a shot. Okay. And now, this is one of my favorite stories of all time, literally of all time. So now you get a yes, which is just incredible. The idea to get in there to pitch, to get kicked out, to come back in to get a yes. Now the issue is, though, you have no clients.

So that theory sounded great. By the way, a lot of people, entrepreneurs listen to this. They got kicked out. They got rejected the first time. They've got an idea. Now they're in business, but they got no clients. And by the way, we really didn't have a business plan because we didn't know anything about the space. And to present a business plan, they could have been like, well, we're not looking for that.

We were the business plan. Yeah. It was like, we're going to make this, look me in the eye at, I'm telling us. telling you, we will make this happen. We give us a shot. I mean, those weren't the exact words, but that was the spirit of it. Let's stay on that for a second,

because I think this is huge, man. People buy into people. They buy into stories and people. They don't buy into PowerPoints. Powerpoints are just words. And we had a passion and a conviction around the idea, because we knew we can make it work. We knew if we had the chance that no matter what,

we were gonna work 21 hour days, we're gonna make it work. You and I are both involved a business together that we'll talk about the end and that's exactly what we both did in this case we bought into the people it's like so super true but you have this thing that I think I think to the extent that someone has this thing I'm going to ask you about before we get into how you end up getting your first client which is the best story of all time but but I think all successful people on some level and to the extent you are successful is the extent you have this thing which is that you're willing to step into spaces you are ill prepared for so it seems

to me like you're willing to you kind of think like if I get my foot in the door then I'll figure this stuff out, right? Whereas what most people do, and this is killing you, by the way, I won't step into the door until I'm completely prepared, which is a total fallacy anyways as an entrepreneur for sure, or wanting to become a rapper or have a music career or an artist or anything great. If you're waiting for a threshold of, I need to be totally prepared. Then I'll step in the door.

You will be on the other side of the door the rest of your life. So talk about that. You have this sort of thing about you. You'll figure it out once you get in there. Yeah. Well, first of all, nothing happens if you don't get into the door. So you have to figure out how to get in the door. And I've always trusted the process that I'd be able to figure it out. But like the common thread throughout my journey as an entrepreneur in everything is I had no prior experience in anything that I did. And for me, that was the greatest blessing. Because for me, it meant rip up the playbook.

No one taught me how to do it. So the whole industry was operating the same way. And I always say to my employees, Sarah, my wife does the same thing. You know, if no one taught you how to do your job, how would you do it? Like, if you ripped up the playbook and you said, like, how would I treat my customer? How would I go after and pitch this? That's where innovation comes from. That's where innovation comes from.

Everybody else in the space, they were doing the same playbook. all the brochures looked the same and we didn't know anything. We didn't know anything. So for us it was a greatest blessing. So I think experience is overrated. It's important but it takes so damn long. You know and like if we would have waited to get three years

on the front on the line and this there would have been four other jack companies and we would have never have done it. So Wow, that's so true. You got to start the process as an entrepreneur I think like the number one thing is start you never have it all figured out. It's never the right time. You never have

enough experience. But if you let that slow you down until you have, it's the right time and the right experience, come on, man, it's the world's like, the world's so fast. So you're telling me, you did not know a lot about the rap game before you got in it. You didn't know a lot about the writing lyrics game before that. You didn't know a lot. Just listen to this everybody.

You didn't know a lot about the coconut water business before you got in, the jet business before you got in it or the NBA before you got in it. I would say nothing. Literally nothing. I wouldn't say not a lot. I would say nothing. It's incredible. Yeah. And look, you know, I was fortunate. You know, we were able to, as soon as we were able to afford to bring in people that knew more, we were able to scale it.

You know, but we started everything very small. You know, we always thought really big. And once we got momentum, we were able to ramp it up super fast. The only way that I could really find, you know, I had to go where wealthy people were. And I heard about this conference called TED in Monterey, California, when they were first starting out that was attracting all these tech guys and well-off folks, et cetera. So my partner's like, you got to go to the. the TED conference in Monterey, California. So I had, I think I connected through Chicago into LA.

It's a five-hour car ride to Monterey, California. It was a 16-hour journey, and I get there, and as soon as I get there, everybody, it's like Fort Knox. I didn't have a credential to get in. So they didn't, you couldn't go anywhere near the conference. So I'm like, man, I just flew 16 hours. I can't go in, I'm so frustrated,

but it smelled like there was a sale there somewhere. So I was like, let me go into the little coffee shop over here and try to like figure this out. out and I'm sitting in the coffee shop and about 20 minutes into my sitting there kind of like thinking God how am I going to do this a wave of people with credentials come in and they're ordering lattes and muffins and I realize that they must be on coffee break from in between speakers at the tech conference so they're all ordering lattes and muffins latte and latte and muffins so the next morning I show up at 5 o'clock first one there as soon as they open and I buy

every single muffin I control all the muffin inventory in Monterey and Monterey California. I bought every muffin. And when the first wave of folks come in, you know, they're like, come up or a latte and a muffin. Like, you can have a latte and a muffin. Like, you can have a latte, but we're all out of muffins. I overheard. Actually, I have the muffin with my office here. We have all the muffins. Would you like a muffin? No, no, no, yeah. What do you do? Next thing you know, I'm in a conversation with someone. He's like, and he said, he asked me what I did. And I said, well, I have a private jet company called Marquis Jet. And a guy who just sold this company called Half.com to eBay. And, and he said, and he said, he asked me, and And he said, well, I'm actually interested in a private jet. Would you mind if I sit down and talk to you about it? And I was like, absolutely. Gosh, like, please sit down. You can have two muffins. And we started talking.

And here's what's interesting. And here's how I built my career. He ended up being my first customer. Unbelievable. But he was the key. Because I serviced the hell out of him. Anything he wanted, carried his bags. If he was going to Mexico, shock and awe.

Here's a book of places. Here's a reservation. Here's where you can snorkel. That's not the business I'm in. I provide time on jets. No. That's what everybody else was doing. This is what we're going to do.

So your family's going. Here's a floaty thing for your two-year-old. They would get that. And I just serviced him. How was the trip? Can I help you? Here are your bags. And he was my source of referrals.

There you go. And then the next guy came in. Same system. Same thing. Same thing. Same thing. And what was interesting about Marquis, jet. Wow. You know, it wasn't that we built this amazing company, you know, we, it was an amazingly

successful venture. And, but that's, that wasn't the gold for me. The gold for me were the people that we flew because we flew 4,000 of the who's who of entrepreneurs, CEOs, athletes, entertainers, and I was like, wow. Here I am. I'm 30 years old. I was obsessed with meeting these people and learning about their daily routines. So what I would do is, I would say like every conversation was like, what time do you get up? What do you eat? How do you spend your time?

How do you live rich? How do you do this? What's a vacation look like? And I would take all these habits from these winners at the highest level and start to incorporate them in my life. And the things that worked stuck and the things that didn't, I got rid of them. And over time built this system. You mentioned in the beginning, like your life resume, built this system that works for me.

And as I've evolved, now I have four kids, my system evolves. Because I can't have the same system as single Jesse, 40 years old and no kids, where I have the freedom to do what I want. Now I have way more responsibilities with my family. So the system evolves. So that was the gift. Wow. See, for me, for someone listening to this, and I already know what they're thinking, this is literally like an inside peak to like an apple. absolute master class of how to do these things right here, everybody.

And I just want to illustrate two points you made, and I want to make sure that I say them correctly. The first thing is that all of the most successful entrepreneurs I know, and obviously you're at the top of that list because there's been multiple wins. The reason I want you all listening to what Jesse covers and his social media and his content is because he's not only a big successful entrepreneur and also successful as a father, successful as an athlete of sorts, successful as an author. he's also had multiple wins. In other words, it wasn't a one-hit business wonder.

This is a formula that has worked for him that he's replicated into many different business ventures. And you said something brilliant. The unique thing for the ones I see is they create an experience for their customers that is completely different than everybody else. I don't care if you're a personal trainer at a gym. You own a dry cleaners or you're a jet brand.

It's the experience. Because if they don't enjoy the experience, it's not mind-blowing, they're not going to refer you to anybody in your business can't go viral. It can't multiply. correct? I always ask myself this one question. Would I recommend myself as fill in the blank? Would I recommend myself as a dad? Would I recommend myself as a business partner? What I recommend myself as a coach? Would I recommend myself as a boss? And if the answer is no, why? Why? Why won't

I recommend myself? And I always tell people like people call up, like my kids are going to their first job. What would be the one piece of advice? Make yourself irreplaceable. Make yourself irreplaceable. If you have that relationship with the customer, if you're so important, you're incredibly valuable. Wow, that's brilliant. But it's true.

And, you know, I ask myself a lot of questions. I ask myself a lot of questions. And that's one thing I always ask myself. Like, you know, if I go, let's say I go sideways with someone for some reason. I'm just, I don't very often. Right. But if I do, would I recommend myself?

What did I do? And very often, you know, it's, I can, I'm okay with it. And if it's something that I did, then I want to get in front of it and apologize or address it internally so it doesn't happen again. You mentioned something about success. And, you know, everybody has multiple definitions of success. If you ask 100 people, you might get 100 answers. But you touched on something I think is important to the listeners. And to me, I have a lot of different definitions. Success isn't being good in one bucket. It's not about like, I made all this money, you know, and I know, oh, it's easy for you to say, no. Success is.

is not about being good in one bucket. It's about being good in all the buckets. All the buckets. It's about being a good dad. It's about being, you know, good to your employees. It's about giving back in the charity bucket. It's about doing the right thing when you do it. It's about standing up for something that you see is wrong. That's success. When I see people that are mega wealthy, they're just fucking wealthy. Yes. No, they're just wealthy. That's not what it looks like. And you don't have to be wealthy. If you're struggling in one area, you can still be good in all the other areas. You can't spiral down because success, the way you look at it, isn't happening.

Well, then go be successful in the other buckets and fill up your plate. And what it does, too, by the way, I can feel you coming at me with that because you feel so strong about it. Your physiology change, too. But what also happens is when you talk a lot about this, but when you get wins in other areas, you get life momentum. And people just, I did a training on this the other day, but like you're, to me, I look at you. I go, okay, look, the thing he said about associating with these people and their habits, I didn't have a jet card company, but I joined the club where I could meet these kinds of guys. What is your schedule?

What's your work routine? How do you eat? What do you think about? How do you talk? I'm sorry to interrupt you. The habits, you get me all fired up. Everything comes around your day. Yeah.

We're talking about all these successes. They took years. Yes. Years. Yes. I remember walking into the president of Coca-Cola about this. Zico thing, he's like, it takes eight years to build a brand in this country. Of course, there's get rich, quick things, and now it's a little faster, but it takes time. But the foundation

of that is your daily habits. It's creating winning habits, winning routines, and a winning mindset. That's the formula. It is. There's no way around it. It doesn't happen without that. What are the unique things for me, because I completely agree. One of the unique things about you and I is we both will be creating this content for a while. And then when we looked at each other, stuff, are like, my God, we so believe the same things. We say it a little bit differently, but we so believe the same things. One of the unbelievable things about social media or podcasts like this is that you kind of can peek into what you had at Marquis Jets doing this. If someone follows you on Instagram or follows myself, you get access nowadays to something

you and I never had, you can get access daily to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the or fitness people or parents or people of faith or whatever your area is through digital connection now it's not the same as live but it's incredible the information you can tap into now you are my virtual mentor no you are I mean I'm I'm in tune to what you say it resonates deeply with me you're in it for the right reasons like there's a lot of reasons why the things you say really have stickiness with me but you are you're to millions of people you're a virtual mentor and that's exactly your point yeah And we didn't have that growing up.

No. Our mentor was my, like, my dad and anyone in my small town. Yeah, me too. Don't you think part of your life, Jesse, you've got some life momentum going, though, right? I mean, the journey is, I think it's the most, I mean, you're a young man, but I think it's the most remarkable journey that I've, of anybody I've talked to because of the breadth of different areas. It's just bananas to me.

That was a great conversation. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. you'll never miss an episode that way. One of the things that popped up when you were talking earlier is that low point in your life. I feel like people can talk to you until they're blue in the face, like get up, get going, do the thing that you want, you know, make, you know, do the thing that you need to do. Yeah. What did you find in you that actually brought you out of that, right?

Because I mean, I may be wrong, but I don't think it was the people talking to you, was it? No, it was just starting to take the steps. It was like, and this whole thing about one more is a real thing. It was just like, look, here's what I'm going to do. In spite of how I feel, I'm going to operate out of what I know I'm supposed to do, not how I feel. I'm going to finally, here's where I was. I was a very average person. Here's why I was average.

How I felt is how I acted. That's how most people are. They feel great. They do great. They feel bad. They lay around. And in that moment, I'm like, I don't feel good. I've had a pattern of not feeling good.

If I'm going to wait around until I feel good to take some steps, this ain't going to happen. But what if, maybe if I take these steps, then I'll feel good. And so slowly but surely, I'm like, I'm just going to make these contacts. I'm going to make these calls. I'm going to go see these people. And I just started taking steps. It's not always what you do on the days you're motivated. Because everyone does well, it is what do you do on the days you're not motivated. And so for me, it was like, I'm going to take steps towards my potential, even though I don't feel like it every day. And you go, well, that's easy to say, not hard to do. Actually, it's not that hard to do. You just have to do it. You have to actually get up, get dressed, put your clothes on, and take steps towards it. And then what I would do is I'd like little promises. So I was just a mess. Like I had no self-confidence because I had a reputation with me of not doing stuff I said I was going to do. So I started going to go, how can I rig the game so I do what I say? This sounds really stupid. I'm going to tell you what I did. I'm going to take you back to when I'm 23 years old. I'm going to set my clothes out the night before for the next day. Simple thing I don't have to think about in the morning, something I can control doing.

I'm going to make my bed in the morning. I'm going to get up at 6 a.m. I'm going to do some meditation and prayer when I wake up and I'm going to go to the gym and I actually started setting my clothes out getting up at 6 a.m. stuff I could do. I said my prayers on my meditation, right? I did the things I said I was going to do and all of a sudden now when I said I'm going to make 10 calls. I'm like, I could do that. Then when I said, I'm going to make a thousand bucks this week. I could do that. 10,000 bucks this week. 10,000 bucks this day. So it started with small stuff when I didn't feel like it and I rigged the game on stuff I could completely control. That's amazing because it's, A lot of people think it's, you know, things turn on immediately for them.

They see you who you are today, not the I laid my close out guy. They see you as the guy that you are today, which is the hard part for most people to see. It's not inspiring. It's the before and the after. I'll tell you one more thing. We can go a couple more minutes. I'll tell you the one thing. You don't know this story, but like I wanted to look rich when I wasn't.

And so I wanted it. I thought, no one's going to take me seriously. This is a true story, brother. Okay. They're going to laugh already. My family. I wanted to drive a Mercedes. I thought, no one's going to take me serious in my business

so I'm not driving a bends. So there was this thing called a penny saver back in the day. It would be like a glorified Craigslist now. And I'm looking for convertible Mercedes. It's so true, dude, you don't even believe this. And you know what this is, but all of a sudden it's 60 grand, 60 grand, 60 grand, it says Mercedes 600 SL, parentheses, kind of. I'm like, tell me more.

And what it was was a Chrysler-Labaron. Oh, hell yeah. kit car with a Mercedes body on it. So kit cars have welded other car. This thing was two feet too long. Interior was a LeBaron. You know, the heat blew constantly. This gets way better.

I drive down to Dana Point. I meet this lady. And I say, tell me about this kit car. She's like, look, it's $5,000. And it's wonderful. Only about half the people won't know it's real. And I'm like, I'll give you $4,000. She goes, I'll take it.

So she takes the $4 a grand for me. And she goes, there's one catch I didn't tell you. I swear to you, brother. brother, this is true. She goes, it's actually not welded on there. I said, what do you mean? She goes, I said, how's the kit on the car? She goes, it's velcroat. And I go, what did you just say? Say that again? Because it's already going on there. But most of the car stays together pretty good. I said, the machine I'm going to drive 60 miles an hour is velcroed together. She goes, you don't have to worry when you're driving fast. She goes, but when you drive up to a stoplight, don't stop too suddenly,

because the front left headlight will fly out into the intersection. And dude, more than a... I have a good social media following. If there was social back in the day, I would be the most viral MFer of all time because more than a hundred times in my life, in this dude's life, that headlight went out of the intersection.

I had to get out of that car, stop the four-way traffic, grab my headlight. You mentioned people watching, what the hell is this dude doing? I would grab my... The Velcro's hanging out. I would go grab my headlight,

run back to my car, Velcro that sucker back on, and jump back in the car. But about 30 of the times, I was so rattled, I shut the door too hard, and it would fall off. And people are honking trying to make their left turn. I'm trying to put my door back on the car. Dude, I swear to God, and I drove that car for four years. I made $770,000 one year driving that car. I swear to you, and it got stolen the fourth year. It got stolen.

And the dude that stole the car got one block from our house and just left the car. car with the keys in it because I swear to you I got pulled over in that car by the cops because they thought it was stolen and it's all because it was like wrong license plates so I went from a Velcroed Mercedes to a global express jet in a number of a decade or two doing the stuff that's in my book I swear to you that is a hundred babe is that a hundred percent true yeah she's like yeah she had to drive that might be one of the most incredible yeah oh you sent the wife I was a in the wife to go get the dead. Deal.

And then at the same time, man, we were so broke. We were so broke. I bought her a Mustang when her other car got repossessed, and the doors didn't work, so she had to go through her trunk to get to the front seat. So here's this power couple you see on Instagram. I'm driving a Velcroed car. Her car, everywhere she goes,

she has to climb through the trunk and crawl into the driver's seat. Is that awesome? Dude, that is so awesome. See, this is what we're here for, guys. This is the real Ed Milet. This is the real story. This is, this helps everybody understand that, look, it doesn't matter where you're at right now. Go buy a Velcro Mercedes because that's a starting point.

It doesn't matter. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Ed Milet, welcome to the show. Welcome back.

Welcome back. It's great to be here, man. What I'm looking forward to the most. So good to have you. Your book is amazing, the power of one more. Thank you. Love it. I'm not at all surprised.

Now, for people that haven't read it, for people that feel like they're wasting their time, they're not getting the results they want, what is one thing that they could be doing right now that would turn things around for them? Well, actually doing one more. So, you know, we always talk, you and I both about self-confidence and the fact that building self-confidence is the process of keeping the promises you make to yourself. And if you lack self-confidence, you've got a real. relationship and reputation with yourself that's not very favorable. And so the baseline way to get

self-confidence is you keep the promises you make to yourself. But in life, as you know, we don't get like our goal. We get probably 25% of our goals. But we ultimately always get our standards. Long-term, you will get your standards. So the question becomes, what's the standard need to be then? And that standard needs to be, you keep the promises you make to yourself and one more. So if you're going to do 30 minutes on the treadmill every day, you don't do 30 minutes. You do the 30 minutes. You do one more. You're going to make 10 contacts in a day. You don't make 10 contacts in the day. You do the 10 contacts, make one more. Now what happens is you start stacking up those one more. You're going to tell your, tell Lisa you love her every day. You don't just tell her that. You tell her one more time

every single day. So you start stacking up mathematically all of these one mores. You've just done more so you're better, but you've changed the standard of your life. And you've built this superhuman type self-confidence that I don't only do what I say I'm going to do. I do one more than I'm saying I'm going to do. And that's something almost nobody's willing to do. So I'm going to get things almost nobody's going to get. So that's one thing initially everybody can do. Yeah, so you are one of the sweetest guys on planet Earth, like in real life. Thank you. But also in real life, you're one of the most intense guys, which I really respond to.

So my journey as an entrepreneur was toughening up. I was super weak as a kid, way whiny, like definitely did not push myself and my parents love them to death, but they didn't know how to push me either. And so I really, when I went to college, my mom assumed I was going to fail because I was so profoundly lazy. and so hearing you in the book talk about like pushing to the extreme like you actually use the word extreme multiple times and that to to expand your capabilities you have to go into the extreme talk to me about that because right now I feel like that's an incredibly unpopular message it is and at the same time it is true

thank you and by the way you talk about it on my show so there's a part of the book where I talk about extremity expands capacity until you push something to the extreme you don't really stretch your capacity to do it. And so for me, I already know, you know, at this point of my life, we know what we're capable of at one point. So how do we change what we're capable of? And that's with extremity. That's with pushing it to the extreme. I have another chapter in the book where I call it, do one more inconvenience. This is something that if we could train ourselves to do our entire lives would change, which is that do the inconvenient or difficult thing in your day or in your life. Human nature is to avoid that. You call it being lazy, but it's just to avoid the

inconvenient. Napoleon Hill says, in think and grow rich, which I love, he says, on the other type of temporary pain, you are introduced to your other self, and that other self produces another life. So what we have to change, I think, to some extent, is our relationship with pain. I'm willing to pursue pain. I'm willing to pursue discomfort and do the inconvenient thing, because on the other side of that, I have extended my capacity. I've literally changed who I am by getting on the other side of that. And so for me, I am always trying to find the inconvenient thing to do because it's not my nature either. I have to build all these habits like you do because left to my own devices, man, I'm Netflix and pizza and Cheetos. I really would be.

Like people say to me, man, you just seem so hardcore. People think this about you as well. No, actually I'm not. And so I've had to develop these mindsets, the strategies in the book, the ways I think, my habits. There's a whole chapter on how to build habits in the book because I'm not that way. I'm not overly disciplined, but I've learned to sort of change my relationship with pain, even in the gym, but even in a given day, you know, for me, I chase the thing that's inconvenient because I know on the other side of that is where all the stuff lies that I want.

And so that's, you know, this old notion of, well, you know, get out of your comfort zone. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about pursuing the inconvenient in a given day because that's the pathway to your bliss. That's the pathway to your happiness. Why is that that super counterintuitive? Well, it's the pathway to your bliss and your happiness because when we're doing things that aren't convenient on a very regular basis, there's a part of our spirit, I believe in our soul that knows we were born to do something great, that knows we were born to grow. And when we begin to settle in our lives, it's like, I had a conversation this morning with a friend of mine who's a parent. They're having some parenting issues. And they're like, well, yeah, you grew up with an alcoholic dad. So that was child neglect. And my parents got divorced. That was child neglect. But I'm not neglecting my kids. This is just this morning, really good friend of mine. I said, I think you should rethink that. And I said, there's an insidious form of neglecting your children.

And she goes, well, what is it? And I said, it's not pursuing your potential in your dreams. That's a form of neglect of your children. You're installing the software in them that it's okay to settle. Because they're watching you. Because they're watching you. And almost everything in life is caught, not taught. You don't teach lessons to people.

They catch lessons from you. And so you're neglecting that child when you're not pursuing your potential, your bliss or and or your dreams in your life. That's a form of neglect. So if it's neglecting a child when we do it, it's a form of self-neglect when we do it to ourselves. And so that's why it's counterintuitive not to do inconvenient things. But the reason it's a pathway to bliss and happiness is intuitively we know we're neglecting

our spirit. We know we're neglecting our soul. We know we're neglecting our potential when we're not chasing it. And there's no way that we can simultaneously be blissful and at the same time know that we're somehow treating ourselves less than we're worthy of. I have a growing hypothesis. I'm super curious. So when I hear people like you talk about the stuff, I'm going to say 99 times out of 100, there's been a physical transformation that they've gone through.

Obviously, your physique isn't saying, I know what it would take to achieve your physique. I don't have your physique not because I don't want it because I don't want to put that level of energy into it. I'm honest with myself about that. But I have transformed my physique. Sure. And so I know what that takes. And that I didn't think a lot about it at the time, but that coincided with me getting better at the being an entrepreneur because I realized, I saw what you were saying, that as I did one more,

as I pushed myself, as I did the things that were inconvenient, as I reached for the extreme, as I began to model myself after something, other people said was crazy, right? Oh, that guy's too big. Oh, what are you doing? That's crazy. But I really got obsessed with it. Yes. And in doing that and going to the gym and pushing myself and being uncomfortable, I remember one time getting trapped under a weight and I was like, fuck, I don't, how am I going to get out of this? And by being in those situations over and over and over, you begin to realize, oh, my God, like I actually change as a result of this, which then lets you believe that you can change your mind in the same way.

Yes. How important do you think it is for people to deal with the body, to push themselves to have a transformation there? Well, brother, I love you because we think so similarly. Catalyst for change for me all my life has been in my body. And the reason for that is it's something that I actually have some measure of control over. I can't control the external result. I can't control every time how someone's going to respond to me, what the market's doing, whatever it might be.

I can control, like you and I were talking off camera, what I'm putting in here, when I'm putting in this pie hole every day. I can control my amount of hydration. I can control the training in my life. And so for me, the catalyst for change, frankly, I was 221 pounds, big and not fat. But I knew the book was coming out, and it was writing the book. And the catalyst for me to get in the most peak state I could do is to do something extreme. And so the extreme thing I did is I said, I'm going to weigh 100. 80 pounds in 90 days.

Whoa. And I got down to 177. And I did that through, you know, intermittent fasting, caloric restriction, changing my cardio. But it was an extreme. While you were working on the book. Well, I wasn't. The reason I did it is I knew that if I could transform the internal parts of me,

that the external results I was going to produce would be that much more extraordinary. And so I'm constantly. You skim the chills. Yeah. Well, by the way, and you've done it as well. It's not like I'm going to do this every single, you know, month of my life or even every single year of my life. But to your point, if you're sitting there and you're thinking, I can't change things.

I don't have the capital. I don't have the relationships. I don't have the this or the that. You do have a body and you can change that. There's things you can do to move it differently, treat it differently, potentially be more kind to it. One thing I'm doing, I'm 51 years old, man. I've never stretched in my life.

I've never done yoga in my life. These joints and tendons are sick of me beating them up. And so one of the reasons I got a little lighter, a little smaller, a little bit less taxing on it, and I'm giving myself the gift of great stretching, you know, great yoga. I'm doing massage now. I'm doing things to be kind of.

to my body as well. And this may sound really hokey and cheesy. I find myself, this is a strange thing that word it, but I find myself being a little more gentle with myself. When I'm so aggressive in the gym all the time, you know, there's a transfer of that even in my life from so aggressive and intense on myself, which I love that part of me. But like, I've had 51 years of that. And so now I'm like, you know what, I'm a little more kind to my body, a little bit more gentle with it. And I find myself, you know, when I give a speech, usually I'll beat myself up. I could have done, you do the same thing. I should have done this, I should have done that.

Leave a meeting, leave a podcast. Why didn't you say this? And I've just beat myself up all my life, just like I do in the gym. Recently, I find as I treat my body differently, I'm treating me differently. I'm like, that's okay, bro. You got the next one. That wasn't so bad. I'm sure you still made a difference.

I've never said those words to myself in my life. Because I've always thought, if I let go of this beating myself up, that's part of my recipe, part of my formula. The truth is I've probably been successful in spite of the way I've treated myself, not because of it. That's interesting. I don't know that I agree. And as you're describing that, I'm so intrigued how you're going to answer this question. Do you think that you can do that now because you have pushed yourself so far, so hard? Or do you wish that you had gone back and done things

the way you're doing them now back then? I wish I had done both. I wish I've had the extremity part of my life where I'm pushing myself to that point of past what I think I'm capable of. But then I also wish that I wasn't so hard on myself, man. Like I've spent a lot of years of my life. I've never really said this before. I've spent a lot of years of my life, I think, at my own expense, makes me emotional to say it. I don't even know where that's coming from. At my own expense in the service of other people. And I think I had this delusion that I had to be almost suffering in order to produce bliss for other people. And some of that software was probably installed to me when I was young with my dad being an alcoholic when I was young. And so no, brother,

I know I could have pushed myself and been one intense beast and still been a little bit more kind to myself. There's a more beautiful and elegant way to get to the results that I wanted. I totally know what you're saying. That there's different seasons of your life and it's easy to say when you got a couple hundred mill in the bank and all that other stuff like, you know what? I'm on a stretch now. I'm going to get a massage. It's a little bit different than that. So one, I think your insight about what you learn to do to be the peacemaker in your family, to read your dad, to figure out where he was, and that you were still so generous to him as well as to the rest of your family, to take his hand, and you talk about this in the book, so I highly encourage people to read it.

But you would take his hand and try to shift his mood, and that really trained you to be somebody that could read people and help change their state, which I think is incredible. But the way that I see it is that you've earned a... you've earned the right, and I'm going to back up in a second, but you've earned the right to get to that position because you know you can fall back on discipline, the habits, all that stuff. Because what I'm thinking is, okay, if I'm 24

and I'm encountering Ed Milet for the first time, and I have this glimmer of like, ooh, maybe I can do something more with my life. That guy really does, and this is projecting, because this is where I was, but that guy probably really does need to go hard first. And he needs first to learn to be tough, to be a badass. Like for me to transform my physique,

I had to imagine my wife being physically assaulted. It was the only way I could show up and put in the work. You got leverage on yourself. Exactly. Yep. And if somebody had been at that moment telling me, no, no, no, you need to be kind or gentler. It's like, on balance, you're right.

And if you're talking to me when I'm in my 50s, 100%. But in the beginning, I wouldn't have been able to be so nuanced. And so I guess what I'm saying is, with what you've done and accomplished, you understand the nuance. You understand how important it is. To do all of that and to sacrifice yourself

doesn't make sense. I think you're right. I think we agree. So I think you know yourself. What's your default place? My default position has been all my life to try to earn things. I conflated when I was young.

The only time I got love from my dad is if I achieved something, if I did something. If I, dad, I got an A. Dad, I hit a home run. You know, dad, I won the spelling beat. You know, so I conflated. achievement and pushing myself with love. So I know me. I know that part of me is sort of my

default place to go. My default place is to do this. I think you have to know yourself. I think if your default is to not do those things, then yeah, giving yourself a break and being kindler is the absolute worst thing that you could do to yourself. In my case, man, it's been a lifetime. I was never a child. I was never a little boy. That five-year-old, I was literally not a child. My dad would, you know this from the book. Five years old, I got two skills in life, man. One is I can communicate. The other one is I can be present and read people. The president and read people is really simple.

I had three sisters and a mom. And when my dad would walk through that front door, at five years old, this beautiful little boy that I was, I would have to look up at this man and quickly figure out. Was he drunk or sober? What was his body language? Like, how was he walking? Was his tie tie? Was he slurring his words? If it was drunk, dad, sisters need to get upstairs.

Mom, go take a shower. And then the man of the house, me at that time would take over. And like you said, grab my dad's hand and change his state. Dad, I hit a home run today. Dad, I got a 96 on my spelling test. And so I never afforded myself or was afforded to be a boy in my life, to ever really have a bunch of peace or bliss in that life. And my dad got sober and you know that and he was my best friend.

But that part of my life was taken from me. I never had it. So I don't have to be, I don't have to worry about Ed Milet's, you know, drive or ambition or any of those other things. I got to worry about this dude hurting himself, you know, metaphorically, but actually theoretically too in any possible way. And so you just got to know yourself. If your default is, you'll cool it.

Then you know what? The worst thing you could do is give yourself a break. You're wired like me and you beat yourself to a pulp all the time. And you think you can do that. And there's some point in your life you'll fray. And there's just a part of your brain, man. There's just there's the neural parts of our brain are telling us, man, can you give me a little dopamine?

Can you give me a little hit of something bliss? Can I celebrate this a little bit? Can I be a little bit more kind to myself? Because if you don't do that, eventually you've trained your brain that you don't want to do those things. Yeah, I think learning to love yourself is critical. I always tell people, in my back pocket, I have detachment at all times, like a Buddhist-style detachment.

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. Success, money, all those things ultimately are irrelevant. If you hate yourself and you're rich, you're still going to have a terrible life. You got it.