The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 247: Benjamin Hardy - The Best Self Improvement Book Of 2018

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk: Since 2015, Benjamin Hardy has been the #1 writer on Medium.com.  He is pursuing his PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Clemson University.�� Ben's writing focuses on self-improvement, motivation, and entrepreneurship. His writing is fueled by his personal experiences, self-directed education, and formal education.  Ben's work is read by millions of people every month.   Show Notes: Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence? They continually put themselves in situations that demand a lot of them.  They put themselves in high stakes situations They invest in themself They create conditions for success to happen Pianist John Burke (Grammy nominated) He puts external pressure on himself ("I will release an album a year").  It forces him to get to work to fulfill those expectations he puts on himself  Being socially invested is a forcing function Signing up for the race like Parker Mays -- A date on the calendar to prepare for.  "If I don't prepare, I will fail miserably" Why you should invest 10% of your income in your self The best self improvement book Ben has ever read? Letting Go "Willpower doesn't work."  You must create the environment to be successful -- Upgrade your mindset Self signaling - How you view yourself is not permanent.  Start to alter your behavior, you start seeing yourself differently You can shape your personality How to upgrade yourself? -- "When you invest money, you are committed" Why all high performers invest in a coach Peak moments -- how to change your life for the better Cal Newport - "Be So Good They Can't Ignore You" Investing in relationships (Jeff Goins and Ryan Holiday) How to build a platform Learn marketing Learn how to write viral headlines (Use numbers, matching, focused on outcomes) Want To Become A Multi-Millionaire? Do These 15 Things Immediately Understand structure - subheadings, short/snappy sentences and paragraphs Have a call to action at the end Create a landing page for email capture What is great writing? Be a good teacher: Communicate effectively.  Convey & connect. Weave stories in and out: Story --> Science --> Story --> Science --> Story --> Science Head knowledge:  Know your space.  Have heart:  Emotional rigor, intense stories How to become a master of your craft Your decisions determine your destiny Visualize the process, not just the outcome Create environments for optimal implementation Pre plan for adversity to strike and how you will respond Morning routine: Write in journal --> "Write it down, make it happen" --> Read --> Work out.  Create momentum for yourself.   "Willpower doesn't work.  You must create the environment for success to be achieved." Social Media: Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenjaminPHardy Read:  WILLPOWER DOESN'T WORK Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12  

What happens when you invest in yourself, specifically dollars, you know, whether that's investing in skills and abilities or investing in relationships, you shatter your subconscious belief system about what you can have, you know, because what you do is you basically tell yourself that this is something I'm going to do. This episode is brought to you by Gusto. Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting, so it's easy to get. Get things right. PC MAG and fit small business have called Gusto the best payroll for small businesses. Gusto saves you time. 72% of customers spend less than five minutes to run payroll. Don't believe it, just Google them. People love Gusto.

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Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2. In order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world, text learners to 4-4-2-2-2. Now, on to tonight's feature leader with the great Benjamin Hardy. Since 2015, he's been the number one writer on Medium.com. It's writing focused on self-improvement, motivation, and entrepreneurship. He's also been pursuing his PhD in industrial and organizational psychology at Clemson University. What an insightful conversation. I love it. A few of the topics we got into why you should invest at least 10% of your income and yourself and your personal development. Then the detailed process to build your platform and how this applies to everyone. And then why willpower doesn't work. Ben shares the hidden keys

to sustaining excellence. Ladies and John, I want it so good with Benjamin Hardy. All right, Ben, thanks so much for joining me on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome.

Thank you, Ryan. Good to have you, man. Good to be with you, I guess. Of course, of course. So I, a big fan of your writing. I'm happy that Ryan Holiday and his team introduced us

because I started just binging on your stuff over the last month or so. And I'm a huge fan of the work that you've been producing as well as the manner in which you've built your platform. So there's a lot to get to, but I'm curious to get us started. If you think about those leaders who sustain excellence, what have you found in your research

and your writing that those people have in common? Yeah. So for me, a lot of what people who study self-improvement or high-performance focus on is totally the inner game, whether it's like pre-performance routines, things that like get them into that higher frame of mind. And I think all those things are important. What the kind of the big aha I've found, there's actually two. One is that people who are high performers or epic leaders, they continually put themselves in situations that demand a lot of them. So they create external conditions that force them to rise up. That's kind of what I think.

I think that they put themselves in situations and they take on high levels of responsibility. they put themselves where the stakes are higher, they create conditions that make success happen. That's kind of how I look at it. And one of the key mechanisms to doing that, and we'll talk probably more about that, is investing in themselves or investing in relationships, putting your money where your mouth is.

And so that's kind of what I see. And the book Willpower doesn't work, which I'm sure we'll talk about. I give plenty of case studies, but people who perform at the highest level, in my opinion, they create conditions that force them to be at that high level. I love that phraseology of it.

Can you share one of those examples or case studies of somebody or people, a group of people who do that? Yeah, I'll give just two really simple ones. So like one form of simple investment, like is, so like Ramit Sati, for example, he invests a lot of money every year into a personal trainer. And like when you invest in a personal trainer, it's a lot harder to say no, especially when you invest in an expensive one. So like that's going to keep him going to the gym, for example. A different example is a pianist who I interviewed for the book. His name is John Burke. He's 29 years old and got nominated, I mean, nominated for a Grammy.

And he always creates conditions of external pressure. You know what I mean? Pressure to like force him to go forward. So he produces like a new album all the, like every year. He produces, he's been so prolific and people ask him how he's done it. And he's got this amazing process. So like whenever he, you know, comes up with this idea that he wants to write a new album. Immediately, he puts a lot of pieces in place. He creates the conditions

so that the album, you know, gets created. So what he does is, like, the very day that he decides, I want to make this album. He calls his sound engineer where he goes and records his album and he puts himself on the guy's schedule three months in advance, you know, because he's got to first write the music, but he puts himself on the guy's calendar and pays for it so that, like, first off, he's financially invested, but it's also on his calendar three months in advance. He knows that he's got to be at that place to record the album that has not yet been written, you know. And then he, uh, he blocks out his calendar, you know, and he puts in creation time like two, two to three hours a day and he cancels, you know, he doesn't take any gigs or any meetings during his

creation time. Like that's in his calendar. That for him is like an important meeting. And then he starts kind of telling his fans about it, you know, telling his fans, he's working on a new album, whether that's on like social media or through email. Like he starts creating that expectation in his fans. Basically, all he's doing right here is, is he's got an idea that he wants to, to create an album. And now he's creating a situation that's forcing him to like make good on that. You know, he's financially invested. Now he's socially invested, you know, socially committed. And then like all of a sudden he's in this position where it's like, okay, now I have to make this album. And like what I call it in the book is a forcing function. You know, it's putting,

it's putting things in place externally that force you to operate how you want to. So there's just a few examples. I love it. So I think of a few personal examples of mine for like I am a big consistency guy. I have to take a lot of pride in that. I've heard from so many listeners and fans that they love having my podcast for their Monday morning commute. And so I have consistently released at 7 o'clock Eastern time every Sunday night for three years and never ever missed. And that's like a social pressure that I feel like I've kind of put on myself because I love, I value consistency and because I've got so much feedback that people enjoy that. And so it's almost I get really productively paranoid about that fact every single week to make sure that I'm well ahead of schedule and have and never have to reach for a guest. I also think of one of my friends named Parker Mays, he's a pretty adamant triathlete.

But one of the things he does is books races for himself about six months in advance. So if you sign up and pay for the race six months in advance and usually has to travel somewhere for the race, he knows for a fact that he's going to hire a coach, which we're going to talk about that, and then work backwards to make sure he's ready to perform at a high level during that race. And I think that's a great examples of putting some of that external pressure, putting your money where your mouth is, putting it on the calendar, telling other people that you're going to perform at that race or whatever it may be for yourself. So I love those examples and think it's hard, but it's necessary and helpful. Yeah. No, I mean, I love that story of the runner or the athlete. You know, I mean, I think signing up for the race and buying the plane tickets. You know what I mean?

Like, you know, and then, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I love that example. Yeah. So one of the aspects of it, you just recently published an article titled, and we're going to talk a lot about your book too. But this is kind of goes hand in hand. Your book's titled Willpower Doesn't Work, Discover, the Hidden King. keys to success, really good stuff. But the article I'm talking about now is titled, Want to Become a Multimillionaire, do these 15 things immediately. And the first part of it that I really agree with and like is invest at least 10% of your income in yourself. And I'll let you kind of share the

science behind that. But why is it important to invest at least 10% of your income in yourself? Yeah. I mean, I love this. So there's like several reasons why, you know, there's several psychological reasons why, but there's also several kind of external environmental reasons. So like willpower doesn't work. The book is fundamentally all about creating an environment that makes success happen. So like either your environment is pulling you forward or it's pushing against you. If your environment's pulling you forward, you don't need willpower because motivation just happens

in certain environments. And if it's pushing against you, then, you know, you're required to use willpower because is there's like a conflict between you and your goal or between you and your environment. But with this notion of investing in yourself, what it does is it upgrades both your mindset and your environment. So like, just as an example, like, so there's a really good quote from Dr. David Hawkins. He wrote the book Letting Go. And he also wrote the book Power versus Force. And in my opinion, having read probably close to a thousand self-improvement books, his book letting go may be the best self-improvement book I've ever read. Just throwing that out there.

Seriously, it's so high level. It's probably too high level for most people. But it's, you know, if you've studied it a lot, if you've been working, if you've been learning on yourself improvement and stuff like that, that book, so, so there. But one of the things he says in that book is that the unconscious will only allow you to have what you believe you deserve. So basically at the subconscious level, your belief system about what you can have, you know, and what you deserve determines, you know, your life. It determines your environment. It determines how you perform on a daily basis. And so what happens when you invest in yourself, specifically dollars, you know, whether that's

investing in skills and abilities or investing in relationships, you shatter your subconscious belief system about what you can have, you know, because what you do is you basically tell yourself that this is something I'm going to do, you know, so, you know, Tony Robbins, but also just a lot of other people talk about the power of making a committed decision. And a committed decision is not something you make in your head. It's something that you do in the real world. And so when you actually invest money, like let's just say it's sign up for a race. Like that decision kind of alters how you view yourself.

So like there's an idea in psychology. It's called self-signaling. And I've referenced this in a few of the articles I've written. But self-signaling basically just means that how you view yourself is not a permanent thing. Like you view yourself the same way you view other people. It's based on your decisions. It's based on your behaviors. And so if you start altering your behavior, you start to alter how you see.

see yourself. If you've been sleeping in, let's just say, for example, for like the last 10 years, and all of a sudden you start waking up early, you'll start to see yourself as a morning person. You know, if you start running, you'll start to see yourself as a runner. So basically what the research shows is that it's not your personality that shapes your behavior. It's your behavior that shapes your personality. And that your personality is something that's actually very fluid. But in Western culture, we view personality is a fixed trait. And it's not a good thing. It's what psychologists would call a fixed mindset. And a big part of my book is all about kind of debunking that myth, that personality is something that's stable. But rather,

personality is something that's totally fluid. It's something you can change. It's influenced by your environment and it's influenced by your choices. And so, you know, taking all these ideas, when you invest in yourself, you upgrade your subconscious belief system about what you can have, but you also generally upgrade your environment, just as an example, like I've invested in relationships, talk about this, invested mastermind groups that put you in proximity to amazing people who have skills and abilities that you can't have or that you don't have. You know, and then you get immediate access to like their knowledge and skills and that just fast tracks your progress. You know, and so those are some thoughts about why it's powerful. I mean, one last thing,

kind of more on the psychological side, is that when you invest money in something, you become committed to it, you know, so like, like I would argue that commitment is one of the most important keys to success. It's one of the most important things, but how do people become committed to something? Like, that's difficult. And I would say that the fastest way to create high commitment is investing money. Like, there's a few ideas in economics that relate to that. One is called escalation of commitment. So basically it means, like, once you become invested in something, your commitment escalates. And that's based on a lot of things, but one of them is sunk cost. So sunk cost is the idea that, you know, when you're invested in something, it becomes hard not to commit to it. And

And sometimes that leads down negative paths, but it can be, it can also lead to positive paths, you know. And so, yeah, once you invest, you become committed. And once you become committed, you become willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. That was a lot. It is a lot. It may, there's a lot of different thoughts I'm having because I have a few really close coaching clients that I work with. And it's amazing that they invest a significant sum of money every month to do this work. And that on my end as being the person to try to help them, I feel an immense amount of

responsibility to help them and to helping of their way. And I'm very pleased with a lot of the production so far. But I'm thinking about from our perspective and from yours, I know you've invested in others and specifically talking about putting together's book. And I believe you mentioned you got a six-figure book deal. And we'll talk about some of the how you did that based on some of the platforms. building, but you still, you're the number one writer on medium. You obviously have sustained excellence in your own right. You've produced some of the best work literally out on the

internet for people if they're interested in this topic, which I think everybody listening to this podcast is when it comes to self-improvement. So most people would look at you and say, well, Ben definitely doesn't need a coach. Ben definitely doesn't need to spend any money, getting any help in any regard. And you looked at it and thought a little bit differently. And I'll let you explain, but I know you've personally understand the importance of investing in a coach and helping, getting help. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you look at anyone who's performing at a high level, you better believe they're investing lots of money in high performance. I mean, think about Olympics. Olympics start in two days. Do any of the Olympians not have a coach?

I mean, it's just ridiculous. And of course they, of course they do. So I mean, I guess I'll start to weave in some of my story right here about some of the core investments I made in the beginning and some of the investments I'm making right now. So going back to the idea that it's making investments that leads you to be committed. I had wanted to be a writer from 2010 to 2014 and never really did any writing. I've always written in my journal. And that's kind of where I developed my voice. It's where I've developed my fluency with being able to just weave ideas together and stuff like that, but I never started writing online. I never actually started to do what I wanted to do. I've wanted to be a professional writer since 2010. And it wasn't until 2015 that I actually

started online. And really what happened was, so about five years went by and really I made no progress, tangible progress towards my goal. I was reading lots of books. I was visualizing and thinking about what it would look like, but I wasn't actually studying the craft. And a few things happened in 2015 in January. I was just starting out my PhD program, by the way. I started August of 2014 in my PhD program and it's in organizational psychology. But in 2015 in January, my wife and I became foster parents. And what does that do? It creates a lot of external pressure. You know, all of a sudden we go from having no kids to having three kids and now I'm like in this position where I feel like this huge need to support this new family that I have to show up at

higher level and also the realization that my time is going to start slipping faster and faster. And it's like, okay, if I don't start this writing thing now, then I'm going to be at the end of a PhD program and who knows what's going to happen at that, you know, and I don't want to do that. Like, I have more time as a student than I would have had a full-time job. And so that external pressure kind of prompted a lot of deep introspection. And so I decided, you know, now must be the time. And so, you know, when you're a PhD student, you're only making $12,000 a year. in certain situations. That's how much I was making. You make like a thousand bucks a month,

but they pay for your tuition. And so we didn't have a ton of money. But kind of the first big investment I made was, you know, we wanted to buy the domain named Benjamin Hardy.com. That was $800. And that, you know, at the time was like, you know, my wife was like, okay, are you really going to spend $800 to buy a, you know, a website? Like, is this just a phase? You know, you've been saying you've been wanting to be a writer for a long time. Like, you know, you haven't done anything, you know. And so I said, yeah, I want to do this. This isn't a phase. You know, so I bought the website or I bought, you know, the domain name, built out some sketchy WordPress website. But that was like, you know, a big investment that I still look back as is like a peak

memory. So like, you know, Abraham Maslow, he talks about peak experiences that lead to self-actualization. You need peak moments. There's a really good book that was recently written about that called the power of moments. But, you know, you want to have these. brothers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a really good book. And it's all about creating these peak moments that then alter the trajectory of your life. And for me, you know, a big power of creating investments and trying stuff you've never done before is that they're inherently emotional and they create these peaks or these dips, wherever they are or transitions. But they're powerful moments that can alter the trajectory of your life. And that's why I think investing is so powerful. But so that was one investment was like,

boom, paid $800, got my website. then just, you know, lagged for a few months. And then in like April or May of 2015, I bought an online course, John Marrow's guest blogging course. He was like $197. And that course taught me how to write viral headlines and it taught me how to pitch articles onto platforms. You know, so that was another investment, but also part of investing is developing skills and abilities. Like in the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You or So Good You Can't Be ignored. However it goes by Cal Newport, he talks about the importance of developing skills and abilities. That once you get good at something, then you become confident. And once you're confident, then you can become

passionate about it. And that's such a better approach than just trying to chase your passion, which most people do. And so when you invest in yourself, you can develop these rare skills and abilities. And so I bought the website, I bought this $197 course. And then one other key investment that I made that was really kind of one of these peak moments that was, you know, all, you know, that was trajectory altering was simply investing in a conversation. So Jeff Goins, he's a, you know, a writer, I'm sure a lot of people here know who he is. But, you know, he was doing some promotional for a book that he was launching. At the time, it was the book called The Art of Work. And he was, one of his promotions was, you know, if you buy 20 copies of his book, he'll have a 30 minute phone call

with you, pretty much about anything you want. And so I was like, you know, it was like 250 bucks to buy 20 copies of his book. And what am I going to do with 20 copies of this book? But, you know, that was one of those ones where it was like, yeah, I want to do this. I want to, I want to, I want, I want to have a conversation with this person. I want to ask my questions directly to the source. Like, yeah, I can read all of his blog posts or I can read, you know, I can read his books, but I want to ask him direct questions. And that's kind of one of those powerful moments where you invest some money into a conversation.

And when you're doing all this stuff, you're watching yourself do these things that you've been wanting to do in your head. You're watching yourself by a website. You're watching yourself learn how to write viral headlines. You're watching yourself talk to big writers. I mean, when you're doing this, that's how you create confidence. Because I mean, what the research on confidence says is that it's not confidence that creates success. It's successful behavior that leads to confidence.

You know, it goes really along the lines of what Cal Newport said. You develop skills and abilities and that leads to confidence. And so those were some of like the big ones that initially got me writing, you know, and then along the way, you know, I hired Ryan Holiday, paid him $3,000 over the course of three months to help me write a book proposal. And, you know, as I said in that article that you're referencing, had I not paid that $3,000, to this day I might not have still ever written a book proposal, you know, just because it's one of those things that, you know, we all have emotional blocks towards things we've never done before. I've never done that. There's a huge learning curve. And so when I paid someone who was really good at it, who I respected and who knew how to do it, that just speeded up the learning process. And it opened up doors. You know, Ryan introduced me to my agent. And so those are some of the bigger ones that stick out. Since I got the book deal, I've invested pretty much the whole book deal. So it was a 200, basically 2.000. $220,000 book deal, but I invested every penny of it into, you know, more mentoring from Ryan and then joining, you know, very elite mastermind groups. And so this is something that I've been

applying bigger and bigger along the way, but I wanted to start with just sharing kind of like the small ones that first got me going. So I think some people are turning their heads to say, wait, what? 220K for a book deal and you essentially are going to break even beforehand, which from speaking to other writers, what you just said is extremely common from the successful ones. Most of them, I won't share necessarily some of their names because they're not, I'd rather them share it. But most of them, if not all of them, that get the advances in the 220 to 300 to 400 to 400 range, spend every penny on making the book grade on some PR things, different type help writing parts of it. They spend it all. So that seems like a big, big deal, but it's usually, for the good ones now, invested right back into the book.

And so it's not surprising to hear that. And it's also, I think, add some credibility to what you write about because you don't just write about it. You actually do it. You do it. And it was interesting hearing the people that you named Jeff Goins, Cal Newport, Ryan Holiday, all have been. some of the best episodes. We've recorded on this podcast, really smart, smart people. So it sounds like you've also done a great job aligning yourself with the right people to help you.

But curious, when you call Jeff, because I've had him on a couple times, he's great. When you called him and you got 30 minutes, what did you ask him? Yeah. I mean, I don't totally remember. I actually, I do. So at the time, so I actually called him in the beginning of 2000. I was, it must have been, so I started, like I said, writing online about May, April or May of 2015. I think it was some time, I really don't remember the exact time, but I had, I know I had 10,000 email subscribers.

And so it must have been like five or so months later, you know, where it was, it was like sometime in the early fall, maybe. But I basically was just saying, you know, I was anxious. And actually, actually, I've written about this. It was actually a very pivotal conversation. I said, Jeff, you know, I've got 10,000 email subscribers. I really want to get a book deal. Like, because I was just really anxious to start getting like a book. And he told me not to do it.

He told me to wait. He said that that was one of his biggest regrets was getting a book deal too fast. His first book contract, I think, was $6,000. And it was just because his platform was small at the time. And then, you know, then he's gotten bigger and bigger book deals up the way. But he said if you wait for an extra year or a year or two and push to trying to get up to like 2,000 emails. I mean, sorry, getting to a little. a thousand, sorry, obviously my brain's rattled. He said if you wait about a year or two

and try to get up to about 100,000 email subscribers that I'll get a 10x bigger book advance and that'll change the trajectory of my writing career. And so basically his core advice was don't get the book deal right now, be patient, just keep doing what you're doing, keep writing, keep building your platform, get better and better at that. And then when you do write the book proposal. When you do write the book, you'll set yourself up for far more success. So, I mean, that was kind of his core advice. I mean, a lot of what I wanted to ask him as well was just kind of like, what are you up to, you know? And he was, you know, I just wanted to kind of like hear what was interesting to him and what he was thinking about, what he was working towards, you know. And he

kind of just told me the book he was working on and some of his goals. But that was kind of his core advice, which just don't do it right now. Wait. And then that gave me a checkpoint. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go for 100,000 email subscribers, you know, and then that's what I did for the next, You know, year and a half. So a lot of people write and publish on Medium or their own blog. I mean, tons. We know they're everywhere. So it is a pretty noisy world.

What has been other than the fact that the quality of your writing, or maybe that's, it's just that simple. But what is the difference? How have you been able to build? This is a specific kind of inside baseball platform building question because we'll still get to some of the willpower stuff. but I'm fascinated by somebody who's able to build a platform so quickly. And there are a lot of people listening who want to build their platforms,

but they don't necessarily know how. And part of it, I will say, they might not be as just, I won't even say that. But let's just talk about the platform. What was the key or the keys that you have found to building your platform so quickly? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is something that I'm happy to share. It's knowledge that, you know, I love to give to people, and I think it's very relevant for a lot of people who want to seek

influence. And so I guess I'll just share some of the key things that have helped me. One was definitely learning marketing. Like, it's not enough just to have good ideas. And it's not even enough to communicate those ideas well. Like, you need to market those ideas well. And for me, that, you know, in the form of articles, that looks like a few things. That looks like learning how to write viral headlines.

You know, like the headline matters, you know, whether it's a video or whether it's an article, how you frame it is extremely important, both for how you write it. Coming up with the headline is so powerful because once you get the headline right, then you can have the angle for actually writing it powerfully. But also, you know, without a really potent headline or a catchy headline, like people won't click on it. And I'm still to this day baffled. You know, like I have like 175 or something,000 followers on Medium.

And if I write an article that doesn't have a good headline, it won't get a lot of views, like even with a lot of followers. And so like that's something you always have to work on. It's just making sure that those headlines count. After headlines, you know, and some of just the keys to big, you know, to good headlines are obviously using numbers. Numbers work really well, especially if you're writing nonfiction, bigger numbers, matching numbers. So like one of my most viral articles was eight things every person should do before 8 a.m. So like the 8 and 8 is big.

focused on like outcomes or behaviors like you know focused on well and another thing is is focusing on either aspiration or pain so like you know like you could write about like five ways to gain a six pack or like five ways to avoid belly fat you know like the belly fat article actually is going to probably get more hits just because it's more you know it's it's it hits the pain point of more people but like focusing on either aspiration or focusing on um you know pain avoidance um and then just a lot of it becomes art, you know, like, you know, you can learn the strategies. It's kind of reminds me of the quote by Picasso, you know, learn all the rules, you know, and then, I forget how exactly what he says, but he says, like, learn the rules like a professional so that you can

break them like an artist. And I think that I've kind of gotten to that point where it's like, I kind of know what works and I often use the structures that work and often I break those rules. And sometimes it's to my detriment and sometimes it really works out. The article you're talking about, for example, is, you know, want to become a more. multi-millionaire question mark, do these 15 things immediately. And so it's like, one, I'm talking about immediately. So like that catches people's attention. I talk about 15 things, you know, so that's obviously going to peak people's interest. What are the 15 things? And then obviously the millionaire piece. It's like, okay. So like, I'm attracting a certain audience, you know,

and I'm telling them to do these 15 things immediately. Like those are all potent things to get people to click. And so what happens after someone clicks? Well, the first thing they're going to do is generally, especially if it's a list article, but if it's not even a list of article, they're going to examine the structure of the article. They're going to just scan it before they even start reading and see if it's something that looks doable, looks easy, looks interesting, you know, and so you want to have a really good structure. And so for me, what good structure means is having lots of subheadings, and usually those are in the form of, you know, numbers, like 15 things, but it doesn't always have to be that way. Most of my lists, I mean, most of my articles actually aren't lists, but a big

chunk of them are, but good structuring. And then you want to write short, snappy sentences and paragraphs, not long-winded paragraphs. I mean, you can still write lots of words, but if the paragraphs look long, then it will feel hard for the reader to consume. So you want to have short sentences, short paragraphs, lots of subheadings. And then I'll just give a couple more kind of marketing tips, and then one writing tip is, you know, at the end of my article. and it's how I've grown my email list so fast, is especially on Medium, but on places like Medium, LinkedIn, and Cora,

and maybe even places like Facebook, it's so great to write at places like those because they already have pre-existing audiences. Like, there's already, you know, 150 million people a month who are going to be on Medium. You know, and so it's like, why not go there and take advantage of that audience? There's so many people on LinkedIn and Quora and Facebook.

Like, if you start your own blog, there's no audience. Like, you have to build it from scratch. And for me, that didn't make sense to me. So go to a place with a pre-existing audience and on platforms where you can market yourself. So you can't directly market yourself on a place like Forbes or Fast Company. They won't let you have a call to action at the bottom where you say, hey, get my free bonus. You know what I mean? You can't do that.

On Medium, you can say whatever you want to say. And so at the end of all my articles, I have a call to action that says, you know, if you want to get this free checklists of sorts, you know, check, go to this page. And then it takes people directly to a landing page. and a landing page is basically just a web page that the only thing you can do on it is enter your email in. And for the first year, I was sending people to my website. And my quote unquote conversion rate was very low. So basically when sending people to my website, I was getting maybe a thousand or two thousand emails a month

because there's too many options. Websites are distracting. Once I shifted over, and it was after I read Russell Brunson's book.com Secrets, which really was a powerful book, I started sending people to a landing page. And as soon as I did that, you know, I went from like 1 to 2,000 emails a month to like 5,000 emails a month, giving away my free book. And it was on the same amount of traffic. And so sending people to a really nice landing page where there's only two choices,

either they leave the page or they give you their email. That was a big one. And then shifting my giveaway. So for that first year, year and a half, I was giving away a free ebook. It's called Slipstream Time Hacking. It's a really unique ebook and it's something that anyone can get for free on like Amazon. But I was giving away that free ebook. At the end of my articles, I was saying, you know, if you want a free ebook, go here.

You know, and I'd send people to a landing page. And then I decided about a year and a half ago to switch up the free giveaway. And rather than giving away an e-book, which is kind of a high, like high commitment offer, you know, not everyone wants to read an e-book. Right. I shifted over to just like a checklist or a cheat sheet, you know, like very practical, very actionable, very simple, very outcome focused. And once I made that shift to a checklist, and it was just a simple checklist focused on specific outcomes, like, you know, if you've, you know,

this morning routine checklist will help you get more confidence or more clarity or whatnot, focused on outcomes. Then I jumped with the same amount of traffic from about 5,000 emails a month, almost immediately to about 20,000 emails a month. And now I'm getting about between 25,000 and 35,000 email subscribers a month with no paid traffic. And my numbers are going up a little bit with traffic, but it's learning how to optimize the articles, optimize the calls to action, and optimize the landing pages and stuff like that. So, I mean, those are kind of the setup. That's the marketing side that I think everyone really needs to learn if they want to grow.

And that's the side that most people avoid learning. When it comes to actually writing, I think that there's three keys to becoming a successful, you know, whether you're writing or speaking of any sort. And that's the one, you have to obviously be a good communicator, a good teacher. Like you need to learn how to speak or write. And like you need to learn how to convey and connect ideas and like weave in story and stuff like that. Like the communication piece is important. The two other really important sides are that you have to have to have.

the head knowledge. Like you actually need to like know what you're talking about. You know, you need to be able to reference key sources and stuff like that. You need to actually know your space so that you don't look like an idiot, you know, because a lot of people, so like there's a problem. You could be one, one sided where it's just like purely academic where you're just writing, you're just writing about the facts, you know, and that may be interesting to some people, but it's not going to be compelling to everyone. It's not going to be convincing and it's not going to be persuasive. And so, you know, the other side of it is is speaking emotionally and experientially. And so that's what you're talking about. Like, the reason I write the things I write

about it is because I put myself through the emotional rigor of actually doing it. And I don't really write about stuff that I am not living. To me, that's not my goal. And so there's the three sides. You've got to be able to communicate. You've got to know it at the head level, but you have to actually be emotional about it at the heart level. So like, you know, if you, if you can speak about something in an emotional and an intense manner, but you can weave in, like, key sources so that it doesn't sound like it's just your opinion. Then it's very convincing and it's very compelling because you're hitting people at the emotional level, but you're also like, you don't sound like it's just your opinion. You're like, oh, wow, like, look, like he's using all

these references. This must be true. And, and so that's kind of, you know, how it works. Man, that was a free course on how to build your platform. That's really good. I had an interesting thought in the middle of that. And maybe it's too early to ask this. Go ahead. If you were going to title this episode, how would you title it when I launch it? Oh, man.

I don't know. Maybe you can send me an email later. I was just curious. Yeah, no, no. I've never asked that question before, but you're a headline guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the one thing I want to make sure, though, for listeners, because I think there could be skeptics listening who say, well, he's kind of figured out this marketing engine and that's why.

And that now, don't get me wrong. That is obviously helped and you've got that mastered. But the reason that I like it, because I've found there are other people who have figured the marketing thing out, but then you dig into their content and it's not helpful. And they're still able to do okay. They all would have do okay. But when you dig in and actually read the material that you put out, it's obvious that it's well researched that you are able to, like you said, like some of the great writers, I think about like Adam Grant and Ryan Hollidays like this and Dan Pinky was just on. The Heath brothers, they've been on and they do this well.

This weaving of the stories with the empirical evidence, the data to back it up is so hard to do. And the great ones make it look really simple and really easy. Like a great football player recently we watched, they make it look easy. I think that's what the great writers are able to do. And that's what you've figured that out is how to weave in the stories with the actual evidence to support the stories. I think keynote speakers that are successful do this really well too. But I think that's a big aspect of why you're able to sustain excellence as a writer is because that part is there. And then you realize, well, I need to market it too to make sure it gets into hands of people because there's a lot of noise out there.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my core goal was never to be a marketer. You know, the marketing was just learning how to get the message out there. Like you said, you could market anything. And, you know, especially on the internet where there is so much noise and where there's so much quote unquote fake news and stuff like that. if someone jumps into a clickbait article, they'll very quickly know if it was clickbait. And so for me,

my goal is to get people in, but my goal is to like 10x over-fulfill the promise. And for me, that's where the mastery of the craft comes in, knowing kind of what I'm talking about, you know, more than anyone else that I've seen, or making connections that other people aren't making

and speaking about topics with confidence that other people know, scraped at the surface on, but don't know the avalan, you know, don't know the ice underneath the water. Like, and so, you know, the whole idea of be so good, you can't be ignored. Really, I love it. I mean, so for me, it's like become a master of your craft, but also become a master marketer. And if you do those two things, you can't lose.

I mean, and so for me, it's definitely more about the craft than the marketing, but I care enough about the craft to get good at marketing. Gotcha. That's perfect. And yeah, I love the Steve Martin quote that Kyle talked about because a lot of people were that comes from that Charlie Rose interview that Steve Martin did where he's, this is reiterating for the people who haven't seen yet. It's a great video. I'd encourage people just to Google it. But Steve was doing a gig and somebody raised their hand and they asked a question and said, well, how do I get the right agent or how do I get noticed or how do I do this when they're talking about whether it's stand up comedy or acting?

and Steve just kind of paused and deadpanned and said, be so good, they can't ignore you. And that's the part about the mastering of the craft that I think is so important that you can't really short circuit that as well. I mean, I'm thinking about how many, you probably can't even quantify this, but how many words have you written prior to your first book coming out? I mean, how many can you even, can you fathom the amount of repetitions you've got at becoming a great writer? Sure, yeah.

I mean, if you looked at the journals that are sitting behind me, there's got to be millions of words in there. When it comes to stuff published on the internet, you know, there's got to be millions of words. And so, you know, a lot of my articles are long form. I mean, that's another, you know, thing I would recommend is writing articles that are a little denser, you know, at least above 2,000 words. Those ones really do well for virality. But yeah, I mean, a lot of my articles are up there 5,000 to 10,000 words. And, you know, because I had written so much in my journal for so long, I've developed the ability to write in a form of stream of consciousness where, like, I don't really edit my work. It's just, it just is how it comes out from my head. But a big way of

being able to do that is learning how to structure your articles in the beginning. So like when I write, when I'm writing in my morning, you know, in my journal in the morning and I'm thinking about something on a right, I do bullet points. Like, for example, I wrote an article this morning because I've been thinking a lot about just decision making. And I'm thinking I'm probably going to write a book. My next book's going to all be about how your choices shape your identity. It's not the other way around. It's not your identity that shapes your choices. So I mean, the article that I wrote today was called Decisions Determined Destiny. Here's how to Make the Best Ones. And then I just wrote, you know, because I've been thinking about that line a lot because

I heard it in a book I was reading and it's just all about how your choice, you know, your decisions determine your destiny. So that thought's been like banging in my head. And so then I was just thinking about, you know, what are the cores that I believe about decision-making? And so in my journal, I just wrote like five bullet points or let's just see here, one, two, three. I wrote six bullet points about just ideas that I wanted to write in the article. And then when I opened up the article this morning, I just whipped out, I just wrote out those like five or six ideas. And they became the subheadings. And then once those subheadings are in place, you just kind of, for me at least, I just kind of riff.

I just kind of just like, once you have the bones in place, it becomes kind of really easy. And that's, I think anyone who has written books would also recommend that. I mean, you kind of want to create the structure first. You want to think about how do these ideas flow into each other? What should the chapters be? And then once you have those bones, and especially once you feel confident about those bones, it's so easy to write. But if you don't have that structure, then you're just going to make so many, you know,

mental mistakes or go back and forth on how to connect these. ideas are weaving together. But once you just have the organization, then for me at least, I can just write. So yeah. Yeah. I, so Ben, I love talking about this process. I want to get to a couple highlights from the book. And we could probably spend another hour on the book because there's, there's so much good stuff there. But just a few kind of teaser ideas, because I certainly would highly recommend everybody go out and buy willpower. It doesn't work. Discover the hidden keys to success. But I thought of this one that you highlight called Visualized the process, not just the outcome. I thought about this when I would get really, I guess you could say, anxious slash

nervous before a big football game. I played in high school and college a little bit after. And one of the things that helped me was just was not actually visualizing winning the game. It was visualizing doing my specific job as a quarterback. So on this play, I know this. I know this. This is what I'm supposed to do. And if I focus on just my role and what I'm supposed to do and working on executing that, I don't necessarily have to think about scoring a touchdown. I think about getting the snap and the play action fake and which safety I'm reading. That's what I think about on the pre the pre snap look as opposed to launching a 50 yard touchdown.

You know, and I thought of that when I was reading the visualizing the process, not just the outcome. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so my whole book, the whole book, and it kind of in a lot of ways, is trying to be a counterculture to what most of the self-improvement writing is. As most self-improvement focuses on, you know, the inner world, like I've talked about, focuses on upgrading your mentality or mindset, setting better goals, you know, being more resilient, all that stuff. This whole book is all about how none of that stuff is even possible in a goal-conflicting

environment and how we're shaped by our situations and about how to create environments and conditions that make your success happen. to outsource your motivation and high performance to environments that just make them happen. I mean, and so when it comes to kind of visualizing the process, one of the kind of the key things I talk about in that chapter is that obviously you can't control every environment. And sometimes you're going to face obstacles. And if you don't visualize those obstacles and how you're going to deal with them, then you're setting yourself up for failure.

You know, so just as an example, like, you know, and psychologists, by the way, call this implementation intentions. And so if, you know, it's basically pre-planning the response when you get triggered to fail, you know, and so like when elite athletes, for example, are putting themselves in a position where they're going to do something big, they have to pre-plan the conditions in which they'll quit. Because if they don't pre-plan those conditions, then they're going to quit premature. It's kind of like the 40% rule that the Marines have that a lot of people, they hit their wall at like 40% and that's where they quit. But they're only at 40% of their capacity.

And so the idea is, is you want to go way past that. And in order to do that, you have to pre-plan your response for tough situations. And so, like, you know, in tough situations could be very small things. I mean, for me, for example, when I walk into my kitchen, you know, I could be triggered, for example, just to open up the pantry and start snacking, you know? And so, like, what's my pre-planned response so that I'm not just reactive to some environment that conflicts with my goals? Like, so if I'm triggered, for example, to do something I don't want to do, or, you

if I'm encouraged or invited by some environment to do something that conflicts with what I want to be and what I want to do, what's my game plan. I mean, that's really what it's all about is planning the obstacles and visualizing how you're going to deal with them and having a plan so that you're not left to kind of make a decision in a crappy situation because, you know, decision making, there's lots of decision making that, you know, you're not going to make a good decision in a bad situation if you haven't already thought about what you're going to do. You want to make your decisions before the fact. And that's kind of what that's, all about. I love it. What about, you mentioned earlier about the morning routines, the big topic that comes up, but I love to hear your assessment of the importance of a morning routine and what to do to help us be more successful to get the day started, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, again, everything I talk about in the book is about, you know, putting yourself in the environment so that this stuff can happen. And so for me, you know, morning routine is really good. certain environments don't facilitate the best types of morning routines.

For me, you know, based on my goals and my aspirations in life, I've decided that writing in my journal first thing in the morning is, and I've been doing it for over 10 years at this point. But that to me is the most important thing, is visualization, meditation, prayer, journaling. But I don't want to do it at my house because there's just too much energy at my house, even if it's at 5 in the morning. And so I get in my car and I drive just to a parking lot, you know, like nearby.

I actually right outside the gym, to be honest with you. And I write in my journal, write about my goals. One of the things that, one of my favorite quotes, it comes from Thomas Edison. He says, never go to bed without giving a request to your subconscious mind. And so the idea is that your subconscious mind is always working. And in Joshua Waitskin has talked a lot about this on the Tim Ferriss podcast and in his own books. But the idea is that, you know, your subconscious is always working. It's always, you know, it's how your memories are integrated while you're asleep.

It's how information is processed, and it's always working. And so the idea is kind of going back to the Thomas Edison quote, right before bed, to kind of prep yourself, to make that predetermined decision what you're going to do when you wake up. First off, you know, so it's like you don't want to make the decision of whether you're going to wake up or not the morning of, like, because you're laying in bed. You want to make that decision at night, but also you want to pre-plan what you're going to do. There's a really good book called Write It Down, Make It Happen. And it talks about kind of writing down what you want to do in the affirmative as if it already did happen.

So, like, what I often do at night is, like, write about what I want to do the next day as if it already happened. So I, like, right, you know, today I did this. I wrote this article or I had an amazing, you know, episode of the podcast with Ryan, you know, write about these things so that you're basically training your subconscious to kind of process them while you're asleep, wake up, go, you know, and then for me, get out of the environment and go into an environment that kind of more triggers the emotions that I want, which for me is simply my car. And then I just write about those things, often read books, and then go to the gym, and those things kind of put me into a state of mind where I can then succeed.

And I think kind of just the last thought about morning routines is I think the core component of a morning routine is momentum. You know, if you start your day with intention and proactively, if you start your day with behaviors that are aligned with who you want to be, then you're going to develop confidence in that confidence then kind of like drizzles in through the rest of your day. Like if you don't wake, if you wake up reactive and if you wake up and you like hit the snooze button, then you can't have confidence because you lied to yourself. You know, you told yourself you're going to do something and you didn't do it. And so for me, it's about creating confidence

first thing in the morning by doing first things first. And again, like I've said throughout this thing, it's not confidence that creates success. It's success that creates confidence. And so if you can wake up and have a successful morning, you'll have confidence throughout your day. That's how I view morning routines. I love it. Big, big believer in a specific morning routine. Is there any one key component that I may have missed. I know this went really fast. So I just want to make sure, is there anything that I missed that you wanted to get out a one line or a paragraph, anything like that, Ben? Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that. I mean, I would say the theme of the book, Willpower Doesn't work is if you do not create and control your environment, your environment will

create and control you. That's a quote that comes from Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and his book Triggers. And I think to some of the big ideas are who you are in one situation is not the same as who you are in a different situation. And in Western culture, we think we have this fixed belief system about who we are and we think that the environment doesn't influence us and impact us. And my book is all about actually you and your environment are two parts of the same whole. And when you shift one, you can shift the other. And when you make big powerful decisions like investing in yourself and putting yourself in certain environments, stuff we've talked about throughout this episode, you can transform your psychologist. You can upgrade your subconscious belief systems and stuff like that. And so I just think kind of the core takeaway is obviously invest in yourself and be very

aware and mindful of how your environment is shaping you and know that you can create and control your environment. And when you do, then you have an enormous ability to accomplish your goals. So yeah, that's kind of like the book in a nutshell. I mean, obviously throughout the book, it's all strategic. But yeah, that's kind of, that's the essence. Yeah, I like the book because it's both the what. And certainly some of the why as well. And I think that's important for people, too. It's not just,

you're not just telling them what to do. There's some, there's some how, some tactical, because I'm really big Ben on implementation and execution. A lot of us listening here are great at taking notes. I've taken pages of notes during this talk. We're great at taking notes, but it's even more important than to put into action to create some sort of change that's needed. And so I think that's big on why I encourage people's right book. Hey man, thank you so much for being here. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Yeah, you could just, I would just challenge you to get willpower doesn't work.

But if you want to just check out my articles, obviously you can do that. You know, Google Benjamin Hardy.com. He'll find my website, Benjamin Hardy.com. And then just medium.com is where all my articles are hosted. Gotcha. And I definitely, I want to get you to title this episode. for the first time ever. So maybe we'll follow up.

After you think about it, you can send me a, send me a no and I'll title it whatever you want. I'll just put that out there. So the title of this episode is whatever Ben decides. And so you had a little bit of power, but I want to put that into action. So thanks again, man, for being here. I really appreciate it. And I definitely want to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Dude, let's do it. This is a really, really well-done podcast. Thank you, Ryan. And I'll talk to you soon, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Talk to you soon. All right. Thank you so much to Ben Hardy for joining me.

I loved that conversation. Really useful, as Peter Drucker would say. I got a lot out of it. Took pages of notes. If you enjoyed it, I love it if you would write a review, subscribe to the show, and rate it in iTunes Apple Podcast. That's rated, hopefully five stars. Write a review and subscribe in iTunes Apple Podcast.

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