Award-Winning Author and Behavioral Scientist Jon Levy on Why We Are so Deeply Impacted by the People Around Us

Audio Transcription

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Are you trying to improve the overall quality of your life? Well, on today’s show, the award-winning author and behavioral scientist Jon Levy shares while your network who ultimately determine your net worth and your overall levels of happiness. Today’s guest is a behavioral scientist, a speaker, and a consultant of choice for Microsoft, Dell. We work salesforce and other leading companies. His insights and strategies for effective social and professional interactions can be found in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, Forbes, business insider ink, and fast company. Here’s the award-winning book has been featured in Gq l on the Lewis House podcast and other leading media outlets. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the author of the award-winning author of the new book, the 2:00 AM principle. And on today’s show he talks about why Gail king benefits just by knowing Oprah. He talks about why nothing really good ever happens after 2:00 AM the four stages for living an epic life. Why he’s traveled around the world and God to the biggest events around the world every month for a year, including burning man and the running of the bulls. All of this and much, much more in our interview with Jon Levy.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. Today you are going to love today’s guest. We are interviewing a man who is a behavioral scientist, a guy who has devoted his life to studying and to finding the answer to the question, why do we do the things that we do? He’s the author of the 2:00 AM principle. Discover the science of adventure. Any specializes in just understanding you and what makes you do what you do.. Jon Levy, welcome to the thrive time show. How are you sir?

I am absolutely amazing. I actually just got back from Siberia. Wow. Uh, and then went from Siberia to Israel. So there was a 100 degree temperature difference from when I took off to when I landed.

Okay. Okay. So my, my question for you, you’re the behavioral scientist. Why did you do that?

Um, this one’s because I needed to meet my inlaws for the first time. Oh. But I’ve never been anywhere that cold. Even when I went to Antarctica it was way warmer. So negative 40 was so cold that I took a cup of warm water, like what you would have tea with. And I threw it out the window and it immediately turned into snow.

Did you film this thing or is this like, yeah, yeah, this is on my, uh, on my Instagram. Okay. So for anybody out there that wants to see this, what do they need to search for to find this right now?

Uh, you can go onto my account. It’s Jon Levy, Tlb, j o n l e V as in Victor, wise and yellow. Tlb. He liked Thomas. I like Lion B, like boy Jon. How did you meet a Siberian queen? As I said, we were in Princess, I was in JFK airport and I was about to board a flight and I saw it, this very charming woman at the gate. And I decided to strike up a conversation. And, uh, she actually wasn’t having it at all. I think she was just really annoyed that she was being bothered. But as we were boarding the flight or the flight was called, I was like, Hey, you know, I, if you want to cut the line, I’ve status because I fly so much. How you can come on early with me if you’d like. And he was like, well, I’ll get in trouble.

I’m like, no, no, no. Don’t worry about it. And then while I was on the air bridge, that space between the gate and the plane, uh, I’m, I probably said one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever said, which is I turned to her and I go, listen, right now it looks like you have two options. You can either take your pre-assigned seat and probably sit down next to some 300-pound man with terrible Beo, a muffin topping over the armrest, or you could sit next to me and have the most interesting flight of your life. How’d that go over? Uh, I think she was a little surprised, but she goes, uh, oh, okay. And so he managed to get somebody to switch to their seat and sit next to, uh, and so she could sit next to me. And, uh, eight hours later we were on our layover in, uh, where were in Brussels. There were splitting a bottle of champagne and planning our first date.

Okay. Okay. Before you became the smooth-talking behavioral scientists that you are the best selling author, you, you, before you married three or four before you started dating, uh, this, the the Siberian queen here, you, you started at, at the bottom. And so I would like for you to shut up. I would like for you to share with the listeners your story of where you, where you believe your career first began. Yeah.

So I, you know, when you like to try to pinpoint where things were going terribly wrong, uh, for me, it was in eighth grade and my school teacher comes in and she says, Hey, we’re reassigning all the seats in our classroom. And, uh, each of you are going to get to privately submit to people you want to sit with and to people you don’t. And you know, everybody’s excited. They’re like writing their best friends names down. And, and, uh, that day I discovered two things. One, there was one kid nobody wanted to sit with. And the second is that, that kid was me. And so I literally, it wasn’t like I was unpopular. I was so unpopular. People thought I was, I guess, the most annoying kid in the class. And, uh, and I found out that I, that’s like kind of the biggest loser, not in the lose weight kind of way, but just that nobody liked me.

Uh, and so I said, I have to figure out what causes people to become friends with like, what’s going on here. And, um, and as a byproduct, I, I figured, you know, being the geeky loser means that you have a lot of free time on your hands. So I, I kind of began to put to the test what will cause people to want to connect with me. And it builds relationships and so on. And, uh, yeah, by the time I was in college, right? Few friends. What can I ask? If you’re looking at it objectively and it’s going to be somebody out there listening right now that, that can relate to where you’re at, right where you were at when you were at the bottom. Um, if you go online and you, and you search your name, uh, your, you’re a handsome guy, you know, Google images.

Maybe, maybe these had been severely edited by the, the Premium Siberia in Adobe Photoshop editors. But you’re a handsome guy. Uh, things seem to be going well. You’re on huge podcasts like Lewis House. Things are going well for you objectively. Looking back, what were you doing wrong? What was the deal? Um, I think that there’s a few things. Uh, and I think this is one of these things that you can’t be objective because, uh, when you look back and tell your own story, it always gets changed a little. Uh, we know this about, uh, human memory that each time that you access the memory, uh, you actually access it and then store it slightly changed. And so, uh, as you tell stories, relate to people, read books and fall in love with certain heroes and archetypes, things get changed around a little. But if I were to kind of point to a few things that are pretty clear is that I was a Geeky kid and back in the eighties and early nineties, uh, nobody appreciated Geek culture.

There isn’t nowadays, like if you’re into dungeons and dragons or comic books, they’re just going to Comicon and you’ll meet 10,000 people who are like you if not geekier. Are you, what kind of geekery were you up to? Um, I, first of all, my brothers were into dungeons and dragons, so I played that a little. Uh, I loved comic books. Uh, back then there weren’t like all the super popular marvel movies and I really liked programming and computer technology. So I’d spend my free time on a computer. But back then there was no internet and you were like, if you were on a computer, you were probably doing something or playing a game. And, uh, so I started programming at an early age back when the screens were black with the green text and the floppy disks. That whole, yeah. So here’s the funny thing that at, at least in, in, uh, in my mind being a, a tech Geek didn’t become cool until the first kind of Dotcom billionaires or until Steve Jobs released the iPhone.

Once the iPhone came out, everybody wanted technology. It became a status symbol. But before that, if you were into tech, you were kind of like a geek who worked in an ID it department. I agree. I agree with, I agree with that. And it’s just, it’s so hard on other, don’t believe you. It’s just, it’s hard to look at you today and then think about where you were and how much she goes now. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re sought after. Everybody’s wanting to interview you for the thrivers out there who don’t know. I mean, you’ve been featured in New York Times and Forbes and business insider, and what was your path to becoming an award winning and best selling author? Um, so I think, uh, first of all, I should probably clarify, I’m an award winning author. My Book Won Best Design Book of the year a couple of years ago. Uh, I’m not sure about bestselling status.

Um, I’d have to look into that. Uh, but my path was really kind of random. So back in 2008, I was probably about 28, uh, I was sitting in a seminar and the seminar leader said that the fundamental element that defines the quality of our lives are the people we surround ourselves with and the conversations that we have in them. And I got fascinated by this because most of the time when we focus on success, we focus on learning specific lessons. We don’t look at, Oh, am I hanging out with a specific group of people? Um, and I had looked into the research and the research is pretty phenomenal. There’s small stuff, like if you’re part of a run club, and I run for an extra 10 minutes just being, my friend will cause you to run for an extra three minutes. So there’s certain things that are contagious.

And these two researchers, Christakis and Fowler looked at the obesity epidemic and they found that if you have a friend who’s obese, your chances of obesity increased by 45% but what’s even more staggering than that is that your friends, the people who don’t know the obese person, their chances increase by 20% and their friends by 5% which means that we have in effect three degrees out. So one of the most important things you can do is curate the people around you because this effect isn’t limited to obesity. It’s also true for happiness, marriage, divorce rates, smoking habits, voting habits, literally anything you could think of is affected by the superhuman organism we call our network. And so I said, if I want to live an extraordinary life, I need to be around extraordinary people. And so I dedicated the next year to really understanding their behavior. What is the life of a major CEO of a large company?

Like what is the life of a celebrity like? And when you begin to break that down and you can actually relate to these people and a significant way, then you can begin to see what will cause them to engage with you. And so if you, if I were to ask you, what do you think the life of a, of a corporate CEO, I was like, what, what are their social pressures? You’d probably think, oh, they’re making a lot of money. You know, they’re getting to hang out with fabulous people. And that might be the case, but usually their life is defined by a handful of, of social pressures. Specifically. Everybody wants something from them. They want their steam. So they want their, uh, social clout because just being friends with them, we’ll give them status. So if, let me give you an example. Do you know who Gayle king is?

I do not. I will demonstrate my ignorance for hundreds of thousands of Lester’s educate me and my friend Gayle King is a media personality. She’s a unlike those talk shows, but she’s, if when you say Gail king’s name, most people say, oh, Oprah’s best friend. Oh, we go Oprah and Gail. Yeah. And it’s so interesting that Oprah has so much social clout that just being her friend makes you a celebrity. And so people who are of high status, uh, are, are often targeted for friendships or relationships simply because it can elevate other people’s status so that people want their social club, they want their time, their expertise, their access, and their money. And so if everybody’s after something, how do you break through all that? And, uh, I ended up discovering that there are these kind of four characteristics, uh, that when you apply them really, uh, cause others to want to engage with you.

And from that I created a secret dining experience, uh, called the influencers dinner. So 12 people are invited. They’re not allowed to talk about what they do or even give their last name. They cook dinner together. And when they sit down to eat, everybody gets to guests what everybody else does. And they find out that it’s a precedent of MTV. The editor and chief of Elle, a two time Olympian, a cast member from a popular TV show. So we ended up with anybody from like, uh, Trevor Noah to a, you know, Priyanka Chopra, uh, or even, uh, Nobel laureates like Dan Kahneman or Eric Kandel. So it’s really all over the spectrum that have hosted about 1500 people across 172 dinners and nine cities and three countries. And what happens is that, uh, that my life fundamentally improved, uh, because these people kept cooking me dinner.

So you now have a network of, of people that are optimistic, that are positive, that, that you have speaking into your life and in, uh, as you were changing your own life. When did it occur to you that you should sit down or I guess what, what inspired you to write your book? The 2:00 AM the award winning, maybe not the best selling book, the award winning 2:00 AM principle.

So, uh, what happened was I was sitting at one of my, uh, dinners I had written down. A couple of stories just kind of picks out, I thought maybe one day I’ll do something with it. As at one of my dinners as hosting a prominent author, somebody who’d written like five books or something like that. And, uh, we were chatting and I said, do you mind if I show you something? And he goes, oh, no, of course not. I passed it to him and he goes, Oh, you should definitely do something with this. Well, this is something that sat in a drawer for years. Uh, and so I called up and another former dinner guests who’s in ancient for a lot of popular talent. And I said, I have this concept. Is there anybody you could introduce me to? And she set up one meeting and the meat, you know, at the end of that meeting, uh, coincidentally that, that book agent represented a lot of, uh, kind of Geeky talent.

And he said this, I’m going to sell this. And so a few months later I had a book deal and it was kind of crazy. I wasn’t expecting it, frankly. I’m dyslexic, so I never thought anybody would pay me to write anything. Yeah. Um, and it totally caught me off guard, but it, what really made the difference was this community of people who I could approach that really knew their industries because I could have, you know, done the traditional thing of like knocking on doors and trying to get my book in the right pants. But fundamentally it’s the relationships that matter. And, um, and so I’d been traveling a lot. I in 2013, I did a project for myself where every month I traveled to the biggest event in the world, wherever it was. So I went to running of the bulls and I almost died. I got crushed by a bull. I went to burning man and, uh, I went to con film festival and any other major event you could think of. Um, and, uh, I kept adding stories to the collection and eventually a lot of those became the, the stories in the book

when you had your agent that finally the third agent, that kind of coach too long. The process. We have so many listeners out there, we have about a half million folks that will listen to the podcast. On a consistent basis. And a lot of them are entrepreneurs or

they’re aspiring authors. What was the process of preparing in, researching this book to get it ultimately signed off on by a publisher? So here’s the interesting thing. I could kind of run you through all that. Uh, but, uh, which is, you know, I, I brought it to the agent. The agent said, hey, we need to rewrite the proposal. And the first thing I had to do was emotionally detach myself from the content. So there’s the character Jon Levy in the book who is there simply as a tool to educate an audience about science in an interesting way and an amusing way, right? So, and that person had to be, that character had to go through failures and defeats and embarrassing moments that were all true but had to be shared. And that’s separate from me, Jon Levy, the individual who wants to be cool and accepted by people, right?

So I had to be willing to detach myself from how I felt about the, the, the character’s journey. Um, and I had to do it all in a way that’s completely honest and consistent with what actually happened. And, uh, and so when I was working on all this, my agent would sometimes say, Jon, I want you to try to write this chapter from the perspective of the people you hung out with rather than your perspective. And so I had to attempt a completely different writing style. Uh, and I hate to keep putting out different projects like that to see what would be the best way to tell these stories because my opinion on what’s going to be successful is, is kind of irrelevant versus the people who do this professionally to India. If we were to take your book and open it up to, to, to do chapter two.

So we take the 2:00 AM principle and we open it up to chapter two or chapter one. I kind of want to go through a couple of the chapters. Here’s what we’ll start with chapter one. Sure. You write that to the title is get your estate in order. You may not be coming back. What is this chapter all about? Uh, so I, I think it’s July 7th, 2013, I’m in Pamplona, Spain and uh, I have this crazy moment where I’m laying on the ground of the stadium where bull fights take place and I lost all feeling in my body because of bull entering the stadium missed it’s jump and landed on my back. Oof. And I’m paralyzed. I literally can’t move. Everything is numb and I have this moment where I’m arguing with myself in my head saying, Jon, you moron, your thirst for may have ended your life or left you paralyzed. And literally like everything had gone blank like the screams and the cheers and everything. Like I couldn’t hear any of it. And the other side of me said, Jon Levy, you wouldn’t have been happy living a life that’s quiet and if this is what happened, it’s

okay.

We’ll just have to deal with it. And I somehow managed to like stand up. But I was in a ton of pain and my, it was clear that my, my torso wasn’t working like my left and right arm. There was something wrong with them as screaming for help from like for where to find a doctor. But nobody was helping me because I had like, I’d been crushed, but the people behind me were a total mess. They, they’d been like cord and uh, they were trying to move bodies out of the way and eventually somebody pointed to where triage was. And I went in and, uh, and the pain was so overwhelming, I lost the ability to speak and, uh, I started going unconscious. So, um, you know, the fact is that when you start,

okay

living in India, venture life to an extreme level, uh, things go wrong and you have to be willing to accept that. And so there’s a big difference between peril, which is, uh, it’s exciting, but it’s, it, it’s very dangerous and perceived risk, which is, there’s a lot of things that are really scary but very, very safe and can give you that same sense of adventure without putting yourself in direct danger. So go skydiving, right? The chances of getting hurt skydiving is almost zero. I think it’s like three deaths per million or something absurd like that. Uh, whereas going to climb Everest, it’s used to be one out of four. I think now it’s like one out of five, it’s 4% or 5%. It’s like one out of 20 people die.

I have a five kids and uh, my partner and I, the two of us, we have built a 13 multimillion dollar companies and people always say, you guys, you got hit my partner, DoctorZ , he’s 54, I’m 38. And they go, you guys are risk takers. And I say, no, no, no. I’m afraid of speed,

water, heights, everything except for growing a company. And when I do, I grew up really poor. So I’m always a hedging my bet. So I don’t have the put Kapow. I mean, even if I, every business we’ve ever done is worked. But even if it didn’t work, I wouldn’t lose everything. So for me to get my adrenaline, what I’ll do is I’ll go up, pump gas and sometimes while on my cell phone, you know, because they say you shouldn’t do that. And that gives me an adrenaline. You are, we are a wild man. You, you, your, your stories. When I was watching videos of interviews you’ve done in the past, I was getting scared when hearing you share the story seriously, I’m getting anxiety hearing you do the running of the bulls. Why, what would you, I mean, what were you, when they, when they started, when they start to running of the bowls, what’s going through your mind as you hear the, the bowls approaching? What do you, what are you thinking? What are you doing a, walk us through that, that,

that was, so I left this part of the story out of the book, you have to wake up at like four o’clock in the morning, uh, and get there at about five because they kind of lock in the gates at six. But they kept kicking us out because the streets cleaners were coming. The, the first day of, of San Fermin or running of the Bulls is actually like an all day party. So there’s broken glass everywhere. Everybody’s getting super drunk. And when the rules is you can’t do the run trunk, it’s just too dangerous. And so, uh, they kept kicking us out and I kept sneaking in and eventually I snuck back in. The only place I could get in a was the last place I want it to be. It’s called a dead man’s corner. Oh. And if you think just anxiety from being in the stadium, dead man’s corner is that both are very fast running uphill, but there’s terrible at turning.

So this, it’s like a Harry Potter, like Lightening Bolt. It’s two turns, one right after the other. Uh, and uh, it’s where the runners often get hit by the bowls and the locals like to stand there and kind of pushed the runners to make sure they get hit. So the, uh, yeah, so I sneak back in, but the gates are locked in and uh, everybody’s kind of shoulder to shoulder, not able to move. Uh, and they’re making all these announcements over the PA system. But the proof will be on your shit and you can’t understand anything they’re saying, especially because it’s in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m, I’m freaking out. I’m literally stuck next to everybody and there’s like constant waves of motion pushing everybody, knocking them over and uh, and then they, you hear the trumpets and the trumpets signal that the bulls had been let out, but we’re still stuck in there.

Uh, and eventually, uh, they open up the gates and everybody’s freaking out because they know the bulls are right behind them. And so I’m running up this hill, uh, trying to get some distance, but you can’t see anything because everybody around you is like this tall drunk Australian person. And so, uh, what happens is that people run up the hill, but simultaneously they’re like looking back and jumping. And so you don’t really know what’s going on until like the person five feet ahead of you just goes, oh no, that the bull is there. And then, uh, you want to wait an extra couple of seconds so that you know that the bull is actually near you. And then you’d want to turn around and run like your life depends on it because it does.

And so I’m running as fast as I’ve ever run in my life. I have somehow make it into the stadium. I jumped off to the side and a bull swipes dry spot right by me and I am full on like adrenalized. And here’s where things started going really wrong. It turns out that human beings have this weird characteristic called the winner effect, and it’s actually a high road. And the winner effect is that when you experience a win,

your body floods with testosterone and it prepares you for the next battle. It makes you more confident and more likely to win your next battle. Now this is great if you’re like antelope battling one another, right? Because you win and then you go off to your next battle and you’re more likely to win. This happens to boxers as well. But the problem is that if you keep winning, you think you’re invincible and you get into unnecessary fights or and get killed. And so what I didn’t know is that once you make it into the stadium, uh, they closed the gates and then they let in bowls one at a time to mess with the runners and the runners will then do really stupid things. So they’ll try to jump over the bowls, they’ll try to taunt them though. So I think, oh, this is a great idea.

I’m going to run up to one of the bowls and I’m going to touch it. And so I run up, I touch it and like I get away and I’m like, oh, this is easy. So the next thing I do is I go, you know what? I’m going to slop. Slap the bull on its butt. No, no, no. That’s not a move. That’s not a move. That’s definitely, it’s definitely a move. Uh, and so I run up to this bull, I slap it on a task and it turns around and looks at me like, boy, you are crazy. And it starts like, it’s about to like full on charge me. And then out of the blue, like this drunk Australian guy distracted the bowl and I managed to get away. And so now completely like pumped full of adrenaline and testosterone. It nothing can stop me and I think I’m invisible.

And the way that bull’s enter the stadium is they kind of run down a plank and they’re these two gates and the two gates are opened. And as it enters the stadium, it jumps in. And what people do is they lie down on the ground and the bull jumps over them. And like the bull literally like what? Clear 12 people at a time. It’s incredible. And so I decide, okay, I’m going to do this. And I laid down and the bold jumps over me and clears me and I’m like, oh my God, this is incredible. So it’s the last bowl and that’s when, as I lie down another time and uh, the bull misses, it’s jump and lands on me and then it all went to hell. Your, your, your, your book is filled with so many knowledge bombs and sensational stories. I want to, I want to ask you, if somebody goes out there in, picks up a copy

of your book today, what kind of knowledge, what kind of mind expanding knowledge can they expect to find about the, the, the science of influencing, how he did the science of, of discovering the, the, the adventure and what makes us do things and what kinds of things can they find you

or book? So I’d love, uh, breaking down these kind of a tidbit there sometimes described as like lightening in a bottle, right? So one of the big mistakes that people make when they go out is that they try to push the experience long past the time that it’s enjoyable. So if you ever ended up at like three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning at a pizza place, being like, yeah, let’s keep this going, uh, it’s probably not worth it. You see, the issue is that human beings don’t process the duration of pleasure or pain. So imagine you were single, you were on a date and you are butterflies in your stomach for this person. And, uh, it’s three hours into the day. It’s the most amazing date you’ve ever been on. And it’s that point where you’re going to lean in for the kiss and just as you do, the person looks you in the eyes and says the most awful thing you have ever heard in your life. And you go home and your friends has good date or bad date and you say bad date. Exactly. That’s three hours of perfection, but three seconds of terrible and the entire experience is terrible. And that’s because we process our enjoyment by something called the peak end rule, which states that we remember the peaks of experiences and how they end disproportionately. So you’re better off calling an experience early

then letting it deteriorate into nothingness because especially if you’re out going out at night and you keep going and going, you’re going to be out to like three, four or five in the morning and then the next year going to be exhausted. You’re not going to remember the experience positively, even if most of the experience was good and you’re going to be less likely to participate in something again in the future. Not to mention the fact that you’ll be exhausted the following day. So one of the most important things you can do is to learn when to call it. And so if you’re not going to make it or if it’s out heading a direction, that’s going to be absolutely amazing when it starts getting late, just cut it. And so that’s a kind of science that can have a huge impact on people’s lives.

I don’t think that you are a crazy person, but I think somebody listening to this show is saying this guy sounds crazy. Could you explain a little bit about your educational background and what made you, or your research, what made you qualified to write this book and what the, what the 2:00 AM principle is all about?

So I work with, uh, uh, I do research. So my most recent research project was uh, and paper. We looked at, um, dating. And so we did the largest study and probably dating history. We looked at 431 million potential matches and asked the question, what gets people today? And we found really kind of wild things. Like if you have the same initial zero 11.3% more likely to date if you are a, if, oh, we’ve discovered the first relationship between introversion and extroversion. So we thought in every case the more similar you are, the more likely you are to date with the exception of introversion, extroversion, which is that two introverts almost never date because nobody starts a conversation. You need at least one extrovert. So, um, so we, I do that kind of research. My research partner is a really well known neuroscientist by the name of Moran Cerf.

Uh, and, uh, we ask questions about decision making and influence and kind of dive into them. Um, what I do professionally is I spend most of my time applying research to help companies often with their marketing. So my clients range from Microsoft and Dell and a to rework. And, uh, who else do I work with? Sap, salesforce. I mean if you often like these global 100 brands and, uh, we really look at how to apply science to help create more meaningful connections. And in the case of the science of adventure, I literally took research by the top minds, uh, across neuroscience, biology, behavioral economics, and I interviewed them and I asked the question of what would actually make life more exciting and what are the principles there? And then I put them to the test to personally. So everything that’s in the book is something that I’ve actually tested or I’ve looked at the patterns and I said, how, what’s, what’s going to, to work here and, and why does it work here?

So I might look at research on risk taking, and it turns out that you can get people to take riskier behavior and kind of funny ways. Uh, so, uh, have you ever watched a movie with like really intense action scenes and felt really pumped after? Oh yeah. Rocky, I watch rocky four every time. Just do it. We just get this fired up for it for a month and a half. Yeah. So it turns out that watching fast paced movie clips gets you to perform riskier behavior by a significant percentage. Just looking or just reading texts faster causes you to be willing to do riskier things, which is crazy. Like that. Something that simple that if I wanted to get people to, to agree to doing something stupid, just showing them a clip beforehand. It shouldn’t have any effect. Your, it does. You’re a book cover. I’m not sure the effect that it’s having on me that it had on me. What

your book cover is. Awesome.

It is awesome. Thank you. It’s a, I’m really proud of it. I didn’t design it. Uh, it was designed by the same guy who designed the Hamilton Book and uh, if you remember the game by Neil Strauss and it actually has a pinwheel in it so that you can rotate the cover it, like it has a spinner and then it gives you different challenges to do, uh, ranging from like convince a stranger you to just met to get on a flight with you, which is something I did in Stockholm. Arlanda airport. I was, uh, going through duty free with my best friend Liam, and it was like five o’clock in the morning and I, uh, the woman behind the duty free counter asked for my ticket to make sure that I was eligible for duty free. I pass it to her and she goes, oh, Israel. And I go, yeah, do you want to come? And she goes, yeah. And I go, great. Then come. And she goes, well, I’m a Grad student. It’s really expensive and I can’t afford it. So I was like, what if I paid for your trip? And she goes, okay. Okay. So 24 hours later, she, uh, well while we were still at the airport, we found our flight and 24 hours later she left her job and joined me and my family and my best friend, Liam, to travel around Israel for a week.

You are, you, your whole, your whole narrative, your whole story is defies conventional wisdom. And I think that’s the power of, of your book a little bit is that your book, the 2:00 AM principle, it’s, it’s encouraging people, teaching people the science of influence and adventure for that. I think there’s somebody listening today who was like, I live a boring life. I want to be adventurous. Do you think that your book could inspire people to be more adventurous?

I think it can without a doubt, and I think when the important things is that I put myself through absurd failures and embarrassing moments and like I was so unpopular growing up that it was a very painful process to get to the point that I felt comfortable one in my own skin and to putting myself out there to that degree. And so I think there’s a few things that are important. One is we need to understand what an adventure is. An adventure. I had to define it because there was no clear definition of it. And I say it’s an experience that is one exciting and remarkable. It’s worth talking about too. It possesses adversity and or risk, preferably perceived risk, right? It’s the difference between climbing Everest and going skydiving. One is significantly safer than the other, but in both cases you have your adrenaline pumping, you’re really getting out of your comfort zone. And third is it brings about growth. The person you are at the end is distinct from the person that started. And so you don’t have to be convincing strangers to travel with you or battling enormous thousand pound beasts in order to live an adventurous life. If you’re an introvert, there’s plenty of things that you can do that can fit in and what you feel is at least reasonable. Um, but the key is to always push your comfort zone. And that’s where the adventure happened. So

if I were to recommend anything, it’s that you need to have a willingness to be uncomfortable because pushing your comfort zone and growing and having new experiences, um, is going to be fundamentally uncomfortable to some degree. But that’s where the magic is because frankly, long, long, long past the point that you forget the experiences, you’ll still have an expanded capacity. You’ll still be a human being has grown true. And that’s what you get to take away from it. Got It.

The question that I have, I’m sure our listeners out there have had this question too, is the 2:00 AM principle, what is, what is the 2:00 AM principle? Uh, so

yeah,

it’s kind of two things. One is that I kept noticing that at some time around two o’clock in the morning was this point that either things deteriorated and went absolutely awful or were so incredible that I was jealous of myself. And so the 2:00 AM principle says you kind of have to learn how to call it. And the basic idea is that nothing good happens after 2:00 AM except the most epic experiences of your life. And epic is a, the four letters that represent the process of an adventure. Establish, push boundaries, increase continue. So if you follow these four stages, you’ll have an extraordinary night or experience or whatever you want to call it. Uh, but you got to always know when to call it,

establish, push boundaries, increase and continue and continue. Okay. My marketing companies called Make Your Life Epic Agency. And the company’s been around since 2009. It’s one of the largest, um, marketing companies in Oklahoma. And people want to say, well, why did you name it that? And I said, well, I think life for me at least had been filled with supreme lows and also supreme highs. But you never get the highs or the extreme lows if you don’t do anything. And so we wanna help our clients do some pretty innovative marketing that has the capacity to, you know, make your life epic. And so I, I really love that, that word. Um, epic, I know the listeners there are, are dying to get a copy of your book. Obviously, they can pick your, pick your book up on Amazon. Um, it, was there a particular website you would prefer our listeners to go check out or a particular social media handle or where’s the best place for listeners to learn more about you and the research that you do?

Um, so I’ve done tons of interviews. Uh, the book was covered by everybody from Gq and owl folk to, yeah, I’ve done interviews obviously with you, but also with Lewis Howes. And Jordan Harbinger and uh, it’s been kind of featured everywhere at this point, um, of the, uh, Amazon and uh, what’s it called? Uh, Barnes and nobles have it. I hope the local bookstore around you has it. Uh, and if you want to find out more about me, you can follow me on Instagram. Jon Levy, Tlb, Jon, l, E v y t like Thomas l like lion B like boy. Uh, and I’m Jon Levy TLB on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, uh, and I’m super easy to get ahold of. I’m also Jon Levy tlb.com. Uh, and so feel free to reach out and follow or message or whatever it is that you want to do. Um, I’m around

thrivers for a good time. If you’re looking for a good time riding on the inside of a bathroom stall for a good time, pick up this book because the cover, the cover itself is interactive. It’s a neat conversation starter and the book is filled with so many fun stories, insightful knowledge and research. Uh, Jon, I know you could be anywhere in the world right now running with the bowls, but you’ve chosen to be here with us. Thank you so much, my friend, for taking time out of your schedule to do this.

A real treat. I really enjoyed this, so thank you very much for having me on.

Alright, you take care of my friend to thrive nation would like to end each and every show with a boom. So here we go. Without any further ado, three, two, one, boom. Before I let you go, I do have a few housekeeping notes here. Um, it occurs to me is it has occurred to me that, uh, having met thousands of you at our in-person workshops, that some of you believe that you have the capacity to change and to grow that business. You’ve always been thinking of how I have the ability to become the person that you’ve always been wanting to be, uh, have the capacity to lose the weight. I think there’s a large percentage of you that believe that you can make the changes that you want to make this year. However, I think there’s somebody out there and it’s probably not you. It’s probably somebody else who feels like you can’t make the changes.

And so you just kind of listening to the show because maybe it’s interesting for you or you liked the variety of guests that we have on the show. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But the whole point of the show, the reason why we do this show is to help you change your life. And so recently I was able to get, uh, one of the, one of the great clients that we’ve had the honor of, of serving a guy by the name of Doctor Breck Kaz bomb, Dr brick chasm. You can check out his website it, Dr B r e c k.com, Dr B r e c k.com. I was able to get Dr Brick in the studio and this is the guy who’s been a chiropractor for over 15 years. And I brought him onto the show and I asked him to, to share his story of where he was at and where he is now.

And all of his, I mean he’s, this guy’s had major changes in, in less than a year’s time. He’s been able to double the size of his company and less than a year’s time. And so I’m going to cue up the interview with Doctor Breck cause I want to build your faith and encourage you that you don’t have to just be a standing on the outside looking in at other people having success. You can join in the success. You can do it. This is your year to thrive now, Dr Brick, talk to me about, um, since you’ve worked with Tim the last year and a half, two years, the year, uh, what kind of changes have you made and how has it impacted your overall profitability or growth?

Well, I’m happy to report that, you know, December of 2018 we had our highest grossing month, so I’m super excited about that. Ever. Ever.

Wow. That doesn’t, you know what that deserves.

New Year.

I knew you. How is it possible? He’s a diligent doer. So what kind of practical changes have you made?

Oh Man. Um, well we had to look at our price structure. So, you know, we have to, we have to be honest with the value and, and what it costs to deliver services and we can’t continue to give away services, um, you know, for free or, or losing money on them. And so that was one of the big steps. Uh, we also had to get rid of toxic employees, um, or, or even contractors. In our case, the massage therapist, uh, are self employed contractors. Um, but a little warning about therapists, by the way, the only difference between the rapist and a therapist is a space. Yeah. Just think about it. Okay. Back to you. That reminds me, Sean Connery on Friday, Saturday night live

right now. Okay. So, so other changes you’ve made this year, what other changes you made you, you

nonexistent on, uh, on our SEO literally was, was nonexistent. You may have found me if you put my name in exactly spelled correctly, you might’ve found me on like 20 pages back.

Got It. But now you’ve got all the content, all the tags, Google reviews. I’ve, so that

start it from scratch. And we now have like 257 reviews and we’re climbing the Google search engine each day.

I was doing a search for you. Uh, was it yesterday and I, I think you were over to 50 and we pull it up real quick. Two 57. You’re right.

257 Google reviews. And so are you, are you having people who are finding you online now? Yes. And that’s it. That’s a nice new thing. You know, people come in and I’m like, Hey, I saw your reviews. Are you hoping, are you up 10% more than last year? 20%. What percentage are you up? We’re, we’re up. Um, so it fluctuates a little bit, but, but I mean literally from like a year and a half ago to now we’re up double. Double. Yeah. Now have you, um, have you fixed your, have you changed or improved your sales scripting or your sales processes that we have? Yeah, we, we very intensely went over a lot of scripting and things. Um, but then also we do, um, we do have a no brainer offer. Yeah. And so the conversion aspect of that to go from, hey, this is all free too.

I do expect you to pay me at some point. I’m getting a better conversion script for me to work from a has also been very helpful. And then you have from an HR perspective, hiring people, uh, I’m not gonna put words in your mouth, but most people, most clients we’ve worked with, most doctors who work with before business owners before they come into our program, have a hard time finding good people. And then after they’re in the program, that’s usually not a problem anymore. Right. Is that the case with you or are you doing good and finding people or how have you changed your recruitment process? So just before starting working with Tim, um, we had to, we had some change up and some, you know, some people left on her own accord and got a, we’re about to have that conversation anyway, so it worked out a nice timing.

Um, but, uh, yeah, so we’ve brought on some great people, um, in the last year and, uh, and now we’re, we’re operating from a totally different way of thinking about that with not being held captive and, and a hostage in my own office. And how do you feel now? I mean, do you and your wife, does it, does it feel better? Do you feel, have more pride about the business now that you’re more profitable? Absolutely. I mean, on a daily by difference in her eyes to really, yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been a doctor for the last 15 years, but, uh, you know, to be a successful doctors kind of a little better. And so I needed the actual tangible action steps, like, give me a task to do today that I can, I can put my hands to work, um, on doing that. But I mean, I, I had to borrow money from family members.

Thank you dad. A big shout out to your dad. I owe you. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it was tough on my wife. Uh, she’s a school teacher and we were, we were living paycheck to paycheck every month. Uh, trying to rob Peter to pay Paul. Got It. And not fun. Not Fun at all. And you’re a doctor, your chiropractor. Yeah, it’s embarrassing. If you’re struggling today and you find it to be embarrassing or frustrating, or you just feel overwhelmed and stuck, just go to thrive time show.com today and schedule your one on one consultation or book your tickets today to an in person workshop for for $250. You get access to all the downloadables to all the videos. It’s, it’s basically 20 bucks a month. You have access to an in person workshop, a two day in person, interactive business workshop, the highest rated business workshop on the planet, a year’s worth of videos, downloadables, templates, tools. It’s all there. You can get all of that for hundred and $50 at thrive time. show.com today. Invest in yourself. You can do it. We’ll see tomorrow.