Transcription
This is Joe Rogan. And despite the weed smoking, Joe Rogan has become one of the most successful and influential men in history. And this was completely by accident.
"What are you hoping to achieve five years, ten years from now? Who do you, who do you hope to be?"
"I don't, ah, I think like that. You don't?"
"No, I just do things that I like to do."
If there was like a conventional way to go about building your career, Joe Rogan has done the exact opposite of that. You see, Rogan has accidentally lived by a set of what I'm calling unconventional truths. And these unconventional truths have allowed him to conquer multiple industries and see an insane amount of success throughout his life.
An unconventional truth is something that goes against common knowledge. It's the opposite of what your friends and parents and teachers will tell you to do. And yet, using these truths as a guide for you will put you on a completely different path from your peers and unlock opportunities for you that you never thought were possible.
So today, I want to share with you three unconventional truths that I have learned from studying the career and life of Joe Rogan, so you too can use them to level your life up. And if you stick around for the next few minutes, I promise to give you a different perspective on how you think about your life and your path to success.
One of the things that is so interesting about Rogan is he is a chief success multiple times in multiple different industries. He's a successful cage fighting commentator for the UFC, a comedian who has multiple specials on Netflix, cause nothing that's nice as a tale like that. And most notably, he has the number one podcast in the world, The Joe Rogan Experience, which recently sold its exclusive rights to Spotify for a whopping 200 million beans.
But for most of Rogan's life, podcasting and MMA didn't even exist. And comedy was seen as a profession for the weirdos of society. So he says to me, "That's what she said." Tough crowd.
[Music]
But where most people will look away and shake their heads in disapproval, we will find our first unconventional truth. You can be successful doing anything. Imagine a young Joe Rogan telling his mother that the thing that would make him the most successful in his life was recording himself smoking weed and talking [ __ ] with his friends.
"Being Italian, like my mother is, I think Mama Rogan probably would have told Joe that he's butts or smacked him across the head."
And this is why our first unconventional truth, that you can make a living doing anything, is so important because it's designed to open our minds to the possibilities of what's out there. If you think of any single niche, there is someone or many people making a good living doing it. Pat Flynn makes six figures a year creating Pokemon videos on YouTube. Thomas Frank makes $120,000 a month selling Notion templates to nerds like me.
And all of this is possible because we are living in the Golden Age of Internet creators. Right now, you can share whatever you're passionate about online, no matter what the heck it is. And if you keep improving, you will eventually be able to make a full-time living off this thing that you are passionate about.
Have you ever watched episode one of The Joe Rogan Experience? Start broadcast terrible. But fast forward to today, 14 years later and almost 2,000 episodes, and this is the most successful podcast in history. But it's not just Joe. This trend has been observed in many other creators. Marcus Brownlee, arguably the best tech YouTuber, started like this.
"Stay tuned for more battery tips. I'm still uploading more battery tips for you guys."
And Mr. Beast, the biggest YouTuber, started like this.
"One, two, three, four, five, six."
Imagine how satisfying it would be for you tomorrow if you woke up and you were able to work on the thing that you were most passionate about. Photography, Lego, Minecraft, whatever.
When The Joe Rogan Experience started, in that very first episode where Joe is fumbling to get the stream set up, he never would have expected that he would eventually sell the exclusive rights to that podcast for $200 million. But that's just it. When you start looking at your life and your career like anything is possible, the anime imaginable can happen.
And this brings us to our second unconventional truth. You don't need a plan to start now. This one probably sounds a little crazy because if you're anything like me, when you were growing up and going through school, you probably had a very detailed plan on exactly how your life was going to go.
Joe started martial arts when he was just a boy, purely because he was curious and interested in it. Little did he know that he would eventually use this experience to become a commentator with the UFC. In the beginning, when he started commentating for the UFC, he wasn't even getting paid. He was just trading his time for tickets to some of the biggest events. But fast forward to today, and he's regarded as one of the best MMA commentators on the planet.
The same is true with his comedy. When he started working, he worked at his local comedy club for 13 years for free. Fast forward to today, he has two Netflix specials, he sells out giant arenas, and he's one of the most sought-after comics on the planet.
And lastly, with The Joe Rogan Experience and podcasting, the original goal for The Joe Rogan Experience was, I quote, "sitting in front of laptops bullshitting." Fast forward to today, and Rogan is one of the most influential thinkers and media personalities in history. He pulls in more views than CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and Tucker Carlson combined.
There's no way that Rogan had a plan to achieve success in all these different industries and all these other things that have come up. He just followed his curiosity and worked hard.
"No, I just do things that I like to do."
The same is true for Mr. Beast. He started as a YouTuber in his bedroom alone, and now he has grown his channel into one of the most watched channels in history. And this has allowed him to unlock other opportunities like his burger chain, Beast Burger, or his own chocolate bar that he just created. And in addition to this, he's helped clean oceans, plant trees, and he regularly provides food for less fortunate people through his philanthropy arm, Mr. Beast Philanthropy.
Taking the first step can often be the hardest. But if you have something that you're curious about, please don't overthink it. You do not need a full plan. Just start doing the thing.
This second truth is super powerful because it frees us of too many expectations. It also helps us to avoid overthinking, which can cause us to do nothing and never get started. Start the thing, work at it, get better, and opportunities will present themselves that you never thought were possible when you started.
Plus, over time, your interests will compound. And this is actually our third unconventional truth. Interests compound. No, I'm not talking about money here, but the principle is very similar. Over time, your skills will get better, and this will help you to get new opportunities, which will teach you new skills, that again helps you to get more opportunities in your life. And that compounding effect is what I mean when I say your interests will compound.
Now, there are a few people in this world that have masterfully compounded their interests as well as Joe Rogan. And he didn't plan this at the start of his life. It happened accidentally.
If you look at the first three careers Rogan had, he was an actor, he, he was a comedian, and then he was a commentator for the UFC. There is actually a higher level of skills crossover within all three of these gigs. You need to know how to perform. You need to know how to think on your feet. You need to be confident in front of a camera. You need to be funny, and you need to be able to make jokes.
All of these skills compounding over time across these three different disciplines led him to his most successful endeavor ever: The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. The thing that makes The Joe Rogan Experience so good is that Rogan used his skills from all these other industries that he had been compounding over the years. And this unconventional truth that interests compound, even though they seem completely weird and different in the beginning, is probably one of the most powerful level-ups you can find in your life.
We all have skills that we have today that we can use when we seek out new opportunities. For me, my formal education was in graphic design, and those skills that I learned in graphic design compound and help me greatly with this YouTube channel, with the editing, with the thumbnails, and with basically anything visual that I create for Head Source.
Another set of skills that is compounding for me is my ability to write and research for these videos. You could imagine at one point in time, I could use these same skills to write a book or something, whatever it is. Before we move into a new opportunity, we should take a second to think about what skills we already have that we can leverage to put ourselves at a huge advantage.
So now you're sitting there juiced up thinking, right, this is awesome. I'm going to lean into whatever I'm curious about. This is going to be great. But stop. I've got something special for you that's going to give you the motivation of an investment banker on Ritalin by showing you how one of the greatest athletes of all time started as an average child and transformed himself into the immortal player that we know of him today, Michael Jordan. You should check out this video right now.