--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have a tremendous conversation for you, an interview with Dan Go. Dan is an executive fitness coach, and I've been following Dan for a long time on Twitter and on YouTube. I've listened to many of his episodes. I've read a lot of his articles. The way he approaches fitness is pragmatic, it's practical, and it is set up specifically for high-performing individuals who are struggling to keep their fitness and health in line with their business performance. And I just enjoy Dan's philosophy, the way he goes about it, his nature. And this conversation takes so many different twists and turns as we approach this topic from multiple directions.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: As you know, as I've said on this show for years, health is a competitive advantage in business. And Dan is the guy to get us there. I appreciate you for listening to this show. I love you for listening to this show. And whether you're listening to it on Apple, Spotify or whatever, or watching it on YouTube. If you're not already subscribed to the show, and if you have comments, questions, things you want to add, come over to YouTube, leave those in the comments. I collect all those comments. And on some of the solo episodes, I go in and answer those. And if I can even get our guests to come back and answer some of those, I do that as well. So I love you guys. Let's get on to Dan Go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dan, so excited to have you on the show, man. Thanks for taking some time out today.
--:-- Dan Go: I appreciate you for having me. Enjoy the conversation that we just had previous to this. Good laughs all around, so I think this is going to be good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, sometimes you start a podcast, you start talking to somebody, you never know if you're going to click with that person, what it's going to be. And then you start having a conversation and you're like, "Ah, I wish I had hit the record button." That was really good. But it's all good. Well, we can get into that if we want to.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For everyone listening, I've been following Dan for a while on Twitter. Love the stuff that you put out. I found an article that made me think, "I want to talk to him about this," reached out, and you accepted the invitation to come on the show. But then I found another article that I want to use as the crux of our conversation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For those listening, they know I work with a lot of executives. I work with a lot of startups. And for years now on this podcast, I have been sharing the idea that health is a competitive advantage. And I've told my story around 2017, I had a health issue and I completely refocused my health and fitness and made it a priority, and it's changed my life. I dropped 25 pounds, et cetera. But despite me trying to bang them over the head with that for years, so many people neglect their fitness and their health, and they don't associate it to how they actually perform in business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One more little contextual piece of information: I actually did a keynote on Wednesday down in Dallas. It's about how do we finish projects, and I have this little form. It doesn't matter. Afterwards, I'm standing there decompressing, and a guy walks up and he said, "In high school and college, I was a baseball player. I was fit. You never had to ask me twice to get to the gym. I was constantly there. I was constantly working out. I loved how in shape I was." He said, "At 38, I'm 50 pounds overweight. I can't get myself going. I don't like the way I feel. I can't change my habits."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My answer to him, and this is where I want to kick it to you to see what you would say and then where we go with this. My answer to him, in my limited health knowledge, was the difference is you don't have a goal today. There's no "why" pushing you or pulling you to get to the gym. In college, it might have been to be a starter on that team, find a woman, get laid, whatever. You had a priority that kept you going back. And today you don't have that priority. Now he's a very successful business guy. If that gentleman had walked up to you and said that same thing, how would you start to address it with him, given that he essentially is your target market? He's an executive who's struggling to get his fitness to match his business performance.
--:-- Dan Go: The very first thing I would do is ask questions. That's the most important thing. Coming from a coach's standpoint, it's one thing to tell someone what they should be doing. It's another thing to use questions to guide what's already inside of that person. So you're right. He had a goal most likely before. He was playing high level baseball. He wanted to keep himself in shape. He wanted to be his athletic best. Now that may have changed in terms of his motivations.
--:-- Dan Go: I would ask him first, "Okay, so why do you want to get in shape in the first place?" And then you go through his surface level answers: "I just want to feel more confident. I just want to feel better about myself." All this kind of stuff. Then you ask him, "Okay, so why does that stuff matter to you?" And then I would keep extracting and trying to peel this onion, getting to the core reason why. Once we get there, we understand what the motivation is. And the thing about motivation is it's very fleeting. You have this window of opportunity to really act on it. But once we find the core motivation, then we have the ammo necessary to say, "Okay, cool. Then what are we struggling with right now? What do we need to do in order to turn the ship around? What's the destination?"
--:-- Dan Go: A lot of times people say, "I want to get in shape." Well, if you say you just want your business to be successful, what does that mean? When I deal with entrepreneurs, I deal with people who are very targeted in the metrics they are trying to accomplish in their business. But when I ask them about their bodies, they're so vague in general. "Oh yeah, I just want to get in shape," or "I just want more energy." Well, how do you quantify that? Because the brain works in such a way where you have to be exact about where you want to end up. That's the thing with entrepreneurs. They don't take the brain they have for their businesses and apply it to their bodies. They treat it like an amateur rather than a pro.
--:-- Dan Go: So what I try to do is find out what the core reason is, what the core "why" is. And then afterwards, we try to treat their bodies almost like they treat their businesses, and we try to make it in that language so they understand. Then they turn this whole getting in shape thing from a process that was maybe kind of "I don't know what I'm doing" to an actual objective process that you can understand. So that's probably the first thing I would do. First and second thing is, what's the destination? What's the why behind it?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I actually feel bad that he asked me that question and not you now. Also, I think I had speaker brain, that first half hour after you get off the stage. You want to answer people's questions, but you have nothing left.
--:-- Dan Go: Well, he's saying, "Give me advice, give me advice." And our automatic is like, "All right, here's the advice. This is what I did."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes. And that's totally cool. It's what he asked for. I just realized through the years of coaching that telling people to do one thing is just one thing. But most of the time, people actually have the answers inside of them. They have to come up with the answers themselves through really good clarity, through really good question asking. And once they get there, then they have ownership over what they do, as opposed to someone saying, "You do this, you do that."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And it's funny how when something is outside of your domain, I do something very similar. I love the Socratic method, which is what you just described. But if I'm working with a startup founder, that's second nature. And then in almost all other things in my life, I'm just like, "Do this," and you don't walk away. It's funny how domain knowledge is like that. And I guess that goes to my next question: Is that the issue with health and fitness for a lot of these business professionals who haven't yet taken it on? Their domain knowledge is in whatever they're executing in their business. And it's in our nature as humans that we just don't naturally apply that to other things. I would imagine that once one of your clients works through this process with you, it feels very similar to things they do in their own business, but they just never even thought on their own to apply that same process to their fitness.
--:-- Dan Go: Something I realized a lot is that things that are obvious to us are not obvious to others. So it's easy for me to stand here and say, "Oh yeah, you could just treat your body just like you do your business," when there is such a disconnect. I've worked with a lot of people, and it's been this subconscious thing that I've already done. So I do feel that people like yourself, people like myself, coaches should be a tool to guide them to that. It's not like they can automatically be like, "Oh well, I measure what I manage, so if I measure the metrics in my business, why am I not measuring the metrics inside of my body?" It's easier said than done.
--:-- Dan Go: Also, something I realized is that through the exposure of doing business, business owners actually become more objective about each metric that happens in their business. So if sales go down, they're not going to panic and be like, "Oh my gosh." They're going to be like, "Okay, cool. What's the cause? What's the thing that happened?" And the thing is, they don't really take that same mindset with their bodies because they have not been focused on their bodies as long as they have with their businesses. So they step on the scale and they see themselves doing everything that they should have been doing, and they're up two pounds. They start freaking out. They say, "This diet sucks. I'm not getting anywhere." And they haven't been exposed to the emotions that you need to be exposed to when you're transforming your body. It's much like doing a startup, especially if you're just starting or restarting.
--:-- Dan Go: So you have to get through those emotions. It's better if you have a coach or at least something to guide you to tell you what you should be doing. And along that process, you should be learning a lot about yourself. As you learn lessons from building up a business to whatever size that you want, you should actually be honing in the lessons that you're learning from transforming your body. These are external processes that are really masking the true process, which is self-development and developing yourself as a person.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It almost comes as second nature, or it's just an accepted practice that most entrepreneurs, executives, et cetera, having a business coach, having a board of directors, having an early mentor, finding an early investor who acts as an advisor to your company. It almost comes as second nature to them. And then so many people fight having a fitness or health coach. And I think this also goes for mental health as well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The best piece of advice that I've ever gotten was from a mentor of mine. About five years ago, I was on my journey of taking control of my health and my fitness. I started to do that. But my mental health, I had never addressed my mental health. And he said, "Go find a counselor, someone who you're not related to, isn't a friend, someone completely removed from your life, and pay them every two weeks and just sit down with them every two weeks for the rest of your life." That's what he said. He goes, "Every two weeks for the rest of your life, sit down with that person and just consider it a life expense. Just put it in your budget, make it a life expense. Good, bad, everything's amazing, everything's terrible, and just talk to them." And that has quite literally changed the course of my life.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And again, I think about it like that makes sense to me. Business makes sense to me. And I still fight the idea sometimes of having a fitness coach. I have had some fitness coaches, but I fight the idea of just having somebody with me all the time. So do you feel like, why do we fight this? Is it because it feels like something, particularly to fitness and health, that we should be able to take on ourselves? Is it an ego thing? Is it a lack of knowledge? Is there some sort of stigma around having a health or fitness coach that keeps people from engaging? Does that make sense what I'm asking you?
--:-- Dan Go: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things at play. Number one, you're going to get coaching for the thing that you want to get better at and the thing that you prioritize. Most times when entrepreneurs are thinking about where they should get a coach, it's obviously going to be for their business because that is the number one thing that they prioritize in their lives. Now, what are other things that they prioritize but they don't really think that they need a coach in? Whether it be relationships with their wife or husband, being a parent, their health. They think of these things as natural processes that just happen as a result of you going through it, when they really should be treating it as something that you can actually learn and get from A to B a lot faster than just trying to figure it out on your own or just trying to read books about it.
--:-- Dan Go: Also, I think when people think about coaches, they think a lot about the educational aspect of things. "Okay, what am I going to learn from this coach?" Especially when it comes to fitness, everyone kind of thinks that they know everything already, especially if you're on social media. It's like, "Okay, well, I've just looked at 10 reels that told me not to eat vegetables, not to eat meat, and not to do all this kind of stuff. And now I'm educated, right?" But it's not necessarily like that.
--:-- Dan Go: The way I look at coaches is as this amalgamation of the right education for the right time of where you are at that very moment, plus implementation, plus accountability. It's not enough to know; you must do. And that's what coaches do. They hold you to the fire of the thing that you said you were going to do. And if you don't do it, that's where the accountability comes in, saying, "Okay, why didn't you do it?" That's why I think coaching works so well, especially in the fitness field, because you have someone there who's telling you what the right thing is to do at the right time.
--:-- Dan Go: I'll use a story for this. One of my clients in the past, over the past 14 weeks, he dropped like 50 pounds off of his body. Incredible. He took himself from 36% body fat down to 23% body fat. Now he's asking me, "Okay, Dan, what are we going to do next?" I told him, "Based on where we are at this very moment, I think we have this opportunity to get to 19 to 18% body fat based on the trajectory of where our weight loss is at this very moment. We can continue this on for another six to eight weeks. But over time, what's going to happen, some things that I've seen is the symptoms of being on a diet for way too long. You get hungry at these weird times. You eat a meal and you're still hungry after you eat a meal. These are signs that your hunger hormones and your appetite hormones are coming back and are going to bite you in the ass a little bit. So when that happens, we're going to up our calories. We're going to keep ourselves within this variance of weight where we're at. We're going to take advantage of these calories and use them to build muscle."
--:-- Dan Go: I tell this story because a lot of times people think that fitness and weight loss is this simple process. You just eat less and move more. It's kind of like telling someone to build wealth by spending less than you earn. It's a trite statement, but it's much more complicated than that. You probably know this through startup coaching as well. So we have to understand that every single thing that matters to us, especially health, even relationships, is much more complex than we think.
--:-- Dan Go: Going back to the example that you used for the therapist as well, I too get therapy. Every single time I'm about to get therapy, I'm like, "Why do I have this in my calendar? I don't even think that I want to cancel." But I've done it enough times that I know that after I'm done that call, I'm going to be put on the right path. I'm going to feel so much better. It's just like, before you get onto them, I'd rather do business. I'd rather create stuff. So it's kind of like this thing where you don't necessarily know the value until you actually go through it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree with that more. I think with all things, the word that I actually heard you use a couple of times in there is "nuance." That aspect of almost everything is so important. And we see these reels. You talk about there was a reel of Dana White saying Gary Brecka changed his life. The next reel was Gary Brecka on stage saying something. And then the next reel was Bio Lane talking about why everything Gary Brecka said was ridiculous. It was one, two, three in a row. So if you don't have someone in your life who can address the specific nuances of your lifestyle, of your goals, of your body composition, of your tastes, of what you're willing to sacrifice to get to that place, you're lost.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Someone may say, "I want to drop X number of pounds, but I'm unwilling to not drink alcohol on the weekends." Okay. How do you figure out how to do that? You need someone who can understand what you're trying to get to. But if you're just scrolling through reels, one minute you hear Dana White. He looks amazing. You're like, "Wow, that looks great." And you hear the guy literally talking. You're like, "There he is. I'm going to follow what he says." And then the next guy is telling you all that stuff is nuts. You're like, "What am I supposed to do?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Those nuances are important. Most successful people assume and understand that nuance is important in business. But I think everything else that you mentioned—our mental health, our relationship with our spouse or partner, our relationship with our children if we have them—is incredibly nuanced. And why wouldn't our relationship with food, exercise, fitness, and health also be nuanced? I just don't think you can get that from generic social media stuff. I don't think it's a bad thing to get small tips and inspiration. We were talking a little bit about that before. Even Alex Hormozi the other day in an interview with Chris Williamson said, "I scroll Instagram and look at motivational quotes. I like them. They make me feel good." That's great. But if you live your life by those, it's very difficult to hit the mark. It's not tailored to what you need. And that is so incredibly important.
--:-- Dan Go: Yeah. I look at people like puzzle pieces, especially the clients. Each client is going to be so different based on a number of factors. What's your time commitment? Some clients like to cook food. Other clients don't even know how to turn on their stove. Some clients love to work out. They love spending three hours in the gym every single week. And there are other clients where they're like, "I am so allergic to the gym. I hate even being here. I feel like I'm being looked at and watched."
--:-- Dan Go: The thing with getting all this information, this abundance of information especially from social media, is that number one, it's not necessarily vetted for your situation. It's a steady stream of different thoughts. And I think that's cool. It's good to have guys who disagree with each other and give you a little bit of a challenge in terms of what you're thinking. But at the same time, if you're doing that and that is the only place where you're trying to educate yourself and piece together a plan that's supposed to be working for you and you alone, I don't think it's a good strategy. If I wanted to build a business, I'm not going to go on social media and just look at how other people are building businesses because they're all optimizing for something different.
--:-- Dan Go: This reminds me of a dinner I was at. To put things in context, I optimize for impact and reach. That's the thing I optimize for, especially when it comes to social media. I was talking to this guy. I just met him for the first time. He knew what I did. He found me on social media. So when I sat beside him, he was like, "Here's all the ways that you can monetize your audience. Here's what you should be doing to monetize and make more money." I never asked him for advice, mind you. Unsolicited. But the thing is, he's trying to optimize me for the thing that he wants, which is money. And I'm not. I like money. I think it's great. But I do think that the way in which I'm making money is a little bit more conducive to what I want to do in the long term, which is really just impact and living a fulfilling life, creating really cool shit. So over time, I extricated myself from that conversation.
--:-- Dan Go: That's the thing. When you're on social media, even if you follow me, we optimize for the thing that we want. My whole thing is, get your body to a level that's avoiding preventable disease, feel good, look good, and do so in a simple way that fits your lifestyle. For other people, they're like, "Get a six pack, be at 10% body fat. Oh no, you got to gain enough muscle so you're always over 200 pounds at 8% body fat." They're making you optimize for their goals and their subjective idea of what success means to them, especially when it comes to health. The reality is, you got to ask yourself, "Okay, what do I really want? And who is the person that's going to best help me get to this place?" If you're a hammer, everything's a nail.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I completely agree. And it's funny. What I do is very similar. I have no intention of building my YouTube channel for max ad revenue. I want to help people. I hit a certain point in my life where I found that working towards becoming the best version of yourself, whatever that looks like for you based on your particular goals, that journey seemingly leads to a more satisfying, content, happy life. I don't love "happy" because happy is more derivative, but it just does. And getting that message into the world and trying to be a positive influence to fight against all the negative is my goal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's funny, I will have people come up to me and they're like, "Are you selling affiliate links through your email list?" And I'm like, "No, I don't do that." Mostly if I create something I think is really awesome, I just tell them about it. The idea is like, no, I'm not doing that. I have a way of making money. I like those things. Those things seem to impact people in a very positive way. And I want to do more of those things and get better at those things, but I don't need 19 streams of income to be happy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do think this idea of being careful where you get your advice until you know why you're getting it and how it's being framed for you is really good. Understanding why someone is sharing a piece of advice for you is just as important as the advice that you're actually receiving. I'm very happy that you brought that up. I think it's important.
--:-- Dan Go: I always ask this question. I think it's a great question to ask ourselves too. It's like, what are we optimizing for? So let's just say we're getting someone into a program and he's like, "Okay, I want to get my weight down from 220 to 180 pounds." Okay, cool. That's the outcome. That's the destination. But what else are we optimizing for? Most people optimize to get to the weight loss result, but they don't optimize to keep the weight loss result. It's like, "I will do this unsustainable thing. I'll drop 20, 40 pounds in however long, and I will do so in a way that is not conducive to me even wanting to live this lifestyle by the time I'm done with it."
--:-- Dan Go: The biggest question I get asked every single time is, "Okay, Dan, what happens after you lose the weight? What happens after we get there?" I'm just like, "Well, getting there is one thing, keeping it is another." The goal is not necessarily to try to control this outcome. I think I say this all the time, and it sounds like it flies in the face of what I'm talking about, but it doesn't. You don't have control over your weight. You don't have control over even how much money you make. You don't have control over what people think about you. You don't have control over how many likes you're going to get on a specific post when you put it out there. But you do have control over your behaviors. You do have control over the way in which you react to things. You have control over the foods that you put into your mouth. You have control over the behavior of actually going to the gym and working. You have control over looking at your KPIs and making sure that you are making progress and taking steps. These are the things that we do have control over.
--:-- Dan Go: I'm so glad that you said the whole idea of fulfillment and happiness. I think a lot of times we get so much anxiety by trying to control these outcomes when the reality is that we should be putting focus into the behaviors. A lot of times when we get a client into a program, our main question is, "Okay, what type of person are you becoming as a result of reaching this destination?" Because it's not necessarily about you doing all these tactics. Yes, it may get you there. But more so, have we set up a plan that's going to be conducive to your lifestyle and the way that you love to live it while still keeping the result that you have achieved for yourself? So it's like, okay, well, if you're not optimizing necessarily for weight loss, what are you optimizing for?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're optimizing for behavior change. You're optimizing for making the right decisions when you are eating meals. You're optimizing for being the strongest version of yourself when every single time you're hitting the gym, trying to see what you're made of, reaching your full potential. That's what you're optimizing for.
--:-- Dan Go: So I think there's this whole kind of focus on outcomes, but it's an over-focus, it's an over-obsession. Because if you're so focused on the outcome, that actually creates more anxiety the farther you are away from it, as opposed to just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other every single day and focusing on those actions for those days. Have you ever read *The Gap and the Gain* by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've heard about it, but I haven't read it.
--:-- Dan Go: No, it's super fast. I don't know if you read it. I'm not trying to give you advice because I'm now optimizing. I'm talking about my own life. You should read this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Dan Go: So this whole idea actually comes out of the work of Dan Sullivan, and then Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who also wrote *10x* or *2x*, he kind of turned it into a book.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The concept is exactly what you just described, and the way he frames it, I couldn't agree with you more. Basically, what most people do is they have this thing, right? 220 pounds, they're trying to get to 180. And all they think about is, "Well, I'm only 218, I'm still 30 pounds away, I'm still this." All that difference between where you started and where you're trying to get to, that's all anxiety. What he says is instead measure down. So go, "I lost two pounds this month. I lost seven pounds this month." Now all you're talking about are the positives. It's a way of reframing your execution so you're always mentally wrapping your head around the positives. That really grabbed me.
--:-- And Abigail Schreier, who just came out with a new book as well, I haven't read it yet, but I read the synopsis. Her whole argument, particularly about postmodern therapy where we're constantly talking about our problems, is that even though there is a positive to addressing and dealing with your problems, if you're constantly talking about them, all your brain hears is the reinforcement of problems. You're essentially compounding those problems in your head, versus what you just described, which is focusing on the activities. Coming home and going, "Sweetheart, I did nine pull-ups today. I couldn't do nine pull-ups a month ago. That's amazing." Now you feel like a pimp. You come home and you're like, "Yeah."
--:-- Sure, there's some 22-year-old banging out muscle ups like a crazy person. You can't even understand how he's doing it. But you got nine pull-ups today and you couldn't do that a month ago. That's so incredibly positive and satisfying. Focusing on that moves you forward. It keeps you coming back. I feel like we get lost in what we're not doing and we forget all the things that we are.
--:-- Dan Go: It reminds me of the curse of the type A individual, where they're always looking at the grass on another person's lawn as opposed to their own. Also, whatever you focus on expands. That's the principle. So if you're looking in the mirror and all you're doing is grabbing onto your belly and saying, "I hate this," or looking at certain parts of your body you don't like, it just creates a way of expanding those problems, as opposed to seeing the things that are actually working for you.
--:-- It's so easy, especially in this day and age where we are so focused on the bad things happening around us. It's even made double worse if you hang around complainers the entire time, energy vampires. What we think about expands. So I like to say, especially for a type A individual, there's this little thing we do: every single day before your day is done, write out every single win you had from that day. People say, "I had no wins, man. This actually kind of annoys me."
--:-- It's an external thing that annoys me a little bit. So I go out, I talk to almost anyone. If I'm in the grocery store, if I'm in a butcher shop, I'll ask them a question. I was like, "Oh, what's the highlight of your day?" And they just draw a blank. I've maybe gotten one good answer out of all the 50 or 100 times I've done this. The thing is, we're so bogged down with the things that aren't, as opposed to the things that are. So I get people to do this little exercise: recount all the small and big wins that have happened in your day. What happens as a result is people look at their day and they're like, "I actually won a lot more than I lost today." Whether it was doing a workout, choosing the healthy meal, or for some people, making a massive gain in their business like closing a million-dollar deal. It will totally gloss over them and they will not even think about it past the event. They have to remind themselves, "Oh shit, I closed that million-dollar deal today. I totally forgot that."
--:-- To us, we're just like, "How do you forget such a thing?" Because we are so mired and trained to be focused on what we don't have, as opposed to what we have in the first place. I do think that the more you focus on the good that's happening in your life, the more you're inviting the good to happen as well. This is not proven by science, this is anecdotal, but I do feel that we emit a specific frequency based on our thoughts and the ways in which we feel. If you're feeling like shit's always bad and I'm always gaining weight, that's what you're attracting into your life. As opposed to, "Hey, I dropped two pounds off the scale. Good job, Dan." Or, "I did one more pull-up than I did before. I just hit a PR in my incline bench press." The more you focus on that, the more you're inviting that stuff to happen.
--:-- For me, I feel that reality is malleable. It's different for everybody. I can put two people in the same room, similar people, and give them the same situation. They will come out with two totally separate perspectives on what happened to them. What most people don't realize is that that is our superpower. We can use a perspective that makes reality malleable to be for us instead of against us. I really wish that people would actually use that, not just for their health and bodies, but for every aspect of their lives. It's easy to say, hard to do, but the more that you do it, the easier it gets, just like lifting weights at the gym.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree with you more. Everything, the resonance of energy, all that kind of stuff. The only thing I would say on top of that is if you are in a place today where you feel like you're not there, guys, this is something you can learn and practice and get better at. I hope no one listening takes this the wrong way. For me, up until 2017, when I had my awakening moment where I said I need a change, I was that way. It was, "I'm not making enough money. I'm not getting on enough stages. I'm not signing enough clients. This person has that." It was all negative, what I don't have. It led to all kinds of things.
--:-- You made this comment that there are ancillary benefits to this work that you don't necessarily see. One for me is I'm a much better father today. Not even close, on another planet quality father today, because of the mental, physical, et cetera, work that I have done. It's taken me years. I feel like I'm a pretty good dad today. I can be present, I'm connected, I give them their space. All the things that I want to be as a parent, the relationship I have with my kids, it is as good as it has ever been. I hope it will continue to get better. But the path that I was on in 2017, if I didn't make these changes, I don't know that that would be true. I don't love when I look back at the type of parent that I was in 2017. I don't look at that person and go, "I was doing a good job then." I don't believe that I was.
--:-- My point is, I would have never saw that coming. I didn't make any of those changes to be a better parent. I made those changes because I was face down on the floor drooling on myself. But because of all this work, you start to see that positivity, that connection, those qualities that you're building into yourself leak out into these other parts of your life that you wouldn't have guessed. They become these amazing surprises that I value immensely.
--:-- Dan Go: Can I assume, and then you can challenge me on this assumption, that the main change you made was a mental choice to see things in the way that serves you? This is one of the things I've seen with entrepreneurs. "I can't go to the gym because I got to do stuff in my business." As opposed to, "I need to go to the gym in order to be more effective for my business." Same situation, different perception.
--:-- It's so easy, especially on social media, to look at what other people are doing, look at what other people have, and be like, "Why am I not there?" You have your own journey and you have to honor that. Part of the journey is making a choice based on what the world means to you, what these things mean to you.
--:-- I had a friend who came up to me and he was just like, "Dan, when I was broke and hustling and trying to make things, I was the happiest I've ever been." And now he's making a good amount of money, very good amount of money. He's like, "I just don't feel that happiness anymore." I didn't really say this to him at the time because I had to think about it for a second. When I thought about it, I'm like, "Hey, the only person that changed was you. As you made more money, you became less happier, and you chose to become less happier. Not because of the things that you did, not because you made more money, but because of the way in which you're perceiving the things that you're doing."
--:-- It's so easy, especially as we get older. How old are you right now?
--:-- Dan Go: I'm 44. So I find this divergence of people as you get older. You can do what most people are doing right now, which is becoming more pessimistic, more cynical about the world, more bitter. As opposed to a very small percentage of people who are getting more optimistic, who are getting happier, who are looking at the world not necessarily through rose-colored glasses, but in the sense of, "Hey, how is all this stuff happening for me?" as opposed to the world happening at them.
--:-- I do this thing with my daughter. Actually, I'm holding this right now. [Holds up a rock] There's this rock that my daughter gave me. I call it a magic rock. Every single time I see my daughter, we touch it together. Once we touch the rock, we're like, "It's a great day." We just say to each other, "It's a great day." And also, "The world is taking care of us." By touching this, it acts as a little totem for ourselves to maneuver our minds in the way that we want to maneuver it. Once you say it's a great day, then you will look for reasons why it's such a great day. It's all a choice.
--:-- Like you said before, it's really hard, especially if you're starting from rock bottom and everything sucks and you're complaining about everything and you're stuck in a rut. Just like going to the gym, it's really hard when you're just starting out. That's the hardest part, getting that momentum. But just like anything, the more you work it out, the stronger the muscle gets. We have to make a conscious choice to say we want to choose this way of life, this way of thinking. Once you start to get these results as a result of thinking that way, then you become a believer. But you won't believe it until you start thinking that way and start looking for reasons why to think that way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I completely agree. I think that you could apply the ritual or ceremony that you have with your daughter to so many things. One of the things that I found or reclaimed was my faith. I don't put that on anyone else, that's what I do. I have friends who are other religions or atheists, everyone makes their own decisions. They'll question why, and they're like, "It's not real." But I'm like, if I believe it's real, it's real. You and your daughter believe that by touching that rock, it turns everything into a magical, great day. That means it's true because you believe it. That's what matters. That doesn't have to be true for anyone else for it to be true to you. That is what I believe the beauty of the universe is. If you believe it, it is actually true. You are creating a great day because you had this moment of connection with your daughter. How many people walk past their children every day and never connect with them? They keep them alive, they have a house, they pick them up from school, but they don't ever have that connection. They don't create that thing. That to me is so incredibly important.
--:-- I had this guy I know in business. I don't even particularly like him. I was talking to him one day, this was around 2018. I was talking about something, I made some progress, and then something happened. I was kind of just bitching. He looks at me and he's like, "You know, it's not supposed to be easy, right?" I was like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Everything's supposed to be hard. And when you learn to love that, everything will make sense." I sat back for a second and I had to marinate on that thought. All of a sudden I came back and I go, "Wait a minute." Just like your buddy who was broke and was the happiest working hard, the hardest parts of my life are the parts that I find the most satisfaction and joy in. Being a good parent, being a good partner, growing my business, helping people. These are hard things, really hard in some cases. And they're also the things that I am drawn to the most.
--:-- Working out, it's not supposed to be easy. My hardest workouts are the workouts that I walk out of with a big old smile on my face, shoulders back, like, "What else am I going to do today? Let's go do something else." But we've been programmed somehow to believe that it's supposed to be easy, or that the goal is eventually things are easy. If you can just retrain your brain to, "Oh no, it's supposed to be hard, and therefore everything's good because it's supposed to be this way. This is exactly the way it's supposed to be," in our growth and journey through accomplishing those goals, taking those hills, there's so much positivity that comes out of that.
--:-- Dan Go: I agree with that. I'm going to throw something on top of that which I've learned from a friend, this guy Ali Abdaal. It's the concept of, okay, yeah, it's going to be hard. You're going to have to struggle, figure it out. How can we make it fun? How can we make the hard thing fun? Because everything that we enter into is also molded by our perspective of what we are doing. We can be doing the same exact task while one person is really stressing out and another person is like, "Oh, this is really cool. It's kind of hard, but I'm having fun with this."
--:-- The perspective that you bring into the gym or whatever you do at work can be molded to, yes, it's going to be hard, and also, how can we make this fun for ourselves? How can we revel in this a little bit and enjoy this process? Our minds are actually the best and worst things in the world. If you give it a horrible command, then it will go and seek out a horrible outcome for yourself. "Why is this always happening to me?" Well, guess what? It's always going to happen to you. So as opposed to giving it commands and setting intention with the thing that you're doing, our minds are these goal-seeking mechanisms. Why don't we use that to our advantage and give it the right intention?
--:-- Let's say a person hates going to the gym. Okay, cool. What's a form of exercise that we can enjoy that we can do on a regular basis? Let's start off with that. If they ever do go into the gym, okay, how can we make going here fun for us? Maybe in the beginning it's, "I'm going to go in and I'm just going to play around with all the machines. I'm going to try them all out. I'm going to do them horribly. I'm not going to judge myself for it." Then eventually, especially for high-driven, high-achieving type A individuals, it's, "Okay, cool. How can I do a little bit more than I did last week?" That's the thing I find with a lot of my entrepreneur clients. They make it fun by progression. If they're adding another 10 pounds to their bench press or another 10 pounds to their squat, that's what makes it fun for them. That gives them this fulfilling prophecy of every single time I'm going to the gym, I'm just going to be creating all these little wins for myself. It all comes from this idea of perception.
--:-- Now, I'll point out something you said earlier which I found fascinating. You said something like, "I'm not making enough money. I'm not getting up on enough stages." When you said that to me, I was just like, those are all incredible problems. Those are all so good. Imagine me being stressed about getting on more stages. Holy crow, what a great life.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know, it's funny. I want to be respectful of your time and that of the audience. We actually didn't talk about anything that I wanted to talk about, which is perfectly fine. It gives me... what's one thing you want to talk about? We could do it super quick.
--:-- Dan Go: No, okay. You have this list. I'm going to direct everyone to it. Show notes, guys, or just go to Dan's website. I'll have it linked up. You have this article, "Things I'm Doing at 44 to Avoid Regret When I'm 74." There's a whole bunch of items on this list. One thing, someone's listening to this, they're completely bought into everything we said. They said, "I get it. I'm going to do one thing." What would be the one thing from that list that you would give them as a starting spot?
--:-- Dan Go: The one thing I would say is actually what we are talking about right now: the idea of making reality malleable for yourself, choosing your perspective, and being intentional. Every single thing that you do is going to dramatically change your life and dramatically change your approach, especially to the things that matter most to you. I'm not talking about making money. That's important, but I'm talking about how you are being intentional with your children if you have them. How are you being intentional with your spouse if you have one? How are you being intentional with your body and your perspective of what a healthy body means to you? What does the gym mean to you? What does healthy eating mean to you? It's not a boring thing. If you change your perspective to being like, "I feel really good after I eat a super healthy meal," that is a perspective that you get to choose. So make reality malleable for yourself and be intentional with the type of reality that you're creating. Once you do this, your reality is going to change. The best part about it is that you made the choice. It wasn't made for you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love it. My man, where can people get ahold of you, learn more about what you're doing, engage with your content? Where's the best spot?
--:-- Dan Go: Dango.co, or just search my name on Google and you'll have everything there. Except there's this place called Dango Cake Lab, because in Chinese, my name means cake. I don't know why my parents did that. But other than that cake place, all the other links point back to me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It was incredible to have you on the show. I appreciate your time. This has been a wonderful conversation, and I wish you nothing but the best, my friend.
--:-- Dan Go: Thanks, man. Hope you have me back. I love this. Let's go.
--:-- [Closing music begins]
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