Tracy is getting really serious. Her effort has gathered commitments for over 2,000 copies from companies!

I’m getting serious too. I want to invite you to be part of history: the first-ever public 100-day book launch campaign.

Here is the deal, you can become a:

EASY Backer – 1 copy, $29

• Secure your square on the forever EASY Wall.

• Hidden chapters and material that got cut by my publisher for being too personal.

• Invitation to the virtual launch party on 7/14/2026.

EASY Believer – 5 copies (for you and your friends and family), $145 ($29/copy)

• Everything above, plus:

• My premium Substack community, with monthly group coaching calls for a year. (Companies pay me $15K for a one-hour Zoom speech. You get me for 12 hours over a year.)

EASY Evangelist – 50 copies (for your team, class, or book club), $1,250 ($25/copy)

• Everything above, plus:

• Your organization’s name on the Wall.

• A virtual call with your team ($5K value).

And beyond – if you want to have me physically come to your company/school/church to deliver an in-person speech, it requires a lot more copies. Contact me. I have a few spots. (And don’t tell Tracy).

How:

1. Buy the copies from a major website (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Porchlight for bulk)

2. Upload your receipt and get on the EASY Wall

3. Get the goodie email from me

If you’ve already bought, thank you! I’ll include you in the launch party.

But if you haven’t, let’s make history together!

The Wall

First, A Correction

Before today’s post, here is a correction. Yesterday I wrote:

“Will corporate purchases alone get us to 10,000? Probably. But I don’t want them to.”

That’s a typo. What I meant to write was “Probably not.” In fact, the realist in me should write “definitely not.” Because:

1. We can probably get companies to buy 2-3,000 books. 10,000 would be insane.

2. If I could, I wouldn’t want to. I want my readers to be a combination of companies and people.

Theoretically speaking, I can just buy all the books myself just to achieve a goal. There are consulting services that do just that to get authors on the New York Times bestseller list. But that would be cheating and meaningless. One of the most important principles for a self-imposed goal is integrity.

When it comes to personal ambitions, no one else cares. Everyone has their own thing to worry about, and no one is interested in some guy trying to sell books, or trying to build a company, or have a good life.

That’s precisely the reason I, not anyone else, need to care. I can fudge the numbers or take shortcuts. But it defeats the whole purpose.

In life, you are ultimately the only person holding yourself accountable. And that’s why I make a personal point to never lie, especially to myself.

What I Did Didn’t

OK, on to today. Yesterday I wrote about a channel that’s working: corporate purchases. Today I want to tell you about a channel that flopped: YouTube.

Why should you care about my failures? After all, I bet you aren’t trying to launch a book, much less sell 10,000 copies of one. So you can’t apply my lessons directly.

But you’ll see the reverse demonstration of one of the most prominent principles of Easy Discipline. So whatever insanely ambitious goal you’re trying to accomplish, this will tell you what not to do.

13 years ago, I became one of the most prominent YouTubers on the Internet by starting the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy series. It was a crazy time: collecting NOs in the morning, handling media inquiries in the afternoon, and champagne and Peking duck at night.

But when I was done, I was done. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, but I knew I didn’t want to do YouTube anymore beyond the 100 days. I knew I wasn’t going to be MrBeast or Mark Rober, not because I couldn’t have kept going and growing, but because the act of making videos was energy-draining.

When my work and my inner core being aren’t aligned, the pressure of success and the relentless requirement of time will burn me out.

So I quit YouTube, wrote my book, started speaking, and built another tech company.

Looking back, I should have just kept writing books and speaking instead of going back to being a tech bro. Because I eventually found out that the startup founder’s life, just like that of a YouTuber, was equally energy draining to me.

But you know what was the opposite? Writing! It brought me endless energy and joy. I would do it for free. And if I must, I would pay to do it. That’s how addicted to writing I am. And that’s why after all these years, I gave up my tech dream and became a full-time writer, author and speaker.

My life is really rainbow and sunshine nowadays. Not because of the success, but because my work and inner core being are finally aligned.

And that’s why when I tried to do YouTube again after 10 years to market my book, I felt soooooo much resistance.

I filmed one video after another, trying to make the perfect video that’s storytelling, educating and drives sales.

I tried regular YouTube videos that are 12 minutes long, and YT Short videos that are shorter than 1 minute. But none of it felt right. The lighting wasn’t right, the format wasn’t right, my body-fat percentage didn’t look right. Nothing was close to the perfection I wanted. In fact, they all sucked. I hated both the action and the result.

Here’s what I learned the hard way: you can’t manufacture hits on the Internet. The things that are hits are often messy, bold and spontaneous, because authenticity plus craziness are what sell, not planning and perfection.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - Easy Over Hard

When you have no interest in the action itself, only the result, you fall into one of the biggest traps of human achievement: Hard Discipline.

It means to succeed, you force yourself to do things you hate.

Can Hard Discipline get some people there? Sometimes. But it always costs more than it pays. Burnout, resentment, broken relationships, lost years.

The people who hit the highest peaks long-term don’t grind their way there. They build a life where the work itself is the reward.

Those people use Easy Discipline: they align their work and their actions to manufacture long-term enjoyment and artistry, not the result. The result is often the consequence, not the sole focus.

Could I figure out a way to make YouTube enjoyable again, so I can do Easy Discipline instead of Hard Discipline? Yes. Eventually. But this is a 100-day campaign, not a 2-year project. Speed matters more than completeness. Time was running out.

So I gave up YouTube and moved on to my next move.

This is the thing about a 100-day project. You are hair on fire. There is no time for agonizing over spilled milk. One thing didn’t work, there is always next.

So, there it is: my failed YouTube saga to market my book. I don’t feel an ounce of badness. In fact, I am glad to have experienced my own principle.

You see my writing? It’s spontaneous, messy and la;sdfslfjkasdfles. It feels good.

And that’s what I will continue to do and feel.

For You

Do you want to win, have a hit, and become a star? Is perfectionism killing you? If so, stop it.

Stop trying to make the perfect thing that’s soulless and meaningless. Make art that’s authentic, fun and most importantly, you.

A real hit is not what speaks to an avatar, but to real people, starting with yourself.

Stop shooting for what works. Shoot for what moves.

And asd;lfadslf;a;ldsfjjgr!!

The Wall

What We Did:

The whole idea of publicly declaring the 10,000 copies goal to the world is that it forces me and my team (mainly Tracy) to come up with unconventional ways to achieve it.

2,000 pre-orders is normal. 5,000 is ambitious. 10,000 is impossible.

To do this, there is no one way to achieve it, but a collection of different methods. Some are moonshots. Some are old reliables.

So… how are we doing?

I’ll start with what didn’t work: YouTube. While narrating my book, I wanted to restart my YouTube channel. It made me famous more than a decade ago, and I wanted to revive it for my 100 Days to 10,000 Copies project. However, it has proven to be ineffective. I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

But here is the good news: another channel started shining. Corporate bulk purchases. And this is all Tracy. Holy smoke, my wife is amazing! Every time I see her, I see a combination of Juliet as a lover, Mother Teresa as an inspiration, and Estée Lauder as a businessperson.

She started calling our friends and contacts who work in organizations, one by one, and just asked them to buy my book for their teams. And many said YES! If you look at the Wall, most of the names are from companies. In fact, there are quite a few more companies that have committed, and the Wall will climb in the next week or so.

Will corporate purchases alone get us to 10,000? Probably not. And I don’t want them to. I want this campaign to be a combination of individual readers and organizations. Still, corporate buys are effective. That’s why you see corporate sponsorship everywhere.

More importantly, it shows that when you have an impossible goal, you try everything. Some of it will fail. Some of it will succeed unexpectedly.

By the way, if you can organize your team/organization to bulk purchase books, let me know. Not only will your team thank you for an awesome read, but your organization's name will forever be etched on the 10,000 Copies Wall.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - You Do You

Why is Tracy so good at getting people to buy books? The answer is simple: she loves people, and can talk all day. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, loves her back and wants to help her.

I call Tracy the Zoom Queen.

For me, getting on the phone and talking all day is like removing a broken toenail. (I literally did that this week. The toenail was more fun.) But for the Zoom Queen, it’s heaven on earth. She LOVES it.

The same phone call that drains me fills her up. That’s the whole point. The method that works isn’t the best method. It’s the one you actually love doing.

And that love is the most important weapon in achievement.

Not ambition. Not discipline. But love.

That’s the essence of Easy Discipline.

For You

Hey, what do you love to do? Writing? Drawing? Coding? Chatting with people? Whatever it is that you love to do, that you’d do over and over for free, or even pay to do.

Figure out a way to use it to achieve your goal! Whether it’s a deep passion or a casual affinity, use it!

That’s your David’s slingshot, your King Arthur’s Excalibur, or your Tracy’s Zoom.

Oh, and if you want to figure out what that is and how to use it… buy the book.

And don’t forget to get on the Wall. I’d love to see you there.

The Wall

Claim your square on the wall by pre-ordering Easy Discipline.

What I Did:

It’s been a bit since my last update. You might be wondering why. The reason is simple: I threw myself into narrating my book for the past two weeks. If you buy the audiobook version of Easy Discipline, you will hear my voice instead of some professional actor’s (more on this later).

Narrating a book is not an easy task, nor is it glamorous. You sit in a little dark room in a studio, wearing headphones, facing nothing but an iPad and a microphone. On the headphones is my director, who sits thousands of miles away, alternating roles of an actor coach who tells me when to speed up or slow down, an English teacher who tells me I’m pronouncing the ‘s’ at the end of “months” wrong, and a therapist who consoles me when I am agonizing over the book I just wrote.

(Danna, you did great.)

And I do it for 6 hours a day for 7-8 days. By the end, I was an exhausted impala, sipping water while staring into the sky.

That said, narrating my own book has been an extremely unique and fulfilling experience. Seeing the words on the screen, pondering the meaning I am trying to convey, then opening my mouth to perform the voice acting, is very therapeutic. It reminds me of telling bedtime stories to my little kids, only in this case to thousands of future listeners.

When I was done, I knew I didn’t just finish a task. I performed an art.

Here is what it looked like.

But this wasn’t the case with my first book.

When I wrote Rejection Proof in 2015, I gently floated the idea of narrating my own audiobook. But the publisher said NO. I don’t blame them. At the time, I had no experience nor confidence for book narration. Moreover, I was very self-conscious about my Chinese accent.

This is the immigrant’s biggest fear: not being able to fit in, and thinking you are different from others. The idea that someone would laugh at my reading bothered me so much that when my publisher pushed back, I agreed with them right away.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t protest in my own way. When my publisher sent their choice of narrator, a fellow Asian American (it’s funny they had to get an Asian guy for fake authenticity, but not the real guy for real authenticity), I said NO. He was a good voice actor, but I didn’t feel his style connected with my emotions.

In the end, I asked the publisher to hire Mike Chamberlain, the voice actor who narrated one of my favorite books, The Power of Habit.

That decision bothered me to no end, even years later.

It wasn’t because Mike wasn’t good. In fact, he was great, everything I could have hoped for. His high-pitched voice even resembled mine in some way. And the book was an Audible bestseller, with thousands and thousands of reviews.

It was because I was afraid of my own voice and my own flaws. I let my fear and insecurity overrule my own desire to perform and be authentic.

The Rejection Guy succumbed to his fear of rejection. So ironic.

I have always wondered what could have been. Every time I sold an audiobook, it was a lost chance of someone hearing the real voice of the person who experienced and wrote the story.

But luckily, there was a chance for redemption.

Last year, because Rejection Proof was still selling well ten years after it first came out, the publisher wanted to release a new edition of the audiobook, and asked me if I wanted to narrate the book myself this time.

I said, Hell Yeeeeaaaah!!!!

This time, I had accumulated 2,452 gallons of confidence from ten years of public speaking, plus 7,349 gallons of regret for not pushing harder the first time. I was going to do it, no matter how much I needed to learn, how much work I needed to do, and how imperfect the resulting product would be.

I don’t care if listeners wince at the Chinese guy occasionally mispronouncing “leisure” or forgetting to say the ‘s’ at the end of plural nouns. It’s MY voice! It’s not perfect, but it was also the imperfect guy who experienced and wrote everything that happened in the imperfect book.

And the result?

Not bad! 4.6 stars on Audible. (I did lose over 5,000 ratings gathered over 10 years, though. Oh well.)

And this time around, when the publisher asked me if I wanted to read Easy Discipline, I repeated the same “Hell Yeeeeaaaah!!!!”

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - Your Voice Matters

OK, this sounds like a cheap campaign ad where corrupt politicians ask for your vote and pretend it’s you who matters, not their own ambition. But when it comes to presenting your idea to an audience, your team, or the whole world, your voice really matters.

Don’t strive for perfection. Don’t hide behind representation. Go for authenticity. If the idea is really yours, express it the best way you can, even if it requires training, preparation, and labor.

This is especially true as we enter the age of AI slop. In a world where anyone can generate something polished and logical in seconds, polish is no longer the thing that wins. It’s the crazy, the ugly, the imperfect, the unmistakably human that cuts through.

Your voice doesn’t just matter. It might be the only thing that does.

WHAT I DID

Things I get asked the most nowadays:

1. What’s going on with your face? Your skin looks… better!

2. Do you still do Rejection Therapy?

Answer to #1: I had never cared for how I looked for 30 years. But then I picked up a facial lotion in Japan, and daaaaaamn!

Answer to #2: Yes! But I no longer get on the street asking strangers for $100. Instead, I turn that spirit into my everyday business. In fact, what I am doing here, asking the world to buy 10,000 pre-order copies of my book, is another Rejection Therapy in public.

Moreover, I take very real business rejection as an opportunity to practice my skills.

For example, I just got rejected by the podcast team of Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor. For most rejections, I just move on. However, for Kim’s podcast, I wrote a post-rejection letter. I always do so with people and companies I care about. I am a fan of Kim’s book, and thus the letter.

Dear Kim,

It seems a conversation on the Radical Candor podcast isn’t going to work out. But as the “Rejection Guy,” I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this moment to let you know the impact of your book.

I read Radical Candor when it first came out. Of course it was an amazing book. But one line in particular I still remember today:

“Time and again, I have seen that it was kinder in the long run to be direct, even if articulating my criticism caused some momentary upset.”

My job is to teach people to be fearless in engaging others through Rejection Therapy. That said, the East Asian part of me still pulls me back. I sugarcoat. I go indirect. Sometimes I lose the moment.

Your book gave me a moral reason and a practical tool to push past that, which has been liberating.

My publisher is pitching me to a lot of shows right now. Yours is one I personally cared about reaching out to.

My new book, Easy Discipline (Simon & Schuster, 7/14/2026), has a section called “The Artist Mindset” that I think you’d find interesting when it comes to achieving Radical Candor. Most people fear direct conversations because they see them as a chore. People with artist mindset embrace them, because they see them as art.

I’d want to talk about:

• How to lean into every moment in a conversation, even tense ones, as an opportunity of creation

• How to use role-play to turn fear into curiosity

• How I went from dreading pre-decision sales calls with speaking clients to closing every single one

I think you’d love the conversation.

And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll add the rejection from Kim Scott as a badge of honor…

I’d rather have the conversation, though.

Best,

Jia Jiang

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - Don’t Waste a Rejection

Will I get a change of heart from Kim’s team? I don’t know. But by writing this letter, I gave myself another shot. Even if it went from 0% to 10%, that’s a 10% I didn’t have.

More importantly, I genuinely admired Kim’s work. I want to use this opportunity to let her know it. The writing of this letter is me having a good time.

I once read a letter from director Jon Chu, the renowned director of Wicked. The movie that made him a household name was Crazy Rich Asians in 2018. He badly wanted to use Coldplay’s song “Yellow” as the closing score.

However, fearing potential accusations of turning their song’s title into a slur, and already experiencing cultural appropriation and stereotyping backlash with their song “Hymn for the Weekend,” Coldplay refused.

But instead of taking the rejection and moving on, Jon Chu wrote a letter to Coldplay. Within 24 hours, Coldplay wrote back and approved the request. And thus the awesome (albeit pretty cheesy) ending.

Now, is my letter as good as Chu’s? Of course not. It’s not a tear-jerking contest. And his lived experience with the song is much deeper than mine with the book.

That said, I am inspired like a rooster fed with Red Bull by Chu’s letter. It reminds me not to waste any rejection as an opportunity to express myself, whether it’s my genuine admiration for the rejector or appreciation for their time.

FOR YOU

Try this. Take a rejection you’ve received in the past 6 months. If the request was meaningful to you, and the rejector wasn’t mean when saying no, write them a letter thanking them for their time, give them an upgraded proposal, and ask them to reconsider.

When you write that letter, treat the act of writing as the goal, not the potential result. Have fun writing!

And don’t forget to tell me about it.

The Wall

What I Did:

Today I asked my publisher to share this letter to Steven Bartlett, the host of The Diary of a CEO, to be on his podcast.

Dear Steven,

I want to share a moment with you from 2019, when I first discovered your podcast. The interviews were great, but when I went back and listened to your first few episodes, that’s when I became a fan. Your first episode was a monologue that went viral, and your second episode described your euphoric feeling of success.

You then built an empire on top of that moment. But that moment, before the empire, is what I wanted to talk to you about. Because I share that feeling.

I started a YouTube series called 100 Days of Rejection Therapy a decade ago. One video went viral, which not only blew up my channel but built a movement of Rejection Therapy that hundreds of creators have replicated on TikTok and YouTube. I have since given a TED Talk with 11M+ views and written a book that’s sold 160,000+ copies across 15+ languages.

But none of that is the conversation I want to have.

Your audience wants that breakthrough - the moment they feel they’ve found their purpose and calling, the sense that they’re genuinely connected to the universe. But very, very few people get to experience that. Why? Because before the moment of glory was endless, lonely, wandering paths of darkness. Self-doubt and rejection, self-loathing and failure. Most give up before they get to the breakthrough.

My new book - Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things (Simon & Schuster, 7/14/2026), is a love letter to those people. I want to have a conversation with you on:

• The science behind why discipline feels hard and impossible

• Why the “grind harder” advice is wrong for high-stakes and long-term goals

• What 100 days of public rejection taught me about chasing impossible things

• Why most people quit before the breakthrough, and the one thing that makes them stay

That’s the conversation I want to have with you - the dark middle before the breakthrough.

The listeners would love it.

Jia Jiang

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Making Art

When most people pitch a product (in my case, my book), they lead with features and benefits. But I lead with story and connection - the reason I’m pitching them in the first place. Yes, I want to be on Steven’s show. Who doesn’t? But I want him to know that me being there isn’t just because his platform is huge and beneficial to me, but because it’s genuinely an opportunity for us to co-create art through a conversation.

Most people see life as a series of goals and transactions. I see it as a continuous journey to create moments, highlights, and art.

In fact, writing, sending, and sharing this letter is rewarding regardless of the outcome. Even if I get rejected by Steven and his producers, my action is a piece of art, at least in my own memory.

When I was a little kid in China, people called me 爱折腾, which roughly translates to “the kid is always cooking up something.” The things I cooked up were always trouble - climbing towers, dancing in the rain, making jokes in class.

As I got older, I found it to be one of my biggest strengths, not because of what I came up with, but because the cooking up itself was fun and artistic. I love being a professional chef, not with food, but with words and actions.

For You

Do you want to pitch something to someone but are afraid to write the letter? Here’s my suggestion: write it in a way that satisfies you, and send it. Don’t worry about the result. The writing and the sending are the goal. The response is just a bonus.

If you want, share with me what you’re cooking up.

THE WALL

We are into week 3 of the 100 Days. We have, let me check… 229 copies.

25% of me is questioning why I am putting myself through the public humiliation, while the other 75% is telling me how exciting the 84 Days to 9,771 Copies Project is.

But I am going to tell the 25% to shut up and let the 75% do its thing.

What I Did:

Last week was speaking week. This week is podcast week. I’m reaching out to my favorite podcasters to pitch myself on their shows.

I am a huge listener of interview podcasts. My phone is loaded with Tim Ferriss, The Diary of a CEO, The Prof G Pod, and Mel Robbins episodes. I rotate through them and their guests to get inspiration and outside perspectives. I’ve also bought many books after listening to an episode where the interviewee is an author.

(Speaking of which, let me check my Audible… I have 347 books. Wow, I’ve bought more books than people have bought of mine - 347 vs. 229. That’s embarrassing.)

Now it’s my turn to get on podcasts so I can sell more books. Here is my dream list. There are 38 of them. Will I get on any of them? I hope so. My baseline is 5. My stretch goal is 10. Anything beyond that would be nirvana.

To give myself a chance, I need to reach out to them. Moreover, pitching is fun! How can I miss this opportunity to be my best self and the artist I am?

In the following days, I will share my letters to some of my favorite podcasters. I’m hoping they will be my best writing. But I’ll let you give me feedback.

Why am I excited about this when most authors dread it? Because of an Easy Discipline principle I lean on hard:

Easy Discipline Principle - Manufacturing Quests

I don’t see life as a series of goals to be accomplished. I see it as a platform to have fun and make art.

Before I was 30, I was a video game addict, because video games provided me with worlds of fantasy and accomplishment that I couldn’t have in the real world. But as soon as I started vlogging, I never touched a video game again. The real world became way more fun and engaging. I no longer needed to take on fake quests, because my whole life became one exciting quest after another.

Excitement is such an underrated factor of success.

The Lord of the Rings is about a quest to destroy the ring. The Pursuit of Happyness is about a quest for a broke guy to become a stockbroker. Avengers: Endgame is about a quest to beat an unbeatable intergalactic villain and resurrect half of the population.

We often only see these quests on a screen, never imagining ourselves being part of them.

But the truth is, we can start amazing quests and tie them to our own goals.

These 100 days are my manufactured quest, and the 10,000 books goal is to make the quest more exciting. This week’s level is pitching to my dream podcasts.

How can I let this opportunity go?

For You

Hey, how’s your life, job, or career? Is it boring or exciting? If you feel you’re in a rut, how about building a quest with insane goals, then giving your all to obtain it? You don’t need luck to have excitement happen to you. You can create thrill, memories, and miracles with your own decision and effort, starting today.

THE WALL

What I Did

Today I am in Charlotte, still speaking on stage. I recorded the following, and had a room full of people raising their hands to buy my book. It’s an improvement from yesterday.

I’m headed to Houston for another event tomorrow. I don’t know what to do yet… maybe karaoke on stage? Do a split for the audience in exchange for a book purchase (and possibly a visit to the ER)? I have no idea.

Now, I’m not going to bore you with my next speech, but I do want to share my thoughts on public speaking itself.

Lots of people ask me how I became good at speaking.

In this article, I talk about how to use weird thoughts to generate humor in public speaking. Today, I want to share another principle of Easy Discipline: Find Your Power.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - Find Your Power

If you told 16-year-old Jia, or 30-year-old Jia, that one day he’d make most of his money being a keynote speaker, he would have said: “What’s a Keynote Speaker? Is that another iPhone app?”

Let’s be honest - a Chinese immigrant who stutters and speaks with an accent isn’t exactly what screams “professional speaker.” In fact, I bet the next conference your company hosts, your keynote speaker will not look like me or sound like me… unless it’s me, of course.

I didn’t even know that could be a thing. But when Rejection Therapy became a trend, people started inviting me to talk to their groups and tell them my story. My first speaking event was in a chiropractor’s office lobby, and the upper half of my face was blue due to a broken projector. I was rambling, stuttering, and went way too long. If my current speech is a Lamborghini, that first speech was a Honda Civic with a plastic bag on the window.

But… people loved it! No one cared about my terrible delivery. They loved my story! In fact, it was because of the rawness of my talk that people knew I was real and authentic.

But more importantly, I LOVED IT! Telling stories and inspiring people is so fun. I discovered a hidden talent I didn’t even know I had - I could move people with my words, all because I said YES to my first invite and performed with sincerity.

Then I kept getting invited from one event to another. I kept getting better and better, more polished, more insightful, funnier. To prepare for my first big stage, I even practiced speeches on the street to strangers.

Then came the real discovery. One realtor offered me $500 to speak at her event. That was the moment it dawned on me: I could possibly make a living off this someday, because I was providing real value to people who needed it.

In the famous book Ikigai, author Héctor García writes about finding your purpose at the center of four circles - what you LOVE, what you are GOOD AT, what you can be PAID FOR, and what the world NEEDS. Finding the center of those four circles is called Ikigai.

10+ years later, I’ve spoken at 400+ events. Now I’m a master speaker and storyteller, traveling around the world and inspiring people with words. I’m about to launch my second book, and I’m working on my third.

I found my power - my Ikigai, because I was willing to try things, say YES to opportunities when they presented themselves, give my best, and get better.

Now, do you have any hidden talents - things that come to you naturally, that you just haven’t sincerely explored? If you do, let me know in the comments. I’ll chat with you on how to possibly create opportunities for yourself.

And if you don’t, it’s time to find one. Try new things. Say yes to opportunities that make you uncomfortable. Because EVERYONE has hidden talent. You just haven’t dug hard enough yet.

THE WALL

One week in, I’m 7% into my 100 days. I now have 222 preorders, that’s 2.2% of the goal. I’m very behind. Am I concerned? On the surface, I’m a cool cucumber planted in zen soil, raised on Stoic philosophy and trained in the temple of Rejection Therapy.

But inside, I’m tearing up my emotional intestines.

Also, two supporters threw down 180 books for their organizations, which is saving my butt. I’m extremely grateful, but that’s not a long-term strategy.

Well, anxiety is not going to sell book #223. It’s time for work.

What I Did

Week 2 is here. This week, I’m doing a speaking tour, flying to Tampa, Charlotte, Houston and Philadelphia to pitch my book to live audiences on stage.

Now, I do speaking for a living, and these events were all pre-planned corporate audiences. For speaking, I’d rather just tell my story, get the love and bask in the applause. Asking them to buy my next book? That’s awkward. I don’t want to feel like a sleazy salesperson.

But here comes the Easy Discipline principle:

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Reward Yourself for the Action, Not the Result

To get over the discomfort, I told myself, “Dude, just focus on the action and don’t worry about the result. Just ask. If they boo, they boo. You live with it. And if you make the ask, I’ll take you to the world-famous Clearwater beach tonight.”

(I talk to myself like this all the time. Is it weird? Just ask Tracy. She went from getting freaked out to expecting it. It’s like she married two Jias, and one is always coaching the other.)

So I got on stage and gave my now-famous “What I Learned From 100 Days of Rejection Therapy” talk. It was a great crowd — people were laughing, applauding and cheering. It gave me tons of confidence, because if I had given them that much fun, I had earned some credibility for a (very) soft pitch.

When I was close to the end of my talk, I added: “I’m writing my second book. It comes out in July, it’s called Easy Discipline. I want to teach people how to have better discipline. Lots of people work hard and feel hard. What I found is people can work hard and feel easy. You can use easy feeling to fuel yourself long-term. I’m hoping all of you can buy my book.”

That’s it. Not a hard sell. Video below:

I did it! Was it smooth? Nah. But I did it. And that’s the first step. Let me show you my reward — a sunset at Clearwater Beach, followed by a huge meal at the oldest Spanish restaurant in America: The Columbia Restaurant.

Whatever you’ve been avoiding — do it today. Then give yourself a ridiculous reward tonight.

THE WALL

How do you set goals?

For a long time, I’ve been advocating setting action goals rather than outcome goals. The reason is simple – you can control your actions, you can’t control outcomes.

That’s why only 9% of New Year’s Resolutions succeed (losing 15 lbs, writing a book, getting promoted, starting a business, etc. are all outcome goals). They are more demoralizing than useful.

In fact, this is a sample of my 2026 New Year’s Resolutions. They were all input goals.

• Getting up by 6AM for 200 days

• Exercise for 200 hours

• 100 deep conversations

• 100 walks with my dad

• 200 hours of “magic time” with kids

However, there is one occasion where outcome goals are useful – when they are so impossible, the pursuit creates an epic story and unforgettable experience. When the journey itself becomes the reward.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – The Magic of Impossibility

When a goal is “ambitious but reasonable,” there are many ways to achieve it. In my case, trying to get 2,000 pre-orders would be a very good and reasonable goal. I can do drip-marketing. I can run Google Ads. I can focus on PR. I’ll get there.

Trying to get to 5,000 would be very hard. I would need to combine all of them, and hope everything works to perfection.

But 10,000… unless I’m Joe Rogan or Mel Robbins, that’s in the impossible territory. All the traditional, tried-and-true methods combined won’t work. (Trust me, I did the math. Unless I commit accounting fraud to appease my optimism, nothing works.)

So when traditional ways don’t work, I need to dig deep into the seldom-visited corners of my imagination and search for hidden treasures.

I came up with a combination of 14 weekly mini-goals composed of 7 tried-and-true safe methods + 7 moonshots. Think about a stock portfolio of half blue-chip stocks like Google, Nvidia, Amazon, and the other half made of early-stage startup bets sprinkled with crypto and maybe some penny stocks – most will go to zero, but one 50x return pays for all the losses and then some.

The 7 traditional tactics will give me a floor, so I don’t sell 0 books. And the 7 crazy moonshots, each with a 10% chance to succeed. Based on math, the chance of at least 1 of the 7 breaking through is 52.2%. That gives me a chance to hit 10,000 copies.

That’s why you are seeing the 10,000 Copies Wall – it’s modeled after the Million Dollar Homepage, a 2005 viral phenomenon. And you are going to see more crazy things I will try for the next 100 days, including poker and tennis. Stay tuned.

And the most important reason?

IT’S SO FREAKING FUN!!!!!

You have no idea how much of a good time we are having. Being scared, nervous, hopeful but creative at the same time? That’s priceless! It reminds me of the before-battle scene below from the Lord of the Rings.

An impossible goal turned book launch, something that most authors hate, into a 100-day journey of imagination and desperation (they come in pairs).

We have only one life to live – we can go the safe, boring, and steady routes. And for most things, you should – marriage, parenting, investment. In those departments, safe and boring pay long-term dividends.

But if you sprinkle in a few bouts of epic 100-day sprints to go after impossible goals, that’s the story you sit down and tell your grandkids.

And that’s the soul of Easy Discipline – creating stories out of thin air, turning the mundane into the epic, all ending up with achievements as by-products.

What’s your big goal? Whatever it is, how about 10x that goal, set a deadline, let your imagination run wild, and go nuts?

Are you having fun yet? I know I am.

THE WALL

Over the past few days, I have received so many emails from you showing me love and encouragement. One of them is from one of my best friends and spiritual mentor. He thought I was flying high and being so confident.

My reply: “I have a lot of fear I am battling every day. What if I don’t succeed? What if I land on 500 books instead of 10,000? I don’t have everything figured out. I suffer from these anxieties just like everyone else. Me doing this campaign publicly is just my way to cope.”

Writing this out makes me feel a lot better. So I want to share with all of you.

Especially the “Me doing this campaign publicly is just my way to cope” part.

Most people keep their biggest goals to themselves, mostly because if they don’t succeed, they can change course comfortably. There are also scientific reasons: the initial public feedback and support can reduce your brain’s desire to take the necessary actions.

That said, I take the opposite stance on this - you should shout your goal at the top of your lungs to everyone you care about. It’s an Easy Discipline principle called the Baby Shower Shout.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE: The Baby Shower Shout

When I hit 30 and Tracy was pregnant, I thought my entrepreneurial dream was over. No way I could leave my cushy corporate job now with my new responsibilities.

Until I did this: at Tracy’s baby shower, when all our family and friends showed up for support, I publicly announced that I’m going to start my own company. Everyone was shocked, and no one knew what to say. Then it went into hesitant applause.

But I wasn’t there for their applause and support. I was there to burn my boat, publicly. I was there to create nuclear pressure and accountability for myself. I might fail, but there is no way I quit. Not in front of my in-laws, closest friends and colleagues.

So I went hair-on-fire. That type of desperation forced every ounce of creativity out of me, resulting in crazy ideas like 100 Days of Rejection Therapy.

I called that move The Baby Shower Shout - proclaiming your goal to the people who matter to you the most (the ones who care about you enough to come to your wedding or baby shower), if not the whole world.

In fact, 100 Days of Rejection Therapy was also a Baby Shower Shout - I told the world I was gonna do rejection for 100 days. And I did.

History is littered with Baby Shower Shouts like this:

• JFK said “We choose to go to the moon in this decade.”

• Muhammad Ali predicted he’d knock out Charlie Powell in the third round, and he did.

• Joe Namath famously made his guarantee: “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it,” before winning Super Bowl III.

Now, not all Baby Shower Shouts come true. Elon Musk (when he was still cool) was famous for announcing and missing impossible goals.

• In December 2015, he stated Tesla cars would be able to drive themselves in two years. FSD isn’t fully reliable until 2024.

• In 2016, he said SpaceX would land a capsule on Mars by 2018. Eight years later, we are still waiting.

He missed all his marks, but that’s not the point. He used the public pressure to force his companies to compress decades’ worth of progress into years, if not months.

Today Tesla is worth over 1 trillion dollars, and SpaceX is about to go public, possibly valued at 2 trillion dollars.

You shoot for the stars (or Mars) and land on the moon.

So this is my move - telling you and everyone I care about I’m going to sell 10,000 copies in 100 days.

Is this insane? Yes. Am I scared? Look at the sweat drop down my beautiful cheek... actually I just finished my Peloton.

This is the only way I know how to live. And this is how to make hard goals EASY.

What’s your future Baby Shower Shout? Let me hear it in the comments.

Today is day 3 of 100 Days to 10,000 Copies, my project to launch my new book - Easy Discipline.

Honestly, to sell 10,000 copies in 100 days is an insane goal. It’s my equivalent of landing on the moon. The thing is: you can’t achieve ambitious things without upgrading yourself, especially when you’re as flawed as me.

For me, my DNA should be called adhDNA. A simple notification can lead me to a 2-hour YouTube deep dive on the Spanish Civil War. The natural me would be lucky to sell 100 books, let alone 10,000.

In fact, my lack of natural discipline caused me to write this book.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Getting In Character

However, there is an Easy Discipline principle I developed and frequently use to power up for a short period. It’s called Getting In Character – I don’t need to change to a disciplined person forever, like all the habit/discipline books teach you to. I can perform as one for the short-term – long enough to get the job done.

To do so, I need to have a temporary upgrade mentally, physically, environmentally, and spiritually.

For example: to write this book, I made four 2-week long trips to the mountain of Japan to perform the role as the solitary writer. My life was very simple:

• Get up at 5AM

• Write until 1PM

• Research until 3PM

• Work out until 5PM

• Big, fulfilling meal at 6PM

• Sleep at 8PM

No exception. I could get more things done in one week than I normally do in 2 months, no exaggeration. And when 2 weeks are up, I’m back with 4-months worth of work. It’s that simple.

However, this is a 100-day project, and I can’t go to Japan for that long, or Tracy might leave me.

That’s why I am going to extreme measures to power up at home. Here are the things I am doing for 100 days to simulate my Japan experience at home:

1. Charge my phone outside of the bedroom

2. Get up at 6AM every day with a routine –

   1. Spiritual devotion with Tracy

   2. Plan for the day

   3. Exercise

   4. Eat

3. Rent a cowork space for optimal work environment (deep work from 9-5)

4. Completely change my media diet

   1. Delete/block YouTube and Reddit (2 of my biggest time-wasters)

   2. Load my phone with curated audiobooks and podcast interviews

   3. If I have to get a dopamine fix, open Substack, which gives me long-form reading, not brainrotting.

5. Sleep at 10PM

6. Shave my head and get a tattoo that says “10,000 copies or die trying”

OK I made the last one up. But everything else is how I get in character as the ultimate disciplined, invincible author/marketer.

Do they sound hard? Oh yeah, if you are thinking about making permanent change or developing a habit.

But they are extremely doable and fun if you are performing a role for just 100 days. Again, when the finish line is in sight, you can do anything.

After that, I will be back to being your distracted, disorganized slob. (Or not)

But for 100 days, I am Superman.

WHAT I DID

Do you see the picture above? It’s a screenshot of this page - The 10,000 Copies Wall. There are 10,000 squares on this wall, representing the first 10,000 pre-order copies. Anytime anyone pre-orders Easy Discipline (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible), they can screenshot and upload the receipt, and have their name on the wall, permanently.

If Easy Discipline becomes a bestseller or a cultural phenomenon, their names will be forever marked as its first supporters.

Great idea right? Well, it was supposed to be my first week’s goal - Build the Wall. But it was built in 4 hours, by my dear partner in crime, and partner in life, Tracy!

Just you know, I spent 5+ years getting a Computer Science degree, 5+ years working in tech companies, and built two software startups myself.

But I can’t build this wall myself without help.

And Tracy, with 0 programming experience, rolled up her sleeves and got it done in 4 hours.

How is that possible? Three reasons:

1. Tracy is a force of nature. When she puts her mind on something, it’s done, with quality and speed. Being her partner is like living with Athena on keyboard.

2. AI is becoming terrifyingly powerful. You can vibe code with Claude to build things in an hour that takes an experienced programmer days if not weeks.

3. Well, here comes today’s main learning:

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - The Magic of “100 Days”

What do a company’s financial quarter, a nature’s season, and the length of time people talk about the start of a Presidential term have in common?

That’s right, they are all about 100 days.

And if you think about it, 100 days is the perfect time for you to take on a new project -long enough to make real impact on the world and changes in your life, and short enough that it’s gone before you know it.

100 days have certainly been magical for me. If you know me, you know 100 Days of Rejection Therapy changed my life and started the movement of Rejection Therapy.

And that’s why I am doing the book launch project for 100 days. Frankly, I finished writing my book 3 months ago, and I could have started the campaign earlier. But I knew if I did, I would get burnt out before the publication date.

So I waited until precisely 100 days before launch, so Tracy and I can go maximum full effort in an all-out sprint.

There is magic in going hair-on-fire, laser-focused, shot-out-of-a-cannon with no regard to fatigue and grind, because the finish line is just ahead.

The result is today - what we thought would take 1 week, we got done in 1 day.

So like I asked yesterday, what’s your big goal? Share with me. Don’t think about someday, the next five years, or even this year. Start today, then go nuts for 100 days.

You can do anything for 100 days.

PS. For those of you who pre-ordered right after yesterday’s email, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart. Make sure you upload the receipt on the 10,000 Copies Wall and have your name celebrated and enshrined forever.

This is my project of selling 10,000 pre-order copies of my new book - Easy Discipline (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible) in 100 days, using the principles written in this book. I am documenting this process live, and share the principles and discoveries with you.

Week 1 - Launch

Day 1 - Announcement

Day 2 - Build the Wall, and Why 100 Days?

Day 3 - I Am Superman

Day 4 - Is Announcing My Goal a Good Idea?

Day 5 - The Magic of Impossibility

Day 6 - Rest Like a King

Day 7 - Travel to Tampa

Day 8 - Pitching From the Stage, Then Rewarding Myself

Day 9 - Using My Hidden Power and Finding Yours

Day 10 - Speaking in Houston

Day 11 - Speaking in Philadelphia

Day 12 - Flying Back

Day 13 - Rest Like a Pig (so tired)

Day 14 - Rest Like a Lion (better)

Day 15 - Pitching to Podcasts, and Manufacturing Quests

Day 16 - Writing to Steven Bartlett, and Making Art

Day 17 - Don’t Waste a Rejection

Day 18 - Day 38 - Tried and Failed at YouTube, Plus Narrating My Audiobook

Day 39 - What’s in a Voice? Everything!

Day 42 - My Wife Is Better at This Than Me

Day 43 - YouTube Failed, and I Couldn't Be Happier

I’ve been hesitant to do this publicly, and I’m somewhere in between being nervous and losing my mind, but I am going to do it anyway. Because that’s how I roll, how I get things done, and how I lived my life so far.

100 Days to 10,000 Copies

My book, Easy Discipline – An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things, comes out in 100 days (July 14th). And I am going to sell 10,000 preorder copies before the book comes out.

And I am going to do it publicly, and document the journey here on this newsletter.

You might be asking: what’s the big deal? Don’t all books sell 10,000 copies?

Hardly. There are approximately 3 million books published every year. Most sell less than 300 copies. For traditionally published nonfiction books like Easy Discipline, the median lifetime sale is 7,100 copies. Only one in three ever reaches the 10,000 copy threshold.

And I’m trying to get to 10,000 preorders BEFORE the official publication date.

Without Oprah’s audience or James Clear’s newsletter empire, this goal lands somewhere between extremely tough and impossible.

But again, this is the type of challenge that turns me on.

So how will I do it?

Well, 100 days are about 14 weeks. So for the next 14 weeks, I will accomplish 14 audacious weekly goals to make the 10,000 copies happen. I will alternate between traditional book-marketing goals, like getting on a dream podcast, to non-traditional things and downright weird things like the World Series of Poker and standup comedy, using Easy Discipline principles for all of it.

The core idea of Easy Discipline is to turn audacious, ambitious, impossible goals into reality by turning the pursuit into play.

It teaches you how to make the journey the reward itself, so the resulting success becomes the by-product of your effort and play.

It helps you to build a floating giant dining table, so your pie-in-the-sky goals become edible and delicious. Or grow artificial swine-friendly wings, so pigs can really fly.

100 days for 10,000 copies is my pie-in-the-sky and pig-flying goal. And what better use for a book than selling the book itself?

So… why should you care?

To be honest, you probably shouldn’t. With how things are going, who knows what the world would be like in 100 days.

But:

1. If you want to take a break from doomscrolling, watching your friend Jia try to sell 10,000 copies might be an OK distraction.

2. I will be documenting daily on everything I do, everything I learn, and everything you can apply to pursuing your own goals.

3. Speaking of your own goals — do you have an audacious, ambitious, impossible goal you’ve been marinating for a long time? Maybe get promoted at work? Start a new business? Get in great shape for summer? Learn a new language?

   If you do, share your goal with me. And we can do it together in the next 100 days. We can be accountability buddies.

Sometimes we pay too much attention to the big world – the macro environment which we can’t control. Wars, economy, AI, all these trends that we can do nothing about. But we let them take over our emotions and attention.

We overlook there is so much we can try, so much we can control and so much we can accomplish in our micro-environments. And sometimes, all it takes is 100 days.

My main concern isn’t politics. Although a million “experts” are telling me this might be the end of the American empire and the start of WWIII. And I’m wondering if in 5 years, Brian will be drafted as the third military surge into Iran. (My mind can go to dark places if uncontrolled.)

It’s economics.

Namely, what if the world economy tanks or even collapses due to surging fuel prices, and the stock market crashes 1929 style? What should I do with my 401K and IRA? Should I sell everything and buy gold? Move to Greenland? (Well, I can’t think of one safe place on earth right now.)

Now as I mentioned, my mind goes to crazy places. But this is not about me, but you. Are you concerned about what’s going on in the world and your economic future? Are you thinking about building bunkers like in Blast from the Past?

Well, you are in luck! Two of the most prominent money experts and their ideas are here to help us. It’s Dave Ramsey (5 seed) vs Tony Robbins (12 seed).

Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is what happens when a Southern Baptist preacher and a bankruptcy attorney have a baby and raise it on talk radio. Got his real estate license at 18, built a $4 million portfolio by 26, then lost it all. Filed for bankruptcy at 28 while his toddler played on the floor next to the paperwork. He found Jesus, found a microphone, and spent the next 35 years telling Americans to cut up their credit cards and eat rice and beans. His show reaches 18 million listeners a week. He carries two debit cards, a driver’s license, and a concealed-carry permit. No credit cards. He is your financially conservative uncle at Thanksgiving who won’t stop talking about compound interest, except this uncle has a media empire and will yell at you on live radio until you cry and say “I’m debt free.”

The Book: The Total Money Makeover (2003, updated 2024)

Thesis: Your money problem is a behavior problem, not a knowledge problem. You know you shouldn’t carry credit card debt. You know you should save. You don’t need more information, you need to change your behavior. The book is structured around his famous “Baby Steps”, a sequential, no-negotiation plan to get out of debt and build wealth.

Core Ideas:

• Debt is not a tool. Credit cards, car loans, student loans. Ramsey hates all of it. “The borrower is slave to the lender.”

• The debt snowball works because behavior beats math. Mathematically, you should pay off the highest-interest debt first. But Ramsey says pay off the smallest balance first because the quick wins build momentum and motivation.

• Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else. Sacrifice now (rice and beans, no vacations, sell the car) so that in 5-7 years you’re completely debt-free and building real wealth.

• A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Every dollar gets a name and a job before the month begins.

• The 7 Baby Steps:

1. Save $1,000 for a starter emergency fund.

2. Pay off all non-mortgage debt using the “debt snowball” (smallest balance first, regardless of interest rate).

3. Save 3-6 months of expenses as a full emergency fund.

4. Invest 15% of household income into retirement.

5. Save for your children’s college.

6. Pay off your mortgage early.

7. Build wealth and give generously.

Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is a 6’7” motivational tornado who grew up poor, left home at 17 to work as a janitor, and somehow turned firewalking into a billion-dollar industry. Never went to college. Started holding seminars in the ’80s, and by the ’90s was on every infomercial in America at 2am promising to awaken the giant within. He’s coached four US presidents, made Oprah walk on fire, and has a net worth of $600 million. Then around 2014, he decided he wanted to be a money guy too. So he called up 50 of the world’s greatest investors (Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, Jack Bogle), interviewed all of them, and wrote two financial books like he’d been in finance his whole life. Neither made anyone forget he’s a motivational speaker, not a financial advisor. But when the guy who made you walk on hot coals tells you not to panic-sell your 401k, you somehow listen.

The Book: Money: Master the Game (2014)

Thesis: the financial game is rigged against ordinary people. Hidden fees, conflicted advisors, and a system designed to keep Wall Street rich and you confused. But you can still win if you understand the rules. Robbins distills everything he learned from interviewing the world’s greatest investors.

Core Ideas:

• The game is rigged but winnable. Hidden fees, actively managed funds, and conflicted advisors are silently stealing your retirement. A 1% fee difference can confiscate up to 70% of your lifetime returns.

• Index funds beat almost everything. Most actively managed funds underperform simple index funds. Stop trying to outsmart the market and own the whole thing.

• Market crashes are seasonal, not fatal. 30+ corrections in 30 years. The people who get rich don’t panic. The people who get poor sell at the bottom.

• Asset allocation matters more than stock picking. How you divide your money determines 90%+ of your returns. Ray Dalio’s All Weather Portfolio is designed to perform in any economic environment.

• Your biggest enemy is you. Fear makes you sell at the bottom, greed makes you buy at the top. Master your emotions or they’ll master your portfolio.

What They Would Say About Today

Tony Robbins would say:

Don’t you dare sell. (He’d say this while standing 6’7” on a stage with lasers behind him, somehow making index funds feel like the climax of a Marvel movie.) There have been 30+ corrections in the past 30 years. Every single time, the market recovered. Every. Single. Time. The people who sold in panic locked in their losses. The people who stayed in came out ahead. The Iran war feels like the end of the world. So did 2008. So did Covid. So did 9/11. The market dropped after all of them. It recovered after all of them. Stay invested. Don’t watch the news. Don’t check your portfolio every day. Buy more if you can. Winter is here, and winter always ends. (This is basically the financial version of “everything works out in the end” from every movie you’ve ever seen, and he’s right, which is annoying.)

Dave Ramsey would say:

The complete opposite energy. He wouldn’t even acknowledge the market exists. He’d look at you the way your dad looked at you when you crashed his car and say: “You’re worried about Iran crashing the economy? Do you have credit card debt? Do you have a car payment? Do you have an emergency fund? If the answer is yes, yes, and no, Iran isn’t your problem. YOU are your problem. You’re watching CNN worried about global collapse when you owe Visa $14,000 at 22% interest. That’s your Iran.”

Then he’d tell you to turn off the news, get on a budget tonight, list every debt smallest to largest, cut up the credit cards, sell the car you can’t afford, and eat rice and beans until your grandchildren get tired of hearing about it. The people who survive economic chaos aren’t the ones with the best investment strategy. They’re the ones with no debt and six months of cash in the bank.

Robbins says your money problem is a psychology problem. Master your emotions and the market will make you wealthy despite wars and pandemics.

Ramsey says your money problem is a behavior problem. Stop buying things you can’t afford and no crisis can touch you.

Robbins wants you to be unshakeable in the storm. Ramsey wants you to build the shelter before the storm arrives.

Which idea helps you more? Your vote:

For Me

To me, the answer is pretty simple: Tony Robbins, because he is directly calming my urge to sell my investments right now. “Time in the market beats timing the market.” I get it, Tony, thank you!

That said, I am also taking one more piece of advice from Robbins: diversification. For a long time, I’ve been primarily a stock investor. In fact, I used to write a blog called Loved Investor, investing in stocks of companies whose products I love. Now with geopolitical uncertainty, ranging from short-term pain, to long-term recession, to missiles flying overhead, I need to study and learn more about other investments: gold, real estate, foreign currency, and even Pokémon cards (my sons would approve, but Dave Ramsey would slap me). I need to understand them more and de-risk from what’s going on.

Plus, I hate how much Ramsey talks about rice and beans. I love rice but hate beans (what do you expect from a Chinese dude?). But today I just got my blood drawn and my fasting glucose is 109. Now I hate rice too.

My vote goes to Tony Robbins.

Since you can’t just return the house with Amazon Prime, now you have to fix it. There are two choices:

Choice one: get yourself a handyman (or a handywoman in this case). She came out of a pickup truck carrying a huge machine that looked to be either cleaning your pipes or opening a portal to another dimension. Her vest has enough tools to build the Trump wall.

After you show her all your house’s problems, she muttered “alright” and got to work. One hour of patching, 30 minutes of supergluing, and an hour and a half of sandpapering, she tells you “you are good.” And you are. In the meantime, she hardly spoke to you and her eyebrow never moved.

Choice two: you called a Feng Shui Master. She drives a Toyota Prius but is dressed in a silk robe with a golden dragon sewn on it. You know she’s not doing Kung Fu, but she’s doing something. She came into your house, not saying a word, and definitely not paying attention to your eager explanation of all your leaks and breaks. She surveyed your living room, then walked up and down the stairs a few times, did some Eastern meditation and chants, and finally said, “The entire house’s chi is wrong. The dragon chi can’t flow, the money chi is leaking. You don’t need patches, you need a remodeling to correct the feng shui and vibe.”

Now, if you use the troubled house as an analogy for your mental state (your fear, your anxiety, your negative thinking), then these two fixers represent our two authors’ methods today. The handywoman is Julie Smith (the 16th seed), and the Feng Shui Master is Brené Brown (the 1 seed). The former has all the tools to fix your problems, the other has one tool to reshape your inner core.

Let’s dive in on each.

Brené Brown

Human psychology research professor at University of Houston. She spent two decades studying one thing: shame. Honestly, that’s like a doctor specializing in hemorrhoids, or a marine biologist studying sea cucumber feces. However, her work produced astonishing results. Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the five most-viewed TED talks ever. It turned her from an academic nobody into a cultural phenomenon, with #1 NYT bestsellers, Netflix special, HBO Max documentary, two podcasts, and the Vulnera perfume brand.

I made the last one up, but speaking of brand, her personal story is part of the brand. She’s a self-described perfectionist fifth-generation Texan who had a breakdown during her own research when she realized the data was telling her she needed to be more vulnerable. That honesty about her own struggle is what makes her credible.

Daring Greatly (2012)

Title comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech. More than 2 million copies sold. The thesis: vulnerability is not weakness, it’s the most accurate measure of courage. We live in a culture of scarcity (never enough, never good enough), and the antidote is what she calls “wholehearted living,” engaging with the world from a place of worthiness rather than shame.

Core Ideas:

• Vulnerability is courage, not weakness. Showing up when you can’t control the outcome is vulnerability. Avoiding it is what actually makes you weak.

• Shame is the real enemy. Shame says “I am bad.” Guilt says “I did something bad.” Learning to recognize the difference is a survival skill.

• The armor we wear costs us. Perfectionism, numbing, cynicism. These are shields against vulnerability. But when you numb pain, you also numb joy.

• Wholehearted living. People with a deep sense of worthiness let go of what people think, embrace imperfection, and believe they are enough.

• The arena matters more than the critics. If you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, Brown doesn’t want your feedback.

Julie Smith

English clinical psychologist. She started posting short mental health videos on TikTok in 2019. During Covid, her audience exploded, hitting 3.5 million followers in under two years. Her videos have racked up half a billion views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I can see why: she looks like Jennifer Aniston performing as a psychologist with a British accent.

Her path is essentially: real therapist → realizes most people can’t afford or access therapy → starts giving away therapy tools for free on social media → becomes one of the most followed mental health professionals on earth → writes a book that became the bestselling nonfiction book in the UK in 2022.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (2022)

The thesis: you don’t need a diagnosis or a therapist’s couch to benefit from the tools clinical psychologists use every day. This is a toolkit. Practical, evidence-based strategies for the everyday mental health struggles everyone faces.

The book is structured in short, bite-sized chapters organized around specific challenges, so you can flip to whatever you’re dealing with right now.

Core Ideas:

• Thoughts are not facts. They’re suggestions your brain offers to make sense of the world. You don’t have to believe every one.

• Emotions are information, not commands. Feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re in danger. Learn to read your emotions without being ruled by them.

• Know your cognitive distortions. Catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, emotional reasoning. Your brain falls into these patterns automatically. Recognizing them is half the battle.

• Small actions change big feelings. In a low mood spiral, you disengage from things you enjoy, which makes it worse. One tiny change (even just getting outside) starts reversing it.

• You don’t need to be in crisis to work on your mental health. This is preventative medicine for the mind. Have tools ready before the crisis hits.

So whose idea do you like better? The shame master who wants to change your mental feng shui, or the handywoman who has a tool for every leak you have?

Brown wants to tear down the walls and rebuild from the foundation. Smith wants to fix the leak, unclog the drain, and sand the floor. One takes six months. The other takes an afternoon.

Vote here:

For Me

Now I don’t vote based on who I think should win. The #1 seed with 70M TED views, 6 bestsellers, and Netflix/HBO series should crush the #16 seed TikToker with a list of little tools.

But I vote based on this single question: “Whose idea helped me more?”

To me the answer is simple: the tool lady. Why? Because I am already overflowing with vulnerability. Two days ago I had a little quarrel with Tracy. I spent the night thinking about it, and the next day came up with a fear list and 2x2 analysis to show her my mindset.

If I get more vulnerable, I’ll overdose and be hospitalized at TED Regional Hospital.

But the tools, they are nice and practical. Here’s one of her tools that has been helpful for me: Square Breathing. Navy SEALs use it in combat. I use it to lower my blood pressure every morning when I measure it.

My vote goes to the under-underdog with a tool vest: Julie Smith!

Whatever it is, hold it in your mind. Feel it.

Now, two ideas. Just read and react.

Idea 1: You are afraid because you care about the wrong thing. You think you’re afraid of failure. You’re not. You’re afraid of what failure will say about you. You’ve fused your identity with the outcome. If the project fails, I’m a failure. If I don’t perform, I’m a fraud. That’s not fear. That’s a values problem. You’ve chosen to measure your worth by results you can’t fully control. Swap the metric. Measure yourself by what you’re willing to struggle for, not by whether you win. The fear doesn’t go away, but it stops meaning something about who you are.

Idea 2: You are afraid because you won’t shut up about it. You’ve been rehearsing your own failure for weeks. Playing the movie of everything going wrong, over and over, in a theater with an audience of one. You. And every screening makes you smaller. Here’s the thing: that fear isn’t a prediction. It’s just self-talk. And self-talk is not reality. You are not your thoughts. You are what you do. So do something. Anything. Send the email. Write the page. Make the call. Action is the only thing that shuts up the voice in your head. Not because the fear disappears, but because you’re too busy to listen to it.

Idea 1 is from Mark Manson. Idea 2 is from Gary John Bishop.

Which one hit harder? If you already feel it, you can vote now.

If not, keep reading. And come back later.

Mark Manson

Born in Austin, Texas and later moved to Boston, he was a dating coach before he was a self-help author. His first book was literally called “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” (2011, self-published). He started blogging about relationships and life advice in 2008, built the blog to 2 million monthly readers by 2016, and in 2015 wrote a blog post called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” that became the basis for the book.

His philosophical influences are unusually serious for a guy with swear words on his covers. Existentialists like Nietzsche and Sartre, Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, Stoicism. The Sunday Times described his writing as “like the local drunk who spent too much time in the philosophy section of the bookstore.” He took it as a compliment.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016)

Most-read nonfiction book worldwide in 2017 according to Amazon Charts. The thesis is anti-positivity. Stop trying to feel good all the time. Life involves suffering, so the question isn’t how to avoid it but how to choose suffering that’s meaningful to you. It’s not that you shouldn’t care about anything. It’s that you have a limited number of things you can care about, so choose wisely. Stop giving a f*ck about the things that don’t matter so you can give a f*ck about the things that do.

Core Ideas:

• Not giving a f*ck doesn’t mean being indifferent. It means choosing what to care about carefully and letting everything else go.

• Happiness isn’t a destination. Problems never go away. They just get upgraded. Happy people don’t have fewer problems. They have better ones.

• You are not special. Accepting your ordinariness is liberating. It frees you from performing a life you don’t have.

• Choose your suffering. What pain are you willing to sustain? That answer determines your life more than what pleasures you chase.

• You are always choosing. Even when you feel stuck, you’re choosing to stay. Responsibility isn’t blame. It’s power.

Gary John Bishop

Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland. That’s about all the personal backstory you get from him. He’s not a memoir guy. He became a Senior Program Director for one of the world’s biggest personal development organizations, and took that training background and developed what he calls “urban philosophy.” Tough-love personal development stripped of all the soft, inspirational fluff. Think of a Glaswegian bartender who also happens to have world-class coaching credentials telling you to get your shit together.

Unfu*k Yourself (2017)

The thesis is brutally simple: the only thing standing between you and the life you want is you. Not your circumstances. Not other people. Not your past. You. Specifically, your self-talk. The constant internal monologue that’s either building you up or tearing you down. Bishop structures the book around seven “power assertions”. Phrases you tell yourself to override the negative loop.

Core Ideas:

• You have the life you’re willing to put up with. If it’s not what you want, you’ve been tolerating it. Stop tolerating.

• Self-talk is everything. Change the conversation in your head, change your life.

• You are not your thoughts. You don’t control what you think. You control what you do. Action defines you.

• Take 100% responsibility. Things happened that weren’t your fault. What you do next is always on you. No exceptions.

• Expect nothing, accept everything. Expectations are pre-planned disappointments. Let go of “should” and work with what is.

Comparison

I made it at the top. Go back to vote!

For Me

I really enjoy Manson’s writing. The fact that he chose to feature cuss words in life philosophy is genuinely bold, and it started a trend in the late 2010s with authors swearing up and down. Thankfully, that trend has died down by now.

But for me, Bishop’s core idea helped more. You might think I have all things figured out. This guy who writes and speaks for a career, builds a family he loves, must be living his dream life. His mind must be an inspiration buffet plus positivity symphony.

Nah, the opposite is true. I talk garbage to myself all the time. I let my biggest fears run through my mind nonstop, making me catastrophize every little setback into self-indictment.

The fears I wrote at the top of this article? That’s me. Right now.

That’s why having this Scottish guy yell at me, even cuss me out, is helpful. Sometimes you need a gentle coach who hugs you with encouragement. And sometimes you need a good verbal slap.

My vote goes to Gary John Bishop.

Slaps hurt. But once in a while, it can feel good.

Failure.

Something we all face.

But what do you do when you fail?

Today’s two books, Lean Startup and Lean In, try to give you the answers. They both came out of Silicon Valley in the 2010s. They both started world-changing movements, and redefined the cultures of businesses, careers, and lives. And they did so from completely opposite angles.

I’ve been looking forward to this battle for a long time. Because this is not just observational, but personal. In fact, I built my business around one of these books’ philosophies and lived to tell the tale.

Let’s get our “Battle of the Leans” started.

Eric Ries

A software engineer who cofounded a Silicon Valley company and failed miserably, because he spent months building features nobody wanted, and launched to a world that didn’t care. So instead of stress-eating Korean hot chili noodles (my #1 go-to), he started a blog (my #2 go-to), and documented his learning from failure. The blog became a book, a movement, a rewiring of an entire generation of startup founders’ brains.

The Lean Startup (2011)

This book thinks your business plan is a fantasy. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how good your idea sounds. Until real customers touch your product, you’re just guessing. Ries argues that every startup is essentially a series of experiments, not the execution of a master plan. The goal isn’t to build the perfect product. It’s to learn what customers actually want as fast and cheaply as possible, then iterate. The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best ideas. They’re the ones that learn the fastest.

Core Ideas:

• Build-Measure-Learn. This is the core loop. Build a minimum viable product, measure how customers respond with real data, learn, then repeat. Speed of learning is everything.

• Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Don’t build the full thing. Build the smallest and cheapest possible version that lets you test your core assumption.

• Validated learning over vanity metrics. Likes, page views, and total signups feel good but tell you nothing. The only metrics that matter are the ones that prove customers will actually pay for, use, and come back to your product.

• Pivot or persevere. When the data says your idea isn’t working, you have two choices: pivot (change direction based on what you learned) or persevere (stay the course because the data is promising).

• Innovation accounting. Traditional accounting measures revenue and profit. Startups need a different scorecard: learning velocity. Are you getting closer to product-market fit? Are your experiments producing clearer answers?

This book became Bible in Silicon Valley in the 2010s. Before this book, “lean” was a term reserved for the Costco meat section. After it, it became a goal for every startup. Its ideas (especially the terms “MVP,” “pivoting,” “product-market fit”) are so overused that the book feels dated today, kind of like watching the 1995 movie The Net (starring Sandra Bullock) in 2026.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg was the kind of overachiever that makes all overachievers feel like failures. Harvard undergrad then MBA, Chief of Staff at the US Treasury Department, VP at Google where she built the ad sales team, then COO of Facebook where she turned a zero-revenue startup into one of the most profitable companies in history. She was one of the most powerful women in corporate America, but noticed that there weren’t many other women in the room with her. That observation became the book.

Lean In (2013)

This book thinks women are being held back by two forces: external barriers that everyone acknowledges and internal barriers that nobody talks about. Sandberg argues that women pull back from their ambitions before they need to, don’t negotiate hard enough, don’t raise their hands, and shrink themselves in rooms full of men. The solution: lean in. Take the seat at the table. Raise your hand. Don’t leave before you leave.

Core Ideas:

• Sit at the table. Women routinely take peripheral seats in meetings, defer to others, and diminish their own contributions. Sandberg says be there, speak up, and act like you belong, because you do.

• Don’t leave before you leave. Women start pulling back from their careers in anticipation of having kids by turning down promotions and stopping raising their hands years before necessary. By the time the baby arrives, they have voluntarily opted out of crucial opportunities.

• Make your partner a real partner. Equal careers require equal partnerships at home. Negotiating the home workload is as important as negotiating your salary.

• Seek mentors, but don’t make it weird. Mentorship happens naturally through excellent work and relationship building. Earn it, don’t ask for it.

• Own your success. Women attribute their achievements to luck, help from others, or timing. Men attribute theirs to skill. Sandberg says stop apologizing for being good at what you do.

The book started as a cultural earthquake but drew massive backlash in the #MeToo and anti-grind era. People said a billionaire telling regular women to just try harder was tone-deaf to the systemic problems of childcare, pay gaps, and workplace discrimination that individual ambition can’t fix.

Comparison

They both have “Lean” in the title and mean the complete opposite thing by it.

Eric Ries says: don’t commit. Test. Hedge. Build the smallest possible version of your idea, measure whether anyone cares, and be ready to pivot the moment the data says you’re wrong. Your instincts are probably wrong. Your passion for your idea is a liability. Kill your ego and listen to the customer.

Sheryl Sandberg says: stop hedging. Commit. Lean in. Raise your hand. Your problem isn’t that your idea is wrong. It’s that you’re not backing yourself hard enough. Self-doubt is the enemy. The data you need is already inside you. You’re just too afraid to act on it.

Ries says your conviction will get you killed.

Sandberg says your hesitation already is.

Are you failing because you’re not testing enough or because you’re not believing in yourself enough? Do you need less ego or more? Should you listen to the market or listen to yourself?

And the beautiful irony: Ries built his framework after his company failed because he was too committed to his original vision. Sandberg built hers after watching women fail because they weren’t committed enough to their own ambitions. They both diagnosed the same symptom (people not succeeding) and prescribed opposite medicine.

Whose idea helped you more? The vote is yours!

My Vote

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this battle is personal. In 2012, I read Lean Startup and decided to quit my job and start my company, because with this manual, there was no way I could fail.

Well fail I did. I followed the book step-by-step, but nothing worked. Looking back, the idea that you can iterate your way out of any bad idea was not only intoxicating, it was damaging.

It made me and my team doubt every decision. Anything that didn’t go our way was a signal that we made a bad assumption. Every idea was half-baked and ended with conversations of “let’s test them out.”

Our lives became daily throwing-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-what-data-say. We usually had no data. And in rare cases that we did, the data always said “shit #1, shit #2, and shit #3 were all shit.”

And this way of running a business even spread into my personal life. I became a hedging maniac. Couldn’t commit to anything and looked to A/B test everything, including ways to wipe with toilet paper. It was an agonizing way to live, sometimes literally.

It wasn’t until I decided to take on the 100 Days of Rejection project that I made a mental shift. The idea of doing things for “100 days” regardless of what data might say was liberating, because the inherent commitment of that 100 days pushed me through all the doubts and hedging tendencies. When I had no results or “data” at the beginning, I couldn’t care less because I had 97 more days to go. Better get on it.

Today, my life philosophy can be summed up in three words:

Convictions with a Deadline.

I think through and carefully design my projects, execute with 100% intensity, then move on when it’s over. No daily pivoting.

I am not criticizing Lean Startup. It has made a lot of successful founders. But because I’ve personally witnessed its mental side effect, and because I live a very different life now, I can’t in good conscience vote for the book.

My vote goes to Lean In.

But if you’ve lived through Lean In and were traumatized, let me know.

If a 21-year-old comes to you for career and life advice, what would you say?

“Find your passion?”

“Try hard and try everything?”

“Don’t buy grocery store sushi?”

After a weekend of diarrhea, I’m going with the third one.

What about you?

If you ask around, you’ll see a million self-help authors giving you advice. And today, let me introduce two of the biggest ones, with millions of copies sold.

Just know, they’re not going to get along at a dinner table.

Héctor García

Born in Spain. Worked as a software engineer at CERN, the place where the World Wide Web was invented. Then he visited Japan and never left. Twenty-two years now. As a ramen addict, I don’t blame him at all. He went from software engineer to blogger to author to self-described “aspiring philosopher.” (Not a foodie. What a waste.)

His blog about Japanese culture became his first bestseller, A Geek in Japan. He then co-wrote Ikigai, which has been translated into 70 languages, making it the most translated book ever originally written in Spanish.

Interestingly, he’s the hardest to locate March MINDness author. There is a CPA named Hector Garcia with more YouTube views than him. Philosophers aren’t the online type.

The Book: Ikigai (2016)

The thesis: the people who live longest and happiest, like the centenarians in Okinawa, have found their ikigai, a Japanese word meaning “a reason to live” or “a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.”

Ikigai sits at the intersection of four things: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. That’s your reason for being. The Japanese don’t really have a concept of retirement. They keep working at what they enjoy because they’ve found ikigai, the happiness of always being busy.

Core Ideas:

• Everyone has an ikigai. Your reason for existing. You just have to find it, big or small.

• Stay active, don’t retire. The centenarians in Okinawa never stopped working. Staying engaged and purposeful is what keeps you alive.

• Slow down and focus. Don’t multitask. The Japanese approach of giving full attention to one task produces better work and more satisfaction. Flow state over hustle.

• Community sustains you. Strong social bonds, the moai (social groups) of Okinawa, are as important as diet and exercise. Loneliness kills. Connection heals.

• Follow your curiosity. García himself embodies this. CERN to Japan to photography to philosophy to writing. The journey to finding your ikigai is itself part of the ikigai.

Gary Keller

Born in Texas, both parents were schoolteachers. Originally wanted to be a professional musician but fell in love with real estate. In 1983, he co-founded Keller Williams Realty from a single office in Austin. Built it into the largest real estate company in the world by agent count, over 180,000 agents worldwide.

He now has his own band and owns two music venues. The guy wanted to be a musician, became a real estate mogul, and found a way to be both.

If you watch his interviews and talks, he looks like Colonel Sanders dressed like Steve Jobs.

The Book: The ONE Thing (2013)

The thesis is aggressively simple: extraordinary results come from narrowing your focus to one thing. Not five priorities. Not three. One.

The book builds on Pareto’s principle (20% of effort produces 80% of results) but takes it further. Keller says keep narrowing. Find the 20% of the 20%. Find the one domino that knocks over everything else. Then give it four hours of your day, every day.

Core Ideas:

• The Focusing Question. “What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” Apply it to your career, health, relationships, finances, everything.

• Multitasking is a lie. You’re not doing two things at once. You’re doing two things poorly in rapid succession. Focus on one thing at a time.

• Not everything matters equally. Most to-do lists are survival lists, not success lists. Find the thing that actually moves the needle and ignore the rest.

• Willpower is finite. It’s not always available on demand. Do your most important work early in the day when willpower is highest. Don’t waste it on decisions that don’t matter.

• “Work is a rubber ball.” It bounces back if you drop it. Family, health, friends, and integrity are glass balls. Drop one and it shatters. So protect those and be ruthless about your work focus.

Comparison

García looks at your life and sees an intersection with four circles. If any circle is empty, you’re out of balance. The goal is harmony. Find where all four overlap and plant yourself there.

Keller looks at your life and sees a to-do list with 47 items on it. He wants to cross out 46. The goal isn’t balance, it’s clarity. Find the one thing that matters most right now, and give it everything. Everything else is a distraction disguised as responsibility.

García would tell that 21-year-old: explore. Travel. Try things. Follow your curiosity across disciplines and cultures. Your ikigai will reveal itself at the intersection of your passions, skills, needs, and income. There’s no rush.

Keller would tell that same kid: stop exploring and start focusing. Ask yourself one question every morning. “What’s the ONE thing I can do today such that everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?” Give it four hours before you check your phone. The people who “explore” for a decade end up 31 with a great Instagram and no direction or momentum.

García would point you to Okinawa, the island with the most centenarians, to see people with purpose, harmony, and balance.

Keller would show you 180,000 agents building real estate empires as examples of intensity and accomplishment.

García would recommend the best sushi and sake in Tokyo.

Keller would take you to Salt Lick BBQ in Austin.

(If you ever need a food recommendation in either Tokyo or Austin, hit me up.)

Their contrast is one of the oldest debates in philosophy. Eastern vs Western, fulfillment vs achievement, harmonic balance vs intense singularity.

Who do you vote for?

My Vote

I enjoy the core ideas of both of these books, and I share García’s affinity for Japan. In fact, to write my own book, I went to Japan specifically for philosophical dust. Staring at Mt. Fuji and walking around Lake Kawaguchi gave me the inspiration to title my book Easy Discipline. I even wrote a chapter based on another Japanese concept, Ichigo Ichie.

That said, I’m putting my foot down and voting against Ikigai. For two reasons:

1. The four circles thing is a personal version of the Hedgehog Concept Jim Collins made famous in Good to Great, which advises companies to find what sits at the intersection of what you’re deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine. That’s the same as “what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for.” It doesn’t feel very original.

2. If you ask a Japanese person, they know what ikigai is, but they wouldn’t know what the famous Venn diagram is all about. It feels like putting a pie chart on Plato’s Republic, or a 2x2 matrix for Buddha’s teaching. I’m not a fan of McKinseyfying philosophies.

For that reason, I am voting for The ONE Thing.