Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today we are joined by Matt Ward. Matt is a serial entrepreneur, a startup advisor, an investor and a futurist podcaster at Disruptors.FM, a TED-esque long-form podcast with top scientists, creatives, and world-leaders focused on a better future through innovation and entrepreneurship.

Matt is also a top writer on Medium, he has built and sold 3 companies (incl. a 7-figure exit in 12 months), has created four top 5 podcasts and, on top of all that, is writing a post-gene-editing Sci-Fi novel.

I wanted to have Matt on the show because I wanted to know how he is so multidisciplinary, how he manages to do so much, focus on so much, have so many different interests, and create such an interesting and meaningful life.

We also talked a little about the future and what that holds, and all the various things that he has learned interviewing some of the world's top authorities on the future. As we know, technology and innovation are going to make us all SuperHuman, so it's nice to know what is coming down the pipeline.

It was a great episode, I really enjoyed chatting with Matt, and I'm sure you will enjoy this conversation as well!

– Jonathan Levi

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This episode is brought to you by Caldera + Lab's The Good. Click here and use coupon code superhuman at checkout to save 20% on their amazing skincare product for men today, for all orders placed on their website!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Matt Ward and how did he get here? [4:00]
• Where is Matt Ward at this point in his life? [6:35]
• What is Matt Ward's superpower that helps him power through all that? [8:05]
• How can you move towards realizing your full potential? [10:45]
• How does Matt choose where to invest his energy? [12:35]
• How is Matt regulating where he is headed? [20:45]
• What are the things that have stood out from Matt's long podcasting experience? [23:50]
• What habits does Matt utilize to keep himself performing at a SuperHuman level? [25:55]
• Some homework for you by Matt Ward [29:15]
• What is some product or service Matt can't live without? [30:20]
• Some of Matt's favorite books [30:55]
• Where can you learn more about Matt Ward and his work? [32:00]
• Matt Ward's final takeaway message [36:20]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Kickstarter
• Indiegogo
• Amazon FBA
• Disruptors.FM
• WeCroak
• Dalai Lama Books on Amazon
• Matt Ward on Medium
• Free Happiness
• News Feed Eradicator
• Ambronite
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• The Syndicate Podcast
• Matt Ward's website
• disruptors.fm/risk
• Subscribe HERE for Matt's top Growth Hacks

Favorite Quotes from Matt Ward:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introdusction: Welcome to the award-winning Superhuman Academy Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to give you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host. Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is sponsored by Comrad Socks. For years. I've known about the health benefits of wearing compression socks. Especially when I travel or have to sit for extended periods of time, you know, things like reduce risk of blood clots, improved athletic performance, reduced soreness and swelling, and much, much more.

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Greeting, Superfriends, and welcome. Welcome back to Superhuman Academy. We have this wonderful episode for you, but first I want to thank our friend PDemand from Canada who says, thanks for putting us on Superhuman track. Five stars. Jonathan, I've been listening to your podcast for the last two months or so since that day, my life has changed in every positive way. I'm sprinting towards my goals. Now, the morning rituals are doing wonders to my life. I've started hitting 4:55 AM every single day, seven days a week, walks, stretches, and meditation have taken my life to a new level.

Thank you, my friend, keep up the great work. Well, wow. Thank you so much for that review. I'm actually getting a little, little verklempt here. After reading it. So thank you so much. And if you want to hear me tear up in the air, all you have to do is leave a review. I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a quick crier apparently on to today's episode.

You guys, today, we are joined by Matt Ward. He is a serial entrepreneur startup advisor, investor, and futurist as well as a podcaster at Disruptors.FM, a TEDx long-form podcast. With top scientists, creatives, and world leaders focused on a better future through innovation and entrepreneurship.

He's also a top writer on medium he's built and sold three companies, including this seven-figure exit in 12 months, and created four top five podcasts. On top of writing a post gene editing, sci-fi novel. Wow. What a bio. I wanted to have Matt on the show because I wanted to talk about how he is so multi-disciplinary how he manages to do so much focus on so much, have so many different interests, and create such an interesting and meaningful life.

We also talk a little bit about the future and what that holds and all the various things that he has learned interviewing some of the world's top authorities. On the future because as we know, technology and innovation are going to make us all superhuman. So it's nice to know what is coming down the pipeline.

It was a great episode. I really enjoy chatting with Matt. And I know that you will enjoy this episode with Matt Ward.

Mr. Ward, how are you, my friend? Welcome.

Matt Ward:  I am pretty good. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Levi: Thanks for coming on. I'm really excited about today's conversation. The only thing I have to warn you about is if a dog barks in the background it's cause I have a foster dog who I don't yet know very well, so I'm not sure what's going to happen, but we'll just take it as applause.

If he barks, throw whatever it is you're saying, I like it. Awesome. So Matt, give our audience a little bit of background. I try in the intro to cover and explain who you are and what you do, but you know, it's always different to hear someone's origin story from them themselves. So tell us a little bit about you.

Matt Ward: Basically good at math and science, I should do engineering, right?

But then I found out fast. There's no way in hell. I'm working for someone else. Couldn't handle having a boss and doing things that the corporate inefficient way I get into starting my own business. Of course, I go for the pie in the sky type deal. And that fails miserably. I'm not the next soccer Berg, but I get into solo entrepreneurship, dropshipping.

I find out fast that that's not a great way to make money. Once Tim Ferriss kind of shared the secret with everybody. So I started crowdfunding podcasts. Let's be unique. This is early on in Kickstarter, crowdfunding Indiegogo days. And it goes really well, except for people that want to raise money. They don't have shit to pay you with.

So I have to manufacture my own products. Throughout this whole time, I'm living in Southeast Asia. I moved to China design, a laptop case. It opens into a standing desk. The problem is it's three weeks between design and prototype. I'm living in a super Chinese part of China. Like I walk by the people, run to the windows type deal.

Whoa. I'm an odd type of person. If you listened, you can kind of tell, I know other people that are also just manufacturing regular products and selling them. So I figured, okay, I'll do that as well. If these guys can do it, I can probably pull it off as well. I started off home garden, outdoorsy type line, and it just kind of takes off its Amazon FBA manufacturing products using Amazon to fulfill them to customers.

I started it with an 8K investment. The business starts to take off. I started a podcast around that, basically sharing, look, here's what I'm actually doing. I'm not trying to sell you guys the perfect solution. I'm just going to be as open and honest as possible. That went really well, was able to fuel my lifestyle.

I was able to reinvest a hundred percent of the business, sell that business at the end of a year, which was kind of a pipe dream. Let's have this as the tagline for the podcast. Step one to seven figures, ended up hitting the seven-figure, Mark selling the business for that, and then transitioning out of that business because it wasn't the passion project.

I'm not really big on that kind of stuff. I want him to get into stuff that actually mattered, which kind of speeds up to more or less where we are today.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Now, I'm glad you pause there because your story and my story are so similar. I also built a seven-figure e-commerce business from the ages of 16 to 25, then and sold it also because that wasn't really pie in the sky enough to use your term, but also because I wanted to impact people and help people and do something that actually made a difference instead of selling luxury goods on the internet. So you said that brings us to where we are now. Where is that?

Matt Ward: So. At first, it was angel investing. I started a podcast, a syndicate, and it's really focused on tech companies, startups, and investing in them. And I do a little bit of investing into startup companies as you do as well. And I've done a little bit more, but by no means seasoned professional, but basically looking at companies that can change the world and trying to help them with investments.

But primarily what I'm focused on these days is Disruptors.FM. It's basically a long-form Tedx. Tedx is great. I know you did a Ted Talk. It was pretty solid, but the problem is, yeah, you got the world's smartest folks and you give them 10 or 15 minutes. Well, they have a lot more than 10 or 15 minutes worth of awesomeness to share with the world.

So we get the smartest scientist, researchers, politicians, economists, et cetera. And have him talk, not just about their expertise, because everyone's good at something, but everyone's not only good at that one thing. So we have them go beyond that and look at the technologies, trends, problems facing humanity going forward so that we can kind of get those spontaneous type interactions that you wouldn't normally get.

When you have the AI guy, who's suddenly talking about the space. And then talking about the implications on human health and optimization human performance, longevity, et cetera. So that's really what I'm focused on these days is building up that podcast. And then also working on a SciFi novel. It's kind of, uh, it's a little bit of a dystopian, little bit of a guard rails type of book about genetic engineering and where humanity could be headed.

Jonathan Levi: Really cool. Really cool. So tell me what your superpower is through all this entrepreneurship and everything that you've learned. I mean, what would you say your superpower is?

Matt Ward: I would say my superpower, my super weakness. I think that's how it works. And it's motivating. It's wanting to be better and wanting to achieve more and being willing to put in that effort.

And I think it's incredibly powerful when you're in those hustle phases, but at the same time, I'm sure a lot of the listeners have gone through this when something is so much of a strength that also becomes a weakness where you overdo it, you burn yourself out and you get into this. Almost a depression-type phase where you just don't know what's the purpose.

What's the point? So my superpower is definitely finding problems I want to solve. And then diving headlong into those. I have a bit of an obsessive personality and very much of a. Damn it I'm going to slam my head against the wall until I make it a work-type deal, which is both great and terrible. Elon Musk accomplishes a ton, but he's miserable on sleeping on the floor if Tesla totally not to compare to myself to Elon, but just an analogy.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, of course. Now tell me, do you think people can learn that superpower?

Matt Ward: To be honest. I don't think people can learn that type of superpower, but I don't think they necessarily need to or want to, I think if people have a focus and it really depends on what you're focused on. So like, this is a big part of what I think about.

And I think that the vast majority of people are working in jobs that they do not like, or, and oftentimes hate. They're not doing something they're passionate much less obsessed about. And I think we need to unlock that talent of people doing their obsession. So I think when people find those obsessions right.

The things that they are fundamentally structured to do the change they want to create in the world. That they're so much further along in terms of what they're able to do. Motivation and output wise than if they put a couple of filters in their life to cut out some of the garbage, to cut out some of them, this is not the stuff you need to be doing.

You can accomplish the same thing without driving yourself mad.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Interesting. So essentially you're saying really people have quite a bit more potential than they realize, and that there is a superpower and actually knowing how to tap into that potential.

Matt Ward: I think that's definitely true and not only potential but everyone has something to give to the world. I'm sorry. But most people are giving busy work to the world because that's what the world rewards unless you're willing to take that really massive jump of Holy shit. What am I doing? Am I really going for this? Am I really going for this? Oh my God. The car is going. I need to steer.

Jonathan Levi: So you go about making that shift. I mean, I'm all about trying to give people as practical, actionable stuff as possible. So what are some steps that people can go through, I mean, this is such a broad question, but what are some steps that people can realize or use to realize that full potential and break out of this kind of comfort zone to use a cliche?

Matt Ward: You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and that's something I try to keep in mind. I downloaded an app and I was going to get used to this as the top thing that I bought. That was one of the questions you had, but it was a dollar and it's called a week croak and it basically tells you five times a day.

Hey, guess what you're going to die. And then it gives you some type of quote, a meditate on death. There's only two types of meditations that have been proven to work for everyone. And that's death, meditation, and loving-kindness meditation. And the death meditation specifically is to make you more present.

And this is something I'm terrible at. I'm always in my own head, which is why it's important. I think a lot of us are, but when you think about the fact that. Shit. I literally have nothing guaranteed in terms of tomorrow or the next day or the next day. It makes you think about what do you want your obituary to say?

Who do you want to show up and how do you want to be. Remembered. And I think when people have those thoughts, it fundamentally shifts what they're able to and what they're willing to work on in their life. It's hard to go about the mundane day to day when you're kind of waiting for that retirement to live the life, not knowing if you're actually going to get that retirement, whether that's money or whether that's dying, whether that's your family or loved ones passing away.

We try to set these constants in our life and we walk into the future. Walking backward. We only know what we've ever seen. We don't really consider what we could see or create. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. So how do you structure the things you're working on? Because one thing that really stood out to me is you're doing many different things, right?

It's not like you're focused on this one big. Saving the whale's mission. I like to call like, you know, social good mission saving the whales missions. But, um, you're also writing a book which you've obviously decided is part of your potential and part of your legacy. So I love understanding because I've spent so much time trying to figure this out for myself.

I love understanding how it is. People prioritize their time. And I don't just mean that on the micro-level. I mean that on the macro level, you like, you've obviously decided to devote. Hours weeks, months to writing a SciFi novel. So talk me through that. You also write quite a bit on medium. You've built businesses.

Now you're focused more on podcasting. How do you choose where to invest your energy? Given that you will one day die?

Matt Ward: There's an acronym, attention deficit disorder. I very much add in terms of what I focus on and I recognize that as both a strength and a weakness, part of that is the purpose for the podcast, because I think learning is one of the most important things we can do.

And it's something that I'm very focused on. And with the podcast, I can have a primate researcher on one day. And astrophysicist on the next bushes, presidential, uh, economics advisor a day after that. So I get to have that interesting mix of, uh, views and ideas to learn about, but in terms of what to focus on, I think this is something I struggle with.

I think everyone struggles with this, right? And I was reading a book by the Dalai Lama actually yesterday. And he was saying something to the effect of the meaning of life is to seek happiness. And I think in a lot of ways, that's something I'm trying to do. And I think it's something we're all trying to do.

And I can very much say I'm not remotely close to it. And that the different things I'm working on are different manifestations of what I think will bring me happiness. I love books. I love reading. I had some free time. I decided to get into it. Writing fiction and found out Holy cow, I actually really liked this.

I started the podcast because I wanted to learn and also spread a lot of these different ideas. A lot of people and a lot of spontaneity could happen when people hear about where the future is actually headed. Most people don't really have the time to think about it because they're busy with their day-to-day lives.

But if you give to people that glimpse of what the future could look like. Not everything's necessarily going to resonate with them, but that one thing that one interview maybe that does maybe that's what gets them to quit their job and to go into biotech or to quit their job and to go into climate science.

And it just, I think if you look at all the different things I've done, it's chasing happiness and chasing purpose and not doing a perfect job of either. And not having a perfect focus for either. I don't think it's the ideal way for people to go about making an impact. I think the most impactful people generally have one big thing they focus on until they go to that next big thing.

I think that focus is key, but for me, a lot of times that's challenging. And by having those different projects that I'm working on, when I feel down when I feel not motivated to do one thing, I am able to shift gears and shift into that other thing, which I also find meaningful.

Jonathan Levi: I'm really glad you said that because this is actually my approach. And I was just explaining this on a coaching call yesterday. This is my approach to learning. Like I think a lot of people beat themselves up because, you know, I said, I wanted to learn Spanish, but now I'm actually taking a programming class and an iPhone photography class and whatever it may be right. We beat ourselves up for not sticking to one thing, but in fact, Two things, one learning, anything helps you learn everything and you know, it's, the more you learn, the more you can learn if you know how to learn correctly. And on top of that, my approach is that. My most precious resource is time and attention and more attention than time.

Meaning enthusiasm for doing a project is more limited than my time because I don't have 24 hours a day of attention and enthusiasm and passion. So yeah, I've kind of taken on within reason, this approach of like make hay while the sun shines. Like if I'm passionate today about researching real estate investment opportunities in North Carolina.

Then I'm just, I'm going to focus on that because it is one of my goals and who cares that it's a slightly lower priority than, you know, creating this next product that we're working on. If I have that energy and enthusiasm, and I also find like, I definitely need to shift back and forth because you do get bogged down and you do get sick of projects.

Matt Ward: If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. Totally. And that's not entirely true, but I do think that I think there's kind of two schools of thought one is the super hyper over-optimization of everything, which is one thing I want to ask you about when you're on our podcast in terms of getting bogged down by the latest science and the other is, well, I'm just going to go with the flow.

And I think the ideal situation for most people is to be able to do both. And to have that self-awareness, which I'm not saying it's something I have, but to have the self-awareness of knowing when it's time to do each.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And I guess the only caveat I would say is like, you really have to know what your rocks are, right?

It's, it's coming from this whole metaphor of, if you have a jar and you need to fit in the water, sand pebbles, rocks, and you put in the water and sand first, you're never going to get the big rocks in. Essentially, if you go. From highest or largest size to smallest size, you will fit everything in. And so there are those big things that are rocks, and I'm a big fan of thinking.

A year in advance about where do I want to be in a year and what do I need to achieve? And what do I need to accomplish? Because that makes it much harder to just sit down, plop down, do your emails because that's the easiest thing to work on. But with that said, you have many rocks and you can choose those rocks.

And one of those rocks may be publishing a SciFi novel.

Matt Ward: Yeah. Think about it like horse blinders. You need to look where you want to go then put on the horse, blinders, run towards it. Until you feel, or until you come up for air to take off the blinders, look around again, and course, correct. Wait, is this actually the direction I want to go?

Or am I building myself a job that I would hate? Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: Right. I like that. I use a similar metaphor, which is bowling in the dark. So if someone told you, you had to bowl, you had to actually roll in the dark while you would want to turn the lights on. At least after every round. And see the results of your bullying as opposed to at the end of the game.

And so many people kind of turn on the lights at the end of the game, so to speak, and say, wait a minute. When I was younger, I had all these ideas about what I wanted to do, and I went and did them. But along the way, it became less interesting to actually do them. Thanks.

Matt Ward: Yeah. I heard a quote one time and it was the saddest thing is accomplishing the wrong goal.

Something to that effect, it was going down the wrong path. It was being successful at doing the wrong thing for you. And I think a lot of people find themselves in that boat. That's why you see people that are working in finance incredibly successful, and then jump off a building because they've optimized for something that's not actually happiness and contentment.

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So tell me about that exercise for you. I mean, are you doing a quarterly check-in with yourself? Are you doing a weekly sit-down where you evaluate your goals? I mean, how are you on an ongoing basis regulating this for yourself?

Matt Ward: I would say it's a bit of a work in progress. I definitely sit down on a regular basis.

It's more of a when it needs to happen, the basis of writing down something to the effect of who am I, what do I want? I have two super personal blog posts coming out pretty soon on medium. One of them is about the sci-fi novel and getting rejected and working through that. And one of them is about the meaning of life and work and how you kind of find balance.

My wife is a business and life coach as well. So. Talking with her creates those types of situations on a normal basis. So it's not something I necessarily have to worry about. But then I also do think about some of these things because I'm of the opinion that a lot of very successful entrepreneurial type, a type people are not necessarily the most happy people.

There are people that are pursuing happiness, but they have a lot of issues. I have a lot of issues. I don't know if you do, but I wouldn't be surprised. You're a high performer. If you look at high-performers, usually that's what the statistics say. And I think monitoring not just goals, but how you're doing is valuable.

I just recently got an app it's called free happiness. And basically what it does is, and some of these, as you can tell, are hacks for happiness. And that's something that I'm trying to focus on because it's something I'm not good at, but it's basically a couple of times a day, it'll say, Hey, how are you feeling?

And you have to choose whichever smiley face corresponds to the amount of happiness. It'll be doing the gratitude journal. What are three things you're grateful for? And then it'll pop up. Hey, it's time to smile. And just some small little hacks like that I think are also beneficial because then you're getting the data of how you're doing on a daily and a long-term basis.

If you're not doing good, well, you better switch something or you kind of have, you kind of know the reason and. If you do find yourself needing to switch something that can simplify things for people that have trouble with that type of stuff, which I would argue, we all do. We all get stuck in the forest and we get stuck in the trees.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Yeah. I found that Jaylee's journaling practice helps me with that one. I have an archive of like, Hey, at this time I was working on this project. I try every day to document a little bit about what's going on before I gratitude journal. So like, uh, today I have to do this. I'm really not excited about it.

You know, rate my overall happiness. And then I have a backward-looking archive of when I was happy. So I can see what are the things that I was doing when I was happier. And just immediately after I do that, I gratitude journal and that makes me much happier.

Matt Ward: It's a smarter system.

Jonathan Levi: I like it. I learned it from Ben Hardy, your fellow writer on Medium.

And it's, it's one of the habits that's most stuck with me through the whole podcast, which actually is, is a question I wanted to ask you. The Anna question I'd love to ask podcaster is because I don't know about you, but certain big themes have stood out to me. Through interviewing 250 of the world's top athletes, performers, superhumans.

And I would wonder what are the big themes that have stood out for you across your various podcasts? Interviewing so many fascinating high performers.

Matt Ward: I would say it's interesting because I've had a couple of different podcasts with different themes, but you see, even then among the top performers, there are certain things that seem to be relatively consistent.

One is that this is something most often admit to, but the one is something that you can definitely see from the outside. There is something missing there and they're striving for greatness. They're striving for happiness. They're striving for meaning in the world. Another meditation. People trying to find some way of coping with the human condition, trying to find their way in the world.

Health focus is something that's way up there in terms of people exercising, people trying to eat. Right. And a lot of this just comes with understanding the science in terms of other big themes that I see between people. It would be two things. One would be not focusing solely on the money, focusing on something else and having the money come as a byproduct of that.

And that's not to say, follow your dreams and that'll create the wealth of the world type deal. But it's saying find something that you love or passionate and skilled with. Find that happy little medium, and then carve out your niche by being. The best at that. So, Stephen King, someone asked him how to do become the world's greatest writer.

And he said, I write every morning, I sit down and write, and I think there's something to that. But you also have to know, like we said before, you've got to take off those horse blinders and see where you're headed. But for the top performers, they're the ones that know what their mission is and they go towards it relentlessly.

Jonathan Levi: Love that. I love that. Now we talked a little bit about journaling. You mentioned meditation. I want to ask what are the superhuman skills and habits that you do to keep yourself performing at this high level, despite add, and the entrepreneur's disorders.

Matt Ward: If I didn't exercise, I would go nuts. So that's definitely one.

I definitely eat very healthily in terms of sleep. I try to get seven to eight hours of sleep. Really? You should get eight hours of sleep. No one can function on less than seven. I try to avoid business books a lot and instead focus on fiction because most of the reading I do is. In bed at night. And I think if you're focused throughout the day on business, on self-development, it becomes something where it's too much.

And for a lot of people, they think about reading a business book, reading a self-development book, they think about that as productivity. And in reality, that's not really productivity, it's false productivity. So if I'm going to be focused on. Something basically, if I'm going to be in my head the entire day, you need something to turn off.

And I think having that something to turn off is valuable, but in terms of taking information, I take in a ton of information, most of it's via podcasts. So I listen to a lot of really interesting podcasts on the industry, on self-development in the future. I usually do three to four X speed on those, which I'm sure you can relate to in terms of working up on that.

You can get a lot more information. I think that's something that's been super beneficial for me. Let's see. Any other habits, obviously don't really use social media.

Jonathan Levi: That's the ultimate hack.

Matt Ward: Isn't it? Yeah. Newsfeed Eradicator, turn off the notifications on your phone. Turn on airplane mode at night. I do cold showers.

Okay. Those would be the main ones. 

Jonathan Levi: That's a pretty good list and fasting intermittent or extended.

Matt Ward: I do both. So I do intermittent fasting every day. It's something where I found way better. Performance, health, mental clarity, et cetera. I've experimented with keto a little bit. I found that that can be very good, but long term, it can have some issues.

And then once or twice a week, I'll do a 24 hour fast, just dinner to dinner.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Good for you. That's very regimented. I do it about once a month today. I did intermittent fasting, but, um, it really depends. I also, we have this sponsor that sent us this amazing product called Ambronite, which makes it, uh, and this isn't a plug.

I don't know if they're going to end up sponsoring this particular episode, but I have it sitting in my cabinet at all times, and I can get like a healthy, all-natural, no preservatives meal in 30 seconds, which makes it harder to. Fast it's like I could fast or I could just mix this stuff and it's so easy.

Matt Ward: You think so, but then when you do, though, I get so much more work done on the list 24 hour fast days, because I don't have to think about or work on anything to do with eating agree. A lot of the folks I interview are focused on longevity, biotech, life sciences, and just the best, best, best science we have right now.

Fasting is the number one thing in terms of improving health and longevity and decreasing inflammation, which seems to be the cause of almost all, all leading, um, neurological and chronic diseases. Alzheimer's arthritis, you name it.

Jonathan Levi: You are absolutely right. And that's why I do it periodically. I should probably do it more than I do.

So that gives us some homework that you would like for people to do to make this episode actionable while they wait for next week's episode.

Matt Ward: I think everyone can dream bigger and not just dream bigger, but accomplish more. It doesn't take 10 times the effort to have 10 times the results, the same thing with a hundred, you can achieve so much more than you think you can.

So my homework for people would be to look at your life and look at the goals that you have to be those businesses, be that personal development. It's easier to do with business things than you can. Have physical numbers for, I want to hit a hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. I want to have a podcast that's XYZ big.

I want to do this. Do that, take whatever that goal is and multiply by 10 and then write down. How you would have to go about thinking and changing things to be able to hit that goal, because what got you here will not get you there. And just by having those thoughts in place, you find the 80, 20, the Pareto principle, so to speak of building something incredible without having to work more, you just have to work in think different.

Jonathan Levi: Wow really fantastic. Now I do want to still hit you with some of these rapid-fire questions. You mentioned one product or service, but what's a product or service you simply couldn't live without?

Matt Ward: Probably podcasts. And it's being able to listen to them. And I mean, it doesn't matter what podcast player, and if, if we were going to go on the health side of things, it would be the gym. I would go nuts without it.

Jonathan Levi: That's a pretty good one. Tell me about books. You and I both share, by the way, I don't read business books in bed anymore. I read fiction, or right now I'm reading an amazing book called a brief history of nearly everything, which is really fun. But tell me about some books that are most impacted your life.

Matt Ward: I would say probably the most important one would be How To Win Friends And Influence People by Del Carnegie.

Jonathan Levi: That's my one.

Matt Ward: That's awesome. The best way to understand psychology and to figure out how to get what you want by helping other people get what they want. And I think if you can think about things like that, you're much more successful when it comes to everything, especially business.

I like, uh, Duvall Noah Harari, Sapiens. There's a lot of books. That's the problem. There's a lot of books that I've read and listened to that have been incredibly beneficial for me, but I can't necessarily remember all of the ones off the top of my head.

Jonathan Levi: If only there was someone out there who taught a memory course that could kind of help you remember all this stuff. I know. Right. I have this same thing. And I teach this in our courses like really that point of a book is to gel the five big ideas, 10 big ideas, and sometimes a book doesn't bubble up to memory right away.

Matt Ward: Even better is when it's synthesized. So you don't remember where it's from. You just remember it and remember that exactly.

Jonathan Levi: Now tell me where can people learn more and get in touch with you?

Matt Ward: I would say for people interested in the future and where the world's headed and how they can align their businesses and skills with creating something incredible. Cause I really do think we can be the change we want to create in the world and we can build incredible businesses to do that.

It would be Disruptors.FM. That's the podcast where I interview Ted level folks, hour, hour, and a half, where we have the big, deep conversations on where the world's headed and how we can make it better because there's a lot of issues with the world, but there's a lot of opportunities as well. That's awesome.

Yeah. At Disruptors.FM, if you're more interested in the startup side of things, then the syndicate that VC is a podcast focused on angel investing. And then you can find me at my blog, Matt ward.io, where there's too many Matt wards. So I couldn't get the.com of course, but that's where you can find my blog.

Find more information about me and then reach out and connect.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. And I know we podcasters are never supposed to pick favorites, but we do. What are some of your favorite episodes that you would recommend people listen to on either one of your podcasts?

Matt Ward: Oh Lord. There's so many incredible ones.

Jonathan Levi: You know, the one that, where I say, which one should I start? You're like, Oh, it's this one.

Matt Ward: Right? I had a great one recently with Nicola. now, host of Singularity, FM focused on tech ethics and direction. But what I would say is an even better way to do it is guys go to Disruptors.FM. We have categories. So if you're interested in space, you can find out everything there is to know about living in space, asteroid, mining, interested in AI, or how Facebook is changing your viewpoints are what the economy looks like. 

Post automation, choose the category and you'll find some incredible stuff there. And then if you're interested in terms of where we're headed and some of the dangers ahead of us Disruptors.fm/risk, you can download my existential risk guide to basically looking at the big problems facing us.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I love that. And I once read a book. I don't remember exactly the guy's name, but it was our final hour. And each chapter was a completely legitimate way that humanity would destroy itself.

Matt Ward: Yeah. Mark Martin Reese, he's a senior astronomer with, uh, Royal Institute of UK, something or other yup.

Jonathan Levi: Very uplifting book.

Matt Ward: See, and I think there's pros and cons to uplifting. So I remember when I was getting into the podcast initially, I was thinking, why is all Saifai sodas, upsetting the future? It looks terrible. Right? Well, terminators coming to get us, we're all going to die. We're going to create dinosaurs, which I had.

Um, that's another great one. If you listen to the Jack Horner episode, he was the inspiration for Jurassic Park. Steven Spielberg's personal onset director. Or not director advisor and he's working on creating and bringing back to life dinosaurs from mutated chicken jeans. Now it's incredibly interesting stuff, but yeah, the future is so depressing.

It's not depressing. The reason why we show it as depressing is one of two things. Okay. They're clickbait because of course, look at the news, similar deal. People want to look at it or they feel compelled to look at the things that sound terrible. But the other side of things now that I can appreciate as a SciFi writer is.

People are much more likely to understand guide rails than they are to understand directions. So Saifai writers, aren't saying this is what's going to happen. They're saying let's take this one specific thing. So whether that's surveillance and the economy that's resolving around advertising, whether that's AI into all of us being replaced by Terminator, whether that's VR and people going into ready player one and never coming out, it's taking.

A specific trend that could become a problem and creating the problem situation so that people can avoid that future and build towards something better. And that's what I'm trying to do with disruptors. And it's something I think that we're accomplishing, even though a lot of the episodes can come off cynical or negative sounding they're designed to.

Be the guard rail so that people can avoid the bad futures and lean towards the good ones.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. And I appreciate that, that caveat. One last question, before I let you go, Mr. Matt ward, if people take away one big message or idea from this episode and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that to be.

Matt Ward: There are no rules. You don't have to have that picket fence. You don't have to get that job. You don't have to go to college. People are going to tell you how to live their life, not how to live yours. And if people aren't further along on the life journey that you want to have listened to the advice is counterproductive because they are quite literally trying to help you live their life.

So set your own course, figure out what you want to do. And remember that you can literally accomplish anything. If you set your mind to it and you're willing to do it. If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right.

Jonathan Levi: Love it. And wonderful, wonderful words to end on that. I couldn't possibly agree with more.

Matt Ward: It's been a pleasure. 

Matt Ward: Thanks for coming on and fun. Hope you guys have enjoyed it and leave a review for the podcast that really helps Jonathan, get this up here and get in front of more incredible people.

Jonathan Levi: That it does. Thank you, sir.

Matt Ward: Same one.

Closing: Thanks for tuning into the award-winning Superhuman Academy Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit superhuman.blog while you're at it please take a moment to share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes, we'll see you next week.