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Win Today
Win Today is a performance enhancing podcast filled with actionable insights and inspiration to come out on top in life. Through captivating interviews and solo episodes, a powerful tool is created and given to listeners to be able to push through any situation in life.
Hosted by Ryan Cass, he delivers messages that align to his purpose of helping people establish a foundation for sustained success, break trends of adversity, and chart desirable courses for life. Win Today!
Win Today
#264 | Why Gratitude Is A Competitive Advantage: How A 19 Year Old Is Changing The Game Ft. Jack Wagoner
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One idea from this conversation really stuck with me: fulfillment isn't about constantly raising the bar—it's about raising your awareness of what's already worth appreciating while continuing to pursue meaningful goals. My biggest takeaways: 1) purpose comes from taking action before you have certainty, 2) balance ambition with gratitude so success doesn't come at the expense of fulfillment, and 3) focus on owning your inputs instead of obsessing over outcomes.
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Low Standards For Real Joy
SPEAKER_00And I think the more we can simplify the things that make our life so amazing, the more that we're gonna find amazing things. I have this clear story to be funny. Um, I was in my first week of college, um, we were out in London, and there was this brick building. And for some reason, I just thought the brick building looked kind of cool. And so with a group of like a bunch of complete strangers that we could like it's a really cool brick building. I love this arcade. And this girl looks at me and she's like, wow, you have such low standards for what like we find exciting. I'm kinda just like, one after you, but two, like, thank you. That's great. I love that. I wanna have low standards for what I find exciting, right? The last that we need to feel excited and energized and joyful, the more purposeful are life can appeal.
Welcome And Meet Jack
SPEAKER_04Welcome to Win Today. This show is crafted for those who want to win in every aspect of their lives. Every week, you will learn from a renowned thought leader that will share a piece of a winning playbook that you can incorporate into your life. If this show has a positive impact on you and you see value in it, please share it with somebody and leave a rating in review so we can help more people win.
SPEAKER_03Age does not define wisdom. Degrees do not define intelligence. And we can truly learn something from anybody in this world. It's an honor to have now the second youngest guest on Win Today, Jack Wagoner with us.
SPEAKER_04He is an incredible human being and somebody that I feel like I've known for many years, even though we just met for the first time a couple weeks ago. Infinite wisdom, infinite energy, and infinite potential.
SPEAKER_03Jack, welcome, man.
SPEAKER_00Oh, what an intro.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Ryan. I know it does feel like we've known each other for a long time, and I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to be here.
SPEAKER_03We can look up and see that in a short period of time you have been able to sit across the room from very notable people, iconic people, and collect a lot of wisdom, and people can see the we'll say really cool settings that you've been able to put yourself into. And it's clear that you are going places in this world. But what would you say is the most important thing for people to know about you and your mission?
SPEAKER_01I want people to know that I'm not perfect or special in any way. I think um being 19 and having accomplished a lot of the things I've done, I've lived abroad for the past three years. I've been a part of uh a startup, I've done 140 podcast episodes. All of these accolades, um, I think they can sometimes actually be detrimental to the thing that I want people to understand, which is that anybody can create the life they want. And so the the thing I want people to understand about me is that I'm in no way special. I uh fall victim to the same traps that all of all the world does. Like I'll be up too late scrolling on my phone, I'll get caught in a comparison loop, I'll skip the workout in the morning because I'm tired. Like I am human. And I think that's the most important thing that people can learn from me because the fact that we're all human, that we're all imperfect, and that nobody is just that robotic machine that does it all the time with no mistakes, it's like possible for anybody to create a life that they're truly proud of.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for admitting that you're human and creating that space for people listening right now because the folks that tune into this are very ambitious people. And I know that that strikes a chord for many when, oh my god, I woke up late this morning. Now I'm a terrible person, and these people have it all figured out. Like, no, we don't. We do same thing happens here. It's just far and few between. I imagine that those instances, and you you if there's a gap, you close it real fast. But I believe it's important for people to hear that and be reminded at the end of the day, everybody that we listen to is also a human and has the same thoughts and the same often encounters the same obstacles, etc. It's just a matter of how you work through them. That's often what can separate people. When we think about when we if we if we look at your life, okay, I remember when I was in Yorto's at 19, I discovered the value of goal setting and personal development and started deep diving that path. And and what drove me there was this commitment to breaking a generational curse in my family. I'm very curious for someone that is your age that's already steps ahead. You're already not only have you done the study phase, but now you're giving people tools to be successful, and you're sitting across the room from
Responsibility As A Driving Force
SPEAKER_03again, highly experienced people. What is it that serves as your driving force? What is it that has you, Jack, so invested in serving others and giving them tools at this stage of your life that many would often probably say, dude, just go live life and enjoy it and you can do that stuff later.
SPEAKER_01Dude, I mean I think about this all the time because a lot of people that I sit across from, a lot of their purpose comes from pain. A lot of what they do comes from the fact that they didn't have these tools when they were growing up. And I think that I don't know if I'm uh unique case, but I might I may be unique in the fact that I just admitted that I do this because I feel responsibility as someone that had the most incredible upbringing and the most incredible caring, loving parents. I so my my parents divorced when I was three years old. Um and I don't remember it, but I mean we didn't have the most money in the world, right? And then when I was around 10, 11, my parents like remarried, and I have the most incredible step parents, and it's kind of this weird jump um going from like growing up in you know, uh an apartment where you're sleeping on air on mattresses with your dad on the floor and your sister on the floor and you, and then all of a sudden you're in like a a a bigger house, but we just had so much love in our family, and I I just have the deepest love for my parents, and they always had that deepest love for me. And I've also got to see my parents even through some of those times, always like chased what they wanted to do. My mom has this incredible health coaching business, she's now a massage therapist, and she's always chased her purpose and her impact. And now my dad, he was a school counselor and uh for for kids with more behavioral challenges, and he would get chairs thrown at him, and it was super stressful, and now he's an artist. He turned a lot of that into art, and that's what he does. And so I think I've always just had this inspiration that like you're you're able to choose your purpose, you're able to take the road that you want to take. And I feel somewhat responsible to show that to other people that haven't had that impact, that haven't had those mentors or those role models in their lives that show them that life can be what you make it. It's not what you're given, it's what you make it. And yeah, I think it doesn't necessarily come from pain, it comes from a responsibility to be that person for others.
SPEAKER_02Responsibility.
SPEAKER_03I walked out of my last meeting at work today having mentored a an intern that was curious about life. And I remember saying that I believe it's our duty as humans to craft a meaningful life because we all have the power to do it. And many don't realize that the amount of power that we actually have, regardless of the circumstances, whether you came from a beautiful family upbringing, a broken family, or no family at all, we we have we possess infinite power. You've stepped into your power, you recognize the tools that you have and you're using them to serve the world. How would you based off what you've learned and the conversations you've had? If somebody was wondering how can I craft a purpose statement for my life and step into my power, this infinite power that you guys speak about.
Four Steps To Purpose
SPEAKER_02How would you help them?
SPEAKER_01I think that people do too much rumination these days and they outsource that type of purpose to whatever influencer they're following in the moment. And so the first step to finding a purpose in life, I believe, is action. It's initiation. You have to take the step to do something that you might not even know if you love it yet. You just have kind of a calling, a sense like, hey, I've thought about doing that before. Like just do it before you understand how if you're gonna land on your feet or not, what other people are gonna think about you for doing that thing, how how it's gonna impact your life, before you even think about those things, you're never gonna get those answers unless you do the thing. So the first step, I think, is initiate. And this is the first of four steps I normally talk about when it comes to living a purpose-driven life. The second thing is do the hard thing. And when I say do the hard thing, I think it's really easy for people to do the easiest hard thing in their lives. So if they feel purposeless, they'll try to find purpose by doing the easiest hard thing. So for me, for a long time, the easiest hard thing was going to the gym. I was always athletic. The easiest hard thing was going for a run. And that's what the easiest thing for me to do was. But just because I was doing the hard thing in one area of my life, I wasn't growing in the others where I needed to get more dis uncomfortable and step into that discomfort to grow. And so choose the productive hard thing. Choose the hard thing that's going to get you closer to whatever you just initiated, right? And then step three is do that over and over and over again. I think a lot of people feel like just because we see it on our phones, that there's this instant success in the world, people feel entitled to success before they've actually put in the work that merits the success. And so do the hard thing, play the long game with it. Um, do it over and over and over again. And the advice I have here that's somewhat practical is set a time horizon. When I started my first business, I said to myself, I'm gonna give myself eight months before I can reconsider whether I'm doing this or not. And with the podcast, I said it way further, I said four years before I can reconsider whether I'm whether I'm doing that or not. Because it kind of when you have a an end goal, it makes it a lot easier to work hard harder in the moment, knowing that there might be a time that you're able to reconsider and you're never thinking about what if I just switch right now. When I have an end goal when I'm running and I know that I'm uh like whatever, a mile from my house, it's a lot easier to go hard during that mile, knowing that at the end of what at the end of it, I'll be able to rest for a second. And with the time horizon, it allows you to s stop getting in your head about should I quit? Is this too hard right now? And you just keep going until you hit that mark. And so step one is initiate. Step two is do the hard thing that is actually productive. And step three is set a time horizon and play the long game. Stop going for the shortcut because over a 10-year period, the long game is actually going to get you further than 10 years of different shortcuts. And then the last thing, I think finding a purpose and crafting a purpose statement for whatever it is where you feel like you're living a meaningful life, is finding joy in the ordinary moments. I think it's really easy to be drawn into this idea you need to live some luxurious, exuberant, extraordinary lifestyle in order to feel an extraordinary way. And now, I mean, everybody, no matter how incredible their lifestyle is, this is what I've learned from interviewing billionaires, multi-multimillionaires, everybody has these mundane moments. Everybody wakes up in the morning, everybody goes to the bathroom, everybody feels a little bit tired or doesn't want to have that conversation. And if you want to feel purposeful in your life and have meaning, you have to be able to find joy in these mundane, ordinary moments that you feel every day and stop attaching to this external outcome for the internal feeling you want to have. And so the four just to wrap it up or initiate, do the hard thing, then play the long game and find joy in the ordinary.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_03I was thinking about what does that spell out? Because we heard so many acronyms at book at BookThinkers this past weekend in Boston. But it it was IDPJ, I believe. Okay, but I'm sure you can play it around to but finding joy in mundane
Practicing Joy In Ordinary Moments
SPEAKER_03moments. Okay. Let's expand on that some more because I agree with everything that you said, but this is something that I believe anybody could do right now to like instantly upgrade their life, like today, like in this moment. Even if you're on a mundane drive right now, as you're listening to this, well, hopefully this is the thing that you that is giving you that joy. So maybe this doesn't count. But when we think about again, yeah, crafting a meaningful life, it it boils down to the day and then expands to the week, month, year, etc. So what does that look like? How have you programmed your mind to find joy and even not just find it, but create joy in the mundane moment so that somebody can take that as a tool or as their catalyst to creating that for themselves as well?
SPEAKER_01If you want to create joy in the mundane moments, you have to practice radically or the mundane, right? And so a lot of people that even talk about practicing gratitude. It's always a gratitude journal and talking about the really fun, exciting things that happen. I'm grateful it was sunny today. I'm grateful for my nice house and like no, stop. When you do that, you're training yourself to be dependent upon these external circumstances, these external things, the sun, the house, whatever it is, to be grateful. And so the way that I've kind of implemented the the joy uh in the mundane is I don't even have a gratitude journal practice anymore. But when I wake up every single morning, when I go to bed, every single night, I just say thank you for that. I think it's a gift to just be alive here for that. And I think the more we can simplify the things that make our life so amazing, the more that we're gonna find amazing things. I have this clear story, it's pretty funny. Uh I was in my first week of college and we were out in London, and there was this brick building. And for some reason I just thought the brick building looked kind of cool. And so with a group of like a bunch of complete strangers, so they're kids my age, like, that's a really cool brick building. I love its architecture. And this girl looks at me and she's like, Wow, you have such low standards for what like you find exciting.
SPEAKER_00And I was just like, I'm kind of just like, one F you, but two, like, thank you. That's great. I love that. I want to have low standards for what I find exciting, right?
SPEAKER_01Because the the less that we need to feel excited and energized and joyful, the more purposeful our life's gonna feel. The more we're gonna just enjoy our lives, and everything else can kind of be an add-on. So I think that as like a tactical piece of advice for people that want to feel more joy in their lives, and they like it's literally a switch you can have happen right now. You just have to think of the simple things, not the not the best things in your life, because we're always gonna feel maybe that's those are the easier things to feel gratitude for. That's the frictionless thing to do. But find like the simple, nitty-gritty things in your life that are constant, that are there that you would not notice, and be grateful for those and spend a second, maybe two minutes, five minutes, whatever it is, just thinking about that, thinking hard about that. And dude, it it just brings a smile to my face.
SPEAKER_03Would you say that it could even be simplified based off what I what I'm hearing you uh bring up here?
SPEAKER_02Would you say that uh an appropriate uh simplification of uh what you said here is just appreciate uh your existence.
SPEAKER_03Appreciate the existence of things, appreciate being.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I would I would a hundred percent say that just being is a get. Waking up in the morning is a yeah, opening your eyes is a girl.
SPEAKER_03I had a this makes me think back to a conversation I had with a woman on the podcast a couple years ago. Her name is Patricia Rust, and at the time she was going through stage four cancer. And I asked her, based off your life experience and what you're going through right now, what advice would you give to people to live a meaningful life?
SPEAKER_02And her answer was so simple and so profound.
SPEAKER_03She said, I would tell people to sit on the bench in the park and enjoy the squirrels playing, to just watch the tree branches floating in the wind, to see the leaves falling off the trees and actually take notice of that and appreciate the creation that we all get to bear witness to. There's so much beauty that is around us that we're often so blind to.
The Duality Of Gratitude And Ambition
SPEAKER_02Have you ever been blind? Yeah, I've been blind. I was just a beautiful ideality. I I think that the most blind I've been was like you've been rewind about two years. Two and a half at this point.
SPEAKER_01And I it was at that point the most had ever been cheating. It was at the end of the year that I'd moved to France, so my junior year of high school, I moved to France alone. I lived with a host family. At the beginning of the year I didn't know any French I didn't know anybody on the continent. And I was just spending all the money I'd made traveling, which was cool. But I kind of tr was traveling to escape the fact that I was a little bit like, what am I doing? Uh I was confused at the decision I'd made. And at the end of the year in March, I had I was about to test for fluency, which ended up passing in the French language. I had an incredible group of friends close to my host family, and I'd started an online business and was doing really well for a seventeen year old.
SPEAKER_02And I was just fucking empty. I was like
SPEAKER_01There's a clear moment if I remember looking into the mirror in my bedroom. And there's just this really small yellow lamp that I would like touch and have a little light, and I could see myself kind of with an orange, like outline glow around me. I just was staring into my eyes, like, what the hell is going on? Like I am I thought that if I had achieved all this, all this shit, that I would just be so much happier than I am right now. And it would it felt like the more that I set the goal post further away, the the worse it felt in here. And I'm overall a really happy guy. Like that's just my natural tendency. So it was weird for me. And that's when I started to realize, I started to reflect after I got really sick, like physically sick after that moment. Um I was like, what do I need to change? Because something needs to change. And that's when I came up with this idea of the duality rather than ambition. Like if I want to feel fulfilled, then I'm gonna have to learn to be grateful for the things, the mundane things, the things I have every single day right here, right now. Because I know, me, I'm never gonna stop setting goals. No matter how much I achieve, I've realized that I can't slow myself down. I'm gonna keep going no matter what. The goalpost is always going to move no matter how much that sometimes hurts. But the one thing I need to do, if that's gonna happen, in order to keep this taste and not burn out and not get sick again, is I need to be grateful for what I have right now. So I created the duality of gratitude and ambition, the idea that in order to be fulfilled, you have to have both extreme gratitude for what is right now, but also also having extreme ambition for the future and big goals that you're going after. Um but yeah, dude, I was I was blind then. And I was blind for a good portion of my of my teenage years, and I still can be, and I have to re-root myself in it every morning and every night, because sometimes during the middle of the day I can feel blind.
SPEAKER_03I feel like those are some of the consequences of ambition, and I feel that most of what we hear and see is be ambitious, set the goals, go after hard things, do hard things, climb the mountain that has no peak, because we're both climbing a mountain with no peak, because we'll never stop climbing as long as we're here. Right? What isn't talked about as much or what I haven't seen is yes, all of those things are great. And if you're not careful, there are downsides. There's there's there's plenty of upside with all of those things. But also with that, I too can relate to being blind to so much of just just what is just what is. And you can have both, but you've got to be more mindful about auditing where you're at, where you're going, what's around you, just like we talked about in Boston a couple weeks ago. That I believe we're a science experiment, and we need to audit what's in the environment so we don't create a explosion. You talk about gratitude, one thing I failed to mention, but we'll dive into it
The Five Levels Of Gratitude
SPEAKER_03now. You're the host of the Grateful Podcast. You're the grateful guy. We're we're we're jumping all around gratitude right now. There are levels to gratitude. You mentioned that being grateful for I'm so grateful for my car, or I'm so grateful that I woke up and naturally feel motivated today. That might be what you fall into or what you classify as level one, maybe level two gratitude. But one episode that I really enjoyed was number 114, and you talk about five levels of gratitude. So for us to be level five gratitude experts, did we already create a crass course and and simplify it? And that's what level five is, and and if not, like walk us through the levels and ultimately how you've built a gratitude practice so that we can have a tip top one as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that we touched on it a little bit, but it is one of my favorite things to talk about. Um, where it's the easiest thing is to be grateful to the things, right? Yeah. Things outside of us. And what that does, and I believe that's important. I believe that like that is an important thing. That's why it's at the base of this the uh of gratitude, right? It's the first level, you gotta get there. Um and that's great for some people, people that really struggle, that are very cynical. It's a great starting point. Um, but we can we can start to work our way up um and have different levels of gratitude to where we can then be grateful to people. And I think being grateful to people is some of the work that I'm doing right now is one of the most incredible things. Because when you're grateful to people, you get to share that. You get to be grateful to someone, you get to have pro-social gratitude, which then compounds into an environment. The best thing a leader can do in the world that we live in today is be grateful to the people that work for them. There's statistics right now that show that when uh a leader shows constant appreciation to the people under them, they're actually that's correlated with higher retention rates than um I I forget what the period of raises is, but it's it's record it's correlated with higher retention rates than even being paid more in certain scenarios. And it's like, wow, that's the power like gratitude can have. But I I believe that where gratitude starts to be extremely powerful is when you get on the inside. And you start to be grateful to yourself for the things that you show up as and the traits that you embody. So you said it there, like I'm grateful to me for for showing up here today. I'm grateful to myself for the part of me that is resilient enough to overcome the setbacks that I've that I've inevitably seen on the road of podcasting and still be here crushing today. I'm grateful to that resilience. And that starts to show like the parts of who you are. And now your gratitude is not dependent on things out here, it's dependent on the qualities here, and it starts to reinforce who you are. And I think where gratitude can be even more transformative is when you start to be grateful for things that might have not even happened yet. And so people like to talk about manifestation and uh creating things prior, but I I don't quite love the word manifestation, but what I do see happening in my life is I know that I'm gonna be uh one of the biggest podcasters in the world, and I'm grateful to that. I'm grateful to that, that I I've had that success. And it just makes it almost a decision, it makes it a future that I'm inevitably building toward. And so this is kind of the way that you can start to build um like the different levels of of gratitude. And I do think that episode, I explained it really well, and I forget all the minor details that I put in there. It's been a few months since I've spoken about this. Um, but that is gratitude's not just some soft skill. It's not just the I'm grateful to my car like most people would think. It's like it's actually so much more powerful than that.
SPEAKER_03I believe the people that are and there's a lot of studies that that back this up.
SPEAKER_02The more grateful you are, the more genuinely grateful one is.
SPEAKER_03So often leads to the more that those people are are blessed, whether it's financially, physically, spiritually, all across the board. And that is backed by countless studies and researchers. And so what I love and what I continue to find through these discussions is that a meaningful life is created through just a few simple things. Like I have yet to find somebody that has sat across from the mic that has credited their life to a bunch of complex things. Sure, they have uh solved complex problems, created complex products.
SPEAKER_02But in many cases, if you break all of that down, they did a few basic things and gratitude is available to everybody.
Why Top Performers Stay Generous
SPEAKER_02They did a few basic things over and over and over and over, even on the days that didn't want to.
SPEAKER_03And I'm curious, what has stood out to you having uh conducted nearly 200 interviews now, having sat across from people that have witnessed a Kobe Bryant training session, have uh trained Olympians, have run multi-billion dollar corporations. What are things that stand out to you about high performers and how they've created the lives that many of us ultimately strive to have and admire?
SPEAKER_01I think the the craziest thing about the most successful people I've ever talked to, and by success I don't just mean money, I don't just mean recognition, I mean like on the inside, that that gratitude, that joy, that fulfillment. And you hit the nail on the head when you said that it's a simple thing. I mean, most successful, happy, joyful, rich people that I talk to are so easy to talk to. And they are so generous with their time and they're so responsive. I mean, you would think it's the other way around, and I think that's something that the world gets strong. And the people that are right below there, that are, you know, they they they put a ceiling on themselves right below that ultra success because they start to think like, oh, I need to conserve my resources, I need to like say no to all these people and not help them out. What like oh maybe I'll take a 15 minute with you in like four months or so or fifth 15-minute meeting. And once like the you get past that layer to the people at the top, top, it's the opposite. They're like, How can I help you? It feels like they have infinite time. You're like, how are they responding to my text right now? How are they going over by 30 minutes on this meeting right now? Uh you don't understand, but they're so generous and they help you. And I just think that that is the number one trait that I've noticed among the just my favorite people that I've ever met, is they're so generous and they're so focused on giving value. It's like the Go Giver by Bob Berg and John David Mann. They're so focused on giving value and spending time with people and making people feel seen and heard and responding to them and introducing them and maybe and paying full price for whatever they have. Like all of the above, they go above and beyond in their interpersonal relationships. And I think that's the number one trick.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree that service, service, service, and without expectation for I gave you this, now you give me that. Because I've found, I'm curious if you're seeing this now too. The more that you've given just purely for out of the goodness of your heart and the desire to serve, have you found that more than you could ever imagine has come back?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's it's incredible. And so I have a story to tell about this. This summer I'm working with a guy named Chris Shembra, and we do um like these virtual gratitude experiences and keynotes and workshops for um big companies, helping them with human connection. And what we've made this summer called is the summer of giving. I invented this term called give maxing. So instead of like looks maxing, let's start give maxing. So we've reached out to a bunch of companies and we're donating these virtual gratitude experiences that are just absolute magic. And we were talking to this one company, and this is a huge company, like tens of thousands of employees, like tens of billions of dollars a year. And we gave to them, we told them our offer, and then guess what they did? They insisted on paying us. They insisted that they pay us. And so a lot of people actually don't accept the gift. But what we found is the people that accept the gift, they want to pay for it, which is so like contrary to what you think. But the more you give in the world, and I found it over and over and over again, the more people want to give back to you, and the more you weed out the people that are takers, because the takers are the ones that are skeptical of the fact that people would ever want to give without anything in return. And the more that you give, the more you find other givers that are better at receiving, and then give more again. It's one of the most incredible uh relationships in the world. I guess it's the law of reciprocity.
SPEAKER_02Go be generous, go give, go serve, be grateful.
SPEAKER_03If actually generosity, gift maxing, gratitude. There's the three Gs. Focus on the three G's. You will win, you will win at whatever you want in life, and it will it'll take time, but you will win. There we go. We could we could stop it right here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What's what's another whether it's been a conversation, piece of research, a book, or a key insight, Jack, that has had an incredible influence on your life.
Conviction Comes From Owning Inputs
SPEAKER_02The Alchemist by Paula Coilel.
SPEAKER_01I first read this book the summer before I went to France. So I was um 16 years old. It's my dad's old copy. It has some of his highlights in it. And since I've read it every single summer, and I have all these different colored highlights and underlines in it with the things that have stuck out to me the most in um the times that I've read it. Because the interesting thing about rereading a book is every time certain things start to stick out to you. And this book has influenced me just in an incredible way. I mean, I sometimes believe that when things are happening that are so good, the wind starts to blow. And I sometimes believe I'm Santiago there turning into the wind. Like j I I the idea that everything, I mean, the alchemist says to the boy, everything you everything you need to learn, you've learned on your journey. And that quote is just the most incredible thing to me because he thought about giving up on his journey so many times. His end goal was just a vehicle for him to experience and learn and gain all this wisdom and go through all these transformative events that turned him into the person that he was meant to become. The idea of a personal legend is not just for the sake of reaching that end goal, because when it's like when you're just so ultra focused on that, you you forget to look around. It's like you lock yourself in a tunnel and you're so focused on here that you have no vision of what's outside here, and you don't grow, and you try to take the shortcuts or whatever. And when you are loosely focused on this, but you're gonna get there, you're here and you have your eyes open and you experience everything around you, you grow as a person and you get these new opportunities. And so the alchemist taught me that when you have a big goal, you can break it into chunks, and it's almost like you're the it's it's like you're playing golf, right? And the the hole is like 400 yards away, but you're gonna you're gonna hit a shot and it's 200 yards, and then you have to walk to it or drive the cart to it, and then you angle your shots differently. And that's life. If you pick up a rock, you throw it as far in the right direction as you can, you get there, and then you look around and decide where you want to go next. And I I it's step by step. Life's a step-wise function, and you learn in between the steps more than you could ever learn just by achieving the goal itself.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna go back to one thing you said about you know that you are going to be one of the biggest podcasters in the world. And it's not even what you said.
SPEAKER_03But it's there's certain things that people say that when they say it, it produces this feeling of conviction in the other person. Like there's certain things that I've heard people say. And based off of how it came out and how it landed has made me feel like undoubtedly like Yes. That person has got it. That is going to happen. I know it. How you said it gave me that feeling. Like I have no doubt in you, especially having met you. But for someone to be able to speak with that level of conviction requires it requires something different of them. What would you say has given you this level of conviction in your future? And I want that to be a tool that someone listening can grab onto, whether they want to be a podcaster, whether they want to launch a business. I often hear people ask about conviction and certainty.
SPEAKER_02And I know you've got it. What's cultivated that? It comes down to ownership.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I've talked to two of the biggest and most successful sports psychologists and trainers and performance coaches in the world. Jim Murphy, Alenstein Jr. Together they've worked with top golfers in the world, best basketball players, including Kobe Bryant, Seth Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and then the golfer Scotty Schepler, and AJ Brown on the Eagles, and neither of them ever used the word winning. And to me, being a top podcaster is winning. But in order to do that, I've realized that I can only I can't guarantee it, but I can close to guarantee it by doing all of the inputs that would make me a successful top podcast. And so I learn these things every day. And I say that with so much conviction because I know that I'm never gonna stop learning what the top things that people do are. I mean, I I'm now like here's just like the list of things I've done. I started off doing three episodes a week for six months while I was still in high school. I was playing baseball and I w was applying for colleges and all of that, I was doing three episodes a week just for the pure incentive of getting as good at interviewing as I possibly could. And so I think I did that. I mean, I'm always gonna be able to get better and I'm always trying to improve, but that phase of purely for interviewing, I did that. Then I'm like, I'm gonna get the biggest guests I can possibly get on for this size of the show. Because what does all the biggest podcasts in the world have? Great guests. They have great interviewing, they have great guests. I'm gonna get on great guests. And so I went all out. Let's get as many of the biggest guests I can get for my size. And I mean, I still have a lot of work to do here, but I've mastered the art for the size of the podcast I have getting these huge guests on the show. In some of the people that booked with me after BookThinkers last week, um, and like some of the intros I got, it is insane. And now I'm like, all right, what else do all these podcasts do? They get views. All right, so I need to get some more views. How am I gonna do that? And so So going to the most beautiful studios in the country that I can find and having the interviews set up where I'm pre-packaging them with both uh with the title, the thumbnail, and the exact first question that I want to ask in order to have this complete trifecta package, like I used to do with YouTube Automation, and then make my editor, instead of having the editor do a trailer that I just like tell them to do, like I'm gonna script out the exact lines. I'm gonna read the entire transcript and say exactly how I want this trailer to level. And now I'm gonna post five reels a day on trial reels and find all of the necessary inputs. So what I'm doing is focusing all of my energy on the inputs. And when I do that, the thing I find is that the outputs come as a byproduct. And I'm so convinced that there's no possible way that I fail if I continue to hone in and get better at these inputs and ask for advice and uh meet these people that are doing it better than I am and mentoring me on that. There's no way I fail if I do that for long enough.
SPEAKER_02I mean, that's why I'm so upset. Check your inputs, people. And even there, there's no way that you fail.
SPEAKER_03And that's something that what I heard you really say. If I turn that, gave that to somebody else, even if it's podcasts, whatever.
SPEAKER_02Understand your inputs. Go in go all in on your inputs. Tweak your inputs. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Just go.
SPEAKER_01You just gotta do it for a long period of time. Yeah. And it's longer than you think, and you're gonna fail, you're gonna doubt it, and you always gotta recenter on like why am I doing this? And uh get back to that conviction like if I do this long enough, I'm not failing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And it's all on you. We already have you already have all the tools you need.
SPEAKER_01I mean, when you meet more successful people, you realize like, hell, if they did it, why why not me? I mean, they're not they're not any different than than you. I mean, I like I'll be candid here. I've met people that are incredible podcasters that I know I'm a lot smarter than and I'm a lot better at uh I think I'm a better interviewer than all these things, like it's no diss to them. But like when you meet people, you're like, dude, they're just people, they're just humans. So am I? Why why are they more fit to do this to me? Why? They're not. They're not we're all human. We can all do the same things that each other did. Sure, other people are gonna have a leg up, sure, you might have a leg down. Other people come from all different circumstances, but our potential is the same.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I stopped asking myself why not me a while ago and and remove that from the equation because sometimes you sit there, you see someone, why not me? Well, how about let's just focus on action and not even slow ourselves down. Why not me? Why not me? Just go, just go, just freaking go. You can do it, you have it. One thing that really stood out, I've been sharing a lot of lessons from book thinkers in Boston. Jim Quick, I don't know if you were in the room when he brought this up. But he told people that we're we're this far away from anything that we want in life. And if you're listening, if you put your finger on your left ear and finger on your right ear, and then you pull them apart, that's how far away you are from anything you want in life. Because it's already all inside, it's all in your mind, it's all in the programs that you have downloaded and written, and we have everything we need.
Winning As Fulfillment You Test
SPEAKER_03Jack, going back to winning, now one thing I love to understand from guests is that winning doesn't have a singular definition. And I love that that that has evolved over time because I but I believe if we did go back decades, winning was winning.
SPEAKER_02Scoreboards, bank accounts, etc. What I've found in high performers is that it usually never means that. If I were to make a sentence, winning is dot dot dot, fill in the blank. What is winning to you? I think winning is fulfillment. Fulfillment is a combination of living in alignment with your purpose.
SPEAKER_01Waking up every day, feeling excited about the things that you're gonna do today. Maybe not every little minute task that you have to do, but the overall idea of waking up and living today, you're working towards something and you're also able to ground and say what I have here is just incredible.
SPEAKER_02If someone came to you and asked how can they craft a meaningful relationship definition of what winning means to them, what would you tell them? I think that in order to know what winning means to you, you have to try to find it and fail at finding.
SPEAKER_01So my one of my first jobs was being a catching coach. I'm a baseball player I was a base huge baseball player and I was a catcher, pretty good catcher, especially defensively. And I would teach kids, and my first catching coach, my biggest catching mentor, um he would always tell me that in order to find like the perfect point, I would have to first go too far, then go not far enough. And go too far and go not far enough, and continue to find that dynamic place. And so I think that our definitions of winning, it's always gonna be dynamic. But if you want to find out what winning means to you, you have to first try it. You have to say, hey, for this season, like I want to see if money is winning to me. It's not gonna be. Money won't be it, but in order to know that, you gotta try. And then you can you can see it's like, oh, is winning like going out in the woods and camping and leaving things behind? And probably not after a long period of time. But I I genuinely think that like wisdom is the combination of information and action. And you have to take that action in order to find out like what does a life in which I win actually look like. Before you do that, you gotta say what does a life in which I don't win look like and live that yeah.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes looking at the opposite can give you the answers for what you want.
SPEAKER_03What's the antithesis of winning? Okay. Now I can form my thesis for winning.
SPEAKER_01The South Star principle. We talk about having a North Star. Well, if you find a South Star, just do the exact opposite of whatever at it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Sometimes I also think things can become more clear or a piece of encouragement for people to take action is to understand and look at what's the cost of inaction. What's the cost of delaying your dreams? What's the cost of not moving forward because you're scared?
SPEAKER_02There's your inputs right there.
SPEAKER_03And in what there's how you create your inputs and so many other things.
How To Follow And Support Jack
SPEAKER_03Jack, this has been a phenomenal uh discussion, and it doesn't feel like I'm talking to a 19-year-old, and I know it doesn't feel like people are listening to a 19-year-old. How do we keep up with you, support you, and how can we be of best service to you?
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Ryan. This has been d it's been amazing. If you wanna keep up with me, you can find me at Jack Wagner, W-A-G-O-N-E-R anywhere, Instagram, YouTube. There's a really annoying old like sitcom actor named Jack Wagner with no O. Uh then I'm starting to creep my way up in the SEO, but it's gonna be a hard battle. So if you guys can like click on my links and like start to fight for my overtaking of Jack Wagner, that'd be amazing. Um I hosted the Grateful Podcast. You can find it literally on any platform. Going hard on that right now. And then uh another thing I'm doing is with my um mentor and boss Chris Shembra, we're just donating as many of these virtual gratitude experiences or um even in-person events if they're if they're closer to incredible companies and universities that need some more human connection. So if you guys, if anyone listening to this has a team or knows someone that wants to be the recipient of some incredible connection, um let us know. It's all out of the kindness of our hearts.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful, man.
SPEAKER_04Gratitude, giving, generosity, give, give maxing, go back to our three Gs.
SPEAKER_03That's the key to winning today, creating an amazing life. And Jack, I am grateful for you. We are grateful for you, and it's my wish that more people are led to you because I know that keeping up with you and being within your influence will help so many people win today. Thank you.
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