 All right, super happy to be here with Tommy Z. Got an interesting background and career and I thought that we could really just jam on some ideas of, you know, authentic business, of course, what I like to talk about. And like Tommy, what you call a liveliness, the art of a liveliness, which is cool. To give the audience some background, I'll just say a little bit about me and then, you know, love to have you share as well. So I have basically been in this authentic business, authentic marketing thing since 2009. I started out because I was helping my friends and colleagues with social media stuff back in the early days. And they're like, oh, you're really good at this. Maybe you should teach, teach the social media stuff online. I'm like, really? People teach online? Back then I like, it didn't know anything. You know, it's early days. People teach classes online, you know? And individuals, not like University of Phoenix, but just, and so that's how I kind of got going. I started teaching classes online and then, you know, my clients, students wanted me to teach about this and about that. And I just kind of added to my repertoire over the years and now here we are. And in 2014, I kind of tore everything down in my business, restarted it because I didn't, I wasn't doing it authentically. I felt like 2009, 2014, it was very much following the mainstream sales funnel type stuff, very salesy webinars. And anyway, I did all that, learned all that. And then I'm like, oh, I wanna do it in a way that's really more with the people, like really with my heart. So I started experimenting with content, with showing up authentically, whatever that means. And it's been awesome. And I feel like I'm a different person than I was when I started my business. Like my internal landscape, the way I think about business, the way I think about people, it's all so different now. So yeah, and I like how things are turning out and where things are going. But just that's a bit about me. Tommy, share with us, share with me, share with whoever's listening to this. Anything you want about your background. Sure, man. First of all, I'm happy we got to connect. I think the best things in life happen because of people. It's always relationships. It's really the lens by which we realize who we are. It's, I mean, I'm not sure that a life is possible. Life in a true sense of that word. Without bouncing yourself off of other people. So I'm glad we got to connect because I feel like we're on the same frequency and I really resonate with your message. And a bit about me, I was born in Poland a while ago. Different people have different guesses about my age. I don't think it's relevant, to be honest. I think it's age is really a matter of your spirit. And I know young people that seem old and I know old people who seem young. Yeah, I'm gonna guess you're somewhere between 20 and 120. Yeah, you're in the ballpark. Okay, ballpark. But yeah, I was born in Poland. I don't want to get into my life story, but I left Poland when I was 12, went to Canada with my mom, settled in Toronto. Then just kind of went on to the life path that we all go on, like you try to survive high school, school, go to university. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I ended up doing polyps in university, political science. And then like most people who don't know what to do with a political science degree, I ended up working at TD Head Office in Toronto on Bay Street, TD Bank Financial Group. And I thought that life on the 37th floor of a skyscraper would be like the life of Michael Douglas in greed. You know, marble, sushi, cash, happiness. But for some reason, it seemed to me that life isn't like that at all in the corporate world, in the banking world. I mean, I'm sure some people enjoy it, but I felt like this is not for me. And I started to sense that there's a call in me to respond to. And it's calling me to something other than spreadsheets. It's calling me to use my ability to create, to communicate, to help others be moved, to help others feel something. It's rare that you feel something with spreadsheet cells. Although again, there are people who love spreadsheets and it's an art form for them and I commend them, but everyone is different and it wasn't for me. And so I went on this journey of trying to extract myself from the corporate world and make creativity into my career. And that was a very interesting journey, a very good journey. I'm happy to talk about that also. But I essentially ended up as a music producer who is commissioned to be responsible for sound and music for some of the world's biggest brands and their campaigns. Now, music was always running in parallel to my regular life. I just never really believed or thought that I could make it into a career. And so it wasn't until I realized that there are very different ways of making living with music. It's not just the traditional ways that we know, like selling records or touring, that I realized, hey, I could do this actually. So I ended up being a music producer, making music for big brands. I did that in Toronto for a bit. Then I ended up meeting my now wife, who I have a family with on a short trip to Europe, ended up leaving everything behind for her to start a family. And then I started again in the same business, but now in Amsterdam on the other side of the ocean. And then after a few years of working with that company, I felt a call again. I believe in calls, you know? I believe we are all made with a built-in life detector. That's what I call it, a life detector. And you might feel it pinging you at a moment in your life when things are not exactly going according to plan, according to the life detector. Like you're not living fully. Hello? This chapter is too long now. It's time to write a new chapter. And so I felt that again, after a few years of working for someone, and then in 2016, I decided to go out on my own. I started my own boutique production company that stayed in the same business, working with big brands to think about their music and sound. And then a few years later, I realized, hey, I've been in this business for a while. And now I feel called to express the creativity in a way that will be beyond the studio, beyond the music. And so I started to get into teaching others about my craft. I opened an academy online for musicians who wanna learn how to make a living at a time when it's not very easy to do so. And these days, I get my aliveness from communicating what I believe makes us all alive to other human beings. And the interesting thing about that is there's no formula. True aliveness comes from a unique response to a unique call within every individual. So, you know, forget your favorite YouTuber, forget us, forget anyone who's telling you what the path to happiness is. There are principles that you can use that are timeless, but the path to aliveness is really only for each of us to take, to explore and to figure out. There is no way, there is no way to find a path from the outside in. It's always from the inside out. Maybe I've been talking too long, George. No, this is, yeah, it's very resonant because when I rebuilt my business in 2014, I started using the term true livelihood. And that was really my thing for a couple of years, like just like promoting this idea of, hey, return to, you know, your, well, like you said, life detector, your sensitivity towards your calling, because I've loved that term for years as well, your call, your calling. And, you know, create a way of, eking out a living, but doing it from a place of genuine passion and service, you know, to the higher call. And I remember an inventor who said to me years ago, he said, calling is interesting because you can only really know your calling by looking backwards and connecting the dots, like seeing the opportunities that came your way, the connections that you chanced upon and nurtured, the skills that you happened to develop, or maybe you were born with some inclination. Like, I mean, you know, music, musicality is largely a born, you know, inborn trait. I mean, people can sure get trained in it, but you know, some people, I mean, you were probably doing music early on in your life, I imagine, right? I was surrounded by it, and I do believe, like you say, that I think music, everyone can do music, but some people are clearly, clearly born on a different dimension. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and nurtured. I mean, like you said, you were surrounded by it. Like, that's, you were lucky to have done so. I mean, I actually was, I was forced into learning music when I was young, but I'm super grateful for it now because, you know, early on I had to learn piano, I had to learn violin, and then I picked up the guitar because I wanted to jam with whatever was on the radio, and then I practiced singing because my mom was singing. So I'm like, oh, I wanna try it too. And so it's fascinating, you know, and of course, nobody's saying you can't, there's no way, you know, you know, my mom's like, no, no, we're having you take piano lessons and violin lessons, not because you'll become a musician, but because, you know, your life will be more enriched by it, you know, in the future or whatever. So it's really fascinating that you were able to make a career out of it, like a super rare, and that you've been helping other musicians make a career out of it. I wanna ask you this question, like you saying you're making music for brands. The first thought that comes to mind is, oh, you mean like commercials or like events, they have music, but like tell us more what you mean by that. Sure, so it's largely commercials, although now we're talking about commercials, campaigns, content, and we're also talking about a very interesting area of the industry, which is sound branding, meaning like, you know, brands spend millions of dollars to define their visual identity. What are our colors? What are our symbols? What are our fonts? What are our, you know, what is our photographic style, filmographic style? And they realize that actually a large part of what creates emotion within humans and even what creates memories is sounds. I mean, as impressive as Star Wars is visually, if you think about the unique sounds that have deeply embedded themselves in our culture that anyone can recite from Luke, I am your father, to the breathing to the sound of R2D2. I mean, what is it about sound that such an invisible thing can enter us and then live within us? And then as soon as you hear it, a whole world returns. You know, if you hear a bleep of R2D2 or something similar, it's not just Star Wars that returns, but everything associated with it, your childhood years, the 80s, the 70s, whatever. And so brands have realized this and now you see a lot of brands using sound in an intentional way, meaning they will spend as much time thinking consciously and intentionally about their sounds as they do about their colors and their shapes. And so I've had a humble part to play in some of the sound branding projects for big brands where we actually help to dissect the brand and figure out, okay, who are you talking to? You know, there are three S's that I always talk about. Every brand has a style like George likes blue. He's always wearing blue. Not always, but let's say you are. Okay, well that brings associations of sound immediately. You could say calming, you could say peaceful, you could say luminous, you could say a lot of things. But anyway, this is the process that you go through style. Every brand has a substance. So this is the values and the brand promise in a way. Like what do you get when you get George, right? It's not just his blue sweatshirt, but it's also the words he says, the things he stands for. And then the third thing is the story. Every brand has a story. So George has a story. 2014, he was all into sales funnels. Then he felt yucky and he was like, hey, is there a different way to try to serve people without pressuring them? So now you take all those things, the blue sweater, the words that George stands for, and he promises when you deal with him, and then the story. And then you start looking for, okay, how do you express blue? How do you express authenticity through sound? How do you express the transformation that took place when George was no longer feeling alive in a way that he was dealing with business? And you try to translate that into sound. That when someone else hears it, they're like, ah, this is, I associate this, you know, with the things that you stand for, right? The style, the substance and the story. And so that's essentially my involvement. Like I've done close to a thousand big brand campaigns where I've been basically asked, okay, let's figure out the music for this. You know, is it gonna be orchestral? Is it gonna be some indie pop? Is it gonna be a beautiful song? What is it gonna be? I've done those. I've helped brands to come up with sound logos, with sound strategies, with ways of using sound to basically communicate their essence in a way that will move people. And that's been my work as a music producer. That's amazing. And now I think about our musicians how to do this. Right, yeah. And it's just, I mean, I think there's been, I mean, I think it's increasingly important because well, the age of video, the age of short form video, where you don't have much time to communicate the style, substance and story. And it's not just graphic design anymore. Sound design I think is increasingly important. So that's a really, really interesting field that's I think gonna become more and more important. Okay, I wanna talk, so you've been helping musicians do this. And so let's talk about a liveliness, right? Cause I mean, you recently did a presentation about this and I thought the metaphors you were using were quite interesting. Yeah, kind of go into, give us an overview of the art of a liveliness. Sure, sure. Well, you know, the thing that I'm always trying to do is get to the bottom of things. Have you ever heard this saying that somebody said, I don't even know who, but they said, I'm not trying to stay on top of things, I'm trying to get to the bottom of things. I like that, yeah. And I feel like an age now where there are a multitude of things assaulting us from all sides on every level through the feeds, through the screens. Anyone who's trying to stay on top of things risks burning out and we see this happening all across the board. I mean, an average person cannot help but to feel like they can't keep up with this all. There's just too much. And you know, it's not like human hands are producing this, you have servers. You can't compete with servers when it comes to efficiency and mass production. So it's completely unreasonable to try to keep up with it all. So then the next question for me is, where do we fit in into all of this? Like, where do humans fit into all of this? And to me, that's getting to the bottom of things. You know, I had a period in my life where I just wanted to be a rock star. I just wanted to be cool. And I wanted to have girls who adore me because of the music, you know? And that was a stage in my life. Then I managed to make a living with music to turn it into my career. But at some point I said, okay, these are not the important questions anymore for me. I've already been there, done that. So now the question for me is, what happens in the age where humans are finding it more and more difficult to find their place in this world? And I've spent hours thinking about this, hours. I've spent years thinking about this, okay? And I think that the more virtual and the more artificial things get, they will get better and better at mimicking and copying best practices, watching what is most successful, headline, thumbnail, whatever, because it's tracking numbers at a rate which humans couldn't possibly do. So the machine learning is fast. So technology is gonna do that. So now what is the human supposed to do? And I see a lot of creators chasing the best practices. If Gary Vaynerchuk does this, I should do this. If Alex Hormozzi does this, I should do this. If George Kao does this, I should do this. And the problem with this is, is that you're basically living your life from the outside in, in other words, you're looking out there for the idea of success. You're looking out there for idea of how to achieve it, of what are some of the effective ways to do it. When the entire key, the entire key to unlocking the treasure that is your unique path, and a feeling that you not only belong on this earth, but you are placed here to do something very particular, can only be unlocked from inside out. You have to turn back in to find this source of aliveness. I don't believe, and I've sat with millionaires in their Beverly Hills mansions, I've sat with homeless folks trying to hear their story while I give them some spare change. I always want to know, hey, what's happening? How are you doing? And the one thing I realized is sometimes, the homeless person is smiling a lot more than the millionaire in the Beverly Hills mansion. It's a very strange phenomenon. And I started wondering, how can this be? The Beverly Hills millionaire, not only went out there, looked for signs of success outside, but managed to create some effective strategies to get there. They're chasing, they're happening, they're accomplishing, and yet for whatever reason, all of this material possessions, all of this success is not making them happy. Whereas the homeless person is just talking about simple things in life. Like, it rained, but I managed to find shelter yesterday. How beautiful is that? You realize, wow, how is it possible that this person that doesn't have much is able to find joy in very simple things despite their suffering? But anyway, George, I think I'm rambling again. Don't worry. No, this is good. No, I so appreciate what you're saying. I mean, because it's increasingly important. This past year with artificial intelligence, like you said, and this coming year, where not only has it been reproducing text and writing and creative writing way en masse that humans cannot possibly keep up with. I mean, how much of the internet in the coming decade is going to be artificially generated? And then this coming year, it's their tackling music and video, artificial generation. And like you said, they have all the metrics of watch time, you know, engagement that they'll be able to, you know, it's like within as people watch a long YouTube video movie, for example, right? They'll be able to say, well, this segment got more engagement and then all the AI will be able to train on those segments. And all these segments, you know, got people to leave. So let's make sure we don't put those things into our films and YouTube videos. There will come a time, George, when you're watching a film and it's unfolding according to action. Right, yeah. There will come a time when it will sense that you're about to get up and it will radically shift the story. You know, there will come a time when I think there will be a choice to make. Do you extract yourself from the screen and look for the source of life outside of the screen? Or do you remain glued to the screen forever? I don't know, maybe I'm sounding drastic, but I sort of see it in those terms because you're starting to see the world divided into folks who are seeking desperately signs of life and connection in real life. And then sometimes we come across folks and you're wondering, hey, I know you have a pulse, but you seem very pale with this light reflecting off your face from the screen. And my grand hypothesis and these bizarre plans that I have, George, is to create this movement called Human Preservation Project where what we stand for basically is it's almost like Noah's Ark. It's like, okay, you can go this way where you will be hooked up, you will be implanted with Elon Musk's brain chip. Who knows, maybe life will be great, but basically you're betting on that horse in that race or you're saying, you know what, I know this virtual reality stuff is very fancy and impressive, but I don't think I've yet solved the sheer wonder, joy, and astonishment that is real reality. I mean, George, what kind of world do we live in? Seriously, we haven't yet cracked the wonder and the joy that real reality brings and we are already looking to replicate it, to create a version of it called virtual or artificial. Like, when did artificial on a label become preferable to organic? Yeah, I was gonna say. I mean, they're already labeling content. I mean, I recently just published a book on Amazon and it's like one of the check boxes says, please check this box if you use AI in the generation of this content and it's a legit question because so much content is, but no, it's so true. I mean, the plugging in and the Apple Vision Pro just came out with their, I haven't even looked at it because I'm like, I can't imagine. It's just wearing that thing on all the time. It's like, let's open your eyes. While I'm still able to look outside, I better use it while I can. This is the real vision, bro. It's like, so as people, okay, so I'm curious then. I mean, since you work in this intersection between creativity, people's livelihood and people's aliveness, like where do you see it going for creatives? Yeah, so first of all, I'm no prophet. I have no idea what's gonna happen, but I believe that any creator worth his salt or her salt, any great artist in history, if you study great artists or creators, they lived according to their own rules. Sometimes even at the risk of their sanity because they were not able to reconcile their rules with the world. But, you know, there's this quote that says being sane in an insane world. Hold on, let me get this quote right. I don't wanna screw it up. Maybe you heard this before. Adjusting to an insane world is no- The Krishnamurti, the Krishnamurti quote. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, yeah. It is no measure of health to be sane in an insane world. Well adjusted. Well adjusted in an insane world, right? That's right, yeah. Oh, I'm so glad. You see George, this is why people should talk to each other. Like how did I know you would know Krishnamurti? We didn't talk about this, but you see there are signs, signs among people who are seeking life and seeking truth and authenticity. You know, you're gonna come across the same signposts, same people who are also seeking. But anyway, you ask me, okay, where do you see this going? I'm not a prophet, but I believe every creator will have to create their ethos. If you don't create your own rules of engagement, your own manifesto, you are going to be likely just plugged into somebody else's. It's as simple as that. I don't know how else to put it. There is no way that we who are susceptible to distractions, to shiny things, to fast moving stimuli can resist the onslaught that the brightest people and the engineers and programmers in the world have unleashed on us through these screens. There is no way, there is no way. We're too weak, we're too frail and then AI is gonna come on top, machine learning is gonna perfect it. It's gonna be so polished and perfect. It will be seamless. It will be like you don't even notice what's going on. And so I think this is a time right now. I heard this expression recently, we're the last of the analogs. Do you realize this? We are the last generation that knows what it's like to not be looking at a screen because we grew up without the internet, right? At least I did. And so I believe there's some measure. So like we fell victims because in this war, we're kind of the frontline. Like we went first, we got the first iPhone, the second, third, fourth, fifth, the best ever iPhone every year coming out. And we were the ones who had to like bear the brunt of this acceleration of technology. And now some of us have just fallen on the field. These are the folks who cannot unstick themselves, unglue themselves from their phone and who are basically a product of their feed. We are what we eat, George. I mean, so if a creator doesn't understand that they have the potential to be an architect of the human conscience, meaning whatever I produce, whatever I say to you now, whatever you say to me now, is going to travel into the human senses of people that are watching this. And in some folks, the seed will bloom and blossom into some idea or influence or inspiration. In others it will not. But the point is everything we say and everything we do has an influence on others. And so I don't find it very valuable when a creator is just a product of their feed. Simply put, like if they're just regurgitating whatever got their attention. Well, they're no different than chat GPT. They're no different than chat GPT and chat GPT. They're not as skillful as chat GPT actually. This is the thing is that unless you tap into your humanity, you cannot ever beat AI and the servers and chat GPT at being better at efficiency, at technique, at all those things. The only thing that we can win at is to be human. I mean, someone watching this might be like, right. So this is your grand idea, like, be human. I'm already human. It's like, are you, right? And this question will become increasingly relevant in the next decades because there are choices to make. Maybe you don't want a real kidney. Maybe you don't want a real heart. Maybe your eyes could have, you know, ability to zoom 40X to five kilometers away. I mean, who wouldn't want those superpowers, right? So these questions are gonna come, they're inevitable. They might not be immediate, but they're inevitable. And the question for me is like, where on which side do you wanna be? And I still think we have not learned how to be human yet. And we're already trying to compete with robots. Well, there is no competition if we just stay human. So you asked me before about aliveness. My simple path to aliveness is to return again to the self, to the self, to extract yourself from all the stimuli because in order to receive a clear signal from yourself, you have to quiet the interference. You have to clean your antenna. It's virtually impossible to hear the calling of your soul when you're subjected to the noise. And I'm particularly sensitive to this because I've spent my whole life moving humans with sound. So the world is very loud. And I believe the path to aliveness is actually not to rile up and boil up and excite your senses. That's not the aliveness I'm talking about and a distinction must be made. I'm talking about the kind of aliveness that is actually a sustainable joy, a sustainable gratitude, a sustainable steady sort of attunement to the wonder of the fact that we're alive, that we exist, that we can make sense out of things, that we can appreciate beauty, that we can be moved by an encounter with a person or with an event. And that to me, and I've tried both. I mean, I've tried both. I've tried going out there and chasing the world's pleasures. I've sat there an hour and a half unable to unstick myself from TikTok or YouTube. And when your wife comes up to you and says, did you know you've been on this thing for like an hour now? You're kind of like, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's like Lord of the Rings or something. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. It's terrible, but one more, one more. And, you know, you just start realizing, if you're honest with yourself, hey, this is objectively speaking, not giving me more aliveness, objectively speaking. I mean, I'm not, you know, it's entertaining in a superficial sense. It's exciting in senses, but do you ever get up from the couch, two hours of looking at short form content or even Netflix or whatever, and go, ah, the depths of my joy and peace? You know what you just said? The ability, the sensitivity to experience the wonder of a moment, of connection with somebody, with nature, with just whatever is happening here in this moment, like, because of the sugary, you know, effective media, the spiciness that's there, the loudness, like you said, it's like we've become very deaf, right? We've become very dull in our senses to what is enjoyable, and like you said, to be grateful for in the moment. And so, yeah, I love this. And it's interesting because when I create content, I found myself, like, purposefully, it's funny to say, like, I've said this before, like, I don't mind being boring. Like, I don't mind my videos being unedited, my Facebook posts having no images. Like, I just want to communicate plainly as humbly as I possibly can, as truthfully as I possibly can, and I wanna keep doing that, and I want people who are willing and able to get value from that, right? Like, to, yeah. Our conversation today is a testament to your decision, to your conscious decision to do that. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember exact moments, you know, in my feeding at the trough, that's what I call it, the feed. I mean, it even sounds inhuman, the feed. The feeds. It's like, okay, line up, homo sapiens. It's time for your feed. But I've had moments when, you know, you're really trying to do the best you can in whatever field of life you're in. So what do you do? You go on YouTube and you always have, like, whoever's the leader of the field. Saying it's simple, guys, three simple steps, you know, too fast and easy, a millionaire life. And because we're walking around in a subconscious state, so to speak, these things just kind of go in unquestioned, and soon you start, like, feeling bad about yourself because you're like, I must be stupid because it's not fast and easy to make a million dollars. And the thing is you're not stupid. It's, you know, it's not fast and easy to make a million dollars. I mean, maybe there might be cases, but generally speaking, the whole thing is like, I don't want to get off on tangents again. No, no, please, please do, keep going. I believe that making a living should not be about money per se, but who will you become in the process? So like I am like the next person, I have obligations. I have two kids, I have a family, and I feel very strongly about my role in providing my family with security, you know, but that can quickly spiral into like, okay, I'm never at home, you know, yeah, the bank account is full, but like my kids' muscles have atrophied. Their ability to be responsible and resilient and reliable in the world on their own, I've just atrophied those muscles because I gave them a bunch of money and said, go. So, you know, so money, yeah, that's a tangent. That's a tangent. It's not about the money. We need the money. It's not evil to make money. It's not evil to save money. I mean, it's just the evil is in losing your perspective and thinking that you can't take the money with you. You can't, everybody knows you can't take the money with you, so why worry yourself about stockpiling so much of it? Unless you have some noble sort of like game plan to, okay, because I'm good at making money. I will make a lot of it and then I will give it away. But even so, it's like, who's to say you're going to be able to? Who's to say you're gonna be able to? Either stockpile enough or to even be there to give away enough or whether you're giving away of that is actually beneficial for the world compared to the way you were making it. It's like, I mean, especially as a father, the way you make the money is an example for your children and not just for your children, but everyone who knows you, it's like we affect each other way more than we realize in the choices of our career, choices of our health, our relationships, et cetera. I mean, they've done studies of this. It's like when someone exercises, right? Like that effect weirdly has an effect on friends of friends who then decide to exercise or whatever. And when someone breaks up in a relationship, that has a weird effect that has that kind of viral effect on second degree connections and third degree. And when someone makes a choice to do career in this way versus that way, oh, that's okay, that's acceptable. That's someone else is doing it. So that must be okay. And yeah, and it's like here we are saying. So too many people, what I wanna come back to is like too many people, when you look at the feed, basically end up chasing money because you see Alex Hormozzi making a bill and then you're like, well, why can't I do that? And that's just, you got her totally reset. You got a totally reset. That's not even the right question. It's not even the right thing. We gotta unplug ourselves to realize that we're chasing, we're asking even the wrong questions and then seeking the, like, we're trying to answer the wrong question to begin with the feeds. So it's a question we shouldn't be asking. But the two things that I wanted to say. Yeah, what do you think are the right questions? Let's get into that for sure. But no, go ahead, you were saying. Well, I wanted to rewind a bit because I said that you deciding consciously to speak in a boring way with boring thumbnails and boring everything. I mean, I found myself after consuming the highly polished, highly effective, highly dynamic content of other people, which sometimes is helpful with some of their tactics or whatever. I always found myself going, let me listen to George. You know, like, just because I felt like your boring voice and your voice is not boring, I mean, I tend not to do well or tolerate boring people very well. I'm sorry. I think as a music producer, you have a certain ear. I know, it sounds terrible. But I'm more like one of those folks that you can see shifting in their seat if like the conversation is like bland and boring. I want to get the heck out of there. But I just found that your frequency, the way you spoke and this very authentic kind of like non-scripted, non-produced, it's just George. It's just George. And it's like, you're sitting in your house and you're wondering, where can I hear a voice of sober, calm, centered perspective? I don't want to hear necessarily from a guy who I know has 14 people working on his video. That just doesn't feel the same as George saying, hey, you know, create the kind of content that makes you excited in a moment. I have barely one person working on my video. So, there you go. But I wanted to say that that's a testament. We're speaking today because I resonated with that vibe. Had you followed the feed, you would probably have to look yourself in the mirror and say, you're pathetic, George. I mean, seriously, no thumbnail, no script, no fast cuts in the first minute. What are you doing? And yes, this is happening. Because you're just saying, hey, I'm a human being, you're a human being. I have some things to say from personal experience that will hopefully serve you. Here they are. Come on board whoever wants, whoever doesn't want. Yeah. You should probably go board of the first minute because there was no fast cuts, right? I'm so grateful that you're saying that. I feel like there's a core principle that I follow in my content that I wish that has given me a lot of peace, which is the principle essentially is surrendering. It's like surrendering to, well, my authentic expression, whatever that happens to be today, but also surrendering to whatever the divine wants this to become. And zero views, one view, a thousand views. Okay, okay, however it is. And so I'm always asking that question, but I'm curious, as we kind of wrap up here, this is a good way to wrap up. What questions are you asking yourself in your art of aliveness? What questions do you think is wise for people to ask? As they preserve their humanity. Okay, so first of all, you're gonna have to come up with your own questions. And that's the key process because the key to aliveness is to live your questions. If I give you my questions, I'm already influencing you. I'm already another talking head in the feed. The entire name of the game here is to extract yourself from the feed. Okay, the feed is not meant to nourish you. I'm just gonna speak to you from a common sense perspective. The feed is not here to nourish you. Behind the feed is a series of interests. And their interests are not in your best interests. That's the best way I can put it. I'm not trying to demonize, I like YouTube. That's the only social media, if you can even call it social media. I'm not demonizing technology. I'm sitting here with my beautiful Apple MacBook. I have my iPhone, I'm not demonizing technology. But I just think that many risk becoming its slave rather than becoming its master. But going back to your question, I believe that the key to aliveness is living your question. What is your question? You cannot find out what your question is until you create the conditions for the question to arise within you, right? And so you're gonna be trying to answer a bunch of questions that the world gave you, that the boss gave you, that the feed gave you. Trying to convince you that those are the questions. In 100% of cases, those are not the questions for you. How do I know this? Because Alex Hormozzi did not bring you into existence. If you want to know how to operate this vessel called human being, it's not Gary Vaynerchuk who can tell you it's not Hormozzi. And again, I'm not demonizing them. They have a lot of really valuable things to say, pragmatic, these guys are killers. I mean, let's face it, they're playing at a world-class level. But that doesn't mean this is a game for you to play. Their questions are probably not your questions. And so what you wanna do is clean your antenna and create the conditions that make it possible for you to receive the signal. Because the signal is gonna happen, okay? You might not believe in God, you might not believe in some kind of infinite intelligence. That's fine. I'm just asking you to believe in something that we can agree on, which is things feel right, things feel off. When that happens, cool or what is speaking? How is it that a child has a sense of being cheated during a game? Hey, that's not fair. Fair. Why is a child invoking right, wrong, a sense of justice, a sense of order, so there's something you can call a conscience even within us. I call it a life detector that says, hey, this is bringing me life, this is not. The whole key is to extract yourself from what I call the metropolis, which is the machine. This is the place that automatically places all of its expectations on you. And it basically, the feed is not to nourish you, but the feed is to serve the feed itself, to serve its own interests. And it feeds on what? It feeds on our attention. Our attention, even Gary Vee says this, you know? That he de-traded. Yeah, he says de-trading attention. De-trading attention. Now, dear human beings watching this, your attention is your life. Your attention is your next masterpiece. Your attention is your child at your deathbed saying goodbye, you've been a great dad. I mean, I don't want to go too dramatic here, but isn't that a question of how we direct our attention? Right? And so the entire idea with art of alightliness is in the age where music, where photo, where film is all easily copyable commodity. I believe that the next and the highest art, again, will be life itself, life itself. Like a human being who is living a harmonious, beautiful, creative life and being a channel for others. Like you said before, George, that, you know, when this person walks in the room, you're like, wow, I want to learn new things. Wow, I want to learn from this person. I want to talk to that person, right? And so I believe that that is something that I cannot ever compete with. There is no competition because this is coming from the soul. This is coming from the soul and we're uniquely built to be able to communicate with this thing called soul, with this thing called conscience, if you don't believe in soul. But the first step is extract yourself from the machine and the practical advice I have, you asked me about a question is, here's a question. Can I sit still, alone, in a room or away from noise for 20 minutes a day with my journal in front of me? Why do I say a journal? Because you can't sort what you can't see. A lot of our anxiety, a lot of our confusion comes from the fact that behind these eyes, everything we ate is being stirred and mishmashed there. Everything we ate from the feeds, from the impressions of the day, from our conversations. And it's hard to make sense of something you can't see. So I ask, can you make 20 minutes a day to extract yourself from the noise, sit with your journal and just start spilling things from behind your eyes. Once you see them on a piece of paper, you can start organizing them. And at some point, if you stick with this process, I truly believe because I did it and I think we're built this way. I just think we're built this way. Your question will arise or questions. Yeah, they will arise. That's a beautiful way to end. The questions lead us onward and birth even better questions, right? The questions that are right for the coming age. So thank you. Thank you so much, Tommy. It was great to talk with you. And I hope this inspired something for those who are watching. Comment below if you'd like and share, we could share what your question is, something that came to you or share your practice of how you extract yourself from Rushi and clean your antenna so that you can be more aware of what life is calling you towards. So yeah, thanks, Tommy. Yeah, and George, the last thing I wanna say is I'm not advocating that you leave the world. I'm just advocating that you do not continue to play its games without questioning them. So the whole thing is to walk away, determine what questions will you try to live and then return to the world to try to live as an answer to that question. That's it. Excellent, excellent. George, I appreciate your time. It was amazing. I knew it would.