Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I think only after those innovators and rule breakers succeed, the Steve jobs of the world, do we celebrate them.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor’s Farmacy. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman. And that’s Farmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And if you care about community, if you care about big dreams, if you care about making a difference in the world, I think you should listen up because we’re going to have a great conversation today with a good friend of mine and the co-author of a brand new book called Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community, three very important ideas in a very screwed up world.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Jeff I’ve known for a long time. He’s a co-founder of Summit. It’s a cutting-edge organization known for hosting global ideas and festivals and events. And I’ve been to many of them. They’re pretty freaking awesome. And he also is the co-owner and principal designer and developer of the Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah, which I’ve been to.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, Eden, wow. To move to a place called Eden and to have a place called Powder Mountain. Did you make that up? That’s so awesome. He’s a co-author of this new book Make No Small Plans, which everybody should get.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And he founded with four of his buddies when he was a young whippersnapper of 23 years old this whole new idea of gathering by bringing together people from all walks of life, who are thinking about how to make the world a better place, who are involved in creating new businesses, new ideas, who are artists, change makers. And it’s Summit.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s like bringing together people in a summit to gather and learn together and grow together, inspire each other, create new connections and change the world, which has actually happened from then. And personally, my life has been completely impacted by Summit and the people I’ve met there, the things that have come out of that, and we’ll discuss a little bit about that. That’s kind of a fun story.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m just sort of inspired by what you and your friends have done. Elliot and Brett and Jeremy are all really fun, interesting, creative guys. And you’ve built this global organization that is bringing people together from all over the world to do really cool stuff. It’s called Summit and you can learn more about it by going to summit.co, not com. Summit.co. And I’m involved there. I speak at the events.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I really feel deeply that building community and building places where people can gather to think about things differently and gather to learn about things they wouldn’t otherwise learn about, to meet people they otherwise wouldn’t meet, who are in different walks of life and different careers and different industries, cross-fertilizing each other to create magic, it’s just so amazing. You basically say in the book, you’re not the smartest guys in the room, but you’re the creator of the room.
Jeff Rosenthal:
That’s right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You sort of reminded me of a joke from [inaudible 00:02:59]. It was like, I’d never be a member of a club that would have me as a member. You said you guys wouldn’t necessarily be picked for the A team, but I kind of disagree with you. But that’s what you said. I think that’s kind of funny. So now we’re kind of in this moment in history, Jeff… By the way, welcome Jeff. This is Jeff Rosenthal.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sure. Of course. So we’re in this moment in history where things are kind of blowing up. We are seeing amazing strife in the world, conflict, divisiveness in our society. In America, it’s red and blue. And it’s so scary to me compared to what the world used to seem like to me, which was more of a safe place.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And rise of autocracy, climate change, the increasing wealth disparities, the health disparities. So many challenges we’re facing and we need big ideas. We need different kinds of thinking and different kinds of dreams to actually solve these problems.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it’s really what your book is about. It’s about inspiring people to think differently, to dream big and to build community. And it sort of reminds me of a Margaret Mead quote, which I think many people know, which is, “Never a doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that never has.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And clearly, that’s the case with you and your three buddies. So Jeff, as people are kind of in this moment of post COVID, or maybe we’re in the sort of tail end of COVID, we’re sort of re-imagining our lives and many people are sort of thinking, what do I want to do now? How do I want my life to be different?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I don’t want to go back to normal because normal wasn’t fun. And people are quitting their jobs to pursue dreams or they’re told maybe that their ideas aren’t great or they don’t work, or timing is not good, or they’re crazy. I’ve certainly been told that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It reminds me of the ad from Steve Jobs about people who just think differently. And you gathered people who think differently. And a lot of the people who’ve made a difference in the world, the greatest achievers, including you and your crew, have really made a huge impact.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So what made Summit possible and how did it come to life? And how has it transformed in ways that actually are fulfilling on the dreams that you and your three co-founders had to create a new world where we can re-imagine solving the world’s problems, being in community, and actually creating a better life for all of us?
Jeff Rosenthal:
Thank you so much, Mark. And thank you again for having me on the podcast. I’ll start by saying there’s two types of entrepreneurs. If you’re high-functioning and you’re afflicted by ambition, if you have to go out and build, you have to create art, you have to make music, you have to change medicine. If you have to push, there’s two types of people in that category.
Jeff Rosenthal:
There are those that are just absolute geniuses. These are like the 0.1%, and they can sign every check and hire every person and do it all themselves. And then there’s the vast, vast majority, the rest of us that really do require a lot of other brilliant people around us to do anything of scale and meaning.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so that’s certainly myself and my group. I think we also are voracious interdisciplinary learners as just a cohort of co-founders. We are insatiably curious about all of these different disciplines and we see how they’re all connected, our health and our wealth, our friendships and our businesses.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I think that inconsistencies in one typically raise up in the others over time. And the value of community and the idea of big ideas. I think the world is set up to shut down big ideas. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Your rational friend is supposed to say, “That’s a crazy idea, Mark. Just go back to doing what you were doing.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I think only after those innovators and rule breakers succeed, the Steve Jobs of the world, do we celebrate them. They’re heretics until they’ve been proven correct, in a sense, right? So having people around you that are entrepreneurial, that are creative, that are non-judgmental, that enjoy crazy ideas and enjoy the art of bating them around. It’s really ingenuity. It’s like, how are we going to take this thing and bring it to a place where it’s actually near possible?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It’s so beautiful. It sort of reminds me of the quote from George Bernard Shaw. He said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” And you guys were pretty unreasonable in many ways.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
We want to do something radically crazy and we have no connections. We have no money. We don’t know what we’re doing. Two of you didn’t even have a college degree. You kind of like dropped out. And you’ve created one of the most remarkable organizations that I’ve ever experienced, which gathers people and creates magic in this stew of the gathering.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
When you were talking, it reminded me of this book I read, it really influenced me years ago by EO Wilson called Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. And it’s about the intersectionality of all disciplines. That both social sciences and regular science are not that different.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that we can kind of learn from this intersectionality how to actually synthesize new ways of thinking and being and creating and re-imagining the world, which we desperately need now. So let’s sort of jump into some of the things that Summit is about. And then we’ll talk more about the book.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But the thing that struck me there is just the radical diversity of people I’ll see on stage. I remember seeing I think Jane Goodall with like Kobe Bryant or something. I don’t remember who was on stage. But it was like these weird collections of people that you wouldn’t otherwise see together talking about the world in new ways that are super inspiring.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So talk about some of the kinds of people that have been there, what you’ve learned from them. What are the things that have really stuck with you as lessons that you’ve carried through, through Summit and some of your co-founders have?
Jeff Rosenthal:
We’ve had 3,000 talks over 14 years across our large and small events. And I think something like 600 or 700 performances and poets and dancers. First, I’ll say in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I don’t know that we’re absolute superstars at content, but there’s just not many conferences out there.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So there’s not that many examples that you get to play from. And for us, we really like to shave down the pedestal when it comes to content. We prefer the fireside chat to the TED talk. I want to know what inspires you. I want to know what you’re enthused by. I want to know what you shouldn’t tell us, not what you thought six months ago that we would be interested in. I want to know what you were like, “I’m not going to say this thing on stage.” That’s what I’m looking for.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I think that when you approach an interdisciplinary, intergenerational community, you just have to represent a lot of interests. And the way that we really do that is that like we’re sensitive to our favorite rapper’s favorite rappers, be it in medicine or in architecture or in music or in business.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So somebody that we’re close with that’s brilliant, like you, for instance. I want to know who the doctors are and the practitioners around the world that you would be incredibly excited to see at Summit.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So if I have 20 people like you who are at the top of their field in 20 different disciplines, and you tell me the two or three people that you would like tear your ACL sprinting to a Summit event to get to see live, that’s really how we’ve done it over the years. And that’s how we set and scope whom we have on stage.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so to pick one person in particular in terms of wisdom that we got to take away from this, it’s just impossible. What I can say is we were 23, 24 years old when we started this. So we were immediately the youngest, least experienced people in the entire community. And so it made us real servant leaders. It really did.
Jeff Rosenthal:
It made us really value critique and criticism from people that wanted to see you. When silent is when you know you lost them. If they’re telling you how you’re screwing up, that means they care about you and they want to see it be better because they appreciate what you do. So I think it’s just like this learning engine, this learning safari we’ve gotten to go on for the past decade and a half.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. And in your book, you beautifully sort of map out a lot of the lessons learned and a lot of the little nuggets of wisdom. I sort of want to read a few of the heading of the chapters because they’re just sort of great. I mean, some of them are things you’ve heard before, like your reach should always exceed your grasp.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Ready, fire, aim. That’s kind of me sometimes. You just got to go for it. Authenticity trump’s perfection. If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. That’s an African proverb. And I think community is exactly what you’re building and creating, which we need more than ever.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Opportunities come from anywhere. A single connection can be exponential. Life is a giving competition and we intend to win. That’s a really good one. I want you to unpack that because most of us live in a scarcity mindset and yet we are designed to be altruistic.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And many of you who are listening may not know this, but I always talk about sugar and the biological addiction of sugar and obviously heroin and cocaine and drugs. We know all about this pathway of dopamine and addiction and these substances. But what’s also true is that altruism in giving lights up the same area of the brain as heroin or cocaine or sugar. And it’s a lot healthier for you and the side effects are all good ones.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So talk about this whole idea of winning at the game of giving. Because that’s not typically how our society is structured or how we think. It’s all about individualism. It’s all about every man for himself. It’s all about getting what you can. At the end of the day, the guy with the most toys wins. It’s all this stuff that we have in our culture that is so destructive. And yet you’re flipping that upside down and creating a new model for how to think about being together in the world.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Well, the quote, I think you said it was George Oliver. It’s the unreasonable man…
Dr. Mark Hyman:
George Bernard Shaw. Yeah.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I’m sorry. George Bernard Shaw. It’s the unreasonable men and women. There’s no man that did anything of scale and meaning by himself. That’s a total made up construct. So starting with the idea that like in the Hagakure, one of the philosophy books of the samurai, it talks about how relying on one man’s knowledge is like a tree without roots.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so the idea that you can get deeply passionate about a topic so a conversation with anyone in that field is pleasurable. And then you can really just ask questions and build your own expertise in every aspect of your life. I think I was lucky enough to spend a little time with Rickson Gracie, who is one of the grand masters of the Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu family.
Jeff Rosenthal:
He wrote a great book called Breathe that’s just all about his breathing practice and how he would maintain a lower heart rate through these world title fights. And the way that he put it, the way that he talked about a few of these things that I thought were really powerful and beautiful.
Jeff Rosenthal:
First, I’ll just tell you, he would do these deep breathing exercises before he would go out for a fight. And he would think about lowering his heart rate. And so when he was at 80 beats per minute, his opponent was at 90. When he was at 100, they were at 110. He could always keep a cool head.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And then submission fighting, you’re in something that you can’t break out of unless you remember the process. It’s like chess. You have to calm your mind, surrender to where you’re stuck and have sort of the hope for where you’re going and what you’re going to go and do and build.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so for us, that made us really fun people to talk to. We’re 23. We’re somehow in your office. We got on your calendar. You don’t want to take the meetings. This is like 2009 or something. And then you’re having the most fun conversation you’ve had all week. We then built real pattern recognition over time, where we could really add value for these people.
Jeff Rosenthal:
We could really connect them into strategically valuable business ideas or relationships. And then we also could pattern match people that would just be great friends. So this is not just at Summit events. This is throughout the year. And it would sort of validate the reality that Summit was this place, this platform, this community that you could connect to and meet these people from all these different disciplines and backgrounds.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so if I’m being honest, I used to be in a reciprocity loop. I knew the power of my giving. I knew what it was for our brand. And people, even if they’re aware that you’re looking for reciprocity, they still feel obligated for the most part to actualize it.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I think that it came later in my career this idea that life is a giving competition. If you’re counting chips, you’re in a reciprocity loop. You’re in a game of trades. You have an ulterior motive for your kindness. And so it also takes some of the serotonin and dopamine out of it.
Jeff Rosenthal:
It’s not nearly as enjoyable than to just… And think about how lucky you are to get to be a part of somebody’s journey who you respect and admire. There was a time where everybody who’s somebody was a nobody. And just the idea alone that you can provide insight or value to be a part of somebody’s body of work or life journey it just is very meaningful personally.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And this idea that if you are a giver, you’re always going to be on the heavier side of the giving in the relationship. The other person might not have the same dopamine and serotonin pathway or reaction to giving unselfishly. But it does lead to this triangulation of goodwill. That was the language we would use.
Jeff Rosenthal:
It’s like you don’t have to think about it as a one-to-one giving. Because if you build a reputation, if you build enough favor economy surplus, anybody will do you a favor. You put yourself in a mindset where, why wouldn’t you ask for the favor? I’m going to give Mark the gift of giving me a gift by hosting me on the podcast. I don’t want to deny you this pleasure, Mark.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Gifts that don’t circulate become poison. Gifts that have an expectation of some return are not really a gift. It’s an investment in yourself. It’s a selfish act. Masquerading is a selfless act. So if you do sit in a giving competition and you do think that, “All right, I am going to make sure that I’m on the upside of the generosity of this relationship.” I don’t know, you always have some love. There’s always a seat for you at the table.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It doesn’t work like that. It’s so amazing. And I see this act out all the of time in my life. Because I’m blessed to be able to sort be generous with my time and my money and I just am compelled always to give and serve. It’s really what I want to do. And then I kind of giggle because it all comes back to me in ways that I never imagined that aren’t in direct one-to-one relationship, but kind of sideways.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That I was like, “Wow, I feel so blessed.” But I think it is just this sort of magic power of serving. Sort of like what Neem Karoli Baba said, who is Ram Dass’ guru, who basically said, “Love everybody, serve everybody, feed everybody,” which is pretty much what you guys are doing.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It creates this beautiful circle of abundance. It’s hard for people to get out of the scarcity mindset into an abundance mindset. You talk about the mindset of possibility and how you had to face a lot of rejection. I mean, here you are, three young guys who are calling leaders of companies, Jeff Bezos, Jane Goodall, this one, that one, Al Gore.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And they’re like, “Who are you? And what do you want?” How do you get to them? And it always amazed me how you collected some of the most extraordinary people in the world to come to your events and speak. How did that happen? Because it just seems so improbable.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Yeah, man. Again, I think that most of these events around the world are really boring and really stodgy. And it’s like watching paint dry. It’s all symposium stage. It’s all keynote from the stage, maybe some coffee outside. But for the most part, it’s very basic.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so the amount of events that these great people that you mentioned get to go to around the world that they truly enjoy or they meet other peers, where they get exposed to new ideas. We have a rule at Summit, don’t snub the startup and don’t fanboy the big timer. So both people have to respect each other, both sides of that spectrum.
Jeff Rosenthal:
We are also very thoughtful about timing. And we do our research. I always think it’s funny when you’re on the phone with somebody or on a Zoom and you’re like, “Oh, so tell me about this thing that you did.” They’re like, “How do you know that?” It’s like, “Because I Googled you five minutes before our call. I don’t understand how you don’t know how I did this.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
So we don’t just say like, “Hey, come speak at our event and then let’s figure out what it is later.” We say, “Hey, this is what we want you to talk about because it aligns with what we’ve seeing you talk about.
Jeff Rosenthal:
We know that this book is coming out or this movie’s coming out or this partnership is happening or something came out in the news that you probably want to have a counterpoint or another type of like presence to you. Or the really thoughtful and fun connections.
Jeff Rosenthal:
One great example is Kendrick Lamar and Quentin Tarantino. We had gotten lucky enough to become with like the TDE crew. They had come out and skied at Powder Mountain. I think Kendrick might have learned how to snowboard at Powder Mountain. I’m pretty sure.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And he has a friend and a partner named Dave Free, who’s an incredible entrepreneur and director and creative and was the president of TDE at time. And they were like very much being kind to us and not just saying no outright, because it’s like a million plus a show for Kendrick to show up anywhere, let alone flying across the country. This is for Summit at Sea.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So it was like, leave LA, fly across the country, get on another plane, get on this boat, be on the boat for three and a half days. It’s like an obscene commitment. And so I think they were just trying to be nice in letting us go. He was like, “Yeah, we’re in if you get Quentin Tarantino.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And you did.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Well, that’s the thing. They didn’t know that we have other… Once you’re in this sort of 10-year community building business, you come across other exceptional people that appreciate this plan. And so one of his producers, a woman named Stacey Sher, who’s another incredible entrepreneur and creative in person, and her husband, Kerry Brown, were neighbors at Powder Mountain.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, actually contributed to this scheme for us to get this done. He has these beautiful hotels in Jamaica. And I was like, “Hey, Tarantino and the TDE group, they want to come to Jamaica and stay at Island Outpost at GoldenEye, which you host. And he’s like, “Oh, of course. It would be my pleasure.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
So it’s all mutually beneficial. Nobody’s losing here. And it turned out that Quentin and Kendrick both deeply respect each other’s work. So I just wanted to give the listeners like a true window into how an event hustler puts all these people together. I think this is how you like produce movies with a bunch of big stars too. You just got to like find the thing that everybody is really seeking and make that the priority of the vehicle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love that. But it wasn’t always easy, right? You had a lot of roadblocks and you kind of had a lot of bumps along the road. Tell us about some of the biggest things that you overcame in order to succeed at what you’re doing.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Well, it’s never easy. Even the ones where it’s just like, “Aw shucks. I minted this NFT and now I’m a millionaire.” Those stories are there just to make us all feel like we don’t have enough. The truth is that everything is a lot of hard work and you can’t minor in anything.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so for us, our own naivete led to us taking shots like buying Powder Mountain or building a thousand person camping trips in the forest or one of these other big crazy moves. But it also meant that we had to get our teeth knocked out on like the growth of our business over time.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So whether it was retaining great people and dealing with having to replace a tremendous partner or team member, or it’s like learning about municipal bonds and project-level finance and infrastructure development. I think that’s probably the best story to go in on just because it’s so obscene.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, seriously, four young 20-somethings bought a village, basically, in town and in the mountain. What is with that?
Jeff Rosenthal:
So before we buy it, it’s like 2012. And this is in the book. But we’re at Summit base camp. We’re hosting like an 800 person event in Squaw Valley, amazing speakers. There’s talks with the founder of Burning Man.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And then you’re taking the gondola up the mountain to see Questlove DJ on top of the hill. And there’s like long throw Summit logos that we have on the sides of mountains. It was a great event. We did well. And there were about 50 people who were just like, “Hey, tomorrow morning when the event’s over, meet us behind the hotel. And bring all your stuff.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so we put them on a bus and we took them all to the airport and they went to an unmarked gate, like some Harry Potter. It was just an unmarked gate. Nobody knew where we were going. And we flew them all to Ogden, Utah. And then we went to Powder Mountain.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And we watched the sunset on the top of Powder Mountain. Powder Mountain’s crazy because it’s an inverted topography. So you drive the top and you ski off our village. Our village now is on the top of the mountain and it looks over the great Salt Lake and four states in every direction. It’s gorgeous.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And from that moment, for the next two years, we were in the process of both buying the mountain. So we didn’t actually own it yet. We had put down earnest money to lock up the contract, where we had to raise like $40 million plus dollars. And we had to learn what we didn’t know so we could actually diligence the deal far enough to execute.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You weren’t real estate developers. You were just kids with a crazy dream.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Yes. Well, even if you are a real estate developer, you need to run like 160 point due diligence checklist against the project and property, the warrants, the rights, the water rights, the land rights, the avalanche control. It’s just like so crazy. There’s so much stuff.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And so what we would do is every week we would host what are called charettes. So we would have like a land planning charette, an architecture charette, a design charette. And we would have experts come in, consultants, architects, thought leaders, whatever, some you’d retain and you’d work with for a long period of time, others would just like advise you and walk the land, do their part.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So we’re getting like a doctorate in land planning and development. And every weekend we would bring in another group of like 200 people. And at first it was for free, but we just knew we needed to build the vibe and the body heat out in Eden, Utah in order to build enough energy and capital to close on this project.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And we literally did that for like year and a half. I think we hosted like 60 plus weekends in a row. And then every week we would have these experts come out and work with us. And we would raise the money while building the team, while hosting the people, while learning about how to develop a mountain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So you built the plane while you were flying it, basically.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Yeah. Well, and that’s not a wise way to do things. Wisdom means that you have time and reflection and a plan and a strategy that you’re executing against. This is just like full gonzo Blues Brothers mania. The truth is that we’re lucky that we made it out the other side. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It sounds like a lot of bruises, but you got through it. A lot of my friends and people have places there or go there. I’ve been there. It’s just a beautiful spot. And it’s just an incredible way for people to meet and gather, inspire each other and create this sort of intersectionality that is so important to sort of re-imagining the world we’re in.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it’s also fun. So it’s like you sort of create a container where people can learn and be exposed to ideas and be inspired and think about challenging things in life, both personal and political and social and environmental, financial. And yet at the same time, it’s like fun, right? Like you said, most conferences are pretty freaking boring. You want to snooze in the back. How do you kind of bring fun into all this? Because it’s not easy to do.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Well, first, it’s through the people that join. If you’re curious and you’re interested in others and if you are… It’s really self-selecting in a sense, right? Like I tell you, it’s intergenerational and interdisciplinary and super social and choose your own adventure.
Jeff Rosenthal:
There’s plenty of people who are like, “No, thanks. It’s not for me.” So I think out the gate, there’s a self-selection. And then we have this term, the art is social sculpture. It’s one of the chapters in the book. And the idea is that the narrative and the rituals and then the order of the experience and your smells and tastes and touches.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And there’s just a thousand touch points that inform the values of what you just went through. And so for us, it literally starts with the invite. How do you hear about it? Who do you meet on my team to tell you about it? What is like the graphic design of the website that you go to for the very first time? That’s when the event begins.
Jeff Rosenthal:
What’s the provocation? Why are we coming together? And then we think about the order of experiences. It applies to roads as it does in events and as it does to movies and music. That you want to have a build and a drop. You want to have a grand reveal. There is intersectionality, not just to wisdom, but to creation, to experience.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So we often have dance classes and meditation. We have live music. We’ll have a beautiful pianist play something that’s totally passive. And then we’ll have like a big deep house dance party at sunrise.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I guess the key is that fun, dynamic shared experiences, that is the cornerstone of long term, deeply meaningful relationships. We’re going to hang on this podcast. We’re going to become better friends. We spend a lot of time together. But if we went and robbed a bank today, I guarantee you we’d be lifelong friends.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I don’t want to do that. I think there’d be better things like…
Jeff Rosenthal:
Okay. Jump out of an airplane.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Okay. I’ll do that.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Or go on a wild adventure. Go off a waterfall on a kayak. Or do a holotropic breathing exercise for the first time. Or see a talk that’s super interesting and inspiring and about something that you don’t often get to chop it up with people you don’t know who are also interested and introspective about.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So that 20 minutes or 30 minutes after a talk, we always protect that. We don’t really like to do one after the other, after the other, as many other conferences do. So that’s our KPI. Our KPI is the relationships.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s a key performance indicator for those listening who don’t know what that is.
Jeff Rosenthal:
That’s right. Sorry. My bad. The number one metric that we’re tracking is like, how do we define our success? It is really like what relationships people leave our events with. And if you’re overt with that and you’re like, “Okay, let’s network,” or, “We’re going to do handshake time. And everybody tell each other about… Get your name tag.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
That’s not what this is. It’s pattern recognition from seeing the same people pop up, choosing the same things that you’ve chosen throughout an event experience and having it be casual and feel good and not be forced and overt that I think leads to the fun.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, I want to share a story because I had an amazing experience at Summit in LA a few years ago, where I ran into a guy online getting into a restaurant that was sort of allocated for Summit. And you don’t know who you’re going to sit next to or who’s going to join you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And this guy admittedly said, “Look, you’re somebody I never would’ve wanted to hang out with or sit with or have dinner with.” I was like, “Okay, fine.” We ended up at this table together. And it was Ryland Engelhart, who has become a dear friend.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And he started talking to me about soil and his passion about soil as a solution for some of what’s wrong with the world, climate change, environmental degradation, our food problems. He was the founder of Cafe Gratitude, which was a vegan cafe.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But went to New Zealand and heard a talk about soil and realized that we need to integrate animals and then built a regenerative farm with his family and started Kiss the Ground, a nonprofit that’s about changing how we think about soil and changing policy and farmers and educating farmers. And it’s this beautiful organization.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
He started telling me about this book, Kiss the Ground, that was written and then became a movie, which I was in. And we have literally become so close and have helped each other expand what we’re doing. Because of that meeting, I really got aware more deeply about the importance of soil and health and how I can’t as a doctor treat my patients without also going to deal with the problems of agriculture and how food is grown and what’s grown.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that led to me writing the book Food Fix. And that led to me creating a nonprofit called Food Fix to change food policy, which Newbury’s $5 million farm are doing more. And has led to a documentary that’s coming out on all this stuff that never would’ve happened if I hadn’t had this random collision with a guy who I never otherwise would’ve met in this beautiful, fun way.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that’s just one example. I imagine there’s a thousand of those stories or thousands of those stories over the years that you probably heard. And that’s just one.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Well, I’m curious, Mark, why did you say yes to Summit? Because you get paid to speak around the world and we were asking you to do what you’re compensated for well for free.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do you suck up people in to talk for free? Is that what you’re asking?
Jeff Rosenthal:
Yeah. Well, because you asked me and now you’re talking about this amazing connection that you formed there, which is just the best. It’s like the greatest thing to hear. And I’m curious, why did you say yes to this? How did you end up there?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think the notion that I understood about Summit was that it was a place for people who cared deeply about the world and about their own personal development and growth, about making the world a better place and about building community. And for me, that’s really at the heart of my life is, how do we create a better world for all of us?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do we build community? How do we actually learn from people who are not in our fields? And how do we start to create sort of a different way of showing up together? I can go to medical conferences and I can hang out with other doctors and I can go to Milken Conference and it’s kind of a very stuffy environment. And I hear about different things, but it’s kind of like a stuffy, shared environment.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And Summit just feels like a giant gathering of fun, interesting people who are doing cool stuff. And I just wanted to be part of it. I wanted to meet people who were also leaning into life, who were making no small plans, who were thinking big, who were chasing their dreams, who were building community, all the taglines of your book, the name of your book. That’s exactly why I want to go. I mean, literally, to go to the Summit in Palm Springs in November, I’m going to be flying all the way from Japan to come back for that.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Oh my God.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because that’s how much I care about having the chance to be in the soup of these incredibly interesting, creative humans who are re-imagining the world together. And I would pay to go to that. It’s like, I don’t need to be paid. And it’s I think why a lot of people are drawn. I built some of my closest friendships and community from that world.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So I get asked to speak all the time and I often will say no, but I feel that this is really sort of a very different kind of community. I also sort of want to dive into community because it’s sort of the third pillar of Make no Small Plans, which is building community.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I’ve spent a lot of the last 10 years of my life, particularly after I went to Haiti and I worked with Paul Farmer and really understood what he did to change healthcare in Haiti and around the world using the power of community.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And he called it accompaniment. We accompany each other to health. And I use that framework to address chronic disease. He was addressing TB and AIDS through building community health workers and networks of people to help each other that were just neighbors.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I began to learn about how what we call noncommunicable disease is actually very communicable, chronic disease, heart disease, diabetes, all these things. And so I worked with Rick Warren to build The Daniel Plan, a faith-based wellness community, where we got 15,000 people lose a quarter million pounds.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’ve translated that into a secular version at Cleveland Clinic, where we’ve created a group model of care that has threefold better outcomes and one-on-one doctor visits. And it’s really central to my life is this notion of community.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think it’s really part of what you’re trying to teach and build and create. So tell us sort of from your perspective, why is community important? How do we build it for ourselves? And why does it matter?
Jeff Rosenthal:
Yeah. The greatest thing that we can give to someone else is to include them in our community, to introduce them to our parents and our best friends, to spend time. That’s the thing that is most priceless. I mean, you don’t know how much of it you get and you can’t get it back. And it’s set.
Jeff Rosenthal:
You can’t expand or contract it. Right now I don’t want to get into a deeply philosophical debate because I’m not even sure if I agree with my own statement there if we really start talking about how time feels and how we use it.
Jeff Rosenthal:
But the greatest punishment that we have is to take away people’s time and to separate them from our communities and send them off to prison. We used to exile people hundreds of years ago. That’s the greatest punishment.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So the idea that people to share this life with, it’s hardwired in us. I mean, I don’t think it’s worth debating. This is innate. This is like, why do we breathe? Why do we eat? We need it. When couples who’ve been together for a long time and one of them dies, you don’t just lose your partner. You actually lose a large portion of your shared memory.
Jeff Rosenthal:
You have some experience of an experience. Your partner or your friend or the person that you’re with has another experience of that situation. So those people are more than just the people around you. They’re actually part of you. They are part of your memory and some of your sits in them.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I think that this idea that like our liberation is bound up together. The things that we want, the way to get them is together. It’s this idea that one plus one can equal three. And I think it’s hard to practice. It’s hard to not get jealous and to not feel included when your friends are crushing it or doing something or having fun or creating without you. You want to be a part of it all once you’re in it.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So I think that when it comes to the thing that I value the most above all else is the community. It’s the people that I spend time with. And I love the quote, “You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time around.” You’re helping create the values that the small group shares that is the thing that everybody is actualizing.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So if we’re all into video games, we’re all going to be getting better at video games. If we’re all into health and wellness, we’re all going to be competing in a sense and sharing and sharpening our sword on one another and whatever is the thing or things that our group really celebrates.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So I think it’s really important to choose wisely the people that you’re around and to aim high. I have a mentor that said to me once. It’s like, hey man, if you are just going to tell me that everything’s cool and good and we’re just kicking it here, not very fun for me. I got plenty of friends. I don’t need another friend.
Jeff Rosenthal:
If you’re willing to tell me the things that you actually need help with and we can chop it up and I can use my wisdom that I’ve learned over the extra 30 years I have on you, that’s really fun. So you have to be willing to share and give and be vulnerable and build intimacy and build trust.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Again, another book chapter is there’s no better building block than trust. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s like once we trust each other, we can really help each other. And until then, it’s almost extractive. It’s always at arms length.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So for people listening, you’ve done such a good job of building community. How do you advise people to start to build and nurture these relationships and connect with people in a way that actually matters?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I say this because we don’t really have that in our culture. It’s really every man for himself. It’s rugged individualism. I’m writing a book on longevity now called Young Forever. And a lot of the blue zones where people look to be well over a hundred, it’s because they have such a beautiful community.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’ve been to Sardinia, I’ve been to Loma Linda, I’ve been to Costa Rica. I’m going to Korea soon. And I think that the central feature of these cultures is that they’re just connected to each other throughout life.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And the Okinawa, they have something called the moai, which is a group of four or five people that you’re kind of thrown together with as babies that you live your whole life with. That are your little core group.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So how do we get there in a world that’s so divided and we’re so isolated and we live in these little nuclear or disrupted families. How do we get there?
Jeff Rosenthal:
I would start by saying that we often think of ourselves as what we’re into, not what we do. We like to judge ourselves by our interests, not our actions. And so I think what you do is a better measure of who you are.
Jeff Rosenthal:
How do you actual the things that you say that you’re into? And it’s so hard, especially when it’s against your brain, like not eating sugar after a meal or whatever, when you have the cake in front of you, that kind of thing.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And when it comes to community, when it comes to friendship, you need to actually do the thing. So you said the best way to be invited to the party is to host the party. Well, that’s exactly right. And every community has someone that makes it their charge to gather and organize that community to bring people together. And so that’s the first step.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And then I think that part of the work is on yourself. If you want to build community in any space, if you want to have friends that have certain traits or expertise or interests, you have to be interesting in that space.
Jeff Rosenthal:
For you, I think that if I had literally just no interest whatsoever in the things that you do and are passionate about, it would probably be an odd friendship. And vice versa, right? It would just be like, okay, nice enough guy, but we’re not going to become friends. We’re not going to start spending time together and hanging out.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I imagine you talk to people who are huge fans of your work and have read every one of your books, but they’re not coming up with questions to the ideas, the big ideas. So for me, if you’re saying like, how did this start? How do we begin?
Jeff Rosenthal:
It’s not about how we maintain relationships now. It’s how to like when you have a couple friends, you’re not in a particular field, you don’t have the cool people around you who can help you build and grow your life.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I love that the word enthusiasm, the root is en-theos. It means with God. And if you can find your enthusiasm and you can learn in enthusiasm, then it’s not work. And then you can become great at something. Then you can become knowledgeable at something.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And start collecting the questions that you have. And then ask your stupid questions to really knowledgeable people when you get the opportunity. And it’s fun for them. That’s it. That’s the whole ballgame. Now you’re a fun friend. Now you’re interesting to talk to.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And then you take that next step, which is like… You can’t take it personally. People are busy. But if I ask you five times to go and do something interesting, whether it’s a small gathering with other people or go for a hike or do whatever, it’s just, again…
Jeff Rosenthal:
I guess I’ll end with this to this particular question. We talk about it in the book, there’s a guy named Michael Hebb, who’s a dear friend of ours, who’s like the artist around the table. He’s the one who said that the table is the greatest piece of human technology ever created.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And the first time I met him and we were chatting, he was like, “Hey man, sometimes people say keep it real.” And I was like, “Yeah, duh.” He’s like, “Do you keep it real?” I’m like, “Yeah, bro. I keep it real.” He’s like, “Don’t do that.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
What you need to do is keep it surreal and just do things a little bit beyond other people’s imagination. Just a little bit of surprise. This is not like rocket science. We don’t need you to paint a Basquiat. We just need you to make this fun for us.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It’s so great. You’re sort of talking about really a key part of building friendships and relationships is being interest and curious. And I remember it sort reminded me of my mother, who said to me, not, what did you learn in school today? But what questions did you ask? And so I was always the annoying kid in class who asked a lot of questions.
Jeff Rosenthal:
Your mom sounds brilliant, by the way.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I was the kid in medical school who sat in the front row and wouldn’t leave till I understood everything and asked every question I had. And I do that all the time because I want to learn. I think I read in your book, it was like, we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that ratio. And I think that’s exactly right. That’s how you build connection and community. I want to sort of jump…
Jeff Rosenthal:
Before you move on, when you say that quote, two ears, one mouth. Totally agree. But you also have to use your mouth. You can’t just use your ears only, right? And I would imagine that there were people in that class of yours who were like, “Man, Mark is annoying. I wish this guy would just shut up.”
Jeff Rosenthal:
But I’m sure there were way, way, way more who were like, “Man, I’m so appreciative that Mark asked that question that I wouldn’t have asked or that question that I wouldn’t have thought of.” And so now everybody else has a fuller knowledge of this topic. I think that’s why you come to Summit and your classmates who are boo-hoo’ing about it probably are just doing some boring work somewhere.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Who knows? Yeah. And I think the meaning of Summit, it’s so multi-dimensional. So you have these big events where you have thousands people. You have small little weekend events where maybe there’s a hundred people.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And then you created something called Summit Junto, which I recently joined, which is really like a personal board of advisors in a way for your life, for your personal development, for business, for creation, for dreaming.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it’s fascinating that people I would never have really either met or naturally collided with or even maybe even been interested in, but kind of unpacking each other’s lives and sharing our collective stories and understanding where we can support each other. It’s really beautiful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, there’s different layers where people can intersect with Summit. And I think it’s such a beautiful creation that you’ve had, where people can tap in whenever they want. I want to sort of jump to kind of a question about dreaming big.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because a lot of us are taught not to think about the crazy idea, to not think differently, to follow the status quo, to follow the rules, to do the things that we were condition to do.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night about how we can reimagine the world where we kind of leave behind the things that don’t work about our cultural norms and frameworks and ideas and conditioning that keep us from an authentic life, that keep us from having healthy love, that keep us from actually being happy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Our culture is so screwed up right now. When you think about these indigenous cultures or these ancient communities like in Sardinia or in Okinawa or in Korea or Native American cultures or other indigenous cultures, there’s a fabric to those cultures.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
There’s rituals, rights of passage, there’s connectivity. We’ve kind of lost all that. So we really want to kind of reimagine and dream about a world that’s quite different. And most of us are just not very good at that because we’re told not to do that. Like, “Oh, don’t be silly. That’s not going to work.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, if I had said what I was going to say to the world about medicine 30 years ago and gotten permission to have a crazy idea, which is that basically diseases don’t exist and that our entire paradigm is wrong and that we’re practicing 19th century medicine. That everything we think is right about how we treat disease is wrong. I mean, people just laughed at me.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But I knew it was right and I had to tell the story and it’s what’s driven me for 30 years. And now it’s finally like coming around. How do we get people to dream big like that and to kind of let go of those societal norms and conditionings and notions that keep us limited?
Jeff Rosenthal:
A big question.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I know.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I’d first say it’s a luxury to get to think big. The worst that can happen is you move back in with your parents. It’s not that bad. So I think that to be born on the 50, or if you could field goal in from where you started, you’re often in the position to really think big.
Jeff Rosenthal:
But what I’ll say is that it’s so hard to do it by yourself. And I know plenty of people that have. The theme of this book and this interview really is community. Once you can build some shared interests and some care with one another, you don’t have to rely on your own knowledge.
Jeff Rosenthal:
You’re a tree with deep roots. You can connect to each other and you can keep each other accountable. It’s like going to the gym with a trainer versus going to the gym by yourself. It’s like, you’re not really there for him to show the form. It’s really for the accountability.
Jeff Rosenthal:
And I think that being really open to the idea that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Once the search is in progress, something will be found. If you lean into the thing, you’ll find the right idea.
Jeff Rosenthal:
You just can’t be that attached to the specifics because those come later. Those come with the refinement and the deepening of knowledge around the thing that you’re doing. And so part of it is just like the bravery to jump, to be in a position to jump in the first place.
Jeff Rosenthal:
It’s hard to be creative when you’re being chased by a tiger. I do believe that we have a pretty upside down society, you mentioned, just like the wealth gap and the food gap and the education gap and sort of like the indentured servitude of student loans.
Jeff Rosenthal:
There’s just so many aspects to this that are unfair by design. And so I do worry about that because everybody doesn’t just get to wake up in the morning and take a moonshot.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No. Unequal playing field, for sure.
Jeff Rosenthal:
A hundred percent. But if you are in that position, you probably should. Because those are the things that actually change the quality of life for people around you, not just in a direct sense. You build a business, you have money, you can take care of your family.
Jeff Rosenthal:
You can give to the causes that you care about the most. You don’t have to convince other people to donate their money to do it. You can be direct. And then there’s doing things that are just in general in service of humanity.
Jeff Rosenthal:
So your work and your body of work, and us in a more indirect way because we really support those that we think are making huge impact. We really do see ourselves as like a platform. We’re not as concerned with our own legacy.
Jeff Rosenthal:
We’re really concerned with our experience and the experience of our children on this planet. Again, there’s a big AB, where it’s like, if I only feel the quality of my own life, then I’m not going to be globally generous.
Jeff Rosenthal:
I happen to feel that my quality of experience is attached to the suffering of others. It’s selfish selflessness. So this idea that like it’s puritanical or that like… I don’t know. I think a lot of us… I am saying a lot of things at once here, but you’re asking a really big question.
Jeff Rosenthal:
It’s not about wearing the baseball hat of the team or looking the part. It’s about doing the work. And it’s not an identity. It’s a commitment to wisdom. I’ll just end with this. If you’re talking about big ideas, world-changing, nobody does that in four years, man.
Jeff Rosenthal:
No player that’s in the game for four or five years changes the world. Talk to me on year 20 in the game. You want to talk about wise men and women, they’ve been in this for a long time. So that’s what I got for you, Mark.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s so great, Jeff. Well, Jeff, this is so great that you created Summit with your friends. This book, Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams and Building Community is such an important book in this moment in time and really fun and inspiring. I encourage everybody to get a copy of it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You can learn more about summit at summit.co. That’s just S-U-M-M-I-T .co about all their programs and conferences and weekends and the book. I just can’t wait to see where you guys go next. I can’t wait to see you in Palm Springs in the fall.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And keep up what you guys are doing, because it’s really creating reverberations that you can’t probably even imagine you’re creating. So thank you, Jeff. And thanks also to Elliot and Jeremy and Brett.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I think it’s just great. It’s a great conversation. I hope it inspired everybody listening. If you loved it, please share it with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
How have you dreamed big? How have you built community? How have you made no small plans? And how have you chased your dreams? Because we all need to inspire each other. Of course, subscribe wherever you hear your podcast. And we’ll see you next week on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Closing:
Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
If you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their ‘find a practitioner’ database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who’s trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
