The Power of the Alter Ego with Todd Herman

<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Hey, welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here with the Publish Promote Profit Podcast. I have a great friend on, but somebody that I think you’re going to learn a tremendous amount from in a lot of different ways because of his book, The Alter Ego Effect, which we’re going to talk quite a bit about, but also because of the ways that he’s used his book.</p>
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<p>So, Todd Herman, peak performance coach, serial entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Alter Ego Effect. You need to buy it if you haven’t. The power of secret identities to transform your life. Todd’s been entrenched in the world of elite performers for over two decades, working with the highest achievers in sports and business to help them achieve their most ambitious goals. Simply put, Todd Herman helps ambitious people do hard things. Todd is a good friend of mine. There’s a lot of business accolades and personal accolades that can be said about him, but none of that matters if you’re a crappy human being, and Todd is not. He’s a good friend, he’s a generous soul. And, Todd, great to have you with me on the show and looking forward to chatting with you, brother.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Is this even a show when just two friends get together and chat?</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, to call it a show is maybe a little bit overstated.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Well, let’s get into it and have some fun, and hopefully, I’ll drop some good actionable things for people who are interested in using a book to really transform their professional life.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>I love it. And, look, you were certainly very, very successful prior to your book, but your book is taking you to amazing heights. And so there’s always two elements to this, there’s the element of let’s talk about your book and let’s talk about kind of the genius of what you’ve crafted here, and then the other element is, okay, let’s talk about what your book has done for you and how that book has maybe put you on the center stage. So, let’s talk, first, about the book itself.</p>
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<p>You met, back in the day, with a sports’ legend that kind of crafted some of these ideas. Can you tell that story and kind of explain maybe a little bit of the secret history behind this?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>It’s the opening story in the book, and just to give someone a context, Cicero, back in 44 BC, was the first person to actually coin the term, and it means the other eye or trusted friend within. The most common rec message I get every single day, whether it’s on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, when people either hear about me, because of one of the 200 interviews I’ve done about the book, or being on TV with it, or just reading the book is, “I can’t stop seeing examples of this now everywhere.” Or they’ll say, “I think I’ve actually been using this in my life at some point in time.” And I said, “Well, I know you have because it’s actually baked into the human experience. We do this all the time.”</p>
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<p>And so, I used this idea when I played high school and college football. I’m not a physically gifted person, I’m not 6’4” and 240 pounds, custom-built to go and win on the football field, I was a tall, skinny, runt kind of thing, but I had a fierce competitive edge to myself, probably because I was the youngest of three boys and my two older brothers would beat up on me quite handily.</p>
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<p>So, I had this kind of inner toughness, but I used this alter ego of Geronimo when I went on the football field. He was my alter ego that allowed me to step in and play something bigger. And then I got into business and I used it as well when I was very insecure about how young I looked, and I wasn’t making the sales calls I needed to make. I was good at what I did, I was a good practitioner as a coach to young athletes, which was kind of the business at the time back in ’97, but I was not good in business in actually making the calls, as many people have that struggle with resistance, right? So, I built out Super Richard, which was the advocate for me to get my calls made and be the promoter of this business.</p>
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<p>And so, as I’ve started working with more and more successful athletes, they kept on bringing this up too. They’d say, “Oh, I’ve got this identity that I step into, I’ve got this performance self that I have. I’ve got this alter egos.” It’s just all different words but all talking about the same idea. And then because we track so much data, I thought, “Well, wait a second.” It was in 2003, right before the Athens games in 2004, so I was preparing one of my swimmers on the US Olympic team for that game, and she brought up her alter ego. And unlike other conversations in the past where I would say, “Oh, that’s really cool. I had one or two,” where it was kind of like a meeting of the minds, I realized, “Wait a second. This is a real thing.” And then that’s when I made it a feature part of how I worked with people. I started interviewing all my clients, “How do you use it? What’s your process?” And I developed this method, which is inside the book.</p>
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<p>And then a year later, in 2004, I’m speaking at an event in Georgia, in the green room area, which is really just a cafeteria, right, and kind of pacing back and forth, getting ready to go out on stage, and through one of the entryways walks this physical specimen of a human being, one of the greatest athletes, bar none, all time, the only two-sport all-star in professional sports, Bo Jackson, Major League Baseball and the NFL. And he is a very quiet guy, but he walks over to me and he says, “Hey, I’m Bo Jackson.” And I said, “Yeah, I know who you are. I wouldn’t be a very good person in sport if I didn’t know who you were.” And I said, “You actually won me a lot of games on Tecmo Bowl as a kid on Nintendo.”</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>No one could tackle Bo.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>No one. He was the ultimate cheat code on that game. And he laughed, he said, “Yeah, you’re not the first one to say that.” And he said, “So, are you speaking?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m about to go up on stage, unless I just got bumped for you, which I’m okay with.” And he said, “No, you’re okay. I’m just here to see a friend.” So, he said, “What are going to talk to the audience about?” And it was an audience filled with teenage athletes and coaches.</p>
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<p> And so I said, “Well, I’m going to go talk to them about really just peak performance mindset, but fundamentally, how to actually use an alter ego to build out this performance self to help them get past their own insecurities, and self-judgments and concerns about what other people might be thinking about them and really go out there and perform to their capabilities.” And he just got stopped in his tracks, and he kind of looked at me and he cocked his head to the side and de said, “Bo Jackson never punted down a football his entire life.”</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Whoa.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>It was such a good statement, I said, “Tell me more.” And what’s not known about Bo and in fact, I actually just had this documentary done about alter egos in the NFL, me and my book and some of the work that I’ve done, and-</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>We’re going to talk more about that because that is legendary.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. It was such a fun interview, and especially when you watch it. Maybe we’ll put it in the show notes on your site, a link to it. But so many guys like Michael Vick and other players that they interviewed when they said, “Hey, do you know what Bo Jackson’s alter ego was?” And then they say what it was.</p>
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<p>So, I’ll get back to my story. Yeah. So, I said, “Okay, well, tell me more.” And he said, “Well, growing up as a kid, I always had a lot of maybe anger issues, and while it sounds like that would work for you when you’re out on the field in an aggressive sport, I would get in trouble because I would take penalties, or I wasn’t all that coachable. So, one night I was watching this movie, and on my screen comes this character who’s cold, calculating, methodical, just nonstop, but unemotional. That was the key thing. And I thought, ‘Wait a second. Why don’t I take that out onto the football field instead?'”</p>
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<p>And it was Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. And I love it, because people’s reaction is always the same. They ask, “Wait, someone who dealt with anger issues decided to go with Jason, a serial killer?” And I said, “But that’s the beautiful thing about human beings, and that’s what I love about story, and narrative, and your world. That’s what you’re bringing to life for people and that gift that you give people is, we all experienced a story differently, and his experience based on where he was at that time was, ‘I’m struggling with anger issues. And wait a second, here’s someone who’s getting the job done, whether it’s a good job or a bad job, but he’s unemotional.'”</p>
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<p>So, his mission on the football field, and I talk about the importance, just in life, of when you’ve got a mission with the way that you’re showing up, it creates this sinew in you, it’s this muscle that you have that drives this toughness forward and propelling this energy that you have. And his mission was to go out on the field and destroy everything in his pass or path with no emotion, though. And you know this from having to do copy for your own business, the power of a without statement in a headline, like how to write a book without toiling away on your own, right?</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Right.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Fundamentally, some of us are confronted with challenges, and now his alter ego allowed him to go without anger, but now it’s with no emotion whatsoever. And so anyways, I was said, “Oh, that’s amazing.” And, to your point, that’s what cemented in me that, well, here is arguably one of the greatest athletes ever. The Alter Ego, this idea doesn’t get to take credit for his athleticism, right? But it did help. It was one of those tools that he used to help him achieve great things.</p>
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<p>And so that’s where I became known as, I’m a quick hit guy, because the moment you change your identity, because everything stacks on top of your identity, how you see yourself, how you describe yourself, your habits, your behaviors, your attitudes, your beliefs about things, the moment you change your identity and you associate with something new, all bets are off. Now, you don’t need to work so much on this outside/in approach. I’m going at the core level, and that’s what’s propelled people to make changes really quickly with this.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Dude, I love that. I’ve heard you tell that story before, of course, but I get chills when you tell it because, Bo Jackson. And he was very methodical. He was unemotional on the football field. He really was that individual.</p>
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<p>I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you talk about this, but can you ever ascribe a performance enhancement percentage? And that may be the wrong way to ask the question, but how do you ascribe how much this has helped me? Have you ever talked to athletes and they were able to kind of express it?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>It’s this idea of before and after. When someone gets introduced to the idea, there is this transition because some people can intellectually get it, right? You’ve seen this with books. People have read the book. That doesn’t mean that they’ve applied the book. So, when somebody has actually embodied this idea and they’ve taken it forth, because we track the data on it.</p>
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<p>So, one of the things that we look at in the world of performance for athletes is, because I’ve got programs for leaders and businesspeople as well, consistency matters. Every coach of a college football team, or an NFL team, or NBA team, doesn’t matter, how consistent are you? Because nothing’s more frustrating to a coach when you’ve got someone who’s got all this talent and skill set, but they’re inconsistent. And so, one of the numbers that we look at is consistency. And because we have the data on thousands of athletes over the last 23 years, the consistency level increases by a factor of 27%.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Wow. I never knew that. So, you can actually ascribe a percentage of performance enhancement.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. We’ve got we’ve got Excel spreadsheets and Google sheets on every client, because again, when you’re a performance guy, you got to get the numbers, because everyone’s got a story and an excuse for something, but it’s the reason that’s this box. This is a Jim Rohn-ism: The reason that this box is really, really tiny is because it can only take a check mark or a number. You know what it can’t take? Your story. Right? And so, when you actually adopt that mindset for yourself, you think, “I get it. I can have a lot of excuses as to why I didn’t eat my kale salad today.” But at the end of the day, is that a yes or no?</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Right. Check the box or not.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Check the box. And so we’ve just seen it, when people really start to adopt this philosophy of being very intentional about the identity that they’re bringing into, whether it’s sport or whether it’s you as a CEO or a leader, “This is who I am,” it’s a game over thing. That’s why it’s my trump card, and I’m sure you’ll probably ask.</p>
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<p>So, I developed the method in 2003, it didn’t go out to the world until 2019, so what was the span that was there? One of the big reasons was, because it really was our secret sauce, it was our main value proposition for why people brought us in, and I was known as the quick-it guy in the world of, say oil and gas, they call them hot shots. When the oil wells start spewing or it’s on fire, you bring in a hot shot, and they’re coming into cap that well fast. While I was the same way, I came in to cap the performance leaks that were happening with people. And the reason I could do it wasn’t because I was running the same playbook as other performance guys or sports psych book guys, it’s because I had this trump card of the alter ego. That was one of the reasons of my resistance, I thought, “The moment I put this book out there, everyone’s going to have it.”</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>You know Tim Grover, he wrote the book, Relentless, and he was Kobe and Michael Jordan’s guy.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>And we both got brought in to speak at this event. Jesse Itzler brought us both in. He’s the founder of Marquis Jets, owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and his wife is Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and so they both brought us in, and so we were in Atlanta together. And it’s funny. A lot of good things happened to me in Georgia. So, we were there, and Tim comes out to me. I was standing at this welcome sort of dinner thing and they had this bar set up with all these cool tasting whiskies, and Tim Grover walks up behind me. We’d never met, even though we’d shared some clients together. And he walks up and he puts his arm around me, he said, “You son of a bitch. That alter ego thing,” he said, “that’s something that I wish that I had created.” He said, “That really good.” So, we had a good laugh. We did a couple of shots together, just awesome guy. So, that was one of the reasons why I didn’t write it early on.</p>
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<p>And then my next big excuse was I was dyslexic. “Oh, how do I write a book if I’m dyslexic?” Then I discovered that, hey, there’s actually some ghost writing companies that are out there that can help you facilitate this, ergo you and Bestseller Publishing.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>That’s cool, brother. Thank you. There’s two, I think, important things that you just hit on that I’d like to talk a little bit more on. One was, you were a bit of a secret weapon to these sports stars, a lot of real named athletes that we would know to talk about, but this book took you out of the shadows and it puts you on the big stage, which meant your content and your secret sauce got out there, but it also meant really, really bigger things for you. Talk just a little bit about that, and then I want to hit kind of the B part of that as well. What did it do for you? How did it do it?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. Now, retrospectively looking at my approach, I wish I’d written it maybe five years before, but the book would have been different because my book shows and talks about the science of why this thing and all the different reasons, and some of that science wasn’t out until the last about five or six years. So, it wouldn’t have been the same type of book where people really resonate with. Not only is this a real art form, but there’s real data and science that shows just the reason, psychologically, why it works so well.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Right, what’s happening in the brain, etc.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. Well, what it’s done. And again, to your point, I already had amazing connections, had a very big business already, and so successful on that side of things, but to all my other friends that had written books, including you, I remember you telling me, “Yeah, you’ve got a name right now, but you don’t know the next event horizon this is sending you into,” and it’s been crazy. The day that my book came out, which, ironically, two years ago today of this interview-</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>No way. How cool? I did not know that.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>So, today is February 5th.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Great timing.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>2019 is when that book came out. My wife and I are getting on an airplane to come back to New York City after we’re doing a bunch of media in L.A, on the launch day, and who sits next to me, but the daughter of the greatest athlete, maybe of all time, Muhammad Ali, Laila Ali, who is also an undefeated champion in boxing. And what book did she pick up in the airport bookstore and put down on her table?</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>No way.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>The Alter Ego Effect. And so, her and I connected right then, I lean over and say, “Well, that looks like an interesting book.” And she said, “Yeah, I just saw it in the bookstore, and this is the stuff that our dad talked to us about, so I had to pick it up.” And I said, “Well, hi, I’m Todd. I’m actually the author of the book.” And we talked for five hours all the way back to New York.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Crazy.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>And she said, “Yeah, this is what my dad talked to us about. It’s that square box that you’re stepping into, unless you know who is supposed to be in that ring, you’re going in with some psychological defects. Who is that person that you’re going in there with?” So, that’s one thing, not just Laila, but Jennifer Nettles, the lead singer, one of the greatest voices in music for Sugarland was on Today Show with it, and Jenna Bush was just over the moon about the book, and Holly Robinson Peete. And then my Instagram DMs, I think I have about 50% coverage in the hip-hop space because Puff Daddy did an Instagram story about my book and talking about how it’s so good.</p>
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<p>And Kobe, before he passed away, shared on his Instagram stories. And when he shared it on his Instagram stories, someone at NFL Films, or the NFL Network, saw him share that book, and then nine months later, NFL Films came out with a documentary on my book and its impact, and how this idea has impacted people. And then getting back to the earlier story when they’re interviewing people for the documentary, Michael Vick and others are like, “Wait, Bo Jackson had an alter ego?” And then they say, “Yeah, and it was Jason from Friday the 13th.: And they’re like, “Whoa.” Their reactions are so funny. They say, “That makes so much sense.” And then say, “For a quiet guy, it’s always the quiet ones,” they were saying.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>I love it.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>But all the podcast interviews, it just opens up so many doors, and so I use it as a mechanism now actively to open up doors. And maybe we can talk about some of that strategy, because I think it’s a good takeaway. I got this advice from another good friend, Phil Jones, who wrote the book, Exactly What to Say, but all the media, all the new business that’s come in from it, it’s been translated into now 13 languages around the world.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, I saw the latest one was in Korean, right?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, yeah. Which might be the best book cover of all time.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>I know. I loved it.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Whenever you’re listening to this, if you go to my Instagram feed, you’re going to see a mockup of a book, and it’s such a fun and playful way for the book cover.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, I love it. You actually dealt with kind of a common concern that authors have of how much do I share in a book, and do I really give the secret sauce? So, talk about that, because you had to overcome that fear. We tell authors, “Look, give it all. What’s going to happen is it’s going to multiply the impact. People are going to want you more, not less, because if you hold back, they’ll know, and you got to give your best stuff.” Talk about overcoming that and how that kind of came about.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>So, for the longest time, I was concerned about it, but when I decided to write the book, I said, “I’m going to write this book and truly give people everything I can inside of a classic 225 page nonfiction book, I’m going to give them the method.” And like anything, when you do that, there’s always nuance you have to leave out, that if I’m in a conversation with you, I’ve got this private client, he’s one of the most funded black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, an amazing man. So, we do private work together, and we spent six hours together last week building out that identity that he wants for his company, and it’s a quarter of a billion-dollar company in its valuation. So, I’m so happy that I did it that way.</p>
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<p>I think psychologically, and I think this is where you would run into issues with some of the authors is, “if you’re trying to hold back on the reins a little bit, it makes it very difficult to then write that book, because then you are constant questioning, “Oh, am I giving too much away?” Just give away, because it’s going to make the writing part so much easier for you. And most of us, when we’re coming in, I never viewed myself as an author. I created programming around the world, we’ve had well over two and a half million people come through our programs over 23 years, so I know how to author programs, but authoring a book was just a different weight. Now that I’m on the other side of it, I think, “Oh, man, I should put together a mental game program just for authors.”</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, good point.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. So, that wasn’t as big of a challenge for me. But what was the second thing that you had said around maybe another issue that comes up with writing the book beyond the, do I put everything into it?</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Well, the mental game part of the fear of how people are going to, either steal your stuff-</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>And they do.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, and they do, of course, they do.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>They do. We actually have a cease and desist out to the BBC right now.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>The BBC of all places.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. Because a lot of these places have just external content writers where you can just use their platform and build up your thought leadership or something. And, yeah, we’ve run into it and it’s been very frustrating with the number and quantity of even psychological papers, whether it’s Psychology Today or whatever, unpacking, essentially, the entire construct of the alter ego book in articles on how to build an alter ego and the science behind it, and they don’t even reference my book or me. They actually give other maybe psychologists or researchers credit inside the thing, and we said, “A, that paragraph is ripped directly from chapter seven of the book. Thank you very much.”</p>
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<p>So, all I know as an experienced person in intellectual property, that, of course, there’s going to be people who go and do that, but we have a process to take care of it. We’ve got lawyers who send cease and desists, and people shut up pretty quickly because they’re going to lose that fight, but it will happen. So what? That’s just the price of admission if you want to get into the higher ranks of success, that’s just it.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, I would say, embrace it, and in one sense, don’t even worry about it. You gave the example of a CEO who runs a quarter billion-dollar company. The people that read this book are going to be at various levels, and you’re going to impact tens of thousands, maybe millions of people from the book that will never pay you a dime besides the <a href=”https://bestsellerpublishing.org/book-royalties/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>royalties from the book</a>. But then there’s going to be two dozen people, or 100 people that say, “You know what, I need six hours with Todd next week to really unpack my personal alter ego because I’m not going to get it from the book.” And so, you get the quarter of a billion-dollar CEO, whereas you wouldn’t have gotten them anyway prior to that.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, no. Not unless it was through some sort of word of mouth, which is one of the mechanisms that we use, but the book just amplified it. Or even just random fun things where you wake up and it’s like, “Oh, there’s Puff Daddy talking about my book.” You probably would have been connected either away.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Right. You did something really brilliant, and you’re a husband, you got a beautiful family, I know your wife, I know your kids, two beautiful girls and a little boy, and you wrote a children’s book based on the principles of alter ego. Talk about the why, and then talk about what it’s also done, because it’s helped you to reach a whole kind of different group of folks that also are being impacted.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. So, that book came out on the one-year anniversary of my first book, so that book’s now a year old too, so I kind of timeline things. But the reason was, my daughter, who was in kindergarten, was going through a bullying experience with a couple of boys telling her that she shouldn’t compete in the track and field race because she was a girl and stuff like that, so she was super bummed out. And when I was tucking her in that night, I could tell that something was off, and I just asked her some questions, and I got to the bottom of it.</p>
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<p>And then I said, “Well, for the Thursday race, let’s bring a super friend with you to run that race.” Just the language changes. I don’t use alter ego. And she asked, “Well, what do you mean?” And so, we built out Chase from PAW Patrol. She was a PAW Patrol fan, and anyone who’s a parent knows about PAW Patrol nowadays. So, I bought her a headband as the totem for her to put on, and that’s when she would become Mighty Chase. And I actually have this video when my wife FaceTimes me after the race with Molly, because I knew the FaceTime was coming and Molly is telling me that she won the race and she beat the boys.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Wow.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>And so, in that moment that was actually about a month before my Alter Ego Effect book came out. So, I decided after I’m done in the initial promotion stage, I want to write this children’s book. So, I partnered up with someone who you partner up with as well through Bestseller Publishing, and we wrote the children’s book version of it, and it’s been tremendously successful. Well, actually, it’s very close to selling the same amount of copies, but that’s because a major corporation bought 25,000 books for their entire team.</p>
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<p>But I’ve had so many other authors who said, “Oh, that’s brilliant,” because what it does is it actually drives sales of my other book, and now it’s creating this nice little ecosystem. But the really cool thing that it’s done is, because it’s a picture book, and it actually carries the entire value proposition of what an alter ego does, and it carries it through the story of a little boy, the inspiration for the writing came from the same song that Mr. Rogers used to secure funding from Congress. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that video from the-</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, it’s a great video.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Great video, right? So, I sort of studied that. And because I use Mr. Rogers as my inspiration for my alter ego for how I want to be around my kids, I’m very close. I know him in my head. So, the combination of Mr. Rogers and then Dr. Zeus was how I wrote that book. And that’s the cool thing, once you play with this idea, you stop just labeling yourself as this one entity. Because I know, if I use the right models in my own mind, I can pull out of myself better quality stuff. And so, what I do with the book now is I end all of my keynote speeches by reading that book. And we’ve got a very good mutual friend, Taki Moore, who isn’t the most emotional guy, and so I read the book to his group of coaches, and it’s the only time he’s teared up and cried in the last five years, he said-</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>No kidding.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>And you saw it right on camera, because it’s the kind of human experience of how do we get past some of these difficult things? But yeah, the that book has been a great amplifier, and it was, again, same process. Let’s work with someone who’s very good at writing children’s books, who’s a part of your world too, and that’s what helped make that process just faster. It got the product out there.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. It’s a fantastic product. I don’t have a copy of it here, I have it in my office in California. Do you have a copy of it?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Right here, man.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, let’s see it. Hold it up. That’s it right there. My Super Me. It’s fantastic. Great, great book for kids dealing with real issues that they deal with. That’s one of the beautiful parts of writing a book, right? For 20 bucks, 10 bucks, people can really have their lives changed and impacted. And then what it does for the author is ridiculous, right, because of the doors that it opens up for you and allows you, at a really, really high level, to impact those that want more. And, of course, 25,000 copies being purchased by a corporation to get in the hands of their employees and kids, what’s better than that?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Just the other side is all of us that are doing difficult things or pursuing ambitious goals, that means that typically, every day, sometimes the crap rolls downhill on you, right? And it is, you’re stepping into just zones where your comfort is going to get challenged, right? And I’m no different than you in that, but the thing that the book has done at a rate of 10X anything else that I have is, there’s not a day, every single day when I log into our social platforms, there’s a direct message somewhere from someone saying, “Thank you so much for writing this book.” So, when you get peppered with that thing every single day, it just infuses you with more encouragement to keep on doing and putting out good stuff, and I didn’t have that before as much. We had good stuff, but nothing like a book does, to your point, because it’s such an accessible thing.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Right. I love it. I love it. Bro, I could keep talking to you, but I think that’s enough for folks at this point. So, how do they best get in contact with you, learn from you? What’s the best places to reach you?</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>So, my home base on the interwebs is toddherman.me, and from there on the other companies like my 90 Day Year company, or alteregoeffect.com is where you can see the book, and the kid’s book, and the training programs we have for people. But social channels as well. I’m on Instagram, and LinkedIn, and everywhere else, and constantly putting out content and stuff of people, so yeah.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Look, if you’ve read the book, reach out to Todd and thank him.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Absolutely.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Reach out to him on his Instagram, obviously, go on his website. If you haven’t purchased the book, you should. It’s one of those groundbreaking type books, one that you can read a business book and see the 11 other business books that came before it that it drew from, your book isn’t like that. Your book is like, “Wow, okay, there’s going to be 11 books that follow it, and maybe they already have, that are going to draw from what you’ve written.” So, congratulations and great to be your buddy and thanks for having you on the show.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah. My final message is, for those out there who are a practitioner like me, we need more people who are practitioners writing books. There’s a lot of books out there that are written by researchers or influencers that when you read them, you can see there’s a very thin veil of expertise that’s there. And so I love consuming books by practitioners, the people who are on the field every day doing nose to nose, toes to toes because you get so much nuance out of it that you can only get if you’re someone who’s truly helping someone to achieve whatever the thing is that is in your domain. That’s why I like surrounding myself with people who are actually doing the work, not just talking about it incessantly.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>Love it. Love it. Love it. Thanks for being on, brother.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Absolutely.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>I’ll let you know when we launch, and man, I’m excited to have you on because I know this is going to be helpful to a lot of people, so thank you.</p>
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<p><strong>Todd Herman:</strong></p>
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<p>Cool, buddy. Have a great day.</p>
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<p><strong>Rob Kosberg:</strong></p>
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<p>You too.</p>
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