Purpose, Using Pain for Growth & Building Multi-Passionate Online Businesses with Dr. Jade Teta

I am so honoured to have a very special friend of mine, Dr. Jade Teta on the Room To Grow Podcast for the second time!

Jade’s first episode was #17 here on the podcast and after more than 200 episodes it remains my second-most downloaded episode ever, which is really no surprise if you know anything about how much incredible value Jade always brings.


His newest company, Next Level Human, combines his medical and fitness knowledge with his expertise in self-development and mindset change. He has recently released two new books available on Amazon: Next Level Tribe and Human 365. The best place to find all of his materials is via his website: www.jadeteta.com.

There is so much Jade and I covered in today’s episode, from self development & personal growth to physical and mental health & some amazing business nuggets in between. Jade is a teacher at heart, and that shines through more than ever in this episode. This one is absolutely jam packed, covering everything from:

  • How to build an online business from the ground up, scale it, and use your multi-passionate nature to work for you rather than against you
  • Creating memorable frameworks that allow you to stand out from the crowded online space, and social media metrics to pay attention to
  • The differences between purpose, passion and meaning
  • Using pain for growth and allowing it to fuel you
  • Whether or not you can teach warmth and authenticity
  • When to share personal stories and getting very clear on your intentions before coming forward
  • Why black and white thinking isn’t serving you, and how to be more open to views and opinions outside of your own
  • Jade’s biggest fear, and what he wished people asked him about more often


I appreciate Jade and his expertise so much, and I know you’ll enjoy this episode and everything Jade has to offer today!


Want to connect with Dr. Jade Teta online? Follow the links here:


Instagram: @jadeteta

Website: https://www.jadeteta.com/

Podcast: Next Level Human

Books/Courses: Jade Teta


Look for references from today’s episodes? Find them all here:


Episode #17: Rest For Success & How to Manage Metabolism with Dr. Jade Teta


Derek Halpern


The Charisma Myth


Man’s Search for Meaning





All right, welcome back to the Room to Grow Podcast and I have my friend Jade here today. Jade I am so pumped to have you on for not even the first time but the second time, I am so honoured. Thank you so much.



I just love hanging with you, Emily. Good to see you. How are you?



Good to see you. It’s good to see you. I know we were kind of having a discussion before we jumped on about how crazy times in quarantine are for some of us but that can also be a good problem to have. And it’s a season so we’ll come out on the other side and maybe take a little bit of a break.



Yeah, maybe it’s gonna add up I didn’t tell you this, but it’s funny. Two days ago it’s been so quiet here in Santa Monica. I guess what on the fifth? I woke up. I live in Midtown, Santa Monica in California and so it’s usually very loud. It’s kind of industrial where I live, and all of a sudden it’s loud as hell and I was like what is going on? I’m used to it being so quiet, it was almost like someone turned the lights back on. So I’m wondering if things are getting started again. I didn’t know, cause it was Cinco de Mio. But then one of my friends said, ‘Yeah, they just started phase one of, you know, sort of turning the economy back on.’ But it was literally a night and day difference, I was getting used to this quiet, no one on the street and all of a sudden, it’s just like this loudness, so, yeah, it’s been an interesting time for sure.



It’s so bizarre how we get used to things so quickly. I mean, I’ve talked to a couple people about this too, about how even just going for a walk, we’ve gotten used to crossing to the other side of the road so that we don’t come near people, very strange what we’ve adjusted to in such a short period of time. Now when it starts to go back, we’re a little bit thrown off.


Jade 1:39

Yeah, it’s funny. I went walking yesterday and I was just kind of distracted and this person was like, giving me a dirty look. I guess because I was just kind of walking and in my own head, and they were giving me a dirty look. I looked up and smiled at him and they were scowling at me. And I said, oh, maybe I’m too close to them!



Just things that we’re not used to.

So tell us a little bit about you because you have a wide and varied background. I don’t even know if we can fit into this podcast number of things that you are, or that I consider you to be, an expert in. So tell us tell us your version of this because I want people to get to know you a little bit better.



Well, you know, it’s interesting how we come to our areas of expertise, right? I would say I’m most known for metabolism and most specifically, hormonal metabolism but I personally feel like my greatest area of expertise, the thing I’ve been studying the longest is psychology, and philosophy. As well, I’m also, what, 25 years? Involved in personal training and have multiple certs in strength and conditioning. I have every health coach certification, I feel like on the planet from the years of like, 1994 to 2004, which is a while ago. I usually tell people my areas of expertise are mindset, muscle and metabolism, and I kind of dabble in all those areas. If I had to say that the area that I feel I’m most schooled in and most expert in, I would say self development, but I’m not really known for that as much. Although that’s changing, because I have pivoted a little bit to start including much more of my expertise in that area. I would just say, you take a little bit of a metabolism sort of position and mix them in a bowl with, you know, a philosophy, psychology geek and then personal trainer, and you have an idea of the different things I touch on.


EMILY: I love this so much.


JADE: Well, and one final thing, sorry to interrupt you, would be beginning to pivot into an internet business and this whole idea of teaching people to do what I’ve been able to do. It is oftentimes an afterthought, like, oh yeah, I do that too you know. Actually, I have to say, the thing I get asked most about now, when I sit down with people who know my work and stuff is ‘how did you do, what you did’, how did you publish a book, how do you produce content, how do I build an online business, all that kind of stuff. So that’s an interesting sort of piece that I don’t really necessarily think I’m very good at. I have had success there, and I teach a lot now in that.



Well, and I would certainly argue your point about not thinking that you’re very good at it, because you, to me, are a huge example of somebody who has taken various passions and turned them into a series of different businesses that are all interconnected, they’ve all built upon each other. This is kind of I think what more people are moving towards, really embracing their more multi-passionate nature. When we’re starting, we’re always told to pick a niche, just pick one thing, but I think that that kind of plays into one of the many phrases that you’re known for which is easy is earned, That you have to build up to that in order to see success in the various different areas.



Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. For me, and I would be interested in how this has worked for you, I always tell people when I first came out, I was somewhat strategic. I mean by accident, in a sense. I knew that I had all these areas, but where could I make the most money and build the most business quickly. I was very much steeped in personal training at the time so I started an outdoor boot camp, and then I built that up and I used that money to pivot online. A lot of people don’t know this story, and I hate that they don’t, but my older brother Keoni went to school with me. I often say if it weren’t for him and I going into the clinic together, I don’t know that I would have been able to do what I did. He is just an amazing human, always supporting me behind the scenes and helping me build those sort of businesses. We kind of split off, he’s more clinician and I’m more teacher. So he took over that clinic that we built together. For those of you who are sort of thinking about how to do this, my path was to build this boot camp, build this clinic, and use that money to build the online space. Once those were up, I was in this grey zone. Most of what I was doing when I first went online was fitness, then I started pushing into nutrition and biochemistry and hormonal stuff, then I started going into more of my functional medicine. Finally, over the last two years, I got to the point where I was like, ‘alright, I’m gonna launch my self development stuff under the brand Next Level Human and was able to sell my metabolism stuff to two of my best friends. I did sort of jump. I think some people can come in and go, ‘alright, I’m going to do all three of these things all at once’. It certainly didn’t work for me. Even with my new business, Next Level Human, which really encompasses what I call the four jobs – finance, health and fitness, personal relationships, and personal development – I still am kind of like, ‘Alright, I have to start with one of those four things’, mainly, because it just gets too messy. I’m interested in your thoughts and what your path has been there.



No, I agree with you. It’s so funny having you back on because so much has changed since we last did this. The first episode that we did together was two years ago. We talked more about metabolism and all that stuff. Since then, you’ve massively gone off into the personal development space as well. You’ve published multiple books.

It’s just been really cool to see how much you’ve grown and evolved. I used to be more health coaching and now I switched into podcasting, business coaching, but I find the same thing that people just get confused, especially when you’re putting out a lot of content. You’re a beautiful example that you’re putting out a ton of content on all kinds of different platforms all at the same time. It’s hard sometimes as the one doing the content when you want to talk about all the things and you want people to know about all the things, but some people are coming to you for one particular aspect of what you do, and they’re not interested in the others. Then you’ve got somebody else who’s coming to you for something different. It almost starts to feel like there’s this pressure to serve all the people while still staying in alignment with what you love and what you enjoy doing best too. So that’s a little bit of a tricky dichotomy that can happen when we start to branch off and we’re not super clear on our main sense of purpose, I think.



Yeah. You know what, I think what you’re touching on there is really, really key. If you’re going to do it, you better get very clear on your messages and get very good at coming up with hooks. For me, I say mind-muscle-metabolism, it rolls off the tongue now, but that took awhile for me to understand what I was trying to communicate, and to make it into something that is rhyming and memorable. I don’t want to just be the mind, or just be the body, or just be a fitness thing that you’ve heard a million times. You have to sit down and be relatively strategic about this stuff. I’ll go through this really quickly if it’s helpful for people, but to me when you’re going to do this you want to essentially do two things. One, you want to define yourself. I like to use the sort of Hollywood example of this where it’s like, I am the X of Y and X is something that is new and Y is something that is old, right? This would be that whole pitch like, the movie Alien actually the movie Jaws but in space. X is something that’s sort of new and different, and for Y you could say, for example, Metabolic Effect, my old company, was the Sherlock Holmes of the health and fitness industry. Most people know who Sherlock Holmes is. They know ‘Oh, that’s a detective’. And so I don’t have to go through this big long spiel about how we help you find what works for you, because other businesses have all these different diets. I just say, ‘Hey, we’re the Sherlock Holmes of the fitness industry’. And you immediately know what that is. I think it’s very clear that we need to define ourselves, and most people don’t do that, which sets them back a little bit. So that’s the first thing. It sort of gets this Hollywood Pipi statement that everyone catches right away. The next thing is to come up with a hook, which is very simple. It goes like this, you think it’s X, it’s really Y. So you think it’s calories, it’s really, hormones. You think it’s hormones, it’s really calories. So whatever most people are thinking that might be true, you just add on your piece to this. I do this, pretty much every time I produce content. An example would be like, ‘you think intuitive thinking is sort of magic. It’s really very specific and rational’. People go, ‘what do you mean? Those two things don’t go together’. I call up this whole popularity of intuitive eating and I start talking about the fact that yeah, it’s not really magic. So those two things together in my mind are critical when you’re thinking business, you have to go;

One. How do I describe what I am in a very simple way that everyone gets it in a sentence.

Two. How do I get a very powerful hook?

I’ll give you the hook of Next Level Human, which isn’t perfect, but essentially goes like this. ‘As a human, you have a job to do’. Then everyone goes, ‘well, what’s the job?’ Then I go, ‘In fact, you have four jobs to do’. Then the hook is this four part framework that everyone goes, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s absolutely right. I do’. Those are my four jobs and it does something to our brains. It’s this neat little thing where we go, oh, wow, all I have to do is these four things. There’s sort of like a truth that makes your brain perk up. And so from my perspective, when you’re going into business, you want to be thinking about these things in the beginning because you’re gonna need to have this mind muscle metabolism thing. I am the Sherlock Holmes of the health and fitness industry or something like that that makes people go, ‘Oh, I get it immediately’. That takes a long time to do, but I also think most people won’t do that. So getting the hook and getting your sort of one sentence down, as you launch into this is going to help you. I do think you have to niche first. But whether you’re niching, or whether you’re trying to do all of it at once, you need to have those things in place in my mind. The final thing I’ll say is that you have to build a framework around your offerings. A framework is essentially something that when someone goes ‘Oh, that’s interesting’, they start looking a little bit further into what they really want and are kept around by something that makes very clear sense, oh, there’s a 123 of this business. And I often say I’m looking for three to five things. Three to four is the sweet spot that I can be like here’s the framework of the business. Here’s how we do it. Because people not only want to know what you do, they want to know how what you do is different. They want to know that there’s a path for them to travel. So if you’re in metabolism, the framework would be like the four M’s. There’s mindset and mindfulness, there’s movement, there’s meals, there’s metabolic. When you come up with these kinds of frameworks people go, ‘Oh, I get it. I want to know more, I can see the path that I’m following and it immediately sets you apart as a smarter business.’ People feel like there is a path for them to travel, they know where they are going and it seems more sophisticated. I just think people don’t do those things. So yeah, that’s one sort of way that I would launch into this. Sorry for that big long diatribe, I hope that’s helpful. That’s how I think about business now.



No, I think that’s incredibly valuable, especially for anyone just starting out, but even like I’m several years in, and I’m still really hammering down the power of these frameworks. To me, you are like one of the masters of frameworks in general, like you have a framework for everything. It really sticks in people’s heads, we’re going to get into a few of the ones that you have in various areas today. I think that it gives people a lot of clarity. Not only as the person who was looking to absorb the content, but as the person creating the content, it’s actually much easier to build things when you have some sort of framework. You even talked about that in terms of publishing books. You have frameworks that you use around publishing books, so that it’s not quite such a painful process and that you can do it in a much shorter timeframe than most other people. I think that that’s super powerful that you’re able to do that and to teach that to other people.



Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really funny, because if we all go online, I look at it like we’re all saying the same thing. So where I have sort of begun to look as I go is, how can I package the information in a way that makes it easier for someone to absorb? I think what we do when we first come up, we talk to our peers, and we want to appear smart and not dumb, which kind of holds us back a little bit because we start thinking too hard about it. We want to go off in all these directions. I did this too, I’ll give everyone an example of this. So when I first started doing this stuff, I was talking about all of the biochemistry, hormones and all this stuff. GLP, giP, p YY, neuropeptide y, glucagon and all these things that a very small amount of people cared about or could even understand. Finally, after answering thousands of questions asking what these are and what do they do, I was just like you know what, what do hormones essentially do? Well, they are directly or indirectly involved in things like hunger and energy and cravings and sleep and mood. I came up with a rhyme. An acronym like SCHMECK, a funny little word. That was also sort of strategic in a way because if I can say something like, ‘all you have to know about metabolism is ‘keep your SCHMECK in check’. It’s funny, it rhymes. It will stick in people’s heads, especially if It makes good sense. It does take a lot of knowledge to make it work. But that kind of thing sets you apart immediately from everyone else. Here’s one challenge though, Emily. And this is one thing I’m noticing now as people are learning this more and more, you’re starting to see acronyms everywhere. There’s almost too many. You have to go back and say, all right, I need to simplify this enough, but I can’t just have acronyms everywhere. So ways to get around that is to add on to that acronyms, metaphors, analogies, formulas. So this is the X-4 formula. Not necessarily just an acronym. I don’t think it’s going to be useful if you’re always like, this is the four Ps and this is the five Ps and this is the 10 Ps. I’ve noticed I have a four p model at Metabolic Living for metabolism. I have a five p model at Next Level Human for purpose and meaning. It can start to get confusing. I think it will work as long as we understand the reason we’re doing that is to simplify information for people. As soon as these acronyms and metaphors and analogies and formulas start to make it more complex for people, you’re missing the point. I just wanted to add that in, because that’s really what they’re doing. It’s simplifying information. One of the things that I have realized, and it is just hilarious how this works, but it works really well. I’ve realized that if I can take a program and build it into a business, and I can simplify the information for people, then have it all in one place. I can take the program that people are already paying for and take that exact content and stick it out into the internet for free. As a standalone no one’s going to get upset about what they’re going to pay for. So if someone wanted to go find all this stuff for free, they could. And I don’t mind if they did. What I’m now seeing is valuable to these people is a place where it’s all packaged in one place, a program where they can buy and have the information organized, and packaged, and they can systematically learn it. So this opens up a whole other thing for content creators, right? You seem to release a lot of your stuff that people pay for, for free. I released most of my stuff that I built for free out to everyone. The difference though is that it’s out there in a way where it’s more of a standalone single video, instead of a series of videos. What that tells us as business owners is that people pay for the packaging of content, and the people who package the information better are going to be the ones who win in content creation. So I think it’s best if you start thinking about it that way, it opens up this whole thing where we can essentially go, ‘Oh, I don’t have to create attraction content separately from program content, I could actually build my program and use that same content as my attraction content on social media, and even my opt in content’. So here’s how this would work. I build a program first. Then I take parts of that program and make it a free mini course with the same information, and I take parts of that program and make it attraction content that leads into my free mini course. Then I take parts of that program and make it as part of the email sequence that sells the course. It used to be that we would build it all separately. Now what essentially I do is build a program, then use that program for attraction content. And use some of that program content for opt in content, and as email content. Even in the sales letter and all that kind of stuff. And guess what, not only do people not seem to care, but it actually seems to work better in my experience than the old way and frees up a lot of my time.



Yeah, I think it’s really powerful and that not enough people are repurposing content. That we fall into this trap of believing that we have to recreate the wheel every single time we post something. A lot of times people will just get discouraged and not post anything at all. They won’t start the podcast, they won’t post regularly on Instagram, they won’t do any of those things or ever hop on live video, because they’re like, ‘Well, I have nothing new to talk about’. The problem is that people are coming to you for usually one particular thing, at least in the beginning. They want to learn that from you, but they also get to know you better when you’re releasing the same style of content, in different ways. Then who are they going to go to when they want to actually hit buy, they’re going to go to you, because they know you by that point, they know your style, they know what you’re about, and they want that beautifully packaged course or whatever, because it’s coming from you. They already trust you. That trust factor is really key, and you’ve already established that with people because you have put out all this incredible content that people are really enjoying.



Yeah, I love that thought. I’ll give everyone listening some things that have worked wonderfully for me. I picked this up from I think Derek Halpern, who first introduced me to this concept of blogs. What he was saying is most people create a new blog, and then they’ll post that blog, then they create another blog, then they post that blog and another blog and they post that blog, because really, what you want to be doing is posting a blog to find the ones that are very well trafficked, and then reposting that blog again, and again, and again. It’s sort of like promoting content, as well as creating content. What I have started to do is exactly that. This is actually really interesting, because a few months ago, I got a DM from someone that said, ‘You know, I noticed that you repurpose a lot of your content, and you don’t get as many followers’. So I’ll share a couple things with you here. First of all, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ I’m looking at shares and saves and leads primarily. I used to be way more egotistical in high school. ‘How many followers do I have? How many posts do I have right now?’. But now I ask ‘how many leads am I getting on social media?’ Because if I’m not getting leads I don’t care, I’m not the kind of person that needs to be on social media. I’m there because I know I get lots of leads off of that and part of the way I get my leads is I go in there and say, ‘what are the things that I have done that get the most traffic and the most saves and shares and leads? Let me repost that again and again.’ I go and repost my own stuff again and again and again. And does it annoy some people? Sure, I’m sure it does. For me as a business person, I just know that gets leads. I know I’ve gotten new followers and I want more leads. It really is this thing where we have to ask why are we even here? I’m not on social media so I can look like I have lots of followers and get lots of likes. Now, if you have followers and likes that usually does translate into leads for sure, but not always. I’m experimenting all the time, my ex-wife, who’s a really good friend of mine, and I always laugh because she says I am reckless. I’ll go in and I’ll buy some followers and see what that does, then I’ll post certain things, and I’m just experimenting a lot. She’s like, ‘you’re gonna get your account shut down’. Maybe she’s right, but I don’t know that that would be upsetting for me. I just get back on and sort of do my thing. I’m not saying for people to be reckless, but I am saying that the reason I do all of that is because I have a very specific goal in mind. It is leads, I want good quality leads. I’ll show you how I do this. I built a lot of programs over the years. Most of those are old now, so a lot of them are now free content. I do posts based off of that, and I have links in my link tree or on my Facebook and I can essentially push people to that. So if I do a post on menopause, for example, or I do a post on purpose and meaning, I can say I’ve got a free sort of mini course on that. They then go to that and I can see based on these bit leaves, the shortened links and also my link tree, how effective that was. I can go into my insights, and I’m always looking at my insights constantly, being like, what’s the flow, what is actually working here and if I see something that works, you’re probably going to see that every month. I have this one post for metabolism that’s by far the most popular post I’ve ever done. This was in my first book in 2010, and it still will show up almost every month. It’s a picture of a chicken breast and a doughnut and it says 300 calories and 300 calories. I know that that is going to get passed around and get me leads. You see it all the time. I’m sure now some people are getting like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe he posts this constantly’. That’s how I get leads versus how I think a lot of people do where they’re being like, what am I going to post now. I’ll tell you what you post now, when in doubt go back to your most popular posts and repost them. But don’t just be posting without leads. I mean, I know plenty of people that ask for help, and I’m like you have a hundred thousand plus followers on Instagram or who have way more interaction on Facebook than I do. They don’t have the infrastructure in place to actually make money. Meanwhile, one of my good friends, hopefully she won’t mind me using her name, Nicole Spencer, has this stuff mastered, with ads and funnels set up appropriately. If you went to her Instagram, you’d be like, she doesn’t have a following. Yet she is literally crushing it online monetarily. It’s just really interesting that a lot of people don’t get this. This isn’t high school. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s business. And business means you want to be very strategic. You can make money with, you know, 7000 to 10,000 followers, if you’re doing things the right way and using ads the right way and promoting your content the right way and have built out your funnels the right way. Meanwhile, you may not be making money having hundreds of thousands of followers if you’re not doing that stuff, and then your only model is hoping an advertiser says ‘hey, I want to give you some money to do a post’. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing something like that, because I have an expertise, I make money with my brain and I don’t want to be reliant on other products to do that, to each their own. I think if you have a big following, you can do both. But my model has always been making money off my brain. I don’t know if that’s helpful for people or not, but to me, get strategic, to me followers don’t mean nearly as much as leads and dollars. I want to see my leads and my email list go up. I want to make sure that the email list is responsive, and I want to see money in my bank account. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be on social media. I don’t necessarily enjoy it, to be honest with you, you know, to the degree that I would just be there for free. I know some people do but not me.



Yeah. No and I agree with everything you said. I have spoken out quite actively about not having any interest in sponsorships of any kind because I’m also always very worried about restriction of my freedom of speech. If they want me to behave or talk about a certain thing a certain way and I’m not okay with that I want to be able to speak freely. I don’t give a shit about follower numbers, because I think that too many people forget that if you are building an online business, that social media is a tool, it’s not the popularity contest, like what you’re talking about. People get caught up in it, and it’s very easy to do that. People will look at your account, and won’t give you the time of day if you don’t have X number of followers, but I just don’t think that that’s what matters. People can have, you know, 100,000 followers and not be selling a thing. That’s a trust issue in my mind, like, they don’t have the trust with their people. They don’t have the engagement. They don’t have any of that and that’s why they’re having such a hard time actually making money off their business. That’s one of the biggest problems there.



Yeah and I’ve noticed with those kinds of accounts, and for anyone trying to do internet business, we go online in the first place to educate and entertain ourselves. What I’ve noticed is that entertainers, if that’s your business, if you’re like Dave Chappelle or something like that, you will be mega wealthy and mega popular, and you could just write your ticket, but that is a tiny, tiny minority of people. If you’re trying to make it through entertainment, then you’re an entertainer and you’re always posting memes, and it’s all just about laughs and getting attention that way. It is much harder. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t see how you’re going to make that leap into selling educational products when you’re primarily an entertainer. Now of course, I think if I was more of an entertainer, I would probably have an easier time because I’m like a 95% educator and 5% entertainer. I’ve actually played with this, I do just entertainment type stuff every once in awhile just to see how it lands. I can’t sustain it though, because it’s not the way my brain works. I’m always trying to educate, but I do want some entertainment because that brings laughs and smiles and this idea of, knowing, liking and trusting. The trust factor, which to me is the big thing, comes more from education. Solid, good quality education that is consistently done over long periods of time. I’m always breaking it down into entertainment and education. I’ve noticed that people who just go the entertainment route don’t tend to make money online. I think the educators who do it consistently over time are the ones who are making the most money. I do believe you have to have the ability to do both education and entertainment. There’s a book called The Charisma Myth that really goes into this. It’s the science behind this, saying it is all about presence, power, and warmth. People who have presence, power and warmth are going to be well liked. If you are all warmth, which I would say is mostly entertainment, you have no presence and power, then you’re going to be liked but you’re not going to be trusted as an educator. You can look at this two ways. You can ask how much of an entertainer you are versus an educator, and you also can look at it through the charisma lens of presence, power, and warmth. If you are an educator, there are some ways to get warmth other than laughs. You’ll see this in sales letters where it will say, hey, it’s not your fault? Or it tries to get some bad guy that we’re all against. That’s a marketing strategy of warmth, it’s kind of like, Hey, I’m in it with you, Hey, I get it. If you show empathy and compassion, there is a warmth factor there. I think when thinking about missing the boat, in terms of my ability to get attraction on content, I would look at those. I don’t want to pretend I don’t like doing that stuff but I do know that that stuff is warmth. There is another part surrounding access, how much access is too much? If you’re always on live and your face is always showing, versus the not necessarily on live and not going to answer all the questions. I wonder about that, and I don’t know the answer to that yet. I wonder Emily if you have any take on that, because to me I almost feel like there is a Goldilocks zone. You don’t want to be answering questions all of the time and give people too much access, because it does take away some of the power sort of principle from you. An example is someone like Sam Harris where I can’t get him to answer my questions, I have to buy his book. Part of this is because Sam Harris has a huge following. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.



That’s actually a really interesting question, because when the pandemic started, I went on live every single morning and I said I would do it until this pandemic situation is done, which is looking increasingly farther and farther away. I did end up moving it down to weekdays only because I didn’t want to burn myself out. I’ve kind of had the same question a little bit, it’s also a boundaries issue. I mean this could segue into a number of different things because I wanted to talk to you about if you think that you can teach warmth, if you can teach people how to be genuine. Then that also kind of leads into another conversation around, share versus overshare because this is one of my favourite topics, especially when it comes to sharing very personal stories which you have shared extremely personal stories. I have shared very personal stories. There are people out there who would look at both of us talking about infidelity, and all kinds of personal experiences and they would say to keep it behind closed doors, and questioning why we are talking about this openly. I would love your thoughts on any and all that. What do we share? What do we keep to ourselves and where’s the line?



I love this by the way, I love talking about this stuff. I do think I have some interesting things to talk about. I always laugh because we’ve all heard the whole idea of resting bitch face, I have a resting dick face, which is the guy equivalent. It’s like if I don’t smile I look like the meanest dude on the planet. You know what I mean?



It’s funny because I think of you as so warm, even if you’re not smiling I never think that about you at all.



That’s so sweet. You know, I just had a friend tell me ‘Oh my god, what are you talking about? You’re like a teddy bear’.


EMILY: You are! You just radiate teddy bear vibes. Even if you’re not smiling.


JADE: 39:40

That’s what she was saying. I do think you can teach warmth because I remember in high school I was told over and over again that I was arrogant. He’s so arrogant. He’s so arrogant. I know I’m confident and I probably was a little bit arrogant, but not as much as I beat myself up about. I started realizing that it’s really about the fact that I’m smiling and taking interest. So how do you do this online? I’m still figuring it out. But I think it really is about just listening to people’s struggles and then speaking to those struggles in an authentic way. I’m an Italian who loves wine and tiramisu and pastas, I am a big eater and I have thyroid issues. Sometimes I feel lucky for this stuff, because it does allow me to tell my authentic story in a warm way. I am able to say ‘Hey, I’m human like you’. I think what a lot of people do is preach. The difference between preaching and sharing your story is you are using all power and no warmth. When you preach, you are telling someone what to do, and essentially putting yourself on a pedestal. When you share a story you are using warmth, you are saying ‘I struggle with this as well, and one of the things I’ve done to help that you could is x, y, and z’. As long as you do that just a little bit, just a smidgen. You basically give yourself a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on your message. When I talk about my expertise I am very confident at times, but I try to sprinkle in personal stories that are relevant to the individual and relevant to what I am actually teaching. To me, if you are just sharing constantly about stuff that you’re not actually teaching about, then this is just attention seeking and shock value stuff. However, if your business is about personal development and evolution as a human, like mine, I’m using a saying ‘like pain is the path to purpose’. Your purpose means you take your pain and your struggles, and you turn them into lessons. But it’s not purpose until you freely give those lessons to someone else. So when you’re speaking about, and sharing stories from that point of view, it becomes a different thing because now it’s not just about infidelity for shock value in entertainment. If I share my experience of infidelity, which for me is my cheating and me sort of being that particular person, and I share it and there’s no sort of solution to it. That shock value entertainment is nothing but a soap opera. If I come online and I’m crying, and you’re seeing me crying, and you’ve seen 100 other people with posts that all have them crying, you it kind of you just go, ‘Okay, another one of these, this is just a me too type of person’. This is what we tend to do instead of just being honest and authentic about it. To me, warmth comes from deep pains that make you go, ‘I don’t want other people to struggle with the same thing. It sucked for me, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I’ve learned some deep lessons about this that may just may if I share them, help others’. Especially if you have expertise and all the information, I’ve been doing personal development stuff for a very long time. I studied psychology and I still failed. It was an embarrassment to myself sort of showed up as a coward and did all these things. To me it is a lesson that I am still learning, as I am still blind to some aspects of my dysfunction. What I just said right there is actually warmth. When I say that I have dysfunction, and we all have it, you can relate to me. Compared to if I told you that you were more dysfunctional, then you wouldn’t like me as much. If I say I’m dysfunctional and that I figured some things out and science can guide us in certain ways as well, that becomes a useful share between me and my listener. The connection comes from the warmth and personal story that is being shared. I am not trying to gain attention or stir up a shock value, I am genuinely trying to connect with my listener. I would ask myself always, am I sharing this from a place of wanting to just post something and then seeing how people are reacting. That’s a very narcissistic sort of way of approaching it. And by the way, again, we’re all narcissists. I’m a narcissist, too. We all have some of this in us. However, if we do it the other way, and we share these deep stories and have a useful anecdote on the back end of it to help people, and one or two people benefit from this, then it’s not shock value, it’s not entertainment, it becomes warmth, it becomes meaningful becomes something that will make a difference. I think that we all have magical thinking. As I got more in alignment with the things that I’ve done in my life and the experiences that I’ve had, good and bad, and the big mistakes I’ve made and the deep wounds that I have sustained and perpetrated on other people. As I get more in touch with that and integrate that more into my business, I just feel like good, I feel more fulfilled. I feel like I have grown, but I am helping other people to sort of grow in that particular way, as well. And it feels it just feels good. It feels like life is giving me good vibes when I’m not seeking attention, which I do at times. I want you to say I’m a teddy bear and I want you to think nice things about me and I want you to like me, because I’m human. When I’m solely focused on that, I’m going to eventually hate myself and have a difficult time in my business. You know, I definitely am a money guy. I want to live a good life, and I feel like that’s tied to my purpose. If I make good money, I can help more people. But the more I get in alignment with my purpose, the more the gods of the universe seem to be smiling upon me, and wake up and feel like I want to get on. I want to get on a call with Emily, I want to share this stuff. It matters. I know I suspect from watching you do your work. You’re the same way.



Absolutely, and it’s interesting that it was sort of a huge catalyst. Not only for me personally, but in my professional life, when I came out with my story, I have just continued to build upon that and use that to fuel a larger sense of purpose within me that has made me feel more in alignment in everything that I do. It seems to have drawn in all of the right people, it feels like they just fall onto my path out of magic. I think that is because you attract what you put out, and the more you are feeling in your purpose and in alignment with yourself, the more that is going to come into your life. I do definitely subscribe to that theory a huge amount. This kind of ties in with a bigger conversation around meaning, passion, and purpose. You came up with a podcast episode, a couple podcast episodes about this recently, and I’ve heard you talked about this before and in your book, Next Level Tribe. I would love to hear your theory on the differences between meaning, passion, and purpose. What made me think of this was the five stages of grief. Recently, David Kessler, I believe, came up with a book about the sixth stage of grief, which is meaning, and finding meaning. Everything happens for a reason, but that we have to create our own sense of meaning from difficult stories, even like the infidelity that both of us have experienced on different ends of the spectrum and all of that, we create our own meaning within. It’s not something that’s handed to us, we’re able to get through it because we come up with this sense of meaning that gives us a lifeline to hold on to, to get to the other side of it and then to potentially teach it in our cases. What are your thoughts around that and sort of the differences between them and how you have sort of found meaning in certain ways and how do you teach people to find meaning within their own situations.



You know, it’s funny, but I read a book called Man’s Search for Meaning when I was 19/20 years old, and it didn’t really do much for me at the time. I read it again in medical school, it didn’t really do much for me at the time either. Then I went through my situation, where I had an affair and I read it again. At that point, it was deeply powerful for me because I could see it. This is what’s really interesting to me because as I wrote my book, Human 365, which basically was in the works two years ago, and came out last year, talking about meaning as if it’s synonymous with purpose. However, since that, so in the last two years, as I’ve been deeply into this work, I’ve started to go ‘You know what? No, it’s not actually the same in my mind’. We talk about passion, meaning and purpose as synonymous. We say ‘chase your passions’, and people go, ‘Oh, that’s the same as purpose’. I don’t think it is. We talk about meaning. Is this the same as purpose? I was doing that just last year in my book, but to me, here’s the distinction that I have begun to make. Actually, as we talked about internet business, again, distinctions are powerful things. A powerful distinction is almost like the evolution of an idea. It’s almost like a little dopamine cookie goes off in their brain where they go, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so cool’. They then take that idea and expand on it themselves, but they keep coming back to you for more dopamine cookies. In my mind, it’s not a distinction, you don’t just make up distinctions, you look for them. You find them through deep thinking and reading and suffering and wisdom. Passions, to me, are these things that come and go. For example, I was so passionate about football. I loved the New York Jets. I loved the NFL. Do you know it’s been five years since I’ve even paid attention to the NFL? Passions change, they go up and down. One minute you’re into travel and the next minute, you’re really not, one minute you picked up cooking and the next minute you’re not, but certain passions will stay around. For example, the passion of fitness and health is a thread that is threaded through my life, but it’s still just a passion. It’s something I love. And by the way, it’s borrowed in a sense, because I have to go somewhere really to experience this, I could get in an accident and become a quadriplegic, and fitness is now going to be gone for me. Passions are important because they can be a path to purpose. I see it as stage one of finding your meaning and creating your purpose. Once your passion gets deeper, once health and fitness became this thread for me, you go ‘I’m going to really immerse myself into this passion, it’s going to be a part of my life now’. That becomes meaningful in my mind. Meaning is something that fills you up with deep joy. A meaning definitely can come from your lover. We all know very deeply that your lover can be a deep source of meaning, your kids can be a deep sort of source of meaning. Experiences out in nature, experiences in general can be a deep source of meaning ,cooking, playing an instrument, going on a hike, watching a sunset, all of these things can be very meaningful. Viktor Frankl, in the book Man’s Search for Meaning, talks about these things. He talks about the idea that people can be meaning, your work can be meaning, experiences can bring meaning. He then talks about this idea of suffering as being a source of meaning. I now look at suffering as being a higher level of meaning. I think suffering is the difference between meaning and purpose. Meaning isn’t purpose because meaning can be lost. The kids graduate, the lover can leave, the lover can die, the sun sets, you may lose your ability to hear music, you may have Alzheimers and lose your ability to think about music, so meaningful things can go away. They’re borrowed in a sense, however your purpose is uniquely yours, your spiritual fingerprints, so to speak, which is made up of all the people you’ve been exposed to good and bad and made up of your passions. Your purpose is made up of your superpowers and your talents and your unique perspectives on the world and your pain. Meaning and passion flow from the outside into you. They’re energetic buffers. We wouldn’t want to live life without passion and meaning, the difference is that purpose is something that actually flows from you to the outside world. It fills you up from the inside. It’s something that you offer to the outside world, it’s when you become meaningful to someone else. That’s when you’re actually making a difference in the world. That’s purpose. Meaning is selfish, passion is selfish, purpose is self-less. When you are tapped into your purpose, it is where you develop what I think is the best emotional state that we humans can possibly have, the state of fulfillment and joy. The difference between fulfillment, contentment, joy and happiness is that fulfillment and joy can stay with you even in the saddest of times. If your loved one dies, you can’t be happy or content in that moment. However, you can still be fulfilled and enjoy and in terms of your internal state, you can still feel like you have made a difference. I feel like I can tap into the fact that I have gratitude for what I’ve been able to give to other people in this world. That’s what purpose brings. I think we have a pandemic of purpose. Most people aren’t feeling fulfilled, and meaning does bring happiness and happiness is important. The problem is, as soon as meaning goes away, your happiness goes away. How can these people that you see going through the roughest things in life, how do they feel sad and fulfilled at the same time. It came to me through this guy, the toll collector who was a Polish freedom fighter. He fought against the Nazis. He actually volunteered for Auschwitz, which is kind of crazy. He snuck his way in, got himself captured, went into Auschwitz, was giving all this sort of information to the Americans and then had escaped. Then he was fighting against the Russians when they were in Poland, and he had a trial and was shot. The last thing he said before he died is ‘I’ve been living my life in such a way that on this day, I can meet death with joy instead of fear’. It gives me goosebumps when I think about that, because that’s a guy in purpose. That’s a dude who’s like, I live my life in a way so that I have zero regrets and nothing but love for where I am. Given that I was so immersed in my purpose and doing what I’m doing, I was going to end up right here, and it’s okay. And that to me, is the difference. That’s the distinction. I think that’s ultimately what all of us need to sort of push for. So how do I wrap up this whole thing? It goes back to if you’re teaching and you’re sharing, if you’re wanting to do sort of what Emily and I do, it’s essentially deciding to create something as your purpose. I’m going to create this thing. I had the option to be a healer or teacher. I chose teacher which is why I’m talking with Emily right now. Most people go well, you can find passions and you can borrow meaning, but you have to create and choose purpose. Once you understand that it doesn’t have to be some grandiose thing, it could just literally be the way you interact with the person in line at the coffee shop. Just deciding that, gives you purpose. My father’s purpose, and this will sort of drive this home so people can understand, my father’s purpose was to be a father. The reason he became his purpose, became a father, is because he decided to be a father, for my cousins. He became a coach and a volunteer. Back in 2007, one of my friends who’s like this blue collar dude in North Carolina, lost everything because his mom stole his money and he was on the street. My dad took him in, helped him learn to write a check and get back on his feet. He lived with my dad for two years. This is an adult, by the way, my dad acted as father to him. My father has people come to him all the time and say, Mr. T, do you know you were my adopted father. This is my other father. That’s the difference. He decided to be a father. Not just to me, that’s the meaning, but to everybody. That’s the difference.



Oh, that’s huge. I have a whole list of things that I would love to get out of you, but I don’t want to take up your whole day. That was a really, really beautiful distinction, and I love how you give examples. That’s how I know that you are fulfilling your purpose as a teacher, because you always have these really fantastic examples to illustrate it with. There are so many rabbit holes that I could go down with you. One thing I want to ask you, what’s your biggest fear? You’ve spoken openly about the fact that death is not one of them, which typically as humans often is, that’s usually the thing that we fear most. Through your various philosophical learnings and all of that, you have come to a slightly different conclusion. I would love to know what your biggest fear is.


JADE 1:02:00

The answer that immediately comes to mind is being a coward. I mean it’s not showing up. I know as humans, I have this game that I play with myself that I’m sitting in a coffee shop and someone comes in with a gun and starts shooting, and someone comes in and I have the ability to escape, maybe, or maybe not, but I always go ‘How am I going to show up?’ Now this is something that none of us know. We don’t know how we’re possibly going to show up. I could literally fall to the ground cower and cry and climb behind a desk and just hope and play dead. Or I could fight, I could try to save someone and shield someone. I want to show up as the person who takes the bullet for other people. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that though. But that’s my fear. My fear is showing up as a coward. My fear is I have this image of a friend of mine, he wasn’t really a close friend, but a friend of mine who was dying of liver cancer. I went to visit him at the hospital, and I remember him crying and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it. It was a cry I’ve never heard before, it sticks in my brain, it was anguish. It was terrifying. It was regret, and you could hear it. It sent shivers down my spine, and I remember I’m like dude, don’t ever die like that. I mean, I think everyone who was in that room was terrified to die. One of my biggest fears actually is showing up that way. You know, rather than showing up in a way that is courageous and helping people they go away. They go, You know what, watching Jade die or watching the way he did this thing makes me more prepared to die. It’s so morbid but this is what showing up as a coward is. We humans, we’re all cowards in a sense, right? I play these games, I need to put myself in challenging positions and try to expose myself to fear. I create the occasion and right now even as I say that I’m like Jade when’s the last time you really did that? Obviously 2020 has been like we’re all sitting home, but we’re all facing fears right now that we didn’t even know. I’m starting to get sniffles and I’m freaking out right now like I got this Coronavirus. I hope I’m gonna be okay, and then I’m scared to death of my family members. But I go, dude, what is wrong with you like you’re gonna be just fine. I guess when I look at it from that perspective, it has helped me work on my mindset, but isn’t it funny that we’re all like? Even all of us who are healthy. We get a little bit of sniffles and for a minute we go into this place where like, ‘Oh my gosh’. What I did when I had that is I ask myself how I want to show up? And I’m like, do you want to show up like this dude? That’s my biggest fear. I guess maybe I’ll be able to show up or maybe I won’t, but I think about that a lot.


EMILY 1:05:43

I think that’s really powerful and that all of us could benefit from thinking about that more.

Jade, what is something that you wish that people would ask you more?


JADE 1:05:56

You know, that’s a really good question. I wish people asked me a little bit more about philosophy and that kind of stuff. Honestly, this is gonna be sort of weird, but I also find myself teaching a lot and I tend to see how I am and it’s kind of embarrassing for me that I sort of talked so much. I think what happens is for people to go, Oh, well, Jade knows a lot or he’s thought a lot about this stuff, so they don’t share as much with me. Part of it is maybe I don’t allow them to share because I’m talking so much. I guess the thing for me is not so much what I wish I’d be asked, but more that I wish people would be like, Oh, you know, that’s really interesting. I feel like people don’t necessarily want to share their lessons with me because they see me as knowing a lot about that already. I think I am a student first. So, to answer your question, specifically this kind of stuff we talked about, I don’t get asked a lot about my greatest fears and death and those kinds of things, but I actually think those things are important. I’ll tell you one thing that I wish we all talk more about, and everyone’s gonna hate my guts right now, but I wish we all talked a little bit more about politics and our values, and everyone does not want to talk about that. Emily, I would want the first thing I’d ask is ‘tell me about your politics’. To me, that is the deep value based seed stories from the time you were a little girl, percolating up and I want to understand that stuff. I want to understand your values and so I want to be asked to talk about politics, because I’m not. We’re not going to get into an argument about it. I just want to know your take on it.



Especially right now, everything is so divided right now and has been for the last few years. I don’t see any signs of it improving anytime soon. I love talking about that stuff with you. I think it’s really fascinating to hear people’s reasoning. A friend of mine, her mom, happens to be a US senator and even though they are both on the more liberal side, she said that she actually has trouble having a normal conversation with her mom anymore because her mom has swung so far to one side compared to what she used to be. It is because of this severe division that has happened politically that she said I feel like I can’t even have a rational back and forth conversation with her anymore about hot topics because everything is black and white. I am very much of the belief that nothing is black and white, with very, very few exceptions. There’s a grey area to just about everything, and there’s reasons why people do the things we do. I don’t really believe in the black and white, and when people think in very black and white terms, I have difficulty even relating because I always think in the grey, so then I’ll try to explain the grey or play the devil’s advocate and even if I don’t necessarily agree with that point of view. I think it’s really fascinating.



People don’t like to be people, they don’t really like to be challenged in that way. One of the things I’ve done because I’m opinionated is when I get these types of discussions, it helps me be more open minded. It helps me pick up things I wouldn’t have known before. I also lean more to the progressive liberal side in the United States like democrat republican. I don’t like either side of the aisle, but if you were gonna pin me down and ask what I am, I’m more liberal progressive. If you look at my Facebook feed, I follow all right wing, conservative types. The reason I do that is that I don’t want to be in an echo chamber. It’s one of the best things I have ever done. I follow PragerU and I follow Ben Shapiro and I feel like some of these people that I am exposed to, I am finding out some of these people aren’t nearly as bad as what other people say. It’s really weird to hear some of my progressive liberal friends talk about someone like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro as if they’re the worst humans on the planet. I don’t agree with a lot of what they say, but the idea that you think they’re horrible, disgusting humans, it’s just weird to me, because I’m watching these people talk all the time. That’s when I start having a heart. I don’t have a hard time with people’s political stance. I have more of a hard time with people’s bias and dogma and inability to hear the other side.



Yeah, the confirmation bias that just happens when that goes down. I totally agree. You’ve been so generous with your time, and we’re going to wrap this up. Let people know where everybody can find you. Obviously, everything will be linked up but we didn’t even get into Metabolic Living, which you’re running right now, and is very current to our situation that we’re in right now. Also, tell us what’s next for you as well.



Yeah, anyone who wants to get more me can check out @JadeTeta on all the social media. I’m @JadeTeta and then jadeteta.com is my website. I have a podcast The Next Level Human Podcast, which most of my content is coming out there. My other company, which I’m a minority owner of, is called Metabolic Living. They’re @metabolicliving and metabolicliving.com. If you’re interested in more metabolism work, you can go there. You’re just the best. I love this, so don’t feel bad about the time.



It’s just always wonderful having you and for anyone who wants to reach out to Jade, he’s really always so accessible. I know that you and I kind of have a previous like relationship friendship wise, but you were just very accessible to anyone who wants to reach out to you and I always really appreciate that about you. So yeah, I love that.



Yeah, I’m sure you know, it’s funny. I know for you, you probably get a lot of DMS too. It’s like I’m literally like, I got like 60 DM. I feel bad, right? Because we are hungry for that knowledge, especially people who are in internet business, like wanting the information that you and I have. I remember being in that position, and I remember some of the people who were just so amazing at that time that I am still grateful for, so I try to remember that you know, and try to show up for people. Definitely DM me, but just give me some time, and I will get back to you.


EMILY 1:13:04

One super quick last question I always wrap up with, if you could give people one piece of advice above and beyond everything that you have talked about today into growing into the best possible version of themselves, what would it be?



It’s literally what we talked about, sit down and choose how you are going to show up in the world, choose your purpose now, let it evolve. Just the way you’re going to show up at the grocery store, at the Starbucks, right now we’re all at home the way you’re going to show up for friends with texts and calls. To me this is what life is about. You get to choose that it won’t fall on you. Everything happens for a reason, I think it’s more that things happen and you choose, you create, you make the reason and so that’s how I would come at it.


Emily 1:14:00

Jade, thank you so much. I appreciate you so much, and thank you for your time and your generosity and everything that you put out into the world. I think that you are just helping far more people than you even realize. So thank you so much.



I love you, my friend.



I love you too



If Instagram and Facebook aren’t your jam, send me a good old fashioned email! [email protected]



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