The Biggest Brain Hacks, Hyper-Productivity Tools, Sleeping Without Sleeping & Much More With Science of Success Host Matt Bodnar.

Ben Greenfield (0:01)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Matt Bodnar (0:05)

So I try to really spend my mornings doing the big, powerful kind of creative thinking journaling and that sort of work. And then I spend my afternoons when I have lower energy and less cognitive power, doing things like meetings, checking email, and dealing with kind of all of the annoyances of work life.

Basically, the fixed mindset is this belief that your identity is fundamentally fixed.

Ben Greenfield (0:26)

And so everything that you do, you know, so your intelligence, your abilities are kind of fixed characteristics and fixed traits.

Matt Bodnar (0:32)

And this ripples through a ton of things.

SPEAKER_3 (0:36)

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.

His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield (0:59)

Whatever it is for you that's the natural movement.

Matt Bodnar (1:02)

Get out there.

Ben Greenfield (1:04)

When you look at all the studies done. Studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

SPEAKER_3 (1:11)

All the information you need in one place. Right here. Right now.

On the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Ben Greenfield (1:34)

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield, and my guest on today's show, Matt Bodnar, was named to Forbes 30 Under 30, which makes him one pretty special dude. But that's not all. He was also called a rising restaurateur, restaurateur star by the National Restaurant Association, a strategy pro by Restaurant Hospitality Magazine.

He's a partner in early stage investment from Fresh Hospitality, but perhaps most relevant to you, he's got a kick butt podcast.

Matt is the creator and he's the host of this podcast called Science of Success. I've been listening to it. I actually found it, it was number one on the new and noteworthy in Apple iTunes. And it's all about decision making and understanding human psychology. And there are experts in there who talk about things like sleep science and the mental tactics used by Olympians to using sound to enhance the brain and a whole lot of kind of interesting and intriguing topics. Intriguing enough to where I thought I should get Matt on the show, especially after we happened to have met while skiing in Jackson Hole earlier this winter. So Matt previously worked as an import export consultant in China. He spent several years at Goldman Sachs before returning to the hospitality and restaurant space and getting famous in Forbes. So welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Bodnar (3:05)

Thanks so much for having me on here, Ben. I'm super excited to share some wisdom with your audience.

Ben Greenfield (3:10)

Yeah. So just out of curiosity, dude, how does somebody get named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list?

Matt Bodnar (3:16)

So getting on the 30 Under 30 list, you know, I mean, it's all about a strategy, right? And I've had that as a goal for a long time, probably five or six years before I got on the list, I had initially set out the goal of, hey, I want to be on this list. What can I do to get on it? And as with many things, when I want to achieve something, and I think this is a really good kind of mental model or framework broadly for thinking about achievement, when I want to achieve something, I try to study the people who've achieved it and figure out, okay, what did they do to do it? In this case, what did they do to get on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list?

And I kind of tried a couple of different strategies that didn't really pan out, but eventually the kind of breakthrough that I had on trying to position myself to get on the list, I went to a conference, and one of the main draws to the conference, there was a guy speaking who had previously been on Forbes 30 Under 30, and I went to his panel and kind of listened to it. The panel wasn't about anything about that, it was about kind of marketing.

But after the panel, I went up and asked him, I was like, hey, what do you think really enabled you to get on the 30 Under 30 list? And so to me, again, following that kind of strategy of figuring out people who've already achieved it, and then trying to model them, trying to emulate them, even asking them directly, what did you do to get on the list? And he gave me a really simple kind of recommendation and strategy. He said that the fundamental thing that helps you get on the list is by getting people who are previous winners or previous nominees, and getting them to recommend you, and getting them to put in favorable comments about you to the editors and the judges.