Some of you are going to be uncomfortable with this email.
Good. I was uncomfortable making this video.
It’s a video about what I learned from being in rooms with some of the most powerful human beings on Earth — the 0.00001% — over the last 20 years. Not reading about them. Sitting with them, face to face, and getting to ask them the questions I’d always wanted answered, to understand how they actually see the world.
The video is blowing up on YouTube right now. I think you’re about to see why.
In it, I share insights from ten people:
Elon Musk
Bill Gates
Richard Branson
The Dalai Lama
Arianna Huffington
Peter Diamandis
Naveen Jain
Dave Asprey
Paul McKenna
Michael Beckwith
But before you watch it, I want to tell you something.
I don’t respect all of these individuals.
Some of them have said things I find deeply troubling. One recently called empathy a weakness of Western civilization. Others have been at the center of scandals I’m not going to explain away. I am not here to defend any of them, and this is not a video about who they are.
It’s a video about what they do.
Because I wasn’t in those rooms as a fan. I was there as an observer, closer to an anthropologist than an admirer. And when you strip away the politics, the headlines, and the noise, something strange happens.
You start seeing patterns.
Not in their character. In their operating system. How they process pain. How they make decisions under uncertainty. What they’ve trained themselves to do, often unconsciously, that most people never learn.
That’s why I deliberately chose a mix. Saints and sinners. Billionaires and monks. Elon Musk and the Dalai Lama in the same video, on purpose. Because I wanted to answer one question: is there something universal here — something that transcends wealth, morality, even luck?
It turns out there is. 9 things, actually.
In 2013, I asked Elon what I thought was the dumbest question of my life: if we blended you down to your core essence, what would be left? He laughed. Then he went quiet. His answer wasn’t a joke at all — and it explains almost everything about how that man moves through the world.
In 1998, I watched the richest man alive grill hamburgers for a backyard full of broke interns. I was one of them. It took me years to understand what Bill Gates was actually doing that evening.
And the richest man who ever lived — before Elon — once wrote a poem revealing his real secret. It’s not oil. It’s not ruthlessness.
When I tell you who wrote it, you won’t believe the words came from him.
Everything I’ve learned from this top 0.1%. – The 9 principles you need right now
Go in with open eyes.
Take what’s useful.
Leave what isn’t.
That’s all I ask.
If it lands for you, hit subscribe on the channel — @vishen on YouTube. I’m putting out a new piece every week designed to help you see further than the noise of the news cycle.
With love,
Vishen
P.S. Principle #2 in that video is know your why — and there’s a reason it comes so early.
The people who move rooms, close investors, and build movements aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones who can make you feel the mission.
That’s a learnable skill, and it’s exactly what we teach inside the Mindvalley Speaking & Influence Mastery Program with Eric Edmeades — the finest speaking trainer I’ve ever trained under. If watching this video stirred something in you about the message you’re meant to share, that’s where you take it all the way down.
