This is a deep guide to happier relationships and the skill of empathy. Learning this skill will make you important in other people's lives. You will be able to know what to say in difficult situations and solve almost any conflict. In this episode we will dive into six different topics. Topic 1 - Why empathy is important  Empathy is a complicated word. In our first topic we will explain what it means and how it feels.  We used to be bad at empathy ourselves, without even knowing, so here we will also dive into how to know if you are good or bad at empathy. Topic 2 - 4 Stages of empathy  This topic is about the 4 stages of empathy that you will climb on your way to mastering this skill.   You will learn which stage you are currently at, and what the next step is for moving forward.  Topic 3 - Behaviours that block empathy  This topic covers the main goal of empathy - and 3 common misunderstandings that makes most of us fail at this goal.   Becoming aware of these common misunderstandings is the first step to moving up the empathy ladder.  You will learn all the behaviours that block empathy - so you can stop doing them, and spot them in others. Topic 4 - How to give more empathy  This topic will deepen your understanding of what state of mind you need to be in to give empathy to others.   You will learn useful techniques that will allow you to build trust and have deeper conversations with anyone you meet.  Topic 5 - How to receive more empathy  This topic is all about getting other people to give us more empathy and understand our emotional experiences.  When we get good at this we will have many more friends, feel less lonely and have other people genuinely want to be there for us and help us out when we are in pain.   You will learn how to get other people to understand and care about us Topic 6 - When empathy is your superpower  This topic is all about how you can use the skill of empathy to turn difficult relationship experiences like anger, conflict and frustration into positive experiences.   When empathy is your superpower, it will be your number one tool for happy relationships.   You will learn practical techniques that you can use each time you feel angry or there is conflict in your relationships.  -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

For you listening, today you will learn the answer questions like "Why are we lying?", "How can I be more honest?", "How can I stop lying?", "How can I make others stop lying to me?" and much more! In this episode, we will dive into five different topics. Topic 1 - Lying to avoid difficult conversations. These are the kind of lies we tell our friends and family members when we are put in difficult situations. Lies like saying we would love to visit our parents in law, when we actually don't, or saying that sure we want to come to that dinner, when in fact we would rather stay home. When are these lies a good option, and what are the effects of them? Topic 2 - Lying to avoid responsibility These are the kind of lies we tell to avoid taking responsibility. Often we tell these lies to ourselves and never even notice. It can be things like "I would go to the gym if I had the time" or "I would quit my job if I could afford the risk". What is the good things about lies like this, and when do they make your life worse? Topic 3 - White lies These are the lies we tell to protect someone else's feelings. The tricky thing about them is that they almost always have hidden intentions that we don't even know ourselves when we say them. How can we understand these lies better? And when are they good to use? Topic 4 - Lying to get something These are the lies we tell to get something. Money, status, attention or even freedom. How can using these lies make your life better? And if you never get caught, what are the effects of these lies? Topic 5 - Toolbox for honesty In many situations where we lie, honesty would be the better option. But honesty is hard. In our toolbox we give you 6 steps to how you can have difficult conversations of things that we commonly lie about. We will also answer questions like "Why are we lying?", "How can I be more honest?", "How can I stop lying?", "How can I make others stop lying to me?" and much more! -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

For you listening, today you will learn: How everybody have values they don't even know about, and how these values secretly runs out lives. How these values are the reasons why we make certain decisions and why we take different actions. And how you by understanding your values better can create lots of meaning in everyday life, get access to more energy, excitement and motivation. All of this, you will learn today! This episode is split up in five different topics: Topic 1: How values are born. In this topic, you will learn why you can’t just look at a list of values from a leadership book and chose the one that sounds best, like honesty, or philanthropy, or bravery. Instead, we explore how all values are born from emotional experiences and unless they are lived, they won’t matter. Topic 2: How values fail us. In this topic, you will also understand that not all values are positive. You can have values you feel ashamed of and would never admit. You can also have values that make your life worse. In other words, values that fail us. In this topic, you will learn how to detect and change failing values faster. Topic 3: How to find better values. If your values are doing a good job, your life will feel great. On the other hand, if your values work poorly or you don’t know your values, you are likely to feel anything from confusion to a feeling that your entire life is empty and meaningless. Topic 4: How values guide you Values are an internal compass guiding us to a better life, but what happens when the compass breaks down? Many of us want to be guided by our values, but unless we are willing to be in touch with our feelings, that won’t be possible. In this topic we will learn what happens when we ignore the internal compass, and also how to start being guided again. Topic 5: How we, Emil and Erik found our core values Make sure to listen to the 5th topic because here we share the top values we believe are essential to embody to live a great life. And we are also answering questions like: How do you find your personal values? How to understand yourself? What are values? Where do values come from? And much more! Learn about what are personal values and how can you use their benefits today! -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Today we will talk about "long-term thinking". What does it even mean to "think long term" and how can you listening apply it in your life? What are the small practical ways to use "long-term thinking" today to make sure your life gets better? We will teach you how to use long-term thinking to solve everyday problems like: - What should I eat today? - I don't want to go to the gym! - And, I don't have enough money! All these problems can be solved with long-term thinking! What is long-term thinking? And what are long-term thinking benefits? Topic 1: What is long-term thinking? And why should you care? We discuss why we believe long-term thinking is one of the most important mindsets you can have and how it will make everything in your life exponentially better. Topic 2: Long-term thinking within health. We use long-term thinking to find unexpected ways to make your sleep, exercise and eating habits both easier and better over time. Topic 3: Long-term thinking within relationships. A strategy you need to build communication skills and a social circle that keeps getting stronger throughout your life. And just a heads up, Erik takes this to the extreme. Long-term thinking within relationships. Long-term thinking around money. Topic 4: Long-term thinking around money. Money can create stress and worry, either by not having any, or by not knowing a smart way to invest them. We explore a long-term strategy for solving both those problems. And we are also answering questions like: What does long-term thinking mean? What are examples of long-term thinking? What are the best strategies for long-term thinking? What are the benefits of long-term thinking? How does long term thinking apply in business? And much more! Learn about what is long-term thinking and what are the long-term thinking benefits today! -- Books discussed: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover - Robert Moore Podcast episodes recommended: About communication: Becoming Great.com, episodes 76, 77 and 78. About the relationships with yourself: Becoming Great.com, episodes 84 and 85. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

If your confidence is low, you will have so many regrets. You will be too afraid to start that business, you will not tell that person you love them, and you will let people walk all over you. School never taught you how to build self-confidence - and it never taught us. As a result, we suffered from low confidence, and we have lots of regrets. So we had to learn how to build strong confidence ourselves. We learned that confidence is not something you are born with, confidence is a skill - a skill that you listening will learn today. Today we both run businesses, we challenge ourselves daily on social media and we've both found the women of our dreams. All thanks to the confidence we have built. We don't want you to suffer as we did. Today we will teach you the skill of confidence. Today's episode is split up into 5 topics about how to build self-confidence and get strong confidence over time. 1. When our confidence has failed us. We share personal stories from when we have suffered from low confidence and what the consequences have been. We show that confidence is not something you are born with - it's a skill you can learn - and we introduce the concept of the four pillars of confidence. 2. The first pillar - Experience Here, we teach you how to build self-confidence for something you are horrified to do. And we show how building strong confidence in one area will spill over in lots of other areas. 3. The second pillar - Control Here, we will talk about the most common mistake that leads to low confidence. A mistake that both of us have done over and over, and that you listening are most likely doing as well. 4. The third pillar - Values Here we talk about the importance of choosing what values you will build your self-confidence on. Most of us have never chosen our values but just been brainwashed into certain ideas by movies or parents, which leads to low confidence. We will show you how to break free. 5. The fourth pillar - Reflection In our final topic, we talk about the most misunderstood part about building self-confidence - reflection. This is the stage where you both find how to build strong confidence in your own way, and where you cement in your confidence over time. -- These are the questions from the reflection toolbox: - What is important to me right now? - Why is this important to me? - Do I want this to be important to me? - Is what's important to me within my full control? Once you know what is important to you, why it's important to you and you know that it's in your control, you ask: - Knowing what's important to me, how should I take action? -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

If you are suffering from overthinking, envy, comparing yourself with others, procrastination, or fear of failing - you most likely have the same problem as we've had - you are emotionally poor. Being emotionally poor has been the source of most of the pain both me and Erik have felt in our lives, and almost everyone suffers from it. In this episode, we will teach you how to become emotionally rich, how to deal with negative thoughts, become a doer that goes after their dreams, and believes in themselves. We have split this podcast episode into five topics about self-esteem and how to build self-esteem: 1. Our most painful experiences. Here we talk about how our chase for sexual and social validation has caused constant pain. 2. The emotional bank account. We explain why you can be rich and famous but still be miserable and how to deal with it. 3. The reason for low self-esteem. We look at how our negative thought patterns are the root of our pain. 4. How to deal with negative thoughts. We teach you how to deal with negative thoughts and how you can learn to understand their hidden messages. 5. A powerful exercise for self-esteem. We give you a simple 5-minute exercise that both of us have done every day for years and that has given tremendous results. With these five topics, you will be able to learn how to deal with lots of pain caused by comparing yourself with others, feeling envy, fear of failure, and much more. An episode of our podcast about self-esteem! --- In the first topic, we are diving into how low self-esteem impacted Erik and his fiancée's sex life and lead to the relationship ending. Erik explains that most of the pain he has experienced in his life can be tied back to low self-esteem. Emil shares how low self-esteem impacted him in tons of social situations and created worry for what other people thought about him and even turned him into a bully to be liked. Emil agrees that most of his pain has been caused by low self-esteem. In the second topic, we give you a metaphor to better understand low self-esteem: the emotional bank account. With this metaphor, you can see positive or negative behaviors and thought patterns as deposits or withdrawals from your bank account. In the third topic, we look into the reason behind low self-esteem and how it all comes back to the voices in our heads: how we think and talk about ourselves. In the fourth topic, we learn how to turn our painful and heavy thoughts into valuable lessons that we can learn from. This way we can turn what previously has been harming us into something that now makes us stronger. In the fifth and final topic, we give you an exercise that both Erik and Emil do daily, just a five-minute thing that creates an internal autopilot that every day helps to build your self-esteem without you ever thinking about it. That's all for our podcast about how to build self-esteem. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Networking is a very misunderstood term. Most people think that it's just about business - but your networking skills can even mean the difference between a sad and lonely life, and becoming rich and happy. Today we will teach you how we have found: - business partners - new clients - friends for life - and even love by simple techniques that are easy to learn. And stick with us to the end, because we will share with you how to write the perfect email if you want to find a mentor or get your dream job. The topic of today is How to network online and how to find inspiring friends. We have split the episode into four topics: 1. What does "networking" even mean, and why should you do it? 2. How to use social media for networking? 3. How to build a networking machine that works while you sleep? 4. How to write the perfect email to get a job or a mentor? With these four topics, you will be able to learn how to network online and how to find inspiring friends. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person and get a better focus. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- In the first topic, we talk about how networking is a misunderstood term. What the differences are between networking wide and networking deep. How Erik started by networking very wide in his teenage years and how that has given a foundation for deep relationships today. It started with Erik asking himself "How to network online?" and "How to find inspiring friends?" In the second topic, we talk about what the easiest way to start networking online is. How you can use the social media traffic of big accounts to get yourself out there and find more people to inspire and that can be inspired by you. There are some tricks that surprisingly few are using that we will teach you. In the third topic, we are building networking machines that network for us. Once again we are utilizing social media but this time we teach you how to use your own account to find people with similar interests and make them come to you - a crucial part of how to network online and how to find inspiring friends. In the fourth and final topic, we dive into what might be the most important part. How to write a perfect email that makes someone wants to hire you, be your mentor, or even your business partner. Very few people know how to write great emails, so we will give you a step by step formula. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Your dreams will never come true unless you beat the number, one dream killer - procrastination. Nothing is more frustrating than having a great idea, knowing what you should do, but for some reason not being able to get started. The key to beating procrastination is to build habits for better focus. With the right habits, you will get better focus and you can stay away from distractions. Today's episode is split up into four topics that will teach you 26 habits for better focus. 1. Why you procrastinate, and what actions to start with. The things you need to do once, that will still have a big impact. 2. It's not your willpower that is the problem, it's the environment and distractions around you. How do you change an environment that stops procrastination? 3. Biggest weapon against procrastination is to have friends that crush it. How do you find friends that are doers? 4. How to create a step by step plan that will increase your motivation and solves the procrastination traps. With these four topics, you will be able to build habits for better focus and stay away from distractions. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person and get a better focus. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- In the first topic, we talk about the common advice of how to deal with procrastination - "just work harder". This is bad advice because it doesn't help you to get better focus, quite the opposite. It will make you feel worse about yourself which will make your performance weaker, not stronger. We touch upon how we struggle with procrastination ourselves and how it feels to deal with it. In the second topic, we look at what differentiates people that have lots of self-control from people who don't. What is it that the people with lots of self-control do, and how can you apply it in your life? This is the key to being less distracted and keep your focus. In the third topic, we look at one of the most powerful ways to stay focused on your goals. Finding friends who are inspiring doers. Surrounded by the right friend's everything is easier when it comes to staying focused. In the fourth and final topic, we look at how you can build your motivation so it's much easier to be focused. When you want something enough it's easier to stay engaged with it and limit your distractions. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Erik has over 200 000 followers on Instagram and "How to stop procrastinating?" and "How to stop overthinking?" are by far the most common questions that he gets. Almost everyone has this problem. You are not alone. Today's episode has been split up into four topics: 1. Why we are overthinking? What is the reason that we struggle to get started even when we know what to do? 2. How to stop comparing ourselves with others? 3. What to do when we are feeling overwhelmed? 4. How to remove self-doubt? We are exploring why we are overthinking and how to stop overthinking. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- 1. In the first topic we are diving into why we are procrastinating and overthinking. What is it within us that stops us from taking action even though we know what to do? We explain the reasons behind it, when we are struggling with overthinking ourselves and what you can do to stop overthinking and procrastination. 2. In the second topic we are looking into how you can stop comparing yourself to others. One big reason for overthinking is that we compare ourselves and that causes us to feel bad, which lowers our energy and makes it harder for us to take action. To understand this is an important part of how to stop overthinking. 3. In the third topic we are explaining how we deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed. The feeling of not knowing where to start and feeling that there are too many things going on at the same time. How to break tasks down and make it easier to stop overthinking by getting a sense of control over the situation. 4. The fourth and final topic is about changing our mindset and the way we think about things around us. What meaning do we give to different situations and how can we shift that meaning to something that serves us better. One great way of how to stop overthinking is to get better at seeing hard things as challenges rather than problems. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Erik has invested $900 000 in the domain name Great.com because he wants to build a company that will change an entire industry from the inside and out. In this episode, we will explain the business model of Great.com, what industry we will change first, and why we will succeed. And stick with us, because somewhere in this episode, I will tell you how much money I think that we will make. Today's episode has been split up into three topics: 1. What is the business model of Great.com? 2. How much money Erik believes that Great.com will make per year? 3. The thing that most people think is crazy about Great.com, that we will give away 100% of our profits. How does it make sense? Let's learn about what is the business model of Great.com -- This is a "Business secrets episode". These episodes are very rare, only once per quarter, we will do an episode where we reveal the strategy behind Great.com and how we will succeed. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look at what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. -- 1. In the first section we dive into the product of Great.com. What is that we are building and what can it be compared with? What value does our service bring to people? And how did Erik come up with it? Has this business idea always been his dream? 2. In the second section we are looking into what it means to give away 100% of our profits to charity. We are explaining how it works to rank high up in Google since this will be an important part of how Great.com will make money. We are also sharing some personal stories about previous challenges with ranking high in Google and when we managed to trick the big company back in 2012 (and how they tricked us back). 3. In the third section we are looking at how it benefits our business model to give away 100% of the money. How it makes us unique in many ways and creates unexpected advantages for our business that our competitors can't do. Follow Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.e

Our four best productivity habits give us 25 extra hours of performance each week. Habits that save time! We are two habit nerds that constantly tweak our days to maximize output. In this episode, we will break our habits down for you. How you can apply them and how you can use them to boost your personal development and your career. Today's episode has been split up in four topics: 1. How Erik got two extra hours every night 2. How Emil saves tons of time by going against the social norms. 3. A health habit that Erik has constantly evolved over the last decade. 4. The most controversial of our habits, yet the only one we both do. An episode full of habits that save time. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- 1. In the first section we dive into the habits of watching TV in the evenings. How Erik changed from spending almost every evening just watching a screen and instead turned this into a more productive use of the time that got invested in his relationship and his health without taking any extra energy. A habit that saves time, about 10 hours each week. 2. The second part is about our view of alcohol and drugs and how Emil decided to go completely sober a few years ago. This has increased his productivity significantly and added many hours to his week thanks to not being hungover. A habit that saves time - about 8 hours every week. 3. In the third part we have a habit that saves time from thinking about food. Almost every day Erik replaces one meal with a large smoothie. This both adds to healthy living as well as to not needing to waste time cooking or thinking about what to eat. A habit that saves time - about 3 hours every week. The recipe is: 100g blueberries 100g raspberries 1/2 avocado 1/2 banana 25g broccoli 25g spinach 5g ginger 5g turmeric One tablespoon olive-oil Water 4. Finally we talk about not watching the news. How this saves time both in mindless scrolling and in better sleep and higher energy levels. We discuss whether we fall behind other people or not if it's important to keep up with the news. A habit that saves time - about 4 hours per week. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

One of the most important factors of Erik's business success is that he a great networker. He's good at creating exciting conversations where people open up and they quickly get to know each other. In this episode, we will teach you the technique that he is using, breaking it down in examples, explaining how to use it and why it works. Today's episode has been split up in four topics: 1. What's the beep beep technique? 2. How to make every conversation interesting? 3. How can you make someone excited to talk to you? 4. Why does the beep beep technique work, what is the magic going on? -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- 1. In the first section we are explaining the "beep beep technique", a way of asking questions and finding the most meaningful and interesting topics for both parties in a conversation. There isn't a magic formula of what specific question to ask but there are several guidelines that you can use to get much better at conversations. 2. In the second section we use the beep-beep technique in several different examples. Showing you how it can be used to take the conversation to more exciting places and how you can avoid making common mistakes that make conversations flat and boring. 3. In the third section we are diving deeper into the beep beep technique and show you how you can use the tone of voice and choices of words from the person you are talking with to find the best ways of asking further questions. 4. In the final section we are breaking down the technique to see what is actually happening when we are using it. What are the different parts of the technique that makes it work and how can you apply it in your own life. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

There are four mistakes that almost everyone does in conversations. They are easy to avoid but most people are not even aware of them. You are most likely doing them as well - and they will lower your chances of happy relationships and successful careers. Today we are diving into how to develop the most important social skill by avoiding these mistakes. Today's episode has been split up in four topics: 1. How do you stop making these mistakes? 2. What are the two most important mistakes to avoid? 3. Why giving advice at the wrong time is a huge mistake? 4. How do you stop making these mistakes? -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- 1. We start by looking into how Erik was called "The radio" when he was a teenager and why he was talking so much. What were then underlying factors that made him be a person that always had something to say. We are also looking into what it feels like to be around someone that talks a lot and shows how it will impact your life if you are a person who does. 2. In the second topic, we look into a painful memory from Erik's childhood and how he early on learned that he was doing social mistakes without fully understanding what they were. The look at the two most important mistakes to avoid, mistakes that we both have done over and over again in our lives and that we are now working on fixing. 3. In the third section we end up in a painful situation were we look into how Emil dealt with Erik's sadness when he had broken up with his girlfriend three years ago. Emil did some big mistakes that he wished that he would have avoided and we are looking at what he could have done instead. 4. In the fourth part, we talk about where do you start? What are the steps to take after this episode to make sure that you will quickly become a better listener, develop the most important social skill, and be more popular in social situations? -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Three years ago Erik learned a skill that completely changed his life - and it only took one minute to learn it. In today's episode, you will get a chance to learn the most important social skill. It's an aspect of listening that will change how you act in all conversations. Today's episode has been split up in four topics: 1. How will listening change your life? 2. What does it mean to be a great listener? 3. What's the best way to learn the skill listening? 4. What is the first thing that you have to do to learn the most important social skill -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- 1. In the first section of the podcast we dive into the question of "How will listening benefit you?" and we are looking at it from different angles. How will listening help your relationships? How can listening make you a better entrepreneur or help you climbing the career ladder in the office? How can you use listening to get your parents to understand YOU better? All of these are questions that we are addressing. 2. In the second topic we look in to what a great listener looks like. How is a conversation with someone who is really good at it, what are they doing that makes them good? How does it feel to talk to someone that is great at listening and how does it benefit the person being great at listening? 3. Thirdly we look at listening as a the most important social skill and what it takes to learn it. How it can be enough with just one minute for you to completely change how you listen to other people. We are diving into when we realized the value of listening to others and how we wish that we would have realized it earlier in life. 4. In the final part we look at how you can start to become a better listener. What are the first steps to take? What do you do? -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Feeling passion is great, but how do we find our passion? Many people make mistakes that prevent them from finding their passion. In this episode of the Becoming Great.com podcast, we explore 3 key concepts that will help you understand how to find your passion.  -- Today's episode is on personal development and entrepreneurship, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person and as an entrepreneur. Erik and Emil are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing their ideas and reading about new things. This episode is excellent for you who want to learn about their latest perspective. They share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in their lives, and how it's useful for business -- They have divided today's episode into 4 topics. Topic 1: What is Passion? Erik and Emil give their definition of passion. What is passion? What is it not? Can you have more than one passion? Does playing computer games count as passion? Topic 2: Try new things! The first key to finding your passion is to try new things. If you try enough stuff, you will find something you enjoy. Just by share luck. This happened to Emil when he started as a professional poker player. How can we find joy in trying new things? What is preventing us from trying new things? Topic 3: Fight when it gets hard! The second key to finding your passion is to keep going when it gets hard. Often our biggest passions lie behind our deepest fears. This has been true for both Emil and Erik when they started to explore public speaking and communication. How can we make sure we don't stop when things get hard? How can we make difficult tasks easier? Topic 4: Don't try to create new passions with old friends. Having like-minded people around you is crucial. A common mistake is to try to change your old friends to fit into your new passions. How do you make new friends? What can you do if you are the only one enjoying your passion? We hope you enjoy this episode. It's full-on knowledge, laughter, and personal stories. --- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e  

We are back from our summer break and there are a lot of things that have happened. Today we will discuss what's going on and give you an update on Great.com. First: We will talk about that Great.com still makes 0 in revenue, why that is, how it feels and what we are doing about it. In this segment you will learn about how to deal with struggling times and how to stay focused on the positive sides of the business. Secondly: We go in to a phone call Erik had that created €500 000 in 20 minutes. A call that will change a lot about how Erik spends his time moving forward. In this segment you will learn more about how to think when you are networking. Thirdly: We enter the topic of recruitment, our current challenges and progress. In this segment you will learn about the challenges of recruitment, how to think and what mistakes to avoid. And lastly: We are following up on our last update episode where we talked about our $100 000 donation - we were hoping for a lot of publicity, did we succeed or fail? -- This is an "Update episode", it means that In today's episode of Becoming Great.com podcast, Emil Ekvardt and Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. -- Great.com talks with Clean Air Task Force #21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiuo1DKFBYk Follow Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.e

A great leader makes people excited to move in a certain direction. A great leader makes everyone around them better and more confident. One of the most powerful ways to do that, is by becoming good at showing appreciation. It costs nothing and it can be remembered forever. Today's episode is about Powerful leadership skills with focus on appreciation leadership skill. The episode is split up in four parts: Part 1: Appreciation is a skill that you can study to learn Part 2: What is most powerful, appreciation or bonuses? Part 3: Tips on how to show appreciation, that you most likely haven't heard before. Part 4: How are we applying appreciation as a part of Great.com -- Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person. We are often sharing real life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, who we have learned from and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections. -- Powerful leadership skills and specifically appreciation leadership skill. In the first part of the episode we are exploring what appreciation is. If it is a skill that you can learn and who you would have learned it from if you are good at it already. If you are not good at appreciation, who's fault it that? In the second part we dive into how appreciation and compliments work as a motivator for work. How do positive feedback and showing gratitude compare to giving financial bonuses? What is it that makes appreciation so powerful and what is it about money that makes it work or not? The third part is about what happens if you don't show appreciation and how that impacts your team. We also look into what are some very efficient ways to show appreciation and how can you learn to do it very well? Finally we round the episode off by talking about how we apply this knowledge in building Great.com. What are we doing to increase motivation and morale in the team by using appreciation. -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

This is an email we got from Anna, one of our listeners. I don't like the job I currently have. My boss is very demanding and I'm stressed out. I wake up early and spend an hour every morning in rush hour traffic. I would love to be able to focus on creating music. The problem is that I can't afford to quit my job, I only make $15 per hour and because I'm working so much - I don't have enough time to turn the music into a career. What can I do? How to stop working and follow my dream? If you have a similar situation as Anna, this episode will be perfect for you. We are diving in to the concept of that "The purpose of money is to buy time". By understanding this concept, it will be a lot easier to free up your time and live a life without a boss. -- Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person. We are often sharing real life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, who we have learned from and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections. -- Our goal with this episode is to change your mindset about money in a way that will help you to have more freedom in your life. Teach you the answer to "How to stop working and follow my dream?" In part 1 we talk about that almost all money is used to buy things, and very little is used to buy time. Why is that? How come we think of money as buying things and is that really the most valuable use of money? In part 2 we look into how you can use your money to buy time instead of buying things. That if you use your money to buy more time early on it will free up your life and even make it easier to buy things in the future. In part 3 we talk about how to build a small money machine, by beginner friendly investing creating a way to get you extra hours every month. In part 4 we come back to Anna's question, and we give her our recommendations of what we would do in her situation. -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e Links: Episode #18 - Finance, easier than you think. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18-finance-2-investing-easier-than-you-think/id1452049777?i=1000440642313

What is actually meditation? How could meditation help you in your personal growth or your entrepreneurial journey? There are many ways to meditate, and there are many benefits to the practice. Today Erik and Emil break down their favorite ways to meditate so you can feel BETTER and be less distracted, Meditation - How to get started. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- Meditation - How to get started: We start by defining what meditation actually is. Since it's such a big word. We decide to divide it into active and passive meditation. How much time do you have in your life where there are no distractions? We explore why silence and reflection are so important. We explore when meditation is the most beneficial. What types of meditation works the best in emotional periods to feel better and be less distracted by negative thinking. What do we mean by active meditation? How can it help reduce overthinking and lower anxiety? We explore common mistakes when meditating. Like forcing fast results and thinking there are good or bad sessions. Finally, we discuss which meditation apps have been the most meaningful for us. We recommended: https://www.headspace.com/ https://wakingup.com/ --- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Great.com will give away 100% of its profit, but so far we have had zero revenues. Yet, we have decided to do our first big donation - $100 000. The purpose is to unify the team, get a publicity push, and support what we believe is a great organization - the questions to answer, are we really unifying the team, or only causing stress and distraction? And will we get any publicity at all? Part 1: The first part is for you who don't know much about Great.com. How come we will donate all our profits? How far has the business come so far? Part 2: In part two we explore how come we are donating this early. We haven't made any profits yet, still, we take this decision. Why? Part 3: Thirdly we look into where we are donating the money. The organization is called Founders Pledge, but why do we choose them and what do they do? -- This is an "Update episode", it means that In today's episode of Becoming Great.com podcast, Emil Ekvardt and Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. -- Great charity podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/great-com-talks-with/id1498831309 Founders Pledge http://founderspledge.com/ Top-ranked charity organization https://www.catf.us/ Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.e

How come some people seem to have unlimited willpower with the ability to push through anything? Today we explore what willpower is, and how anyone can build it stronger. "The more voluntary suffering you build into your life, the less involuntary suffering will affect your life." - Tim Ferriss This quote by Tim Ferriss inspired the episode of today. We look into how to build will power and stop procrastination by making it easy to choose your challenges today. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- There are lots of different things that play into how to build will power and stop procrastination. We touch upon various areas where it is important, from food and exercise to porn and alcohol. The general idea is that either you make an effort to deal with discomfort today, or the future will bring you discomfort in the shape of bad health, bad economy, and bad relationships. -- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

What is Great.com? To answer that question, the best way is to look at our long term vision. What will Great.com become? In this episode, we are diving into our founder Erik Bergman's vision of where Great.com is heading. The episode is split up on four sections: Part 1: The first part of the episode is about the charity vision of Great.com. How do we want to help? What kind of organizations are we supporting? And what have we done so far? Part 2: The second part is about the organizational vision. How do you build a team that is spread over the world, works without work hours, and have an unlimited option for vacations? Part 3: Thirdly we are diving into how Great.com wants to inspire and influence the world. Why we want to make charity cool and why we are running this podcast. Part 4: And lastly in part 4, the business model, we will look at how we make money today - and our plan for becoming the biggest company yet, in a very specific part of the internet. -- This is an "Update episode", it means that In today's episode of Becoming Great.com podcast, Emil Ekvardt and Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.

What is the most powerful way of learning something? How can you engage your brain fully into a topic, tie it into your own experiences, and look at it from lots of different angles? This is the topic of today's episode. We have now done one year of podcasting and we will talk about the most important thing we have learned - how to learn, a very powerful method for learning. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- We are starting this episode with Erik talking about how he has spent the last 3-4 years dedicated to learning about social media, personal development, leadership, and social skills. At first, he was very focused on consuming as much knowledge as possible but it was first when he started teaching what he had learned on Instagram that things shifted. He got to embody the concepts and found that some of them he believed in and some of them made him feel like a fraud. We keep exploring why teaching is a very powerful method for learning, how it engages our body and our emotions, and why everything you have been teaching will be easier for you to remember. We sum up this episode with various ways of teaching, what you can do if you don't want to put yourself out there as a teacher in public or on social media but still benefit from this technique and what are the important things to get started. --- Social media channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.e

We want to teach you how to make $1000 a month online because we believe that if you had that extra money, you would have a lot less worry in your life. $1000 extra a month is enough to solve most money problems. Today there are more opportunities to make money online than ever, you just have to know where to look. In this episode, Emil Ekvardt interviews Erik Bergman, who made over $50 million online, before he turned 30 and he will give you the exact steps you need to take to start making $1000 a month online. Part 1 We will share a story about a friend of ours who went from 0 to $1000 per month and what made him succeed. Part 2 We will talk about the most important ingredient to succeed when learning a new skill. Part 3 Is about how you find the best skill for you and how you learn it. Part 4 Is about how you start making money from the skill and how you can sell it. -- Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person. We are often sharing real-life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, whom we have learned from, and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections. -- We start the episode with the story about Felix. A friend of ours who went from 0 to $1000 per month when studying. We get to follow the steps that he took and what made him stand out from other people who tried. What were the elements of his success? Then we move on to talk about the importance of having fun when learning a new skill. It's easy to forget fun when trying to make money, but the truth is that if you can find something you enjoy and make money from it, not only will you like it more - you will get a lot better at it. Thirdly we go in what skills to learn to make $1000 a month online. We talk about different topics to learn. Based on what you enjoyed in school, this is a list for inspiration: Math classes Programming, start with "Python" Web development, "Wordpress for beginners" Accounting, start with "IFRS" Spreadsheets, start with "learn excel" Web analytics, "google analytics for beginners" Facebook ads, "beginner Facebook ads" The music or art classes Create thumbnails, "thumbnails photoshop" Content for social media, start with "canva beginner" Audio editing, start with "podcast editing" Video editing, "video editing" Language classes Copywriting (all kinds of writing online), "write product descriptions" Copywriting, "SEO copywriter" Subtitles for videos, "kapwing subtitles" Translations, "start a translation business" The social parts / Recess Recruitment, "LinkedIn recruitment" Sales, "cold email sales" Coaching, "start a coaching business" Finally we talk about how to turn the skills that you have learned into money. How you can sell it and start making $1000 a month online. Link to recommended episode: "Find inspiring people in social media" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaSVVSnZ9kg -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

In school, we don't get to learn social skills. No one teaches us what mistakes not to make. When Erik was young, he was a lonely child with very few friends. He always thought it was just bad luck and never understood why. A few years ago he started reading about social skills and how to interact with others and it opened a world of new knowledge. More than anything, he could see all the mistakes he had done when he was younger. For the first time, he realized that it wasn't bad luck that made him lonely, it was mistakes that he did. If you want to know how to make more friends at school? or how to make more friends at work? this is a great episode for you. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- This is another spontaneous and very vulnerable episode. We are diving into Erik's childhood and emotions. We are starting by getting an understanding of what Erik's life looked like as a 10-12-year-old, how it changed when he moved to another school as a teenager, and what he learned when he started learning about social skills. "How to make more friends in school?" was one of the questions he tried to understand early and "How to make more friends at work?" is something he is now teaching. After years of diving deep into social skills and personal relationships, this is now one of his core interests and something he loves talking about and learning more about.

Did you get to learn about social skills when you went to school? Did someone teach you how to interact with others and feel confident? One of the problems with the school system is that it doesn't focus on the skill that might be the most important of all, social skills. How to feel more confident talking to new people? How to feel less nervous in social situations? Today we are diving into the challenges that we have had in our social life. This episode is focused on exploring Emil's struggles with feeling nervous and awkward around new people and social situations. What he did to come over it, how long it took and what are his best tips to learn social skills. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from. -- This episode was spontaneous and unplanned. We wanted to keep the conversation as real and genuine as possible and instead of planning, we dove into it. The focus became on exploring how Emil locked himself into a bubble of online poker for 10 years and during this time just stayed in his comfort zone. When his girlfriend broke up with him he had to start socializing with others and found that he couldn't even talk to women. He asked himself "How to feel less nervous in social situations?" and "How to feel more confident talking to new people?" He started challenging himself, growing his comfort zone, had friends to learn together with, and went from being socially challenged to someone who now loves social situations, meeting new people, and values his social skills as one of his main talents.

What is a successful career? What's the difference between climbing the corporate ladder, or becoming an entrepreneur? It's easy to start climbing one latter and not being sure if it's the right one or how to change the ladder you are climbing. In this episode, we touch upon what's the difference between climbing the corporate ladder and becoming an entrepreneur, when is the right time to start your first business and what are the risks of climbing the corporate ladder? This is an episode that is extra important for you early in your career, this is when you decide what ladder to climb. Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person. We are often sharing real-life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, whom we have learned from, and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections. We start this episode by exploring what it means to be climbing the corporate ladder, what are the steps, and what happens when you climb them? We then talk about why it's easy to get trapped in the corporate ladder and why it's harder to switch over to the entrepreneurial journey later on. It's easy to start identifying with your job, making the title a part of whom you are, increasing your expenses, etc. All things that can make you stuck. We then move on to thinking about life from a 10-year perspective. If you draw a line into the future from where you are today, will you end up where you want to be 10 years from now? If not, what changes can you do today that will make you reach where you want to be? Is climbing the corporate ladder the right strategy or is it better to start saving money, lowering your expenses, and give entrepreneurship a try? Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

What is it that all the richest people in the world know? How do you get 20 million people to collaborate in one project? And how to deal with a team member that has an anxiety attack and wants to quit the job? These are some of the questions we are diving into in today's episode. -- This is an "Update episode", it means that In today's episode of Becoming Great.com podcast, Emil Ekvardt and Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. -- This episode starts with Erik reading a message from our public slack channel. One of our team members is sharing about a panic attack he has been having that is related to work. How to deal with situations like that? After this, we are going into a segment where Emil describes our new "Great.com talks with..." charity podcast. He is explaining the progress that we have been making, what the purpose of the podcast is, and sharing some of our biggest milestones so far. In the third section of the episode we are diving into something that the richest people of the world already knows, that is, the power of networking. We explore why Erik has spent so much time on social media over the last year and how it is now starting to add lots of value to Great.com as a business. In the final act of the day, we are diving into the importance of celebration. That even in times where it seems like we are missing all of our goals, we find lots of important energy in asking ourselves the question "What are we proud of?" and by using that finding area of the great progress that we haven't even been aware of earlier. Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt Charity podcast - Great.com talks with... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWoEGVR89zo8Ltd1EhMDLDw?sub_confirmation=1

"Social media has changed the game. Don't use it as a way to waste time. Use it as a way to surround yourself with people that in any other time in history you would have been unable to reach." - Tom Bilyeu Both Emil and Erik are constantly looking for new ways to learn and grow. Social media and more specifically Youtube has been an endless source of inspiration. With countless hours of videos and podcasts, we have found our favorite people to learn from and be influenced by. In this episode we will dive into our favourite teachers within: - Social skills - Health - Sex - Spirituality - Business - Creativity and what we have learned from them. -- Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person. We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives and where we have learned it from. -- We start this episode by exploring the questions "What would you have changed in your upbringing?" This is one of Emil's favourite questions to ask and it opens up a lot of interesting perspectives. From there we move on to exploring the role models that we've had from social media. Tony Robbins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxOQPgz_Vdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruApkmEkPxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P6yoK7tH3Y Charlie Houpert - Charisma on command" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_KFy6qy-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLnrx6mbcSo Ester Perel - "Where should we begin" https://www.estherperel.com/podcast David Sinclair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4 Teal Swan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMC7ULTSPEE Eckart Tolle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTFDfR47dl4 Matt Kahn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2da2CQEyy0 Dave Asprey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YjLMdx3YZY Dr Erik Berg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwCRjwDs1Ek Matt D'Avella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG2GJZcBKOE Peter McKinnon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PXCa6RCG28 -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

Going to college or not can feel like the most important decision of a lifetime. Standing in front of such an important choice can easily cause confusion, apathy and a feeling of overwhelming. Erik Bergman has built a company with 300+ employees. Today we explore his perspective of the importance of a college degree both as an employer and as an employee. One of the most common questions that Erik gets from social media is "Is college important before starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur?" or "Is college even important?". We are no experts in this topic but we have lots of thoughts and our own experiences to share. Some questions we touch upon are: - Is college important as an entrepreneur? - Why didn't we go to college ourselves? - How did our parents take that? - When is it a good idea to not go to college? - What skills are most important for an entrepreneur, and is college the best place to learn them? -- Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person. We are often sharing real-life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, who we have learned from and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections. -- We start this episode by exploring what "college" even means. As two swedes this is a somewhat confusing term that has been romanticised by teen comedy movies. We move on to describe the confusion that is very common to feel when standing in front of such an important decision. It can feel like the entire future depends on this and that's a very overwhelming feeling. From there we move on to talk about what skillsets we believe are great for an entrepreneur to learn and how college can be used to find those skills. How networking can play an important role and how college can be a great place to find likeminded people with inspiring goals. Is college important before starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur? -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

Everyone has been talking about the coronavirus lately, but what is actually a virus? Other than staying away from infected people, what can you do to protect yourself? And how does your immune system play into this? How to build an immune system against corona? These are some of the questions we are answering in today's episode of "Becoming Great.com". The purpose of this episode is to make you feel a bit safer and prepared for dealing with a virus and learn about different ways to improve their immune system. The two friends Erik and Emil are both nerds and the topic of health and personal development, every now and then we do episodes with this theme and this is one of those episodes. We dig into our own life hacks, tips, and tricks for how to improve our lives. We are not scientists or doctors, but we are passionate learners and we talk about the things that we apply ourselves. In the introduction, we touch on the questions of how to build an immune system against corona but all in all the episode is about how to defend ourselves vs any virus. We describe what a virus is, how it works, and how our immune system works to protect us. We talk about the most important factors that play into the immune system. Age, genes, nutrition, gut flora, stress, and sleep. Age and genes aren't much we can influence so instead we dig into how you can decrease your stress levels by becoming better at saying no and by practicing gratitude and meditation. How to improve your nutrition by eating different high vitamin levels foods such as sauerkraut, cod oil, lemon, turmeric, and garlic. We are also talking about the importance of sleep for the immune system and what we are doing to be able to sleep better in stressful times. Welcome to Becoming Great.com and the episode "How to build an immune system against corona" Book: Why we sleep - Matthew Walker   Follow us on social channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

Boring tasks are a killer of joy and creativity, still, every job has them. What can you do to make boring tasks more fun? How can you use your selfishness to become a better team player? These are the questions we explore in today's episode. This episode can change the way you are thinking about boring tasks, forever. Today’s episode is an update episode, where Erik and Emil explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building the company Great.com. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look of what it’s like to build a company and also get an update on our progress. What we learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. In this episode, we are exploring our new project in Great.com, a charity podcast. Emil has been swamped in admin work and boring tasks and feels both frustrated and overwhelmed. When he brings this up with the team he feels like a bad team player and worries that he will let everyone else down. He feels that he is just supposed to suck it up and do the tasks, that's what everyone else does. We are exploring the importance of creating an environment where concerns like this are being raised. What are the effects on the team? How can this be good for the team? What can we learn about how to make boring tasks more fun? Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

We have just launched one of our biggest projects ever. A new podcast! We are interviewing charity organisations with the purpose of building more trust and understanding between the causes and people that want to donate. Our ambition is to launch 7 episodes every week and now we are hiring to make this dream happen. The role we are looking for will be a podcast coordinator, a project manager role responsible for booking guests, building relationships with organisations, creating processes to easily get things moving and simply be the spider in the net of the podcast. Today’s episode is an update episode where the good friends Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress. What we learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. This episode took off with a playful start (as usual) and we went over the two different parts of this episode. First part is about the charity podcast, why we are doing it, who is it for, whats the value for the organisations and what's the business value for us. The second part dives into the role we are currently hiring for. What is that we want help with and who would be a suitable candidate for the role? What is it like work with Great.com? EP15 - Albert Schweitzer Foundation, animal welfare. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgPa63npzu8&t=186s EP21 - Clean air task force, climate change research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgPa63npzu8&t=186s -- Follow us on social channels: http://linktr.ee/smilingerik http://linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

We have realised that we are addicted to creating habits. We think outside of the box and we look for ways to live our lives with constant small improvements, different from most people. Most of these habits are pretty shitty and don't stick, but some do! Then we keep building on them. This is a personal development episode for you who want to build success. SPOILER If you want to be surprised of which our surprising habits are, don't keep reading :) The habits that we have built are: - Self-reflection, and why that is so important. - Absurdly regular eating and sleeping patterns, and what impact that has on decision making and creativity. - Acting like a dog, and how humans life can be better if they are more doglike. - The secret memory app that creates an eternal memory just by using it 10 minutes per day. It takes a lot of work to get started, but once you do, it's a revolution. - The most simple food hacks, that can easily change your diet without taking up much of your time or thought processes. - Sobriety, why not drinking might be the best decision you have taken and how to be brave enough to do it. Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

Some books can change lives, and some books have truly changed ours. Today Emil and Erik talk about which books have influenced them the most. We talk about books on topics that range between social skills, spirituality, sleep, sex, saying no, creativity and communication. It turned out that both Erik and Emil have the same favorite book ever that they rank higher than all the other books combined. Find out which one it is! Some of these books introduce new ideas that are highly useful in our lives. What we discovered though, is that a lot of these books are very good at pinpointing the negative behaviors we are doing, that we might not be aware of. So we can change. Books: How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie The power of Now - Eckart Tolle Come as You Are - Emily Nagoski Women's anatomy of arousal - Sheri Winston Mating in Captivity - Esther Perel Why we sleep - Matthew Walker Essentialism - Greg Mckeown War of Art - Steven Pressfield Non-Violent Communication - Marshall Rosenberg

We are currently missing all of our goals with Great.com. It's a source of frustration and powerlessness. We believe this is a common challenge in when building an organisation and in this episode, we explore how to deal with it and how to move forward. Today’s episode is an update episode, where Erik and Emil explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building the company Great.com. This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look of what it’s like to build a company and also get an update on our progress. What we learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built. We started by exploring why we are missing the goals and it felt like opening Pandora's box. When planning the episode we were thinking about the missed goals from a logical perspective and found lots of valid reasons for it. When the microphones were turned on and things got real, the conversation, however, took unexpected turns. There were a lot of unexpected answers that came up and we ended up questioning the goals altogether and if we have even understood the goals in the first place. Erik found that he didn't feel committed to the goals himself and Emil realised that he had no understanding about why the goals were there in the first place. We both felt that we were lacking an emotional connection to the goals. This became a very valuable episode for ourselves and probably the most important one we have recorded seen from the perspective of Great.com and the importance for our team. Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

Erik has just reached the milestone of 100k followers on Instagram. This results in a lot of joy but also in a feeling of being overwhelmed and not enough with messages coming in 24/7. In this episode, we explore what to do as an entrepreneur when there are more tasks than time, how important it is to prioritise and what you can do if you want to talk personally to Erik. -- Today's episode is a special edition episode. It doesn't fit into our normal categories. It's a mix of how it is being an influencer, some struggles of being an entrepreneur and some guidance of what you can think about if you want to reach someone you look up to. -- We start the episode by explaining that this is spontaneous and not planned. The reason is that during Erik's morning meditation he found himself longing for a time with fewer notifications and messages coming his way. We explore how many messages he gets per day. How it feels for him to answer them all and what keeps him going. We move on to do the math in how many messages there will be when there are a million followers and can easily realise that the direction we are heading in is not sustainable. We end by giving you a treasure map of the steps you can take if you want to reach Erik personally and make sure that he reads your message. -- Follow Erik and Emil on their social channels! linktr.ee/smilingerik linktr.ee/emil.ekvardt

How would higher and more stable energy affect your career and business? In the first Food HACKS episode, we explored different ways to get more focus and live a healthier life. In this episode, we enter the world of sugar. Three years ago Erik's energy levels were like a roller coaster. When the food reserves crashed, so did his temper and some times he could barely speak unless he got a banana. What effects does sugar have on your body? What can you replace it with? And what are the main sugar traps around us? How would you feel if you are less sugar? What would the benefits be for you?

Entrepreneurs live a busy life and high energy is a key element to get more stuff done. What can you do to get energy? What are some effective ways to keep your focus high and your output higher? This is a personal development episode focused on health. How to eat to get the most out of your life. We will dive deep into different health hacks. What are the benefits of fasting? How can you make it easier and how do you get started? What do healthy fats do for you? Which fats do you want in your body and which ones do you want to stay away from? Is coffee good for you or is it an addictive drug?

This is an entrepreneurship episode. Erik Bergman has grown from nothing to 75 000 followers on Instagram in three months. Today we will learn from Erik Bergman, who has tried hard since 2010 on social media, failed multiple times, and learn his 4 step path to success. Do you want to use social media to scale your personal brand or your business? Have you maybe already tried, and failed? Or do you feel that you don't know in what social media to start? Do you struggle to keep the motivation up? Today we will define what different social media is good for different purposes. We are going over how he started out in 2010 and what social media meant for the success of his previous company Catena Media. How he then put social media on hold for several years just to come back and failed. We will learn from Erik's mistakes and see what he changed to reach success in 2019.

Frustration is a big part of starting a company. A part that gets a lot less attention than success and profits. Today has been a frustrated day. Our plan was to have clear and great goals for 2020 and simply record an episode about them. That did not happen. Instead it became an episode in frustration about how to set goals? Are goals even worth setting in a young startup? How to deal with frustration when it comes up? Is it good to show it for the team or is it better to hide it? If you feel a lot of anger in your life, what can you do to deal with that? This is a very raw and honest episode about the feelings of running a company when things are not always going according to plan.

What is an affiliate 2019? Who is this business model for? What are the ups and downs with entering the affiliate industry? Find out the TIPS you MUST know before starting your affiliate project! Erik Bergman has done lots of different kinds of affiliate and in all different sizes. Starting with a small affiliate business in the basement of his friend's parents, ending with a 400 employee affiliate business on the Nasdaq Stock exchange.

Are you making common mistakes when setting goals? Falling into the same traps we have fallen into? If you are doing these mistakes you run a big risk of both losing your energy and your motivation as well as completely missing to reach your targets. This was a spontaneous episode. We had such interesting conversations when we started planning our goals that we just decided to turn on the microphones and record the dialogue. We feel it became one of your best episodes yet. One thing that it's rarely spoken about is the importance of enjoying the goals. How much are you following your goals vs. following your inspiration? How likely is it that you kill your inspiration with your goals? How can you set your goals to make sure you build great habits? How can you set your goals to make sure they give you energy instead of taking it? Our goal with this episode is for you to set the right goals for 2020, make sure you can reach them and that you enjoy the ride of getting there as well.

We have had some surprising successes and embarrassing failures in 2019. In this episode, Emil is interviewing Erik giving an overview of the year that has passed. It started as a vague idea, but how did it turn out? How much money did we actually make?

Erik and Emil are personal development junkies. These are the most IMPORTANT INSIGHTS from 2019. After a 2018 of pain and struggles, we have rising from the ashes and take us on 2019 with power and passion and this is the reflection and reaping the rewards of what we have learned. TEAL SWAN SEMINAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EXMOxzmAm8

Today our colleague was worried that he would get very bad news from an ultrasound. Still, he put a smile on his face, pretending, everything was OK. This is a personal episode that highlights what kind of relationships we want to have with our team at Great.com and why that is valuable in any business.

NO is only two letters, at the same time it's probably the most powerful and the scariest word in the entire English language. How and why to say no? We have a lot of good ideas, implementing them to reality is something different. This is a story about our challenges.

How far can you take the idea of charity? Is it morally correct to save people if the consequence is that others have to suffer? Great.com is a casino marketing company where all profits will go to charity. In this episode, Emil Ekvardt is challenging the founder of Great, Erik Bergman, with thoughts and ethically challenging questions.

Erik Bergman founder of Catena Media, a company that went for 0-400 employees in 7 years. During that journey he worked with great teams and amazing leaders - today we will look into the top 13 tips he learned about leadership on the way.

What do you do when someone knocks on the door and says "I can make you 300 000 euros"? That pretty much happened to us this month and it got us jumping. We have also lost a first teammate. It's always difficult separating with someone and this was no exception. Last but not least we will also talk about some surprising updates on the commercial side of Great.

Erik Bergman made over €50 million before he turned 30 and he says that his mentors was a big reason for his success. In this episode he shares 10 steps to do to make sure that you can get the mentor you need.

A couple of weeks ago, Erik started an Instagram campaign to raise awareness for the climate crisis and to protect the rainforest. He pledged to donate up to 1 Million dollars, $1 for each person that was tagged in the comments. This received a lot of tags, a lot of love as well as hate. Is donating openly cool or self-serving flattery? Join Emil and Erik in their discussion about doing good publicly.

This month we have received love and we have received hate. This a story about how to navigate a startup journey in both ups and downs. This is an inspiring update episode where we will talk about our million dollar campaign, how the progress with the business side is developing and how the podcast is growing.

What's the difference between a vision and a strategy? Imagine you are building a house. The vision is how the house will look when it’s finished. It’s probably a very exciting image! The strategy is the blueprint. How to reach the vision. We believe Great’s vision is very exciting, but how will we get there? Blogg: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ckG0jHlzGwNM1XL9PT_V1vtZ1wwvZDjjKrzoTN5gm8/edit?usp=sharing

The way climate change is being communicated is very focused on the problem and very little about the solutions. We feel that there is a key piece of the puzzle that is rare being spoken of. With this episode we want to give you more hope of how you can contribute to a better environment. Date: 25 September 2019 Links: Doing good better by William Macaskill Great.com/rainforest https://www.rainforestcoalition.org/donations/

Do you like making mistakes? Erik Bergman made over €50 million before he turned 30 and he made a lot of mistakes to get there. These are 10 very common mistakes that entrepreneurs do when starting their first businesses.

How much salary do you Need in order to live a Great Life? 36000 Euros per year! Or 54000 Euros per year? Or 72000 Euros per year? Every person has their own idea of how much money they Need in order to live the life they want without having to worry about the economical aspect. What if your workplace allowed you to decide on your own salary based on the NEEDS YOU HAVE in your life.

A few days have gone by since the Great team met up in real life for the first time since the birthday of Great. Listen to Emil and Erik summarising the vision of Great that came up in the greatogethering.

Today we will do a portrait episode of Erik Bergman, the founder of Great.com and share his story. He has previously founded Catena Media, an online marketing company that went from 0 to hundreds of millions of dollars within 5 years and today has around 400 employees. After leaving Catena a couple of years ago he bought the domain name Great.com for almost a million dollars, on this new adventure he will start all over again but this time give away 100% of the profits. Do you want to know how it happened and how you could do the same thing?

Erik writing a book about sex together with Neils Strauss. Or is he? This episode is full of spontaneous energy, personal stories and a crazy idea with a high probability of happening.  

Are you struggling to get started with a project? Do you know what is holding you back? We have been struggling lately and in this episode we explore what are the blockages and challenges and how to solve them.

Erik is going through a period of doubt about the whole project. Together we are exploring the roots of and the feelings behind that. This is a very emotional and personal episode that we believe you can relate to.

"We are all connected in the Great Circle of life" - Mufasa, Lion King. Who would have known he is actually talking about SEO and the business model of Great? Charity plays an important role our business model, in this episode we explore the Great circle of SEO.

What is it that makes social media fun? What is it that creates resistance? Lately Erik has been very excited about social media and we want to find the keys to make this exciting in the long term.

Are you looking to start your first business? Would you like some tips? Erik did a presentation on stage for young entrepreneurs about his journey. After the speech he got over 200 questions about how to start a business. We picked some of the most common ones and turned them into this podcast episode.

We are launching our first casino product and it raises a lot of challenges. Where should we focus, making money or long term branding? And if branding, how should we do that? Is charity a good word or does other words give more vivid images?

What is Great.com? Do you want a quick overview? Want to hear our history? How we will make money? What is the difference between Great and other organisations? Then this is a short episode for you.

What is Becoming Great? It took us 22 episodes to figure it out - but now we have a clearer idea. Why we are doing this podcast and what do we want to give to you? Are you curious about Great.com? Then this is a great place to start!

Do you want new strategies and challenging your thoughts about advertising? This is an episode for you. This is a practical episode. We read the book 22 immutable laws of marketing and it drastically changed how we thought about Great. https://medium.com/@skueong/the-22-immutable-laws-of-marketing-violate-them-at-your-own-risk-book-notes-a0bb0e3e2662

You know these days were everything just works out? June has been full of those days. We've had more progress than any other month and at the same time, it has gone very smoothly.

What does minimalism mean to you? Is it sleeping on the floor with zero belongings? We thought so, but now realize that minimalism is a useful skill both for a happy, fulfilled life and a thriving business.

Are you someone who thinks that investments are far too complicated and therefore puts your financial destiny in the hands of experts? Are you someone who considers yourself to be an expert and therefore choosing your investments yourself? Or are you maybe somewhere in between, ending up not doing anything at all? Regardless, we have been in all these positions and now we think that we have a way that will make our lives easier.

When marketing a podcast, there is a secret ingredient that will guarantee failure. We used that ingredient, and we failed. Now we have a NEW approach. Based on key concept: Just begin Links mentioned: Just begin video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qXjm1SLT8Q Gary Vee structure - https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-garyvee-content-strategy-how-to-grow-and-distribute-your-brands-social-media-content/

- What keywords will we rank for and why. Help people find a way to contribute and in that way feel better. - Make is easier to donate in public. Have a page that shows, I donated this because of this. Each donor gets a personal page on Great.com that shows donations done over a life-time. - Donation loans. Someone pledge to donate in the future, we donate for them now. Good or horrible idea? links: https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.charitywater.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/matrix

What is happening with Great right now? How is the organization developing and how are we growing as individuals Link to what Erik referred to in the episode: https://medium.com/@skueong/the-22-immutable-laws-of-marketing-violate-them-at-your-own-risk-book-notes-a0bb0e3e2662

How do you get in contact with Tim Ferris? Listen to Erik and Emil sharing experience and insights on emails. Most of the times I hear my friends striving to optimize their A-games like public speaking, spiritual development or something else sexy and trendy. I think the biggest effect is raising my C-game where I'm below average. Email seems to be one of mine after listening to this episode...

An episode on what happens when money is added to a friendship.    How do the dynamic change when one part of the friendship is paying the other to achieve a result in a project?   Listen to Erik and Emil's experiences in regards to working with your friends.

How do you build a pyramid? Easy! To begin you only need 10 000 slaves and 2,3 million huge blocks of stone. Then just start putting them in place one by one from the bottom up. No problem! Or is it?   Great want to do a lot of things upside down from conventional methods. We want to start with the top piece of our pyramid and build downwards instead. Why?   When Erik built Catena he did it the standard way. Hire junior staff first, and when needed he’d hire a manager on top. Today we explore the downside of this approach when starting a new company.   We are looking for the top stone of the Great Pyramid. We are talking about a CPO/CEO, or just simply, a Great leader.   Today we explore what qualities are the most important to become a Great leader?

In this episode, Emil & Erik summarize the insights they gained from podcasting so far. Be ready to add some new assets in your stock of communication skills: - Perfect metaphors - Framing statements - The dirty secret of ”balcony talk” Enjoy! Subscribe: Website: https://Great.com/ Facebook Page: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat Twitter: https://twitter.com/livegivegreat Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erik.bergman/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/413713782708580/

Imagine you’re a dragon guarding a big pile of gold, and if you are a dragon, that’s your thing apparently. Now suddenly a group of dwarves comes and steals half of it! Needless to say, you are furious! So what do you do? Will you fly after the dwarves and breath fire everywhere -- leaving the rest of your treasure unguarded. Or, do you stay and make sure to guard the remaining half to the best of your ability?

When building a pyramid -- which block do you start with?   Great as an organization is upside down in many ways. We want to start with the top piece.   This is most likely our most important podcast episode yet. It’s all about how to find that top piece, and why we haven’t found it yet.   What is a Great leader? Why would a Great leader want to work with Great.com? What kind of Person are Great looking to Hire as a CPO?

This is the first of many episodes Becoming Great will do on the topic of charity. So far we have learned that charity to be a way more complex topic than we thought. We have made our fair share of mistakes already, and we want to share them and our insights as transparently as possible.   We have learned that listening to our hearts is important to have the passion to even start giving in the first place. We have also learned that without the use of logic and careful reasoning the heart will make mistakes.   Can both the heart and the mind work together to find outstanding giving opportunities?

The ability to focus intensely on one thing, on one project can be a great strength. When something becomes an obsession and a lifestyle a lot of progress can be made in a short time. The downside of this ability is that other things in life can be neglected, like family, friends and health. This is something that both Erik and Emil have experienced. What are the dangers of putting all eggs in one basket? How does work affect relationships? How do relationships affect work? What is most important, the mission or the missus? Is working together with your partner a good idea? To find out, you gotta watch today's episode, enjoy! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat?sub_confirmation=1 Website: https://Great.com/ Facebook Page: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat Twitter: https://twitter.com/livegivegreat Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erik.bergman/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/413713782708580/431001597646465/

It's official, we are hiring! Learn where great.com are today, understand what's required from you that wants to work in a truly disruptive organization. Do you have what it takes?  Expect to learn: - Where are great today? - What kind of people are we hiring? - What's the downside of a transparent organization? Tune in, I love you! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat?sub_confirmation=1   Website: https://Great.com/ Facebook Page: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat Twitter: https://twitter.com/livegivegreat Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erik.bergman/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/413713782708580/431001597646465/

This week the discussing is about finding a great work life balance. Listen to Erik and Emil discussing these three questions: - If you have to push, is it healthy? - If you know you only have 5 years to squeeze out the value, is that the right idea to invest your time in? - Sleeping at work? Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat... Website: https://Great.com/ Facebook Page: https://www.youtube.com/livegivegreat Twitter: https://twitter.com/livegivegreat Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erik.bergman/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/41371...

Here is the full unfiltered version of the entire conversation about gambling addiction, and what responsibilities someone in the industry have towards this subject: - Has we ever been the reason for someone taking their life? - What do you tell the parents of a suicide victim? That's two of many tough questions that will be explored.

A shorter version of the original episode. Here we go directly to the parts of discussing responsibilities around suicides in the gambling industry.  - Has Erik ever been the reason for someone taking their life? - What do you tell the parents of a suicide victim? That's two of many tough questions that will be explored.

This week's episode presents a crash course into the four pillars of Great.com's organization, self-help, commercial, non-profit strategy. Erik will discuss his vision for Great and how we can build a self-sustaining organization that donates 100 percent of its profits to charity.

Erik gets beat up by a 14-year-old, then loses his life savings to an Italian man wearing four Rolexes. Emil comes along and the two of them shares the perfect one night stand with each other, without the sex and hangover. 

Emil and Erik dive into questions of paying $900,000 for a domain.   - How does a $900,000 domain bidding look like? - Why investing $900,000 for a domain in a charity project? - Why is the domain name important? - What is Great.com?