286: Leon Logothetis on a Journey Through Pain, Purpose, and the Search for the Kindness Within

In this deeply personal episode of The Light Watkins Show, Light reconnects with Leon Logothetis—also known as "The Kindness Guy"—for their fourth conversation on the podcast. While Leon is widely known for his global adventures and bestselling Netflix show The Kindness Diaries, this episode reveals a different side of his journey—one rooted not in exploration of the world, but in an inner quest to answer one of life’s biggest questions: Is God real?

After years of seemingly “living the dream”—writing bestselling books, speaking in stadiums, and inspiring millions—Leon found himself sitting alone in his Hollywood home, penning a suicide note. What followed was a moment of divine intervention: a late-night phone call to his therapist, a spontaneous visit to a bookshop, and a chance encounter with Autobiography of a Yogi that sparked a decision to travel to India in search of God.

Leon and Light unpack the inner landscape that led to this journey and the emotional depths that birthed his latest documentary, The Kindness Within. They explore the realities of mental health, even for those living seemingly purposeful lives, and how sharing your pain can often be the first step to healing. Leon speaks candidly about navigating backlash, staying authentic amidst criticism, and what it truly means to speak to someone’s heart.

This episode is a reminder that fulfillment doesn’t always come from outer success—and that sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is follow a quiet nudge from within.

Whether you believe in God, question it, or are simply searching for a deeper connection, Leon’s journey will leave you reflecting on your own path—and the kindness waiting to be uncovered within.

Transcript

LL: “I had all this success, I got a Netflix show, I wrote bestselling books, I spoke in stadiums, but I still found myself to be in a place that was pretty painful. I was in my house in Hollywood after all the success, and I was writing this note, and it was a suicide note. I don't think I would've acted on it, but it was still, I still wrote it. And I called my therapist instead of acting on it. He talked to me. We talked through it. It was very late at night, like 11 o'clock at night. Very random. He picked up the phone. The next morning I find myself at the Mystic Bookshop on Abbot Kinney. And I randomly picked up the Autobiography of the Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I'd seen that book many, many times, but I'd never picked it up. I opened it to a random page. Once I'd opened that random page, I looked at a random paragraph, and in that paragraph he says to a soon to be guru. If you reveal God to me, I will follow you anywhere. In that moment, I had an epiphany. I was like, that's it. I am going to India to find God.”

[INTRODUCTION]

My day one podcast fans will remember that my very first podcast guest was a man by the name of Leon Logothetis, who had just returned from riding a vintage yellow motorcycle around the world, get this, relying entirely on the kindness of strangers, which means he didn't take any money with him, if you can imagine that.

And every day he had to persuade someone to feed him, to put fuel in his motorcycle, and to give him a place to stay. And in return, he would offer something that they desired. 

And that journey became the Netflix show called The Kindness Diaries. And since then, Leon has taken a few more adventures. But his latest adventure is his most personal. 

Even after being on his purpose for years now, Leon occasionally felt lost, depressed, and suicidal. And he suspected that maybe it had to do with the question around God; is God real? Is God not real? 

And he got this internal nudge to go on, a quest to find God. And he decided to embark on that quest in India of all places. And that journey, culminated in a new documentary called The Kindness Within. And I know some people hearing this who do believe in God think, oh, it's obvious. Of course, God exists. Maybe it's not so obvious for some people. And in any case, Leon and I unpack what exactly prompted his search for God, how his relationship with that question has changed him, and what the word God even means to him now. 

 We also dive into the creative side of the project, what it takes to make a documentary like this, what to do if you have an idea for a documentary. And we also get into those quiet spiritual nudges and why they matter. 

This episode starts with Leon in therapy, breaking down and asking Where has God been hiding? 

And I'll put the timestamps below if you wanna skip around.

Let's dive in… 

[00:02:58] LW: Leon, AKA, the kindness guy. Welcome back to the podcast. I think this is number four?

[00:03:07] LL: Wow. 

[00:03:08] LW: I think so.

[00:03:09] LL: Thank you for having me and for believing in me once again.

[00:03:12] LW: You're an easy person to believe. Anybody calls himself the kindness guy, I think is an easy person to follow and get inspired by and believe in. And you've been at it for a little while now. We've gone through your whole superhero origin story. Actually, yours is the very first episode of this podcast. You're episode number one. So if you're listening to this, there's no video of it, but you can go back and listen to the very first episode of this podcast and it featured you and your story, the Kindness Diaries. and so here we are four or five years later, and you've embarked upon a journey to find God the kindness within.

So we're gonna be talking about that. But first, let's just check in, man. Let's just check in. How are you doing? How are you feeling? What where are you? What's going on?

[00:04:01] LL: I'm doing good actually in this moment. So that's a good thing, right? I've been around long enough to know that when you're doing good, it's a good thing and be happy with it. And if something comes up down the road, okay, we'll deal with that then. But right now it's sunny ish. I'm chatting to you and all is good.

[00:04:23] LW: So what's interesting about that answer is when you watch the documentary, the kindness within it opens with you and your therapy session, and you're crying and breaking down. And, it seems like you're having a pretty difficult time mentally. And that's something that I think has been a recurring theme uh, with you even before you found your purpose and abandoned the financial world for this kindness journey.

So can you just. Talk a little bit about how that has evolved with you, because I know a lot of people out there have struggled with mental health stuff and they imagine that, oh, as soon as, maybe as soon as I find my purpose, then that's gonna dissipate. What's been your experience with that, having lived your purpose for over, well over 10 years now, and yet you're still an asking yourself these questions that I am assuming initiated the beginning of this most recent journey.

[00:05:16] LL: Sure. So for those that don't know me, I'll give a brief rundown. I used to be a broker in the City of London and I had everything you could ever want on the outside, but on the inside I was totally broken. I. And to cut a very long story short, I quit my job and I started to travel around the world relying on kindness.

And I thought that, if I got a Netflix show, if I wrote bestselling books, if I spoke in stadiums, all of these things that all my issues would melt away. And that didn't actually happen, believe it or not. What a shocker. Yes, I was in a better state than I was when I was sitting behind that desk.

I was traveling, I was connecting, I was, serving in some way. I was doing things I loved to do, but the true depth of the pain that I think many of us suffer from wasn't really being addressed. And that's how I ended up. Having another existential crisis. I like to joke that every five years I have an existential crisis.

So I haven't had one for a few years, which is good. So the chances of having one on this podcast light, you'll be happy to know, are pretty small. But maybe in a few years I have another one. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having an existential crisis every few moments because it makes you better, as long as you can find your way through that pain.

And for me, the simplest way to find our way through the pain is to share it. And that's really why I did the movie.

[00:06:44] LW: I think I remember from your very first book at the end, it was either the end of your first book or the beginning of your next book. You talked about how you got back from the journey around the world on the kindness of strangers and you fell into this deep depression. Is that, am I remembering that 

[00:07:01] LL: Yes, Yes.

[00:07:02] LW: So is there something about being on a mission that can keep that at bay? Or is there like an excitement level when you're out there doing something that you feel is aligned with your heart and then when you're not then. Whatever was happening before can creep back in because you've done many of these now.

So have you noticed a pattern with that? Is that kind of how it works?

[00:07:24] LL: Yes, there's definitely a pattern. So I would go and I would travel and I would connect and I would be on adrenaline for months on end. And I'd have these amazing experiences and then I'd come home and I would crash. And I think a lot of people can relate to post-depression blues, right? But sometimes they can become worse than that if you are using them as a crutch to not feel so I think in many ways that's what I was doing.

Doesn't mean that I'm not glad I did what I did. I am. I had to face it head on as opposed to facing it by kind of running away.

[00:08:00] LW: Okay. So in the kindness within the question that you are, exploring is for someone who wants to be connected to God, how do you meet God? So before we get into that, what was your, what was your relationship with God, like prior to you embarking upon this most recent journey? Did you believe in God and how did God play a role in your previous journeys?

[00:08:24] LL: I don't think I believed in God. In fact, I didn't. Right, and I still did all of these journeys and people, I would stand on stages. And during the q and a, people would always say to me. Do you believe in God expecting me to say yes? And I'd say no. And they'd be like, well, we don't understand that because what you're doing is feels like it's guided by God.

And I wouldn't understand what they were talking about. I'd be like, well, yeah, okay. But I don't believe in God. So sorry. And it was just interesting that after all the pain, let's say the emotional pain, I didn't, how could I believe in God? That was what I look back and think to myself of as of why I didn't.

[00:09:03] LW: What did you believe in? Like how did you make sense of that little voice You would sometimes hear inside or any of these nudgings because when you do these adventures, you have to somewhat be guided by what's happening internally, right? Something tells you, go talk to this person. Go ask this person for a place to stay.

Like, how did you make sense of that?

[00:09:21] LL: That's a good question. So look I believed in humanity, believe it or not. Right. And I'm not pollyannish. I'm not like, oh, go be kind and everything will work itself out. Because unfortunately there are people out there that are disordered in ways that your kindness doesn't mean anything to them.

Right? There aren't many, but there are and there are enough. So you have to be careful to not let your kindness be used against you. Right. But I believed in humanity and in some way I still do. The majority of people out there are kind, the majority of people out there show compassion, show love.

There are those that don't. But I would find the ones that did. So my belief and my faith was in humanity, that they would help and they always did. It doesn't mean that I would, I would go up to 10 people. I would say, on my trip when I took my yellow motorbike around the world, and I would say, can you let me stay in your house tonight?

And obviously nine, nine outta 10 would say, no, understandably so, maybe five of them would be fearful. Three of them would be like, and the other two, God knows what now I'm not very good at math. That was 10. So one out of 10 would be like, yeah, sure. Have you ever heard of couch surfing?

[00:10:42] LW: There's an app called couch surfing.org and I let people stay at my house all the time and my partner, she's like, what are you doing? Are you sure? Are you sure that you are gonna be okay? Then I've got friends saying, are you mad? You don't even know these people. I do because I'll see their pictures, I will see their Instagram. I will feel the energy of their humanity in our communications. And lots of people asked to stay at my house. I don't say yes to lots of people. So I guess to answer your question a long-winded way, I had faith and belief in humanity

But obviously you've considered the possibility of a God. So I'm, I just want to go a little deeper in this. How do you make sense of it? What do you think people are thinking of when they pray to God? Or, thank God bless me on this journey, and you think that's just, I'm talking about prior this recent exploration, was it just like a naivete that some people had, or is it is it just whatever people need to believe in order to do the thing that they're trying to do?

Or what's your, what was your sort of stockbroker esque understanding of, because I'm assuming it started when you were younger, right?

[00:11:52] LL: Yeah, I mean, look, I, I knew and obviously still do know that I don't know everything. And just 'cause I'm not aware of something doesn't mean that it's not possible. It just, in that moment, in those moments before the movie, I couldn't see how it could be possible. And it was also always thrown at me in an intellectual way, not in an emotional way.

And maybe I kept on having moments of God. I obviously did. Some of the things that I experienced on all my journeys were beyond way beyond humanity, let's say. Right. But I wasn't, capable of understanding it then.

[00:12:29] LW: Yeah. So you mentioned that some people try to diminish or, troll. Your, what were some, what have over the years. I'm just I'm really curious what have been some of the more negative responses to you and your work? I'm sure you've heard, oh, you're just a privileged guy and of course, you know the world. It's all about you and yeah, you're English, and so, people accept you wherever they go, so it's easy for you to get places to, have you heard all of that?

[00:12:55] LL: So I have heard when it comes to the Kindness Diaries, right, which was the show on Netflix, I have heard people sending me messages saying, thank you so much for saving my life. Right? And then I have also heard, you should die. How dare you go around the world mooching off people for money, and then everything in between.

I'm like, it used to piss me off, but now I'm like, alright, what am I supposed to do? If you take the beautiful Kindness Diaries and send me a message like that, then I dunno what to say. Okay, fine. Alright. Hopefully I don't die, but if you wanna send that message to me, then God bless you.

[00:13:36] LW: H How did you make sense of it though? when you finally came to terms with it, did you articulate

[00:13:41] LL: Yeah. So, so this is what I realized and again, this could be wrong, but this is what I realized. I realized that if you are living with an open heart and you are living connected to your soul and connected to love and compassion, send messages like, thank you so much, you saved my life. If the pain is so. Horrific, and you are not connected to your heart and you live purely from your mind. It's much harder to see something so beautiful and react positively as opposed to negatively. That's the way I see it.

[00:14:17] LW: So when you're thinking about your next journey are you considering like those can comments, those filters? What are the haters gonna say about this and what can I do to satisfy, some of those kinds of concerns versus just going with what you're feeling, intuitively and this is what it's gotta be.

[00:14:37] LL: Look, I'm always gonna go intuitively, right?

If someone wants to react negatively to what I've done, there's nothing much I can do about that. I stay true to the message. We create something that touches lives, and if it touches a life in a negative way because you think I'm a privileged man who shouldn't have the honor of connecting with God or connecting with you or connecting with the rest of humanity, then se la vie.

Okay, fine. Who am I to tell you, you are wrong. Maybe you're not. I don't know. Look, it took a long time to get to this place, right? I remember when I first started reading the comments about my books and my shows, I'd be like, literally, what is wrong with you? How can you write this?

Literally like, but then after a while I was like, whatever. This is the way you saw it. Fine. Okay.

[00:15:30] LW: Okay. So, but being the kindness guy, like you're this I'm calling you that because that's your social media handle, the kindness guy. So a lot of people know you as that. Are you conscious of staying away from politics and like these kind of lightning rod issues because you don't want people, thinking that you are backing one cause versus another cause as the EST guy.

[00:15:51] LL: I try and stay outta politics.

There's no upside. I have my views, I have my opinions, and uh, that's where they will stay as, as mine for as long as possible.

[00:16:03] LW: Why?

[00:16:04] LL: Because what's the point? Unless you're actually willing to stand up and truly do something about what's going on

In any situation you are in. What, why do that? If I posted something that was. Pro the left, I'd have the people on the right scream at me. If I posted something that was pro right, I'd have the people on the left scream at me.

Like, why? They always scream at me anyway when I post happy things. So imagine what will happen if I post something that pisses half the country off.

[00:16:33] LW: You know who Mr. Beast is, right? He's the most popular YouTuber out there. And I saw an interview that he did recently and he said, if you really wanna piss people off and everybody hating, you, do something nice, do something kind. Because he's done some of that and he's got the same kind of reaction that you've gotten.

Oh, you're just this privileged white guy and you're out there trying to exploit these poor people in, Cambodia who need eyesight and you're using them to get views on YouTube. Meanwhile, he helped a thousand people. Be able to see, as a social experiment. And he said he's gotten more hate from being kind and being nice than he ever got from giving away a Lamborghini or from giving away an island or for giving somebody, you know, a hundred thousand dollars.

, but he's keeps doing it because he feels like that's what he's here to do. So I thought that was really interesting. I wasn't expecting him to say that, but being kind actually draws more haters than just being your regular, materialistic, capitalist self.

[00:17:32] LL: It's a interesting observation. We'll leave it at that. I may not be a politician light, but I have, I know how to be political politically

[00:17:43] LW: yeah. Sure. I had a experience back with when the Israel's Gaza stuff first started happening, where I weighed in almost in a, what I thought was a bit of a tongue in cheek way, which I learned very quickly. I just got cooked in the comments and so it helped me, that experience helped me learn two things.

Number one I have to be really clear about what my own personal mission is for how I want to use social media, right? So social media for me is to inspire. It's to inspire new ways of thinking. It's to inspire, expansive, or inclusive actions, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, it's not necessarily to piss people off.

That's not what I want to do. I could easily do that. 'cause I like you, I have my personal views on everything that I talk to my close friends about. People who I feel have earned the right to hear the views because they can listen. They've demonstrated, they're able to listen without judgment and with curiosity.

And so that's not what I, how I want to use my social media. Other people can do that if they want, that's great. But that's not how I want to use it. And then number two, I don't think social media particularly Instagram, is the place to work out solutions to the world's problems. I think the short form, if you're scrolling and there's some cat video and then.

Some video titties and then your video about, some political stint. That's not the place to get on there and pontificate about, what your views are. It's just, you're just gonna end up, like you say, pissing a lot of people off, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of misinterpretation, a lot of lack of context.

And then of course, the algorithms pushed the most black or white thinking to the top of the search feed, and so then you're having to deal with all of that. But it got, it felt very freeing once I finally got to that place myself. But it took getting skewered in the comments to get there. Have you had any of that experience, or you have always

[00:19:46] LL: I've, I've never talked about anything apart from. Humanity, kindness, goodness, travel, adventure. And that's what I can, I will continue to do. I don't see

[00:19:59] LW: Do you ignore those comments where people are saying you're just a colonizer going around, or whatever the troll comment, do you ignore them or do you acknowledge them at all? Do you block people?

[00:20:07] LL: Do you know, it's so interesting. Generally, I ignore them completely.

But if there is a comment that is egregious to the point of madness, right? Or an email that is egregious to the point of madness. There was one guy who I pretty much respond to everyone, right? And he sent me an email and I was responding back to him.

And I can't remember exactly what happened, but something happened and his reaction to me, I was supposed to call him on Sunday at two or whatever, I can't remember what it was, and I didn't, right? And he sent me the most vicious email. Right. Clearly the guy wasn't right in the head. Sorry, but he wasn't.

And my reaction was okay, this chap I'm gonna put in his place. So I sent him an email back very calmly, very English and said, Hey, Richard, just so you know, I didn't call you because A, B, C, and D happened, which was quite bad,

All the best, didn't attack him. And he responded, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

I didn't realize that, but the damage had been done. His viciousness, I put it, I put the mirror up to him. I'm like, look, that what you're doing is not okay, and I'm gonna respond with calmness and grace, but at the same time, there's gonna be a mirror put up to your face so that you can see what you just did. And that's what I did. So very rarely do I do that, but sometimes I do.

[00:21:32] LW: He was a friend of yours or No, just some guy that I talk to people, right? People send me messages, they send me emails and I respond, and 

you agree to get on the phone with him?

[00:21:41] LL: no, I can't remember what it was exactly. It was something, maybe it was an email or something happened.

It was five, six years ago, and I didn't do what I said I was gonna do because of a very good reason. And his reaction was vicious and violent.

[00:21:56] LW: Okay. Well, the kindness within is about a search for God. Now, when you've done your, your other journeys, one was around the world. One was from, was it from Alaska to, was

[00:22:08] LL: Argentina,

[00:22:10] LW: Argentina.

[00:22:11] LL: relying on

kindness. idea, You had, 

[00:22:13] LW: You had an idea about how it was going to. Go right, how it was gonna play out. Maybe the idea was, I'm just, it's gonna be sporadic and some people are gonna say yes, people are gonna say no, I'm gonna make it.

I'm not gonna give up till I make it, blah, blah, blah. What was the idea that you had as you were coming up with this new premise of finding the God within? Did you think you were gonna find God? Did you think that it was gonna happen, quickly, or it was gonna take a certain amount of time?

Like how do you even plan that? 'cause obviously there's gotta be some sort of payoff for yourself as well as for the viewer. Otherwise, what's the point in watching? It's what, back in the day when they used to play those shows about finding Bigfoot and you'd watch it for like an hour and a half, and then.

The last scene is, so we still don't know where Bigfoot, and you're thinking, I just invested an hour and a half of my time thinking. 'cause they kept showing you the teasers, with every commercial rate thinking that you were gonna, they were gonna reveal where Bigfoot was and turns out they're, they still don't know where the Loch Nest monster is or where Big Bigfoot is, if it's a legend or not.

Were you thinking of that model or were you thinking, I have to actually find God and what kind of pressure does that put on 

[00:23:21] LL: So look, that's a great question. I had no idea if I was gonna find God, and that was some of the things that we talked about with the crew. I said to them, look, I'm going to India to find God and I, what happens if I don't find God? And we were like, well, we'll deal with that later. So how did I end up doing this movie?

So, as I mentioned, I had all this success, but I still found myself to be in a place that was pretty painful. I was in my house in Hollywood. After all the success, and I was writing this note, and it was a suicide note. I don't think I would've acted on it, but it was still, I still wrote it.

And I called my therapist instead of acting on it. He talked to me. We talked through it. It was very late at night, like 11 o'clock at night. Very random. He had, he picked up the phone. The next morning I find myself at the Mystic Bookshop in AB on Abba Kinney. This was before it moved to Santa Monica, and I randomly picked up the Autobiography of the Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

I'd seen that book many times, but I'd never picked it up. I opened it to a random page and I opened. Once I'd opened that random page, I looked at a random paragraph, and in that paragraph he says to a soon to be guru. If you reveal God to me, I will follow you anywhere.

In that moment, I had an epiphany.

I was like, that's it. I am going to India to find God. I called my director and I said, let's go to India to find God. And that's literally how it happened. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's what happened. And I wanna be clear. Not everyone can obviously just get up and go to India to find God.

Right. And also I realized you don't have to go to India to find, you don't have to go to India to find God. Right. But I had to go to India to realize that you don't have to go to India to find God. And I. first step is different. My first step was to go to India and find, God. Your first step may be to go to the bookshop and find a book about depression, or it may be to pick up the phone and call a friend and say I'm in trouble.

Can you come over and chat? Everyone's first step is different, but that first step leads to something magical pretty much all the time, and for me, it led to this podcast with you. Had I not walked into that bookshop, had I not read that line, if you reveal God to me, I will follow you anyway. You and I wouldn't be talking about this.

[00:25:44] LW: Right. As someone who's written books, you've written multiple books, right? I've written multiple books. You start to see the world through books. You think to yourself that would be a good book. This experience that I'm having would make a good book. Or that you hear somebody telling your story and you may give them advice.

Hey, you should write a book about that. That's great. That would be very helpful for people. So when you were reading that line in Autobiography of a Yogi and you had the idea to go to India, did you think to yourself pretty much right away, this will make a great continuation of this body of work of mine?

Or did that come later?

[00:26:20] LL: No, absolutely. I knew in that moment when I called the director within a few minutes of reading that line that we were gonna create a documentary. So I thought about doing a book as well, but the book never came to, but the film did.

[00:26:33] LW: Had you been thinking of another thing to do before 

[00:26:35] LL: not 

really. 

[00:26:37] LW: What was your idea for how the rest of the kindness stuff was gonna play out?

[00:26:41] LL: I mean, Who knows, maybe a season three, we had come up with a Scotland, to Singapore on the Kindness Diaries, but it didn't happen. Instead, this happened.

[00:26:50] LW: So what are some of the considerations? There may be somebody out there listening or watching, and I always like to unpack the logistics behind things like this. Obviously you have experience producing and pulling these things together. You knew that you needed to call the director, get him or her on board pretty much right away.

What are some of the considerations when you have an idea for a documentary, how do you know what the steps are? What are some of those early steps? Does it about creating a treatment and getting investors or what did that

[00:27:20] LL: There's lots of different steps for me. I funded this myself, so I didn't need investors. I had the crew and the team in place so I could just call them.

[00:27:29] LW: Same crew from Kindness Diaries.

[00:27:31] LL: Pretty much, there were some differences. There were, but generally the main crew were the same. So, you know, we've done a lot of work together.

We've circumnavigated the world. We've gone from Alaska to Argentina, we've crossed America. A lot of stuff. So it was all in place. If you are asking what someone who doesn't have any contacts or has no idea how to create a TV show needs to do, and that, that's a whole, that could be a whole podcast.

[00:27:58] LW: But is it possible can, obviously it's possible, but is it something that if you don't have those connections, if you haven't, you don't have a crew that's standing by, waiting for the bat signal. Is that something that, let's say I say someone approached you and said, Leon, I've got an idea for a documentary.

I wanna, I wanna find out about reincarnation. What would your advice be to that person?

[00:28:21] LL: Well, my, my first thing would to be, to understand whether or not the idea is good, right?

[00:28:28] LW: And how do you know that?

[00:28:29] LL: well, everyone's different. For example, I remember a couple of years ago, someone came to me and said, oh, I've got this great idea and it's about people dancing with stars. And I was like, that's a stupid idea.

What? I don't wanna have anything to do with that. And of course, I was wrong very wrong. And it's a brilliant idea, right? So I can just give my opinion. So do I think it's a good idea if I do think it's a good idea, or if I think someone else will think it's a good idea? You have to create something so that, again, it depends.

Are you gonna fund it yourself? If you're gonna fund it yourself, then you don't need to get approval from anyone else. If you're gonna, if you want someone else to give you the money, then you have to get them to believe in your vision. Yeah. So if you believe that your project is amazing, but no one else does and you need money, then you're gonna be in a bit of a pickle.

Yeah. If you believe your project is amazing and you don't need money and no one else thinks it's amazing, then there's less of a pickle because you can do it yourself. If I'd gone to people with the Kindness Diaries and I'd said, Hey, do you wanna do this? The chances are they would say, no, I don't have a name.

I'm not a celebrity. If I'd gone to them and said, by the way, I'm Tom Cruise's son. Can, I'm not Tom Cruise's son by the way, but if I was Tom Cruise's son, I'd be like, oh yeah, you're Tom Cruise's son. Here's $5 million. Right. So it's a minefield, but it doesn't mean it can't be done.

It absolutely 100% can be done. I had no understanding of tv when I first did my first show, when I walked from Times Square to the Hollywood Sign hitchhiked. But I had someone that did. So we put some money into it. He was a director and a producer. We created this show. We tried to sell it. Everyone was like, you're never gonna sell this.

I was like, all right, maybe. But we ended up selling it. And the same thing kept happening with the Kindness Diaries. Oh, no one's gonna buy the Kindness Diaries. Okay. But we did. And same with the Kindness Within, or no one wants to watch a documentary about God and mental health and India never gonna sell.

you're right, but maybe you're not. And we, we got it on Amazon Prime. So yeah, if anyone actually truly wants to know how to do this, they can just DM me Instagram at The Kindness Guy. I respond to everyone and I'll respond to you at The Kindness Guy if you wanna know how to do production stuff.

Because everyone's different. You have to, I. It's difficult to like express exactly how to do it unless you understand what the person's bringing to the table. If the person's bringing just an idea as opposed to the person's bringing a pilot and they have created TV for years and they have a name and they just need some financing.

It's all different. It's different levels.

[00:31:20] LW: Right. But there are some principles in this, and I would say that as someone who's, created things and you've created things, and you talked about this in our very first podcast the importance of being able to enroll people into your vision. I think that's that principle. You have to have that no matter what you're trying to do, whether you have the money, don't have the money, you have to be able to sell people.

And that sounds like a, little weird using the word sell, but that's what it is. You have to sell people on your vision

You said you learned that like in, on the go while you were trying when you, when you first started, making your way across America, you had to learn that when you would approach people, how to get people on enrolled in your vision, what were you gonna 

[00:32:03] LL: I'm surprised you remember that either you have a photographic memory or you've been looking at the at the

[00:32:08] LW: No, but it was such a powerful and profound point that you made, and it's one that keeps coming up over and over. If you are hitting a roadblock, if someone is rejecting your idea or saying no, it's not because they, wholesale thinks something's wrong with it. You just haven't sold them well enough.

You gotta get better at sales and then go back in, tell a better story and they'll say yes.

[00:32:29] LL: so, so that, that brings me to Times Square, the first trip I ever did. I was in Times Square and I was trying to get someone to help me get out of New York City on my way to the Hollywood sign, and no one would help me. I had been there for hours, no one would help. And I remember meeting Dom and Dominica Fox, right?

I never forget their names. Names. Dominica was a, how do we say this? A lady of the night, and Dom was her business agent, right? Okay. And he said to me, he said, Leon, you have to have a story. What's your story? When you figure out your story, you'll get to the Hollywood sign. And I never forgot that. And thankfully he told me that on day one.

What's your story? Liam? Dom, if you're listening to this, thank you.

[00:33:23] LW: I had a friend who just, I literally just had this conversation before our podcast. He created these art pieces that he wants to sell online to people, and, he said, yeah, I just, I'm just gonna put it up and sell it. And I said, are you gonna have is it gonna be limited edition or I said, you gotta have a story.

'cause people that's what they're, that's what they wanna buy. They don't wanna just buy a piece of art that, someone sees and goes, where'd you get that art? Oh, I got it from Walmart. No, they want a story. They want to be able to say, oh yeah, I got it from this Mexican artist. He only made 10 and they were inspired by his relationship with his mom.

And, but it could be the same piece of art, but people will value it and will probably pay a lot more money for it. If you have a story, if associated. As opposed to just thinking that, oh, it's beautiful and people are gonna wanna buy it. That may be true for a very small percentage of people, but ultimately we have to have a story.

If you wanna date somebody, you gotta have a story. If you wanna get married, you gotta have a story. Like it's, there's no area of life where having a story, having a reason, having a why, having a purpose, having a mission is not gonna benefit you in some way.

[00:34:31] LL: I couldn't agree more. 

[00:34:33] LW: So going back to you getting those initial rejections for the Kindness Diaries, the different iterations, what were some of the reasons why people said it wasn't gonna work?

[00:34:43] LL: because people don't wanna watch anything about kindness. I. They don't care. But you see what we did with the Kindness Diaries, even though it was called the Kindness Diaries, it wasn't necessarily about kindness. It was about some crazy English man that quit his job and went and traveled around the world relying on kindness and had all these crazy adventures and gave life-changing gifts along with the crew to unsuspecting good Samaritans.

It was like a backdoor kindness, even though it was called the Kindness Diaries. I get it, but it wasn't like a pre, we weren't preaching, we were just having an adventure. We were just being, and it was I would, I think the reason why I did so well was because it touched a nerve. It touched the nerve of humanity in each and every one of us.

Some of us are connected to it, some of us are not connected to it, and those who are connected to it. Who are not connected to it. You have to be a little bit subtle about how you spread the message, because if you start being too Pollyannish, they're just gonna turn off. And in the kindness side was, it's not all kindness.

There's bad things that happen. We go to the killing fields in Cambodia, we go to Slave Dungeons in Ecuador. I mean, Really terrible, horrific things. So again, I wanted people to know that it's not just sometimes what I see in the, let's say the kindness world, whatever, it's just the light or let's drown ourselves in the light. But there's darkness out there as well, and you have to show both sides. That's what I, that's what I do anyway. Like for example, in this documentary, you've got this guy who, me, who's clearly suffering. Yet there's hope and at the end, I don't wanna give it away, but there's a lot of hope. But you gotta see the dark and the light together.

[00:36:39] LW: it's actually a pretty it's a growing format on platforms like TikTok and I guess on Instagram to some extent, where people are on a quest. Whether it's a quest to transform their body in a certain amount of time, whether it's a quest to make a certain amount of money and a certain amount of time. But you present, and this is what Mr. Beast is really good at. You present a goal, and then you present obstacles to that goal. And then you let people watch you in real time play out trying to achieve that goal while confronting those obstacles. And I would say that's what the Kindness Diaries really, that's the machine, the mechanism behind why the Kindness Diaries were so successful.

Is it's, it taps into that same sort of human psychology of wanting to see, is he gonna be able to make it around the world? Is he gonna be able to make it down to Argentina without the car breaking down or without the motorcycle breaking? The motorcycle would break down multiple times, and then you have to find somebody, like that's what people are posting and going viral with these days.

So was that the thinking of the kindness within is he gonna be able to find, is he gonna be able to find God and if so what does that look like? Did you feel like looking for God was. I don't know. Were you, was that something you were conscious of, that same format that you had with the Kindness Diaries of trying to find something, presenting obstacles and then letting the viewer kind of sit on the edge of their seat to, to see if it's gonna actually happen or not?

[00:38:10] LL: Yeah. On some level. Absolutely. And like I said at the beginning when I started doing this film, I had no idea if I was gonna find God, be like, well, what the if you think about it, right? You're like, I'm gonna do a movie, a documentary where I'm gonna find God. The first thing that I would say as a producer is, well, Leon, what happens if you don't find God? There's no answer. Well, then we're screwed. Right? But I just, I don't know, I just felt like it would work and I would, and if I didn't, we'd deal with it. It's the same thing with the Kindness Diaries. Sorry we took a 40-year-old yellow Chinese motorcycle. From Los Angeles and Circo navigated the world.

That in itself is insane. Today the bike is in the garage, right? And sometimes I think to myself, okay, I'm gonna drive it down to the grocery store, and I'm like I'm not sure the bike's gonna make it back up the hill. So I don't do it, but I circumnavigated the world in the same bike. So sometimes you do things that are just completely, if you think logically, if you think 10,000 steps ahead, you're like, this is insane.

But if you think one step ahead, like for the film, get on the plane. That's the first thing. Get on the plane. I nearly didn't get on the plane. This isn't in the movie, but I was stopped and they wanted to do not a strip search, obviously that's an exaggeration, but they wanted to do a bit of an invasive search.

And I was getting angry, and then I saw out of the corner of my eye the crew and the guy looked at me, the director looked at me, and I felt him saying, don't mess this up, just let this happen. So I let it happen. I got on the plane, but that was the first win. Get on the plane, the second win, get to the hotel when you've arrived, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So just do it one step at a time, one step at a time. If I'd known the pain that doing this documentary would've caused, I probably wouldn't done it. So I can only think one step ahead, just one.

[00:40:22] LW: You could probably say that about any of your projects. They're all very involved with a lot of moving parts, a lot of uncertainty. But that's the point, right? 

That's what makes it compelling is that there is so much uncertainty.

[00:40:32] LL: I'll tell you another quick story. We were in the office in Los Angeles discussing the circumnavigation of the world. In order to get the bike into different countries, you need a thing called a carne, which is a passport for the bike. So we got the carne for everywhere. And then when we got to in, we were in the office, we got to Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, and we realized that they didn't accept carne and they didn't accept, they would not accept the bike.

And we were in LA and we made the following decision. We were like let's worry about that when we get there. Right? So we get to Thailand and they won't let the bike in. And we're first of all shocked, which we shouldn't have been 'cause we knew, but we did everything in our power. And that's actually in my book.

We did everything in our power to get the bike into Thailand, so we did. Then we got into Cambodia, and the moment the bike got into Cambodia, they confiscated it. So we had to do everything in our power to get the bike out of Cambodia, which we did, and then in Vietnam took us 10 days to get the bike out.

If we'd thought about all of this before we were doing it, we would never have done it. Sometimes you just have to go for it

[00:41:41] LW: But that's also a part of the story, right? Like part of the reason why you were able to get the bike through is because you were able to tell that story to certain people who then believed in your vision enough to help you to take certain steps that would help to help you get to the next way station.

But yeah you would never know when that was gonna happen along the journey. So you just have to put your faith into something and take that next step.

[00:42:08] LL: And you have to connect with other people. Because if there's no connection, they're not gonna help you. So you have to have a story and you have to connect to their humanity. You have to speak to their heart. I remember I was in Thailand and there was this poor Thai border guard who was just doing his job, and I was in the main office and I got onto my knees and I held him by his ankles and I begged him.

I was like, look, please help me. We need to get this bike. And I said a lot of other things, which I'm not gonna share on the podcast, but he, in the end, he helped us, right? He enabled us to get the bike through. So sometimes you just have to improvise. As long as you improvise with your heart and you connect to another human being, the chances are you will get what you need.

Of course, there are sometimes where you can't, right? Government officials often are just machines, and if they've been told to do something, they're not gonna change their minds. And you have to be aware of that too, right? And you have to deal with that. So there's all these things that travel, whether it be to India, whether it be to South America, wherever it may be, you just have to how to deal with people.

[00:43:26] LW: If you had to articulate how to speak to someone's heart, what would you, what would the steps of that look like

[00:43:31] LL: That's a

[00:43:32] LW: if done that a lot?

[00:43:33] LL: first of all, find something that you have in common. I mean, Obviously I've known you for many years, right? But I. I sense that you like travel. I mean, It's a bit unfair because I know you like travel, right? So let's say, I didn't know, but you'd mentioned travel.

I like travel. So I would start talking to you about travel, and we would start connecting from our hearts. We would start connecting from a place of commonality. And you would talk about your amazing travels. I would talk about my travels, something that you did say, assuming I didn't know you was, you said you wrote a book, you've written books.

So I would go there, I would start talking to you about your books. I'm like, oh, light, that's cool. What? What book did you write? And you'd tell me, right? You'd tell me one of your books is about bliss. And I'd be like, oh, I've I've always been chasing my bliss. How do I do that? And already, we are no longer talking up here, right?

We're no longer talking in our minds, we're talking in our hearts. There is always something to connect with another human being about, and when you do connect, you are generally connecting from the heart.

[00:44:44] LW: Do you know who Mike Posner is?

[00:44:46] LL: Yes. He's the guy that walked across America. Right. And he is a musician.

[00:44:50] LW: Yeah, I heard him on an interview. He said something he said. He learned how to go pretty deeply with people pretty quickly by asking this one question, if I were to pray for you today, what's something that I could pray for?

[00:45:02] LL: That's a great way of doing it.

[00:45:04] LW: And then people would open up. So I think to add to what you said is just curiosity.

Maybe speak a little bit less about you and your journey and ask questions about other people's journey. And then connect from whatever they say. Offering sincere compliments. Not flattery, but like finding something that maybe a lot of people don't appreciate about this person. Maybe something you witnessed and giving voice to that.

I think those two ways are really good ways of connecting with someone's heart.

 You mentioned that these projects of yours sold, even though the gatekeeper said they wouldn't do, they typically, you don't have to tell me numbers, but do they pay for themselves when you do these things, like after you spend all the money and you put it all together, does and it eventually does sell, does it usually sell for enough to pay for 

[00:45:49] LL: Most of them do. Some of them have not. Some of them may pay themselves off because of a speech or because of some ancillary thing.

[00:45:58] LW: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Like, how do you know, I'm wondering how do you know how big of a budget , how much of your own money to put into these things? Because you get a lot of people saying, don't bet you, you the farm on something that, most people are saying is not gonna work out and in case someone does wanna mortgage their house or, refinance something to follow their heart to see this thing through thinking that, hey, I know people saying are saying it's not gonna sell, but I really feel like I.

You know it's gonna pay off in some way.

[00:46:28] LL: Sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do, and,

[00:46:31] LW: Yeah.

[00:46:32] LL: You get to decide when that is. Like I would've bankrupted myself for this movie to be on Amazon to be on a major streamer. I would

have. I didn't. I didn't. Right. But I would have, because I was so deep in it, and I'm not saying that's clever.

Obviously the cleverest thing to do is to, I don't know, find an HBO Max give them an idea for a show, and they're like, oh, then we love you. He's $5 million. That's obviously the best case scenario, but that's never happened to me, unfortunately. And it may happen to you, and if it does, God bless you.

But there were other ways to do it.

[00:47:06] LW: Vegas? And you don't bet more than, you, you could lose, maybe you have a certain amount

that You,

think, I lost this. I could still get my life back together. But your limit was bankruptcy. You are like, I'm gonna go all 

[00:47:17] LL: Look, there were moments, it did not happen, right. But there were moments where I was like, I don't care what happens. This movie's gonna be finished and I'm gonna get it on a major streamer, and I just don't care. I will be living in the streets. If the movie gets out there, of course this was just in my mind.

I'm not saying that I'm anywhere near that. I am not right. But I was so driven to get this message out to the world that I would've done anything.

[00:47:44] LW: Were there moments where it looked like it may not happen in the way that you thought Of course, or 

[00:47:49] LL: of 

[00:47:50] LW: were those moments? 

[00:47:50] LL: there were. So, and again, I don't wanna mention specific names, but there were so many moments where people would come to me and say, listen, no one's gonna watch this. The best chance you have is to put it on this platform. And I would say to them, in a very PG 13 type of way, F off, we are absolutely not doing that.

We are not stopping until this is on a major streamer where people get to watch it and people get to be inspired and they kept on coming back. Well, you've gotta live in reality. You're not so sure it's gonna happen. Did you not hear what I just said to you? We are not stopping until this happens and it happened.

I don't know. It just did. So sometimes you just gotta go for it. You've

[00:48:33] LW: Were those conversations after the film had done this post-production, or was that literally during the filming and 

bringing 

[00:48:40] LL: so, so light. During the filming, during the filming, obviously we had no idea where it was gonna end up, even when the movie was finished, we had no idea. I had put six years of my life into this movie. I had put so much money into this movie and I didn't know if anyone would ever see it. And that's not a happy place to be. It's I was like, we are just going this way and that's what's gonna happen and we're not stopping and let's see

what 

happens. 

[00:49:08] LW: What was the initial timeframe that you had planned you'd budgeted in your mind for this, getting this thing completed and out

[00:49:13] LL: A year or two,

[00:49:14] LW: and it was this before the pandemic you started?

[00:49:17] LL: the actual movie was 2019, that it was filmed in 2019.

[00:49:22] LW: Yeah. I remember coming in, I think I did a little segment as well in 2018. Right.

[00:49:26] LL: Yes. And it took a long time to edit it. It took a long time to make it happen. And we did. We did it. And it's a collaboration. It's not just me, maybe my face, but the amazing shots of the movie. I didn't, did none of them. The story producing to make it so that it's relatable. I did some of it, but the majority of it was not me.

So it's a collaboration.

[00:49:49] LW: So you being the main character though, how involved and the producer, how involved are you in the edit? Because I know it could be hard to watch yourself sometimes and you're thinking, oh, I'm being too indulgent and maybe not, I don't know. Or did you just say, Hey, let just do it and I'll just live with whatever decisions you guys make.

[00:50:06] LL: No, I did not do that. I will not, I will not live with whatever decisions they make. That will never happen If I'm in control, if I'm not and I'm working for someone, do whatever you want. Right? But look, I'm not an editor. I'm not a story producer. I don't know how to do that stuff. They do. So I hire people who know what they're doing.

They'll send me a cut, I'll give my notes, then they'll send me another cut. Then I'll give my notes again, and then we'll go back and forth for years and finally we'll figure it out. And this is what we end up with. The movie that's on Prime. That's it. But it was a very difficult process. And the movie's about God.

We talk to Muslims, we talk to we go to temples, we talk to Hindus. We talk to Christians like all of the religions, even though it's not a religious movie. So you can imagine we went to the Golden Temple in Amitha. You could the Sikhs. You can imagine there is a massive scale of potential for pissing a lot of people off, right?

So what I made sure was we didn't take sides. It wasn't about taking sides. I sat with a Christian pastor and his wife in near Dar Charlo in a beau, you the beautiful church with the fog. Remember that scene?

And they were telling me the Bible is the only way to, to God. Who am I to say that's wrong For them it was clearly for me it wasn't. But for them it was. Right. So the same thing with the Muslims. Were saying something different. The Buddhists were saying there is no God. But what I realized was that you can't explain God. God is a feeling. It's a presence that you get connected to and it's an individual thing. The pastor and his wife clearly got to God through the Bible. Great. That's not for me. But that doesn't mean that I didn't find God and I did. But for someone to say to me, oh, not that they were saying that, well, they kind of were actually saying that the only way is through the Bible for you. That's okay. That that God bless you. you can't tell me that I didn't find God. ' cause I did. It wasn't through the Bible. Sorry. It just wasn't, I've never read the Bible.

[00:52:28] LW: I thought you said in the movie you were gonna read the Bible from cover to cover. That was part of the agreement that you had made. Starting tonight, you said.

[00:52:35] LL: I did, I made that agreement and I didn't follow through with it. Sorry. but they found it through it. It was amazing. You could sense it in them. You could sense their, the presence of God inside both of them.

[00:52:48] LW: Yeah. Okay. What does that feel like when you sense the presence of God in some way?

[00:52:52] LL: Well, I know that you have sensed the presence of God in people and it's a beautiful thing because there's a pureness and a love and a compassion and a wisdom that is beyond anything a mere mortal could create.

It just is something extraordinarily pure and beautiful. And you sense it. And you feel it.

[00:53:18] LW: Do you think you have to believe in God in order to sense and feel that, or does it?

[00:53:23] LL: No, that's a great question. No, you don't, but I guess you don't really know what it is if you don't. See, that's interesting. I like that question because at the beginning I'd said to you that I didn't believe in God when I was doing the Kindness Diaries, but people would come up to me in all the speeches and say, well, obviously you believe in God because God was guiding you.

[00:53:44] LW: Yeah,

[00:53:45] LL: I had those experiences, but I didn't know what they were.

[00:53:47] LW: right. I think it's a fascinating question. I think people would assume that I believe in God. I wouldn't say that's necessarily true or false. I think that's a question that I live with on a daily basis. I am a big believer that we should and and could obviously curate whatever beliefs empower us the most.

And so for me, the belief in God, I find it empowers me. Oddly enough, because I feel that God is acting through me. It's not like God is the white man with the beard, in the clouds. And I have to appeal to him and his judgment and all this. I feel like God is acting out through me, through you, through everyone that we come across.

And so, that, that belief for me it makes me feel it. It brings more of a more weight to the things that I do, things that I say and the way that I interpret other people's actions and behaviors. So that works for me. But I don't think everybody necessarily has to have that same understanding in this sort of higher intelligence.

But, and I think it can change, it can evolve over the years with new experience, right? And so that's my own personal take on this idea of God as a concept.

[00:55:02] LL: And if that's what helps you and what is your truth, then great. Great. I know you, I've known you for a long time, right? And I sense God in you. Whatever that means, doesn't matter. I sense it. And so do you. You look at yourself in the mirror. You live your life. You have your experiences.

[00:55:25] LW: So you've been all over the world. You I know from just you personally. I know you've been to India several times and you traveled through India on the Kindness Diaries. Why did you choose India? Why? And I've been to India several times as well, but I'm just, I'm curious to hear your reasoning behind choosing India as for this quest for God.

'cause one could also argue God is everywhere. He is not. He's not just in India. 

So 

[00:55:46] LL: course. That's the whole point. I don't wanna give away the movie, but you know, yes. God is everywhere, right? God is here between me and you right now in this very moment. Just a question of connecting to, to that energy, to that that, that place. Right? Why did I choose India? Look, I chose India for a very simple reason.

When I walked into that bookshop and I picked up Yogananda's book, he asked his guru to reveal God to him. He was in India. The book is a lot about India.

[00:56:17] LW: Right.

[00:56:19] LL: I wanted to follow in Yogananda's footsteps and find God in a similar way that he did. Okay. I'm not comparing myself to Yogananda by any stretch, but he went out into India and found God. So I wanted to do the same, and of course, realize that you don't have to go to India to find God, but I had to go to India to realize that

[00:56:44] LW: If we're being honest, it's good cinema, like India is such a colorful, chaotic place. So many things can go wrong. It's good for, it's good for the story behind searching for God.

[00:56:54] LL: Yes, it is indeed. India's a fascinating place.

[00:56:58] LW: Now, you had the who's who of spiritual teachers, healers thought leaders in the spiritual space being interviewed. The documentary, a lot of these people have done many documentaries. What was your pitch to them that kind of made them say yes to you?

[00:57:17] LL: I think the Netflix show helped the fact that I'd done the Kindness diary so they could go onto Netflix and look at it and think, okay, this guy's genuine. And I think the journey to find God interested them all, because I would say that pretty much every single person who's in the movie has had an experience with God and could talk about it.

So I think that's why they said yes. And again, that's another thing. Who am I to get people like s Guru to come and be on on the film? It's not like we paid any of these people. We didn't.

[00:57:50] LW: Where was that interview?

[00:57:52] LL: That was at the Isha Foundation in Tennessee.

[00:57:55] LW: Wow. So you guys traveled there Yeah.

[00:57:57] LL: Yeah. And also talking about being guided most people, and again, I open it up for anyone that really truly wants my insight on creating TV shows just to DM me and I will respond to you.

The only thing is that when it comes to films or TV documentaries or whatever you wanna call them, generally you need to arrange things months in advance. So you'd think that, oh, Leon, your team called the Golden Temple, the most religious holy site in the seh religion months before, we didn't call them at all.

We went the day of filming and we sat there and we are like, look, we're doing this documentary about finding God can you can we come and film inside the Golden Temple? And they kept us waiting there for a few hours, but at the end of the day, they said yes. That's unheard. I'm not gonna say it's unheard of, but most documentaries, everything is pre-planned.

We didn't plan pretty much anything.

[00:58:57] LW: But was that on purpose or did somebody screw up? They were

[00:58:59] LL: No, no, no, No. It was not, it was done on purpose. Right. There may have been a little bit of planning. You can't just show up to that church in the middle of the mountains and the pastors just happens to be there. Right. But we called a day or two in advance from when we arrived in in Delhi and it just all fell into place again, that's simplistic.

'cause it was hellish doing it in many ways, specifically the editing process. But it if you put your mind to something, anything is possible. I know that sounds like such a cliche. Oh, okay. Leon, it's all right for you to say that, but. I wanted to quit my job and start traveling around the world and ended up on Netflix and Nat Geo and Discovery and Amazon.

Like how did that happen? It happened because I said I was never gonna stop until it did and I kept on doing the right things. And when I did the wrong things, I tried not to do them again.

[00:59:54] LW: Are you happy with everything, how everything came out? I'm intentionally not asking you about, if you discovered whether there's God, because I wanna be able to watch the show. But are you happy with the way everything came out and the way it was marketed? 'cause it's launched now, it's out, it's on Amazon Print.

How long is it on Amazon Prime.

[01:00:08] LL: Two years.

[01:00:09] LW: Okay. So you happy, is there anything you'd do differently? Six years later.

[01:00:13] LL: When it comes to the movie, is there anything I'd do differently? The actual filming of the movie? No.

When it comes to a few other things potentially, but I'd rather keep those to myself.

[01:00:24] LW: you've mentioned several times you'll respond to everybody who reaches out. Why do you do that? Because what I found is that you get 99% of people reaching out is just, people haven't really done any research at all. They're asking you very basic questions. Where can I watch the kindness diary?

Stuff like that. And I'm just, I'm wondering what your own personal, so I'm sure it comes from a personal sort of value that you have for yourself. Maybe the next, there's another Leon Logus out there that you feel like if I could just connect with that one person. But I would love to hear from you what your principle is when it comes to that.

[01:00:58] LL: Look, if I create a TV show or a movie that I want to touch people's lives, and you send me a message whether it's something positive or whether it's a question, part of the mission is to connect with you. And if I ignore you. Then I'm not connecting with you. And look, there are some people I do not respond to.

Like the guy that we talked about earlier, I can't remember his name. I can't remember exactly what he did. Things like that. I'm a bit more careful of these days, right? There was some guy that sent me a, an email from Russia a couple of days ago. He said he was in trouble and he needed help.

And I responded to him and I said, Hey, I hope you're okay. How can I help? And then I kept on getting weird messages back that were like, they don't deserve a response because I'm not gonna waste my time if you're clearly not who you say you are, right? So I'm not gonna go crazy and respond to every single person that sends me crazy things.

But generally, if it's not crazy, I'll respond to you.

[01:02:13] LW: I remember for a long time you didn't have a smartphone. You just had a little flip phone because you wanted I know protect, you wanted to protect your time from being, from scrolling and being on Instagram and all that, too much. How long did that experiment last and what did, what were some of your takeaways from that? I.

[01:02:29] LL: I God, those are good days. So I actually started to get a smartphone in 2016, but I also had my flip phone, and I had my flip phone until 2020 ish. But then the flip phone stopped working. I would be in New York and the thing wouldn't work because the towers wouldn't connect to the phone. So I had to switch it completely now to a smartphone.

What I will say that I don't have social media on my smartphone. I don't have news apps. I don't have access to the internet. I just use it for emails WhatsApp, although WhatsApp can be an addiction which I've realized. But I try my best to stay away even now, because it is crazy out there.

It's crazy in so many ways. And I know myself, I would be scrolling on the news all the time. I would be looking at Instagram. I would be looking at FI would just be doing everything that we all do, I would be doing. And the only way I can not do that is not to have. Connection to it. So my partner has a code in the phone, right?

That I don't know. So I'm like, oh, please. She's no, you told me not to give it to you. I was like, okay, don't give it to me.

[01:03:49] LW: What's next for you, Leon? What are you thinking about unpacking, exploring next? I'm sure this, the marketing of this has taken up a lot of time, but, have you had any ideas, have you downloaded anything about the next project yet?

[01:04:01] LL: Do you know I haven't? And I did. I've done that purposely, purposefully. I wanted to concentrate on this and see what happens. I don't know if you remember in the movie when I'm sitting by the statue of Shiva with Nandini G in Rishikesh, and I say to her, look, you clearly have what I want. How do I get that?

And she says, don't do, just be. And I was like, wow. Don't do, just be. So, I took, and I've, because I edited this with the editors, I've seen that quote. 500 times. So it's inside me now, right? And I am, I'm trying to do that to the best of my ability. Don't do, just be when the movie is finished, the marketing is finished. We'll see what happens. I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen.

[01:04:47] LW: Is there a length of time that you'll be devoted to marketing of the film? Like traditionally, how long do people market a film that's gonna be on streaming for two years?

[01:04:55] LL: So the movie came on February 21st and its Mental Health Month in May. So we are going to go all the way through May and then we'll let things go as they go.

[01:05:11] LW: Beautiful. And if someone's watching this, what's the best way they can support you in the movie other than streaming it? Of course.

[01:05:17] LL: Watch it. Share it with people who you think need it. Review it. Please don't give me a crappy review though. If you really want to, then God bless you. And you can contact me at the Kindness Guy on Instagram, and as long as it's not a crazy message, I will respond.

[01:05:32] LW: So I've got, we both have books on Amazon and things like that. And it's funny when you get these one star reviews and you go, oh my God what? And you look at it and it's like the book arrives with a mark on it, one star. It's that has nothing to do with me. That's all happening in the shipping.

Why are you giving me a one star review? Are you seeing any of that in the reviews? I 

[01:05:52] LL: I have, I have not seen any one star reviews yet, but they're coming. They'll come. They'll come for sure.

[01:05:58] LW: Yeah. A DirecTV. The signal didn't work. One star for the phone,

[01:06:04] LL: Exactly.

[01:06:04] LW: man. It was a pleasure having you back on and chatting with you. You mentioned sharing this with a friend who may need this. Who, Who's the audience who, when you were creating this, who was the avatar you were thinking of when you were putting this together in the narrative.

[01:06:19] LL: People who needed hope, people who needed to know that there is another way to live,

And that's why I shared my pain so vulnerably because if I can do it, then maybe you can too.

[01:06:36] LW: Couldn't have said it better. That's a great place to end, man. Thank you so much.

[END]

Thank you for tuning into today's episode with Leon Logothetis. If you'd like to follow Leon's work, you can find him on the socials @thekindnessguy. And be sure to check out his newest documentary, the Kindness Within which is streaming on Amazon Prime. 

If you enjoyed my conversation with Leon, be sure to check out his two previous appearances on the show, episode one for his full backstory, and then episode 151 for a powerful follow up on truth, courage, and taking action. 

If you know someone who's out there making the world a better place, please send your guest suggestions to me at light@lightwatkins.com. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to rate and review this show. It does help more people discover these meaningful conversations. 

And I'll see you next week for another story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. Until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart, and keep taking those leaps of faith. And remember, if no one's told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you.

Thank you and have a fantastic day.