#172: The Importance Of Having A Great Work Space As A Lifestyle Entrepreneur With Travis Huff

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and this is actually take 2, take 2 of my opening remarks there because I flubbed the first one, which is kind of just one of those funny things. I'm feeling in this moment this wonderful sense of harmony and yeah, I sometimes speak, think, and talk a little bit about balance and how balance for me is Balance is not quite the accurate term for that equanimity or that feeling of being peaceful and having things in the right sequence and just, you know, you're in the flow and all that. Doesn't feel like balance to me because balance, when I think about balance, I think of a tightrope walker. Yeah. Balancing themselves on a thin wire. I really think that that's the way a lot of people do feel in life these days, just on this thin wire. We're trying to do so much and we've got so much on our shoulders and we're trying to balance it all and I think that that's even potentially dangerous. As an intention because it's so tough to maintain. And so I'm just putting it out there for myself even in this moment that the word that I'm more called to describe how I'm feeling in this flow state, this peaceful state, this, you know, things just moving sort of effortlessly but I'm also involved in the process, that feels like harmony to me. And the yin-yang that people refer to, that symbol, Is a symbol of harmony. It's not actually a symbol of balance. So I'm feeling harmonious in this moment, feeling really blessed that I've got a great guest on the show today, somebody I'm looking forward to chatting with. This is going to be a first conversation for us. We haven't talked before, but in looking at the work he's doing in the world, he's a fellow Californian, born and raised, not quite like the— most of the people out here are transplants, but evidently there are some people that were born in this beautiful state. And he's doing— he and his wife are doing some amazing things in the world, have an incredible foundation. We're going to talk about that in just a second. I'm actually going to I'm gonna read his bio and then we'll dig in as we always do. So buckle up and get ready for a wonderful interview. This is gonna be a high-energy interview, I can already tell. So I feel so blessed to be here today and have a great guest by the name of Travis Huff who's on the show. And Travis, this is a high-energy guy, you guys are gonna already tell right out of the gate. He's enthusiastic and I think there's almost nothing that's more important in any area of your life than enthusiasm. 'Cause enthusiasm is Latin derivations like from the universe, from the ether space. It's heavenly, it's divine. And everything is energy. So if you can't bring enough energy to any, whatever area of your life you're looking to improve, you're gonna have a challenge. So you gotta build that up. This gentleman started out with an incredible, talk about an energetic, enthusiastic brand. He started working for the Walt Disney Company right out of college, which you think about companies that have prolific, epic cultures, this is, they are sort of the quintessential company to describe that. I mean, Apple is another one of those companies that you just feel like that brand is so strong and that culture is so strong. But out of the vision and the dream of a Walt Disney comes a company that has changed so many lives. I mean, got millions and millions of lives for so many years. So what a great foundation to be learning about business and learning about different areas of operations and sales, etc. And this is an area that Travis excelled in until he had a pivot. And we're going to find out what that pivot was because in 2009, he actually started his own business and has his own podcast. We're going to talk about that today as well. But for right now, I'm just going to say welcome, Travis. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. I'm excited to be on the show today. Like you said, I am high energy. I'm 6'8, so I gotta bring every bit of energy possible, and it's just kind of who I am, you know. I just, like you said, you know, if you get one shot at life, so you might as well bring all of your game every single day.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, at the end of the day, now as a business owner, you got to step up every day, you know. People think a lot of times owning a business is, oh, I'm just going to be, you know, the boss and I'm going to be in control and all this stuff, but Hey folks, that's not the reality. If you think that you are going to work less hours as an entrepreneur or business owner, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're wrong. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. You are the boss, but that means everything falls on your shoulders, you know. So truthfully, Adam, I was, I was having a great, great opportunity to work at the Walt Disney Company, one of the most unbelievable companies, get the best opportunity for me coming straight into the advertising world where I could see broadcast television. And I started to see, you know, digital was on the rise. You started seeing abc.com and Hulu, and Netflix wasn't even really there at that point, but it was still in the infancy of them delivering, you know, the DVDs in the mail. But I was sitting in November of 2008, it was actually when it was, and I'm sitting with a buddy at Starbucks, and we're just talking, you know, just jiving and talking about industries, talking about life, what's going on, what's, you know, what's new. And he says Hey man, someone's gonna need to manage Facebook business pages. Someone, some business is going to be managing pages for clients. I mean, they're not gonna be doing it all themselves. They're just, they're not. And so I just ran with that, Adam. I started slowly kind of putting together, you know, a PowerPoint like I suggest to any entrepreneur. You know, sometimes, you know, when an idea is always

resilience, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

It's like the best ideas always happen when you're listening and not necessarily your idea. And so I just took that as this is my moment. And I—

So you were sitting there with a friend and he's, he's giving you his take on the environment Business environment right there. And you heard them. Like, as you said, you were listening, you heard them. And so, even though it wasn't like you didn't wake up in the middle of the night, you know, so many entrepreneurs talk about their epiphany moment or the light bulb moment, right? This is a light bulb moment of a different kind because you're listening.

Yes. And I truly still believe this. The best ideas happen when you listen to now either my customers now or just your friends, you know, the market, just listening to what's going on. See, you know, and you pick something up And folks, you have a PowerPoint, you start making a PowerPoint. That's all I did. I started—

So that's your— make a deck.

Dude, make a deck, make a deck. How are you going to talk to people about how to manage social media? It was very simple. The logo was crappy. I made a PowerPoint logo. I'm a true believer of bootstrap as much as possible, you know. And so I took that opportunity along with a little bit of savings and a little bit of, you know, kind of had some months, uh, 3 to 6 months of, you know, I could pay the bills. And I said, now's my shot, man. I got to take this opportunity. I saw the industry changing right in front of my eyes, Adam, from when I worked from—

And you're working for, you know, what are they, a Fortune 100 or Fortune 50 company?

Yes. I mean,

this is a very successful enterprise to be a part of, etc. So, this was a risk for you, wasn't it?

It was. Oh, yeah.

But you saw there was a runway for you.

I did. I saw the opportunity. After he mentioned that, I saw, you know what? You're right. You're absolutely right. I've always been an entrepreneur, a business owner. I've had lemonade stands. I sold t-shirts. It's clothing. I— none of them really ever paid the bills, you know. And so I don't want to take away from the opportunity because ABC television was the best opportunity I ever had. You know, there's no giving— no going around that. But Adam, what was happening right amongst our eyes was digital was taking over broadcast. 2005 was strong. 2007, 2008, 2009, you come into that Digital starts taking over. I could actually show my customers how many people saw their campaign online, and I couldn't do that on my TV commercials. I couldn't tell you how many people—

You had more visibility and metrics were clear.

Metrics, yes.

Right.

I, I just love that part when I could actually show the customers, this is what happened, you know, what— this is exactly what happened with your campaign. And on the TV business, when I was on the broadcast side, You couldn't show them that.

Well, it's kind of a lagging indicator, right? I mean, one's more of a leading indicator because you can say, look, this is exactly how we measure what success looks like in terms of things that can be measured, frankly. Whereas with some of these other forms of advertising, the metric is what sales occurred. How many phone calls did you get? How many people took whatever the call to action was and did that? And you find out later on, right? So you invest first, find out later whether or not it was wise or a poor investment, right?

Totally. God, yes. And sometimes it would work, folks. Let's like—

Well, no, traditional advertising works for sure, right?

It's just expensive. It's like, I mean, it's $10,000, $20,000, uh, campaign for a month, you know? It's not little money.

Different paradigm for sure, right?

Different paradigm, different pair. I just like literally saw, Adam, the business was gonna have to change. Like, they're gonna have to make cuts. Something's gonna go. Over the 10 years that I've started my business now, they eliminate all the accounting, production, All the sales admin staff that helped the sales teams, the girls that ran the commercials, they centralized all that stuff. So in amongst the 10 years, folks, that I actually have been out of the business, I mean, it has changed dramatically. I mean, they fired managers, top planner, GSMs, local sales managers gone was the first step. And then it was just boom, boom, boom. Where can we centralize? You know, cause Disney owns 10 ABC-owned stations. And so they centralized everything. They centralized accounting, they centralized production. And the people that I used to work with, they don't have a job anymore. You know, they're working in different industries. That's obviously in hindsight, right? You know, like, it was like one of those things to say, yeah, you were probably right about that. You know, like—

Well, Travis, I mean, you were in a really interesting position right there because you didn't have a crystal ball. So even though you were speculating, or at least had a suspicion that things were going to shift, you didn't know for sure. And in hindsight, I think what's interesting is it was a really disruptive time. Right there, right?

Yes.

That market, that way of conducting business was going to change. And you either were going to design the disruption for yourself or wait to have that disruption sort of thrust upon you. We sometimes talk about that as a pivot by design or pivot by disruption. And clearly, if you waited, as many people did, and it was perfect for them— everybody's path, I think, is perfect— then it was more pivot by disruption. Instead, you decided to design Yes. Step out of— from the mothership, so to speak.

Yeah, truly.

And create your own ship.

Unbelievable. When you look back, it's like, damn, I really did that. Like, I can't—

It almost doesn't make sense, right?

It doesn't. Yeah.

Because it defies common sense being an entrepreneur in many ways. Being a business owner in many ways defies common sense. A paycheck, a steady paycheck, steady benefits.

Right.

You know, somebody else that gets up in the middle of the night to use the loo, they worry about their cash flow. They worry about making payroll. You don't have to do that when you're an Right. Yeah,

you're just gonna show up and then leave, you know, it's like—

Well, I mean, right, there are so many variables there that if you analyze them in great detail, they don't— it wouldn't make sense to kind of give up that security,

right?

And yet there are crazy people out there like you and like me and like others. You know, it's funny too because there's something about the DNA of an entrepreneur that I think is kind of with us. There's signs of it from the time we're really little. Now I'm looking at these pictures. Now some of you watching this on YouTube, others Listening, you may not see this, but there's a lot of pictures on walls around Travis's desk.

Oh yeah.

And, and so were there signs— and you and I, before we turn on the mic, you know, I know what those pictures are, and you gave me a little of the backstory there— but were there signs that you had this renegade spirit, this entrepreneur?

Oh yeah, absolutely. My dad was an entrepreneur. So he was an accountant. A lot of people don't think of an accountant as an entrepreneur, but he led the way as an accountant. And I actually, folks, learned Accounting, which I think is the most important critical aspect of your business, is your money and how to spend it and how to learn how to, you know, use the tax laws, things like that. But to be transparent, folks, taxes and accounting wasn't interesting to me. So at college age, I said, you know what, Dad, I'm not going to be an accountant. I know you put this 10 years into me, and I know I worked my ass off in your tax season. I made, you know, I learned accounting, but I like advertising, Dad. I like marketing. I want to make these campaigns happen. I like this stuff. I like being creative. And so That in itself, like, taught me that, like, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur one day, but I knew that at the end of the day, the chance with Disney working at ABC right out of college was, was my shot, you know? And I will always say that helped me become a better businessman because a lot of my customers are still from those days. A lot of the agencies we work with, we work with a lot of advertising agencies and PR firms, and I could talk shop with them because I knew what I was saying. I knew CPM and CPC, and I knew what they were kind of looking for.

And

that basically led me into my business. Like I said, I had been running little small businesses my whole life. I had been having a lemonade stand with my buddy. It was a mobile lemonade stand. When I was in college, I'd go to the thrift stores and I would buy cool shirts, and then I'd hook them up and make them look a little nice, put some embellishments on them, and sell them back to my fraternity and my fraternity sisters and brothers because I was in a marketing fraternity. But at the end of the day, I didn't really understand business until you get into it. You know, until you actually get a full-scale business, you know, and real time, like I say, I always tell everybody, you don't have a business until you can get a check. So, for me, the big thing was getting that first check. Thankfully—

Is that hung up on your wall too? Do you have that?

It isn't hung up on my wall. Damn it, I wanna get that damn check back.

Hey, Travis. Oh, man. Well, what do you do? You do have some things hung up on that wall.

I do, man.

Folks that can't see it, just describe for them what this wall of fame is behind you.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, when I was a kid, folks, I always admired, you know, different celebrities and different By the way,

I love how you're addressing everybody as folks, you

know.

Yes, absolutely. I'm a folk, you're a folk, we're all folks.

Yes, we're just all humans here.

You know it.

But as a kid, so I always wanted to collect autographs and I didn't want to necessarily pay for them, and I also wanted my name on them. So I wanted them to say, to Travis, not just, you know, anything you could buy off the internet or, or at the end, at the end of the internet was barely getting going then. So I started going and I actually did find an internet site that had addresses of celebrities. And so, I started like literally, you know, put— figuring them out. You see Brett Favre and you see Archie Manning behind there, Phil Knight, George Foreman. On the other side—

You would write to these guys out of the clear blue?

Yes.

Now, were you sending a snail mail or did you send an email address?

No, it was a physical snail mail, folks, and still today, you still kind of have to—

Physical address.

Yeah. Physical address with a physical letter and then, also, the key is to have a self-addressed stamp on the way back. So you, you pay for those posters there, you pay for it back. And a lot of times, yeah, these celebrities, you know, not all of them, but a lot of them would sign, you know. And now looking forward and looking at my wall here, I got Adam West, The Rock/Ice Cube, Bill Belichick, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Drew Brees, No Doubt, Simon Cowell, John McCain.

All right, so I got a, I got a really tough question for

you.

I already know this is gonna be a tough question for you, but what's your favorite one? And, and is it— and here, I'm gonna give you a second to think of an answer of what you want to say here. But yeah, I'm interested not only just which one is the favorite, but is there a story around it? I mean, did you send them a picture? Did they send you one on their own? What, you know, just like what gave you the most warmth? Like what was the best vibe you got from somebody, you know?

Well, I'll tell you this. I got a lot of different ones back that I was shocked that I actually got them back. But one of my favorite ones, I'll show you here, and I actually printed this one. I printed off my computer. Yeah, is Adam West, the original Batman. I always just imagine Adam West. I remember seeing the pow and bam and boom and the action and the, you know, this is the time before all the superheroes.

Same bat channel, same bat time. Tune in, baby. Yeah, that guy.

So this dude right here, when I got his back, I was like, wow, it says my name on it. It says, to Travis, Adam West. I also printed this photo so I know that it was from him. It really just gave me that level of like, damn, a superhero has given me an autograph, you know? And I was like, oh my God, like I still today, I still can't believe it because obviously at the end of the day, you know, superheroes and Marvel has taken off so much. Now you see the hot movies are all around superheroes right now, right? So people are fascinated by superheroes even though we know—

Do you think he gave you any, any superhero, like, did he transfer any of those superheroes?

I hope he transferred a few pow pow booms, you know.

I think he did, man. I, I don't know you well, but I can tell. I mean, if he had you on his side, Yes. You would just have no quit in you.

That's what I'm getting. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I'll be, I'll be in the trenches with them. I'd be in the trenches with them ready to, ready to do work. But you know what, transparently, because I have so many, there's thousands of them. These are just the ones you see on the walls, but I have a whole— I have folders full of them. And I'm blessed to my dad because he actually paid for the postage. So, I always give my dad a shout out for that because a lot of times he didn't even know it, but I was, I was using his postage machine to get all these damn autographs because you'd have to pay money. It was money, you know. So, But I would say that the one I'm looking at too, Bill Belichick with some of his Super Bowls, is an amazing one. Um, people have a lot of different opinions about the guy, obviously cheating scandals and all that, but I look at this, the guy is the GOAT in football. I mean, unbelievable. I also look at The Rock right here because I think of all the adversity he's had to go through through his life and the transfers of where he's at in his game now at the top. Yeah. When I'm looking at the picture here, he was doomed. This is like one of his first movies. This is in 2005. It was, and he says, my number one fan. I always like thought, damn, does he really think I'm his number one fan? Like, and so I still even look at it, I'm like, damn, he put number one fan on there, you know? And so I guess at the end of the day, the autographs are a way for me to remind myself of greatness, you know, remind myself of each one of these people in their own ways. And some of them have passed, like I'm looking at John Wooden right now.

Yes,

they've impacted so many different people.

Holy smokes. Yes, and folks that don't recall, John Wooden was the Coach of the UCLA men's basketball team. I don't know, might have won 10 NCAA championships, something like that, right? I mean, the guy, he coached, he coached Bill Walton, he coached Lou Alcindor, and I mean, a host of other, you know, epic greats.

Yes. And how his legacy goes even into business. And you hear a lot of times people talking about, you know, John Wooden quotes and things like that in business. So it's like Kobe right now. Let's just be real. Kobe, I love Kobe, man. What has happened to Kobe has also maybe elevated everyone's game to be better dads, to be better fathers, to be better entrepreneurs. That's right.

Hashtag girl dad.

Yeah, hashtag girl dad. You know that mom mentality? You know, like think about these people. I always put myself in that situation, Adam, when I'm going through a tough time. You know because entrepreneurship, I'm a dad. It ain't easy. It ain't easy. My daughter's been going through a cold right now, so it's been battling a damn cold for like. you know, a week. But the truth is, you just look at any one of these people and say, man, they have gone through a lot more than I have. They've gone through the ups and downs. Some of these people have had high highs, and now they have low lows where no one gives a shit about them, maybe. And they still, at the end of the day, represent greatness.

Yes.

In their industries, in their light. And I don't know, I mean, it's, it's, uh—

Well, I think, you know, environment is so important, effective.

Yes.

You know, You know, Yogananda, among others, have said things similar to this, but environment is stronger than willpower in terms of habits and how it is that you do what you do and when and why and whether you continue to do those things or not. A lot of it has to do with the environment that you're in, meaning the people you are around for sure, and even just the physical surroundings, how it is that you construct your office. So just relative to something really relevant in my own life right now is that our oldest daughter was creating an office in her home. She is an entrepreneur as well and so is her husband who started his own successful online marketing company and working virtually. My wife also, same thing, has a big part of our business and we work out of our home. It's one of those wonderful things about owning your own shop.

Yes.

And I've been in offices and paid lots of rent and there's places and times for that as well, but we love to operate a lean business and by lean I mean what it is that you spend because that's the only thing you actually do control as an entrepreneur is what you spend. So, there's lots of discussion around that, but the thing here is this, your office where you are conducting your business, where you're making your sales calls, where you're making time to think, where you're doing any number of other things that are so vital to the success of that business, that environment in many ways is as important as any other thing you're going to do in that space. So, if the environment is not conducive to clear thinking, if the environment is not conducive, does not lift you up, let's say, then it has the opposite effect. It can have the opposite impact, which is to bring you down or to make your thinking muddled. So I think what's really amazing about this, and I love how this just came out in our discussion, is that you're surrounded by greatness in your office right there. Thank you. You've cultivated, created, curated an environment where you are surrounded on you know, looks like 4 sides by—

Oh, yeah.

By people who have, as you said, experienced all the ups and all the downs and everything in between. People that are still walking this planet, thankfully, and people that have passed on. So, you know, there's just all this good stuff all around you, man. And I would say that those, that all that energy, all those vibes, that they are influencing. Now, let me ask you, I don't even wanna put this on you. How do you feel it is to be surrounded in that space? Do you feel like it contributes to it? It's adding to, you know, who you are and what you're able to do as a business owner?

I would say it's humbling.

First, I'm gonna interrupt you one time on this. Uncanny, because that was the word that was before I stopped myself. I wanted to say that, and I'm so glad you just used that word.

It's freaking humbling, man. When you look around, you're like, damn, these people are great, and they've done shit. Like, I'm looking at George Martin, the producer of the Beatles. Les Paul, you know, and influential on so many levels of the music and guitars. Elton John, Johnny Depp, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles. Shit, even Donald Trump's on my wall with Travis. You know, the point is that these people are doing greatness. These people have— are currently doing greatness, like you said, and some of them have had highs and lows. They're not necessarily as great as they were at that moment. Like, I'm looking at Peyton Manning, his rookie card to Travis Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning is not on the high-level stage that he used to be as far as like packed stadiums. He just wakes up in the morning and obviously he's Peyton Manning, let's just be real. But it ain't the same as going in and rocking a big old, you know, 70,000, you know, people screaming your name. It ain't that. And so I always just think about like, how do they go through their days every day, you know, now that maybe that some of them are, are just living maybe more normal lives? Mm-hmm. And then also I always, I always do this, is that whenever I'm having a tough time, I just look at one of them and put myself in their shoes and say, Shit, this person has gone through so much. I'm 38 years old, this person's 60, 70, 80, or, or my age, whatever, but they've done it better, bigger, harder, faster. And so whatever my excuses for that day, Adam, I'm like, this is nothing, you know? And so I think it's— in hindsight, I never really knew why I collected the autographs.

Uh-huh.

I really didn't. I just didn't know exactly what I was gonna do with them. But when I started putting them up on my wall Changed the game. You know, it really changed the game because otherwise they were just in some folder, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, I mean, check them out here and there, but—

They'd still be great. I mean, you know, that you collected, that you did all that stuff, but the fact that something about the fact— so I'm thinking for people that are listening to this now, what's the environment that you are working in? Meaning it could be that you're in an office, that might be where you're spending the bulk of your time, might be somewhere else. You know, there's all this coworking spaces, all these great opportunities to get out, you know, to have a place to conduct your business, but what's that environment like?

So I'm a lifestyle entrepreneur, Adam. I'm with you. I'm with you, man. I love taking advantage of the tax benefits of having a home office. I'm now a papa entrepreneur. My wife is a psychologist.

Yeah.

So I let my wife hustle and do her thing and build her career, which she loves, you know. And so 4 days a week, folks, Tuesday through Friday, I'm papa entrepreneur. Now I do have some helpers that come and hit, you know, come to the house and take care of my daughter for a little bit, but it's usually all on me, the responsibility How nice! It is. You know what? It truly is because my father, to be transparent with you, he sacrificed us kids' relationship for his business, right? And he has a business that takes him out. You know, Texas, Philadelphia, New York could be gone two three weeks at a time. And at the end of the day, we didn't get that connection. Now I'm thirty eight, so I do have a great connection with my dad by choice. But transparently, I think a lot of entrepreneurs. The biggest mistake they make, Adam, is they, they don't know which kind of entrepreneur they are, and they want to be something that they really are not. And so for me—

What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think there's 3 different types of entrepreneurs. I think that there's the one that wants to build a huge business, like you're talking Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. They got the vision, they've dedicated, and they make sacrifices in their family. I don't think Elon Musk gets to spend much time with his daughters or kids. I don't think Jeff Bezos gets to spend much time with his kids because he's freaking busy, folks. Let's just be real. He's building Amazon. So, when you have that mindset and you want to build it—

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day, it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools The tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

The huge thing, you're gonna make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the second one is I think someone that has a public good or wants to solve a cause or, you know, they kind of like see the vision not to build a huge business, but they want to get more fresh water to people or whatever that is. And the last one is what I am in, and I think most entrepreneurs truly are, and that is lifestyle entrepreneur. I think that they enjoy the lifestyle entrepreneur brings them. You know, your time— your most valuable asset on earth is your time, folks. And entrepreneurship, being a lifestyle entrepreneur, gives you time. You can be in control of it. You can use it how you like, and no one's telling you come in at 8 and leave at 5.

You get to see your kids or whoever it is that you want to spend time with.

Yes. I get to own them.

We have 4 kids of our own and I remember when 18 years I spent in the practice of law, kind of similar to accountancy, that that is an entrepreneurial pursuit or it can be and yet you're turning off the clock, so to speak, at regular hours is a very odd thing. In fact, it's a really— it was difficult for me. I imagine it by what you said, it was difficult. Oh, absolutely. And maybe it still is, right? Because you make hay when the sun is shining, as the saying goes, right?

Absolutely.

And yeah, there's a lot you can miss in that process. I think, you know, it's a good point to make here too is that entrepreneurs, while, as you said, lifestyle entrepreneurs get to make those choices differently, there is still this sort of drumbeat today of working, you know, working 80, 90, 100-hour weeks to build something. I hear a lot of Gary Vee and other people that sort of espouse that methodology and I call BS on that because I don't personally buy into that because there's a great cost that you— so it's not that it won't work very well, could work to sort of get you, get things up and running, but in the long run, there's a price you pay. Oh, yeah. And I don't think there's enough conversation around what the price is because If you don't know what the price is for something, it's very difficult to make a clear and wise decision going into it. Right. Knowing that there's something on the other end of it. It could be your health. I mean, there's just tons of people that are under the burden of this sort of excessive load and are exhausted from it because there's almost no boundaries now between work and non-work. Right. And that's another thing just to kind of trail back to this What your space is. Where's the space for work? Because I can tell you, we have a 3-story place that's at the beach and I'm on one floor and my wife is on— there's a floor between us.

Hmm.

So her office is on the third. We meet in the middle, literally meet in the middle for, you know, and that's where living room and kitchen and things. But wherever it is and just at our daughter's place, you know, the segregating, the putting a workspace together that's beautiful, a place you walk in and it smells great. Maybe there's a diffuser, maybe there's incense or Oils or other things that just kind of enliven those senses, that the lighting is the right kind of lighting for you. At the desk, I've got an autonomous desk that rises and goes down. Oh, nice. So I can stand. It's kind of cool to stand. You're not sitting the whole time. But whatever it is that you do to sort of create that environment where you can be in there doing your best and being at your best, like performing almost like the way an athlete takes care of themselves so well, but not confusing that space With the bedroom or aren't using that space with the kitchen, right? Or other places where you just don't want that work to get infused into things that are not work. What do you guys have boundaries that way, you and your wife?

It's freaking hard, man. I mean, straight up.

I didn't say it was easy.

It's hard. You know what, I tell my wife all the time, you know, I, I'm working where I live. And so, sometimes there's just like, it's Some days it's tough, man. I can tell you most days I really am able to separate it. Then there's some days you just get a shit ton loaded on you, whether that's new clients reporting for us. There's certain days where just a lot more work has to be done, and I'm spending a bunch of time with my daughter. I'm like, oh my God, I need to get all this stuff done. And so sometimes I just have to tell my wife like, hey, you know what, it's nothing personal. Like, I gotta hustle. I gotta go back to the room here at 7:30. We put my daughter down usually at 6, 6 or 7. I gotta go bust out some work for a few more hours, you know, and she's totally accepting of that. I love that as long as I let her know, you know? Because otherwise it's just like a weird awkwardness that's there, you know? I'm like, God, I need to get shit done, I need to think, oh God, you know? And it's like, no, just tell your wife what's up and then you'll find the time, you know? I've been running this business now for 11 years. I tell everybody, I've been working every single day for 11 years. I've not taken one day off. Even when I'm sick, I did not take a day off. Now folks, that doesn't mean I'm working 10 hours a day. I can still work, I call it a power hour, and so I can get shit done in my business in 1 hour for that day. You know, like I have power hours where I can just get a ton of stuff done. However, folks, entrepreneurship, especially I would say lifestyle entrepreneurship, that's a huge blessing if you really think about it because you don't have to be working 10 hours a day, you know. And like we hear about it all the time, you just talked about it, people will get into a salaried position at an agency or at somewhere, next thing you know they're working Saturdays and Sundays, they're not getting paid, away from their family. And honestly, folks, when you're working for someone else, you're not building your business, you're building theirs. Just always remember that. So I always preface this, I've been working every single day, but that doesn't mean I haven't been to Italy, Hawaii, Miami, Vegas, all the places you probably want to be, or wherever people love to be at. Near the ocean, I was just in Pismo Beach and I was working, folks. I was— I had my power hour. I was busting open my laptop when my daughter was asleep, my wife was relaxing, and I'm getting work done. You know, I'm coordinating my team, I'm working on things for the podcast, I'm working on actual physical social campaigns and That's the blessing of it, is that you get to control that, you know, and you don't have to be sitting there for 8 hours if you're not. Because I'm with you, man. I'm like, I don't want to work more than I have to, you know. Like, if I can get shit done in 1 hour, I'm not gonna make it drag on to 4 hours, you know what I mean? It's like, that's why I call it the power hour. It's just like when you put your mindset on it, you block out all interruptions, you can get a lot done, folks.

There's a method that's called the The Pomodoro technique. And actually, it's something that I learned when I was 19 years old as a lifeguard on the beach because we used to— 8-hour shifts were pretty standard. Sometimes there'd be some overtime. And in 8 hours, man, on a very busy crowded beach, we worked at this one particular field where we had 100,000 people.

Oh, wow.

It's a lot of humanity on half a mile of beach in the middle of the summer in this spot where the Atlantic Ocean was just raging. I mean, rip currents, riptides were really strong there. So we're always making rescues, but we didn't work 8 hours. None of us could have been at our best for 8 hours. Can you imagine being at your best, like Olympic-level best for 8 hours? No way. And by the way, when it's life and death, like it was, you had to be at your best. So the way that worked was we work an hour, a power hour. Okay, that's— I'm thinking about it because of you, the power hour. And then we take a down hour, and that was a power hour in the other direction. So that meant we could sleep, we could nap, we could eat, we could look at girls, we could We could work out in the— we had a set of weights in our shack. I mean, we could surf. We could do any of those things in that other hour and then we were back up on the stand for an hour. So, it was up an hour, down an hour. We toggled back and forth that way. And the Pomodoro Technique is one where— and folks, you can just go ahead and now you got me saying folks. Yeah.

Let's do this.

Let's change it to humans. Humans. Humans. It's about how to toggle back and forth between focused, committed time, usually in 20 to 30-minute increments, can be as much as an hour, and then you take a commensurate rest period, a recovery period. Yes. Because all of our work and research on the topic of resilience is that resilience is not about endurance as people think it is. You know, like, I've just got to be a marathon runner, but I'm going to run a marathon every day. Every day I'm going to run a marathon. It's like, it's ridiculous because you break yourself down. You break yourself down mentally. Mentally, first and foremost, and then physically for sure, emotionally, even spiritually. And then you're not performing at the same level. But if you wanted to deliver an Olympic-level performance every time you sit down at your desk to do whatever it is that your business requires, then you've got to recover. And that's the whole key is you got to bake the recovery. And that is a particular advantage, I think, of being a lifestyle entrepreneur. Oh yeah. You can bake that in. But even if you're not, even if you're working in a You know, someone else's business, you're mid-career or beginning your career, ending your career, wherever it is, you can start to adopt and create new rituals that will enable you to take this approach to how it is that you focus like that power hour, that power 30 minutes, and you're so productive right there. And then you also unplug right after.

Absolutely. Watch Kobe. Right now I've been watching Kobe interviews. You know

what I mean?

Putting all this mindset stuff into my head. Absolutely with you on that.

I mean, what's your definition, Travis, of resilience? What do you think?

You know what? Well, first off, I've had 3 major challenges in my life. First was when I was 17, I was about 300 pounds and I had to make a decision about my body. So, I had to decide, folks, I gotta start cutting out the fries and chips and all that and start going to the gym. Shit. Get your body in right. Second was, I, at 27, I went through a divorce. I started a business and I also bought a house that closed January of 2009. So just think about that.

Tough time.

Tough time. And third was my baby. So resilience to me is this. I always say this. First off, just do you, period. Because you will be resilient if you focus on the things that are important to you first. Then you can be a bigger impact for everybody. The more I get my power hour done, the better father I can be with my, with my daughter. Like, I'm hammering this out right here. I consider this a power hour. When I'm done with this and my daughter wakes up, I get to spend quality time with her, not working, playing, reading, doing stuff that has nothing to do with work. Yes. So the point is this, folks, is focus on the things you gotta get done and do them. Don't let excuses, people, life, all that bullshit that people say for themselves— folks, you are in control of this. No one else is. You are. And so resilience to me is focus on the things you got to get done and do them.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com. And not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

Because no matter what, there's going to be pressures, there's going to be things. My wife wants to maybe have another kid. That's a whole other level of resilience I'm gonna have to fight against, you know, having 2 kids now instead of just one. And my business, I got to still keep grinding. The algorithms are always changing since I started this business 10 years ago. Shit, the social media algorithms, the Instagram, the Facebook algorithms, they're always changing. And what do you think we do? We just fold our hands and say, oh, we're gonna stop running a social media management firm? No, you figure them out. You figure things out. You figure what works now. Okay, this didn't work now, but okay, well, this stuff does work now. And so

it's like everyday pivots.

I mean, yeah, you have to, you have to, seriously. Like, especially in social, like, it's, it's literally—

See, you are I mean, to me, it's sort of a poster child for the world of an entrepreneur. You're in your business, working on your business a lot. So when we're talking about resilience and the way that you maintain that resilience, what's a ritual, if you can call it, or a habit even? We refer to them as rituals just because this is something you consciously are doing to benefit yourself in some way. What's one of those rituals you have to remain resilient? Absolutely.

I would say it's this right here, a piece of paper with what you got to get done for the day. You know, my first is always the day. So today I got my boy Adam right here. I got his podcast. That was one of my biggest things today because I knew I got to show up and deliver for this right now. This is my man. I've been listening to your shows. You're building something very special. So I knew I had to bring some value first. That was very important to me. Then it's my business. What do I get done in my business? You see the things that are crossed off? Yes. That means because I got them done. Folks, and the last two are actually two rent are more. I guess you could say like out outside of business. It's personal. What do I get done personally? I want to make a video for my daughter recapping my first year. That's one of my things I haven't done today. And so I just put these things together, and I literally just say, okay, what do I get done? Let's start hammering out when I get my power hour. This has changed my life. Like for me, a simple pen. And a simple notepad.

Yellow pad, baby. All right.

Freaking changed my life.

This is where we have a little simpatico moment, right?

Yeah. My man's knocking them out. Boom, boom, boom.

You know, it's kind of a fun thing to experiment with these productivity hacks. And this is definitely not very different. In fact, really similar to what you just described. You just wake up in the morning as part of whatever your morning routine is. And in a moment, I'm going to just end with my own waking ritual, but a little bit into the morning after I've eaten, after I've spent some time quiet, not a lot of time, but just some time to be mindful, I think about what's the critical inch in my business today? What is the critical inch? What's that one most important thing? And for a lot of people, you know, it could be that you've got to review a contract, you've got to speak to a lawyer about something, you got to have a sales call, you got to have a tough call with a client, you know, who's upset with you or somebody you want to fire. I mean, it could be any number of things that are going on. Right. That would be the most important thing for that day and that's the thing you do before 10:00 AM. You do that hardest thing. You do that most uncomfortable thing right out of the gate. And if you just do that, it erases a lot of procrastination which is a big issue for a lot of folks. And the flip side of the procrastination coin is perfectionism. So you might think to yourself, I'm not a procrastinator, and then ask yourself the question, but am I a perfectionist? Yeah. And usually they're one and the same. Because if it's not perfect, if it's not right, if it's not ready, whatever the words are that we tell ourselves, then we delay. We don't do it till it's ready, till it's right, till it's perfect, etc. So regardless, what's wonderful about this tip, this way of approaching the day, is you just do that toughest thing first right out of the gate before 10:00 AM.

So— That's about to work for everybody, by the way, folks. Just so you know, that's going to work for everybody.

I love the list, Travis. It's so classic. It's really, you know, some old school things are not old school. They just work and they're timeless. And the yellow pad or the pad of any color and the stuff for the day and crossing it off, you know, you feel great, man. You feel accomplishment when you do it and you can see your scorecard, right? That's what that is. You pulled up that yellow pad again for us. You see a scorecard of travel. Yeah. And that scorecard doesn't lie, right?

Absolutely. I think, I think folks just remember this. The biggest tip he said is do the hardest thing first. Because it makes everything easier. You know, like when you know you got to have that difficult conversation, should I put together a— one of my customers wanted to put together, like he said, hey, I want you to take over all my digital media. So we had just been doing this one piece. Now I knew I had to put together a much more comprehensive proposal, but this is my biggest thing of the day because he's one of my most awesome customers. And so the point is, it was actually pretty difficult because I was like, oh shit, do I want to put this together? I got some other stuff to do. But I put that together and the next thing you know, like And then like 4 other things just get done quickly because it's like all that other stuff is so much easier. You know, like there's usually like a few tough things that we have to get done. And if you get those things done, just like the gym, just like meditation, just like anything, day goes smoothly. Everything is easier, you know? And so, because a lot of those other repeat tasks are repetitive, we've already done them. We already know how to do scheduling and posts or whatever it is. You already know how to run a podcast, you know? Yeah. So, that's the biggest thing, folks. Don't forget that the biggest one on your list needs to be done first.

I love it, Travis. Thank you for that. The last thing I want to say is this, and this is a ritual, waking ritual, and I think this is a tough one. This may be the toughest thing for a lot of people. I know at various points in my life, it's been the toughest thing for me. And so, in keeping with that idea that you do the toughest thing first, we're all going to have the same opportunity tomorrow if we're lucky. If we're fortunate, if we're blessed, we'll have the same opportunity to wake up tomorrow morning and start our day the way we choose. And we all get the fact that there's no guarantee of that. Some people are going to wake up tomorrow. Hopefully everybody that's— that we're reaching right now in this moment and your families and your friends and everybody you know, I mean, and extend it out to the entire earth, of course. Right. You know, you want everybody to wake up, but the reality is that's just not what's going to happen. So that moment when we wake up and what we choose to invest our time in at that moment and the thoughts that we— thoughts are like seeds. So it's the seeds that we plant in our minds at that moment are not as easy as it sounds. I mean, to me, that's one of the toughest tasks in anybody's life on a day-to-day basis is to actually think good thoughts, think rightly. You talk about— I'm not a big religious guy, but I love studying Spiritual texts and the word righteousness as a part of spiritual texts is sometimes misunderstood, or at least I'll say the way I understand it to mean is that it's right thinking, right thinking. And so to think rightly, it isn't easy, and to do it consistently, it isn't easy. But why not every day you're blessed enough to wake up, do one thing in that moment, at that waking moment. When the soil is fresh, you can plant a seed right then and there. Just do one thing there to get that day off on the right thinking foot, mixing the metaphor there. But the idea here is what's something you can say? What's something you can think? So for me, it's gratitude. I'm going to feel grateful at the moment of waking, hopefully every day till eternity, because there is so much to just appreciate in life. You know, it's the usual things and it's the things that we sometimes overlook. So, simple waking rituals tomorrow. We're all gonna wake up. That's number one. Travis, you agree to that? You're gonna wake up tomorrow?

I pray and hope so, man. Yes.

All right. So, that's it.

Let's do this.

Wake up, have some moment to just feel gratitude in that moment. And then, if you're up for this particular challenge, this is tough. Again, this is not an easy thing, but you can make that difficult do something difficult right out of the gate, and that's to say something about yourself, to create a statement, a mantra, an I am statement, something about you that is maybe aspirational. Maybe you want to feel some way, but you don't feel it all the time. Like, I am a world-class, and then fill in the blank. Right. What do you want to be world-class at? And say that statement at the start of the day. I use 4 words. I've used these 4 words. It's this topic that I I spoke about on the TED stage as well. These 4 simple words I start my day with are, I love my life.

Ooh.

And those words are important to me because I don't always love everything going on. And I have moments where I'm frustrated, angry, and just like everybody else, you know, just go through that stuff where it's like something sucks. The experience feels like it's just not the way I want it to be. And so to start off and plant that seed at the beginning of the day that I'm going to love my life today, I'm going to love my life today. No matter what, no matter what bad news I might hear or read or see, or how somebody might rub me the wrong way, or whether I get a client or lose a client, or whatever it might be, that I'm gonna love my life no matter what in that moment.

That's powerful, man.

It's tough.

That's powerful too, to actually take that and own that and think about all the greatness we have here. I mean, I think about people that, you know, unfortunately they even have greatness and they're not happy. You know, and so if they could even tell themselves that, you know, one thing I've always done, Adam, uh, as after coming across one of my guests, Garen Jones, was, uh, to release all fears, all worries, all stress. Tell yourself that 5 times and then tell yourself, I am now finally free from all worry, all stress, all negative energy. You know, whatever you think, whatever you're thinking, there's no right answer. Mm-hmm. But you can say, you know, with God and the universe's help, you can say whatever you'd like. But I find that It helps me and my wife a lot of times at night when we're sleeping, but also I do it in the morning because, you know, like you said, you've got a fresh day in front of you, you know. And so when you say and you release anything you feel that's negative, anything you feel that is holding you back, it changes your game. It changes the game for you. I mean, it really does, because you feel in some moments, you feel like this burden is off my chest, it is off my life. And it's only you saying it to yourself. I mean, it's not

Right.

It's just you, but that's all we have. A lot of times it's just like my wife always says, you got to be your own cheerleader. You know, like, don't think other people got to be your cheerleader. You got to cheerlead for yourself.

And that's tough for people, right, Travis? So the key here is we're gonna keep to that theory of do the toughest thing before 10. Let's say you get— you can lock in a victory right out of the gate upon waking. Lock in a victory. Say something, declare something, think something that puts you off on the right foot, even if it's tough. Even if you're saying to yourself, man, you know, today's gonna be a tough day, and yet what do I really want to— how do I want to experience today? And even though you might have to go to court or you might have, God knows, any number of other things that are going on in your life that day, can I still decide at the moment of waking that I'm gonna experience this day exactly the way I intend? Mm-hmm. And you just laid that out perfectly for us. So Travis, thank you so much for being a guest on this show. Really appreciate all the insights that you shared with our folks today.

Oh yeah.

Well done.

I appreciate you, man, my man, and I'm gonna stick to that one. I love my life. I love my life. I'm gonna put that on the wall today. I love my life.

Way cool. All right, everybody, you know what to do. Please leave a comment. Let us know your thoughts. Go to adammarkel.com/podcast. Leave a comment and go anywhere else that you want to share those things. We've got a Facebook group that is called the Start My Pivot group. You can check more of what people are doing in their pivots out on that site as well. And again, we love to get your feedback, so share it with us. Travis, again, thanks so much for being on the show. Ciao for now, everybody.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.