I'm Back!

I'm back. Hey, striver, it's Brendon Burchard. And this is a special episode here where I wanted to share some of my experiences of the last three weeks where I had the opportunity to travel over to Europe, come back to the US speak to 15 or 18,000 people in an arena and just get back into the flow of things after a little bit of a break, honestly, one of the longer breaks I've taken in my entire career. So it was a lot of fun. And you probably have noticed a little bit of absence from me on social media in terms of, you know, fresh stories or fresh reels or fresh content. And that's because I decided to really take a break, take a step away, practice exactly what I preach and what I believe, which is the need to rejuvenate ourselves strategically on top of all our other high performance habits that keep us successful and striving and doing well. This will be an extended episode, so forgive the length, but if you'd like to hear some of the frameworks I taught that 15,000 people in that big arena in St. Louis, which was a beach body convention, their annual convention, and, and you'd like to hear some philosophies about rest, recovery, productivity catching up and what I think is happening in this world and in this economy. This is gonna be a special one for you. Again, it's a little longer than usual, but it's the first one back and I just thought I'd take some time here today. So a couple things, you know, before I get to the trips and the travel, I'm always asked, how do I make, maintain it all? You know, how do I do all of this? I mean, you all know I have a company called Growth Day, which is our software company, part of the personal development. I've got, you know, my Brendan brand, which is my own personal brand, my own email lists, my own courses, content, speeches, books, audios, courses, audibles, et cetera. I've got multiple companies that I invest in and, and run or advised. And I've got company I partner in. I've got just like you, family, friends, health, trying to keep it all together. And I'll just preface it by this. So much of what allows me to do all that is in high performance habits, which is, I hope you've read it, or if you're in Growth Day, it's a free course in Growth Day. It's called the High Performance Habit Builder. Just watch that. That's a big piece of it. I also use Growth Day to track my habits each week, as you all know. So tracking my habits, those high performance habits by that weekly life score really keeps me on track. It just helps me become more self aware and just more, I guess, focused. And that's a big part of it. I also am blessed to have amazing teams that we built up over the year. I've got amazing understanding and boundaries with my family and friends and teams. I've got opportunity each day to wake up energized, to do this, to be here for you, to speak to you, to talk to you. For 20 years, I've created content for you every single day. Whether that's creating a video or an audio, a podcast, a daily fire now and growth day. If it's, you know, a short little quote card, if it's a quick story, if it's just a note on a new framework in my phone, I'm capturing, thinking about the next time I'm teaching. I'm always in this mode, but like everyone else, I need a break and so rarely do I take them. But I'd like to talk about the overall philosophy outside of like, how do you do it all with high performance habits? I think I'll start with just here's eight ways to get a little bit more break in your life and then I'll jump into the content and everything we taught at the large arena event for Beachbody. So just a couple ideas. People say, how do you do it? How do you stay fresh? How do you come up with this content? More importantly, just how do you enjoy your life? If I have any reputation in the industry, I would say, you know, the three things about my reputation is, number one, just that unbelievable, unflagging consistency of creating great content for you all. Second is just integrity and good reputation of taking care of our teams, our customers and the industry. And third, lifestyle. You know, even though I was just away for two or three weeks, I didn't feel that I had to continue doing the exact same content rhythm I've had throughout my entire career. A lifestyle approach which is, hey, if I'm going to work this hard, I'm going to do it on my own terms. Not to the expectations of the crowd or the fans or social media or what I think I should be doing. And I think that's a nice thing to hear these days where everyone thinks they can never take a break. They have to create content every single second, every single day. At least in my industry, people are super paranoid about it. But there's other great examples of people who've achieved mastery who decided to Take a break and come back. Great authors who might have years between their books, you know, great comedians who take a break and take a step away and then hit the stage again and come roaring right back. Business leaders who wind down one company, wait a couple more years, wind up a new one. And it's okay to have this idea that sometimes we are in transition and sometimes we have to set boundaries about what we have to do. And so one of the things I decided right off the bat with this particular vacation was to get support of my team to really access our vault of content and some of our best content we've had out there and repost those or repurpose those, or schedule those in a new way or a new format to allow the content and the company and everything to keep going. But for me to take a bit of break from that creation. But there's a deeper philosophy here of rest and recovery than just, you know, hopping on a plane and going to Europe, which I think I was one of the ker billion Americans in Europe in the last 30 days, sorry, Europe. But here's what I do outside of this extended vacation. Time to stay fresh. Number one. As many of you know, every single day I work my morning routine to keep my mind, my health, my perspective fresh. Instead of burning out, I get up, I do that 20 minutes of movement, that 20 minutes of reading, that 20 minutes of planning, and that's just free from. I don't check in, I don't look at my phone. I'm not tweeting, I'm not, you know, on TikTok, I'm not browsing. I'm using the morning, that hour to really get myself in a good space. And there's times it can't be a full hour. Maybe it's 5, 10, 15 minutes. But I'm always on my own terms. Vast majority of the last decade, it's an hour in the morning I take to do those three things, move, read, and plan. These days at the end of that, I hop into growth day. I use the plan section to capture what my day and my week is about. And of course, I fill out the morning mindset under the journal prompt, which is a game changer for me, keeping me fresh with my mindset every day, as many of you know, approximately every 50 minutes to maybe 75 minutes, I actually take a break when I'm working. So if you've heard my research on this, in high performance Habits, one of the world's largest study that's ever been done on the most successful people found they actually take a break from on average every 50 to 52 minutes. And so I follow that every single day for 15 years. I tend to take a break at the top of the hour, even if that just means go get some water, walk around the house, stretch out, do jumping jacks, do you know, a couple Vinyasa flows, bounce in place, close my eyes, do some qigong. Whatever it is, it's an hourly reset where it's like my pit stop for increased energy throughout the day. So the first thing I would do is just that I would say that morning routine. Second thing would be that daily hour break. Third thing I would say is that daily meditation. I tend to do an afternoon meditation. It can be anywhere between 15 minutes and sometimes even 45 minutes if I happen to fall asleep in it. I'd say probably 30 or 40% of the time I actually fall asleep during the meditation in the afternoon. But it resets me for a powerful mid afternoon burst and for longer mental stamina and happiness throughout the rest of the day. Another thing I do is that I've always practiced the idea that I should make sure the mornings at work are mine to actually create, do, review, get things done, not be trapped in my inbox and not be on calls, actually produce. If you read the chapter on productivity and high performance habits, you know the importance of making sure that we're doing quality, prolific output in our careers. That requires time. So it's rare that I'm on a phone before noon sometimes, you know, like on a Monday, that might be different. But in general, I keep my mornings to doing stuff, creating, being on my own agenda, making sure I'm fulfilling my life or my business's agenda. Another thing that keeps me fresh is that I try to make sure that on a weekend I'm really clear where I'm personally going to recover on a weekend. Because on a weekend I might have some work to catch up on. I might have plans and schedules with my wife, friends, family, other things. So I'm really clear on where is that hour, two, three, four hours, where it's just my time, it's for me to recharge. Maybe I linger longer at the gym and decide to hit the sauna or the steam room. Maybe it's an extra long walk just by myself, listening to a podcast. Maybe I spend a little bit more time outside reading a book. But something that's just for me on a weekday, on a website, on a weekend, I know it's just for me. Of course, then throughout the year you've got those Breaks those holidays with family. For me, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas are big ones. Then I've got the trips or the breaks with my wife where it's just the two of us. Pre pandemic. We used to do, you know, two or three big trips a year together. And I say big trips meaning for us, like leaving the house, like, not a staycation, but like go out somewhere, spend, you know, time, energy, effort, money on an actual escape. And it didn't have to be fancy, especially when we were starting, right. But later on, as we got more successful, it was like, oh, let's go spend, you know, a couple nights at a nice place, nice food, really relax. And, you know, I used to have a rhythm where I also would go do one trip a year with friends, often July 4th, or often new Year's, or often, you know, some adventure up in Montana. And then, of course, I travel a lot for work, as many of you know, which will get to the point here in a little bit where when I travel for work, I always also do the same exact thing where when I'm traveling, I approach it kind of like my weekends. Where on this work trip am I going to find that block of time that is just for me to recharge and enjoy life again? Whether lingering at a longer workout or reading or taking a break or taking a long walk and listening to a podcast or even just sleeping in. But something that is specific just for me on a work trip. Often I make sure when I come back from a work trip, I take a significant amount of time for myself, even if I'm like, just coming home. And, you know, let's say I come home from work trip at 3 o' clock and I know dinner's at like 7 o'. Clock. I might just brainstorm with Denise, like, hey, you know what, can we just meet up at dinner? I'm going to take a beat here. Or if I'm traveling, I might stay at a hotel for an extra half day before traveling. Even though I could get home maybe three or four hours earlier, I'll take that later flight. So it's just a little less pressure to get on that flight at that time. Does that make sense? So those are some things I know that's just a lot to throw at you, but I. I know that when I was gonna do this episode, I was like, you know what? Thousands and thousands of replies are gonna come back like, but how do you manage your life? Well, High performance habits. But how do you approach rest and recovery? Well, there's eight things that I do. And those things seem to serve me pretty good. So I know a lot of that just sounds like having a lot of blessings and opportunity and privilege to be able to take time away from the day, to be able to go on to trips, to be able to have these breaks. And I don't share that lightly, knowing that also in the last three years, Denise and I really didn't get away. And there was reasons because of the Pandemic. There was reasons because we were launching Growth Day. There was reasons because we were restructuring lots of things and really building and expanding and investing and just really just heads down, leading teams and taking care of people through the pandemic. So this break was much needed. As much as I know it can sound like, oh, yeah, there's Brennan going off to Europe again. It's like, man, I want to let you know, I am one of those people proud and happy and joyous to share that I believe people should take breaks. And I do want people to travel and have vacation and experience it. What's the point of all of the hard work if we don't make sure we take care of ourselves and refresh ourselves sometimes? And. And like I said, sometimes it's a staycation and sometimes it's a broader travel trip. For us, this was a big trip and it was super fun. We had the blessing of going to Italy and then France. We met up with a bunch of friends. We saw, you know, some old friends, some new friends. We had a really remarkable and fun time seeing the coasts of Italy, the coast of France. It was just awesome experience. Hopped on a plane, came back to Northern California, landed, went to bed, got up, packed a carry on, hopped on a plane, went to St. Louis where Beachbody was having their big convention. Now, I'm not a, you know, member or distributor of Beachbody, so I'm not in that industry. However, I love that brand and I love their workouts. I've used them, I've used their products before. I was excited about it. And as many of you know, I used to keynote five to 10 major arenas a year. And when I say that, I'm talking about, like, arenas with 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people. That was a huge part of my life. And so this was the first arena gig that I had since the pandemic. In February of 2020, I did one of our large events called HPX at the time, which stood for High Performance Experience. It was kind of like our High Performance Academy event. And we had, I don't 2,500 people and that was February of 2020. And you remember March is when it became very clear we were in a pandemic that was going to shut things down. And so I'd gotten that event in. And since then I have not been on a major stage in the thousands of people. So this was a big coming back and I wanted to challenge myself. And so I'll share a couple things that I taught for you and you might enjoy and also some of the perspectives I had as a speaker coming back into the industry and really enjoying it. It also happened to be a very special one for me. Honestly. I believe, if I got this right, that St. Louis was the last major arena that sort of on the speaker grand slam, if there was such a thing, where there's these major arenas in the US and Canada, maybe only 50 or 75 of them that are like major conference events, that have events where like keynote speakers like myself might show up, maybe if only 50 or 75 major ones. And St. Louis was the last one on my list. It took 15 years to cross off all those arenas. But I've been blessed to be a keynote speaker for a really long time. And so this was really exciting. Coming back to it, I thought, you know, what, what do I want to share? And of course, what does the client need me to share? So we discussed lots of. I had many pre conference conversations about some themes that they were gonna be covering at their event, about what some of their leaders are going through, some of their new people are going through. And I always ask lots of questions and have lots of conversations before any presentation, certainly before an audience of that size, some of those who knew my brand, and you're like, wait, you do these keynotes and do all this stuff? Brandon, I just thought you were running a software company called Growth Day. Well, no, most of my career has been speaking, teaching. Really. When you ask me what do I do? I'm a writer, I'm a coach, and I'm a trainer. And I'm just one of the few trainers, meaning someone who teaches really in depth or teaches from a framework or research perspective, who ever transcended and crossed into that arena level keynote. And I used to teach a program on how to actually do that, on how to be a speaker. We call it world's Greatest Speaker Training. I'll probably bring it back someday, maybe next year, the year after, where we really sat down with some of the best speakers in the world and helped them hone their craft and get booked and all that stuff. But I digress. So I've had a lot of experience at it, but I was nervous this was coming back. This was the first time in, you know, two and a half years that I was on a. In front of a major arena. It was the first time that I. I also, you know, felt not in my best place in front of an arena. I had kind of ripped out my ankle in Europe, hiking. I stepped on something and just went and really, really sprained my ankle. So I had it all taped up and was wearing, like, high tops so that it was really immobile. And if you've ever seen me hit the stage, you can visit my Instagram to see or see tons of people who are posting all over social media. This last weekend, I hit the stage hard. I play that Macklemore song I love, Ceiling Can't Hold Us. And I just hit the stage hard. You know, the stages are often arenas especially. They might be anywhere between 30 and 90ft long. And I try to cover all the way to the left, all the way to the right within 60 or 90 seconds. So it's like hitting the stage hard, 60, 90 seconds, going clap and jump and get the people going, man. I love it. And I was worried. I was worried would my ankle hold up? I was worried what would it feel like. I haven't been in front of an audience for a while, but I also did a lot of the backstage work of just calming my mind and not having super high expectations. Not worried about what anyone's gonna think, not too overly focused on what my framework was gonna be. Cause I'd already prepared for that for days ahead. And it was just trusting. It was just kind of like getting back on a bike. And I had the blessing of talking with a lot of the Beachbody leaders backstage. Hey, guys. Thank you. You were awesome, everyone. It was in a good mood, and everybody knew that they needed this event coming back together. And I know not everyone can travel all around the world yet. I know not a lot of people do want to travel all around the world. I know there's still lots of concerns about the pandemic, and lots of people don't want to be in a conference setting. I understand all of that. And I just didn't know what it was going to feel like out there because of all of that. But the buoyancy, the excitement, the great connection, the full engagement, if you saw it on social media, it was there. It was immediate. I hit the stage, audience started standing up. They, they, they, you know, I started clapping, getting fired up, doing some callbacks. They were in it pretty Dang quick. And I felt blessed about that. Five years previously in I believe it was New Orleans, Yeah, I had keynoted the Superdome for Beachbody. So this was my second time there. And I made the decision to try not to share or teach the same. Five years earlier, my book High Performance Habits had come out. It's been five years. Can you all believe that? So I taught that last time. And I taught two of my favorite stories. Last time I told my car accident story, which tends to be 15 to 20 minutes, where I share how I learned that our lives is sort of our. Our last questions in life, or where we contemplate whether or not we lived and we loved and we mattered. And then towards the end, I've got this, you know, one of the sort of talks or stories that made my entire career, which was Jumping into Fear, where I tell the story of skydiving, and I kind of relive what happened to me while I went skydiving. It's like literally a worldwide famous story, at least in the keynote world that I. I used to get booked, you know, $75,100,000 just to come and tell that one story because it's hilarious. Well, I did that five years ago. So this time I said, I don't want to. I don't want to do the things I've done before. One thing that has made, I think, a big difference in my career is not just, you know, how long I've been doing it, but this thing I have where I say every single time I go onto a stage, I'm going to challenge myself to do something or say something that's very uncomfortable, that will push me outside my comfort zone. That can be teaching something completely new in front of a large audience, which is what I did here. It can be trying something physical. Let me give you an example. Five years ago in Beachbody, prior to me showing up, I had interviewed a couple of their trainers. They, I think they had to call them super trainers. And I asked them, what are some of the hardest moves in the Beachbody catalog? And I was at that time specifically talking with, I think, Chalene Johnson and Tony Horton, and they shared some of the moves that were really hard for people, and I learned them. And so here I am on stage five years ago in front of, I don't know, 30,000 people. And I wanted to make a connection with the audience. So I decided to do these moves on stage right in the middle of a sentence so that. Just to create a connection. And I knew it was a big risk. Because there were hard moves. I mean, this is like a handstand, a donkey kick, a crossover, a one handed bridge. And to do that in a suit, with suit shoes, you know, on a slippery stage in front of 30,000 people. I knew if I fell, they'd love me for trying. If I pulled it off, they'd. They love me for connecting and caring about what they did. So it's that kind of thing. It was crazy to try to do that. But that's the difference of someone who kind of is able to climb up in their career because they keep trying harder and more difficult things on stage. Most people get on stage, they just don't want to throw up. Most people get on stage, they just don't want to be embarrassed. Most people, in other words, are in their own head versus challenging themselves in how they might connect with the audience. And so that was a big part of it. And so I thought, okay, well, I don't want to tell the car accident story, I don't want to tell the skydiving story, and I don't want to teach the frameworks that I've been teaching on stage for the last years. I'm not one of those guys who has the same speech all the time though. I tend to tell my car accident story on most major stages I get on and usually the 15 or 20 minute version of it if I'm teaching for an hour, because I just believe that's why I'm here. It's so central to why I started all of this. And I feel like that's a key message of mine, which is, please think about the questions you will ask at the end of your life. Because if you woke up each day with intention to live your life in such a way, you'd be happy with the answers to, to those questions at the end of your life, then you lived an intentional and purposeful life. And so I talk about second chances with my car accident and suicide and about how we can all start anew if we learn some personal development and stick to it. Hey, it's Brandon jumping back in here again. Are you looking to go to the next level in your life right now? The next level of joy, abundance, success. Then you already know that you need to journal about your lessons learned in your life. You gotta track your moods and your habits. You have to learn from the best personal development coaches and teachers in the world. And you gotta stay inspired and accountable so that you can be more focused, disciplined, joyous, and keep growing. That's what the Growth Day app is gonna Help you to do, my friend. It's the world's first all in one personal development app. It has all of the tools you need, all the coaching and the community that you need to level up to progress every week, to track your breakthroughs, and to keep growing in every area of your life consistently over the long term. So go start your transformation right now@growthday.com or just download the Growth Day app on your phone right now. Every day. You can keep improving every day. We are here for you. And every day is truly a great day to grow together. So let's make self improvement a way of life. Let's make that self improvement stick. Go to growthday.com right now. Okay, so enough backstory, I promise I'd kind of get to it here of what I taught and maybe what I experienced on stage age. And so what I decided to do was teach a framework that I've been talking about in Growth Day with like Growth Day Pro members, but I haven't really put out there broadly. I haven't written a book on it just yet, though I plan to. And it's something I've never presented in front of a large audience before. And that was a framework that I just call the four desires. These are like the four human desires that we all have after we have basic safety or sustenance. As an example, though, these do fit in there. And that is basically if you drew out a triangle, which I had a slide on stage and just taught about how these three sides of the triangle are the three sort of human desires, in the middle is the amplifier. And so I didn't use that language, but you get the idea. I'm trying to describe it in audio here for you. So you imagine a triangle. If you draw it out right now, one of the sides of the triangle you label aliveness. I believe one of the central things that we all desire in our life is a sense of aliveness. People might call that different things, right? You might call that vibrancy. You might call that energetic health. You might call that spirit, you might call that passion. You might call that enthusiasm. You might call that presence. You might call that flow, whatever. You call that that state of being where we feel here now and energized mentally, physically, spiritually or emotionally. We all want more of that aliveness. And contemplatively, when you think about philosophy or you think about the human journey, the opposite. That is our mortal being, our mortal experience, right? We're all going to die, so we want to be alive while we're Here, very central to my car accident as well. That idea that I want to live my life. I want to be alive, fully alive, fully engaged, while I'm here. But I'm not here to repeat the speech to you, but just to give you some of the context, because I spent a lot of time talking about that and how aliveness for many people feels like it was kind of like stolen during the last couple years. Certainly we lost many people because of the pandemic, but also because there was so much uncertainty and so much fear and so much change and so much difficulty during these last couple years. A lot of people lost that sense of aliveness. So I talked about how to bring that back a little bit, bring joy back in a little bit, about how to be a little more intentional and about the reasons that we need to be alive right now and in terms of service for other people because of the economy to show up and be engaged again. I don't want to rehash the speech, just giving you a quick recap. Another side of that triangle you would label as another human desire. Connection. We all desire deep, authentic reality, connection with others. And if we're a person of spirit with the divine that we desire, real connection. Not this social media kind of connection. Real connection with real people, real family, real friends. And a lot of that also is taken away because trying to lead or serve or love or connect through zoom is a little hard. And so a sense of connection felt like it was taken away. But the only way that we can really thrive and survive in life and ultimately reach even higher performance is through connection through our relationships. So I talked a lot about relationships, and I talked about how when they go bad, it can lead to difficult things. And I talked about when I became suicidal in high school because of a breakup with somebody I loved. And I talked about how we can quickly become caged in our own thoughts about connection and relationships. I would say it was one of the quieter moments in the entire arena when I talked about the caged life, if you ever studied my work before, and about how we can feel like sort of caged animals at some point behind bars, separate than other people. And. And that can quickly lead to a sense of division, where we feel like, you know what? They don't understand me. I'm different than them. There's nothing for me here because you don't sense that connection with other people. And that can lead to really terrifying thinking and actions. I talked about that, and you could hear pin drop. I mean, that's one things that I've been always attentive to is the rhythm of speech. When you're giving a speech, you got the high points, you got the low points. It's like a roller coaster ride. And your job is to be attentive to those and to take the audience on a journey in such a way that the points hit emotionally, but also pull out of that and move to something that doesn't feel jarring. So if you drew out that triangle, the human desires, at the bottom of that is meaningful pursuits. And I transitioned into a conversation about meaning and about purpose or service to others. And we all desire a pursuit that is meaningful in life. And this is really important because I think some people, they are fulfilled in their lives, but they don't. They're like, I don't understand it. I have aliveness. I've got great relationships, so I'm healthy. I've got great relationships. You know, I got a good job, but I'm not happy because there's not a pursuit. They are actively engaged and that connects to a future vision. Even if just right now, the things that I'm doing today matter to me or I remind myself that they matter and they're building to a greater destiny. If I don't sense that I'm pursuing something, not just experiencing, but pursuing something, even if just this week, then it's hard to find, feel the day, to feel alive, to feel connection. These things, of course, all connect. And then the center of that triangle is growth. We all want to grow in our character, in our creative expression, in our relationships, in our health, in our finances. We all want to grow in who we are becoming. These are major themes that I took on with the audience. And then I kind of broke it down about, well, why don't we have those things? And if you read the motivation manifesto, you remember that there's kind of like three things that keep us back. And those three things are doubt, division, and delay. I showed a funny picture about these three dragons, and I'll leave that as an inside joke to the audience there that they'll remember. But I talked about how those things doubt when we doubt ourselves. And we take that as a signal to stop versus as a signal to learn and to continue and get better. I talk about division and how social media and politics are kind of ripping us apart from one another and we're losing that unity, that oneness of the human spirit, but also the unity in our families, that unity in our teams, that unity as a culture trying to get better. And of course, as an organization which Beachbody is that concept of unity is vital, isn't it? Think about any team, any company. This is one reason so many companies hire me, is that I'm the person who comes back in and helps them develop that unity, that connection, that culture again, that's not only vibrant and connected, but sharing a broader sense of meaning together and really sensing that we're doing something together, important. And then that last thing I covered was delay how these stories and distractions we tell ourselves delay us from taking actions that are needed in our families and how much that can cost us, taking actions in our businesses and how much that can cost us. And I think there was a point there where I was sharing how, you know, later on, how if you, meaning the audience, if you don't take action, somebody else is going to go make that sale and they're going to bring in that money for their family and that we have to realize that in a competitive marketplace, we got to show up, we got to engage, we got to try. And then later on. So I'll share. That was kind of the big picture of the frameworks. But of course, throughout that, you're weaving story and metaphor. You're kind of working the stage. You know, you got to cover all sides of an arena just energetically. To project into an arena is an incredible experience. You have to learn, especially when you're up there for 60 or, you know, 90 minutes. And so, you know, which for me is always a challenge because that's short for me. I know for some of you who haven't been in front of a large audience for a long amount of time, I love it. But I'm also used to speaking for like nine hours when we do our seminars. And yes, our seminars are coming back next year. Don't worry, we'll host a Growth Day summit and, you know, we'll put a couple thousand of you in and we'll change your life in three or four days, just like we used to do with HPX or High Performance Academy. We'll be back. But I. I used to teach for, like, literally days on end, just me with no other speakers. Again, I'm a trainer more so than a speaker. I just was a trainer who happened to cross over. And what you learn is you've got to really energetically engage different parts of the arena. You've got to ride and build energy. You got to know how to use silence and enthusiasm. You know how to build crescendo and. And most importantly, you just have to really care. You just have to care. You can't Fake that when your face is on a 40 foot jumbotron. Okay? Like you can't. You can. If you don't love this work and you don't love the audience, they'll feel it in an arena. It's why there's so few of us who do this work at that level. Because it has to be who you are. It has to be to me, forgive the language, I don't know other way and I know it sounds self congratulatory when I say it, but you have to be a servant leader that has to be so authentic and true to, to, to who you are. And I just, I love this audience, I love that business. I love those folks who, who work so hard to start an entrepreneurial journey when it's scary. And I know people always have some feedback about, well, you know, I don't like, you know, this industry health and fitness, or I don't like direct sales, or I don't like MLM or I don't like product companies or I don't like entrepreneurs or I don't whatever. You have a perspective of people who show up and take days out of their life to learn how to be better. And frankly, anything, especially as adults when they're out of school, is incredible. And I really believe that's one thing that we've lacked the last couple years. That human connection engaged in learning to become more. And because of that division spread like wildfire. We stop seeing each other and learning together and going to situations. Whether it was volunteer opportunities, whether it was seminars, conferences, networking opportunities to mix, mingle, learn, connect, set goals, share goals, talk about who you are, what's important, all of that. That's the power of conferences, that's the power of seminars, that's the power of networking, that's the power of volunteering, that's the power of being together in person. And it was awesome. I, you know, really had to get a hold of myself towards the end of the speech because frankly, it was not the best ending of a speech I ever had. I kind of, I kind of rambled a little bit too long. I feel like I didn't know exactly where I was going to end it because I got emotional and in a good way. I just was so grateful. I could see the people in the front rows, I could literally see their eyes. I really make connection with people and I could see that they had resonated with the content. What I wanted to achieve up there, I felt like I achieved and then more. Not because I'm great, because that audience is Great. And that's what you always have to know as a speaker. If you achieve anything on that stage, it's because of the audience. It's because they led you with their energy and you connected with it and you built something together. I felt like we had built something together, and that was pretty evident, frankly, afterwards. And so, for those who are listening from Beachbody, thank you so much. I mean, it was. It was a standing ovation. I'll remember a long, long time. You can already tell my voice is quite tired, but I'm also pretty emotional just telling the story, because it was. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful moment. I just appreciated it. And got to go back and talk with some of the senior leaders and some of the other speakers who were going up right after and got to watch them go up. I love to stay around after my talk and see the other speakers who go up and do what they do, unless I'm ending the conference. But it was nice to see, and it was just great energy. I had no idea what to expect because there was no call to action for me for the stage in terms of, you know, hey, go listen to my podcast or follow me on this thing or buy this thing. It was just there in service and in the speech. And then I had no idea that probably 90% of that 15,000 people were going to DM me or mention me on Instagram, and. And, you know, drove our podcast up because I tried to reply as many DMS as I could and let them know I was gonna do a special episode like this, kind of recapping the experience, but from. From what I had experienced. Cause you don't usually get to hear this stuff from speakers at conferences. And so I just shared some of that. And I know some of you, by the way, if you're like, wow, you sound a little different right now, you're not as energized as you were on stage or something like this. I wanna let you know, I'm also recording this at midnight. Right. I decided to come out to my little studio here and just knock this out tonight. So if I feel a little contemplative, it's just because it's late. That's all. It's late. And I really loved it. I loved the experience I had the blessing of. Afterwards, I did another speech for the company, their leaders, to their most successful members, and in a separate leadership track, if you will. And I just talked about how being a leader right now is very important in understanding how to move people through the phases of what we've just experienced and where we're at now, you know, we experienced the last couple years as so much. If you think about phase one, it was all about, you know, really like chaos and coping. It was about in, in the, in that pandemic, that first months of the pandemic, it was and, and, and afterwards, many for years, right. It was about safety. It was the shock of the change of our lives. It was about establishing some type of security and that safety and that coping was really a time when that was happening. To be a leader was just to try to figure out where the footing was and to help people with coping. But also just at that point, because we didn't know, no one knew what was going on, was to be that empathetic leader. Well, phase two is things became a little bit more known and yet there's still so much chaos and change. Great leaders had to help their people cope with the change in a different way. And that is to continue on with life, but to deal with all the new stresses because of the uncertainty. And so that is where you saw that entire year and a half of every company in the world focusing on what? Wellness, stress management, sleep recovery, you know, and so companies turn their whole focus towards the wellness and the well being of their people. Especially because so many of them were virtual and so many of them were scared or burnt out or because things were growing and reorganizing. It was just a lot more work for so many people. You know, there was many companies in many segments of industries had their best year, year and a half ever in history. And so during that time it was just a lot of work and it was a lot of go, go, go. So it helped people deal with the stress of just the uncertainty and the growth. Well, those phases have ended that coping. And I noticed a lot of people will not like me saying that ended because for, for you, maybe personally it hasn't, but when we talk about a larger global view, what I'm trying to say is the time in which an uncertain or chaotic or very drastic change happens. There's always a phase of which we're just trying to figure out what's happening, right? And then we've got to figure out what's happening and integrate it into our life and, and, and continue and move on and move through it. But then there's a stage where there's a major shift in how people are dealing and coping and another change happens where we have to now succeed, be productive, reach for high performance again at a different level because the expectations are Different. That is what I believe is happening right now. It's why I believe our work and Growth Day is more important than it's ever been. Because in this phase, at least in my opinion, and I know not everyone will agree with my phases here, but I spoke at length about them with the leaders. So I'm just giving you a, again, I'm just doing a quick recap for you here, but I believe where we are right now is I, I don't know where you're listening in the world, but particularly just imagine where I'm at, you know, not too far from Silicon Valley as an example is it's like, look at the nasdaq, look at the economy, inflation, recession, major layoffs, and after all of these years of, you know, pretty wild fiscal policy, we're in a place where the bill is due. Inflation's up, recession's here. And so what does that mean? Well, as a country here, I'm in the US Our GDP becomes important again. You know, basic fundamentals of the economy become important again. Productivity, workforce engagement, leadership. Right, all of these things that kind of got put on the back burner when we're all being empathetic and just trying to support people through major transitions. Now the rubber hits the road. The expectation is back to we need to be productive. It doesn't mean we don't also be empathetic. It doesn't mean we don't also. Many of us are still rooting for that security, that safety, trying to figure out how to deal with the stress that is still there. The phases don't end, they're still there. But this new expectation, I'm here to tell you, if it's not really clear yet where you're at, the next couple years are going to demand more of your full engagement and productivity leadership than you've probably experienced in your lifetime, unless maybe you're above the age of, let's say 65 or 70. This is going to be a very critical moment in your life, in your business and your career. And I think you're hearing that. I'm not saying that from my opinion. I'm somebody who spends literally every day, all week, all month, talking with leaders from all around the world. Our research and our content reaches over 190 countries. We're really that company with Growth Day. And in my personal brand, I've got my ear to the floor. I hear what's happening. I'm talking with people all the time. And what's very clear is leaders are expecting and expected to focus on Productivity right now. And don't worry, I'm not saying this to lead to some big crescendo of like, hey, go do this thing. I mean if you're in growth day, awesome. You have the best software and tools for self improvement, habit tracking, planning your days. We have tons of content and training on productivity in growth day. There's my self serving part about it. But regardless, it's about figuring out what is your personal routines for activity right now, what's going to help you lead right now? What's the messaging that you need to convey to your audience, to your team, to the people you serve, about where we're at right now? How can you level up the standard of excellence or expectation for people in your world to be on their a game, to produce, to be high performers? How can they do that without burning out or ruining relationships? Which by the way is literally the definition of high performance, isn't it? High performance is succeeding over the long term while still maintaining well being and positive relationships. Which means there's a whole research field and there's an entire sort of ethos around my brand and what we do in high performance of helping people. No, no, you can, you can be outstandingly excellent in what you do and still maintain your health and relationships. This idea that you have to burn out to succeed or you have to wreck all your relationships and step on people to succeed is more of like old thinking than an accurate portrayal. In fact, our research from 190 countries around the world really did show that high performers are very strong at long term success in whatever way they measure that or we measure that. Sometimes that was financial, sometimes that was promotability, sometimes that was work output. In all of the research it was became clear those people also took care of their well being or their wellness and they also took care of those around them. They had positive influence and connections with others. So it's possible. So maybe refresh yourself on high performance habits if you haven't read it for a while. If you're in growth day, there's a free course called the High Performance Habit Builder. If you're a paying Growth day member, I should say that you can go in and take that course like 3, 4, 5 hours on how to establish clarity, how to at this stage of your life, how to generate more energy in your mental, physical, emotional life so that you can have the stamina, how to develop the psychological motivation, how to be productive, influential, courageous, right when time is needed the most. These are all topics I talked about a lot and I'm passionate about. And these aren't things I'm just speaking about in terms of the content that, you know, I believe in or that I research or that I teach or train. This is a challenge to me, too. You have to understand, it's midnight right now. I'm standing in a dark room and I'm sharing this with you because I'm not only a passionate believer in what I'm saying, it's like, okay, I know I need to show up in a different way right now. I'm going to be more prolific in the next six months of my career than you've probably ever seen me do. You know, we'll be taking our YouTube channel, my YouTube channel, where we release like one episode a week. We're taking that up to three episodes pretty soon per week. You'll be seeing me rebrand my podcast, the Brendon Show. You'll be seeing me launch a new podcast where I'm teaching about entrepreneurship and marketing specifically. It's kind of funny. Most of the world only knows me for personal development, but the insiders, the influencers, thought leaders, the authors, the speakers of the world, they've known me for teaching marketing into that subcategory in that niche for also 15 years. But that's a smaller part of our business and most of it's just teaching personal development. And I want more of the world to know about how to share your voice and reach people and build a personal brand in this modern era, but still using some basics of online marketing that we know work. So brand new podcast will be coming out on that this summer and fall. We'll be launching a broader podcast network under the growth day flag. We will, gosh, be onboarding new coaches. We'll be, you know, developing new features and products. We have so much coming up and I've never been more excited about it because my belief is this, during these times when the demand for productivity, really the rubber hits the road in how you really practice your personal development. Because many of you, you can get focused, you can work really hard, but you tend to burn out when you do that. And you need to learn a new way to be productive and to strive. So please do make sure you join Growth Day. Like become a paying member, go to growthday.com and actually sign up for starter or pro so that you can get the tools. Pro is where we go live every single week on a new personal development topic. Again, just go to growthday.com, select the Pro membership when you sign up and that live weekly teaching. I think we all need to be immersed in personal development right now in a different way than we were the last two or three years. Now it's about getting that edge back of performance versus just the coping and the mental health perspectives. Those again, those aren't phases that go away, those are still there. But on top of it, a new expectation will meet us because the worldwide change in global economy. And so I think it's really important to be aware of how much you will be tasked. But I also love that you've been preparing. If you're listening to me now, you've listened to me likely before. If you're new, welcome. You know, I wish I had a little more energy for you tonight here at midnight recording this for you. But you're in my heart, you're in my mind. I know how hard it is. So make sure every day you set some intentions. You write your goals down. You take some pit stops throughout the day to re energize yourself, refocus yourself. You make sure that you choose to bring joy into the day. Don't wait for some long off destination to feel joy. Bring joy today to this moment, to this experience, to what you get to do next. You get to summon the energies of life that you wish to experience, not just take what life throws at you and living in that purposeful way, that intentional way, making sure that you're caring for your aliveness, your connection, generating meaning and growing. That's what we do at Growth Day and that's what I've done in my brands since my first book came out 20 years ago and since I went full time as a writer, a coach and a trainer 16 years ago. This is all I know. This is all I do. I love showing up to serve with you and to be here for you. Because as we say at Growth Day, every day is a great day to grow. And I love that we did it today in this special episode together. Thank you for the warm welcomes all of the DMs to the beachbody community. If you happen to be listening, man, I don't know how I got off that stage without crying, but I'm deeply grateful for the reception back into this world. I love doing this work. I love being part of personal development journey with you. Not just as the person teaching or training or talking at you, but doing it in front of you for all these years. I'm wishing you and your family and your teams and all of your community health and joy and abundance and love and success and fulfillment. May you meet this time and really show up. I mean, really show up, fully engaged and productive, to communicate, to lead. Even though you may need help doing that, even though you may need a coach, even though you may need a therapist, even though you may need to go to the conferences, read the books, listen to the podcast, find your own way to grow and accelerate. At this stage in the world, when you're being called, even if you don't know it, when you're being needed, even if you don't see it or hear it every day, you have an opportunity to really become a role model right now, to really lead others, to care for others, to show the world a different way where we can be alive and connected and meaningful and kind and we can be growing together. You have that opportunity. So please take advantage of that. Because the future is way better than most people think. Even though it sounds like I'm saying, hey, it's tough right now or it's going to be difficult, that's true. But the future is always better than we think and you are stronger than you think. Thanks for listening today. Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendon Show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity, right? So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday, because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars, cheer us on, leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff actually really does help. And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember, you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance. Every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the growth Day community. So be sure to go deeper with us and@growthday.com.