Intentional Lifestyle Design w/ Justin Brooke

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Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Hey. I believe the path to freedom is three steps. First, you decide the life that you want to live. Then you build a business that you enjoy that provides value in the world. And then step three, you invest for passive profits. That's the road to freedom. But we so often forget step one, deciding the life that you want. My guest today is Justin Brooke. And Justin and I met at the beginning of both our entrepreneurial journeys. We've had very similar paths, and along the way, we have both discovered that somewhere in this entrepreneurial world, somewhere in the world of hustle and grind and grit, you forget to live the life that you actually want. Most of us get into this game, most of us become entrepreneurs because we.

Want a better life in the first place.

And then somewhere along the path to success, we forget the enjoyment part, we forget the happiness part, and it just becomes about building the business. Justin recently bucked the trend. Instead of going from a trailer park to a mansion, he went from a mansion to a trailer park. And I'll let him tell the story, but he is being very intentional about lifestyle design. He didn't end up in a trailer park because he failed. He ended up there because he succeeded. And after traveling the world and after succeeding at everything that he wanted to succeed at doing, he decided that he wanted a different life. And he opens up about the life that he's building right now, about how much happier he is now since he has gotten rid of all of his junk, since he has focused on fun and family and let the business support his lifestyle. I have found that in my life, the more I focus on happiness, the more money I make, the more productive I become. And I am kind of relearning this habit of being happy, of focusing on fun and happiness partly as a result of Justin's example. So I wanted to have him on the show to share about his journey. Justin has something going on with his voice in this podcast. Maybe it's from yelling while playing Xbox.

With his son, I don't know.

But he's got some sort of a voice thing. Thing going on, so you have to get through his scratchiness. But you'll really enjoy this show with Justin Brooke.

Justin Brook. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. How you doing, man?

Awesome, man. Thank you so much for having me on, dude.

I've been stoked to have you because I know you have some new perspectives on life, and we've known each other for many, many years, and I think I've seen you more stoked about life in the last year or so than ever before. And it seems to me like you have kind of cracked the code on making more money and working less and have identified why the heck entrepreneurs work so hard and make so little. So before we dive into that, would you, would you talk a little bit about what you've been doing for the last six to 12 months? Because it's been pretty fascinating.

Yeah. So last year I was living in a six bedroom house, almost an acre yard, it was like three quarter acres, swimming pool, big truck, you know, all, all the gizmos and everything. And I just realized it was too much. Yeah, it was, it was great. I'm, I'm super glad I did it. I, you know, but it was excess. So we sold everything and we went on the road. Me, My wife, my two kids, 12 and 4 years old at the time, they're now 13 and 5. They both had their birthdays in Bali, Indonesia, which was pretty cool. Yeah. My daughter also learned how to swim in Bali. So for the last nine months, actually I just got back to America like a week and a half ago. We road tripped across the United States in our pickup truck and then we shipped the pickup truck back to Florida, flew to Asia, we went to Japan, Bali and then Australia, back home.

And what, at what point did you realize that there was excess and you wanted to do something different because you're an Internet marketer. I mean, you know, the Internet marketing quote lifestyle that at least is promoted on Facebook. And at what point did you realize you weren't happy with what you had? You had accumulated this stuff in the big house and the pool and the family. What, where was the dissatisfaction? And at what point did you realize I want something different?

This is gonna be the worst possible answer to your question, but I realized I was unhappy when I realized I was unhappy. Yeah. And what really did it for me though is realizing that I was unhappy and also realizing that I had it all. I was like, wait, why am I unhappy? Like, I remember I was standing just to the right of my kitchen, about to pass into my living room when I had this thought of, why am I unhappy? I'm standing in a six bedroom house. I've got, you know, a 60 inch flat screen TV, Xbox One and 360, you know, like I've got everything. I've got the pickup truck and the kayaks and the big pool with the hot tub. Why am I unhappy right now? And I realized I was unhappy one because I was trying to clean up this six bedroom house before a guest came up. If you've ever had to clean a six bedroom house, It's a pain in the butt. So that was one reason I don't like doing chores. Another reason was like my monthly nut to cover my bills was so high that I had to keep working all the time. So I was working 12 to 16 hour days. Here it is. I have it all. I've got the reputation, I'm making good money and I got the house. But it's like, man, I felt like I was working to exist. I was working to just maintain whatever it was. And I just felt very trapped at that moment. Like standing there, four feet away from my kitchen, trapped on this single tile that I was standing on. That's how trapped I felt. And that was when it was all like, we got to go, we got to change this. And right now I'm living in a trailer park in Davie. It's a two bedroom, single wide trailer and I frickin love it.

And you've done this by choice, right? I mean, this isn't like, this isn't a sob story where Justin Brooke loses everything, has to move to a trailer park and sells his pickup truck and goes to Bali where it has cheaper standard of living. I mean, this is your lifestyle design right now.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who go to Bali. You talk to entrepreneurs over there and they're like, yeah, I'm over here to.

Alleviate my burn rate. Basically they're saying they're broke. You know, that wasn't, that wasn't the choice and there's really nothing against it. Everybody's at different points in their startup business career and everything and I'm at a high right now. But I've been at Lowe's before and it's all a roller coaster. But no, you know, it's not because I'm broke or anything. In fact, I hope none of my neighbors ever figure out how much I make because that might turn ugly.

Well, tell me a little bit about the, the, the mindset shifts you had while you were traveling around the world and you had downsized and, and cut everything out. Because I know you realize that you had been doing a lot of things for many years that really had become unconscious or subconscious, that it held you back from the life that you wanted. How has that shifted since you cut out all the things that were holding you back and started moving in a different direction?

I would say the biggest shift is I listen to myself now for a long time. You know, I had in the beginning of my career and up I did well you know, I started in, like, 2006, 2007, Choo Choo trained up the mountain. I'm doing great in 2009, Slam. I'm doing horrible in 2010, like, you know, back to figuring out how to make $1,000, you know, like, that bad. And so I lost a lot of confidence and I lost trust in myself. And so I dealt with that for quite a while, and now I'm back to having confidence and trusting in myself. And what really led me astray was listening to everybody else. I became what everybody else wanted me to be, which was grinding all day long and, you know, hustling my face off. I'm all for hustle, but, like, you don't need to work all day every. Like, at some point, you just can't wake up any earlier. You know, you just can't do it. You need to sleep. Your family needs to see you. You need to enjoy life. If we're. What good is all this money if we're not enjoying life? So that's like, the big realization I had is just stop listening to everybody else's version of what I should be and what do I actually want to be. And that's. That's where I'm at now. It's so cool.

I think a lot of people hear Gary Vaynerchuk talk about hustle, or they talk about whoever talk about working your face off, and. And they misunderstand that for mindless hustle, there's just. There's just. I'm always grinding. I'm always hustling rather than hustle with a purpose. There's an end in mind. There's some sort of intention behind where we're going. Most of my. Most of those who follow me know that I've been on a big health sprint for the last two months. I've lost 25 pounds of fat in two months. And it was super, super hard, but it was hustle with a very distinct purpose. And now that I'm done, I'm done. And I have a different. I'm not in the. I'm not in the gym two and a half hours a day anymore. I'm now in a different mode. And it's the same thing with business and with life. If you're mindlessly hustling, then you're just grinding and you're gonna die soon. You made this post on Facebook or your website. Please forgive me forgetting, but you made this post that got a lot of attention, and one of the things that you called out in entrepreneurs was the fact that we don't know how to say no and that we are constantly distracted. How do you define that and when did you realize that that was going on in your life?

Well, you know, we say that we're working. You know, we're grinding. You know, that's the other thing now. It's not working anymore. It's grinding. I'm on my grind. I'm on hustling. I'm 10xing, you know, but like, what are you really doing? You know, if you really look at what you're doing, are you flipping back and forth to Facebook? Are you watching videos, courses, writing blog posts? Now, writing blog posts may be something that's good, but there's a lot of people out there who are really just like flipping back and forth from different social media. They're writing blog posts, they're reading things. They're really not creating anything. 10x doesn't mean work 10x more. It means get 10x more results. And that doesn't mean to get 10x results doesn't mean you have to work 10 extra hours or work 10 times harder. It just means you have to think and strategically get 10x results.

So let's go there next because I think we have adequately identified the problem And I think 98% of people can identify with this idea of I know when I have been hustling too much. My family hasn't seen me, I haven't slept, I'm out of shape and I'm not seeing the results that I want and I'm constantly distracted and I can't say no. I think almost every entrepreneur can, can relate with that. If you haven't, I want what you're having, but the fix the other side of this. You now traveled all over the world. You've downsized, but what have you identified as the other side of it? What is, like what, what are those activities? Where should entrepreneurs be spending their time in order to get those leveraged results?

Yeah, well, first thing I want to tell everybody is, you know, that was me. You know, so I'm not.

Hypocritical or calling out anybody or saying, you know, that was me. I have the Facebook post. I was bragging about waking up at 3:30am and working until midnight. That was me. I thought that was the way. And when I went and traveled, I didn't, I didn't know the answer. I just knew I wanted to. I knew I was trapped and I knew I'd get away. I knew that this wasn't it and so I had to get away and then by traveling, I didn't even realize I had fixed it until like six months in when I was like, wait, everything's awesome now. I frickin, I'm happy now. I love working now. I love my business again. And what had really fixed it for me was you can't, when you're traveling with your family, you can't work all day. I mean, you probably could, but you'll make everybody's life suck.

Yeah, that would stink.

Yeah, it would be horrible. Like you'll be just living in the hotel all day long. And so I had to be able to work. You know, basically my schedule became wake up at 5am and work until 10 and then I had the rest of the day. I mean, we would go swimming, we'd go play at the playground, we'd go to the movies, go to the mall, we'd just do whatever we wanted. And sometimes I would work more, you know, sometimes I'd just be bored or sometimes I would really love this idea and I would just work some more. And that's, that's the thing is you can if you want to, but you don't have to. And so traveling really helped me learn how to delegate. That was the biggest answer, was picking what I needed to do.

You know, so there's all these things on your to do list. You know, I realized that my to do list never got smaller. You know, it was like, it's like you working 16 hour days, but the to do list is just as big every freaking day.

Amen to that.

We're bigger, you know. So I learned that the biggest thing about productivity is not about being able to check more things off the list. It's about filtering what things end up on your list. That's the biggest thing of productivity is you look at that. You know, if you look at a list of 10 items, there's probably three items on there that will move you the farthest. Call it 80, 20, call it whatever you want, but there's a limited amount of items on there that you really should do. And chances are if you do none of the other things, you know, maybe one person gets a little upset, but life isn't going to be over. You're still going to have those big jumps in your, in your business results. You know, everybody's dropped the ball at one point or another and life kept going.

So that's, I 100% agree with you. But I'm always curious to know, in your business, in your life, what have you identified as those, those leverage points, meaning those Activities that if you do them, you know that you're going to move things forward as opposed to the things that are not moving things forward, because I know they're different for everybody. But for you specifically, what were you able to cut out and what have you seen recur on your to do list that you say, I know that by doing this activity, I'm driving revenue and growth forward.

Okay, so here's a very specific example. Every week I have a newsletter that goes out and, you know, so I read a bunch of articles. This is something I love to do. I love to read about marketing. So I read a lot of stuff. And then every week I send out the seven best articles that I've read that week. And my subscribers love it. It's like the one thing that, you know, when I hear from my fans or subscribers, they're always like, I love that email. So I always did it myself. Every week I would read the article, pick which seven are gonna be there, write the summary of the seven, go into ActiveCampaign, set up the email, add all the links, make sure I add Google UTM parameters to all the links, or sniply, and then I choose a product. I would do the whole thing, and it would take me like five hours a week. Now, that's not a whole lot of work, right? Five hours a week. But that's just one item. That's one small thing in my business that I'm spending five hours a week on. That's really not something I needed to spend my time on. So instead of me spending my time on that, and instead of just getting rid of it, I trained somebody else how to do it. So I just. And that's where I find the super productive tasks, is what are these little menial things that I'm doing and how can I train somebody else to do that thing instead of me doing it? And so my goal for 2017 right now is to make money and not work. Yeah, I don't want to work. I want to just get the paycheck. Which at one point sounded like blasphemy to me, but now sounds like, wait, that's what an entrepreneur really should be doing. I should be coming up with ideas, solving problems in the world, not writing a newsletter every Sunday night.

Yeah. Amen to that. And I have found that I'm constantly replacing myself, and that's what I should be doing. There are gaps. For example, right now as we record this, in some of my businesses, there's a sales piece that nobody can do but me. Not all of it. But there's certain pieces that, you know, when I connect with my list, it's me writing my emails. And that might not be the case forever, but I'm constantly moving myself away from the tasks that happen day to day and replacing myself in my businesses. So we have some people that have, I mean, I could never do everything now based on the team that I have built. And that has allowed me to free up my time, my energy on the.

Things that actually matter.

You, you, you touched on something really interesting of this idea of six months into traveling, you realized, oh my goodness, everything's amazing now I love my life again. And that almost created a new sense of creativity. Like you could focus, you could get hyper focused on the things that actually mattered.

Yes.

What happens to you in that state when you have this idea of, now I can create something new because I'm not tied to this entire to do list. What kind of stuff came up for you when you're, you know, in, in Bali on the beach and all of a sudden you want to work? And I ask this because I know for me, that's when I feel like work becomes effortless and it becomes almost automatic. My coach, Peter Shallard, says it's at that point that work becomes, you've done the hard work of making work effortless, which is kind of counterintuitive. So I want to hear what that's like for you. What comes up to you or for you in that state.

Oh, that's a really interesting question that I probably need to think more about. But a couple of things that came up for me is I'm creating an institute of, you know, helping people do what I've been able to do. You know, now that I have these results and I've gotten the success helping other people use the same systems and frameworks that I'm using. So that's been cool. And because I have all this extra time, I have all this extra, like, brain power, you know, because I'm not just like mindlessly working all day on trying to conquer this to do list, I now have time to like, sit back and think or time to spend two hours reading a book. And then because I have all this new brain power, time to think, time to read, I come up with way better ideas, I come up with better solutions to problems for people. I'm able to, instead of just like create or mindlessly go through the list. I can't find the right words for it, but I'm able to think about the problems that people have in my world. Anyways, and solve them.

You don't have decision fatigue anymore, right?

Yes, that's it. I can wear instead of wearing the same outfit every day because I was just working so hard. And so decision fatigue. I can now, you know, spruce up my wardrobe again. And.

That'S not just it, but you get it. Like, I'm not so mentally tired now.

And what is the revenue source that is now automated or paying for things? What does income and revenue look like now that you have stepped back from your business? And how did you get to that point where it was automated if it is? I actually don't know the answer to that.

So one of the big revelations for me was that I was the business and that's why I was having hiring problems. That's why I was working all the time. You know, nobody wanted to call and talk to one of my sales people. Nobody wanted my junior media buyer working on their ad campaigns. Nobody wanted my content writer writing the blog posts. They wanted me, me, me. Because that's what the business was. It was me. You know, it said iamscalable.com but it might as well have said justinbrook.com and that was the biggest thing is now I look at my businesses, you know, I need to be able to build a business on what other people can do, not just what I can do. And so getting back to the actual question, the income for me now is info products. And that's mainly because it's just a world that I know. It's where I came from. It's easy for me. I happen to have a skill set that, that works great for info products. So that's my income now. I actually just got rid of my last client yesterday or the day before that. So I no longer have the agency and the info products. It's not me as the star. It's, you know, it's this institute, it's contributing coaches. It's not about me. It's about helping people become better at their career, at their chosen path in life. And, you know, when I'm hiring now, I tell them, I don't want to be the genius. I don't want to be managing you. I want you to manage yourself. I want you to be the expert. I want to put money behind you and help you shine. You know, I want to be a ghost.

Yeah, that, that, that's beautiful. And that frees you up to actually run the business rather than, you know, be trapped in every little detail of it. So let me ask you this. You've been saying some interesting things. About how your view of your home has changed, specifically the country that you live in. And in this world where at the time that we're recording it's political season, there's mud being slung everywhere, we're hearing about all the problems that we have. We're constantly being bombarded by CNN and Fox and those are my go to examples. But really everybody's in complainer mode about either their lack of options, hey, that's me. I'm complaining about that too. And all of the problems we see in the world and all the dirty, disgusting politicians. What's your view after traveling the world for almost a year?

So it really changed in Bali because in Japan, you can still get just about anything you want. In Australia, you can still get just about anything you want. But when you get into Bali and you're legit in the jungle, so there's a different thing. You know, Miami or even Florida is a city with everglades, but Bali is a jungle with a city. And there's a big difference. And so everything is harder over there. Everything is a little bit more risky. You know, ac, there's only one AC unit in there. There wasn't couches. Going to the grocery store. Sometimes they just didn't have rice, you know, sometimes they just didn't have milk. And that's it. You don't like here in America. You go to the grocery store, not only is there milk, but there's coconut milk, almond milk, rice milk, organic milk. You got all the different milks, you know, and they're all cold as well.

Cheeses. And so when I got back to America, it's so easy here. And the greatest thing is my kids now see it. My son keeps talking about every time we go somewhere like, oh my gosh, America's so easy. It's so easy here. And that's the thing is people forget because we're media is everything that we consume. It's the Netflix, the Hulu. It's not just the news, it's the movies, the TV shows. Everything we consume, everything we think about are these high level problems of who are we going to vote for? And you know what, Kardashian is doing this and whatever. But we forget, yeah, we forget that like if I want a banana, I can just go. Like I could probably walk to the grocery store. I can actually, you know, and go get a banana or anything that I want. I can choose from organic bananas and GMO bananas and yeah, there's so many. I don't know how to describe it any other way. Man, just everything is five minutes away here.

There's abundance and it's only getting more and more abundance and we only hear about the bad news, but we strategically block out the fact that it's getting more abundant. Because our brains are trained to look for problems and solve problems and we have more abundance than ever. We might as well recognize that you got to see the other side of it. So your comparison is now sensitized again. So you've got the ability to see the difference between the two.

Yes. And I couldn't see it before because everything is just normal. You know, it's just normal that I have a pickup truck. It's just normal that I have a 60 inch flat screen TV. It's normal that I can just go to the grocery store and buy eight different types of toilet paper or eight different types of milk. You know, that's just normal life. And so it's like living in a world where.

It'S only sunshine, it never rains. And because it never rains, you never truly understand how great the sunshine is. And by going to these other places, I now have a contrast. I now know what rain looks like. So when it's sunny outside, it's so much better. Does that make sense?

I think it makes total sense because that's just like basically how our brains work. We're always making comparisons. That's all our brains know how to do is make a comparison. Jesse Elder, one of my mentors, talks about the fact that our brains are always normalizing what's around us. So if we normalize living in Bali, where they run out of rice, and then you come to America, it's amazing. But quickly your brain normalizes that. And the way that we shift that on ahead is through active appreciation.

Can I give everybody some relevant contrast real quick? Okay. This is a really touchy situation and I don't want to sound.

Unsympathetic, but it's just real. I mean, this is a real life thing. Okay, so right now, Flint, Michigan, what's going on with the water situation in Flint, Michigan is a very big deal. It's all over the news. Everybody's freaking out about it. There's charities driving people over there. It's a big frickin deal in the media and in life and conversations and social media.

But in Bali that's just Tuesday.

You know, you can't turn on the water, the tap water in Bali and drink it. Nobody can. The locals, the Australians there on vacation, the American who's there trying to figure out life for himself, nobody can. So it's like we freak out over not being able to drink the tap water. But there's other countries that that's just normal. That's just Tuesday to them, you know, and all everything goes out to them. I know it's a little bit different because a corporation screwed it up and it's. You can't just filter it out. You can filter out Bali water, but that's the type of contrast that I got is realizing that tap water is a freaking awesome thing, you know?

Justin, I want you to speak to the entrepreneur who's listening, who is overworked, who is over decision fatigued, who has. Who can relate to that idea of, I'm working from sunset to sundown and I don't feel like I'm ever getting ahead and doesn't know what the problem is. You changed everything. You shifted everything on its head and kind of walked away from it and got perspective and realized what the problem was and were able to fix it. But how would you encourage someone who may not go pack everything up and travel the world for a year, but still wants to move away from being stuck in their business and automating their income so that they can have and be a real business owner and a real entrepreneur? How would you get them to make the shift and start moving in the direction that you found to be helpful and enlightening?

Well, I wish I could make the shift for them, but it has to come from within. You know, it was, you know, me standing on that tile four feet away from my kitchen and feeling trapped that made me make those changes. And you've just got to ask yourself, are you having fun?

Is this. What was your original reason why? You know, for me, I remembered that the reason why I started all this was because I didn't want to work all day long. Like, I didn't want to be waking up to an alarm clock. Like, that was literally the reason why I started the business is I never wanted to wake up to an alarm clock again. And what was. Was I doing? I was setting the alarm clock earlier and earlier and earlier and then bragging on social media about it. Like, it just. I got so far away from the original reason why that I was doing all this and what I was really trying to accomplish. You just have to have that honest, that brutally honest internal conversation of, are you really doing what you set out to do or you're just grinding?

Well, Justin, thank you for this reality check. Thank you for sharing this with my audience. Because I think sometimes we forget that the first step of freedom is to decide what you want and then to cut out and expand into whatever gives you that. And we instead expand into something and then forget to cut out the things that are holding us back. And then we forget what we even.

Decided about in place the first.

First place. So thank you for the reality check. I personally appreciate it and I appreciate you sharing it with us here at Freedom Fast Lane.

Thanks for letting me share it, man. I want to tell everybody in the world this stuff now.

I appreciate it. Thanks, Justin.

All right, man. Thanks. Bye.

Hey, if you enjoyed today's show, I.

Want to highly recommend that you check.

Out the podcast with Peter Shalard, the Shadow Shrink for entrepreneurs. So head back 10 episodes or so and listen to that episode with Peter. One of the things you'll hear him mention is that we as entrepreneurs learn that making money means suffering because we have to grind to get it. And what we need to do is train our brains to make the connection that when I make a ton of money, my life gets awesome. And Justin is doing this. His businesses have grown since he has made the change. My businesses have grown since I have started practicing some of this in the last few months. I have been grinding a lot in the last 18 months or so and instead now I'm focusing more on my life because when I focus on my life, I get better ideas, I work more efficiently, and I can see the multi billion dollar path now. I can see it. I couldn't see it 18 months ago.

When I was grinding.

So there's a very interesting shift that happens that once you have the cash flow but you don't learn how to enjoy your life. Once you make the switch and you go back to enjoying your life again, money and growth starts to show up kind of automatically again. And I want to publicly thank Justin Brooke for reminding me of that.

One of the things that I find.

Most enjoyable within my business is having entrepreneurs around me and giving them breakthroughs that allow them to make a bigger impact in the world. At the end of this year, Freedom Fast Lane Live 2016 is happening in Austin, Texas. It's December 9th, 10th and 11th. You can get on the early bird registration list over@freedomfastlane live.com if you heard about or were at Freedom Fast Lane Live last year, you heard the several hundred people who were there leaving it saying it was one of, if not the best event they've ever attended. This one is guaranteed to even top that one. So I highly encourage you to get on the early bird registration list or grab your Ticket over@freedomfastlanelive.com Thanks so much for listening to the show and I'll see you on the next episode.