292: Life Profitability - Building a Business that Can Serve Your Life with Adii Pienaar

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Hey. Hi. Hello and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Alexa and we are so excited and honored that you decided to tune into the podcast today. So you may have heard of AD or the companies he founded, WooCommerce and Convergio.

But.

But he's here today to talk about his new book called Life the New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. So when you're starting and building your own business, it's really easy to get tunnel vision and just put all of your time, effort and thoughts into making that business succeed. But will all of that brain space spent on your business make your life more fulfilling? AD is here today to talk about why that's not necessarily the case and instead argue for the need of a healthy balance between life, business and productivity. This interview will have you challenging your definition of success and inspire you to work towards creating a more mindful, value driven life and brand. So without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Ad welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, excited to talk about something that I've actually been thinking a lot about. We have our three month old daughter, we have a two year old daughter and it's caused kind of me to move into this reflect on life, reflect on business stage. And my guess is that your book Life Profitability and kind of that concept came out of some similar reflections that you had. At what point did you find yourself starting to see these thoughts pop up in your head in your entrepreneurial journey?

Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. So I mean, I think like what eventually became Life Profitability and what became the book really had multiple different kind of forces of nature or energy kind of going into it. But you know, you mentioning your younger kids, Bjork, I have two boys, they're six and nine. And I think, and this is hindsight now because I don't think at the time, like I would have said, hey, you know, AD, this is not very life profitable of you. But I can remember when, when Junior was very, very young at one stage and I was, I was still at Woo Themes and woocommerce at the time and I was constantly multitasking and I was constantly like, you know, changing a diaper and on my phone quickly trying to grab you one hand, like totally. So you get that right? And at one stage like Eddie Jr. Was a couple of months old and Jean, my wife, came up to me and she said, do you realize that you're constantly just managing your son in the same way that you would manage a team Member. And that's just that, like, that very conversation struck me so hard. It literally is that kind of you literally have. You stand back and say shit like this, this can't be it, right? Yes. And I think, as I said, like, in hindsight, I don't think I realized really the extent of the importance of that moment. But that's definitely like one of those moments that kind of I now look back on and I see, oh, like that kind of contributed to me eventually becoming aware of these what I now call kind of life costs that I was incurring along the way as I was, you know, building a business and being successful at that, but probably being a really kind of, you know, you know, kind of absent, you know, father to, to a young baby at that stage.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's like we're in the thick of that. And we have. So our youngest have talked about this in the podcast a couple times. So much so that people who follow along will probably roll their eyes, but has, like, really struggled sleeping. So I find myself and Lindsay, my wife as well, like at all odd hours holding her, and it's getting better. But along with that, like, trying to also do work at all odd hours with, you know, from my phone and from wherever I can, like bouncing her with my foot as I'm like sitting at the desk and her little bouncer. And it's been the same thing where it feels like I'm in those moments. I'm not really doing either thing very well and how discouraging that is. And so it's like, hey, I want to be all in as a dad, but there's also a piece of me that wants to be all in as it relates to the businesses. Or maybe it's not all in, but just like when I'm doing one of those things, doing those 100%. But the hard part is I kind of feel like I should be doing work whenever I'm with my family. And I kind of feel like I should be with my family whenever I'm doing work. So as you started to get into this place of thinking through what does it look like to be life profitable, what does a life cost look like? Did you find yourself starting to draw hard lines and say, hey, I'm going to always go home? I think it was Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. I'm always going to go home at 5 o'.

Clock.

That's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to draw a hard line. Or is it not as simple as that.

Yeah. So hard lines don't work for me generally. Well, I think I'm a bit of a rebel at the heart. And when I see a hard, firm line, like, there's that temptation within me to try and cross it. Right, exactly. So those don't work for me. But generally also, I think that kind of between those. Let's just call in different states or different realms of our life, I actually think that when we keep things liquid, when we allow kind of energy to flow from the one to the other, then that is the way in which we kind of preserve most energy. Right. Because energy is just flowing between those different things. And I think that the key thing for me is then, because what I used to do probably when I was kind of doing this kind of subconsciously or unconsciously, was that I would allow that kind of ambitious energy, which is a very kind of strong, forceful energy. I would allow that to flow, and I would allow that to kind of really kind of shape the narrative of any moment for me now is I just think that being aware of what is most important in this moment and then ensuring that even if that other energy economy pops up, I will try and just stay in this moment for just a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer. And over time, it's almost, for me at least, it's been. Become easier to just be in the moment. So when it is working, I am working. When I'm with friends or with family, then I'm doing that thing. So I said, and by all means, I have boundaries, and we can get into kind of your boundaries. And I think about those. But generally I think there should be a softer, lighter, like, playfulness to the way we think about kind of moving between these different states or different moments in our lives. I think we actually create more friction by putting up kind of barriers and walls between these things because they are never completely separate.

Right, right. Do you have an example of what that looks like when you talk about energy? I'm guessing there are some people who are like, yes, I'm tracking. And there are some people who are like, what do you mean by energy? Like, what does that look like? And how does that feel like if you look at a day for you, or there's no typical day, but how are you aware? It almost sounds like getting into mindfulness and presence, and is that a piece of it? But curious if you could kind of walk through a day and how you're even checking in with yourself and being aware of that.

Yeah. So. And it's great that you mentioned Mindfulness because a big part of the way I at least think about life now and many of the concepts in the book like has elements of mindfulness in it. Mindfulness, you know, changed the course of my life. I literally stumbled into it as, you know, kind of five, six years ago as my life was literally kind of breaking apart and kind of. I worked with a therapist that helped me understand, like listen here, if I, if I don't tame this monkey brain of mine, if I constantly allow it to be in a fight or flight mode, I'm going to struggle. So mindfulness is very much there. And the way I now explain mindfulness to anyone is literally for me it's just that awareness. I still, for example, I still meditate kind of on adult basis when I feel I kind of need a top up or I need to exercise my, you know, mindfulness muscle. But for me it is really just that awareness and awareness of when I'm doing something or in a, you know, in a moment, in a space, but I'm not really there. Right. Or kind of when because that's the awareness, right. Something else is distracting from you from that. So and I think that kind of, you know, to just then kind of touch back on that kind of energy flow. The probably the best example I have work is like most people will tell you, you know, the way to have work, life balance. One example is like don't work on weekends, right. Like keep work, you know, nicely confined, 40 hours like in a work week and that's it. And sometimes, and this doesn't happen every single weekend, but every now and again on a Saturday, Sunday morning. I, regardless of kind of what the family is doing, maybe the kind of. We did some exercise in the morning, the kids are playing, I played with them. And then something strikes me and I'm like, you know what? This actually a relatively quiet, peaceful, calm moment. I'm at home, I'm going to get to go bash out a few emails for an hour or so, right. Just because that's, that's where my energy and when I say energy is less airy fairy. It's just that like that's what I feel most compelled to do in that moment.

Versus restricting yourself when you're being drawn in this way and then and saying no, I can't because it's a weekend and having a hard line and not moving forward with it.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. So we, this isn't necessarily bearing the lead but we jumped in right away to talk about life profitability, some helpful context around that is you've had some very successful businesses. And so that's a piece of this story is. And I would love to pull that apart because in some ways there's, there's the sun and the shadow of the sacrifice made to build significant things in the world. The sunny side of it is you've had some successes and that translates into credibility. It translates into like you emailing me and being like, oh yeah, of course, Adi I'm gonna like, I recognize the businesses you've built, your name and there's something to be said about that. And the thing, the life you've exchanged for that has created value in the world that you are then able to, whether it be purely cash. Right. Money or status that maybe wouldn't have existed if, if not for some of those sacrifices. So can you talk a little bit specifically about your businesses? A lot of WordPress users here who will be familiar with them. And that's not the only thing you've done. I know you've done other businesses after that, talk about some of your businesses and can you talk about what that was like when you were in the thick of Sounds like pretty consumed by those businesses.

Yeah, totally. So I mean I think my little elevator pitch as Adi today is I built and sold two software businesses. The first was as co founder of WooThemes and WooCommerce. I built the very first theme that became Woothemes way back in November 2007 which totally gives away my age as well here. And I left WooThemes end of 2013 because I wanted and I sold out that stage because I wanted to do something, something new. I wanted to challenge myself again and ultimately got into a new. Well in between, had a failure but ultimately got into my second successful business which was called Convergio where we built email marketing automation for e commerce brands. And I sold that to campaign monitor about 18 months ago now in latter stages of 2019. So that's. And I think in saying that as well is that's, you know, in between that I spent six weeks working for corporate just after university before I went, you know, to work on with teams full time and which means I've always been responsible for my own journey. Right. And responsible in the good and bad ways. Right. Because in the good ways it's like sure, AD is responsible for his journey, like he can make his own decisions. That sounds like anyone's dream that doesn't have that. But then that also comes with loads of other responsibilities or kind of just challenges and baggage as well. Right. So multiple I think how Long do we have one stage is like, you know, just. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, you know, I think at some stages, just this notion of, like, if you're. I've often felt like this, and I don't know whether anyone listening has felt like this, but, like, once you've had any measure of success, it. It feels like you should always know the answer. Right. You should also always know what to do next. And I felt like this with, you know, when. When I build teams. Right. I'm the leader of that team. So it feels like, you know, we're in this challenging moment in the business, for example, and it's ultimately my responsibility to figure out how the hell are we getting out of this? Like, how are we going to overcome this obstacle? How are we going to meet payroll at the end of the month? So many of those kind of the. I often refer to it as the ultimate responsibility came back to me. So there is definitely that balance between the kind of the privilege, the opportunity, the freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur. Right. And shaping, literally carving out your own path and going on this journey. But it also creates loads of responsibilities along the way that doesn't always feel that great and especially doesn't feel great when things are kind of going on. And again, I said how much time we have? I mean, many of my. I think my challenges are very existential. Right. I mean, I know kind of going through building Convergio after having been so successful with WooCommerce. One of the biggest challenges I had was, what if I fail at this thing? What are other people going to say about me? Like, is it like this? I actually left with you the notion of feeling like a wanted wonder and wanting to prove myself again. Like, if I fail at conversion or is that what people are going to say? Like, 80 was just like, you know, lucky. Like, they get lucky with Woo. So, like, I think there are definitely those other challenges that I don't think people talk about them often. Right. Because it also feels silly to some extent, especially if everything is mostly going well. Right. It sounds ungrateful to. Sure. I don't know. I think there's a lot of shame there. Probably.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And probably levels to unpack and layers to pull apart. At what point did you realize, gosh, it'd be really helpful to see a therapist and was it really. Was that, like, tied into business and did that impact business and did life profitability come from some of those conversations which we can get into next?

Yeah, so it's a personal question.

So.

Yeah, no, that's perfect. That's perfect. Fine. I. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I. I generally don't like. I love demystifying things to that extent, I think. You know, again, like many, you know, successful people, are more than happy to expose the tactics, the mindset, the beliefs, et cetera, that made them successful, but they don't share the things that are much, much harder. Right.

Yeah.

Because both those two things are true. So, you know, for me, we. My wife and I had spent time with two separate kind of couples therapists or psychologists, like, early in our marriage. I've been married for ten and a half years now. Been together with my Jean for about 11 and a half, almost 12 years. So we spent some time in therapy there, like, figuring things out in terms of communication, just kind of literally getting onto the same page, nothing too serious. And then somewhere, and this was about five, six years ago, and I mentioned the mindfulness. It got to a point where I backed myself into a corner. I was just constantly angry. I was angry at things, and, like, I was angry at things that going the way I wanted them, like, feeling this discontent. And it was weird because even I could stand back in that moment and see, hey, I've got good business going here. Right. Convergio was growing well at that stage. I've got a beautiful family, like, beautiful young family living in a beautiful home, like, great friends, et cetera. And I could feel that discontent, the feeling like just angry all the time. And that's literally like in a. In a session where Jean and I both were like, I completely lost my cool. And the therapist looked at me and she said, we're starting with you. Like, things need to change and you need to change.

Wow, what a moment.

Exactly. Right? And she told me afterwards that she had tried to provoke me because she thought that I would take the bait. And then she could actually appeal to kind of my rational brain. And she admitted it was a bit of a gamble. But then she's the one that got me into mindfulness and ultimately understanding how, kind of how even though I was doing these really good things in my professional life, how it also had that dark side, right, of, like, that. That constant hyper vigilance, that constant way of having my brain switch switched on, like, thinking about everything in business, that's not very healthy. And, you know, in the context of, you know, sitting down for a date with my wife or, you know, kind of having a family or going on holiday, for example.

Yeah.

So I spent lot of time working with her to. To really change the way that I thought about my life at least, and kind of the person that I wanted to be in that life.

And I would assume life profitability comes out of a lot of that processing and contemplation. When I talk to you now, it seems like you're a very Zen person. Do you feel different today than you did, than you were like six or seven years ago? Or is it like that? I. Do you still have that. Do you still have that piece of you? And it's just like, I don't know those things to provoke you, like the therapist that you're working with?

Yeah, I mean, I. I still have the challenging days, right. And I think the biggest difference is. And when I say challenging days, like a challenging day in my mind would be where I again, feel like this, this ambition of mine is pulling me forward in a way that I know will create collateral damage and that I know will incur these life costs. And I can just feel it, that it doesn't feel great. What I've learned over the years is to also just acknowledge that, but. And know that that's probably never going to change. Like, having those slightly off days is actually okay. And the way that I rationalize it is by understanding tension and understanding how tension also shows up in, literally in the human body and muscles. And if you think about. I often joke as a enthusiast runner, not a really great runner, but enthusiast runner, that I literally have two iron rods for hamstrings because my hamstrings are incredibly tight, right? Which I know is not true, but. But effectively kind of, you think about any muscle in your body is for a muscle to function properly, it always has to be intention, right? If it's too rigid, it can't move. If there's no tension, it will just flop around. So it needs to be intention. And I. That's the way I essentially think about my life and at least ambition and my entrepreneurial pursuits is it will always have that tension with the harder parts thereof, the parts that challenges my ego or, you know, the parts that. Where it feels out of my control. And I need to acknowledge that and I need to just continue kind of, you're moving on. And for me, like, then kind of acknowledging that means that I can come back into my own being, right? My own self, my body, my mind, and just say, you know what? I'm. I'm okay, right? Like, this, this thing, this thing that I'm doing here as entrepreneur, it's not me. It doesn't define me. This mistake I made does not define me. Et cetera. But that part of it is better. The sensations are still the same, the challenges are still similar.

But awareness of them.

Yeah, totally. I think 80% of it is literally awareness and the ability, like, if it's uncomfortable just sitting with that discomfort, it's just not trying to necessarily change things. Accepting that some things will always be like that. Something I love from Buddhism is this notion of, you know, we only know light because we only know dark. We also know dark. Right. We like yin and yang. Right. We. We know good because we know bad. Like, we need these contrasts as human beings, these tension between two different things that are on opposite ends of a spectrum because that's what keeps things in equilibrium. And both of those two things will always be true. It's not either or. It's just like both of those two things are always true to some extent.

Yeah. Wow. I remember when I first started using Calm, the app Calm, and they would do these really simple explainers and they'd have these little characters that would walk you through at kind of a fourth grade level, which is what I needed at that point in my journey with understanding Meditation. But one of the visuals that has really stuck with me is one of the characters was, there's this cloud and it was raining and it was like he was sitting underneath it and he was like, ah, this is just so terrible. But it was like, hey, you can also go up above it and like, see, that cloud is still there. It exists, but it's observing the emotions and the feelings that you have as opposed to being defined by them. And that's been such a helpful visual for me as I think about even entrepreneurial pursuits. This is really frustrating. This is difficult. I feel like imposter in this regard. Those are all valid feelings, but I can kind of sit above them and observe them. I don't have to be them, which is. Was a helpful concept for me. So I'm.

Exactly. Because then I think that's. That's a trap, by the way. I think for entrepreneurs, like, whether it's your business or the products you're putting out there, the creations that you're making, we aren't those things. And I think that, like, we should, like, we're almost reducing our true magic by saying, I am my business. I am this product that I created. And I mean to your point of the cloud, and I know exactly which visualization you're talking about is just abstracting that because the creation is still there, the business is still there, but we can view it from so many different lenses. We don't have to look at it in this very kind of narrow way of saying this is the business and if I make a mistake in the business, that mistake reflects poorly on me. Or if this business fails, I'm a failure. Because I think that's just that just very kind of a limited kind of belief sets there that is unlikely to serve anyone.

Do you feel like in the. So a lot of the people who listen to this podcast would have businesses that are very personality forward, even so far as like influencer or, you know, a personal brand. Do you feel like in the businesses that you're building now, with that in mind, are you trying to have them be less you and more just the business, or are you still letting yourself be a part of the business, almost be a part of the brand, or are you trying to separate those in order to make that a little bit that distinction a little bit easier?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think at a tactical level, you know, having gone through the process of, you know, of selling to businesses, Bjork, I think what is tactically important is that no single person in the business should be that important to the business that you can't detach that person from it. Right. And I think that's the way I think about branding as well. Like I, you know, when I think through, you know, my new business that I'm working on now, it's called Cogsy. And I think about, because we just went through the process of designing the brand, going through all the brand kind of your guidelines, et cetera. And I am happy to be part of the brand, but I also want to be able to eventually divorce myself. But that's more of a kind of a tactical, logistical kind of your thing. In the event that I wanted to exit the business, I think what is more important there actually is making sure that there's alignment and speaking kind of value alignment. So aligning your personal values with your brand values, like making sure that those things are tight and there's clarity around that, I think that's much more important because when you do, I think it's just more sustainable to build a business in that way. I think you introduce unnecessary friction when those two things are separate. So I would rather think about kind of if you are your brand. Right. If I was my own brand and it was just adplr, it wasn't woo themes woocommerce, it wasn't convergeo, that's perfectly fine. But even then I would need to figure out what are my actual values. Not the ones that I propose on the Internet. Who am I when I'm at home and I'm actually just myself and making sure. Sure that those are the things that show up in those brands, in the things that I do. Right. Because actions always speak louder than words. So I would rather think I said about kind of value alignment with branding then whether I myself am kind of a part of that brand or not.

Right, right. That makes sense. So you've talked about businesses you've built, you've exited multiple times. And I feel like you have almost like a ground hog stay. I haven't actually seen the movie, but I would imagine this happens where like Bill Murray gets up and then he like, gets better. I think that's how it works. Like gets better throughout the day, knowing what's going to happen. But you've done that in a. In a really unique way for somebody at your stage and in business building in that you've built, you sold, you've built, you've sold. A lot of times people will build, sell, and then they can kind of like coast on that. Right. For a long period of time. But you're in this third stage of it, and in this or third go round, in this version that you are in right now of business building, how does life profitability fit into the decisions that you're making around how you're building the business? And we've kind of talked about it, we've talked about the book, we've kind of circled around it. But could you kind of define what that means? What is life profitability? And then how are you manifesting that in the current business?

Yeah, and I love that word manifesting, by the way, which I will totally touch on. So the idea of life profitability is very much based on the term that we all know in business, right. Which is just profitability, financial profitability. And what I wanted to, what I learned through kind of the last couple of years, especially of my journey, was that by purely pursuing your profitability in my businesses, I felt empty at times. I've mentioned kind of feeling discontent, feeling angry, you're feeling like didn't have that kind of your higher purpose or meaning. So what life Affability proposes is how can you build a business that is not just profitable in the kind of the narrow sense of the word, that is financially profitable, but really profitable in the kind of the broader, holistic, wholesome sense of the word, which is your whole life. And what I really want there is thinking through how to build a business that can serve all of my Life, Right. And when I say all of my life, and again, like borrowing from another financial term that people know is if you think about a financial investment portfolio where you have multiple different assets and stocks and whatever is in there, all of that's in balance, using air quotes here, but in balance of somewhere and you're diversifying, you don't just have one thing in there. Generally, that's how I think about my life portfolio as well. My work and this new business I'm working on is just one component thereof. A book is another component thereof. But then there are so many other important things in my life that I want to make sure kind of gets the necessary investment right. My family, my health, my passion for wine. You carved out some time to play FIFA, which is the only game that I play on my PlayStation. And that's been the case for the last 10 years.

Do you have a PS5? Have you gotten one? Have you made it?

I. I've been tempted, but no, I'm still on my four. As soon as I can convince 80 Junior to buy my four at a kind of overpriced valuation, then I can kind of Upgrade to the 4.

The Nice Thing about having that as an asset category in life profitability is you can invest in it, right? That's an investment.

Well, we can invest actual money in it, right? But that's the way I think about kind of business. And when, you know, in the book, one of the central themes, it's also on the COVID really, is the idea of concentric circles. And the way it really works is that life, profitably, my life profitability, starts with me at the core there, me being in alignment with my highest studies. But then it ripples outwards. It ripples outwards to kind of my immediate family and my friends, but it also ripples out to my team, the society, kind of my community, the ecosystems in which we operate. And that's. That's really what I kind of the biggest change going from first to second to third business years to really think through how my actions here ripple outwards and ripples outwards in a way that ultimately, as I said, is profitable and serves my whole life as well as that of others. And not just trying to figure out, okay, I can make some money over here. And then I still need to figure out how to, like, how do I live a life? How do I fund the life that I want? Because I think that's the trick here is I'm not trying to propose people not make money, right? We live in a capitalistic society. Like money pays bills, etc. Money kind of buys experiences, buys nice things, buys PlayStation fives. Not saying that those are bad things, but I think we like in just doing that. Again, that's a very narrow definition of saying I will just make the money and then afterwards I will think about how to live my life. Right. I really want like propose with life profitability is how today, like before you have that big exit, right before you manage to sell your business, before you become a millionaire, how can you start pursuing at least greater or better life profitability in your daily life right now without having to hope for that kind of one day where there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Do you think that in the beginning stages would you have with the framework of life profitability, like let's say with woo themes, WooCommerce, would you have been able to build those as quickly and to the same degree of success? Yes. No. And if no, would that be an okay thing? And would, would it be better because of it? Because you would have been more balanced and, and you know, those concentric circles would have been more even as opposed to just kind of this one big business one.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess it's very hard and it would sound disingenuous if I said just kind of outright, yes, I could have done this differently. I mean, I do think there are things that I can totally point to that I know I could have done differently and it would not have affected the extent of the success we had or the kind of pace at which should happen. Right. And the simplest idea or the simplest example that I have that comes to mind is with Woo themes, we still had. We only ever had the single office which was. Was down in Cape Town because I was in Cape Town. And Mark, my co founder, eventually moved back to Cape Town. He and I worked out of the office with about eight, nine other team members. And I would generally be first in the office. I would be there at about 7am in the morning because I liked the first hour or two when it was quiet and then I'd be lost to leave at about 7pm and I was not productive for 12 hours. We had an Xbox and a table tennis table in the office and I spent lots of time just doing that. Right. And just that as a simple example of me not, not acknowledging that there are other important things that I should also spend time on and invest into. Like that's a change I could have made. Like it clearly like me playing, you know, playing Xbox did not influence the Success of the business, for example. Right. So like, I think there are those tweaks that I would have made, like with the things that I had done back then had been completely different. I don't think so. Right. I don't think it's completely different, but maybe 10 or 20% kind of difference in my actions and crucially my experience going through those moments, if I had been aware of literally the collateral damage that my actions was causing in the rest of my life.

Yeah. And was, do you feel like even at that point, was there damage that the amount of time you were spending and energy you were spending around work, was that happening at that point in your life or did things shift and change in your life where the amount of energy and time you should have been spending for those other things shift and change, but then it didn't. To say it more simply, you know, I can imagine myself coming out of college, not married, no kids, no huge responsibilities, not as much damage if I'm working seven to seven, but then when these other things start to be introduced, that's where the shift should start to happen. And if I don't shift with those, there can be damage. Was that the case for you or was it like, hey, there's actually ways that I should have been working different early on?

Yeah, I think it should have been different earlier on. And the reason I say that, I mean I spoke about the experience I had when my therapist provoked me in session. Right. And ultimately like that provocation wasn't just in that moment. That was literally because the bucket was already so full and she just poured the last couple of drops in there and the bucket was. Bucket was full due to years of sub kind of thoughts, actions, decisions, etc. So like maybe the way it would have manifested kind of in those early stage journey, like outwardly it would have been like, might not have been very different, but I think the kind of the internal psychology. Yeah, like my psychology, my experience, like would have been different and would have probably kind of eventually either got me to the aha moment in a faster or better way. Right?

Yeah.

Where. Because. Because by the time I got to the home, like I had to change or like my whole life would have been changed for me.

Yeah, it's a version of fitness, but maybe mental framework or your view on the world. And the earlier you start on a fitness journey, the more fit you're going to be five, 10 years later. And I can see that applying even for how you view and process things. So one of the. So this just happened this morning this story was fresh as of 4 hours ago. We have our 3 month old. I was getting ready to go. I was heading out the door and our two year old, Lindsey, my wife, was holding our daughter and trying to get her to sleep. And our two year old barged in and she ran in and she jumped on the bed and she was rolling around and she had done the same thing a couple days before. And I was like, how do I get her out? And I'm like, solvi, come on. Like, I got to show you something. Like I was trying all these different things. I couldn't think of anything. And then I'm like, do you want an Eminem? And she's like, yes. And she got up and she ran out. And so that was. That was yesterday. Today she runs into the bedroom again when Lindsay is trying to get Lena to sleep, and she jumps on the bed and she goes, I want an Eminem. And the analogy for that story is, I think in business it can be the same thing, especially if you're having success, where you start to have this Pavlovian connection to. I do this work and I get this thing. I tweak the conversion on my homepage and more sales come through. I send out another email and I get a sponsored content deal for Instagram. I publish two pieces of content versus one, and I get more traffic. And that can be an addiction, much like going into the room to get an M and M. How do you. How do you apply that same mindset? Is there a way that you can think about kind of a reward mechanism or even a metric around these other areas of life profitability in order to increase the appeal of those things, to try and win back some of the. I send an email and I get an M and M.

Yeah, totally. And by the way, what you've described there, Bjork, is exactly what my therapist helped me understand as well. Right. This behavior that I had become so accustomed to that became second nature. It had its good parts in business, but as I mentioned before, in other parts of my life, it was not as beneficial. When I think about life, profitability is. I actually, I think we should stop measuring things. And a big part thereof is just defining whatever is what is good enough for ourselves. Right. And I think good enough here is partly looking at that kind of broader, holistic life portfolio, but then also just making sure that we stick kind of very close to very, very close to our nature, to our core, to our highest values. And one of the things that I absolutely love, and I quote the author in the book. In my book. And I'm going to share it here. The author is Benjamin Zander. The book is called the Art of Possibility Transforming Professional and Personal Life. And the quote that I have here, and I'll explain how that fits into what I just said, the quote is, in the measurement world, you set the goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold. And what I absolutely love about that is it tries to get us away of again, like that very narrow definition of how we measure success in our lives. Right. Followers, we've essentially decided exactly it all made like the worst part of it. It's all kind of made up like human made metrics, money. Yeah, exactly. None of it is intrinsic to kind of the universe or the nature itself. We've made it up and we've suddenly decided that it is now okay for us to be unhappy when those man made metrics kind of don't look up. Exactly right. So hence why I like and I love that but in the universe of possibility, because I think back to myself, like regardless of whether you're kind of religious or biblical, what not like, but if I was Adam or Eve and I was literally the first human on this universe, the first and only human on this universe. And again, regardless of whether that's a myth or whether I actually believe that's the case. But say, for example, I was the only kind of the first human being on this universe and I just imagined all of this possibility, like what would that actually look like? And I think a big part of that is again like taking that step back, changing this paradigm that we've been so kind of brainwashed with. And brainwashed. Because if you look at mainstream, your media, especially around kind of success, again, those are the metrics that get thrown at us all the time. But taking a step back and just reimagining what a universe of possibility would look like, in what other ways would I kind of measure success? Quote unquote for me. Right. And I think that's where like life profitability comes in. And a big like one of my biggest goals with the book was I truly did not want to write a how to book. I did not want to give or propose. Exactly right. Because I don't believe in those things. I believe we're unique, magical individuals and no blueprint, you know, can just be kind of, you know, given to someone else and you can have the exact same outcome. So the idea there with life profitability is really again stepping back into that universe possibility and letting your context, your magic just unfold. Like, that's probably your definition of kind of of success. That's your definition of life. Those are the metrics, whatever they look like, and they probably look way different to the metrics we use in our lives at this stage, but those are probably the metrics. Like, if you wanted to measure something, you should try and kind of. And I would even take measurement out of it completely. I would probably say, like, reference. Like he wants to reference. Like the progress you're making. Like, reference those, you know, those new things that you imagine. Not these. These metrics that get thrown at us so often.

How. How do you set the context? Like, if somebody's like, yes, I want that. I want to be less aware of the number of comments on an Instagram post or the revenue from my blog or the traffic that I get to my site. I want to decouple from that and I want to set new context. How do you do that?

Yeah, first step is just being aware of what your highest values are. There's a simple exercise, and I repeat it in my book, but I got the exercise from the book is called the values factor by Dr. John Demartini, I believe is his name. And essentially he takes you through 13 questions around literally looking at what do you spend most of your time, where do you spend most of your money? Looking at your office or workplace. What are those things around you that kind of. That you always keep in place. Right. Et cetera. Like, very different kind of questions that essentially kind of what he's trying to tell you alludes to is the things you are really invested in, they're really in front of you. Right. And they probably are linked to your values in some way. And again, I think that is just that context. Like, I am my context as I walk, like on this earth. There's this kind of. Again, not to get too airy fairy. I'm not that airy fairy. But there is this kind of your energy field. Field around me. And that is. That is the context. Like, whatever I then touch, like it's been. Becomes part of that context. But I can only do that in a way that is efficient and effective if I really know myself, if I really know kind of what other things are truly important to me.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think part of the. Even for myself, I would say one of the things that I would need to be aware of as I go through an exercise like that is to. To be able to parse out the things that I've been fed that I think are my values and the things that actually exist at my core that I know are my values. And I, you know, it's interesting. The. There's, I think it's called the Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix, and it talked about the. The manipulation of what we believe to be true in the world based on what we're being fed through algorithms and social media. And suddenly you find, or I can find myself kind of believing things based on the things that I've taken in. So it's not so much a. A question just as a comment or an observation around how that could potentially be kind of a difficult thing to say. What are my values truly, as opposed to what are the things that I think I value based on the things that have been fed in? Point being, if you value creativity and building new things. I think of myself. I did the Inventor's Fair in seventh grade. I just loved that. I think some of that manifests itself in the things I'm doing now. But I've also been fed TechCrunch articles and Gary Vaynerchuk videos on Hustle and businesses that report their revenue on bare metrics. And it's like suddenly these other things start to come in. And where it started as creativity, now it kind of becomes. I find myself leaning into the measurement side of things and there's maybe value misalignment there. So it seems like it would be hard work. Did you find that to be the case for you, that it was hard to figure out what those values are, or was it pretty obvious when you did that?

I don't think it's that obvious, no. I also don't think it's necessarily hard work. I do think it's an iterative kind of evolving process. And the reason I say that is because, yes, I think I'm really great at rationalizing pretty much anything, right? And especially to myself. And I think the key, and again, to your point, it's because we've been so programmed to believe that if you're an entrepreneur and you're not aspiring to build a billion dollar company, then you can't call yourself an entrepreneur. That's obviously very simplistic, but it's that kind of programming that we need to rework. And I think the way to rework that, again, touching on principles of mindfulness, there is to. I think that the values are our core, our true values are ultimately those things that, like, mostly always feel good, right? They energize versus takeaway, like drain energy, right? They come that. They come naturally. They come subconsciously. Right. Or unconsciously at times, right. You find yourself gravitating towards those. So even if you said like, hey, like it's my, for example, it's my highest, my philanthropy is my highest value, but you ultimately find like, like philanthropy is really hard for me. Or you know, I just don't prioritize this as much as I say I do. Right. Like those are, I think, just going through that iterative process and then, you know, whittling it down and saying, you know what? I actually, I like drinking glass of wine and playing FIFA on my passion for. Right. And that's, that's just, that's just the process. So I said, I totally get it. Like for me it wasn't that easy, right, to figure everything out. I at least, like through my experience came to the conclusion that like my family is my highest value and I, I would for example, rather not have my business if I had to pick between those two. Ideally I would never have to pick between my business and my family. But if I really, really had to pick, if there's no way to find common ground, I would always pick my family first.

Yeah, when you talked about looking at each individual item and saying energy giving, energy taking, am I drawn to this? Am I not? It reminds me of a book I read called Designing youg Life. And one of the exercises they had you do was to audit your day and they'd have, have a, you'd write down what it is and it was a little gas gauge and it was like empty, full. And that just being a really simple exercise to say, hey, what does that look like? As I go throughout my day, there's probably part of it is like, is this work that I'm drawn to or not? You know, before we press record, I have this like stack of CPA like to do stuff. And it was like, that's definitely an empty, which is not necessarily value related, but it does inform what are the things that you're drawn to or not. Side note, they addressed it to Brian Ostom. So they got my first name and last name wrong, which is awesome.

But that, that by the way means you can send it back and say, this wasn't for you.

You, this wasn't this. You gave this to the wrong person. I'm not going to do it exactly. But that just being an important exercise that you do to think about where does that look like as you're talking about it? It reminded me of a friend of mine who said your checkbook and your calendar are moral documents. And I think they could also be value documents. They are a reflection of the things that you are currently valuing most. And, and if those get out of alignment with what you truly value, it's probably time to reassess and relook at that again. So as we close out, one of the questions that I have for you. Let's say you're sitting across from somebody who hasn't exited two businesses. They're not, you know, starting their third businesses. They haven't had these, these wins necessarily. They're in the early stages. They're. They've maybe been doing it for a few years. What would, what would you tell them as you're having a coffee or tea in regards to considerations around business building life, profitability, knowing that it can't be the seven steps, but what would be some encouragements you'd give to people in order to make sure they're aligned in a way that their entire life is profitable as opposed to just their business?

Yeah, I would probably ask them to go back to that first moment that they decided that, hey, this is the thing I'm going to do. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to build my own business and go down this path. And I would probably ask them, like, what was the consideration in that moment? And my gut feel is they would probably give me some version of their pursuit of freedom. Right. Whether they define freedom as wanting to kind of work on their own time, work on the things they want, work when they want, work with whom they want, et cetera. And then I would probably ask them, how has that played out until now? And how many things, how many freedoms have you sacrificed? Right. I mean, I think the simplest, even though your biggest freedom that we give up these days is the fact that we all have smartphones and our businesses live on our phones in our pockets. If you didn't have a business, you probably would have that freedom. You've pursued many of these freedoms that comes with this entrepreneurial path, and you've probably traded many other. I would probably ask them just to take stock of that. And I would leave them with the thought of, you know what? Especially given the success rate of most businesses, it's okay if, like, this path is not for you. Right. Sometimes the best decision many entrepreneurs can make is to actually just find a really great team, join that team, work on payroll, but do something they truly love, where they're not trading kind of all of these other freedoms or incurring all of these life costs. But that's probably where I would start. Maybe Slightly provocative and maybe not.

I have this friend who his dad owned multiple different businesses. One was in manufacturing and he'd made springs for machines that made other machines. It was like this super niche thing. And then he got into, he had a luxury dog babysitting. And I was like, hey, could I get together with you and your dad? I just want to ask. This is probably 12, 13, 14 years ago. I just want to ask him about entrepreneurial stuff. And he was super resistant because he thought I was doing like multi level marketing Amway. And he was like, I just, I don't want to get lunch with you and talk about business. But ended up doing it and eventually was like, yeah, I can sit down with you and talk to you about it. And I was like, essentially it was just like this open ended question, do you have any advice for me? I'm trying to figure out do I want to be an entrepreneur? And he was like, don't do it. He was like, find a job you love where you can work 9 to 5 or whatever it is and go home and enjoy the evenings. And I think it's like you said, it's a little bit provocative and it's like, gosh, that's not what I wanted to hear. But also I think his point was if you're in the pursuit of whatever it might be, you know, freedom of time or not having the burden of certain things, the answer might not be building a business. Maybe it would be. But if you are building a business, and my guess is implied within your response, make sure that the business is serving those values and if the values won't be served through business building, then you can look in other places and that's okay. Which I think is, is a really helpful perspective for people to have as they, as they process through stuff. So we're coming to the end here. I want to make sure that people get an opportunity to check out the book. I have the PDF version but I'm gonna buy the hard copy version and put it up with a all my other books here in the office here. Where can people do that and also follow along ad with what you're up to?

Yeah. So easiest place to probably get the book is Amazon, both ebook on Kindle and paperback. Otherwise most major retailers should have a copy of the book. If you can't find it at any of those places then my personal website, Ad Me, Adi Me has loads of links to the book as well. And I'm also building my new startup Cogsy in public over there and hoping to kind of share that journey and kind of in a way where kind of anyone that is keen will hold me accountable to my own life profitability as I also embark on these kind of on this next phase of my life.

Great. And one of the things that's wonderful about that is it's not building it in public and exposing the metrics, which a lot of people do. We've done that a version of that others have. But to your point earlier in the podcast, building it in public with the context of life profitability, which I think is wonderful as a way for us to feed into, to consume content that isn't just about growth in numbers, but also about those other important considerations around life profitability.

Totally.

Eddie, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

And that's a wrap for this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed this interview with ad. I thought it was really interesting and kind of gave me a new perspective for becoming a little bit more mindful, more self aware, and to help me recognize my values and how that can impact a business. So I hope that you had similar takeaways. And if you have any thoughts or questions, you can head on over to the Show Notes for this episode@foodbloggerpro.com 292 and there you'll find links to all of the other, you know, books or resources that Bjork and 88 mentioned in this episode. So thanks again for tuning in this week. We'll see you next Tuesday and until then, make it a great week.

Sam.