Lighting The Fire: Jason VanDevere

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Jason Vandevere of Goal Crazy. Jason, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Christian.

Absolutely. Uh, as we were kind of discussing, um, in the green room, um, your background and experience, why don't you catch up the listeners on what your, your CV is, if you will.

Yeah. So before I started my own business, Goal Crazy, I worked for my family. My dad is a car dealer here in Akron, Ohio. So if you ever come here, you'll see my last name, Vandevere, all over. They've got 5 dealerships, Vandevere Kia, Cadillac, Chevy, whatever, bunch of dealerships. So I was supposed to be the 4th generation to take over this portfolio of car dealerships and run it. So I was working there for a number of years. So I could learn the whole business, take it over. And eventually I realized that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to design a planner, uh, and start my own business. Everybody told me it was the craziest idea to leave the family business and start with nothing and start something on my own, but I did. So back in 2018, I launched this business selling planners that I designed called Goal Crazy, and now it's just turned into more things. People started buying them, reaching out, and then it— I started hosting courses and workshops and coaching programs. Most recently, it's turned into a book, Dream driven. On the side, I've been buying rental property. So I'm up to 34 apartments and hopefully can keep getting more. But I'd say that's like my, uh, my highlight reel right there. That's just like—

beautiful synopsis.

Yeah, there's been plenty of struggles, plenty of things I've done that didn't work, uh, but that's, that's where I'm at right now.

Um, what I do on this show is I ask questions and then I listen and then I find something interesting and I tug on it. It's interesting to me. It may not be interesting to anybody else, but if I'm not interested, then no one else going to be interested. Okay, so I am interested in what you said about a generational business that you rejected. Okay, let's, let's dive into that. When did you figure that out? Like, was there some epiphany while you're standing there on the showroom floor where you're like, this isn't it? Like, was there a light bulb? Oh, there's a light bulb on your book. So maybe— no, it's not a light bulb. Is it a light bulb?

Yeah, it's a light bulb with an arrow in it. There wasn't necessarily like a single moment. I would say I always wanted to start a business on my own. And when I graduated college, I kind of hoped going into the dealership would fulfill that. It put me on a trajectory to become a business owner. And but then as I worked there, if I— when I worked there, my dad shows up there. And if you were at one of the dealerships, you'll know if my dad is there because he's you'll hear him. He's just loud. He's excited. He loves it. He absolutely loves it. And growing up and working there, I always knew that's what I wanted. I wanted a business that I loved that was just this extension of himself. He's built it with core values. I mean, he has great work-life separation and great hours, all that stuff. But like, I wanted a business that lit a fire inside of me. And as I worked there, my dad wanted me to work in each department for about a year, give or take, so I could learn the whole business.

And Did that include valet? Did you have to clean the cars?

Oh, I drove Cut-It Smart cars, washed cars for years. Yeah, lots of jobs that they wouldn't even hire other people. It's like, oh, who wants to clean the gutters?

Nobody.

Have one of the Van de Veers do it. Yeah. Yeah, but it just became clear to me like I wasn't going to have that same fire that he had in there. And maybe like something that also made that clear for me is when I was there, I did buy my first rental property.. And that really excited me. If I meet somebody, well, if I met somebody then and still meet somebody now who also has rental properties, I love talking to 'em. I feel like I could talk to 'em for hours about their rental properties. It's like this game, this hobby where if I met somebody else who worked in the car business or even another car dealer's son, it's like I knew how to talk to him about it, but it didn't light a natural— it wasn't connected to a passion of mine. So Yeah, maybe long answer. Like, I wanted to find what my dad had.

Okay, so that's also interesting. Okay, so you're— and I don't mean this as a criticism at all, but I, you know, when I meet people that are really fired up about real estate, I'm like, why? Like, I mean, like, I ask myself that too. So did you play a lot of Monopoly as a kid? And So what about, what about real estate lights your fire?

Ah, it's, it's like a puzzle. It's like a game. You're finding these deals and every deal, it's like you gotta, is it a good deal? Is it not? You don't know. Like it all comes down to what price are you going to buy it for and what does it need? And it's like, okay, here's this property in front of me. How could I get it? So it's a good deal. And a lot of times you still think you're buying it at a great deal. And once you buy it, you realize it might not be as good of a deal as you thought, but then you buy it and there's, there's just different levers to pull on of how can you make this a good deal? How can you, how can you make it more passive for you? It's— and one of the things I do like about rental properties is there's enough to go around. Like lots of my friends now in, in where I live in Akron, they also have rental properties, but we can share with each other everything that we're doing. And by me doing great with my business, it doesn't hinder on them. Competition. Yeah, I mean, I was never like the top car dealer level where my dad was, but if he got together with the other car dealers in our area, they're probably not sitting down sharing their secrets, you know, of like, hey, here's the secret sauce that we do. You hold that closer to your chest because there's not—

trade secret—

like enough around. Yeah. Um, so I did really like— I really liked that. It was, it was fun. It paid you again and again. It just seemed like a more fun investment avenue than like I bought some more bonds and stocks.

Okay. All right. I stipulate that you enjoy it. I don't understand it. And there are lots of people that do, you know, like one of my— Yeah. One of my first influencers was Robert Kiyosaki. And I read his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right out of university. And he's the OG real estate investor.

Oh, that book was super helpful for me. Yeah.

But, but like, I, I never could like— but I think it speaks to a point. Like, I— and I think the point to take from it is, is that you have to find out what lights you up. Like, and it can't be what lights someone else up, because if it doesn't light you up, then you're not going to be— you're not going to be successful at it. I mean, and, and I, I see, you know, I, I applaud you for having the courage to step out of the shadow of your, your family business? Because I imagine that that was extremely difficult to, to do. I mean, around everybody else's expectations.

Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, I was terrified to tell my dad I wanted to leave. Yeah, it was.

How did that conversation go?

I think he was shocked at first. Me and my dad are very similar. In our personality traits or skills that I've most likely gotten from him. So I think it was hard for him to wrap his head around like, well, why don't you like it like I do, right? It's— he loved it. It just seems logical. Like, I'm good at it. Uh, why don't you enjoy it? Uh, I— but I would say like he's been incredibly supportive afterwards. I think it was more than anything just a shock and it was It's kind of sad, but I probably crushed a level of his own dream, right? Like, he dreamed of being able to pass this down to me or to— I'm one of 6 kids. There are other siblings. None of them plan on going into the business now, but maybe that'll change. So we'll see. But I think he's been, you know, the business has been positioned so that it can keep going down generation after generation. Now, my dad and my uncle also is in the business and he has kids. Who are planning on going into it. So, it shouldn't die off because I left. There should be enough to go around, or to keep going.

And it sounds like it doesn't— I mean, at that size and with that continuity, you know, sustainability, it doesn't have to be a VanDeVeer that owns it.

Like, you know, it doesn't have to be. Yeah.

Someone else will certainly find value in it. Oh yeah. Okay. So let's, let's fast forward then. You decide to— you bought your first rental property while working. Fast forward to what was that leap like? Like what was, what was the like, I've got to— was there a trigger to say, okay, I got to go like it's time? Was there some something that triggered that? Was there some event?

Not necessarily. When I had the conversation with him originally, I said I was going to stay around for one more year, uh, and I ended up shortening that by about half. And maybe what kind of started that is I went on a cruise, uh, let's see, it might have been like in the fall, and it was just— I was— I wanted to be done with the dealership. And I feel like having a break from the dealership, it was like, why am I waiting till the end of the year? I feel like I have enough money to do this. Let's just get started. So then I came back and told him I want to leave at the end of the year. And yeah, then that worked. But I mean, I, I knew I wanted to design this planner, but I didn't have— I know what he's going to be called. I know what the content was going to be like. I just knew what I wanted it to do. I had tried a bunch of different planners out there. All of them had the right promises of what they said they were going to help me with, and none of them delivered on it, in my opinion. So it was like I knew I wanted to make this certain planner.

Uh, did you want to make it for yourself or were you intending it to be a product from the outset?

Yep. Both. It's like I wanted this for me and I had to assume that other people were having the same problem. I would meet people who were like planner people like I was and they had tried dozens of planners and it was like, oh yeah, I've tried all those dozens of planners too. And, and it was just like, that's what you would do. You should hop from one planner to the next. And it was like, I just, why doesn't somebody put in the work to actually do this. So when I left my job, I spent 6 months just interviewing successful people. And I would say because of my family, it was— I was easier to get connected with people who were business owners, accomplished something, wrote a book, something, and I could learn, what are you guys doing to clarify your goals, to hold yourself accountable, to accomplish them, to track your progress, to just— how are you doing this? And then I put those together in little booklets of the design, and then I hosted 7 focus groups where I took people through it. They would try it out. And those really helped to iron out the process really when I didn't realize how bad it was until I did that first focus group. And then it like slowly got better until, all right, this is working. This is consistently getting people results. And then I launched it, uh, yeah, about 7 months after I left the business. So I left my job.

You designed the planner for entrepreneurs.

Yeah, uh, in a way I designed it for myself who was an entrepreneur, but, um, there's nothing in there that's just specific to entrepreneurs. Now I do niche my marketing down to entrepreneurs, but really, like, I have people who are buying this to homeschool their 6 kids, to run, be a pastor, to get through med school. It's just going to help you clarify what do you want to do with your life and then make a plan to do it. And it helps you set goals in all the different areas. It's not just goals in your career. It helps you Set goals for your family, your travel, your health, your, your finances. There's 7 different areas that helps you set goals in.

So what do you, what do you think the primary difference in your product is that makes it scratch that itch for you and entrepreneurs that others don't?

Yeah, so I think there's 2 really big things. The first is I call it my life crash course. And it's a goal-setting course that helps somebody figure out what do you really wanna do with your life? And I think this is, with other planners but also the market, there's kind of this broken belief, and I had been in it, where it was like I just kept hopping from planner to planner to planner, like trying to get the planner that made everything in my life fit. When what I really needed to do was to clarify what do I actually wanna do with my life? Because once you have the answer to that question, everything else is easier. Now it's like, all right, this is what I wanna do, I'm gonna focus on that, and now I have the clarity and the confidence to say no to all this other stuff because the world is unlimited, right? You just brought up like real estate. It's not for everybody. And if it's not your thing, don't do it because it's just going to be a pain in the butt. But like, if you try to invest in every single investment opportunity, you drive yourself nuts versus figure out which one you want to do and then get really good at it. And then you have the confidence to say no. So that's— it really helps somebody figure out what do you want to do with your life, break that down into clear plans. And then it has— it's an accountability tool. I call it a habit card. But it's a way to hold themselves accountable. I'm gonna show you this, but I'm gonna explain it at the same time so people listening can get the idea. But each planner comes with 3 of these cards. Essentially, they're like a scorecard where whenever you set a goal, I want to figure out what's the successful behavior I need to do every day to reach that goal, right? My successful behaviors will lead to my successes, or my unsuccessful behaviors will lead to my failures. So when we set the goal, figure out what are the successful behaviors I need to do every day to reach that goal. And you make a list of 10 of them. Here are the 10 successful behaviors I need to do every day to reach my goal. And then every night I go through this and I track my progress on it. So it matches up with these little check marks on the side of your page. This becomes your daily bookmark. And I go, number 1, did I do that? Check. Number 2, did I do that? No. 3, yes. And then I'll give myself a grade. If I did 7 of the 10, I had a 70% day. And it's just a really easy way to hold myself accountable. Because I know if I do these things every day, I'm going to reach my goals. My successful behaviors lead to my successes, so all I need to do is do them every single day.

I think, I think that's brilliant. I, I have used planners in the past. My, my most recent iteration, which I haven't used in a couple years, was Full Focus Planner, and I can't remember who—

Michael Hyatt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I found it good. I'll tell you what I— why I stopped using it was I felt like that being goal-oriented limited my being open to things that were not on my radar. So, like, it's like when I'd set goals for the year, you know, they were the things that I wanted to do, right? I wanted to accomplish. But there were things that— what I noticed looking backwards were that there were things that happened, that came up, that weren't on my radar at the beginning, right? That became interesting, and maybe I passed over them because they weren't on my goal sheet, right? And so I like what you're proposing, because it kind of marries the two, the longer-term vision, like beyond a year, where it gives you that space to say, okay, this wasn't what I had set out to do at the beginning of the year, but it's still in line with what I ultimately want to be. Uh, so there's space for it. Is that— am I interpreting that correctly?

Yeah, I, I agree, because, uh, like, and I'm gonna give a long answer to this question, or this issue, because I think this is a really good thing. Um, and so before I get into goals in the planner, we first clarify somebody's dreams. And I want to separate the difference between the two because I think this is going to connect exactly to what you're Christian Brim here. Goals, everyone's pretty familiar with goals, right? When you set a goal, it's something you actually plan on doing. It's realistic, it's specific, time-bound, right? The whole SMART goals thing. Dreams, on the other hand, when we're dreaming, we're simply asking our heart, what would I love to do? What would I love to experience? And we're letting our heart speak to us without limits. These are things you may do, you may not actually do. They don't have to be realistic. They don't have to be time-bound. You're just asking yourself, what would I love to do and experience? And this is the beauty, is when you can do that, once you have dreams, then you can set goals that are aimed at making those dreams happen. And because they're aiming at a dream, it gives your goals meaning. Now here's the thing, you don't need dreams in order to set goals. If you don't have dreams, you can still set goals, but they're not aiming at anything, right? They become meaningless. And if you don't have any dreams, your goals don't have meaning. And if you don't have meaning to your goals, you end up in this place that I call survival mode. Where you're just working to stay afloat, you're just trying to survive. And I think so many people have fallen there where it's like, look, you go set a goal to do anything, right? You could set the goal right now today to go write a pop-up book about penguins and just go do it, right? But if that's not connected to a dream of yours, I'd say, Christian, that's a complete waste of time. So what you were kind of bringing up is I think you had clear dreams of this is what I want to do with my life. And then you can set goals and maybe the vehicle of the exact goal that's going to get you there started to change. But it's still connected to this is the life, the lifestyle that I want to create for myself. And connecting this back to why I think this is helpful for entrepreneurs is our business in a lot of ways should— it needs to be the means, not the end. Our business needs to be the means, not the end. The end is your dreams, your lifestyle. What's the lifestyle you want? And once you clarify that, then you can make the business to be the means to create it. But if you don't do that, then your business becomes the end and And then entrepreneurs succeed where it completely overtakes their life and now they're a slave to their business and, and they need help getting out. And that's where many of my coaching clients come from. So no worries if that's the place you found yourself in, but, uh, you can fix that by dreaming and it gives you meaning, takes you out of survival mode. And then when you have to pivot, you're still in line to your dreams.

Okay. So I'm going to reference two books. And, and, and try and stick with me because it's not even clear in my, in my mind. But I'm seeing some connection here. There's a book called Why Greatness Can't Be Planned. And it's actually a book around computer science, artificial intelligence. It's an old book, way before LLMs. And essentially, the book postulates that the great things can't be planned, like, linearly. We can't see the direct path, all of the steps to get to the point. His example was the creation of the computer. The creation of the computer was predicated on the creation of vacuum tubes. And vacuum tubes were created for lab testing of electricity. It had nothing, no one had envisioned a computer, right? But it was a requirement for you to move to the computer. So like, if you'd set out to say, I'm gonna build a computer, well, first you'd have to have the idea to create a vacuum tube, right? And so like, the path is not always straight. And it's not usually clear.

Right.

Okay. So I'm going to set that idea here. Yep. A more recent book that I read is Cognizant. Give me a second. I always confuse the title. Not Cognizant. I've got it sitting right over there. Let's see if I can see the title. My eyes are bad. Good God. Contextual. Contextual Intelligence by Dr. Matt Cutts. And he talks about this model of 3D thinking where specifically, I'm thinking of foresight. So, like, when you think about the future, how it drives your actions in the present. And he said The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is with the ghost of the past, the ghost of the present, the ghost of the future, is actually a perfect example of 3D thinking. Where you look into the future and see where your current actions are taking you. And if you want it to be different, what you need to be doing differently in the present. Which is exactly, I think, what your planner does, like, and what the concept that you're talking about. But I guess what I find difficult is when the future is unclear, right? Like, you aren't even sure what it is that you're wanting to do. And maybe that's kind of my age. Like, I've had success and like, I'm trying to figure out the, the third act of my life, like, what does that look like? Um, do you think that you— and understand, I've worked with a business coach for 3 years, like, I, I'm deep into this of like trying to figure out my next iteration and what I want to be. Do you think that your planner is a useful tool in helping, helping someone do that?

Yeah, so I have a couple thoughts here. And well, yes, planner, but let me tell you why. Is so I have this goal crazy cycle, But like one of the important parts is you're setting goals, but you need this reflection component is one of it. And that's built into the planner. I would say it's a planner and a journal in one. At the end of every day, you're reflecting on your accomplishments. Each week there's an end of the week reflection and the month reflection and the quarter, whatever. But here's why this is so powerful is I kind of compare this to golf. Like I'm not good at golf, golfing. So if I go to the driving range and I hit 100 balls, let's say 10 of them are good and 90 of them are bad. Well, there's this saying that practice makes perfect, right? So if anything, I practice my bad shots more. I should be getting worse, right? If I go to— I practice the bad shots 90 times and the good ones 10. But that's not what happens, because when you're there, you reflect. After you take a swing, you reflect and say, all right, that was bad, I got to change this. And that reflection allows you to start improving. So to pair this back to the goal setting, you need to be setting the goals, but you need to be reflecting on a regular basis. On how do things go, what did I accomplish, uh, what are the challenges I'm facing, what are the opportunities, what went well, what worked, what didn't work. The reflection part, I think, is what actually allows progress. So there's one thought which we can noodle on together. But I think I had this coach once, and I've come back to this image a lot of times, where, uh, it was after I launched my planner business. I came to him, it's like, well, what am I supposed to do next? And he kind of drew this chart for me where there was this little stick figure and he was at the bottom of a mountain and he's like, look, okay, when you were— you had set this goal to the top of your mountain to launch this plan or business and now you did it. And he draws a stick figure now at the top of the mountain and he's like, now that you're at the top of the mountain, you realize that behind this there's another mountain. And he kind of draws a line that goes maybe 30% down the mountain and then back up again. Kind of looks like, you know, like a stock chart going up. And he's like, you couldn't see the second mountain when you were at the bottom because the first mountain was blocking. But now that you're here, Now you see it. But for you to go to that next mountain, you have to go down a little bit. You have to take a risk, restart and go again. And I would say like, that's been so accurate for me with my business. Like, okay, I launched the business. Then I realized the next thing was like launching in different countries, took an investment. I had to restart the process, but it brought me higher. And then coaching, like each thing, it just kept going up and up. But you can't see it all. There's the first mountain that you need to get started on. And I think like with goals, I'm fine with goals pivoting. I mean, if you're pivoting all the time, then you have a problem. But like, the purpose of a goal is it's supposed to give you direction and it's supposed to draw you into action. And if it is doing those things, it's doing its job, right? Action brings clarity. The goal setting does help. But once you start taking that action, which you've brought up several times, like you take the action, more clarity comes. It's great. A lot of times you need the clarity to get started on the action, and that can be your goal setting. Start getting started, and the path gets clear. What are your thoughts there? Is that kind of—

well, no, it makes sense. So, so to continue with those two books, the, the other analogy in Greatness Can't Be Planned is that like you want to reach the mountain, you can see it in the distance, right? But there, there's, there's fog covering, and you can only see in front of you a few feet. Right? And then there are— it's actually water that you've got to cross to get to the mountain. So there's stepping stones, right? But you can only see the stepping stones that are right in front of you. And you can't see the next stepping stone until you move forward because your visibility is limited, right? But the end goal, the mountain there, you can see, right? Yeah. Then I also would say Dr. Kutz talks about the 3D thinking is in time. So there's hindsight, insight, and foresight. And goal setting is looking forward. But the reflection that you talk about is the hindsight, like, and the distinction there between like, good and bad hindsight. Most people, myself included, when we look backwards, there's a lot of self-criticism. There's a lot of you know, what's the word he used? Ruminating about— and that's negative hindsight. Like going back and reliving your failures and beating yourself up is not productive. It's rather, what did you learn from that experience to affect your current decisions? Like, what were the lessons learned? So, yeah, I think all of these things are in synergy.

I want to add something there because I think that's great, like reflecting, what did I learn? How did I grow? And because a lot of times that does come from our challenges, right?

The challenges are where we always come from the challenges.

Yes. But one of the things that I journal regularly at the end of every day, week, month, quarter, the first thing you do is you write down your accomplishments. And you kind of brought up people ruminate on lots of times things that beat them up, like they collect these things they failed on. They're collection— collections of failures. And it's like, okay, let's just collect your accomplishments. Every night I reflect on what did I accomplish? And sometimes my day very often doesn't go as planned, right? And if I didn't reflect on my accomplishments, I've got a bad thing. I'm like, that was a waste of a day. But when I write down everything I accomplished, I realized, no, I did a bunch of stuff. But what happens is this is a physical paper planner. So I have shelves in my office full of these journals of writing down accomplishments. But that maybe it's silly that I save them all, but like it's a visual cue to me of like, there's all my accomplishments. I have notebooks full of them. So now when I'm thinking about what do I want to accomplish next, I start to think of myself as an accomplisher, someone who's capable of accomplishing things rather than just I accomplished a couple of things in the past because it's a visual reminder. So I would highly encourage people to start collecting.

No, no, I think, you know, journaling is an interesting component of that because I have been— I've been awful at journaling. It's been something— it's been a discipline that has been recommended to me multiple times. And I like writing, but I don't know why I have resisted journaling. So maybe using your planner, I can incorporate it with the other. I think the other thing that I think about when I think about planning is, you know, and this comes from my faith. I'm going to bring faith into this and where this causes conflict. You know, I think man makes his plans and God laughs. You know, the— a lot of the ancients in the Jewish and Christian tradition would always put the, the God willing at the end of like, I'm going to go do this, God willing. And this idea of trying to control our future by goal setting and planning, right? And having that with the understanding that God's purposes will be done regardless of what I'm doing. So I can either be in line with God's will and God's plan, or I can not be. And I want to be in line with what God wants me to do specifically. But it is sometimes so hard and not clear, like, this is where God is calling me to go. This is what God is calling me to do, versus this is what I want to do. Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I agree with that. There's this wrestling, and it's this wrestling of surrendering versus the goal setting. Seems like they can be pulling, and they're both biblical, like the You know, it says like, don't build a house without counting the cost or some scripture verse like that. But then there's the like, don't bring two tunics, don't prepare what you're going to say, just surrender to me. And it's like, well, then which is it? Right? But that's so often in the Bible. It's the right— the parallel, the tension, the tension in that. And there's something beautiful in there.

Yes, because I don't think you're called to be passive either. Right? Like, you know, you're not just submitting to God's will is not just saying, okay, well, you know, whatever happens, happens. That's not what I think it is. I mean, I think it is— I think one of the verses that has resonated with me for a long time is, it's in the Psalms, where it is the glory of God to conceal a thing. It is the glory of things to search for it. And so I think that there is— that's part of it is the process of us seeking seeking it out. It's, it's working through it. It is not passive.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's, that's good. Yeah, I know. So this is kind of off topic, but I have found this helpful for goal setting for all this. I do silent retreats every year. I've done as long— well, it's at least 24 hours. I've done as long as 6-day silent retreats, and those have been absolutely transformational for my life. Every year I do one. Uh, really helpful. It's—

I always go there. Do you do it by yourself or is there some—

Oh yeah. Yeah. But, um, so when I did the 6-day, I met with a spiritual director once a day. So I did have an hour of not silence and, you know, he would give me things to pray about. And, but it's kind of like I would always go, I always started and I have this list of like, here's the problems I'm going to solve, right? Here's the things I'm going to get clarity on. And you go there and never once have I like pulled that list out once I'm there and like brainstormed through them. It's like, you just, that's not what it's for. It's for an encounter with Jesus. It's, it's more religious, spiritual thing. But whenever I come back, if I look at that list, all of those become solved by me just going deeper and solving the root issue of normally it's some kind of lie or twisting of I'm not enough. And I might be setting these goals to try and be like, well, I am enough. Or maybe I don't feel enough, so I'm not pursuing things that I should be. But like, once I can connect more with where I came from, God, who is already enough, and therefore I can have my own worth from him. Now it's like, well, I should be doing things, but I don't know. I feel like you just— if you go on one, it's so, so helpful to experience. This is what it's truly like to have zero stress. I'm there for hour, 24 hours or days, and it's like there's nothing I should do, can do, have to do, need to do. Like, I can sit here and sleep. I can just sit here and doze off looking at the sky for hours if I want. Bring a journal, Bible, and that's it for a week. Uh, I would highly recommend that.

I— well, you know, you, you're, you're inspiring me because I have been coming back to the, the book, uh, The Joy of Discipline. And it talks about the 7 ancient Christian disciplines, you know, one of which is silence. And that's one I overcame. I overcame the fasting one last year. I did my first multi-day fast. And, you know, the silence one I haven't tackled yet. But I think you're inspiring me to give it a try, because you're right. It resets your perspective. I mean, what I envision it doing is because the things that we think are the problem are not really the problem. Not really. They're symptoms. They're not underlying problems. And I think ultimately, the underlying problem is you have to be right with God. Like, you know, that's That's where you have to start and end it. If you're not, then— there was a quote that a pastor read by Oswald Chambers, and paraphrasing it says, you know, if you fear God, then you don't have to fear anything else. If you don't fear God, everything is fearful, right?

Yeah, I like that.

That's not, that's not the exact quote, but he said it much more eloquently. He's British, you know.

Sounds eloquent. Well, so this was an analogy I heard from somewhere else, but they had given this analogy where if you were given a glass of water and there was dirt in the bottom and they gave you a spoon and said, get the dirt out and you get your spoon, you try and get it out and it just cloudies the water, right? It's impossible. The more you stir, you're stirring. But if you just get another pitcher of water and you're just dumping it into the glass and the glass starts overflowing, eventually the clean water will dump all of the bad water out and now the dirt is out. And I feel like for me, that is a silent retreat. If I don't take that time, I'm stuck stirring the water more and more trying to get the dirt out. And it's like, I— when I've gone on those retreats, most time I realized my goals were actually too small. Uh, now kind of my approach is like, I need God-sized dreams. And like when I have a giant goal, it forces me to surrender and then it bridges the like, if it's so big, like I can't achieve this. I'm going to tie this to the Bible. Jesus told the disciples to go out and make nations of all people. It would be illogical for them to have sat down and tried to make a plan. Here's how we're going to do it, right?

Like we're going to set an annual goal of this many people, right?

It would be ridiculous. It was so big that it forced them to say like, God, this is in your hands. I'm going to surrender. I'm going to take the action that's in front of me. But this is ultimately up to you. And it's like, that's what I want to be doing. I want to be setting targets that are big. They're motivating and entices me to push through even when it's hard. But there's— it's so big. I need to surrender to let it happen.

I love that you have a tremendous amount of wisdom for your apparent age. So That's good. Okay, I'm going to pivot and talk about some of the challenges that you've had as an entrepreneur. What was the one that comes to mind? That like, if I say what was really difficult, what comes to mind?

Yeah, launching my planner business was really difficult. It took me almost 2 years to turn consistent profits.. And it was just so hard for years, feeling like just banging your head against the wall. Like, why is— they were selling great. I was getting incredible reviews. It was like, why can't I make any money doing this? And it was hard. And it's kind of— I want to connect this here to dreams. And I feel like why it's so important to answer that question, because this is what's got me through it, is like when I'm— so the premise of my book is called Dream Driven. And when I'm helping somebody find their dream business idea is I want it to be a dream-driven business, one that connects to a dream rather than I compare it to like an easy money business where you just simply like, what's going to be the easiest business start that earns me the most amount of money? Because when you find your dream-driven business, like, I'm willing to do it even when it's super hard, right? Like, if the desire is this big, uh, but the challenge is bigger, then I'm going to quit. But if I have the challenge is this big but my desire is much bigger, then I'm going to I'm gonna overcome it. So yeah, but it was, it was just really hard.

That reminds me, when I wrote my book Profit First for Creatives, I was interviewing Todd Henry, who is another author and creator, and he was, he was talking about the word passion and the Greek word. I It's periklos or something, periklos. Anyway, he said the Greek word actually means suffering. And, you know, at that point, I was like, oh, well, that makes The Passion of the Christ make much more sense. I never understood that. But it also, to repeat what you said, if you don't have the passion, and you're not willing to suffer for it, you know, then you won't— you won't continue when it gets hard. And that's what you're saying is exactly right. I mean, that, that is my experience because it's going to be hard. And if the, if the dream is not big enough, your passion is not there, you'll stop.

You're going to quit.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that suffering— I mean, I don't want to go through it again, but we'll see what happens. But like, now looking back, I needed that. Like, that matured me. Absolutely. So much in a matter of years. It forced me to, to understand myself, figure out what limiting beliefs, fears are holding me back, to get more disciplined, to get into my faith. Forced me to pray for— I mean, I've always had things to pray about, but like, for once in my life, it was so obvious I needed, I needed to pray about these things. I need to get healthier, have better routines. It was just, it forced me to improve. And I think that's like what we all want, is we want somebody or something to come along that forces us to improve. And I think when you find this dream, it's— I love that. I've never heard that connection to suffering, but it'll force you to suffer and therefore it forces you to improve.

The— I just completely lost my thought. Dadgummit. Oh, well, never mind. It'll come back. My brain is addled with age. I think— no, it's not coming back. All right, never mind. Oh, no, here it is. I knew it would come. I've had Dr. Pish Patel on the show a couple of times, and he is a successful entrepreneur. He had a 9-figure exit in his 40s, and then he was like, what do I do? With my, my life. Um, he chose to go back and get his doctorate in psychology, which he successfully defended his thesis last year. And it was a new brick in the psychology, uh, knowledge, uh, that centered his, his research was strictly on entrepreneurs. Um, his survey that he did was on entrepreneurs, which that data didn't exist. And that's the interesting thing, because entrepreneurs are hard to get that kind of information from, from a psychology standpoint. And what he discovered— this is not what his thesis was, but what, what, what also came out of it. He proved his thesis. But, but, but what this other thing that came out was essentially the longer people are entrepreneurs, the more emotionally satisfied they are and the more emotionally healthy they are. And I think that— and he thinks that entrepreneurship is the ultimate tool of refinement. Because it forces you into uncomfortable situations. And it requires you to change yourself. And nothing else— well, there are other things that can cause that, right? But, you know, like if you have a life-altering accident, lose, you know, the use of your legs or something like that. Absolutely, there are things. But like entrepreneurship is this beautiful vehicle to give you the refining fire to figure out what needs to change with you. And that, I think that's true, even in a secular sense, like you can set the spiritual aside. I think it's agnostic as to that. Like, I think it is a crucible.

Yeah, no, I think that's really good. Oh, yeah, I agree with that. I feel like entrepreneurship is this journey inside of myself. Uh, I would say like entrepreneurship. And the second thing that's helped me mature and grow a lot is having kids. It's just hard. It's beautiful. So we have, my wife is pregnant with our fourth kid, but it's been really, uh, we love it.

And you figured out what causes that?

I mean, like we want to have more, God willing, 6, 8, 10 kids. We'll see how many we can have, but, um, that sounds very Dutch.

I don't know.

Dutch Catholic. Yeah. That's, uh, we, we just love kids, but, um, I feel like for me with my entrepreneurship journey, it started out with this question of like, what do I want to do with my life? Right. And I brought that up a lot, but I feel like then to answer that question, it turned into more of an internal journey of who am I? Right. And it almost realized that that was the question at the root of almost everything I've done. I was either trying to understand who I was, reveal who I was, prove who I was, who am I? But then like it started as this external journey. What do I want to do with my life? It turned into this internal journey. Who am I? And then for me, that did turn into a spiritual journey. Like, I don't know how I can understand who I am without getting to know where I came from. But you said it doesn't have to go that route. But that was my journey here. Yeah.

And it reminds me, you know, this time last year, approximately, I was in Nicaragua at a mastermind event that I'd been invited to. I was not participating. And through a series of conversations with some of the people there, I came to understand that God was— because I was asking that question, what do you want me to do? But what I kept hearing from God was, I want you to focus on who you are, not what I want you to do. Right? And so I spent a lot of painful experience last year. And now just in this moment, I'm seeing the alignment, you know, you can, you can, you can only understand life looking backwards, but you have to live it forwards. Is that the things that I went through last year and that were very challenging to me personally and professionally were about me being able to understand who I am on a deeper level than— because I think what your insight was brilliant, like you can't act You can't know the proper way to act until you know who you are. Yeah. I mean, otherwise, you're just flailing at the water. You're just— right? We're human beings, not human doings. And it has to start with that. So, again, I applaud your wisdom and insight.

Christian Brim.

Yeah, no, I really do. I think it's magnificent. How do people— I'm, I personally am going to go buy one of your planners. So how do any of the audience go buy one of your planners if they want to?

Yeah, so my planner is called Goal Crazy, not go crazy, Goal Crazy. So my website's goalcrazy.com. If they want to get from Amazon, they can search it there, Goal Crazy Planner. My book is called Dream Driven. So the planner, like we talked about, it'll help you clarify your goals, accomplish your goals. The book is specifically going to help you just figure out your perfect business idea and then launch it this year.

Love it.

Yeah, thank you, Jason.

Thank you for being on the show and sharing your experience. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.