The Art of Rock Balancing, Zen & Following Your Passion in Business w Travis Ruskus #EEP #292

All right, my friend, it's time you strap on that dangly neckerchief of yours. So we're about to discuss rock balancing and how it applies to business. Plus, there's a brand new book coming about out, or is out about this too. You're gonna hear that and so much more in today's episode of Entrepreneurship Elevated. I was just staring Kelsey down, waiting for her nod. Was she gonna give me a smile and a yes, or was she gonna slam me? I don't know. You never know what's coming from Kelsey, but you do know what's coming from me, Mike Michalowicz, the author, on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. That's what's coming from me. I am here to help you to make your business permanently successful, to achieve that vision you have. Yeah, I do it through my books like Profit First and Clockwork, my brand new one Fix This Next. Yeah, get that. It's on pre-order right now. And we do it through this show called Entrepreneurship Elevated. I'm joined in studio with my dear friend and sometimes enemy, Kelsey Ayers.

Hello, friends. Thank you for listening to us. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening.

Yeah, and also in studio is the one and only Jacob Blown.

Hey, what's up?

Jacob Blown, you ever, uh, you, you go out to, uh, national parks, state parks pretty regularly? You're a hunter?

Yes.

Do you ever do rock balancing?

I actually did try a little bit, but not, not seriously.

It's hard.

It's not easy.

It is hard. Or is it? I think our, our guest may challenge the difficulty of it. I think it's a mental game. You and I were talking about kind of how our minds— why you look at me that way?

Like, it's hard. I don't— it's hard.

How much rock balancing have you done?

Oh, rock balancing. I thought you said rock climbing.

Sorry, did I say rock climbing?

I think you said balancing.

I don't know. Have you ever rock climbed?

I have, yeah.

I've done that too. Yeah, that is super hard.

It's really hard.

Yeah, but that's also— it's interesting. I think when it comes to rock climbing, a lot of people think it's all about strength, and it's not. It's about positioning skill. It's, it's, it's the mental aspect. Yeah. You know, I didn't realize this. My son's a rock climber. Like, he competes now. And you can— Jake does. And you can do— I don't know why you're looking at me. I feel obligated to tell you who he is.

I already knew, Steve.

My youngest son, Jake.

You know him?

And he can, uh— it's all about the use of your legs. That's the main muscle. It's really about the strategy and knowing what the path is you're gonna be following. But have you done some rock balancing, Kelsey?

I have tried, yeah.

What have you tried?

To make those structures.

That doesn't— first of all, you just did on the camera, you did a teepee structure. So that's not called rock balancing, that's called a rock house. No, they stack on top of each other. Yeah, they stack on top of each other. All right, well, we're going to discover there's a lot of lessons. And, uh, this gentleman I met actually in San Francisco, uh, at a CreativeLive event. He, uh, I knew his mother actually, and she said, I want my, uh, son to check out what you're doing, and we had just an interesting conversation.

That's cool.

And I've been following his story ever since. I purchased his artwork. He does artwork too, with— he does photography of his rock balance stuff, so we have some displayed in our house. Yeah, it's really breathtaking. Cals, do we have a shout out from one of our listeners?

We do.

Nice.

This comes from Natalie4ca. She writes, this podcast and Mike's books methods are truly life-changing. The podcast is so upbeat, even if I'm in the worst mood, listening makes me optimistic again. I love to start my Monday morning out with this podcast.

Natalie, Natalie, this section's for you, and I want you to clip this out, and every time you listen or you're down, you can listen to this. Natalie, you're a badass!

That was good, right?

That was pretty good, right? Yeah, we should do that for the, like, one podcast, like Just every person. Jeremy, you're a badass! Kelsey, nyeh. We should do that for all of our listeners, and then they can just play it over and over. Hey, Natalie, thanks for giving us a shout out, and we appreciate you. Keep kicking ass, my friend. Hey, I want to thank Nextiva voice over IP phone system.

Thanks, Nextiva.

I'm sorry, what? How do you pronounce the company?

Nextiva.

Oh, it sounded like you said neck. Diva. Nextiva. Um, NextCon will have been completed, of course, by the time this, this broadcasts. They do a 2-day event teaching, uh, business strategies. Now what's interesting is I don't know of another phone company that does something like this. Like, um, they compete against Vonage, RingCentral. You're ready for a joke to come.

I was waiting for it.

Yeah, there's no joke. Um, they were the only company I know of that does this. They're really out to support small businesses, and they are the ultimate small business phone system. So check them out at nextiva.com. All right, uh, Kelsey, I think we're gonna get into the show. Is that cool?

Yeah, that's cool.

San Francisco-based artist Travis Ruskus combines temporary rock-bound sculptures with photography, freezing into an infinity the ephemeral moment.

Who writes ephemeral?

Ephemeral. Who writes words I can't pronounce? You do. The healing energy of the meditative work showcases a transformative or transformation of stress to clarity, scarcity to abundance. His editions and workshops investigate the reconnection of human and earth. And he has a brand new book that's out there. You got to pick it up. It's on Amazon right now. It's called The Rock Balancer's Guide. So with no further ado, I want to welcome Travis Ruskus to our show. Travis, welcome.

Welcome, Travis.

Thank you guys. It's great to be here. Thank you for the intro.

So we meet in San Francisco. Do you remember what I was wearing? I don't recall, but I, uh, we, no, we started bullshitting after I was teaching at a conference, uh, teaching a thing called Creative Live out there. We started talking after, and, and Travis, I think at that time you were at a defining moment of your life. Like, should you go a career path that society deems appropriate, or should you pursue your passion, which is rock balancing?

Yeah. And I, I think that defining moment is every moment. But really, yeah, it was really externally kind of out there of what do I do? And I just, I mean, luckily I found my guru, Mike, to guide me towards the light. But yeah, it was something where when I met you, Mike, I was between so many things and just looking for someone to be like, no, go in on your passion, do that. And I'll kind of forever be grateful for you to to embrace that part of me that I couldn't even embrace myself. But since then, I've just been leaning in on that, and it's been a really difficult road, don't get me wrong. But I think that that's what allows other people to kind of fade off so that the strongest people rise to the top. And when it comes to art, it's tough because you got to have a unique idea, you got to be essentially the only person in the world that does it for anyone to consider you of value. But I think with this, what I'm trying to do is show that anybody on earth can balance a rock. And through my workshops and just working with people one-on-one and seeing how they instantly go, like you guys were saying in the beginning, of that's hard to that's easy, or I can't to I can. Because ultimately the rocks are just a metaphor for writing emails or driving in traffic. And I'm just trying to get people who maybe aren't going to go out and balance rocks or touch a rock to just look at how they approach anything. In a different light.

So this is a business of yours, uh, you found ways to monetize it. Um, what, what got you inspired to balance rocks in the, in the first place?

The origin story is always this long drawn-out thing that I, I don't even want to get into right now, you know. But what really it was is I was just in the river one day and, um, super sad, like just just reconsidering everything. And I was just standing in the water kind of numb, and I looked down and the water was rushing past, but the stones were still beneath my feet. And just out of curiosity, I picked up a rock, and it was— I think because I was so sad, when we're really sad, we get almost more open, we're more receptive to the things around us. And when I picked up that rock, it was almost like I picked up a rock for the first time and I could just see the deep purples in it and the gold and all this visual, sensory just explosion. I could hear the wind and it was almost like my thoughts for a few moments just kind of went away and I could just tap into the moment. That alone to me was weird because it didn't really happen before, but then I was just thinking, "How old is this rock?" couldn't really come up with an answer. I saw that I was holding it and I had these, these fingertips that were, I think it was 22 or 23 at the time, holding this like million or billion year old entity. So when I was trying to compare how old is 23 to a million, it's very, very— there's a huge gap. So there had to be a reason that I was there and I You know, looking back, it's like, well, of course, to balance rocks. But in that moment, I'm just thinking, okay, well, you know, let's go to the next moment. And it was just me trying to balance a rock in the most difficult way possible. And after 45 minutes, it just still wasn't balancing. So I, uh, it just kind of got exhausted and I kept with it with my exhausted mind. And by doing that, I was able to feel more and just kind of see where the rock was gonna wobble to one side. Okay. You just correct it. And after a little bit, only, you know, a minute or two. It just clicked into place and locked into place. And it's kind of spooky when you first do that, but after that moment happened, I just kind of went mad. I went rock crazy and I just kept going back there and I had all these people coming up to the park and, you know, taking this photo of me and, you know, super validating at first. But after a while it's like, here I am having this really deep experience in the river and, you know, someone's just leaving with a photo, they're not really getting transported into that world with me. So what I've done is I've just taken all of that knowledge of 45 minutes of struggle and then condensed it down into a minute to teach you how to rock bounce. So it's amazing seeing people of any race, any religion, any age, any color on their skin. The rock treats you all the same, and it's getting someone to just shift their approach to themselves over and over and over again. There's like this this look that people get in their eye when they balance that first rock in like a quote-unquote impossible way. Once I started to see that look in every single person that I taught, it was kind of like seeing— it's hard to explain, but seeing God or seeing yourself, the energy that kind of surrounds us all. It's almost like you're recognizing with it. For me, I thought, "Hey, there's got to be a good business model in this. If I'm clicking with every single person that I teach, then there's got to be something going with it, but that has been the process of it is getting something that looks completely amazing and people are shocked and awed with to actually being a profitable thing that I can pay rent with.

How do you monetize it?

So with this, I've been selling the artwork. I've been doing workshops, and this book has been a great tool to monetize. And something that I didn't really think about too much, but my publisher actually really wanted to when she approached me. With this book contract was like translation deals, because how cool would this be in Japanese or Spanish or stuff like that. And the whole process of giving birth to a book, I kind of forgot about that. And then once it was out, she just sent me a couple random emails like, oh hey, this French translation deal went through. Oh hey, we got it in South Korean, and here's like a couple thousand bucks in your pocket like come next pay period. So for me, I'm just like, this book is amazing. And at least for me, it gives me something where if people can't afford the artwork, because it is, you know, much higher price and value, they have a book with all of my information, all my insights, and just all like, there's, I don't know, 40, 50 pieces of artwork in there that you can kind of have. So I guess it's just having different price points to have it. And it goes even further of like, if you want a Zen garden and stuff like that too, I'm trying to incorporate what I call a healing room. Into corporate environments. So coming down in San Francisco, you got Facebook, and Facebook is essentially filled with stress, and you need a little room where people can go in and meditate and rock balance. And trying to work through some people either in Facebook or some other companies that I know to just make it happen, because all you need to do— what I'm seeing in this is you gotta have one person take a leap on you, take a risk and believe in you, AKA Mike, and then From there, you get other people that see that and they're like, oh, well, if they did it there, then they must be cool here. But it's really, really hard for people to take that leap. So if you can have someone to kind of bridge the gap, um, it always helps.

So, um, so tell me about, um, the process of balancing rocks. I always thought take the most flat part of the rock and balance it to the other most flat part of a rock, and that's basically it. But you've proven there's combinations that are perceivably impossible, but they're clearly not.

Yeah.

How do you go about this?

Well, the, the way that you balance a rock is a totally valid way to balance a rock, and it's probably a great way to— that's probably why you're great at building businesses, because you just look for the most kind of easy, consistent, strong thing that you can, and there you go. No wind is really gonna knock it down. And what you're doing in this whole process is discovering where I guess the balance lies between your limits, the wind blowing, your mindset. There's a variety of factors, but to be real basic with it, you just sit down and you balance a rock. But what happens with that is we start to think, well, what rock should I balance? When I take one rock, what angle should I balance it on? What about this next rock? How does this fit in? So it's more of before you even start balancing, just getting clear and finding a couple moments to just take a few breaths. And by doing that, you can tap into, I guess, your story right now. And a lot of what we do in our daily life is getting caught up in the past or worrying about the future. And if you can just breathe, it's the— it's almost like a little poke you give yourself to say, here you are right now, and That alone has allowed me to save a lot of the angry emails that I would write if things weren't working out or something. Just kind of take a breath and just be like, "Okay, no, this is the moment right now of something didn't go your way." I believe that every failure is a test to see how much you truly believe in something. Ultimately with rock balancing, all it is is finding the point within yourself of when you're happy. So I've taught people that are never satisfied. They want to have just one more rock and just one more rock and just one more. And then when it's like definitely at the edge, they just want to put one more on, the whole thing collapses. And yeah, and when I talk with them, it's— I can just sense that they're never satisfied with it. And there are other people on this, the swing arm of that, where it's really hard for them to just pick up another rock and put it on top. When they think they're at their limits, they're not actually at the limit. You can put about 5 more rocks on. So you kind of need me to come by and be like, "No, no, no. Let's see if you can do one more." It's more of a complex process, but simply put, you're just putting rocks on top of each other. So for me, I like to go with the rule of every time I make a rock balance, it's got to be better than the one I did before.

That's cool.

It's not kind of invalidating what I'm making previously. It's just saying, no, previously you were at your edge. Now we need to find a new edge and a new edge and a new edge. So that's why I think I've been able to make this work that blows people's minds, because I've just gone so far. And then that's kind of the step one for the next balance.

So, Jeremy, I got a question for you. You were like, as we're talking, you're leafing through his pictures. I'm curious how rock balancing influences the outside consumer. So you saw some of the pictures of Travis's work. What was your impression?

It was amazing. I mean, they're not angles that you would imagine the rocks at, and the rocks look like they're pretty heavy. So what I— my first thought when I saw that one image was, do you have to hold the 3 rocks to get them together and hold it with one hand before you put the little ones on top?

Good question. How do you do that, Travis?

Yes, sometimes, you know, you're just balancing one rock. Sometimes you're balancing two. Sometimes— the last one, or the one before the last one I just did, was called Revolution, and it was, I think, 8 different rocks at a time, like 8 different rock balances in one rock balance. So it's something that's hard to explain how you do 8 at a time. It's all based in this core principle of the triangle method. So if you take your hands almost like capiche, like you're pinching some salt, and you have a little triangle basically, and if you take your other hand and you with an index finger, you put it in that little pinch, you're going to see kind of how these rocks are getting essentially pinched into place. So if you have a small rock on the bottom and you have a bigger rock on top, it's still pinching into these little divots or grooves that are in every single rock. So when you have 8 at a time, I'm doing the first rock, I find that, okay, it's solid. I do the second one on top, it's going to be, you know, solid. But then as after I start to get to the 5th and 6th on there, it shifts the weight at the base. So I have to kind of do everything. I'm putting some elbows in it, maybe a knee or something like that to make sure that it doesn't shift too much. And then at the very end of this thing, and actually throughout the process, I'm breathing because I don't know if you guys are breathing right now just hearing this. It's like you want to kind of hold your breath and hang on to that anxiety. But really it's in these moments of tension that you want to find the flow because then you can find, oh, well, there's the easiest thing to do, can click everything into place. But our minds are so caught up in, well, I gotta make it complex. It's gotta be more beautiful. Is just really one simple shift can make all those 8 balances click into place.

So one of the things that I thought of is how do you avoid getting angry and frustrated when you're working on this thing for like an hour and it keeps falling and falling and you can't get it? Because I know it's supposed to be zenful and mindful, but to me that would be infuriating.

Well, you let go of ego. And really, when you can see it more of as a spiritual practice of whatever your definition of God is— my definition is more of the rocks and the trees and the wind and, you know, Mike's warm voice and all this stuff that surrounds our world. Really, in this moment, that to me is God. And when I can see myself failing, it's just showing me that I need to kind of remove the me out of this a little bit more and start to listen into the rocks. Because either for me, especially as I start to get super complex and I can go to space with this almost, I need to kind of reel it back a little bit because a lot of my ideas don't actually meet up with reality. And maybe that's what it is. Either your ideas are too far to what your current experience level is, or you're not maybe going far enough and you're just kind of frustrated because you saw this cool guy do it and it looked really cool and, you know, this is your third time rock balancing and you can't even get anywhere near to that. All I just say is your balance that you made is perfect just because you made it. And if you can find that happiness within yourself to say, hey, I put one rock down and that's cool, I'm just going to sit with that and enjoy me. But if you're trying to compete with me, it's kind of hard because I've just dedicated my life to this. I go in all the time and go to the furthest extreme. So I think that the anger— and I associate heavy with anger because it's the opposite of my peaceful, spiritual kind of enlightenment side of myself. So whenever I encounter that anger, I just know that something within myself isn't jiving with my current surroundings. And instead of me getting mad at the rocks, I almost use my anger to get mad at myself, to calm myself down and just listen to what's around me. Because in those angry moments, we become blind and deaf. And if you can just, like I'm saying, breathe and just really kind of feel the wind on your face and just enjoy this moment, then the next step is going to reveal itself to you.

Well, this is a good— this stages us well for my next question, Travis. You build a structure and you get toward the end and it falls apart. You built a successful partnership with Airbnb with the rock balancing at Lands End experience. I think it was the national parks who shut you down.

Mm-hmm.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, and that's a great example of what are the real limits. Because in the beginning it was, "Well, can I do this workshop? Do I have it in me? Are people going to actually show up?" And then once that started to happen, it was, "Wow, I mean, how can I get more people in it?" Or once we started to get booked out every week, every Friday to have an experience, it was amazing because I could finally have a solid source of income rock balancing. And after a while it just became too popular and the National Park Service found out and they said, Hey, first off, you don't have a commercial permit. So that was definitely an error on me and Airbnb's part. But to get a commercial permit, we can't actually give you one for rock balancing. We can give you one for hiking, equestrians, like horse riding, or a variety of other things. But for rock balancing, unfortunately, we can't grant you that because it violates our leave no trace policy. So if I'm picking up a rock and it could potentially damage animal or plant life, at a microscopic level or something. But at the place that I was doing it at, it's pretty funny because the rocks are constantly being pushed in and out due to the tide. So, there's not even really any microscopic plant life on it, which I know people are going to come after me and say, "Well, you don't know the microbiomes and all this kind of stuff." But you're right, I don't. I just know that when I hold a rock and it's clean and I can just go balance it, I'm not really hurting anyone and I just want to show what that can do to another person. Because I would have people from all over the world visiting San Francisco, see this little thing on Airbnb's experiences, press a button, show up, and then I'd be like, okay, so here you are, and here are all the things you're telling yourself. And I'm not going to show you how to do it, you're going to show yourself how to do it. I'm just going to help guide you through where you get stuck in your daily life because how you do anything is how you do everything. And when someone's coming up and they're balancing rocks on the beach and they got that just one more mentality, or they don't want to have another one, they don't want to balance another rock. Or I had someone who had a panic attack on the beach and I'm like, we're on the beach. I can't walk you back because you can't just enjoy this moment right now. And I know that may seem a little harsh, but There were 7 other people just sitting around. We were at sunset just enjoying it. By doing that, I allowed her to just sit with herself for a little while longer and she ended up balancing this huge rock, just one rock on its nose by itself. Because she went through that instead of avoiding it like she had always done, she was beaming and glowing.

Wow.

She left a great review. And once I had all these people writing these really positive reviews, it just snowballed on the algorithm and I was just always at the top. So inevitably, um, that's when the national park was like, hey, you can't do that. So, um, I tried to do a couple of things like just do meditation, make it so there's no rock balancing involved. We're just gonna go to the same spot on the beach. And I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know without any rocks because I think like the highest form of rock balancing is when you don't need rocks, you could just balance yourself driving in traffic. Like to think about Mike balancing rocks while he's in traffic is like a little scary, but— It's a great visual.

It's a great visual.

Yeah. So ultimately that's kind of what happened with that. So because I went through that, it gave me this ability to teach anyone on earth, even if they couldn't even speak English, and know that there was just this magnetic attraction to it. Unfortunately, I lost the platform, so now I can only do it with private experiences, but at the same time, it's just, it's almost that proof of concept that I discovered kind of worked, so.

Yeah, yeah. So that'll definitely spin into something new. How can, uh, before we let you go, how can our listeners get started on rock balancing and start having these revelations about themselves? Do they take a class with you? Do they get your book? Uh, which I'm definitely gonna suggest they do, but should they just get out and just start playing around with rocks? As long as it's not in a national park and you're not, you know, messing with the biosphere.

Yeah. Mess with the biosphere. Yeah. Um, do not throw your rocks into space. That would be I suggest that step 1, you just breathe. So right now everyone, we're gonna be a little awkward and just take one little breath. So wherever you are in your breathing, just exhale all the air out. So breathe in nice and full, and you exhale. So that's it. You're just in the moment. So if you can repeat that when you're doing anything, either happy or sad, then at least you're gonna tap in. And from there, you can look around at all the opportunity that's around in front of you. And for this, if you're balancing rocks, you look on the beach and you say, "Well, how do I pick a rock? Which one do I do?" And it's like, I don't know, do you pick the rocks or do the rocks pick you kind of thing? And either way, whenever you get a rock in your hand, you just start going with it. And as you start to do that, you need to believe in yourself. Once you do that, like I'm saying that easy, like, okay, just believe in yourself. But once you truly believe that, yes, I can do that, I can get to one more, or do that rock on its nose and do something crazy, you'll have that moment of balance. And once you figure out, okay, this is how you balance stuff, maybe it's even balance in driving in traffic and that flow of, you know, changing lanes or not getting stuck in that terrible lane. That's balance that I'm talking about too. From there you realize what your limits are. So you can only lane change so fast and you know, there's going to be a cop or you may get in a wreck. But with rock balancing, it's just defining that limit of, you know, the national park is telling you, you cannot go or they're going to contact law enforcement versus me just the first day being like, ah, I can't do that. Like I'm too scared or someone's going to judge me. So it's, it's, popping that bubble of limits. And once you get to that, it's the most important part of release and letting go. And this is where you're actually seeing a huge misconception with what rock balancing is, because if you see a rock balance on a trail, it's usually a sign of somebody's attachment that they're here promoting this ephemeral kind of thing. Ephemeral means like, uh, spiritual, like a ghost kind of— like, it's hard to explain what it is, but, um, it's just this feeling of energy outside of yourself, essentially. And when I see rock balances on the trail, I just see someone who's like, hey, look at my ego. And I'm trying to knock those down if I see them, but you got to be careful if I'm telling this to other people because in certain parts of the world, these cairns or rock totems are used to actually— like, they want to mark where the trail is, but it's also these spirits of energy. And in Japan, there's a great thing where you want to actually put one more rock on top when you cross these balances as a sign of good luck. So in Japan, they treat it as more of this ancient totem that just keeps slowly building with each person. It's this collective consciousness. In the USA, it's quite the opposite. It's very, you know, you can't do that, you're disturbing the earth, leave no trace, all this kind of stuff. So if you're gonna go out and do it, I just recommend that yes, you do it responsibly, but also if you're— I can't stop you. And if you're in the national park and you're like, hey, I really gotta bounce real quick, man, just make sure that after you use it to align your energy that you just knock it over and release. And some of the most amazing moments when I am out there rock balancing and creating these amazing sculptures is when I let go, because it's showing me that I've not conquered, but I was able to face that part of myself that didn't believe that I could do it, and here I am just moving past it. So When you can release, you can embrace what comes next. If we're on this interview, it's amazing. I've had such a great time talking with you guys, don't get me wrong, but you can't have a new guest unless we hang up this interview.

Good point.

Good point. From there, it's just a cycle of evolution and just kind of repeating the process.

All right. Well, we are going to release you, but first, first, I want you to share where people can pick up The Rock Balancer's Guide. Also, to sign up for the classes, to procure your artwork, where's all the resources you can share with us?

Yeah, so just go to my website, travisruskus.com. My last name is spelled R-U-S-K-U-S. That'll point you to the book and everything like that. The books are available in bookstores actually in the US and UK. As far as workshops go, you have to contact me privately in order to make it at your company or event or something like that, just shoot me an email, studio@travisruskus.com. And, uh, yeah, we can go from there. I have a bunch of videos as far as like free tutorials on YouTube that thousands of people watch, and I get messages all the time. So if you don't want to give me a dollar, go on YouTube and just give yourself something. That's what I say with that.

That's super cool. And I'll tell you, my friends, get the book. I just purchased it as we were talking. It's The Rock Balancer's Guide. I got on Amazon. Here's the deal. If you have no interest in being a rock balancer, you have no curiosity, you probably need this book most. The greatest way to expand our insights into our own business, our own lives, is looking outside of our comfort zone. So, um, I'm not an aspiring rock balancer, but damn it, I have the guide now, so I'm going to do it. Travis, thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you so much. And I would just say on a side note that I, I actively promote the Profit First system to everybody that I can. I just think it's so awesome what you're doing, Mike, and I really thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Oh, Travis, it's a joy to know you. And I heard that you promote us because the last time when those park rangers were coming down on you for saying Barack's sculpture, you were yelling, "I'm part of Profit First! I'm part of Profit First!" And you ran away and I got arrested.

Good story.

Ah, it's a total lie. All right, Kelsey, here's what we're gonna do.

What are we gonna do?

We're gonna play a game. Do you— I have a game if you don't, Jeremy.

Yeah, I have a game. I have riddles.

All right, I'll do my game and we'll do riddles again next episode just to shake it up a little bit. I want to first thank Nextiva for what they do for us. They are— they're our rock. They've been with us since the beginning of the show. 200 and how many episodes were in? 250? 300? Almost 300 episodes, Kelsey. Yeah, wow, is that unbelievable? That is unbelievable.

My God, I'm gonna go home and balance 300 hours Nextiva phones on top of them.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Yeah, but they've been a rock. They've been with us forever. Check out nextiva.com, get your voice over IP phone system there. And plus, they have a new CRM that's just released. It is unbelievable, called NextOS. All right, Kelsey, you're not going first. You always go first. What'd you learn, Jake LeBlanc?

Well, first of all, a side note, super annoyed about the National Parks Department with that. There's so many things that people do.

Yeah, 'cause you can see the horses walking through the stream knocking rocks, hikers walking through. But God forbid you pick one up.

Yeah, people going off trail, that causes more issues than— anyway, that's— I need to balance rocks right now.

Yeah.

No, I think that the lessons for business, take your ego out of it, have patience, and be present.

Yep, dug that. Here, I'll tell you, you're going to wrap us up. Here's my takeaway. That sadness makes us more open to the things around us.

Yeah.

I love it when he said he was in a very sad moment in his life. That he became much more aware and much more curious. I could picture him picking up that rock and just staring at it and really pondering it, where when we're maybe happy or in a different state of mind, we don't consider those things. So sadness has even more value than I expected. So I thought it was pretty cool. I like this step too, start with, start with, uh, breathing. It's interesting. I'm like, what's the first step to, uh, bouncing rocks? He's like, breathe. Pretty interesting. What'd you take away?

I love that too. I really super love this, but I think I really like when he said that it had to be a good business model if he was doing it and consistently everybody he connected with—

Yeah.

—like got something from it. So it made sense that it would be a good business model. And I feel like that's so true. And I love that that's true because it's something that serves him and his purpose and it also serves others. Really effectively.

Yeah, fascinating that there was that much demand. He became the number one or leading kind of provider on Airbnb experience. So I wonder if there's a studio here or if he can partner with someone else, maybe like a yoga studio, yeah, to get part of their space to bring in-house rock balancing. Um, I don't know, there's definitely something significant there. Yeah, he was talking about Facebook.

If anybody can afford to create an artificial river in a building Right, where you can go and balance rocks. It's, it's them. Yeah, they could have a whole room with a river running. Yeah, what a great client.

Yeah, Facebook. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's perfect. Um, I just love he's able to monetize all the different things. He's not just doing the process for his own enjoyment. He found a way to make it sustainable by offering the experience through artwork, through workshops, through his book. Now he's monetizing it, which is actually expanding the word and allows him to sustain what he's doing. Very smart. Yeah, I really like it. Very smart man. All right, should we do listener mail for— no, we don't have listener mail anymore, right? So why can we— why should we do that? Let's go to Ask Mike, right? You send an email to askmike@mikemakalowicz.com.

Random. Yes. If you have any questions for Mike that you want answered, send an email to askmike@mikemakalowicz.com. All right.

Here's 3 jobs. You guys tell me which one's the fake. Okay. This is how the game works. 2 of these are real jobs. These are all entrepreneurial businesses and You know, sometimes you have some weird, um, weird job offerings. You can be a car kisser. Do you know, do you know people like to kiss their car? When you buy that brand new baby, you kiss on the hood or something. Well, car kisser ensures that the experience is optimized. So there is a job at potentially a car manufacturer or two that hires car kissers. I'm just saying. Or you can be a train pusher. You know, sometimes those trains just stop. It's so hard and difficult to get into a train that you need to push your way in. Well, why not hire someone that pushes people into the train faster? Really? Oh, that one you like. Yeah. Hey, you're not getting the train faster. Move your ass. They're also in New York. They're called Move Your Ass or Move Your Assers. And then full-time Netflix viewer. Callis, you watch Netflix constantly.

Yeah, constantly. Well, Netflix.

They say Netflix. I love Netflix. Yeah, it's great.

It's just, it's just movies about your neck from the head up, right? It's all flick. Yeah, it's only the neck. It's not even the head, it's just the neck. That's a great flick about the neck. Adam's Apple. That's on there because Adam's Apple is massive. What's going on? Um, you can be a Netflix viewer, um, watch TV all day, Netflix, give feedback. So which one's the fake one? One of two of those are real, by the way. Cows.

I say the fake one is the car kisser. Why would that be fake?

It seems so silly. When you got your new car, did you kiss it?

Even if other people do it, why would you need somebody to test out that process?

Well, some people— first of all, some people even name their cars. Do you name your car? Yeah. What'd you name your car?

Pippa LaRue, the Subaru.

Pippa LaBoo? LaRue. LaRue is a family name, so she's Pippa LaRue.

So Pippa LaRue.

Oh, she's a she. Yeah. So a machine is a she.

Are you saying a machine can't be a she? No, it can be.

I mean, listen, like they name schotes, boats, boats, like ships. I didn't say ship and a boat at the same time. It's a schote. They name ships like she, you know, like, and airplanes.

I like your other, the other one better.

Gemma.

Oh, Gemma the go-getter?

Yeah. Gemma the go-getter. Yeah. I like that. So, okay, so car kisser. Okay, what about you, J-Bone?

I agree, I think car kisser, because I think in Japan they actually do have people that push them on the trains. Um, and then the last— what was the last one?

Uh, the Netflix full-time viewer.

Oh yeah, that's definitely a thing.

So it would be a miracle if 3 consecutive weeks in a row you both are wrong, right? Yeah. And so you were wrong. Well, it depends on this episode comes out, but you were wrong. I got, I got sweep. I got sweep again, and today no sweep. You guys got me. You guys got me. A car kisser is totally made up. There's no one that goes out there and kisses cars except for some kind of weirdo. Train pushers are in Japan. They're called, uh, ashiyas. They're hired— they're hired to ram and cram people into the train because of the overflow. They also exist, um, in other, uh— oh no, I thought in London, but no, that's not true. Just in Japan. And then Netflix, uh, sure enough, you can get paid for watching Netflix, giving feedback and reviewing on the viewing experience. Oh, okay. Yeah, so there you go. All right, Kels, um, I think we're good, right? Is there anything else to talk about?

Yeah, I think we're good too.

All right, let's get out of here.

But thanks for listening, guys. Yeah, we appreciate it. We do appreciate it.

Is there anything else, a call to action, you have to say, or that's it?

No, don't forget to subscribe.

Yeah, please don't.

Yeah, and if you're watching on YouTube, uh, make sure you sign up for notifications and, uh, hit the bell.

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Yeah. And then every time we put out a new video, you get a little notification.

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