How to win big, lose it all and rebuild smarter w/Eric Partaker #podcast #business #health

You encourage people, when they're scaling to think much more holistically. You encourage people to think at 35,000ft.

Yes.

Can you, can you share with our listeners the context to that view?

Yeah. So I nearly died from a heart attack about 14 years ago, and it happened on a plane. And I remember the moment my left arm went completely numb. Very strange sensation. And then I could feel it was literally ice cold. Like, the temperature difference was like, shocking. And then I said to my friend sat next to me, I'm like, louis, I'm like, I'm not feeling well, something's not right. And like, can you feel my arm? And he looked at me with like this. It's like, oh, my God, Eric, your arm feels like it's been hanging in a meat locker. And. And then he jumps over, asks, you know, if there's the. Asks the stewardess to come over, and then she calls for a doctor. And luckily there was one on board the plane. And the doctor rushes over, takes my vital signs. Yeah, he sees that I'm sweating profusely and he just says, we need to land, you know, the plane immediately. He's having a heart attack.

Eric, you're very welcome to the Skillax Insider podcast. Absolutely delighted and thrilled to be joining you in person today.

Yeah, likewise. Thrilled to be here. It's been age since I've done a podcast. So I was, you know, excited to get your invite and excited to chat.

Brilliant. Likewise. Well, look, you know, we've been chatting off air. We're very aligned on this. Our vision is to inspire, connect and enable millions of ambitious leaders of small and medium sized enterprises to scale with purpose. So I open up the show with this question to all of our guests. What does scaling with purpose mean to you?

Yeah, well, I mean, so first off, yeah, I mean, we are very aligned on, on that mission, right? SMBs, you know, they're the backbone of the global economy, right. So for me, so it's not a universal. I think it just depends on the individual. And you can go very, very philosophical on it, of course, and say that you need a purpose that extends beyond the company and serves the world in some way. And I think that's beautiful when you have it. When we were building up Skype in the early days, you know, our tagline was the whole world can talk for free. And so, you know, it gave us. We were the David and that David and Goliath story. And having that sense of purpose that we were doing the world some good, you know, certainly was a factor, I think, in Our success wasn't the only factor, of course, but equally, too, I don't see anything wrong with if somebody's purpose at a certain stage in life is to. I just want to have a big financial exit. I think we have to leave space and room for people to decide whatever it is that motivates them. So I think really the litmus test is, does it excite you, motivate you, and compel you into action? And if it does those things, then that's your purpose. But it doesn't have to be prescriptive, I think, in a certain way. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I love that. Whilst you've alluded to something that's very financially driven there in terms of it's okay for somebody to be financially motivated, financially excited, financially compelled in the context of their purpose, you encourage people, when they're scaling, to think much more holistically. You encourage people to think at 35,000ft.

Yes.

Can you share with our listeners the context to that view?

Yeah. So I nearly died from a heart attack about 14 years ago. And it happened on a plane. And I remember the moment my left arm went completely numb. Very strange sensation. And then I could feel it was literally ice cold. Like, the temperature difference was, like, shocking. And then I said to my friend sat next to me, I'm like, louis, I'm like, I'm not feeling well. Something's not right. And, like, can you feel my arm? And he looked at me with, like, this. It's like, oh, my God, Eric, your arm feels like it's been hanging in a meat locker. And. And then he jumps over, asks, you know, if there's. Ask the stewardess to come over. And then she calls for a doctor. And luckily there was one on board the plane. And the doctor rushes over, takes my vital signs. Yeah. He sees that I'm sweating profusely, and he just says, we need to land, you know, the plane. Immediately, he's having a heart attack. And, yeah, when you hear those words, yeah, it's like, you don't. You never want to hear words like that. But, you know, but also in that environment, because I thought that was it. I thought it was, you know, game over. Like, the plane wasn't gonna. Because I was so far, literally so far from safety. And it felt like an eternity for the plane to descend. And they closed off a Runway, and it had an emergency landing in France. I since found out that that cost the airline about $150,000 or something. I only paid 1,500 for my ticket. I Think I was the worst deal ever. They're just like, I'm surprised they even let me fly that airline anymore.

Did they send you an invoice?

Yeah, no.

Good, good.

So yeah, we touch down and they get me off of the plane. There's an ambulance waiting. They administer nitrates, I think it was, or something. Something that opens the. Yeah, I'm not very queued in exactly to all these medical terms, but yeah, increases like the blood flow I guess to the heart or whatever. And I remember the paramedic looking down at me and I just remember I said to him, please don't let me die. I have a five year old son. And those were like the first words that came out of my mouth. And he just said, sit tight. I think we got to you just in time. Just relax, relax. And I don't really remember all that much after that, but woke up the next day in the hospital and I was just grateful to wake up and, and then that change didn't happen immediately, but it sparked a change. You know, I realized that something had to change. Right.

Yeah, it was the, the ultimate alarm. And thankfully you shared with me off air before we started recording. You're meeting Alex, your, your eldest boy who was five, who was five at the time.

Now he's 19.

Yeah. Wow. How different his life would have been had that alarm call not went off and that you had time to, to respond. I have for those listening you not be able to Eric's wonderful book up the three alarms. I have absolutely to face this book a simple system to transform your health, wealth and relationships forever. You prescribe for people how to perform at their optimum. You give people a prescription for peak performance. Before we get into the tactics of actually achieving that. How would you define peak performance now?

So not in the way that I defined it, which led, you know, up to nearly dying. So previously how I defined it was doing absolutely whatever it took to succeed professionally. You know, so that that led to, you know, 100 hour work weeks at McKinsey and Company and we were building Skype in the very early days. It was very intense. And then, you know, building a restaurant chain after that and it was just, you know, I remember, I remember for example, in the early days of the restaurant chain going to bed at midnight and then waking up at 3:30 to get to the meat market on time to like buy meat for the chain. And it was just, you know, insane. And I think that was ultimately driven by like a lack of self worth or just not feeling comfortable with yourself, you know. We were talking about this earlier too, as well. It's like we're similar age, born in 75. Great vintage, right? And now we jokingly were talking about this, and I said, I think the beauty is like, now I just don't care.

So just coming to the idea of achieving your best self, you mention and allude to the three pillars in your book. Can you share with us the three pillars that you now focus on? So previously, in the previous life, the.

Previous identity, I was trying to do way too many things, focus on optimizing in a million different directions. And then my guiding principle in life is the 8020 rule. And I use it in every way, shape and form. And so for me, the 20% of kind of life domains to focus on for 80% of, say, the improvement that you're seeking is your health, your wealth, both in terms of how you make your money and what you do with it thereafter, and your relationships. And I think if we just focus on that and act more intentionally in those domains. And just asking yourself in the moment about your choices and your decisions, for example, how congruent are they with you at your best? And I think when you pause and you ask yourself that question, there's a timeless wisdom within us all that just gives you the answer, right? The little Yoda inside. So, yeah, I love that.

So we can intellectually grasp that, you know, leaning into what is your best self. But what are the. The traps? What are the obstacles to becoming our best selves? You mentioned five of them in your book. Can you share with our listeners what those. What call out what those obstacles are?

Yeah, we can go. We can go through, you know, a few of them at least. So one is the. The lack of intentionality. And by intentionality, I mean very consciously deciding what does, like, best look like for you on the work front? You know, what is that as an identity? And then how does that mean you show up in the world, you know, interact with others, interact in a meeting, for example. And when we don't have that intentionality, to me it's akin to you're just hanging on to the back of the train, you know, that is the day, and you're just reacting from one thing to the next rather than just being more proactive. And so, yeah, that lack of intentionality is a trap for sure. Another big villain is just perfectionism. And for me, that's nothing more than just procrastination in disguise. And. Procrastination itself, obviously. Another as well, putting things off till tomorrow indefinitely. You can be too rigid or have too much structure. So one of the ways I think in which people try to certainly I try to become all that you're capable of being is you try to create the perfect day. And this is my amazing system for capturing every single thing that I read and I file it away and this second brain note taking system and all this stuff and it's just like, oh my gosh, it's like there's no room to breathe because everything just needs to be. It's just so rigid. And you can kind of think of it as like life is a river. And like any river, you have two banks. And one bank is structure and the other is spontaneity. And if you overflow that structure bank, you end up in this land of rigidity. And you're just missing miserable with yourself. You're miserable to be around. Like if something doesn't go to plan, it's like chaos. But then if you overflow the spontaneity bank, you end up in the land of chaos as well. So that doesn't work. So it's just like figuring out how to kind of bounce from one bank to the next without overflowing. And then. The other thing is just focusing on, or not focusing on progress, but it relates to the perfectionism. Again, if you just focus on getting a little bit better each day and you can be happy with that, then it's just a life better lived.

Completely agree with that. Well, look, let's share with our listeners the antidotes to those traps, those obstacles to what best self looks like for everyone listening. So let's do a little mini master class on those. The. The three antidotes. Yeah, and, and it's. There's a wonderful irony where.

Yeah, I was thinking about the exact same thing.

We're recording this in, in Brew Dog's podcast studio. I interviewed the wonderful James Watt, the co founder of BrewDog, earlier this year.

And because the antidote is IPA, absolutely. You know, but this is like, you know, like the beer in terms of the acronym or whatever. But of course, this is a lot better for you. So the identity, the I is for identity. And that's just defining, as mentioned earlier, you know, what does the best version of you look like in each of those domains? Health, wealth and relationships. And almost thinking of it as like the superhero version of you. And if you were to turn into that superhero, like, what would you name it? And for me, you know, on the health front, me at my best, I'm a world fitness champion, even though I was like a horrible Athlete for most of my life and still am.

I don't believe that for a minute.

Six foot three, looking wonderful, very injury prone. And, you know, and there's. It's powerful to be identity driven because there's those times when I don't feel like working out and going to the gym. But then with that identity in mind, I think, well, what would a World Fitness champion do? And they would say, well, what difference does it make whether you feel like going or not? You just go, or you're doing that exercise and you're on the 8th rep and you're. I don't even know if I'm going to get this last rep out. Well, what would a World Fitness champion do? Of course I get it out and I get the 9th and the 10th and maybe even 11 and 12 and. And so it's like it pushes you to a higher level than sometimes you ever thought was possible. And then you can have. My identity on the home front is world's best husband and father again, which I'm not. Not even close. But it's just. But if I have something to aim for, it's sort of like, for example, this another way to think about it. If I blindfold you and hand you three darts and I say, okay, go ahead and throw them, hit the target. You just have no chance. Like, you don't even know where the board is in the room. But when you have the identities, it's like you take off the blindfold. And so even when you throw your darts, even though you might miss, over time, you are going to get closer because you have something to aim for. And then on the work front, my identity, I mean, it's changed over the years. Now it's world's best coach. Just to remind myself, well, if I was that, how inspiring, decisive and reliable does that version of me? How does that version of me show up? It triggers a more empathetic, for example, version of me that really takes the time to listen not just for the rational, but also the, you know, the emotional and what someone is saying, which, as you know, you know very well with all of the work that you do is like a most powerful way that you can connect to another human being. Right. So that's the identity piece. And then.

Well, before we move on to the p. Yeah, Identity is, as you can imagine in this podcast, has cropped up a lot. In fact, I interviewed Rob Dial, the mindset mentor for the start of this season, season 14, and he mentioned 14 a season. Yeah, yeah. Almost what that.

Is.

What a project yeah, it has been, it's been a huge commitment, so massive commitment. The, the identity piece, people listening to this go, what do you mean by identity? You know, I am who I am, but what I'm hearing from you, Eric, is that you don't have to be and behave as you're currently behaving. If you set out to craft a vision of those world class behaviors in the workplace, those world class behaviors from a health perspective, those world class behaviors from a home perspective and a relationship perspective, then you can lean into, to the behaviors which we would ascribe to those who are world class in each of those domains. Practically. What can we do? So that might sound a little bit abstract for people listening, where do you start with it?

And just to comment on that, because I think it's very important whenever you're teaching someone, I think a powerful way to teach anything to someone is to either get them to realize that they're already doing the thing that you're teaching already and they're an expert at it, but perhaps in another domain of life. And so it's just getting them to realize, oh, I do this already, I just need to do this here and I can give examples of that later. Or if that's not possible, getting them to realize that they used to be a master at this previously in life. So they're not trying to do something new, they're just trying to reignite an old skill. So what I mean with all of this is that identity driven change is nothing more than being a child again in a way. And what I mean with that is, So I have two boys, 19 year old Alex and 11 year old Leo. And I tell the story of how very simple, of how we got a Captain America shield for Leo. And when the shield arrived and I gave him the shield, I didn't then need to sit down with Leo and say, okay, now we're going to start your Captain America behavioral training so that you know how to act with this new shield, he just immediately became the character. And by him assuming the identity, the behaviors followed. And so, you know, this is something that every child on the planet is a master at doing. And somewhere along, I don't know, I think it's about 12 years old or 13 years old, we lose our ability to create change top down, identity driven, and think that we can only do it the other way, which is another way to do it too. Bottoms up behaviorally. So I'm going to do a lot of different things which over time will make me this new thing. But when we reignite this ability, then it's sort of like putting that superhero costume on when you were a kid. And that can influence behavior, but instantaneously in the same way that you instantly, as a child, when you become a character, it instantly impacts your behavior. So it's a way to create change that's a bit more fun and makes it easier because when you think of a superhero version of you, like when I think world's best husband and father, so I, you know, and I have alarms on my phone for these things. So at 6:30pm an alarm goes off on my phone. I've labeled it World's best husband and father to prompt the question, well, how would the world's best husband and father walk through that door right now? That's the power of the intentionality. When I step into that character, it means when I walk through the door that I'm engaged with my family, I want to know what it is that they're doing. The previous version of me, if my wife, for example, would have asked me to help with something, I'm too tired. Can we just do that over the weekend? But is that how the world's best husband would respond? Or if the kids want to play? Nah, I just got to finish this work. Can we do that later? Is that how the world's best father would respond? You see what I mean? So it's like powerfully influences behavior.

Yeah. And interestingly, this season, I interviewed Chris Doe. Chris is an incredible guy. He's an Emmy award winning brand designer.