Ep 1: Chasing Success, Finding Peace: The Story Behind BUILT for Impact | Jake Burhans

What if I told you that building a 7-figure business could actually make you miserable? That was honestly my story. I thought money would fix everything. The next deal, some amount of money, some milestone, some title of being a 7-figure business owner, maybe another zero in the bank account would finally give me the peace inside that I was looking for. But instead of fulfillment, I just felt fear, stress, and ultimately emptiness. So today I want to take you behind the curtain of my journey, the truth about chasing this external achievement and validation, the burnout it created for myself, and the breakthrough that led me to build a business and a life, or to shift into building a business and obviously a life from a completely different place. Welcome to the Built for Impact Podcast. I'm Jake Burhans, and this is is the podcast where inner peace meets high performance and where building your dream life starts from the inside out. BILT is a framework. It's an acronym and it stands for Break Limiting Beliefs, Upgrade Your Operating System, Imagine Your New Life, Let Go of the Past, and Transcend into Your New Self. This framework is basically a culmination of everything I've been learning over the past 5 years, personal development, spirituality, mindset, leadership. Business, like all of it comes down to this, all put into one framework. This framework has completely changed my life. And today's episode is special. It's the first episode of this podcast. I want to share the story behind why I even created this in the first place. So I built a 7— or we, my business partner and I, obviously you never do anything alone, one of the biggest lessons I've learned. But so we built a 7-figure business over the course of 3 years. And quite honestly, for me at least, it was hell. On the outside, I looked like a quote-unquote success to a certain extent. There's obviously always people doing more than you, but on the inside I was just stuck in constant fear, stress, anxiety, and worry. No matter what happened, no matter how much money hit my bank, right, $50,000, $100,000, you never— that never went away. Always running around and living in the state of fear. Every seller call, I'm, you know, I run the sales side of the business. Every seller call came with a pit in my stomach, right? Every conversation with an employee, I think they're going to quit, or just this fear-based mentality. No matter how much money I had or achievement or XYZ, I'd go to bed in dread and wake up in the same way. And here's the truth. I don't want anyone else to have to live this way, and you don't have to live this way. That's why I created the Built for Impact program, right? To show people that they can build the business of their dreams, perform at the absolute highest level, still make a ton of money, still get a ton of achievement while actually enjoying life in peace, joy, and alignment. So like many of us, I grew up believing that achievement equaled worth. If I got the title, if I made the money, if I reached the milestone, then I'd finally be enough. I'd be accepted. I'd be loved. Whatever that childhood trauma is that you need as an adult, you know, a lot of it stems from childhood. Maybe you weren't— didn't have a ton of friends, or you weren't accepted, or you didn't get love from your parents, or you constantly needed to be proving yourself as a kid. We don't realize as we become adults, those things govern our lives, and we just don't realize it. Particularly, it started with hockey. So as a kid, hockey was the first thing— ice hockey— gave me— that gave me validation in my life. The first thing I was like actually good at in high school, where people started to look at me like, oh, you know, he's pretty good at hockey, right? So I wanted to go to the NHL, obviously, like every kid wanted to go play professional sports. And for a while it worked. I played at a pretty high level throughout high school and then into what they call junior hockey before college. I ended up, you know, hurting my knee and kind of went away from it. Altogether, but it gave me an identity and a self-sense of worth, um, or a sense of worth. And that was really the issue with hockey too, is like I didn't really enjoy playing it as much as I liked the idea of being, you know, on the varsity team and wearing the jacket and doing all these things, right? It was for all the wrong reasons, but it gave me my identity. And the dangerous part about that is when that's stripped away from you, then who are you, right? Are you building your house on sand or on rock? When your identity is something that you cultivate within, that's a house built on rock. Right? And when it's, when it's your identity is built on something externally like a job or a relationship or a status or whatever, that's a house built on sand. Cause as soon as that's ripped away from you, you're nothing and your world crumbles. So keep that in mind. A house built on rock is something that's cultivated, cultivated from within. So for me it was hockey, but when hockey ended, I had to, I had to go find the next thing, right? Cause my identity was wrapped up in something external. So then I went in, You know, I went to college at University of New Hampshire, poured myself into business, you know, and entrepreneurship. That was the thing. So college, I, you know, I met my business partner now and, but all of college, you know, freshman year a little bit, I kind of did the normal college thing and had fun. But after that I was just grinding, right? It was a blur of building, grinding, chasing success at all costs, neglecting my relationships, my wellbeing, my creativity, my joy. I would go to the gym. You know, healthy physically— I didn't neglect that— but my overall well-being, my mental, my emotional— I wouldn't take breaks. I wouldn't— I didn't think creativity was valuable. I don't need to like, you know, make music or play the guitar, do anything, or my joy doesn't matter. It's just about boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, right? To get this achievement because if I don't become an entrepreneur, I'm not going to be anything. So that was the next thing I was grasping onto was okay, when I become this entrepreneur and I build a 7-figure business, it's $1 million business and all this stuff, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna be the thing that's gonna give me this feeling inside. Wasn't, obviously. But right, goes from one thing to next, goes from hockey to entrepreneurship to real estate. And I told myself, you know, I wanted it more than I could breathe. But deep down, I was just chasing acceptance and love through achievement. That's all I want. I just wanted to be accepted, right? I wanted to be loved. And I thought that achievement would do that, like people would look at me differently. In reality, no one cares, man. No one cares, right? Everyone's so worried about their own life that they're not even paying attention to your life. So, you know, running our real estate business from that place of just like chasing, chasing, chasing for the acceptance was really just miserable. Even when deals closed and the bank account grew, still felt empty, right? And, and that's when it hit me, like, you know, no amount of external success was really ever going to make me feel fulfilled. The peace, love, and joy I was chasing weren't out there. They had to be cultivated from within, right? So I mean, even if you go from like having no money in your bank account to having like $80,000 in your bank account or $100,000, it's a pretty significant jump. Like you don't need to be a millionaire to realize that, hey, you know, if you're, if you're used to living on like a couple grand in your bank account and you go to $100K in your bank account and you're still in fear and anxiety, it's probably not the money, right? It's probably not the money because $100,000, that's going to last you a little bit. You shouldn't be in any sort of fear be your anxiety or worry. But again, it was that external thing. You were afraid, well, what if I lose it, this or that? So that is when I realized, right, no amount of external success was ever going to make me feel fulfilled, right? The peace, love, and joy I was chasing weren't out there. They had to be cultivated from within. So that realization changed everything. And I kind of, I knew it at a certain level, but didn't really internalize it until I really was like pushed to the breaking point. But over the past 5 years, I've studied relentlessly, like hundreds of books. I don't know, hundreds of books, but just lots of books. Maybe 50, 60, 70, 80 books. Um, thousands of hours of learning. Now it's got to be hundreds of books. I would say thousands of hours of learning, right? From just spiritual masters, Eastern and Western philosophy, business, psychology, and personal development. And through it all, I discovered this, a simple but profound truth that all the greatest spiritual teachers and masters have been teaching since the beginning of time. That all these states of being—peace, love, joy, and abundance—are not things you earn. They are states of being you choose and you cultivate from within. And when you operate from those states, your external world begins to reflect them back to you through synchronicities, opportunities, and flow. And we'll get into all these things in other episodes because this is a, you know, it's a deep rabbit hole. But your internal world creates your external world. It's the Second Law of Hermetics. If you read the Kybalion, is that as above, so below, as below, so above. Basically, your inner creates your outer, and quantum physics backs this up. Basically, you are the cause to the effect. Your thoughts, your emotions are creating your reality every second of every day. So even if you don't believe in manifestation, that's okay, because you're still creating your reality whether you believe it or not. Okay, it doesn't, it doesn't matter about your belief system. It matters what are universal laws here. So like I said, I discovered that truth that these are states of being you choose and cultivate, and when you operate from those, your external world begins to reflect them back to you. So now I use this BILT framework every single day, right, in my businesses, my relationships, my life. It has just transformed not just how I operate but how I live. And I'm constantly learning, right? I'm on this journey. It's a lifelong journey, but I'm here to share now right, what I've been through so far, where I'm headed. And as I continue to grow, have everyone grow along with me. And I feel it's like just my duty to share this information with everyone so they can begin their journey and we can all grow together. Because the reality is, everywhere I look, entrepreneurs are just burning themselves out chasing validation through money and success. And they're building businesses that look super good on paper, but at the end of the day, leave them empty on the inside. And there needs to be a new way. So Build for Impact is about doing the inner work first. It's about breaking limiting beliefs, upgrading your operating system, imagining the future, you know, self that you truly desire, letting go of your past and transcending into your highest state of being. And when you live from this place of wholeness, business stops being a grind and starts being an expression of purpose. You no longer are chasing any validation. You create from overflow. You build because you're inspired, not because you're desperate. So at the end of the day, this journey is not going to be easy, right? It will challenge you, it will force you to face yourself, but it will also give you something greater than any amount of money or external achievement could ever buy you. Okay? A baseline state of peace, a heart full of gratitude and joy, and the ability to build a business and a life that truly feel aligned. That's what Built for Impact is all about. And if you're ready, this is your invitation to begin, folks. Can you even put a price on peace? Peace. You can't even put a price on it. You pay billions of dollars to just be in this blissful, peaceful, loving, abundant, grateful state, joyful state. You pay billions of dollars, wouldn't you? So understand that you have the power to just cultivate that from within, right? You have the power to do that. First thing I want to touch on here is, uh, I'm gonna try to keep these podcasts not too long, but we'll see. I kind of get off, I get going here, but achievement does not equal worth. That's the most fundamental thing to understand. Like we grow up thinking that achieving things in the external world equals our sense of worth and it makes sense. Like we go to school and we get grades and if we get an A, we're worth something. If we get a D, we're not worth something. In reality, who made those rules up? It's just some random test that we took and some random teacher is telling us that, oh, because we got a D, we're not worth something. And that starts to condition us, right? And even maybe our parents— our parents come from a loving place and they're only acting based on their conditioning, but they might say, well, if you don't go get a good job or you don't go to college or you don't do this, you're not worth something. So all of these little things start to add up to program us to believe that we are not worth anything internally if we do not achieve things externally. Okay? And it's pretty— it's exactly backwards in regard to how the world actually works and the universe works, because your internal state of being If I'm feeling love and peace and joy, that is reflected back to me through the external environment. So I'm start— gonna start to experience more experiences of love, peace, and joy because I'm vibrating that frequency, right? Law of vibration. So we have to understand the internal creates the external. And when you're— and when you're just chasing— when you stop chasing things in the external and you detach from that and you just focus on cultivating inner states of being of peace, love, and joy regardless of what your external circumstances are, you become unstoppable. No one can break you because nothing can happen in the external world that changes your state of being. You don't give anything that power, not anything, not any situation, not any accolade, not any person. You have complete power over your state of being, and that's— there's nothing more powerful than that. Uh, but you know, for me, it started with hockey, right? That was the first sense of validation for myself. When it ended, you know, I poured that hunger for achievement into business, and I just kept going, kept going, kept going until I realized, hey, No, you gotta start with the inner stuff. So one thing I want you to reflect on here is I'll give you some reflection points is reflect on where you might be chasing, you know, love or acceptance or whatever it is that you need through achievement. And ask yourself, if I stop achieving, would I still feel worthy? And if the answer's no, then there's inner work that you need to do to realize like, why am I, why would I not be worthy? Like everyone's inherently worthy as human beings. We're all born equal on this earth. You're worthy of everything that you ever want, right? And that's the first belief we need to cultivate. Second thing here is the illusion of external success. And I think that ties into it is like, yes, especially in Western culture, we teach, hey, career, career, career, career. And I've been traveling around the world, right? Europe and South America. And everyone looks at Americans as workaholics. Like, oh, are you a workaholic? That because that's all we care about in the US. That's what we've been— we've been— has been drilled into us is to just focus on your career, focus on business, this, this and that. Whereas you go to South America and you go to Europe and there's so much more emphasis around family and friends and culture and socializing and having fun and expressing yourself and creativity and art and culture and going to games. Like, there's so much more community. People are out together eating in the streets, you know, dancing, hanging out, doing the stuff. Whereas US, we've got our blinders on and we're freaking just business, business, business, career, career, career. Like, what do you do? What do you do? All people ask like, what you do for work? They never ask like, who you are as a person. And you wonder why you look at happiness tests, the US is ranked like, whatever we are, 20-something, because we're just conditioned to chase external things. So yeah, that's like the illusion of the external success, right? And we built the, you know, we've done a million dollars, over a million dollars in our wholesale businesses here. And I'll probably do like 1.5. And on paper, it's like, oh, wow, it's pretty significant. To a certain extent, like I said, everyone, there's way bigger businesses. But for people who are kind of just starting, like, oh, wow, that's pretty significant. But every deal is coming with anxiety, went to bed in dread, woke up in dread, felt no peace. What's the point? There's literally no point. So I think that the takeaway here is like, notice where you're postponing your joy until after the next milestone, because that's a slippery slope. And what would it look like if you just enjoyed the journey now instead of waiting for some future moment? I think that's a huge point. So the point number 3 here, the shift within, right? So true fulfillment comes from cultivating, like I said, the peace, love, joy, and abundance internally, not chasing them externally. So for me, it was that, that's when I realized like no amount of external validation would ever give me what I was chasing. And you know, I got pushed to a breaking point of just not enjoying things, but I'd also heard these principles because I'm a voracious learner. Like, I will just every single day reading and listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and I've heard these concepts from so many different people, so many, so many, so many different people, but it didn't really— I didn't internalize it until I was kind of pushed to my breaking point of like pain and all this stuff, uh, that I realized, oh, that's what they're talking about. That's what the Buddha is talking about. That's what Jesus is talking about. And you'll hear me reference different religions. I don't subscribe to any religion. So, you know, hopefully no one takes this personally, but I like to pull from all the different texts, whether it's Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, because they all talk about the same thing at the base. It's all love. It's all seeking yourself. It's all the internal work that creates the external. And the root of all suffering is just chasing external things to feel happy on the inside. That is the root of all suffering. So understanding that that true fulfillment comes from cultivating it on the inside, asking yourself, what do I want to cultivate right now? Like, what do you really want? Do you want peace, love, or do you want fear? At the basis of everything, there's love and fear. Do you want to live in love or do you want to live in fear? That's it. Love is— love is joy, excitement, inspiration, laughing, having fun, um, peace, excitement. That's, that's all love. Fear is anxiety, worry, doubt, anger, frustration, lust, you know, jealousy. So you can either live in love or fear, and you choose, right? You choose. And the beautiful thing about fear is fear was created because how could you ever experience love if everything was just love and butterflies? How would you truly know how good it is if you didn't have the contrast of these fear-based things? That's, that's why they were created. But the beauty of it is that you get to choose every single day. All right. Lastly, the BILT framework. So like I said, transformation happens when you do the inner work. BILT gives you the structure to do it. That's why I created this whole thing. Break limiting beliefs, upgrade your operating system, imagine your life, your future self, right? Let go and transcend into your highest self. These are things you need to do. Okay, I use Built every single day. Like I said, it's a culmination. I'm still building the program out. Like, I have all the thoughts and stuff in there, but it's every single book that I've read over the past 5 years, every podcast, every idea, every thought. I've just been putting it together as the ideas come to me and the inspiration. I'm putting it in there and I'm adjusting it and I'm reviewing it. And I, you know, the tricky part— I'm not gonna say it's tricky because you got to watch how you speak to yourself— but the fun part is figuring out how that I— how I can take all these concepts and distill them down into one framework that people can use and that's practical and that's deep enough to create change, but not too complicated that it's overwhelming. So that's, that's what I'm doing right now. But I'm using these things every single day, right? Breaking limiting beliefs every single day. I'm reflecting on, hey, what beliefs are limiting me? What beliefs are not serving me? Like maybe, you know, the day is going to be hard, or this seller call is not going to be great, or this conversation with my team is going to be hard, or I'm always, you know, maybe thinking that someone might quit. Like, these are all limiting beliefs that I have. Why don't you just flip it? Why don't you have the belief that your team loves to stay and they're going to stay for the longevity, and this seller call is going to be fun, and this, this conversation with your employee is going to be great because it's going to, you know, it might be challenging, but it's going to help you grow. So I'm, I'm changing limiting beliefs every day. That's why you got to break limiting beliefs, upgrade your operating system, which is your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors, and your actions. That whole loop Your thoughts create emotions, which create behaviors, which create actions, which create results. So I'm constantly raising my state of being, my frequency, right? My operating system every single day, doing that work, doing a little routine in the morning to upgrade it. And we'll get into that in other episodes, right? So break limiting beliefs, upgrade your operating system, imagine your future self. I'm always doing that. The movie theater of your mind is where everything starts, the imagination. Right? Einstein, Shakespeare, like all these people talk about the imagination, how important it is, 'cause it creates reality. It literally creates reality. When you think about a thought in your mind and get emotional about it, there's no difference to the quantum field than what you're experiencing in your physical reality. So if you do that enough, your external reality literally collapses into that imagination. So imagination is huge, doing it every single day and getting emotion, putting emotion behind it. Just getting in the movie theater of your mind. Athletes do this all the time when they're visualizing their performance, right? So nobody— you can do it for your life. L is letting go of the past, right? The past self. Letting go of the samskaras and the fear and all that stuff. Like, we don't need to be holding onto this fear, okay? And the anxiety and the worry. Why are you going around all day long holding onto this? You had a bad call with someone, or you had a bad meeting on Friday with someone, right? And it made you upset and angry. That's fine. We're meant to deal with emotions as human beings. But here you are on Sunday morning, still pissed off about it. Why? Why are you still pissed off about it? That situation has no bearing on— at this point on Sunday, other than the bearing that you give it by dragging it into the present moment. That's it. Let it go. It happened. Forgive. Forgive the person. Forgive yourself. Move on and live your life. You're doing it to yourself. You're literally doing it to yourself. So forgive and just move on. That's letting go. Letting go of everything. Stop clinging to things. And then transcend into your high self. You do all 4 of these things. You're like a, you're on a rocket ship to freaking outer space of peace, bliss, joy, and love. And that's true. And you're constantly transcending into your highest self, right? And then once you do that, you live from overflow and you only act from inspiration. You just want to give it away. You have so much love and peace and joy in your heart that you just want to give it away to other people. That's what you want to do. So you go out and you act inspired and you serve other people and you have purpose. And when you do all these things, as a result, guess what? You make a lot of money. Because you're providing a lot of value, because you're purpose-driven. But the money is just a byproduct, just a byproduct of it all. So that's the Build for Impact framework. Biggest thing I want everyone to focus on here is, uh, that I want to leave you with is where in your life are you chasing external validation? Okay, just think about that. And how could you instead cultivate the state of being you're longing for right now from within? So if you wanted a journal prompt, it could be, what would change in my life if I created from overflow instead of chasing validation? So I want you to think about what am I chasing right now? Like what I really, really want externally. And then think even deeper. What feeling am I hoping that that's going to give me? If it's money, maybe it's like safety or peace or joy, or maybe you're chasing like a relationship and you want to feel accepted. Like understand whatever that is you're chasing and just be that feeling now. Sit down in silence and just imagine what it would feel like to have that feeling. Stay in that feeling. Just hold it throughout the day. And that's it. You win. And that's it. You win. So if this resonated with you, share it with a friend who might be stuck in the same, the same chase. Subscribe so you don't miss future episodes and join me next week as we dive deeper. I'm gonna go into the nature of our thoughts and emotions. We're gonna be releasing one a week here. We're gonna keep it consistent, right? One of the lessons I've been learning is consistency over intensity. So I might wanna be like, yeah, let's, you know, new podcast, let's do 3 a week. But I'd rather be consistent every single week. I'm thinking Mondays will be a good, good one to start the week off for everyone with a, uh, a little, little, little clip here. So these will be released on Mondays going forward. This is Built for Impact. Thank you for listening. ¡Gracias!