Craig Ballantyne - How To Overcome Anxiety And Dominate In Business

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, Joe, how you doing?

Hey. Pretty good, how are you?

I'm feeling great.

I did my, my breathing.

Yeah.

As I was preparing for this, this intro that Craig has taught us. By the way. Who's Craig?

Who we chat.

Who, who we got?

Matt, we're talking to Craig Ballantyne.

That's right, we are.

He's actually, he's actually the owner of earlytorise.com.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, he is. He has a new book called Unstoppable and basically it's very similar to what we're going to discuss, like this conversation we have with him. It's exactly what the book is. The book goes obviously much, much deeper and there's a lot of tools that Craig also has available, but addressing anxiety, stress and all that stuff that we have to live with as humans, but we have the tools and the mechanisms to handle those. So we can actually strive and do great things in business and life.

Of course.

And that's what Craig's all about.

Yeah.

That's what's super cool. That's what his book Unstoppable is all about as well.

Yeah. Apparently his clients call him the most, the world's most disciplined man as well.

I can see it from the way that he describes how he structures his business.

It'll make sense when he talks about his seven by seven strategy in here. Yeah, it'll definitely makes sense. He's the dude's discipline or the bumpers.

That he, you know, like, like bowling alley. Yeah, the bumper analogy. He, you know, Craig goes deep into different strategies. You can approach your day to day lives and put these bumpers that will give you a lot more happier life.

Yeah. He built turbulence training empire with over 13 million viewers.

Dang. That's a lot.

He's got his book, the Perfect day formula. Did you already mention that one?

Have not mentioned that one, but that is on the list and it's working on a new one.

He's helped 35,000 high performers own the day and take back control of their life. Today, Craig coaches entrepreneurs to double their income and work less using powerful techniques. In his new Wall street best selling book, Unstoppable.

Bam. Now it's solid. Craig was very nice to ship us out a copy of that and check it out. Prior to this interview, as I mentioned, even on this podcast, I mentioned my father really quickly. At the time of this recording, he passed away Last week. And since then, I've been using a lot of the tools and mechanisms that not only Craig describes in this book because it came at, like, the perfect time, but also just a lot of the stuff he talks about, just breathing and, you know, just exercise, movement, talking to people, getting help. All that stuff that, you know, Craig really harps on inside this episode. It's. It's crazy because it's like what I'm doing literally going through right now and it's working. Like, if it wasn't for the tools and the strategies and the support and stuff that he mentions here and that we've, you know, Matt and I have been talking about a lot. Holy crap. Like, I'd be a totally in a whole different headspace right now. And I could see when something, you know, crazy, tragic in my case, but just. But we all live with different stress and anxieties that might be bellowing up over time or compounding up without us really knowing. It still has a very similar effect, I feel like, on the body.

Yeah. Yeah. And in this episode, we do get into how to know when these things are starting to creep up. You know, seeing the early signs of these things creeping up. And then, you know, we talk about some tools that you can use where if you're feeling anxious in the moment, you know, what can you do to sort of help calm the anxiety in the moment? You know, we cover a lot of ground here. You know, mental health is something that's a topic that we're obviously very passionate about. If you've been listening to our show in the last nine months, you've heard us talk about it quite a bit, and now even more so with some of the stuff going on personally. And. Yeah, so it's a really good conversation, really timely conversation, and I think a lot of people are going to get a lot out of this, and it's going to help a lot of people overcome a lot of struggles. So I'm excited for you to hear this episode. And if, you know, if you struggle with anxiety, if, you know other people who struggle with anxiety, share this episode with them. You know, let's stop making some of these mental health topics taboo topics. Let's start spreading the word around these topics. Let's start sharing some of these things. If you find value in some of our discussions around mental health, share them with other people who you think can benefit. Because, you know, that's sort of our mission now is to make sure that, you know, less people suffer from this stuff.

Yeah, we can all grow businesses and Have a great life and all that stuff. At the end of the day, we need to keep our minds in a good spot, and we're in this together. And no one. No one is alone in that. And it's only alone if you think you're alone, but you're not. No one's alone for sure. Yeah. Reach out if you have any questions, too, if you want to chat about stuff, if you have any. If you've been through this kind of stuff. Like, I mean, that helps us as well, you know, like, because we love to hear what you're learning, what you've experienced, and maybe some of the struggles you've gone through and got past, like, the ways that you've done that. And, you know, if there's anyone you want us even to have on the episode on the podcast here, that would be super cool, too.

Yep.

Because, yeah, like Matt said, we're obviously doing the business thing, and that's a focus, a big focus of the show. But at the end of the day, mental health and all that is gonna. You're gonna see that a lot more and more in us as, like, a mission of our company and of our podcast. And anything we can do to give back and help and support, I think, is that bigger calling that we're being called for right now. So we're going to heed the call and do it.

Definitely. We do have notes on this episode.

Yeah, man. We're going to test out some cool. Let's start with the texty thing.

Oh, the texty thing.

The texty thing.

Yeah.

I wrote down that I have the number here.

Oh, do it.

All right.

You give that call to action.

Yeah. Because I have not memorized this yet, but I need to. I would like to. So we took the notes, as always. You probably heard it before, but we have a notetaker that listens to. To everything and takes the notes for you, so you can get them absolutely for free if you're quick. By the time this goes live. So a couple weeks or so, and then they go away. If you pull out your phone, ideally you're not driving or anything.

Your phone's probably already out. If you're listening to a podcast, just.

Don'T text to do this while you're driving, please.

While driving? Yes. You have to text to do this, but don't do it while driving.

Not driving, yes. Key thing there. So you can get these notes for absolutely free. If you text on your phone to 38470, you want to text the word comp c o m p to 38470. Yeah, 38470. Comp.

Do that and then we'll send you the notes by just doing that also. You can do it the old fashioned way.

Oh, it is kind of old fashioned.

You go to the old fashioned way and go to the website hustleandflowchart.com computer hustleandflowchart.com comp that'll also get you the notes. So if you're on a phone listening to this, text COMP to 38470. If you are on a computer right now, just go to hustleandflowchart.com comp. That might be faster for you.

Keep it simple.

Either way, we're going to get them notes in your inbox for you.

Sweet. All right, let's go over to Craig and let's learn some stuff and remember to keep breathing. Hey, Craig, welcome to the show.

Hey. This is going to be a lot of fun. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, man. I mean, you speak our language with everything you put out there in your work. I mean, you have your new book Unstoppable that. I mean, that book is, I feel like it's very tactical. It's an easy read, but it gives you a lot. It's so much packed in that. In that I don't know how many pages are in that thing, but it's not a lot and it's great. I think that's like the best.

Thanks. I really appreciate it. Both of the books that I have are, I call them my life's work in a book and very, very important stuff that helped me get through a lot of struggle and into a place of good freedom, but also more productive and more structured and way less stressed. So we'd love to share that with your audience today.

Yeah, man. We talk a lot about that on our show, about entrepreneurs, especially dealing with anxiety and just the overwhelm of life. But then you layer in business and the A type personality. That's where things can get a little squirrely.

Let's go back, I guess I know you went through transformations of your own that led you on this path and let's get through that a bit and then we'll get into what kind of cool tactics we can share here.

Yeah. So if you start all the way back when I was in high school, I grew up in Canada. So up in Canada, we drink beer and play hockey or play hockey and drink beer. It doesn't matter what you order, you end up doing that. And I wanted to be a strength and conditioning coach in the National Hockey League, of all things. But I was also a binge drinker as an angry young kid. Not like getting in fights or anything, but just really frustrated. And so I sat down the course of personal development, and that led me into the fitness industry, which allowed me to transform a lot of lives. But then in 2006, when I was, like, at the peak of my success, early on in my career, I had massive anxiety attacks that made me go to the emergency room twice in a period of three and a half months. And it was real tough time in my life. I wouldn't call it a dark time. It was just a tough time. It was a real challenge. I was like, man, I'll just do anything to get rid of this. And then I discovered a whole bunch of tools, which I keep in my toolbox to this day. And I teach a lot of other entrepreneurs, and it's something that I continue to work on. You know, I was talking to somebody, a friend today about, hey, what can I do? You know, I've still got a little bit of envy in me. I still got a little bit of frustration. I gotta. I gotta keep on evolving. So that's kind of my life story in a very short amount of time, or at least my mentality, you can see the kind of stuff, the way that I think and what drives me to do what I do.

Yeah, that's interesting. So what was that? What did that look like back when you were going to the er was there. Can you put your finger on what that was that really triggered this? And then, of course, you had a transformation after that process. It sounds like.

Yeah, so acutely, it was seven Red Bulls in an evening. That. That'll do it. So anybody out there keep it to 5 or less? I guess keep it like half of 1 or less. So anyways, it was around Christmas time, right? And I was still a personal trainer a little bit, and I was running my online business. And I had what I called the paradox of freedom. I really didn't have to be, except for a couple of training clients, I didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time. And I could work all that I wanted, and I could party all that I wanted. And in Toronto, where I lived, it's kind of like New York, and you can go out any night of the week. And so I tested that theory and proved it to be true. And around Christmas time, I was working all the time, partying all the time and drinking, and I was exhausted. So when you hear about, like, those celebrities who have like a. Or Go into some rehab for exhaustion. I know what, I know what that meant. Now I'm like, oh, I get it, I get it. So on January 1, I woke up with a hangover that was unlike any other one. My heart started pounding. So I paced around my tiny little apartment for 11 hours. And then I finally gave up. Went to the emergency room. There's nobody there. It's January 1st on a Sunday evening. You know, everybody's gone home from their mistakes of the evening before. And so I walk in and there's this guy about my age and he looks at me like, what are you doing here? I'm trying to like read a book or something. And he was disgusted with me. And then I said, I think I'm having a heart attack. And his face changed, like immediately. And they took me to the back of the room, you know, back of the hospital. And nurse, like held my hand and petted my stomach and my head and then I was out of there in like 30 minutes. And then I did it again, like three and a half months later. I was training somebody and I, I asked this 5 foot 3, 310 pound obese lawyer if he would take me to the emergency room, which, you know, if one of the guys should have been going to the emergency room, it was not me.

Right?

Yeah. He looked at me like I had nine heads. As. That's, that's the thing with obesity, or not obesity, anxiety, mental illness, whatever you want to call it, is that on the, on the outside you look normal. Right. It's not like I had a broken arm where it's like, oh man, you need to go to the hospital.

Yeah.

Like I looked great. I had six pack abs. I looked like a fitness model. It was, you know, the peak of my physicality. And I was on the inside, I was going crazy and, you know, breaking down. So I went to the emergency room. They gave me a chest X ray and a heart rate monitor and they told me to bring the heart rate monitor back in 24 hours. And when I did, they said, we'll call you in 24 hours if there's anything wrong. So I set a timer and started watching the clock and they didn't call me. And then the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders. So anybody listening to this and you're waking up in the middle of the night and your chest like it's, oh my God, somebody put a piano on my chest or my, my heart is pounding or I've got tingling from the top of my head down to my end My fingertips, which I had. Or you've got something, right? I had a burning over. I had a burning under my left pec, like where your heart's supposed to be. I always, like, when the anxiety was coming on, I had that. If you've got that stuff, trust me, you can get through it. You just need some tools in your toolbox. You need to, first of all, go to your doctor and make sure that there's nothing physically wrong with you. But once you know there's nothing physically wrong with you, then it's like, oh, so that just means, like, the way that I look at it, guys, is there's a puzzle in my head that needs to be solved, like a Rubik's cube. And, oh, the breathing will get it all yellow on this side. And the, you know, some of the stuff I talk about on Unstoppable, it'll make it blue and green on the other side. Now I like to get it, you know, orange and red. And I've solved the puzzle in my head, and that's the way that I look at it. And I've got 900 tools in my anti anxiety toolbox that I can help myself with, I can help other entrepreneurs with, I can help you with, I can help a teenager with. I can help a person who's caring for their parents and their kids and who's struggling. So there's hope for everybody out there.

That's really cool, man. Yeah. And that's. I feel like, Yeah, a lot of folks will have. Maybe the issue is because you hit on a lot of the points here, actually. So I heard boundaries. I know boundaries is a huge thing for you. It sounded like in your state, back in the Red Bull days in party. And you just like. You're just like, screw it, we're going to the limit. No boundaries. You can't hold me back. What do you say?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's what I call the paradox of freedom. Everybody thinks I want my life to like. I know I never have a. I don't want to have a boss. I can want to work wherever, whenever, doing whatever. And so I got there, and when you get there, all of a sudden you go, like, if anybody listening has ever gone from working in an office to working at home, you're like, whoa, this is awesome. And then it's like, I didn't get anything done today. And then it goes on and on. Or you just like. There's no. You don't stop. You just keep. Oh, it's. I've got two hours. I Don't have anything else planned. I may as well keep working. And the next thing you know, you're working from like 7am till 10pm and then from 10pm till 3am I was out. And then I was back at it again at 7 o' clock in the morning. And you can't run like that for long. There's very, very few people. I mean, Elon Musk is breaking down in front of everybody because it's trying to run like that. And so. So that was the thing that I discovered then. I discovered you need the paradox of structure. And the paradox of structure is that structure equals freedom. Jocko Willing says, discipline equals freedom. Or maybe it's the army or Navy seals or something that say that, but it's true. Once you put boundaries in place, all of a sudden you're like, oh, great, this is the end time. It's very much like, if you want to use some analogies, like think about a Broadway play like the Book of Mormon. They don't make that stuff up as they go along. Right. It's not like, oh, it's fun, let's just make some stuff up tonight. No, that's called improv. And it's not as good as the Book of Mormon. It's scripted out, you know, so we need that structure and these systems in our place. And when you put that together, you get true freedom.

And I think that's the big thing I was taking away there from the book is I know in my own life, whenever I feel overwhelmed or that I'm just kind of out of flow, I can tell that there's not enough boundaries or structure around my habits, you know, my daily routines, whatever it might be. And just putting little structures, little guidelines, timers on the phone, whatever it takes makes all the difference and can completely squash that kind of cloudy feeling in my mind.

You're the one that you're having the little baby coming up soon, right?

I do, yeah.

Okay. So there's a little boundary that's going to come into your life. Right. And what I found is that entrepreneurs respond either one of two ways. And I hope that you go the first way, which is when the baby comes along, you become a better entrepreneur because you have less time. And, you know, you go back to my days when I was 29 and I had no dependence and I went and got a dog because of the anxiety. So I actually finally had a dependent that required some time from me. But if you don't have anything, then you just, you don't have any boundaries. You Work all the time. And when you get the baby. Well, now I can't work all the time. So that means I can't be screwing around and I can't be going down these rabbit holes of like, oh, let's try this business, and let's try this in the business. No, you make smarter decisions. And then there's the other entrepreneur who gets very overwhelmed by it. And the reason why I say there's two entrepreneurs, it's almost like there's two types of people in life. The people that look at the positive and the negatives. Because for my Perfect Day formula book, my most negative review is from a woman, a married woman with one child. Oh, this won't work. He's a single guy, blah, blah, blah. And my best review is from a single woman with three children.

Wow, that shows the disparity there.

Yeah. And. And I could have written. I could have been Oprah and writing a book and, you know, wrote to that, you know, that first woman, and she never. And she still would have said, this doesn't apply to me. Right. She would have always found a way that. That doesn't apply to me.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, Matt, like, what was your experience?

So many people in so many ways.

Yeah. Well, Matt, I know, like, you were up like before you had kids, you were up all walks, hours of the night.

Before I had kids, Yeah. I mean, my. I. I didn't have the social life. My, my life was pure work. Before kids, it was, it was basically what you said, but without the social element, I just would start working at 8am Actually, no, I'd probably start working at 10am and then work through till 4am and go to bed for a few hours to get back up and start over at 10am the next day.

Yeah, I like that you said that. There's two different folks, especially with a kid coming in, but really with any boundary or new thing in their life, responsibility.

Oh, yeah. When I had my first kid, that was it. It was. That lifestyle ended like in a day.

Yeah. I chatted with a friend the other day and he just had a baby. And he said, I've never been more focused in my life and in business, like, everything's starting to grow and just all the bs, the stuff that you shouldn't be focused just falls away immediately. Yeah.

And so actually you guys haven't got this book because we just sent it to the publisher this week. But we have the Perfect Week formula, which I realized after I wrote the Perfect Day formula, I wrote the Wrong book.

Oh, really?

Oh, hey, way to go, buddy. Spent three years of your life writing the wrong book. Now, of course, the book is great, but we realize not every day looks the same. So we wrote the perfect week formula and we put more bumpers and boundaries in place. And so you will learn when your baby's old enough that when you, like 3 or 4 years old, maybe 5 or 6 or 7 or 8, I'm not sure you'll take them bowling for the first time. And what happens when you take a little kid bowling?

The bumper. Yeah, the bumpers.

The bumpers go up so they don't roll gutter balls. And it's. And the analogy here is for adults, we don't put bumpers up in our life and we roll gutter balls in our life. Right, Like I did back in the day. So you put up bumpers and boundaries. The way that we teach people is before you. We teach people to. The quote is, build your business around your life and not your life around your business. So build your business around your life, not your life around your business. So if you think about your seven day calendar, we call it a seven by seven grid. This empty box, each square on the way down is about two to three hours. And then you got Monday through Sunday across the top and you're starting with a blank 7 by 7 grid. Now what is most entrepreneurs, they're going to be like, oh, well, I got to put these meetings on and you know, here's where we're going to. When I'm going to work and grind and hustle and blah, blah, blah. No, no, opposite. We're going to put bumpers and boundaries in place. First date night goes on the calendar. First family dinners with grandma. Family time on Saturday, Planning time on Sunday morning. Your two or three workouts per week that you're going to get while you're a busy entrepreneur. Your morning routine goes on there. Your evening cutoff routine. I've got this thing to help people overcome overwhelm that they got to do at the end of the day. That goes on there. Then your bedtime. And, and we teach people to use a reverse alarm, which is, you know, so you get to bed on time. That all goes on the calendar first. Now we can talk about work.

And then that goes back to what you guys were saying, what your friend said. You'll never be more productive when you approach life this way because you're going to get more done in less time because you're going to cut the fluff.

I love it. And it's such a contrarian way to go about, you know, I just have this to do list. I got a lot of stuff to do. But us entrepreneurs. Yeah, a type like I would say, I know you mentioned this in your book too. We just feel like that takes precedence typically. But it, it's flipped. It should be flipped like as you.

Well, it's kind of like, you know, when you're, when you're going on a vacation or whatever, right. You know, you're gonna be gone for two weeks and you have all this shit you got to get done before that vacation. Somehow you figure out how to get all that shit done within the, like the three days leading up to that vacation. Well, it's kind of like that same concept, but on a day to day basis. You know, this is coming and you got to stop this time. So you're going to figure out how to get done what you need to get done in the constraints that you've placed upon yourself.

You nailed it, man. You just absolutely nailed it. And that's Parkinson's law, right? If you guys remember that from Tim Ferriss four hour workweek, that's the first time I had ever heard of it. And that means the task expands to fill the time allotted for it. So if you go back to college and the professor says, hey, yeah, the essay is due April 20, or as grownups, the taxes are due April 15, or whatever it is. I'm Canadian, so I'm not sure what your tax.

Right, right. But okay, so in college, like, yeah, okay, I'll do that on April 19th. And in the adult world, yeah, I'll do that on April 14th. But if taxes were due on March 15th, guess when we get them done.

Yeah, the 14th.

Right, that's right. And so the task expands to fill the time allotted for it. And if you have no boundaries, the task just expands and the number of tasks expand and the next thing you're overwhelmed with all these opportunities. And that's the first world problem that a successful entrepreneur will have. I mean, this is not a problem that only is on struggling entrepreneurs. Right? It's not like, oh, the only, the only person who's going to get anxiety is an overweight struggling entrepreneur. No, I was in the best shape of my life. My business was in the best shape of its life. And that's when I got my anxiety because I had too much opportunity, both personally and professionally, and I chased it all. And there were no bumpers and boundaries in place. So that's the overriding message we want to get here. Which Leads to then singularity of focus, knowing what to do, knowing what not to do, having a not to do list, and being able to say no. The strength to say no really, really gives you clarity.

Yeah. I mean, this conversation right now is actually resonating pretty hard because we're in our actual. In our business right now. We're in scenario where there's 15 opportunities. They've all presented themselves at the same time, and we're trying to figure out which paths to follow because there's so many. They're all seemingly good opportunities. And now we're in this. This situation where over the last, like, two weeks, we've had so many discussions about, like, all right, which of these are we going to pursue and which of them aren't we going to pursue? So I'm kind of curious, do you have some sort of process or some sort of way of thinking about, okay, this is worth pursuing, These ones aren't worth pursuing?

Yeah, absolutely. But first I'm going to ask you, do you know what Steve Jobs was most proud of?

Hmm. I don't.

Not off top of my head, no.

Steve Jobs was most proud of what he did not do, as opposed to what he did do. And what that means is when the ipod and iPhone were starting to become popular, everybody was talking about, oh, he's got to make an iWatch, he's got to make an iCar, he's got to make an eye this and I that, and iRobot, you know, all this stuff. Right. And eventually Apple did make some of that, but at the time, what did they do? They got singularly focused on the iPhone and turned it into something that will eventually hit trillion dollars in sales, probably, if it hasn't come close to it already. So it was the focus, the singularity of focus. If you want to do great things, you have to do fewer things. If you want to do great things, you have to do fewer things. And so it all starts with knowing your values and your vision. This is classic business strategy. Whether you use Gazelle's, Verne Harnish's Secrets of the Rockefeller Habits, or eos, or whatever it is, you've got to know the vision for your business. And when you know the vision for your business, your values and vision drive every daily decision. So what I do when I work with entrepreneurs, I do an entire day with them. We do this deep dive. The very first thing we go through are, what are your values? Because I got to know your values and I got to know the vision for your business. Before we can talk about what you need to do next week. Because we could sit here and you could download all of those 10 opportunities that you get and then congratulations to you guys. That means you guys are doing great work. You have the first world problems of too many opportunities. And that's great. That's great. It's better than the opposite.

That's right.

We could sit here and brainstorm ideas about those things. But if I don't know your values, then we could probably send you down some big rabbit holes that will get you in a lot of trouble. Maybe financially, maybe personally, you never know. So what we do is, first of all, we start at that high level, 30,000 foot level. And I go, matt, what the heck are your family values, your health values, experiences, and your business and wealth values? What do you want to achieve in the next 10 years? That's basically what I say to somebody in the next 10 years. What do you want to achieve for these four values? Family, health, wealth and experiences. And people download a lot of stuff to me and this is like, I want people to get everything out of their head. Like, oh, I want to take my extended family on a trip to Mexico and, you know, I want to write three books and I want to, you know, be making a million dollars a year net income. And I want to, you know, be in the best shape of my life. Okay, great. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah, we got to get it out. Then we cut it down and we build what I call a three year vision. And the three year vision is like writing a movie script for your life. Hey, when you describe your three year vision, I need to be able to sit back and I need to be able to visualize it like I'm watching a movie. Oh, I'm living in this home and I'm with these people and this is what our family does. And here are the three big accomplishments in our business. And this is what our business looks like with our team. And, you know, here are some of the rituals and trips that we take as a family and what we do. And I go, okay, great. I can see crystal clear what your life looks like in three years from now. And I might give some feedback on it and question you and say, how does that fit in with your values? A lot of people will say to me that their family value, their overriding family value, is to raise well adjusted children. Great. And then they will say, I want to build a billion dollar company. I go, okay, I can support that. But you need to understand that most people that build a billion dollar company.

They might not have the most well adjusted children because they're probably not going to be around. You understand that building a billion dollar company is going to take a huge amount of sacrifice. So we just make sure that we're on the same page. And then we cut down and I ask them a bunch of other questions to get them to think bigger, to think different or overcome some obstacles and anxieties in their life. And then we go and build a one year plan based off the three year plan. And then from the one year plan we build a 90 day quarterly plan and now we know. And then a 30 day fast start guide which includes what to do in the next 24 hours. And now I know exactly what you should be doing and you know exactly what you should be doing. And it's crystal fricking clear.

Yeah, yeah, it takes, I love that because that takes any kind of ego out of a decision making process, which is probably, I don't know, I would like to hear your thoughts about it. It seems like that would almost weigh a lot heavier than most people's practical like this. The vision and values.

Yeah. So, you know, one of the funny things is that if somebody came to you with a problem in business, you'd be able to, you'd be able to give them the advice of exactly what to do exactly. Now the thing is most of us have the exact same problem that our friends bring us and that they talk about, but we for some reason can't fix our own problems. And the reason is we're not emotionally attached to our friend's problem. So objectively we see what is right and it's easy for us to tell them what to do. Now in our own lives, we have that emotional attachment to. But I put 100 grand into this project or I've been working on this for six months and you want me to go and stop it and kill it? Like, yeah, it's so freaking obvious. You have to go and kill this. I was actually just at my doctor doing a physical, regular checkup and we started talking about Theranos, right? And the woman who started Theranos and everybody who was involved in that company must have known, like, oh my gosh, we are lying to everybody here. But they were so emotionally involved in. Well, we've gone this far down the rabbit hole, you know, we're not going to turn around now. And it's the same with wework, right? Like, hey, you guys realize he's just sprinkling pixie dust on real estate leasing, right?

You're not raising the collective consciousness of the world by renting this space. But everybody fell for it. And then they went so emotionally attached to it that they couldn't rationally and objectively look at the problems. Whereas everybody. A lot of people on the outside, a lot of investors couldn't either. But a lot of, you know, people who were critics could. And so I think I answered your question or at least addressed what you were saying. But again, with the ego stuff, we need to strip it. It's very hard. The emotion and the ego is hard to strip out of it. But when you see. I like to call it alignment. Like if you say, oh, I want to have a billion dollar company and then you say, but you know what? I'm not giving up Netflix and date night and time with my kids. I'm like, okay, there's only like two or three Jesse Itzlers in the world who can maybe pull that off. And even him, I think he works a ton too.

He's also married to another billionaire, so.

He'S got that leg up.

It helps.

But I mean, that guy would. That guy, he has great stories. He spoke at our mastermind that I run with my friend Bedros, and he's like, yeah, like, I just jumped on this private airplane one time with these guys and sold them net net jets or whatever. It was like, yeah, like, he's the kind of guy that go to the ends of the earth. He actually would bike 20 miles at 2 o' clock in the morning on the Long Island Expressway to go and record a rap album. Like, not a lot of people are going to do that.

That's true.

And that's what you have to do in order to become a billionaire. So most people, again, they're not aligned with what they want to accomplish. Like all these crazy dreams they have. It's great to have crazy dreams, but we need to also be realistic and take the ego and emotion out of it. And then we put people on the right path and it's like, hey, if we can build you a $10 million company and a happy marriage at the same time, you okay with that? Yeah, I guess.

Is that enough for you? Yeah. Right.

Like. Like I don't have 10 million bucks, but I can barely spend the money I have now. And like, so at some point, unless you can really spend money, and I have a couple friends who can, you don't need that much money to live a great life. And now we can flip it around and make sure that you're really living life properly.

Yeah, yeah. We actually we had James Altucher on the show and we did this exercise with James on the show and he basically, we're trying to figure out how much do you really need in life. Like what, what is enough? If you wanted to live like a baller and fly private or, you know, every time you travel, it's either private or first class or you know, upgrades.

To your house, whatever you want to do.

Yeah, add upgrades to your house and you can. You're traveling all the time and you're eating at fancy restaurants every night. Like how much does it really take? And like the number that I think we came to at the end of the whole thing was like, if you made any more than like $5 million a year, there's not really much more that you need to make after that. And you know, likelihood, most people's numbers is way less. But even off 5 million a year, if you were to put that into an investment, get a 10% return off of it, you're living off half a million dollars a year at that point. Like, what more do you really need?

Yeah.

And the thing, the thing is, I'm not sure which philosopher said it, it might have been Seneca, might have been one of the other stoics, but it was basically like, you want to have a happy life, just stop wanting things. And I'm actually a big fan of stoicism and it's really helped me. And when you read my books, you'll see that influence there. And it's not that I don't. I mean, I want to achieve stuff, I want to impact people. But when you chase the impact, instead of the income, you actually increase, increase the income too. So it's valuable to look at it that way.

Well, I think going back to that ego question and also what you just said to what Matt was saying is being objective I think is so key. And that's like a reminder that I always tell to myself. I think it was something I heard in Tim Ferriss podcast or maybe in his book is looking at things objectively takes away the emotion or it takes away an anxiety around something, you know, maybe a past failure, you know, it doesn't. You are not the failure. But objectively, if you're looking at this, you know, like, oh, it just like didn't work out. I made the wrong decision maybe.

Yeah, exactly. And so, so my favorite philosopher is this guy Epictetus and he talks about looking at the things externally. So even in your day to day stuff, almost like it's a third person thing.

Right.

It's outside Eyes now, it's great. It's very helpful to get outside eyes from a coach, a mentor, a personal trainer gives you outside eyes when you're doing exercises because you can't see, you can't see yourself doing the push up and you can't see where your shoulder blades are and your elbows are and all that sort of thing. So you need outside eyes. And very much like in your business, you need a coach or a partner, you know, some, A mentor, somebody come along with outside eyes. And oftentimes because you're so in the weeds, you either can't see a glaring opportunity or you can't see a glaring problem that's coming down because you're in the weeds the day to day. And if you don't step back and look at it externally and objectively yourself, which is very difficult to do, it's easy in theory, it's very simple, but it's actually very difficult to do to detach yourself. It takes practice, but if you can't do it, it's very important to get the outside eyes of someone that you know like and trust and who has the expertise to give you the constructive criticism and feedback.

Yeah, yeah, definitely a trusted. Whoever it could be for that objectiveness. And then practice, I think, with some meditation or like breathing. I know there's a lot of breathing practices you recommend as well. Something I do all the time is box breathing. I think it's similar to what, what you recommend as well.

Yeah.

And in the moment. Yeah, you can, yeah. Squash that anxiety and then think a little bit more objectively about what you're handling right now.

Yep, exactly. I just think that there's just what you've listed, what we just discussed are so many of the tools that can be in your toolbox and whether you do yoga or tai chi. I did this thing called qigong. So all of those things, you know, it gives you self awareness of your body and of your mind and it allows you. Like I discussed earlier, you know, I was pretty angry teenager and you know, losing a sport, I hated to lose sports, I was the worst poor loser. And over the years I've been able to calm and control that quite a bit. Where in the past I would get mad really, really quickly because I had a temper, but now I'm able to step back and almost like look at it from the outside and say, hey, a normal person wouldn't get mad at this. You need to just, you know, calm, calm down and say something different or just slow down and have a pause in between your Reaction. And I mean, that sounds weird. It's like, really, there's like, two people there, and there is two people there. So a couple of other book recommendations are the Power of Now, which is by Eckhart Tolle. And then.

Yeah, it is the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, who. I mean, Michael Singer is a great example of a guy who built a billion dollar business and all he wanted to do was do yoga all day long. But he talks about how there's the self and then there's the voice in our head. Right.

Mm.

So, you know, you're walking down the street, as he would say, and, you know, there's all these thoughts running through your mind, and you observe the thoughts. So you can. Right there, there's two things. There's the person observing the thoughts and there's the thing creating the thoughts. So you're not actually the thoughts. You're the person observing the thoughts. Very deep stuff. But it also will help you with your emotions and you. And the reason why I bring all this stuff up is because as an entrepreneur, you're on the entrepreneurial roller coaster every single day, hour, day, minute. Right. And, you know, we've all seen the memes, and it's the same in our personal lives. You know, in this world, you know, we got ups and downs. We don't know what's coming next. And if you are emotionally stable, you will have a healthier, longer life and you'll be able to deal with whatever the world throws at you.

Yeah. Well, I'll go back to something I mentioned to you, you know, prior to recording is. You know, last week I found out my dad passed away and very unexpected and out of the blue and 100%, the different anxiety practices, luckily, I already had in me prior to that point. But even thumbing through your book, I got it, I think literally that week as well.

There were so many things that just the tools that you give in the book, also the tools I already had 100% without those. I could see a whole different side of me if I didn't have those. And then with business, like, already my head, it's still, you know, kind of getting back into it, but at the same time, without the tools, without the practices and consistency and support people like Matt and other folks that have, you know, around to chat with. Holy crap. Like. And we're all dealing with something like that. That's just my own experience. But, you know, we all have these things that happen outside of the business but completely affect the day to day of the business. That's why I love this talk right here.

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I've noticed is really common these days.

That brings anxiety to people is more than ever we want fast results. And we see the 19 year old kid who's making a million with a Shopify store and we see somebody our age that's making a lot of money. And I think it's super important. We've talked about a lot, reading a lot of stuff, I read a lot of biographies and to see how long we see the person with success now, but to see how long they labored in obscurity and not just in obscurity, but on the verge of bankruptcy. You guys read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight?

Yes.

I have not, but it's on my list.

Yes, right. Like Nike was bankrupt for, you know, on the verge of bankruptcy for 18 years. For the first 18 years. And that guy was doing business with Japan by phone because there wasn't fax, there wasn't email, there wasn't Twitter, there wasn't LinkedIn. This is 1962. And not only is he doing business with Japan from America, when he had to fly over and he had to call, he had to wait four weeks and wonder, hey, that money that I wired them, I wonder if it's actually if they're just taking my money. The guy was also doing business with a country that the United States was at, at war with just 15 years ago. So it's absolutely crazy, you know, that somebody today gets stressed out because they didn't make any money on their Facebook ads and they've had them up for an hour and they're freaking out and hitting the panic button. Right. You can't, you got to go and read this stuff and see where these people are. And so biographies and understanding just that most great stories are 18 year plus overnight success stories and just get some fricking perspective on things and understand you got to work hard.

Yeah. Even a more recent example, sort of in our marketing world industry is Roland Frazier, one of the guys who is a digital marketer.

Yeah.

He posted something on Facebook just last week about how so many entrepreneurs just think, hey, we sort of leapfrog to the top or whatever. And he just made this post of like, here's all the shit that's gone wrong in my journey to become an entrepreneur. You know, he, he worked so hard that he, it ruined his relationship and he lost his first wife. He had the IRS come after him for $2 million because of, you know, some sort of tax issue that popped up and you know, he just listed off like all of these things and he's like, everybody sees where I'm at now and the digital marketer stuff and you know, the big brands that I'm dealing with now. But nobody really ever talks about like all of the crap that I had to go through to get to this point.

Yeah, and one other one, we, I mean we could go on all day with this. But you know, one of the guys who I actually really think is great on social media is Grant Cardone. I've gone to one of his sales boot camps. The guy is 62 years old and he talked from 9:30 to 1:30 straight. There were no breaks. I did not see him drink water.

Whoa.

The energy that that guy had, I mean he would grind most 20 year olds into the dust with the energy that he has now. Here's the thing though, everybody sees you guys probably seen him, you know, he's got his jet, he's got all this stuff, he's got a great life. Realized that he was single, struggling up until he was 45 years old. He didn't get married till he's 45, he didn't have kids till he was 52. And so everybody, I want to be like Grant Cardone. Okay, great, go, go and travel America doing speaking every weekend for 20 years with no family and you know, not being able to find the love of your life. Go and do that and then you can have a lot of money and are you willing to do that? No, of course not. Of course not. So you want what he has without doing what he has done.

And that will cause a lot of problems inside your mind if you do that.

Yeah, that goes back to the values and vision. It seems like it all kind of starts right there. It's getting so damn clear.

And there's this, there's this bodybuilder guy. So I'm in the fitness world and most people who know this bodybuilder know this, this phrase. His name is Ronnie Coleman and he was a, he was a cop, but he ended up being the Mr. Olympia, which is the thing that Arnold won back in the day. Coleman was Mr. Olympia like seven years in a row. And he has this great quote and it goes like this. Everybody want to be a bodybuilder, but nobody want to lift no, no heavy ass weights. And it's true. I mean this guy, this guy would, would do walking lunges in a parking lot with £225 on his back, you know, all day long. Right. And everybody wants to be the Bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift the weights. That's essentially just. That's. That's first world problems in a nutshell right there.

That is. You're right. And then we can go on and on about social media and all the other different implications and things that are feeding our subconscious every single day. And again, back to your boundaries statement. Put some boundaries on social media or whatever these inputs are that could maybe cloud your judgment of your own path, because you're on your own path.

Absolutely. And I'm a huge believer that social media can be a positive force in my life. Social media is nothing but positive. I follow 15. No, I follow 11 people on Instagram. And the only people that I follow on Instagram bring value into my life. I have maybe only 150 friends on Facebook, but we got tens of thousands of followers. But the stuff that I let into my feed only puts a smile on my face or is only from a couple of friends. My LinkedIn, same thing. And I don't watch any crap on YouTube. And so social media has done nothing but bring positives into my life. And you can design it. And the way that I look at social media and I teach this from stage, is that every single day, you wake up and you are going to war with tens of thousands of PhDs from MIT in Silicon Valley whose overriding job in life is to make you addicted to the phone. So there we go. We got the world's best minds. They're doing one of two things. They're making us addicted to our phones, or they're food scientists making us addicted to Doritos. So that's where we put our best minds, is making us addicted to crappy things. So every day you wake up and you're in this war. And if you play by their rules, and their rules include allowing notifications on your main thing and having hundreds of apps, all that sort of stuff. If you do that, you are gonna lose that battle against your phone. Every day, what I teach people to do, delete all or, you know, remove all notifications. Delete as many apps as possible. I have a grand total of.

It'S six apps. I have Uber, I have Instagram, I have the Oura Ring app, and I have Cut Story. Those are the four apps on my phone. That's it. I don't use. When someone says, hey, you got to download the app for this, I'm like, I don't know how to do that. And the less you can know about tech, the better in most cases. So now my phone does not suck me in. I mean, Instagram is still a sucker, but I have learned how to put it in airplane mode. Turn it off, put in another room, and put in a desk drawer. Those are the four things I, I talk about destroying distractions and tossing temptations from your life. And that will make you more disciplined. A lot of people think they have to do a whole bunch of stuff in order to become disciplined. No, you actually have to remove things from your life in order to become disciplined. And for me, when the phone's in the other room and it's not within my eyesight and I have to go through a bunch of stuff to get to a thing, it's very difficult for me to get off track. And that's very important for you to understand. If you struggle with alcohol, get it out of the house. Never go to places where it's served. You know, you got to go to extremes here, and it's going to stop you from getting in trouble. If you binge eat certain food. Never have it in the house, never go to the place where they serve it. Man, you want to avoid gossip and toxic people. Stay out of the environments where the toxic gossipers are, you know, staying out of trouble. That's, that's why it's called staying out of trouble.

It's true.

You know, don't get into it and, and you'll never have to worry about staying out of it.

That's it.

Yeah. It also sounds like kind of the other lesson there is, you know, if you are going to have social media, you know, follow the stuff that up lists, you don't, don't, you know, don't follow the stuff that's gonna lead you to comparing yourself to other people.

Yeah. And when you find it, when you find yourself feeling that way, you gotta ruthlessly destroy it. And, and I hear all the time from people who are like, but what if somebody finds out I unfollow them?

I'm not joking. Grown men asked me this.

Yeah.

And I'm like, you are so weak. That, like, that matter, like, if somebody found out that you didn't follow them on social media, like, first of all, those people would be so petty that they would give you a hard time. Like, you spend time with people like that or like, to even think about that is ridiculous. Yeah, it is absolutely ridiculous. And so listen, at one point in your life, you were not following them on social media. Let's go back to that time and everything will be okay.

That is funny. I mean, I literally don't even know how People know when people unfollow them, who knows?

Right. But I like what you're saying here, Craig, because I feel like that is a source of anxiety. It seems so minuscule and weak, which it is. But at the same time, it's so powerful for some people. Like, it tugs at them and can create this anxiety that they can't control or they don't know how to control. And it sounds like it starts with, well, well, here.

Have you ever read the book. Have you read the book Sapiens?

Yes, yes.

I've got about 25% of the way through it, but I've started it.

It's a great read because unlike, you know, it's not like a business book where I have to take a hundred notes on it. Like, I can just read it and it's entertaining.

The journey.

It was either in that book or it was in another one of his books or some other place that I read. Every one of today's vices used to be a virtue.

So the fact that we want to eat 10,000 calories at a sitting. Well, in 10,000 years ago, you had to do that in order to survive. And 10,000 years ago, if you stood out from the tribe, you were a dead man. Oh, you're not going to be one of the tribe out. And you go and die in isolation. So all this stuff that causes us problems today was actually good 10,000 years ago.

Wow.

And it's so, you know, it's kind of cliche to say it's not your fault, but it's not your fault. We are wired in the wrongest ways for the modern world.

Yeah.

About the technology, about, you know, the, the, the food scientists at Doritos, they're just preying on what worked 10,000 years ago. You know, they're making it sweet, salty, whatever it is to make us addicted to the thing. Because 10,000 years ago, that was actually beneficial to us. When we found something like a berry, it's like, yes, eat these things because that will be beneficial for you. So, man, I mean, it's. It's all messed up.

It really is.

But the solution is what we talked about before. Externally, look at what you are doing and when you notice, hey, you know what? Three nights in a row of three glasses of wine, this can't continue. I need to change something here. Whether I get public accountability, whether I have a chat with my partner and say, hey, listen, listen, babe, that was fun, but we can't do this every night. Will you support me? You will?

Great.

Let's toss the Wine. We'll go out Friday night for wine, but we won't have it in the house on school nights. Great. You know that you circumvent the loop. That is negative. And you get into a positive streak of winning.

I like that. And even the way you just. With that example, that's a reward. You can spend time with your family, but you have something to look forward to, which is having goals or amazing. For anxiety.

Exactly.

I love that. Now I want to just quickly hit on, because I know we started this whole conversation with anxiety and all that, but for folks who might be listening, who maybe from your perspective, I'd like to hear what are some signs of anxiety or stress or just a downward feeling that folks can identify and at least start to put up some boundaries in some of these things we're talking about?

Well, yeah, that's a great question. So I would say that if you are negatively focused, if you find there's something wrong in everything, if there is a lot of worry and fear about the future, a lot of people.

They will think, oh, my goodness, well, what if this happens? Well, has it happened? No. Well, then don't even think about it. I mean, you will deal with it when you have to deal with it. But right now there's no point in you thinking, what happens if I hire an employee and then after six months of training them, they leave? Well, what happens? What happens if, like, you know, they get hit by a bus? Like, what happens? We'll deal with it. But everybody's making up these things in their head. And if you find yourself always making up the things in your head, that is definitely a pathway down to anxiety. And then also not sleeping, Overconsumption of stimulants, any form nicotine, caffeine, recreational drugs, anything that's a stimulant. Definitely no bueno. Anything that increases your adrenaline. So short shallow breathing from your upper chest combined with stimulants, combined with a lack of sleep combined with that fear of the future. Oh, that is a recipe for disaster. So everybody listening externally, look at yourself. So imagine you are one of your friends and give yourself a once over. Give yourself an audit. Am I checking those boxes? Am I working too much? Am I keeping all the problems in my head? Am I suffering in silence? That's a huge one. Am I putting everything on my back? Am I doing all of the work and refusing to ask for help? So putting everything on your back is where it's like, oh, well, I'll just do it because I don't want to bother Anyone or I'll just do it because it'll take me too long to train somebody. I'll just do it because no one else can do it as good as me. That's a warning sign. And then very much like, remember that movie the Green Mile? Michael Clark Duncan, he takes in everybody's pain. If you're one of those people who takes in everybody's pain but does not exhale it, you are going to end up with a lot of problems because there is, you know, woo woo stuff. There is definitely something to keeping negative emotions inside. There you are on a train track to run it into a mountain for sure. So make sure that you are talking it out journaling. I mean it doesn't matter what you do, but you got to get it out of you. You got to get it out so that you're, you know, in my book, I say you're. If you keep it inside, your anxiety engine revs, your wheels spin and your mind races. Everybody knows what that's like. Yes, I've been there. And you know, like everybody's been, you know, go back to college when you had a boyfriend or girlfriend, you were like, you're like, oh my gosh, they didn't call me last night. They were with somebody else. Like you make up all these things in your head and that's a great analogy for, you know, fast forward to being an entrepreneur. Oh my goodness, are we going to lose this account? You know, that team member, you know, I think they like snubbed me today in the meeting. You know, as you're just making crap up in your head and that's, that's the path to anxiety for sure. And all those things that we've talked about are the ways to overcome that.

Yeah. Now you mentioned journaling and you know, you know, when it, when it comes up, do you have any sort of, do you have any other sort of like tools or mechanisms to like if you feel it sort of coming up in you, like you start to feel like maybe this is an anxiety attack coming up. Do you have any tools to, to sort of squash it back down?

Yeah. So, you know, first thing is if you serious anxiety, go see your doctor, period, you know, first of all, second thing is that if it's a small bout of anxiety, like you're stressed out breathing, 4 second inhale, 7 second hold, 8 second exhale, do that for 2 minutes and you will feel the weight of the world leave your shoulders. Even if you do four seconds in, six seconds out, 10 times, you'll feel great. Then Also, there is no shame in going to a therapist. Every single entrepreneur should be going to a therapist to talk it out. These are trained professionals in cognitive behavioral therapy is absolutely essential that you talk it out. You got to get over whatever problems that we all got saddled with when we were kids. Money, mindset, issues.

Envy, all this sort of stuff that we. That we carry with us. The fear of losing it all. So I asked this one question in my workshops. You know, what's the thing that keeps you up at night with anxiety or the thought pattern that runs through your head? And very common is imposter syndrome, the fear of irration, the irrational fear of losing everything. Like, one day I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be poor again. All that sort of stuff. Scarcity, mindset. You ain't going to get rid of that on your own. You can chop away at it a little bit, but you got to go and get professional help. And there is nothing wrong with it. It's like going to personal trainer. There's nothing wrong with it. And so that sort of stuff. Then we do the gratitude journaling. In that kit that I sent you guys, there's a gratitude journal that really changed my mindset because it was very helpful for me to be a skeptical, cynical guy when I was in college, because I was in exercise physiology, and you were supposed to completely break down another person's scientific study to see where it went wrong and, you know, how do we make it better? That sort of stuff. But then once I left college, being a cynical, skeptical person doesn't work in a lot of industries or in social life. You know, to, like, think that everybody that is nice to you is out to get something from you. That's the way I thought for a long time. And I was. I would meet really nice people, and I'd be like, I don't like this person.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that sucks. That's great advice, too. You know, we had Justin Goff on. I think you may be familiar.

Oh, Justin's a good friend of mine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He. He.

He.

We talked about that. And he said that, you know, starting to go to a therapist completely changed his life. Like, that was the turning point for him in his life, 100%. And, you know, Howard Stern, somebody that I follow kind of closely because I love his interview style and same thing.

That's a legend.

Yeah. Howard Stern said that his. His life completely changed by going through therapy. In fact, if anybody who listens to Howard Stern shows, you probably realize within the last, like, 10 years, the format of the show completely changed where he was kind of being a dick to people to. Now he's actually, like, trying to get inside people's minds a little more. And he said that was all just a mechanism. Therapy was the mechanism that sort of changed that for him and. And gave him more empathy towards other people and started to make him realize, like, this path I'm going down with my show is the wrong path.

Oh, that's so cool.

It is, man. Well, let's wrap this sucker up. I think we gave a lot of tools and Craig, amazing for everything you laid out here. I think it's gonna help.

Yeah, it was a little all over the place, but this was definitely one of the most fun interviews I've done. So thanks for, you know, entertaining me.

For us as well, man. I appreciate it. So Unstoppable is your book. They can grab that everywhere, I'm assuming, right?

Yeah. Amazon or be unstoppable. Book.com comes with a video course there, too, for free. Awesome.

And then you said you've got a new book coming out. When is that one going to be ready for people?

It'll be. We're giving it out of my big event, the retreat, so you guys will get a copy if you're there. So it'll be on Amazon late November, and the audiobook won't be done until December. If anybody loves audiobooks, get the Unstoppable. Get Unstoppable on audiobook. It's the best work I've ever done.

Wow.

Very nice.

I'm grabbing that.

I got about five audible credits right now. So you're in.

I do voices. It's amazing. It's really fantastic.

I love it. The fact that you are doing it yourself is even better. Don't do that.

Yeah, you know, I didn't. For my first book, the Perfect Day formula, I had somebody else do it because I was actually, ironically, too busy. And then I went and did it, and I do a lot of video and I've got my kind of almost acting chops down now, so I really enjoy it, and it really speaks to the reader a whole lot more when it's from me.

Awesome, man. Well, you. You mentioned a couple books as well. Power now and Untethered Soul. We always can ask those at the end. And Chew Dog as well. So. Amazing.

I think. I think there's. There's a couple of other books I'd like to recommend if that's definitely. I think that this book should be mandatory reading for high school. Kids across the world. If it was, I think it would change the world. And it's Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Oh, okay.

Have you guys never read that?

No.

No, I had never read that one. It's actually come up multiple times on the show, but I think it's one.

That I haven't picked up yet. I mean, this is a guy. This is a guy who survived a concentration camp. But I didn't know this until after many years. After I read the book. He didn't have to go, whoa. He was in Switzerland, but his parents were still back in Poland, I think, and he could have left them there, which obviously doesn't sound like a good thing, but most people probably did leave their parents there. He went back for them and then went and spent years in a concentration camp and then wrote about how you survive it, and you survive it with your mind. And, you know, it's powerful, powerful book. And then the other book, a book that really has changed my life. And I don't. You know, that's a cliche, but it certainly is true. Is the Art of living by Sharon LaBelle. And that is actually just a short translation of Epictetus teachings. So it's kind of like the Tao Te Ching. You know, you could read just one page per day. And I buy it for everybody who's got anxiety stress comparison syndrome, all that sort of stuff. It'll set your mind right. You know, read it once a year.

Oh, these are amazing. Okay. Grabbing all these. Everything's resonating. All right, Craig, this is great. Anywhere else that folks should go and check out your stuff? We already dropped the book. We'll link everything in the show notes as well.

Yeah, even after I told you not to follow anybody on Instagram. Go to Instagram. And I'm real Craig Valentine. And it's positive stuff every day for sure.

Cool, man. All right. Appreciate your time, Craig. This has been great.

No problem, guys.

Talk soon.

Hey, thanks for listening to that episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

You dang right you did.

Of course you enjoyed it. What's not to enjoy?

We weren't gonna publish it unless you were gonna enjoy this.

If we don't enjoy it, we don't publish it. Therefore, we only publish the stuff we know you're gonna enjoy.

We listen and read the notes as well.

So.

Very, very true. Well, you know what I wanna do? I wanna actually start reading some reviews of some of the people that listen to our podcast because we're getting some really cool reviews. And also, I wanna kind of incentivize people to leave more reviews because then we're gonna read them for you.

Hey man, this is our shoutout section. Yeah, that's kind of what this is going to become for the outro shout out section. So, yeah, let's do some reviews and prior to that, let's talk about some.

Of the guys that have supported us.

Yeah. And there's a couple shout outs from our friends and some other folks that reached out to us. These two actually are our friends. They're pretty close friends of ours and they support our show. So if you want to get more of an exclusive shout out, reach out to us. We have a couple spots available occasionally, so it depends. But the first buddy of ours actually Steve Olsher, he's one of our masterminds, he runs a podcast called beyond eight Figures. And they're chatting with just amazing entrepreneurs who do have either exited or they currently run a business that is above 10 million. And they basically grill. So they have three hosts over there, Steve Olsher, Mary Goulet and Richie Ote. They're all buddies of ours as well, all in San Diego. And they basically grill them until they figure out their methodologies, the tactics and action steps that actually got them to accomplish that, which are what few companies ever would ever get to that point for sure.

It's a great podcast. They cover a lot of ground and the whole thing is trying to uncover what goes into creating an eight figure business so that other businesses could sort of reverse engineer the success. So amazing podcast. That's Steve Olsher's beyond eight Figures podcast. Definitely go check it out on Apple podcasts and everywhere where you listen to.

Your favorite shows, you gonna like it. It's very similar to this one with different approaches. So I think if you're a fan of this, you're gonna love his show beyond eight Figures.

And then our other supporter for this episode is our good buddy Casey Zman's Easy webinar.

Bam. And both these guys have actually been on our show too, Steve and Casey. So if you like them, you can even check out an episode too.

Yeah. So check out EasyWebinar.com hustle because Casey put together a 20% off deal for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart. So EasyWebinar.com Hustle Now Easy webinar is kind of a webinar tool, but it has live webinars, it's got automated webinars, it's got kind of hybrid webinars, it's got all sorts of social media functionality. It's Got. It's pretty much like the only webinar platform you would ever need. It's got everything all in a single platform. A lot of the other platforms you got to buy one product to go live and one product to go automated, and one product if you want to. Hi. And this one is just, you know, you get easy Webinar year covered. You've got it all. So if you want easy webinar, get it for 20% off. Go to EasyWebinar.com hustle. And again, I just want to thank our partners and our supporters on this show. Casey and Steve, we love you guys. Let's go talk about some of these cool reviews we're getting.

Yeah, let's get into them.

All right. Ready for me to read a review?

Yeah. This one. Oh, and also, like, we don't pre read these things.

No, this is.

You're hearing it in the moment as we're hearing it.

Yeah. So if somebody was like, you guys smell like stinky farts and I hate your face, we would. We would actually have to read it in real time because I don't pre read them.

And then we'd be like, yeah.

And we'd be like, they're making good points.

Yeah. We do sit in a room for like most of the day when we record this, and I don't want to know what it smells like. So let's carry on.

All right. This. This one is titled. It's a five star.

Titled. Love the teamwork from Dr. Aaron L. Smith.

Ooh, Dr. I like it.

These guys really take a look at every angle and draw out the best. Huge fan of their podcast and love their approach. Can't wait to hear more.

Thanks, doc. Aaron, I think that's super cool. Yeah. And the teamwork thing, that's. We harp on that. I think that's the only way we can survive, actually, is having great team. Not only Matt and I, but also you as a listener. We see you as part of our team, 100%. Without you guys, we kind of do all the cool stuff we want to do and then you got teamwork with, like, masterminds and all that stuff too.

Yeah. I'm actually going to read a second review.

Oh, dang.

Because it's four words long.

Audible.

Audible. So this review is called Joe and Matt. Fun to listen to. And the review is left by Scale Strong. Also pretty sure that's not their real name.

Scale Strong.

Here's the review. Ready?

Yeah.

Great podcast to follow.

Heck, yeah.

I agree. Thank you.

Short and simple, to the point. Yes. Love it. Brevity. All right, on that point, let's wrap this one up. Thank you. Please. And please do your thing. Do what these guys do.

Keep leaving these reviews. Keep having fun reading them.

Heck yeah.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a cliffsnotes version of every episode where you can go and find find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki Wiki. We love you.