If You Haven't Taken a Vacation in a WHILE, Watch This! Feat. Dan Sullivan

If I can ask you a question about that. So, like, because I'd written down a couple questions that I wanted to just have a discussion with you about. One of them is what's the importance of free days and taking a sabbatical for entrepreneurial rejuvenation and energy? You know, just even go to the most basic stuff, because a lot of people, I've heard you say, you know, the model that most people look at is I'm going to take free days because I've worked really hard and I've earned them. Not you take free days because it actually makes you better and you perform better.

Yeah. So I think one of the switches that we made in coach very early, and I have to give all the credit here to Babs. Bab Smith is my wife and my partner and coach. I was as much a workaholic as any entrepreneur who has that as an addiction, you know, that we've ever seen in the program you and I saw sitting in workshops, and we've talked to people who are really addicted to work. And, you know, before I met Babs, which was, you know, in the early 80s, I'd probably gone 20 years without what I would actually call a free day. In other words, that the work that I had to do at that time, I was doing that work on all my days, you know, and I grew up in a family. We never took vacations. We farm family never took vacations. I remember we went to Florida once for a week, and all of us vowed we would never go again. It was such a terrible experience. And so I grew up in a work culture, and I had all my role models were workers, and I did it. But what I noticed, my big concern was, and it was just an observation why, when people get to that stage in their career and I've grown up with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I said, why? Right about, you know, let's say 50s and 60s, which is really called the power of success decade, you know, for Most entrepreneurs, your 50s and 60s, first of all, you got a ton of experience. And you've, you've. You've practiced until you've practiced until you can't get it wrong. You know, amateurs practice until they can get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong. And that just makes a lot of mistakes and a lot of experimentation, a lot of R D. And why is it that I notice that they run out of ambition when they're around 50? They run out of ambition, they run out of energy. And I said, what's happening? There. And then, you know, I started tracing the alligators back to where they came from. And it's that it's just been work, work, work, work, work. They put in already a lifetime of work by the time they hit 50 and they're just tired. And there's a lot of tragedy to that because people are quitting their game right at the top of their skills, right at the top of their reputation, right at the top. So, you know, I didn't want that to happen to me. And then I met Babs and Babs said, we can't have a relationship if you're not going to take free days. And I thought that was kind of vague. That was kind of vague. And she said, no, she says you have to take three days. And it was tough the first three days, but I got it because she's so good at taking the free days that I launched into it and I was a changed man. And then I took, you know, I took her idea and packaged it.

No, you certainly did. And I think you've probably been single handedly more responsible for giving not only a lifetime extension because you even have a whole process in Strategic Coach. You've written a whole book about it called the Lifetime Extender and living to be 156. I mean, I cannot tell you how many countless thousands of entrepreneurs all over the world, even many that listen to our podcasts and stuff, never would have had that life had it not been for you packaging that concept and turning it into a life design. And I mean, even I was talking to you a couple days ago. I've my friend BJ Fogg, who's going to become a Genius Network member. He's the professor at Stanford who.

See him next week. See him next week?

Yeah, he's speaking at our 100k group. And BJ is going to do a, you know, a behavior design class for all of our Genius Network members. And he has a book called Tiny Habits where if you're going to any sort of behavior, good or bad, it starts with tiny habits. Right. And you said it was really hard in the beginning. And I equate this. You know, workaholism is an addiction. An addiction to describe it. You know, there's many different ways people can define addiction. One of the ways I define it is doing something you want to do or that you don't want to do and not being able to stop that has negative consequences attached to it. And there's obsessiveness and compulsiveness and addicts don't pursue Harmony. They pursue chaos. And for some reason, chaos is appetizing. It's like this old Guns N Roses album. It was titled Appetite for Destruction. And you can have an appetite for things that are very destructive. And there's a book on workaholism with a subtitle that's, you know, workaholism, the Respectable Addiction. And, you know, it's real easy to hide under words like, I'm obsessed with success, or I'm obsessed with exercise, or I'm obsessed with building a business. What they're really saying is, I'm an addict, and I can't stop. And there are withdrawals. It's really hard. And, you know, one of the reasons I was talking to you and talking to David and going through this whole process and even publicly talking about it right now is, you know, I know for a fact that anytime you change a certain behavior, there's an identity attached to it. There's easy ways to rationalize almost anything, even stuff that's negative. I mean, I can even see when I'm like, oh, yeah, let me excuse this sort of thing that I may think is good but is really tearing me down. So can I ask you what. How did you start? Because a lot of people will hear this and say, yeah, I'd love to take a sabbatical, but I don't know how I can handle ca. Well, what about all my employees? Or I love to take free time, but I got a business to manage, and we're in the middle of a pandemic, and God knows if it's going to get worse or, you know, we have no idea what stage someone's, you know, some people are doing well. Other people, their businesses are completely wiped out and everything in between. How did you approach it and how did you do it? So the people listening to this could actually, you know, not just be excited with the concept, but could actually make it life.

Well, I think you know, one thing, and you. You've. You and I have all. And a lot of the entrepreneurs, we've read books on habits, and I'm really looking forward to Professor Fogg, you know, coming and talking about it. But one thing that I tried to do when I tried to, one, change. Change a habit that, you know, for good or stop doing something. And the other thing is, I don't try to change bad habits. I try to develop so many good habits that the bad habits are just crowded out. I think that if you have a negative habit, it actually enjoys you trying to change it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Change me Change me, beat me, beat me. You know, like that. So just a couple things that I found as ways of thinking that this really works is don't, don't try to stop negative habits, but keep focusing on using up your time with good habits, you know, so you got. You only have a certain amount of time. And then speaking of time, we have a natural habit, you know, that everybody, everybody has this habit that we live our life in days. And so what I simply said was that I'll consider the day's 24 hour from midnight to midnight. And if I take a free day, it's within that framework of midnight to midnight. Most of you know, I sleep a lot, so probably a third of that day I'm going to be asleep of the 24 hours. So it's 16 hours. And then the other thing I said, you know, since I'm doing something that's kind of new, I should take advantage of another habit, which is scheduling. And so I would schedule my free time the same way that I would schedule my work time. In other words, what are you doing from this time to this time? This time, this time, this time, go for a hike, exercise, go for a swim, read a novel and everything else. Because it's really hard to go from a habit which is really incredibly structured, to a period of time when nothing structured. You want to go back to the structure as fast as you can. Okay? And so my sense is, I always tell people when you, when you do this, probably you'll want to schedule it, treat it as a day. Doesn't matter what you do tomorrow. Today is going to be a free day. You can do anything you want tomorrow. And the other thing is, you know, don't push yourself too far into the future. You know, you say, well, I'm gonna do this, you know, for the next five years. Well, that's a lot of days when we just take them one at a time. And the other thing is that you're either winning or you're learning. So the way that I look at it is that you're either being free in the way you want to be free or it got interfered with work. Just stop and treat that as a lesson. You know why? And so it's not a failure. It's just that you switch from winning to learning. There is no failure. There's winning and there's learning. So you've never done a sabbatical before. So guess what? You're going to learn a lot about what prevents sabbaticals, you know, and I would treat them as Lessons. You know, I just noticed that this comes up. Well, that's really, really interesting. You get more and more knowledgeable and, you know, I'm talking about free days here, but the big project is your sabbatical project.

Right.

So those are some of the things that I tipped off. And then you just notice that you probably don't have free time because there is no meaning in free time. All the meanings in work time.

Yeah, exactly.

Now that's.

That is it. That is a huge thing to ponder. Yeah. We're gonna do an upcoming episode on thinking about your thinking. And I think I'm gonna come back to that because that's one of my favorite Dan Sullivan lines. It's hard to say what is my, you know, people like, what's your favorite book? It's like, well, there's a lot, you know, what's your favorite Dan Sullivan line? Well, there's. There's a lot of them. One that I put up there. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. So. Well, let me ask you this, then. I'm going to ask you a couple questions and we'll wrap up this episode. But where do entrepreneurs go wrong when it comes to energy taking time off in their business? Because for me, it's, to me, it's more about energy management than time management or even priority management. Because I realize if my energy is low, I don't think, well, I can't focus as effectively. I make decisions that I certainly would not make. I get moody, stressed out, and I'm more apt to react to life, not respond to life. And I know that when, you know, being in recovery for many years from addiction when I was not. When my life is not working, I'm reacting. When my life is working, I'm responding. And I think of responding as, you know, just responsibility responding with ability. And if I'm tired, if I'm exhausted, if it's the whole thing that the model you have where task, problem, crisis, you know, task is eating lunch, task is returning a phone call, maybe checking emails. But if you're tired and exhausted, every task in life is viewed through the lens of it's a problem or it's a crisis. And so that comes to energy. So again, my question is, where do entrepreneurs go wrong when it comes to energy taking time off in their business?

Yeah. And, you know, our friend Ben Hardy has a lot to talk along these lines. You know, making as I talked to Ben about his two first books, that willpower doesn't work and personality is Impermanent. I've just come up with a mental model where you have your. It's kind of like your present self is responding to two other selves. You're responding to your past self, or you're responding to your future self. And it's an uneven fight because it doesn't take any talent to have a past self. It takes a lot of talent to have a future self. Yeah, I mean, all it requires is that your heart keep beating and your landscape working to have a past self.

And.

My sense is a lot of entrepreneurs are running away from a self that they don't like. In other words, it's probably a self that was a failure, a self that lived in bad conditions, a self that felt powerless self. And they set goals to run away from their past self. And it's, you know, it's a lifetime race. And at the end, the past self wins. You know, the future self has to be created. And it's not created as a reaction. It's created that this is really what you would want. Okay, now, I would say, Joe, that both of those responses, whether you're running away from your past self or you're creating a new self, generates chemical, you know, generates exciting drugs one way or the other. The other, it comes down to which kind of drug is better for you.

Yeah.

Which one?

Which one expands you? Which one contracts you? Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to.

Get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So let me ask you this. This will be the last thing, and then we'll. Because I wanted to plant the seed on this episode about just getting people thinking about it because I know that this is a really radical idea for someone that is not, you know, I mean, even Free Days is a radical idea for.

Well, it's beyond radical. Joe. You've made the decision that you're going to do it.

Oh, yeah, I know.

For me, it's not a radical idea anymore.

It's.

Yeah, you know, people. I'm just going to relate it because it does have relationship to your decision. So one person at workshop came. Can I talk to you privately? And I said, yes. And he said, I'm thinking about divorcing my wife. And I said, oh, no, no, you're not Thinking about divorcing your wife. You've decided to divorce your wife. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You made the decision. You know how long it takes to get the thought all the way up to your head and then say it to someone else? I'm thinking about divorcing my wife. I said, no, no, that decision was made long ago. You don't have a problem with the decision. You have a problem with the implementation. So why don't we talk about the implementation? I think it's the same thing with the sabbatical. You've decided. So, I mean, again, you wouldn't have even said it to me, and we're pretty close. You wouldn't have even said it to me if you hadn't decided.

Absolutely. So I definitely been pondering this for a period of time. In the first conversation I had was with Eunice, my assistant of 25 years, and just saying, okay, how do we need to set up the company so it not only continues, but it's actually better. And, you know, how do we do it in a way that's not absolutely shocking to the members? They're like, oh, my God, how's Genius Network going to continue? And how. How's all this stuff going to do? And what are we going to basically say no to? And what are we going to. You know, I mean, it's setting up the game. And I've always loved the line I got from Gary Halbert years ago, which is some. In life, the only way you win is you don't play. And I've gotten myself into some games that on the surface look like they're winning games, but in terms of psychological satiation, in terms of where they're really taking me and how they make me feel, you know, no matter how well I play them, the best way to win them is not playing anymore. And the beauty of it is, you know, we can we make it up and make it real, you know, to use your line. Right, make it up and make it real. So I definitely. And I've already made the decision. Now I'm just dealing with implementation. And what I meant about radical thing is, for people that are listening to this, because I always tried to take my experience and my thoughts and apply it to our listeners is, you know, how can an entrepreneur start thinking about taking a sabbatical or even free days if they wanted to, but they've not done it before that we haven't obviously already discussed.

Yeah, well, I think that. I think the. You mentioned in describing how you talked about it to Eunice was that I want to transform my entire company. And the very first step of transforming my company is for me to take a one year sabbatical and have everybody else's talents come to the forefront and jump to another level while I'm on my sabbatical.

Yeah. Yep. And what's great is, you know, talking with you. Like that day that we talked, I had five hours of conversation that day with trusted people and it was the kicking off point. And like some of my very best members, people that pay to be in Genius Network, and I talked to four different people that, you know, that are either in Genius Network or in my hundred K group. And every one of them are like, you know, I'm still in the group, I will still pay and I will facilitate, I will help any way you want. I mean, like the support I got. It was even more funny is there was, you know, I was looking at a piece of property, like a building that would be a place to hold workshops because I've already started some crazy projects that either I keep them going or I just put them on hold. Right. Or I just end them. And this one person who I said, you know what, I don't think I'm going to look at this property anymore. He's actually a very successful real estate person. And he, I said, because I'm going to take a sabbatical and this doesn't fit. This person is like extraordinarily successful, multimillionaire, and, you know, very driven. And he sent back this message, an audio message on my phone, and he's like, can you please tell me how you're doing it? I'm so curious and so interested in how. It just showed me how many people are dying for this. But they never, they don't have like a Babs or someone that's given them permission to do this. And it really occurred to me that they don't even know how to think about this, which is why I wanted to do an episode of it. I just wanted, I wanted to just plant a seed and let people really think about it and really ponder it. Then as I develop this and as we talk about things, because 10x talk to go back to David Bach, when he heard you talk about 10 times, I mean, that was the trigger that he had mentioned. He goes, I think he was 46 at the time, or 45 or something. And he said, I felt like I was 50. He's like, I just felt like old and I was, I felt tired. And it made him realize that he you know, he needed to do this. Not because, you know he's going to earn it, but he deserves it. But it's like, man, his future, what's it going to look like? And I realized, if I don't do this now, when am I ever going to do it? I mean, how many other excuses can I possibly make for not doing this? And that's where I'm at. And so. So what we're going to talk about on the next episodes, Dan, we're going to talk about scary times. Is there anything else you think that we should. That you wanted to share or say to this topic to put a cherry on top before we wrap up, and then we'll go on to the next.

Now, the only thing I would say is two things. I was born into a world, you were probably born into a world where physical work was still the main activity for most people. You know, physical. And you got tired. Physically, you just got tired. And it was probably repetitive work. So it got boring. So tired and boring is a good reason to stop doing something after, you know, 50 years or so. Yours is intensely mental. It's intensely creative. And the other thing is that we. We are now living in an age where being active at 80 or 90 is not an unusual idea. As a matter of fact, there's an enormous amount of emphasis being 80 and 90. And so, you know, 100 years ago, you were lucky to be your age and still alive. Now you're, you know, you know, the onus is on you being as young as you can be for as long as you can be. So. And I think that the whole notion of sabbatical and free time and, you know, having lots of different gears in your daily life that give you different kind of positive, you know, positive rejuvenation. I think it's. It's the topic of the times right now. So. And the thing is that I think that you will hit a nerve here just by us putting this podcast out there, because a lot of people have been secretly guilty about this, thought that they'd like to take three months off or six months off or a year off. And you're just giving them permission to talk openly about it.

Yeah. Awesome.

I'm going to. I highlighted, as you can see from my handwritten notes, some of the things that I want to share. So before I went on my sabbatical, I was in pain on the left side of my body, left shoulder. And I know a lot about physical pain. Most pain is not structural. It's psychological. It's caused by Repressed emotions, predominantly anger and Rage. Dr. John Sarno did an amazing job writing about that. And I was in chronic pain almost my whole entire adult life until I met a guy named Steve Ozanich who wrote a. A very exhaustive book called the Great Pain Deception by Sarno based on Sarno's work, not by Sarno. And if you don't know who Dr. John Sarno is and you have any sort of physical pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, we have a modern pain epidemic. Most of it is caused by, it's psychosomatic, it's stress, it's anxiety. That's for much longer conversation than I have right now. Some of you have heard me talk about that. And I know there's at least 20 people in this room right now that were in constant chronic pain until I shared enough with them until they did their own research and that they're now out of pain. And so I was having a lot of pain and I was like, what the hell is going on? The moment I said I'm taking a sabbatical, the pain went away. It literally went away. And I had it for nearly two years because prior to taking the sabbatical, I had a of bunch breakup that was very difficult. Sean Stevenson, my best friend, died, several other friends died, Mark died. I had, you know, I had to deal with some IP theft, all kinds of things. It was a very, very psychologically difficult thing for me, the way that I was interpreting it, life. Even though again, I have a blessed life. And so when I announced I was taking a sabbatical, the pain went away. I was like, what the hell? This is the weirdest thing ever. And then about a month before I started my sabbatical here in this, the gym, at this hotel, I was doing pull ups. And the right side of my body, I literally lost like the strength was half of what the left side was. And I was doing pull ups. Like I'm like, what? On the other side of my body before I was getting geared up to start the sabbatical. But it wasn't pain, it was, it was just a weakness. I don't know if it was caused by TMS or what. It never came back. I literally underneath the lat in the upper part of the tricep and part of my right, the pec, the muscle atrophied and never turned back on. And it's something, I'm like, what? The body is so weird. And I just turned 54 years old. And so I'm like part of me. Oh, is it age you know, whatever. But I kept with it and I started, you know. And where's Nick Sonnenberg at? Back here. Only useful thing Nick has ever done.

In my life for me.

Is he. No kidding. Just kidding. He's done three useful things. So Nick. I'll just take this off. So Nick is a very flawed human being, and we have to. But let's put this. Jacket it over here to the side. Well, thank you, Mr. Asprey. Yeah. Biohacker, doorman, whatever you call it. I like the hair. You're looking kind of. Not too much like Neil Young, though. That's, like, not going for that. You got to read the shit that Dave's been writing on Instagram. It's so good. It's so good. How many of you follow Dave on Instagram? It's so fantastic.

Yeah.

So fantastic. The people that are on the other side are like, fuck, I hate that guy.

Yeah.

So. All right, so Nick Sonnenberg calls me up. He's like, I'm in town. I'm hanging out with one of my clients. And by the way, where's Chris Voss? Oh, he should be there. Okay. Okay. That's tomorrow. Okay.

Okay.

All right.

I was going to say something, but that's good. So Nick says, hey, I'm in town. I've got one of my clients I'm doing some consulting with at her plastic surgery clinic. And he said, would you like to go to dinner with us and meet up? And it's the middle of a sabbatical, and if you can remember, back in November. Well, different parts in different parts of the world. But it's really hard to go to restaurants. Everyone's wearing masks. A lot of places are closed. And I'm like, sure, yeah. And he goes, well, do you have any suggestions on where to eat? And I'm like, okay.

Well.

So he calls me up to see if I want to go to dinner, but then asks, where should we go to dinner? Which is fine. It's fine. And I'm like, why don't we just do it at my house? And I'll make food. And to make a long story short, he invites this wonderful woman by the name of Dr. Cherie Ong, who's sitting right here. And she comes over with a couple of other people. Jessica Carroll comes over, and Nick. And we're hanging out, and we just became friends. I just really liked her, Brain. I liked her. She was really awesome. And no thought from either one of us that we would ever, like, start a relationship intimately. That's where people have Sex and do weird things. But anyway, her parents are here with her. I just had to say that because I'm trying to. You got to get people used to me. I'm like, weird as hell. You got to be slow about it.

It's this.

A different form of foreplay. But anyway, so we just have become friends. And we'd gone to lunch, gone to dinner a couple times. And then we have this wacky friend named Cindy who wrote a book called Everything. Well, she did all the marketing for Everything Men Know about Women. Have you ever seen that book? She became a multimillionaire with a book called Everything Men Know about Women. And the whole book is blank. It's just the title. So anyone here saying, I have difficulty selling my shit. I paid $10,000 to come to this event, or I'm in the. You want to mark headlines? Headlines, you know, and so the book is blank. I mean, there's authors that spend their whole life trying to write a book, and they never do anything with it. She becomes a millionaire with a blank book. It's hysterical. You know, I mean, you could do it with, like, wit and wisdom of Joe Biden. I mean, there's a million different strategies, you know, ethical guidelines of the, you know, drug companies. I mean, there's just so many things that you can. You can do with this, you know, there's so many headlines in my head right now.

I'm just trying to look at the.

Clock and realize, oh, they got a.

Little bit of time.

So anyway, Nick introduces me to Cherie. We hang out. And then Cindy, she comes to me and says, you know, why are you not dating her? And I said, well, there's this other woman I'm actually interested in, but she's in another country and that sort of that story thing. And she's like, well, she's amazing. She's awesome. She's got a great heart. You guys really should be. I'm like, I'm not. She's just a friend. And she's like, no, really, She's. So she plants a seed. And then unbeknownst to me, she's saying the same shit to Sheree in the corner, like, at a different. You know, like 10 minutes later or whatever. And then the very last interview for I love marketing, I happen to have Amy Chang. Where's Amy? I always say, amy Chan. Amy Chan. Where's Amy? Okay, sorry.

Because of the light.

She's amazing. She wrote a book called Breakup Boot Camp, and I'm going to be doing an interview with her and Annie Lala on love relationships. Because what we do is we sell people what they want and we do our best to give them what they need.

Right?

That's what we do here. So you bedazzle people with marketing and how to make money and how to build whatever your client base is or whatever you're trying to do. And then we smuggle in all of these things related to health and fitness and being a good human being and all that other sort of stuff and then put you together with what I hope is to be the most non narcissistic entrepreneurial group in the genre of marketing that you could find. Because marketers are brilliant geniuses, the ones that really know their shit and have studied persuasion. But they are some of the biggest con artists on the planet. I mean, how many of you have noticed that, right? It's like really great. They can sell anything, but they will sell their mother. They will do whatever they, you know, for money. So part of it is we want to teach you marketing and stuff, but it's this other stuff that is so much more important. And how many of you were single throughout the sabbatical? I mean. Oh, yeah, that still makes sense. I can still try to make that work. How many during my. No, how many of you were single during the pandemic or they're still single. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard, it's lonely and you know, man, so love relationships. So I did this, this interview with Amy and me and Cherie had just started dabbling with dating. And Amy makes this comment on this interview. She's like, you know, try someone, you know, try going out with someone that you've not known before. Someone that's younger, someone that's older, someone has a different personality than you, you know, something along those lines. And she said it way more eloquently than I'm saying right now. And when I interview Amy and Annie, I think you'll agree that you're going to get so much out of it. And it planted the seed in my head saying, okay, I'm going on a sabbatical. I've met this incredible person. You know, I'm already a little jaded from, you know, past things that have happened in my, in my life. And many of you have met some of my past partners. Right. And I tend to try to not burn bridges and be friends with people and also look at, you know, how do I do relationships and stuff. And so Nick is responsible for the introduction. So thank you very much for that, Nick. Now if this thing blows up and she, you know, that's all another thing. No, but you. And by the way, here's the best thing about. Well, there's many beautiful things about Cherie, but one of the best things from a public standpoint is that Cherie is the top vaginal plastic surgeon in Arizona. And I can now talk about vaginas in some way, segue them into every conversation. It somehow becomes acceptable. It is unbelievable. You know, so you can. I can just get away with even more stuff that I tried to already because I'm sort of an inappropriate person, if anyone hasn't noticed that.

Right.

Okay. But she's loving and incredible and awesome. And so it's been an incredible journey. We started the year of my sabbatical on January 3rd. We went to Florida and we spent seven days meditating for between four to seven hours a day with Joe Dispenza. And that was really cool. And then went to Hawaii after that. And I didn't do much traveling. This was not an external journey. It was more of a internal one. And so the lessons. I'm just going to go through some lessons real quickly and then I'm going to show you a couple pictures and then we're going to have way better speakers and presenters than me for the next two and a half days. And you're going to love it. So here's the ones I highlighted. All right, so the people that wanted to. So here's some aha's and insights.

I got.

The people that want to dispense the most advice on how to do sabbaticals are actually the people that have never truly taken one. I cannot tell you how many people are trying to tell me how to do a sabbatical. And. And you need to do. Have you ever taken a sabbatical? No. Shut the fuck up. I listen because those that can't teach. I mean, there's a lot of good people that teach stuff that never do it. I mean, there'd be no books in the world if that wasn't the case. All right, so. And by the way, I've said this before. You've heard me say it. Every person that writes a book is a speaker, puts themselves out there publicly in a lot of ways. They want validation. They want the world to like them. They want people to like their ideas. Most of them have low self esteem, low self worth, including myself. Not all.

Not all.

I actually think Dan Sullivan is an example, has an incredibly high self worth. Yeah, I tried to, over the years, see if I can get into that sensitive part of Dan, and he seems to be a pretty confident man. So. But we'll see. There's always some area. There's always, there's always some area. So what was so valuable in the sabbatical is the realization that I don't need to plan anything, I don't need to do anything. And I had this, you know, this energy that needed to go somewhere and it was really uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. But David Bach, were any of you at the presentation you gave many years ago where he talked about taking a one year sabbatical?

Okay.

And it's still on Genius network. You can find it on YouTube and it's great. And I had really good conversations with David, with Richard Rossi, with Dan Sullivan, with Ben Hardy, with a variety of different people that were really helpful to help me think through. You know, Ben even helped me, you know, he interviewed me. We did some interviews and I really went into this thing wanting to reevaluate weight works. So here's some of the things I learned. Humor heals, thinking time works. We need to give ourselves more of it. I learned a lot about cryptocurrency and blockchain and I am still a total, you know, infant in my knowledge of it. So crypto, blockchain, NFTs all very fascinating, very confusing and will make some people very rich and some people will totally lose their ass. And there are chains and it may be smart to pay attention to them. Try to understand things that are new before you say they are good or bad. Because in the state of ignorance, it's easy to make judgments. So yeah, you know, I got a few NFTs and stuff. I'll show you a couple of my cryptopunks if we have time. If not, I'll do it later. Here's some other things that I discovered and learned and some insights. We're in the midst of evil. They in quotes are not doing this for your safety. Recovery work from a life of chaos prepares you for chaos and uncertainty. It doesn't provide all the answers, but it helps. And by the way, I'm going to put all these into a more laid out way if this is useful for anyone. And I'll send them to everyone. You don't really know what you got until it's gone. You also don't know all the bullshit you put up with until you step away from it for a while. We're in the middle of a world war unlike any that has ever happened on planet planet Earth. It's a physical, cyber and psychic war. And the weapons are truly different because war is organized murder. And you are blind if you're not aware of all the organized murder going on in the world right now. Drug dealers and pimps are truly running the world. They are and utilize as, you know, quoted. They credit Stalin with this. The useful idiots that Stalin referred to as the media. This includes almost all media media. The drugs that kill people are legal and the drugs that can save people's lives are illegal or becoming illegal. We don't need a war on drugs. We need a drug against war. There are less givers in the world than what I once thought. But a lot of true warriors people truly are under a mass hypnosis formation. Some of the people that are considered conspiracy theory people were the early adopters that actually saw much of the truth through the propaganda before most other people have. They were insulted, attacked, called crazy, deplatformed, canceled, sometimes lost their jobs, their freedoms, their livelihoods, and sometimes their lives. Life's easy when you live it the hard way and hard if you live it the easy way. By my friend Dave Kekich, who died a few months ago. Some of you were good friends with Dave and that was such a loss and he's such an amazing guy, but he wrote Kekich credos. It's easy to lie to yourself and rationalize your behavior. There are no rules for sabbaticals. You do what you want. And it's easier to make personal decisions when you're not burdened with business decisions. And then for me, not being on social media was way healthier for my brain than reading inspirational quotes on social media. And yeah, so I've got. I still posted once on Instagram like a video. But I don't have Facebook, I don't have LinkedIn. I don't have WhatsApp. I don't have any social media things. Twitter on my phone. And during the sabbatical, let's see, I started doing this at the very end with Cherie. That's our second ice bath we did a couple weeks ago. Where's is Michael and Jesse? You guys in the room somewhere. They own a great sort of biohacking place called Optimize. And while you're in town, if you want, if you stay in town, go to Optimize. So Michael is a Wim Hof trainer and these guys are great. And so that's Cherie.

She's.

See the smile on her face the first time she did it, that was the look on her face. She was hating life and I hate the fricking cold. And we During Thanksgiving week we listened to the entire Wim Hof book, the Wim Hof Method. And I'd been doing Wim Hof breathing a couple years ago. But I never did the cold stuff consistently because I hate the cold. And listening to that book and him talking about his wife when she jumped off an eight story building over 25, 30 years ago and committed suicide. And he was left with four kids. Kids and no time to grieve. And how he healed himself of the cold. And then the way he explained just, it flipped a switch. And one of the best things that I got out of the sabbatical was I started doing this. And so that video that I recorded for you, that was this morning. I spent nine minutes in my pool this morning. I was freaking shivering when I got out today. But it's actually colder at. When you go to optimize the example, it's between 39 to like, you know, 40, 42 to 44 degrees. And I've been doing it every day. And then a couple days ago I was there with Jim Quick and there's Jesse on the left of Jim and. Or yes, left of Jim and Michael between me and. Yeah, Sandwich and a couple dudes, you know, and that's. And so we did saunas. We did, you know, all that stuff. So I'll just real quickly show you a couple other things. Divorce court in 2030. Does anyone get that? Does that make sense to anyone? Those are NFTs. Okay. It's the divorce card. So here's one of my cryptopunks. The first one that I bought used by jpegs at the time with the price of Ethereum, I think I paid $407,000 for that. And here's one that looks just like me that I just acquired. How fucking awesome is that for me? None of you give a shit, but I actually think it's cool. But I've created a. We're going to create a thing called Recovery Punks and we're going to use cryptopunks. We're going to create a whole community about that. But we're going to get to that. I'm going to bring NFT experts in Genius Network over the next year. We got all kinds of cool stuff. Got Jordan Peterson coming to the 100k group in April. It's got all kinds of stuff. I'm going to try to get them to come to another Genius Network meeting. All kinds of things. This little thing above the. That's a picture from my office. My brain had too many tabs Open. How many of you feel that way?

No, I have so many dang questions. So to get. So basically I have three sets of questions. One is, what. What permanent changes do you want to see? You know what? Because obviously you don't want. I love the quote from David Bock. It's not about just recharging batteries, but it's actually like what. It's about resetting them, you said Replacing them. Replacing them. And so what I. So it's not about you going away for a year and then coming back and going back to how life is now. It's about having a transformational experience. And so I guess one question I have is. And I know you might not have all the answers to this, but to the extent you have answers, what permanent changes in your life do you want this to create? So that whether it be starting next week or in a year or five years, what are the permanent changes you want this sabbatical to create moving forward? So it's not just a. You're going to go back to how things are.

Well, for one, I want to sleep better. Even though I know a lot about sleep and I'm friends with some of the best sleep experts in the world, I want to be able to sleep better. I want to be able to experience my parasympathetic nervous system in a more relaxed state. Even though I meditate, even though I exercise, even though I'm a clean eater, even though I am engaged in very positive work that I love and helps people. And I definitely get a lot of compliments, a lot of feedback, which makes me feel really good. It's hard for me sometimes to take it in. It's almost like your body doesn't digest food because you've eaten too much. Well, too much of anything can cause opportunity in digestion, right? And so there's a lot of that. So I need to lean things out, and I want to have more of a lean life. And I don't just mean physically, I mean mentally. And so in terms of things that will change, I think the things that are going to change the most are probably going to be something I will come up with. I will address that. Will, in my mind, will be one of the hardest things to let go. I mean, you've. We can talk about books all day long, like the Art of War by my friend Steven Pressfield, Resistance Letting Go by David Hawkins. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, the Power and now by Eckhart Tollen. You know, I mean, these are All Breath by my new friend James Nestor, you know, there's all of these ways of thinking, experience, and being in life. But, you know, here's what's kind of.

Funny, because sounds like you're gonna be letting go of a lot of attachment anyways. Keep going.

Yeah, yeah. You know, but here's the thing, and I might ask you to do this for me a couple times, because just you asking me these questions, which is really weird, and, you know, I can ramble and go on a bunch of ways, and I usually bring it back.

I'm going to.

I may ask you to ask me the question one more time.

Yeah, you would be blown away how many questions I've recently developed just listening to you talk. So one of them is, what permanent changes do you want to get out of this? You know, just as a quick example, permanent changes do you want. Because just as a quick thought, I've written a lot to the idea of, like, for example, I have a friend who had a weight problem, you know, and he was like, ben, I'm gonna go off sugar for a year. And I'm like, okay, so what's gonna happen after that year?

You're just gonna go back?

And he's like. He realized that he needed to make permanent changes. And so I'm just wondering, like, you know, obviously you're going to do this. You're gonna go have a transformational experience, and what are the permanent changes that you want to make? One of them, you said, is get better sleep, which I know is very important to you, Joe. And so just so that when you come back, there's going to be a slightly different Joe. You're still going to be Joe Polished. We're all going to love you. There's aspects of you that are going to be the same, but there's aspects of you, they're going to be fundamentally different. And people shouldn't expect that you're going to go back to doing things the way you used to do them in various ways of your life and business. And I'm just wondering some of those permanent changes that you either want to get out of this or hope to get out of this.

Yeah, I want more clarity on where I put my time, attention and my energy. Right. Because you can spend time, you can spend money, you can spend energy. And I want my attention better focused on people and with things that make the most difference and really allow me to get into a flow state as much as possible. I want to learn how to. How to actually get to flow. I want to be careful about saying hack, because I think A lot of people hack can also be an excuse for half assing things or thinking that you can somehow shortcut stuff. And certainly there are shortcuts. There are certainly ways to get someone quicker. I mean, if you want to cross a river and there's no bridge, a bridge would be a shortcut, but it has to be built. So there are certain bridges that will get me to where I want to go that I haven't had the time in order to build. And that may be in a physical way, that may be in an intellectual way, an emotional way. I want to build my emotional resilience which also requires my energy because it's really hard sometimes. I found myself incredibly sad and depressed at different times during this year. And in my past I've absolutely had suicidal thoughts. When I was in my worst state of being, a drug addict, I didn't want to exist, but I didn't want to take my life at first the same time. And so I would just spend hours contemplating how to cease existing, which is a not a fun place to be in. It's a terrible, lonely, suffering, angst ridden place to be in. So I still have scar tissue from that. I still have remnants of, you know, just the memories that still bother me. I still have ruminating thoughts that, you know, it was kind of like fantasy recall in destructive ways from addiction. I've worked through so much of that, but when I talk to other people about it, I'm reminded how difficult life can be. And one of the most difficult things is when you have shame attached to it because you can be wealthy, you can not be someone that's lost their job or you have a house and a roof over your head and you can still feel absolutely miserable. And when you're in a place where you're not, you know, you're not operating on survival only, but you still don't feel good about yourself, then what is, you know, pain is a messenger. And so I want to be able to be able to pick up on what are the messages of pain when I've, you know, as you know, we've had a lot of conversations about Dr. John Sarno's work and Steve Ozanich, who.

Wrote about recent tms. Yeah, in my knee and in my back. I've had it recently.

Yeah, right before my sabbatical. My right side of my body has been hurting my arm. And I know it's psychosomatic, I know it's TMS tension Myel Neuro syndrome, Mind Body syndrome, first originally coined by John Sarno. And there is so much physical pain in the world that's caused by repressed emotions, predominantly anger and rage that causes oxygen deprivation in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, which cause people to hurt. And even though I'm aware of what causes this and most doctors don't even understand this, I mean, I've helped so many doctors get out of physical pain by explaining there's this emotional component to it. I want to better calibrate my own body so permanently. I want to have better boundaries, I want to sleep better. I want to be able as I get older because I'll be 53 in a couple of months. I want to be able to have a better connection with my own body, my own energy levels, so I can avoid whirlpools that my current level of thinking doesn't even see them. I want to be able to smoke out narcissists and people that are presenting themselves as genuine and authentic but are anything but. You know, my thoughts because we've had private conversations, there's a lot of amazing great people in the, you know, personal development space, if you want to call.

It that, the self help influencer world, you know, online influence.

Exactly. And I, and I sort of have, you know, I mean I have some cynicism, a lot of it towards that. I don't usually express it, but there's a part of me that's like, I just. There's so many people that present themselves as authentic in the world that are just agendas and, and frankly takers and narcissists and they don't really care about anyone but they present themselves like they do and it's very self serving. And as you know, I really have done my best to build Genius network as a group of givers. And we even see people become better because they see clearly the benefits of being a useful person. And instead of using people, they utilize people. Instead of being used by things, you utilize things. Most people don't utilize social media, they're used by it. I mean there's so much propaganda being fed into the world right now and some of it is just evil. I mean, I'm not going to go deeply into, you know, politics because I could spend an hour just. And I'm not an expert on politics. I certainly though can talk about, you know, communication and context and framing and fear and hijacking the amygdala and you know, keeping a society in a globe in a state of reaction and how people default to addiction. I mean, you know, I've had a few conversations with the Pandemic of the people that have died in America from it. If you take everyone that died from sugar consumption, tobacco, alcohol, opiates, suicide, and all of the things that are the aftershock of the quake, which is, you know, the aftershock is far greater than the Quaker. It so far surpasses the amount of deaths related to Covid. But a lot of this is just fear and it's angst and it's pain. And so you take that to an individual level. I think about all of this stuff, and when I go on sabbatical, I'm like, okay, for whatever little dent I can make in the lives of other people or anywhere. And I'm not talking about saving the world. I mean, the world's going to be fine when I'm gone. I really don't ever want my ego to be so big, to actually think I'm that damn important. And I also don't want to minimize the fact that I can do useful things and that I can be really helpful and I can have a really great life. I want to take time to step back and think about work. And I want to permanently change not only the way I feel and experience life, I want to be deeper connected because connection is really one of my. My biggest desires and goals. And I do my best to connect with others and try to connect with myself. And there's been a lot of things that have happened last couple years that have disconnected me that. That had me question relationships that I held sort of sacred in a way and then realized, huh, you know, that person really was kind of scamming. That person was really coming from a dark place. Even though everyone, you know, thinks they're right, everyone, whatever they're doing, even if it's hurting others, most of the time, they're. They're justified in their thinking and can easily rationalize. Including, you know, including all of us. Right? We all think our. We all. We all think we're right. And then when we have moments that say, maybe I wasn't right, and you open yourself to make amends or to apologize or to rethink it, that's growth, that's progress. And people certainly do that. However, most people think they're right, and even when they're hurting others, they can usually justify that permanently. Going back to the permanent changes of sleep. The way that approach work, you can't see I'd have to pull it off the wall here, but my friend Kathy Colby, one of her sayings is on the wall back here. It says the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. And I always make the analogy. If you've ever sitting there reading a book and you've read the whole page of the book and you realize you have not comprehended anything that you've just read, you've read it, but you don't. It didn't sink in. And then you keep reading the book again. You go back to it when you're exhausted, like, you're laying in bed, you're staring at a phone as an example, and you're reading something and you're delirious, but there's that draw, that magnetic pulling you to it. And because so much of my world is hanging around successful, driven entrepreneurs, I witness people, some that are making a ton of money, but their marriages are a wreck. They don't see their kids, their health is poor, they're not sleeping. I mean, all these things. And I experience these things on different levels. Some of it, I'm talking about an exaggerated version of my own life. Although everything that I'm talking about in terms of dysfunction, I either can relate to it or have had that in different stages of my life. Most of my life, Ben, even though, you know, I started making money when I was in my 20s because I was so driven, it was. It was coming out of fear. It wasn't because, like, oh, I have a wonderful, great life and a wonderful upbringing, and I'm just going to take all of this stuff and build a wonderful. I mean, it was hard. I mean, you know, in order to get to elf, I had to go through a lot of crap. And I actually tend to appreciate people that have been through massive adversity, but they've transformed shit into fertilizer. They've actually transformed difficulties into productivity. They may have been hurt, but they don't spend their life hurting other people. You know, our friend Shawn Stevenson, who is literally, you know, one of my best friends on the planet, he died last year. That was, you know, such a shock to my system. I still haven't fully grieved that. And that's one of the things that I want to do on the sabbatical is not only Sean, but the. The. The loss of relationships that I, you know, had at some point that were important, betrayals that were. Were done, deaths of several other people that have died in the last year. I want to actually, you know, I want to actually grieve that stuff. And, you know, I would have a lot of conversations with. With Sean. And Sean was, you know, hypnotherapist. He was a doctor. He was Brilliant. And he was also a guy that could have meltdowns with me, you know, if he was just losing it. We have that level of rapport. Same. Same there. And so when you lose someone that's really important to you, it really makes you question the value of life, you know, and grief comes in all kinds of different ways, shapes and forms. So it's combination of celebrating amazing things and grieving things and going through those stages and being able to, you know, being able to interact with it and learning how to do it. And so a lot of these, I just don't know what to do with some. But I. But I also know that if you give yourself time to go back to the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. You know, we sometimes. We just keep pushing. We keep pushing. And if you listen to a motivational speaker that just keeps telling you to drive, drive, drive, drive, and you believe that is how you get through everything. You know, you're gonna constantly be driving, but you'll drive yourself off cliffs, you know, when people like, what are you obsessed with? You know, obsession. Is this a cute word for addiction? Not always. You know, you can be really obsessed with stuff and probably not have a negative connotation. But I'll tell you, most people that say those sort of things, if you really look at their lives and you really look at their behavior and you really look at the consequences of constant, continual obsession, you actually will see a lot of brokenness, a lot of angst, a lot of pain. And so, you know, I got a big mission in the world. You know, my mission is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world. That requires a lot of focus and a lot of energy. And it's a complex thing. So I want to be able to do that, but I don't want to sell my soul in order to do it. I want to be able to do it from a state of energy, a state of appreciation, being able to sit with pain and also still be sitting with love at the same time, as weird as that sounds. And that's why I need to take time off. That's why I need to take time off from the current way that I'm working so I can reevaluate work. And I'm around successful. Most of my clients are millionaires or multimillionaires, the ones that pay me money. And there's most people that benefit from my work. You know, we give it away for free, we put out podcasts, we put out videos, we make it available to a lot of people. And the ones that end up becoming clients, they, you know, join things that are not inexpensive. They're there, but they're investments. You know, I mean, one of the biggest difficulties for me would ever think that I sell something to someone and it's not valuable. So, I mean, I believe all money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. So I'm very much about delivering great value for anything that I charge for. Because I always want Genius Network to be a school that pays entrepreneurs to attend and that requires me to be the best version of me. And if we're going to tell people to be the million dollar racehorse, which is analogy we use all the time, if you owned a racehorse and every time the horse ran a race you won a million bucks, how would you treat the horse? You wouldn't shove fast food down his throat, you wouldn't over train it, you wouldn't sleep, deprive it, you wouldn't have it drinking and smoking. You know, you would have that horse having the best trainers, the best track, the best nutrition, the best that you could provide that horse. So that is a very fit horse. And I say to people, you're the million dollar racehorse. If you're treating yourself like the $100 racehorse, guess what, first off, you ain't win a million dollar races, you're probably going to treat yourself like crap. And so even though I could say the words, like everyone can say the words, it's so much easier to deal with other people's marketing problems or business problems or life problems and dealing with your own, you know, I'm the million dollar racehorse in my own, in my own race. And so I want to pick the right races, the right trainers, the, you know, and I want to play a game that I enjoy playing and I love a lot of the games that I play, but a lot of games that I find myself in, relationships that I'm in, people that, you know, present themselves as friends to me, but they're not really good friends, need to step away from that. So I can have conversations with the people that say, hey, let me tell you as clearly and openly, honestly how I'm experiencing this, you know, if you don't have to agree with it, but this is my experience and do that with as much impact, as much compassion as I can. Even though I think I'm a pretty darn compassionate guy, I want to become more compassionate. I Mean, the world needs compassion. You know, hope heals. False hope is very destructive. Blowing smoke up people's asses. Just try to look like you're hopeful and energetic. You know, some people are going through difficulties and it's not going to get better. And you can try to, you know, pretend that's not giving them hope, that's leaving them in a worse place. So there's. I can give the argument for the positives of hope, and I can give the arguments for the negatives of hope. And so I want to better understand it. And as our, you know, kind of colleague, I've interviewed him before. I know you know him. We're not great friends or anything, but he's, you know, he's written some really, I think, thoughtful books. Cal Newport, who wrote, you know, so Good They Can't Ignore you, was his first book, and then Deep Work was his second. Digital Minimalism was one of his more recent books. But, you know, doing deep work, most people don't go deep with things anymore. They go very shallow. And I, you know, before the Internet even existed, I would talk about client acquisition because studied it. I, you know, I've spent a lot of, I've done my 10, 20, maybe 30,000 hours just on the, on marketing, learning marketing over the last 28 years of my life, because that's when I really started studying marketing. From the time we're having this conversation, it was 28 years ago, but I've had, you know, I've had my own business for over three decades. And most people go very shallow with how they do stuff. And the more that we have all kinds of different options, the, you know, the more shallow people become because they're so darn distracted. And I'm a poster child for distractibility in add. I mean, my friend Gabor Mate says, you know, he wrote a book called Scattered. He believes, you know, ADD ADHD is a response to trauma. I'm also friends with Ned Halliwell, who's, you know, considered by many the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world, written many books on it. And so I've had lots of conversations about distractible entrepreneurs, and I'm around them all the time. And sometimes you just need to give yourself space. You need to give yourself solitude, and you need to be. Doesn't mean you need to be sitting on a, on a beach or under a palm tree or, you know, having a vacation doing nothing. Although that could be very valuable. It just means you need to shift kind of how you're looking at stuff. Because I'm looking right now at either the screen because we're on zoom, or I'm looking at this camera front of me and if I turned around and just started looking that way or that way, I'm in the same spot, but I have a completely different view. And sometimes how you experience life is just which way you decide to look, you know, and if you're in a halt state, as I've Learned in many 12 step groups over my life, which is hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you don't make good decisions. And you could be fed and still hungry. You could be having someone hold you that loves you and still be angry. You can be in a room filled with your family and feel lonely and you could have slept, you know, 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours and still be incredibly tired. Just because you're feeding yourself doesn't mean you're digesting your food. And I'm saying that metaphorically. So I want to improve my digestion not just physically, but how I take in life. And I don't want junk food and I don't want junk thought and I don't want junk people. And when I say anything here that sounds like I'm bashing someone or talking shit about influencers and stuff like that, part of it is for humor, part of it is for effect, part of it is because it's true. I think it's true. You know, for me, there's a lot of people that are really full of crap that, you know, say that they're not. There's a lot of people blowing smoke up people's asses. There's a lot of stuff. And there's a part of me that's grappling with that because do I want to be angry about it? Do I want to look at people as like, oh, no, you're an annoying person, you know, not really. I mean, you know me.

If.

So unless someone's really hurting someone, even if they have hurt people like I treat, you know, people in recovery as an example, that's a different context. If someone has been accused or has done damaging things, you know, I mean, I've sat with people that have done awful things to other people and they show up for recovery. And I, you know, the only requirement for membership is a willingness to get better. So I do my best to not say that no one's incapable of help. Even though there are some people that have done pretty awful stuff. It's hard to sit with them, but I'm a guy that will sit with them, you know, assuming no one's in physical danger at that moment. So I have a lot of acceptance of people. And at the same time, there's a part of me that's like, I don't like the way some people do shit. I don't like the way some people treat things. I don't like some of the stuff that's being shared. And I'm also a big believer in freedom of speech. You know, protect free speech. You know, if speech didn't offend you, there'd be no reason to protect it. It's a point behind, you know, some of the Constitution. So anyway, I'm just.

No, no, no, it's good.

You said a lot, so I'm not going to have you answer this, but I think it'd be really cool if you defined the three core outcomes you want to get out of this thing. You know, you mentioned a lot of things. Obviously doing more deep work, a lot of emotional healing or a shift in how you approach things, a higher quality. So there's. There's a lot of things in there kind of changing directions. Joe, what scares you the most about doing this? If anything, you might not be scared at all. But I want to. I want to hear what scares you the most, because this is a very unknown thing for you. You know, this is very different from how you typically do things. You're jumping into a bunch of unknowns for a lot of different reasons. What scares you the most as you're jumping into this new thing?

Yeah, I mean, you know, people that run around and say no fear and stuff like that, I understand it to a degree that it sounds kind of cool, but, you know, most people that have no fear are, I tend to find, kind of disconnected from reality. And if you're overly fearful, then there's some. There's something that's. That's causing you some pain.

So it could be a mix between fear and uncertainty. But what.

Yeah, what scares me? Yeah.

So what scares you about this?

Yeah, so from what I've learned from all the therapy and stuff that I've done, all the recovery work, is that the only healthy form of fear is concern. You know, when you're concerned about your family, concerned about your job, when you're terrified or worried or scared and it's debilitating to you, then that's not. That's not utilizing that feeling in a positive way. It's actually can be quite disabling in the right context, because if you're. If you have a tiger chasing you, it's probably appropriate to be a little bit more than concerned, right. But if you're. If you're in that state of, you know, fight or flight all the time, even when there's no obvious threat or danger, then that can be quite debilitating to you. So what scares me is my ability to relapse addictively. But that's sort of a concern I have all the time, but I work on it. And I'm right now best state I've ever been in my entire adult life with my recovery. So I always have to put my recovery first. So there's a saying that I've said to many people in recovery and that has been said to me many times early on, which is anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're to going. Going to lose. So if you put your business out of your recovery, you'll lose your business. You put your family ahead of your sobriety as an example, and you're an addict, you may lose your family, right? You put your money in the pursuit of it and your fame and whatever ahead of your recovery, you may not only lose, you may lose all that. Right? And you can see that happen. I mean, I'm, you know, famous people that I've worked with that you see that happen because of their behavior, because of their, you know, they're damaging themselves, which then ultimately leads to damaging others. So I'm scared of the part of my voice that says on, you know, let's, let's, you don't need to do this. You're okay, you're, you know, let's just go back to work, that sort of thing. But I made a commitment early on, which sounds good. I mean, it'd be interesting if it was actually presented to me. I still think I'm not. I think, I know right now my current state. I said it early on. I said if someone offered me $100 million to not take this sabbatical, I would not take the money. Because the moment I put any amount of money where I could be bought or there's something that's going to be an opportunity that's so good that I have to take it. You know, I've just. I've just not kept my word to myself. And so this is not about money. It's about freedom. It's about evolution. I want, you know, I'm scared of some of the subjects I'm going to really delve into death. I want to be more connected to the ending of life my own and the ending of life of others, because I think we very much hide from death. You have how Much. How often in a. I have a lot of friends that are doctors, you know, so they see people that die, they're with people that die. They, you know, they see death all the time. Medical workers, people that are, you know, firefighters and anyone in those fields. But the average American doesn't see. You can go your whole life without seeing a dead body, you know, unless you go to funeral as an example. Some people, they see very little death and we hide it. We don't really talk about it. And I have a couple of dear friends that their profession is helping people grieve. You know, one of my friends, you know, Tim, is a music therapist, and he has played music to people dying in hospice centers. You know, I have an incredible friend who walks people through what happens with loved ones, you know, and they've helped, been very helpful to me, and I'm going to go spend time with them. So I'm scared of the emotions that can come up to a degree because that shit hurts. And I don't want to go into those conversations. You know, it's kind of like doing a plant medicine or psychedelic journey. I mean, you can, you know, they can get very dark, they get very scary. And for someone that's never done that, it's hard to experience that. But it's closest thing that, you know, I've ever done, close to, you know, what would it be like to. I mean, you see things, you see visions. And I want to be. I want to embrace it not as like a fear, but as like this is part of life. And how do you celebrate, you know, you know, Tibetans, from my limited understanding experiences, is one of the most, you know, that is the. One of the greatest things in life is the ending of life. But how you approach it, because I. As you get older, you know, Ben, you're quite a few years younger than me, the older you get, start getting into your 40s and 50s. Look, I mean, my mother died when I was 4 years old. My father died when he was 73 years old in 2002. I was one of his primary caretakers. He was in and out of hospice the last year of his life. Very difficult. One of my dear friends, the late Dr. Janice Dorn, who was an incredible woman, you know, I was. Me and one other woman were her primary caretakers when she was dying. And, you know, had lots of conversations about death with, you know, it's different, though, when it's you. And when I say that, I'm not saying it like, I know that, right? How do I know? But That's a really crazy subject. That sounds weird. Like I'm going to go on a sabbatical, and I'm going to study or learn or think about death. It's one of the things I'm going to do. And that freaks me out a little bit. But there's a calling to me. I mean, what. Probably should have said this early on, what the idea of doing a sabbatical came from. I have a friend named Mark. He was the guy that sat on a golf course, and I'm not really a golfer. Years ago, over 20 years ago, he was talking about running a business. Very successful guy. Sold hundreds of millions of dollars of products and services. A lot on home shopping, things like that. And he was. I imagine he was worth about $300 million. And so we were talking quite a bit a few months ago, you know, a couple times a week. And he was out of the country. And before the pandemic started, he had gotten sick, and he had become sort of paralyzed. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. And he finally got back to where he was living in another country. And I was talking with him. He was, you know, always working. You know, always working. He has a great family, a couple of sons. One's 25, the other one's 30. And I get contacted from one of his sons asking if he could give me a call on WhatsApp, which I don't use that much. And I said, sure. And he called me and he let me know that they had found his Mark in bed that morning, dead at 59 years old. And this is a guy worth a lot of money and a very bright guy, very positive guy. Crazy. He's a little wacky as hell, twisted sense of humor, but a very funny guy. I mean, most people that met Mark, they would just totally crack up around him. And I was like, man, does. Something clicked in my mind. Like, this is. I need to take a sabbatical. Why a sabbatical? That's just.

Would you say that that was the triggering moment when you were like, okay, I need to go take a break, and I need to fix some stuff, and I need to change some stuff that was, at the core, triggering event?

Yeah, absolutely. Because here we were with this massive shift in the world, and I cannot fathom, Ben, how much suffering. Some people that have no money, no access to medical care, elderly people that are utterly alone, people starving. I mean, you know, there. There are so many people on the planet that would do anything to trade places with me, right? And I don't ever want to lose track of that. But it's like that was the triggering moment where it's like, man, here's a guy that on the. It could just end it at any point in time. And one of my favorite proverbs is he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she who does not have their health has only one. And no matter how much money you have, if you lost your health, you would do anything to get it back. And what is it about life that you could have everything but the pursuit of those things somehow puts health as a lower priority? Or your, you know, the obsessiveness to work or perform or whatever that pursuit is, you know, it's kind of more woo and less, ah, you know, when you're, when you're pursuing woo, woo, but the woo is killing you. It's actually going to give you more.

It's usually driven and fueled by unhealthy additions, whether that be chemicals or loss of sleep. Like, there's. There's reasons why people push through, right? And it ends up leading to more and more unhealthy. I mean, that's why I think addiction and business go so hand in hand. It could be addiction to multiple things, but usually these things are fueled by increasingly unhealthy behaviors.

Thank you. Good to be here. What do you want for your birthday? Do you remember that question when you were a kid? What do you want for your birthday? You always had an answer, right? Remember? Let me show you a picture of my kid. See that little one in the front, James? He can tell you from the day after his birthday what he wants a year out. But what happens as we get older? What do you want for your birthday? What do we say? Not sex. What do we say?

I don't know.

I don't know. Typically we say nothing, right? So something very faithful happened to me in 2012. I was unable to sleep, which was very common in 2012. I had come off a tour, having done my 12th book in 10 years. I was completely exhausted. And my wife said, honey, what do you want for your birthday if you're not going to sleep, let's talk about your birthday plans. Now, the particularly annoying thing about this question was that my birthday was in November. And the question was asked in bed in March. I said, do you really want to know what I want? She said, yes. Now, my wife has pads of paper, so she likes to take notes. She says, please tell me, what do you want? I still tell you what I want. I want a year off she said, what are you talking about? She said, you mean you don't want to write another book? I said, no. You mean you don't want to do another speech? No. What about television? You're still going to still do tv, right? No. What about your office? What about your employees? I said, honey, I don't know. You asked me what I want for my birthday, and you know what I want. I want a year off. She said, okay, fine, then take it. Happy birthday, honey. I said, it's not that easy. Do you know how busy I am? How many of you are busy? Yeah, busy, busy, busy, busy, right? I start giving her the long list of things I'm busy with. I'm like, there's no possible way I could take a year off. She's like, what about next year? I said, well, next year I'm booked through the middle of the year. Fine. Then after that, she said, let me ask you a question. Can we afford for you to take a year off? Now, that's a good question. I started going, well, you know, if we cut our expenses. She said, wait, hold on a second. I married you for better or stay the same. You won a birthday present. I didn't say anything about cutting back. I asked you, can we afford for you to take a year off? So I start going through the expenses and I start thinking about how much money we have, and I go, you know what? Yes, we could. She goes, how long can we afford for you to not work? I add it all up, I'm in bed. I go, okay, about 20 years. She goes, we can afford for you to not work for 20 years and you just want to take a year off? This is the dumbest conversation I've ever had in my entire life. She said, I'm going to sleep. You can stay up and stare at the wall until 3 o' clock in the morning, stressed out for whatever reason it is, I don't know. And in the morning, let me know what you want for your birthday. So in the morning I did that. I stayed up until three in the morning, stressed out in the morning. She said, are you going to take a year off? And that started my journey to planning in 2012 how I would take the entire year off in 2013. And on January 1st of 2013, I took the gondola up to Ajax with her and I planned an entire free year. Would you like to know what that's like? It's fantastic. So here's the thing I want you to know. In 2013, I was 46 years old and I felt like I was 46 years old. In fact, I felt closer to 50, and I was tired, and I would go to the doctor and I had my blood work done. I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with me. He's like, well, you're getting older. That was the wrong answer. There was a book that Joe promoted here by a friend of mine named Arianna Huffington. How many of you read the book? Thrive? One of the things Arianna said in that book is she talked about how our batteries get depleted and we need to recharge our batteries. 2013, taking a sabbatical. What it did was replace my battery. But here's the interesting thing about taking a year off. People go, what was the real purpose of year off? You know what? It was just to be a dad. In fact, my wife said, what are you going to do with your year off? I said, well, I want to do what you do. She said, what do you mean? I go, well, I'll take the kids to school, and they'll go have coffee, and then I'll go to the gym, and then I'll run a couple errands and I'll pick them up. I'm like, that looks like fun. She's like, you know, that's not as easy as it looks. That was true, by the way. But what I wanted to do in 2013 was step into my life and stop time, because I have those two young kids that you saw. And I made the decision that I wanted to live in the present moment with my kids for a year. One of the earlier speakers said, we'll say that we will die for our kids, but will we live for our kids? And in my year, what I got to do was not just spend time with my children, but I also got to go spend time with my parents. I spent almost a month with my parents. I visited friends who I hadn't seen since college. And yes, I took amazing trips all over the country and all over the world. But the most important thing was I got back my energy, and I wanted to share this message with you, this room in particular, because I have a lot of friends in this room. And here's what I can tell you. I didn't know how tired I was in 2012 until I wasn't tired anymore. I have one of these interesting radar things now where I can look at you and some of you in this room, I can look into your soul, and I can see how exhausted you are. And what I'm here to tell you is that There's a magic pill, literally, that I wanted. I wish someone had told me this sooner because I would have taken it sooner. And that magic pill is a sabbatical. And it doesn't need to be a year to get 80% of what I got. It needs to be six weeks. Because in six weeks, the miracle of taking that break, I felt younger, five to 10 years younger. I had more energy, I had more presence, my happiness level. How many of you, the book 10% happier. Have you guys ever, any of you read that book? This is like 100% happier. A six week sabbatical is a miracle. And most of you in this room have never had one. People go, what is it? It's where you don't work for six weeks. Somebody asked me at lunch, well, does that mean I don't do email? You don't work. None of those things that you do that are called work, you don't do any of them. Now here's the interesting thing. After I came back out of the sabbatical, I became a vice chairman of one of the largest financial planning companies in the country. And the most amazing thing when I sat down with the founder is I said, I was telling him about my sabbatical, and he said, you know, we have a sabbatical program. And they did. They have a culture where every seven years you get a six week sabbatical. And you know what they do? Not only do they give you the six week sabbatical, they unplug you from your email, from your phone, and they don't allow you to call in. Wow. So I go there for the first day to get met. There's 500 employees and they basically do a book signing in the open area of the corporate headquarters. And everybody's coming up to me because I gotta meet, but I don't know everybody's names yet, obviously. And so I'm meeting them and I ask really quick questions. How long have you been here? Someone says, 10 years. I go, where'd you go on your sabbatical? And they have an unbelievable story. And as I walk around the office, people have pictures just like their kids. They're all on the wall. Their pictures are sabbatical. And if someone's been there 15 years, they've been on two sabbaticals. If someone's a year away from their sabbatical, they're talking about it three years away, they're talking about it. Amazing. The only person in the company who hadn't taken a sabbatical over seven years, the founder, he had been there 28 years. He never had a sabbatical. Interesting, right? Because often the entrepreneur is the last one to take care of themself. Sabbaticals can change your life. The next time someone says to you, what do you want for your birthday? If the sabbatical sounds good, take it. Take it because you earned it already. God bless you. Thank you very much.

That sounds like the perfect time for a Sally Batical.

Yes, it was.

I love this.

I remember being just a delightful participant in Sally Batical. Day one, the very first we got. The very first order of business was lunch.

The Bohemian Hotel. It was day 001.

Yes.

Yeah. And I had no idea what I was going to do. And I was scared shitless.

Yes.

And that was. That seems like yesterday, but it was now three years ago. I mean, two.

Because it was pre Covid.

It was. Yeah.

And it was.

Tell me the story.

Because it was two years ago.

Okay. Two years ago.

It was two years ago in 2018. I was so miserable. I just. I think a lot of us can identify with this. Not just feeling depressed, but feeling like nothing we do matters. And the harder we work, the bigger our overhead gets. And we're not able to have quality relationships with anybody because it's exhausting to be inauthentic. Wearing a mask is like wearing hair extensions.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're catfishing.

Yeah.

So I finished my sabbatical in April of 2020, which means then I just kept it rolling.

Yeah.

Right.

And I did a tremendous amount of contemplation. And you were a really great part of that, Dean, that you and I would check in consistently and I would come to you with, like, not so sophisticated questions like, I don't know what to do with my life. And you were really great about helping me get back to not only what do you love to do and what do you make money at, but what are the things that you do that define who you are? What is your cow that can self milk and how do you build your entire business around it? And I want to say thank you. Thank you, thank you. Based on our discussions, I was able to turn my company from me, like, pulling the wagon, being on the road to. My team operates completely separately from me. And in fact, my team is having a team retreat today in Montana and I wasn't invited.

I love that.

Right. So that's the whole thing.

As we joked, your team has embraced your bovinity and they allow you to be the cow that does all the creative ideas and build around it. Yes.

Yes.

I love it.

Just you do your thing. Because what is so in your reinvention then or in your. Your Sally Batical, what was the. Did that when you started really fully contemplating this whole, like, going further with the. This being the platform, better is or different is better than better? Is that. Because I know you've always said that and you've always kind of had that approach, but you now leading with this message, is that as a result of your contemplation.

How did it evolve?

It's important now for you.

Thank you. Yeah, it didn't start as a book concept. It started as a way that I needed to completely restructure my business. And so I took a step back and I took a really, really hard, painful, brutal look at what I was doing and who I was being at my brand inside and out. And I realized I wasn't getting hate mail. And so I saw it, for example, as a microcosm. I looked at my Instagram feed, and my kids have always said, my Instagram feed sucks, but I realized that I was posting really boring content that had nothing to do with anything. It wasn't adding any value. It was just taking up space in my feed and it would be a photo of my dinner. And here's the irony. If the value that you add in the conversation in the world is to have a message about being different, and then, you know, your social media is neither different nor better. It's not adding value, it's just taking up space, then it's time to have a good, hard look at yourself. And so I took my social media and completely blew it up from the very beginning. And you can. I unfollowed everybody. I deleted every post and completely started over. And I said, I feel like I have spinach in my teeth. Nobody told me or nobody followed me.

Right, right.

And that was incredibly freeing. And I began to think of some of our conversations, Dean, where you and I have talked about brands that. The brands that you and I talk about, not just marketing, but, you know, behavior, decision making, that the ones that we have that we've talked about, it's always like, can you freaking believe they did that? And the fact that we were talking about it is the greatest form of. Of media. So I started looking at what are brands that over time, they have not changed the product, they just changed the positioning of the product. So I wasn't changing who I am. I was becoming more getting back to who I am, scraping off the layers, taking off the hair extension.

Okay.

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