Takeaways from CEO Week 2025: Rest, AI, and Over Functioning

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey, everyone. Julie here. Welcome back to another episode of Million Dollar Grit. I am just coming off of the fourth CEO Week at my home, and today I take you into what happened, who was there, what we did, and most importantly, what we talked about. So the idea of CEO Week actually started out as a random post. Covid. Hey, I just moved into this big beautiful house on this, you know, 15 acres in Connecticut. Let me have a few people over. And the very first CEO week was in the summer of 2021. And because we were kind of still during the COVID years, everyone had to stop at the barn, like is halfway up my driveway and take a COVID test first before they would be allowed in. So it was kind of risky. People had to travel and not know if they would end up being able to stay. But since then, we. We no longer require Covid tests. It has become a beloved transit transition tradition for both myself and my clients. So this past week was our fourth event, and even though there have a lot of things that have changed about it, the idea has always remained the same. Let's hang out together in the wood at my house and do three things. Rest, reset with inspiration, and all of that, as well as work. So nothing was recorded or transcribed. So I'm going all from memory, which feels a little foreign since I am used to zoom transcripts and things, you know, basically taking every word that. So I never forget. But I think that there were some key themes that I really want to bring up here today because I think they're important for the entrepreneur community at large. So a few contextual details about how CEO Week is set up so you. You can kind of picture it in your mind. So there's a max of 30 people, and my mastermind is anywhere from 60 to 80 people at any one time. So it's a first come, first serve and basically, you know, whoever's available to come to Connecticut. And So I had 26 people RSVP for this particular our CEO week. We sprawl out in my house and we work, talk, and mastermind basically all day and all evening. So if you can imagine my house, we have a dining room, we have a sun room that has couch and Another table. I turned my living room into almost like a mini conference room with classroom style tables. That was the one room where we could technically all sit together. All 26 of us were able to fit. My basement had like some cushy rug, carpet, couches, chairs, even like a low, like a tempur Pedic mattress with pillows and blankets and stuff like that. Then I have two porches that have seating. So there's actually enough seating. If I needed to get butts in seats, I could seat 60 people in all my indoor seating between my basement and my first floor. So it just creates these little pockets of people. And we had quiet areas where, you know, headphones were on and my cats were, you know, resting on people who were under blankets who were like typing away. And then we had places where it was very lively, there was a lot of discussion and back and forth. I also have one small room in my house. I use this room for, for morning prayer. I also use it for like therapy. And I created a reservation list. So people who needed a fully private room, if they had their own therapy session, they had coaching call calls, they had to record a podcast or business meetings. There were some business meetings that were really private that people had to do. They could sign up for a time to have that room all to themselves. Now what happened with me during the day is that in the morning I had four slots for private hot seats, 30 minute hot seats. And then in the afternoon I offered group hot seats. And this is where it's, you know, me giving feedback, but it's also the entire group that wants to participate. So we had basically eight slots a day for hot seats. So over the three days I did 24 hot seats. People showed up anytime between 8:30 and 9:00am they brought breakfast. One morning we had New York style bagels. I catered every single lunch. So I just did classic, like New England food that people that were known for New Haven style pizza, you know, New York style deli sandwiches, things like that. And the dinners were very flexible. So one night my husband AC he cooked Colombian food for the entire group. It was delicious. The second night it was beautiful night. So we went to the beach and we had seafood. We had lobster rolls and fried seafood on the beach. And then the third night, everyone just wanted to hang out more. So we did some Thai takeout. We went and got the takeout and everybody hung out. And then once it was dark, we went and caught fireflies. So it was just an amazing week. And that's kind of how the whole week operated. It was really whatever you need as a CEO this week you can come for. So we had whiteboards and we had, you know, M and Ms. And bowls and we had a drink fridge and a coffee station and lots of areas to roam, places that you can walk even. One of my clients, Sarah, spotted our resident bobcat during a happy happy hour walk. She sent a text to me and said, is this a dog or am I seeing things? I said, no, no, that, that, that's a bobcat. So that was the environment in which these conversations came up, the ones that I'm about to give you. So here are the the biggest takeaways that I think everyone needs to hear. So number one is about rest. Rest is not a reward for work. It is the other side of the coin of productivity. And this is an idea that has taken hold in my mastermind. This year. We've done a few things differently. Number one, my mindset coach Helen and I co taught a course on self leadership, which had a lot to do with nervous system regulation and this idea that you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the levels level of your system. That's a quote by, I hope I say it right, Adam Grant or James Clear, I can't remember, sorry. But the idea is that you actually fall to the level of your nervous system. And so we did that class. We also, in the May Mastermind, had the very first day of the Mastermind dedicated to rest and reflection. So it was no surprise that this theme continued into CEO week. We had a great discussion about rest. In fact, one of my clients, Abby Springman, she's a fantastic brand photographer, she brought up a great point and she recommended the book Rest. And she said that a wave that you see in the ocean really can't crest without a trough. Right? The low part of the wave is as critical to the wave as the big, you know, crest at the top that surfers ride. And so rest is not what you get to do when you finish. It's actually a necessary part of the productivity cycle. And if we think about this in nature, we think about it in science, we think about it in spirituality. There's absolutely nothing in our natural world or our spiritual world that doesn't work on some sort of reality rest, work cycle. And so this hustle culture that we have really doesn't make any sense from any, any viewpoint. So that was a really strong takeaway. The second big theme of the week was AI is not the future. It is right now. And it is intense. We had so many Discussions about AI, of course, we talked about using it for copy. We talked about, you know, how annoying it is that all the Internet is becoming flooded with ChatGPT copy. But we also started talking about AI clones, specifically around coaching. And this was a really interesting discussion that was brought up by my private client, Brittany Long. She is a coach. She's a cloning expert, an AI cloning expert. And she really did an amazing job of reframing how these AI clones could actually unlock new levels of coaching. And I think people are worried about AI clones. You know, oh, you're not going to need a therapist, you're not going to need a coach. But she had a really unique way of thinking about it. She talked about how she's using a tool called Delphi and building out coaching clones. She also does that as a service. And she gave us insight into her experience of how her students and clients are actually enjoying the ability to talk to AI Britney versus real life Britney and how those two things are working together. So I thought that was fascinating. Definitely check her out if you are interested in that. Also, I got some great YouTube videos from my private client, Stephanie Blake. She's an agency owner and she is really sort of leading the way by saying, hey guys, if you are an agency owner, there is a huge amount of change coming. So she dropped two links. One from AI in context, which is called we're not Ready for Super Intelligence. The other by Liam Otley, which is this AI technology will replace millions and how to prepare. I watched both those videos and they were intense. So if you are struggling to understand how AI may be changing your business, I encourage you to watch those. The third theme that came up this past week was the weekly webinar. The weekly webinar being this sort of clarity engine that every entrepreneur needs. So we had a lot of discussion about people who are running their weekly live webinar, both good things and bad things. One of the unique benefits of the weekly webinar is it helps business owners really clarify their offer. It gives you a repeatable thing to do every week to generate revenue. It gives you an opportunity to get in front of customers or potential customers, gives you an opportunity to practice your sales skills. But we're also learning, man. It is an art form. And there was a lot of moaning about the process. It's really not the easiest thing in the world to do. And I would say if you are interested in learning the weekly webinar, you need a coach, you need a system. And as my private client Ashley said at CEO Week she's like, listen, it is hard to do, but once you get it right, it is as if you are printing money. And she's not wrong. So if you do not have a weekly webinar in your queue and you want one, there are two ways that you can do so. The first is to reach out to me personally. You can go to Julia Julie Chanel, you can email me juliejuliechanel.com or you can go to my website, juliechanel.com and ask for some private coaching. Or if you want to, you can go to launchgorgeous.com and click on accelerators. We have two day accelerators four times a year. And what you can do is when you sign up for an accelerator, you get access to one of our coaching series because we do them twice a year and the one we just completed was the live webinar edition. So if you want to get access to that replay of curriculum and attend that launch Gorgeous accelerator, just go to launchgorgeous.com and click on the word accelerators. You can get all the details there. All right, the fourth thing which I think is really important, this was a theme that came out of one of our discussions was learn how to conquer over complicating things, overthinking things, and over functioning tendencies. But the important caveat here is that you really need to understand the difference between those three because we tend to use them interchangeably. Oh, I overcomplicate things or I'm overthinking or over functioning. And so we sort of broke it down. I'm really excited about this. I might actually do an entire podcast episode, an entire blog post on this. But I want to give you sort of the, the top, the high level of what we came out with. So when you over complicate things, the question I want you to ask yourself is, what are you avoiding? Because most people who overcomplicate are actually looking to control every outcome. They don't want to be pigeonholed, they don't want to be trapped. They cling to freedom. And so they tend to pull every thread, they tend to play the yeah but game, and they make things more complicated than they need to be. So the work for you is to learn how to simplify, which is the opposite of over complication, but also to get comfortable with constraint. And constraint isn't meant to trap you. Constraint is meant to relieve your nervous system system of all the options, right? So if you think about, like weighted blankets, you know, for people who tend to need like weight on themselves when they sleep, That's a constraint. You're actually putting weight on you to make it a little harder to move, but that is making you sleep better. It's the same reason why newborns need swaddles, right? The constraint isn't designed to trap them, the constraint is designed to regulate them. And so if you have a tendency to over complicate, that can be a solution. The second is overthinking. The question to ask yourself if you are an overthinker is what are you afraid of? Most people who overthink are looking to try to get out of feeling fear, feeling rejection, or feeling failure of some kind. So whereas over complication shows up as a lot of spinning and busyness and making things, overthinking is often accompanied with like paralysis, procrastination. And so you'll try to differentiate between the two because an over complicator will tend to be driven by avoidance and doing a lot of things and an overthinker will be driven by fear and you'll see a lot of paralysis. So the work for you is to learn to trust intuitive action to build confidence in the idea of it being done rather than perfect. The last one is over functioning. And the question to ask yourself is what are you trying to prove? Most people who over function are actually in a state of performance or they're trying to prove something about themselves. This could be based on status or it could be based on fear. Like if they don't perform, they won't be loved or they'll lose money. And so the work for over functioners is to learn boundaries, rest and contentment. So again, the three questions. If you're an over complicator, the question is what are you avoiding? If you're an overthinker, it is what are you afraid of? And if you are an over functioner, it is what are you trying to prove? So those were the takeaways from CEO Week. I, like I said at the beginning of this episode, is one of my most favorite weeks of the year. And if this sounds like something you want to do, I really encourage you to reach out to me, the Digital Insiders Mastermind. And that's how you get access to CEO Week is one of the longest running, most reputable business and mindset masterminds and coaching programs for entrepreneurs that are trying to scale into that seven figure mark. So I really hope you reach out and you can read all about it at digitalinsidersmastermind. Com. You guys have a great week. Talk to you soon.

And there you have it. Folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.