E574 | Entrepreneurial Health

Today, I am joined again by my partners Yves Gege and Jerred Moon. When you are an entrepreneur, there is a battle between ambition and survival. You must prioritize your physical and mental health, or risk sacrificing relationships. We wanted to share our experiences on how to create a balanced lifestyle for success and unlock the secrets to entrepreneurial health. Enjoy!

• Starting a business will kill you if you let it
• Optimizing your life outside of being an entrepreneur
• Enjoy the journey

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

Hey guys, another quick intro on this podcast. I wanted to go ahead and let you know this is another live podcast we did in person on the PT biz annual planning trip. This one in particular is on entrepreneurial health, both mental health and physical health. So we dive into some of the things that we've had to deal with, how we have successfully dealt with, some of those mental and physical.

Barriers that we've had to overcome. And and honestly, I think this is probably the most open, honest conversation that the three of us have had [00:01:00] about not just the, positives of living in entrepreneurial life or deciding to go into business for yourself and all the positives and negatives associated to that, but really about some of the challenges that you face, especially on the mental health side, and how to really try to dial that in proactively.

A lot of the things that we have done is really, from learning the hard way. So hopefully this helps you quite a bit. Again, this is a new mic. This is something that we're testing out for travel, and the audio might sound a little bit different. I think the content's really good, so we wanted to make sure to share it.

So hopefully you guys like this one and that if you like this, please share it. Just grab a, screenshot of it and share it on your stories on Instagram. It lets us know which topics you really like the most and that we should do more of those. We're gonna try to do more and more of these in-person ones.

Between the three of us, I think there's a lot of knowledge to be shared here, and I hope you like it. What's up guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and we're back again with [00:02:00] a in-person podcast this time as we're talking about entrepreneurial health. What should you be doing to take care of yourself, both physically and mentally?

Because we know that starting a business, running a business, but in particular, starting a business, will kill you if you let it not phy, not completely kill you, but it will ruin your life. It will eat you alive, physically, and mentally, honestly. So you gotta understand how to check that. And for a lot of you, maybe you're dealing with poor health, physically poor health, mentally poor relationships that also go into that.

And you are just prioritizing trying to get a business to work because you're scared to death that it won't, and you're dropping. Everything else in the process, which is what I did. So I think, we can talk through this somewhat and share some lessons learned and also some, I hope, like actionable things, like things you can actually do that aren't just theory.

This is in research. We're not reading some RCTs and spitting some research at you. This is just [00:03:00] stuff that, we found that works. That's pretty easy. Why don't we do this, Jared? All right. Previously, I had you be quiet and stop talking about this because he was dropping some really great nuggets that I wanted to make sure we got on this podcast and his, challenges with starting his business, which are different than mine.

So why don't we do this? Why don't you st talk about where you struggled when you started your business in terms of physical, mental health and, what areas you, you had to really work on.

Jerred: Yeah, so I feel like a lot of the things I did not struggle with that I know other people struggle with.

My non-negotiables from the start were family and fitness. Like I just. And to be honest, I was, my first company was fitness based, so it'd be really silly for me to be like trying to run that company and not also be fit at the same time. Definitely. And yeah, I just did not, I non-negotiables, I was gonna be fit and also my family, like I was gonna spend time with them.

I wasn't gonna do anything that was going to affect that. But what ended up happening[00:04:00] was the mental health side of things. Anxiety really got to me in a major way. And a lot of stress got to me in a major way. And I didn't ignore those things. Like it was an impossibility for them to happen to me, but I just thought I was tougher than the stress and anxiety that it would give me.

Like I thought, like I knew that what I was doing was stressful, but I was like, I can push through this. I almost like viewed stress as like only a perception based thing. If you perceive it as stress, if you don't, then it's not. But there's actual physical stress involved. And I remember getting these severe tension headaches. And I was like what are these? I went to the doctor for him and he was like, ah, maybe you're stressed. I'm like, dude, not a real thing. I'll be fine. And so that was what I had to focus on and I can probably dive into that a little bit deeper, but I was definitely fine.

I'm not gonna say relationships didn't struggle, like with just be, but it was more from the mental health side, not the lack of time side. Like I had the time with my family, but the fact that [00:05:00] my mental health wasn't squared away with stress and anxiety affects relationships with like wife and kids.

So even though I was trying to make them a priority, it was so affected. So like I said, we'll, we, I can dive into that deeper, but ultimately I had to go down some deep rabbit holes to fix my mental health. And I can dive into that a little bit more, but how about you guys?

Danny: Yeah, go ahead.

All right.

Yves: I think it's interesting. I thought about the song cause we prepped a little bit. Like Jared, a non-negotiable was working out. And honestly at the time I thought mentally and even my relationships were in check. Like I told myself a story that those things were okay. And it wasn't until probably three to four years down the road, looking back and having some conversations with Amy A.

Little bit and just realizing how much those things actually did suffer. And I didn't even know, like I thought they, things were okay and just, and they weren't, and it was just like, I thought I was doing such a good job, but I actually,[00:06:00] wasn't, and it was, I feel like I could prioritize time, but what I didn't prioritize was presence.

And that's a big difference, right? Just being there, but not actually being present and just and it was, it did come down to priority is like my business became the first priority. And looking back, I realize that now because I would check my phone or I would be here, or I would be doing this, and I'd be like, oh, I gotta go here and you gotta cover.

For me, it was always like, family came second and I was just lucky that I had some flexibility. So that happened. So definitely relationships were a big struggle. I think the mental health side is like you hear people say it's the silent killer. Like even now I struggle with that sometimes. We ramped up things in our business and ptbs and other things, and I was like, I'm fine.

And like I was like hurting a little bit physically, and I had no idea why. And then afterwards I'm like, man, I was just, my stress level was so high. And it's funny how you just can't even realize it sometimes. Like you just, you're just there. It's like Jared, like I just feel like, oh man, I can handle this, but you can't.

Yeah. And your body will tell you eventually, your body will say, [00:07:00] shut this down. And I used to, looking back, when I worked in insurance-based practice actually happened the most. But my body, like I was training CrossFit pretty hard. I was pushing business pretty hard and probably every three to four months my body would shut down.

I would have to sleep for 24 hours. Like I had a, almost like a sickness, but nothing was wrong with me. So just sleep for a day or two and then I would just come back up and it'd be fine. And I would just keep going. I never thought maybe I should try to manage this a little bit better. You know what I mean?

Which is crazy. Yeah. You go back and look at it. So I in think in thinking about this is just like amazing kind of the story we can, because if you're in it, sometimes you just don't realize it. Yeah. So I don't know if there's any actual

Danny: steps, but that's the story. Yeah. You know what, we'll get to that.

The I feel like I had, I'm probably more similar to Eve with the, like physical training was just assu an assumption. Just part of the job. Especially cuz I was traveling and I was teaching for mobility. One the hard part for me was people expected Kelly strt to show up. Dead lift 500 pounds and do the [00:08:00] splits, which I can do neither of those by the way.

So what I had to focus on was being like as like physically fit as I could to where it wasn't that I was showing up and people were like, who's this guy? But also intellectually as fit as possible to know more than anybody that was gonna be there, which takes a lot of time and effort not to include also trying to run a business, right?

So just trying to learn all of that was a lot. And what I ended up sacrificing more than anything was actually sleep. So what I would do is I would wake up really early, usually between four and four 30. And I would get, I would get work done. I would go see patients at six in the morning, and then I would come home and I would, I would be around the family and helping out with everything like after work.

But I wasn't really there like mentally. I was thinking about all these other things that I had to do. I was like physically there, but not necessarily mentally there. And it's very apparent to people around you. My kids were very young but it was very apparent to Ashley. It was very apparent to my, like my siblings and extended family and things.[00:09:00]

But the other thing that I sacrificed was just purely sleep. When ashy would fall asleep, I would stay up and I would work until 12, maybe one o'clock in the morning. So I was really probably only getting like four three to maybe four. And four and a half hours of sleep at night was like, good for me.

Yeah. For years. Years. And you can only do that for so long before it starts to really like, become super detrimental on your health because not only was I not sleeping much, but I was still training pretty hard. And then I was traveling a lot, so I was traveling two, three times a month, sometimes internationally.

And so you're just getting messed up by all this travel on the weekend. So during the week it's work. On the weekend it's traveled to teach. And then you're stuffing all this stuff in your head trying to keep up with like newest evidence and things that people might ask you questions about at these courses and for your patients and all kinds of stuff.

So for me, like sleep was the big factor that I just was like I can just get less sleep cuz it's not, can't be that important. And turns out super important and it was something that I had to like really tried to improve. So what happens though is if [00:10:00] you put yourself in a stress state and no sleep, I was telling them at dinner, it's just, it's like you've created an overstimulated, overtired toddler of a human being.

So my emotional control was really was really bad. So it's like temper my temper was bad. Like I would get mad easily, I would get really frustrated easily, and it's just stuff that just would come outta nowhere and I would in instantly feel bad, but it was like almost uncontrollable because I was just so tired and just overworked all the time.

And I didn't realize it because I just thought I was doing what I needed to do to just, figure out how to make all this stuff work. And eventually even for me, like I got to a point where, I was like 30, I think I was 33 and I got shingles on my leg. I was like, what is this? This is weird little rash out of my leg.

Wow. It's like super uncomfortable. And I go to the doctor and the doctor's yeah, you have shingles. But it's because it's a stress related thing. It's like your body's kind of attacking itself and you need to really look at like your lifestyle. This isn't normal for somebody that's, I look healthy, [00:11:00] but internally not at all.

Started pulling blood panels and starting to realize like a lot of my stuff, performance hormones in particular were way off because I hadn't slept really much in years and was stressed a lot. So it's funny how you come to these things, but it just, not in a positive way, just hit the wall and then it's what's going on?

But I remember like having shingles, it wasn't terrible. It's not like I was dying, but. I just thought old people got that, those are really painful. Five shingles are extremely painful. Dude, I went snowboarding with active shingles, like we had a trip planned so Ashleigh and I had a trip planned.

That's the first time we ever went on a trip together where it was snowboarding. And we suck, so we fall a lot. And like when I would fall, there's this weird, I don't even know how to describe the pain sensation you get, but it's like someone tass you when you have shingles going on, because it's like your whole body feels like it gets electrocuted when you and I would fall and then my whole body would like jolt and the all I could do is like self-medicate, like to try to get through, like the [00:12:00] trip.

And and then when we got back it was like, this isn't right. And instantly for me it was the first thing was sleep, which I, really dove into after that. But but yeah, that was my, I guess my challenges, it was more presence, it was more overworking and just.

Sacrificing sleep. Cuz that was the one thing I could take away and I could still I could just be hyper caffeinated and get through the day

Yves: sleep when you die. Like that old adage.

Danny: Yeah, totally. It's if you don't sleep, you die. Yeah. That's that's actually what it should be.

And it's not what we think of. So I think that's, a lot of people actually pull, peel that away because, you can get a lot done when other people are asleep, whether it's super early or late at night. And I was doing both for a long period of time. But you can only burn the candle on both sides like that, or both ends, wherever the saying is for so long and then all of a sudden it's you gotta pay it back and it takes a long time.

So now that was mine. Yeah. Let's dive into yours. I'm interested, cause I know you've done some, I would say non-traditional mental health stuff, but what did you find most beneficial?

Jerred: I went down a lot of rabbit holes because once [00:13:00] I realized, I was like, whoa, okay, I'm attacking this from like the mental health side.

I didn't know I knew how to like, work out more, sleep more, change my nutrition. Like all those things made sense to me. But I was like, the mind I don't, what am I gonna do here? Like, how do I fix that? To be honest, there's just a lot of, I didn't, there was no therapy involved or anything like that.

And there's no problem with that stuff. I just, that wasn't where I landed a lot of, to be honest, a ton of meditation, breath work and just those kind of things. But it wasn't just like sitting there doing it myself. I went to like seminars and events and I did a holotropic breathing, which is one of the craziest fucking experiences my life.

What is that? It's really aggressive, like breathing for an hour. Oh, like

Danny: breath of fire. Like where you really, yeah,

Jerred: to where you, you end up like hallucinating just from like breath patterns and stuff. So like I did all sorts of stuff and what I got from all of that, cuz I still do most of it today.

Like breath work and meditation are part of my daily routine [00:14:00] is just, it gave me tools in the toolbox and made me realize I'm very aware of when I'm stressed or when anxiety is like lurking around. Cuz it's not like you conquer those things and you get rid of them. You just need to have tools in the toolbox to be able to combat them is what I've learned.

And so if I feel that coming on, cool, we're doing a breath work session in the middle of the day for 15 minutes, like I'll start the morning with meditation. Journaling has helped a ton, like getting all my thoughts out because I think a lot and like I need to get most of that out when I keep it in it's way worse.

That's why I think a big part of me, like I've been creating content consistently. On the internet podcast writing articles since 2000 and I don't know, 10, I think 2010. And that outlet has to be there for me because it's just, it's like a creativity outlet. Like I have to be able to do those things.

And so you just have to learn to manage your own mind. And for me, it's getting a lot of thoughts and ideas [00:15:00] out either on paper or creating content, which is very like, therapeutic for me. Breath work, meditation. But then you end up going into a lot of other like weirder things like vibrational and like energy.

And then I went like all the way, I was like, okay, I don't know if this is like exactly where I'm at. I'm gonna like land in the middle. But I had to go experience all those things and see what they were like and see what people were thinking. What do

Danny: you mean? I don't understand what you mean by What do you have?

Like a tuning fork

Jerred: next to like the, so the if anyone wants to look into this stuff, like a big place you could look is Abraham Hicks. Oh, I've read some of those books. Yeah. Okay. So it's just a matter of like always being in like a positive mental state. So anytime there's like a negative mental state, like you need to counteract that and one of the exercises, and there's tons of them, so I'll just give one.

But if I was in a negative state right now and I was just like depressed and not happy I forgot what they called this, but it's like a positive rampage something like that where like you, all I'm gonna do for until I can no [00:16:00] longer think of them is think of positive things in my life.

So I'll just be like, I'm so thankful for my wife. I'm thankful for my kids. I'm thankful for my business partners. I'm thankful, like just thinking of every single thing for us long as you possibly can. And then even after you can't, you stop and then you think of more positive things, good things that are in your life.

Little exercise, like exercises like that were really helpful. Sure. But sure, I feel like I had to be in like an incredibly low place for them to be helpful. And I don't find myself in those positions as much anymore, which is great. But there are a lot of like ways to tackle that and they worked, but some of them were just like, you see these people like influencers or whatever who kind of talk about that.

Like trying to constantly be in a positive state. And I'm, I don't know where I land in that. Like maybe I consider myself too much of a realist or whatever, but I'm like, I just need to manage when I'm having an issue. I'm not gonna try to pretend like the world is perfect and everything is perfect at all times because I just don't have that belief in the world or myself.

But if I get too negative, I know how to counteract it and come back to [00:17:00] at least baseline, and so I think that's what was really helpful for me.

Danny: Yeah those books are, they're out there, man. You Oh yeah. I believe that's the guy that wrote a book about, just a conversation with a angel, right?

Like a prophet that Abraham, that's right. Yeah. Because the author's name is not actually Abraham. Yeah. So the name of the book is based off of the person they had an interaction

Jerred: with. Yeah. And they have they do seminars. They have it's lot of books. Yeah.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah. It is definitely an I would say an, I guess like an extreme sort of approach in some people's view, like the personal development world can get real weird.

I think what you're talking about, the core tenant of that is gratitude. Yeah. Is gratitude and understanding your own state. Which we went to this, we went, oh, I thought about this. As soon as he started talking about state change. Yes. We went, yeah. Crazy experience. We went to this ClickFunnels conference in 2014.

It's where PT Entrepreneurs was born 2015. When was that? No, it wasn't two 15, I think it's 18. 2018. That's right. Thousand 18 in Orlando, which was cool. And Tony Robbins was the [00:18:00] keynote and we go in and it is freezing cold in there. Apparently. That's his thing. It's gotta be cold. His people are jumping around and he gets in there and he's like clapping.

He's got a weird clap with his, he doesn't use his fingers, he just uses Palms. Giant. Yeah, he's huge. Got big ass head and he's just like serious. He's just pumping everybody up and he has everybody jumping up and down and unison, which was cool actually. Like with to, to, to music. But his whole thing was about change, understanding your state and how to change your state.

And he had us do some like weird stuff that we eventually, I just eventually left. Cause you had to

Yves: remember, you had to pretend like you were. Excited to see the person in front of you be like, oh my God, this is the best day of my life. I'm so glad you're here. Yeah. You'll do that to a random person next to you.

Yeah. Yes. And I had to hug them and yeah, there's so many, there was like, I forgot all of them. Those was just the two that stood out to me the most. Yeah no. So you were watching you,

Danny: it was you had to act like the [00:19:00] first one was you had to act like a shy kid that was like unsure of anybody around you.

And you're, so they were, the whole thing was like understanding body language or whatever. Yeah. And then the second thing was you had, act like you saw your best friend you hadn't seen in years. Yes. Yep. And some lady picked me up, hugged me, picked me up, and kissed me on the mouth. And I go, Eve, let's go.

And I was like, I getting the hell outta here. But the core tenant, this is why he resonates with people. The core tenant of what he talks about is understanding your state. And when you get into a state of negativity, how do you get yourself outta that? Cause think for a lot of people they end up spending a lot of their time there and they are depressed and they just spiral in this negative sort of like loop of, oh, this is bad and this is the bad thing that happened to me, and then this led to this thing, and I never get this chance, or, and it's all negative.

And versus being able to understand oh my gosh, I'm so thankful for this, and this, which is a huge part, actually practice of mine then, where I will journal this stuff out [00:20:00] too and write things down that I'm grateful for or just talk to my family even about things that, we're very thankful for and in particular have them spend time around people that have far less than us.

And and then it's just it's so much more real, right? If you can say oh, I'm thankful I have this and this, or whatever. But when you talk to somebody and they just like, Like their Christmas list is soap, you're like, dude, your Christmas list is soap and my kid has 20 Nerf guns.

Think about their perspective there. Like that I think is actually really important from just a mental health gratitude standpoint. That's not just journaling something, but actually seeing another human being that's having way harder time with life than what we are. And the perspective is far better.

So like I think the state side of things is huge and most people don't think about it because they just are I think most people are selfish and they just focus on what they want and they don't actually think about how great it is to have what they actually do have, cuz they're always chasing more, which I think is just constantly a great way to stay unhappy, honestly.

So yeah, I [00:21:00] think state is. Huge and gratitude is huge. Whatever direction you decide to go with that.

Yves: Yeah. I think a big thing for people, and we had the Made to Move retreat recently, and this was a theme that came up is having a sense of agency in your life, right? Like those tools for you created control for you, right?

You were down and you had knew nothing to do, right? You had all these things like you couldn't sleep. And it's I think it's so important. That's why I think the state change is so powerful. It's oh shit, I have control over this. I can actually make myself happy. You know what I mean?

Like and it may be temporary, but I just think it's so important to have some sort of sense of agency and sense of control in your life in order to like, dial some of that stuff in. I totally agree. And that's essentially what we're doing, and so some of the tools that I used for sure, journaling was a big one for me.

For me. Ones you guys have mentioned, cause I, I use very similar ones. Is creating self like creating barriers like. Structure. I'm a systems person. Structure and barriers inherently built into my life to create room for my family. For instance, like a really small [00:22:00] one was like plugging in my cell phone and putting it into a different room at 5:00 PM Like, that little thing made such a difference in my life because I just couldn't get distracted, right?

So I just, I create barriers in my life to create room for these other things because I guess like it or not I'm like a juggernaut. Like I'll just sit and I'll just focus and I'll do this one thing and just, and I'll do it until it's finished and no matter what. And so I have to create these things in my life that say, no, this is more important.

You have to do this. That's something that's really helped me

Danny: like a ton. The mental health side, I think is it's I don't know. I guess people talk about it more with, entrepreneurship. It's all relative though, right? Because mental health is, I think most people struggle to some degree with where they are in that spectrum.

And yet we also have perspective with family that's military that has actually experienced like really challenging things and have to like, deal with like things that we do not, which is good [00:23:00] for us in, in a lot of ways we don't have those same experiences that are just so traumatic.

But also, when you look at, you can't really compare that because like the things that, at least when you start a business, the challenge is it's so damn hard. It's so hard and it's so ex, it's such an extended period of time. It's not like you, you spend a couple days doing something hard and then it's over.

It's years and it's not just years, but it's years also where you're by yourself trying to get something to work when there's other people that probably are telling you it's not a good idea. So then there's self-doubt associated with that. And. And you're trying to stay positive and try to move towards a thing you're trying to do.

So I honestly think it's like such a huge area that even just being able to talk, I think this is actually one of the huge benefits of the Mastermind on behalf, is like people in there being able to hear that other people are dealing with the same challenges. It's almost like group therapy. It's funny, it's I know it's, we can't pitch it that way because no one wants to [00:24:00] buy into that from the business side.

But ultimately when we get people together in these small accountability groups and they get a chance to share stuff that they're working on, it's one person leads the way they dip their toe in the water of talking about some stuff that maybe is a little bit uncomfortable for them and then all of a sudden it's like other people feel like they have permission for that and then they're like, oh floodgates open say this.

So this has really been bothering me. Maybe they can help me with this. And next thing they're getting a lot of help on things that maybe they don't think are directly related to how many package sales they have or whatever else might be. But it's so beneficial to just their perception of where they're at in their own.

Their own journey, their own sort of goals and achievement of those. Because it's such a long marathon and there's so many negative elements associated with that. They can drive you in a direction that's very unhealthy. And there's a reason why entrepreneurs have such high divorce rates, suicide rates, like depression rates.

There's a lot of problems with it. And it's because you're suffering in silence for a long period of time and you're doing something that's like you also really [00:25:00] enjoy. But there's a very difficult side to it that most of us have been just conditioned to just suffer in silence and just figure it out and not say anything.

And the more you do that, I think the more you end up in a worse place overall. So just on the, we're talking like entrepreneurial health, but the mental health side I would say is probably the harder physical is one, but like I feel like the mental health side is the harder one for people to actually seek out help and also maybe admit that they need to actually work on some of that because.

They're high achievers. They don't want to say oh, I suck at this. Like, where should I get some help from this? They just want to check off the boxes of their goals and move on to the next thing,

Jerred: yeah. I think listing out what your priorities are is really helpful in that because the fact that I always put family first, family fitness above, even to be honest, even above the business, if Emily ever asked me like, Hey, I don't think this entrepreneurship thing is good for you, you should probably quit.

I would've quit. I'd be like, all right I'm done. There's no drive beyond my [00:26:00] relationship with my wife that would make me want to continue to do that. So I think that those priorities are really important and I think you have to show the other people in your life that they are that important.

And it's hard to do because when you are an entrepreneur and you're driven, you have this obsessive nature about you. It's what makes you a, successful and being an entrepreneur, but you have to like, You have to draw those boundaries and put those priorities in line. And like you mentioned, like your phone, like I had a weekend phone for a while I remember.

So that just completely removed my smart, the only reason I stopped doing the weekend phone is so it was just a dumb phone. All I could do was text and call. The reason I stopped doing that is because my parents were in a car accident and they tried calling my regular cell phone on a weekend and I couldn't, they couldn't get ahold of me and I was like okay, fuck that.

Like we're gonna just have the normal phone. Yeah. So I found some apps that like block all that shit, but you might have to get into those things where you can work against your obsessive nature, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Like you can't always just [00:27:00] like what I was trying to do initially with stress and anxiety, just be like, you know what?

I'm tougher than this. I'm better than this. Why don't we just make it a little bit easier? So one of the, this is very tactical, but one of the apps that I started using on my phone, it's called Freedom. I think Freedom dot two is like the website and you can get it across all of your devices, but it turns your smartphone into a dump 'em, and you can set a schedule or recurring schedule.

And so Instagram doesn't even work for me after 5:00 PM on weekdays. And like those kind of things are really good because like I could just be like, you know what, Instagram's stupid and I'll never go there. That's not how it really works. It's like there's some a down minute, no one's around you.

Yeah, whatever. I'll just check it. But if I try to do that, it just doesn't even work. And I would rather put the systems in place to make sure I keep the priorities I say that I have as opposed to just try to be, everything is willpower. So I think you have to put those things into place if you wanna succeed.

And I think if any entrepreneurs are listening to this, you that struggle with these kind of things, you have to realize like it's all of us. Like [00:28:00] we all have this obsessive nature and you have to fight against it. And you have to prioritize the things that are most important. And it's not easy, but you have to like just find the systems and the processes that work for you to make sure that you're sticking to who

Danny: you think you are.

Yeah. The obsess, I think the obsessive side is the, it's the superpower and the kryptonite, right? Because the obsessive side is what allows you to work, get in such a deep work state that you can actually build something that's really difficult to do. And which is why most people will not do it.

Like starting and growing a business is really hard, super hard. And there's a reason why not everybody does it, but you have to be obsessive over achievement of this goal that is like not visible to anybody, but really yourself. Like you see this vision of what you, something can look like and then you have to have a compelling enough argument for other people around you to get them to buy into it, even though it doesn't exist.[00:29:00]

Cuz no one wants to work for your shitty company. In a sublease CrossFit gym office right now, they wanna work for the one you're telling them about that is in this future-based state that they want to be a part of, and they want to be a part of the story of the growth. That is actually the, that is the like superpower of an entrepreneur to be able to influence other people to be a part of their vision because they get excited about it because they don't actually have the same vision themselves.

But the problem is the same obsessive nature allows you to also completely dismiss other things in your life that might be incredibly important because you are so fixated on this achievement of whatever that future-based state is. Right? So you don't want to get rid of that. You just have to understand how to balance that.

So what you're talking about is how do you engineer things in place so that you can actually be functional and govern this. This sort of obsessive nature that you have. Because for as [00:30:00] beneficial as it might be, if you end up with this success, incredibly successful company with no relationship with your spouse or family, and you're like obese and unhealthy and you have all these systemic diseases, is it a win?

Like it's not in my book, right? But yet we know plenty of people that's the case. More, it's actually more common than not, I would say to have people that have their own businesses that are super one-dimensional and they win in one area and that's it. And every of part of their life sucks because they've not under understood or be able to check their obsessive superpower, which turns into a huge area of kryptonite that, that it just runs their life.

Yves: Yeah, it's been a, it's been really cool in the mastermind. Like we didn't start out. Talking about this stuff. I think the three of us started having conversations and realized we had very similar views about, putting these things first and family and friendships and like exploring that part of our life.

[00:31:00] And now it's become this core tenant I think in PT bids, which is so cool. Yeah. It's like what you pay attention to you will improve. And so the first start of this is having this conversation and just talking about it and being like, Hey, this is a problem. Go seek out help. Go find tools for it.

Because that's what we didn't have. Yeah, all three of us, A very similar story in different areas, but basically didn't even realize we had a problem until we got punched in the face. Multiple times, yeah. Over and over again oh crap, now I have to do something about it. So yeah, it's just interesting.

So I'm just, I'm glad we're opening up the space for people cuz I know that there's people out there that are just like, this is normal, this is how I'm supposed to be. That's definitely what the norm is, right? Like people talk about our culture, American culture being like work hard as possible to get as many things as possible and then you're good to go, which is No, like, how can I impact people?

How can I be healthy? Also have good relationships, let's talk about that stuff and still be successful. We can do it all. Like it's, I feel like it's a myth sometimes that like you have to be one dimensional and you just have to worry about that. I don't think that's

Danny: true, I think if you look at a [00:32:00] group that, that I've been a part of for a couple years now, it's interesting the way that they define it is that, that you basically have to score yourself on a bunch of different categories. And business is one of 12, right? So it's like adventure family relationships, spouse relationships, health, happiness, spirituality, like all these other categories that, that most people don't actually even think about until it's too it's too late.

And they're not intentional about any of that. And and I think that there's also a fine, there's a balance there between. If you just look at that and you're like I have to optimize my life in all of these areas, how do I optimize spirituality? That's like the complete opposite of what actual spirituality is.

It's just like you don't fucking optimize that. It just, it is like, how do you get so robotic with a relationship that's not even like an actual relationship? That's just something that's, that takes time and attention and it's, you can't just use a scorecard for that. You have to actually spend time and focus on that and realize what you're not all that great at.

I think we're talking mainly about mental health at this point, but mental health, [00:33:00] I think one of the best ways to improve mental health is to actually improve your physical health. Because if you can improve your physical health and in the core domains of just movement, sleep and nutrition in particular, if you get those three things somewhat right, then all of a sudden your mental health is so much better and we see it complete the complete opposite direction.

Like for me, with sleep, right when I wasn't sleeping, my mental health sucked. It was terrible. And it's because I was tired all the time. And internally my body was just like, It was rejecting me. And what's so funny about sleep, I had, I interviewed this guy, his name is Kirk Parsley, who he's a he was a Navy Seal and he went back to medical school and went back in.

He, he stayed in the Navy and went through the Navy's or the Army's I'm say the military's medical school called Use Shoes. So he goes through this, it's a uniform service health system. So he gets his md, he goes back to the SEAL teams and he gets there and he realized like, all these guys in this high level program have terrible sleep, nutrition basically sleep hygiene.[00:34:00]

He thought he was gonna go there and revamped their sports facilities their training facilities. And it turned into, basically his whole time was spent taking blood panels and doing things to help improve sleep. And what I thought was fascinating about it was he said, sleep is the most anabolic thing you can do.

And it, it feels amazing. He's it would be like trying to talk people into having sex more. Like it's something people like, like why would you have to try to talk someone into that? And yet it's free. Anybody can do it, yet everybody doesn't prioritize it. And when I did, I, this was during the Dock and Jock podcast days and I did this podcast with him and I was like, fuck dude, I need to, this is crazy.

Why am I not doing this? He's right. This is great. And I started to change that. And it's so interesting. The domino effect from that was like, everything got better from me changing one variable. And it's such a simple thing that most of us as healthcare providers we know this yet, we're so bad about taking care of ourself cuz we're constantly trying to help other people and we're pouring into other people, but at the same [00:35:00] time we're burning the, we're burning on both ends and we're just like, we're just essentially being unhealthy ourself.

As we're trying to do these difficult things. So for me, like that was huge, just that one variable. And for some people, maybe it's, they call it like a key or a keystone habit, right? What do you do that drives these other variables? Some people maybe it's physical training and they're like I gotta recover, so that means they gotta sleep and I gotta get the right nutrition in cause I don't wanna waste this workout.

Or maybe it's nutrition and I don't wanna waste, I'm eating really clean and I don't want to not work out or get some sleep. Whatever it is for you, for me was sleep, but one of those three is probably gonna lead to you becoming healthier, you said for you like training was always no problem.

Yeah. I feel the same way. Did you have issues with nutrition or sleep that you had to adjust or was it mainly just management of the intensity of the work volume that you had?

Yves: Yeah, I think sleep was never an issue for me. I always honestly slept eight to nine hours a [00:36:00] night. Like as soon as I was able to create my own schedule, I was able to sleep relatively well.

Kids of course change that and stuff like that. Sure. But I sleep pretty well, and yeah, just like you said, movement was always a core tenant. Exercising was fine. Nutrition has always I guess up and down. It's never terrible, but it's also never been like amazing, do you know what I mean?

I really like cookie cake and I really like cookies, and those are great things. Cookie

Danny: cake's amazing. Oh my God, so good. It's better than cookies and cake. It's the best. How do they do, how do they combine such great things and make it even better? I don't know. It's amazing.

Yves: I can put down as a cookie cake.

But yeah, I mean it for sure, it has been, the management of stress for me has been the most challenging thing for me in my life. By far. You know what I mean? And I've, I know you didn't seek help, but I sought help like with it, yeah. I've talked to people and I've had coaches and I've never seen like an official, like psychotherapist, but I've had like kind of mental health coaches and that's been super helpful for me in journaling.

Just like you guys like getting that stuff out. It's re [00:37:00] I had to reframe so many things in my life to understand like what was useful and what wasn't. Like defining what productive was for me was actually there was a, there's an inflection point, like during PTVs where I was like, the only thing that I felt was productive was like helping you guys or helping my businesses move forward.

Like literally that was the only thing I felt was, it was the only way I felt useful in the world otherwise. And then I realized pouring into relationships is useful. Do I know those are things that would feed into that? And so reframing what productive meant in my life was like this weird kind of like domino effect that allowed me to be like less stressed.

And all of that and everything in my life, it's but I think you're right. It's it's a culmination of all these tools that I think get us there. That might have been inflection point for me, but it's also like prioritizing a certain amount of training volume, actually prioritizing and doing sleep hygiene.

Never did that never had a problem with sleep, but I definitely got better putting my phone away, you know what I mean? At a certain time. Helped my sleep a bunch, being intentional about going to bed at the same time, things like that. And like being more [00:38:00] conscious about nutrition and being a part of community and talking about it more journaling, like just focusing on self-care.

Like all these things layer up. And I think one little theme I feel like we have, that the three of us do really is we're open to new information. And I think so many people aren't, right? I'm stressed out, I suck. Nobody knows better than me. I'm just gonna figure this shit out.

But you had oh cool, you heard a podcast change, you went to these courses, you change it like the three of us are. I think that's a superpower. It's like we're always trying to be like, what else don't I know? I wanna go find out more so I can be a better human being for the people in my life.

Yeah. That's an awesome thing. I think that's what's allowed us to improve, as a

Danny: dude. And I feel like it was like interesting timing for me too because not only were, Joe and I like interviewing people, it, we basically had it was two or three sleep specialists that was like, just popped up.

I think Joe was trying to solve his own sleep problems. He was definitely trying, I remember listening

Yves: to those. I'm like, Joe's just doing this cause he wants to

Danny: like, because he needs to figure it out. Cause he was a mess man. A hundred percent sleep [00:39:00] like one hour night. Yeah. He was setting those up and he was just getting sleep specialists in trying to figure it out.

But at the same time I had gone up to Fort Bragg or a base attached to Fort Bragg, I should say. There's like a military very elite special operations group. And I remember going there and I was with Kelly teaching at this group and. He and I were teaching, it was like a two day course for like their medics and a couple of their operators that were banged up.

And we went to lunch and we're sitting there and it was like, 1230 or whatever, and we're talking to the head medic that brought us up and we're like, is it cool? We started around, like we started one for the next block cuz he wanted to do a bunch of pool training which turned anyway, which turned out to be a little bit of a problem.

But anyway, we were like, can we start at one? And the medic was like, nah, we're gonna have to probably push it back to one 30. And I remember, Kelly was just like, oh, okay, cool. You guys got like something going on or whatever. And he goes, no, it's it's nap time. And we were [00:40:00] like, what?

He goes, yeah. So we had this group called Fatigue Science come in and they tracked us for a year and we were trying to figure out how we can improve. Cognitive, like decision making and efficiency in the afternoons. And what they basically found after a year and a lot of money of actually tracking this was that these guys should do a, what's called a caffeine nap.

So they had all these generic five hour energy drinks, boxes of them, and they had bays where they had cots where they would could lay down if they wanted to. And they were like com, no windows, like totally blacked out. And they would shoot a five hour energy drink or like a cold cup of coffee, something that wasn't where they could just get caffeine really fast.

And then they would take a 20, I think it was 28 minute nap. It was very specific. And then they would wake up and basically what happens is you're like, your brain waves slow down the caffeine hits and as you wake back up, they all hit at the same time. And it's like you take the limitless pill and you're just like, boom, ready to go in the afternoon.

So we were sitting there, we were like, wow, you [00:41:00] guys take naps like kids. And they're like, yeah, it's it's important, and they tracked all this stuff. And I remember thinking like, Damn. If a, if this is that important to a group that has literally every resource I've ever seen from a performance and a hu like a, like an injury prevention or a health standpoint and they put all this money into it and this is like really that important to them, man, why am I not focusing more on sleep?

And that's when I started going down the rabbit hole of what does good sleep look like and what things do you need in place? And I'll just give you a quick idea cuz I think if you struggle with sleep, these are the things that help me the most. Number one, it's consistency in terms of time of bed and waking up.

That is actually for me, I find to be the most important thing. Blackout shades are completely worth it. I don't know why you wouldn't have that, or at least sleep with a sleep mask on. Because even the littlest bit of light can actually take you out of. A deep level of sleep trying to get the room cold.

I know it can be expensive in the summer but just not having a lot of sheets on, you can help with that. But like a cold room is really helpful. I think the [00:42:00] standard or what they found with research is like between 65 and 68 degrees, which obviously not a lot of people can do if it's hot, but just try to make the room as cold as you can afford to make it.

That's really important. And then screen time before bed. So not getting a lot of screen time in because that can actually decrease your ability to actually hit deeper levels of sleep. And what I thought was actually really interesting too was they didn't really care about duration of time sleeping.

They cared about saturation or density of sleep. So density of sleep would be how much deep sleep are you getting during the same time? So if you're asleep for six hours, but you get four hours of deep sleep, that's awesome. Oh, anything over 50% is considered really good. If you're getting nine hours in bed, but you're getting three hours of deep sleep, that's bad.

That, that means that your sleep density is not great because. The beneficial, at least from a performance homework standpoint happens when you are in deep sleep. So you wanna get as much deep sleep as you possibly can and as short of a time in bed as possible is what their goal was. Which I thought it was fascinating.

They're like, we don't wanna you in bed for eight hours, we got shit to do, but can we get you [00:43:00] like four hours of deep sleep in six hours of a time? Awesome. So they would deploy with chili pads and all kinds of stuff that were just like little hacks you could have. And I always thought that was fascinating.

So I started tracking a lot of stuff with the whoop and there's lots of other ways to do it. I just use a whoop. And for me, like being able to get to sleep saturation where I'm getting four to five hours a night of deep sleep, that's a game changer for me. The way in which I like interact with other people or my productivity so much better and it just sets the tone for everything else.

I'll train harder. I eat better. All these things happen off of sleep for me, and these are the things that I've learned. So hopefully from a tactical standpoint, like these are easy things you can start to implement. And if you don't know if you're doing the right thing, then get a whoop or an, or a ring or something like that where you can track what you're doing.

There's probably a number of other things. And start making one change at a time and just see how that goes. Don't try to change everything at once, just make one change and just see. But sleep saturation for me, like that's been huge. So anything with Kirk Parsley, I love his stuff.

It's really good. Why We Sleep is a great book. You brought up Jared. I think that's [00:44:00] a, that's an awesome book. That'll be like probably all you would ever need to know about sleep. It's everything. Yeah. But it's huge. It's amazing.

Jerred: Yeah. Why We Sleep was the main reason I started sleeping More. Read,

Danny: you started sleeping when you read that.

Yeah. Started sleeping

Jerred: officially. My sleep wasn't as bad quite as bad as yours, but like I definitely slept a lot less. And then, The day after I finished reading that book, I was like, all right, I sleep more now. Totally. That's what I'm gonna do. In a lot of it had to do with like prevention of death.

Yeah. It was like every reason person dies is related to like lack of sleep. And I was like, all right, I'm just gonna sleep more. That sounds like a good idea. I, and I, but I do think on the, like the fitness side of things, I think it can go b both ways because when you are a hard charger entrepreneur I feel like people gravitate towards these high intensity situations, but there's only so much in the tank.

However, you're taking that out of the tank doesn't matter. And that, that took a long time for me to learn. I used to compartmentalize training. Training was one thing. Business was one thing, family was one thing. But if [00:45:00] I have three kids at home and two of 'em are infants okay, that's stressful.

Okay, you're doing high intensity workouts every day. That is a stressor. That's hard. Oh, you're like trying to get a business going. That is a significant stressor. And those things are something that you all have to, you have to take into account. And then to counter that with like low sleep, there's, you're on a crash collision course with just like mental health problems or physical problems or injury, whatever it's gonna be, it's gonna be bad.

And I think the biggest thing that's flipped me on my ass over the last couple years is you're mentioning like greatest superpowers, the greatest kryptonite. Mine is like intensity and focus. Like I can be incredibly intense in almost anything to include exercise. Like I could hold zone five, heart rate for an hour if I wanted to.

It's a fucking uncomfortable, but I could just do it. And other people don't. Other people are like, oh, this is woohoo. Like I should take a break. I'm like, minute, let's fucking go. Let's just keep going. And like I can do that. But I've actually ended up in the hospital forcing myself to do those [00:46:00] things.

And so I've had to learn how to be less intense in a lot of areas of life. Which is the most uncomfortable thing for me to do. And so when I talk about killing comfort all the time, a lot of people think it is being more intense and going harder. And like for me, it's the opposite of that. It's like trying to tone down things that are natural for me, which is it's comfortable for me to try as hard as I possibly can and be super intense and sleep less, but it's super uncomfortable for me to you know what, let's sit down and meditate.

Let's do nothing. Let's do jack shit for 15 minutes. That's really hard for me to do, so I've had to learn how to do things like that. Tone down, exercise intensity, do a lot of zone tune, zone two work. I hate that shit, but like it's really good for you. Like it builds a great aerobic base too.

And there are all these things that I've had to learn on this side that you're talking about, like just the whole health continuum that are the opposite of my natural tendencies. But they have helped me become way more optimal as an

Danny: entrepreneur. I think some of it too is also I've seen people [00:47:00] swing the, grossly one direction or the other, right?

They do nothing and they're incredibly unhealthy, or they are literally that biohacker, right? Yeah. And neither are good, I think for you, because I remember I was, I had a conversation with Kelly one time where he was like, if you turn a friend down that asked you to have a beer with you, you're a dick.

Is even if you if you're an alcoholic and that's gonna send you down a, like an incredibly bad path. Okay, that's one thing, but if it doesn't fit your macros and you're worried about like recovery and your buddy's just basically just trying to like, connect with you over a beer is just don't take yourself too seriously with these things, right?

You have your parameters that you're within, but also I think if you get too strict with some of these things, you miss out on some of the just like subtle nuances of life that are unplanned. And we're sitting here drinking a beer. I don't drink really that much at all, right? But for whatever reason, we decided to have a couple drinks with dinner, and now we're doing a podcast and I'm drinking the greatest beer in the [00:48:00] world, stated by themself.

Delirium. Trumans apparently sit on the can. They said elected as the best beer in the world, which seems odd. Asterisks. Yeah.

Yves: So they didn't win. They were

Danny: just like in the running. I don't remember voting on it, but the, my point with it is don't take yourself too seriously with this stuff too, because if you're unwilling to enjoy life with people as well, because you have such a strict cadence of what you need, and your morning routine has to be two hours of you doing these things that are step by step or whatever, and you're unwilling to stay up.

Late to watch the national championship game with your brother or something like that, that, that is important to, to them and that maybe for you as well. It's dude, what the hell man? You're missing out on just things that are, that matter, like memories that you're making. And that's just life in general.

Not taking yourself too seriously and not being too strict. Because I honestly see the same sort of obsessive nature of entrepreneurs where they either go way the opposite direction where they're so super, super unhealthy [00:49:00] and it's really bad. Or they're like, literally they're turning into Tim Ferris and biohacking everything they possibly can and they're literally researching every little thing and they have every gadget and whatever else.

And that's unhealthy either because they're just stressing themselves out over the things that they're not doing right. And I think that's just as detrimental as somebody that's literally doing that's doing nothing because you're not enjoying things along the way, which they don't happen in strict manners like you gotta be.

Flexible enough to be able to say, cool, mom, I'm down to do that. Let's try let's see how it goes. Even snowboarding for us, when we first started there wasn't planned. I never snowboarded a day in my damn life. I had one day of skiing in Germany when we lived there and I ran into some lady on a T bar and never wanted to do it again.

And we just showed up in Salt Lake and it snowed that day and we're like, you know what? How will this conference, let's go snowboard. You said we, it was totally you. That was,

Jerred: we're no plans to doing that. Yeah. We're supposed to be going,

Yves: I think we tried to talk you out of it, and you're like, no, we're doing this.

I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. But

Danny: it was awesome. No jacket. No, it was amazing. But you guys said [00:50:00] yes, and next thing I know I end up on top of a mountain. I know what I'm doing. I just Sure. Fucking slid my way down and and it's been a hobby that I've enjoyed ever since, thankfully. I'm glad I did that versus being so strict in your ways that you've never actually experienced any of these other things.

I think that's, you're just missing so much if you do that. So just make sure you don't swing too far one way or the other. Like just find The middle in which you can have balance to some degree as best as possible. I think, I don't know if balance exists, but just some sort of balance so that you're not just so strict or so just like unhealthy that you're unable to maintain the relationships that are important, but also your business, which is necessary for the things you're doing in life to support that.

Yeah,

Yves: entrepreneurship, to circle back to it, I think is hard. And I think if you want to be good at it, you've got to take care of yourself and whatever that means for you. It could be any of these tools. It's I think the first step is like probably just knowing yourself a little bit more and knowing, okay, I am stressed, or, hey, I'm not sleeping enough.

Like it's the one thing that we probably just didn't do [00:51:00] well, and so it's just take a look and be like, man, where could I be better? Or what's What's affecting me right now, and maybe talk to a spouse or talk to your friends, start having those conversations because I'll tell you right now, that's probably one of your biggest limiting factors of maybe why you're not growing.

I don't know about you guys, but the more I've worked on these things and I've worked on myself and I've been better about managing stress or sleeping more, being better at my training or whatever, the better everything in my life has gotten. Relationships, finances, overall happiness, all the things.

So I think just, yeah,

Danny: put some time into self-awareness, right? I think self-awareness is what people don't want to actually own up to. And you're right. If you are struggling with mom, maybe, how am I doing? If you have a spouse, that's the easiest place to start because they see you on a day-to-day basis and they know like they've been around you for a while, probably bef far before you started your business.

If you don't have a spouse, ask a sibling, ask a close friend and someone who's gonna be honest with you. [00:52:00] And be like, how am I right now? You suck. You might not like the answer. Yeah. Like I've had the same thing, man. I've had spouse close friends, and they're like, dude, you suck.

Like all you wanna do is talk about your business. It's fantasy football season, and you don't care. Yeah. We've been in the same fantasy football league 10 years. You changed, man. And I, and they're like changing. You're right. Fantasy, football's awesome. Yeah. I should get more, involved in that and actually start the players that are in and not be a dick and ruin the league.

Don't be okay. That's what I'm saying. But you have to actually be okay to ask somebody. And it doesn't feel good because normally they're not, it's not a good response. It's not that they're just like, yeah, you're the best. You're just, you give so much and you're just like, you're so awesome, so calm.

There's nothing you could do better. Yeah. That's not what the, that's not what you're gonna get. Especially if you're asking for it. So I would say ask somebody you trust. Ask somebody that you know, you, you've known for a while. Ask [00:53:00] somebody that will be honest with you. And and especially if you're married, ask your spouse because that's probably the best place to start in particular because you would, you rather know or not know if there's, if things are trending in the right or wrong direction.

I think for a lot of people they want to hide from it and they want to just be like, they tell them, here's what you, most people will probably tell themselves this. And if this is you, please stop because I did this for a long time. And I would say I'm doing all this stuff so then my family can do this, and this.

And they're like, your family doesn't give a fuck about that. Yeah. Cause all they wanna do is hang out with you. Yeah. And you're never even around. And when you are around, you're not actually there. So like just asking some family and like spouse how are things going? And they're like not great.

You're a dick and you're really never present. And when when you are around, you seem to get Frustrated easily. So we don't bring stuff up, and they shy away from things like, dude, you gotta be okay with getting that feedback. And then realizing I'm gonna, I dug myself into a pretty bad hole, but at least I know where I'm [00:54:00] at.

I should stop digging and get out of it. Cuz if you don't ask, you never know. And you just assume everything is good until it's not. And one day your spouse is gone too late and it's too late. You can't recover from that.

Jerred: So many things I could unpack in everything you just said. So one, if you are gonna ask people for feedback, which I've done a lot of in my life it is, it can be hard dependent on the people in your life whether or not you have a wife who's will provide frank and fearless feedback.

Sure. Fortunately, I have a wife who will tell me exactly what's wrong with me if I ask. Heck yes, she was. But I. Scale of one to 10 for people who, friends who might be a little bit softer. So just a scale of one to 10, like, how am I doing on our friendship? And when they're like seven, you're like fuck damnit.

What am I? Then it opens up a conversation. So that's a great place to do those things. And then what I would say in regards to similar lines that you said is I ended my career in the military in special tactics, which is like special forces for the Air Force. And they had attached about two years previous before [00:55:00] I joined the Human Performance program as part of it.

And how I had that explained to me was, I had come from the aviation world as a pilot and they were like you know how, like you have your aircraft, right? There's so many supporting elements to aircraft. There's the pilot, but then there's depending on which aircraft there's a navigation team, there's maintenance team, there's a communications team.

There's just, there's so many people that make the mission work that it's absurd. And so once they're like, okay, so you have all that right in the aviation world? I'm like, yeah, I get it. And then they're like, okay, we have an operator. Our operators are aircraft, and they need all of those supporting elements.

They need the sleep, they need the fitness, they need the nutrition, they need all these things. And I think as an entrepreneur, you have to start to think of yourself as in that way as you are like a special operator. You are like, you are an asset and this asset needs to be taken care of, and it needs to be taken care of in a very well-rounded way.

It can't just be, what's the phrase, written hard and put away wet. Like it can't, just like a weird phrase. Never [00:56:00] heard that phrase. I was like, a boat.

Danny: Suing.

Jerred: Literally. Definitely a boat.

Danny: Keep going.

Jerred: But yeah, you have to take care of this thing. You can't just feed yourself shit and not take care of yourself, not sleep, and not exercise and expect to perform at a high level.

And what's funny is if the deeper you get into the entrepreneurship world, you'll realize like a lot of entrepreneurs start to figure out, like health and fitness stuff. Like we all like gravitate in that area, but they start to get interested in it, not because they wanna live longer, it's a hobby of theirs.

They're just like, oh, this can help me be more like optimal mentally, or something like that. And so they get into it a little bit more. And once you realize those things treat yourself as such, like you are a, you are an asset and it needs to be, you need to be taking care of yourself as such, like a racehorse that needs to be fed the right food and trained properly.

Like you're no different. And the you, most entrepreneurs I think have age on their side. If you're starting earlier to like twenties, early thirties or something you are not on a trajectory that [00:57:00] will last if you're. Not taking you care of yourself in all the areas that we've talked about in this podcast.

Like you're just, you will burn everything to the ground. So you need to be taking care of all these areas and start doing it as soon as you possibly

Danny: can.

Yves: Yeah. That there's a book you recommended way early in our partnership, I think it was called Peak Performance. And the main, the gist of the book basically summarized, they did a really good job, was like, you can't, just like you can't one rep max for 10 reps or you can't sprint like your version of a sprint, a marathon.

Mentally it's no different. And I really didn't like really realize that until I read that book. You mean I can't just go a 10 outta 10 mentally seven days a week, 365 every single day. And it was like, it just created an allowance. Like it allowed me to say, oh cool, I can take a day off. Like it actually will be better for me in my entrepreneurship.

I can take a day off. It's like the same thing, like an engine needs rest and it's sleep, but it's also just Take a fucking day off and don't feel guilty about it. There's some of [00:58:00] that as well in entrepreneurship. That's super

Danny: challenging. My gosh. It's so hard because y I think what's really hard, some people like when you first get going, I think it's hard to put in the amount of work necessary to make something work.

So you build this tolerance to that and then all of a sudden you get to a stage a stage where you don't have to work as hard and it's actually very hard to step that down and you probably

Yves: shouldn't. I feel like some people ruin their business

Danny: that way. Totally. But once you get to a point where you have a, where you're leveraging like other people, like assets, like technology and other people in the company, you got you, you have to realize that like you just trying to do everything doesn't, it's not gonna get you where you're trying to go.

There's a diminishing rate of return associated with that versus. You have to take your attention and turn it towards things that are more leveraged, which is really building the other people in your company and mentoring those people as well as [00:59:00] at a certain point you deserve to take a break.

I know so many people, and I was like this, I didn't take a vacation for so long. And even whenever I was on vacation, I wasn't actually enjoying it. It was miserable. I remember being on vacation and just being miserable I gotta do some work. How ridiculous is that, dude? I'd be like, it's ridiculous.

Listen, you gotta gimme three or four hours in the morning before I can enjoy being around you guys because I've got shit I have to do. Yeah. And honestly be like, really, we're at the beach. I'm like, that's okay. I'll get up at five. I'll knock out like three hours of work. People won't even be up by then.

It's not a big deal. Yeah. You've all been there. There's still times where I've gotta

Yves: do a little bit

Danny: of something. Yeah. There's definitely things that you have to do at certain points in time. Yeah. But if you can't, if you can't even enjoy being at a nice beach unless you knock out a bunch of work, that's a problem.

And you should really start to work on that. Especially, you just have to realize that it's not that important. It's just not gonna get you where you're trying to go. And it's really just like you're just trying to work harder on this thing you feel comfortable with because you don't [01:00:00] realize that there's other things you need to actually build and improve.

And it can feel weird though when you take yourself out of it and you're at a place where things are working without you. You talked about this yeah, you don't know what to do because you've built this tolerance of work. It's almost if you ran every day and all of a sudden you decided today, I don't have to run today.

You, you would feel weird. Cuz your routine is broken, something is different. So I think that you have to understand that stage is normal too, and that you can take some time down. And I was actually really worried about this. I was worried that if I stepped it down, I wouldn't be able to take that intensity back up where I needed it to be.

To like really push hard to be able to do something challenging in business, which is frankly silly if you think about it. It's if I can do this one time, it's not that big of a deal, I can just do it again. But it's just also just, it's a lot of effort for something that you can do in a much more efficient manner.

But when you're all by yourself and that's all you have, you just get so used to just grinding real hard and then just, working. And then when you [01:01:00] have a team, it's really more about empowering them to be able to do the right things and be in the right roles and mentor them effectively, which is a very different switch to, to turn that to turn that on.

It's normal if you feel like you have a hard time with that. It's normal if you feel like you have a hard time being present. I think it's all very normal, but it's also the self-awareness of that, I think is the biggest thing. If we're talking about summaries of this and we'll end it now cuz we have to watch road trip and finish a bag of sun chips.

But the, I guess summary of this would be number one, gotta be self-aware. And if you're not self-aware, you need to ask people you trust that can be honest with you about what you need to improve. Number two is you've gotta take care of yourself. You gotta look at yourself like an asset, like Jared said and give yourself like the support needed as well as give yourself the the mental and physical health.

Support needed to actually be able to do the things you're doing. Cause otherwise you're not gonna be able to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. And then the third thing is I think the biggest thing that I've found [01:02:00] is to not, don't, it's hard, it's very easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself, but I always to think about, okay, if your goal, let's say your goal is you wanna double your business, right?

Let's say you're at $500,000, you wanna get to a million, and let's say you get to $850,000, right? You're gonna be upset, but ultimately you are awesome still. That's crazy If you think about it, like if where you started and where you ended up, okay, maybe you didn't achieve what you're trying to achieve, but for fuck's sake, like you're great at whatever you did.

It's awesome. Have gratitude for that, which is the first thing you brought up, which I think is from me, from my standpoint. The number one thing that makes me happier is just to be grateful for the shit that I have and not just chasing more stuff, more accolades, more size of whatever, more people, more whatever.

Be content, without being complacent. We talk about this a lot. That's very hard to do [01:03:00] and the only way to do that is to be grateful to understand where you came from, where you are now, all the progress that you've made, and just take a step back, view that as something very positive, which it is.

Be grateful for that, and then set another goal and try to achieve that, but if you don't and you're close, like man, you're still awesome. Be grateful for that. At least anything you wanna end with,

Jerred: Just every minute of your day is an investment. And I don't say that to try and stress anybody out about the productivity hamster wheel.

That's not what I'm trying to do, but Every minute of your day truly is an investment and it needs to be spent on something that's going to help you move forward. Because you can't only be productive, that's a bad investment. You have to invest minutes into the health and longevity of your career and your life and your relationships because early on I didn't, I didn't have a lot of entrepreneurs I knew growing up, but I always read these books and there's always like a comeback story in them with the entrepreneur, how they they became obese or they [01:04:00] became mentally unhealthy or something because their business like fucking destroyed them.

And I was always like, okay, I just won't do that, but you don't like even knowing that at the beginning I was like, oh, wow, it's still crept in there somehow. Like one aspect of this. And so you really have to focus on all these things. And if you feel like you don't have the time, You just have to make the time because your longevity as an entrepreneur is going to involve taking the break off of work, spending the time with family, doing the meditation, doing the breathing, doing the exercise, all of that, if like you need to frame it that way, is going to help you be a more productive, higher earner entrepreneur.

So you need to just go do those things. So invest your minutes wisely to become, in, be in the game for as long as you possibly

Danny: can. Okay?

Yves: There's no reason not to do those things based off all of that, right? Your relationships a bit better. If you're worried about business, your business will get better.

There's just no reason not to focus on those things. Yeah. I feel like the, a good thing to, to end with is just try to enjoy the [01:05:00] journey. Like I talk to a lot of the people in the mastermind, and like they get so caught up in KPIs and my business is not growing. And I remember a specific recent call that I did these people have been business for four years and like they're super concerned, lost an employee, have to hire another one might not be working out.

And she's I feel like I'm failing. I feel like I just suck and nothing is going right. And I'm like, how long has this been since you've had to work for anybody else? And she was like, four years. And she's I've never thought about that. I've never thought that never like for in four years I could have the flexibility in my schedule.

I'm enjoying my life. I don't work for anybody else. This is awesome. And so it's just it was just interesting. I feel like so many people don't enjoy and it's something I actively work on. Yeah. Where I think all of us, like as much as we're giving you these tools, like this is all an active thing that we're all trying to work on.

And I just try to enjoy the journey as much as I can. It's this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and I'm enjoying it. That's probably some self-talk that I have to do a lot, it's just I'm not, I'm always thinking about what's next year? Where am I gonna go? You guys know I'm so goals focused, like I need this balloon or [01:06:00] whatever that I'm chasing.

And I just gotta be like, no, this is fun right now. And just enjoy the journey because Yeah. It's

Danny: awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And trip is awesome dude. And. Not to I I think about it's, it sounds weird, but I think about like death a lot. Especially like un people that die unexpectedly.

Like even there was a my my mother-in-law had a friend that was just sitting on a bench with her husband, and they would go watch the sunset in this park on a bench together almost every day. And she was sitting there and tree limb fell in her husband's head and he died just completely unexpectedly.

Just some something they would do all the time. Just cra like that's crazy if you think about it, right? But that can completely happen to anybody without, without you wanting that to happen, obviously. That's not something that they were planning for. That's just part of their routine and they were spending time together.

And, you think about something like that and it happens and it's just you're right. If you're not enjoying what you're doing, if you're not like actually having fun with that, or you're not actually feeling like you're helping other people and giving back in some other way, What's the point?

Like you might as well do [01:07:00] something else. Just be very aware of that. I think it's super important and that's something that I, for me at least I definitely think about a lot and it helps me just be more present. And I think that, for anybody that's listening to this, hopefully it's been helpful.

Cause I think that it's funny, I, we record, I've done a lot of podcasts and I feel like I can tell if a podcast is gonna be if it's gonna be something that hits home with people, I think this one will, because I can tell you, I think that this topic is uncomfortable for, I wouldn't say it's not like uncomfortable for us now, but I think these topics are uncomfortable for most people, and yet they think it, it's not abnormal for us to think these things, but not actually verbalize them. It's very common for most people to have these thoughts and keep 'em to themself because it's, I, it's weird to bring it up with somebody else and just, it's. Vulnerable, I guess is the best way to put it.

And not vulnerable for the sake of be vulnerable in marketing cause you're trying to get more patience or some bullshit like that, it's just this is a [01:08:00] thing that I think most people don't talk about. And especially in the entrepreneurial world, we have to deal with it whether we like it or not.

I don't know what the average person deals with. I'm not sure. I'm sure they have the, yeah I'm sure that being a long-term employee of somebody else's business has its own problems. And there's some carryover, I'm sure to what we're talking about. But I do know in the entrepreneur world, you're gonna get challenged with certain things.

You're gonna have to look in the mirror and just realize there's certain things that you have to improve. And I honestly think that it's the greatest personal development vehicle possible because it expose you to so much stuff that you realize you're really bad at. And if you're willing to accept that and you're willing to improve that, It's quite possibly like the revenue and the whatever else, the financial security never have to work for somebody else.

That is a byproduct, in my opinion, of just becoming a better person and improving these other areas of your life that are forced upon you if you're willing to actually do it. So hopefully this helps you guys. We don't get together too [01:09:00] often, so this is actually pretty fun. I hope the audio's okay, like we're doing this with a new mic.

Hopefully the audio's okay. If you guys like this let us know, share this with somebody else. Just tag us on Instagram with a story and we'll share it as well. This is something that we talk about a lot, but rarely actually share in this form. So if you like it, let us know.

Not that we want to there's plenty of tactical things we want to give you, but this is foundational, hopefully. Very helpful and heavy shit. Maybe it's not the right time for you to hear this, but for some of you, it's probably the exact right time to hear it and I hope it helps you.

So as always guys, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and we'll catch you next week.

Hey, Pete, entrepreneurs. We have big exciting news, a new program that we just came out with that is our PT Biz part-Time to full-time, five a day Challenge. Over the course of five days, we get you crystal clear on exactly how much money you need to replace by getting you ultra clear on how much [01:10:00] you're actually spending.

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If you're doing the work and you're getting. Information put down and getting yourself ready to take action [01:11:00] in a very organized way, you will have success, which is what we want. So head to physical therapy biz.com/challenge and get signed up today. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation.

So this is a one one-way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connect with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group. So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.