Show Notes:

Why great leaders prioritize their health. “Your ability to take care of yourself is going to directly impact your level of decision-making, your effectiveness as a leader, and ultimately how successful your organization is. And I used to not really understand that. I thought I could just work hard. Doesn’t matter if I’m stressed out, doesn’t matter if I am taking care of myself physically and mentally — the business will still press on. But today, when I look at a lot of leaders that I respect and a lot of organizations that I respect, one of the things that I can appreciate about them the most is their level of longevity and their ability to sustain a certain level of high performance over years at a time. Growing a business is very much a marathon and not so much a sprint.”

Sabbatical magic. “At the beginning of last year of 2022, I went on a sabbatical. I had always had this dream, this goal of like one day going off into the wilderness or wherever and just disappearing for a month straight — cutting off from just society, internet, social media, and bringing all the books that we buy on Amazon that we don’t always read immediately, and then bringing a journal and just being there and just being at peace. I was fortunate to be able to do that. I learned a lot through that experience. I was able to really focus on my health. I was able to focus on just journaling reading, and just really thinking, which has kind of set out the goals for the next three to five years.”

It’s only possible if THIS is true. “Everything I’m about to talk about does not work if you don’t have a great team in place and if you don’t have great leaders in place. If you don’t have people that are capable of being able to lead and grow your organization day in and day out, you can’t just disappear, come back, and expect for the organization to grow.”

It’s all about your decisions. “When you really look at what are the most impactful things that you can do as a leader, it comes back to your decisions and the quality and the caliber of the decisions you’re able to make. You make the right decisions, you move the organization forward. You make the wrong decisions — even if they’re micro decisions…We make dozens if not hundreds of decisions a day, and they’re all weighted differently, and there’s always going to be key decisions you make every single year, whether you hire somebody, whether you fire somebody, whether you invest in an initiative, whether you don’t invest in an initiative, whatever that decision might be, that if you make the right decision, it moves you forward exponentially, and if you make the wrong decision, sometimes don’t even realize it at the time, but a series of wrong decisions keeps you stuck or moves you backwards.”

What are you working toward? “For most entrepreneurs, it is the pursuit of some sort of level of freedom. When you start your business, it is because you wanted to be able to control how you spent your time, who you spent your time with, and the type of work that you were doing. So if that’s the goal, what are you doing to move yourself towards that type of goal? Maybe you want to be able to do certain things throughout the day that excite you and that you are are really enjoyable, that allow you to take care of yourself. The option shouldn’t be that you’re doing all the things you don’t enjoy doing constantly, and that never changes. Yes, there’s going to be certain chapters that require you to be able to do things because either you don’t have the support you need or you haven’t figured something out. But if you’re still doing that and you’re five to 10 years in and you’re not progressing towards a life that gives you more freedom…well, it’s time to reexamine that.”

The most impactful step for your health. “I had to drill things down of saying, ‘Here’s what’s been most impactful,’ I would say that diet and nutrition is probably 90% of it. That is the hardest part is also the most impactful part. You’re not going to out-train a bad diet, and I used to think that. I used to think, ‘Hey, I work out consistently three or four days a week, so I can eat whatever I want and I can eat wings or whatever.’ You know, you can eat whatever you want. You just may not accomplish your goals. And if your goals are, for example, you want to lose weight, you want to burn fat, the only way to do it is on a caloric deficit, meaning that you burn more calories than you take in. And we typically significantly underestimate the amount of calories that we take in.”

Healthspan over lifespan. “What they talk about is really not so much lifespan, which is how long you live, but more so healthspan. It’s like the life in your years, and it’s more important that you can have great functionality in being able to do the things you want to do, whether it’s spending time with your kids or your grandkids or going wakeboarding or whatever your goals are. But you can do those things. That’s much more important than living to 150 and your health being off a cliff and you basically being connected on life support.”

What true success stems from. “I think sometimes we as leaders pride ourselves in terms of our financial success, but perhaps 1) you’d be more financially successful if you were honestly taking care of yourself mentally and physically, and 2) I I think it’s really important that the in matches the out, meaning that the way you are in terms of your health is also matching the way you outwardly project yourself. Because if you want to be a successful leader and CEO, when I see somebody who gets winded going up a flight of stairs, when they’re exhausted, when they’re eating just fast food all day…If you had a high performing sports car, you wouldn’t put regular fuel in it, right? You just wouldn’t do that. And if you had a house that you had to live in for the next 50, 60, 70 years, how would you take care of that house? You get one body.”

RESOURCES & REFERENCES
Willpower Doesn’t Work by Ben Hardy
MyFitnessPal (app)
Eight Sleep
Dr. Peter Attia
Dr. Andrew Huberman
Andy Galpin
Outlive by Peter Attia
Streaks (app)
StepsApp
Five Minute Journal (app)