0 (2s):
Who's ready to rock Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like business infrastructure. Today, we'll be focusing on how to win at work and succeed at life to drop these value bonds. I brought Michael Hyatt into EOFire studios. Michael is the chairman and founder of Michael Hyatt and company under his leadership. Michael Hyatt and Company has been featured in the Inc 5,000 list of the fastest-growing companies in America for three years in a row and inks best workplaces in 2020. He is the author of several New York times wall street, journal and USA today bestselling books, including platform living forward at your best year, ever free to focus vision-driven leader in his newest book, win at work and succeed at life.

0 (52s):
And today Fire Nation, we'll be talking about the concept of the double win. We'll talk about the five principles to free yourself from the cult of overwork and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, their matching technology finds these qualified candidates for you and invites them to apply. So while other companies give you too many options, ZipRecruiter finds you the needle in the haystack. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire. Your expertise is unique in your online courses should be too. So build it your way with Thinkific.

0 (1m 32s):
Introducing the first app store for online course creators on Thinkific. Sign up for your free trial of Thinkific at Thinkific.com/firefree. That's THINKIFIC.com/firefree. Michael, say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree.

1 (1m 54s):
Hey, what's up Fire Nation, John, thanks for having me on. Yeah. I would say something that, that is controversial in some circles and that is, there is no long-term success without work-life balance. You will burn up, break down, have some kind of crisis. If you don't give attention to the non work areas of your life, which of course is the subject of my new book.

0 (2m 18s):
And that's what we're here to talk about today. Fire Nation. Cause we want you to win at work and succeed at life. It's not an either or, and I can tell you if you could have been part of a little pre-interview chat that Michael and I just had, we were both kind of geeking out a little bit on health and wellness because we're both being like, you know what, it's great to be successful on the business and work side of life. But if you can't combine that with your spectacular health, I mean, waking up in the morning, right. Or charge the day and feeling great, looking great. Then at the end of the day, is it all worthwhile? And I love Michael your concept of the double win. Can you break down this concept for Fire Nation?

1 (2m 56s):
Yeah, absolutely. So the double win is when don't have to choose between winning at work and succeeding at life, they work together. And let me just tell a story that will kind of set this up. And this is one that I, I begin the book with. So about 20 years ago, I was hired at a big publishing company to manage one of their 14 book publishing divisions. And this particular division was dead last in every significant financial metric. So it hadn't grown in a couple of years. In fact, it was shrinking and it was not profitable. We'd lost money the previous year. So the CEO asked me, we're publicly held. He asked me, he said, how long it's going to take you to turn this division around? And I didn't have a clue, but I picked a number out of the air.

1 (3m 37s):
And I said, I think it'll take about three years. And he said, okay, you got it. So I went back to the team, shared a vision of what I thought could happen. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work and we were working 70 to 80 hours a week. We were not working or we were working through the weekends traveling like crazy, but John, we did it. And in fact, we did it in half the time that I had told the CEO. So in 18 months we went from number 14 to number one in terms of fastest growing division in the company from number 14, to number one, in terms of the most profitable division in the company. And as a result, I got the biggest bonus check that I'd ever received in my career. It was more than my annual salary. So I just knew that my wife Gail was going to be thrilled with this.

1 (4m 19s):
So I walked in the front door, unfurled the cheque, expecting her to be ecstatic. Cause she's always been my biggest cheerleader. And she kind of looked at me and said, we need to talk. And my heart sank because I knew it was going to be one of those pivotal conversations that I wasn't sure I was ready for. But we walked into the den. We sat down and she began to tear up and she said, you know, I appreciate so much all that you do for our family. And I love you dearly, but I gotta be honest with you. You are never home. And even when you are, you're not fully present and your five girls need you now more than ever.

1 (4m 60s):
And she said, you know, if I'm honest, then she began to cry. She said, I feel like a single mom. And I just don't know how much longer I can hang on John. That was a gut kick. I, you know, I thought I'd reached the pinnacle of success, but it was a false summit. And so it was at that moment that I, I, I felt like I was facing what we call in the book, the impossible choice. You can either win at work or you can succeed at life. And, and most people faced with that choice do one or the other. And so today we have a lot of celebrity entrepreneurs advocating what we call them, the book, the hustle fallacy, where, you know, you just work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, crank you'll put in the hours, crank out the work.

1 (5m 45s):
And eventually you'll be able to slow down and give attention to your health, your most important relationships and, and be able to have some semblance of balance. There are some people that choose sort of the opposite approach and, and we call this the ambition break, where they just pumped the brakes on their career. And they say, look, it's, it's not worth blowing out my personal health or my most important relationships. So I will settle for less than what I know I'm capable of in my career. We think. And by the way, I wrote this book with my oldest daughter, Megan, who's the CEO of Michael Highland company now, but I, but we believe that's a false choice that, that it's not either, or as you said, but it's both.

1 (6m 26s):
And, and that's the double way, double

0 (6m 28s):
Win Fire Nation. And I hope you're listening to migraine right now. You're asking yourself these important questions, are you right now climbing a false summits. Think about that. Are you putting yourself in a situation where you're facing an impossible choice? These are hard questions, but important ones you want to answer now, not five years, not 10 years from now. And your book's subtitle. Michael is five principles to free yourself from the cult of overwork. Why did you choose the subtitle?

1 (6m 59s):
We really came to the conclusion as we listened to a lot of people like Elon Musk, for example, which has done amazing things in the world. But when he advocates that people should be working 80 to a hundred hours a week, and he's done that at numerous entrepreneurial conferences, because he said, if you can put in that kind of time, you can do in three to four months, what your competitors will take a year to do. And that'll give you a competitive advantage. But what he doesn't share is he's now in his third marriage, his five sons by his own admission, don't speak to him. You know, it's coming at considerable cost. And I know, you know, his driving passion in life is to go to Mars, but he might be there alone when it's all said and done.

1 (7m 42s):
And, and this is kind of a cult and it has all the same kind of addictive properties that, you know, alcoholism would have or any of their substance abuse or even unhealthy religion. And, and that's why we named it that, you know, at the, at the time we're recording this just yesterday, bill and Melinda gates announced, or maybe it was two days ago, announced that they're getting divorced after 27 years. And I did a lot of research on that. Cause I was curious about, you know, why. And one of the things that that Melinda said is that that bill just couldn't achieve work-life balance. And I don't sit in judgment of him because that could have been me if Gail hadn't intervened.

1 (8m 24s):
And if I hadn't had a change in the trajectory of my life, I could very well be there. Thankfully, Gail I've been married 43 years. We now have not only our five daughters, four grand or nine grandkids, but, but that's, that's, it's not perfect, but it was a result of realizing that this was going to end up in a bad place. And I think that's what people don't often consider out the front end of this, where is the true trajectory of my life going? If I don't make a course correction, where am I going to end up compare

0 (8m 56s):
And despair, I've talked about this before, and this is a little different direction when Michael was talking about, but I think it's important when he brought up Elon Musk, because so many people are comparing themselves to people like Elon Musk and saying like, look at what he's created. Look at what he's building. Like when you compare yourself to someone like that, fire nation, of course, you're only going to despair because you're comparing sometimes the wrong things. Like if Ilan compared his relationships with mine and Kate's, or with Michael and Gail's guess what he would despair because you know, we have incredible relationships and he unfortunately does not. So the only person you should be comparing yourself to is you yesterday, fire nation, are you winning that comparison going forward? And you can use this book, you know, how to win at work and succeed at life to get going forward and start winning that comparison with yourself yesterday, by moving in the right directions.

0 (9m 49s):
Michael, one thing that I am concerned about as a lot of people in my audience are consuming this content, which is the right content, but they are high achievers. And a lot of times high achievers, not all, but a lot of them do seem to only, and I mean only want to work, work, work. Why is it important to also focus on things besides work? Yeah.

1 (10m 10s):
You know, we did a lot of research for this book and there's been so much work done on this topic in recent years. But one of the things we discovered in one of the principles, one of the five principles to free yourself from the cult of overwork is to realize that there's incredible power in non achievement. Now I coach a lot of entrepreneurs. We have 750 people in our coaching program. And when they come into the program, a lot of times what they will tell me is they don't have any hobbies because what their work is, their hobby, right? I've said the same thing. I love my work. You know, it's very difficult for me to tear myself away from my work. But here's the thing when I'm engaged in hobbies, when non achievement based hobbies, like I love to fish, I love to golf.

1 (10m 52s):
I play guitar. When I do those things, it actually rejuvenates me in a way that access is different parts of my brain so that when I come back to work, I'm not only more well-rounded, but I'm rejuvenated, I'm focused, I'm more creative, I'm more productive and all the science points to that. And if you look at the, you know, sort of the history of the people that have made the biggest mark on history, whether it's Einstein or Steinbeck or all these different artists and scientists, most of those people are not putting in the kind of crazy hours that people are advocating for today. What they did was they went on long walks or they painted, or they had a hobby or something that contributed to their achievement.

1 (11m 37s):
Now they didn't settle for less than their achievement, but they had a different strategy for going about it. And that's what we're advocating in this book is there is incredible power in non achievement, as well as rest. You know, that's another, another principle altogether.

0 (11m 52s):
And this is again where Mike and I were kind of geeking out a little bit before the interview started about some things that we're doing to really focus on our health, our wellness, our rejuvenation, like I personally love that word. I mean, rejuvenation something about it. I'm just like, I feel better just saying that word, but you know, something that I'm doing and actually I will have already done by the time you hear these words is leaving in two days on a 14 day wellness retreats up north of San Francisco in a town called Santa Rosa, where I'm going to be going through a 10 day water, fast supervised, you know, with the doctors and physicians as a whole clinic and a whole wellness retreat. And then what I'm most excited about, I'm excited about the whole thing. But what I'm most excited about is, and the reason why I'm really going is because I finished that 14 day wellness retreat after my 10 day water fast with four days of supervised and essentially educating me on the correct refeeding process when it comes to not eating for anything except consuming just water.

0 (12m 53s):
Only for 10 days, you need to know how to re feed correctly, getting back into it. So this to me is going to be a whole rejuvenation process. I'm bringing some pleasure books. I've been wanting to read for a long time. I'm bringing my meditation apps, I'm bringing a journal. I mean, I'm going to be doing a lot of rejuvenation over these two weeks because you know, like Michael actually recently launched a book. The, the, the common path to uncommon success might be, you might want to ear Muff here a little bit, because I did 345 interviews on other shows in two and a half months. That was really not a ton of work-life balance right there, if I'm being honest, but I was just committed for my first and maybe only traditionally published book, like who knows what the future holds.

0 (13m 36s):
But for my first one, I was just committed to going all out. And so I just cleared the schedule and just went all in on other people's platforms and did 345 interviews on other shows in two and half months. But I was committed fire nation. After that, to taking the time to rejuvenate, to relax. I planned this wellness retreats. I haven't, honestly, since the book launched about a month ago, I've been doing much of anything except relaxing and keeping the wheels going of course, in the business. But rejuvenation has been the focus and we're going to be talking about this type of stuff in a more impactful and even more meaningful way. When we get backfire nation from thanking our sponsors as entrepreneurs, we have unique expertise and goals.

0 (14m 18s):
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0 (14m 59s):
You're invited to try it out for free for 30 days right now, visit Thinkific.com/firefree to sign up and get started on your online course today. That's THINKIFIC.com/firefree. If you're a business owner who's hiring, you probably face a lot of challenges when it comes to finding the right person for your role, like not having enough applicants with the right skills or experience. That's why hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure. You can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire. When you post a job on zip recruiter, it gets sent out to over a hundred top job sites with one click.

0 (15m 41s):
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0 (16m 25s):
A lot of people would think it'd be the opposite, but you found that it fosters these three things. How so?

1 (16m 31s):
So counter-intuitive, isn't it, but I'll tell you what happened right after I had that conversation with Gail. You know, I was at a place where I realized, I don't know how to do anything else, but work. And if I'm going to change the trajectory of my life, I need outside help. And I really believe in coaching. I really believe in getting, you know, the best coaches that you can afford. And so I decided I was going to hire an executive coach. So, you know, we did about a three, a three hour onboarding meeting where he did some assessments and some deep analysis. And then he said to me, he said this. He said, you know, it seems to me that you're living life without constraints. And he said, tell me if I'm wrong. But he said, my guess is that in the middle of the afternoon, when you realize you're not going to finish your impossibly long to do list that you say to yourself, no problem.

1 (17m 17s):
I'll go home. I'll eat a bite with the kids. And then I'll crack open my laptop and keep working. He said right or wrong. And I said, that's exactly right. That's exactly how I live. He said, my guess is that you get to Friday afternoon and you realize you're not going to finish your impossibly long list by the end of the week. And you say to yourself, no problem. I'll just come into the office on Friday or Saturday morning or I'll work Sunday night, but I'll get it done. And he said, tell me if I'm right or wrong on this, but you're probably the kind of person that goes on a vacation and you look forward to it because you're going to get up several hours before the family gets up. So you could work on project that you haven't been able to find time for at work. And I said, look guilty as charged. I do all three of those things. And he said, he said, well, here's what I want to do.

1 (18m 0s):
I want you to establish some constraints. And he said, I'll explain to you why in a moment. But he said, he said, what time are you willing to quit each night? And I'm talking about closing your laptop and not open it again till the next morning. And he said, I don't care what time it is, you know, make it easy on yourself, but pick a time. I said, okay, how about 6:00 PM? He said, perfect. So he said, what about the weekends? And I said, well, I'm willing to, you know, not work on the weekends. And what about vacations? I'm willing to now work on vacations. Okay, great. So then he said to me, he said, I'm sure given those commitments, you won't mind if I call Gail periodically and check in on how you're doing.

1 (18m 41s):
And John that's exactly what he did. I mean, in that moment, it got real because you know, I wasn't going to be able to spin it. Right. I wasn't going to be able to, you know, self-report, my wife was going to report on how I was doing that kind of accountability was huge, but here's why that worked. When you don't have constraints, you get to the middle of the afternoon and you just say to yourself, you know, I can scroll Facebook or I can get involved in some conversation or I can get distracted. I don't really have to prioritize because I've always got the evening to finish my work or I've got the weekend or I've got my vacation to bail me out. When you have a hard stop. I don't care if it's at 6:00 PM or now I actually quit at 3:00 PM.

1 (19m 24s):
But if you have a hard stop, you can't afford to get sidetracked. You can't afford to get distracted. Every day becomes like the Friday before you go on vacation. You know? And that's like the most Uber productive day of the year is when you're working on that Friday before vacation. Cause cause you realize you've got a hard stop. So establishing constraints, whatever they are is the secret to productivity, creativity, and frankly greater freedom. And it gives you the space to develop other aspects of your life. So they don't have to

0 (19m 54s):
Fire nation. I'm a big believer in Parkinson's law because tasks will expand to the time allotted and listen, Michael's a writer. He's a fantastic writer. He's always been a great writer. I'm not a writer. Like I had to literally create restraints when I was writing my first traditionally published book, otherwise it never would have got done. So my constraints were two hours a day for eight months I wrote. And that was it. That was all the time that I had. And I use a Pomodoro method to keep me on track. So I literally would watch the first few seconds go off that timer. And I knew I only had the next one hour and 40 and 59 minutes and so many odd seconds to write, to get to my 500 to a thousand word goal per day.

0 (20m 35s):
And that's it. That's what I would have had. That was my constraints. And I couldn't procrastinate once I hit that start button on that timer. And I just use those constraints to foster productivity, to foster creativity in the overall foster freedom. So let's talk Michael about work life balance. Is it a myth?

1 (20m 54s):
There's a lot of people that would like you to think it's a myth. And when somebody tells me that work-life balance is the best. And you know, I get that a lot, especially people on the front end of our program. I know that number one, they've probably settled for that because they haven't figured out an alternative strategy, right? Or they have a misunderstanding about what balance is. First of all, balance is not this Zen state. That's a one and done kind of thing where, where you're giving the same attention, focus and effort to every domain of life. Now think how stupid would this, this would be if we tried to apply this practically, like this morning, I was in the gym for 45 minutes. Like I am every weekday.

1 (21m 36s):
I don't need to spend six hours in the gym because I'm going to be spending six hours at work. And I need to ha give us the same time and attention to everything. No. What balance means is that I'm giving the appropriate attention, focus and effort to each of my, my life domains, Galen, I don't spend six hours a day together. She doesn't want that much time with me. I don't want that much time with her, but we spend the appropriate amount of time together. So that, so that, that's what I mean by balance. And the other thing about balance too, is like I said, it's not a one and done thing. It's more like a gymnast who's walking across a balance beam. It takes constant adjustment, constant recalibration, constant reshifting and positioning because we naturally go out of balance.

1 (22m 22s):
And so we have to work to stay in balance. And I think that's a, you know, it's, it's important that we define what we mean when we talk about work-life balance before we, you know, create a straw man, and then try to, you know, dismiss it.

0 (22m 34s):
Are you defining these parameters? I hope after this interview, the answer is absolutely. And Michael, obviously we want to learn more. We want to know more about winning at work and succeeding at life. Where do you want fire nation to go, to pick up a copy of this book and read it from cover to cover?

1 (22m 56s):
Well, the best place to go is your favorite retailer by the book. You know, obviously it's available on Amazon BarnesAndNoble.com and all the other retailer sites, but hang on to your receipt and then go back to WinAndSucceedBook.com/eof. So that's a site that we've created just for your listeners, John, just for the fire nation. So again, WinAndSucceedBook.com/eof, and there you'll find more than $500 worth of free bonuses. When you turn in your receipt, these are bonuses that are going to help you implement what we teach in women, work and succeed at life faster, easier, and cheaper. And there's a lot of cool bonuses that are available by our nation.

0 (23m 39s):
When Michael Hyatt creates bonuses, these are real valuable bonuses. Please take advantage of them because you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with MH and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And just remember when you're reading this book, you're actually hanging out with Michael because he wrote this book. He's the author. And that's part of your average for that day. I want you to head over to eofire.com. If you type Hyatt's HYATT in the search bar, all the amazing episodes I've dealt with Michael over the past decade will pop right up, listen to all of them, take a little time capsule over the, he hears you will enjoy every one of these conversations that we've had. And one more time, Michael, before we let you go, what is that direct URL you want fire nation to go to

1 (23m 10s):
WinAndSucceedBook.com/EOF.

0 (24m 29s):
Michael, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value bombs with fire nation today. For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks John. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bond content was brought to you by Michael and fire nation. One thing that I identified over the years is that successful entrepreneurs are productive, disciplined, and they are focused, which is why I created the mastery journal, which is a gorgeous full of the journal that will ensure that you master productivity, discipline, and focus. And 100 days it is my best work ever

2 (25m 2s):
Up until the common path to success.

0 (25m 4s):
Visit TheMasteryJournal.com use promo code PODCAST for a $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I will catch you there. Or I will catch you on the flip side. Hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, their matching technology finds these qualified candidates for you and invites them to apply. So while other companies give you too many options, ZipRecruiter finds you the needle in the haystack. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire. Your expertise is unique in your online courses should be too. So build it your way with Thinkific.

0 (25m 45s):
Introducing the first app store for online course creators on Thinkific. Sign up for your free trial of Thinkific at Thinkific.com/firefree that's THINKIFIC.com/firefree.