How to Win at Work and Succeed at Life with Michael Hyatt: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like No Straight Path. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down how to win at work and succeed at life. To drop these value bombs, I brought Michael Hyatt into EO Fire Studios. Michael is the chairman and founder of Michael Hyatt & Company. Under his leadership, Michael Hyatt & Company has been featured in the Inc. 5000 list on the fastest growing companies in America for three years in a row.

0:33In today's foundation, we'll talk about what people would like you to think about work-life balance, how the double win is when you don't have to choose between winning at work and succeeding in life, establishing constraints, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Michael and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work.

1:02A recent an episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success, a must listen. Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com.

1:36Michael, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? John, thanks for having me on. Yeah, I would say something 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. And that's what we're here to talk about today, Fire Nation, because we want you to win at work and succeed at life.

2:15It'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 just spectacular health, I mean, waking up in the morning ready to 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?

2:46Yeah, absolutely. So the double win is when you don't have to choose between winning at work and succeeding at life. They work together. And let me just tell a story that'll kind of set this up. And this is one 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.

3:22He asked me, he said, how long is it 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 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, you know, 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.

3:59And 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. So I walked in the front door, Unfurled the check expecting her to be ecstatic because 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 got to be honest with you you are never home.

4:41And even when you are, you're not fully present and your five girls need you now more than ever. 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 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 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 in the book the hustle fallacy.

5:29Where, you know, you just work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, crank, you know, put in the hours, crank out the work, and eventually you'll be able to slow down, give attention to your health, your most important relationships, 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 pump 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 hiding company now, but I but we believe that's a false choice that it's not either or, as you said, but it's both and.

6:16And that's the double win. Double win, Fire Nation. And I hope you're listening to Michael right now and you're asking yourself these important questions. Are you right now climbing a false summit? 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 wanna 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? 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.

6:57But when he advocates that people should be working 80 to 100 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 come at, at considerable costs. 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.

7:33And, 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 were recording this just yesterday, um, Bill and Melinda Gates announced, or maybe it was two days ago and they're getting divorced after 27 years. And I, I did a lot of research on that because I was curious about why. And one of the things that Melinda said is that Bill just couldn't achieve work-life balance. And I don't sit in judgment of him because that could have been me.

8:12If Gail hadn't intervened and if I hadn't had a change in the trajectory of my life, I could very well be there. Thankfully, Gail and I have 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 at the front end of this where is the their trajectory of my life going if i don't make a course correction where am i going to end up compare and despair i've talked about this before and this is a little different direction what 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.

8:58Look 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 Elon 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 direction.

9:39And Michael, one thing that I am concerned about is 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, 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, and 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.

10:17Now, 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, I play guitar, when I do those things, it actually rejuvenates me in a way. that accesses different parts of my brain so that when I come back to work, I'm not only more well-rounded, but I'm rejuvenated.

10:56I'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, you know, 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. Now, they didn't settle for less than their achievement, but they had a different strategy for going about it.

11:34And that's what we're advocating in this book is there's incredible power in non-achievement as well as rest. You know, it's another principle altogether. And Fire Nation, this is again, where Michael 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.

12:18And then, um, what I'm most excited about, I'm excited about the whole thing, but, um, 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 only for 10 days. You need to know how to refeed correctly, getting back into it. And so this to me is gonna be a whole rejuvenation process. I'm bringing some pleasure books I've been wanting to read for a long time.

12:55I'm bringing my meditation apps. I'm bringing a journal. I mean, I'm gonna be doing a lot of rejuvenation over these two weeks because, you know, like Michael, I actually recently launched a book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. And Michael, you might want to earmuff 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. But for my first one, I was just committed to going all out.

13:29And 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 a half months. but I was committed, Fire Nation, after that to taking the time to rejuvenate, to relax. I planned this wellness retreat. I haven't honestly, since the book launched about a month ago, 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 back, Fire Nation, from thanking our sponsors.

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15:49Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. So Michael, we're back and over the years, you found that constraints actually foster productivity, creativity, and freedom. A lot of people would think it'd be the opposite, but you found that it fosters these three things. How so? Yeah, it's so counterintuitive, 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.

16:26And 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, three hour onboarding meeting where he did some assessments and some deep analysis. And, 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.

17:02I'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.

17:33So you can work on that 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. 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 until 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 p.m.? He said, perfect.

18:07So 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 not 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. 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. 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.

18:43When 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 p.m. or now I actually quit at 3 p.m., 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.

19:18And that's like the most uber productive day of the year is when you're working on that Friday before vacation because 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 atrophy. 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.

19:56Otherwise, 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 used the 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 59 minutes and so many odd seconds to write to get to my 500 to 1 ,000 word goal per day. And that's it. That's what I 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, and to overall foster freedom.

20:33So let's talk, Michael, about work-life balance. Is it a myth? 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 a myth, and 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.

21:12Now think how stupid would this, this would be if we tried to apply this practically like this This morning, I was in the gym for 45 minutes like I am every weekday. 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 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 life domains. Gail and 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.

21:48And 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. And so we have to work to stay in balance. And I think that's a, you know, 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. Fire Nation, are you defining these parameters? I hope after this interview, the answer is absolutely.

22:27And 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? Well, the best place to go is your favorite retailer. Buy the book. 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 slash EOF. So that's the site that we've created just for your listeners, John, just for the Fire Nation. So again, winandsucceedbook.com slash EOF. and there you'll find more than$500 worth of free bonuses when you turn in your receipt.

23:13These are bonuses that are gonna help you implement what we teach in Win and Work at Succeed at Life faster, easier, and cheaper. And there's a lot of cool bonuses that are available there. Fire Nation, 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.

23:46I want you to head over to eofire.com. If you type Hyatt, H-Y-A-T-T in the search bar, all the amazing episodes I've done with Michael over the past decade will pop right up. Listen to all of them. Take a little time capsule over the years. 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. Winandsucceedbook.com forward slash EOF. Michael, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value bombs with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side.

24:23Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Michael and Fire Nation. One thing that I've 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 other journal that will ensure that you master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days. It is my best work ever up until the common path to uncommon success. Visit themasteryjournal.com. Use promo code podcast for a$15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcast. And I will catch you there or I will catch you on the flip side.