No Willpower Required: Overcoming Habits with Alcohol and Thriving in Entrepreneurship with Mike Hardenbrook

0:01Boom! Shake the room, 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 inclusion and marketing. Today, we'll be breaking down how there is no willpower required, overcoming habits with alcohol, and thriving in entrepreneurship. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Mike Hardenbrook into EO Fire Studios. Mike co-founded and sold multiple online businesses. He currently works with CEOs to execute on operations and growth. He is the author of No Willpower Required, a Neuroscience Approach to Change Your Habits with Alcohol.

0:40And today, for the nation, we'll talk about how big a deal is alcoholism as it pertains to entrepreneurs. We'll talk about in-between drinkers. We'll talk about time reclamation. Of course, the neuroscience that can help you here. We'll talk about the scrum method and self-evaluation and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mike and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

1:17A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Hostinger is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to hostinger.com slash onfire and use code onfire for an exclusive 10 % discount. That's hostinger.com slash onfire and the code onfire. Mike, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Thanks, John. What's up, Fire Nation? I think that one of the things that people might disagree with is I don't think that success is all about reaching the goals that you wrote down in your notebook or set up high, you know, in your mind.

2:07Because I think that that perspective is a really rigid goal setting one that can limit people's potential. So instead, I think you need to look at goal setting and everything as a journey and as an exploration that can adapt as you go through it. And you have to be open to serendipity, allowed to experience new opportunities that might take you in a new path organically that are completely different from the goals that you wrote down. You gotta be agile, Fire Nation. I mean, you've gotta be able to pivot, adjust on your feet. Things are always changing. Things are always evolving. And what you're doing every day might lead you to uncover something that you're even more excited about, even more fired up about.

2:50Follow that path. I love this conversation. And as I mentioned, we're talking about no willpower required. That's the title of this episode. We're talking about overcoming habits with alcohol and thriving in entrepreneurship. And that is what we are, Fire Nation. We are entrepreneurs. And I want to start off, Mike, by just asking you, how big of a problem is alcoholism as it pertains to entrepreneurship in your experience, in your opinion? I think it's a big problem, but let me clarify something. the people that I'd like to address are what I call in between drinkers. And so I'll lay out the landscape a little bit of how drinkers exist.

3:28So what I call 70-20-10. So 70 % of people don't drink or are very light drinkers, as in like one or two beers a month or something like that. 20 % of people are what would be considered moderate drinkers. And 10 % would be what you'd consider as AUD or alcoholics, and that 10 % accounts for 50 % of the alcohol consumption. Now, that 20 % is still a really big segment of the population, and in that category is what I call in-between drinkers because they're regular drinkers. It might be problematic. It's not problematic enough for it to be painful to seek some sort of 12-step or AA solution, and it wouldn't be relevant.

4:13And they also don't identify with the other 70%. And so that's what I started thinking about because I experienced it myself, kind of sitting in that moderate to moderate to heavy with no real direction on how do I change this habit? Because at that point and at that stage, it really is just a bad habit that's problematic. And what did that look like for you specifically? Like over the course of a day, a week, what are you consuming when it comes to alcohol? I had a lifestyle business in my 20s, which meant that I pretty much could make Friday, any day of Friday, and I was only accountable to myself.

4:48And also a lot of entrepreneurs here would identify that it's really hard to shut down. There's no set working hours as an entrepreneur. And so for me, it began after grad school when I hit this no accountability zone with enough money to support everything I needed without a boss, without working hours. and the only way I could shut off is by opening a bottle of wine in the evening. I wasn't a day drinker. I wasn't like going out and doing crazy parties and drugs. It was just a nightly routine with wine that would then lead to really sleep, that would then lead to low productivity, that would lead to a person that I just felt like I wasn't meant to be.

5:30I optimized everything in my life from diet and exercise to biohacking to supplementation. And yet here I was with this habit. And I didn't really kind of know where to go from there. I think this is a really important conversation because you brought up such a great point with this domino effect. You know, you go out one night, you have a few too many drinks, you wake up the next morning, you get a bad night's sleep. So you're kind of tired and cranky and you kind of feel like crafts. And then you're laying around the couch. You're probably eating crappy food. Some people are like, well, the hair of the dog.

6:04So maybe you have another drink or two. Maybe you don't, but you just don't feel great. And you kind of want to do something to make yourself feel better. So maybe you go out that night to kind of spice things up. And then it's just like another bad night of sleep and then another missed exercise session. And then you're getting off the wagon a little bit as far as like with your exercise routine. And this domino effect can really take place and it can be something, Fire Nation that you really need to look out for. And I'm not going to lie, like I had my time in my 20s. I went to a great party college.

6:31I loved every minute of it. In my 20s, you know, in the Army, we work hard, we play hard. So we definitely played hard on our long weekends that we had a lot. And then after that, you know, I didn't have a ton of responsibilities in my life. I didn't have a huge business. I didn't have a ton of, you know, financial responsibilities. So I could kind of just get by and spend a lot of time to having fun until like Mike's kind of talking about, I looked in the mirror one day and I'm like, you know, this isn't really congruent to how I want to live, to how I'm picturing myself as a human. I picture myself as a human in this way where like I get to talk to the smartest people in the world.

7:08You know, I could really focus on how I eat, how I sleep, how I exercise, how I do all these things. And yet I'm not, Why am I not doing that? And at some point, I hope that a lot of people come to that realization, hopefully a lot sooner than later, because bad habits can develop. And you talked about this in-between drinkers. We're going to maybe circle back to that a little bit more in depth in a minute. But I want to talk about neuroscience, because Mike, you found that neuroscience can actually shape an entrepreneur's alcohol choices. How so? That's part of the entire story here is that I got to a point where there wasn't really a resource on, okay, I can get 30 days, but I white knuckle it, willpower through 30 days.

7:52But then I got to a place where it just, it didn't do any lasting change. And it was super common, you know, think about all the people that say they're going to do sober October and they don't do it. I mean, it's very hard to sustain a change without a structure or without like awareness about what's going on, why you're craving things. And so I started approaching it from just a neuroscience and a habits. And it's really neuroscience is not complicated when we're talking about it in this context. It's really about how the brain forms, sustains, and changes habits over time. And so you perform an action repeatedly, your brain is going to form neural pathways to make that behavior more efficient.

8:35And once it recognizes that it's efficient, it becomes a habit because you're starting to do it over and over again. And that pathway becomes more ingrained into your mind. And it also, the more ingrained it gets, the harder it is for you to break from that. So alcohol is a very efficient habit to create. And the reason for that is that there's something called a likelihood versus outcome. So whenever you make a decision on something, you kind of, what is it I want to achieve? So with alcohol, it's generally, you know, I want to feel good or have pleasure or I want to relieve pain or anxiety or whatever, depression, whatever it is.

9:18And the short term outcome with alcohol is almost 100 percent. Right. And so like when your brain knows that 100 percent plus the dopamine hit that it takes with the alcohol itself chemically, it makes it really easy to form a habit that's very difficult to break. Fire Nation, there's a couple of things I want you to think about with what Mike just shared. Number one, if you're ever finding that you're using the phrase white knuckling it for 30 days to get through something, there's probably something there that you have created habitually as a habit. Because honestly, it shouldn't be that hard for any of us to not drink alcohol for 30 days, to not do anything that is a quote unquote addictive substance for 30 days if we're not addicted, addicted.

10:03If it's quote unquote, not a problem. If you're white knuckling something, there's a problem. You need to think about what the next steps are. And we have a lot to talk about around this when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Happy 2024 Fire Nation. Q1 is here and that means new goals, more growth and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads, Let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year. The new HubSpot Sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps.

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12:23Mike, we're back and I want to talk about time reclamation because you found that time reclamation can boost an entrepreneur's efficiency, which I would like to hear more about. And I want to talk about how this pertains to the topic that we're talking about today. Yeah, you touched a little bit on it earlier, talking about habits or laying around with the hangover or whatever but you know a lot of people that I would like look to early on about okay how do I change my habits with alcohol a lot of people like would just lean heavy into alcohol is poison and alcohol is costing you a ton of money neither of those things while they're factual changed anything to motivate me but as an entrepreneur one thing that's super valuable, probably the most valuable is our time.

13:13And I'll tell you a story then one day that it kind of clicked is that I went to this business conference and I was not drinking at the time. And I saw all the guys in the lobby, you know, having the after the conference drinks. And so I decided I was going to go for a long bike ride. It was in Miami and went on the beach. It was great. I listened to an audio book. I got back. They were still there. I went up to my room. I I planned my next day. I even might have hit the gym. I don't remember, but I was highly productive. Went back down for something at the front desk. A lot of the guys were still there, not standing quite as straight as they were.

13:49Woke up the next morning at 5 a.m., got to journaling, did my mindfulness techniques, worked out, did some early work. And I had half a day done by 7 a.m. and you better believe that not only did those guys lose all that time, I started thinking about that morning. I was like, man, those guys are like not productive. It's highly likely that they're still sleeping. They're going to piece together the rest of the day. So I started breaking it down about how much time you actually sacrifice when you're drinking because it's not the time that you're drinking. It's the time that you're drinking. It is the impact it has on your sleep.

14:29almost every other drink that you have starts to decrease your sleep efficiency by 20 percent sleeping in later than you probably would so let's say instead of 5 a.m you get up 7 8 at best you know then you have to deal with a hangover and then maybe by the afternoon you might be clear enough to even be close to your optimal self or even 50 percent of that and I realized that like every day that you drink, you pretty much lose 30 % to 40 % of your day productivity just based on that one action. And if you're doing it every night, even at moderation, but it's causing some problems the next day, you literally could be losing 30 % of your entire year.

15:14Man, that really adds up, Fire Nation. For those of you that want to accomplish something meaningful in life, that want to impact the world or at least solve a very important problem, man, this is just time that you cannot give up to accomplish that goal. Now, a lot of us have heard of the Scrum Method. Mike, can the Scrum Method help redefine alcohol habits? Yeah, it was kind of just a stumble upon thing. You know, I used it at being a tech entrepreneur. that I've used the scrum method so many times to tackle big projects and chunk them down and it's really about doing short sprints of work in a team and with accountability and with alcohol to really get long-standing habit change you need a minimum of 66 days it really for a more calm medium to complex habit like alcohol you can't just do 30 days that's why i would go 30 days and just fall off you have to sustain it long enough that it actually like becomes automatic in your mind and 66 days you know i think a lot of the reason that people out there that have programs they don't want to say 66 days because 30 days is a lot easier to sell to people and for me to get to sit down and say you got to do 66 days and then they're at 65, 64.

16:42That's really difficult. But with the scrum method, you can set small achievable goals. You can plan out and tackle those goals. So, okay, today I'm going to do these mindfulness practices in the morning. If urges and triggers arise, what am I going to do? Am I going to do something like urge surfing? Am I going to do something like take a walk and then also plan in okay in order to change this complex habit I need a new habit with a reward to replace it and doing that on a daily basis with just journaling and writing about that and then having that daily stand up with yourself is the accountability and planning part and then on a weekly basis you can do the same thing as the scrump went to development, you review the progress that you've had so far, and then you adjust your plan accordingly to how the previous week went.

17:36Fire Nation, these are methods that you can employ today, literally, in your life to start moving in the right direction. And this kind of all goes back to a self-evaluation. You talked about journaling a lot. I mean, that's one of the best things about journaling is it's self-reflection, it's self-evaluation. And you're a big believer that self-evaluation can actually improve the entrepreneurial mindset and habits when it comes to alcohol. How so? I think self-evaluation is really important at the start of trying to tackle on something big, especially in the context that we're talking right now.

18:13But I think an overlooked thing very often, especially when it comes to alcohol, is the self-evaluation when you're doing and good because there's this thing that I call the forgetful mind. This forgetful mind doesn't remember the reason that you took this journey on in the first place. It doesn't remember kind of the low days that you maybe were sitting at. But if we sit down and self-reflect at certain milestones, so let's say 30 days, let's say 60 days, you can look back and evaluate, okay, hey, my sleep is better, my relationships are better, I'm waking up more early, I'm getting more done, generally I'm happier, my kids know that I'm present 100%.

19:02And then you realize, whoa, you know, let's keep this thing going. Or if you decide you kind of want to reintroduce this change and you made a reset of the habit, recalibration, instead of like giving it up forever, you just wanted to recalibrate, then it's important to self-evaluate as that progresses so that you can remind yourself, okay, no, actually 30 days ago I was doing a lot better and maybe I need to reconsider where I go long-term. Mike, give us the key takeaway from our entire conversation today. I mean, we've been talking about how there's no willpower required, overcoming habits with alcohol and thriving in entrepreneurship.

19:41We talked about a lot of great stuff in between drinkers, time reclamation, the scrum method, self-evaluation, neuroscience, of course, which is really interesting. What's the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? I think the biggest takeaway is that if you approach your habits with the same dedication, the same resolve that you have for your own business, and really give it effort and planning, you can change pretty much any habit with awareness, with mindfulness, with planning and execution. And you have a book. You have a call to action for Fire Nation.

20:21Give those to us now. What's the best place that we can go to learn more about this topic and you? Absolutely. So you can check out the early release of my book at Hardenbrook, which is my last name, dot com backslash NWR. Fire Nation, you're 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. For links to everything we talked about today, visit eofire.com. Just type Mike, M-I-K-E, in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Mike, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your experience, your value with Fire Nation today.

21:00For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, JLD. You're the man. Hey, Fire Nation. A huge thank you to our sponsors and Mike for sponsoring today's episode. and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams.

21:36Visit uncommonsuccessbook.com. I'll see you there or on the flip side.

22:09is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to hostinger.com slash onfire and use code onfire for an exclusive 10 % discount. That's hostinger.com slash onfire and the code onfire.