The Hidden Bottleneck in Your Business: Your Nervous System (And What Top AI Founders Are Doing About It) with Stephen Zerfas

0:01John Lee Dumas:Light that spark fire nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down the hidden bottleneck in your business, your nervous system, and what top AI founders are doing about it. And to draw these vibe bombs, I brought Stephen Versus in the EO Fire studios. Stephen is the CEO of Journey, which has trained over 1 ,400 people, including OpenAI and Anthropic founders, to reach profound meditative states in a week, which previously believed required to take thousands of hours. So today we talk about why meditation fails, stress and performance, accessing ultra states, and oh, so much more.

0:37John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Steven and our sponsors. Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. If you're feeling stuck or like you're ready to get to the next level in your career, then finding the right coach can help. Go to strawberry.me slash fire and get 50 % off your first coaching session. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:15John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Stephen say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with Most people think of success as coming from intelligence hustle or strategy And I think maybe the biggest unfair advantage is what I might call nervous system mastery your fluency over your own inner state I think if you can enter into an advanced meditative state in particular an altered state using just attention and emotion no drugs no breath work nothing else if you can prove that you're navigating your own nervous system at that level that's a world-class level and that primes yourself for things before board like like big decisions or going into a board meeting or recovering fast when stuff gets hard insurance against burnout you hear your emotions as signals instead of noise and you can also replace an inner critic with an inner coach when you need it most that i think is maybe the biggest unfair advantage when it comes to success.

2:17And then, you know, I'll say one more thing, which is that it can also change the definition of success. If you think of success as just being about putting money in your bank account, almost certainly once the money's in the bank account, you're going to go looking for true happiness. And if you have mastery over your inner state, you're going to be, we teach this on our retreats. And the reason we do it is because it makes high performers higher energy. It makes higher performers, you know, have more meaning. It makes higher performers ultimately happier. And so not only does it give you an unfair advantage, I think, towards productivity, it also begins to change your definition of success to be something more meaningful.

2:53John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we're talking about the hidden bottleneck in your business, specifically your nervous system and what top AI founders are doing about it. And I want to start, Stephen, by talking about why meditation fails. And that's quote unquote fails. So a lot of people, they just say, you know, meditation, it just doesn't work for me. I've tried it. It doesn't work, blah, blah, blah. Why is that such a common thing to hear and how could they fix it in just one week? So meditation has something unique relative to almost any other skill domain. And that is that it's invisible and nonverbal. And so it often ends up being boring, slow, without a payoff.

3:32We see it as eating vegetables instead of something really enjoyable or transformative. It's just really easy to plateau, to get stuck. that's not the case in almost any other skill domain in most skill domains whether it's learning to swim or learning to become a world-class programmer you're going to get feedback from reality in real time concrete customized to your specific situation whether or not you hit the wrong stroke whether or not you hit the wrong stroke or hit the wrong note you're going to know in meditation because it's so nonverbal invisible your feedback it's all messed up it gets all gunged up with guesswork.

4:07And so the problem, the challenge really with meditation, and I think the opportunity is how do you find a way to navigate it as like any other skill, one with really good feedback. And that's what we set out to do on our journey retreats. And that's why we see 60 to 70 % of our students get to these states that were thought to take thousands of hours of practice in just a week. You come in and we're just maniacal about feedback. You sit down with us and we'll grill you. We'll be like, what did you try? What did you learn? What did you feel? Where in your nervous system? What three emotional labels?

4:41Did it have a temperature? Did it oscillate? Did it change over time? And after we're done grilling you, then we'll dump and say, hey, here are all the patterns that you're triggering in my mind as a facilitator who's now seen hundreds of students. And let's co-create an experimentation plan for you to go try things that you're genuinely excited to try. Oh, if I open my awareness in this way or tune into my body in this way, the wonder, my sense of wonder goes through the roof or I relax in a way I didn't know was possible. When those experiments start to add up, suddenly you learn a whole lot more about yourself than maybe you thought was possible.

5:16So the problem why meditation typically fails is because there's this guesswork problem. There's a feedback issue and the solution is solve the feedback.

5:26John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about stress and performance because I can tell you what, Steven, Fire Nation. We are entrepreneurs. We know all about stress. So can you share how stress is quietly killing performance, killing decision-making, and even charisma for its founders? Stress doesn't just feel bad. It narrows your aperture in a way. You make worse decisions. You miss social cues and you lose that charismatic or relational edge that allows you to create that magic between teams that makes the sum greater than the whole greater than the sum of its parts. One of our students has a quote post retreat saying, most people quit their company because they're stressed.

6:07And if they stay stressed, stress just kills charisma. This just solves stress. This referring to advanced meditation or the ability to enter into these altered states without a drug. For founders, the cost is usually invisible. You don't see the deal you didn't close or the higher who didn't choose you. And if you get a strategic call just 10 % wrong, it's going to be over time, subtly and slowly, that you begin to pick up on your mistake. Having full nervous system fluency to the point where you're able to really tune in to the just tiniest of emotions, whether it's a little sadness, a little fear, a little anger, and learn from all of them, not try to push or run from them, means that you can make better decisions because your full subconscious in a way, which is just an incredible pattern recognition machine, is offering you what you're missing.

7:01It gives you insurance against slow burn emotions that if you resist are going to end up really hurting you down the line. Maybe anger that leads you to lash out at somebody or a sense of exhaustion that's going to lead to burnout. Nervous system regulation or perhaps mastery is the thing that lets you stay sharp 18 months into a really hard run.

7:22John Lee Dumas:Man, I mean, Fire Nation, I really hope this is giving you just hope and belief that it's there for you if you just figure this part out. And I know a lot of people talk about accessing altered states, but you've actually built a system that helps people access powerful altered states. And we're talking without drugs because a lot of people, they just are never going to take drugs. Very understandably so. So what does that look like, Stephen? And why does it even matter? I think something that's a bit of an underappreciated secret is that contemplative traditions across time and space, Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, you name it, have described for thousands of years powerfully altered states that also then are typically used to alter traits and lead to improvements in baseline well-being.

8:10And many traditions will use this for lofty aims like enlightenment or union with God or these kinds of things. So these altered states then can, you know, in some of these traditions are used to sort of open oneself up to alter baseline happiness. Vox, the magazine recently called these states the opposite of a panic attack. If you really look at the different descriptions across these different traditions, they're really talking about the same thing. Other people describe them as MDMA without the drug. The thing that I think is so crazy about this secret is that it turns out it's been hiding in front of us this whole time.

8:45we're most of us most of us who are founders or leading competitive jobs maybe raising a family usually feel stressed out sleep deprived short on time in order to spend it with our family and friends or get the next measure of output out of our company this leaves us feeling as if we're overwhelmed our attention is scattered in a thousand different places and yet right in front of us, there's been tools to move into profound states of ease and peace, bliss or gratitude or straight up love. And being able to move into that completely changes the game. It allows you to navigate the stress with a whole kind of, in a whole new way, with a sense of insurance that everything's going to be okay, or you have a refuge or a reservoir whenever you need it.

9:36And in so many ways allows you to turn around and be at your best day in and day out instead of of your worst.

9:41John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we're going to talk about what top founders are doing, growth without ads, the real competitive advantage, and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. I've interviewed over 5 ,000 successful entrepreneurs, and one thing they all have in common, they've enlisted mentors, coaches, and people along the way to help guide them. But where do you find the right coach or mentor? Great question. And that's where our strawberry.me career coaching comes in. I speak from personal experience when I say that coaching and mentorship has helped me get to where I am today.

10:17John Lee Dumas:In fact, you might not even be listening to Entrepreneurs on Fire if it weren't for my first coach and mentor, Jamie Masters. I knew that in order to produce the best podcast, I needed to find someone who was where I wanted to be. Here we are nearly 14 years later, and I'd say I made a fantastic investment. So if you're feeling stuck, facing an important career decision, or ready to make your next big move, the right coach can help. Go to strawberry.me slash fire and get 50 % off your first coaching session. That's strawberry.me slash fire. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom.

10:57John Lee Dumas:That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting. Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support, so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. A 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 15-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more.

11:38John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Steven, I want to talk. I want to talk about what top founders are doing because you deal with top founders. You have a direct line of communication with these incredible and successful humans. So what are founders at the top AI companies quietly doing to perform at high levels without burning out? So quietly, founders at top companies, top AI labs and YC companies and engineers and tech executives are coming on our retreats and learning how to enter into advanced meditative states with efficiency and effectiveness that they can then turn around and apply to the rest of their lives, specifically their relationships, their decisions, their habits, their ability to reset emotional defaults on things that would otherwise be difficult and tough for them.

12:41This in a way is being used as a hedge against burnout and as a performance tool, sharper decisions, better sleep, less reactivity. You know, it wasn't that long ago that people didn't take sleep seriously. And then now we see it as just a given. You have to have your sleep in order in order to be ready for the day. That's one of the high order bits to optimize. That's why you're going to get your eight sleep or your aura ring, and you're going to track your sleep and make things better. Sleep is upstream of so many of the things. Nervous system mastery, I would argue, is even upstream of that.

13:11Being able to navigate and spot, oh, that's a very early burnout sign. I need to relate to my emotions a little differently. I need to open up in this way. I need to play the subtle interplay between attention and emotion in order to stay on my game is an absolute given in my mind. Most, most people in the most intense industry on earth have started to recognize that in a way, in a way, I think the saying could go, the bottleneck isn't more compute. It's more regulation. It's more inner regulation as intelligence is commoditized. And as the world picks up more and more pace, more and more speed, the thing that's really going to make a difference.

13:48The thing that's going to lead to the highest output humans isn't going to be your typical productivity hat. It's going to be whether or not you're training your nervous system. So that's what I think most top founders are recognizing is they're saying, hey, look, if super intelligence and super longevity are already picking up steam, it's only a matter of time before super well-being is taken equally important. That's a function that matters for productivity. And it also matters for happiness. I actually maybe want to just make a side comment here, which is so much of what we, you and I, you know, JLD, you and me have been talking about here has been about productivity.

14:24But when we first met, you made a comment about flourishing and you made a comment about like health span and you made a comment about, Hey, I've got 40

14:32John Lee Dumas:years in front of me and I want to make sure these are good 40 years. Yeah. At least, you know, if we see something, you know, that we live in such as almost like a science fiction becoming reality time. If we see something like longevity escape velocity happen in our lifetime, we absolutely want to have a solution to become happy during that extended life period. Don't try to knock me off at 80, 40 years. I'll be 80. I mean, don't try to knock me off early, brother. And one thing that I'm really impressed with, with what you've done is you've grown without ads. I mean, ads can be powerful, no doubt, but you built a multi-million dollar business with zero paid marketing and a 47, let me say that one more time, 47 % referral rate.

15:11John Lee Dumas:How the heck did you pull that off? I don't know that I have a magic answer other than the fact that we built something that I think genuinely changes someone's life. And it's something that someone really wants to tell their best friend. When I stumbled into this kind of meditation, I could not help but tell my wife and my best friends and my loved ones and my family. this is one of the most important things that's ever happened to me up there with marrying my wife and having my children and these these uh you know there's like a few of the places you might look where you see truly life-changing outcomes and the cac is low because people can't help but talk to it it's like a lasik outcomes or fertility benefits have the extraordinarily low cacs get because people can't help but share them with other folks and so i think in many ways This is all about building something that was genuinely transformative.

16:05And that then became a referral engine. We're now, I think, just starting to be intentional about referrals. And so this referral rate happened without us thinking about, okay, here's the point where we're going to give them their first referral opportunity. Here's the second. Here's the third. And those are things that we're starting to build out and begin to track more closely. So I'm excited to see where it goes.

16:29John Lee Dumas:Rightfully so. Absolutely. exciting times. And you know, you have a real competitive edge and that's kind of what I want to talk about next because you believe that the next competitive advantage, it's not intelligence, it's emotional regulation. Why do you believe that? You know, it goes back to something I was starting to hint at earlier, which is in a world where the AI models are smarter and faster than us and you can spit up 20 at a time and in a world in which longevity is becoming increasingly a solid problem, the competitive edge and the real value is going to be found in emotional regulation and presence and the ability to stay clear under pressure and the ability to live into my full range of human experience to embrace the full range of human emotion one of the one of the greatest gifts of advanced meditation is how you can change your really grief and love can begin to start to feel like two sides of the same coin fear can feel like a rush or a thrill rather than something existentially threatening.

17:29And anger can even be something that feels clarifying and passionate, but something you might act on clearly and without regret. These are all things that were completely foreign to me. And they both give me this competitive edge in a way that I think is just going to continue to grow in a world where intelligence is commoditized. And it's the thing that is ultimately building a lot of meaning in my life.

17:48John Lee Dumas:So we have a closing value bomb here because we've talked about a lot of stuff. You know, what top founders are doing, growth at ads, the real competitive advantage, accessing altered states. What would you say is the one thing that Fire Nation can start doing today to gain more control over their mind, over energy, and just over our overall performance? Two ideas to take with you, and then one quick thing to just do live right here in this moment in this podcast. So the two ideas are environment trumps willpower and habits trumps goals. If you really lean into both environment trumps willpower and habits trump goals, then suddenly the game of becoming an incredible entrepreneur, an incredible husband or wife or brother or sister or daughter or son becomes a game not of, okay, I have to be better.

18:42But rather, how do I get my nervous system to do the thing that I want it to do by default, effortlessly? almost like you can imagine that sometimes people talk about the elephant and his rider and it's like if i'm the rider how do i train my elephant to do all the hard work automatically and effortlessly how do i how do i train it to be productive day in and day out how do i train it to be compassionate day in and day out how do i train it to be the person that i aspire to be and that that idea is one that immediately lends itself to what we call playful experimentation you're not trying to grind it out and see if you can pull off like your you know 60 minutes of the gym on the hardest day of the week you're trying to run tiny experiments to see if what you do effortlessly and automatically begins to look less like low productivity more like high productivity less like you know self-centered and more like compassionate so this idea of playful experimentation because habits trump goals and environment trumps willpower is i think the key idea i want to lead people with.

19:45Now, for just a quick little experiment here on the podcast, I would suggest you pause it right now. Or maybe we can even... Yeah, I would suggest you pause it right now. And for 30 seconds, just sit here, take three deep breaths, and ask yourself, what am I feeling, maybe emotions in my body, that I didn't realize before I took these three deep breaths? If I can name that, I've already spotted something I didn't realize about myself. And that is the first step towards nervous system mastery. That's the first step towards playful experiments that make it easier to be the person I aspire to be.

20:27Because then I can ask, why am I feeling this? How might I relate to it differently? What do I have to learn from this kind of emotion? And if you do this several times a day, a lot of things end up opening up. And maybe one day, you'll find yourself on one of our retreats.

20:42John Lee Dumas:Oh, Fire Nation. powerful stuff from Steven. And Steven, if our listeners are like, this is interesting, I want to learn more. I want to connect with Steven and what he has going on. Give us a call to action. How can Fire Nation connect with you? What do you want our listeners to take as action today if they're really feeling the vibe? The first thing I want to ask, the first thing I want to invite everybody to do is to really tune into how are those ways in which you can playfully experiment to make things a bit more effortless, not effortful, but effortless. And the second thing to, if you really want to come and learn some of the stuff with us is you can find us at www.journey.io.

21:24That's J-H-O-U-R-N-E-Y. You can also find us on Twitter at Jhanatech, J-H-A-N-A-T-E-C-H. And we often do calls every couple of weeks in which we dive deeper and run little mini experiments. It takes about an hour. And then from there, folks often end up getting connected to one of our facilitators. And then eventually they come and join us on retreat, all of which are also available on our website. And we have work compatible options that make it a little easier if what you're worried about is taking time off work. we also have full on in person step away from the world which is what other people are looking for

22:02John Lee Dumas:fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with you've been hanging out with s z and jld today so keep up that heat and for links to everything that we talked about visit eofire.com just type steven s-t-e-p-h-e-n in the search bar in the show notes page it'll pop right up steven thank you for sharing your truth your knowledge your value with fire nation today For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. It's been fun. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Stephen for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world?

22:41John Lee Dumas:If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me if you're feeling stuck or like you're ready to get to the next level in your career then finding the right coach can help go to strawberry.me slash fire and get 50 off your first coaching session stop duct taping your business together high level runs your website your funnels email automation scheduling payments and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

23:25John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.