How to Upgrade Your Performance in Business and in Life - Jairek Robbins
Why you should listen -
Bestselling author and Business Performance Coach Jairek Robbins is a master of enhancing performance for Fortune 500 companies. Jairek's best-selling book "LIVE IT" breaks down the science of show to fill in the gaps to get where we want to be in business and in life. In this eye-opening discussion, Jairek walks us through the steps and focus points that are critical to optimizing performance and overall wellbeing. Jairek talks about two biohacking gadgets that are game changers for any biohacker and he goes deep into the the optimal psychology to take your performance to the next level.
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Muse Device — mbsy.co/muse/24203501
Spire Device — www.Spire.io
Podcast with Jairek Robbins
Ross Franklin: On the podcast today we have best selling author and business performance coach Jairek Robbins. Jairek was a 2016 keynote speaker at the Harvard leadership conference. He is the author of the best selling book "live it" achieved success by living with purpose. Jairek has worked with organizations like BMW, United States Marine Corps, and the United States Olympic team.
Ross Franklin: Jairek How are you doing today?
Jairek Robbins: Very good sir. Thank you for having me and thank you, everyone, for taking a moment of life to listen in with us.
Ross Franklin: We are so excited to have you on the podcast today and just to get us started Jairek can you tell us your just your personal story and how you build your career as a performance coach.
Jairek Robbins: Sure! So depending on how far you want to go back. Me getting in the performance coaching I started out working in the non-profit space, and I just have a huge heart, love helping people it's my passion it's my fun. I like physical hands on volunteering, we've done lots of work all over the world we partnered with the merriment Ecuadorian and brought 200 families Christmas with a group that was leading to South American. We built schools in Guatemala and houses in Guatemala as well for families in villages. I love that tactical hands-on giving back and making a difference in what really matters for somebody's that is going to change their life or change their family's life. So I started out there, and I remember at one point as much as I love the nonprofit world I also want to have a badass lifestyle and so I had all these visions and dreams of how I want to end up living, and then I looked at the paycheck that comes from nonprofit work and I was like wow I love making a difference but I don't like getting paid this. We need to work this one out, and then the only thing that became close is becoming the CEO of a major non-profit or something like that and to be honest you know I have some conflicting beliefs of those people taking such large paychecks don't make sense like this, they're supposed to be helping just to help and I had his inner conflicts, so I remember one point walking across the courtyard to the prophet's side of the company that I was working for and I sat down with their coaching department and I was like wow and I sat down I knew the lady who was in charge of all the coaches and I asked hey can I do this? I was 18 years old, and I think she was humoring me which she said "sure you can kid." And I was like really? And she was like Woah I mean we would need to make sure that you can actually do it and then we'd have to test you and make sure they did on my. Okay, how do we do it? She said let me give you a quiz, she started asking all these questions and I knew all the materials. You know I have been studying these stuff since 14 years, and so I had about four years under my belt of just studying the tar out of personal development and these very specific tools and techniques that I was learning from, and I got to the point where I knew everything Shashi. And she was like wow you really do know it but to be honest we have to give you another 250 hours of training in our material to make sure you really know how to coach it not just how to understand the content itself. So I went through an additional 250 hours of training then they test you. You know they give you three clients, and they test you, and if you do well they will give you more, and if you don't, they'll fire you. So I did well with those I got more, and I rent up, and I spent six years coaching on behalf of that company, and it's a global leader in present performance coaching. But then from there, I had 7 1/2 almost eight years ago now I decided to take the leap and go out on my own, and I said hey I'm going to start my own coaching business or a coaching practice to be more honest, there wasn't a business just yet. You know I was the operator and the sole proprietor of it so if I didn't show up for work, it didn't work. So I mean it is not a business, it is just a job that I own. So I showed up to my practice of coaching, and you saw my original ugly website that I put together by myself, it was all black, and it's a jerk coaching sign up, and it had a picture of a random tree I took when I was in Africa.
Ross Franklin: That was way back when iCloud was me.com right? I remember that.
Jairek Robbins: That's right. I had my little website, and I put it up, and I figured out how to use all my coaching skills and all my sales skills I knew when I ramped up from 0 to 52 one-on-one performance coaching clients in the next eight months. And so eight months later I made my first hundred thousand dollars in my own business. I was 24 years old, and I pretty much felt like I was crushing life when it came to finances and when it came to freedom. But speaking of freedom, I had 52 one-on-one coaching clients. I was getting up you know six in the morning, working out and handling all the majors that I had to focus on, health exercise spirituality all these stuff. And then working from seven in the morning till nine at night doing paperwork, getting ready, optimizing my sleep, going to bed, waking up and doing it again six days a week just to keep up with my clients.
Ross Franklin: And with this clients were you or was it mostly like on the phone, was its Skype or was like in person meetings?
Jairek Robbins: No, 99% all on the phone and Skype. My very first client and I'll tell you a funny story. He actually just signed back up seven years later. When I first worked with him he was a gentleman in London, he was working to become a part, or his goal was to become part of the law firm to make $1 million a year to live in a certain part of town, to be married and have kids and do all these things. And we wrote out all this ten-year vision for his life and mapped it out, organize systems and habits and things he was going to do every day to get there. And then we work together for like I think about a year, and then we stopped working together, and he just emailed me about three, four weeks ago, and he said hey you know just first want to say hello, how are you? Do you still coach? I was like yes I do, a lot more expensive now than then but I do. And he said okay fair enough, and he said so I just wanted to tell you I'm a little bored. And I said why? And he said every single goal we wrote down seven and half years ago is now a reality, I have done it. I am a partner in a global law firm and on the front page in NewYork times every other week with our cases. I make over a million bucks a year, I live in this part of town, I travel this way, I have my kids and family, and he thinks everything we worked on is my reality. And he says you know I hit a point where I'm kind of bored because I am crushing it in every category and I need to figure out what's next. And he said so I looked back at what was the catalyst that helped me get here, and he said you were. The time we spent together mapping out my vision and figuring out the habits and routines necessary to get there and organizing my plan is very valuable to me back in the day and hopefully would be valuable again but I like to resign up and you know we could do the same thing.
Ross Franklin: That is amazing. You know, I'll love to really get into it a little bit like when you originally met with him right? You established some firm goals, how does it look when you first take on like an entrepreneur like what's like the agenda what you cover with them first?
Jairek Robbins: Sure what's interesting, the very first is figuring out what the ideal day look like which is the first chapter of my book "live it" that I wrote about. And it's figuring out for most of us we have goals things we want to achieve and what our goals can look like is? Well, I want to make this much money I want to achieve this much net profit, I want to hit this margin I want to hit these goals, I want to have this less much turnover, I want these things in my business and then health. Well, I want to be healthy and relationships, have great relationships. And what is that going to look like 20 years from now? Well, my business 20 from now is going to be this and this and this. How's your relationship going to be 20 years from now? Great! Next! And you look at these people lives, and you are like wow. When it comes to what matters most to them, their business, everything mapped out in front detail of exactly where they want to be, exactly how they want to get there, exactly every little detail of exactly what is going to happen 20 years, ten years, five years, One year, six months, quarterly they know exactly what they are going to do. And when it comes to these other things that are important to them like their relationship, their health, their family, those things that they tell you are most important to them how's that supposed to be 20 years from now? Great, Better! No details, no fine print, they know exactly what they want. And so what's wild is I always stopped them in their tracks and said hey you know I had a rare experience at 20 years old, and I know a lot of people have these, but for me, it was the first time it happened. Hopefully doesn't circle back around but I got malaria told them I had 20 60 days left to live. I was 20 years old sitting there thinking wow.
Ross Franklin: This was based in Uganda?
Jairek Robbins: In Uganda. Well, I'm like that didn't work out, that was not the plan.
Ross Franklin: You were in Uganda; you got malaria the doctor found you and said you only have six days to live?
Jairek Robbins: No here's why. I was being stubborn, and I wasn't taking medicine because I grew up in Southern California you meditate, drink greens and it heals you. Much as I love greens, there's certain time you're supposed to take the medicine I learned
Ross Franklin: One of them, that's one of those times. Everything else goes out the window
Jairek Robbins: There's a reason, and I'm being stubborn as hell like no I will meditate my way out of this. And the doctor was like dude I don't know how to explain this to you. There are millions of people a day that die from fucking malaria like you have to take the pill. I am like oh oh I will be fine, I grew up in California. I totally understand how to heal myself from all disease; it is meditation and vegetables. And the doctor was like Buddy I hate to tell you it won't work this round. I'm like don't mess my beliefs, I believe. So we argued, and he said let me show you. Here, maybe a visual, let me show you. He took some live blood, put it on the screen, and he says you have 55,000 parasites per one red blood cell. I said oh shit, that didn't sound good now. And he is like yeah they hatch they kill the cell, and they lay eggs on all the other cells, and then they duplicate they double. So 55,000 110,000 220,000 and he goes let me do some math. This is just maths, its number they don't lie, and then he says you've about six days left. I was like so what? And I was a little slow, but he was like six days until your body will not be able to sustain itself. I was then like Oh shit that is not good and all of a sudden this concept of wow I'm not invincible. I thought I was going to live forever, but apparently, not bullshit and all the same your value starts to reorganize in the cells. Because when I said what am I actually upset about? It wasn't optimizing this quarter's KPIs in my business, I didn't have one at that time, but that's not the first thing that flashed through my head. The first thing that flashed through my head was Oh shit I never got to get married and have a family. Wow, I never got to have a house of my own. Holy macro I never got to start a business, I never got to start one that I dreamed about you know. Men if this is true and this works out in not a good way in six days, I won't even get to hug my family again and all of a sudden the things that matter most come to the top of the list. And what's interesting for those of you listening if you want to figure out what matters to you most right now and get real, what I want you to do is write down what's most important to you in your life, most important to you top 3 to 5 things whatever comes to mind first. What is most important in your life, if you have a pen and paper write it down, just jot them out. Now it's interesting that people always tell me the good shit; family, making a difference, God you now spirituality, being a good person, doing good in the world, all these good stuff. It's great things they say, and I say okay next step, and we talk about this in the book as well. Next step take out your calendar and look at you've invested the majority of your time for the last 30 days. Look at your calendar, look at your meetings, locate where you spend your time and tell me if it matches what you said is most important. Because how you invest your time the most valuable asset you have is a reflection of what's actually most important to you. So I get to sit down with the CEOs and executives we have this conversation and telling me family is the most important and showing me watching your feet not your words, your feet are showing me that nothing is more important than work seven days a week for you right now.
Ross Franklin: Now, Jairek, I think I got a confession to make which is it sounds like a typical CEO. You map out like okay what are your goals right? And like you said it is like okay I want X number of locations, I want X number 10 million in the bank. And then you ask about okay what's going on with personal relationship, what is going on with spirituality right? And then it's blank like nothing hadn't even been thought about that. I got to admit I'm one of those guys because for me like if you go back and look at my calendar, it's like it's all business. I just focus on the growth of business and the way I look at it my mentality is I may have to reorganize which is I look at once to get the business going because I want to shift massive amounts of people get them into a healthier lifestyle. So once I get that rolling, once I achieve a certain threshold there then I could focus on relationships, spirituality, everything else. Health that's what I do so that's that's definitely like you know I have specifics regarding health but certainly relationships, spirituality are elements that have to be more clearly defined. So what would you do with a guy like me? You're working with a guy like me as your coaching client. Okay, we identified like Ross like you have got to outline some goals, you got your goals for your business, but now we have to talk about relationships, spirituality, family. What would you do with a guy like me?
Jairek Robbins: Here is why because if something magical happens in the wrong way, not the good stuff. None of us ever see this coming, I didn't see that coming. I always say you never know if you are going to walk outside and get hit by bus number 142 this afternoon and I have always used that example. I have a friend named Teresa who literally a month and a half ago got off the trolley in Toronto and got smacked by a bus, and she looked like the wicked West witch of the whatever were little feeder taken out from under the bus. There are pictures of it on the news, and she survived she has a heart surgery coming up, and I keep her in my prayers to make sure she heals. She survived, but she didn't see that coming, you know no one does. No one is like Oh yeah tomorrow here it comes, I mean that's not what we are thinking. We think we are invincible, we think we will last forever, and so the conversation becomes if you look at something like the five regrets of the dying. The five regrets that people on their deathbed have in hospice later in life, it is never I wish I would have worked harder. No, it is I wish I would have lived truer to myself but not I wish I were to spend ten more hours at the office every week. It's I wish I would've stood in contact with my friends and one of the longest research studies that Harvard figured out longevity, fulfillment, and overall what they termed success, the biggest determining factor was how well a person was able to keep and cultivate a peer group over time. And so when we look at these things for entrepreneurs, and we look at longevity. How long you want to live in these high networks, my friend consults with them, and they want to live as long as humanly possible. Because they believe their brilliance is a gift to humanity that humanity needs forever or they want to optimize their kids you know and have perfect little mini beings they come out of them somehow. But this concept of if you look at this stuff you gotta start by saying how do you design your absolute ideal day? Now the reason I would start there is it because you're living at David so rich so fulfilling so abundant makes you feel so alive and so deeply purposeful every day? If you did get hit by bus 142 you hi-five yourself and go out with a smile; you are like fuck I did it, I'm good, like peace world things. When growing up my friend Brennan had as a good little thing he was pouting over a grown South American and flipped the Jeep and almost died when he was younger. And you know he said when he almost died, there were three questions he had to answer. Did I live fully with life given the opportunity to like did I grab life by the horns and I just fucking do it. Did I love deeply when life gives the opportunity, did I open my heart and soul and pour every ounce of who I am in there and then did I matter, did I really make a difference that if I were to die today, my ripple would continue? And he got answers to those questions every day and so the first place I'll start with you is figuring out what your ideal day. Now for right now at this moment of life 30s?
Ross Franklin: I'll be 37
Jairek Robbins: Is that's okay! So usually the mindset of someone in that stage and age of life is hey it sounds like I'm going to a build the kingdom first and then once it's built, I'll find a queen to share it with.
Ross Franklin: Yes
Jairek Robbins: Got it! The other mindset that exists at this stage for ladies dating advice on performance just a heads up. For anyone out there looking for that the other mindset men have at the stage of life are I will find a princess, and we will build our kingdom together. The reason you want to know about this because if you're dating someone who believes that they have to build their kingdom first and then find a queen if he dates you as a princess, he will kick your ass out when he's ready to find the queen. So, ladies, that's a little tip outside that works for guys too. Just understand the concepts and apply it vice versa, but there's something there.
Ross Franklin: Jairek before you say that one thing, I have the Queen, but I don't treat her like a queen because I focus on growing the kingdom and you know when the kingdom is grown then I can treat her better than the Queen or at least that's the kind of mentality that I have. And one of my core values is continuous improvement right, I could always do things better, and so it sounds like I have to make some adjustments to the plan. So for guys like me who are in the same position where Bertolli focus on business, I think this is and correct me if I'm wrong I think for most entrepreneurs they do intend to have this mindset. So for guys like us and in Geiser's position okay what we do from here? What are the steps?
Jairek Robbins: Got it! So start off with your ideal day. And an ideal day will do your life in a freaking minute but start with the day because it is easy to wrap your head around it and really understand. When do you wake up, how do you feel, where do you go, what you do, what are all the things that make your day the perfect day you can imagine. Who's involved, what difference do you make, which business do you work on, what deals do you close like everything that can make it the most ideal day that you can imagine. Come up with two or three versions of it just to have some variety but start there. And the first step becomes how do you turn that one day in your day-to-day reality. For a lot of people, it's a few very minor adjustments to the way they are living right now, and it's fucking there, for other people it is a whole different universe. If you are just getting started it is like wow. for me I lived in the front end of a house with three roommates, and I'm like this is not how I want to live my life fucking. So I had a journey over in a few years to figure out how to transition. For other people who are already doing most of it, it's a few minor tweaks and boom you are there. Now once you have that now you have a daily vision, you can live every day. Now in this day, you want to intertwine some habits that will literally lead to optimum performance, and I think that's really where we want it to go in this conversation. It is interweaving these habits that optimize you as a person. The first three I'm going to start with, most people might go yeah I get this especially in this podcast, or they are listening to it for this reason because they don't get this. But if we were in a wartime and you got captured by the enemy, what are the first three things they take away from you? They want to torture you; they really want to like put the rack on you and mess you up mentally mostly physically. The first thing they do is they won't let you sleep you know. They put you in a room burning hot lights on you, throw buckets of water on you, they keep loud music, they keep you away 24 hours a day for the next so many days to the point that it psychologically takes you out. It breaks you, it breaks your will, breaks your spirit, breaks your ability to focus function and focus. So it breaks you as a human, it is supposed to that is what it was meant to do and that way you give up the secrets or give up whatever you're hiding with them trying to torture you. The second thing they do notice they don't have a highly dense Goji berry, buffets, and superfoods smoothie shake, and they don't offer you pure greens and bulletproof. They don't give you all that stuff. Why? They don't want you at your best; they take all these shits away. You know in the war, I don't have any experience, but in the movies, they give you a bowl of slop and a piece of bread and say good luck. Why would they do that? Why would they take away the dense really powerful nutrition because again it breaks you down? If your body doesn't have the right fuel, you can't function. The example I used for this is you know would you ever go buy a $65 million Gulfstream jet and put diesel fuel in it? No, and people will be like that will be dumb. Well here is something else that would be dumb, imagine getting to the airport jumping on the plane with your pilot and being like hey are we good and he's like yeah we are out of fuel, but I think we will just hit the gas hard and will go from New York to LA, no big deal. Will fill up when we get there, will put extra in when we get there. Any intelligent human being would be like that won't work, if the tank is empty and you slam on the gas, it won't go. You will get into the air and fall and die but when our bodies are out of fuel we just jam on the gas and go it is okay I'll eat later. Somehow we think that that is a fucking brilliant idea don't know how that came to play but it's what we do. And you watch busy entrepreneur say I'll eat later; I'll get that later. Just give me a bar, give me a shake, just give me something. I've done this myself, but basically, our jet is out of fuel, and we are jamming on the gas trying to get more lift to get across the country as fast as possible and with no fuel in our body. And this is also called torture, if they take your food away, they deprive you of nutrition, and you can't function at your best. The third thing to take away notice there are no cell three cells down in the movies where you have like the perfect optimized weight training treadmill cardio fitness machines. They don't have anything in there that can help you be your best physically and there's a reason. So they take away your nutrition, they take away your sleep, they take away your ability to move and taking away those three things we called torture in a wartime condition. But what is the first three things an entrepreneur screw up when they get too busy.
Ross Franklin: Those are the three. So can you tell us with those three things in mind sleep, nutrition and fitness what you do personally? What are the like the tricks of the trade, strategies, tools that are used for those three?
Jairek Robbins: Great question! There are resources here, I am not the expert on any of these three topics, but I turn to experts, and I say okay who the hell do I know that really does this at an amazing level. For sleep, there is a book called sleep smarter by Sean Stephenson, a wicked smart guy. It's all research-based, it is not opinion based. It is not he woke up at his desk, and he's like oh shit I need more sleep in my life. It is literally research-based and here is what the research shows. Now I grew up in a family with mentors in mind who are like sleep when you are dead, work harder, sleep an hour less and get more done. And all the research shows is that it is backward, it just is. Now it can work, and there are lots of people who live by it but if you look at all the research it jacks up your body over time, and the crazy part is it doesn't do it all once. It does it over time, and there's a thing, I forgot what they are called telomeres. A little plastic thing that goes in at the end of your shoelace. When that shit unravels, the whole shoelace unravels. Same thing with aging, the problem is you don't realize you are unraveling these stuff when you're partying, drinking, staying up too late not, getting proper sleep is the big one. And when you do this you are unraveling those telomeres
Ross Franklin: Are you talking about with those are for anti-aging and it's a...
Jairek Robbins: Yeah! So what happened is the moment they unravel you age very rapidly.
Ross Franklin: Yes, the longer they are, essentially the longer you live is what the research is showing.
Jairek Robbins: Yeah and so sleep is one critical factor to keep these things like a plastic on a shoelace keep it nice tight and right on there. If it unravels, your whole shoelace unravels and if it unravels your aging process immediately accelerates. And so this concept of being able to perform at your best, sleep is a big determining factor. There is also something about weight loss that is very interesting. (inaudible) University's done that, but they did a study where they had three different groups. One group got optimal sleep, one group got average sleep, and one group just did something else. And what was interesting is that the group who got optimal sleep all doing the same diet and workout drop by 30% more weight just because they optimize their sleep. It was crazy, so sleep stuff. And Sean, big expert there he is a friend of mine. We have a new program together where we shared a handful of these tips. Both simple tips optimizing our light pollution, optimizing air quality you know there are certain plants you can buy that can literally bring in the highest air quality. They release oxygen at night when you are sleeping, and you get more air to breathe.
Ross Franklin: Yeah like the snake plant. Snake plant is like the second best plant for filtering out the air. I have a ton of that planted at my place.
Jairek Robbins: And then optimizing the air filters the high-quality airfare using stuff like the magnesium spray to spray your body. Your body needs more of that at night, your heart especially. So using all these little tips, great book sleep smarter, you can grab that if you want to manage your sleep. Great tips to optimize your sleep and these other stuff. We have it all, we had someone we are going to rent a house furnished for the next few months, and we had this guy from Atlanta break is coming to see it because he likes it. So he was walking through it, and he was like hey what's that? This is cool, what is this for? So then he says this is great, I'm going to love this place. Optimized for his performance as an athlete, but that kind of stuff. Nutrition this is different for different people, and I have lots of young people call me, and young guys specifically will be like what is the best thing to eat? I said are you shitting me there is no one best thing. I mean what are your goals? And he is like well I want to look like Dwayne Johnson, the rock but I want one Ironman competition consistently. I mean dude those are not the same direction those are different directions in life. If you want to look like Arnold, it is going to be a very different diet, very different exercise routine, very different movements to get that result and you are going to feel differently. But if you want a look like Ben Grinfield and be a triathlete champion it's different plans. So in this category, there are some things that stay the same across the board you know. Research shows having your solid alkalinity levels and lots of greens, that is good for bodybuilders just as much of it is for triathletes. And triathletes are endurance athletes; mom is another word for that because mom's if you look at them their sprint starts right when they wake up or when the kids go like this and wake you up in the morning, and it doesn't end until the kids freaking goes to bed at night. So if you're a parent, you are also an endurance athlete whether you like it or not, you're welcome and so you know if you look at what fuel sources you should be using as a parent it is probably what endurance athletes use. Why? You need energy from the moment you wake up, the moment you go to bed and at 2:30 in the morning when the kid pups in his pants and you need to fix it somehow. Like you need 24 hours a day energy as a parent, and that goes for most business owners too because most of us don't get the privilege of shutting off at five because there's a fire that starts in your business at two in the morning like you got to wake up and fix it. You can't just be like whatever, that's part of the game as an entrepreneur. So this concept if you want to look at meal plans for endurance athletes depending on religious and food choices and preferences, there is all different stuff you can eat there. I tend to do lots of vegetables and fish that's it. So for breakfast, I usually do steam broccoli and salmon, for lunch I usually do steam broccoli and salmon, for dinner don't want to make you guess but usually steam broccoli and salmon. Might mix it up with sweet potato and some cod and then from time to time if I'm traveling a bunch, will use oatmeal mixed with stuff, usually plain oatmeal with water. On the road works really well but there are certain things we will settle in on that. For supplements again depending on what I'm training for, I will switch out my supplementation based on the result I'm trying to get. So I think I will show you a picture, I did a whole fun kind of bodybuilding sprint that I wanted to do before our wedding. I just never had a six-pack, and I thought it would be cool to have. I said okay, let's see what it's like, let's see if I can put it up real quick for those of you watching. I had a friend of mine who is a bodybuilder, he has done bodybuilding competition or so like that. So I had him optimize my meal plan, and this is the beast. If you're watching this you know here's a picture of him. So he is a fine-tuned specimen of life, and I was like wow this is cool. So I looked at him, and I'm like you've done this before, how do I do this? And so I found an example and again if you are watching this we put the pictures, but this was the first 90 days. So this little picture of 90 days right there.
Ross Franklin: Wow man, your ripped!
Jairek Robbins: It's legit. I went from 185 pounds in about 20% body fat, and I popped up to 210 pounds that was that right there, and I was at about eight or 9% body fat. So we did the amazing magic of gaining muscle and losing fat at the exact same time over three months.
Ross Franklin: That's great man! Amazing results and I have to tell you; I love what you did in the sense where you know if you are going to work with a personal trainer you don't want a personal trainer that's like obese; clearly, they're not taking their own advice. So I like what you did in that you went out and sought after someone who looks kind of how you want to look. And bringing it back to you, I love your energy, you use to have a great energy, you've achieved an amazing level of success, and you've got in substantial results with your clients. And so as it relates to nutrition with you, you walked us through some of your nutrition but what else have you found? How do you get that energy? How do you have that energy constantly every day? What else do you do to bring it every day really?
Jairek Robbins: Sure! It's a consistent pattern; it's all these things together. There's not one thing that does it. For someone to say like hey eating these foods just magically makes you feel the energy all day. Nah because if you don't get quality sleep, it will screw up your energy. Or if your relationship goes to shit, you can take the smartest, most passionate, determined, focused, excited you know live fulfilled human on earth. And if you break the hard earned relationship, I guarantee their performances is fucked for the next 30 days. Guaranteed! You meet them when they come out, how are you doing? Good. How's life? It's okay. You know how is business? It is fine; it will work I guess. That's what happens when you break some guys or some woman's heart like you did defeat them. So all these stuff matters and that's why you in life coaching, I laugh at the concept because I believe in performance. We need to optimize all these things otherwise anyone can take you out in the game. And so sleep, nutrition, and exercise. As far as exercise, Ben Greenville had some great insights when we recorded a program with him, and he was saying for most people we believe exercise is this 45 minutes we do, and we are done. And he says honestly most people are jacking up their bodies for no reason and not really helping. He said as an endurance athlete with which he has lots of medals and awards and stuff he has won in all those competitions; he says perpetual motion is the key to what you're looking for. So the concept of you know I have a treadmill that's sitting behind me, I do something that is called war walking throughout the day. You know I have a Yoga ball that I use to sit on it for that perpetual motion. He was giving me tips around the house, and he says hey in your office it is going to seem weird, but obviously, you have to get used to it you know hurt yourself. Put a big heavy weight on the floor between you and the door and every time you walk by it lift it up. Put a bar on the door jam and every time you go under it do two pull ups. You know stairs, purposely go up and down the stairs bunch each day. You know every hour get a solid you know set of jumping jacks, push-ups and running in place for a good 3 to 5 minutes. But it is like perpetual motion will keep your body functioning at a really rock solid level and he says that's where you'll see a lot of magic happen when it comes to staying at your best energetically and staying at your best physically. You want to keep constantly moving, stretching you know pain-free movement is the other part, I'm a huge fan of the goskew. They are a great group, and they are about pain-free living. So how do you address the functional alignment of your physical structure of your body and how you keep that alignment because if you do it keeps you at your best because you don't have to waste energy trying to overcompensate for stuff at a place. The example I always use for entrepreneurs is that you know the left shoulders forward your right shoulders forward and you try to walk straight you're using up energy to pull your shoulders back each day as you are even walking. If your right hip is tilted forward to walk straight and when your body has to pull it back, you are wasting energy you could be using in other places just to walk straight. And so this concept of getting back your energy by keeping your body and functional alignments is really important. But to move from these things, these are like basic tips. The next thing we hop onto is mindfulness and state management.
Ross Franklin: Before we jump into that, I have a couple of questions for you there, but I just want to make a comment which is you know Ben Greenville is great, and back 20 years ago, I use to have the mindset where yes all about bodybuilding is getting big. And then over the years my thought process my approach has really shifted to how to increase cognitive power. How do I focus on anti aging? How do I focus on this high energy constantly throughout the day? So I've had to modify my approach and a lot of things that you just mentioned, that's what I do. You know as a busy executive, after I get up in the morning I got trampling right. I jump on the trampoline for five minutes; I've got pull up bar, I'll do a whole pull up bar routines and push-ups. I got some adjustable dumbbells, and I'll do that for just 20 minutes. Boom that's, I get it done in the safety of my own home I don't have to leave to go to the gym and is just super efficient. So I definitely agree and totally agree with that, it is just about making time for it.
Jairek Robbins: Absolutely! Ben did us a favor in our new program put together
Ross Franklin: Oh yes, could you tell everyone about that as I think our listeners will find that really interesting
Jairek Robbins: Yeah, it's cool! It is focused on all the stuff we are talking about, and Ben did us a favor. He wrote out I think it was an eight week nutrition plan with a shopping list based on different dietary styles, and then he wrote out I think it is an eight week or 10 week fitness plan as well of exactly what to do all throughout the day, week and month in order to optimize yourself and get the absolute best out of yourself. It is really cool and it is all the stuffs you were talking about everything between using hot and cold showers in the morning to activate fat burning to all the cognitive supplements you can be using to get yourself the absolute best psychologically and then physically to all the tips on how to keep your body in perpetual motion and what types of exercise to do. One of my favorite things, he said you should never have a workout more than 20 minutes. I was like dude; this guy is smart. You know I was in a slight hypnosis as he was talking to the camera for us. Those that were filming us were like yes.
Ross Franklin: So after 20 minutes, your levels of testosterone start to deplete, so 20 minutes is definitely the ideal time. And who else is on this udemmy?
Jairek Robbins: So it is really simple. The first three modules well are not in the right order. We reorganized it to make it more you user-friendly but basically, it follows the path that we are talking about right now which is nutrition and exercise. You know experts Sean and Ben they had covered those three topics for us to make sure you have an optimized plan of action, exactly what to do. The next two topics we are going to swing into here is mindfulness and state management. For mindfulness we have a partnership with MUSE it's a medical grade EEG headband that works on meditation. Now, whenever you say the word meditation to a type A badass entrepreneur they go okay next I have tried it, and it doesn't work, go on. And all the research shows like there are so many freaking benefits. Let me pull up a couple, and it is really wild how much
Ross Franklin: Even if it is just five minutes a day right? Meditating for just five minutes a day has a massive impact
Jairek Robbins: Yeah, so listen to some of these. As an entrepreneur, you can find some of these things useful. Harvard found that meditation gives you the ability to screen out distractions and increase productivity faster so you can increase your response time faster than the pass of hand. Another study found that it draws focus away from the past or future and focuses on the present which is where you need to be as an entrepreneur to get shit done. The Mayo Clinic found an increase in self-awareness and reduces negative emotions which you can't have negative thoughts or emotions if you run a business. You need to stay positive and focused at all times. Psychological science journals say improves working memory, who doesn't want that an entrepreneur to remember more of what has to happen each day and stay focused. Also, Jerry performance for students, University of Michigan says it improves the executive functioning performance of your actual brain. Here is what is wild, here is all the benefits of meditation:
It helps prevents depression lifestyle and improve sleep, well-being, create mental resilience and stress reduction, cognitive skills help in attention, focus, and memory. Self-regulation of emotions helps with interpersonal skills, communication, and assertiveness very important in business. Leadership helps in decision-making and in keeping perspective and team development helps with the awareness of others needs. So these are some of the side effects of learning how to meditate and keeping a practice. The problem is that there's no way to know if it's working or not for most entrepreneurs till you sit down, you close your eyes, you talk to yourself for 20 minutes you open your eyes, and you go Oh shit I had no fucking clue that helped. Next! And that's usually what it had been in the past; there are great products like headspace. Ben did a great job with that which teaches you how to meditate, but still, you don't know what the results are, but with this one, it is a medical grade EEG. A little headband you throw on, and when you meditate it literally tracks your brain waves, and it gives you a physical report at the end and shows you. For those watching, I'll show you again what it looks like. It shows you the difference between you know when you're able to stay calm, active, or focused and in this is what is wild. So I will show you a day that I did okay on; actually, I will show you a day where I got my ass kicked.
Ross Franklin: You're doing it every day?
Jairek Robbins: Everyday! Here was a day that I couldn't focus my damn mind for the life of me. I was busy I had a million things going on, and this is what my brain waves look like in the morning when I just couldn't focus. So you can see the jagged gigantic spikes and valleys all over the place
Ross Franklin: Yeah, it is a mess, it's all over the place.
Jairek Robbins: All over the place and here this morning, here's the difference.
Ross Franklin: Wow, much more level.
Jairek Robbins: So here is what's wild. As a coach, we track this with a professional dashboard that I can log in and look at all my client's meditation every morning. As an entrepreneur, if I'm watching you meditate and I know that you go calm, calm and today it is like all over the place, I'm going to text you that what's on your mind pal. And if you go nothing, I'm fine; I'll be like no bullshit! This is a screenshot of what it looks like in your head right now, seriously something is clouding your ability to focus. Let's handle it real quick and get that out of the way so that you can go back and get shit done.
Ross Franklin: That is amazing. So you can visibly see and measure the results?
Jairek Robbins: I can sell your results every day; I can watch you improve, I can see what your stats look like day over day. And it shows you when I go back to the main screen if you look at the top bar here the blue is the good stuff, but it shows you every day you're using it, and it shows you stats on what every day looks like compared to the rest. So I have a dashboard where I can watch all my clients on that, and that's a key piece. How do you track and measure your actual ability? Here is why this is important. I have a client of mine; he uses to train the Navy snail snipers. His name is Brandon, he's up in New York, a great guy, he just wrote a book on total focus and part of the things he talks about is the ability to stay aware of all the chaos going on at the same time around your world yet being laser focused on the one task at hand. Now, this is crucial for entrepreneurship and especially performance because if you get lost in all the fires you have to put out and all the craziness, you will never get anything done.
Ross Franklin: That's like multitasking and multitasking doesn't work.
Jairek Robbins: But if you only focus on one thing and not paying attention to all the other shit, it will burn your house down. So I was like fuck what do you do? This is what you do. You have to be completely aware of all the craziness at once yet only focus on the task at hand and making sure you get it done and then moving to the next fire as fast as possible. And how do you train that muscle? Who the hell has to sign up for the results training camp? Good luck, hope you make it. For most of us, there's no place you can go each day to train that actual muscle except for this little device that used to cost you $7000, $10000 $15,000 to gain access to medical grade EEG scan. Now you can get it for 200 box or something like that, you (inaudible) to stand for it and you do it every day, and you're training yourself to stay present and aware of all the distractions and craziness in the world, yet laser focus on just being present on the one task at hand which is your breath at that point.
Ross Franklin: Where can our listeners get a hold of them? Is it on Amazon or they can get it on muse.com?
Jairek Robbins: Yeah, it is on Amazon. Choose Muse.com if you want because we do this with our clients. I give you a discount code they'll take 15% percent off if they want.
Ross Franklin: I'm going to get one today.
Jairek Robbins: Take 30 bucks or whatever. They give it to us because we buy them for our clients but that concept is a way you can train your brain to stay aware yet focused. It's the only way; I know that you can actually train the muscle every day. There is this other stuff you can use with heart math or something like that, but again the stuff gets stupid expensive when you try to buy all the professional high-grade equipment you know when looking for the things you can use. The second one is a little breaths stone this thing for those watching; I'll hold up for you. It is a little stone you wear on your belt, and it tracks your breathing patterns all day, and it tells you if you are calm, focused or tensed.
Ross Franklin: Wow, that is cool. So explain what this is and how to use it.
Jairek Robbins: It is called spire, and it tracks your breaths or what I call your state. My dad came up with that concept of tracking your state, and he teaches people how to you know if you want to change your state you jump up, screams yes and what he does you know call make your power move in and change your state. And for most executives, they love the concept from the seminar but from I've never seen an executive in an executive meeting or in a big negotiation in New York City stand on the table and go yes and then get back to business. It won't fucking work, and it works great in the bathroom, works great outside, works great with friends, works great at the gym. And in the boardroom, I was looking for a way that you could take an executive and help them change the state in a moment without having to do anything crazy. And I figured out the breath is the only part of your peripheral nervous system, the only part of the autonomic nervous system you can control. You can't enjoy your heartbeat, you can't control your sweat, you can't control your pores, any of this stuff but you can control your breath. In your breath, you can actually help control the other stuff. So when you look at this you know let me scroll back, and I'll show you this is what a day looked like and it was showing me the pattern between being calm, focused, and tensed. It is telling me how much time, what's interesting I can click moments and it links up to your calendar, and it tells you what you were doing when you were calm when you were focused and when you are tensed. If you have your locations turned on, it will tell you where you were and what you were doing at that moment. If you take a picture, it'll look up the picture and put it right in the slide for you. So literally showing you what are you doing each day that's causing you to go into different emotional states and you would become aware, and most of us are not aware that's the biggest part. My wife and I were downstairs talking a few months ago we were talking about a family member who is struggling financially and how or if we should help them and in which ways. We were coming up with options, I felt totally fine with the whole conversation but about seven minutes in I heard buzz buzz, I looked down, and my phone lit up a little, and my phone said you had been tensed for seven minutes. I mean shit, I feel fucking fine right now. I don't think there is anything wrong with me, I feel totally fucking fine, and I look at it, and you realize the moment you go tensed your brain gets hijacked by fighter flight. Meaning you're now emotionally reacting to life instead of logically responding and choosing your path. So imagine you're sitting down in the biggest business negotiation you have ever done in your entire career, and you go to sit down at the table, and your phone goes buzz buzz, you have been tensed for 12 minutes. You're about to make a really dumb emotional decision at the table.
Ross Franklin: Yes, so what do you do? How do you fix it?
Jairek Robbins: Breathing! And so this is the other problem. I went and found a lady, she's wonderful, and she's up in New York City. She trains professional athletes, golfers, NFL coaches, the best in the world come to her to learn how to use their breaths to train their body to go between calm, focused, and intense. Purposely they can change their breathing pattern and alternate. The challenge is she only works with the best, she only takes a handful of clients, and it is like $4000 to do this work. And I was like there is another way. So I found this little thing, it's only 90 bucks, and you can put it on, and you have got to Jimmy rate it yourself because you have to do what she does for you but all by your own. And the biggest factor is number one you have to learn how to reset yourself. So I'll show you a breath pattern that a friend of mine who studied the breath for 30 years showed me that you could reset yourself in three breaths. And it's really simple, here's what it is. All you have to do is you are going to do a really slow long inhale through your nose and when you feel completely full of air and be like there's no room left you take one more big gulp, and that's credit like to force the rest of the air in. Then you are going to hold it for five seconds, and when you hold it you are going to kind of like bear down like you are going to tense your shoulders, you are going to tense your hands, you are going to tense your bodies, you just kind of bear it down and then after five seconds you are going to release it. When you release it, you are going to open your mouth and let out all the hair once, and you are going to drop your head, drop your shoulders and drop your physiology. So it looks more like this if you're watching, it is going to be and what happens is that we are going to do it three times together. So let's do it together, ready slow breath in, one more at the top, hold it, bare it down and count 1-5 and then all the way out. That's one, let's do it two more times, all the way in load in more, hold it, 1 2 3 4 5 and let it out, make noise too like really drop it out. So ready it last time and into your nose, little more, hold it, 1 2 3 4 5, all the way out. Now that was wild, how do you feel?
Ross Franklin: Awesome man that was great.
Jairek Robbins: Do you have a little tingly feeling?
Ross Franklin: Yeah, a little tingly feeling but definitely feel a surge of energy.
Jairek Robbins: Your mind is clear you feel some energy, and then you are just back present in at the moment.
Ross Franklin: Yeah and I guess it was really funny. It was just two weeks ago; I was working with a breathing coach, her name is Beliza. I think Ben Greenfield had her on his show but she did the same types of exercises and it is such amazing to make such a huge difference, and I got to thank you so much for showing me these two new tools. I love gadgets so the spire and muse. Then the muse you know as a bio hacker, I'm like how do I not have them, I have to get them immediately. Then you know as you demonstrated they could make a significant increase in results in performance. So that is so amazing man and so the stone, the spire it essentially digitizes and class all the information on your breathing and to get that you just have to breathe on, is that correct?
Jairek Robbins: No, it stays on your belt and attracts your breath movement. It is based on your stomach going in and out.
Ross Franklin: Yeah, gotcha!
Jairek Robbins: And for men, you know it is deep breathing because if your stomach is not going in and out, it is not capturing breath patterns.
Ross Franklin: Wow! How do you handle it though like right you go into a meeting with the CEO, and you got this little stone on your belt, and they ask what’s that rock on your belt, what's going on?
Jairek Robbins: No, they don’t see it. I mean it is literally on the inside of your belt.
Ross Franklin: So it has got spacing like it is touching your skin.
Jairek Robbins: It is facing you because it's got a push and against your stomach. No one even knows it is there, my phone just buzzes later, and I look and see that I’m calm right now great or I’m focused right now. And the trick is one becoming aware and just recognizing what things cause you to go into certain states. If you know every time you to the office, you get tensed, that is not good. You are not going to perform at your best; you are going to jack up your mental, emotional performance. That means learn how to breathe through it, learn how to stay calm to practicing a call breath pattern while you're going through the craziness. You know Mark Divine, I'm sure you know who he is, he is the guy from seal fit he taught me he was number one in his class for the seals when he graduated and how he got through the pain to ugliness through all that stuff, the sock they call it. You have to embrace it, or else it's going to sock, and you just learn how to breathe through it and get through it. And how he would get through is using box breathing which is just four seconds around the edge of the box. 04 seconds into the nose hold it in for four, out for four, hold out for four repeat. And that’s how he would keep his nervous system calm when he's going to immense painful, crazy situations in hell week and allow him to get through and stay laser completely focused on the task at hand. so these things when it comes to the breath is using that kind of stuff to stay at your best. And the first piece is tracking and becoming aware; the next piece is then optimizing by using certain breath patterns to go from focused to calm to whatever you want. Now the ability to know the difference there now comes to practice and in part inspired they tell you there are certain ratios of breathing that when your breath pattern is between this many breaths per minute, you are calm when your focus is between this many breaths per minute you are tensed. So they have actually done the research over at Stanford and let me see if I could pull up the exact numbers for everyone listening, so you know what it is.
Ross Franklin: Great! As you’re pulling that up just for our listeners out there, we are going to have links in our show notes to all of these amazing gadgets that Jariek is talking about.
Jairek Robbins: So here you go. A calm breath pattern is 6 to 12 breaths per minute, slow regular breathing. A-10s hijacked by fighter flight breath pattern is 18 to 24 breaths per minute, fast erratic breathing. And focus is 16 to 20 breaths per minute so right in between those two but a very consistent breathing. And so this is the goal if you want to stay focused and want to be a high performer, you have to train your body to breathe at 16 to 20 breaths per minute consistent rhythmic breathing. And when you can purposely train yourself to do that by training your body to breathe in that rhythm, it'll train your brain to stay focused. And so will reverse engineering focus now it's not some magical flow state you access through somehow being in alignment with your manifestation of awesomeness it's fucking a breath pattern you can control and if you can control it and you can train your body to do it through discipline, you can fucking keep your focus all day long.
Ross Franklin: I love it, man.
Jairek Robbins: I love the workflow, but it doesn't give you a strategy of how to actually fucking do it. It tells you about how magical it is to access it and then hope to God you get there yourself, good luck see you later.
Ross Franklin: I feel like running the role now, we have got some really cool bio hacking devices. I’m going to be getting them today, what else you got man this is great.
Jairek Robbins: So from here, we go a little bit to the soft skills but like I said you break someone's heart their shit goes down fast. So this is kind of the basic technical stuff like you need sleep, nutrition, exercise, you need mindfulness, and you need the ability to stay laser focused and stay calm and focused at the same time and be able to control it with your breath and then practice it with your mind. Once you have all that stuff now, we will move over to some of the soft skill that makes or break a difference. Number one you need ideal day vision, and you also need an ideal life vision. You know what your Northstar, what’s your 20-year vision for where you're headed mentally mostly physically, business wise, spiritually all that stuff. All the research shows that if people who don't have a vision of where they are going, they will end up getting depressed, suicidal, they feel lost in life, they feel like they don't have a purpose, they are wondering, and they're certainly not performing at their best. When someone knows exactly where the hell they're going, and they're locked on like a laser, they're energized, they are passionate. They wake up early in the morning before the fucking alarm clock because they have shit to do. They are ready like they can't wait to get on with life because they know what the hell they're doing and how they are going to get there. And so they need every single moment to squeeze the most out of it. So you have to figure out how you reverse engineer that, how you say okay if this is what my perfect day looks like, what will my perfect 20 years look like out in the future. You know in all the major categories rely on their working backward ten years, from there work it backward five years, from there work it backward one year, from there work it backward you know six months, quarterly, weekly. And then figure out the next piece which is one of the habits you need actually to get the results you want. This is where people screwed up. For those watching I will draw you a little picture, it's kind of fun to see it this way. I have my mini whiteboard I use for Facebook lives but this concept of if you take a little chart here and you're in the bottom corner, X just getting started for those of you watching and you want to go out, and you want to have a 1% lifestyle. This pisses a lot of people off like fuck the 1%, but really truly I don't know anyone who's like oh no I have average normal dreams, I want to be on unhealthy, attaché, fucking broke, and hate my life. Yeah, sign me up for that shit. No, people want the best, they want this amazing experience of life. So let's call that you know the outstanding you know this amazing experience. So we will put a little like A for amazing out there where they are aiming for up on the corner, and then this is the note down here AVE for average. Now the average person in today's society at least in America's is unhealthy. They are overweight, they are unhappy in their relationship, over half get a divorce, they are financially living paycheck to paycheck trying to figure out how to fucking pay the bills next month, and they are not optimizer performing at their best in any way shape or form. And so here is what is wild, we have these amazing goals we want in life, but then you have got to ask yourself a deep question. Where are your daily habits currently leading you? So if I would add up the next 15 years that shit you do every day where is it actually taking you? Now for most people, their daily habits lead to a completely average life. Very fucking average because most people live that way but that's where their habits are taking them. Their vision, they are dreaming of this extraordinary life, and their habits are taking them to an average life.
My dad and I had a real big talk at one point in my life when I was young. He was like pal, you have got some real big dreams, but you have some really shitty habits. He is like this ain’t going to add up, and my heart is going to break as a father to watch you fuck this up. And he is like it is your life though, you do what you want, I’m not being hard on you. I’m just telling you're aiming for here and actually headed here; it doesn't add up. And so the big question we have for people is what habits do you actually need that will take you to the awesome life you really want? What daily habits do you need in each category of your life? What are they? What do you do every day? How much sleep do you need? How much food do you need? you know how do you need to treat people in your life? How do you need to build relationships, have a powerful peer group? What do you need to do in your business? What do you need to do you know in all the different categories of life to make sure it is actually adding up? So when you say you know like I catch an entrepreneur like hey it is all business, and every thing else is just off right now. I’d say hey let's come up with two things you can do every day in the other category, just two. If they did those two every day, it's going to lead you towards that amazing life you want. Instead of one categorical business is going to be amazing, everything else is going to be shit. That sucks because, in the end, you ain't going to be fucking happy. And I have met a lot of people and trust me I've done tons work for lots of people who make shit tons of money you know. Like my clients I work with personally between two of them, they raised over $500 million for their startups in the last couple years. And so I get to work with people doing big fucking things, and they all have the same story. Once I finish the broad and sell the company, then I'll focus on the ship. I’m like you are going to be dead before that fucking happens because of how hard you are pushing yourself, and you're not paying attention to the shit that really matters. And so I get to have a real heart-to-heart with them and get them the wake the fuck up and pay attention. Sorry, my mouth runs itself so that I don't filter that thing. But I get to have some heart-to-heart with this people and get them the wake the fuck up and realize that there are other shits they need to focus on otherwise they are going to hit the end of the trail and not knowingly some of them too soon and go oh shoot I messed up.
Ross Franklin: And then what happens when that light punches you in the face right like during Uganda when you get malaria right than it gets real really fast.
Jairek Robbins: Yes, I mean and I would ask them. You know how important would your fucking business be tomorrow if you went to the doctor and had testicular cancer. Fuck! I guess it is important to like pay for the bill. Well, what if I would have told you if you would have paid attention to your fucking hell for six months you wouldn’t have cancer. He’ll be like oh shit it is important, and I’m like yes fucking focus on it. But people like to play you know the opposite card here which is well some people are super healthy and do all the right things and still get it. That's just I don’t know how to explain that, shit happens. But taking as much responsibility as you can and optimizing it in the best of your ability is your choice and to choose not to do that I think is very silly as an entrepreneur. Because you have the space and you can optimize the time, you just have to commit to and actually stay accountable to it which is the hardest part.
Ross Franklin: So let me ask a question. When you found that you know there wasn't a congruency, your daily habits like weren't aligning to get you to where you need it to be. What shift did you make, how did you come up with your daily routine? What shift did you make in order to make that shift?
Jairek Robbins: Well, luckily that conversation was 14 years old with my dad. I had an early coach who told me to say hey pal you have to update this shit. That was what a 54-year-old figured out. But it is worth talking about here; it is me sitting down doing all crap. You know I can’t just work all day and hope that the rest of my life is going to figure itself out. I’m going to have to figure how to do this in and when I was busy. You know I had 52 one-on-one coaching clients which mean I was working from six in the morning till night, six days a week to try to keep up with everybody and doing paperwork in between calls and all that jazz. And so what’s wild about all that is I had to figure out how you sneak in the major categories of your life other than just business and finance. So the other five categories in two hours a time, that was it. So I wake up at six in the morning and between 6 AM and 7 AM I had one hour to try to knock out five major categories of my life as far as simple daily habits. So here is what I do, I would wake up and immediately get on the rebounder and bounce a little to wake my body up to get some lymph node moving. I super hydrate on the water first thing in the morning, do some breath patterns and breath work and some fresh breathing oxygen, and I put on my workout cloth and go straight out the front door. And while I was on my walk, I would say okay now I'm working on my physical body in motion. Now that I'm in motion, I’m going to start filling my mind. So I use some of the stuff I learned from my dad as a kid which was hey start with gratitude. Everything you have heard before to fill yourself emotionally, so you feel powerful. So I’m so grateful for my health, my emotions, my family my friends, all this stuff. So I start with gratitude, and from gratitude, I would work into what am I excited about? What is my vision? Well, I’m so grateful that 20 years from now, I’ll be 50 years old and healthier than the majority of 20 years old in the world. I’m so grateful that mostly I’m passionate about my life, living on mission enjoying every moment of my life. I am grateful I’m passionately in love and our love and passion for each other go by the day and when we are together anything is possible. I’m so grateful we have 10+ companies, and we make $100 million a year. I’m helping people becoming the happiest, healthiest version of themselves. So I literally memorize this vision for where I was going, and I repeated it to myself again and again and again to know exactly what 20 years looks like. And I say okay what do ten years look like? Ten years from now, here is exactly where I’ll be. I am so grateful that at 40 years old here is where my health is, here is where my emotions are. What do five years look like? I’m 35, here is where I’m at. What does this year look like? I am so grateful that this year, here is what is happening we are accomplishing this making this happen. What does this week look like? What does today look like? This week, here is my number one outcome to become 210 pounds, 10% body fat or less, be the strongest, flexible, most endurance filled human being I can possibly be. Why? You know, and I have all these reasons and these outcomes like what am I doing each day, and that is what I do with my mind. So I am like wow, emotions locking onto my vision filling a a purpose in life knowing that filling myself up physically using gratitude to fill that out. And I’ll be what about family, how do I sneak that into this time while I’m on my run? So I’ll envision my family and I would send love them and think about what I appreciate about them and what I love about them. And what I do when I get back, I send them a text. Hey, I just want to reach to you, I love you so much I'm so grateful that you have always supported me and I can't wait to see you you know big ups. And the practices there is well I have got emotions, physical health, and I’ve got family in there. What about spiritual? Well, I’d stop in my first favorite part of the park, and I'd sit there and just take a moment and say you know where is the miracle at this moment. And I look for it, and I see it in a butterfly, I see a leaf blowing in the wind. So I’m just like wow that's spectacular, and at that moment I get to experience a little bit of God and a little bit of the universe. At that moment like wow is amazing and get to feel that deep sense of spirituality and say a prayer. Lord, please guide me. You know thank you for this opportunity, thank you for this gift thank you for another day alive, and then please guide me. I would say you know God’s love flows to me from the room full of the hearts and souls of every person around me daily. So I use that as my mantra to imagine that energy of life flowing through me reaching people and they need it most. So all these things if you noticed I've crossed off health, emotions, family, spiritual and what am I missing? There's one more, intimate relationship. Now at that point in business you know 18 years old, I didn’t have an intimate relationship. But eventually you know relationships became an area where once I decided to be in one I made it the number one priority in my life. More important than business, it is the first thing I write in my schedule each week when I schedule out my time. Why? Because it's the greatest gift life has to offer, the ability to share with another human being and there’s no fucking way anything else should come before that. So what happens is that as an entrepreneur figuring out how do you rewrite your values if you are going to choose to be with someone to really truly put them first. And other people say hey God first then relationship, great do it that way. But so often it's the ability to do that and make that choice and say hey I'm choosing to put them first. You know there is a research study done by the Gottman Institute which studied 3000 couples for over 30 years and they found out one of the key there are seven factors that causes relationship to either work or not work overtime. And one of the key factors is called turning towards and what that means is when your partner says hey babe or hey look at this, or wow look at this. Anything that is a bid for your attention the masters of relationship, the ones that work would stop what they're doing turn towards their partner and go wow look at that, that's pretty neat huh and acknowledge whatever it is they're talking about. The disasters that always fucking fall apart would go just a minute babe, just a minute and turn away from the bid for their attention. These are the things that make or break a relationship long-term 107, there is a very small consistent pattern but that saying hey I'm choosing to put my partner first. What does that mean? I am in the middle of a big fucking negotiation, and my partner goes hey babe and instead of just a minute just a minute just a minute, I go stop the fucking negotiation I can handle the shit later. Yeah whats up honey and go straight to her first. You know what’s wild is if you train yourself to do this, they stop bidding for your attention as much because they know they always have it.
Ross Franklin: Wow really interesting.
Jairek Robbins: So these are things that you got to optimize because you have to train yourself. How the hell do I optimize this and how do I do this and how do I build it like a fucking muscle so that my body and the system is trained? And it's wild because if you can do this properly, these are 30-year study on 3000 couples, different nationalities, different sexes, all the orientation and all the other stuff and it found the same patterns exist. So you want to optimize it, you have to attention to it. You have to learn it, study it like a Ph.D. program and you have to figure out how to fucking put in your life. So these concepts at that point in my life, I got four out of seven areas covered, and that left me the rest of the day to focus on the other two areas that were most important at that stage of my life. And it's fair I would say business and finance were the most important thing when I was 18 to 24 years old. Like that is the Big Apple of life, nothing else really mattered to me at that moment of life. And it didn’t (inaudible) but I figured out hey I'm a real shit patterns leading to a totally average fucking life and if I don't update these patterns and get this type of stuff every single day like clockwork, I’m going to land up having average relationship, average health, average emotional fortitude in life, average spiritual life, and I will have a ton of money and be fucking miserable in the process. And by it, I say hey two simple things I do every day to optimize these little patterns and these other categories of life. Now not only do I make a ton of money in the process and help people make a difference and grow business, but I also did have this phenomenal life in the process of it.
Ross Franklin: I love it man and what a paradigm shift you were talking about with the relationships and just so you are in the middle of an important negotiation and she's like honey look at this, and you stop the negotiation and just focus on her. Wow man, what a paradigm shift. I got some adjustments to make for sure!
Jairek Robbins: Most do that is why we are here.
Ross Franklin: That is awesome man, you have given us so much great information. I mean this was really phenomenal, we got some amazing new tools, amazing new gadgets and I think maybe a good way to end this would be you spoke a lot about just building your ideal day and you kind of walked us through your morning and what you've done for a long time to get to where you have been. But how does your your ideal day look? So that way our listeners kind of has something to do model from.
Jairek Robbins: Sure! It evolved over time, and there are certain things that are still the same. My wife and I are huge fans of traveling, huge fans of helping people, huge fans of physically volunteering making a different hands-on like we were talking about earlier. And so my ideal day is waking up and doing new things. Before it was waking up, working out, being my best self, crushing it at life, making a difference, adding value to people lives and businesses, you know having this amazing serene moment in the afternoon where I get to stop and watch the sunset, going and hitting yoga, decompressing from the day. You know we have talked about a lot of routines here of winding up to get ready to conquer the day. I went to training for the special forces command for the U.S. Air Force and these guys are badass human beings, fucking hard-working, just badass humans and they are very also self-aware. So anytime you know they’ll be like Woah do you see anything I can improve on? What about this? I’m very well aware of that I’ve been working on it. What the fuck, I mean they are good. So awesome, I mean these guys are great. But I was looking for gaps and the only gap I found was they knew how to turn on, they knew how to stay on mission and lock on and not never come off. They didn’t know how to turn it off, and so this is also important as an entrepreneur. The ability to ramp up to your day and kick ass and conquer throughout the day but the ability to have a moment in time when you say listen it can be 5 o'clock 9 o'clock 2 PM doesn’t matter. You choose, and you say at this moment I'm going to have a routine that will mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually bring me back out of my battle for the day. And bring me back to the place where I can decompress and then refuel with love, compassion, and connection for my wife, for my kids, for my husband, for my family, for the people that matter to me most and I can go all in 100% presence with the people who matter to me most for the rest of this night. That ability to transition.
Ross Franklin: How do you wind down? How do you do that?
Jairek Robbins: It’s just like you need a morning routine and an evening routine. For me depending on the personality type, there are four ways the people decompress. Number one is exercise, physical activity. Number two is community time being around a group of people. Number three is alone time, just leave me alone all by myself. And number four is nothing time, like I want to sit here and do nothing, I don’t care if people run or not, I’m just going to do nothing for a period of time. There is a research study that showed that 80% of men who stop by the barn in the UK London after work then drink. They just sat there and did not disturb the fucking wall for 20 minutes and then went home. It is really remarkable, nothing time, fire gazing they call it for men. But this ability that is knowing your personality type and how you decompress you want to purposely schedule that in the gap that exists between office and home. Now if you work at home like we do on the road and work from our home wherever we are, you have got to create a transition. My transition is usually yoga, I schedule yoga at the end of every day, and I pack shit up, and go yoga, I decompress, I sweat, I let my thoughts out, I let my feelings out, decompress my body, get loose, and at the end of the yoga I flood my mind with all the things I love and appreciate about my wife. What's special about her, what’s unique about her, how I fell in love with her, what are my favorite things about her. And at the end, I come home, and I’m full with love to pour into my wife for the rest of that night. And when we first met I was phenomenal at that fucking routine. We've moved a bunch, traveled a bunch, all that stuff. I've fallen off recently but I purposely just signed a lease in San Diego, and we are going to move ourselves back for nine months so I can get back into the routine. And it is important; I have reason to move out our crew across the country to get back into that routine because I know what difference it makes for our relationship.
Ross Franklin: That’s phenomenal. Welcome then, that's huge.
Jairek Robbins: It matters. I mean what matters more where you live in a tax break city, or you get the ability to have a fulfilling relationship long-term. Now once I get into it, the goal is to be able to move again but keep the rhythm going. I just lost it because we were doing too many trips in too many cities too fast. Yeah, it's okay, go back to what works. Restart, reset it and then do it again.
Ross Franklin: Amazing and thank you for sharing that as well. You know I think it's important to know that even someone like you is still having to make changes and adjustments to the rhythm to get back to it.
Jairek Robbins: So the peace with this is the underlying philosophy that it's constant fine tuning. No one is perfect; no one ever has it crush, no one's ever like oh I’m there now. No, it's good because things change, life change, you change, your body changes, your emotions change, the experience is constantly unfolding. And so having the ability of the growth mindset, it is the way it's turned technically as far as a research goes is the ability to know that for you be at your best you constantly have to be updating the process to keep yourself at your best. And it's a problem that’s part of the process so get excited about them as they show up. I was talking to young entrepreneur who had a business of 10 million bucks prodded down on 6 million, and now it’s 3 million, and he is kind of freaking out. And I said hey, what do you think the problem is? He goes I hate problems just fucking things. I said I know, I’m just warning you if you are going to scale your business back from the 10 and hopefully 100 million then you are going to have problems every fucking day. You have to fall in love with problems. You have to be like yeah, and I said let me give you a heads up. In the beginning, we hate these things because they are things preventing us from having what we want. Later in business when you meet seventy-year-old business guys who have been running their business for 50 years like that, they fucking love problems. Why? It gives them something to fucking do. They are bored out of their fucking minds all day, and the problems come up, and they are like Alright, come on, let's get in on is this, this will be fine. And the young people scratch their head, and they are like I want no fucking problems. But what's interesting is that's what makes it fun the longer you do it because you get so good at hanging on. It just gives you something to do every day and hopefully. I was talking to Dan Martel yesterday he's building so many different companies tech companies, and I was talking to him about it, and we were laughing. He said hopefully mostly entrepreneurs listening even on here have figured out a way to elevate themselves from the person running the company with all the people reporting to them to eventually if you know me on the bone you elevate yourself up to you know the owner of the company and hire someone else to be your operator, and now you have one meeting a week. And tour one meeting a week is with your CEO who is running the business for you and you just help fix problems. And besides that go live your freaking life or start five other companies, do whatever you want. But the ability to do that really comes from optimizing you so you can lead the pack when you need to be there and then eventually being intelligent enough for you to optimize your business and get yourself the ability to elevate out and have someone else run it for you or just exit and install somebody else.
Ross Franklin: Sure! I love it. I mean my day mostly I consider myself a firefighter, I’m just putting out fires all day. So it's funny that those those old-timers you mentioned get so excited when they have problems.
Jairek Robbins: Look at it this way. Imagine if you had this business still totally optimized four years from now into the future and you have one meeting a week, and your CEO goes yeah things are great, we are kicking ass daily, everything is awesome. You have got nothing to do. You know there's only so many years you can travel, sit on the beach and do all these other shits. And eventually, you are like okay I need something to do you and you know I have the privilege of getting clients to call me because they've sold their business, they have invested their money, they have tons of passive fucking income, they have a beautiful wife, beautiful's kids and they are bored out of their fucking minds. They call me, and they are like I thought this would be it, it's not fucking it. Look, what do I do now? Then I’m like let's find some thing you have passion about. Let’s work on that; there is a PS it's going to be nerve racking in the beginning because it is going to be a lot of fucking problems. All those stuff you had to deal with when you had to start up. Then they go argh. But then they get into it like this is awesome and they remember the thrill and the only problem is when they did the first time they were single, so they could dedicate 24 hours a day to just working. Now they're trying to do it when they have a wife and family or a husband and family. And at that moment, the only reason I keep saying, wife and family, is I worked with 90% male entrepreneurs, it is just the people I work best with. I do work with a couple of female with women, but 90% of my clients tend to be men. Also, it is just who I adapt to and who I work best with. We have a lot of people on that team, my wife works phenomenal with ladies and optimizing them but I generally work with guys and mostly 35 to 45-year-old male entrepreneurs who own one to five companies in that range and so that why I really keep using that same analogy or phrase for anyone listening, just to clarify. But now they have to figure out a new way to go about the same challenge because they now have other members of their team with them, their kids and family. And so that is very important to update the strategy otherwise you know there's a book written that says what got you here won't get you there. It's very true because if you try to go back to your old tactics of how you succeeded as a single entrepreneur in the past, it will destroy your relationship and family. Until you have to learn how do you update the habits, put your family first and still go conquer business. Put your wife first, your husband first and still go conquer business. That is a new set of patterns, a new set of habits.
Ross Franklin: Awesome! I mean amazing advice. The podcast was full of a lot of actionable strategies and really cool gadgets. You know thank you so much Jairek for all your time, this was amazing. We are going to have a lot of the items that you mentioned, links to that in the show notes and I just want to thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure having you.
Jairek Robbins: So very welcome and thank you for everyone taking time to listen. I appreciate your ears for the last however many minutes this was and thank you very much for having me and sharing what we have with everyone.
Ross Franklin: Amazing.
