The Dave Crenshaw Success Show
Learn how to achieve balanced and lasting success with world-renowned author and keynote speaker Dave Crenshaw! Dave has already taught millions how to be more productive through his online courses—now listen in as he explores the untold stories of some of the world’s most accomplished people. Dave’s mission is to help his kids become successful human beings, and you get to come along for the ride! Discover how to develop your career, manage your money, find time for fun, build stronger relationships, and make your mark in the world. Every episode ends with clear, concise tips you can implement to reach your goals. If you’re looking for a wholesome, family-friendly podcast to achieve happiness and find prosperity, The Dave Crenshaw Success Show is for you!
The Dave Crenshaw Success Show
The Adventurous Author, John Strelecky - Bestselling Author & Speaker
Discover the remarkable journey of John Strelecky, a bestselling author and speaker who dared to quit his job and embark on a global adventure. His story, which has touched the lives of millions, is a testament to the power of reassessing goals and the transformative potential of life-changing experiences. This episode will inspire you to value persistence, gratitude, and the pursuit of your passions. After hearing John’s story, you'll be encouraged to choose an action that resonates with you today.
Action Principles
Pick one to do this week:
- Study business. Whether it’s through a degree or self-taught, business skills are invaluable to your success. ACTION: Take a business course on LinkedIn Learning.
- Create your museum. An imaginary museum of your life is a great way to do a mental check on your life’s journey. ACTION: If your life were displayed in a museum, what is missing, and what can you do to fix it?
- Delegate. By delegating tasks to others, you can spend more time on your most valuable activities. ACTION: Pick one lower-value task and delegate it by outsourcing or automating it.
- Find your purpose. The secret to winning in life is spending more time doing what you love and fulfilling your purpose. ACTION: Read A Cafe at the Edge of the World and explore the question, “Why am I here?”
Guest Resources
Learn more about John Strelecky at JohnStrelecky.com. You can also follow him on Instagram for daily inspiration.
Suggested LinkedIn Learning Courses
Free Time Management Course
Thanks to Dave Crenshaw's partnership with Microsoft and LinkedIn Learning, you can get free access to his full course, Time Management Fundamentals, at DaveGift.com.
Dave Crenshaw develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities, and organizations of every size. He has appeared in Time magazine, USA Today, FastCompany, and the BBC News. His courses on LinkedIn Learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages, the most popular of which is The Myth of Multitasking—a time management bestseller. As an author, speaker, and online instructor, Dave has transformed the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands around the world. DaveCrenshaw.com
took 46 of the biggest questions people have asked me over the years about life. And some of them are just unusual and quirky. And so is like, Have you thought of your own funeral? Do you ever find inspiration from fruits?
Dave Crenshaw:And this episode, you'll get to know John's true lucky, the adventurous author, and you'll hear the story of how he quit his job to travel the world, and how that led to him becoming an inspiration to millions of readers. I'm Dave Crenshaw, and this is my success Show. Welcome back friends to the Dave Crenshaw Success Show. This is where I interview some of the most successful people I've met in my life's journey. And I'm on a mission to discover universal principles of success. I started the show to help my children be successful. But then I realized you'd probably want to learn along with them. If you're not familiar with me in my work, I'm a best selling author. I speak around the world to Fortune 500 companies, and I've taught millions of people how to be successful through my online courses. With this show, I wanted to create something lasting to help my family succeed. And I'm, in particular, looking for people who have multifaceted success in many areas of their life, not just their career, or their financial success. And at the end of every episode, I share a few actions that you might take this week to make it a part of your life. So as you listen to today's episode, look for something you can do, do today do this week to make my guest success story a part of your success story. And you're really going to want to do that with today's guest. John's for Lucky is a best selling author. His work has been translated into 44 languages, and he's sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. He's been honored alongside Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and Deepak Chopra. As one of the 100 most inspirational thought leaders in the field of leadership and personal development. John spends extensive time backpacking around the world. He's taken extended trips to Africa, the Amazon Basin, the Yucatan Peninsula, South America, Southeast Asia, Europe and China. And he's generously agreed to talk with us today. John, thank you so much for being on the show. It's an honor to have you here.
John Strelecky:Thanks, Dave. It's an honor to be here. Love the show. Love the interviews that you do. Yeah,
Dave Crenshaw:well, and I've just been fascinated, my goodness, the book sales that you've had and the remarkable life that you've lived and all the places you visited and people that you've met. I've just been fascinated to have an opportunity to talk to you about this. Where are you located today?
John Strelecky:I'm in the Central Florida area today. Okay, great. Is
Dave Crenshaw:that home for you?
John Strelecky:It is yeah, no, I love warm weather. I grew up in the Chicago area when I was a kid. And we used to go on vacation once a year, and my parents would bring us down to Florida in February, they would take us out of school. And I don't know if you've ever spent a February in Chicago. But if you do that, and then you go down to Florida, thinking to yourself, Wait, why do we live in Chicago? So when I had the freedom to choose where I wanted to live, I was like no warm weather 12 months of the year. Yeah,
Dave Crenshaw:Utah, we get all four seasons, and they're all extreme. So I love going to tropical places as well. And well, you spent a lot of your life in those places. And we're gonna get to that story in a moment. I always like to ask all my guests the same question, John, which is when you were young, and I'm thinking more in your teenage years, what did you want to be when you grew up? What did you think you were going to do for a career?
John Strelecky:Yeah, I had no clue. Absolutely no clue. So I was a senior in high school and saw the movie Top Gun and decided I wanted to be a pilot and so nice. Yes. Yeah. As a general rule, everybody who's listening, making life decisions based off of Hollywood movies, not a great life strategy. As a clueless 17 year old, that was the path I chose. Yeah,
Dave Crenshaw:boy, that that happened to a lot of people, I think, see Tom Cruise flying around. You're like, yeah, that's it for me. So did you did you go into the military? What was the progression with that thought?
John Strelecky:Yeah, that's I mean, it's just a crazy bizarre story of how it progressed, I, I went down to a place called Embry Riddle, which is in Daytona Beach, Florida. And because I was so late in the game, I couldn't apply for military scholarships. And so once I got down there, I did that, only to find out that my vision was like 2025, which at the time, they're like, Well, you can be a navigator but not a pilot's. And so I dropped out of the military part of it. And it's focused on commercial aviation, only to then find out a few years later in a sort of catastrophic moments in my life that I could actually no longer be a pilot. So but that was the dream.
Dave Crenshaw:Do you mind talking about that, that moment that caused that to occur?
John Strelecky:To back up a tiny bit, I started working when I was 12 years old. My family didn't come from much money. And so I knew that if I was going to be able to go to college, I would really have to save and make as much as I could. So I started working very young and I would work multiple jobs during the summer I'd be up at 6am and be working until 910. o'clock at night, and took all that money and invested in this dream of becoming a pilot. And then when I was in my junior year of college, I was offered a chance to do a very prestigious internship with the United Airlines. It was a big, big deal, and basically would accelerate your career track by about 10 years did all that everything went great, they loved me, and was given one of only three letters of recommendation from the history of the program. And came back a couple of years later, and found out that I had a never diagnosed heart condition that only matters if you want to be a pilot or an astronaut and only impacts about one out of every 100,000 people. Nonetheless, those two realities were my reality. And so literally, in one day, every penny I'd invested in my dream, every moment I had invested in study was gone, just in a heartbeat. I
Dave Crenshaw:want to pause on that for a second and just highlight it because often moments like that, when we're in them, we feel like everything has been taken away from us. Oh, yeah. It's easy to feel like and I'm sure you felt this way like this is over. Right, everything I wanted to be. And yet I think in hindsight, you look back at it and say, that moment helped define me, it helped push me to the place that I am in the success that I have today. Totally,
John Strelecky:yeah, had that dream been followed through, then I wouldn't be the author that I am. Now I wouldn't have a book that is in 44 languages, 10 million copies out there, it's being turned into a movie. And most important for all of that as much as like any book is great to have that if it's entertaining, or inspiring whatever the particular genre that I write in is books that inspire people to live a very special life, like their version of an extraordinary life. And so the beautiful stories and letters that we get every day would never have come to life had I have been able to be an airline pilot. So yeah, in the rearview mirror, there was clearly something that I was supposed to do that was different than that. But at the time, it was just catastrophic. For about a year after that I was severely depressed, trying to figure out why just was so unfair. It's not like I had done something wrong. I had done all the stuff I was supposed to do. And it was all taken away. So at the time, it seemed catastrophic. Okay,
Dave Crenshaw:so talk to me about that year afterward, like, how did you get out of that funk, of feeling depressed and feeling like, all my dreams that I had are gone now. I
John Strelecky:think at some point, you just have to realize, I am either going to pick myself up, dust myself off and start over. Or I'm going to be this way, which was the depressed way for ever. And I was too young to have that be my reality for the next 60 years. And to driven I mean, I proven to myself from such a young age that I could make things happen. And so yeah, that path is gone. You know, there's that great quote by Helen Keller, it's, you know, sometimes we stare so long at the door that's closed, we don't see the ones that are open. And I said, I got to start moving, I got to start finding another way.
Dave Crenshaw:That's a great perspective to have, right, we can choose to stay where we are, or we can choose to do something different. So what did you choose? Well, how did you start to make the progress out of that, that place? Yeah,
John Strelecky:I would love to tell you. It's a beautiful story after that. And like, I found my passion and was well on my way. But no day of the story is actually quite ugly for a little while after that. There was a horrible job market at that time. I mean, unemployment was very high. And so I got a job working at an office as an accounting clerk. It was a job that I hated. And so I was there for about a year. And then eventually I was, I was like, Alright, so there's gotta be a next step. And I got a random piece of advice from a former neighbor of my parents. And, you know, I was visiting my parents, I was shooting hoops in the driveway. And he came out and saw me and we're shooting hoops together. And he said, So what are you going to do? I heard you know what happened? I said, I don't know. I just have no idea. And he said, I think you should go get your MBA. And Dave, honestly, like, like, I was a good student, but I just didn't love school. And so the idea of going to more schooling just didn't really resonate with me. And I kind of explained that to me, he's like, Well, he's like, I really think like, you'd be great at it. And I think that's what you should consider doing. And so long story short, I ended up applying to Northwestern University's Kellogg business school. And I got rejected, and I had extraordinary scores. But within the rejection letter with some of that said, if you feel this is an error, that you can contact the University and sort of pitch your case, right. And so I contacted the university and I said, Well, I was rejected, and they said, We didn't think you had enough practical work experience. And so Dave, I wrote this letter to the university admissions department. In which case I said listen, you guys are telling me I don't have enough practical work experience. I was a pilot. I had people's lives at stake. I flew in such cold weather that I had wind covering the windshield, ice on the wings. And I just went there was basically just me venting my frustrations over this horrible like situation. Never expected to hear anything back. I started myself on a different path. Six months later, I get a letter in the mail it says congratulations, you're in for the fall. Oh, wow. So sometimes the universe takes one away from you and sometimes the universe hands you went back and this is definitely a case where I got handed one back
Dave Crenshaw:your story, you know, having someone come to you Say, Hey, you should get an MBA with this highlights part of my experience. And what I've seen with many of the people I've interview, which is the value of a business degree. Studying that was was a major point in my career. And it was because a brother in law, who now is highly successful with his own business, made a comment he said, you can't go wrong with a business degree, it's I think you said it's like apple pie, and Chevy, right? It's always going to help you, I can't
John Strelecky:agree enough to be honest with you. So when I look at my trajectory, and I look at the trajectory of other people who have been, have done something in the creative arts, that it is my ability to negotiate a contract, even read a contract, and know what the terms are, I made some very key decisions in my career as an author, including keeping the digital rights for my content, for example, this is very tactical, but it's a relevant example. And so at the time that digital rights are starting to come out in the publishing industry, they would offer authors 25%, of what's called net receipts. And I remember hearing that and saying, Well, who agreed to these terms? And my agent at the time said, Well, we did and I was like, well, who's weak? Because like, I was not involved in that discussion. And it's my content. And they said, well, the industry has decided these are the terms. Well, just for perspective, it takes about an hour to take a book and put it up on Amazon as a Kindle product an hour. And so you're going to lose 75% or more of your royalties in exchange for an hour. That's crazy, right? So I had the business savvy to understand these kinds of things and the courage to say no, like, I'll just try this on my own. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back to them and take the very bad offer. It
Dave Crenshaw:sounds like you have a pattern of speaking up and arguing for yourself. Where does that come from? Is that just something that's inherent in you? Or is that something that you've learned over time? Yeah,
John Strelecky:comes from decades of not doing it and seeing the negative consequences.
Dave Crenshaw:I know that part of your story was that you were in a corporate job before you started to pursue traveling? Can you talk to me a little bit about that time period? And how it shaped your perception of the world today?
John Strelecky:Yeah, so one of the great things about getting a degree from a top tier MBA program like Northwestern and the Kellogg School is that it opens up doorways that otherwise would not be open for you. And so I had the opportunity to enter arenas that I would not have been asked to enter before and one of them was the field of management consulting. And so I learned a ton, you know, I'd be called on a random Thursday or Friday and said, Hey, we need you to be an expert on corrugated boxes, Monday morning, you're going to be presenting to the board of directors of this company. And so it taught me to be courageous. It taught me to, to believe in the strengths that I had, which was I'm a very creative thinker. And I can connect the dots on things. And so when I'm asked to do something in an industry I know nothing about I can be like, alright, well, what do they do in the radio industry? Like, what did they do in the grocery industry? What do they do in large scale manufacturing? What do they do in publishing, and take something creative from those and apply it to whatever the client was dealing with? So yeah, I was very good at it. But the thing was, Dave, I didn't love it. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, I'd be very curious to hear where you're good at a job. But you don't love the job, you don't feel like you have the heart connection. This isn't where you want to spend the quality minutes of your life, you're not fulfilling as I call it in my books, your PFP your purpose for existing. Because at the end of the day, if we're not careful, we end up spending 70% of our awake life Monday through Friday, they're at work, getting to work or thinking about work, and then do that for 40 plus years only to get to the end and be like, Hmm, like, yeah, I made the money I wanted to make. And I was able to provide for my family, which is awesome. Nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. But I didn't really do what I felt was my calling, I didn't really fulfill my purpose on the planet. And at the end of the day, I do think that there is a much bigger game than just like work for 40 years at a random job. So that was a big thing. For me, it was looking deeper than just a paycheck.
Dave Crenshaw:I want to pause on that. And I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone listening to this. And the question that comes to my mind is, well, how do I know if I'm fulfilling my purpose for existing? How do I even become aware whether or not that's occurring? What's that? What does that feel like to know that you're not fulfilling it?
John Strelecky:Well, in my case, it was using that terminology. It's a sense of unfulfillment. I remember getting, I'd come back from a week trip at a client's I'd be in the cab going back to my place. And just asking myself, is this all there is to life? And so asking those types of questions are good indicators that you're either on their path that you want to be on or you're not really there.
Dave Crenshaw:I know that you eventually left your job to pursue traveling. And that strikes me is something that's very difficult to do with family. Right? I've got three children. Now my oldest is 18. My youngest is 11. But it's hard just to go on a two week trip. You left everything and you're like, I am going to travel the world extensively. Is that Is that accurate? Yeah.
John Strelecky:So at the time, I did not have my daughter. But that said, with my daughter so we took a year and backpacked around the world when she was four and a half. And I think like most things in life, it's very easy to find reasons why we can't do things. And it's also very easy to find ways to make it happen. The trick is to ask ourselves, what is the motivation. And for me, I use a very simple concept called museum day. And it's Imagine if every moment of your life was recorded everything you did everything you said, all the places that you went to all the ways in which you spent your time. And then towards the end of your life, a museum is going to be built to honor you. Only, it's going to show your life exactly how you lived it. And so if 80% of your life is at this job that doesn't make you fulfilled or doesn't make you feel like you've, you know, lived the life you wanted to live, then there's going to be 80% of your museum showing that there's going to be giant murals and pictures and videos and kiosks. And if you love spending time with your family, as you just described, or on a particular passion or hobby, but for no matter what reason, you only spent 2% of your time on those loves, then no matter how much you wished it to be different, only 2% of your museum will get to be dedicated towards that. So maybe it's just a few pictures in your exit door. And so I challenge people to say, what would your museum look like right now, first of all, and how would it feel for you, if you keep living life the way you're living? If you got to the end, and you walk to your museum. And then the real big aha is what if the human experience actually consists of building our museum every single day as we do. And then the afterlife actually consists of us being the tour guide for our own museum for all of eternity. And when you have that context, and frame of reference in mind, it gives you the courage to do things that you may not otherwise have the courage to do a couple of
Dave Crenshaw:great tools right there that I really love. Because I teach the importance of having a clear vision and using that museum day tool helps you with that visualization and seeing that in your mind. And that's so critical for crafting a successful life a successful career. I love that philosophy. So talk to me about the early years of traveling, what you did what you learned, provide a couple of highlights if you don't mind.
John Strelecky:Yeah, absolutely. So I was in my early 30s a time when most people are not going to be leaving their careers. I was doing excellent in my career, I was on my way to be a partner in the firm I was at. But I like I said I just wasn't feeling fulfilled. And so I decided to leave it all behind and go backpack around the world, which people you know, when you're 18 or 19, like, okay, maybe when you're 22, and you're done with college, you're gonna take a gap year, okay, people can get around that. And when you're 32, like people look at you like you're absolutely nuts. I mean, I heard the word crazy so many times. But you know, did it anyway. And it was an absolutely life changing experience. I had dreamed of seeing Africa and to be in Africa, camping among the animals to be driving my own little vehicle in Africa, seeing the animals to meet the people and cultures from around the world. It just opened my perspective in so many ways, including the fact that I had had a very well orchestrated, well mapped out spreadsheet data that showed when I could retire and how much money I needed to retire before I left on my trip. After traveling to work $40 A day and having the time of my life, I realized that the rest of the world in many places is a lot cheaper. And yet it's still extraordinary. And so it just reframed my mindset about life, my perspective about finances. And I think that's the case with so many things when we get outside of our knowledge base in our comfort zone. Like our perception of how the world works can shift dramatically and instantly, with one small little change. And for me, going in backpacking and seeing the world was that change. And so I came back from that experience. And I had a little I actually had a client contact me shortly before I came back and they said, Are you back yet? They knew I was traveling. I said no. And they said, well, we need a consultant. So are you willing to come back and do a job and I had no, nothing lined up? You know, I wasn't planning okay, this is what I'm gonna do want to come back. So I said, Sure. And so I remember coming back on my last flight of that engagement, and thinking to myself, what would I tell someone right now is the meaning of life. And then I started to write something out on the plane. And the next morning I woke up. And something inside of me said sit down and start typing. And so I did that I sat down and started typing. And over the course of 21 days, a little story about a cafe in the middle of the middle of nowhere, which is now called the cafe on the edge of the world flowed through me. I had never written anything before Dave, I had no plans to be an author. I had no big like Master dream to be a novelist or anything like that. But I had traveled the world without the knowledge of how to speak other languages of what the local cultures and customs were like. And when you do that, one of the best things you can rely on is your intuition. And I think it's a fabulous tool in business. I think it's a fabulous tool in parenting. And it is a fabulous tool in aligning your life and the direction that you want it to go. And so when my inner voice said sit down and type even I didn't really comprehend why it was telling me that I sat down and typed. And now here we are. That book is, like I said, 5 million copies sold worldwide 44 languages, like it launched everything for me in terms of what I do.
Dave Crenshaw:How did you get that into the hands of a publisher? Did you get an agent? What was that process like for you?
John Strelecky:Because of my consulting experience, I knew how to take a concept and launch it. And so when I when this story flowed through me over the course of 21 days, and it looked like a book, and it felt like a book, I did two things. One is I started to research the publishing industry, like, alright, what are my options here, and I treated it like a consulting assignment, I said, if I had 72 hours before I needed to go make a pitch to a board of directors, I better learn everything I can. So I took three days, became an absolute expert in 72 hours. And I learned that the options were, I could either try and get an agent and a publisher, I could do what was called at the time print on demand where they take anything and like, turn it into a book. Or I could start my own company and have my own magazine or have my own publishing company. And so I was like, I'm gonna do the Oprah route because the other publisher and the agent route looked like 18 months, and I didn't feel like I had 18 months to wait. Within two and a half months, I had my book up on Amazon. And then I was like, alright, so I got a book. I said, Tom, I just had a manuscript was like, alright, so I got a manuscript, but it's going to be turned into a book, I need to get publicity like this goes back to the marketing piece, how do I take this thing, and I let the world know that it actually exists? And so I acted in a fearless fashion. David, I'd be very curious to know if you have one of these stories in your life. I'll share it very briefly, but I think most entrepreneurs have one like this. So in my state of complete cluelessness about how the publishing industry worked, I contacted the magazine that was like a lifestyle magazine. And I told the whole story. And I said, I was wonder if you guys would do a profile piece about me, because I like live in this general area. And the editor had this long pause. And she was like, well, we don't really do that kind of stuff. But I kept talking to her Dave, and I just kind of wore her down. And eventually she said, Okay, you know, what, just send me the book. And I was such a complete amateur, that I said, Well, I actually don't have a book, can I send you the manuscript? And I think I just asked her and she was like, Okay, fine, just send it to me. And so I sent her the manuscript. So I follow up eight days later, the phone call, I get patched through to the admin person. And then they somehow they had to have made a mistake, because actually Patch me through the Editor again. And she was like, I'm sorry, you're who like she had no idea who I was, had no recollection of our previous conversation, clearly had not read the book. I hung up from that I was like, Tang like that cost me $25. And encourage us to print this thing. And clearly, that did not work out. But Dave, three days later, I get a phone call. It's this lady. She says, Hi, this is on so and she said, we need to meet you. Alright, well, that sounds way more promising than I don't even know who you are. And so I met her at this restaurant, I walk in, I've never met her before, she never met me. I sit down at the table, and her opening words to me are, your book has changed my life? Wow. And she went on to tell me this amazing life story that was her life story, but how it related to the story of the cafe and the cafe and the edge of the world and how she had found something in there. That validated a piece of her life story that nothing else had. And that was a tremendous big boost for me, because I was like, Okay, if that's the very first person to ever read this manuscript, like there's something here and I should keep going. Yeah,
Dave Crenshaw:well, I've said this a few times. But there's something powerful about being naive and full of confidence. So true. I started my career coaching businesses when I was in 98. And I hadn't graduated from college yet. And I was just like, You know what, I can do this. And just just went for it, and somehow was able to convince people, you know what, I'm going to work with you. Let me show you that I know what I'm talking about. And then when I do, then you can refer me to other people. Now, I want to point out something though, I want to pause and I apologize if this question puts you on the spot. I'm starting to feel a little irony here. Because you wanted to leave a corporate world you wanted to travel, and you created a company that puts all of this responsibility on your shoulders. Right? So how did you or how do you reconcile the two things?
John Strelecky:Yeah, great question. And very intuitive as well, in terms of my life story. So at some point as the book took off, so I needed a website. I don't know how to do a website. So I created a website. It was horrible, absolutely horrible. But nonetheless, like, despite all of that people were buying the book and talking about the book. And so this was further validation. But I was about a year into it. I had sold over 10,000 copies. We've taken orders from 24 different countries. And I felt like I was running a company again, to your point, and I felt like my calling my purpose was to not be running the company but to be writing. And so a strange series of circumstances but very short version of this as I ended up getting picked up by a literary agent out in New York. And from there, she started to sell the rights internationally, and also sold it in the US. So I sold it to a US domestic publisher. But six years after that I was dissatisfied, like they weren't doing as good of a job as I had been doing. And so I took the US rights back, I kept all the international deals in place, but I took over the rights for myself. And I found a balance, because at that point, I now had a little girl. And I found a balance of being the dad that I wanted to be continuing to write when I wanted to write and doing the publishing stuff. But doing it in a way that allowed me to have the lifestyle that I wanted to live, including, as I said earlier, taking my daughter when she was four and a half and backpacking around the world for a year. And it was just having the awareness and the consciousness about this is what my life ideally is going to look like. And then taking the steps so that it did look like that. Because it's very easy to be reactive, like I'm reacting to whatever's in the inbox, as opposed to No, I will actually control the inbox and control the way that I spend the minutes of my day. So how
Dave Crenshaw:were you able to go back out, right, you're getting sucked into this wonderful vortex of selling all these books, and building this business. But yet, you internally know that you want to be someone who travels and goes places. So how did you? I guess I'm asking from a logistical standpoint, how did you make that happen? Yeah,
John Strelecky:I mean, technology continued to evolve, which made it easier in terms of I, you know, I could take a laptop with me and I could be doing stuff remotely. But having an eight at the time, enabled her to be working on selling international deals while I was out backpacking around the world. So I think this is one of the great things you can look for as an entrepreneur, no matter what industry you're in is, what resource can you partner with, that can probably do the job better than you can actually do it, and can do it while you're off doing whatever it is that you want to be doing. And that was really the thought process that I would use to evaluate all of my decisions. And that meant, yes, stepping back from things that I couldn't do and do well, but weren't going to get me to the life that I most wanted to be doing. I'll say there's another and we can go into this in a second. But know your numbers is one of the most important variables of thriving in the human experience to me, what does that mean? Well, if you say to yourself, if I'm going to have a successful life, that means that I'm going to read 250 nights a week with my kid. That's a number that is success to me. If your number is I want to make $250,000 This year, because if I make that I can provide for my family and the way that I want to provide for them. And that means two vacations a year, and dance lessons for the girls baseball lessons, whatever the case is, like all these variables. And if you say to yourself, and for myself, my number is I need two weeks of alone time or I need 20 minutes per day of meditation, whatever these key variables are for you know your numbers, and then honor those numbers. Because what I've discovered is that we're in a very interesting learning construct this cosmic algorithm of life that we're operating within. And this algorithm is designed to help us learn and grow. And when we have clarity about the numbers, the algorithm will align to assist us in getting those numbers. Now the interesting thing is, if we don't honor the numbers, the algorithm goes, Oh, here's a very interesting life lesson opportunity for John, or for Dave. And so then we will get the life lesson. And often the life lesson will appear in ways that aren't so great. And so on are the numbers. And when you get to what you want to get to, like, stay there.
Dave Crenshaw:And I do want to say this to John, I want to add to this. It's true that being a business owner, being entrepreneur gives you more flexibility. Our audience is maybe some entrepreneurs, I think we can still do those things, I think we can still structure our day, we can delegate a lot more, even if we don't run a business. And the best example of that is you buy something from Uber Eats, and you're not driving out there physically someone is going and getting it and doing it for you. And now there are so many opportunities, so many ways to delegate out parts of our life. And I think we can ask ourselves the question, which of this do I really need to be doing personally, and the things that you don't need to be doing personally find a way to delegate it to someone else who's better at it, who's more skilled at it. And that helps you free up that time, so that you can get those important numbers in your life. Absolutely.
John Strelecky:And all of us are faced with an immense amount of options for how we can spend our time these days more so than ever before in human history. Well, this can either be a great asset to you living the life that you want to live or this can be the greatest barrier, because it's so easy to be what I call pleasantly occupied. You look at your phone, and an hour goes by and then oh, you're rushing around at the end of the night. So we don't have time to read tonight. Sorry about that. Well, if earlier in the day, we had not been pleasantly occupied on our phone for an hour doing Something that really added no real museum day moments to our existence, then maybe we would have had that hour for the reading time at the end of night. And so being consciously aware of the minutes that we spend, and the ways in which we spend them, not from a place of judgment, or like being cruel to ourselves, but genuinely asking, Is this the best use of my time? You know, one of the one of the quotes that I love more than almost any is, are the steps I'm taking today, getting me one step closer to the life I want to be living tomorrow,
Dave Crenshaw:would you share one of the more memorable places and situations that you've experienced when you've been traveling the world? Is there something that stands out into your mind with all of those amazing trips that you've taken?
John Strelecky:There's so many amazing different experiences, certainly from a place of, there's two that come to mind instantly. So one is, it gives you such an unbelievable perspective about being in a state of gratitude. So I did nothing to get a passport in the country in which I live, I did nothing to get access to the unbelievable resources and opportunities and chances to grow. As an individual provide great schooling for my child, I walk into a grocery store, there's 42 varieties of toothpaste, 100 varieties of cereal, and that's just two of the, like, 19 aisles in that store. When you travel the world, and especially when you go to third world countries, you realize what unbelievably precious gifts those things are. And I did nothing to deserve them. I just happened to be born in a place where I was instantly given access to that. And that's very humbling when you travel the world cup makes you seriously question whether or not you deserve that. And if you don't necessarily deserve it for anything you've done to contribute to the world, I think it pushes you to say, Okay, well, what can I do to actually justify that? How can I contribute to help out someone else who doesn't have that. And so that's one of the things that travel does for you, it just opens you up to just how easy it is to be in a state of gratitude for the chances and choices we've been given. In addition to that, I had an experience where I was almost killed by an upside down flying car when I was in the country of South Africa. And being almost killed reframes your perspective on many, many things. Certainly, it challenges your perception of your own mortality. But it just, again, causes you to look at life in a very different way. And certainly that experience did for me,
Dave Crenshaw:and what did you change after that experience occurred?
John Strelecky:I think it gave me a perspective about how fragile and brief life can be. And I was already out there backpacking around the world. So I was doing something that was in alignment with my purpose by core desire, which is to be an adventurer to see the world to make a positive difference. But I think it just permanently gave me a museum, a mark in my museum that I could go back to again, and again, that reminded me of just how potentially fragile and precious the human experiences and how fast it can almost end. And that can be the motivation to then make the tough choices in life. And that tough choice might be, you want to move to a different city or you want to leave a relationship, that's not a good relationship. Or you want to leave a job where you've got a lousy boss and go to a job that you feel is more in alignment with your skills and your passions and your talents. But you know, what, you know, and you fear the unknown, and you need to find the courage to take those kinds of steps. And so having something like that, that reinforces in you just how precious and fragile life is, can be the motivation and the courage to make those kinds of tougher life decisions. And the cool thing is, the more times you make those what seem to be tough life decisions, the easier it gets to make the next one. But the first couple are the tough ones.
Dave Crenshaw:Yeah, having dealt with my own brush with death, it's, it really makes you stop and say, what are the things that I'm doing that don't matter? I think that's the biggest thing to me is creating that assessment of saying, you know, what, I'm doing a lot of things that, really, there's no point in me doing them, and I'm going to cut them out of my life. And simplifying, for me has been the lesson and the importance of spending time with my family and prioritizing them.
John Strelecky:What are the new things as you're describing that reminds me of is the near death experience can be one of the most motivating things possible. And sort of the traditional one I remember growing up was like, oh, yeah, person who was a lifetime smoker, and my grandma was a lifetime smoker died of cancer from that. But someone who said, like, I can never stop smoking, I can never stop smoking. And then they're on the way to the hospital as they're having a heart attack. And then they decide I'm never smoking again, right? Or they're stressed out at work and mass or whatever. And so it's like this near death experience gives them the courage to suddenly make a change that they've known they've wanted to make for a long time. And this is all fine and well, but the problem with the near death experiences, you get very close to death, and sometimes you don't walk away from that. And what I've discovered in life is that there is an equally powerful presence that we can have. That's what I call a near life experience. That's when you allow yourself to tell perfection. As close as you can imagine, that might be just a day spent, I did these adventure days with my daughter from the time that she was two until the time that she was 12. And it was just she and I off doing an adventure day together. And we would hit parks and zoos and everything you can imagine just tons of fun every single day. And so when you have a near life experience that is as close to perfection, as you can imagine. That is also tremendously motivating to ask yourself, How can I have more of that in my life, I find it to be even more motivating your death. And the good thing is, you don't get close to death. And so my great challenge to everybody is allow yourself to carve out blocks of time that you dedicate to having these near life experiences as close to perfection as possible. And see how that motivates you to have more and more and more of those in your existence.
Dave Crenshaw:It's a beautiful way to put that thank you for sharing that haven't put her to put that way. But that's, that's super valuable, create near life experiences that are close to perfection. How are you structuring things today? Are you still traveling? How are you building your life right now?
John Strelecky:Yeah, the interesting thing about the human experience is just how much it is constantly changing. And so when my daughter was little, it was easy. Now she's a teenager. And so it's I'm teaching her to drive driving her places. And so the whole dynamic is changing. And so part of the human experience is allowing us ourselves to be appreciative and nostalgic in a good sort of way about the amazing pieces from the past. But also embracing that this is the future. And here's what this is going to look like. So she's got two more years of high school. And I am fully aware that in two years, like I'll never be living with her full time again, I won't see her every morning and tell her Good morning, tell her I love her at the end of every night, it just won't exist. That's and I want that I want her to have these amazing experiences as she grows up. But it is different. And so I try and hang on tight to the times that we have together now. And then I spend the rest of my time aligning my minutes with the things that mattered to me also. And so I still do write, I have a new book that's coming out in the fall, actually,
Dave Crenshaw:what's the title of that book?
John Strelecky:That book is called answers. And I took 46 of the biggest questions people have asked me over the years about life. And I've come up with answers for them. Some of them are more philosophical. So what is the meaning of life? Some of them are a bit tactical? How do I deal with depression? How do I find more happiness in my life? And some of them are just unusual and quirky. These again, these are all submitted by fans. And so is like, Have you thought of your own funeral? Do you ever find inspiration from fruits? But bizarrely enough, because it was it was easy to look at them and be like, Alright, I'm not answering that one. But then, strangely enough, as I like thought through them, I came up with really interesting answers to the ones that were very interesting and bizarre. So it was a very fun experience to go through and do that. And so I'll be on tour in Europe, actually, in the fall to promote that book when it comes out. And yeah, I still travel, it's not as easy to travel. Because like I said, my daughter being in high school at this point, it's not like back when she was younger, and you can just pluck her out and go away. But you got to, I think the trick is to find new interests. She's interested in marine biology. So we scuba dive now, which is something that I had always wanted to do, and had never done. And then when COVID ended, I was like, let's go get scuba certified. And she was excited about that. So we did. That's
Dave Crenshaw:great. What a wonderful treasure trove of memories you've been building for and with your daughter. I love that. Thanks for sharing that example.
John Strelecky:Do you find that as they get older do you find you have to be creative and finding new ways, because there's things that you love at different phases, and then those phases go away.
Dave Crenshaw:Personally, I work with a therapist, I talked about how I have the fear of regret, of missing out on that time when my children get older. And he shared something that really stuck with me, which is it's sort of a myth, the idea that we're not going to have these times with our kids anymore. The reality is, the nature of the relationship will just change over time. And so we enjoy what we have now, but also recognize that in the future, maybe we'll be hanging out together as adults from time to time and talking about his children and that sort of thing. And I think that's helped me have peace. I certainly tried to create those moments with all of my children and with my wife, but accepting the reality that they will change over time and just enjoying and savoring. I love that word, savoring say, savoring the moments of what we have right now and then allowing them to become something else in the future.
John Strelecky:I think that's great. So what about age seven for anybody who's got kids you already know this but for somebody who doesn't like let this sink in, that by the time your kid gets to be seven, you probably won't be able to carry them anymore. They just get too darn big. You know the inherited this little tiny human that from the day that they Were born you are responsible for carrying around and taking care of. And there will come a day. And there's no big announcement for this either that like that's the last time you will pick them up and carry them. And so as they get older, there's more and more of these, and there is a little bit of mourning, I think that you look back and say, Geez, I'll never get to do that again. And I think the only way that you can get to that point with the least regrets possible is to allow yourself to have these moments you're talking about to be very conscious as you're going through the adult experience. And it's not just with parenting, it's with friends. It's with your own life and the hobbies and passions that you have with your parents. The only way you can get to those moments and not have regrets is to have done the work to think about what is it that's going to make this special and make it happen. So that when the end eventually comes up, whatever it is that you got no regrets.
Dave Crenshaw:It's a sobering thought. But I think if we make it a priority, and I'm a time management guy, from a structural standpoint, we carve out time to make it happen, then we will know that we're doing very best we can love those moments when they occur. So John, at the end of every episode, what I like to do is I like to help my audience out so that they take your story and your example, and they make it a part of their life. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to call out three potential actions that someone can take, because I'm a big believer, it's not just about hearing, it's not just about learning, it's also about doing. So I want to give three potential actions that someone can take this week immediately today to make your success story part of their success story. So I'll share three, then if you wouldn't mind sharing one as well, I'd appreciate it. The first one. And this has come up several times, as I mentioned, but I think it's a good thing to consider is Have you studied or are you studying business. Even though John story is very much one of traveling the world and experiencing new things and not getting caught in corporate culture. His background in business is what has enabled him to make the strategic choices with his career with his books, with everything that he's doing, so that he has the free time so that he has the income to enjoy those kinds of things. And you don't have to go back to school, you can just get a book, spend a little time studying business, and that's going to enrich what you're doing. Second action. I love the idea of the museum. And taking a moment, you can just pause this week schedule some time this week, to have a museum day or a museum hour and look at it and say what are the things that I want to have in my museum? What's missing? And what can I do to add those things to it? I think it's a it's a brilliant tool for that. The last one, and this is sort of practical is also finding ways to delegate, finding ways to have someone else to partner with you. So think about the things that you're doing. John, I use the term most valuable activities. So you can you consider what your most valuable activities are the two things that you do that are worth the most per hour, everything else that you do, try to find a way to delegate it, try to find a way to get someone else to lighten the burden, so that you can spend more time on your most valuable activities, which will increase the freedom that you have in life. So those are my three, John, what's one action that you would suggest?
John Strelecky:Yeah, I love those. And so I'm gonna tie into those, which is, when we're doing something that we actually are excited about, it makes it so easy to go through life with a smile on our face. And I do believe that is the whole purpose. Like I think the goal in winning the game of life is to spend as many quality minutes doing the things that you love to do with the people that you love to spend time with in the ways that you love to spend your time. And so I would recommend two parts to this. The first part is asking yourself the question, Why am I here? So in the cafe on the edge of the World Book, that's one of the first questions that the visitor to the cafe encounters. There's three questions in the cafe menu. Why am I here? And it was when I really started to ask that question of myself and my existence that I started to get clarity that enabled me to make decisions aligned with that, as opposed to life controlling my life, I started to control my life. And that's a really powerful thing. In sequence with that, we talked a lot about museum day. So let me tie that piece together. That's from a little book that I wrote called the Big Five for life. And so when you have the answer to your question, why am I here? That's your purpose. Then ask yourself, What are the five things I most want to do see or experience in my life before I die, and align all of your resources, your time, your energy, your emotions, towards those five things. And it ties in directly with your last point, which is when you do that, it challenges you to find ways for other people to do the other things so that you can focus on what will create the life that you most want to live. It's an incredibly powerful tool that has been transformative for me. And I think about it first thing in the morning when I wake up last thing before I go to bed, and it just makes life so much easier. Those
Dave Crenshaw:are beautiful actions that we can take. Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us, John, if someone wants to, and I'm sure most everyone is going to want to if they want to follow you, if they want to keep in touch with what you're doing, what's the best place for us to send them to to do that?
John Strelecky:Yeah, absolutely. So my website is my name, John straw luckey.com. And I'm on Instagram, I would highly recommend follow us on Instagram, I post a lot of inspirational content on there. But on the website, there's numerous articles that I've written related to specific topics that I get a lot of questions about. So feel free to use those resources to help you. My whole goal is that whoever listens to this, who was like, I really do I really want to get to the end of every day and be excited about my life like that I can provide a way to do that. So whether it's through the books, or the articles, or Instagram, tap into us if that's part of your goal in life. Fantastic.
Dave Crenshaw:Thank you for coming and being on the show, John, I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Same here, Dave, thanks so much. And thank you everyone for listening. Remember, it's not so much about the knowledge that you gained or what you heard. It's about what you do. So please take a moment today this week to do something about what you heard from John streleski, and you'll make his success story, a part of your success story. Thanks for listening.
Darci Crenshaw:You've been listening to the Dave Crenshaw success show hosted by my dad, Dave Crenshaw, and produced by invaluable incorporated research and assistant production by Victoria Bidez Sound Editing by Nick Wright. Voiceover by me Darci Crenshaw, and the music is by Ryan brainy via pond five licensing. Please subscribe to the Dave Crenshaw success show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you like to get your podcasts. If you have a suggestion for someone my dad might like to interview, please send it to guests at Dave crenshaw.com and please don't forget to leave us a five star review. See you next time.
