Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #324: Joel Gandara with 31 Day Challenges, LLC
Most people wait for clarity. Joel chases it through action, accountability, and a community that refuses to let you coast. From a 12-hour boat ride out of Cuba to buying 14 companies and then building a thriving men’s brotherhood, his story shows how impatience, ADHD, and hard knocks can become precision tools—when you channel them into daily practice and honest feedback.
We get tactical fast. Joel shares why “only handle it once” is a superpower for clearing mental clutter, how a single finance audit saved a member $50,000 a year, and why small, consistent decisions beat perfect plans every time. We dig into presence at home—planning thoughtful dates, asking one daily question that lightens your partner’s load, and using your calendar as a trust contract. We also map a sane path through burnout: shorter, higher-quality work blocks, scheduled recovery, and boundaries that keep you steady through hot streaks and slumps.
Then there’s jiu-jitsu—ego dissolves, skill grows, and humility becomes a habit. Getting tapped by a teenager isn’t failure; it’s feedback. The mat mirrors the brotherhood: show up, breathe, execute the next best move, and let the room raise your standards. If you feel stuck, Joel’s blueprint is simple and sharp: pick one book, one walk in the sun, one set of push-ups, one honest outreach. Put it on the calendar, report to people who care, and let identity catch up to your actions.
Ready to trade rumination for momentum and isolation for community? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review with the one tactic you’ll try this week. Your move.
For more information, visit 31 Daily Challenges, LLC at www.31dailychallenges.com, call (305) 915-8811, or explore additional resources at www.JoelGandara.com.
Well, hello, hello, friends, family, wonderful community. We are back. We are bad. Okay. You know, our guest today is someone that I recently met. And I must say that I am grateful to have crossed paths with him. Uh, as everyone knows that's been following the show, I've been doing a lot of personal growth and development work uh over the last, I say, on the north side of 40, the last six, six years or so. And one of the things I've been missing is a sense of community. And a couple of months ago, I came across our guest, Joel Gondara, and started plugging myself into his network and really leaning into a lot of the work that he's been doing in. And it's really on par with where I'm at my life. And I've seen a huge improvement in my own day-to-day and everything I'm moving towards. So I'm truly blessed and grateful to have him with us today. I think that more people out there, more men out there that are struggling to find a sense of purpose, sense of community, need to know about the work that he's doing. Um, so I think this is gonna be a really good conversation. Joel, good to see your brother. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Of course, man, of course. And thanks for your time. Really excited to get into this and really because yeah, like I said, we've just started to get to know each other a couple of months ago. So I feel like there's a lot to learn about what kind of led you up to where you're at right now. So before we get into what it is that you're doing now, I think it's important to kind of look at the origin story, right? How did you arrive where you're at today? And I noticed something not too long ago, I think it was today or even yesterday. Like so many people in life, they have these big goals and aspirations and they set out to do great things and they do accomplish great things, and there's it's fantastic. But often is the case, less often is the case that somebody goes out there and just tries to pursue their passion with no agenda, right? They're out there truly trying to help people and make a difference. And through that process, you start having a profound impact on people, so much so that you start getting this feedback that you're actually making an impact and changing people's lives on a deep level. Uh, and then your life kind of organizes around that, and then you end up doing this thing as you're as you're living. And I think that that's kind of where you're at right now. So I wanna I want to kind of get a look under the hood and learn about the story behind Joel Gandara, what brought you to where you're at today, and then we'll get into the work that you're doing today.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, um, I'm an entrepreneur and I've been grinding since I was in the fourth grade. And I don't mean like, oh, cute, little Joel, go make a couple dollars and buy yourself some bubblegum. It was like if I wanted to buy toys, I had to make my money. And so the reason I had to, we had to start that way is because I came from Cuba on a boat when I was a kid, and uh it took a 12-hour journey, it's etched in my brain, it was you know pretty dramatic. And um made it to the US and freedom and opportunity and got sent. We got into Key West on our boat and we got sent directly to California. I grew up near Oakland, California, and we were pretty poor. And um, so there was necessity. So I'm mentioning that because that has created me and part of it, it's part of what's created me into where uh what I've become, and there was a lot of need when you don't have stuff, you don't have the cool shoes that everybody has, you don't have the toys, you can't go to that thing that they're going to. It it creates something, some hunger for me at least. And I turned that into something, and and that became being an entrepreneur since the fourth grade. I traded uh garbage pail kid cards and I made some money and I bought my transformers and toys that I wanted. Um, and I started buying like I could go to after school with the other kids and go get a donut and little tiny things so I could fit in. I already had an accent and I didn't speak uh great English. So being able to just be one of the guys and and and then be more superior than them, and something was finally wow, I'm not getting made fun of. I actually have some money in my pocket, I could be cool. So that happened early on in life, and that's the early beginnings from there. It was all entrepreneurial. It was um, you know, jobs every day after school in high school, but then also something on the side. I sold chocolates at school through high school and I made$30 a day net profit in my pocket. But then I went to my$425 an hour job after school and hustled, and then you know, one step at a time and finally built a company. But we can get into that as as you see appropriate.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And I I want to I want to dig into that a little further because so so many of everybody experiences challenges and hard times throughout their life, right? But but so many people allow that to defeat them. What do you what do you think it was different for you growing up? Obviously, you came from from Cuba, but I think you mentioned uh another time that you came here when you were four, like you were so young back then. Was it just a product of your environment? Like, what was it within you that got you to where you're at when so many people out there still experience struggles, but just don't know how to get past it, don't know how to frame it properly, don't know how to use it uh to create the consistency and the patterns and the habits in life that lead to success.
SPEAKER_02:Over the years, I've learned a little bit more about myself through you know doing the work. And so one of those has been a personality test. And I'm in the top 3% most impatient people in the world. So that's good. That has helped me to just really think like I don't like the situation I'm in. What can I do about it? And let me go do it right now, not start on January 1st, not start on Monday. No, it starts this second. I thought about it, I gotta go do it right now. So that's part of it. Um, I was told I had a hyperactivity disorder as a kid. Um that's ADHD, I guess. I don't know. A couple of psychologists have told me, confirmed when I tell them everything. Oh, yeah, you have ADHD for sure. Those are all superpowers for me that you know, I'm curious. I want to get into a thousand things, I want to look into them and I want to do them right now. And I stick stay the course, even if I don't want to. Um, I stick with it and I make and I see what comes out of it win, lose, or fail. And as far as yeah, I mean, you you could hit me in the nose, you know, Jeremy. If you see me walking down the street, I make an ugly look at you, you don't like me, you punch me in the nose. Let's see if I roll up in a ball and cry, or if I fight back. And I want to think that my product of ancestors of mine that fought really hard and fought off animals and hunted and did a lot of things to survive to get me here. That, oh, someone punched me in the nose. I'm gonna roll up in a ball and cry, or someone said something mean about me, they made fun of the way I spoke English, or that my shoes were uh pay less shoe source while everybody else had Nikes and Reeboks. Am I gonna cry and be a victim? Or am I gonna do something about this and surpass the norm? I just chose the other one, the good one, I think, and it's worked out pretty well.
SPEAKER_01:I love what you said there about a superpower, right? Somebody diagnosing you with a condition. And so many people use that to perpetuate this victimhood mentality, right? Like, this is the external thing, this is the thing I have no control over that's oppressing me. Uh, and just flipping that script and looking at it from a different lens, right? And saying, like, yo, good, hit me with it, hit me with your best shot. Whatever you got, like that's just another obstacle, another challenge, another tool that I could use for growth. Something that that I've been thinking a lot about lately is like all these things that we go through, right? Anxiety, stress, grief, depression, all the ugly stuff, the shame, right? Like, I've always my whole life been trying to avoid that. I've been running away from that to my detriment. What I've come to learn is that while those horrible emotions and those states can consume you if you allow them to, if you allow them to, you know, if you ruminate them and you allow them to let you suffer indefinitely, those are the things that lead to disease and misery and lifelong suffering. But when framed properly, those are the things, those are the tools that help you grow and propel you to heights unknown. Not the easy stuff, right? The the outside validation, the wins, the instant dopamine gratification, even if you put on a lot of work, it's important to have all that stuff. But the really, really dark, ugly stuff, when you start leaning into that and looking at it as this is something that there's a lesson on the other side of it, right? What can I learn from this? That's when the true transformation starts to come. At least that's what I've experienced in my own life.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that and that boils over to everything. I'll give you an example of something that happened. Um, here in South Florida, we have a lot of palms, palm trees, and palm fronds that fall off. And I didn't see it one day. I was in sandals and I kicked something out of the way, and a big multi-inch spike broke off one of those palm fronds and it went in between my toes. But see, I didn't know that it broke off in there. I thought I just got poked and I went, ah, dang it. And I kept with my day until my foot swelled up and turned black. And I went to the doctor and they did x-rays and they couldn't find anything. And man, it got to the point where it's very difficult to walk. And I went again for another x-ray, nothing. They couldn't find it. And then the process of all that, I just kept looking at my foot, it was growing and getting darker and darker. I uh I told my jujitsu coach, my professor, I said, I haven't been able to go train because look at my foot. And he says, You're not training because of that. So you come in and you lay on your other side, on that side, and protect it with your other foot. And you're gonna learn a lot by working in that compromise position on your side, right? And so he said, Come in and we'll work on something. I went in, we worked on something, it upped my game tremendously well. Next day I got an MRI, they found it finally. The x-rays weren't showing it, and I had to we put under and had surgery. They opened up my foot and took it out. Thank God that happened because I worked on something that I didn't have before. Now, again, once you failed enough times and you've rebounded from it and you see that no one dies and you survive, you start realizing, you know what? The next time something bad happens, I'm kind of looking for the silver lining. It actually happened in our company as we were growing it. Things were going great. And I remember my vice president and I saying, we need a shakeup. We need something to go bad for us so that we could shake up and regroup and get to the next level. Because otherwise, we're just coasting right now. Yeah, I'm making over a million dollars a year, net profit. This is good, this is comfortable, this is nice. We need something to happen. And every time something happens, we man, we jump in 12 hours a day, we figure it out, we execute and get better because of it. So I think having that perspective can help someone who is getting stuck and becoming a victim. First of all, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Many people have it way worse than you. And when you do have something go bad, look to make it better. But how do you avoid it? How do you in the future? How do you get better because this thing happened? Don't waste a good opportunity, don't waste uh uh a depression, don't waste uh an injury, don't waste it. Get something good to come out of it.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny that you're you're you're you're mentioning that I had I I go for a run every Saturday with a good friend of mine, and we have like deep physics deep philosoph philosophical conversations about all sorts of stuff while we're running. And oftentimes we get that's like when we get the best stuff, because right, we're we're having this deep physical activity and we're just kind of talking off the cuff. And we were talking about um what you were just saying about you you know not being a victim and like not feeling sorry for yourself and just getting out and doing these things. And and I like he had he he looked at it like a hundred percent through that lens of like no pity, right? You got to get out there and do it. And I was like, well, there are people out there, right, that certain ways of uh phrasing things just don't land with them, right? Like to say to somebody that's suffering from depression or going through it really, really, really in the thick of it, you can't just tell them to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and do the work, right? It just doesn't land with them. And he disagreed with me wholeheartedly. He said, Well, that's you know not my problem, whatever. But I I guess I have a soft, soft spot in my heart because I've been there and I I understand how that how that can go. What are your thoughts on that? Like, where do you land on that spectrum? Do you do like obviously there's some level, the more you know somebody, if you're a close friend with them, clearly you can give them more tough love. And if you don't know somebody at all, you got to be a little bit more tender with it. But there's a balance there. Like, where do you land on that spectrum?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I can tell you for myself. Um I have been through depression a few times, and I as a kid, I was I had a lot of moments where I was down and just sad and didn't feel well. But as an adult, I've had a couple of depressing moments, and a couple of them were breakups when I was a young man that crushed me in the moment. Later, I realized, you know, thank God, thank God that relationship didn't work out because now I'm where I am today. Another one was a betrayal in business that really hurt me years ago when I was building my company. And again, thank God that that happened. But I'll tell you what got me out of it every single time. It was action. When I sat there and felt sad and just went in circles with the, because I have that tendency, and so do a lot of people, to just go in circles with the negativity. That never helped me. I just kept thinking about the problem and then digging it deeper and how how much worse can it get and all these things. But as soon as I said, yeah, you know what, I got betrayed by that vendor. It's okay. Here's what I'm gonna do. And I put a plan into action and took those actions immediately, those depressing energies went away. I put them into I'm gonna win, I'm gonna beat this thing, I'm gonna beat that now competitor of mine. And that's what's worked for me. I'm gonna show that girlfriend she shouldn't have dumped me because I'm gonna get in the best shape of my life. I'm gonna read the best books, I'm gonna surround myself with the best people, I'm gonna build my business to multi-millions. I like that energy. It it worked for me to use that same energy, but instead of for negative, use it for positive.
SPEAKER_01:So, all these life experiences that you've had kind of I want to fast forward now to a few years ago when you kind of started formulating and putting together what it is that you do uh full-time now, which is the brotherhood and all these challenges and these groups. Let's talk a little bit about that. Like, how did that come to be, right? How did you end up? Because I know it happened organically, and I that was something I was fascinated about. Talk a little bit about the transition from you know building businesses and being an entrepreneur and then kind of just transitioning into this new mission that you have that you now call your your life's purpose.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I'll start it off by saying that I'm not a huge planner, but I'm a pretty good and quick executioner. So as soon as I have a plan in my head, which takes 30 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes, I go, this might work. Let me go take the first step toward it and let's see what happens. That's it. That's how I went from a garage sale, buying some stuff to a flea market to exiting a company that I was already making, I've made many millions, tens of millions of dollars in profit from. So that all happened by there's an idea. Let me go explore it right now. Okay. So here I was, I had this company, it was making me a lot of money, I think. Very happy with it. And I was working about four hours a week. I'd go in once a week, take employees to lunch, check in on them, um, check my dashboards a few times a day, and that was it. That's all I did. So I got to be there for some 12 years or so with my wife and kids and all that. Those last or eight last eight years of the business, I wasn't going in that much. And it was great. It gave me a lot of free time. That free time, I just started volunteering as a mentor, as a, you know, in incubators and all these business startup things. And that led to someone asking me to coach them. And so I started a little coaching business, and that led to, hey, I wonder if I could put guys together to make some challenges and some practice where I get to see, you know, put them through something. Because I here's what I found is that a lot of guys, and I work only with guys, my wife works with women, so we together we team up and have this company. But I found that guys sometimes have bad habits or they don't know better. Because when I share them what works, I go, here's what's been working for me. They go, Man, I never even thought about that. Never even thought about that, right? You don't know what you don't know. Yeah, and I go, man, and I kept hearing this, and I kept coaching entrepreneurs and I kept noticing a pattern. I go, I should probably put something together, not a business, just let's get together and do this, no cost. So we got together, a few friends, maybe 20 something. We put a WhatsApp together, and I said, Every day, let's do these challenges. I didn't have a book or my book or anything, and we did some challenges, and then one of the guys says, We should use Zoom. And I go, sure. Okay, I didn't even have a Zoom account. So we got a Zoom account. When should we meet? Friday mornings, great, let's meet on Friday mornings once a week for these days that were this month that we're together. And we kept doing it. And toward the end, it might have been the very final day, it was a Friday. Um, one of the guys says, Joel, this was very good. Can we do it again? And I said, Yeah, let's do it once a year. And then he said the magic words to that hungry entrepreneur from the fourth grade. He said, Joel, if we do it again soon, like in a month or so, we'll pay you. And I go, You guys agree to that? And they all went around, yeah, dude, we'll pay you hundreds of dollars to do this again, each of us. I go, Whoa, this might be a business. Okay, how about 200 bucks? And they said, Yes, and we did it again. And I go, Well, guess what? What we're finishing today is going to be called 001. What we're gonna start next month will be called 002, and that'll be what we do. And and then class and here, so that was organic. I didn't plan that business. There was no structuring, and I didn't have a website in a corporation.
SPEAKER_01:I and just just for context, I was part of uh 031, I believe. 030 030, okay. Yeah, you were you were not too long ago.
SPEAKER_02:Nope. And so what happened? Here's but here's how things evolve. I have an open mind. I used to say no to things, and I learned a huge lesson once to stop saying no to everything and start just saying, maybe, let's see, tell me more about it. What's your idea? And then that leads to better conversations and better developments. So then class 002 started, and my buddy Kevin Thatcher, he owns Independence Title here in South Florida. Um, he was in class 002. I just met him through EO, entrepreneurs organization, where we're both members, and he joined my class. And as it was finishing, we had a finance day. And on that finance day, I still didn't have a book, but on the finance day, we looked at expenses that are going out in your business and you're bleeding money. There's a leaky bucket, you got to stop it. And he found$50,000 that was leaking through his business annually. And because of that one challenge day, he stopped. He's he closed this uh software that he was using, he turned off this other thing and he's saved$50,000. And he said, Joel, I'm so grateful you found me$50,000 a year in net profit in my pocket because of that one day of challenge for the finances. And he says, You can never let this end. And I said, Sure, every like month and a half or so, we'll start a new class. He goes, No, you got to make a maintenance program. You can't just keep doing classes only. And I go, I don't even know what you mean. I don't know. I've never been in a group, I've never been in a men's group, I never. And then he said, You got to build a maintenance program. So I said, Let's get on a phone call. We talked for five minutes, and about five minutes later, he had us uh uh a logo made, and and we came up with a name. It's called the Brotherhood. We put it on a website, we reached out to everybody in class 001 and 002 and said, guys, we formed this thing if you want to join us. And 14 guys signed up that day. Now we're over a hundred guys and we've grown this thing again, and now we bring them speakers, a book of the month club, five retreats a year, all this stuff. None of this was a plan. That was three years ago, and all that we did was put together some guys, open ourselves up to ideas from others and implement them. That's it. That's how we got here.
SPEAKER_01:So much of what you said said there is just incredible. About about like being open, suggestible, right? Where we we all as human beings, we all have our own biases. We have so many blind spots. That's one thing I've noticed the older I get, many things that I was so sure of myself throughout my life going back, like I would have died on the sword, Joel, over certain things, like argue till death turned out to be wrong about. And I've learned that I only know what I know, and I I what is what is it? I I know a lot about a little and a little about a lot is the saying. And by surrounding yourself with other like-minded individuals, other growth-minded individuals, other people that are are looking to help people on a fundamental level, you really get unbelievable feedback and you get to work on areas of yourself that you wouldn't have otherwise even known need work. Knew need work. And I just I I appreciate that so much about the community that you've built. It's and that's like I said at the top of the show, that's that is the thing that was missing. I had doing all this work on myself. And it just it felt like one step forward, two steps back. And I I knew I was doing work and I knew I was putting time in, but I wasn't really seeing the results. And when it dawned on me I was missing the community, that's why I started my own men's group, and that's how we kind of connected. And ever since that happened, it's like it's just the floodgates have opened. It's been nothing short of incredible, really.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Community is so important. I didn't have it in the beginning. Think about it. And I think this is part of my journey. As a little kid, I didn't speak English. I came here and three months later got dropped into the fourth grade. I'm sorry, the kindergarten. And I didn't understand a word that was said. So then I had to repeat kindergarten. And the first few years, my English was horrible. I didn't fit in. I didn't have friends. And then the best thing ever in third grade, I still have that yearbook. Uh, I was awarded friendliest in the school. And it's because I now spoke English and now I knew what it was like to not have a community. So I wanted to bring people in. A new kid would show up to the school and I'd say, Hey, I'm Joel. What's your name? You want to play with us? We're playing kickball. And I built a lot of friends. Now I did let that kind of slide as I built my company. I put my head down and didn't build a community for so many of those first years. And I was on my own and I could have saved a lot of suffering, lost money, lost time, made a lot of mistakes until I started getting mentors. And then being part of a community of entrepreneurs, that changed everything for me. So the evolution of this, what it's become is I'm in entrepreneur groups and I think they are phenomenal. But I was missing the personal development. I was missing the, hey, we're about to start a meeting. Why don't we knock out 25 push-ups real quick? Hey, we're going to talk about our finances for the next four hours and our business and all these things. But why don't we also once a month read a book and share for five minutes each at the beginning of this next meeting to what we learned about it so we can all grow together. And I got a lot of pushback in the groups that I was a member in at that time. So that's what we've developed. Uh is something that is, yes, it's business, but it's personal, it's health, it's family, and it's community with each other.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's making an incredible impact on so many lives. I want to pull it back to something else you said, uh about the the taking action. Right. I I I've I've been thinking a lot over the years about decision making. And in the past, I've always been somebody that has been indecisive. I think uh a lot of people are. And that was basically just a lack of belief in myself, a lack of trust in my ability to make the right decision. And I like what you said about taking action and learning from the action, right? Like you don't get new information from inaction, right? If you have a decision to make and you just kick the can down the road, um, you're not getting any feedback, right? But by making the decision to move forward and do something, you know, it might be the right decision, it might be the wrong decision. There's no way to know until you actually make the decision and get that feedback. And I think the the most successful people uh and the people that achieve the most in life are the ones that make more decisions than anyone else, right? They don't kick the can down the road. Now there's different types of decisions, obviously. Uh I was listening to a podcast and somebody talked about the types of decisions that are like tattoos that are very hard to reverse versus the ones that are uh a little bit less hard to reverse. But I think the majority of the decisions we make in our life are not that important, and so many people stew over them, right? And it's just it's it's it's needless. You gotta, it's a muscle, right? You gotta train the muscle, and the more we use it, the more decisions we make, we get better at it.
SPEAKER_02:No, I had a manager that worked for me who had a little bit of trouble deciding, and he we were maybe a year in of working together, and and I would stop him because I wanted to get in his mind, and I'd say, What's the problem? Like you have these two options, what's the issue? And he goes, I don't know which one's gonna be better. And I said, What's the damage if you make the wrong decision? And if he told me, like, I don't know, we lose like$500 or a thousand dollars, I go, just make the decision. I don't care. Just tell you what, don't even tell me anymore. Make the decision, call me at the end of the day and tell me which one you decided. That's it. So I get to empower him. He knows he's not gonna get in trouble. I know he's not stupid. I never hired stupid people, I hired great people, and so I knew he's gonna do his best with that whichever decision. And in the end, come on, it's not that big a deal. So we go with this vendor or this vendor, one's a little bit more, but they might be a little better. It's not the end of the world. Just make the decision, just make sure you don't lock us in a 10-year contract, make sure we can get out if it doesn't suit us in a month or something like that, and let's move on. But we have information and we can make one decision. Let's go to get us to the next decision. Look, I bought 14 companies when I was in business in my apparel company, and they were 13 of them were not for sale. One was everybody could have bid on it and bought it, and I did. But the ones I bought were my competitors, my vendors, my customers' businesses, so I could be completely vertical from a brand owner to you know the manufacturing, the distribution, the final consumer on the website. So we bought to be vertical. I just moved faster. Anybody could have bought this. Anybody in my industry could have gone to the same trade shows that I went to, talked to all my competitors, talked to my vendors, talked to my customers, and built relationships and just moved. But I always heard people, man, if only I owned that, I would, if I own that brand, I would do this. I'd go talk to that brand and say, You ever want to talk about selling your business? Talk to me. No rush. Here's my card. I'd love to talk to you about it. And then I put them in my calendar, and every three months I'd send them a little message. And I didn't tell them, I'm remember, I want to buy your business. I would just say, Hey, I hope you're doing great. This is Joel. And uh, we saw each other at the last trade show. How's everything? Make a note about what they told me. The next time I chat with them, I hit them up about that stuff. Hey, by the way, how's your daughter? You told me she was gonna go to the university, blah, blah, blah. And build relationships by just moving. And that's it. So, yeah, action is uh my favorite word.
SPEAKER_01:So powerful, those little things, right? Interactions that you have with people. I think those things taking taking notice of these little tiny things that are important to people and making a note of it and bringing it up later. It's like a superpower, isn't it, Joel? Like like you're remembering a kid's birthday and then sending them a text message. Maybe you only met the person a couple times, but they had a big impact on you, and you're like, Yeah, I want to take a note of that. And then you send them a message, like, I hope your your daughter has a great birthday.
SPEAKER_02:Like little things like that land so powerfully, or they tell you next month I'm gonna have surgery on my elbow. Oh, that hold on. Yeah, yeah. Well, they no, I not me. I don't have it. I'm using it as an example. Okay, okay. Someone says I'm gonna have elbow surgery, oh man, when? And they'll say February 13th, oh man, wow. Make a note, put it in your calendar, message them at 6 a.m. on February 13th, because they'll be up, they'll be going to the doctor. I'm telling you, the relationships that get built like that are phenomenal.
SPEAKER_01:Not just the relationship, though, that that is like talk about from a mindset perspective. If you're going into a surgery and you get a message like that from somebody you met only once or twice, what that does to your your mind going into the surgery, and that's going to help potentially your recovery process, right? Going into it with that positive feeling. And that I mean, that's that's really powerful. I like that.
SPEAKER_02:And where do you, as the person who sent that well wish, where do you now place in their mind? Are you at the bottom or are you like, man, this is a quality person? You want people out there thinking about you as a quality person. You want a thousand people to owe you a favor, and you never have to cash in, hopefully, because you're good, you don't need anything. But if if you affect a thousand people by helping them, by thinking about them, by sending them a nice message and staying in touch, that's pretty powerful.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it and it's like anything else, it's a muscle that you have to train, right? I found myself more and more when I interact with people and I meet them, it's like they're talking to me and I'm making, you know, I'm not gonna pull out my phone and write notes in front of them. So I have to like remember it. And I find myself being in some ways pulled away from the conversation to make sure I'm getting my own head trying to remember it. But the more I do it, the less I need to go rush to write it down. I just like because I'm actually in the conversation now and I'm like listening and absorbing what they're saying, and it's not something that I need to like get out of my head right away.
SPEAKER_02:But it's important to get out of your head and put it, uh, store it somewhere because I know you can also ask them at the end of the conversation, hey, when is it again that surgery you have? You know, just remind you and no, okay. See you later. Good luck with it. And boom, now you get your phone. That's a good, that's the one good thing about having phones all the time around us. It's okay to grab it for a second and put something in there as you're departing. You know, I told somebody or somebody told me a long time ago, I'm gonna have this big exam for some state license or something. And they gave me a date. I put it in my calendar, and I wrote them that morning. And that person wrote me such a beautiful thing. They said, I cannot believe that you messaged me. I told you that months ago. I can't believe you remembered. I didn't really remember. I had to have some help with technology, a calendar. But either way, that person told me it was the most special thing, and then it actually like made their heart race that that somebody thought of them that morning and wished them well. I was the only person who wished them well, and I heard about it months before. That's not a superpower, that's a Gmail calendar. That's all that is with a pop-up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's so easy and so so impactful on people. So that's a that's a missing in a lot of people's lives. We talked about connection, right? And uh have people really take note of these things can have a deep impact on people. Um, another thing I wanted to talk about real quickly was something that that I've heard you say before. I'm not sure we discussed it, but it's it's about getting the junk out of your head, right? And and and and storing it somewhere, whatever. For me, I I've I've had uh uh incredible surge working with ChatGPT in terms of like trying to take ideas out of my head and then synthesize it and distill it and then structure it and then drop it in my Google Drive. And what I've found is that like the more I take everything out of my head, the more space I make for new insights, new creativity, right? Because I can't remember everything. I can't remember anything. Jesus. Uh and and so I think a lot of people they they carry around so much crap in their head and it creates brain fog, confusion, lack of clarity. And when you start organizing all this and getting out of your head, it just opens you up for so much more.
SPEAKER_02:Well, when I was a kid, I was watching the Oprah Winfrey channel. I didn't have cable, so I had limited options. I had like NBC, ABC, CBS, and a few other channels, and that's it. But I would watch adult programming all the time. And I remember a guy say he has a good way of living his life, and it's called Ohio. Only handle it once. I must have been 10, 11, 12, and that stuck with me. I'm not gonna think about things over and over. I'm not gonna go in circles about things. That's my default. I do that a lot, so I have to get it out. So only handle it once. I thought about it already. Jeremy gave me a good business idea. Am I gonna leave that in my head and just do circles around it? Or you know what? This isn't the time, but I'll tell you what, I want to jot down some thoughts. I'm gonna go into my calendar for next week. What's open? Thursday, I got nothing in the afternoon. Think about what Jeremy said. Okay, there it is. Jeremy had this idea. I'll give it a little context. Done. It takes about 27 seconds to do that. And now, when that day pops up, Thursday afternoon, hey, it's time to think about this. What thoughts do I have? Huh? Here's something that came up because the subconscious is powerful. You planted that seed in my head, but now over the next few days, I'll come up with some more thoughts. Let me put a Google Doc in place. Jeremy's business ideas. And now every time the thought arises, I'm not going to go in circles in my head. I'm going to go to that Google Doc. We have access from anywhere in the world, and I'm going to say, you know, he said this, this, and this. I think he's right. Explore that. But also, I also think this and this. I'm getting it all out of my head. It's not going in circles. The creativity that that allows now, like you said, is so powerful. And the first time I witnessed this was years ago with a vice president of mine. Once I started not going into my office, I was 38 years old. I was making over a million dollars a year in profits, net profits, and no partners, no debt. I mean, I was doing really well considering a few years before I was in poverty. And I said, you know what? I'm done going in every day. I'm doing what I do want. I don't live on all this money. I live on a fraction of it. I'm going to just go enjoy life. I'm going to go run an ultra marathon. I'm going to enjoy my wife and four kids. I'm going to do what I want to do. And I would go out and run 50, 60, 70 miles a week. And guess what? That doesn't leave you a lot of time to sit at a computer or go into an office and all this. But what it does enable you to do is to grab your phone and leave a voice note for your vice president and tell him the ideas you just came up with on this 18-mile run. And as I'm running, I go, Hey Jonathan, I just thought of something. Some of the best ideas. What's that? Some of the best ideas come on those long runs. Absolutely. So then he would say, All right, I'm on it. I'm going to work on it. I'll let you know by the end of the day how it went. And we kept doing this and kept doing it. And one day he said to me, I hope you'll never come back to the office. And I hope you're running a lot because you keep coming up with some doozies. Where are you coming up with all this creativity? And I said, I don't know. I've never considered myself creative. And I go, Oh, I'm not putting out fires. I'm not in the day-to-day. I'm not going in circles with thoughts. I'm just getting them out and letting someone else execute. So I'm the visionary. I could, I could do that. I don't want to be the one executing. I did that for many years. So that is very powerful to get things off of your brain and put them somewhere productive where you'll move that ball forward later.
SPEAKER_01:Wise words, my friend. I want to talk a little bit about something that we talked. We had a discussion on one of our first calls. It was about I started doing these things and these insights started coming and downloads started happening. I noticed these surges of adrenaline I was having. I was riding a wave. I was, I was like just experiencing like 100x productivity all of a sudden. And I was aware enough to recognize that this was not sustainable. And I was like, part of me was afraid that it was going to disappear. Um, but I learned along the way that there's nothing, it's it's within you, right? The potential is locked within you. But I did experience a burnout on the other side of that. And we had a conversation around trying to stay level. I'd like you to speak, speak to that, uh, what we talked about in terms of what the tools that you've used and the things that you've used in your life to help you stay level through the ups and the downs, because there's always peaks and there's always valleys. Um, and and and the important part is to just stay level through all of it as much as possible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, a couple thoughts come to mind. Um, I shared one with you, is I played baseball all my life, and uh the book by Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters ever. I think the last man to hit over 400 batting average, he was a great hitter. And I think it was in that book that I read this as a early teens. He said that when he gets in a hot streak, he doesn't start celebrating and high fiving and jumping up and down. He doesn't go crazy, he stays calm. And when he gets in a slump and things aren't going very well and he's over his last 10 at bats, he doesn't get depressed, he stays in the middle. I think a good example of that to add on to it, another sports analogy, is I remember Barry Sanders, the Detroit Lions, one of the greatest running backs ever. He retired a little bit young, but put up phenomenal numbers. That guy would score a touchdown and hand the ball to the referee. He didn't spike it, he didn't dance, he didn't get all emotional. I remember always thinking, what a man! Like that guy is one of the greatest players in the history of football. And he's just right down the middle. If he gets stopped for a two-yard loss, he doesn't pout, he just does it again and keeps working harder. So that's one thing that I like that approach of just being consistent and sticking with it, good or bad. In the end, the good stuff will come out. But another one that I'll add to that is to block your schedule and don't do too much. Don't work 12 hours a day, every day forever. Start blocking things out and go enjoy a day. Go say, you know what, I'm gonna get a massage. Maybe it's once a week, once a month, whatever your finances and your body pains uh need. Um, but but set that time aside. I'm gonna go for a walk once a week and I'm gonna put my phone away. I'm not even gonna take it with me. I need to decompress, knowing that I might burn out. So, this is the way as we get older, we get better and we start catching ourselves better. But those are little two examples getting massages, blocking off some time, going for a walk without a phone, going into nature, just resetting so that we don't burn out and try to catch it ahead of time because it's a down, it's a bad spiral if we burn out and we're gonna let a lot of people down. And I don't think it's very consistent, you know, it's not, it's not impressive. If you're you're if our for me, I'll say I'll use myself as an example. If my wife sees me work really, really hard and wow, what a man, and then I burn out and I become a nothing for a week, that's not very impressive. What good is it? Yeah, yeah, what good is that? And I you know, I I really believe I'm the when I'm I'm not here to impress everybody, but there are a few people that I want to remain impressive to, my wife and my kids. I want to be impressive to them. So step back outside of just our own life and say who else is watching and what would they think if I go balls to the wall, 100 miles an hour, and then crash and I keep doing this. Let's take a step back. Let's catch ourselves before we hit that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've noticed that I can get a lot more done in four hours of clarity and and and and lucid thinking than I can trying to grind for 10, 12 hours. I think that's also seasonal, right? When I was younger, I mentioned to you earlier that I sold books door to door. I was a college kid, you know, I was completely unaware. It was just like go, go, go, go, go. And I was building that muscle of just kind of working and just proving to myself that I could do something hard. But I think as you get older, like your bandwidth goes down significantly in terms of what you could process, and you get tired, right? Um, so yeah, I've been way more intentional lately about blocking off my calendar and making sure that I'm I'm allocating a substantial amount of time on my calendar for my own personal growth and development, right? Uh mindfulness practices, family type situations, right? Because, you know, I don't need to be out there grinding right now 12, 14 hours a day working um so that I can be burnt out on the other side and not show up right for my family and just be miserable. Absolutely. Yeah. Speaking of family, let's shift over to that for a little while because there's some things that are going on in my in my life I'd like to touch on with you. Um, but tell us a little bit about your family. You mentioned you have a wife and four kids.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I've been married, uh, been married over 23 years to my wife. We uh are together a lot. People think, how can we be together so much? She was a registered nurse for many years and uh worked in a hospital while I was building a business. But once she was able to, at 30 years old, she retired from nursing and came and worked with me part-time. So we were together all the time. And and people thought that was crazy that we get along so well. We really do. I'm hard to live with, and she's amazingly patient. So we get along perfectly well. We've gone on couples' retreats up in the mountains and did uh and and done all this work together and learned some things. But I one time in Quarterlay, Idaho, it caught the attention of the people putting on the retreat. It was all entrepreneurs from all around the world that we're in this private dude ranch. It was amazing. And they put up a chart of who is this couple? And it was all on personality. And one was red hot passionate, 100 miles an hour, and the other one was baby blue, sky relaxed. And they said that's Joel and Jessica, and that crazy 100 mile an hour one is Joel, and that calm, relaxed one is Jessica. And they go, That might work for them. And they had us come up and talk about it, and yeah, absolutely that worked for us. So yin and the yang. Yeah, the secret of our success is nothing that I'm doing, it's it's her patience and her peacefulness. Yeah, I I mean, I I treat her well, I treat her very well, and um, so yeah, we are absolutely best friends. Our employees used to think it was fake that there's no way we treat each other this way. And I remember overhearing my employees, I was on the second floor, they didn't know I could hear them down there. And one employee who lived with us for six months while he got took took care of a DUI situation, he said, actually, guys, I lived with them for six months. This is real. I'd be in my room, they didn't know I was there, and I heard how they spoke to each other. They were so kind and they treated each other well. It's all real, so it is real. Married to my wife for 23 years, love it. And we have four kids, and uh, they range from 20 down to 12. Oldest is an army reservist, mechanic. Uh uh, second one is uh an impressive runner, has won many races and does ultra marathons. He's 18. Um Then a 13-year-old daughter and then a 12-year-old boy. So three boys and a girl. And um yeah, absolutely in love with my family. And I get to spend every a lot of time with them. And I appreciate every minute of it.
SPEAKER_01:Family is everything, my friend. I got a wife of 15 years, two beautiful children. But unlike you, I've I've had some some serious challenges in my relationship. And I've had a problem uh throughout that time with being present. And I think a lot of a lot of men struggle with this, a lot of people struggle with this in general. And I'd like to share a little story, a little incident that happened. Because I like, I want I want to try to speak to people that are having issues in their relationship, that are having communication problems. There's so many breakdowns that occur because of these blind spots that I talked about. People are just unaware of certain things about themselves and their partner. So the other day, it's around the holiday time holiday time. My wife suggested that I buy from Costco these Godiva chocolates. It was a box of chocolates for gifts. And I had always been of this mindset of like, I don't want to buy more stuff. I have too much stuff. I don't need to waste any more money. I was like, yeah, but it could be good for like maybe client gifts or whatnot. Uh, I reluctantly bought the chocolates. Fast forward a few weeks later, I was going to a client's house. She was having an office warming party that she opened at her house. And I was like, Oh, I'll, you know what I'll do? I'll bring a box of these chocolates over there to her as a gift. And I went to my wife. And Joel, I said to her, I said, I wanted to apologize to you, honey. You know, there was resistance from buying these chocolates. I was being an idiot. You were right about that. And now I'm gonna actually use these for the client. I saw thank you so much for teaching that lesson to me. And she total cold shoulder. She was like, she didn't say anything. She was clearly upset over something. I had no idea what it was. And I told her, I was like, what's going on? I said, What what's the problem here? And we had actually scheduled, or I had scheduled, dinner with the family that night. And she said one question to me that landed really, really deep. She said to me, Where are we going for dinner tonight? Joel, I hadn't even looked yet. Here I was running around doing my own shit, like I always had done in the past. And I hadn't even put the time into what was really, really important. And that that landed on me on such a deep level. And I looked at I was like, Why, why do I have a problem with this presence? And it was I need to train that muscle, right? I want to be, I want to show up properly for my family, but I have a tendency to get sucked into my own shit, as many of us do. You know, we're human beings, we're selfish creatures. So I have to be very intentional about structuring these things. And one of the things that I got from you is I I set a date night from my uh from my from my wife, and I created multiple stages of dates. I really put a lot of time and intention into the process, and it showed on the other end of that. And we had a wonderful, wonderful experience. And again, it's just about training that muscle and that that little that little communic miscommunication that we had in that moment in so many other circumstances, that would have turned into a giant fight, but it didn't that time because I was aware enough to know what was going on in that moment, so just you know, I think that we have a competition that we wouldn't have had before entertainment and television and movies.
SPEAKER_02:A hundred years ago, a couple hundred years ago, I think a man was just providing, and he didn't have to come up with dates and cute little gifts, he just had to work hard and provide. But we have to compete now with social media, romantic comedies, and the guy. Oh, what did that guy do for the woman? Wow, that's beautiful. So we have to do two things now. We have to provide if that's our job, but then we have to do a little bit of this stuff. We have to go on the nice dates and we have to, and by nice dates, I don't mean expensive, I mean thoughtful and thoughtful in the sense of, hey, honey, we're gonna go to this, or you know, you know, you have to tell her sometimes you can go, we're gonna go to a show and a dinner, just be ready on the 15th at four o'clock as we're leaving. And um, and you put it all together. And by the way, if guys are listening, you can cheat. Chat GPT is phenomenal at helping to plan dates. I've gone in there and I've told it, hey, I want to go do a weekend getaway with my wife for four days, yeah, like a Thursday to Monday or whatever, and or whatever it is. And I want to make sure we do some physical activities. I want to go to a couple of nice restaurants, and I want to do like some show, and boom, it lines up a weekend for me. I just have to go book the things and we're done. So don't overcomplicate it. I think people complicate things so much. Uh, I literally tell people that should take 28 seconds, that should take 90 seconds. Things don't take that long. You go on Chat GPT, what I just described will be done in one minute, and then you play with that and you start booking things and putting them in your calendar and stay organized. And like you said, on the other side of that, it's very well appreciated.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I actually I like putting a little bit of extra time into that stuff. Again, it's it's I gotta train, I gotta train myself just a little bit harder when it comes to that stuff. So leaning into that uncomfortability, I you know, sure, use chat, but put some put some actual thought into it too.
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, I mean you still have to tell it what you want, and those are just ideas. You have to then go pick and schedule and plan and reserve and all these sort of things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, chat chat is incredible, it's amazing, but it's a double-edged sword. If you don't use it properly, it could become a drug and you could outsource everything to it and start not thinking about anything deeply. It's uh gotta be very cognizant of that. I've noticed.
SPEAKER_02:And look, we need purpose in our life, we need a reason to do things. Look, I'm not trying to say that this is gonna happen, but I play these mind games with myself and I tell myself, you know, if I don't look good, my wife will look at other guys and compare me to those guys. And then I'll wonder why intimacy isn't the same. Then I'll wonder why she's short with me. Then I'll wonder why I'll avoid all of that. I'm gonna work out. Uh, I will take her out. I will tell her she's beautiful. When she walks by, my love language is physical touch. I'm gonna show her that. But hers is acts of service. So if I see her doing making sandwiches for the kids, I go, Hey, I got nothing to do right now. I see you doing that. I'm sure you have other stuff you'd rather do. Let me make those sandwiches for the kids. Those little tiny things make me feel like, you know, I'm doing everything I can. She's happy. I also check in and say, what else could you use from me? What would you like to have from me in our relationship? And sometimes it's just like, you know, I'd love to go more walks with you. Okay, great. Or sometimes I'd like you to not give me so many ideas and interrupt me. Great. I'm really good at doing that. So thank you for the reminder. I'm not gonna try to fix problems. So those are tiny little things, but my reminder is I don't want to thinking it could be better on the outside of here. Let me make it nice here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think I also got this from you as well. Just just to say to your significant other, just one time through the day, go up, go up to them and say, Hey, is there what's one thing I could do for you today that'll make your day a little easier? And you do that uh do that every day. It's easy, it's simple. And the impact that that has and how it compounds over time is just magical.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and if you can't remember, put an alarm, put a calendar. That's what you would do for your business, do it for your spouse.
SPEAKER_01:Everything goes on the calendar, yes. How about jujitsu for a minute? I know that's a big part of your life. I uh I've been meaning to get involved, and I'm getting closer and closer. This this back injury that I've been having, the sciatica is is slowly but surely subsiding. I'm getting stronger, I'm conditioning, and I'm I'm mark my words, certainly in the next month or two months, uh I will be involved. Tell me, tell me, let's talk a little bit about jujitsu. I found it fascinating. The sport in general, how humbling it is. I mean, I hear Joe Rogan talking about it all the time. Um, it's it's just something that that I've heard so many people talk about how impactful it's been on their lives.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I got lucky. One of the companies that I bought was called jocko.com. And when I bought it, it came with jocko.com, the website and the brand, the you know, the trademarks, all that, the inventory. And I sold it to Jocko Willink, uh, former Navy SEAL commander, uh, has written a lot of good books, has a Jocko podcast. And along with that sale came um a couple of things that I requested was uh to coach me privately uh on the phone calls and to work out with me. And I'll fly myself to San Diego and spend a day with him. And so thank God he said, no, we're not gonna lift weights, we're gonna train jujitsu. Come to my jujitsu academy, which is this monster place, victory MMA in San Diego, two stories, just phenomenal. And so we spent the day together. And before I flew out there, I started training jujitsu because I wanted to learn a little bit before I got there. So I have some understanding. And I thought I'll train for a month, do that with him, blah, blah, blah, and be done. And it turned out that I fell in love with it. It reminded me, because I've heard someone say, think back when you were 12 years old, and what did you love to do? Do more of that. Well, I loved to wrestle with my cousin Michael and and with my neighbors and my classmates after school, we'd wrestle, and that was a blast to me. And I got that back by doing jujitsu. But like you said, it's extremely humbling, and I think being humbled is very good. It does something magical. If your ego's too big, it'll put it where it belongs. And if you have low self-esteem and you work really hard, it'll get you back up there. So when I joined jujitsu that first month, I got destroyed by a 13-year-old girl named Annie. She literally, and I was like, I uh lift weights, I'm a man. I was 44 years old. Oh man, a 13-year-old little girl was literally choking me out, arm barring me, ankle locks, and uh I gotta learn how I gotta learn how to do this. Yes, it's either I quit because I don't like this, it doesn't make me feel good, or I suck and she's amazing. How can I suck less and be more amazing like Annie? And so I started training in four, five, six days a week. I hit one point I hit 49 days in a row because I was just addicted to it. I just I still am. And so I've been training for over five years. I just got back from it an hour ago. Uh, I go about five days a week and I absolutely love it. I'm in the process with a partner of opening a jujitsu academy here in South Florida, uh, sometime in 2026. And um super excited about it because I get to combine so many passions. Jiu-jitsu, but also more community. If I have a jiu-jitsu academy, guess what we're gonna do when there's no classes? We're gonna run brotherhood events, we're gonna do other things there because we're putting a cold plunge, a sauna, a gym with weights, uh, a social area where we could have dinners and all those sort of things. So I'm combining, I don't need to fight for money anymore. I now fight for building a community and the people I want around me, and that's what I get to combine in all of this.
SPEAKER_01:You well, you have another founding member for the for the studio you're building. I'm looking forward to it and having you. It's funny. I was talking to uh Carrie yesterday. Uh he happens that he lives like down the road from me and Davy, and we were talking about getting lunch together, and I mentioned something about jujitsu jujitsu came up. I was talking about running, he talked about jujitsu, and he's like, Oh, if you want to if you want to get into it, because I told him I was wanting to check it out. He's like, You should come by Renzo Gracie in Cooper City. I was like, I know that name. I I it turns out I had actually had them on the podcast, the owners of the Renzo. Alan Tazal and Lauren, yeah, episode like 20, 15, 20 episodes ago. So yeah, it's a small world, isn't it? Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he's uh uh somebody I've trained with and learned a lot from.
SPEAKER_03:Hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Good stuff. All right, man. Before we getting close to the top of the hour here, before we wrap up here, let's let's speak to somebody out there that is going through it right now. Maybe they're listening to this and they like what they're hearing, but they don't know where to start, right? They're stuck. I think that that's that's a big impetus to people actually taking action, right? They're stuck in their own head, they're overwhelmed, and they're just not able to get moving. What do you say to somebody like that? Yeah, if books work for those people, I'd recommend a couple of books.
SPEAKER_02:I can think of a bunch of books. I'll tell you one that took me from like a$50,000 or$60,000 a year guy to seven figures was the book The Secret by Rhonda Burns. Now I bought it and I started reading it and I go, Oh, this is woo-woo, this is weird. But you know what? I bought it, let me finish it. I finished it, and then I go, I could erase it all in my head, or I could put it into action because why not? And I go, let me give it a shot. And I started thinking positively for the first time in my life, and it changed my life. I also read how to win friends and influence people, and it gave me the permission to start connecting on a high level with people and not just be like, okay, well, you know, that Jeremy guy's a nice guy. No, hey Jeremy, you're a cool guy, man. Want to get to know you more and be more bold and praise people. Nothing wrong with that. Um, those little things, man, you start doing, you start thinking positively and that law of attraction, that stuff works. I don't know how, but it works. You start connecting with people and building community and being an important person in people's lives, and things start coming back to you. And you don't have to do it to get something, you do it to be a good person, and things start coming back to you. Also, um, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, uh, Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. Those are four books that I would highly recommend. Just start getting good positive things. Start following accounts on social media that talk about positivity and getting after it. Start making friends with people who are active, who are going to the gym. I'm telling you, if you're stuck and you're depressed and you don't feel well, I really believe you get in the gym and you things that are heavy, you run, you start getting some sunlight, um, you start eating clean and no junk food, no beer, no alcohol, no soda, you start becoming a new person and you start attracting people like that. Because at the gym now, man, if you've read the law of attraction, how to win influence win friends and influence people, and you're at the gym and you're doing, you're gonna start being out of your comfort zone and saying, Hey, I like those shoes. Hey, what's that workout you're doing? And you get more uh confident in yourself, you start attracting really good people. So that's a start. Um I run a 31-day program, like you know, that it's 200 bucks. If it doesn't impact your life, you get your 200 bucks back, but you got to put the effort in. And I know who puts in the effort because they show up to the calls. Um, that you know, do things like that, find a program. But the key, like you said earlier, is to be surrounded by people. So you do 75 hard, great, but if you do it by yourself, you've got nothing. You got a little sniffles, you go today. I can't do my workout. Yeah, do it with a community where you're sniffles. So what? Go run, go work out, go do your thing, get people that push you. I think that makes a big difference on people's lives.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I I will say from experience, right? If you do this 31-day challenge and you truly make a decision to go all in and and you you put yourself out there and you do the work, it will be worth your while. It it really has been transformational for me. And I was I will say this to folks out there that that may be stuck, you're not far off. Right? Nothing is permanent. This is something that I realized recently. No matter how how bad things are right now in any given moment, no matter where you're at, there is light on the other side, and the other side is it's not far off. And if you just take action, stop thinking about it, just get up and move, right? You're sitting around, you haven't been exercising, just start doing push-ups, right? Start breathing. Breath work has been tremendous for me. There's many things that you could do in the moment that will create an impetus for change. And when you start doing these things consistently, you start building habits, and when you start building habits, you start shifting your identity to the person that you want to become so you can live the best life possible. We'll leave we'll leave it at that. Joel, it's uh truly been a pleasure. Did you want to let everybody know where we can get more information about the program? I know you got the website. You know, let us know where we can follow you on Instagram.
SPEAKER_02:If you're on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, it's Joel Gandara, you'll find me. Not too many of us with that name. And uh the website's 31, the two numbers three and one, dailychallenges.com. You scroll down and you see the men's challenge or the women's challenge, you sign up for the next one.
SPEAKER_01:Beautiful. We'll obviously put a link down in the description below uh so everybody can access that without delay. Everyone, thanks so much for tuning in, Joel. Appreciate your time. And I will see you soon, brother. Take care.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, Cooper City, to nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show. Go to GNP Cooper City.com. That's ENP, CooperCity.com, or call 954 231 231 470.