Brett Eaton on Overcoming Loss, Building Confidence & Finding Purpose | Made By Challenge

How do you rebuild your life when everything changes in an instant?

In this episode of Made By Challenge, host Alberto Sardiñas sits down with performance coach, entrepreneur, and author Brett Eaton to discuss the challenges that shaped his life and career.

Brett shares the personal story of losing his father at a young age, overcoming a career-ending injury, and discovering the mindset that helped him transform adversity into purpose. Together, Brett and Alberto explore confidence, resilience, personal growth, entrepreneurship, and the lessons that emerge during life's most difficult moments.

If you've ever faced uncertainty, loss, or a major setback, this conversation offers practical insights on moving forward with intention and confidence.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Sports gone. Father gone. And he was only a teenager.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And then that I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me. And then not too long after that, about two months after that, my dad died suddenly of a heart attack.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

He was 16 when his life turned upside down.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I am literally complaining every day that I don't want to live this life anymore. That I know that there's more inside of me.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

He could have stayed in that room for good, but he didn't.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Everybody thinks it's it's about, you know, life is about reducing risk. I really think life is about reducing regret.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

What would be the best piece of advice you could give someone who feels like they have hit block bottom and they don't know what to do? High performance coach, author, speaker. He turned the two worst moments of his life into the only playbook you need.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Sacrifice success in one bucket if it means emptying the others.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

Because every breakthrough begins with a challenge. Brett Eden. So hit subscribe, turn on notifications, because you never know, you never know which guest drops the next exact framework, the one that you need, the one that rewires how you think about your career and your life. So, Brett, there's somebody out there doing exactly what they told them to do. Find a job, go to college, pay your bills, find a life, and they can't figure it out. They're really trying to put themselves out there and have success, but they can't seem to figure it out on their own. Why should they listen to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Because I was them not too long ago. And I think you when you start to ask the right questions, you get better answers. So my my my job today is to make sure that they're asking the right questions.

SPEAKER_04 1:55

So, about the right questions, there's a question about your story. Because at some point when you were a teenager, you were dreaming in being an athlete and just going to college because of sports, and something messed it up completely for you. What was that story like?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, I had a back injury that nobody could really figure out what was happening, but it was it was so bad that it would shoot down my leg and I couldn't walk for for periods of time. And um, being a three-sport athlete, my whole identity was wrapped up into what sport am I playing currently? When's practice? You know, my whole life schedule, everything was based around that. And that took me out of sports for a year to the point where they were like, we either have to uh fuse his spine together, and for a 16-year-old kid, they were like, that's probably not the best idea. Um they also said, okay, so let's let's take him out of sports for a year, try to let him heal, maybe do some physical therapy and see what it looks like next year. So um I missed my entire sophomore year of basketball, junior year of football, and baseball. I had to stop playing baseball completely. And and that really kind of flipped my life upside down from a standpoint of who am I now without sports? And and that was where I found my confidence, that's where I had my friends, that's where I had all this whole life that I had built. And then that I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me. And then not too long after that, about two months after that, my dad died suddenly of a heart attack. And that kind of flipped my my whole life upside down. And what was a pretty normal life, um, all of a sudden became very abnormal of the stuff that I felt like I was dealing with, and you know, had a little bit of that life feels unfair. Why is this all happening to me? Um, you know, why why do I have to go through this? And everybody else just gets to play sports, or everybody else gets to have their their dad still around. And, you know, there was a lot of uh a lot of turmoil that happened at that time. I went down a couple different winding roads, uh, but I but looking back, those tough moments are really shaped who I who I became and really shaped the character and the lessons that I had to learn early that I think a lot of people don't learn until later. And I believe that what was the major adversity in my life actually became the advantage.

SPEAKER_04 4:03

You know, there's there's one thing that I picked up in your book, Uncomfortably either way, which is the fact that things really change in a moment. Yeah. And your decision making changes in a moment. But let me go back, if you don't mind, to the moment in which you lost your dad, because it sounded to me like everything started like a normal family dinner that took a terrible turn, and that your dad uh wasn't an unhealthy guy, wasn't a guy that was really, you know, expected to go through a health condition. What happened then?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah, nobody would look at my dad and say, that guy's really unhealthy. You know, he was a little bit overweight, probably had some weight to lose, uh, but would was very active. He was always the dad jumping into the games. He coached me in a lot of sports. He would ride his bike all the time. So there was nothing that I ever thought, you know, dad's really unhealthy. I should get on him to be healthier. We had a gym, we had a very small gym in our basement that he would go down there. At 16, I would sometimes go down there with him. I was just starting to learn about weightlifting and sports and all that stuff. Um, but what you know, basically we had a we had a great family dinner. Uh my sister was home from college that night, and it was very rare that on a Friday night with all of our schedules and going in different directions, that we were all sitting there having uh dinner together. And it was it's one of my favorite family memories because mom had cooked her favorite meal and we just were sitting there. Dad was cracking jokes, he was in such a good mood, and I just remember us all so vividly being like it was it was like the best dinner that we had had in a long time. And then I go off to a friend's house and we're watching a movie, and I get a phone call, and it was my friend's mom calling saying, Hey Brett, um your mom just called me, they're on their way to the hospital, something's going on with your dad. I'm gonna come pick you up and take you to the hospital. Um, and me, you know, not thinking the worst, made a joke about like, oh, I hope this isn't so serious. Like, just pause the movie, save it for me. I go out, we're driving there, and I just had this like really bad feeling of like I don't know what I'm about to walk into. And we pull off, I sprint in, go to the front desk, and I remember before I could even say, like, hey, where is Bill Eaton? I remember turning to the left and I looked down this long hallway and I saw my sister just like in distraught in tears, and I didn't even have to like I just didn't have to ask. I knew. I knew it was like I think that's the last time I saw my dad, and it was, and it was crushing. And it just showed me how quick things can change, and it also kind of taught me the fragility of life, of how like we really do need to appreciate like what we have and when we have it, and it's so easy to look down the road or think things are going to be different or the same, and they they can change so quickly. So it was uh it definitely flipped my life upside down for a while. I got angry, uh, I was resentful, I was probably a really tough kid for my mom, um, tougher than I should have been for a while. I was forced to grow up, didn't want to grow up, still wanted to be a kid. Um, so there was a lot of that kind of into my early 20s where I spent my early 20s avoiding, avoiding relationships, avoiding healthy, you know, uh friendships, uh drinking too much, partying too much, doing anything I could to kind of avoid having to really look down the reality of life.

SPEAKER_04 7:15

At what point did these two things, you know, the what happened with sports and then what happened with your father, which was even harder, at what point did that turn from being something that you were a victim of and turn into something that actually built you in a good way?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Pretty quickly, actually, even though I didn't realize it. But when I was a sophomore in college, my guidance counselor pulled me into my office and I had a good relationship with her because she would talk to me often and she'd say, Brett, we really gotta choose a major because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't one of those kids that said, I definitely want to do this, I know exactly what I want my life to look like. I was very much like, I have no idea what I'm gonna be really good at. I have no idea what I want to pursue. The idea of doing anything for the next 40 like scared me, like terrified me because I just always liked changing. The reason why I liked playing three sports was because right when one was ending, the next one began and it was new and it was fresh, and there was new skills and new teammates and new sports. So I had just always known that I wanted to live a life that wasn't just the same every day. I really wanted life to look different with different adventures and have to continue like growing. And she pulled me in and she said, She said, Brett, we really gotta, you know, narrow down what you want to do and what you need to, what major you're gonna choose. And I said, Okay, okay, let me think about it. And she said, No, we have to choose today or we have to send you home. We we can't keep you here. So I said, Okay, what do I like to do? I said, I really like sports, I like being around athletes, I like what I had found after my back injury, and this was kind of the first lesson, was that I really fell in love with the training side of sports, not just the playing of the game. So I didn't play any sports in college. I actually tried to walk onto the to the football team and ended up tearing my ACL. And that was pretty much the real thing.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

And you've got so many signs of sports.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Maybe not for me. Um but I mean professionals. I'm not even six feet. So this was a long shot. But what it taught me was when I I said, okay, I'm gonna what what about exercise science? It was called kinesiology, and it was the study of human movement and how it works in you know the whole health fitness scheme. So I love that. And I have and all the classes I started taking, I started to really fall in love with. I loved learning about anatomy and all the different muscles and the bones. And at JMU, we got to work with cadavers. So we actually got to open up the human body and we get to work and see what a real you know bicep looks like, hamstring, blood vessels, heart. It was the coolest class I ever took. And what what were you training for at that point? I was just training to basically be like a personal trainer to work with athletes, uh, strength and conditioning was what they called it. Okay. Basically help the athletes get ready to play in their games, stay healthy. Um, and I started, I started working with the athletes that were injured because I found myself gravitating towards, man, I know how hard that is. That all they want to do is get back on the field. And I found myself being like, I'll work with that, I'll work with them. Like, let me work with the people who are injured or struggling to get back. And hey, so I had this small group of players that I would work with and help them rehab and overcome their injuries and hopefully get back to the field. And I felt like weirdly enough, that was me curing this little, you know, the 16-year-old inside of me that all he wanted to do was get back. Well, if I can get let these college athletes get back in the field, it was really fulfilling for me.

SPEAKER_04 10:31

Now, there's a point in which you joined sort of like formerly corporate America type thing, and you see yourself in a job from seven in the morning until seven o'clock at night, and then not even making it to the gym. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

So when I graduated, the first job opportunity I got was uh there was a group of investors opening a gym, and they were, and through a connection of an old football uh teammate of mine in high school, said, Hey, Brett would be perfect for this fitness manager role. He's gonna run our whole fitness, uh, our whole personal training department. And I loved it because it got me in early, but it also got me to see like the all the ins and outs of what it would take to open a gym. I thought I was gonna open a gym at some point down the road. And I and I loved it. I mean, it's for for eight months before the gym opened, I did everything from stuff, you know, trash in the dumpster to handout flyers and parking lots to sell personal training, to sell memberships. Uh, I helped, you know, you know, move the equipment into the gym. I loved it because it was just every day was different because the gym was growing. But I started to realize pretty quickly that one, my day started to look the exact same every day. And again, that was like I had this weird resistance to like, why don't why don't I want to do the same thing over and over? And I also started to realize that the people I was working for were not very good people. And it hit a breaking point when I started to get this feeling in my gut of like, I don't, I just don't think these are good people. And it feels like I'm going against my like moral compass to continue working here. And it was that it was the day when um they they told me to tell our cleaning staff that they weren't gonna get paid. And and I knew that our cleaning staff was was um to put it to you know, to put it bluntly, like they needed that paycheck. I they would ride their bikes to work, they would clean the gym all day, and like they couldn't go another two weeks or a month without that paycheck. They I knew that they needed it, and and it was when it was like the first moment I had as a 23-year-old kid where I pushed back against authority, and it was the opportunity of instead of just translating the message, I remember saying, like, calling like four or five people and being like, you have to pay them, like you have to pay them, and you have to pay them today. It's Friday, and and I'm not gonna stop calling you guys until like we figure this out. And they eventually paid them, but it made me realize like they were so easily just dismissive of anybody who couldn't who who like wasn't at the same level as them. And so I remember leaving that job, and and it was one of the the most one of the biggest decisions I made on confidence of that we actually gain more confidence when we say no to something or walk away from something than we often do by saying yes.

SPEAKER_04 13:01

But how much of a calculated decision was this? Because I'm trying to think about the 20-year-old watching now or 23, 25-year-olds. Yes. They're thinking, well, I have bills to pay, I decided to move out of my parents' home. I don't want to go back to my parents' home after college, I'm paying rent, I have two roommates and we're figuring it out and no savings.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

So how do you balance the moral compass of something when you have to make a living?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Great question. And what I have one of my strengths has always been was relationship building. And in our gym, there had been somebody who was uh who was opening their own gym. It was actually a place called Get in Shape for Women. It was only women, it was a good one. Oh, so you got a backup plan. So it wasn't even a backup plan, it was I was ready to to change. And that also made so I don't want to make it believe like I walked out and said I'm gone and I had nothing to do. I was always, throughout my career, I have always realized that the relationship part of it all, and I don't even like to call it networking. Networking to me feels stuffy and it feels like there's an agenda of like, I need something from you, so let's let's act like we're friends so I can get the thing that I want. Relationship building to me is let me be interested in you, let me learn about you, let me learn how I can help you. And if I help you, guess what you're probably gonna want to do? You're probably gonna want to help me. So, this is one of my first opportunities where I helped this person who was gonna open a gym actually get in the best shape of his life without needing anything from him. And then one day he said, if you're ever looking to leave this place, I would love to have you work on our team. Oh, wow. And that was when I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Now maybe instead of just talking about leaving, maybe I actually should, maybe this is the moment. This is the moment I should leave and go pursue this new thing. And it was trusting that gut, and I think that that's the one of those characteristic traits that I believe the people who end up aligned in life and doing the thing that they say that they're gonna do or want to do, they trust their gut. I think a lot of us, we all have the feeling, some people don't trust that gut or they don't trust it early enough, and that becomes this thing that holds them back.

SPEAKER_04 15:00

Interesting because again, you know, when you're in survival mode, there's so many variables that you want to take into consideration. At the same time, what you're telling me and what you're teaching us is that you leverage your relationships. Yes. So, in other words, you were just kind of like depositing a little bit of a balance in somebody else's account. And and how has that helped you in different stages in their life? I mean, how how can we learn to use that resource more often?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

I like to put it this way, is there are some people who it's easier for them to give a dollar than it is to take a dollar. Like if I had if I was like, hey, here's you know, you need an extra dollar here. It is, it's easier to give a dollar away than for somebody to be like, hey, here's a dollar, you're like, oh, I don't think I need this. Hold on a second. It was always easier for me to give stuff away. Meaning, if I had, uh, especially in the gym, it was a knowledge-based thing that I was giving away. I wasn't giving away money, but I always had knowledge. If I saw somebody and I thought I could help, I would go up and I'd say, hey, you know, you could do this a lot more efficiently. Do you mind if I help? Or hey, you're I could see you're always working this exercise. Can I give you an alternative to this that maybe might be better for you? And that just was so easy because one, I was already there. Two, I was so passionate about it. So by me sharing my passion for something that I loved, it made somebody else more interested and they appreciated me for that. And that just always became this relationship currency. And then relationship currency turned into energy currency, where if you just pass along and spread good energy, it is one of the most valuable things that all humans respond to. And when I I forget where I heard it, it might have been Tony Robbins, it might have been somebody, but at one point somebody said the most valuable currency you could possibly have is good energy. And I wasn't making a lot of money at the time, but I remember Alberto saying, Hold on a second. Okay, so if I want more money, and this person just said the most valuable currency is energy. I'm like, that's one thing I do have. I have good energy. Let me just keep doubling down, tripling down, and putting out as much good energy as I possibly can to the people around me. That's when I started taking content a little bit more seriously. I started putting things out there and said, if I just keep putting this out there, good things will come back to me. And they did. And and like I can trace back almost every good thing that has ever happened to me to some sort of energy exchange that you put good energy out, good things come back.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Brett, are you ready to give us a discomfort masterclass? Let's do it. So the first question is break down the title of the book for me. Uncomfortable either way. Why choosing easy is making your life hard. If I needed to understand why you titled the book like that, yeah, what is it?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

In the simplest form, it's we always think change is gonna be hard. When we talk about a change, we we we usually think about whether you're leaving something or going into something, it's easy to look at all the things we're gonna lose. If I change this, well, I have to give up this, I have to change this, I have to stop doing this, I have to, we, you know, when it comes to habits, New Year's, whatever it may be, we always think about the change and we always think it's gonna be hard. And I'm here to tell you, it is going to be hard. I'm not I'm not trying to rewrite that narrative. But it was the moment when I started to realize I started to be that guy who was dreaming. I was dreaming about this, I wanted my life to look like this, this is how much money I wanted to have. I wanted to change my lifestyle, I wanted to set up my future for my future wife and kids. But I would let this little voice inside of my head convince myself that all of those things are going to be hard and that they're gonna be uncomfortable. And it wasn't until I had this kind of aha moment of thinking, man, I am already uncomfortable. I am literally complaining every day that I don't want to live this life anymore, that I know that there's more inside of me, that I know that I could be doing more. That's also uncomfortable. And when I stopped thinking that only the op only the change was gonna be uncomfortable, and I started really sitting and and not kind of pushing it off, but really like speaking it in, be like, why am I so uncomfortable? Why do I not want to show up to this job? Why do I not want to do this thing again? Why am I continuing to drink even though on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I'm gonna tell myself we're not going out this weekend, Friday would come around and we'd go back out. It was that realization that when I started to trace back, you know, when I started to come up with the title of this book, I I thought back to all of the important fork in the road decisions that I had, where it was I could continue doing the same or I could do something different. And when I finally realized that every single one of those decisions had this it's going to be uncomfortable either way moments. It's going to be uncomfortable to stay, it's going to be uncomfortable to change. But the change always came with more hope. It came with an opportunity for different. And every time I realize I actually do want different, roll the dice. You know, take the gamble, take the risk. So I really share in the book that everybody thinks it's it's about you know, life is about reducing risk. I really think life is about reducing regret. And if you can rewrite your life to make more decisions about reducing the regret that you may have in your life, you're gonna live a much, much more fulfilled life.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

You know, I love that you bring that up because you actually say that a good 75% of elderly people live with regret when they can't do anything else about it.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah. And we all, and I I don't know if your listeners know that stat, but it's such an important stat to understand. Why do so many people get to the end of their life? And and there's a there's a book called The Seven Regrets of the Elderly or of the Passing, and they're all the same. I wish I would have lived my life more for me and not other people. I wish I would have taken the risk, even though it might have been uh, you know, it might have been challenging or it might have been more uncomfortable. I wish I would have spent more time with the people in places, the things that brought me joy. It's so easy to read that and then go back to all of these obligations and things that we have, thinking like, well, I I'll change that, but not today. And it was to go back to when when my dad passed away, it was hearing from all of his friends and hearing from him, like hearing the stories and stuff about the things that he would talk about that I didn't know. I was, you know, he wouldn't always share these things with me, but I know that when we would go on vacation, our one vacation of the year, and we would go to the beach and we'd walk along, you know, the houses that were close to the beach, and we'd look at these gigantic houses right by the ocean, and he would always share how excited he was that like when he retires, he can't wait to move to the beach. And he's gonna live by the beach, and every day he's gonna walk on the beach, and we just we were both like ocean guys. We just could be in the air, like we'd get to the ocean, we'd be in the water until we're ready to leave, we'd get out and we'd leave. And it it was uh it was sad to hear, like, well man, he he thought that that was gonna be available to him when he retired, and he never got that opportunity. And then hearing about some of the people who get to the end of their life, and these are the things that they are talking about that they regret. How do we create how do we use that information to not just be like, oh, that sounds great, back to work, but how do we use that to then craft and create a life that helps us prevent a lot of that regret at the end? So there's a question that I started to ask myself that has probably been one of the most profound questions that has helped me align my life year after year. And the question is. If you knew you only had one year left to live, what would you regret not doing or pursuing? And the reason why I love that question is because it immediately prioritizes the thing that is in your gut and in your heart that you know you should be making time for. For me, this book wouldn't exist if I didn't ask that question. Because personally, I started to think through, okay, like, well, there's a couple things I want to do personally, a place I want to go. I should spend, I want to spend more time with mom, so let me make sure that I plan trips with her. And professionally, there was one thing in my gut that rose to the surface. Everything else, I was like, yeah, of course, of course, we want to make more money. We want to have more impact. Those are great, but those are hard to quantify. The one thing I could quantify, I know that there is a book that I've talked about writing. Why haven't I written it? And that was the one thing that immediately started to be a priority for me. I took two weeks later, I was on the phone with every publishing company I could. I had a contract in place, and all of a sudden I was writing that book. And if it wasn't for that question, that book would have continued to be this thing that was a Google document on my, you know, on my Google Drive that would have continued to just live there. And it might have died there. But it was that question that allowed me to really start to say, what do I know that I would regret not pursuing? Go after me.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

I love it. And I know that you actually kept a mock-up of the book on your phone as your screensaver because that's published here.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

The visual is so important. Like seeing that thing. The reason why I had the first terrible, not look good-looking mock-up on that phone is that one of the biggest distractors that I believe not just distract us day to day, hour to hour, but are a big cause of especially our new generation's regret is going to be all the time that we spent on our phone. And I just heard some, you know, one of those stats that you kind of like, you're like, oh, I can't unhear that, is that we spend something like two and a half hours on our phone every day, which equals like that's more than a day a week that we just lose to being on our phone. And then you multiply that over a year, and it's like, yeah, there are things we need to do that are on our phone for our business, for our life, for our work, for texting our family, like all those things. But the but the two and a half, like, there's a lot of that time that is not being spent on something that I'm gonna remember at the end of the week, and I'm sure as heck not gonna look at the end of my year and say, like, you know, one of the highlights of my year were was that that that post on Instagram I saw, where it was this picture of this, or that funny video where the thing exploded. It's like that's never gonna be a highlight of my year.

SPEAKER_04 24:20

Oh no, you mentioned that. So I'm curious because it sounds to me like your attention towards your phone, and this is something that could be an interesting lesson, is something that you're mastering in a way that's a lot more productive than mine.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I love that you brought that up. I would say I'm far from mastering, but I am but I'm hyper aware of, especially now that we welcomed our son into our world now. He's three and a half months, and you know, he's at that stage now where you know I I feel like he's still young enough that I could be multitasking. And there are times he's he's speaking and he's not speaking, but like making the noises, making noises, and he's looking and he's so happy and he's giggling, and I'll be like trying to do this one thing, and I'll realize that I'll look up and he kind of has his face on, just like, why aren't you looking at me? And I'm like, he's only three and a half, and he's already aware enough that like if you're not giving me eye contact, I don't really want to play with you. Yeah, and it's and that like oh, it's like, oh yeah, you're right. Like, this can wait. What am I doing? It was taking a self, I work for myself, my wife works works for herself. Um, I didn't have to ask a boss, but I but I felt it very necessary that I self-impose a paternity leave for myself because sometimes when we work for ourselves, we can convince ourselves, oh, I can kind of work a little bit while I'm on vacation. I don't need to take off. I knew that for me to be really present through the end of my wife's pregnancy and for these early, early stages, I really wanted to, you know, take it all off the table. So I actually stopped writing. I haven't missed my newsletter in a couple years. I took I I took my newsletter off the table, told everybody, guys, I'm I'm I'm stopping writing this. I put my uh inbox on hold.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

You had an autoreply. As if you had a corporate job. As if I had a job.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

It was telling everybody, say, hey, you know, this is what it's gonna be. I'm not gonna reply. And by the way, I'm probably not gonna go back to January and look through all the emails. If you need me, email me after April 6th. And I did that because I have not slowed down in like 18, 19 years. I had never taken that long of time off. It was actually really uncomfortable, Alberto. It was more uncomfortable than I would like to admit to take that space for myself. And there were days, you know, especially when he was little and he's sleeping a lot, that I like didn't know what to do. I was so uncomfortable with not knowing how to be bored anymore, with not knowing how to appreciate looking at the end of my day and being like, okay, I spent this time with him, I went for one walk, I got to work out in, but like, what did I accomplish today? And that was not easy to sit with of man, I don't know what my life looks like when it's not highly productive. And while that has been extremely beneficial for me in my work life, it it is it is starting to be this measuring stick that on a day where I want to take off or weeks when I want to take off or months in this situation, it was really uncomfortable. It was it was having to retrain myself to can I find joy if I don't pick up my phone and check off five work things? Do I feel confident? Do I find do I feel accomplished? Do I feel worthy if I didn't make money today or sign somebody up or book a speaker? You know, what does that look like? So it was definitely uh a lesson that I didn't expect from that time, but I really appreciate that time because I think it it highlighted some things that, whoa, I don't think I've given myself the space to even feel those things.

SPEAKER_04 27:36

Now, you know, towards the end of the book, you call it the uh the fuck it button, basically. And uh and the moment in which you try to hold yourself so much from something that you're really not supposed to do or have, like picking up your phone or grabbing the piece of cake or whatever it is, and what you're trying to help people with is avoiding that fucking button where you say, Oh my god, you know what? Screw it. I'm just gonna grab the phone. So I'm just take me to the microsecond in which those decisions that are not good for us are about to be made, whether it's you and your paternity leave booking a gig or you responding to me quicker because you're like, oh, you know, let me just get back to Alberto that you know that you could get back to me the next day. How do we manage those moments in which we're about to screw it up?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

It that that button, and I'm glad you bring it up, because that everybody has that button, and that button is, oh, I messed up a little bit, eff it, it's I'm I'm going all the way in, right? It's like I had a uh okay, I wasn't supposed to eat that. I ate a little bit, let's let's eat the whole thing. Or um, I missed my workout on Monday, uh, screw it, I'll start next Monday. We're like, dude, it's only Tuesday. Well not like we can totally make it up today. It's those type of situations where we all have that button. And the the high performers mentality that most people think is a strength, is a strength, but it can very easily become a weakness. And it's the all-in, all out. I am all in, all out on this. And and when people say that, they say it as it's of a compliment, right? I'm when I'm all in on something, I'm all in on it. You're also telling me, and when I I learned this when I started working with people in fitness in the first half of my career before I became a high uh a high performance speaker, is I would find that when somebody would tell me that I hey I'm I'm either all in or all out, I already knew at some point when it gets hard, when it gets uncomfortable, when it's no longer convenient, you're gonna be all out. So the success that I would have with people in fitness, and it's the same as when I've worked with people as high performers in business or whatever, is if you know that about yourself, we have to retrain your mind to be okay with 80%, with 70%, with 50%. And there's another line in this book that I call the no zero days. And a no zero day is is similar to the eff it button where when you are feeling that something is off. Look, let me give you a great example. Yesterday, my wife was traveling, she was coming back from a speaking event, and I was alone with Elliot, and you know, he was not having a great day. He was crying a little bit more, we were doing our best, but it was one of those where I did not get a workout in. I also didn't sleep very well. I also um one of my meals was like just a quick handful of something because, you know, again, we were trying to move around and try to get him ready. And what could so easily happen is I can say, today is gone, today is ruined, I don't, you know, my health is just let me go for whatever. Or just like totally screw it. But the no zero day mentality is in health, it's all of I might have missed all of those things, but when I feel that, man, I'm getting close to I'm gonna drink all 100 ounces of water. I'm not gonna allow myself to get a zero in the health bucket today. So I may not sleep, I may not get a workout in, I may not eat three great meals, but I'm also not gonna get a zero in health.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

You wanna try to check off at least one of the boxes. Check off something.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

And again, and again, that might be 20% of what a perfect health day looks like for me. But it's not a zero. And what people don't realize is getting a hundred percent right doesn't move the needle as much as getting a zero holds you back. And it's the same in business when people are cruising, cruising, cruising, and then all of a sudden they hit the brakes like they slam the e-brake. If we just slowed down a little bit and went to 50% or were okay hitting five out of 10, it would just make life so much easier to get to the end goal because we don't stop the most important thing in life, which is momentum. And if we let momentum stop, it is so much harder to get it going again. And I like to think of the visual of a train. If you've ever seen a train stop and then begin, it takes a very long time for that train to get up to full speed because there's so many parts of it, and you just have to grind through the beating.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

So you want to keep that momentum as opposed to stopping the train.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yes, if that train slows down to one mile an hour, it is still easier to get back up to full speed than it is to come to a complete stop. Think plane, think rocket, think anything, any anything that that that moves. Losing full momentum is the hardest thing. And again, that all in, all out person, when they are all out, it is not very easy to get them back all in again. So if we don't ever have to be all out, we never have to go all back in.

SPEAKER_04 32:14

That really hits home, Brent. It does. I'm glad. Now, you talk about willpower and emotion. Because, you know, you've taken us to that fork on the road. Uh the eff it moment, I'm understanding it not as the moment in which something in which we avoided something from happening, but we avoided just continuing with the behavior, is what I'm picking up from what you're saying. But there's also this thing about willpower. Everybody talks about, you know, you got to align your emotions and have a lot of willpower. And yeah, you say in the book that willpower is mostly going to fail us.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

It is going to fail us. It's it's there, it's almost like a break if an emergency. Like willpower is there, but a lot of people think that willpower is going to be their best strategy. And then to me, the difference between discipline and willpower is discipline is creating environments that encourage you to succeed instead of tempting you to fail. And that's the difference between willpower is putting yourself, is like somebody who wants to stop drinking, going to the bar and with all their friends and sitting there being like, I'm not gonna drink, I'm not gonna drink, I'm not gonna drink, I'm not gonna. You know how that's way harder at a bar than it is, you know, going to the movies or something? It's it's an environment that is not helping you succeed, it's tempting you to fail. So for me, I have always found the biggest success in my life, not when I just willpowered and like white-knuckled my way through it. I've always found the best success for me when I first create an environment that is going to encourage me to do the thing that I say that I want to do. So, for example, if somebody wants to drink more water, like I'll go health and then I'll go business. Health, what I have somebody do is fill up 16 ounces of water the night before and put it in their bathroom. Because where's the first place we go when we're done is your bathroom. And if you go to your bathroom to grab your toothbrush and all of a sudden there's this big glass of water there, it's tripping your normal, your, your, your system, and you're being like, What why is that water? Oh, that's right. It's just that one quick question that says I'm starting, I've got to start my day with drinking water. And I have found through many client studies that if somebody gets 50% of the way to their water goal by lunchtime, they're gonna hit their water goal. The business side of that is the same, is where can you create an environment? And whether that's people, I know you had um, you know, Aaron Speedak from the Founders Club on here, uh, there's the people who have groups of people where if they are already doing the thing that you want to do, whether it's virtual learning, whether it's in person, we've talked about conferences, we talked about speakers associations, those are the type of environments that are a bunch of people encouraging you to succeed. And if you can get yourself in environments like that, and that's the big environment, but also what does your house look like? What does your room look like? What does your office look like? You notice when we walk into this beautiful studio that you have here, there's not a ton of other distractions. It's two microphones, two chairs, we're sitting across from each other. There's not a lot of things preventing us from having a great conversation today, other than you know, other external things, but the room is curated for great deep conversation. Allow yourself to first curate the environment and then let that encourage you to succeed.

SPEAKER_04 35:18

This episode of Made by Challenge is powered by Saglow. Every business you walk into started with someone who took a risk. But behind every great local business, there's also a place that made it possible. Saglow is a team of shopping center owners, operators, and retail specialists who create the environments where entrepreneurs open their doors, hire their teams, and serve their communities. From grocery stores to neighborhood shops, they develop and manage spaces designed to make everyday life more convenient and more connected. Because community isn't built online alone. It's built in real places where people show up. At Made My Challenge, we believe opportunity grows when you create the right environment. Saglow is doing exactly that. Building the spaces where businesses launch, families gather, and communities move forward. If you want to see how communities, shopping center owners, operators, and entrepreneurs can flourish together in a way where everyone wins, visit Saglow.com to learn more. Saglow, creating the foundation where challenge turns into opportunity. Now, let's talk about identity for a moment. Because what you also discuss in the book is the fact that at some point we need to redefine ourselves, and that's not an easy thing to do. And our old self is gonna keep coming, knocking and knocking, and knocking and nagging us and trying to say, no, no, no, this is who you actually are, remember? How can anybody watching or listening can understand the concept of identity and how a shift in identity can really get us closer to what we want?

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Identity is one of those things that can be super, super powerful when used correctly. And I'll start there by saying if you identify with something in your life, something that you want, um, and one of my favorite lines is I'm the type of person who, and this is Sahel Bloom talks about this a lot, I'm the type of person who, and fill in the blank, if you say, I'm the type of person who always shows up for my podcast with great energy and I always come prepared, if you just say that, you are more likely to do that exact thing. If you say I'm the type of person, not just I hope to show up prepared tomorrow, I really hope that I, you know, it's a good episode, but if you say I'm the type of person who and you really believe that, you are so much more likely to fulfill that part of the sentence. The part of that that I like next is if you're the type of person who shows up super prepared and good with good energy, what else does that person do? That person may also show up to work that same way. If you're like, well, why would I show up to my podcast guest with great energy and not walk into my house with great energy? So guess what? You may also be the person who, when you walk into your house at the end of the day, you walk in with great energy. All of a sudden, we start to build this identity of this person that we not just want to become, but the person that we actually are. So the identifying with something is so powerful to not to making it a reality. And I want to be super clear that this is not a fake it till you make it type thing. This is the opposite of that. Because fake it till you make it is I am going to lie to myself about this thing that I'm not and hope that it's it eventually floods my brain and I have become that thing. But to but staying on the, I'm the type of person who. So for me in fitness, one of the greatest lines, and I talk about this also, the one of the greatest lines that have like shifted my identity in fitness is I'm the type of person who never misses a Monday. I never miss a Monday workout. And for a lot of people, that's like a cute hashtag on Instagram. But for me, I have worked out at 11:45 p.m. in a hotel room in New York doing push-ups on the floor because that identity is so important to me that missing a Monday workout would crush my identity way more than doing push-ups at 11 foot. Like that's way more uncomfortable than just getting on the floor and banging out 200 push-ups. So, like, that identity is so strong into who I am. And then guess what? If I'm the type of person who never misses a Monday, I can't say I've never missed a Tuesday, but I'm way more likely to hit a Tuesday simply because I start my week every week with a workout. And it's easier to do something on Tuesday when you've already done it on Monday.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Doesn't that put just too much pressure sometime on ourselves? How do we find a balance? Because let's say I I start using the hashtag never miss a Monday, and there's a fourth or fifth Monday in which I miss it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

And then I'm like, like, like, like I want to stop myself. Yeah, yeah. So that's where, again, that the the effort button comes in, right? The fuck it button, fuck it, I missed the Monday, I'm I'm done, I'm off this. Or you can say, what got in the way? What what did I do that that would counteracted that identity that I said that I was? And here's the bigger picture on that. We can't commit to so many things that it becomes impossible to fulfill them all. And and that's where the one of the greatest lessons that I've learned myself coaching high performers is you have to be so dialed into your follow-through that you can't overcommit. What is better off is being what is the one promise that I have in my health? What is the one promise I have to my family, and what is the one business commitment promise that I have to myself. You can probably go three for three. That doesn't feel so hard to do. It's when we say, every day, I'm gonna start my day with water, I'm gonna eat three perfect meals, I'm gonna get a 90-minute workout in, I'm gonna get these things. If anything, fatherhood has taught me like that. That is great if that happens. Very unrealistic day to day. So what I've had to do is get really comfortable being like, okay, I know what my ceiling is, five for five, all the water, the sleep, the eight hours, all that's gonna be great. What is the floor though? And the floor protects my identity. So that's where the no zero day comes in. I may not do this, I may not do this, I may not do this, but there is no reason that I can't carry a water bottle with me every day. There's one in my car. I know you gave me one when I walked in, but there's one in my car. But it's just like to me, that prevents the zero, and the zero prevents keeps my identity intact. So the same thing in business. If you like, figure out what that thing is for you or what is the thing that you're going for. For somebody, it may just be like, I'm going to post a couple times a week. And again, posting a couple times a week may not change your business, but you now have the identity of I'm taking work seriously and I'm trying to put good content out there. If you do that, it it is it is a coin in the jar of this is who I say I am. Look, I just proved it. And every time that we break that or we hit the fuck it button, it's this is who I am. Uh now I'm gonna put the coin over here, and it just again continues to reiterate, I'm not that person. That's the fake it till you make it. That's where that starts to come into play because authenticity is the highest frequency a human can emit. More than love, more than uh confidence, more than anything. It's it's the like the frequency that we give off. Meaning, like you can pick up when somebody's being authentic. I'm sure you can pick up when somebody is taking it too, right? We all can. It's it's people aren't as good as it as they think they are. But you get to that position where you are actually believing what you say you are. So to me, I I rather than somebody writing affirmations and maybe being like, I am so rich, I am so this, I am so that works for some people. I would rather say, I would rather somebody be like, let's be super authentic and be like, I'm going to look at my bank statement every month. That is more realistic and that is also helping the wealth train. But at the same time, it is we can fulfill that. We can fulfill that now. We don't have to convince ourselves I'm rich when I'm not. We don't have to convince ourselves I have the you know person in my dreams before we're not. I'm all about that. I just I would never tell somebody not to do that. I just think it's harder to believe. And I have found the times that I fake it till I make it, actually I show up way more unauthentic, and it's harder for me to be that person and comfortable in my own skin. I would rather come here and tell you the things that I I do wrong or the things that I've messed up, to me, that's gonna be more authentic and that's gonna be the real version of me. And it because of that, easier to like live in your own skin.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

Absolutely. Now, I can imagine people watching or listening also that that know about you, that maybe follow you. So if we wanted to land most of the advice that you've given us today about about finding those moments, about having never having the zero day, about you know, about the the the fuck it uh button, etc. Can you can you explain to those that doubt you because of what you have been through and the position they're in now, how that's still a challenge for everybody?

SPEAKER_00 43:40

It is so it's such a and that's why you're a great host, because it's important to tie those all back to the person who's listening. And again, we've both been there, I'm sure. I've been the person in the audience looking up at the person who has all the money saying, It's not about money. And I'm like, Yeah, but I wish I had more. And the person was like, It's not about having the biggest business. Like, yeah, but I wish my business was doing better. It's it's I really believe it's about compounding. And compounding is not something that happens in a day, it's usually not something that happens in a week. It may not even happen in a year, but it's compounding the good things in your life that are happening. And I know in all areas of my life, it was not the one day that, like, all of a sudden I made six figures, all of a sudden I made multiple six figures, all of a sudden, it's it you don't, it doesn't happen because of one day, one decision. It was all of the lessons that I learned to make the first six figures that now started to compound that made the second part easier. It's the years of fitness that I that I stacked on top of each other that now makes being 39 almost 40 with a couple of bad knees and a bad back, like it makes it easier to still stay highly fit because I'm not trying to do it all today. I'm doing it, I understand the compound effect. That one meal doesn't feel like it makes a difference, but it does when you stack one meal times 100 times 300 times 365 times three. Like it's all of those things that stack up. So the person who is listening to this and saying, like, that feels overly simple. If you understand that almost everything compounds, it'll make you appreciate what you do have control over today. You might not be able to find your perfect partner, or you might not be able to build the perfect business today, but what step can you do today that is gonna get you closer there? And back to that question that I said earlier of like, if there you had one year left to live, how could you live that year super fulfilled? And and and and I always get the pushback of the cynic who's like, but we have you know, we're not gonna, you know, we can't spend all our money in one year. What happens when we live way longer than that? I still go back to um it was either Gandhi or somebody, but said, like, you know, plan uh live for today, plan for tomorrow. But at the same time, I have found that by prioritizing the most important things in my life for this year, and hopefully when I get in, you know, the my time around the sun goes and I get another year, I look back and I say, that was an awesome year. Let me do that again. And now let me pick the next thing that's gonna be this. And what I'm doing is I'm not only living a great year by year, I'm also reducing a lot of the regret in my life. And again, and and I'll say this to that person too. They have done studies on what the happiest people in the world are. And most people think it's the person who made all the success, has all the money, and achieved everything they ever want. Alberto, it is not that person. They've also run studies and say, like, oh, so it must be the people who have no dreams, no goals, they don't want anything in life, they must be super happy. It's not them either. The happiest people in the world are the ones that are in pursuit of something that excites them and can appreciate where they are on the journey. And if we understand that that is actually peak happiness, peak happiness meaning I am in pursuit of something that excites me, that may change my life, that that is that is something worth pursuing, and I can just appreciate that I am not at the top yet. But you know what? I'm excited to get there. That's really where peak happiness is. That's why when we get to the summit, it lasts so little. That's why a lot of founders, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of them, they get there and it's like, oh man, this is it. Like I had more fun building the thing than I did selling it.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

Aaron Speaker. He talks about the moment that the wire hit the bank account.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 47:23

He got depressed.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Super depressed. So if we know that, like, what can we do in our own life? It's it's trying to appreciate those small moments. And again, that's so much easier said than done. And I'm even going through this identity shift right now myself with being a father and getting back into work and like realizing like what are the things that I took off that I don't actually want to put back on anymore? Man, what does that mean? What happens with the what do I want my new life to look like? How am I gonna live this life for Brett while still being a good father and husband? It's recreating all of those things in your life, but understanding that it's going to compound. The things I do with my son right now, even though he might not remember, will compound when he's one year old with two years old. The health that I have right now, not just you know giving in to the early dad stages of the first two years. Guess what? If I took two years off, fuck it button, you know how much harder it's gonna be to get that train moving again in two years? So those are the kind of compounding things that I want uh you know, the young listener to think about. It's just hey, everything, everything compounds. Just like make sure that you know, try to avoid the zero because that that will hold you back.

SPEAKER_04 48:23

That's a great takeaway from this conversation. Just try to avoid the zero. I mean, it's like a like a big deal that I'm taking away from it. Simple, not easy. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Now, in uncomfortably, the way why choosing easy is making your life hard. Uh, you talk about the ABC method. So you say action builds confidence. And you were just talking about looking back at the year that just finished for whatever that milestone, whether it's a birthday or the new year's or whatever, and you want to look back and say, okay, this was a better year, this was a year of progress. And you're saying that that comes with action.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Yeah. Yeah, the action build confidence is it um actually came on that that was created on a Zoom call. And it was somebody asking a question. I was coaching this group of probably six sixty uh coaches and looking to be coaches, online coaches, and somebody was talking about confidence, and they're like, I just don't feel confident to post you know my program on social media. I don't feel confident to sell it. And I say, Well, like, where's that gonna come from? It's gonna come from the more you talk about it, the more action, you know, the more action you take, the more confidence you're gonna get. And I started yelling, like, action builds confidence, action builds confidence, action builds confidence. And somebody in the chat was like, there it is, Brett's ABC method. And I was like, Yeah, that's that's a good thing. I should write that down. So it it's just this realization that anywhere that we don't feel confident right now, it's because we haven't taken enough action. Let me give you a case in point. If I said, hey, there's another guest coming in right after this, and you're gonna, you're gonna, you know, take them through another podcast episode. Do you feel nervous about that? No, because you're you're you you've done it plenty of times. But if I said there's gonna be a group of a hundred people that come in and you're gonna lead them in a Zumba class, would you feel super confident about that?

SPEAKER_04 49:59

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Me neither, my friend. So so what that tells me is that it's not the the thing that we're doing, it's the the reps that we have in that thing. So if you, and I love this when I have a group of people, if I'm ever leading a workshop or something, I'll say, who in here thinks that they're really confident? Raise their hand. And you know, usually like 70, 80% of the room will raise their hand. I don't have to ask the the non-confident people. But what's funny about that question is that when I ask it, the people who raise their hand are immediately associating their identity to the area that they're confident in. So they're saying, well, maybe maybe it's a business conference. They're like, I feel like really confident about my numbers and my business. I'm I'm gonna raise my hand. The person who doesn't raise their hand, funny enough, is also confident that they're not confident. But they are associating themselves to the one area of their life that they do not have confidence in. So they may be raising their hand and being like, well, everybody in here is married, and I must be the only single person, so I'm not confident because I don't have a partner, or everybody here is fit and I'm the least amount of fit, so I'm gonna raise my hand because that they may be crushing it in their business, but they're associating their confidence to the one area they don't have it. So the reason where the action the ABC method comes in, it can actually be as simple as the place that you want to build confidence, take more action. Put yourself in more situations where you are forced to take action. Whether that's putting yourself out there on social media, we talk about you know, speakers association, people who have done Toastmasters and things, nobody leaves Toastmasters less confident in speaking than they walked in. Why? Because they force you to speak in front of the room. They force you into those reps. So any area of your life that you don't feel confident in, simply just take more action and you will have more confidence. It always comes second. It never we never get the confidence to go do the thing. We do the thing and then we get the confidence.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

I love it. So let's imagine for a moment that somebody listening or watching is trying to figure things out in life again. You know, am I an entrepreneur? Am I gonna be an executive? Do I want to keep this job or not keep this job? My relationships are horrible, maybe I'm not dating or you know, those things that that that make for a really dark moment. And and a lot of people get very paralyzed in the at the time we've all been there, you know. I mean, what am I gonna do now that that I just hit rock bottom? What would be the best piece of advice you could give someone who feels like they have hit rock bottom and they don't know what to do?

SPEAKER_00 52:14

I would say one, that's actually a great place to build from. Anybody who's all who's ever been at rock bottom, you realize that weirdly enough, is is when we talk about risk, you don't have as much to risk than sometimes somebody who has more things good going on and they want to do this thing, and it's like, well, I may be risking all these good things. If you feel like, man, I'm at rock bottom, start building, right? Just start compounding brick by brick, no zero day. Start to stack those things up. The other thing that's really important for them to understand is that most people think that they are stuck when they're really just unwilling to make a bold decision. We can convince ourselves that we're stuck, which is great because it's almost like in chess where you're like, I'm stuck, like, you know, it must be checkmate, right? I don't have a choice to make because I I can't move. A lot of people are calling checkmate on their life when they're not in checkmate. You have plenty of moves, you just don't know which one to make. So I challenge people to say most of the time it's the thing that you are avoiding the most. And it is most likely the thing that you would rather change everything else but that. For me, it was the decision to take alcohol out of the picture. And and I say that because I was willing to do almost everything but that because I didn't want to change my identity, my friend circle, my all these things, and this is where like, hey man, that's gonna be just too much change for me. It was realizing that that's probably the thing that has the greatest uh ripple effect.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

Which is why you say in the book Progress Heights in the Spaces You Refuse to Go. Refuse to go.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

So I can think back all the times I've used that word, and it's such a friendly word. I'm stuck, right? It's not me. It's like somebody else has to come change something before I can do it. But what it does is it really gives up all the control. It gives up the control. So I would challenge that person, and and if I was in a room with them, I would say, okay, what do you feel like would be one move that without doing anything else would change some other things in your life? What would be the one thing that you could do that may affect all three categories, or you know, some people have four, but you know, business, your health, and your relationships. What would be one thing that you could do right now that maybe it would affect one of those buckets more? But what would be one thing that you can do right now that will positively affect all three of those? I say that because what we don't want to do, and this is one of those hard lessons that I wish, I wish we didn't have to learn it the hard way. But a lot of people will try to out-earn the unhappiness or unfulfillment they fill in those other two buckets. And business is just the easiest one, especially for men. We find that if I just keep earning more money, it'll make up for my struggling relationships. Well, if I just keep making more money, it'll make up for the fact that I don't feel good and healthy and good, comfortable in my skin. But if I have money, I'll feel confident. That is a losing game. That is a losing game for somebody to sit there and say, I'm just gonna out-earn or I'm gonna put all of my success in one bucket and it's gonna bleed into these other buckets. I wish more people understood that you the only way to truly feel successful inside is when all the buckets of your life are in a good place. Doesn't mean that they're all perfect, but they're but that they're in a good place. And that is the probably the saddest thing I've learned about high performance that I didn't know about when I got into this profession and into this field and started to speak on this, that um I was gonna learn that. There's a lot of things about it that has like changed my life. The one thing I didn't expect to learn was that a lot of people are chasing success in business at the cost of losing things in their other parts of their life that they can't make back. It happens so often. It happens so often. And and I wish that early on, and and I would say this to the to maybe the the the 20-year-old listening in their 20s, be careful putting people on a pedestal and idolizing people that you only know that they're successful in one category. I did that when I was early on, and like anybody who had a lot of money, anybody who had a successful business, anybody who was well known, I put them on this pedestal and I said, I gotta learn everything I can from them. And then at some point, you know, you go down that road long enough, you pull the curtain back and you start to realize, well, hold on a second. This person has a ton of money, but they've been divorced three times, they don't have a relationship with their kids. They're hold on, they're they're not healthy. Well, why am I necessarily learning from that person? And the older I've gotten, and probably we could call it maturity, is now I only look for, I only learn and look to learn from people who have the and what I mean by that is you're successful in this bucket and that bucket. You have you you're you're highly successful, you're the sought-after speaker, great. And are you a good dad and good father? Show me the family, show me the show me that too, because if you are, then I'm willing to look at your blueprint and look at your strategy and like, hey, that may work for me, but I am not willing at this point to, and maybe when I was younger, maybe I was willing, because I didn't have as many things going on as I was like, I would do anything to do this.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

But you know, being older now, I I definitely have learned that I will not sacrifice success in one bucket if it means emptying the others.

SPEAKER_04 57:06

So, Brett, we have a tradition of wrapping up this conversation every time with imagining that we're a hundred years from now. Okay. And we imagine and pretend that Google still exists, maybe they manage to survive to Chadipiti and Claude and everything else, and that somebody Googles Brett Eaton. And what would you like those top search results to say?

SPEAKER_00 57:31

I would love that's a great question. I would love those to say probably number one would be something around um how you can live a great life and it doesn't have to feel so hard. I just want to try to simplify life for people. And the reason why I wrote this book in in such a simple way is because I like to read books simply. You know, I like I like easy to read, easy to digest books that kind of hit you hard in the chest and that can help you create change like with an action item. Um the second thing I would like it to say would be uh something about probably the way I treated people. And you know, my favorite one of my favorite quotes that, you know, unfortunately learned when my dad passed was uh that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And one of the only good parts about losing somebody that you love at an early age is that you get to hear everybody's best story about that person. And I remember standing at the wake and just being at the the front of this line that I never expected to be in front of. Um and all you want to do is that you all you want is that night to end. And and you're standing there and you're getting to hear stories about your dad that you never got to hear before. And I might not have gotten to hear those stories if if he didn't pass away. So it was at that moment that everybody's story was nobody was telling me how much money he made, nobody was telling me about all the things he did. They were telling me about who he was as a person. They were telling me about how he made them feel when they would walk into a room. They told me how they would feel when my dad would show up at a at an event that you know the company was hosting. They would tell me that my dad would send him a text on their birthday, that he never missed a birthday since it was all of these little things that, you know, I I wish that I wish that he could have gotten to hear a lot of those. And maybe he knew, but it was just one of those things that I I think back, and I've lived my life differently because of that. Not always proud of it at times, but I do, you know, the energy thing was not just like a cute saying, it's really how people will make how you will be remembered by how you made people feel. So I try my best to always bring good energy in. And um I learned a lot of those lessons from my dad. And the last one would be, you know, I hope that uh I hope that I'm a good dad. You know, I I I want to do all the things that if that's the only thing I'm remembered for. You talk about, you know, what would you do if you only had one year left to live? I would want um I would want my wife to be able to tell, you know, my son that, hey, your dad was like the best dad for that year.

SPEAKER_04 59:59

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