The Cycle of Growth: Lessons from Abraham Shreve

Summary

In this candid interview, Abraham Shreve shares his journey through business successes, failures, and personal struggles, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability, relationships, and resilience in entrepreneurship. Discover powerful insights on handling dark times, the cycle of growth, and the value of authentic connection.


Keywords

entrepreneurship, failure, resilience, mental health, leadership, personal growth, business coaching, vulnerability, relationships, success


Key  topics

The importance of vulnerability and authenticity in leadership
Lessons learned from business failures and dark times
The cycle of growth and the role of resilience
The impact of personal relationships on professional success
Strategies for managing mental health and entrepreneurial loneliness

Action  items

Implement mindfulness practices to manage anxiety
Share struggles openly to build support
Enroll family and team in your journey


Choose Difficult Podcast - https://example.com/choose-difficult
Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time - https://amazon.com/dp/B09XYZ
Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk Biography - https://amazon.com/dp/B0XYZ


Guest links
choosedifficult.com

Live Consequential Podcast

www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3HRfUrstXXnCvLKA4kowQ

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/abrahamshreve
Twitter - https://twitter.com/abrahamshreve

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right. Welcome back to the grind design. This is Mandy Henriad and Michael Walters. Back with our one of our favorite people out there. We're super excited to have Abe Treves with us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Yeah, I mean, I've known Abe for 10 years. He was my first business coach when I got into real estate. And um he did so much for me uh early on, and his uh uh the pattern that I've seen him uh that worked with me as one of his clients and the effect and impact he's had on others is um it's just so cool to see.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Well, and we all have I I would say we all have like the voice in our head, right? There's certain people who said certain things along the way. And I I can guarantee anybody who has ever been in a room with Abe or has listened to Abe, there's something that Abe has said that lives in your head. And so, Abe, we're gonna let you introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

You guys are very kind. Thank you for that. I um I think I'm an amalgamation of the people that have had influence on me. Uh many of them are those I've worked with, Mike. You know, you become the conglomerate of those that people you get to spend time with, right? And um, well, I mean, let's see. I'll give you the I'll vomit me on you for just a minute.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

I uh give it to us.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

So I've I for the last 15 or so years I've I've been a business coach prior to that. I had a new construction company. We built residential homes up until 2009. Some of you know what happened then. I I don't remember. I blacked out for something like seven years. But then I, you know, I've had some great mentors in my life, one of which I I met back then, uh a guy named Brad Wilson, um, who today is the CEO of the Utah Winter Olympics 2034 and is coming to meet with us tomorrow. He's I went to work for him and made a big impact. And then I went into the coaching world and had the blessing of coaching in the real estate world inside of Keller Williams, Keller Williams, excuse me. And and that led me to um meeting the founder of that company, Gary Keller, and who approached me hello, let's see, not eight years ago to launch a coaching, a business coaching and training company, which we did. And then um, I'm now the sole owner of that. I took I took on a partner, um, but I I own that independent of Gary now through his incredible generosity. And and we've we've worked with clients of every conceivable industry. You name it, we've got someone there. I would I would coach you to pick a niche, and I have failed miserably at it, but I've learned that the models of business are universally true, and we're not as heavy on the coaching side of that now. We have some other things that we do. Um, kind of another another side of that is I I I like many of the people that listen to you and you guys, I'm addicted to high performance, I believe. And I've spent the major years of my adult life, 30 at least of them, climbing rocks, especially in Yosemite, California. I've climbed L Cap a bunch of times, and for those that know what that is, and and I have a podcast called Choose Difficult, and we are right now writing the book. We're we're almost done with the rough draft. We're hoping a release in late winter, early spring, and it's it's the cycle we've discovered studying those that really do incredible things. There's there's an actual cycle to it. And I would tell you, my greatest accomplishment is talking Teresa Shreve into marrying me. And uh she is my greatest source of joy in life. She and the four Shrevelets. We have four kids, and I'll tell you that at the age, the ripe young age of 53, young or old, it just depends on the day. I would tell you that I am crystal clear that my greatest joy in life are are my most important relationships. And I tell Teresa all the time, if if you are proud of me, I am bulletproof. And if we're disconnected, I can't do anything. So she's she's an absolute integral part of my success. And we're doing we're doing some really cool things right now, you guys, that maybe we can get into a little bit. How's that? How'd I do?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

I love that. The the tough part part is figuring out where to begin.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, I mean, what don't you do, Abe? No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

That's fair.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, I mean of course you climb. Okay, sure.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yeah, I mean, our podcast is is around people that have you know built things, failed, encountered roadblocks, built again. And I know, you know, knowing you, I know that you've had uh um many examples of that, right? Yeah, I mean and you didn't like when I say this, it's not to say that you've arrived, because I know you don't believe that to be the case either. But but you've had a you've had a journey of uh you know some uh some really good wins and some I mean, may I say catastrophic losses, you know, in terms of just in your own business. I mean so for somebody who's listening to this who's uh building something or maybe they've um maybe they've failed, right? Like maybe give us an example of because I I've got my own idea of what you're gonna say, but like give us what you've been through because it hasn't been all rainbows and unicorns. I know that.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Oh it is not rainbows and unicorns. It is you know, I think there is the meme that we quote about, you know, fail you fail your way to success, and and it's a hundred percent true, but what the meme doesn't hold inside of it is the pain and the agony of success. And um I I am greatly appreciative to my journey as a coach and and coming up through coaching because a coach is different than just an operator or um or a trainer. A coach is a person, the way I like to describe a great coaching relationship is we close the blinds and shut the door so no one can look in and see if we're doing it right. We strip it all down, we are completely vulnerable and open, and you just dive into the elements of business, you know, that are you get real and get right. And I have I have a greater accumulation of failures than I have successes, and some of those are really painful. I've had some really painful, I'll tell you a funny one if you want to hear one. Um I'd launched the business with Gary Keller. It was his third attempt at the company, at a coaching company for businesses. And for the first time ever, we're profitable. And I somehow have been invited to the um state of the company, the executive state of the company for all of Keller Williams. Gary and I had launched our own company. I'm actually not a part of KWRI, but I find myself in this meeting, and there's all the executives, and they're going through things, and it comes to me, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. And Gary says, Well, just tell us what you're doing. And I said what I'm doing, and they were all, oh, that's interesting, you know, and kind of kept moving. And in my memory, this is exactly how this happened. There's, you know, we get two people down the line, and then Gary interrupts them, looking at me, and says, You running that company scares the hell out of me. And you guys, I looked behind me and he said, it's so much worse. He said, I'm talking to you, Abe. And I, you know, I think in my 30s I would have deflected, and in my 40s, I would have either got pissed or got you know, got you know depressed. But and I was in my 40s then, later 40s, but at this state in the game, I laughed because I recognized that yeah, I'm a great maker of messes. And then he's very generous. He went on to explain. He said, You're like me, you you you get the vision, you make the mess, but you need someone that's gonna add structure to it. And he decided to teach me that lesson in front of that whole room. You know, that's a funny one. There are many of them that aren't funny where where I just thought that thing was gonna work and gave it everything, only to discover that it didn't. But I've learned in almost every one of those instances that failure gave birth to the next thing. And there's this fine balance, there's a very fine balance between having a vision, fleshing it out in a plan, and taking it far enough to really earn the right to innovate it, to adjust it. Sometimes we just abandon it before it, you know, before anything gets done. You've maybe read Seth Godin's book, The Dip. We we bail out in the dip. And I've I've had many, many times where um I thought this was it, this is the thing, we're gonna run with this, and then you know, any number of variables change and you realize that's not it. And uh, you know, so I've had, in fact, if you go back, you want to talk about failure, go back to 2009. It was a brutal failure. I was the proud owner of a bunch of new construction homes, I was the personal guaranteer on, none of which would close with me as the market fell apart. I remember walking out into the parking lot and looking at the cars there and thinking, I know all these families. I raised my hand and said, Come here, between my real estate business and and my construction company. I I said, Come here and build the financial security uh for your family and for your future. And now they don't know, but there's no security. So that was a season of I call it the season of long, dark, lonely nights.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Well that's I sorry to interrupt, but that's like knowing your story. I didn't know you know that you got posted up by Gary and in front of a group of people. Um, but I did know that story. And that alone for people that are listening. I mean, think back at the time, 2009, you know, everything went inverted. Um and you know, like pull that through. Like what happened and what was your next go pick up the story from there.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Sure. I I remember exactly where I was when I got a phone call that and my title rep said the subprime market has crashed. And I said, What does that mean? And she said, Well, the homes that are scheduled to close today aren't gonna close today. And I would learn they never would. In my care. And this um this is this is kind of a a nutty season and story for me because but it's but I learned a ton. And I will tell you this I'm not coaching, I'm not partnering with Gary Keller had I not gone through all this. And so, you know, that that led to something really impactful. So, you guys, um I moved from from cashing checks to writing checks. I had a great partner in Scott Thompson, this wonderful, wonderful man. And you know, this we built great houses, and there was a time that we'd get a hole in the ground and it was sold, and I would represent both sides, and it, you know, we were printing money, but we were reinvesting into our business. And in a day that changed. And now we're writing checks. And I didn't I didn't know how to do a traditional real estate business, and you know, it was a brutal time. But the part that was the most difficult is I thought I could white knuckle us through it. I thought I could just, you know, just by sheer will get us through. I also thought I can fix it before it really affects my family. And and anyone that's hearing this, hear my voice when I say, no, you can't, and you're not even supposed to. That whole idea of I'll just do it alone, I'll just handle it, I'll take care of it. They won't know. You know, it is a brutal self-inflicted wound. And in my story, it's one of the most impactful parts of it because Teresa, I've already told you how important she is to me. She's a really talented singer, and we have this, she has the standing gig at Sun Valley Ski Resort every Christmas. Our kids don't know Christmas away from Sun Valley Ski Resort. And we go up there and they put us up in their nicest rooms and give us meals at all the lodges and ski passes, and Teresa sings for three hours at night, and we get to see her do the thing God put her on earth to do. It's it's wonderful. You know, Santa has always found us up there. He he can't get out of the room without getting a piece of his beard caught in the door of the poor guy. You know, we have great traditions. Well, we're we're in Sun Valley, and we are dead broke. And, you know, there's a moment to tell someone, hey, this has happened. And have you ever noticed that when the moment passes, it gets really hard to go back to that moment and tell them? At least that's what it felt like for me. I thought I could fix it, and it just kind of rolled over me. And I'm we're in Sun Valley, and we got a babysitter that day, and I was gonna go skiing with my friends, and Teresa was gonna go shopping with hers, and I did not go skiing. I sat at the fireplace and extended credit lines to make our mortgage payment. You know, I've learned in business, sometimes you're working to get ahead, and sometimes you're working to make the mortgage. And the same guy that's working to get ahead has a season, he's working to make the mortgage. And she came back early and saw me at the fireplace and said, What are you doing? All right, I thought you were skiing. And you know when you're fine until the right person's like, Hey, are you okay?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

You know that moment, and then you're like, like it all could and you can no longer hide or pretend you're fine.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, and you guys, when you're in when the weight on you feels this heavy, you're not thinking right. And what I was thinking is, I have sunk us, I have let us down, I've ruined it, I have let my family down, and she will not want me. It's ridiculous. Looking back, I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. But in the moment, you're not thinking like that. And so I thought, when I tell her it will be the end of the most important thing in my life. And I I said to her, honey, there's something I have to tell you, and it's really bad, and you're probably not gonna want me anymore. And I can't hold it anymore. You hear what that sounds like? I can't hold it in anymore. And she's like, Can we go to lunch first? I'm like, No, I have to tell you right now. So we go up to the room and I said, I don't even know how to start. And she's like, You just better start. And I said, We are dead broke. The subprime market crashed, and all that real estate we had, we no longer have. And I started explaining it, you know, it's funny, who who would have guessed we're broke would be the good news. You know, it's looking back, it sounds like I was about to tell her I cheated, but I'm like, nope, we're just broke, we just have no money. But what was amazing in that moment, you guys, is I said to her, What this means, honey, is we have no money. And I'm working like crazy just to make our bills. And that amazing woman just grabbed me and said, Why have you carried this by yourself? I feel the emotion of it right now. Why have you carried this by yourself? And and it there was this incredible freeing moment for me where I realized, I haven't let him down. I mean, the mistake I made was not telling them earlier, not enrolling them in what was going on. But you know, the things that matter most, I I very much have and now can rely upon. And it started this season of rebuilding, but you know, with everyone had their eyes wide open, I had to teach my family here's what a success looks like because there's a gap between this the activity I do and the check I bring home. And so I get these little tastes of success. I set an appointment, but they don't feel that. So I would go home and say, this is what it means. Here's what I did today, here's what happened, here's how it's gonna show up, and here's how you can celebrate this with me. You know, I had to get really good at enrolling them, and I kind of, you know, we were able to come out of that dark season and build a great business. Good enough, it led me to to building a business with Gary Keller, which has been amazing. And uh I would tell you that as hard as that was, and I don't want to go through it again, I I gained a lot, a lot of valuable things. And perspective in dark times is one of the things that I really gained. And I I would tell you too, Mike, as we got to have so many of those, you know, so many of those coaching sessions. I was coaching Josh Stern, who funny enough brought me into the real estate company that we're talking about. And Josh is the one that brought you and introduced you into real estate. I don't know if I've, I mean, I've met a lot of really cool hires in my time, but you are at the apex of people that have come aboard a team. And um, but there's no way in the world I'm working with people like that if I haven't been to the lows that I've been and had to face the music and work through it and learn how to rely on others. You know, so there's a, you know, there was this season, I want to say, in the coaching and training space, maybe between like, I don't know, maybe it was like 2015 up to like 2019, where it was all, it's all in your mind, and you just gotta grit and you gotta you know you gotta spit and pee excellence and all that crap. And what I would say is I am a I am an insatiable business builder. And business under the best of circumstances is difficult. And that there is benefit in having a moment with people that you trust to say, this this sucks right now. We're just gonna get that out. We're not gonna stay here, but let's talk about what's hard, and then we're gonna get in planning mode and execution mode, and tomorrow morning we show up here different. You know, and I'm grateful that the conversations have moved from that, you know, you just gotta grit and pain is weakness leaving the body. Oh my gosh. Maybe, yeah. I mean, there's elements of that that are true, but pain is also a signal that something in your life is out of order and and it it's inviting an exploration of where to make some adjustments.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

All right.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I feel like I'm just talking now, you guys.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

No, you have said so many important things. So many important things, right? Because I don't think anyone who tries to build a business for any period of time, right? And you and you said it yourself, like some people just walk away before they are far enough in to truly go through that moment. But beautiful things are born in that. Everybody is failing somewhere, and failing in that moment isn't the end. It's just the pivot point, right? Um such because I truly I think there's so many entrepreneurs out there building something and they feel like they have to keep up this facade. Everything's great, everything's fine. How often do we say that? It's fine, right? And I love the authenticity of that, of saying, oh my gosh. Like I literally was saying these words to my wife thinking she's gonna be done.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Well, yeah, I I think the other thing I heard is you know, you take partnerships because it is whether it's the uh, you know, just being manly or or you know, having this this um mask that we have to wear, the the reality is is that that is not sustainable and um it's not healthy. It's not healthy for yourself, it's not healthy for other people. And when we bring other people in that are closest to us, right, it um it helps uh share the burden which allows us to go farther.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah. You know, I could take us right now in a in a in a direction I doubt any of your other guests would take, but it would be impactful. Let's go. You guys want to roll it? Wanna roll some dice?

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

So 2024 for me was the most difficult year of my whole life. And I just told you about 2009. And um, and I and I I I'm sharing this because of what you just said, Mike, Michael. It's you know, I think when the story is told of us all, I love the name of your podcast, by the way. When the story is told in the end, when we look back, it will be the lessons that we cherish. And the lessons are born out of the out of the difficulty. You know, and and the key is to is to lean into difficult things. That's the reason the podcast is called Choose Difficult. I spent just last last Thursday. Thursday? Yeah, last no last yeah, last Thursday. Last last Wednesday, I drove me and my partner drove to Colorado and spent an entire day, maybe 30 hours, with uh someone who's become a very close friend of mine named Jimmy Hinsky. Jimmy, Jimmy was a commander in SEAL team six. It at one point he was he was the commander over one-third of JSOC. This is a guy who's been tapped on the shoulder to take his team after bin Laden, and and he's got some incredible stories. But, you know, as we sat and talked about choose difficult and what it means and this cycle I think I've identified. You know, we we talked about how do you deal with the how do you deal with the moments that you're not bulletproof? And I think for many people that have followed my journey, if you've seen any of it, there's a lot of really great things. I've been fairly transparent on what's hard. Do we have a hard stop in 15 minutes?

SPEAKER_02 21:29

15 or 20.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Okay. So that said, I've learned in coaching that behind the curtain everybody struggles with something. And so last February I was at a conference and I was gonna be speaking, and we we had made big plans. A year ago, February. And I had these rooms that I was an individual speaker on, and my team had built this whole drip system, and you were gonna be able to opt in. It was a big pivotal moment for us. Sunday morning of that conference, my wife calls me. And tells me that a close friend of mine, the second in three years, has taken his life. And three years ago, this month, my best friend killed himself. It's the single most difficult thing I've ever been through. You know, I'm thankfully I still have my parents, and this is the hardest thing I've ever faced. When she told me that, you know, just like my other buddy and just like me, here's an amazing man, our kid's orthodontist, my fishing buddy. Four kids. We go to church together. You know, it started something. And I would have these, I've never dealt with what I would describe to you as real depression and anxiety, but man, that that showed up in my life in a way that I didn't see coming. Now, on the outside, I'm partners with Gary, building a company, got a great podcast. Our company, our company's growing, I have the love of my family, and inside I am having waves of darkness that are pushing me to question if I even want to be here anymore. And and not even understanding those things. And I have you ever noticed that we're an expert in everybody else's challenges? So true. I can help you guys through it. And so now here I am. I don't want anyone in my company to know. I don't know how to explain it to Teresa. And I've always been able to do something. I'll do a new LCAP route, or I'll go run a you know an ultra marathon, or I'll try something big. And none of that worked. I had a good friend of mine who asked me one time, how is it manifest? And the best way I can describe it is it's this combination of hopelessness and intense loneliness. And it just comes in in waves. And what I I had one night in particular, so I was I was fly fishing on a river. Told you I was gonna take you guys in a weird direction. I was fly, I love to fly fish and I was up fishing. My wife's a I told you she's talented musically, and she was music directing um a um Anastasia, the musical Anastasia. And my daughter, Aliyah, was little Anastasia in the musical, and so they were at an all-day rehearsal, and my boys were with their friends, the little jerks. They have friends now, and my daughter's with her husband, as you would expect. And I I love time alone. I'm up on the river, I'm fly fishing, and I'm I'm in the river where I know the fish by name. We're friends. They jump on my line and I put them right back. And I am so miserable, and it and just that wave is in there. And so I packed up my stuff and I went home and I'm sitting on the couch and I'm thinking I I gotta do something. And so I grabbed a I live right on the foothills of the Wasatch Front, and I grabbed some a backpack and I threw a jacket in there and a cliff bar and some water, and I headed up the mountain, and where I was going is a peak right above our home called Mailens Peak. It's about 2,600 feet in elevation gain. And my thought was, I'll go change my physiology, right? I'll do something to change physically, my mind will follow. And um, I did something I cannot explain it to you at this time. I turned off my location sharing. For some reason, it was important to me that no one knew where I was and I couldn't be found. We don't do that in our family. And then I got into that hike, and about 15 minutes in, I broke like I had never broke before. Just sobbing uncontrollably. I kept hiking. I was just praying someone wasn't coming down the trail because it was this combination of out of breath and ugly crying. I couldn't explain it. And what would happen is that would hit, I'd get a hold of myself in about 15 minutes, I'd have a small break, and it would come again all the way to the top. And I made kind of an agreement with myself when I got up there that I will go down when I've gotten a hold of this. And I was I got home at about 3:30 in the morning. And I ended up reaching out to a friend of mine at midnight and just said, Hey, I'm in the mountains, I've turned off my location sharing, I'm not doing well, and I just needed someone to know. And like a good friend, he said, I'm calling you, and he called, and he was going to Europe the next day, leaving at like 6 a.m. And he lives probably 40 minutes away from me, and he said, I'm gonna drive up there. And I said, That's nice, you can't. I've hiked up here. And he said, Then I'm gonna drive up there and then hike the rest of the way. I said, You can't, you're going to Europe at six with your family. And he said, Then I won't go. Ah, you guys. I I I once heard a really powerful definition of empathy. It was standing with another in their darkest hour for as long as they need you with nothing to say. And then he said to me, and I won't say who he is because it's not my story to tell, but he said, Hey, let me tell you about the attempt I made on my life 14 months ago. And you could have knocked me over with a feather. Of all the people I know, if I lined him up in the order of people that would never think about this, he's at the top of the list. And I really started to learn something. I went home, I I ended up letting Teresa know where I was at. She, of course, was horrified, and I got home, and the next day, I s I it occurred to me my friends didn't talk about it. And I better talk about it. I sat my whole family down. I've always wanted to just be Superman. But what uh excuse me. Well what I can tell you is that Superman isn't the guy that deflects bullets. Superman is the one that gathers around those most important in life and says, I could use your help. Bear in mind, during all of this, if you were to look at my business, everything is going great from the outset. Like my my reels are on point, our social media is growing through the roof, podcast is doing great, everything's good. But behind the curtain, everybody's struggling with something. And you know, I've made it. Um, I can tell you that telling my family was important. There was this moment a couple weeks later where I was just gonna go hiking. I hike all the time, and I was walking out the house, and sweet Aliyah, now 13 years old, 12 at the time, just came busting out the front door. Dad, Daddy, are you going to the mountain? The mountain had taken on this meaning for her. I said, Honey, are you worried about your dad? I am. I said, I am doing great. And I said, I'm do you want to come? She's like, No, I've got homework, but you know, will you call me when you get up there? I'm like, Yeah, I'll call you. How beautiful. There is such a thing as entrepreneurial loneliness, and you can't see it back there, but I had an artist friend of mine. I commissioned him, very talented illustrator, to illustrate entrepreneurial loneliness. And I wish you're wish people could see this. I'll share it with you if you want. I don't know how you share it, but I can share it with you guys. But what it shows is a man or a person inside of a light bulb, a glass light bulb, pushing it up a hill and up a mountain, and there's rocks, and there's, you know, and he's in this idea that he has, and there's a horizon up ahead. You know, and and business can be lonely. I will tell you that I learned some things, and I better share this before we're done with this point. I learned that we have to talk about it, that if there's dark moments, no amount of, I'll just hold it in and get through it, get you through it. I read a book called Bad Therapy, it's really interesting, where they talk about one of the reasons that there's such a failing in mental health in the world today, other than like social media and algorithmic programming, is that the way that reels work in these 15-minute videos is we ruminate on the problems. And the so many of the current therapeutic solutions, they ruminate on the problem instead of things like behavioral cognitive therapy, which is tools, breathing techniques, and how do you get through. I learned during this season that waves come in, and if a wave comes in, what will it also do?

SPEAKER_00 29:44

It'll come out.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

It'll go out. Waves come in and they and um a good friend of mine, you guys may know Matt Townsend, Dr. Matt Townsend. And if you're not familiar with him, he's a relationship communication expert. Matt got on a call with me one day and taught me about, he put me on a book called Unwinding Anxiety. It's a great book. The guy's a researcher from Brown. And he gives this definition of anxiety. He says, anxiety is uncertainty. It's fear plus uncertainty equaling anxiety. Fear plus uncertainty. And my coaching business brain is like, okay, well, I'm gonna re reverse engineer that, right? If I if I can identify what in my life feels uncertain, and if I can make it less uncertain or more certain, maybe I can decrease the fear, and if I do that, then I can decrease the anxiety, and then I'm more operational. I um, you know, what I can tell you guys is uh in Matt talked to me that day, and in the book they talked to me about um so funny when I say this, it just doesn't sound like me, but talk to me about um oh, what's the word? It's escaped me um practice. But essentially it's it's when the feeling comes, it's it's just sitting and observing it. Mindfulness. I would have put mindfulness in with astrology and essential oils. I hope I didn't offend anyone there. But you know, things aren't important to you until your way is not working. And then you get open to things really fast. And so if you've ever read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, he's you know, he survived the concentration camps and he was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud. He had this clinical training as a psychiatrist, and because of that, he was able to observe his life in in even in Auschwitz as if he were a third party, and it gave him this sustaining power. And so for me, mindfulness, the only way I could make sense of it was that I'm gonna observe my life as if I were a third party. What does this mean? This is here, and that has been profoundly helpful. What I'll tell you now is I don't think I'll ever say I'm done with it, but I'll tell you I'm 95% better than I was that night. And all of this to say, you you tee this off with failure. All of this to say that no amount for me, no amount of sleeping on the factory floor would get me through innovation and difficulty and growth without the help of people that have expertise in the areas I need it and the help of those I love the most. And we're doing some really cool things right now. But everything I do, I measure against the enrollment I have of my wife and my family in how I win and what they can do when I when it hurts. This probably has nothing to do with the purpose of your podcast, or maybe it has everything to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

It is lonely. Entrepreneurship is lonely, it is isolating in a lot of ways. It's also something we believe passionately in. And truly, like you're you're phenomenal. Like, thank you for being being willing to be transparent because I think so many people around us aren't okay. But as entrepreneurs, everybody's just keeps up this veneer because everybody's so tough, right? And you're right, it's all about the people. Most of us are doing this because of our relationships, who we care about, who we want to be for our families. And you're right, none of us do it alone. And our hope originally was that the conversation would bridge the gap.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Yeah, I mean, I I I would just encourage anybody who's ever had anything where they had to just sort of unload, like you know, Abe said, Hey, I'm gonna vomit here, right? Um I mean, you say, Yeah, well, we said let's go there. But the reality is is when we do that, there is a release of I don't know what it is physiologically. There is something that happens to where just by doing that, things uh start to get better.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Or feel manageable.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

And also everybody willing to have that kind of a conversation gives permission for everyone to connect and have conversations.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah. I think I think sometimes in the world of high performance we we believe that there is a a shield that we're supposed to somehow have so we don't feel or experience these things. And I would say we are more susceptible to these things in the world of high performance.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

And you know, I had this I had this experience that kind of really helped it move me forward. I was speaking at a conference in Vale, Colorado, and and um on the day I spoke, there were two speakers. It was me and John Maxwell. And we all know and love John Maxwell, and and John had to be at another event later that day in Canada, and so he had a plane all fueled up ready, and so he had to speak first. And I thanked him for opening for me. There's not a chance he opened for me, but he thought that was funny. But the night before, I'd taken my 19-year-old with me on that. I take my kids all the time, and my wife is often as she'll come. And I had the strongest impression to not talk about what they asked me to talk about. Hey, we're here to talk about mastering your finances. I had the strongest impression to share my experience. I remember I was I I didn't sleep one minute the night before. Not one. Didn't even climb into my bed. I was so nervous about it. But I stood up and said, I've loved coming here. This may be my last time in front of you, because I had spoken twice before. This may be the last time because I'm not gonna talk about what they asked me to talk about. I'm gonna talk about what they should have asked me to talk about. And I shared that experience, and then I shared, here's some things you could do. And this is a room full of business owners. And you know, when you speak at things like this, it's not uncommon for someone to come up after and say, hey, I like this, or had a question, or what do you think of this? I've never had a line like that before, though. And it was my husband's there, I've been there, I have a kid that's there. You know, for anyone listening to this, what I would say is on the other side of it, there is peace and joy. And for anyone that's heard this and thought, you know, there was that that night on the mountain, I thought for a moment, if I wasn't here, you know, there'd be 15, some people would be sad, but maybe there'd be 15 or so that'd be really sad, but everyone would get over it. And what I can tell you now is, no, they wouldn't. That the people that love us would never recover. You know, let me let me see if I can steer this back in, you know, let's let's not leave it on this. But I think it's an important conversation. What I would say to you guys is to the entrepreneur or to the business leader, we cannot maximize our impact and potential in the absence of our most important relationships. We cannot. And I think my secret weapon in business is when I get to run home to Teresa and the family and tell them about this thing. We share really openly, you know, in our in our family. Um, and I've set up an environment, we've set up an environment where I've enrolled them all. Hey, this happened today. And, you know, we we celebrate those things. And some of those things, like my 13-year-old doesn't know what it means that you know, we landed a big client. She doesn't understand that. She just knows dad had a big win that impacts us all. I uh I'm excited for where we're headed. You know, we've we've built, I I've got this, I've got a passion project right now. I want to, can I tell you about it briefly? So, you know, you get to my phase of the game, 13,000 plus one-on-one coaching calls, and all this time with Gary and other mentors, and you get to this point, and what you realize is I want to I want to maximize my input. Like I want to, my impact on people. How do I do it? How do I help people as far and wide as possible? And we spent the last six years developing, you know, through some of our products, um, these really immersive experience-based workshops to help business owners with every imaginable topic, everything from forecasting their business to to maximizing a database to fitness and mental health. And and we've built these amazing workshops for teens. I mean, literally, if you if you're a person that runs a business, um, you can go to the Leadership Experience Box Hub if you're a subscriber and and just pick something from there and hit play, and we walk you all through it. And you know, adults learn by doing. And, you know, I'm I'm I'm more than happy to do something special for your audience on that particular thing, but I I think that a lot of times we go into isolation or we lean on what we know or we lean on I'm the leader. I have to, my energy has to carry everyone. And what I would tell you is there is a much better way. And if if it comes down to your energy carries everyone, then you're you're always gonna be the lid and you're always gonna you're always gonna end in exhaustion. More important than your energy carrying everyone is what experiences of growth and learning are you having together? Because that way it's not about your energy, it's about creating an environment and a moment where we extract the best thinking of the group and grow and learn together. And then we go out and hunt together and kill something and drag it back to the cave, you know, and eat it together. And I'm I'm a big believer that it experience-based learning is is critical and it's an important part of getting us out of the singularity of leadership and the loneliness that we talked about earlier.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah. What's the uh what's your program?

SPEAKER_01 40:09

It's in the middle of this rebrand. What I'll tell you is it's called the leaders the leadership experience box.

unknown 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Um so by the time this comes out, we'll we'll connect and we'll make sure that that makes its way into the Yeah, we'll get to like a discount code or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

I mean, it's very easy to experience and yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

I appreciate you, Abe, for being such a voice.

unknown 40:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Well, thanks you guys. I um it's I'm I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk to to you guys anytime. And I'm grateful for your audience. I'm grateful for uh man, we live we live in a great time for people that want to get after it. And and the reason for that is there's so much innovation and help and and advancement. AI is really exciting. And we're finally having the right conversations. Like here's how you rev it up, but let's also talk about how you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

And the combination of those are very important, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

I agree. I agree. I think that is the secret to success for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Well, I think I mean, thank you for volunteering to come on again because um I I think this is we've touched on some really important pieces today. I'd love to, you know, sometime down the road uh pick it up where we left off because there's just so many more important things.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Yeah, there's anything you can add to writing.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

And there is a cycle that we've identified of what people go through that choose difficult and change the world they live in. Be sure fun to go through some of that. I think you guys would really you'd you'd recognize a lot of that journey.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Count on it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

I I the reality is like honestly, we could spend hours with you, Abe. So thanks for taking time out.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

So, you know, we warned you. Yeah. The one of the questions is favorite book, most impactful book, what are you reading, or what have you read in the past that you would suggest?

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Well, I've always struggled with this, so I'm gonna answer this probably the way I should, which is what book am I obsessed with right now?

SPEAKER_00 42:16

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

You know, I at the beginning of this year, what I what I realized is I don't need any more business books. What I want to do is I I want to get the stories of those that have done it. So I went into biographies, read like six biographies. You know, so the the answer to the question, what's the most impactful book that I've read in recent years? I would tell you the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. Hands down. But what book am I currently obsessed with? I'm a slippery sucker on this question, is this one, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. And I'm doing something with this book I haven't done with books in the past. I usually read it and then just move on to the next thing. This one, I am not passing a chapter until it's implemented. And I've been listening to the one on hiring your on hiring your assistant now, because I've been a minute without an assistant. I've been listening to this one for like three weeks. And I'm doing interviews right now, and I hope sometime by the end of next week I can move on to the next chapter. But that's been rewarding. Like I he has put this together in it's nothing that I didn't know, but I just, it's a very he says it beautifully and simpl simply, and I it's fantastic. Buy back your time by Dan Martin.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Yeah, really good read. As as we were talking at the beginning, I'm actually working. There's a companion workbook, kind of the same concept of like how do we actually implement what's in the book. So I I've been in that task also, Abe. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

Yeah, I love that hack by the way, too, because I think as all of us that are goal driven, it it we may have a laundry list of you know twenty or thirty books that we've read over the course of a year, yet what did we do with it? Yeah. So uh what I'm taking from this on the back end of this episode is um go deeper um with you know the next book that I read. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Yeah, I am I read for two reasons. To learn I'd say these are in the reverse order of importance. To learn and to stay inspired, to stay on the learning channel. You know, and so typically if I take one or two things out of a book, that's useful to me. That was worth going through. So there's something about staying in the flow of great, inspiring new material. This thing is just written in a way, it and it's kind of lines up perfectly with where I'm at right now. Yeah, I'm just slowing it down.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Love it. Okay, and and we talked about this earlier, and we're gonna add a piece on later, everybody, when this goes through production, because Abe has warned us that he's in the middle of a little bit of a rebrand. And the where we find him, how he would answer that today, and how he's gonna answer that in maybe a couple weeks might be different.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

So what's your timeline here? Like how soon?

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Uh, right now, based on what's in the library, we're probably 60 days out from this dropping.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Okay, great. We will well in advance of that, we will have our rebrand set.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

So we'll circle back to you before we release.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Perfect. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

And we will add on that piece for everyone because we want them to be able to find you. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

You you guys, this is this has been great. And thank you. I, you know, I uh we talked about some heavy things, but I I just have to know, and I think we all know that there are people in your audience that are facing this.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

And I think it's useful when you hear from those that you perceive, you know, that don't go through it, even though that's not true for anyone. But when you hear those that you perceive a certain way open up and say what they faced, it it gives us room to realize, okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

You know, I'm I I think it gives everyone permission who's who's feeling like maybe they're failing because they feel that way, that that's actually just part of the journey for a lot of us, right? There are chapters, there's moments in life, and it is a journey. I I think it's beautiful to be hear it said out loud.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Can I share with you one more quick thing about failing? Yeah, I just learned that was super cool, even though maybe we're done, but I'll let me just throw this in. Well, my friend that's the Navy that was the Navy SEAL. You know, every now and then I just call him and I'm like, hey, what's this? You know, I called him once, I'm like, why didn't you ring the bell? Because I'm writing a book on choice, you know, why didn't you ring the bell and tap out? I almost did. Just great conversations. But I I called him maybe a month ago. I was on the way to the airport, that's when I always do it. I'm like, you know, after we caught up, I said, Jimmy, what's failure? And just so fast he said, failure is knowing you could have done something and you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

That brings clarity. And in my mind, I've I've started defining failure as any any outcome other than the one you planned on. You know, let's let's turn failure into just part of the learning curve. But his definition I would equate to failing. And I think there's a difference between failure and failing. Failure, if you're using it as a as a measurement tool for for innovating and getting through the learning curve, then my definition of anything other than what you planned on really works. But if you're just failing, it's knowing you could do something and you're not doing it. That hurts.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Yeah. Yeah, that hits. This is it, this is why I say anyone who listens or talks to Abe, you're gonna walk away with something in your head and it sticks. And for years later, we'll be thinking that thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Right, you guys. Love, peace, and checking grease. Yes. Thank you. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much, and we'll we're gonna connect it again soon. Awesome. Look forward to it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.