Podcast Episode #3 from https://nuvisionexcel.com/podcasts/episode-3/
Introduction: Hi everyone. I am your host, Dr. Nick Zyrowski, and I am here with a very special guest today. His name is Jayson Gaignard and he is the founder of Mastermind Talks and he also has a podcast, MastermindTalks Podcast. Welcome to the show, Jayson.
Jayson: Thanks for having me on!
Dr. Z: Yeah, definitely my pleasure. Like most entrepreneurs, you have story of highs and lows and it correlates with your health as well as with your business. Am I correct?
Jayson: Sure.
Dr. Z: For me, I think that your business is very much attached to your health so hearing your story is very interesting. If you could just go ahead and tell us your story and share that with us. That would be incredible.
Jayson: Sure. Wow! I will first preface this with saying I am just getting over a cold. So I could have used your services a few weeks back to avoid this cold.
Dr. Z: You didn’t call, haha.
Jayson: Really quickly, I guess my entrepreneurial journey does really tie into the importance of health and how that came to be is so I dropped out of high school and started a service-based business and realized that service-based businesses are hard to scale and I pivoted to an online product business which we grew to about 6 million dollars a year over 4 years of no outside investments. I was living my whole model of success I was in the whole 4 hour work week where I was traveling the world and I was making all this money. With all this money and all this free time I started asking myself questions. Why am I here? How many people will show up at my funeral? And if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t happy with the answers I was giving myself and around that time I realized I was making 22x national average income. In most business circles this would be celebrated but for me I knew I was not 22x happier than the average male. I was not 22x healthier. When I was 23, I had kidney complications because of stress. I actually got admitted to the hospital because of stress from my business and actually had kidney issues so I actually realized that money and happiness scale very differently.
Dr. Z: So how you measure success then, right?
Jayson: Sure, yeah! Right after that I basically consciously decided to sell my business to get out of it. Subconsciously I started to detach myself from it because I saw it as a source of pain. Overtime I became comfortable with the idea of scaling it down to zero. Two things happened that were out of my control and landed me in a quarter million dollars of cash debt which was August of 2012 and that was my quote unquote rock-bottom. Like most entrepreneurs I built my business at the expense of my health. I was just focused on my business everything was about my business and I was eating really well at the time (not in a healthy way) but I was eating pretty good at the time and I was 72lbs heavier than I am now and the scariest part of it all, everyone hears quarter million dollars and they’re like “Oh my God that’s a lot of money” and it’s all in context when you make 6 million dollars a year a quart million isn’t the end of the world but with all the added pressure because of the debt and the creditors and I had no business anymore. With all this added pressure and all this uncertainty, I had no energy. It’s like I had a Ferrari for a brain with no gas in the tank and that was by far the most scariest aspect because I knew I had the mental capacity to make the money again but I had no energy. I couldn’t get out of bed; I mean I could get out of bed but there was no point. My head was cloudy and I had no energy and my daughter was six months old at the time and I had just got married so there was other stuff at the time that was just compounding on top of that and there was so much transition going on. That’s when I really realized the importance of focusing on your health and kind of keeping that in check and I’ve always gone up in down in weight and health and that kind of stuff. I’ve lost… oddly enough…When I was in high school I was a fat kid. I was 252lbs and my girlfriend and I of 4 years broke up and there’s no better time to get back in shape than when you’re back on the market.
Dr. Z: Yeah, haha, exactly.
Jayson: Put your best foot forward so I lost all the weight. I went from 252 to 168 in one year. I did it the complete wrong way. I barely ate and I’d go the gym 6-7 days a week and I’d run like a gazelle on the treadmill for an hour and then I’d go do weights and I couldn’t figure out why on my second set why I felt like I was going to pass out so I’ve always been on this up and down roller coaster. So when I was down and out financially I knew that before I started to climb out financially, I needed to get my health back in check so with sleep and that kind of stuff and now I’m still up and down. My energy is fantastic. I eat really, really clean
Dr. Z: That’s interesting. So you had the money, you had the success but you didn’t have happiness. You didn’t have your health mentally and you didn’t have your health physically and so that was a struggle.
Jayson: Tony Robbins has a story that he shares. He went to a Cirque De Soleil show or something like that and he was sitting there and there was like 3 seats next to him and this guy came in (huge guy like 400lbs or something) and sat down. Somebody went to Tony and was like, “Do you know who this guy is? He’s like one of the richest men in Canada.” And he’s like no he’s not and when you have that kind of issue or handicap to some degree you have to be very clear what success is to you. A lot of people get on what I call the entrepreneurial hamster wheel where they build a business they hate or they pursue a career they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need, to impress people that they don’t even like and they do this at the expense of the relationship with their family, their spouse, and their health. Often times their health is easiest thing to put on the back burner and it really bites you when you don’t focus on it.
Dr. Z: Oh yeah, I focus on working with a lot of entrepreneurs and executives and that’s one of those things that is incredible to me. Even some of the people you can show them lab data of look your health is in trouble and you have some serious problems. Look your health is in trouble and you’ve got some serious problems, how they can look at it and blow it off. That’s unbelievable.
Jayson: Yeah it’s sad and I try my best to share my story and I find myself, it’s always these cycles as well. You start getting focused on business and then you realize you know your health is slipping. A scale is not the best measure of how healthy you are. It’s really not so you don’t realize like… I got a proper (I don’t know what kind of test it was it was) like a saliva test and I found out my testosterone is like half the average male and the average male now a days has low testosterone to begin with and I’ve noticed amongst a lot of entrepreneurs and you know adrenals and adrenals are drained and all this kind of stuff and you’ve got to take care of that stuff even though like I said I’ve learned the hard way I still every once in a while have to remind myself or I get these rude awakenings that I can’t shake a cold or I get a cold in the first place like, “This is ridiculous. Why am I getting a cold?” and then I can’t shake well there’s something here.
Dr. Z: I think as an entrepreneur you just you get really wrapped up in projects, hone in on a project with laser light focus and the next thing you know you’re forgetting about something else and that’s why you almost need something on a daily basis to have those checks and balances so that you’re reminded of these different things you’re reminded like, hey I’m not spending enough time with my family. I’m not spending enough time on my health, whatever the case is.
Jayson: Yeah, there is a great quote…I wish I had it. I had it at the bottom of my email for the longest time and I’ve got to pull it up. It’s a quote from Nikola Tesla and it basically sums up…Nikola Tesla once said:“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor (or entrepreneur in this case) as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.” And I think that’s just what we get caught up in. We just get tunnel vision and everything goes sideways to some degree.
Dr. Z: Yeah, absolutely without a doubt. So then, you basically you were having these times where your health and all this were at the lowest. You talked how you have had problems over time where you are up and down with your health or your weight. What is it that really started setting you straight? There had to have been something, like an on switch somewhere that got you on the straight and narrow.
Jayson: It was… I think that moment that I had the mental capacity to pull myself out but I had no energy and I’m like, where do you start from here? It was terrifying, by far more terrifying than anything else and that’s when it really switched for me. And again you get busy and you kind of lose focus every once in a while. I am pretty good at bringing myself back on track and I have also pretty lofty fitness goals to some degree. I’m good at setting stuff far out because I don’t like the terminology of working out. I like training for something. I did martial arts for many years and just using the word “training” means like you’re actually pursuing something or going after something and as an entrepreneur, we are achievers if you set a goal, I’ma get it. It’s like a dog and a bone or something. So I know that’s how my mind works so I can’t just workout for the hell of working out; I need something to work towards. That’s why usually once a year I do something. So last year was like a Tough Mudder which wasn’t that big a deal and this year I’m doing Seal Fit 20x in Encinitas, which scares the crap out of me.
Dr. Z: I’m not familiar with it but it sounds good.
Jayson: So it’s basically this guy named Mark Devine; he’s a former Navy Seal. He graduated top of his class was a navy seal for like 15-20 years. He has this program called Seal Fit and it’s Cross-fit type academy but it’s a mixture of cross-fit meditation and yoga. So it’s kind like a whole warrior what he believes is like the whole warrior combo I guess to some degree. Kokoro camp, which is a navy seal hell week condensed into 50 hours in essence. So literally spraying you with water yelling at you, making you do 1000 burpees, going out the ocean…I’m doing the child version which is 14 hours straight of just that kind of stuff so that’s what I’m training for the end of November. So that and I have 160 kilometer race over 6 stages in August. So again if I didn’t have those things, I would not be as driven to be in the gym as much as I can and eating as clean as I do.
Dr. Z: Yeah, because I think that setting up those events, you know you have no choice but to show up for the. You know you paid for them, you’re not just gonna skip out on them.
Jayson: I make sure I make it public too. There’s a thing Derrick Severs has (this famous TedTalk) that you should never share your goals and that kind of stuff because it’s like false completion because if you share your goal, unconsciously you feel like you’ve already achieved it and for me peer pressure and the integrity of my work, if I say I’m going to do something is far more of a motivator than anything else. So if I say publicly I’m doing Mastermind Talks event, there’s no canceling. I’m doing it just out of integrity. If I’m doing this 160 kilometer race, I gotta do it. Basically the minute I put it out to my network, it’s happening. I know there’s no out because people will ask me about it and that kind of stuff so yeah it’s in my calendar.
Dr. Z: That’s awesome. So is there anything that you do on a daily basis that sets you up for success?
Jayson: Uh, so I’ve done many different things. You know I’m always testing what works best for me. I think that’s the one thing with like weight loss and getting healthy…there’s no silver bullet because everyone has different schedules and different needs and demands and that kind of stuff. That’s one thing I’ve learned: what’s worked for one person won’t necessarily work for me so I try a bunch of different things and kind of test them on myself. So I’ve done stuff like early morning rituals like waking up at 4 a.m. and having a very strict morning. I did that for 18 months, cold showers, ice baths. I stopped recently because freezing in Toronto. And it just ads on top of that.
Dr. Z: Yeah, I’m in Michigan and it’s the same thing. I still try to utilize it for a little bit but it’s more about slowly turning the water a little colder in the shower than just jumping into an ice bath because it’s 10 degrees here now.
Jayson: Yeah, I’ve got to pony up and get back into it. You know there’s a saying “Do what is difficult when it’s easy.” It’s like the whole Navy Seal training thing; they train so hard and so brutal so that when they go to war, it’s like a walk in the park. You know what I mean? So that’s how I have to start kind of treating things and I have to get back into ice baths which I did for quite sometime. Really, I start kind of treating things now so I tested that waking up extremely early and having very structured mornings and a lot of people are kind of getting into now. Now I’m going the opposite way and I don’t use an alarm clock. I wake up whenever my body needs because I obviously understand the importance of sleep and I’m working a lot on strength training and my body needs to recover through sleep. So now I don’t wake up with an alarm clock and I’ve been doing that about 3 or 4 months. Which is great.
Dr. Z: Do you find yourself still waking up fairly early though?
Jayson: Yep, still wake up, this morning I woke up at 5:30. So I’m in bed…When I was waking up at 4 a.m. I was in bed by like 8:30 at night 8 o’clock at night. Now I’m usually sleeping by like 9:30/10 o’clock, 10 o’clock usually the latest. Even if I got to bed at midnight, which I did last night actually which is rare, I’m still up by 6:00 a.m., 5:30 a.m. because it’s just I guess my circadian rhythm or something.
Dr. Z: Yeah, it’s the same for me. I hate getting to bed late because I know darn well that I’m up first thing in the morning regardless of how late I…
Jayson: Exactly! It’s true. It’s funny because even when I had an alarm I’m not waking up that much later than when I had the alarm going, right and the alarm just kind of startles you when you’re in deep sleep or whatever. Your body needs what your body needs you know and I’ve kind of gone to that extreme now where sleep is the biggest thing for me right now and strength training and eating clean. That’s pretty much it you know. I’m gluten free. Every once in a while I’ll kind of slip a bit but definitely for the most part gluten free and a lot of vegetables, that kind of stuff. It’s kind of like the whole boiling a frog thing, right. Once you start eating clean and you feel healthy you have something like pizza or something like you realize how much it just sucks you down. And the whole boiling a frog theory if you throw him in boiling water he’ll jump right out but if you throw him in lukewarm water and turn up the heat he will boil and most people in North America don’t realize how unhealthy they are until they taste health for the first time.
Dr. Z: Right, and one important thing you mentioned is that you are training right now. So that’s one thing that keeps people in check. If you’re training for something and you get off that diet or you go crush a pizza the night before and you have to get up and run in the morning or lift weights it’s so miserable for you that you’re not gonna do it anymore, like it’s gonna be a learning experience.
Jayson: Sure! I mean there’s one thing to note as well like you don’t even have to be training for something physical. I treated the last two Mastermind Talks events…I’m in the event space. I hold one event a year. I treat those like an athlete would treat a marathon. I try to peak from a health perspective up to the event because I know my adrenal levels are gonna get hammered for the two weeks leading up the event, especially the two days of the event, and I need to be on as best as I can. And that’s the thing that even though that’s a business context. I understand the importance of being on and having energy and vitality and that kind of stuff. I treat business events as kind of training reasons to some degree.
Dr. Z: Oh definitely and you should make sure you get your mind right when those come up. It’s inevitable that you’re going to experience an incredible amount of stress at some point and you gotta be like an athlete coming out of the gate but you gotta be ready for it.
Jayson: Yeah, 100%.
Dr. Z: Another thing I think that’s important that you had mentioned you know you said, “I’m gluten free but here and there I have a few things.” It’s important too for people to not create such strict rules for themselves and that they are setting themselves up for failure because so many people do that. It’s really interesting because I have people tell me all the time, “Well I didn’t do good at this or I could have done better”. It’s like, hey look we’re all human and this is real world so this type of thing happens, you know. Don’t beat yourself up so much, just do the best you can.
Jayson: Yeah, it’s funny because Dave Aspry interviewed Mark Devine on his podcast and Dave Aspry is strict you know, “this is the way you eat and don’t eat outside of that.” Dave’s a friend so I’m not taking a stab at him or anything’ I mean what he does is fantastic. He asked Mark Devine (he was a Navy Seal) and you think who must have incredible discipline the most incredible willpower possible and incredible shape the guy is in. And he asked him how strict are you with your diet and he’s like I’m 80/20: 80% of the time I’m good and 20% of the time I eat whatever I want. I’m like if that’s good enough for a Navy Seal, then that’s good enough for me. I think that just being aware, self-aware, enough to know hey I’m moving down a slippery slope, that’s the biggest thing for me is when I do slip up…so if I do have something like I’m much more prone to have that same thing the following day like it’s easy to get into a slump. I think that self-awareness of seeing yourself getting into a slump and then being able to kind of correct yourself cause I know if I start slipping bad enough, and it happens, then I’ll fast for like 2 days…2-3 days. It’s so funny because I have like these voices in my head the end of Day 1…I’m like okay I won’t eat anything just let me have some broccoli because I’m starving, right? I think that awareness kind of plays into it but I think that balances everything. I’d rather live, you know, 85 years dabbling and enjoying life than live 95 years like a monk to some degree. You know what I mean? With a lot of structure right? My wife would not stay with me if I ate clean 100% of the time. She likes the idea of like a Ben Greenfield and like a triathlete body but that kind of stuff she would not live with that.
Dr. Z: It’s a different story to actually follow it then, huh?
Jayson: 100% yeah, I mean the lifestyle that comes with that kind of strict regimen and stuff like that is not fun.
Dr. Z: Yeah, exactly but you had mentioned how you would fast and you know that’s a great way for you to hit, I call it a reset button. It has an incredible amount of healing properties when you’re doing a fast for your gut and your body to detox and clean and you burn an incredible amount of fat. Another thing that it’s great for is if you’re finding yourself where you can’t get off the sweets or something to fast, that’s a reset button that you come back on and once you start eating food again. I mean you start eating like a cucumber and it’s like the tastiest thing you’ve ever had.
Jayson: Yeah, it resets like everything like your mindset resets, it resets your appetite. Everything resets like you said. How little food you need to be like on top of the world to some degree because I think the saying, you probably know the number better than I do, but that 40% of your energy goes towards digestion. So you think about all the crap you eat and if you eat cleaner you’re conserving your energy for the things that matter like dealing with the stressors in your life and business and relationships and that kind of stuff. So the fasting, I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for the past 3 years, 2-3 years, so that means no breakfast and the first meal is a noon which has been great. Like I said I do a full fast when I feel like I’m really slipping because I hate not eating and it’s almost like a punishment for me like you’re gonna learn type thing.
Dr. Z: You know the fasting the thing is too that you can easily do a fast and I mean unless you have serious health problems you can do a fast and but the thing is along the way you know your mind plays games with you. You were saying how you just want to eat something the whole time. I think it’s really interesting because when you’re doing this fast your brain… first of all you’re constantly thinking of food but also the time that you spend eating meals throughout the day is really interesting because all of a sudden you have all this extra time to your day and you’re like why do I have so much time?
Jayson: 100%, okay and just knowing and making a deal with yourself that you’re not going to have breakfast it clears up your mind of like what am I gonna eat and do I have time to do the dishes and that kind of stuff you know I…all I had for lunch today was I was trying to have chicken and broccoli and vegetables and I didn’t have time to make the chicken so I just had vegetables. From a time commitment perspective, just skipping breakfast and I mean, studies show the benefits of intermittent fasting from a clarity perspective, a health perspective, a time management perspective, you name it. I’ve seen no downsides and it’s something I apply pretty rigorously.
Dr. Z: Yeah, how many hours do you fast at night during intermittent fasting?
Jayson: So, I know some people like track their windows and their feeding windows and stuff like that I am definitely not that strict…
Dr. Z: I vary with it personally.
Jayson: Sure, usually my last meal is 7:00 p.m. and my first meal the next day is at noon and that’s like clockwork. So whatever that window is, which I think it around the 8 hour window, so a 16 hour fasting period.
Dr. Z: Yeah, and for everybody listening here, the intermittent fasting, you are supposed to consume the same amount of calories that you do on a normal day. It’s just that you do it within a short window of time versus the typical grazing that people are doing nowadays because it’s detrimental to your health.
Jayson: Yeah, I love… I know the old conventional wisdom was that 6-8 meals a day… and from a productivity perspective that’s a disaster. I’d much rather have two big meals because I generally eat a lot to some degree and then just even naturally removing one meal it cuts back your calories just kinda naturally your intake to some degree and again you know we talked about eating too much to begin with to be sustainable.
Dr. Z: That’s interesting. So with your rituals in the morning that you brought up do you have like a certain method to how you’re doing them or you just start doing them when you wake up in the morning or how do you go about your rituals?
Jayson: So, always changing depending on what’s a priority. The general rule of thumb, just from a productivity perspective, is to sleep til whenever I need which is, historically I wake up around 6/5:30 a.m. and now I’m starting to go to the gym daily. This is something I’m implementing in now and going to the gym daily and not going crazy hard. I started to realize with my own body that even just hopping… I mean I’m sitting on a treadmill desk right now. I’m not walking but I’m sitting on a treadmill desk, but just going to the gym and being able to just like listen to a podcast and kind of just decompress before the day starts is just a nice way to kickstart and it’s one of those almost keystone habits and it’s one of those if you start the day doing something that’s physical, it makes healthy eating habits and choices throughout the day significantly easier. That’s one thing I’m implementing right now as far as my days are concerned. I usually have one thing that I’m supposed to do daily. I set this out a month in advance and I ask myself what do I want the end of February to look like? What did I achieve in my business? The results I want to achieve, then I work my way back in order to achieve that. What do I have to accomplish day by day, one thing and that one thing I do it first thing in the morning because studies have shown decision fatigue. Sorry willpower fatigue so you have less willpower throughout the day and you have the most willpower first thing in the morning. So, whenever I want to build a new habit, like right now is going to the gym 6-7 days a week, I do it first thing in the morning because that’s the most amount of willpower I have. Also, I’m not reacting to stimulus at 5:30 in the morning. I’m not getting new emails, I’m not getting new Facebook notifications. Often times, just living in this 21st century, you roll out of bed and the first thing you grab is your cellphone and from that point forward you are not in control of your day. And when you’re not in control… perceived control is one of the pillars of happiness and when you’re not in control you can’t be happy. I try to avoid reacting to other people’s agenda through emails or reacting to stimulus, like Facebook notifications and that kind of stuff, until I did what’s important, like going to the gym and doing that one major task, then after that I may reward myself by fiddling around on Facebook or something like that but that’s the biggest thing. Like I said I used to have very structured morning rituals and a friend of mine, Hal Elrod has a book called the Miracle Morning and it has affirmations and meditations and workouts and I did that and I’m starting to realize the power in simplicity and focusing on the 80/20, the things that really matter, that 20% that give 80% of the difference.
Dr. Z: Right, I’ve kind of went through that type of thing myself. I currently have pretty decent morning rituals to where I’m getting up at a certain time and I’m basically focusing on what’s my most important project or maybe it’s something I don’t really want to do, that type of project.
Jayson: Yeah, yeah 100%.
Dr. Z: And so, I mean that’s where I’m at with that right now and I definitely think that starting off that it probably helps to have pretty strict discipline and then after you can create that discipline, by following a strict schedule, then you can probably you know get a little more lackadaisical with it like you were saying that you are right now.
Jayson: Yeah, I mean the one thing to touch on discipline, my morning ritual started with one thing which was waking up early.
Dr. Z: That can be tough.
Jayson: Sure, yeah. It’s one of those things that once you start seeing the results and how you feel and stuff like that it almost becomes addictive. Just like any habit, the philosophy around habit building is tiny habits. If you want to start flossing your teeth then floss one tooth every night and then eventually you’ll just start flossing all of your teeth. You’ll have the habit ingrained to some degree. That’s the biggest thing with doing any kind of major change, whether is be going to the gym or… I’ll give you a great example: When I lost all my weight the second time…so when I ended up a quarter of a million dollars in debt, 72lbs overweight, I was smarter than I was the first time. I was not going to kill myself in the gym and barely eat anything. I said this is basically a whole new setup of habits, healthy habits that I need to implement. So, I knew how habits worked, to some degree, so the first month that I went to the gym the goal was to go to the gym 3 times a week and spend no longer than 10 minutes. No schedule whatsoever and no workout plan, just the act of going to the gym. It killed me because as an achiever you want to lose the weight yesterday, you know what I mean, but that’s not sustainable; you don’t build the habit. The first month was all about going to the gym and not pushing myself any longer than 10 minutes, as ridiculous as it sounds, but the second month was extending that to half an hour. The third month was actually implementing some kind of workout routine and picking up intensity. The fourth month was changing my eating habits and then… it took a little longer the second time around because I was doing it the healthy way and it took about 14 months to lose that weight but I felt great through the entire process. I had healthy habits.
Dr. Z: That’s great. One of the things that I’ll do sometimes just so that I’ll go to the gym and work hard is it’s like I’ve got a half hour here to work hard so it’s like get in get it done and get out. Don’t talk to anybody and stay focused and then all of a sudden you’re like okay where is the next weight and I gotta get on this treadmill and I’ve got to speed it up a little bit and I’ve got to work harder and that’s really how you should work out.
Jayson: The hardest part of the gym is just showing up, is getting there. Once you’re there I mean 80% of the work has been done. Even myself I have to keep on telling myself that today I’m getting into the routine of really picking up and going to the gym and today I did a workout and it was about 40 minutes and I told myself, you’ve got to hop on the treadmill and do thirty minutes of cardio that has to be part of it and I just had to stop myself and say no. Commit to 40 minutes and then you come back tomorrow and tomorrow you do cardio. The day after maybe do weights again. If it’s an hour and a half commitment or a two hour commitment and stuff gets busy in my life then I’ll have an excuse to say that’s gonna take two and half hours of my day and I can’t do that today, which means I won’t be able to do that tomorrow, which means I won’t be able to do that Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then it’s a slippery slope. So 100% correct.
Dr. Z: Yeah, that’s really interesting. When it comes to your business could you speak a little bit on that because a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. You had a business you said that basically you closed it down because it was ruining your life.
Jayson: Yep.
Dr. Z: And then you have started another business and explain that a little bit.
Jayson: Yeah, I was just simply unhappy in my first business and like most entrepreneurs, I picked my business based on opportunity and proximity. We are often taught that whatever is the most profitable business that we can get into then that’s what you go after. I was selling concert tickets and sporting event tickets, I was reselling tickets. I don’t go to concerts. I see no value in going to concerts and I’d never been to a sporting event. For example: The Toronto Maple Leafs are huge in Toronto, billions of dollars of tickets per year. I never went to a game, I never saw the value. It’s hard to get behind something you don’t see value in. Right? So…
Dr. Z: So you’re probably dragging yourself to work every day basically, right?
Jayson: Oh, the company died because I wasn’t there. I’d show up maybe once a month towards the end. Once an entrepreneur gets disengaged like that, I mean you talk about the culture in your business, the culture was so bad that I didn’t even want to go to work and it was my own business. Right? So, I kind of created my own cancer within the business and disconnected myself and by then the employees were disconnected as well. I mean if the leader doesn’t want to be there I mean what do you think the employees are going to think “oh I have job security”?
Dr. Z: Yeah, exactly.
Jayson: So they were worried and they just killed the business even faster so I had those ripple effects. And then I got into Mastermind Talk and Mastermind Talks, man, it lights me up on every level. I mean financially, I’m not where I need to be yet but I’ve never felt wealthier. I’ve also realized in this process how much energy comes from happiness and purpose and stuff like that.
Dr. Z: Oh yeah.
Jayson: I was focused originally on getting my health back on track and through clean eating and stuff like that. But when you just deliver value to somebody and they send you a thank you note or something like that, that boosts your energy like nothing else. I’ve never felt more energy. Part of it is because of the health stuff, the health changes I’ve made like clean eating. Part of it is because what I do I love immensely. I care immensely about the people that I do work with. I don’t refer to people as customers, I never refer to them as customers. I don’t even know how to refer to them because they are literally all close friends and some of these people, I would take a bullet for them. That’s completely different that my last business where I just didn’t like my customers. Whatsoever. So, I’m in a beautiful place.
Dr. Z: Yeah, well that’s really awesome. With your other business why didn’t you consider selling it?
Jayson: A couple of reasons so 1. It was difficult because I was kind of the core of the business and I know a lot of entrepreneurs get in this loop where they are like “ oh, nobody can do what I can do” and that kind of stuff. Given the model of the business I really was the lynchpin. I had nobody within the company that could take on a leadership role or grow into my position. I would have to find somebody, if I could find somebody. I was never good at identifying a talent. That’s not even an appealing proposition to find somebody to replace you and be like “listen dude, I hate the business but I want you to come work and take my position.” So that was one main factor and another main factor was psychologically I saw the business as a source of pain. I had people who wanted to buy the business from me and…
Dr. Z: You just didn’t want it around?
Jayson: Well yeah and I’ve heard other entrepreneurs say this as well that they literally… I literally wanted to see the business die.
Dr. Z: You were very attached.
Jayson: 100% yeah. I also saw it as a source of pain because I pursued what I thought was success, which is making money, and I made a lot of it and then I’m like I’m unhappy and when people approach me to buy the business, I didn’t tell them this but, unconsciously, I don’t want to sell the business to them and then them coming back to me two years later say that I ruined their life. You know what I mean?
Dr. Z: Yeah, oh yeah.
Jayson: As crazy as it sounds I had to get out and I had to scale it down. So being the lynchpin, not being able to identify a talent, seeing the business as a source of pain and there’s other kind of layers of self-sabotage that go into it…but yeah.
Dr. Z: Now that you love what you do you have a ton of energy and I think everybody sees that in their life to a certain point. It’s like trying to get out of bed on a certain day that you don’t want to do something that you have to do or trying to get out of bed or you jump out of bed on a day that you’re doing something like going on vacation that you’ve always wanted to go on. It’s like you can’t sleep that night you have so much energy. You know?
Jayson: Sure!
Dr. Z: It’s a big difference.
Jayson: It’s like Warren Buffet, his book was titled Tap-Dancing to Work and that’s how I feel you know? I literally love what I do and I love the people and it’s completely different than where I was before. I’m stoked, man, I’m excited.
Dr. Z: Yeah, that’s awesome. So with Mastermind Talks then, how long has it been in existence, the business?
Jayson: This is only gonna be a third event so realistically our first event was May 2013. So, less than 2 years. So, we’ve gotten some great traction and some great success in a short amount of time.
Dr. Z: Well, I mean you’re pumping out a lot of really great information in just your interviews that you do with world class entrepreneurs, they are incredible. They help a lot of people.
Jayson: Yeah, no I’m very… I did the podcast for several reasons and I wrote a book for kind of the same reasons. One of them is that if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, I’m leaving nothing behind. The people in the Mastermind Talks community, it’s a hand-selected group of people and these are the people I want to support 100% but again if I get hit by a truck and my daughter has nothing I’m not leaving anything behind. Actually, this became, I don’t know if you’ve listened to episode 10 of the podcast where I interviewed my friend Jordan Guernsey, who actually just passed away from cancer. One of the most amazing men I’ve ever met. His mindset, I highly suggest you listen to the podcast.
Dr. Z: Yeah, I haven’t heard that one.
Jayson: His mindset around cancer, his saying was that “I will no longer have cancer when cancer doesn’t serve me.” He saw cancer as a gift because it got him out of the business and started focusing on his family. He was stage 3 in Melanoma cancer and they gave him 5 years to live and unfortunately he just passed recently.
Dr. Z: That’s unfortunate.
Jayson: One of the most positive people on the planet. One thing, when he passed, that was one of the most difficult passing’s. I’ve had people like grandparents pass and all that but they were old and they were gonna go within the hour…
Dr. Z: They had a good life, you know. What do you expect?
Jayson: This was one of the first times where I was like really impacted even though I didn’t even know him. I wasn’t super close friends with him but I felt like the world was missing out with him not… I mean because he had cancer and he went to Thailand for the hurricane relief and stuff. Just a really, really giving dude. But the biggest thing was that when he passed, there was nothing out there that he produced. There was no book, there was no podcast interviews besides the one I did with him. There was nothing and it was such a shame because a man like that, his views on things, could profoundly impact lot of people.
Dr. Z: Yeah, that’s unfortunate, definitely. Yeah, that’s interesting. So with our listeners, you’ve done a lot of transformations with your health and your business. What are some tips, if you could give 1 or 2 really key tips, what would you suggest for them?
Jayson: Easy. Who you surround with is who you become. There’s a couple of great quotes like that. “Average of people you spend the most time with.” “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.“ This transcends all aspects of life. Whether it be your health whether it be your relationships, whether it be your business. I’ve always unconsciously, now consciously, surrounded myself with people who are one or two steps ahead. What that does is we all have a deep yearning to be connected or to be part of a tribe or group. This stems back to our old primal days because if you weren’t part of a tribe 10,000 years ago you would die. Either you would get eaten by another animal or you would starve to death. So the only reason we’ve been able to evolve as a species is simply because we’ve been able to band in numbers. So we have this strong desire to be apart of something. When you pursue people who are a step or two ahead of you who have what you want, unconsciously what that does is it forces you to bridge that gap as quickly as possible so that you can feel like you belong to that group. When I was trying to lost weight, I actually didn’t realize it until a few months in, when I tried to lose weight the second time I realized I was the most out of shape person in my peer group. Everybody else, I had one friend who was a Canadian kettle-bell champion, I mean the guy weighs 165lbs and dead-lifts 155lbs. Everyone else was in ridiculous shape and I was the most out of shape person and that has a profound affect on how you choose your food, how you choose everything. When I was out with those guys you better believe I was eating clean, I wasn’t eating hamburgers. Again, who you surround yourself with is who you become. Business contacts the same thing, I mean if you have a million dollar business surround yourself with people who have a 50 million dollar business. It will change everything. How you view the world, decisions you make, all that kind of stuff. So that’s probably one of the most profound things I’ve discovered and has shaped my life in almost every aspect and every area I want to improve. I surround myself with people who are triathletes. I am not going to enter into any triathlon soon but these guys are at the top of their craft and you better believe that some of their knowledge kind of trickles down to me.
Dr. Z: Yeah, definitely. Do you always surround yourself with people who are ahead of you maybe people behind you or is it always just people who are ahead of you?
Jayson: No, this is good, this is good. I came to this realization rather recently. So historically I’ve always surround myself with people who are ahead of me. The downfall to that, and I wasn’t aware of that originally, was you’re left feeling like crap all the time because you’re always comparing yourself to people who are above you, right? I dealt with self-worth issues, growing up as a fat kid and weight issues and all that kind of stuff, I dealt with self-worth problems all my life. You wouldn’t believe, and some people may hear self-worth and say “oh not me”, you wouldn’t believe how much low self-worth and low confidence affects entrepreneurs. It’s mind boggling.
Dr. Z: It would wipe them out, right?
Jayson: Oh, it… I’ve done retreats with entrepreneurs who are legit well respected successful entrepreneurs, the oh I want to grow to a billion dollars and take over that kind of stuff, and you start digging into the why they do things and why they do things the way they do and you find out it’s because they are trying to prove something to their father. Their father never said they were proud. That happened to me. I had an issue where I came to the realization that my father never said he was proud of me and that was the main driver for a lot of my business success. It showed up well because financially I had made a lot of money but when I obtained it I still didn’t get that since of pride from my father or whatever. Once you become more self-aware you start realizing it. I don’t know how I got on this tangent. What was the question?
Dr. Z: We were talking about… well before I jump back… pain is a powerful motivator so I want to point that out and that’s what it comes down to with that story. I was asking you if you can only hang out with people that are ahead of you or behind you or?
Jayson: Oh yeah, so ahead of you and you feel like crap. Below you, a lot of people surround themselves with people they feel are below you because it makes them feel good about themselves, right? But they never grow. So you need a balance, it’s called the law of 33%. I heard it from this guy named Ty Lopez, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The philosophy is that and I’ve kind of elaborated on it, is that you spend 33% of your time with people who are below you. What that does, unconsciously is it makes you feel better and more importantly if you’re helping people, you need a deeper level of understanding if you’re going to teach something. Right? Whether it be health, whether it be business, or whatever the case may be. To teach an up-and-comer, you need to know the ins and outs and to kind of sit down and process that to share to somebody else, it’s just a great exercise in mastery, to some degree. You want to surround yourself 33% of the time with people who are at your level because you have a deep desire to be connected to people who face the same struggles and stuff that you do. If you hang around only with people who are above you, you don’t feel understood, you don’t feel like you’re part of anything in particular. And then the other 33% is surrounding yourself with people who are above. It’s that kind of a mix and it doesn’t have to be a third, a third, a third exactly but having that variability is good because I’ve done the extreme where it’s all successful people and again you feel like crap.
Dr. Z: Oh yeah. When you’re looking at people who are way ahead of you, you feel, what am I doing? How come I’m not them?
Jayson: Great example. Great example. My most depressing day of the year, up until last year I guess, is my birthday. The reason being is because, let’s say I turn 26 well, Mark Zuckerburg has his birthday, same age as me, two weeks prior. I always find out, I’ll be on yahoo you know “Mark Zuckerburg, 29” and I’d be like, this guy as a hundred billion dollar a year business and I have a 7 million dollar a year business. What am I doing wrong with my life? You know because that is like the thought process.
Dr. Z: Oh yeah.
Jayson: That’s what I’m comparing myself to on a regular basis. I’ve recently kind of got rid of that but that… again, it works and it motivates you. It works great in some areas but then you get to this area that you realize “what the hell am I chasing” right?
Dr. Z: It’s gonna fatigue you is what it’s gonna do.
Jayson: Yeah, and a lot of entrepreneurs, the things is I’m grateful that I became aware of this stuff in my 20s. Unlike some people, my father for a great example, his identity is tied to working and he’s 73 and still works 20 hour shifts but the thing is he’s been so engrained to work that he can’t stop. And if he stops he’ll die. There’s a statistic that most people die after retirement 9:00 a.m. on a Monday. That’s going to be him. So he cannot stop. I don’t want to be that guy and I’m very grateful that I’ve come to this realization in my 20s and not when I’m on my deathbed.
Dr. Z: So, it’s about finding value in other things other than your job or work. It’s about finding value in your family, your relationships and your happiness, you know, there’s so much more right?
Jayson: Sure, 100%. Absolutely.
Dr. Z: Well Jason it’s been awesome having you on. Definitely every time I talk to you, it’s very enlightening. I know it’s gonna be enlightening to our listeners and it’s been a pleasure.
Jayson: I appreciate you having me on. Thanks, man.
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