39. CHRIS DUCKER: Bouncing Back from Burnout

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

Chris: [00:00:00] You don’t need to break in order to take a break. It’s okay to do that anyway just because it’s good for you. And number two, self care is not selfish.

Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael: And you’re listening to The Double Win Show.

Megan: And we’re back.

Michael: We’re back, fresh back from our hiatus and our summer vacation, or as they say in Europe, our holiday.

Megan: Our holiday.

Michael: What did you do, Megan?

Megan: I actually, one of my takeaways is I probably did too many things over the summer, but it was all kid stuff. So my son Moses, is trying to get recruited for college football. So we were on the prospect camp circuit, which basically meant that we went to all these different schools where he had to do sort of like a tryout in a way with a whole bunch of other kids.

And we were just driving all over the southeast. You know, I really put some miles on my car. There were some great memories though. It was cool to get to spend time together. At this point, he’s a rising junior, so you know, you [00:01:00] just realize like it’s going fast.

Michael: Well, and then he got hurt. Then. Then he just got hurt.

Megan: Yeah, like second scrimmage of the season. So we’re not even in the real season. He got hurt, but fortunately he kind of dislocated his elbow and pulled a bunch of stuff, but it’s only gonna be out about three weeks, so. Whew. That was a close call. We thought it might require surgery. And speaking of surgery,

Michael: yeah.

If you’re watching this by video, you’ll see that I’m in a cast, and that’s because I had surgery last Friday for a distal bicep. Tendon terror.

Megan: That’s a real mouthful.

Michael: It, it really is. I always have to stop and think about it, but, uh, so I did it trying to pull a jet ski up onto a lift at our lake house.

And I have to say, I have a very complicated relationship with jet skis.

Megan: I’m telling

Michael: you, Megan’s telling me to sell ’em. I’m

Megan: like, get rid of those jet skis. But I

Michael: love riding my jet skis.

Megan: Okay. So what did you do last year?

Michael: So last year I threw my shoulder out, or actually I had a fracture.

Megan: Yeah, I was gonna say it was worse than that.

Michael: Yeah. But I, I, ’cause of the jet

Megan: skis,

Michael: you were telling me [00:02:00] that the other day.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And mom has told me that your mom not mine has told me the same thing. And I said, but. I’ve never been injured actually riding a jet ski. Well,

Megan: you better knock on some wood really fast. So I just

Michael: need, you know, I just need help putting him up.

So, at any rate, so I had surgery on Friday. I’m gonna cast probably for the next three months and it’s gonna be about a six month to 12 month recovery and that kind of stinks, but it’s okay. Everything belongs all good.

Megan: Yeah. But it was a really good summer. It was.

Michael: It was a really good summer. It

Megan: was a very full summer.

We had some good family time. We were all out at the lake over the 4th of July, which was really fun. We got to you, you bravely took us out into the sea of boats. If you’ve ever done 4th of July on a lake, it’s really fun because there are hundreds of boats that will gather if they’re shooting off fireworks at the lake and you’re just out there with all these boats with their little lights on and you see the fireworks right above you.

It’s really cool. That was one of my favorite memories from the summer

Michael: driving back. From that in the pitch, black was not my favorite

Megan: part. Yeah, that was [00:03:00] terrifying. But up until that point, point, it was great.

Michael: That all, all it was great.

Megan: Do you have any other highlights from the summer?

Michael: I did a lot of reading.

I got into songwriting and so I’ve now written three songs and totally produced two of them. And so I’ve gotta produce the music for the third one.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: But I’m like a kid in a candy store. I haven’t done that since I was, my first year in college was when I last did that. And I am enjoying the heck out of

Megan: it.

And at least the one that I’ve heard is actually really good.

Michael: Yeah. I played mastermind. I shouldn’t, I

Megan: shouldn’t sound surprised, but I was kinda like, oh, when you were like, listen to the song I wrote, I was kinda like, uh oh, okay. Yeah. You know? But that’s kind of cute. Dad, that’s kinda cute. No, but it was actually really good.

So maybe you’re gonna have a third career.

Michael: Thank you. That would be fun. That

Megan: would be fun. I

Michael: would just love somebody to say And Grammy award winning songwriter.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Michael Hyatt.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. I think we may have slipped over from visioneering to Hall Hallucination.

Megan: Well, okay. So back to the podcast. Enough about us.

[00:04:00] Enough about us. Um, but thank you guys for being patient while we were gone. Hope you had a great summer too. And we’re so excited to be back. We have so many amazing guests that we have lined up for the fall and we’re gonna be back in all kinds of fun ways that you’ll be getting emails about and hearing about soon.

Um, we’re gonna be moving our newsletters to Substack. Um, we’re gonna be having some new free trainings that are coming out. We have a double win show that is obviously now back. The focus on this show is coming back later this fall. Like so many things that we are excited to be back. And so to kick off being back, we had the best conversation.

So this conversation is with our friend Chris Tucker.

Michael: Yes. And he is my longtime friend. We’ve known each other for probably. 12 years. But Chris is the founder of Youpreneur, a global personal brand business community. He’s the author of several books, including Virtual Freedom, rise of the Youpreneur, and now the Long Haul Leader for [00:05:00] which I wrote the Forward.

Now you have to understand, I never write forwards,

Megan: like never like it’s a personal policy that you don’t do it. Like

Michael: I I never do it because A, it’s way too much work.

Megan: Yeah. And

Michael: second, nobody reads them. Right. So the value to the author, I guess is they get to put my name on the cover. But when I read this book and when Chris asked me to write the forward, I said, I’ve gotta do it.

’cause our journeys are so parallel.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Michael: And he has so many overlapping values. But, um, I also experienced severe burnout, and we’re gonna be talking about that. Yeah. And you know, just was completely outta balance. And Chris talks about that. But my favorite part of this interview. It is something we haven’t talked much about on the Double Wind show, although it’s one of our nine domains of life, which is hobbies.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And if you think that sounds boring or you don’t have time for hobbies, wait [00:06:00] till you hear this conversation.

Megan: Yeah, it was so inspiring. I found, I think I found a new hobby, which you’re gonna have to listen to find out what it is. I think I have a new hobby that I wanna pursue now,

Michael: and I didn’t see that coming.

Megan: I know. Me neither.

Michael: You guys are gonna be like, what? Here’s our conversation with Chris.

Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It’s a hoop to be here.

Megan: We’re so excited about this conversation. When I heard that we were having you on and I heard about. Your new book. I was like, oh, this is so perfect. Our community is going to just love this topic. Especially because it’s so personal for you.

Michael: Well, and plus it’s very parallel to my own journey.

Megan: Yeah, true.

Michael: So that’s why I agreed to write the forward to the book because I thought I can’t not write the forward to this book. So Chris, it’s an honor to have you, you not been friends for a long time and I think we’ve had you on the podcast before, right?

I believe in its old format.

Chris: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. So anyway, it’s great to talk about the long haul leader, but your story [00:07:00] begins with burnout twice. Yes. And I’d love to just for you to set this up, talk about the journey that led to you writing this book.

Chris: Well, like you say, 2010 was the first burnout and it wasn’t horrible burnout.

You know, burnouts have different varying degrees of mm-hmm. You know, how they take people out of the, out of what they’re doing for a while. The first one wasn’t too bad, at least initially, I was able to bounce back from it pretty quickly. It was exhaustion. It was, I guess, a certain amount of anxiety that had built up as well for a while.

Mm-hmm.

But I bounced back from it pretty quickly and we actually hired, I think it was either eight or nine people in that following year to kind of replace me in the business so that, you know, I could free up some time and not burn out again. It did have a little bit of a follow-on effect, whereas in 2012, I ended up having an L five, S one spinal fusion.

Oh gosh. So had surgery. Wow. Which had come about because I was sitting in the chair for 15 hours a day growing my business. [00:08:00] Right. So it had a little bit of a knock on effect, but I was lucky to recover from that surgery without any issues, any complications or or anything like that. And then. 2021 came along.

You might remember the world was a little bit topsy-turvy at this time. And myself, like anybody else, was kind of dealing with that situation and being stuck at home in their own ways and all the rest of it. And we had always done our sabbatical as a family in August. The school holidays and whatnot are a little bit different in the UK in terms of dates than they are in the us.

So August, we usually take the entire month off and uh, we would travel and we would go out. Now, obviously this year it was a little bit different because we couldn’t go anywhere we wanted to. So we got this gorgeous countryside retreat about an hour’s drive away from us here in Cambridge, here. And we spent it in this beautiful old batched farmhouse.

It was gorgeous. It was right out of an old. Lord of the Rings episode or something like that. I can see it in my mind. [00:09:00] The Shire. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. The Shire. It was The Shire. That’s exactly what it was. Yeah. And we, and we, we got the opportunity to do campfires every night and feed the chickens in the morning and go for long walks and all this sort of stuff.

And it was fantastic. And I thought that by the time I got back and I’d gotten back to work in that first week of September, that the fatigue that I had been feeling prior to going on that sabbatical would’ve left and that I was gonna come back with this kind of renewed. Energy level to get back to work and all this sort of stuff.

And so first day of work, coming back from that, I walked into my office, I sat down in this very chair, turned on my computer, and about 10 minutes later, after staring at the screen aimlessly for 10 minutes, I turned the computer off. I walked back out through the doors behind me, and I didn’t return for three weeks.

Wow. I just

couldn’t go back to work. Couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t go back to work. Now I wanna clarify something really importantly here as well, because as I’ve told this story, you know, with a [00:10:00] few friends and on a few other shows recently, really feel it’s important to clarify this. We were having an excellent year.

From a business perspective, huh? We were crushing all our KPIs. Our numbers were through the roof. Our profit margins were up like crazy. The whole world had gone on to learning online. And as a education business, we had obviously pivoted everything we were doing from a lot of it in person to online. And because of that, we were able to sell to parts of our community that we’d never been able to, you know, enroll into our courses and our programs before.

So we were having a great year. I was enjoying the work I was doing, but the fact was I was just doing too much of it all at once without giving myself a chance to recharge. And I went to the doctor and I remember saying to her, you know, I feel really tired all the time. By 11 o’clock in the morning, I’m kind of done.

I’ve got no energy left for the rest of the day. I keep getting brain fog, which had never happened to me before, ever recall, particularly short term. Mm-hmm. [00:11:00] Memory loss, quite frankly, was an issue. And I just, I’m just not into it. Like I just, I should be hyped up to get back to work here. I feel awful. And she said, well, let’s do some tests and well all the rest of it.

So we pulled up a load of blood and we did a cortisol test for adrenals and all that kind of stuff. And then she asked me, how have you been handling the pandemic? And I hadn’t actually been asked that question directly by anybody up to that point. And I remember saying, and I’ll never forget the words I said to her, well, except for the fact that I feel like the pandemic has taken everything away from me, that makes me me.

I feel great.

Megan: Wow. And she

Chris: said, okay, we need to dive a little deeper here. And a month later I was diagnosed with depression. I was put on an SSRI, which is an antidepressant. I was diagnosed with anxiety and I was diagnosed with phase three adrenal fatigue, which was the big one for me. ’cause that was like [00:12:00] deep chemical, physical stuff.

And here we are. I’m happy to say I’m not on any of those medications anymore, feeling very, very much like my good old self. But it’s been a journey. And that is where the book came from, from that journey.

Megan: What an amazing story. And I think a lot of us can relate to that. I mean, I remember 2021, I had a heart attack in 2021, a freak weird kind of heart attack that wasn’t lifestyle driven, but certainly there had to have been some stress that was left over from 2020, et cetera, that played into it.

Yeah. And I’ve heard so many stories from people. About the negative impacts of the pandemic, not even the direct ones. You know, like they got COVID and they were in the ICU kind of thing, but more like, yeah, just the, the psychological impacts of such an alternate state. You know, I think we’ll probably be understanding that for many years to come because it wasn’t, you know, it’s weird to live through something in real time.

We can’t stand outside of it and really understand exactly what its effect [00:13:00] was. But I know that a lot of the people in our community that are listening are like, yeah, me too. You know, as you came back after that three week break, you know, you had those diagnoses in place, you kind of had a sense of what was going on with yourself and you sort of reimagined, what’s my vision for success gonna be?

What was that vision and. My big question for you is what trade-offs or compromises did you decide to make on the other side of that? Obviously, well, I imagine obviously you weren’t still working 15 hours a day, that that was a trade-off that you decided to make, I’m sure. Yeah. But what was your kind of updated vision for success, and what trade-offs did you have to make to make that happen?

Chris: It’s interesting because I wasn’t actually really working that many hours with the second burnout. Okay. I was with the first one, but with the second burnout, you know, I was doing eight, nine hours a day, pretty much four days a week only. I haven’t done a Friday for about. I’m gonna say close [00:14:00] to probably 10 years now.

I think with, it’s been a whole thing. No work Friday. Uh, I remember years ago I was sat with our mutual friend, Amy Porterfield at some conference somewhere and join a cocktail and I was telling her about No Work Friday. And she said, oh, I’m gonna do that. Oh, that sounds

great. And she did. I’m gonna get my whole company

doing that.

And she did. Yeah, right. So, which is awesome. So I couldn’t quite figure out why it was happening, and I think this was the first really big realization was being that I’d gone through burnout once before, like, why didn’t I see. The warning signs. Yeah. Right. Like, why didn’t I see, you know, the similar kind of symptoms and, and over reliance on caffeine, for example, you know, I, I went from my one cup a day to three or four cups a day, and I didn’t really realize what was going on until I.

You know, it was too late. But the really big thing was the adrenal fatigue Yeah. Syndrome. That was the big one. That was the really, really big one. Because so much of my chemistry from a body perspective was outta whack [00:15:00] because my adrenals were not creating any cortisol as we know, our cortisol Yeah. Is our stress hormone.

Right. It’s that fight or flight thing. And you’re supposed to have a really nice, solid, you know, level of cortisol in the morning when you wake up. And then slowly but surely over the course of the day, it drips away and it makes space for melatonin to be created to help us fall asleep at night. The problem was with phase three, which is about as bad as you as it could get, like most entrepreneurs, I decided to do things for whack here, obviously.

Right. That’s right. Go big or go home. Um, why, why be burn out a little bit? Yeah. Let’s go all the way. Right. All the way. Yeah. And so, and so when I started looking into that and the fact that my, my adrenals were not creating any cortisol at all. They were completely flatlined. That was the first thing that I needed to try and

Yeah.

Fix. I realized, because if I wasn’t creating in cortisol, how am I gonna handle stress? Right. And not only that, but that’s gonna affect everything. That’s gonna affect the fatigue. It’s gonna [00:16:00] affect the brain fog, it’s gonna affect everything. And so one of the first things I did is I, I hired a functional medicine doctor.

Mm-hmm. And I hired a naturopathic doctor and there was a whole bunch of different tests and gut tests. I found out that I had bacterial issues in my gut and, and I had a parasite that had been living in me. It’s always fun to discover you getting real. Yeah, yeah. You, it’s all fun and game to

Megan: discovery of a parasite, you know?

I know, right?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Oh, brilliant. I’ve got a parasite too. Gosh. I’m so lucky. Right. Great. And so all these things, what happened, and we did this massive gut cleanse and all this kind of stuff, but slowly but surely, I started. To feel better. Wow. And there was a whole bunch of stuff, you know, I gave up gluten and I gave up caffeine and I didn’t know at the time, actually, here’s a big one.

Caffeine actually strangles your adrenals. Mm-hmm. It’s a horrible thing for your adrenal glands particularly. And so, Michael, you’re not drinking coffee there are you? I am. Because it’s good for your brain. Okay. Yeah. Well there you go. You [00:17:00] know, swing some roundabouts just straight off as we, yeah. Straight off swing some roundabouts, you know?

But ultimately I had to go through a lot of different changes from a lifestyle perspective. Yeah. Almost all of it was lifestyle and like I said, feeling great now, but it was, it was, it was tough for a while.

Megan: You know, one of the things that really stood out to me that you said, ’cause my assumption was you were overworking and what I feel like you just said to me was, no, I’m, I really wasn’t overworking like that was within a reasonable range.

I think that’s really important because. Especially for our community where we talk a lot about avoiding the hustle fallacy, you know, the dangers of overwork and workaholism. We talk about that a lot. But a lot of the people in our community are past that. They’re no longer overworking. Yep. They,

Michael: I saw that in a recent survey.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Like they heard us. They are committed to not overworking like you. They are, you know, working a reasonable number of hours per day, even if they’re not business owners, et cetera, et cetera. And it is still possible to be burnt out even with working a [00:18:00] reasonable number of hours, because the only causal relationship between burnout is not just over work, for example, in the pandemic.

There’s tremendous external stress that no human on the planet that’s living has ever been through before or has any skills to do. Just the environment. Just the environment. Just forget your work. Yeah, forget your workday. The number of hours you worked, you know, you might’ve been working less during that period.

Doesn’t matter. And I think that’s true. If you have other things going on in your life, even today, you might find that you’re burnt out. And if you just think, well, but I’m not working too much, that can cause you to be dismissive of those symptoms, even if in fact they’re very real and you are burnt out.

Great

Michael: point.

Megan: And I think that’s important for our community to just have like a flag on, you know that if you’re feeling burnt out, it’s not necessarily because you’re overworking

Chris: a hundred percent.[00:19:00]

Michael: I dunno if this is true for you, Chris, but for me, I was unaware of the stressors that were creating my anxiety. Yes. And I think my journey through anxiety over the last two years, and I’ve told you about this Yep. Has been really a journey of self-awareness and sort of the more environmental or contextual awareness of what is it.

Whether it’s too much consumption of social media, watching the polarized and polarizing news, but all those things are stressors. You know, we may not, we might think, oh, I can handle it fine, but our nervous system picks it up.

Chris: Yeah. And you know, the one thing that made me feel, I guess, a little bit better when all this sort of came out was that I was told, you know, this isn’t.

A six month thing, like you didn’t just get into this because of the last six months, you are in phase three adrenal burnout here. Mm. So that means that this has been happening for years. Wow. This is not an a, a recent thing. This [00:20:00] has been going on for a while. So I looked back through what had been happening in my life other than work over that last few years, and it was so obvious to me.

I hadn’t necessarily been burning the candle on both ends. Right. You hear that popular colloquialism all the time. But what I had been doing was a little too much of pretty much everything. And so, you know, in those three, four years prior, I had moved my entire family from the Philippines, which is where I’d been based for 18 years back.

To the English countryside that comes with very much its own level of stress. Mm-hmm. With visas and, and you know, documentation. And do you know how hard it is to bring a dog from the Philippines to England? Forget about the family. Wow. Never thought about it just right. Good lord. Yeah. So it was one of those things where, okay, we moved the whole family over from the other side of the world.

Then I was building out and running a very, very large event scale event in London. 450, 500 people every year. We had done that a [00:21:00] couple of years in a row and getting kids into schools and all the rest of it. It, it was clearly one of those domino effects scenarios where it’s just one thing on top of another, on top of another.

And eventually it came crashing down. Simple as that.

Michael: I wanna press into this insight ’cause I think it’s so good. Will Guder, I’m not sure it’s original to him, but he says how you do anything is how you do everything. Yeah. And so if you’re a balls to the wall, hardworking, white knuckling entrepreneur, once you decide to dial back.

The work time, you just reapply that to your hobbies, to your exercise, to everything. And you’re still balls to the wall, white knuckling doing everything. And I guess I’ve never thought of it that way, but that’s really interesting and worth it for all of us, those of you listening for sure. But for us as well, is just to notice that, ’cause that could lead to burnout too,

Chris: as you pointed out yourself with your journey with anxiety.

It’s not until you step back. And start looking at things through a [00:22:00] slightly different lens. Mm-hmm. Even in a slightly different direction, perhaps in slightly different surroundings, almost that you realize just how different things can be. If you were to make a little tweak here, a little tweak there.

So what I promised myself was, I said, I’m gonna be doing these, what I started to call micro moves. I’m gonna be making these all micro moves, these little 1% changes, gonna 1% here, 1% there, 1% here, and hopefully by the time the year is up, or you know, going into the next year or the year after that, either compound interest or these 1% moves to ultimately make things better across the board.

If you’d have told me five years ago. That I would be doing daily red light therapy sessions. I would’ve called you mad if you’d have told me five years ago that I’d be doing cold plunges three times a week and saunas three times a week, I would’ve called you bonkers. Yet, here I am with all that stuff on my property, right?

So, you know, we’ve had it all in store. It’s all here. It’s, it’s, [00:23:00] there’s no excuse anymore. Not to put ourself first. And what I really realized above and beyond everything else coming out of this was that, number one, you don’t need to break in order to take a break. It’s okay to do that anyway just because it’s good for you.

And number two, self-care is not selfish, especially when you’re an entrepreneur. Self-care actually is a strategy, and it’s a strategy that you can use to your advantage, particularly from a business owner standpoint.

Michael: How do you respond to the person who says, I don’t have time for self-care, or, yeah, that’s a little bit too woo woo for me.

I’m serious, man. I’m serious about my business. I’m serious about my hobbies. I’m serious about my family. And so self-care, you know, not that big a deal.

Chris: You’ve got it a little twisted, quite frankly, you know, I mean, you know me pretty well, Mike. We’ve been friends for a good while now. You know, I’m gonna tell it how it is.

I don’t sugarcoat anything. That’s just a silly, [00:24:00] silly view of wanting to be around for a long time doing what you’ve been called to do. Mm, you know, nothing. Nothing that is worth doing should have that mentality of, I’m gonna avoid all these other things just so I can work on this one thing. And what I’ve really realized is that if I allow myself time to work on myself, and I can see the benefits of that, and a lot of the times you can see those benefits very, very quickly.

You don’t have to wait very long for them at all. Better sleep, better. You know, education, better moments with your, with your spouse, with your partner, with your family, whatever it is. If I allow myself to do that, then. I actually feel less guilty about the time I spend away from building my business because I realize that I matter, that all these other things matter.

Mm-hmm. Just as much if not even more than the business. Right. And so I think ultimately you’re the engine, you’re the spark, you’re the difference maker. But even engines need a little maintenance. They need a little [00:25:00] lubricant, they need a little time off. They need a little time in the garage from time to time.

And so if you can’t lead at your best on a regular basis, you’re not leading well at all. And you can’t, you definitely cannot lead on fumes, that’s for sure. So sustainable success for me isn’t really about how hard you go. It’s about how long you actually last in what you’re doing.

Megan: Mm-hmm. I think that’s a really good point.

You talk about this idea of setting the right pace and being. Of pacing in general, and I don’t think that’s something that most of us business owner, entrepreneur, or not think a lot about.

Chris: Yeah,

Megan: I think we all walk around with a sense of scarcity that whatever opportunities I have in front of me right now, you know, by golly I better take advantage of them.

You know, ’cause they might not come around again or I might not have enough, or whatever. That kind of sentence in your head is about that. So what does it mean to set the right pace? What does it look like? And maybe even tell us like what is the [00:26:00] pace of your life outside of all the health stuff that you’ve done, like just your day-to-day life.

What does the pace look like now compared to pre second burnout?

Chris: I think the really big difference for me in terms of my schedule, and I believe it was you, Mike, that said this many, many, many years ago now, but you said something to the effect of if it doesn’t get scheduled, it doesn’t get done. Yep. Is that a Mike

Michael: original

Chris: you

and is

Michael: it Daniel Harkavy?

Original because we wrote about that in our book Living Forward.

Chris: That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So that for me has become something I’ve really kind of taken on board quite strongly. And everything that I need to do day to day goes on the schedule.

Hmm.

I think what has happened here, because the schedule is a finite amount of time.

I start work at 10:00 AM and then I finish work at 4:00 PM and I do that Monday through to Thursday. So I take care of my, my personal health side of things first thing in the morning. So it’ll be exercise [00:27:00] those dreaded cold plunges, uh, and all that sort of stuff. Um, which by the way, I’ve gotten to love.

I’ve actually gotten to love it now, but it was brutal at first. I’m not gonna lie. And you’re not a big fan of this Michael, at all. We’ve had this discussion, right?

Michael: Yeah. It’s not that I’m not a big fan, it’s just that as a cardiac patient, my cardiologist doesn’t want me to do it. It’s too risky for me.

Chris: Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. So, you know, I get all the health stuff out the way first, and then I get to work. I, I make sure that I do my creative work first in the morning because that’s when I’ve got the most kind of mental energy I’ve discovered. Usually the first part of that kind of work area, from like 10 to 11, 30, 12 o’clock, it’ll all be the creative stuff.

So it’ll be either writing emails or newsletters. It’ll be working on copy for maybe some landing pages or programs that we’re running, or whatever the case may be. It could be devising ideas for another book, believe it or not, the fourth one is already in planning session right now. And so a lot of it, sometimes it’s podcast recording, sometimes it’s shooting stuff [00:28:00] on video.

I don’t do a lot of video, but when I do, I just make sure I do it when I’ve got the most energy, which is absolutely in the morning. And then I go into admin for a bit and then I’ll take some lunch, and then I go for a walk. And this is a non-negotiable on my, on my schedule. Oh, I love that. Every afternoon after lunch, I go out into nature.

And this, I believe, for me, was the biggest game changer.

Megan: Okay. I wanna know all about this. How did you decide to do it? Why, what does it give you? Tell us all about because I, I love walking and I’m, I’m not sure

Michael: we can do it at Tennessee, at noon, at least in the summer. Yeah.

Megan: Right now it’s 85 degrees outside and it is 10 32 in the Morning Central.

When we’re recording this, it’s, it’s all humid

Chris: and I’ll bring this full circle moment in a minute, but I had an early morning walk in Nashville when I was there a couple weeks ago. Which blew me away. And I’ll tell you why. An early morning walk blew me away in a minute. Because you lived, you tell about

Megan: it because it was so hot.

Oh, yeah,

Chris: totally. I I, I was not arrested in the process or anything like that. Like, it, it good, good. Trust me. It was amazing. So it was [00:29:00] actually my naturopathic doctor who told me to get out into nature. She said to me, it’s gonna lower stress levels, it’s gonna clear your mind, it’s gonna be great for you from a physical perspective.

You’ll be doing some walking, you’ll be breathing in some fresh air. The Japanese have a a name for it. I might butcher this, so please don’t quote me on it, but I believe it’s something along the lines of duco, which means forest bathing. Yes, I’m that.

Megan: Yeah.

Chris: And so I was like, okay, alright. And I said to her, well, I guess I can go out and I can walk around.

You know, I can listen to a podcast. And she went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t take your phone with you. You can’t take your phone, you can’t listen to anything. You can’t bring anything with you. You’ve just got to walk. How do you get credit for the steps? Well, yeah, exact, well, the whoop, the whoop on the wrist certainly helps.

Okay. Hashtag not sponsored, but I, so I went out and I did this walk two or three times in a row, and honestly I felt better coming back from this walk. So I, I made it a non-negotiable and we kind of took it in there. And then I was coming back every afternoon [00:30:00] afterwards and I was telling my wife s about, oh, you know, I sat down on this old log and it was a squirrel 15 foot away from me, and it was amazing.

And he just sort of stuck around for like three, four minutes and wasn’t scared of me at all. And, and the next day it would be, oh, you know, there’s this lovely little Robin that came and, you know, sat down on the bench next to me and all this kind of stuff. And I kept having all these little wildlife moments and she said to me, well, we’ve got that old DSLR.

You know that we never use, why don’t you take it out with you and start taking photos of some of the wildlife that you see, you know, that might be quite nice to document. I said, yeah, you know what, I’m gonna do that. That’s tech, but it’s not really tech. I don’t think I can get in trouble with the dock.

I’m gonna do that. And so I started taking photos of birds very specifically. And now I can honestly say I’m a very proud birder. I’m a birder chef. Yes. I love that. That’s very

Megan: English of you, by the way, so I know you can check that off your bingo card.

Chris: Thank you very much. So, and now I, now I’m the guy that’s walking around with the big 600 mil [00:31:00] lens for hours and length.

I love that. You know, looking for birds or the rest of it. Full circle moment to Nashville. And, uh, my early morning walk, before our first day together, Mike at Don’s place, and I went out for a 45 minute walk. It was about six 30 in the morning, and in one walk I saw. A borrowed owl, which are beautiful, woo, which I’ve never seen one before, ever.

I saw a red shoulder hawk just sitting there ready and waiting for me to come along and say hello. And a host of other little woodland birds, including your gorgeous red cardinal that we don’t have here at all. Huh? All of which I took amazing photographs for. So now I can obviously share them with my kids.

And so what I’m getting at here is that it’s a non-negotiable now because I know that I will never come back from that afternoon walk not feeling better when I went out initially. Schedule everything that’s important to you. And what that’s meant is that I actually spend more time working in my [00:32:00] zone of genius, more time doing the things only I can do.

More importantly, it means I get to spend more time with the people that I enjoy spending time with. And little birds as well. Obviously, the birds don’t argue back, which is a bonus. Obviously.

Michael: The thing I like about the walk, the way that you do it as a recovering overachiever. I always make the walk about, you know, how far I can walk or how fast I can walk.

And it sounds like you don’t do any of that, you’re just out enjoying nature forest bathing. Yeah,

Chris: and some days I don’t actually walk that much at all. Some days I’ll go 20 minutes into the forest or something and sit down quite literally on the forest floor and just sit there with the camera waiting for whatever might come my way.

Other days, wildlife does not want to call me a friend at all. Doesn’t show itself. And I carry on walking around, searching for it. Either way, I’m out. I’m not at work, I’m just at peace with myself. Um, and it’s gotten to the point where, you know, my wife has come with me a few times. [00:33:00] It’s not the same. It’s really not the same.

So I tell her to stay home. Now I wanna be on my own.

Megan: I love this so much because increasingly we’re talking about the idea of human flourishing and yeah. I think that human that’s in

Michael: our own business. In Yeah, in our own, in kind our own concept. Yeah. Of what we’re about.

Megan: Yeah, exactly. So you’ll be hearing more and more from us about that.

But one of the practices of human flourishing is experiencing nature. And I do not think you can flourish at a, as a human without nature. I don’t think you can biohack your way there. I don’t think you can check off enough, you know, metrics on whatever your wearable is or your app like it. There is something about being in nature so true that human beings from literally the beginning of time have needed that can be replaced by anything else.

And I think we overcomplicate things like nervous system regulation, for example. We need all these gadgets and they’re [00:34:00] expensive. We need to do all these practices. And in reality, yeah, if we would just go outside, just go outside without any of that junk on us. I mean, we have just got to get outside.

It’s amazing to me. How simple it is to take care of ourselves actually. And we overcomplicate it and we make it seem like something we don’t have time for, something that we can’t afford, something we don’t understand. And it’s actually the basic behaviors and practices of being a human being that are the things that restore us to our humanity, which is what feels lost in a season of burnout.

So I love this example because it’s accessible to anyone. Even if you say, well, it really is, I can’t get out during the day because I have a regular nine to five job. Okay, fine. But you could get out in the morning, you could get out in the evening, you could get out for 15 minutes. I mean, you could, you know, just make it, keep dumbing it down till it’s as easy as possible and get outside.[00:35:00]

One of the things that I also know about you that I was just like, wait, we have got to talk about this. I’m so excited, is that you take this love of nature to another level and you, I hear are a bonsai gardener.

Chris: Yes.

Megan: Okay. Like I am a gardener and so we share gardening in common, but I know very little about Bonsai and I would love for you to tell us all about this.

Do you call it a hobby? Is that like demeaning to call it a hobby?

Chris: No, no. It’s absolutely fine to call it a hobby. All I think. I think it’s a great, a great way of being able to kinda describe what it is. It’s a pastime and actually when I started riding the long haul leader. I hadn’t planned to really talk so much about hobbies or pastimes.

Yeah. And there were three main principles of the book, and we called it Our Life os or our Life Operating System. Because the premise of of everything was, well, if the computer’s got an os, our phone’s got an os. Why can’t we have an os? Why can’t I have an os? And so originally there were three kind of points and it was [00:36:00] kind of directed as a triangle and there was personal mastery, there was impactful work and there was love and relationships and how they all kind of form and kind of intermingle with each other.

But as I started writing, I started telling more and more stories about things like getting out into nature, spending time with my little baby trees and all these kind of things. And I realized actually a lot of my recovery over these last three, four years. I’ve come from time on my own. Comes from time when I’m sitting with a tree with a pair of scissors or when I’m out in nature photographing birds or, ’cause I’m, I, I, I’m a watercolor artist as well, so I like to paint.

Oh wow. You know, I went from doing a lot of urban sketching with my father, who is an architect, uh, in my teens and my twenties to doing absolutely nothing through my thirties and forties. And now my fifties, I started watercoloring again. And, you know, I started out doing buildings ’cause that’s what I was happy doing.

But now all I do is birds. I just do watercolor birds all the time. And so hobbies actually [00:37:00] came outta left field. And I didn’t realize I was gonna include it. And now there’s a whole chapter dedicated in the book to hobbies and pastimes. We actually did some research on hobbies and pastimes as well. And I’ll get back to the Bonai in a minute ’cause I can see you genuinely interest.

I’m really

Megan: excited to talk to you about this. Yeah, we should probably also tell people what Bonsai is because there may be people listening that don’t have a reference point for that.

Chris: So Bonsai is basically the art of miniature tree keeping. So it was originally from China, but then the Japanese kind of brought it over and imported it and called it very much their own is basically the art of keeping miniature trees, which we’ll get to in a minute.

But the hobby side of things huge, and this is why I decided to actually include it quite substantially in the book. We actually did a lot of research on this and we realized that about 67% of entrepreneurs, 67, 60 8% of entrepreneurs who experienced burnout didn’t have a hobby or a pastime to call. So I [00:38:00] started looking into that a little bit more, and then I realized, well, holy moly, like if we were to have these hobbies, particularly creative hobbies such as painting or journaling or photography or whatever the case may be, how does that look?

We actually found that hobbies, particularly creative hobbies, if you spend a minimum of two hours a week on your hobby, you will be as much as 30% more productive in your work. Wow.

Michael: You quoted this last week at the Mastermind and I wrote it down and I wrote about hobbies too. We’ve written about hobbies, but I miss that stat.

Megan: Yeah. That’s fascinating.

Michael: That’s

Chris: amazing. And so I got into Bonsai because I was a big fan of the Karate Kid movie, uh, back in the eighties. Seriously?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, I love it. So my mom took

me to go and see the Karate Kid movie, Mr. Miyagi and all that sort of stuff, and she fell asleep in the cinema about 30 minutes in.

I loved it. Instantly became my favorite [00:39:00] movie. And then about a week later I got my dad to take me again ’cause it was PG rated there in the uk and I was just amazed. I mean, it was a cool story and, you know, good versus evil and the kids getting bullied and there’s a badie and you know, all that kind of sweep the leg stuff.

And then I was like, these little baby trees look really cool. Can I get one of these? And so my dad at the age of whatever it was, 1415 at the time, bought me a little shrub at the garden center and I clicked it away. I killed it, obviously. But all these years later, Cobra Kai, the TV show Yes. The Netflix came about and it, it just.

Just threw me back into the, what they now know as the Miyagi verse. Uh, and um, I was like, you know what? I got nothing bear to do. I’m gonna become a Bonai guy. And so I joined the local Bonai club here in Cambridge in England. I went out and I bought a couple of bonai trees and a whole bunch of garden shrubs.

And I learned how to wire and I learned how to prune. I load how to not kill them and to feed them and all that kind of stuff. And here we are [00:40:00] five, six years later, I’ve got about 40 bonsai trees on the property. Varying, oh my

Megan: goodness. Vary.

Chris: Yeah. But varying degrees of, uh, development and growth. I’ve developed my own forests where I’ve got 16, 17 individual trees planted in one pot together.

Gosh. All this kind of stuff. And, uh, yeah. And actually about a month ago I received confirmation that one of my trees is gonna be exhibited in a bonsai show in London next year. So I’m kind of excited about

Megan: it. Wow.

Chris: Congratulations. It’s, this is

Megan: the coolest thing ever. Like I, I’m like this, you’re doing this.

I know. I, I’m like, okay, this might be my next hobby. I was,

Michael: you have to understand, she’s like a shrub maniac. She has so many plants in her home. Yeah. And here at the office. It’s ridiculous. I mean, it feels like a jungle.

Megan: It does feel like a jungle. And, but I, in a good way. But this year I started gardening outdoors.

So my husband and I, with the help of our friend Natalie, put in a raised bed garden that included, um, all manner of vegetables and flowers. Of course

Michael: we have one too. [00:41:00]

Megan: Yep. You have one too. And one of my favorite things about it is that I have a pollinator garden to attract bees and butterflies and all the

Chris: beautiful,

Megan: all the friends that help us pollinate, which I didn’t even understand anything about pollination.

It turns out it’s very important. You really need those guys to help you. Otherwise, you’re out there with a Q-tip trying to do it yourself. And lemme tell you, it’s harder than it looks, but it’s been such a joy. There’s nothing I love more than being out in my garden. And I usually am out there in the morning, first thing, not for a long time, you know, I’m not, it’s not like I’m out there all day long, but I might be out there 15, 30 minutes in the morning and same in the evening.

And. There is just something I, I make it a point that I don’t take my phone, I don’t listen to anything. I just wanna be present to the sound of the birds to, and

Michael: the bees.

Megan: The bees. I actually, I get so excited I take pictures of the bees and send them to the family members. You know, like, this is amazing.

I have two bubble bees, you know, but like, really, I, I get so excited and I talk to the neighbors as they’re walking by. So, you know, [00:42:00] another practice of flourishing is connecting with others, and so I’m doing that. Yeah. At the same time, it’s like there’s so many things that get in these kinds of hobbies.

Do you know of the, the Cooking Show Guy, Alton Brown? Have you ever heard of him? He’s like a sciencey cooking guy. Okay, well, no, some of you, he had a, he used to have a show called Good Eats and he was like, Mr. Science. And so he would always tell you like, here’s how to make this recipe. But he hated things that were what he called a unit taskers.

Like, you know, where you have a kitchen appliance that can only do one thing?

Chris: Hmm.

Megan: Right. So you have like a popcorn maker say, you know, he’s like, if you got a great pot with a lid, you don’t need a popcorn maker. Like you can just make this. And I think the great thing about hobbies that are like the ones you and I are talking about is they’re not unit taskers.

You know, you’re not just like nature check, you’re also connecting with God, you’re also connecting with others. You’re also taking care of yourself in the process. You can accomplish so many things at the same time without needing to do 15 different things. One thing [00:43:00] can actually accomplish many things at once, and that’s one of the things I love about these hobbies.

Chris: That’s great. The big thing for me with Bonsai was initially. I don’t wanna kill these trees. That was the big thing. So I kind of went on a little horticultural course. You know, they, they need sunlight, they need water, they need air. So I went on this horticultural course, which was like a six hour course.

It was done over a couple of weeks online. So I learned, okay, you know, you learn about photosynthesis and put ’em in the sha and it’s too hot, and all these kind of things. And then I was like, well, okay, now I can keep ’em alive. How am I gonna make ’em look pretty? Well, I’m gonna have to learn how to prune things properly and how to wire branches and how to select certain branches.

And through the process of doing these things, sitting with a tree, and sometimes I’ll sit with a tree for an hour.

Hmm.

Looking at one branch, because once you cut it off, you can’t put it back on you. You can’t, you can’t super glue the branch back to the trunk. You know, it’s like if I’m gonna remove and sometimes I pray, please Lord give me the [00:44:00] guidance I need to make sure that this tree doesn’t look horrible by the time I’m done hacking away at it.

Right. I will do, I honestly, I will look at a branch for 30, 40 minutes sometimes before I, you know, decide to either remove it or to wire it into a different position or whatever the case may be. And one thing I can promise you is for sure, every single time I’m there in my Bonzo garden, and that is the last thing I’m thinking about is work.

Mm-hmm.

The absolute last thing I’m thinking about is business. All I’m thinking about is the tree and, uh, whether or not it’s gonna look better by the time I’m done with it in this session. And there’s also a longevity point to Bondai as well. ’cause I know if I do the job right, the tree will outlive me.

Wow. So I’m just a

steward. Wow. I’m just a caretaker at the tree as it stands right now. And I have some trees that are very expensive trees that I’ve bought myself who were imported from Japan 40, 50 years ago. You know, I’ve invested in these, these kind of the jewels of the [00:45:00] collections, so to speak. I can’t mess that tree up, you know, I gotta look after that tree because it’s, it was around before I got involved.

And hopefully it’ll be around when I’m, when I’m done with it, whether that be, uh, because I passed it on to somebody or because I’ve passed on one or the other, you know? So it’s really important to me to have that longevity look of, of not just the trees and, but also the business, the legacy, the life stuff, the family stuff.

It all comes into one, you know, I’m pretty sure Mr. Miyaki would be very, very proud.

Megan: I think so too.

Chris: You

Michael: know, I think the thing that I love about hobbies, and you said it, you can’t think about work. You have someplace else to focus your thinking. And whether I’m fishing or playing the guitar, or now writing songs, it’s like an all in kind of thing that steals my focus in a good way so that it uses another side of my brain that’s not activated, you know, when I’m at work.

I have a question though about this gardening. [00:46:00] How does that apply to our lives? What are the life lessons in that

Chris: first and foremost, like I touched on the longevity view. Mm-hmm. Knowing that, you know, what I do to the tree today will have either a benefit or a detriment to the tree tomorrow and there and you know, and so on and so on.

So if I water the tree properly, if I feed the tree with the right fertilizer, if I give it enough light, if I make sure I protect it when it’s too hot, and so on and so on and so on, if I do all those things right, the tree’s got a better opportunity to flourish. Whereas if I look after myself personally as the leader that I am, as the patriarch that I am of the family and you know, the leader of the community that I run, if I do, if I look after myself, then I know that, you know, I’m, from a sustainability perspective, I’m gonna be around a lot longer and, and therefore to be able to have, you know, effect more change and more opportunity for people in the future as well.

Likewise, if I don’t look after the tree, if I take my eye off it. [00:47:00] And if I leave it for a week on its own soil is gonna dry out, the tree’s gonna get sick and eventually die. Mm. So a lot of the time I use it as an al as an analogy myself, actually for myself a lot of the time. And I, I don’t really do woo woo.

It’s not really my thing, but I, I think that it’s a good analogy. It’s an analogy that I can connect myself to. And it’s one that I’ve become quite viscerally, you know, connected to over, over the years. Unfortunately, I have lost a couple of trees over the years, and when I look back as to why it was because, ah, you know what?

I couldn’t be bothered to move it that day, but the sun was blaring down on it for 10 hours. You know, those three days of sun that we get in the UK every year, you know, or maybe I, I over watered it and the roots rotted, whatever analogy you like to. To use a lot of the time I’ll bring it back to me and how I’m looking after myself.

Megan: I love that.

Chris: Really good.

Megan: Okay. One of the questions we get all the time from people like you talked [00:48:00] about, um, Chris, you know, people say, well, how do you find a hobby? I don’t know. You know, what would my hobby be? And they, I mean, they just act like it’s this total black box, right? Of, of mystery, like the hobbies or things you have when you’ve retired maybe, or something like that.

The other thing that I hear, I’d love, I’d love for you to talk in a minute about how do you find that thing, like how do you discover what it is that you would enjoy? But then the other thing that I hear a lot from people are fake. Hobbies. Hobbies that, you know, when I think of. Hobby. First of all, I really don’t like the word hobby because it sounds like dinky in some way, kinda trivial in a way.

Kind of trivial. Yeah. Like it’s a thing that you, you know, like it doesn’t properly vest it with the importance that it actually has. I think that’s

Chris: why, like application, what do you call it? I’m curious.

Megan: Well, I don’t know. I, I mean, I, I’m really upset about it because there’s not another word that she calls it, that

Michael: thing,

Megan: that thing, that thing that we do it to my mind, it is supposed to be like the idea of recreation, being recreation, [00:49:00] like that is what a hobby is supposed to do, is it literally recreates us.

It puts us back together when we’re fragmented. It reorients us, it grounds us, all those kinds of things. Alas, I have no better word, but sometimes people think, you know, my hobby is playing Pokemon Go, or my hobby is learning something, which I think learning is great, but learning is not a hobby. You know, like, like re even reading is not a hobby in the way that you and I are talking about it right now.

You know, like that’s a, it doesn’t have an embodiment to it. And I think that’s a really important part of hobbies is that engages your physical self and it’s not just intellectual or, you know, maybe something like that. Yeah. But I’m curious, what would you consider, like, I’m looking for like a list of like fake hobbies that people are like, oh yeah, my hobby is, or I don’t need a hobby because I do X, Y, z.

Like, what are like the, the counterfeit hobbies that people have?

Chris: How about work for work for sure. Hobbies.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: I love that term. Counterfeit hobbies. I, I, the term I use quite a bit is past times, Uhhuh [00:50:00] hobbies and pastimes. You know, these are things that will pass the time, which I guess is maybe, I, I’m with you though.

You know, it, it doesn’t really do. The act of what it is, you’re doing the thing. Mm-hmm. Um, it doesn’t do it a lot of justice when you say, I’m just passing the time kind of thing. It doesn’t have as much of a connection as it probably should do. The one that I hear a lot when I ask somebody, well, what kind of hobbies do you have?

It pops up all the time. Well, I go to the gym. Exercise. I’m like, well, it’s not a hobby man. Like you’re supposed to move your body. God gave you this amazing vessel that Yeah, is the body. You should look after that. You know, if you wanna be around for a long period of time, it, you should move it. You should take care of it.

You should look after it. Going to the gym is one of the things that you need to do in order to achieve that. Or exercising is one of the things you need to do. And so I don’t really look at that as a hobby or possible. I think that’s really right too. That’s

Megan: like saying, you know, changing the oil in your car is a hobby.

It’s like, well that’s just maintenance. You know? That’s just

Michael: Right. Or eating.

Megan: Yeah, or eating. Definitely eat

Michael: out, you know, certain culinary things or cooking. [00:51:00]

Megan: Sure. That are creative. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Exactly. And so for me, the way I’ve approached hobbies, and like I said, here we are, we’ve gone, what, 15 minutes into this discussion now?

Probably, if not a little more. I think this is a really, really important discussion. For leaders to have. Mm-hmm. Because we’re not spending enough time away from work. We’re not spending enough time enjoying time for ourself and, and, and doing things for ourselves. And any kind of success that costs you, your health or your family or your joy isn’t really actually success.

That’s sacrifice. Right. And so to use your popular colloquialism of the, you know, winning at work, succeeding at life thing, if you’re winning at work or winning at business and you’re losing at life, then you’re not actually winning at all, are you? Right. Like you’re losing pretty hardcore, quite frankly.

And so I like the idea that, and learning is important. Learning is super important. Sure. In order to lead, you’ve gotta learn. Yeah. As much as you can as well. Right. But [00:52:00] just not a hobby. Here’s the, yeah. And here’s the way I look at it. The short-term wins that we are kind of aimed to go after nowadays, both in our lives as well as in our businesses, in our work lives, our careers, those short-term wins because of the way that we’ve been programmed by society to consume content in three seconds instead of 60 seconds.

Lo and behold, those short-term wins are really, really loud, but long-term impact, long-term impact is that consistent kind of whisper that pops up over and over and over again until it just roars, right? Like we want that big win, that big roar. And you only get that by being really consistent and the real game here.

Patience, it’s consistency, it’s showing up when it’s not sexy, when it’s not flashy, it’s doing the unsexy work. Or as my good friend Phil Jones says, the work before the work, these are professional speaker, he’s on stage 50 days a year, which is his bag. I can’t think of anything worse to do, but he’s on [00:53:00] stage 50 times a year around the world.

And what he always does, which I really love his, my favorite stuff that he shares on particularly Instagram, is what he calls the work before the work, where he walks the rooms the morning of or the night before where he’s gonna be performing. And I love that. And that’s the consistency that I’m talking about.

It’s showing up over and over and over again. And so whether it’s showing up at work, showing up with family, showing up at hobbies, you’ve gotta do all these things consistently in order to live that long haul life that I’m talking about.

Michael: Why is being a long haul leader? What is it about that concept that captured your imagination and made you put in the, the work, which writing any book is an enormous amount of work, but what was it about that that intrigued you

Chris: through the recovery process I went through on that second burnout, I realized really clearly that I was the engine, not just at work, but also in our family life as well.

I was the [00:54:00] engine, I was the spark, I was the difference maker. I was the change maker in what we were doing. But even those, even the engine needed, that maintenance needed that time away to be able to kind of work on itself. Mm-hmm. So to speak. And I realized what it was actually, the, the hustle culture that we’d been fed quite a lot over the last decade has crept up on a lot of us.

And one thing that I became really quite viscerally connected to was the fact that I realized that hustle is a season. It’s not a lifestyle.

Mm-hmm.

It’s not something that is sustainable at all. Hustle in and amongst itself is not a bad thing. We all need to hustle. That means work hard for old, old people tuning in.

It means going all out towards that deadline or that project or that KPI to be hit. But then stopping when that deadline or that project comes to an end recharging, [00:55:00] recalibrating, resetting, and then creating more opportunity to engage upon additional, additional hustle in the future. Right. And so when I realized that, I thought, you know what, the first book I wrote, virtual Freedom was about working in the outsourcing and the delegation world for a decade.

The second book, rise of the Up O is about building my personal brand for over a decade at that point. So I’ll write that and I’ll write a handbook about that. This book I had to write because through talking with a whole bunch of people. That had gone through similar situations that I was going through, I realized that if I didn’t get it into a, a journal, a manual, so to speak, a handbook, so to speak, if I didn’t do that, I’d be letting myself down as well as hopefully a few other folks so I could help along the way as well.

So it’s not about one thing or another thing. It’s not about making one choice over another choice. It’s about making sure that you’ve, you make a good amount of right choices across the board. And it’s about making the right priorities stick out. And for [00:56:00] me, that means being around for my family, it means being around for my business, my friends, and everything else that I do day to day, whereas absolutely long as possible.

And for me, that’s what’s important now. It’s not about making tons more money or accolades or winning different things. All that sort of stuff is actually pretty irrelevant to me now. For me now, I, I just wanna be around for the, for the long haul and to make as much difference as I can. Beautiful.

Megan: Okay.

Well, we have a kind of rapid fire series of questions that we ask all of our guests, and so I’ll, I’ll kick us off here. What is currently your biggest obstacle in getting the double win, winning at work, and succeeding at life? We’ve heard a lot about in the past, but today, what’s your biggest obstacle?

Chris: Hmm. That’s a really good question. I would say probably not taking, still not taking enough time to figure out. Different projects that I work on. And I think we have a lot of issues, like entrepreneurs in general have [00:57:00] issues to deal with. And I think the big thing for me has always been picking what project to work on next.

Hmm. So I think I’m gonna say having too many great ideas. Something to that effect.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I

Chris: feel your pain.

Megan: Yeah. Same.

Chris: Yeah.

Megan: The struggle is real.

Chris: And, and cue the group

Michael: therapy right now. Yeah, that’s right. Oh

Megan: man.

Michael: Well, and that’s why I lied to myself for years because I thought, as soon as I get through this project, you know, then I’ll be able to live a little bit more relaxed.

But by that time, I’ve got 10 more ideas queued up. Yeah. Then I’m ready to raise resolve.

Megan: There’s no, there’s no bottom to that. Oh my gosh.

Michael: So true. So true. Okay, second question. How do you personally know you, Chris Ducker? How do you personally know when you’re getting the double win?

Chris: I know because I feel balance, not burnout.

I, I know because I feel balance. I’m doing things with balance when I am. With my kids. I’m not thinking about work when I’m on date nights with my beautiful wife who we just celebrated 18 years of marriage. Congratulations to Congratulations. Congratulations. [00:58:00] Congratulations. Thank you. Um, she still likes me as well.

So there’s a win for you. Um, imagine when I’m with her, I’m not thinking about the kids per se, and when I’m at work, I’m not thinking about the wife and, and vice versa and all the rest of it. A balance. It’s about being in harm, harmony, whatever it is that you’re doing at any one time. Very

Megan: good. That’s great.

Okay. Lastly, what is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do? Well,

Chris: that would go back to being out to nature.

Megan: Yeah.

Chris: I’m gonna throw back to that one. There’s a good few things, but that for me is really the biggest non-negotiable on my calendar. Yeah. Day to day. Even to the point where it’s not always possible on a weekend because kids’ birthday parties and all the other good fun stuff you do.

But when I do skip a day when for one reason or another where I won’t get out, I feel it. I feel it genuinely. And the one thing actually that I have found that particularly during the week when I’m doing work, if I don’t go out for that day, something pops up, a call needs to take [00:59:00] place or whatever it is, I don’t sleep as well that night.

Megan: Huh, fascinating.

Chris: I’ve really noticed that. So for me. One thing is getting out into nature and saying hello to all my little feathered friends as much as I can. I

Megan: love that.

Chris: I don’t think

Michael: in all of our guests we’ve ever had anybody with that answer.

Megan: I know. But

Michael: that super inspires me. And look at your big smile.

I know. I’m like, you’re super excited too. If

Megan: only it wasn’t 90 degrees right now. I’d be out there. I’m, I’m headed to Park City, Utah tomorrow, and it will be much nicer in Park City than it is here in Nashville. That sounds great. So I’ll be getting outside there. I can’t wait.

Chris: Your dad’s got my mobile number.

You can get it from him. If you any questions in regards to Bonsai, I mean, I’m not kidding you, I’m gonna hit you up because

Megan: that sounds like a blast.

Chris: Next time I’m in Nashville, we’ll hang out. We’ll, we’ll do something together with a little tree. Don’t worry.

Megan: Okay, great. Fantastic.

Michael: Thanks for being with us.

The book is The Long Haul Leader, the author is Chris Ducker right now. Before you lose the glow of the show, go order it. You won’t be disappointed. This is a great [01:00:00] book, an inspirational book, and I really recommend it. Thanks, Chris.

Chris: Thank you guys.

Michael: Well, first of all, as we’ve said before, if the guest has an English accent,

Megan: listen,

Michael: it’s gonna be good. That’s really

Megan: 50% of our formula is just bring in the Brits because whatever they say sounds so smart and charming, you know? But they could read the

Michael: phone book.

Megan: Yeah, they could read the phone book since we don’t have

Michael: anymore.

Megan: That’s right. I know you say that to my kids and they’re like, what’s the phone book? But seriously though, that was such a wonderful conversation and it kind of went in a direction that I wasn’t expecting that whole conversation about hobbies, like you said in the intro. We really haven’t talked about that a whole lot on the Double Wind show.

But man, I got some great insights. What about you?

Michael: Absolutely. I mean, it inspired me. I think the biggest thing that inspired me in that conversation is not about hobbies. So let’s get back to my idea here in a moment. Okay? But let’s just talk about hobbies. I have a question. [01:01:00] I know you garden.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: What other hobbies do you have or do you have any?

Megan: Gardening is kind of the one that I spend the most time on and the one that right now I’m enjoying the most. Uh, and one, one thing that’s interesting about gardening is it changes so much season to season. So the kinds of things that I was doing in my garden at the, or in the early spring are very different than kind of when it’s in its peak.

Mm. Good point. Versus now it’s the late summer when we’re recording this and so I’m pulling things out, I’m getting ready for the fall, et cetera. So it just changes a lot, which I, I really like that variety. I also love to bake and cook and so that is definitely a hobby. That’s, I

Michael: love for you to bake and cook.

That’s, yeah. I

Megan: was gonna say that’s my family’s favorite hobby that I have. So the other day I had a bunch of, uh, peaches that were kind of last of the season peaches that I made into a gt, which is sort of a, an informal pie, you know, no, no pie plate, just, just sort of crust folded over and everybody got to have pie for breakfast and that was really exciting.

And I forgot to bring you some, so, you know, sorry about that.

Michael: I’m gonna have to try to forgive you on that one.

Megan: I know, I know. So

Michael: Megan makes the best [01:02:00] cherry pie. It’s

Megan: true.

Michael: You’ve ever tasted.

Megan: Yeah,

Michael: and I mean, I love it.

Megan: It kind of makes you never wanna eat cherry pie from a restaurant because those have are kind of gummy and they have coloring in them and this is just like real, it’s just like real, real.

So I love to do that. I also love walking, and I don’t mean walking for exercise. As Chris was quick to point out, exercise does not count as a hobby. That’s, you know, like maintaining your car. But I love to just walk slowly. Sometimes it frustrates Joel because Joel’s a really fast walker. Naturally. I’m like, babe, you gotta slow down.

You know, like if we walk together. But I love walking slowly. I love walking by myself. I love just noticing nature and being outdoors. So I love that. I think I have several hobbies that I’m working on cultivating, like they’re kind of like on my to be discovered. List one is beekeeping. So I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna start that in the spring.

What? Yeah. Well, like I was talking about with Chris, it’s really important if you are a gardener, that you have bees and other pollinators to pollinate. Plants. [01:03:00] Like they actually have to be pollinated. Well, this doesn’t just happen naturally.

Michael: Afraid Kyle is your man.

Megan: I know, I know. That’s true. Mom was telling me that the other day.

So I’m gonna, I’m planning to do beekeeping next year, this bonsai thing. I’m like, oh, I gotta really check that out. I actually know somewhere locally that sells bonsai trees and there probably is like a club or something. So that could be really fun. And then drawing and watercolor are things I’ve done before, but I haven’t done in a long time.

And I’m thinking that would be a great winter hobby because if your hobby involves nature, you kinda have to think about how you mm-hmm. Are able to do it or not in the winter. Oh, knitting. That’s something else I do. I do love knitting.

Michael: You might have too many hobbies.

Megan: No, you know what, I have five kids.

I’m very busy. I’m not spending hours and hours and hours. I mean, I feel like if I can have a hobby, anybody can have a hobby because I have a very full life.

Michael: Well, that’s absolutely true. So my hobbies are golf when my arm’s not in a sling fishing. And I’m really hoping I can still fish because my dominant hand is not in the cast.

And I’ve got a big fly fishing trip planned for this fall, [01:04:00] and then playing the Native American flute, the guitar, and now songwriting. Yeah. Which I’m really studying that like it’s a craft uhhuh, you know, I’m listening to songwriters talk about, you know, how they get the hook and how they structure the song and all that kind of stuff.

And so I’m just enjoying the sort of craft part of that.

Megan: Oh, birding is another one I wanna do. Have you ever thought about birding?

Michael: I don’t know why it doesn’t appeal to me. Part of it is I hate having those big cameras with those big lenses.

Megan: Well, you don’t, you don’t have to say, I used to have them. You don’t have to take pictures.

You can just like go look for the birds.

Michael: Yeah. But if. If you don’t take a picture, did it really happen?

Megan: Well, I mean,

Michael: okay. My biggest takeaway, although the hobbies was super inspirational, my biggest takeaway was being outdoors more.

Megan: Yes. Oh yes. That was so great. So the

Michael: thing I do now, which is limited, I’ve got so much room to grow on this when I’m golfing ’em outdoors, when I’m fishing ’em outdoors.

Yes, right. That’s all good. But the slow walk and forest bathing really inspires me. Mm-hmm. So what [01:05:00] your mother and I do now is first thing in the morning, we go outside and we sit on our patio.

Megan: Yep.

Michael: Except that we hang our feet off the patio into the grass. So we’re grounding.

Megan: Oh yeah.

Michael: And I spend 10 minutes and I just pray.

Megan: I love that. And we’ve done that too this summer. Um, we put Adirondack chairs at the beginning of our garden. Our garden is like a rectangle, and on the, the front part of it is the short side of the rectangle. And so we put three chairs there because we often end up with a kid outside with us and we bring our coffee out there every morning.

We like, we get up, we get dressed, we make our coffee, and we go straight outside. We plan our day. We, you know, do our kind of devotional stuff. We talk like we stay out there as long as we can. You know, now that school’s back in, it’s a, it’s a little bit shortened, but we try to get at least, you know, 20 or 30 minutes outside and it is like become our favorite ritual that we do.

Well,

Michael: those Adirondack chairs. Are so [01:06:00] underrated.

Megan: I know.

Michael: I love those chairs. Yeah. We have some at the lake, but I never sit in them.

Megan: Yeah. What’s wrong? We have those ones that are, uh, made of P wood, you know? Oh yeah. That’s totally, it’s like composite. So they don’t like flake off their paint or, you know, break down and they’re wonderfully comfortable.

We put our feet in the little garden pebbles, you know, they’re the base of the garden and it is just a lovely thing. So oftentimes Naomi, our 6-year-old, she’s like playing in the driveway with her toys and you know, she’s not necessarily sitting the whole time. She’s mostly just playing. Dogs are out there with us and it is a wonderful way to start the day.

It’s, I think part of what I loved about the idea of being in nature and hobbies is that they all slow you down to a human pace. You know, you’re not just running around like a nut, like you’re actually. Your body, you’re able to slow down to a human pace, a human scale, and be present in ways that are really important.

Michael: What, what was that term you used in the conversation with Chris About one activity, sort of meeting several these. Oh, oh

Megan: yeah. Like I was using that example of in the kitchen, you know, not having things be unit taskers. Unitask, [01:07:00]

Michael: oh, unit

Megan: tasker. You know, it was like your popcorn maker or whatever, you know, a butter melter thing or something.

You know, it’s like we want, I think when we’re thinking about human flourishing, we want the practices that we do to not be single things. We want to be trying to have our, the activities, the practices of flourishing to accomplish many things at once. Yep. For one thing, that’s how it becomes sustainable, where you don’t feel like, oh my gosh, I need a morning routine that’s three hours long.

It’s like you don’t, you can actually check a whole lot of boxes and feel much more like you’re thriving and flourishing If you can do one or two things that accomplish many of those at once.

Michael: So true. Well, guys. If I were you, if I were sitting there, I think I would take away three things from the show.

One, the need for self-care. Chris made a great case for that. And then the need to get outside more. I can tell you from a neuroscience perspective, not that I’m a neuroscientist, but I’ve done a lot of reading on this, is that nothing regulates your nervous system more than being outside. Relationships too are a [01:08:00] big one,

Megan: but you can do both of those at the same time.

Michael: That’s right. And the third one is get yourself a hobby. You know, all of us need a hobby. We need some way to spend our time. That’s not work. And if you’re one of those people that says, I love my work. My work is my hobby, I just want to call a big BS on that, you cannot have work as your hobby. You can enjoy your work.

I love my work. Mm-hmm. It ain’t my hobby.

Megan: That’s right.

Michael: Right.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: You guys can do us a huge favor as we’re relaunching for this fall with the podcast. If you’d go to the podcast page or wherever you listen to podcasts and you would rate and maybe even write a short review, you can use Chad g PT and just dump some rough ideas in there and let it have a beautiful review.

But that would be hugely helpful to us in terms of getting the word out and getting more listeners because we are committed to getting this message out about the double win and about human flourishing and you have a role to play. So we’ll see you next time.

Megan: See [01:09:00] ya.