May 29, 2025 • 48 mins
Most entrepreneurs are told to grind harder, work longer, and out-discipline the competition—but what if that mindset is actually hurting your business and your life?
In this episode of From Crisis to Justice, Parag Amin sits down with Craig Ballantyne, bestselling author of The Perfect Day Formula and The Dark Side of Discipline, to unpack the high cost of hustle culture and why even the most successful entrepreneurs break under pressure.
Craig has coached 7–9 figure founders and is known as “The World’s Most Disciplined Man.” But he didn’t get there without facing crippling anxiety, burnout, and a complete re-evaluation of success.
🔑 Key Takeaways Include:
- The hidden dangers of hustle culture and over-optimization
- Why most business owners say “yes” to too many things—and how it’s killing your growth
- The difference between real discipline and performative routines
- How to overcome burnout, rebuild from rock bottom, and design a life that actually serves you
- Craig’s 3-step system for eliminating bad habits and building sustainable routines
- Why some entrepreneurs succeed—and others implode trying to do too much
Whether you're scaling your company or trying to get your life back, this episode will shift your perspective on what it means to be productive, successful, and in control.
Learn more about Craig Ballantyne:
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Learn more about Parag Amin:
Business Law Firm:
Personal Website:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Welcome back, everybody. To.
From Crisis to Justice.
The showwhere we help entrepreneurs turn crisis
(00:44):
and chaos into clarity and protect.
Help business owners protect theirlegacies and protect themselves legally.
Mentally and financially.
Today's guest is a powerhouseand a friend.
Craig Ballantine, he is the bestsellingauthor of The Perfect Day
Formula and coach to some of the world's
(01:04):
top 7 to 9 figure founders.
He's coach people like Bedros,Julianne and Jason Capital and founders
such as Russell Brunsonhave also successfully used Craig Systems
to multiply the revenuein their businesses.
Craig is known as the world'smost disciplined man,
but his successdidn't come without setbacks.
(01:27):
In fact, he's faced anxiety, burnout
and business stressthat most people never talk about.
So I want to dive in and talkmore about that.
Craig,thank you so much for joining me today.
Man, this could be a lot of fun.
Yeah, absolutely.
Always a good time hanging with you.
So tell us a little bit about
(01:50):
how you got into businesscoaching in the first place.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So I'm a farm boy from Canadaand I ended up building an online
fitness business of all things.
So I sold my first product onlinein January 28, 2001.
I sold the word document through PayPal,and that set me off on the course
of building this turbulence trainingfitness program for the next 15 years.
(02:13):
Along the way, people started saying, Wow,you get so much done.
You are very productive.
Therefore you must be the world'smost disciplined man.
That'swhere that whole little shtick came from.
And and, you know,I don't claim to be like David
Goggins, you know, running ultramarathonsevery single day or anything like that.
But I use systemsto go from being kind of lazy
and unmotivated, as many peoplenaturally are, to becoming very productive
(02:37):
because I wanted to achieve more
and I built systemsystems are the keystone of discipline.
And then from there,because people started asking me
how I got this all doneand how I grew my businesses.
I had my first business event,business coaching event in 2007 of,
you know, way back then.
And it was mostly in the fitness world.
And then over the years,every single year,
(03:00):
you know, it'd be like a supplement guy,then a construction company owner,
and then, you know, a lawyerlike Farag would come into my world and,
you know,we had all types of entrepreneurs
and we've worked with peoplein the strangest industries.
And today we coach, you know,
I would say low sevenfigure to timid eight figure entrepreneurs
and business ownersto get more systems in their business
(03:21):
and in their personal lives so they becomemore organized and increase the profits.
Yeah, I love that.
And so what what do you think
holds most of these entrepreneurs back?
You know, for example,if it's low seven figures,
what's holding them back from mid to highseven figures or even eight figures?
I mean, what's, what's the constantyou've seen and or does it differ
(03:43):
between seven figures and eight figures,meaning the blocks that people have that
seven figures changewhen they get to eight figures.
Yeah.
I mean, you know,the nuance is a little bit different,
but ultimatelyit's the inability to say no.
And this is from the personwho just started their side hustle
yesterday to the person who's doing eightfigures, nine figures, even billionaires.
(04:05):
You know, the thing is, is as you get moresuccessful,
you get asked to do more things,whether it's donate to charities,
whether it's be involved in charityevents, whether it is mentor people
or is it, you know, to go on podcast,be on YouTube, you know, go on TV.
Just think of how many times peopleyou know, the people that I'm saying
this to, the people listening today
(04:26):
as an entrepreneur,how many times do you get
asked to do something to try outa new program?
People are pitching you all the time.
You're seeing stuff and you're thinking,Oh, maybe I should try that.
You've got booksthat everybody's recommending,
you know, even mine,and you have all of these choices
and the people that struggleto go to the next level
(04:46):
get spinning their wheelsbecause they say yes to too many things.
And oftentimes and that's whyI wrote The Dark Side of Discipline
is that we're not saying yes to bingedrinking and we're not saying yes to a bag
of potato chips in 19 episodes of Netflixevery night or video game marathons.
What we're saying yes to are good things,but the good is getting
in the way of the great.
And the good things can be anything from,you know,
(05:08):
joining a fitness challenge,doing 100 pushups in 100 days.
That's another that's a push up or afitness challenge always gets me fired up.
And because I think it's so useless or itis, you know, starting and on,
everybody's doing an online challengenow for their business or writing a book
or starting a podcastor doing a YouTube channel.
All of these things that are good, right?
Like exercising is good.
(05:29):
Starting a YouTube channel that's good.
But if it gets in the way of great,which is, you know, ultimately
growing your business,working on the constraints and bottlenecks
in your business,
having the difficult discussionswith your business partner
or improving your marriageor fixing your health.
If it's really out of control,if you're doing good,
that gets in the way of the greatand the good becomes destructive.
(05:50):
At the very least,it's a perverse form of procrastination.
And so that's what I seebecause, you know, you and I
and everybody listening,we're ambitious, we're high energy.
We want to have it all, do itall, be it all, travel everywhere.
But eventually, you have to say no,because if you want to do great things,
you have to do fewer things.
(06:10):
Yeah,
and that's one of the things I loveabout your philosophy.
You and I have been each other's clients
and, you know,I was a coaching client with you
and you've been in my officewith quite a few important things.
I appreciate that.
And it was my privilege and pleasure.
So, you know, one of the thingsthat I think is difficult,
(06:31):
meaning it's it's easy to think aboutin kind of a vacuum, but it's very hard
to do on a day to day basis when you'retrying to grow and scale a business
is these various opportunities come about.
And so part of you,or at least maybe a part of me,
always wants to kind of sayno to almost everything.
But then there's the other part of methat says,
(06:52):
Hey, look,you know, if you say to know this,
then it may leave doors closedthat you don't even know about.
So it's much easier to say no to somethingif you've already been there
and done that.
But it gets much harderas you continue to scale up
and these opportunitiescome your way to be able to say
no, because you really don't knowwhat's behind that door.
(07:14):
And there's there'san innate level of curiosity
about opening that doorto find out what other doors it leads to.
So what would you tell entrepreneursin terms of how to say yes to things
and how to say no to things?
Meaning, how do you decide what to sayyes to and how to say no to
if you haven't been thereand you haven't done that right?
It's a good question. Like what?
(07:34):
What role does serendipity play in this?
I'm going to be pretty hardcore on this.
I'm going to say that a lot of theyou know, you never know
what's going to happen. You never knowwhat's going to come out of this meeting.
It's a lottery ticket.
You know, it's a lottery ticketnetworking.
It's a lottery ticket marketing. You all,you know, I should go and try this thing.
You never know what will happen.
I need to go to this event.You never know who I will meet.
You can't play.You can't live your life like that.
(07:55):
You're literally not literally you'refiguratively scratching a lottery ticket,
hopingthat you're going to go to this thing
and you're going to bump into somebodywho's going to make you an easy
million dollars. That's not how it works.
And in most cases, you know, in advance,
because you have experiencedsimilar event events
or coffee meetings or whatever,you know how it's going to end up.
(08:19):
But we like to believebecause actually going and doing
that thing is easier than us workingon the hard problem in our business.
And so I want people to put asidethe lottery ticket approach
to networking or marketingand stick to their circle of confidence.
And so that's a phrase from WarrenBuffett.
And Warren Buffett,
(08:40):
you know, great.
One of the greatest investors,maybe the greatest investor ever.
And what he did was he said thathe stuck to his circle of competence.
So if anybody knows anythingabout Warren Buffett, he was famous
for being ridiculed in the late ninetiesbecause he didn't buy any tech stocks,
But that was outside Warren'scircle of competence.
Now, he may have chosen the right ones,but a lot of people got burned
(09:01):
by the tech stocks in 2000 2001when the market turned and Warren
just didn't want to make mistakes.
Him and his partner,Charlie Munger, were famous for
just trying to avoid being stupid.
That's that was their entire investmentphilosophy was just wait patiently,
sit on your hands until somethingso obvious comes your way
that it's going to be a Grand Slam,like investing in Coke
(09:23):
in the eighties, like,you know, Warren did.
And so we knowbecause we have experience in life,
we know whether or not we can judge fairly
objectivelywhether or not going to X-Y-Z event
or having a meeting with ABCperson is going to be worth it or not.
And we have to harshlyjudge those situations.
(09:47):
And one out of a thousand times
you might be wrong,but 999 times you're going to be right.
And when you goand do one of those things,
it steals your time, energyand focus from either something
that you should be working onin the business
or from something that you should beworking on in your personal life.
Because almost every single personthat's listening to this
(10:08):
would love to have more time.
And if you ruthlesslylook at how you're spending
your time right now,you can have more time.
It's just thatwe're giving it away to too many things.
Yeah, that's right.
And you know, it's interesting you talkabout Warren Buffett, on the one hand,
a billionaireand talking about a few other
billionaires is the lateSteve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.
(10:32):
So it's interestingbecause you may have heard this, that
those guys talk about the importance of of
wandering to a certain extentand the importance of space and time.
So do you think that well,the importance of space and time
for the purposes of finding your pathor finding your way
and becoming successful,which to some extent
(10:52):
may opposethe ideas of what other billionaires say?
And so, yeah, so listen,Steve Jobs is also famous for a quote
that says, you know, I'm as proud of whatwe didn't do as what we did do.
So, you know, you can probably,
you know, much like in I'mfrom the nutrition and fitness industry
like you can find a study that says cowsmilk is the worst thing in the world.
(11:13):
And you can find a study that says cows
milk is the best thing in the worldthat fits your bias. Right?
And so we can find these quotesfrom the billionaires to
and you know, I'm guilty of this, too.
I go find a story that supports my,you know,
my bias here, and we can quote those guys.
So it's fair, you know,
that, you know, Steve Jobs went to India,you know, did all the masses and whatever
(11:34):
and came backand all sudden invented the iPhone.
You know,that's kind of how the narrative goes.
But he was also ridiculously focusedin that after they did the iPod,
you know, he probably knew we were goingto the iPhone, but he didn't rush to it.
And he knew he would do the iWatch,but he did the iWatch in 2008.
I don't know when he did it,but eventually he did it
and he didn't do an iCar, even though I'msure plenty of people would
(11:55):
say, Hey, I was doing iCarand all that sort of stuff.
You have towithin your circle of confidence,
judge on this.
Otherwise,if you take every coffee request
and you go to every event, there'sno time for you to exercise.
There's no time for youto spend time with your family.
And so we have to draw the line in thereand have these boundaries.
(12:17):
And again, will you miss somethingby not going to India and doing acid?
I suppose maybe your business will getbetter if you followed Steve Jobs path.
I don't know, and wanderedaround the world that way, but
I don't think that Steve Jobs wouldn'thave been successful if he didn't do that.
Remember what really
you know,there was some timing right in this.
(12:39):
Like Steve Jobs becamepassionately interested in the computer
in the earliest days of computing.
And, you know, if the computer had,you know, it, Steve Jobs was born
30 years earlier or 30 years later,what would become of Steve Jobs like?
There was some timing in it.
Same with me.
I was born and went to collegethe year that people started
(13:00):
getting email addresses.
And I was introverted by natureand I liked writing.
And when I found that I could make money
sitting behind a computerand not interacting with human beings,
I won the lottery.
Now, if I was born 30 years earlier,I would have had to have figured out
how to place ads in a newspaperat the back of a classified
ad and make money that wayif I wanted to do a similar business.
(13:22):
So, you know, there's so many factorsthat go in here
and most important forfor our listeners is
eventually you draw the lineand you have to make a decision
like just like when you're
you have to good candidates,you have to choose one person for the job.
You have two good opportunitiesto choose a CRM.
You got to choose one of them
(13:43):
and hopefully you make the right decisionon all the things.
And it goes for the same with theopportunities and the serendipity in life.
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
I think, you know, that that kind ofis the unfair thing
about following the adviceof some of these billionaires is because
Steve Jobs was probably going to beSteve Jobs regardless.
(14:05):
You know,I was talking to a friend about this.
Like the whole idea of itprobably didn't matter who Muhammad Ali's
trainer was because MuhammadAli was still going to be Muhammad Ali.
And he's probably going to be greatregardless because of the sheer
amount of raw talent that he had.
And so somebody could polish ita little bit.
But ultimately, it's not like the trainermade Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali made Muhammad Ali.
(14:26):
Well, then you can argue with MikeTyson and say,
look what happened towhen the trainer passed away
and was gone from Mike's life and maybeMuhammad Ali would have been fine.
But Mike Tyson
went on a down curve because, you know,he didn't have the father figure.
And I forget what the guy's namewas, Gus D'Amato or whatever.
Cus D'Amato. Yes. Yeah.
You know, And it was like,but I think he passed away.
(14:47):
And then,you know, Mike went from being basically
the the Tiger Woods of boxingand he had his self-destructing moment.
And so, yeah, it's like, you know, we canjust argue these things all the time.
And but some people certainlyare meant for greatness.
And who knows what would happenif things turned out slightly different.
Yeah.
And, you know,
(15:07):
so the point of that, though, is reallyjust I think that there's there's there's
that fire of each personthat they're looking for a certain thing.
And so
when they're
looking for those, those dots line upand they find it.
And the big lesson I takefrom my anxiety attacks
that I had so years ago, you know,before I started business coaching,
(15:28):
I had anxiety text,sent me to the emergency room twice.
And when I had them, you know,they were bad.
I was like, I'll do anythingto get rid of these things.
I wasthey were almost literally crippling,
you know,I couldn't really concentrate on anything.
It went on for six weeks straight,24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I felt like I had a heart attack.
And I what got me through it was
(15:50):
I committed to turning over every rock,which meant I went to do
the qigong, tai chi,yoga, breathwork meditation.
I didn't like any of those things,but I knew that I had to try those things
because in somewhere inthere was the solution.
But the key words are turned over everyrock.
And if somebody is
(16:12):
ambitious, high energy wants more.
You know, it'snot the person that you're going to meet.
You likeyou would eventually meet a person,
the person that you meet that you think,Oh man, if I didn't meet this person,
who knows?
Well,you just would have met another person.
You know, he would another mad person,because the core values, the intrinsic
characteristics of you, you would have metsomebody who showed you the way.
(16:35):
And, you know, I often hear this from likefrom my clients, like, man,
you know, I met youand you show me the path.
I'm like,
I'm not the only personwho could have showed you the path.
I mean, I appreciate it.And it makes me feel good.
But the truth is, is thatif you didn't find me, you would have.
Eventually,you may have found somebody who sucked.
That's fair.
And you may have found somebody who wasokay, but eventually you would have found
(16:58):
somebody who was as good as me.
Or better to show you the path
because you were the type of personwho doesn't give up.
So it's not me.
You, you know, the success is you.
And, you know, I just showed you a path.
You you were just wandering aroundkind of aimless in the dark,
but the path existed and I was the personto guide you towards it.
So I think that you're rightthat the intrinsic characteristics,
(17:22):
you know, there's there's natural talent,and then there is, you know, passion and,
you know,
preparationand those mental characteristics.
Everybody's eventually
probably going to get somewheredarn close, regardless of who they meet.
Yeah.
And you know, what I'd like to do is talka little bit about
the anxiety attacks going back,because I think, you know, a lot of people
(17:45):
see the successful Craig Ballantine today,you know, multimillionaire,
multiple seven figure business is businesscoach to already
relatively successfulor no not even relatively
successful entrepreneurs
and so there's the current Craig
and so if we were writing that backlet's talk a little bit about old Craig,
(18:08):
the Craig that had maybe
an alcohol problem or an addiction
who was
not as confident, not the guy who talks onstage is not the guy
who's the coach of coaches and helpsbusiness owners scale.
Like, Let's talk
a little bit about that momentand then how how did you get out of that?
(18:30):
I mean, that's a deep, dark place.
And especially because I think
from the outside looking in,it seemed like you had good stats, right?
You were healthy,you were working out, had a six pack.
Yeah.
And so socan you tell us a little bit about that,
how you got out of itand how you figured it out
and what you might do differently todayif you had to do it over again.
Yeah, for sure.I mean, you know, it's true.
(18:51):
The irony was I was making more moneythan I ever had before.
I was young.
I was in the best shape of my life,like cover model men's health magazine
type of shape.
Everything was going my way.
And the only problemwas not the only problem.
There was two big problems.
I think, is that one, I was a hypocriticalbinge drinker on Saturdays
(19:13):
and I was a good boy from,you know, Sunday through through
Friday as a personal trainertelling people what to do.
But that hypocrisy in my lifedefinitely led to some stress.
And then the exhaustion.
You know, when I had my first anxietyattack, it was around the holidays.
I was, you know,training people in the morning.
I was drinking some nights,you know, staying out late.
(19:34):
And, you know, I was just exhausted,you know, on New Year's Eve.
And I still went out and drank more.
And then the next morning I woke up andthat entire day I had the anxiety attack.
The other thing that I was messing upwas that my introverted tendencies
caused me and supported mekeeping everything inside.
So, you know, any problemsI had, you know, I didn't do journaling.
(19:56):
I didn't do all those breathing therapies.
Qui-Gon Yoga, meditation, Taichiall that sort of stuff.
I was I wasn't highly caffeinated, but,you know,
if I was, that would have beena contributing factor to it.
And I was just living out of alignment.
And that, you know,you use the little metaphor of,
you know, when you if you ever tryand cram a whole bunch of stuff
(20:18):
into somethingthat has any elasticity to it, you know,
you cram, you cram, you cram in harder,you cram down, the greater the reaction.
Right?
You know, it's moreit's going to explode up in your face.
And that's what I was doing with thoughtsand feelings and problems was
I was cramming them, cramming them downand eventually exploded into an anxiety.
Now, I you know,I quit drinking for a short time after
(20:41):
and then after a few weeks,when I started feeling better,
it came back in because I wasn't committedto getting rid of it from my life.
And then sure enough, I did.
It had another exhausting spelland had another anxiety attack.
And then that's the onethat lasted for six weeks.
And through that I was smart enoughto ask for help.
I was smart enough to realize like, okay,you know, all these people
(21:01):
who do yoga and meditation,they're pretty.
CHO And that's supposed to help.
So I asked people who did those typesof things, and I got instructors.
And again, I did not like any of it,but I was committed to it.
I was like, I'mnot I'm not taking a pill for this.
I'm not doing any drugsto get rid of anxiety.
That's just going to bea Band-Aid solution.
So I made sure that everything was,
(21:23):
you know, a natural approach.
And after a few weeks and another anxietyattack, I was able to get rid of it.
I also went tothe doctor, went to the emergency room.
They gave me a heart rate monitor.
And when they told me
that there was nothing physicallywrong with me, my brain kind of switched.
And that was a huge change moment for me.
And I actually read a bookat the same time called Panic Away.
(21:46):
I found an e-book on the Internetin and it was 2006.
And the I read through to the first
five words of chapter two,and then I was I was cured.
And the first five words of chaptertwo said, There's nothing wrong with you.
And that was it. It's like, Oh, yeah,there's nothing wrong with me.
And and then I said to myself,I'm too busy for this anyways.
(22:06):
And I got, you know, fortunatelyI was able to, you know, it came back
a little bit, but I had all these toolsin my toolbox to get rid of it again.
And now today, you know,nothing could give me anxiety.
So I saved all of this.
And I do look back and I laugh at anxiety.
I think that anxiety is self-inflicted.
I don't think I don'tI don't talk about depression.
(22:28):
I don't think that depressionis a laughing matter.
But I think if you have anxiety once,you know,
I feel bad for you,
if you have anxiety twice, shame on youlike you're just living in the wrong way
and you need to go outand get the tools and toolset
because it is nothing more than worryingabout things that haven't happened.
And so, you know, you just can't wasteyour time and energy on that
(22:48):
and you can't definitely waste your life,you know, going from anxiety
issue to anxiety issue.
Like you need to go and work on this,but it's like losing £30.
Anybody can lose £30. It'sgoing to suck. It's going to be hard.
But you can get rid of £30just like you can get rid of anxiety.
So I don't have any respect for it nowtoday because I built the tools to do it.
(23:10):
So it was a painful momentand there were definitely some,
you know, closeto lowest moments in my life.
But everything is a learnable skill,including overcoming anxiety.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's one of the thingsone of the many things
that I admire a lot about use your abilityto continue learning
(23:31):
through the process and almost be willingto start at zero again
and look at things
objectively of where you are to be able to
to restock and get rid of bad habits.
Is that how did you develop that skill?
So I started, you know,so what I have is these effortless
(23:52):
discipline systems and, you know,they're what help me be productive,
but they're also it helped meget rid of bad habits.
And it's very simple.
And you can get rid of any bad habit,whether you're addicted to your phone,
whether you're addicted to pornography,whether you drink too much.
I wouldn't say if you're addicted toalcohol or if you have a drug addiction.
Those are likebeyond the scope of the book.
But if you just have bad habitsyou want to kick, It just requires
(24:15):
elimination, preparation and connection.
That's it. It's three thingsand it works for everything.
And so the elimination is pretty obvious.
Like, you know, when I was a binge drinkerand I wanted to get rid of alcohol
in my life,you know, first of all, get rid
get it out of the house, you know,So it's not no, it's harder to get to
eliminate myselffrom going to toxic environments.
(24:35):
So a lot of my drinkinginvolves sporting events.
So I stopped going to sporting events.
Now I can go to sporting events today.
But back then I had to go to the extrememeasure of not going to sporting events
and putting myself in environmentwhere alcohol was freely available.
And then I had to eliminatethe toxic people in my life
whose only purpose in my lifewas to drag me down to drink it.
(24:56):
However, there were some good people
that I associated drinking with andI didn't want to remove them from my life.
And I'm not one of a fanof these social media posts that says,
you know, shut out everybody for your lifefor the next six months and go dark.
I think that's absolutely stupid.
Humans are meant to be very social andthere's so much benefit to other people.
And so what I did was I was like, youknow, I got my best friend of 30 years.
(25:20):
He drinks a lot,but I really want to hang around him.
I'm not going to cut them out of my life.
But we had mutual interest in nondrinking activities,
so we would plan and prepare to meet onSaturday morning, go for a big hike,
and then in the afternoonhe would go to the sporting event
or the bachelor party and I would say,No, I can't go to that.
It's not going to be a good fit for meat this stage in my life.
(25:40):
I'll get back to those later onwhen I've conquered the drinking thing.
And so that's the elimination part.
If you have any bad habit, you know,if you're addicted to your phone,
you need to put as much frictionas possible in place of you
using your phone in the wrong environment,such as around your kids.
And we teach people to downloadsomething called the Opal app.
Opal.
(26:01):
It has 4 million downloads,a 4.8 star review on the App Store,
and you can set your phone upusing the Opal app to block you
from accessing social media,accessing your text, accessing your phone,
accessing your email,whatever it is that is your downfall
within certain time ranges.
So if you want to be presentwith your family from 5 p.m.
(26:21):
to 9 p.m.,you use the Opal app on your phone
and even if you pick it up and you try andlike do something, you can't do anything
so you won't even bother picking it upafter a while.
And that's the type of building a fencearound yourself is what you want to do.
Just so you know, I grew up on a farm.
We built fences
not only to keep the cattle in,but to keep the other animals out.
(26:41):
And that's what you want to do, is
you want to keep the distractionsfrom coming into your life.
Now, on the flip side, we have that betterplanning and preparation.
Like I said, I had friendsthat I didn't want to cut out,
but I wanted to spend time with them.
So it took more planning and preparation
to spend time with themin a positive environment.
Likewise,if somebody wants to take up exercise
and they've always struggledto do so, it's
(27:02):
because there's too much frictionin the way of you doing the habit.
So what you need to do isset your exercise clothes beside the bed,
have your shoes rightthere, have your workout printed out,
or have a workout videoyou're going to watch, or even better,
that you're going to go to a local workoutplace where there's a community aspect.
You know, it's a class of likeminded people who are going to lift you up
(27:22):
because that's a third phase,which is connection.
And also known as accountability.
You need to be connected with peoplewho are achieving the same goals as you,
who are positive, who are going to supportyou, who are not going to drag you down
and who are going to hold you accountableto following through.
And when you have that, whether you haveaccountability to one person
that you deeply do not want to disappoint,which has been a life changer for me,
(27:45):
or whether you have accountabilityto a community, a group of people
where you stand up and say, I'mgoing to achieve this in the next 30 days
and I want you to hold meaccountable to it.
If you're a person of integrity,you're going to fall through
because you don't want to be a hypocrite.
That's like a really low feeling.
So your brain, your brain will support youin the habit change.
You need to follow through on
(28:06):
getting rid of the bad behavioror adding the good behavior to your life.
And it's just elimination, preparationand connection for any bad habit
that you want to get rid of in any goodhabit you want to add to your life.
That's great.
And so, you know, with your new book,The Dark Side of Discipline,
you kind of take that concept.
But it seems like
(28:27):
maybe,maybe the idea of discipline can also has
as the name and title of the bookimplies, a dark side to it and it can get
too restrictive.
So can you talk a little bit about thatand how one decides, meaning,
is a good disciplineor is it bad discipline? Yeah.
So the whole reason I wrotethe book is because
in this day and age,what people do is every day they wake up
(28:50):
and they open up their their social mediaand especially if they use Instagram,
they go to the explore pageand it shows what's trending and viral
and they see somebody doing a cold plungeand somebody doing an ultramarathon
and somebody reading a book a weekand somebody, you know, over here doing,
you know,
some other workout challengethat you do twice a day
and then other guys do100 push ups in 100 days.
(29:12):
And if you're a reactive person,you're like, I got to go do this.
It's just like in our human
nature to be lemmingsand do things and follow the crowd.
But the problem is individually,
none of those things is a bad thing,right?
Like doing pushups.
It's a good thing.
Exercise and good thingreading a book a week, good thing.
But if reading a book a week stopsyou from writing the book
(29:34):
that you've wanted to writefor the last ten years,
then that good thing getting in the wayof the great thing becomes a bad thing.
And I've seen this go so farwhere I've had friends,
successful entrepreneurs, six packapps, married to a wonderful woman,
kids, awesome familylike ideal, perfect life, beautiful home.
(29:55):
And then they saw a disciplinechallenge on their phone
and they decided to spend two or 3 hoursa day,
four months in a row, devoting themselvesto this discipline challenge.
When they were already disciplined,
they were already successful,already productive.
Like what were they trying to prove?And I knew they were already busy.
They had a family
and they had a business that kept busyeight, nine, ten, 11 hours a day.
(30:18):
So where was this 3 hours coming from?
I notice your business is still growing,so you're not taking it from the business.
It meant they were taking itfrom their family.
And sure enough, after they finishedthe discipline challenge, not once
but twice, they did this to get internetclaps on the back.
Their wife walked out on themwith the kids and now they went from
(30:39):
being able to see their kids all the timeto once every two weeks broke my heart.
And that's the dark side of discipline.
Discipline can be your savior likeit did for me when I was a binge drinker.
It got me out of the depths.
It can be a lifeline for somebodythat's really in a bad place.
But then you get to a point where there'sa razor thin line where you cross over
(30:59):
and you go from having disciplineserve you to discipline being your master.
And it puts youin this prison of rigidity,
which it did to me for a long time.
I had these exercise streaksthat I couldn't violate.
I had to go to bed in a certain time,
which meant I couldn't go and docertain things and blah, blah, blah.
It's all ridiculous.
As I look back on it with my outside eyesand think what a tool I was.
(31:21):
But when you're in it, man,when you're in it
and you've lost the plot,you really get carried away by,
you know, people saying,Oh man, you're doing awesome.
You know,even though you've never met the person
and they're saying it on the Internetand you're excluding your family
at the expense,you know, it's expensive, your family
to get some positive reinforcementfrom somebody
you've never met and never will meet.
(31:41):
And and it all sounds so crazyuntil you're that person
and you're swept up in it.
And that's the dark side of disciplinewhere you just go too far,
where you take up the triathlonwhen your marriage is struggling
and you avoid the difficult discussionin your marriage because you want to go
and do a triathlon and you think, oh, I'mdoing hard things and being disciplined,
but your marriage is suffering.
(32:02):
And so, you know, what do you win?
You lose the game of life.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's really interestingin the the age of social media,
you see the highlight reelsand other people's lives.
But not just that.
You see the highlightreel of the top element
or the few elementsof a particular person's life.
(32:24):
Meaning, you know,let's say we see David Goggins and he's
jogging 100 miles in a day just nonstop.
And you know,
it seems very inspiring and very much
built for, for, for social media.
But, you know,you see that one element of his life,
but you don't see the rest of itin terms of how his family life is.
(32:47):
And I don't know. I'mnot saying anything negative.
That's family life.
But, you know, I think that it does comewith a trade off.
You know,there's a phrase that you probably heard
when you were growing up that I heard, youknow, it's keeping up with the Joneses.
And years ago,what that meant was before social media is
you were influencedby the people in your neighborhood. So,
(33:07):
you know, Johnny's family down the street,they got, you know, a new minivan.
Well, now, even if your parents couldn'tafford it, the pressure is on, right?
Because, you know, the stationwagon in your driveway is, you know,
as it was in mine,in a old beat up station wagon.
But everybody else had the minivan.
And now the kids are putting the pressureon the parents, you know,
keep up with the Joneses.
And what happened when people triedto keep up with the Joneses, they outspent
(33:31):
their income and ended up in a worsefinancial situation.
Today's version of keeping up withthe Joneses is we are starved for time,
but everybody else is out there and itlooks like everybody's doing these things
and we see everybody doing
these things like, I got to go and do thisand I have to spend more of my time,
of which I'm already broke on timebecause I'm already too busy.
(33:53):
Marty broke on time and I have to goand spend more time on these things.
And it becomes the keeping upwith the Joneses.
And it's gotten so ridiculous.
You know, it used to be that
if you did a marathon, people be like,Man, that's pretty awesome.
Now everybody's done a marathon,and if you haven't done an ultramarathon,
are you even running right?
And if you haven't done the Bad MudderBad Water Marathon, which is 100 mile
(34:16):
marathon in the desert,are you even an ultra marathoner?
Right.
And then there's the guy who's doneseven marathons in seven days
on seven continents.
There's a guy on Instagramwho's who's bio says that.
Right?
And so it's this giant pissing conteston Instagram of who's more extreme
and you can't keep up.
You cannot be the most disciplined,extreme person on Instagram.
(34:39):
But people are losing the plot trying andit's like, hey, sorry, son or daughter,
I don't have time for you right nowbecause I have to go in cold plunger.
And and I know this sounds like,well, you know, I'd never do that,
but I've been on probably 100 podcastsnow promoting the book
with Navy SEAL, Special Forcesguys, really successful business owners.
(35:00):
And they're like,
you know,
I'm embarrassed to say this, but years agoI was in one of these challenges
and my wife said, Hey,we're going to the beach with the kids.
And I said, I can't go.I got to do my second workout.
And then my wife looked at me with likethe divorce, divorce, death stare.
And I was like, okay, I'mgoing to the beach.
Because again, you're just so wrapped upin this myopic view of
(35:20):
you have to do these things that you losethe plot of what really matters in life.
And so, you know, I'mjust asking people to step back
and do the hardest thing of all, becauseagain, people are posting on the Internet
that they do hard things.
You know, I take a cold shower,I do hard things.
Okay, great, whatever.
You know, if you want to do somethinghard,
You know, I lived in Mexicothe last couple of years.
(35:42):
If you want, do somethinghard, do it. Got.
You know, I lived in this areawhere there was construction all day long,
and I guess it would be I'm doingthe Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion.
It'd be like 85 to 90 degree,
you know, equator sun on you all daylong, 90% humidity.
And these guys workedwearing jeans and sweatshirts.
I don't know whythey wore jeans and sweatshirts,
(36:03):
but they did all day long on buildinghouses.
There's no electricity on site,
so they had to haul the cementbricks up using a rope.
And they did that every single day.
Six days a week for 10 hours a day.
That's a hard thing.
Taking a 32nd coldshower is not a hard thing,
but everybody's posting like, Oh, yeah,just did my 32nd cold shower today.
(36:23):
So, you know, just to proveI can still do hard things.
It's not a hard thing, but the hardestthing of all is my little tangent there.
But the hardest thing of all for uspeople in the first world is to think,
to take out the AirPods,
to stop listening to an audio book,to stop listening to a podcast.
Not this one.Don't stop listening to this one.
And sit there in silenceand figure yourself out
(36:45):
and plot a course for your lifewhere you achieve what matters.
And then damn everybody else, forget them,forget them, Run your own race in life.
That's the most difficult thing of all.
But most people don't do itbecause they're so reactive that they're
that their day to day
and their future is all based onwhat they see on their phone that morning.
(37:09):
Yeah, I agree with you.
And I think part of it is also, though,that, you know, let's let's say there is
a guy who's £200 overweight and is brokeand he's talking about cold plunges.
You're probably not going to bethat inspired to do a cold plunge.
You from that one guy that you see, a guywho's ripped
and running a very successful businessand he says, hey, look,
the key to my success has beenI do cold plunges every morning.
(37:32):
And I think that some of these peoplemay genuinely mean it,
but I think others don't really.
And, you know, there's an aspectof somebody looking at that desiring
whateverthe outcome that person has achieved
and falsely equating
the outcomethe person is achieved to whatever.
And that person is saying the habitis that they're endorsing.
(37:55):
So, you know, some people say, hey,don't don't buy avocado toast,
or if you want to be a millionaire,don't buy avocado toast.
If you want to own a house, don't do that.
Oh, no. Oh, all this crazy stuff. So.
So how does one cut through and findwhat's true for them?
Do you have any thoughts on that?Absolutely.
You got to know yourself.
So, you know,we have a three step process in the book.
(38:16):
We talk about knowing your big why,What are you doing all this for?
And it should be a very statementlike for me and my coauthor.
Well, about it, family, like everythingwe're doing is is to support our family.
Family first.
And so that's the filter.
That's part of the filterthat we run every decision through that.
You know, I'm not going toI don't do any podcasts before 8 a.m.
(38:38):
because
that's the time that I spend with my kids.
And, you know, I can workI work from 4 a.m.
till 6 a.m..
The kids get up and then from 6 a.m.
to 8 a.m.,I spend with my kids and my wife.
And then from 8 a.m.
to 11 a.m.
I work but I don't do anything in betweenfrom 6 a.m.
until 8 a.m.
I never schedule anything in therebecause that's the time for them.
(38:58):
So I can make every decisionthrough that filter.
And the second thing,after you figure out your big
why is to create a vision for your life,where do you want to get to in your life?
And you've gonethrough my process for this.
And if somebody buys the book, there's ayou know,
you can download a video for freeabout how to go and create the vision
for your life, because it's so importantto me, because it is work for me.
It's work for so many of my clients
(39:19):
to figure out their lives,to make their lives better.
And when you have that,
when you know exactly where you want to bein the next three years,
where you want to be living,what you want to be achieving,
what you want your family to look like,what you want, your family's days
and weeks to look like what you want,
family vacations to look like, what you doand what you don't do.
Again, it's very easy to filterevery opportunity through that.
(39:39):
So when somebody comes to you and says,Hey, let's go to this seminar in Vegas
or this convention in Vegas, you know,those guys are going to be there.
We're going to have a great time.
And but your path is your NorthStar is like, hey, I want to be happily
married with three kids.I want to be living on the street.
I'm on my income to be this.
And somebody says, Let's go to Vegas.You go immediately.
That's a dangerous detour.
I'm not,you know, I run through the filter.
The answer is no.
(40:00):
And, you know,there's not any decision fatigue from it.
And then finally, the third thingthat we ask people to figure out is
what's your specific definition of successfor the short term
for the next 90 days orfor a specific goal that you're going for?
When somebody comes to meand says they want to be more disciplined,
that's a general term.
I can give you a million things that wouldmake you technically more disciplined,
(40:21):
but it wouldn't solve your real problem.
So when you say you,
you want to be more disciplined,what specifically do mean by that?
Does that mean that you want to bein control of your phone
and not use your phonewhen you're around your kids?
Does that mean that you want to stopdrinking during the week?
What does it mean for youto be more disciplined?
And when you get that specificity
around all three of those things,your big why, your vision for your future
(40:45):
and your specific definition of shortterm success.
Only then can we start to move forwardwith choosing
which activities will get there.
And if one of them is a coal plunge, it'slike if coal plunge fits into your plan,
fits into your schedule, movesyou ahead and it serves you, then do it.
But if you are serving the cold plungeand sacrificing what matters
(41:07):
so that you just make sureyou never miss a cold plunge
and you're always on the coldplunge streak,
then that's not a good idea for youand you have to step back from it.
Yeah I agree with that.
I mean, so let me give you a hypothetical.
How how would you handle this?
Is this the dark side of disciplineor is this the right side of discipline?
So you wake up at around 4 a.m., right.
(41:27):
Or a little bit before I think likesomewhere like three something, right?
Yeah. I don't use an alarm anymore.
So now it's all kind of random.
You know, we've got a seven month oldsometimes it gets us up early or.
And sometimes I just randomly wake upand I just get out
of bed, usually before four,but sometimes I'll sleep past it.
I just don't use the alarm anymore.Yeah. So.
So let's say,you know, you're trying to wake up at
(41:49):
or let's just saysomebody is trying to wake up at 4 a.m..
Yeah, sure.
And alarm goes offand they just they feel really, you know,
and that that's normal in the beginning,but eventually your body gets used to it.
But then sometimes, you know,you'll have a night
where you don't get to sleepuntil midnight or 1 a.m.
maybe traveling.
Maybe you just have a late night at work.
Maybe you just went outand it got a little bit late, you know.
(42:11):
Do you insist or encouragepeople to get up?
Is that the dark side of discipline?
You know that that would be in that casebecause you know how
well you're going to operateon three or 4 hours of sleep.
Now, listen,if you have if you have to be some
if you have to be the airport,
you know, for 530, then yeah, you're goingto have to get up at 4:00 in the morning
even if you go to bed at midnight.
(42:32):
But in most cases,you need to think in advance
about
the two or three most common obstaclesto this.
So, for example, if if you're like, Hey,I want to get up at 4:00 in the morning,
currently I'm getting at 5:00,I want to get up at 4:00 in the morning.
You know,I have two kids under the age of two.
Well, you need to be realistic.
And so what happensif one of them gets up from 11 until 2:00
(42:55):
and you have to rock him back to bed?
Are you going to force yourself to get upat 4:00 in the morning and go to the gym?
Or are you going to say, hey, listen,this is just a stupid idea for my health
and, you know, for everybody on the roadfor me to get up at that time
and drive to the gym, it's a bad idea.
You should change your alarm
when you go back to bedafter getting your child about,
you know, one or two in the morning,
(43:15):
you should change your alarmand sleep another hour
because that's the best thing for youin the long run.
You know, no one's going to you know,
you're not going to self-destructif you sleep a little bit longer one day.
But if you're going to bed on time,
you got to get up at thetime that you promised yourself to get up.
So, yeah, there's a little bit of nuanceto everything, but understand
(43:38):
that there can be certainexceptions for it,
you know?
And one of the things that I'm not sureif I left this in the book,
I had to cut a lot of stuff out becauseI wanted to keep the book to 25,000 words.
And when I lived in Toronto in the
you know, in the wintertime, Toronto'spretty harsh winter.
And every winter there would be, you know,one or two ice storms where it wasn't
(44:00):
snow, wasn't rain.
And, you know, the streetsare pretty dangerous the next day.
But you'd see all these runners out and,you know, the sensible one stayed home.
But there's runners.
There's actually a thing in runningwhere it's, like
if you run every day,like you have a 10,000 day running streak
and you're like people,you know, they're getting pats on the back
from Internet strangers.
(44:20):
And every every timethere was an ice storm,
see these runners outand I'd see them wipe out
and they'd probably lose the next3 to 6 months
because they sprained an ankle,they tore ligament, whatever,
because they were so myopicabout keeping the streak going.
And now anybody who has half a brainwould look back with outside eyes.
They're not emotionally attachedto the streak.
(44:41):
They would look at thatand go, That's just stupidity.
I'm sorry, but you're acting stupidand it is a stupid action.
But when you are caught up in the momentand you've you know, you've got so gung
ho on this ideathat I have to do everything every day
as I once did,I had a workout streak of a thousand days.
It was stupidand I worked out in some weird places
(45:03):
and I sacrificed certain social eventsjust so I could do my workout.
So I had to exercise every day.
But it was stupid.
It was pointless.
It didn't actually move me ahead.
And so, you know,you can use the classic and,
you know, is it going to matterin five weeks, five months, five years?
If not, then don't worry about it.
You know, that's one filterthat's helpful,
(45:23):
because in most casesit's probably gives you the right answer.
Yeah, I really like that.
And I like the fact that, you know what?
There's no new bookyou're really taking on.
So a surprisingly nuanced area
which is in the Hustle and Grind culture,I think
the part that really is overlooked
is that self-care ofof longevity of performance
(45:47):
rather than the performance of the one dayor the one month or even the one year.
A lot of the long termgets sacrificed in that.
And it's only looking back on it
that you realize much you've lost.
And it seems like, you know,there's there's a part of your own
reflection of your own life in this book,is that right?
(46:07):
Absolutely.
You can't write the bookuntil you've lived it.
And I live disciplined on both sidesbecause, again, discipline
was my savior for a whileand then discipline became my master.
And and I swung the pendulum, too.
And I went, oh, man,you know, that got in the way of me.
And then, you know, it was only a likeI stopped swinging the pendulum too far.
(46:28):
It was a couple of years later,you know, after the pandemic started,
this is where these thingsbecame really popular.
And it was probably because,you know, people are sitting around
with social mediaa little bit more time on their hands.
You know,they couldn't go and do certain things.
So online communitiesbecame a little bit stronger.
And it just it got them so myopic.
You know, it's like a nearsightednessand so like blinders on
(46:50):
that distorted their reality.
And they lost sight
of what mattered to focus onwhat doesn't matter in the long run.
And you know that that'swhat made me want to write the book.
I love it.
I mean, so, Craig,if people want to learn more about you
or your book,how can they find you or your latest book?
(47:11):
Yeah, absolutely.
So Amazon is the best place to do it
because we want to get our Amazonsales up as high as possible.
So if you go to dark side of discipline
dot com,that will redirect you to the Amazon
but also give you some extra bonusesand goodies.
And then anybody can message meon LinkedIn or on Instagram.
And the Instagram handle is at real.
Craig Ballantine
(47:32):
Awesome.
Craig,thank you so much for joining me today
and sharing some of your lot of wisdom,some of the a lot of wisdom that you have.
Very much appreciate it.Thank you, my man.
And to all the listeners,thank you all for joining and listening.
Hope you all have gotten as much out ofthis as I have, or maybe even more.
(47:53):
And if you found this helpful,
make sure you like and subscribeso you know when the next is coming out.
Thank you for joining me today.
On From Crisis to Justice.
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Welcome back, everybody. To.
From Crisis to Justice.
The showwhere we help entrepreneurs turn crisis
(00:44):
and chaos into clarity and protect.
Help business owners protect theirlegacies and protect themselves legally.
Mentally and financially.
Today's guest is a powerhouseand a friend.
Craig Ballantine, he is the bestsellingauthor of The Perfect Day
Formula and coach to some of the world's
(01:04):
top 7 to 9 figure founders.
He's coach people like Bedros,Julianne and Jason Capital and founders
such as Russell Brunsonhave also successfully used Craig Systems
to multiply the revenuein their businesses.
Craig is known as the world'smost disciplined man,
but his successdidn't come without setbacks.
(01:27):
In fact, he's faced anxiety, burnout
and business stressthat most people never talk about.
So I want to dive in and talkmore about that.
Craig,thank you so much for joining me today.
Man, this could be a lot of fun.
Yeah, absolutely.
Always a good time hanging with you.
So tell us a little bit about
(01:50):
how you got into businesscoaching in the first place.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So I'm a farm boy from Canadaand I ended up building an online
fitness business of all things.
So I sold my first product onlinein January 28, 2001.
I sold the word document through PayPal,and that set me off on the course
of building this turbulence trainingfitness program for the next 15 years.
(02:13):
Along the way, people started saying, Wow,you get so much done.
You are very productive.
Therefore you must be the world'smost disciplined man.
That'swhere that whole little shtick came from.
And and, you know,I don't claim to be like David
Goggins, you know, running ultramarathonsevery single day or anything like that.
But I use systemsto go from being kind of lazy
and unmotivated, as many peoplenaturally are, to becoming very productive
(02:37):
because I wanted to achieve more
and I built systemsystems are the keystone of discipline.
And then from there,because people started asking me
how I got this all doneand how I grew my businesses.
I had my first business event,business coaching event in 2007 of,
you know, way back then.
And it was mostly in the fitness world.
And then over the years,every single year,
(03:00):
you know, it'd be like a supplement guy,then a construction company owner,
and then, you know, a lawyerlike Farag would come into my world and,
you know,we had all types of entrepreneurs
and we've worked with peoplein the strangest industries.
And today we coach, you know,
I would say low sevenfigure to timid eight figure entrepreneurs
and business ownersto get more systems in their business
(03:21):
and in their personal lives so they becomemore organized and increase the profits.
Yeah, I love that.
And so what what do you think
holds most of these entrepreneurs back?
You know, for example,if it's low seven figures,
what's holding them back from mid to highseven figures or even eight figures?
I mean, what's, what's the constantyou've seen and or does it differ
(03:43):
between seven figures and eight figures,meaning the blocks that people have that
seven figures changewhen they get to eight figures.
Yeah.
I mean, you know,the nuance is a little bit different,
but ultimatelyit's the inability to say no.
And this is from the personwho just started their side hustle
yesterday to the person who's doing eightfigures, nine figures, even billionaires.
(04:05):
You know, the thing is, is as you get moresuccessful,
you get asked to do more things,whether it's donate to charities,
whether it's be involved in charityevents, whether it is mentor people
or is it, you know, to go on podcast,be on YouTube, you know, go on TV.
Just think of how many times peopleyou know, the people that I'm saying
this to, the people listening today
(04:26):
as an entrepreneur,how many times do you get
asked to do something to try outa new program?
People are pitching you all the time.
You're seeing stuff and you're thinking,Oh, maybe I should try that.
You've got booksthat everybody's recommending,
you know, even mine,and you have all of these choices
and the people that struggleto go to the next level
(04:46):
get spinning their wheelsbecause they say yes to too many things.
And oftentimes and that's whyI wrote The Dark Side of Discipline
is that we're not saying yes to bingedrinking and we're not saying yes to a bag
of potato chips in 19 episodes of Netflixevery night or video game marathons.
What we're saying yes to are good things,but the good is getting
in the way of the great.
And the good things can be anything from,you know,
(05:08):
joining a fitness challenge,doing 100 pushups in 100 days.
That's another that's a push up or afitness challenge always gets me fired up.
And because I think it's so useless or itis, you know, starting and on,
everybody's doing an online challengenow for their business or writing a book
or starting a podcastor doing a YouTube channel.
All of these things that are good, right?
Like exercising is good.
(05:29):
Starting a YouTube channel that's good.
But if it gets in the way of great,which is, you know, ultimately
growing your business,working on the constraints and bottlenecks
in your business,
having the difficult discussionswith your business partner
or improving your marriageor fixing your health.
If it's really out of control,if you're doing good,
that gets in the way of the greatand the good becomes destructive.
(05:50):
At the very least,it's a perverse form of procrastination.
And so that's what I seebecause, you know, you and I
and everybody listening,we're ambitious, we're high energy.
We want to have it all, do itall, be it all, travel everywhere.
But eventually, you have to say no,because if you want to do great things,
you have to do fewer things.
(06:10):
Yeah,
and that's one of the things I loveabout your philosophy.
You and I have been each other's clients
and, you know,I was a coaching client with you
and you've been in my officewith quite a few important things.
I appreciate that.
And it was my privilege and pleasure.
So, you know, one of the thingsthat I think is difficult,
(06:31):
meaning it's it's easy to think aboutin kind of a vacuum, but it's very hard
to do on a day to day basis when you'retrying to grow and scale a business
is these various opportunities come about.
And so part of you,or at least maybe a part of me,
always wants to kind of sayno to almost everything.
But then there's the other part of methat says,
(06:52):
Hey, look,you know, if you say to know this,
then it may leave doors closedthat you don't even know about.
So it's much easier to say no to somethingif you've already been there
and done that.
But it gets much harderas you continue to scale up
and these opportunitiescome your way to be able to say
no, because you really don't knowwhat's behind that door.
(07:14):
And there's there'san innate level of curiosity
about opening that doorto find out what other doors it leads to.
So what would you tell entrepreneursin terms of how to say yes to things
and how to say no to things?
Meaning, how do you decide what to sayyes to and how to say no to
if you haven't been thereand you haven't done that right?
It's a good question. Like what?
(07:34):
What role does serendipity play in this?
I'm going to be pretty hardcore on this.
I'm going to say that a lot of theyou know, you never know
what's going to happen. You never knowwhat's going to come out of this meeting.
It's a lottery ticket.
You know, it's a lottery ticketnetworking.
It's a lottery ticket marketing. You all,you know, I should go and try this thing.
You never know what will happen.
I need to go to this event.You never know who I will meet.
You can't play.You can't live your life like that.
(07:55):
You're literally not literally you'refiguratively scratching a lottery ticket,
hopingthat you're going to go to this thing
and you're going to bump into somebodywho's going to make you an easy
million dollars. That's not how it works.
And in most cases, you know, in advance,
because you have experiencedsimilar event events
or coffee meetings or whatever,you know how it's going to end up.
(08:19):
But we like to believebecause actually going and doing
that thing is easier than us workingon the hard problem in our business.
And so I want people to put asidethe lottery ticket approach
to networking or marketingand stick to their circle of confidence.
And so that's a phrase from WarrenBuffett.
And Warren Buffett,
(08:40):
you know, great.
One of the greatest investors,maybe the greatest investor ever.
And what he did was he said thathe stuck to his circle of competence.
So if anybody knows anythingabout Warren Buffett, he was famous
for being ridiculed in the late ninetiesbecause he didn't buy any tech stocks,
But that was outside Warren'scircle of competence.
Now, he may have chosen the right ones,but a lot of people got burned
(09:01):
by the tech stocks in 2000 2001when the market turned and Warren
just didn't want to make mistakes.
Him and his partner,Charlie Munger, were famous for
just trying to avoid being stupid.
That's that was their entire investmentphilosophy was just wait patiently,
sit on your hands until somethingso obvious comes your way
that it's going to be a Grand Slam,like investing in Coke
(09:23):
in the eighties, like,you know, Warren did.
And so we knowbecause we have experience in life,
we know whether or not we can judge fairly
objectivelywhether or not going to X-Y-Z event
or having a meeting with ABCperson is going to be worth it or not.
And we have to harshlyjudge those situations.
(09:47):
And one out of a thousand times
you might be wrong,but 999 times you're going to be right.
And when you goand do one of those things,
it steals your time, energyand focus from either something
that you should be working onin the business
or from something that you should beworking on in your personal life.
Because almost every single personthat's listening to this
(10:08):
would love to have more time.
And if you ruthlesslylook at how you're spending
your time right now,you can have more time.
It's just thatwe're giving it away to too many things.
Yeah, that's right.
And you know, it's interesting you talkabout Warren Buffett, on the one hand,
a billionaireand talking about a few other
billionaires is the lateSteve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.
(10:32):
So it's interestingbecause you may have heard this, that
those guys talk about the importance of of
wandering to a certain extentand the importance of space and time.
So do you think that well,the importance of space and time
for the purposes of finding your pathor finding your way
and becoming successful,which to some extent
(10:52):
may opposethe ideas of what other billionaires say?
And so, yeah, so listen,Steve Jobs is also famous for a quote
that says, you know, I'm as proud of whatwe didn't do as what we did do.
So, you know, you can probably,
you know, much like in I'mfrom the nutrition and fitness industry
like you can find a study that says cowsmilk is the worst thing in the world.
(11:13):
And you can find a study that says cows
milk is the best thing in the worldthat fits your bias. Right?
And so we can find these quotesfrom the billionaires to
and you know, I'm guilty of this, too.
I go find a story that supports my,you know,
my bias here, and we can quote those guys.
So it's fair, you know,
that, you know, Steve Jobs went to India,you know, did all the masses and whatever
(11:34):
and came backand all sudden invented the iPhone.
You know,that's kind of how the narrative goes.
But he was also ridiculously focusedin that after they did the iPod,
you know, he probably knew we were goingto the iPhone, but he didn't rush to it.
And he knew he would do the iWatch,but he did the iWatch in 2008.
I don't know when he did it,but eventually he did it
and he didn't do an iCar, even though I'msure plenty of people would
(11:55):
say, Hey, I was doing iCarand all that sort of stuff.
You have towithin your circle of confidence,
judge on this.
Otherwise,if you take every coffee request
and you go to every event, there'sno time for you to exercise.
There's no time for youto spend time with your family.
And so we have to draw the line in thereand have these boundaries.
(12:17):
And again, will you miss somethingby not going to India and doing acid?
I suppose maybe your business will getbetter if you followed Steve Jobs path.
I don't know, and wanderedaround the world that way, but
I don't think that Steve Jobs wouldn'thave been successful if he didn't do that.
Remember what really
you know,there was some timing right in this.
(12:39):
Like Steve Jobs becamepassionately interested in the computer
in the earliest days of computing.
And, you know, if the computer had,you know, it, Steve Jobs was born
30 years earlier or 30 years later,what would become of Steve Jobs like?
There was some timing in it.
Same with me.
I was born and went to collegethe year that people started
(13:00):
getting email addresses.
And I was introverted by natureand I liked writing.
And when I found that I could make money
sitting behind a computerand not interacting with human beings,
I won the lottery.
Now, if I was born 30 years earlier,I would have had to have figured out
how to place ads in a newspaperat the back of a classified
ad and make money that wayif I wanted to do a similar business.
(13:22):
So, you know, there's so many factorsthat go in here
and most important forfor our listeners is
eventually you draw the lineand you have to make a decision
like just like when you're
you have to good candidates,you have to choose one person for the job.
You have two good opportunitiesto choose a CRM.
You got to choose one of them
(13:43):
and hopefully you make the right decisionon all the things.
And it goes for the same with theopportunities and the serendipity in life.
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
I think, you know, that that kind ofis the unfair thing
about following the adviceof some of these billionaires is because
Steve Jobs was probably going to beSteve Jobs regardless.
(14:05):
You know,I was talking to a friend about this.
Like the whole idea of itprobably didn't matter who Muhammad Ali's
trainer was because MuhammadAli was still going to be Muhammad Ali.
And he's probably going to be greatregardless because of the sheer
amount of raw talent that he had.
And so somebody could polish ita little bit.
But ultimately, it's not like the trainermade Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali made Muhammad Ali.
(14:26):
Well, then you can argue with MikeTyson and say,
look what happened towhen the trainer passed away
and was gone from Mike's life and maybeMuhammad Ali would have been fine.
But Mike Tyson
went on a down curve because, you know,he didn't have the father figure.
And I forget what the guy's namewas, Gus D'Amato or whatever.
Cus D'Amato. Yes. Yeah.
You know, And it was like,but I think he passed away.
(14:47):
And then,you know, Mike went from being basically
the the Tiger Woods of boxingand he had his self-destructing moment.
And so, yeah, it's like, you know, we canjust argue these things all the time.
And but some people certainlyare meant for greatness.
And who knows what would happenif things turned out slightly different.
Yeah.
And, you know,
(15:07):
so the point of that, though, is reallyjust I think that there's there's there's
that fire of each personthat they're looking for a certain thing.
And so
when they're
looking for those, those dots line upand they find it.
And the big lesson I takefrom my anxiety attacks
that I had so years ago, you know,before I started business coaching,
(15:28):
I had anxiety text,sent me to the emergency room twice.
And when I had them, you know,they were bad.
I was like, I'll do anythingto get rid of these things.
I wasthey were almost literally crippling,
you know,I couldn't really concentrate on anything.
It went on for six weeks straight,24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I felt like I had a heart attack.
And I what got me through it was
(15:50):
I committed to turning over every rock,which meant I went to do
the qigong, tai chi,yoga, breathwork meditation.
I didn't like any of those things,but I knew that I had to try those things
because in somewhere inthere was the solution.
But the key words are turned over everyrock.
And if somebody is
(16:12):
ambitious, high energy wants more.
You know, it'snot the person that you're going to meet.
You likeyou would eventually meet a person,
the person that you meet that you think,Oh man, if I didn't meet this person,
who knows?
Well,you just would have met another person.
You know, he would another mad person,because the core values, the intrinsic
characteristics of you, you would have metsomebody who showed you the way.
(16:35):
And, you know, I often hear this from likefrom my clients, like, man,
you know, I met youand you show me the path.
I'm like,
I'm not the only personwho could have showed you the path.
I mean, I appreciate it.And it makes me feel good.
But the truth is, is thatif you didn't find me, you would have.
Eventually,you may have found somebody who sucked.
That's fair.
And you may have found somebody who wasokay, but eventually you would have found
(16:58):
somebody who was as good as me.
Or better to show you the path
because you were the type of personwho doesn't give up.
So it's not me.
You, you know, the success is you.
And, you know, I just showed you a path.
You you were just wandering aroundkind of aimless in the dark,
but the path existed and I was the personto guide you towards it.
So I think that you're rightthat the intrinsic characteristics,
(17:22):
you know, there's there's natural talent,and then there is, you know, passion and,
you know,
preparationand those mental characteristics.
Everybody's eventually
probably going to get somewheredarn close, regardless of who they meet.
Yeah.
And you know, what I'd like to do is talka little bit about
the anxiety attacks going back,because I think, you know, a lot of people
(17:45):
see the successful Craig Ballantine today,you know, multimillionaire,
multiple seven figure business is businesscoach to already
relatively successfulor no not even relatively
successful entrepreneurs
and so there's the current Craig
and so if we were writing that backlet's talk a little bit about old Craig,
(18:08):
the Craig that had maybe
an alcohol problem or an addiction
who was
not as confident, not the guy who talks onstage is not the guy
who's the coach of coaches and helpsbusiness owners scale.
Like, Let's talk
a little bit about that momentand then how how did you get out of that?
(18:30):
I mean, that's a deep, dark place.
And especially because I think
from the outside looking in,it seemed like you had good stats, right?
You were healthy,you were working out, had a six pack.
Yeah.
And so socan you tell us a little bit about that,
how you got out of itand how you figured it out
and what you might do differently todayif you had to do it over again.
Yeah, for sure.I mean, you know, it's true.
(18:51):
The irony was I was making more moneythan I ever had before.
I was young.
I was in the best shape of my life,like cover model men's health magazine
type of shape.
Everything was going my way.
And the only problemwas not the only problem.
There was two big problems.
I think, is that one, I was a hypocriticalbinge drinker on Saturdays
(19:13):
and I was a good boy from,you know, Sunday through through
Friday as a personal trainertelling people what to do.
But that hypocrisy in my lifedefinitely led to some stress.
And then the exhaustion.
You know, when I had my first anxietyattack, it was around the holidays.
I was, you know,training people in the morning.
I was drinking some nights,you know, staying out late.
(19:34):
And, you know, I was just exhausted,you know, on New Year's Eve.
And I still went out and drank more.
And then the next morning I woke up andthat entire day I had the anxiety attack.
The other thing that I was messing upwas that my introverted tendencies
caused me and supported mekeeping everything inside.
So, you know, any problemsI had, you know, I didn't do journaling.
(19:56):
I didn't do all those breathing therapies.
Qui-Gon Yoga, meditation, Taichiall that sort of stuff.
I was I wasn't highly caffeinated, but,you know,
if I was, that would have beena contributing factor to it.
And I was just living out of alignment.
And that, you know,you use the little metaphor of,
you know, when you if you ever tryand cram a whole bunch of stuff
(20:18):
into somethingthat has any elasticity to it, you know,
you cram, you cram, you cram in harder,you cram down, the greater the reaction.
Right?
You know, it's moreit's going to explode up in your face.
And that's what I was doing with thoughtsand feelings and problems was
I was cramming them, cramming them downand eventually exploded into an anxiety.
Now, I you know,I quit drinking for a short time after
(20:41):
and then after a few weeks,when I started feeling better,
it came back in because I wasn't committedto getting rid of it from my life.
And then sure enough, I did.
It had another exhausting spelland had another anxiety attack.
And then that's the onethat lasted for six weeks.
And through that I was smart enoughto ask for help.
I was smart enough to realize like, okay,you know, all these people
(21:01):
who do yoga and meditation,they're pretty.
CHO And that's supposed to help.
So I asked people who did those typesof things, and I got instructors.
And again, I did not like any of it,but I was committed to it.
I was like, I'mnot I'm not taking a pill for this.
I'm not doing any drugsto get rid of anxiety.
That's just going to bea Band-Aid solution.
So I made sure that everything was,
(21:23):
you know, a natural approach.
And after a few weeks and another anxietyattack, I was able to get rid of it.
I also went tothe doctor, went to the emergency room.
They gave me a heart rate monitor.
And when they told me
that there was nothing physicallywrong with me, my brain kind of switched.
And that was a huge change moment for me.
And I actually read a bookat the same time called Panic Away.
(21:46):
I found an e-book on the Internetin and it was 2006.
And the I read through to the first
five words of chapter two,and then I was I was cured.
And the first five words of chaptertwo said, There's nothing wrong with you.
And that was it. It's like, Oh, yeah,there's nothing wrong with me.
And and then I said to myself,I'm too busy for this anyways.
(22:06):
And I got, you know, fortunatelyI was able to, you know, it came back
a little bit, but I had all these toolsin my toolbox to get rid of it again.
And now today, you know,nothing could give me anxiety.
So I saved all of this.
And I do look back and I laugh at anxiety.
I think that anxiety is self-inflicted.
I don't think I don'tI don't talk about depression.
(22:28):
I don't think that depressionis a laughing matter.
But I think if you have anxiety once,you know,
I feel bad for you,
if you have anxiety twice, shame on youlike you're just living in the wrong way
and you need to go outand get the tools and toolset
because it is nothing more than worryingabout things that haven't happened.
And so, you know, you just can't wasteyour time and energy on that
(22:48):
and you can't definitely waste your life,you know, going from anxiety
issue to anxiety issue.
Like you need to go and work on this,but it's like losing £30.
Anybody can lose £30. It'sgoing to suck. It's going to be hard.
But you can get rid of £30just like you can get rid of anxiety.
So I don't have any respect for it nowtoday because I built the tools to do it.
(23:10):
So it was a painful momentand there were definitely some,
you know, closeto lowest moments in my life.
But everything is a learnable skill,including overcoming anxiety.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's one of the thingsone of the many things
that I admire a lot about use your abilityto continue learning
(23:31):
through the process and almost be willingto start at zero again
and look at things
objectively of where you are to be able to
to restock and get rid of bad habits.
Is that how did you develop that skill?
So I started, you know,so what I have is these effortless
(23:52):
discipline systems and, you know,they're what help me be productive,
but they're also it helped meget rid of bad habits.
And it's very simple.
And you can get rid of any bad habit,whether you're addicted to your phone,
whether you're addicted to pornography,whether you drink too much.
I wouldn't say if you're addicted toalcohol or if you have a drug addiction.
Those are likebeyond the scope of the book.
But if you just have bad habitsyou want to kick, It just requires
(24:15):
elimination, preparation and connection.
That's it. It's three thingsand it works for everything.
And so the elimination is pretty obvious.
Like, you know, when I was a binge drinkerand I wanted to get rid of alcohol
in my life,you know, first of all, get rid
get it out of the house, you know,So it's not no, it's harder to get to
eliminate myselffrom going to toxic environments.
(24:35):
So a lot of my drinkinginvolves sporting events.
So I stopped going to sporting events.
Now I can go to sporting events today.
But back then I had to go to the extrememeasure of not going to sporting events
and putting myself in environmentwhere alcohol was freely available.
And then I had to eliminatethe toxic people in my life
whose only purpose in my lifewas to drag me down to drink it.
(24:56):
However, there were some good people
that I associated drinking with andI didn't want to remove them from my life.
And I'm not one of a fanof these social media posts that says,
you know, shut out everybody for your lifefor the next six months and go dark.
I think that's absolutely stupid.
Humans are meant to be very social andthere's so much benefit to other people.
And so what I did was I was like, youknow, I got my best friend of 30 years.
(25:20):
He drinks a lot,but I really want to hang around him.
I'm not going to cut them out of my life.
But we had mutual interest in nondrinking activities,
so we would plan and prepare to meet onSaturday morning, go for a big hike,
and then in the afternoonhe would go to the sporting event
or the bachelor party and I would say,No, I can't go to that.
It's not going to be a good fit for meat this stage in my life.
(25:40):
I'll get back to those later onwhen I've conquered the drinking thing.
And so that's the elimination part.
If you have any bad habit, you know,if you're addicted to your phone,
you need to put as much frictionas possible in place of you
using your phone in the wrong environment,such as around your kids.
And we teach people to downloadsomething called the Opal app.
Opal.
(26:01):
It has 4 million downloads,a 4.8 star review on the App Store,
and you can set your phone upusing the Opal app to block you
from accessing social media,accessing your text, accessing your phone,
accessing your email,whatever it is that is your downfall
within certain time ranges.
So if you want to be presentwith your family from 5 p.m.
(26:21):
to 9 p.m.,you use the Opal app on your phone
and even if you pick it up and you try andlike do something, you can't do anything
so you won't even bother picking it upafter a while.
And that's the type of building a fencearound yourself is what you want to do.
Just so you know, I grew up on a farm.
We built fences
not only to keep the cattle in,but to keep the other animals out.
(26:41):
And that's what you want to do, is
you want to keep the distractionsfrom coming into your life.
Now, on the flip side, we have that betterplanning and preparation.
Like I said, I had friendsthat I didn't want to cut out,
but I wanted to spend time with them.
So it took more planning and preparation
to spend time with themin a positive environment.
Likewise,if somebody wants to take up exercise
and they've always struggledto do so, it's
(27:02):
because there's too much frictionin the way of you doing the habit.
So what you need to do isset your exercise clothes beside the bed,
have your shoes rightthere, have your workout printed out,
or have a workout videoyou're going to watch, or even better,
that you're going to go to a local workoutplace where there's a community aspect.
You know, it's a class of likeminded people who are going to lift you up
(27:22):
because that's a third phase,which is connection.
And also known as accountability.
You need to be connected with peoplewho are achieving the same goals as you,
who are positive, who are going to supportyou, who are not going to drag you down
and who are going to hold you accountableto following through.
And when you have that, whether you haveaccountability to one person
that you deeply do not want to disappoint,which has been a life changer for me,
(27:45):
or whether you have accountabilityto a community, a group of people
where you stand up and say, I'mgoing to achieve this in the next 30 days
and I want you to hold meaccountable to it.
If you're a person of integrity,you're going to fall through
because you don't want to be a hypocrite.
That's like a really low feeling.
So your brain, your brain will support youin the habit change.
You need to follow through on
(28:06):
getting rid of the bad behavioror adding the good behavior to your life.
And it's just elimination, preparationand connection for any bad habit
that you want to get rid of in any goodhabit you want to add to your life.
That's great.
And so, you know, with your new book,The Dark Side of Discipline,
you kind of take that concept.
But it seems like
(28:27):
maybe,maybe the idea of discipline can also has
as the name and title of the bookimplies, a dark side to it and it can get
too restrictive.
So can you talk a little bit about thatand how one decides, meaning,
is a good disciplineor is it bad discipline? Yeah.
So the whole reason I wrotethe book is because
in this day and age,what people do is every day they wake up
(28:50):
and they open up their their social mediaand especially if they use Instagram,
they go to the explore pageand it shows what's trending and viral
and they see somebody doing a cold plungeand somebody doing an ultramarathon
and somebody reading a book a weekand somebody, you know, over here doing,
you know,
some other workout challengethat you do twice a day
and then other guys do100 push ups in 100 days.
(29:12):
And if you're a reactive person,you're like, I got to go do this.
It's just like in our human
nature to be lemmingsand do things and follow the crowd.
But the problem is individually,
none of those things is a bad thing,right?
Like doing pushups.
It's a good thing.
Exercise and good thingreading a book a week, good thing.
But if reading a book a week stopsyou from writing the book
(29:34):
that you've wanted to writefor the last ten years,
then that good thing getting in the wayof the great thing becomes a bad thing.
And I've seen this go so farwhere I've had friends,
successful entrepreneurs, six packapps, married to a wonderful woman,
kids, awesome familylike ideal, perfect life, beautiful home.
(29:55):
And then they saw a disciplinechallenge on their phone
and they decided to spend two or 3 hoursa day,
four months in a row, devoting themselvesto this discipline challenge.
When they were already disciplined,
they were already successful,already productive.
Like what were they trying to prove?And I knew they were already busy.
They had a family
and they had a business that kept busyeight, nine, ten, 11 hours a day.
(30:18):
So where was this 3 hours coming from?
I notice your business is still growing,so you're not taking it from the business.
It meant they were taking itfrom their family.
And sure enough, after they finishedthe discipline challenge, not once
but twice, they did this to get internetclaps on the back.
Their wife walked out on themwith the kids and now they went from
(30:39):
being able to see their kids all the timeto once every two weeks broke my heart.
And that's the dark side of discipline.
Discipline can be your savior likeit did for me when I was a binge drinker.
It got me out of the depths.
It can be a lifeline for somebodythat's really in a bad place.
But then you get to a point where there'sa razor thin line where you cross over
(30:59):
and you go from having disciplineserve you to discipline being your master.
And it puts youin this prison of rigidity,
which it did to me for a long time.
I had these exercise streaksthat I couldn't violate.
I had to go to bed in a certain time,
which meant I couldn't go and docertain things and blah, blah, blah.
It's all ridiculous.
As I look back on it with my outside eyesand think what a tool I was.
(31:21):
But when you're in it, man,when you're in it
and you've lost the plot,you really get carried away by,
you know, people saying,Oh man, you're doing awesome.
You know,even though you've never met the person
and they're saying it on the Internetand you're excluding your family
at the expense,you know, it's expensive, your family
to get some positive reinforcementfrom somebody
you've never met and never will meet.
(31:41):
And and it all sounds so crazyuntil you're that person
and you're swept up in it.
And that's the dark side of disciplinewhere you just go too far,
where you take up the triathlonwhen your marriage is struggling
and you avoid the difficult discussionin your marriage because you want to go
and do a triathlon and you think, oh, I'mdoing hard things and being disciplined,
but your marriage is suffering.
(32:02):
And so, you know, what do you win?
You lose the game of life.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's really interestingin the the age of social media,
you see the highlight reelsand other people's lives.
But not just that.
You see the highlightreel of the top element
or the few elementsof a particular person's life.
(32:24):
Meaning, you know,let's say we see David Goggins and he's
jogging 100 miles in a day just nonstop.
And you know,
it seems very inspiring and very much
built for, for, for social media.
But, you know,you see that one element of his life,
but you don't see the rest of itin terms of how his family life is.
(32:47):
And I don't know. I'mnot saying anything negative.
That's family life.
But, you know, I think that it does comewith a trade off.
You know,there's a phrase that you probably heard
when you were growing up that I heard, youknow, it's keeping up with the Joneses.
And years ago,what that meant was before social media is
you were influencedby the people in your neighborhood. So,
(33:07):
you know, Johnny's family down the street,they got, you know, a new minivan.
Well, now, even if your parents couldn'tafford it, the pressure is on, right?
Because, you know, the stationwagon in your driveway is, you know,
as it was in mine,in a old beat up station wagon.
But everybody else had the minivan.
And now the kids are putting the pressureon the parents, you know,
keep up with the Joneses.
And what happened when people triedto keep up with the Joneses, they outspent
(33:31):
their income and ended up in a worsefinancial situation.
Today's version of keeping up withthe Joneses is we are starved for time,
but everybody else is out there and itlooks like everybody's doing these things
and we see everybody doing
these things like, I got to go and do thisand I have to spend more of my time,
of which I'm already broke on timebecause I'm already too busy.
(33:53):
Marty broke on time and I have to goand spend more time on these things.
And it becomes the keeping upwith the Joneses.
And it's gotten so ridiculous.
You know, it used to be that
if you did a marathon, people be like,Man, that's pretty awesome.
Now everybody's done a marathon,and if you haven't done an ultramarathon,
are you even running right?
And if you haven't done the Bad MudderBad Water Marathon, which is 100 mile
(34:16):
marathon in the desert,are you even an ultra marathoner?
Right.
And then there's the guy who's doneseven marathons in seven days
on seven continents.
There's a guy on Instagramwho's who's bio says that.
Right?
And so it's this giant pissing conteston Instagram of who's more extreme
and you can't keep up.
You cannot be the most disciplined,extreme person on Instagram.
(34:39):
But people are losing the plot trying andit's like, hey, sorry, son or daughter,
I don't have time for you right nowbecause I have to go in cold plunger.
And and I know this sounds like,well, you know, I'd never do that,
but I've been on probably 100 podcastsnow promoting the book
with Navy SEAL, Special Forcesguys, really successful business owners.
(35:00):
And they're like,
you know,
I'm embarrassed to say this, but years agoI was in one of these challenges
and my wife said, Hey,we're going to the beach with the kids.
And I said, I can't go.I got to do my second workout.
And then my wife looked at me with likethe divorce, divorce, death stare.
And I was like, okay, I'mgoing to the beach.
Because again, you're just so wrapped upin this myopic view of
(35:20):
you have to do these things that you losethe plot of what really matters in life.
And so, you know, I'mjust asking people to step back
and do the hardest thing of all, becauseagain, people are posting on the Internet
that they do hard things.
You know, I take a cold shower,I do hard things.
Okay, great, whatever.
You know, if you want to do somethinghard,
You know, I lived in Mexicothe last couple of years.
(35:42):
If you want, do somethinghard, do it. Got.
You know, I lived in this areawhere there was construction all day long,
and I guess it would be I'm doingthe Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion.
It'd be like 85 to 90 degree,
you know, equator sun on you all daylong, 90% humidity.
And these guys workedwearing jeans and sweatshirts.
I don't know whythey wore jeans and sweatshirts,
(36:03):
but they did all day long on buildinghouses.
There's no electricity on site,
so they had to haul the cementbricks up using a rope.
And they did that every single day.
Six days a week for 10 hours a day.
That's a hard thing.
Taking a 32nd coldshower is not a hard thing,
but everybody's posting like, Oh, yeah,just did my 32nd cold shower today.
(36:23):
So, you know, just to proveI can still do hard things.
It's not a hard thing, but the hardestthing of all is my little tangent there.
But the hardest thing of all for uspeople in the first world is to think,
to take out the AirPods,
to stop listening to an audio book,to stop listening to a podcast.
Not this one.Don't stop listening to this one.
And sit there in silenceand figure yourself out
(36:45):
and plot a course for your lifewhere you achieve what matters.
And then damn everybody else, forget them,forget them, Run your own race in life.
That's the most difficult thing of all.
But most people don't do itbecause they're so reactive that they're
that their day to day
and their future is all based onwhat they see on their phone that morning.
(37:09):
Yeah, I agree with you.
And I think part of it is also, though,that, you know, let's let's say there is
a guy who's £200 overweight and is brokeand he's talking about cold plunges.
You're probably not going to bethat inspired to do a cold plunge.
You from that one guy that you see, a guywho's ripped
and running a very successful businessand he says, hey, look,
the key to my success has beenI do cold plunges every morning.
(37:32):
And I think that some of these peoplemay genuinely mean it,
but I think others don't really.
And, you know, there's an aspectof somebody looking at that desiring
whateverthe outcome that person has achieved
and falsely equating
the outcomethe person is achieved to whatever.
And that person is saying the habitis that they're endorsing.
(37:55):
So, you know, some people say, hey,don't don't buy avocado toast,
or if you want to be a millionaire,don't buy avocado toast.
If you want to own a house, don't do that.
Oh, no. Oh, all this crazy stuff. So.
So how does one cut through and findwhat's true for them?
Do you have any thoughts on that?Absolutely.
You got to know yourself.
So, you know,we have a three step process in the book.
(38:16):
We talk about knowing your big why,What are you doing all this for?
And it should be a very statementlike for me and my coauthor.
Well, about it, family, like everythingwe're doing is is to support our family.
Family first.
And so that's the filter.
That's part of the filterthat we run every decision through that.
You know, I'm not going toI don't do any podcasts before 8 a.m.
(38:38):
because
that's the time that I spend with my kids.
And, you know, I can workI work from 4 a.m.
till 6 a.m..
The kids get up and then from 6 a.m.
to 8 a.m.,I spend with my kids and my wife.
And then from 8 a.m.
to 11 a.m.
I work but I don't do anything in betweenfrom 6 a.m.
until 8 a.m.
I never schedule anything in therebecause that's the time for them.
(38:58):
So I can make every decisionthrough that filter.
And the second thing,after you figure out your big
why is to create a vision for your life,where do you want to get to in your life?
And you've gonethrough my process for this.
And if somebody buys the book, there's ayou know,
you can download a video for freeabout how to go and create the vision
for your life, because it's so importantto me, because it is work for me.
It's work for so many of my clients
(39:19):
to figure out their lives,to make their lives better.
And when you have that,
when you know exactly where you want to bein the next three years,
where you want to be living,what you want to be achieving,
what you want your family to look like,what you want, your family's days
and weeks to look like what you want,
family vacations to look like, what you doand what you don't do.
Again, it's very easy to filterevery opportunity through that.
(39:39):
So when somebody comes to you and says,Hey, let's go to this seminar in Vegas
or this convention in Vegas, you know,those guys are going to be there.
We're going to have a great time.
And but your path is your NorthStar is like, hey, I want to be happily
married with three kids.I want to be living on the street.
I'm on my income to be this.
And somebody says, Let's go to Vegas.You go immediately.
That's a dangerous detour.
I'm not,you know, I run through the filter.
The answer is no.
(40:00):
And, you know,there's not any decision fatigue from it.
And then finally, the third thingthat we ask people to figure out is
what's your specific definition of successfor the short term
for the next 90 days orfor a specific goal that you're going for?
When somebody comes to meand says they want to be more disciplined,
that's a general term.
I can give you a million things that wouldmake you technically more disciplined,
(40:21):
but it wouldn't solve your real problem.
So when you say you,
you want to be more disciplined,what specifically do mean by that?
Does that mean that you want to bein control of your phone
and not use your phonewhen you're around your kids?
Does that mean that you want to stopdrinking during the week?
What does it mean for youto be more disciplined?
And when you get that specificity
around all three of those things,your big why, your vision for your future
(40:45):
and your specific definition of shortterm success.
Only then can we start to move forwardwith choosing
which activities will get there.
And if one of them is a coal plunge, it'slike if coal plunge fits into your plan,
fits into your schedule, movesyou ahead and it serves you, then do it.
But if you are serving the cold plungeand sacrificing what matters
(41:07):
so that you just make sureyou never miss a cold plunge
and you're always on the coldplunge streak,
then that's not a good idea for youand you have to step back from it.
Yeah I agree with that.
I mean, so let me give you a hypothetical.
How how would you handle this?
Is this the dark side of disciplineor is this the right side of discipline?
So you wake up at around 4 a.m., right.
(41:27):
Or a little bit before I think likesomewhere like three something, right?
Yeah. I don't use an alarm anymore.
So now it's all kind of random.
You know, we've got a seven month oldsometimes it gets us up early or.
And sometimes I just randomly wake upand I just get out
of bed, usually before four,but sometimes I'll sleep past it.
I just don't use the alarm anymore.Yeah. So.
So let's say,you know, you're trying to wake up at
(41:49):
or let's just saysomebody is trying to wake up at 4 a.m..
Yeah, sure.
And alarm goes offand they just they feel really, you know,
and that that's normal in the beginning,but eventually your body gets used to it.
But then sometimes, you know,you'll have a night
where you don't get to sleepuntil midnight or 1 a.m.
maybe traveling.
Maybe you just have a late night at work.
Maybe you just went outand it got a little bit late, you know.
(42:11):
Do you insist or encouragepeople to get up?
Is that the dark side of discipline?
You know that that would be in that casebecause you know how
well you're going to operateon three or 4 hours of sleep.
Now, listen,if you have if you have to be some
if you have to be the airport,
you know, for 530, then yeah, you're goingto have to get up at 4:00 in the morning
even if you go to bed at midnight.
(42:32):
But in most cases,you need to think in advance
about
the two or three most common obstaclesto this.
So, for example, if if you're like, Hey,I want to get up at 4:00 in the morning,
currently I'm getting at 5:00,I want to get up at 4:00 in the morning.
You know,I have two kids under the age of two.
Well, you need to be realistic.
And so what happensif one of them gets up from 11 until 2:00
(42:55):
and you have to rock him back to bed?
Are you going to force yourself to get upat 4:00 in the morning and go to the gym?
Or are you going to say, hey, listen,this is just a stupid idea for my health
and, you know, for everybody on the roadfor me to get up at that time
and drive to the gym, it's a bad idea.
You should change your alarm
when you go back to bedafter getting your child about,
you know, one or two in the morning,
(43:15):
you should change your alarmand sleep another hour
because that's the best thing for youin the long run.
You know, no one's going to you know,
you're not going to self-destructif you sleep a little bit longer one day.
But if you're going to bed on time,
you got to get up at thetime that you promised yourself to get up.
So, yeah, there's a little bit of nuanceto everything, but understand
(43:38):
that there can be certainexceptions for it,
you know?
And one of the things that I'm not sureif I left this in the book,
I had to cut a lot of stuff out becauseI wanted to keep the book to 25,000 words.
And when I lived in Toronto in the
you know, in the wintertime, Toronto'spretty harsh winter.
And every winter there would be, you know,one or two ice storms where it wasn't
(44:00):
snow, wasn't rain.
And, you know, the streetsare pretty dangerous the next day.
But you'd see all these runners out and,you know, the sensible one stayed home.
But there's runners.
There's actually a thing in runningwhere it's, like
if you run every day,like you have a 10,000 day running streak
and you're like people,you know, they're getting pats on the back
from Internet strangers.
(44:20):
And every every timethere was an ice storm,
see these runners outand I'd see them wipe out
and they'd probably lose the next3 to 6 months
because they sprained an ankle,they tore ligament, whatever,
because they were so myopicabout keeping the streak going.
And now anybody who has half a brainwould look back with outside eyes.
They're not emotionally attachedto the streak.
(44:41):
They would look at thatand go, That's just stupidity.
I'm sorry, but you're acting stupidand it is a stupid action.
But when you are caught up in the momentand you've you know, you've got so gung
ho on this ideathat I have to do everything every day
as I once did,I had a workout streak of a thousand days.
It was stupidand I worked out in some weird places
(45:03):
and I sacrificed certain social eventsjust so I could do my workout.
So I had to exercise every day.
But it was stupid.
It was pointless.
It didn't actually move me ahead.
And so, you know,you can use the classic and,
you know, is it going to matterin five weeks, five months, five years?
If not, then don't worry about it.
You know, that's one filterthat's helpful,
(45:23):
because in most casesit's probably gives you the right answer.
Yeah, I really like that.
And I like the fact that, you know what?
There's no new bookyou're really taking on.
So a surprisingly nuanced area
which is in the Hustle and Grind culture,I think
the part that really is overlooked
is that self-care ofof longevity of performance
(45:47):
rather than the performance of the one dayor the one month or even the one year.
A lot of the long termgets sacrificed in that.
And it's only looking back on it
that you realize much you've lost.
And it seems like, you know,there's there's a part of your own
reflection of your own life in this book,is that right?
(46:07):
Absolutely.
You can't write the bookuntil you've lived it.
And I live disciplined on both sidesbecause, again, discipline
was my savior for a whileand then discipline became my master.
And and I swung the pendulum, too.
And I went, oh, man,you know, that got in the way of me.
And then, you know, it was only a likeI stopped swinging the pendulum too far.
(46:28):
It was a couple of years later,you know, after the pandemic started,
this is where these thingsbecame really popular.
And it was probably because,you know, people are sitting around
with social mediaa little bit more time on their hands.
You know,they couldn't go and do certain things.
So online communitiesbecame a little bit stronger.
And it just it got them so myopic.
You know, it's like a nearsightednessand so like blinders on
(46:50):
that distorted their reality.
And they lost sight
of what mattered to focus onwhat doesn't matter in the long run.
And you know that that'swhat made me want to write the book.
I love it.
I mean, so, Craig,if people want to learn more about you
or your book,how can they find you or your latest book?
(47:11):
Yeah, absolutely.
So Amazon is the best place to do it
because we want to get our Amazonsales up as high as possible.
So if you go to dark side of discipline
dot com,that will redirect you to the Amazon
but also give you some extra bonusesand goodies.
And then anybody can message meon LinkedIn or on Instagram.
And the Instagram handle is at real.
Craig Ballantine
(47:32):
Awesome.
Craig,thank you so much for joining me today
and sharing some of your lot of wisdom,some of the a lot of wisdom that you have.
Very much appreciate it.Thank you, my man.
And to all the listeners,thank you all for joining and listening.
Hope you all have gotten as much out ofthis as I have, or maybe even more.
(47:53):
And if you found this helpful,
make sure you like and subscribeso you know when the next is coming out.
Thank you for joining me today.
On From Crisis to Justice.
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