205. How to Create More Peak Performance Days Each Week with Julian Hayes, II

A lot of times when you think about slowing down to speed up, like you said, it does sound contradictory. I should be just be going, going, going. But a lot of breakthroughs and a lot of our best ideas are going to come through inquiry and through thought and thinking. And if we don't give ourselves time to actually do this, then we're going to keep pretty much repeating the same patterns.

Welcome, everybody. I'm so excited today to have Julian Hayes, the second with us today, to talk about how to create more peak performance days each week. He's got a lot of things going on around health, business, productivity, energy, and I'm really excited to have him here. Thanks so much for joining us.

Today, Julian. Thank you so much for having me here, Wade. I am stoked to be here.

Awesome. So Julian has already endured three botches of the intro, so we're going to see how I do in the bio here. If it turns out perfect, I probably edited this. Julian is an author, executive health consultant, and the founder of the Art of Fitness & Life. His mission is to help entrepreneurs, executives, and high performers elevate their status and upgrade their energy and entire human system so they can run around with their great grandchildren. I love that. Not just see them. This mission is accomplished through leveraging their unique DNA, data driven health metrics, and personalized programming. He calls it N of 1, which we'll talk about that. High tech toys and a performance team. He's the host of the Optimal Health for Busy entrepreneurs. He's written extensively, for many of the world's largest publications, such as Inc, entrepreneur success and more. I'm really stoked to get in this. I'm not going to understand everything he says today, but I'm hoping we're going to try to keep it simple for you all. I'm going to assume that you all are at least as not as aware of this as I am, but I'm really excited in our pre interview.

I already learned a lot and I'm excited to learn more. Julian, would you just share a little bit? How did you get into this work? Let's just start there. How did you get in this work? What got you here and where did.

You start out? Absolutely. That is one of the goals today is to make sure everyone understands a little bit what we're talking about. So we are going to keep it super simple for everyone. But I think it's good to start back probably around, I would say, New York. I got accepted to medical school. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, and I had to New York for that year. During that time in New York, man, I met so many interesting people who were just seemingly living their dream, just very passionate about their dream. And even you would think you would be super excited to be in medical school, but it was really, for me just something that was fairly easy because you just show up and take tests and study and I could do that. But I wasn't necessarily just super passionate about it. I wanted to be an eye surgeon, and that was cool, but it wasn't just super passionate about it. And then I had this crazy encounter at a bar during the middle of the day. I think it was actually early eveningish. And the lady was combining, A, she had something that she could make a living from very comfortably.

And more importantly, it was something that she is passionate about. And you add those two things up and she had her version of freedom right then and there. And I thought to myself, Wow, I don't really have that, but I want that. So after that year, I completed the first year and I decided I'm not going back. I told everyone. Everyone thought I was crazy. Some people even asked if I needed a drug test. And over the course of time, I started like most fitness people, which is personal training. But I'm a curious guy, and I like to... And one of my mottos is how good can I be? And so I started learning about epigenetics. I started learning about different ways to leverage technology. I started learning a little bit about peptides and the whole gamut. And you find mentors and did one thing leads to another. You create a service and you just go from there.

Wow. One of the things that really hit me is most people, I'm assuming most people who are listening at some point have gotten into working out or tried different things. nd most of us have gotten to a certain point. Maybe we plateau, maybe it's because of genetics, or maybe our genetics is good enough that we don't have to work out. There's a little bit of everything. One of the things that I found is I would reach a point where, okay, this is one of those, oh, gosh, confession shows. I still have my dad's love handles. Well, not his. He has his. I got mine. And it's one of those things where it's like, man. Even if I look back at the pictures of me in high school, it's like, okay, a six pack. There's just like, hey, hey, here's your dad right here. Here's the whole genetic. And it's like, there's certain things also just as an 80 20. I'm like, Okay, there's certain things I'm not going to worry about. I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to be the person that got a 95 on my test and say, Oh, boohoo. But I'd also reach a point where I'd stop.

And then that shifted for me. I'm really less concerned about the six pack, and I could prove it if you needed me to. But I'm more concerned about the energy. So we have a 16 year old boy and a 13 year old girl. And so that is huge for me, the energy. And then just over the years, my mom's always been a reader. And gosh, in high school or college, I had some allergies. So I did a food allergy test. I did the thing where they take your hair and they sample your hair. So things that 30 years ago were pretty much cutting edge, or that the New Agey people did, or the kooky people did, and now a lot of that is being more considered mainstream. What are maybe some of the things, just even to start out, this idea of DNA being part of it, because DNA, for a lot of people, or genetics, raises so many different things, whether you talk about tendencies or chances of getting cancer or chances of becoming addicted. And some people give a genetic so much power that they'll say, Okay, well, so and so, my mom had this, so I'm going to have to have that.

That's like in the cards for me. And other people are like, Yeah, I can outdo it. Where does genetics fall just in the overall equation, would you say, as far as getting to this conversation? Health, fitness, energy, how much of that is really the DNA slowing you down, and how much of it is you just not getting off your butt? Are you eating too many Twinkies or HoHos?

Yeah, that's a good place to start. And I think I can relate to those people at first who mentioned that maybe it runs in my family and I'm destined for it because for me, my father, my grandfather, various aunts and uncles, they've all ended up with diabetes, heart disease, and even dialysis. And I even had one doctor tell me a long time ago when I was in my early 20s that you're most likely going to become diabetic. And I'm like, That's interesting. And I'm a fairly competitive guy and athlete and everything. So that's fine with me. I just took that, oh, okay, that's a challenge. But for some people, they relegate themselves and it becomes a destiny for them. They start to live in this world. So I like to... You hear the word epigenetics. I think we might have mentioned that so far. So let's give a definition of what that is. So yes, when we have our genetics, that's our DNA, it is hard wired. It is not going to change or everything. The DNA that we have now is the DNA that we're going to have whenever we leave. However, there is something called epigenetics.

When you hear the word EPI, that means above the gene there. It's key there when you hear epigenetics is that basically how that gene expresses itself is going to be influenced by various lifestyle factors that we do. So how we sleep, how we eat, how we move, how we love, our work, how we handle stress, basically every single thing that we go about throughout a daily basis, we are dynamically interacting with. And it's influencing us and communicating with us on a cellular level. So if you think like a computer, our human body, our human system, that's the hardware. And then when we do these different lifestyle healthy decisions that we do every day, that's going to be the software, and that software is going to influence how that hardware is, and ultimately that computer, which is our human body here, is going to respond and act in itself. So for instance, for myself, I'm in the high suscept for blood sugar dysregularity, which can lead to things like diabetes. However, everything is really propensities here. Some of us just have higher ones than others. Some people have a higher propensity for cognitive issues, whereas for me, it's more on the sugar spectrum.

When you have that, yes, you keep that in mind, but when you have that information, our DNA is really just clues to our past of who we are, where we came from. But the epigenetics is going to help us mold the future to our liking, because now that we know this information, we can tailor everything for that to create a future where we don't have those things. So if you wanted to give a number, maybe 60 % DNA is hardware, and then the rest of it is up to us. So there are some longevity genes, absolutely. But I look at this with my uncle. My uncle is 100 years old, and he doesn't know anything about biohacking or none of this information. He's 100 years old and he's had some crazy things he went through. I'm pretty sure that I can get to 100, barring any unforeseen accident that I can't control. That's my mentality and that's how I encourage other people to look at this. B efore you even think about any different supplements, tools, gadgets or anything, it's really a mindset. To shift this paradigm of how you think about aging, I always said aging really needs a rebrand.

Somebody needs to give it a good rebrand because when you think about aging, you think about, I'm going to have more weight on me, I'm going to be colder, I might go to sleep early, I'm not as mentally sharp, I have these little aches and pains. And so it's a terrible reputation that aging has. And it doesn't look like something that I actually want to get to. But when you reframe that and you think about age and what aging is to me is wisdom, you're actually like an athlete where you have more knowledge. So you can actually... It's like LeBron. Lebron is still performing at a high level, not because he has the athleticism of a job and rent right now, but it's because he has wisdom and he has the tools and he knows his body so well that that's how he can still start to keep having this distinct peak performance.

I love your take on that. There's a couple of things, definitely the propensity thing. I remember when I first needed glasses, basically what happened is I was working at a company and I was looking at one of those old school black computers with the green fonts on it. And I was doing that. And it was either green or white or orange were the colors of the day. And working 10, 12 hour days. And after a while, I needed glasses. And so I asked, Okay, well, is this workers comp? And I was told by even the doctor, Sorry, this doesn't qualify because work didn't do this to you. You had a propensity for this. You basically accelerated it by looking at the screen X number of hours per day. And it was like, Okay, well, first of all, that would have been really interesting to know a while ago. But secondly, it was like, Okay, so there's variables here. And then the second thing, to your point of aging, I'm 50. I'm glad to be 50. The saying goes, you can be upset about getting older. You can be grateful that you get a chance to get old.

And I think there's something about the Gen X. As much as we don't get a lot of coverage, we're like the FU generation, like, no, we're not going to do that. You said, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing aging. We're not doing... I mean, to a fault, we're still not doing aging. We're still running around many of us like we think we're in high school. We're still acting that way. Yeah. But to a certain degree, there is this sense of... So much of this stuff I'd read about Deepak Chope or Wayne Darrell, you're going to be aware of, Okay, well, are you going to decide? There's colds going around. I remember Wayne Dyer always saying, I'm not getting a cold. Someone over there, they're probably going to get one. Because that's the person's like, Oh, I'm going to get this cold. So some of it is mindset. It can't all be mindset because some of those same people have died from things that were like cancer and everything. So you'd say, Okay, and Steve Jobs had all the money in the world. He had a strong mindset. So you'd say, Okay, it's not just that.

But to your point, it feels so much more empowering, at least to look at, Okay, what can I control? And at least say, okay, again, I can't fully control the narrative, but there's a lot of things I can control. And maybe going into that part, so then what are the things? You started mentioning some things that I hear more and more because I do a lot of podcasting and interviewing, but a lot of people don't hear as much. So about sleep, because it used to be just exercise nutrition, exercise nutrition, and now sleep is becoming more recognized. It's not like all of a sudden sleep just trended. It's been there, but it's been more recognized. Attitude, relationships, happiness. You mentioned how well you feel loved. Maybe even just start out, what are all the main variables that are in this cocktail of, Okay, how much you can control your aging, your energy, those things. Yeah, I.

Think probably the big rock is going to be sleep before you get into maybe some of the more esoteric or smaller things. But the big thing is sleep, like you said, because we know about exercising, we know about nutrition, we all know that we should be eating pretty healthily, vegetables, fruits, and that stuff. But sleep is very different, especially with entrepreneurs. And it's because we have a lot on our plate. And a lot of us, including myself at one time, think you can get by on maybe five hours of sleep because you're not going to necessarily wake up the next day and just feel the effect. Sure, you might feel a little groggy or your eyes might be a little puffy, but a cup of coffee can fix that. And you'll go about your day. And the funny thing about this is the brain is so sophisticated that our brains can adapt to this five hours sleep. And you might think initially, Oh, this is great. I can just get by on five hours of sleep. But the thing is, and I always have to explain this, that there is a difference between existing and thriving.

You can exist on four or five hours, sure, but you're not going to thrive and you're not going to really have this level of sustained peak performance on this four and five hours of sleep. There's a very small percentage of the population who has a gene called the deck two gene, who actually can thrive. They are actually genetically short sleepers. And you could see their blood work and the brain activities, and it would look like maybe the rest of us mere mortals who need the seven to eight hours. So one example when we think about sleep, and I just talked about brain activity is you have a prefrontal cortex and a mixed amygdala. Those are two different systems, but two very important systems. So a prefrontal cortex is going to be the logic and the reasoning. And when we have amygdala, it's a very primitive old one of the earliest parts of the brain formation, and it's going to be more emotions. When you have this less amount of sleep that you have, you're going to have more activity in your amygdala and less activity in your prefrontal cortex. What does that look like in a real life standpoint?

Let's look at relationships. If you have your amygdala more active in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, you're going to be more likely to act with emotion. You're going to be more short tempered. I can create a little argument, like, Why are you so short? Why are you so scrappy? Even with your kids, look at the professional standpoint, maybe something doesn't go with work that you like. You're going to be a lot more emotional with it. Maybe a deal didn't go through. You're a lot more emotional with it. Maybe you have team members that you work with. You're a lot more emotional, less empathetic with them because you're not thinking with logic and reasoning. And in business, sure, we want emotion, but you really want to act with logic and reasoning. And especially if you're an investor as well, emotion is not a good thing to just act with emotion when you're trying to make investment decisions there. Now, let's shift to weight. Now, let's shift to our weight because sleep is very much connected to every single facet of our life. It's basically like a puppet master and there's strings with every single facet. When we think about weight, there's a cool study that I always talk about out of the University of Chicago.

And they had two groups. One group slept around seven or eight hours. I believe the other was five to six. And both groups lost weight, the same amount of weight. The difference was the group that slept the seven to eight hours, they lost more body fat in itself, not just weight. Whereas the other group, they lost the same amount of weight, but more of that was actually muscle as well. And this is a big change for people as well. When we think about losing weight, we just look at the scale. I always encourage people to look at something called a lean body mass because you want to... Muscle is one of the greatest longevity currenciessthat we can have. So as you're losing weight, make sure that your lean body mass is still improving as well, because you don't want to just slim down to a smaller, weaker version of yourself. And another aspect, let's connect with sleep here since we'll do three of them, is let's look at our decision making in regards to nutrition. So we talked about that, the different brain activity levels, right? This is going to make you more impulsive. So think about these mid afternoon benches, think about these different cravings that we have, and it's because our chemistry in our body is off.

So we're going to be craving these things more. You have these hunger hormones called gredaline and leptin, and you're going to have these signals that are altered. So you're going to be having these urges to eat more, but you're not going to have the signal to tell you that you're full. So this leads to overeating as well. And so that's just a few examples right there of how sleep is just connected with our day to day lives. Wow.

There's so many things there. So I have a busy season in my software company, and my family knows I become a grouch during software season. And as much as I try, I've got a bachelor's degree, I've got a master's degree in psychology, for God's sake. I'm a coach. Take away my sleep. I just become shorter. And even when I'm aware of it, but then I'm ticked off that I can't control it. It's just the whole thing where you're stuck in it, but you can't do anything about it. And I was just telling my wife, actually just this morning, I said, you know what? I think I figured something about this sleep because we've been up late, the Miami Heater and the playoffs, we've been watching the games till later at night. And I said, you know what? I think I realized why some of our friends drink earlier in the day just so that they can crash and get sleep and wake up the next day. Because it's tough enough just to even be up late and wake up the next day and try to be functional, much less add alcohol to it. I know a lot of people that once you get beyond that stage of being an athlete, where your main focus is, Okay, I want to make my body stronger so that I can win this game.

And then it's like, Okay, what do I do with this now? Okay, maybe energy for my kids. But even there, the muscle mass is what I see creeping up on me to say, Well, wait, like you said, just to watch the scale isn't going to cut it. And again, not even from an ego standpoint of, Well, do I have big muscles or not? I'm past the point where I really care that much. They'd be nice, but I'm not going to work that hard just for that. But as I start realizing aging, and I see people around me at times, that the body just starts looking more frail and say, Wow, okay, now that really has my attention. So you're saying that the sleep is basically... It's almost like that Disney movie, I forget, with the little characters that are running the brain. Oh, geez, the little cartoon characters. Anyway, inside space or inside something. And I just think of that idea that it's almost like, who's piloting the ship? Who's got the controls? So basically, the quote by Vince Lombardi, Fatigue Makes Cowards of us All. And this is the guy, the Super Bowl trophy is named after him.

One of the most physical sports, our oxy friends might disagree and say that it's first for wusses, but that's okay because we work pads. But in essence, one of the most physical sports on the planet, and the coach who won the first couple of Super Bowls and everything is named after him is like, Look, fatigue. That is just all your plans derailed just off of that. And so maybe if you'd share this, so let's take in a person's day, if you'd maybe help me map this out, compare for me, if you would, let's just say an entrepreneur who's been doing this for a while, or any performer, an executive, somebody says, Okay, I know how to do my job. I'm not learning my job. I've done this before. What's an average day look like when a person has gotten their sleep? And for a moment, I'm going to say, let's say the middle of the road coffee drinker. So this is the person that might drink one cup of coffee, or they might binge the three or four, depending on where they go, or the person that doesn't drink coffee and says, But I might need that five hour energy drink in the afternoon.

I think most people know, that's not great for you. What does that look like, the person who's getting the sleep versus the not?

Yeah, the person who's getting the sleep and who's not. I think if you look at the big thing is, I look at it efficiently efficiency. I think that's the big word that comes to my head is just efficiency. It's easier to focus. You're not as... And I'm thinking of myself, too, and just different people that I've, of course, talked to. It's just easier to focus on your task and get it done early. You don't have this scramble brain going on. So for me, writing is a big portion of my day. When I'm well rested, I could sit down, hammer these daily words out and get on with it. When I'm not as well rested, I sit down, I try to hammer these words out. But, oh, let me check, what's the market doing today? I'm just finding different things. I find different things to do. Or actually, let me go check this website real quick. You're just a lot more impulsive because that goes back to what we talked about earlier is that my brain chemistry is off a little bit, so I'm a lot more impulsive and to just sit and focus is more difficult.

And so the caffeine does help then. And I have a cup of coffee, one or two cups of coffee a day, but closer to the one just because I enjoy it. So the focus, the efficiency thing is there as well. Secondly, say this person wakes up around 6 AM, he's probably going to be pretty shot by maybe one o'clock. And that's only seven hours. Because I look at this, this person who didn't sleep a lot, he's like a high phone battery that wasn't fully charged that night. So he's waking up at maybe 55 %. Whereas the person who wakes up and gets that seven, eight hours of sleep, he's in the green, he's 100 %. So obviously he's going to be able to last longer all day. More importantly, he's going to be able to make more high quality decisions because his battery is charged up more. Whereas the 55 % battery guy, his decision making abilities is going to diminish quite early and he's not going to have a lot in the tank because as he goes, our batteries all go down. From the moment we wake up, it all goes down. And when that goes down, our decision making goes down as well. And it's one of the things of why you probably don't want to make super important decisions late at night for that reason.

So we have focus, we have efficiency, and we have most likely nutritional decisions as well. Whereas the person whose brain chemistry is off and their mood might be a little off, they might be seeking something that's more pleasurable to offset this bitterness and this fatigue that they're feeling. So they're going to go for something sweet to crave that. And this is where you get into people who say more voodoo stuff where it's like, why do we crave sweets? Not just because we like them, but sometimes people have bitterness or they're agitated by something and they want to offset that to bring some pleasure into their life, to balance everything out, whether they realize it or not. And so this person who has a short amount of sleep, they are going to maybe reach for something like this or like the five hour energy drinks that you mentioned, which are not the best things in the world. Or even worse, they're probably just going to skip eating altogether, which is not that good as well because a lot of times fasting is fine for most people. But I tend to think from what I've seen that for a lot of entrepreneurs who are really go getters and just go, go, go, go, go, that's already a very stressful state that you're in.

And to not eat is to put your body through another stressor. So you're walking a fine line when you're doing these extensive fasts and everything.

Yeah, I found when I've done those, I'll last a while, and usually my body will break down after about a week or so. And I wouldn't say I'm the strongest person in the world by any stretch. But when I'm all rested, I'll be at the beach, I'm 50, I'll be at the beach, I'll play volleyball on the beach, two man volleyball on the beach, five, six hours at a time. I mean, there's rest between points. But there's times when I have endurance, but any of my buddies know if I show up, they're almost looking like, Okay, did Wade get sleep today? Because if Wade didn't get sleep, it's to your point, it's the quality of things. I might have three quality or four quality good games instead of eight. And you don't see it in the first three or four. But to your point, I think of it like sports or anything else where you really start looking at performance. I can go to bat in baseball 24 times. I mean, you don't get tired going to bat in baseball, but if you're not focused, your at bats are going to stink. I don't get tired shooting a basketball.

It's not that difficult. You throw your head. But again, if you're not focused, what's the quality of it going to be in all those decisions? One of the things that I know a lot of people are starting to do, I've looked at this back and forth and I've read different things on it, is people are starting to get more into this wearable technology. And I know there's different levels of accuracy and that stuff. Share a little bit about... Actually, before I did that, if I missed anything other than the sleep, the nutrition, whatnot, what I'm seeing that you're saying is just this vicious cycle. Bad sleep, you're tired, you need the sugary drinks, or you need more coffee, you drink later in the day and then now you're staying up later, now you're getting more it just keeps going. Is there anything else first that you'd add to that, and then if you'd get into the wearable technology, if you don't mind? No, because I.

Think those are the big foundational. Those are, of course, the big foundational pieces, no matter what level or whether beginner or advanced, you need to have solidified this foundation. And then you start to add in all these different intricacies and very precise methods. Because a lot of times, I will admit that you see a lot of entrepreneurs where they want a limitless pill or some bio hack, and they're sleeping five hours a night, their nutrition is so so. And it's almost like they're looking for a shortcut to avoid these necessary things, but we can't avoid that thing. So once you have all the foundation in there, then you can start to work on what I call more adding the structure and the more strategic parts. And that's a big part is the wearable technologies. And so wearable technologies is just basically health device that is going to give you some biometric data. So things like a Fitbit, a garment, a Wattband, let's see, Biot strap. And I'm probably leaving a couple or ordering. And there's tons of them. And like you said, there's different levels. And basically, I like these things because, one, a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, are quite stubborn.

You don't like being told what to do, and you don't believe it. So if I tell someone, Hey, you should get more sleep. They're like, Okay, yeah, but I've been pretty successful for years doing what I'm doing, why should I do it? I'm like, Okay, fair argument, right? And when you show them the data, when you present data, data is a helpful ally because data is not bias. Data is data. And so you have this to show to them, Okay, we have this data here, and then we can correlate it with your blood work. And then we paint a story almost like you're an attorney. You're preventing a case. This is the case that you present. This is your blood work. This is your genetics. This is your data here as well. We bring all this to the forefront and just show it in your face. And you cannot argue with that. But after we take that stubbornness off, more practical reasons is it's basically having almost a mini physical every single day. Whereas most of us, they'll just go to the doctor maybe once or twice a year for their annual physical. What if you can get that every single day on a smaller scale?

Meaning you know your average heart rate, you know the HRV that's typically that you're around. And even with those two things, or you know your respiration rate. Even with those few things, like for myself, I got sick maybe a few months ago, and I saw three to four days before the symptoms showed up, my heart rate jumped up. My HRV tanked. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it did it the next day and I was like, okay, I think I'm coming down with a cold or something like that. I could go ahead and start prepping my body, increasing some of my supplements, getting more rest to prioritize that and let my body heal. I basically had one day actually of what you should call symptoms, but it was pretty small because I was preventative instead of being reactive. And when we look at our whole as a society as whole, especially in the US, our system has been on being reactive. We don't do anything until we get the diagnosis that we're sick. Oh, then we need to go do something. Whereas why wouldn't we just do it beforehand? And so that's one thing there.

And the second thing is I think it's a good motivational tool as well to see that, okay, if I have this alcohol, which I like alcohol, who doesn't? Well, maybe there's some people. But a lot of times we have alcohol and we use that to help us sleep and we think it's fine. It's like, well, I have two glasses of wine every night and I fall asleep like a baby. True, you might be sleeping, but what sleep are you getting? Because it's not going to be high quality because when you drink alcohol, very close to the time that you're going to bed, you're going to get a lot of micro awake nings, meaning that you are not going to be able to fall into those deep, restorative patterns of sleep. So what you're going to see on your wearable is you're going to see your rem sleep and you're going to see your deep sleep. And then you're going to see the lighter stages and you're going to see a lot of micro awake nings and you're going to see a lot of time spent in that light sleep, but very little time spent in those two restorative phases of sleep.

And that's just a little example. Now, if you like to run and different things like that, you can keep up with that as well. But for all intents and purposes, I like it as a general health guide to just give you an idea of how you're living on a day to day basis. So then.

That sounds to me way more effective than somebody just looking at the scale and using a number to decide your health.

My philosophy is the more data, the better. The only thing is, a lot of people get overwhelmed with a lot of data. I take into account the person's... I just don't show them. I just come with the big numbers and go from there. But for me, I love all the numbers because it just tells a beautiful story and it helps you be even more precise and more tailored to this specific person because we are different. We're 99.9 % the same, but that 0.1 % within us is so vastly different that makes us unique. Awesome.

I definitely like what you shared about just the rest, the being on top of it. I know in my case, I need the numbers. Like you said, I don't like to be told what to do. I'm an entrepreneur. That's why I became an entrepreneur so that nobody could tell me what to do. Then, of course, then you realize you got a lot of people say, Oh, you're an entrepreneur? Nobody tells you what to do. Yeah, all my clients tell me what to do. I used to have one boss, and I got a bunch of clients. First of all, there's that. If you're thinking that entrepreneur, that's why there's what? Only 10 % of the population on the world, working population is even trying to be an entrepreneur.

Wow, I didn't know that. I thought it was more. It seems like, maybe I live in a bubble, and it just seems like everybody's an entrepreneur. It might be the...

Well, last I checked, this was a few years back, and I was just looking, I was wondering, I was doing, I don't do data analysis much, I should. And I looked and it just said, basically it said the number, and the number did, I just did the math, but it was basically about 10 % of the population. And that's including everything from the person that's a rickshaw driver to a street vendor. And I'm not trying to knock them. I'm just saying, because sometimes we have this really elaborate version of entrepreneurs that it's got to be Richard Deere from Pretty Woman or somebody that's fancy or Bill Gates or I don't know. And it's like, no, it could be anything. So a lot of people aren't doing that. And I think a lot of this actually has a lot to do with that because I find at least a lot of people that I talk to that don't want to leave their jobs, they are in a comfortable enough pattern of what they're doing, of their... Again, the coffee, the donuts, those can all be good, but all those different things to where they're just there.

But to your point, the data, to me, that's what I found, whether it's the insurance, the insurance owners I work with, the entrepreneurs I work with. I was telling them, Look, I know very few entrepreneurs that make poor decisions with good data. I know very few of them. Because when you have the data, this project is tanking. It's cost you X %, it's losing money. Okay, we'll pull the plug on it. But that's not what we do. It's like, No, that's my baby. I don't want to know. That song, I don't want to know. I don't know why I decided to sing that. It's just like, Keep it on the down, though, babe. I don't want to know because this is my baby and it's got to work. Instead of like, Well, no. If you knew, you might just find out that this one part of it's not working or whatever it might be, or even just as simple as, Well, no, I eat healthier during the week. And then, yes, on the weekend, yeah, eat whatever the heck you want. But I think a lot of people don't have that feedback because they don't want to know.

That's a very funny thing that you say. A lot of people sometimes don't want to know the data because some people ask me because I have a biological age testing that I do as well. And they're like, Aren't you nervous about getting your biological age testing and your blood work and your genetics back? And aren't you afraid of that? I was like, No, because it's empowering. My biological age came back very well. But even if it was the opposite, I at least know because at some point it's almost like getting a huge... It's almost like what I imagine getting a huge tax bill or something. And you're just going to pretend it's not there, and you just keep avoiding it and then hoping it goes away. But then years down the road, it comes back and it's even bigger and it's even more severe ramifications. That's the way I look at it about this health. I'm just going to ignore that I probably should work on my fasting glucose and A1C and work on getting that under control so I don't become diabetic or something and work on losing some weight. I'm just going to pretend it's not there.

But it always comes back so you can't avoid it. The only thing you're doing by delaying it is making it an even bigger issue. That's the way I see it. And I think it's good to take... You take back power. Because a lot of times, at least when I grew up, that was part of the inspiration with my whole health journey, is that so many people felt like they had no control, no say so, over their life, over their health, or even their career. And I thought about this, this is why I ended up where I am, and why I choose to do what I do is just because I like control. And like you said, a little bit not being told what to do, even though I am told what to do now. Well, yeah. And I.

Think the other thing is, it's that whole serenity prayer, God grant me the wisdom to what? To accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. You tell me what I can't change, I'm all good with that. When people start talking conspiracy theories about things that go wrong in the world, I'm like, Look, those people are way up here, as what said in the Hamilton, in the room where it happens. I'm not in the room where it happens. So I don't know about that. I don't love it, but I can't control it. So I'm not going to put a lot of energy on this stuff I can't control. But it's just that thing, especially, for example, if you're definitely as an entrepreneur and absolutely as a parent, the things you think about is what are going to happen to my kids that I could have prevented? What's that business decision that I could have made? And if you tell me, no way, the market tanked. Okay, I'm not happy about it, but then I can sleep at night like, okay, I did what I was supposed to do.

It's when it's like, oh, if you'd have only done this one thing, I think that's the part that's difficult, perhaps rightfully so. And so for me, if I can control that, whether it's wearables, whether it's getting more sleep, whether it's getting more exercise, I'm open to that. Yeah.

And as we're talking now, I'm sure the listeners can see that a lot of things in health are very similar to being an entrepreneur in a business. The identity, the mass changes. But underneath that, a lot of the same principles apply, which is why I think it should be encouraging for maybe some of the leaderships out there who are, maybe if they are doing really well in their business and their health is, is maybe not where they want it to be. If you apply and adopt the same mentality that you have with your business to your health, it's only a matter of time. It's pretty much impossible. I don't like using the word impossible, but it is pretty much impossible to... Do what you say. I've never seen someone not get the results if they consistently change their life, what they're sleeping, they're exercising their nutrition and adding some of these other things on. I've never seen it. Yeah, it's one.

Of those things I remember. I finally got this and I don't always live this, but I understood this about a year ago. I had heard it for so many years from Gary Vee, Brendan Bruchard, Pat F lynn, a lot of different people that are saying, Look, if you do the work, and they'll say, Look, I've been doing my YouTube channel, my podcast, whatever, for 10 years. It was horrible the first two or three years, but I stuck at it. And then they're like, There's this point, and I don't think any one of them used the word, or maybe one of them didn't finally click with me, but there's this point of inevitability, barring some really weird circumstance, it's inevitable that you're actually going to get there. So now you're like, Whoa, slow the roll. You mean, if I just do this, if I get good sleep, then it's almost, and the whole chain, it's almost guaranteed that I'm going to have the energy. It's almost guaranteed that I'm going to be making better decisions. Then you start doing all these things. So much will spend all this time just optimizing our sales funnel, and we know what a couple of percentage points means in the long run.

One of the things, and you and I know we're getting a lot of conversation, there's a couple of things I want to get to that we talked about in the pre interview. So I'm going to pull our pace a little bit quicker if that's okay. Exercise. We all know what's good, but we don't seem to all know what a big deal it is. And you talked to me about this idea of it being a competitive advantage for an entrepreneur. And I know as entrepreneurs, we might not even admit it, but we like that advantage, the unfair advantage, the thing that we know that nobody else knows. And I remember Richard Branson saying when they asked him, What's the most important thing you do? He's like, Exercise in the morning. And he's like, Okay, dude is probably one of the most admired... He does what he wants for the most part. And that's his thing. So how important is that? And what does that look like? Yeah. So it's a couple.

Of things when I say exercise is a competitive advantage. And I think the most important one and my favorite one is something that's called executive presence. And it's from a book I read a long time ago. And it's about your gravitas. It's basically your image. It's your communication and just your overall posture and everything. And when you think about that, don't think about, Okay, I need to be shredded and 10 % body fat. No, that's not necessarily what we're talking about when we say appearance and everything. Sure, image is power, and the better in shape you are, the better you're going to feel. But this is more about when you have the posture, even something like if my shoulders were rounded over, I would not appear as confident in myself. And so if you're sitting and you're in a group and you come up to section one's hand and they see that's your posture, they're going to take you a little differently because communication is basically 7 % verbal and 93 % or so nonverbal. So a lot of times people are forming an image and thinking about doing business with us without even saying anything, but all about how we present ourselves and all about how we're showing up.

And so exercise is helping in that regard because for me, I would use myself, for example, when it comes to running. I picked up endurance training now, and there's just a certain type of confidence you get in yourself when you can do hard things, when you can push your body and you commit to doing those things day in and day out and you keep your word on what you're doing. That is one of the greatest ways to build confidence before getting any type of invoice or sale. That is the most important sale is yourself. And to get the most important sale is to keep your word. And exercise is a very good parameter to do that because it's free and it's totally in your control as we went back to talking about a lot of things we can't control. We can absolutely control what we put in our mouth. We can absolutely control to move our body every single day. Now, a couple of other things to move on when we look at exercises. Exercise is helping our brain chemistry, in particular, a substance called BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor. There's a great book called Spark, if you're interested in this more.

And it goes all into detail about this. But basically, high intensity training is going to help with this. And what does that look like? Well, it's going to help your memory, and we need to work on our memory. Sleep, of course, helps with memory, but exercise does as well because you're building these new cells and these new neuro connections in your brain. You're becoming literally smarter as you go about it. Exercise is also helping you develop resiliency. I like to think of this, maybe in our early 20s and stuff, before we had families, before we were business minded, it was all about winning the game, winning, coming in first place. As we transition to different phases and you want to let that go, or that doesn't motivate you as much anymore, think about this as resiliency. Resiliency, so if you get a cold, you're only down for a day, not three days. Resiliency for some crisis comes and you have a strong enough system that's fortified that you're not just going to break down and have that little stressor just completely get you sick. Resiliency to show up for your family, resiliency to show up in your business.

So exercise is doing all these things. You might just see the physical, but there's a lot of mental that's going on as well. And I also think there's a lot of spiritual that's going on as well. For me, I know a lot of my best spiritual thoughts have come from just being out on the road or out on a trail on Mile 11, and then I just have all these thoughts come to me. And going off of that is creativity. Now, Steve Jobs, Charles Dickens, and a lot of other different artists from various different industries, they had something where they called a daily walk. And they would walk because when you get in motion, that brain chemistry changes and you get these thoughts. And so Steve Jobs was notorious for having walking meetings. And that's something that we can do now. So you can get some exercise in, you can get some steps in, but you can also take care of business. And most likely, if you're in a climate, the weather is pretty good here, the sun is shining, that's going to help your mood as well. You're getting some vitamin D. So you're stacking all these things and you're becoming more efficient with your day because you're getting exercise in, you're handling business and you're taking care of your health.

And these things are all going to catapult to helping you further advance as a person. That's a couple of things when I look at exercise as a competitive advantage because your competition is probably not doing it. They're just going to hustle, hustle, hustle, and you might feel like, Okay, I need to keep up with them, but this goes back to what we talked about earlier, are they efficient? Because it doesn't really matter. Working harder, working harder, that doesn't mean you're going to win. There's a lot of people who work hard. I knew a lot of people who work really hard and they still weren't very good. Yeah, well, it goes back to.

That thing of the Steven jobs of sharpening your saw or working on your business versus in your business. It seems to me that people that are only hustling, even if they're hustling 80 hours a week, which is hard work, they are... And of course, usually if it's 80 hours with the report, it's about 60 that they're actually doing. That's a whole different conversation, though it's related as far as focus and efficiency and effectiveness. But they're working hard, but because they're not increasing their capacity, you just look at sports in general, the difference between, let's say, tennis, the Jimmy Conners that all they did was play tennis, then you had some of these people like Yvon Lendon's like, No, I'm going to figure out how to make my body stronger, and I'm going to play tennis. So I'm not going to do 100 % tennis, let's say, and I don't routine, but he's like, I'm going to do 70 % tennis, 30 % training. And as much as a tennis purist, you might say, Well, they should just play tennis all day. When you look at me and for God's sake, Tiger Woods in golf, and you look at his approach compared to so many of the greats before him, and it's not a knock on them.

Maybe there wasn't as much awareness, but just what that does. So one of the other things you and I talked about was this idea of slowing down the speed up. This is another one of these contradictory, or at least seemingly paradoxical things for an entrepreneur. What does that look like and how can that help an entrepreneur or anybody for that matter? Yeah, a lot of times.

When you think about slowing down to speed up, like you said, it does sound contradictory. I should be just speed going, going, going. But a lot of breakthroughs and a lot of our best ideas are going to come through inquiry and through thought and thinking. And if we don't give ourselves time to actually do this, then we're going to keep pretty much repeating the same patterns. I look at this with health a lot of times. You can look at the health example here. Say a person wants to lose, I don't know, 15 pounds. They might immediately say, Okay, I'm going to lose 15 pounds. I'm cutting out all the sugar. I'm cutting out all the dairy. I'm going to go to Cross Fit. I'm starting tomorrow. That might sound good, but they didn't slow down. They just started to do a bunch of things. They didn't take into account all these other various factors in life, such as what's their schedule like? What's their psychology makeup? Are they a person who actually needs to cut those things out? Do they like carbs? And are they really going to cut all your carbs out? What's your business schedule like?

What's your day to day schedule like? Do you have time for all these things? So it's not really being strategic. So this hectic schedule may work for a week or two, but I can guarantee you it is not going to be there three to four months now. And that's the part where when you slow down, you can effectively gather your thoughts, formulate a much more precise and effective game plan. And once you have all those things in place and you're taking into account all these other things that influence our health, and you have those all seamlessly blended together, now you can execute and you're going to be able to execute much faster because you know specifically what you're doing. You're specifically dialed in to what exactly needs to be done for you and not just randomly taking some stuff that you saw other people do. And it's the same thing in business. A lot of times we want to just go, go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. But what works for me may not work for you. And I need to slow down to recognize that. Because when I really do find out what works for me, I'm going to be able to go really fast for a really long time because I know what I'm doing right now is specifically tailored for me.

Awesome. And there's two more things. Now, these we've discussed in a way, so whatever level depth in this, but the idea of operating with an investor's mentality when it comes to your health.

When we think about investing, and I guess it's relevant now. I think the market has been struggling a little bit, just to put it nicely. When you think about that, if a person just looked at the market for the last two weeks or so, you're like, Wow, I need to get out. I need to get out. But if you actually looked at the big overall time horizon, you'd be like, Okay, this is just the ebbs and flows of things. Actually, this is the time where I could probably set myself up for even greater opportunities when it's back on a bull run again. And looking at a health standpoint, it's basically to simply expand your time horizons. Don't get so caught up in the week, in the days, or even a month or two. Think big picture. When we think about health, one of the best things is to be bored with your routine. It's like, How's your health going? Oh, it's going good. It's just going. It's boring. Boring is beautiful when it comes to health and investing. If it's keeping you up at night, you're probably doing something wrong. You might want to revisit that.

Another good thing with our health, to have nothing happened, nothing shows up in our 30s, our 40s, our 50s. It's awesome. It's perfect. This area of life can be boring. This thing boring is beautiful. Expand your time horizon. When you're thinking about, Okay, for most of us, if you're training for something specific, this is going to be different. But for most of us, I don't think you're training for a specific sporting event now. So think about this. Okay, this plan I'm executing on, how does this look six months from now, 12 months from now, 18 months from now? Is this something for all intensive purposes? Is this something that's going to effectively jive with my day to day life in the long run? Do I see myself eating like this in the long run? If it's a yes, then you're probably on the right front. And I look at this for a weight standpoint, too. So let's go back to the person with 15 pounds to lose. You might have went to Google and said, if I cut this many calories a week, then I'm expected to lose X amount of pounds. And so you have a linear mindset that, okay, by this point, I should lose all this weight.

It doesn't necessarily work that way. There's a lot in the body that we don't understand. And I'll be the first to tell you, there's a lot of stuff I don't know. And there's stuff that we learn every day. But if you have this time horizon and this expanded thing out, like we talked about earlier, this sense of inevitability, if I keep doing these right things, it's going to happen. Maybe it won't happen as quick as I want it to, but it's going to happen. And most likely when it does happen, I'm going to be happy anyway. So if you think about this, someone who's like, Man, this guy grew a million dollar business in six months, and it took me five years or four years, you're probably still going to be happy when that moment does happen. It's just that we have this comparison now and we see what everyone else is doing, or we see what we think everyone else is doing. That's the thing. What we think they're doing because they show us what we want. They show us what they want to show us, but we have no idea they're behind the scenes.

So keep that big time horizon in mind and just truly think like an investor. Treat your health almost like Warren Buffett treats his value investing. That's awesome.

Yeah, definitely. That's so huge to remember. Not just even what people are showing us, but what they think to show us. So I remember taking courses from people and they're like, Well, I got my business from point A to 2 million in two years. Then you say, Okay, so you didn't do... Then he said, Wait, hold up. Yeah, but I worked for a big six firm for five years or 10 years. Okay. Or I worked for Tony Robbins. I'm like, Well, no, no, no. Hold on. You had some training, brother. You did some other stuff first, and you might have only exploded or started your business, but you were an apprentice to some of them for five, seven years. So if you're now selling me a course and you can get me there in two years, I'm like, Well, you're going to get me the job at the Big Six accounting firm? It's like, No, there's these different pieces to it. And I think people miss that. And certainly, if you were to tell me, Wade, you can grow, I don't know, $100 million business. Do you want to grow it in a year or five years?

My answer is five years. Now, granted, I might be wrong, but my default is like, Dude, I'd rather 100 million is enough because chances are, again, barring being a JK Rowling who writes Harry Potter and becomes a millionaire, that stuff, and even that wasn't a one year thing. Usually, when it's very, very quick, sometimes it comes down hard really, really quickly when you do it steady, it seems to be, and this ties in the last part of this, it seemed to be more aligned with this multi dimensional body, heart, mind, spirit, relationships. It seems to be more sound. And so that if one of those things is off for a while, it's steady as opposed to being this one dimensional thing. Oh, this one app just went through the roof and everybody likes it. All the influencers like it. And boom, now the influencers don't like it. Your whole business is gone. There was never even evaluation. There's never even a profit. And, oh, your IPO is next week, by the way. So sorry, this influencer so and so just said your app sucks and there goes your $100 million company. Yeah. And then.

Also, are you even ready for... Do you even have the infrastructure and mindset ready to handle $100 million firm? I still got a lot of development. So you have to think about that, B. A lot of us want certain things, but are we ready for those things? And I thought about this, too. I wanted certain physical attributes and goals to hit, but I wasn't, I don't want to say worthy, but that's what I said, worthy in terms of the time I've spent in it, the time, attention to detail, the work that I haven't put in enough time. I just needed more time. That's it. You just need more time. That's one of the things with my mentoring session is you just need more time. You're doing the right thing. You just need more time. I would say that's probably one of the best pieces of advice that I've had over the last year for the listeners out there in terms of just business and health in general is, a lot of times the plan is working, we're just impatient. Yeah, wow, I really.

Like that because there's just so many things. I know that's applied to parenting, at least what I've seen so far, and I'm not the greatest parent ever. We seem to be doing pretty well so far. But my answer is just always just show up again tomorrow. Show up again tomorrow as best as you can. And you're going to have days where you didn't do things as well as you thought you would. But that's what I found for entrepreneurship in life, too. Man, thank you. Gosh, I know you and I could go another hour. Definitely really got so much out of all the things you've shared here. One of the things that's funny, I feel a lot of the times when I have on people who are talking about exercise, nutrition, health, it's almost like I'm trying to attack some belief in my brain or some thinking that hasn't gotten the basic simple thing we were taught when we were like five. Dude, exercise. But sometimes we think we're clever. It doesn't apply to us. Dude, thank you. There's so much. And by the way, for those of you all, we'll share the links to him and ask him a couple of other questions.

But go into his work because there's... Again, he held back on a lot of stuff, the N1, the personalized training, the height... There's a lot of other depth that he has in his stuff. I'm excited to dig into more of your work, and I think the other people will be as well. Where can people find out more about you and your work? And again, you'll put the links in there as well. Yeah, the home base.

Is theartoffitnessandlife. Com. Since you're listening to this fantastic podcast, go ahead and hit subscribe on mine. Optimal Health for Busy entrepreneurs. And if you just personally want to reach out with me with any question, you can just email me at Julian@ the art of fitness and life. Com, or look up Julian Hayes on LinkedIn as well. Awesome. Yeah, and we'll have all of.

Those links in here. Well, man, thank you so much. Like I said, I'm coming away with more. I've been going back and forth on the wearable. I think I'm finally going to get the wearable. One of my friends is going to say, Wait, finally, I've been beaten you up for it and now you're pushing me over. So I have to make sure that I tell her that, yes, I'm now getting it. But yeah, thank you so much. And for those of you all listening, as always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best and hopefully with more energy, with more excitement to see your grandkids. Maybe you don't want to see your great grandkids. I don't know, whatever works for you. But anyway, thanks for listening. And as always, look forward to helping create the life in the lifestyle you most desire.