Episode 185 - Living At Your Best with Carey Nieuwhof
Carey Nieuwhof knows something about burnout. He was crushed by its devastating effects while over-working as a lawyer. What he discovered is “The people that ultimately pay the price for your overcommitment are the people you care about the most.” In his book At Your Best, Carey provides leaders with practical solutions to thrive both in their personal life and within their organizations. For the faith driven entrepreneur, success can be so much more than an all-or-nothing proposition. Tune in now for our encouraging conversation with Carey Nieuwhof.
Episode Transcript
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Carey Nieuwhof: And as I reconstructed my life, I started thinking there's got to be a better formula. And so I came up with a new approach on how to look at time, how to look at my energy levels and how to stop my priorities from being hijacked by other people. And it was a personal formula based around doing what you're best at, at your best. And sort of the mantra is I needed to learn how to live in a way today that would help me thrive tomorrow.
William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. It is so good to have, we have two special guests today, we have one really special guests. And then we have one moderately special guest. It's Amen introduced our moderately special guest. First, we have Luke Roush from the crossover Faith Driven Investor podcast. Luke Roush. Welcome to the show!
Luke Roush: It's great to be moderate. Thank you, William.
William Norvell: Does your visit your first appearance here, right?
Luke Roush: It's is. This is and that's what happens when your business partner gets stuck in Romania and really fired up to be here, though with Carey.
William Norvell: Yeah. Yeah. If you're if you're one of the people that heard Henry's talk in Romania about Faith driven entrepreneurs ship, you are awesome and you're the reason that he's not here. But it was fantastic. And flights and COVID restrictions are really fun, but is amazing that he was able to go over there and speak to some faith driven entrepreneurs that are doing some amazing things. So with that, Carrie, thanks for being here.
Carey Nieuwhof: Hey, it's a joy. Thanks for having me, man. I've been looking forward to this.
William Norvell: Well, this is exciting. If you are the one listener that doesn't know who Carrie new off is and is not. And listen to our podcast instead of his. Then I worry about you. You know, I worry about your soul. I worry about your marketing on Instagram. What are you really looking at? If you haven't found Carrie's podcast, so you know it's it's good that you're here now.
Carey Nieuwhof: Yeah. Hey, it's like lots of people don't know me as Seth Godin says, you know, when you're famous, like ninety nine percent of the planet has never heard of you. So I just just try to remember that, you know, that's good. D-List, celebrity, D-List celebrity.
William Norvell: So if you're d, then I'm really worried about what my letter is, but that's a different conversation. In all seriousness, if you have not, we're about to get into Carrie's background. But if you have knowledge in his podcast, some of the interviews are just breathtaking. From Tim Keller to Seth Godin to Adam Grant to Simon Sinek to one of my personal favorites, I thought your interview with Rob Pelinka was just unbelievable.
Carey Nieuwhof: Yeah, you know, I got away with my lack of basketball knowledge like you did really come through like
William Norvell: it came through when suddenly.
Carey Nieuwhof: That's what I'm OK. Good I did study. I studied for that interview, but it was funny because I'll give you the backstory. I get this text. I'm out with my family. It's Andy Stanley and Andy's like, Hey, Rob from the Lakers is trying to get a hold of you, Rob Pelinka from the Lakers trying to get a hold of you. Can I give them your email? I'm like Lakers. I like high school team. Like, what is that I'm saying to my family? I'm like, What? Like, they're like in L.A., right? Like, that's that's the L.A. Lakers, right? And so I said, Yeah, sure, we can connect. And anyway, Rob's a gem. Oh my gosh, that was so great. And I can't wait to fly to the U.S. again one day, and we're going to go hang out in L.A. But he was incredible and such a man of faith like, my goodness, running this huge empire and like read theology in his spare time.
William Norvell: It was amazing, and that's exactly what I thought was what a quiet man of faith, but how faithful? And if you don't know who we're talking about, he was Kobe Bryant's agent and then became the GM of the Lakers. And so big, big job. And he reached out to Kerry to say, I want to talk about my faith on your show and how it impacts the way I live my life. And it was just an incredible interview.
Carey Nieuwhof: I found the the original email and it was so humble, he said, Hey, my name's Rob, I listen to your podcast. We just won a world championship. I help with the Lakers. You want to connect sometime. It's like so unreal. The guy's humility is like off the charts.
William Norvell: Amen Amen. Well, well, speaking of that, Kerry, tell us a little bit about you. We always love to start our show. Who are you? Where do you come from? You teased a little bit, not from the United States. So tell us a little bit more. Who are you? How did God get you to where you are today?
Carey Nieuwhof: I'm almost an American because I was born about a mile from Detroit across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, so I lived there for about a decade. I grew up with immigrant parents. My parents both came over from Holland and they met in Canada. So both Dutch roots, but they met in Canada and one of four kids. So I have three younger sisters, first born when I was eight, I wanted to be a lawyer. I do not know why to this day, but I'm like, Yep, I'm going to be a lawyer. I had a lot of detours got into radio in my teen years. There was like this thing when I remember being 12 years old, I'm giving you the long version, so speed it up. But I remember being 12 years old and you know that moment when you kind of realized, Oh, this is how the world works. We're listening to the radio in my mom's car and I'm like, Wait a minute, that guy talking at me is an actual human being because you don't think about those things, right? It's like, Oh, that's a real person. I bet you could get a job in radio. So it's 16, went to local radio station, got a job, ended up in Toronto, working in Toronto radio, but quit that when I was 24. Got to law school in between first and second year law felt a call to ministry had grown up in church. Rededicated my life to Christ prior to law school. But like never thought about ministry, wrestled with that for a long time finished law work. For year in downtown Toronto, got called to the bar, then went straight into seminary. Thought I did not have the gifts for pastoral ministry because I'm kind of like a leader. I'm not very pastoral. I can trample people's feelings pretty quickly, at least especially back then, but decided to test it out. Came up to three small churches about an hour north of Toronto, and I'm still here. 26 years later. Those three churches would merge, eventually become connects this church. I led that for 20 years. We grew to a relatively large church, multiple locations, and then about six years ago, I stepped aside, decided to hand things over to the next generation because succession is a real crisis. It's a crisis in business. It's a huge crisis in the church. So let's do this. Well, the church was growing. I just turned 50, so I handed it over to my successor. And for the last five years, six years, I've been doing this, just podcasting, writing books, that kind of stuff, helping leaders,
William Norvell: helping leaders go one layer deeper there. So tell us about your podcast. Tell us about when you think about helping leaders write what, what? What does that look like to you in your day to day?
Carey Nieuwhof: Well, you know, the mission of our company is to help people thrive in life and leadership. So I found as a graduate of a good law school, nobody taught me anything about running a law firm. There was like and not that much about how to argue in court, either, to be honest with you. So you figure out a lot of that stuff in real time. And then seminary was the same thing. There were just leadership gaps. We never learned how to run a board meeting. No concept of what happens when your church grows. We had growth almost from day one, and I found that a lot of my problems, a lot of my struggles were like trying to figure out how to do the practice of leadership. And back then in the 90s, like, you know, we didn't really have the internet. We sort of did, but not like we do today. So it was like books or conferences, like I was just so hungry to figure out how do you lead people through change? We sold buildings within five years of me moving there like historic red brick buildings had to like rally people around a vision had to raise millions of dollars like nobody taught you that stuff. So they figured it all out the hard way, and God was gracious. So then when I kind of looked at the second chapter of my life, what became the next this chapter of my life? I had started as a hobby maybe over a decade ago, doing a lot of speaking to leaders because when you have a growing church, people ask you questions. So I got invited to conferences and I've been a podcast listener, probably for over a decade now, like 12 years. Probably caught onto that around 2010, and I would be in the green room backstage with amazing leaders. And I kept thinking, Gosh, I wish our board could have heard that or I wish my staff could have heard that, or I wish everyone could have heard that. And it's hard to believe, but like eight years ago, there was no interview format podcast in the Christian space. I know that sounds weird today because it's 2021. But in 2013 2014, there was none. I had heard the format, obviously on radio. I heard it in the business space and I thought, Well, what if I could just bring these conversations via podcast? So in 2014, we started a leadership podcast. My first guest was Andy Stanley. He was very gracious. So that gave it a huge boost right out of the gate. And I'm surprised, but I've been doing it six times a month these days for seven years, and we never missed a launch date. And it's just a great privilege. Like, I get to interview a lot of my heroes, some of the smartest people in the world that I know of, and we try to bring people the back story, not the Oh, give me, you know, 10 minutes of soundbites on your book, but like, what's it like to be you and what do you struggle with and what are some of your challenges? And tell me the making of Seth go? How do you get to be that good at turning phrases? Why is your content so calorie dense questions like that that always interests me? And then we just kind of bring the interviews to leaders, and it seems to have resonated.
William Norvell: That's amazing. That's amazing. And what a long obedience in the same direction as well, right? I mean, I think it's so easy for entrepreneurs to see something like where your show has gone and say, Oh, I mean, that must have just happened, right? Oh yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof: Well, we're pushing 20 million downloads and we had a good start. But I can tell you, I looked at so we've been seven, seven years now, podcasting. And so I think it took us like, I'm pulling numbers out of the air here. But let's just say two years to hit a million downloads, which is pretty incredible. Like when you hit a million downloads like. Ninety nine percent of the downloads happened to one percent of the podcasts, which is insane. Like there's two million podcasts out there, but so many of them three episodes, they abandoned it. They got like 50 downloads know. So it is a real extreme version of the Preto principle, but so took, you know, a few years to get to a million and a couple more years to two million than we hit five million. We hit 10 million downloads less than 24 months ago, and we're about to hit 20. So long obedience in the same direction, I don't know exactly what happened, but there was just this hockey stick moment where all of a sudden things really like things were always growing. But then we got this like exponential boost back in 2019. 2020 was a really good year. And then 2021 is proving to be a record year. And of course, having guests in that kind of downloads opens up doors that you don't get opened up when you're starting out like, you know, the first 15 episodes where? Well, I know this guy. I could talk to him about that. Like I already spent my Andy Stanley monopoly money. So, you know, now I got to talk to my buddy and hopefully he'll do it right. So you start there. You don't get to Simon Sinek on year one, or at least I couldn't. It took me seven years to get there, but we got there and I still got a hitless hour.
William Norvell: Our first 30 guests have no idea what you're talking about now. I promise. No, no clue. They don't. They don't empathize with that at all. Yeah, it
Luke Roush: is, as you were describing that kind of downward ramp. It reminds me a little bit of Moore's law. You know, where doubling and the as you get into the out years, that doubling turns into some real big numbers.
Carey Nieuwhof: Yeah. And the similar things happening on YouTube, we have a fledgling YouTube channel, and so I've done video interviews for years. We didn't broadcast them forever, but I like it because I think I do a better interview if I can watch body language because they're the written questions. But the best interviews, I hardly look at my notes. It's like, Well, tell me more about that or what did you mean with this? Or, you know, that kind of thing, draw them out. And we uploaded it to YouTube, and it was a really slow start. Like 12 views, 15 views, 100 views, 200 views. But again, the hockey stick stuff. Since May, we went from like eight 6000 subscribers to now, the fall of 2021, we're at 13000. Some of the videos now, like even the bad videos, are getting 1500 views. Some of the best have over 100000 views on YouTube. So it's like, Oh, this is a thing, and I think it's throwing spaghetti at the wall. We did a good job, I think, but we haven't really spent a lot of energy and I'm excited because we're hiring again. Well, now we're going to actually try to develop a YouTube strategy right now that we got a little bit of momentum. But it is that thing of don't give up, don't give up. And thirteen thousand like there are people with millions, I'm sure, who are listening to this podcast. But, you know, thirteen thousand for us, it's like the most we've ever had on YouTube. So you just experiment. This was all a hobby for me. This is what I did after I burned out. I'm like, I'm going to start writing articles just for fun because I need a hobby and I'll start interviewing people just for fun because I need a hobby. Well, now it's not a hobby anymore. It's my full time job. But you know, it is that long obedience in the same direction.
Luke Roush: Well, and you know, career just to kind of jump in reference and kind of Moore's law and just the law of big numbers as you get out there. One of the things that we've seen with Faith driven entrepreneurs and we see it all the time as investors is success kind of begets more success. But then at some point it just becomes really big numbers and there's a feeling of burnout on the part of some entrepreneurs that can kind of set in. And you talk a little bit about that in your new book at your best. So I'd love to just get your perspective on what's different today that seems to be contributing to extreme challenges in that area.
Carey Nieuwhof: Well, I'm doing less and accomplishing more. And so the back story to that is there's a hinge point in my life and it happened around age 40. So I spent 11 years in university degrees in history, law and theology, so it takes a long time to finish. So anyway, finished started at 30 in ministry up here, and after about a decade, we were the fastest growing church in our denomination and one of the largest in the country. And I had a terrible equation for time management, which was more growth equals more hours. And the problem with that is it doesn't scale now. We weren't leading a giant church, but you know, churches aren't very big in Canada. So when we were about seven 800 people, I just hit a wall and I couldn't work any more hours. There were probably over a thousand people who call their church home. I couldn't remember names anymore and people told me for years, Hey, Nuha, if you're going to burn out and I'm like, No, I'm not. That's for weak people. And then one day my body's just like, That's it. We're done. And I probably would have qualified as clinically depressed. I lost all my passion, lost all my energy or my zeal didn't lose my faith, but I couldn't feel it anymore. I went numb and I'm like, Gosh, this is it. I'm like 40 in my life is over. And so I kind of knew my formula was broken like more hours is not the solution to more growth than I started in the reconstruction by the grace of God. That that burnout, that depression lasted four to six months. It was brutal. Worst half year in my life. But I started to gradually see daylight and as I reconstructed my life. I started thinking there's got to be a better formula. And so I came up with a new approach on how to look at time, how to look at my energy levels and how to stop my priorities from being hijacked by other people. And it was a personal formula based around doing what you're best at, at your best. And sort of the mantra is I needed to learn how to live in a way today that would help me thrive tomorrow. So I use that for a number of years, and then I started to see exponential growth to the point where I was four while leading a church full time and it was still growing. We were in a building campaign. I launched a podcast. I was speaking around the world. I was writing books and I was writing regularly on my website at Curie News.com. And a few years ago, the number one question I was getting asked is like, How do you get it all done? And so I started to think about it and I thought, Well, you know, there's this formula I use. And then I realized, Oh, this works for other people. And so it's really ironic because I say no way more often I have way more margin. Like today, I did some writing in the morning. I launched a book a week ago, but at lunch I went for a 25k bike ride and then I came in. I did an Instagram Live. I'm doing this interview. I have another one. I'm going for dinner with a friend and I'll be in bed by 10:00 tonight and I'll get up and do it. So now I serve like our content gets access that like a million and a half times a month by leaders around the world. And I have more time than ever before, and we're accomplishing more. So it's this really weird. And so that's what at your best is about. It's like, OK, here's the formula that I've used, and we've trained thousands of leaders on this over the last few years. But you know, this works for other people. That was the big surprise is, oh, these are principles that you can adopt to your life that will help you accomplish more in less time.
William Norvell: Oh, that's good. OK, so I'm going to play, you know, the negative guy on the podcast here, right? Right. So this is, oh, I guess it's absolutely a plug for your book, but you said you've trained lots of people. So does that work? So what you just said, that sounds great. That sounds amazing. Every entrepreneur and this thing goes, I mean, gosh, I'd love to work forty five hours a week and not 80 and accomplished just as much. I mean, we've done a podcast before as I'm sure, you know, anxiety, depression so high in entrepreneurs like, is this real, Carrie? Like, Is this? And I'm not saying the book for sure is going to change the life, but you've trained leaders. This isn't just a one of you, right? This ideology works. Is that what you're saying?
Carey Nieuwhof: Well, to be specific, let's put numbers behind it. I had a version of this. I've redeveloped it and made it better. But there was a course called The High Impact Leader. We ran over 3000 leaders through that course, so not everyone completed it. You know, online courses, but we heard from hundreds, if not thousands, of people who said, Wow, this is really making a difference. Then I've spoken on it for three or four years and have literally interacted with thousands of leaders around the world as I've spoken and had lots of dialog and people write us. So I would say we tested it with about 5000 leaders. We've also sold about 5000 books in the first week, and now we're starting to get letters in from people who are just starting the system. I know this sounds like some miracle tonic or whatever, but all it is, it's a fun. Let me let me give you the heart of why I think it works. You start out first thing in the morning, often in your inbox or you're checking all your unread messages. You have 24 equal hours in the day, but you don't know when you're actually at your best. Like, there is now brain science that says, believe it or not, you have three to five productive hours in a day. And that's it. Like, as a writer, I can tell you my content at seven a.m. is far superior to what I can produce at seven p.m. I'm a morning person. You know, no one's a robot. We can't. If you're doing investor calls your investor call up 4:30 in the afternoon, Luke probably is not the best one. You know, unless you had a nap at two o'clock, you're probably sharper at eight o'clock in the morning and any board meeting a lot of your listeners will sit on a board at some church or something like that. Any board meeting that runs by 10:00, like there's three brain cells left in the room. That's just the loss of human energy. And what we do is we spend our time unthinkingly and reactively. We don't manage our energy. So what happens is you start with that honkin to do list at seven a.m. You're in reactive mode all day. So you're answering emails, answering texts, fighting fires, you know, people are knocking on your door. Hey, William, I need your help on this. You're like, Yep, OK, and you've got this big strategic plan you're working on, but now you have to come back to that. Then it's lunch, then you get back. You're kind of tired. You have more caffeine. Oh, there's a meeting. Can you come into this meeting? Yes, I'll come into this meeting. Oh gosh, I got 17 new emails I got to respond to. Oh, there's this guy who needs me to return the call. It's four o'clock. What have you crossed off your to do list? Nothing. And that's called every day, so you take your most important work, the stuff that actually moves. The needle and now you've got that home with you. So if you have a family at home, you're trying to be present with your family, but you're not really family. Your laptop is open while Disney Plus is on. You're not really paying attention. You're reading with your daughter. You're skipping pages out of her storybook, hoping she won't notice. But she notices because you just have to get back there. You fall into bed exhausted and you do it again tomorrow. Like that stinks. And we always tell ourselves, OK, this is just a busy season. It's like, No, you're an entrepreneur, OK? Seasons have beginnings and ends. If your busy season has no ending, it's not a season. It's your life. So I can live like that for a book launch. I can live like that. If there's a date on the calendar, OK, by Christmas, we get peace by February 17th. This season is over. Our IPO is finished. Whatever, there has to be a date on the calendar. We don't have dates on the calendar. Next thing you know, you're 50 years old and you hate your life or you're 30 and you hate your life and you built this life you want to escape from. So that's the stress spiral, and that's what I'm trying to defeat. And I lived in the stress spiral. I got eaten alive. You know, when our church was 800, that's not, you know, a million liters a year, but now it's a million liters a year and this has worked. So that's where it comes from. But push push back even more because I like it, I used to. My favorite part of being a lawyer was being in court. So be the opposition. Go ahead.
Luke Roush: So I have a question that actually relates to maybe kind of a root cause diagnosis. And then I think William has a question around how do we solve for all this? But what drives leaders? Because I think many of us innately understand what you just shared and what you just articulated. Many of us have experienced it. Maybe not me, of course.
Carey Nieuwhof: But of course, of course I know. But but good friend and good
William Norvell: friend of Lou gets his two o'clock nap. Don't worry.
Luke Roush: So you know what drives it? Is it my insecurity? Is it my kind of concern for what others think? Is it a desire to be busy almost like a paranoia? What is it that actually at the root level drives leaders to continue to behave in a way that they know is ultimately not as productive as kind of this state that you described a moment ago?
Carey Nieuwhof: It can be incredibly unhealthy or it can be healthy. So in my case, going back 20 years in my thirties, I'm 56 now, but going back into my 30s, it was, you know, it was a part of me that really needed redemption. It's a very perceptive question, Luke. I would say as a performance addict, and I think a lot of people who are in that entrepreneurial space and a lot of pastors who was a pastor of a church at the time, you know, 30 percent growth wasn't enough, even though it was unmanageable, it wasn't enough. And I remember one day I came home and I told my wife, my biggest fan, my best critic. I said, How is today's message? She said it was good. And I'm like, Well, good. We're like, Really good. She's like, OK. It was really good. I'm like, You look really good. Or was it excellent? She goes, OK. It was excellent. Yeah, but excellent. Like, do you mean it was excellent? Do you mean? And she's just she just looked at me and she said, I don't know what that is, but whatever that hole inside you is, I will never be able to fill it. Hmm. And. Mike, yeah, you're right. And it doesn't matter, you can be number one on the New York Times list, which I have not been, but you can be number one in the New York Times list and it's like, Well, you know, William, look just and they were on for 10 weeks. I was only on for four weeks, Ted. Ted Turner donated a billion dollars to the U.S.. Anyone remember that that happened in the 90s, but he donated a billion dollars to the U.N. and I remember reading an article at that time and they asked Ted Turner, How do you feel after donating a billion dollars to the U.N.? Said, Well, it's not bad, but like compared to what Warren Buffett could do, I'm like, Oh my gosh, you just donated a billion dollars and you're like, Well, compared to Warren Buffett, I'm like, What do you do, right? Like, there is something unhealthy I interviewed. This will be, I'm sure, by the time this airs, this will also be on my podcast. But Mike Todd, the lead pastor of Transformation Church, the fastest growing and one of the largest churches in America. Thirty three year old African-American leader who's just sensational. And we got into it and I said, What's driving that? And he he said, you know, I'm working through that with my counselor. He said when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was a drummer and I wanted to be the best drummer in the world. And I kept wanting my church to pick me as a drummer. And they always pick the other guy. And he said there was a lie, there is an agreement that happened in that moment, and he's unpacking this in real time. Where he just couldn't stop until he was back, so he has been a New York Times number one best selling author. He's had an album he produced or song he produced chart top 10 on Billboard. Like, the guy has been so successful and he's sitting with his counselor trying to figure out what drives me. So this summer, he took 103 days off. And his church grew and his book launched at number one after that, there's this really weird thing that drives us, and you can't because the very thing that drives you is the thing that will destroy you if it is unredeemed. So most of the people listen to this podcast are Christians. You have to bring that under your drive. My drive, I had to bring that under the grace of Christ. And it's a daily mode of check. It's like, Am I doing this so I can be well known? Am I doing this so that I can be successful? Am I doing this for the wrong reason? And the answer is still, my motives are a bit mixed. Like, Catch me on a good day. It's pretty altruistic. Catch me on a day where I'm tired or exhausted or not in good space, and it's a little selfish. And what I have to do is I have to lay down my life in the service of others. And so it can't really be about me. It's funny. That thing I'm best known for. My podcast is the thing where I talk the least, right? So I preach sermons for 20 years, talk for 40 minutes uninterrupted. I shut up and let the guest talk, and that's what I become known for. In the end, it's just the most bizarre thing, but there is that Gordon MacDonald, if you want to read about this in his order in your private world, a classic book it was released almost 40 years ago has a whole section on driven verses called And It. I've talked to Gordon about that on my podcast. It's chilling, but if you redeem that, if you allow God to take that drive and have it, it's like, you know, what's the difference? Because your work, Luke is in the area of finance. What's the difference between the greedy guy who builds himself a mansion and spends all his money on himself and the kingdom minded entrepreneur who decides, I'm going to use this money for the benefit of others? You know, the green family, for example, like we are actually doing Hobby Lobby so that we can actually change the face of generosity and hopefully make a little dent in human history. I think that's a much better motive, but it's just a twist. It's a redemption. The drive is still there, but the purpose is redemptive. And so that has been a very active story in my life and on my good days. I get it right on my bad days. It's like, Please pray for me. I'm still working on it, but it takes it takes the pressure off and the emptiness in my last book didn't see it coming. My final chapter, which I don't think anybody read, is on emptiness. And like, what happens when you reach the pinnacle and you're like, This isn't enough. Like, Solomon lived in that world, and his conclusion was, It's meaningless, it's meaningless. It's all meaningless. And there's a there's a certain vanity to the chase unless it's fully redeemed. And so, yeah, you got me on a soapbox, but I will now step off, think it's
William Norvell: a we might we might get you right back on there. No, that was so good. I mean, so when I hear that the one thing I want to think about for entrepreneurs, so they're they're hearing this, hopefully they're thinking about the priorities in their life. They're trying to reorder some of them and think through, you know, what does matter and how am I living my life? What are the questions I want to ask? Are there spiritual practices? How does trusting the Lord work in this? You know, the famous my mind goes the famous quote. He probably never said the Martin Luther quote of, You know, I've got so much to do today. I must spend three hours in prayer for that, right? You know, is there something there? Do you commit the week to the Lord when you start to you, close your laptop on Friday or Saturday and say, Lord, you work while I'm not. How do you? In your soul? Most of our people listening right there over workers, that's probably their default, right? Like is there? Is there a practice or something that says, Well, you have to trust that, that you're doing the Lord's work? And if you know, and ninety hours a week just can't be the Lord's work for five years, right? Or you know what I'm saying? How do you how do you think through that?
Carey Nieuwhof: Yeah, I think through that in a number of ways. So the goal is to get time, energy and priorities working for you, and margin should show up in your life in five categories spiritual, emotional, relational, physical and financial and by financial margin. I don't necessarily mean, oh, you got millions in your bank account. What I mean is margin, because we all know the guy who makes $30000 a year, who has an emergency fund and the guy who makes $300000 a year, who's got loans coming out of his ears and has no margin. So margin is simply extra. It's surplus spiritual and so many entrepreneurs live in the red all the time. They're just in deficit. Their relationships are in tatters because they spent too many hours emotionally. They're depleted and they feel numb. Physically, it's like, Yeah, maybe they go to the gym, but are they really taking care of their bodies or is it, you know, drive through day in and day out and then financial margin can be razor thin sometimes. And I know there are seasons to sacrifice and there's start season and all of that and then spiritual. So what it looks like for me, my kids are grown when they were young. You know, I started my day with God for about 15 minutes. Now that's about an hour, and I don't want to, you know, you won't find me sitting there in perfect meditation. I'll be thinking I'll be reflecting, I'll be journaling, I'll be reading, I'll be reading scripture. But that kind of sets a baseline for the day. And then the other discipline that I would add to that is you've got to learn the art of saying no and FOMO is going to creep up on you fear of missing out. We just did my 2020 22 speaking calendar. I said no to most of the requests that came in for twenty twenty two, and that's a little terrifying because it's money you can be certain of its opportunities. You may not get again, but we set our priorities as an organization. I realized COVID was a gift not in most ways, but in the sense of grounding me for 18 months. And I'm like, Oh, I like this pace. I'm a better boss, I'm a better husband. I used to fly 100000 miles a year and I wasn't burning out, but it's like, I think I'm going to do one or two trips a month. I think, you know, we talked about Tim Keller when we were getting ready to record. I had the privilege of interviewing Tim and he has pancreatic cancer. And so I asked him what he was reflecting on. And one of the things he said just. You know, stop me in my tracks, because Tim Keller said I've been thinking about how much time I have done what other people wanted me to do and not what the Lord has wanted me to do. And like, I hope Tim Keller lives to be one hundred and seventy two years old and writes a book every year until he is no longer here with us. But, you know, to think that Tim could have perhaps done more in his lane with his life, that he's that's what he's thinking, like, what is God uniquely called you to do? And what I've found is just this inverse relationship. I mean, we just had a six hour dinner party Sunday night. I'm going to dinner with a friend who's come in from out of town, did a bike ride at lunch, and the platform keeps growing. It's like, What is that? And we say no, and then we get more requests. It's like. And you have to be careful. Like, there's a season maybe early on where you say yes to everything. But as your capacity expands, it's that bizarre thing. And Richard Branson never been to Necker Island, but I've had a couple of friends who have been there and you know, the guy runs like 400 companies. Think about the Virgin Empire. There are hundreds of companies under Richard Branson. Apparently, if you go to Necker Island, he comes out on the jet ski and you know, he's got a T-shirt and shorts and he's like, Hey, what do you want, William? Luke, Justin, what would you guys like? Do you want something to drink? You want to go sit in a hammock, you want to talk in the cabana. Like, what do you want to do? And he's got all the time in the world for you. He's not on a cell phone like texting seventeen people. He's just he's just present. And it's sort of like Dallas Willard, you know, he talks about the ruthless elimination of Hurry, an idea that John Mark Comber popularized. And you know, I've got friends who knew Willard quite well, and when one of my friends tells the story and Dallas has had this huge spiritual legacy. But if you went to Dallas, his house was very modest. He had an old fashioned land line and one day he was just sitting there talking to my friend. John and John said the phone rang and rang and rang and rang, and it was like Dallas didn't even notice because he was just fully present with my friend John that day. And you know what, that kind of singular focus does, what that could do for your company, what that could do for your marriage, what that could do for your parenting, what that could do for your time with God. And so if you think about your limited energy doing what you're best at, when you're at your best, what is the most valuable thing you could do for your company? You've got three to five peak hours in a day. Do it, then shut off all the distractions. Turn off all your notifications and just focus on that for an hour or two every day and then get your inbox and then get to your screaming customers and then get to the investors and then get to the customer service department and then get to those other things. But that kind of like moving the big rocks, getting those things done early in the day or whenever your peak zone is and being fully focused on that, it just alleviates so much pressure and that's made a huge difference. So I think, you know, having margin again, do you remember between kindergarten and grade one to remember that summer? It felt like five years of today time, doesn't it? It's like one school going to start again. It just lasted forever. And now we're like, Gosh, how is it? Not 2019 anymore? The years are flying by like days used to, and it's time to slow down. And Jesus, you know, he walked. He didn't run, and he changed the world in three years. We've got to figure out a better rhythm that doesn't kill us.
William Norvell: Amen Amen, gosh, have so many questions left. I've listened to too many of your podcasts so we can do rapid fire.
Carey Nieuwhof: I've been so
William Norvell: rapid, but I love that. Two lessons from people you've interviewed that you'd want to pass along to entrepreneurs listening.
Carey Nieuwhof: Hmm. I would say. Gordon MacDonald just about making an active contribution at age 82. He just at eighty two, his life is focused on reading great biographies and giving back to other people and staying intellectually curious. That's huge. And then Adam Grant, I had a fascinating conversation with Adam Grant earlier this year and. So often we think the world is not interested in the church. The world is not interested in the negative version of the church that unfortunately dominates the news and everybody's social media. But when you actually start talking about Jesus, I was just listening. You know, Adam and I had the most fascinating conversation about church, and he was like to his point to his book, thinking again about what he thought about church so more as possible than you would think.
William Norvell: Hmm. What would you tell an entrepreneur to do tomorrow morning if they're overworked, they're in the red and everything? What would you tell them?
Carey Nieuwhof: Turn off all the notifications on all of your devices. Spend your first few minutes or a half hour with Jesus, with God, and then spend the next two hours doing the most important thing. You could do that you never get around to, to moving your company forward and then open your devices and jump in your day and repeat that and repeat that. And that's like the baby version of at your best. But if you just start there tomorrow, you'll already have a better day tomorrow.
William Norvell: And last one, I know this is not a prosperity gospel idea, but I have to ask it. Someone reorders their priorities. They work 40 percent less. Their company fails. Was it worth it?
Carey Nieuwhof: Well, let's ask it the other way around would have been worth it for you to win at work and lose it life. Because to me, I used to I used to justify it when I was in my 30s and I was starting to lose at home, my wife Tony wrote a book before you split about the really rough part in our marriage, where we didn't know whether we're going to make it or not. And I was a pastor and she was my wife. And, you know, I used to believe that the success at work justified feeling at home. And I don't believe that anymore. If you're winning at work, but you're losing at home, you're losing. Period. So what profit's a person to win the whole world and lose your soul? It's not worth it.
Luke Roush: Amen, I'm going to close this out, and we like to close each episode by just hearing what God is teaching you right now, how he can be praying for you and then what have you found in God's word that has stuck out to you recently above the just quote there, if we could carry
Carey Nieuwhof: Amen second desire? So the hope, the hope that kind of springs eternal, the Old Testament can be like just this roller coaster. And so springs in the desert and the second Isaiah story. That's seminary thing. It actually is the book of Isaiah, but they say those first 40 chapters written by one Isaiah. What's next for you anyway? Long story short, still the word of God, but it's super powerful. The other thing I would say God is teaching me in this season is that I wrote, at your best to be a Trojan horse into the business community, that there's not a lot of scripture in it. It's thoroughly scriptural. But, you know, on the front cover, you've got endorsements from Adam Grant and Seth Godin on the back, Pat Lynch, Yoni, who is a Jesus follower, by the way. Yeah. And Cal Newport, Greg McEwan, all those people who are sort of in that space. And when I left La, my heart never really left. And so I'm hoping that business leaders, I would encourage people, you know, who are listening if you've got secular friends who just need the help of Jesus. I'm hoping God uses this platform in this book and what we do to reach out in the world and make a difference. Because, you know, when I was in law in my twenties in Toronto, they had the whole world, but they didn't have Christ, and you could see the bankruptcy happening in people's lives as they had all this money and they were miserable. And I'm like, People need help. And so I'm really trying to let God speak into my life right now about perhaps using me and what we do to make a small dent in that universe. So the book is really a lot of scripture without all the Bible verses, and some principles, I hope can help some people who are far from God and far from church. And perhaps along the way they'll discover the beauty of Jesus.
Luke Roush: What an awesome on ramp for people who are going to ask that important question at the end of going through your book. Where does this all come from? Where does this lead? And what will be a great opportunity? I think over time for you to be able to speak to where that comes from and where does it lead? So thank you for being with us today. This is wonderful, Gary,
Carey Nieuwhof: and thank you, Lou. William, so appreciate you guys.