528: How to Find Inner Peace for Entrepreneurs with Gino Wickman

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today, we are talking about how to find inner peace as an entrepreneur with Mr. Gino Wickman. And if you don’t know Gino, he is best known for his series of books, starting with the award-winning bestselling book, Traction, along with six other titles that have together sold over 1 million copies. He is the creator of EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and founder of EOS Worldwide, which has helped over 200,000 companies to run better businesses, get better control, have better life balance, and gain more traction.

And now, he has a new book that came out, which I am absolutely loving. I read an early copy. And I’m rereading the final copy right now, but it is really after decades of helping entrepreneurs succeed in their outer world. Gino’s new book, Shine, in today’s conversation is now focusing on helping you succeed in your inner world. How can you achieve inner peace, mental health, etc., even in the midst of all of the challenges that running a business, having a team, being an entrepreneur can bring to our lives? And today’s conversation will enable you to make a bigger impact and even bigger impact while experiencing more fulfillment and peace.

Before we dive into the conversation, I want to take just a couple of minutes to acknowledge to thank our sponsors who bring the show to you and whose products I want you to know I personally use. I would never endorse someone’s product if I did not personally use it and would recommend it to my mom and dad, first and foremost, is Organifi, the highest quality organic whole food supplements. If you want to lose weight, you want to improve your health, have more energy, enhance your ability to focus, or achieve any health-related goals, I highly recommend Organifi’s products, everything from their Protein Powder to their Red Juice to take before workouts, to their liver support supplement, their turmeric supplement, you name it. I take most of their product line, their probiotic. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal. That’s O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and use the discount code H-A-L, my name, for 20% off your entire order. If you want improve your health, Organifi is a way to do it as fast and effectively and efficiently as possible.

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All right, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to share this conversation that I just finished and I thoroughly enjoyed. I always enjoy having Gino on the podcast, Mr. Gino Wickman on how to find inner peace as an entrepreneur.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Gino Wickman, the one and only, welcome back to the podcast, brother.

Gino Wickman: Thank you, Hal. Pleasure to be here.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. The last time you were on the podcast was Episode 384, talking about your book, the Entrepreneurial Leap. And then the last time you and I connected, I actually was exploring publishers, and I had a conversation with BenBella. And I really liked them. And I found out that you had taken your self-published book, Traction, which I was now taking my self-published book, Miracle Morning, to a traditional publisher. And I’d met with Simon & Schuster and Penguin, all the big ones. And BenBella, just something felt right, and I found out you were one of their authors, and I text you, you said we jump on a call and you were very gracious and just said, “Hey, they’re fantastic. I love working with them.” And you and I were just talking about, we started recording, just giving an update on how that’s going. So, yeah, man, thanks for your support over the years. I really am grateful for you.

Gino Wickman: My pleasure. Right back at you, brother. This conversation’s always fun, so I really look forward to this today.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. So, your new book, I’m holding my hand, I got it yesterday in the mail, so it’s new. I’ve just been skimming it, Shine: 10 Disciplines for Maximizing Your Energy, Impact, and Inner Peace. What I love about it is the premise is it’s the inside out game of entrepreneurship and everything that you’ve taught up until this point that I’ve seen, Traction and Be a Great Boss, all your books are more of the outside, like, hey, here’s the logistics, here’s how you set up your team and your systems and your operations. And I think for so many entrepreneurs, we get burn out or we don’t even start because the inner game of entrepreneurship, it is so challenged. And maybe you can speak to this, but I believe the suicide statistic, it’s something like you’re three times more likely to commit suicide if you are an entrepreneur versus an employee. Am I somewhere? Does that sound right?

Gino Wickman: I can’t remember the exact statistic, but you are right in the ballpark.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. So, let’s start here. So, in your new book, Shine, you posed the question, is it possible to be a driven entrepreneur and have inner peace? And I think it’s a such an important question because, again, the reason the suicide rate is so high is most entrepreneurs don’t have inner peace. And your new book’s trying to change that. So, what’s your answer to that question? Is that possible, Gino? Can you be both? Can you be a hard-charging, driven, ambitious, successful entrepreneur managing all sorts of projects and be Zen, have inner peace? Is that possible?

Gino Wickman: So, drumroll please. The answer is yes. And I love that you started there because that’s the whole premise behind this book, this project, this company, our message to the world, that it is possible to be driven and have peace. And I hope to prove that to you and your audience by the end of this conversation. And I hit that back up on where you started because it’s so important. As you were talking about the book I just sent you, Shine, there’s a really cool guy on the back cover that gave me an amazing endorsement. So, I just want to publicly thank you for that, my brother. You are on the back cover. And it meant a lot that you gave it such a beautiful endorsement.

Hal Elrod: It’s an honor.

Gino Wickman: Yeah, and with that said, I want to create a little context first as we answer that question, is it possible to be driven and at peace? And the context I want to paint is, it’s really interesting because you and I did our podcast, whatever it was three years ago, the first one we did. And then we’re doing this one. It’s really interesting because I have put five pieces of content out into the world to help entrepreneurs, and very quickly, they are, number one, Entrepreneurial Leap, which is the conversation we had three years ago and that’s to help an entrepreneur. Anyone who thinks they’re an entrepreneur understand if they are how to take the leap, how to start a better startup.

The second piece of content is called Rocket Fuel, and that’s helping that visionary entrepreneur find their integrator counterpart and grow their business to the next level. Third piece of content is EOS and the book Traction I wrote to help that entrepreneur build a better business, run their business like a Swiss watch. Fourth piece of content is The EOS Life, which is then helping that entrepreneur live their ideal life. And then the fifth piece of content is this book Shine and what we call the 10 disciplines.

So, the contextual point I want to start with there is, first of all, it’s ironic that the first piece of content and the fifth piece of content, you and I are bookending this podcast because obviously, three years ago, we talked about the first piece. Now, I didn’t necessarily write them in that order. But if you think about those five pieces of content and you mentally look at that, what you will see is the first four pieces of content are helping an entrepreneur climb the mountain, okay. And so, they climb the mountain, they get to the top. It’s helping them succeed by every outer metric, just like you said, so they have the business, the stuff, the people, the money, the accolades. But unfortunately, it gets to the top of the mountain and they don’t feel that level of satisfaction. They rang the bell. It didn’t feel the way they thought. And they kind of say, “Is this all there is?”

The fifth piece of content is what helps them go inside and find that inner peace. And so, that’s kind of the contextual point. Now, bringing you back to your question, is it possible? It is. In the reality of a visionary, a driven entrepreneur is its DNA, we’re born with this drive. And so, inherently, we have this drive to build, create, work, do. It’s just what we’re conditioned, born to do.

With that said, sadly, that leads us to not have inner peace and actually fear peace. And so, very quickly, for me, when I was in my mid-20s, my daughter was born, my first taste of peace lasted about an hour. I can only describe it as pure bliss, love, peace. And then it scared the sh*t out of me, and I stuffed it back down because it actually felt wimpy and weak, and I thought it was going to zap me of all of my drive and my edge and what made me great. And so, sadly, I stuffed it back down and it didn’t fully resurface until many, many years later, many decades later, other than when my son was born, but at 52 years old. And now, everything I write and create stems from what I needed the most, stems from what I experienced as an entrepreneur. And so, four years ago, I kind of had a little bit of an awakening and was called to go inside and find that inner peace.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. Yeah. And it is interesting how just the journey that I’ve been on as an entrepreneur that, as you get older and your kids get older, I mean, it’s all this new experience, like, I’ve never parented a teenage daughter before. And this is a whole new experience, right? And I was at church on Sunday and the message was about parenting, and one of the things that stuck with me is he said, “Parent the child you have, not the one that you thought you were going to have.” I thought I’d have a miracle morning doing, personal development, right? So, it’s so important though, but going through life, not to get to a far-off track here, but just the idea that as an entrepreneur, it is challenging.

And when you have 17 things in every moment in your head of like, “Oh my gosh, I got to get back on this project. I got to start this thing. My team’s waiting for me on this. I’ve got my schedules,” I mean, it is so overwhelming, and Shine is the book that I needed. It’s the book you needed, so you wrote it. It is the book that I needed and I need right now in my life.

One of the other premises, so we talked about, is it possible to be an entrepreneur and have inner peace? That is one premise. Another one of the main premises of Shine is what you call owning your inner story. What does that mean? And why do you believe it’s crucial to our success?

Gino Wickman: Yes, I love it. And so, little context here as we’re now drilling down deeper, and I’m thrilled that we’re going to get way into this content because I’m a teacher at heart. And so, I hope to really leave your audience with exactly what they need to do if they are pinged to do this. So, the inner story starts with understanding a little bit bigger picture. And so, what I teach in the book in the first half of the book are three discoveries to free your true self. And we’re not going there yet. And I’m assuming you’re going to take me there, but I just want your listener or the person watching this to understand the context because it’s about first discovering that you are driven and understanding the DNA of a driven person.

Number two discovery is about understanding that all decisions are made out of love or fear and understanding what the root of a fear-based decision is. And then the third discovery is what we talked about, and that it is possible to be driven and have peace. In that second discovery, when we go to the root of what drives fear-based decisions, and again, we don’t have to go too deep into this just yet. We can come back to this, but I call it shedding layers, okay. And so, somewhere in our life, we had pain, trauma, conditioning. We learned something. Something happened to us that we held on to.

And sometimes, two things happened and three things, four, five, six, seven, whatever the number is, we held onto these things in these stories. And as driven people, we tend to get ourselves in more trouble because we’re risk takers. We tend to go far outside the boundaries. And unfortunately, that leads us sometimes to a bad place, to bad stuff, to bad– and with that pain, the trauma, whatever happen, we’ve carried that with us in life. And so, for me, with my pain and trauma from growing up, when I turned 15, I learned how to put on a suit of armor to protect myself from ever feeling that pain again.

Well, the suit of armor I put on is the protective layer that protected me. I created this tough guy, hardworking persona that served me well as an entrepreneur for 35 years. But what the inner story is about going to the root of why did I feel the need to protect myself. All that is, is your ego protecting you. It’s intentions are good. It’s been protecting us for millions of years from saber-toothed tigers. Well, there aren’t saber-toothed tigers anymore, but it’s still trying to protect us. And so, unfortunately, it creates this almost cocoon-like layer that we need to shed. To understand why the ego did that, we have to go back to the inner story and see the roots to why we’re feeling anxiety or pain or shame. And so, there are stories that we held on to, that our ego continues to hang on to, and it’s able to head off any potential pain at the path through humor, distraction, whatever it is, it becomes very artful.

And so, to understand your inner story– so the outer story is what the world can see, all of your successes, everything you’ve done, your family, your friends, your things. The inner story is what’s going on below the surface while all these external things are going on. And if below the surface, the tectonic plates are shifting, your central nervous system is amped up, you don’t feel peace, you feel uneasy, there’s some stuff going on that needs to be shed. And so, it starts by understanding the inner story and then, ultimately, letting it go. The only reason to dive into your inner story is to let it go and move on to shed it, so you can shed the suit of armor and free your true self and live the reason you’re meant to be on this planet and shine bright.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, that sounds like it’s making the unseen seen because otherwise, it’s unconscious incompetence, right? I think there is shadow work. There’s lots of different terms for this, but it’s bringing what’s in the dark, what you’ve suppressed, what is unconscious, bringing it to your conscious awareness so that you can understand it. I did that for me when I was eight years old. My baby sister died in front of me. And that day, I started using humor, making it light-hearted, going, “Oh, she’s in heaven, isn’t that–” I was telling all my friends, “She’s in heaven. Isn’t that great? That’s the best place ever.”

And it wasn’t until I was roughly 40, I think, that I actually, through some therapy and stuff, unpacked. Oh, I think that I’m so strong because I don’t really experience negative emotions. It’s actually that I can’t handle them because at nine, when I was a kid, or eight years old, I realized I can’t handle the way I’m feeling about my sister dying, so I’m just going to flip a switch and kind of tune out. And I did that for my entire life. And so, I’ve experienced 40 years’ worth of crying in the last four years, you name it. So, let’s get a little tactical here. What is the first step that anyone could take to start owning their inner story? Like, I get generally what it’s about. How do we move in that direction?

Gino Wickman: Yeah, for sure. And you shared yours. I’ll share a little bit of mine. I bare my soul in this book. So, it’s terrifying to bare your soul and tell your inner story to the world. So, what I urge for the listener out there is you don’t have to do what Hal and I are doing. In other words, once you get clear on your inner story, share it with one person in your life that you know and love, and you’re going to discover they’re not going to run away from you. As a matter of fact, it’s going to bring them closer to you. It’s just people like Hal and I are just kind of called to help a greater number of people. And if you’re called out there to tell your inner story to help others, please do so.

But a couple of main points for me is, I move nine times by the time I was 10. So, I always felt unsettled, sexual abuse at six and seven by older boys in the neighborhood, bullied from age 6 to 13. I was this highly sensitive, tiny little kid. And so, all of those things kind of add up. And so, the inner story is understanding what happened and then understanding how it’s affecting me. And so, what I saw is the shame that I’ve always felt from the sex abuse and the uneasiness and the unsettled from the moving and the feeling unsafe from the bullying. And so, like you did, you figured out humor as the solution.

What I did, when alcohol touched my lips at age 15, thank God, it’s never been a problem for me, but what alcohol did was it numbed all the pain and my ego. And I joined forces at that moment to create this, like I said, suit of armor, but this tough guy. So, I’ve been in more fist fights than you can imagine from age 15 to 22. And so, as this fighter, this worker, this tough guy, so I just created a facade that served me well in terms of fending off all that pain.

So, the inner story is understanding what happened, why it happened, what it did to me, how it’s affecting me, how it’s showing up in my life, getting clear on it. And then it’s like with the sex abuse, I finally shared it with a therapist in my late 20s. I finally shared it with my wife, I think, in my early 30s, it took me that long. I was so afraid to tell anyone the shame I felt about that, and when I shared it, they didn’t run away. So, it’s freeing to just let it go. So, you’re not having a trauma party, you’re not having a pity party, you’re not looking for people to feel sorry for you. You’re getting clear on why, so you can release it.

Again, back to you, you realized that humor, it was all a mask to hide the pain once you realize that, and then you shed that, the pain just goes away. The peace shows up. And so, I call that shedding layers. And I always lovingly say, whenever you shed a layer, there will be tears. And so, it’s just confronting what’s really going on below the surface. Hopefully, that helps.

Hal Elrod: No, it does. And it reminds me of something that Robin Sharma, there’s a quote that Robin Sharma said years ago, and it’s a part of my life. I live by this. He said, “When you’re vulnerable with people, they fall in love with you.” And we fear the opposite. Like you said, love or fear, right? Fear is, oh, I’m going to appear weak. Oh, they’re going to judge me. Oh, they’re not going to like me. Oh, I’m going to be embarrassed. That’s all the fear-based way of looking at it. Whereas the love is no, they’re actually going to love you because they also have things there they went through that are traumatic and that are difficult. And they’re going to see, oh, you’re a real person. You’re not on a pedestal, right?

And so, yeah, I found that it’s so true when you’re vulnerable. It takes courage initially, but then it gets easy because you do it for a while and you’re like, oh, wow. And I’m just being honest, people feel better about themselves. They feel more connected to me. Wow, I’m just going to be vulnerable all the time. You talking again, keeping it on this inner story piece, we’re talking to a lot of entrepreneurs or people that want to be entrepreneurs, either way, but do you think there are long-term effects, I would imagine positive, but either way, of owning your inner story in the workplace specifically?

Gino Wickman: So, when you say that, it’s really hard for me. It’s like that does not compute because you’re bringing two things together. So, here I am, I’m sharing my inner story in the workplace because you and I are working right now. So, I’m not correlating the two, but let’s drill down on this a little. And I just want to create a little context there because what I’m urging is that we, driven entrepreneurs, that are not experiencing peace have an opportunity to shed our shed, I lovingly like to say it, just to shed our stuff, shed the suit of armor. And to do that, we’ve got to confront some things from the past. And when we confront the things from the past that takes us into our inner story, and what I’m urging is to go there and do that, you can then release it, and all of a sudden, you start to find that peace.

Now, let’s go to work. Let’s assume you’re doing that work, you’ve done that work. When you bring that into the workplace, you are showing up in the workplace as a much more purposeful person, peaceful person. Your drive is now coming from an inner knowing and more of a calling than it is this drive, measuring against competition and comparison and reacting to what people will think. And so, you’re just a much more peaceful entrepreneur in the workplace once you’ve shed your stuff. So, that’s how the two come together, but the two necessarily are not hand in hand. But keep digging because I don’t know that I’m hitting exactly what you’re asking.

Hal Elrod: No, that makes sense. I mean, I think that it’s doing the inner work and then that manifests in the outer world and how you relate to people, how you interact with people, being more mindful, elevating your own consciousness, right? Like, I always say, the Miracle Morning isn’t just about you doing it for you. It’s about you being able to show up every day at your best for the people that you love and the people that you lead. So, that to me, it’s like once you make that unconscious conscious, you own your inner story.

With your book, obviously, there’s walking through how to do that, but that, I think, yeah. Then it’s like, oh, wow, now I don’t have to show up, like you said, where I’m showing up and I’m working because I’m trying to prove to my dad that I’m worthy of his praise, right? I mean, all of these, like this, because I always say, most of us are just kids if we haven’t done a lot of inner work, and I still feel this is true for me. I still am the insecure high school kid that I was that got picked on in school. That’s still how I show up to social situations. Only now, it’s like I’m hanging out with Gino Wickman. I’m like, “Am I cool enough for Gino? Does Gino like me?” You know what I mean? But I’m still that insecure high school kid that shows up. And so, it’s your point, own your inner story. Now, you’re going to show up in your workplace as more whole, more complete, more conscious.

Gino Wickman: Yeah. And watch this because you’re getting into the dream, which I closed the book in the final chapter by talking about what’s possible. And so, let’s go back to discovery number two, I am driven. And in that discovery, it takes you into understanding the DNA of a driven person and understanding that, again, there’s pain and trauma in there, but we are so intense and driven, we do a lot of damage to both ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, but also to our relationships. And so, it’s this beautiful awareness that you start to see the effect you’re having on people.

Now, let’s shoot forward to what’s possible. And that is all of a sudden, you are now a peaceful, driven person. Yes, you’re showing up different to those people in your life, personal and professional, and you are making a much bigger impact because what starts to happen is they start to say, “Whoa, what’s changed about you?” And you have an opportunity to teach and share what happened because the dream, what’s possible, is that I believe on average, every driven entrepreneur is touching about 200 people in their life – employees, vendors, partners, family members, friends. So, we’re touching about 200 people on average. Some are touching 2,000, some are touching 20, but on average, 200 people. I really believe what’s possible is that entrepreneurs, if they can all find peace, then people will notice that in them and they have the opportunity and the possibility of literally changing the world when those 200 people they’re touching start to notice a change, start asking, start inquiring.

Hal Elrod: Well said. I want to circle back to, you just mentioned it, you mentioned it earlier, in your book, you actually start at the end of your journey with what you call the three discoveries to free your true self. And these were discoveries that you personally made on your quest for peace, and then, created a framework to share it. The second discovery is our decisions, and again, we touched on this briefly, are made out of love or fear. I think that perhaps is the most surprising and probably the most widely applicable of the three discoveries, at least from my perspective. What can this teach us about who we are as leaders in the workplace, for our families, like, talk, speak to the love and for your peace?

Gino Wickman: Yeah, for sure. So, get ready with this one because this one goes deep. So, I’m going to do my best in less than three minutes to get all the way to the root of this. And then you just dig where I’m not being clear, but I’m going to try and do it actually in two minutes. But again, so the discovery is to understand that all decisions are made out of love or fear. When we say decisions, those are thoughts, feelings, emotions, decisions. So, all day, every day, we, driven entrepreneurs, we’re making more decisions than most, 10 times more. We have emotions, we have feelings, we have thoughts. And they’re either love based or they’re fear based.

So, the thing to understand is love is coming from your true self, your soul, your heart. Fear is coming from your ego, your mind. When you understand that, what you will clearly see is that your true self, this soul, this essence, this being you at your core, your authentic self is it wants to shine and vibrate at the highest level, but it’s trapped in that, we talked about armor suit. I like to describe it as a cocoon, which is that ego layer that’s trying to protect you from the world, so you are not fully shining.

So, here we go. Now, I’m going to take you four levels deep really fast. First level is to understand your true self is in there. It’s in there. It wants out. It wants to be free. And so, it’s trapped in there. It’s in there. Next level we take you to and you understand that, is to understand you are made of pure energy. You are pure energy and scientific. Google it. In other words, there’s no denying anymore. We are pure energy as beings. And when you understand that, you will see that many people shine very bright and some people don’t shine very bright.

And when people don’t shine bright, they’re blocked. It’s that cocoon. And so, the beauty is, once you understand that, we take you to the third level, and that is that you can remove blocked energy is where we come back to inner story. This is where we’re going to these blocks. So, all of this stuff you’re hanging on to, they’re just simply blocks in your energy field and you can remove them. There are a thousand ways to remove them. We talk about all of that in the book.

And then from there, once you understand you can remove it, you then go to the final and fourth level and layer in this, and that is just be aware. It’s about awareness. It’s now finding time and space in your life to be aware when stuff comes up. Because if you’ll create space, stuff will come up, you’ll feel it. And just for the record, it comes up as painful as it went down. But that’s how you release it. All of a sudden, you now become aware of when you’re making fear-based decisions and these blocks are coming up, you then process it, you release it. I lovingly call that shed your shed as we mentioned earlier. And then all of a sudden, you shed a layer, you shine a little brighter. Ultimately, you get to the point where you shed it all and you shine as bright as possible in the world. And then your decisions many, many more, if not all of them, are made out of love instead of fear. And just a 10% shift to love-based decisions is monumental. It’s like a Richter scale, incredible change in your life just with that minor adjustment. Hopefully, that made sense.

Hal Elrod: No, it did. And what I love about, any time you can have a framework that’s a binary, anytime you have a framework that’s a binary, to me, it’s so much– binary meaning that there’s only two options, right? It’s love or fear, or like Ben Hardy’s book, Gap and The Gain, it’s either you’re in the gap, you’re focused on the negative or you’re in the gain, you’re focused on both, like that’s it, right?

Whenever you can simplify a framework to be a binary, I feel like it is so valuable because now, it’s a tool in our toolkit. And to your point, as the book helps you understand how to become aware of am I in a place of love and deciding from love or fear? And you immediately understand that, oh, I’m deciding from fear. It’s like, just that level of awareness, you go, oh, what would it be like if I choose from love right now? Well, and it’s funny, even as I ask that question, Gino, unless somebody is watching this on YouTube, the corners of my mouth lifted, like I smiled when I was leaning over here and like, ooh, my face was crunched. Am I going from fear?

And then what if I came from love and immediately, I felt lighter, right? I felt more resourceful. When you’re coming from fear, it’s very narrow. You don’t have resources. You don’t make good decisions. You are in fear. You lack courage, on and on and on. And this simple shift, I mean, if that’s all somebody gets from your book, like this is one thing that’s a game changer, when you learn how to shift from fear to love in the moment, moment to moment to moment, that you’ve got this binary framework always available to you, like you said, even 10% of a shift is totally life transforming.

Gino Wickman: You got it. And with those love-based decisions and that love, you’re expanding, you’re growing. And when it’s fear, you’re contracting. And so, I love you talked about your facial expressions. Physically, you can feel the difference. You can feel yourself closing when it’s fear that in your ego that’s running the show, and you can feel yourself opening and expanding and growing. When it’s your heart, your soul, your true self, that’s making the decisions.

Hal Elrod: I want to unpack, so the subtitle of your book, Shine, is 10 Disciplines for Maximizing Your Energy, Impact, and Inner Peace, right? In the first part of your book is the three discoveries to free your true self. But part two, it’s the rest of the book essentially and it is these 10 disciplines for maximizing your impact and inner peace. Discipline 1, 10-year thinking. Number 2, take time off. Number 3, know thyself. Number 4, be still. Number 5, know you are 100%. Number 6, say no often. Number 7, don’t do $25 an hour work. Number 8, prepare every night. Love that. My new book has the Miracle Evening, so there was some overlap there. Number 9, put everything in one place. And number 10, be humble.

So, here’s my question. We don’t have time to unpack all 10 of those. This would be a Joe Rogan length podcast if we did. But here’s what I want to ask is, what was the most significant change that you noticed in your own life after adopting the 10 disciplines and sharing your inner story?

Gino Wickman: Yeah, it’s great. And one little contextual point here, so that first half of the book and those three discoveries we talked about, that’s the what. So, the whole idea there is I hope to motivate people to see what is possible. What we’re getting into now with these 10 disciplines is the how, this is how you do it. And so, I passionately plea, just please embed these 10 disciplines in your life and you will achieve these results that we’re talking about because you have to create time and space to do this work. You can’t keep charging forward, going nonstop, and this magic happens. And so, this is a framework, a platform, a foundation for you to create the time and space.

With that said, I think the greatest outcome, and my coauthor and I, when we recorded, we did a long-form interview for the audiobook. So, we had a professional narrator read the audiobook, and then we did this three-hour long-form interview and what my coauthor did, in a sneaky way, is he reached out to my wife, my daughter, and my son and just asked them, how is Gino different in the last four years? And I’ll tell you what, it’s terrible. I can’t remember the words, but I’m going to give you the best words that I can because it gets me very emotional. It’s like the ultimate gauge in my life that those three people in my life are noticing the biggest impact, but they said words like, he’s more peaceful, he’s more present, he’s more loving, he’s more– I mean, just these wonderful, beautiful words that we’re talking about and who better than your family to see it and describe it without you having to put words in their mouth. So, that’s the greatest outcome for me out of all of this.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. Amazing, dude. Congratulations, by the way, because as a family man, nothing means more to me than my family feeling good about how I’m showing up for them.

Gino Wickman: Yeah. And by the way, one last point on that, because here’s the other thing I like to say, because then all of a sudden, I get superstitious because I am not perfect and I am on this journey with all of you. In other words, all we’re doing is just working every day toward growing, becoming more peaceful. And so, I still have bad days, I’m not vibrating at the highest level, every minute of every day. I feel pretty darn peaceful and blissful about 70% of the time, but I’m not perfect and I’m still growing, learning. Every day is a new discovery. And so, I don’t think there’s like an end game, but holy sh*t, is it a whole lot different and better than four years ago?

Hal Elrod: That’s great. That is great to hear. All right, one more question for you, and I’ll let you out of here. So, I’ve heard you say, in the book, you’re at the forefront of a new way of entrepreneurial thinking. And so, I just want to ask, what do you hope readers get from this book? And what are your last words for everybody listening?

Gino Wickman: Yeah, awesome. Well, what I hope in its simplest form is that wherever you are out there on your entrepreneurial journey, this is either going to ping your soul right now or it’s not. Okay, so I always describe it as piercing the shield and letting a little light in or a little light out. Okay, and if it doesn’t and this kind of freaks you out, it’s okay because I want you to know in your brain that it is possible to be driven and have peace, so know that that day will come. And so, if you’re walking around and not feeling peaceful, but this is scary and you just want to keep building your empire and working, that’s okay.

And by the way, these 10 disciplines will help you do that. But just the day that you get pinged, here’s the opportunity for you. And for those of you that have been pinged today, please just start doing the work because it’s as simple as saying I want peace, and acknowledging that and just saying that out loud to the universe and the right resource to help you shed is going to present itself. So, again, the point is, please know that it is possible to be driven and have peace and that journey starts for you. For some, it had already started. For some, today it starts. For some, it will happen in the future. And so, that’s the first thing.

And the second thing I would urge is we offer a true self-assessment. It’s free on the website, The10Disciplines.com. And it’s an assessment where you answer 20 questions about yourself. And it will help you determine how free your true self is at this moment. And then we even offer a free coaching call if you want to go a little bit deeper, but it’ll really be a gauge of where you are on this journey to freeing your true self.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful brother. That’s an assessment that I think that we all need to take. Awesome, man. Well, I love the new book. I love you, brother. Thank you for showing up and shining today for our audience. I appreciate you.

Gino Wickman: Love you, too, my man.

Hal Elrod: And the best place to buy the book, I imagine anywhere books are sold?

Gino Wickman: Everywhere, you got it.

Hal Elrod: And what day does it officially come out, by the way? Just want to make sure.

Gino Wickman: Comes out on March 26.

Hal Elrod: March 26, okay. perfect. Awesome. Appreciate you, man. We’ll talk to you soon.

Gino Wickman: You bet.

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: All right, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in today. And the book is Shine: 10 Disciplines for Maximizing Your Energy, Impact, and Inner Peace. As an author myself, this book is really transformative for me, and I think it will be for you, too. So, I love you so much. And I will talk to y’all next week. Take care, everybody.