Helping You Overcome Stress, Anxiety, & Burnout with Michael Levitt "Chief Burnout Officer"

You're definitely not alone.

But here's the secret: there is a way out.

You don't have to stay in this same place that you're at.

Now, I'm not saying that the choices that you have to make are easy.

No, matter of fact, it may very well be the hardest choice you've ever made in your life, but it's a necessary choice because your body is not designed to operate under so much stress.

It's just not.

And if you don't make those hard decisions for yourself, then quite possibly your body is gonna make them for you.

I know this because I was talking with a guy.

His name is Michael Levitt, and he found this out the hard way.

But now he's on a mission to let you not have to go through what he did.

And well, my interview with him is on the other side of this intro.

Welcome to the Lowdown with Kevin Lowe, the podcast shining light on the inspiring stories of ordinary people choosing to live out anything but ordinary lives.

All in the hope that you will be inspired to live out your best life.

Because this life is meant to be lived.

And this podcast is meant to inspire you to do it.

What's happening?

Welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Kevin Lowe, the host of The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

And today you're joining me for episode 82.

As always, I'm of course joined in the studio by another amazing person, another amazing guest.

And this time it's a guy named Michael Levitt.

Now, a lot of people have titles.

Myself, I call myself a podcast host or a life coach.

Or, you know, other people.

They're firefighters, or you know, maybe they're a business executive, whatever it is.

And it's the title of Michael Levitt that caught me the most because his is chief burnout officer.

How cool is that?

I immediately had to know more.

And that need to know more led to the podcast episode that I'm bringing you today.

A heart-to-heart conversation with a guy about some of the lowest points in his life.

Points that were brought on because he was burned out and he didn't even realize it.

But it doesn't matter in this life what we go through as much as it matters how we react to it.

Because as I often say, the only things in life that are truly bad are those that we can't figure out a way to make good out of them.

Michael, he took his bad situations and has turned it around for not only his life, but to help other people as well.

And that's just pretty awesome, in my opinion.

Now, before I get to my interview with Michael Levitt, I of course want to give a little bit of love to the sponsor, John's Crazy Socks.

John's Crazy Socks has been sponsoring the podcast for the past month.

And well, I could not be more honored to get to partner with such an awesome company, a company with a mission to spread happiness.

Because the owner, John Cronin, he may have Down syndrome.

But being labeled with having a disability, that wasn't for him.

And when I met him, I realized it wasn't either.

And I understood.

Because me being blind, I'm labeled as being disabled.

But we're not disabled.

We are differently abled.

And for John Conan, that differently abled self led to the world's largest stock company, a company making people smile and making a difference in the world.

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Now for my interview with Michael Levitt.

SPEAKER_01: So I'm Michael Levitt.

I'm the founder and chief burnout officer.

That title came to me in the shower, by the way, for the Breakfast Leadership Network.

It's an organization that I founded several years ago.

It started off working with C-suite executives that were burning out.

I was a C-suite and still am a C-suite executive.

And I had my own burnout journey, which we'll talk about today.

And I saw that a lot of executives were, and this is before the pandemic, were struggling with stress and burnout.

And if your leader is failing, then your organization is failing.

And for me, as being a consumer of all kinds of different products and services, you want strong leadership in the organizations that you support because that trickles down to the staff, to the customers everywhere involved.

Where in May of 2009, so a little while ago, I had what I like to call my year of worst-case scenarios, which over a period of 369 days, so just basically May of 2009 to May 2010, the following happened to me.

I had a severe heart attack that should have killed me.

Seventeen weeks later, during the Great Recession, I lost my job in an area that was struggling to have jobs.

Then several months later, after finally finding a new job, which required a relocation to Toronto, my family car was repossessed.

And that's because when you're on unemployment, you know that your income levels are dropped.

And when you are paying$1,000 a month for medication, now that you've had a heart attack and you're now a cardiac kid, you have to take a lot of medications, and those were $1,000 a month out of pocket.

And I didn't have insurance coverage because I wasn't working.

And of course, you have a family and you have to feed yourself and all that.

So you make choices.

And you know, we worked with the banks and all of that and let them know what the situation was, but their grace period ran out.

So no ill will ever towards the bank for taking my car.

And then a few weeks later, after relocating the family up to Toronto and getting ready to sell our home, the bank decided they're just gonna go ahead and foreclose the house instead.

So heart attack, job loss, car repossession, home foreclosure, all in a year.

And all those things happened because I was burned out.

Wasn't taking care of myself, I was making mistakes at work, I was overcommitting myself.

I stopped doing things in life that I enjoy doing, and it all came to a real big crashing halt in that very, very challenging year of my life.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

I mean, it's one thing to have one bad thing happen, but then it just kind of a domino effect of just worst-case scenarios.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was you get up, you get knocked down again, you get up, you get knocked down again, and it sounds like a song.

You know, it's well, you know, it's it's funny because it kind of sounds like a country music song, you know.

Lost my health, lost my job, lost my car, lost my home.

If I had a dog then, I would have lost a dog too.

And that that would be the part where everybody starts crying.

It's like, you know, the other stuff there, whatever, who cares?

Oh man, you lost your dog, and then you know, then you're bawling and crying and everything like that.

So it but yeah, I didn't have a dog then.

I do now.

And you know, when he when he passes, I know that I will be bawling because he's he's fun.

But you know, it then it was, you know, thankfully no dog, but so it's kind of a partial country music song.

Doesn't have the the that one last thing to just really hammer it home and and and win some country music awards and all that.

Um as long as I'm not singing it.

If I'm singing it, it's not gonna well, it might win some rewards awards, but it's not gonna be the awards that normally people want to get.

I think I don't know.

I'm I know there's the Razzies for bad movies.

I don't know if there's an award for bad music.

There should be, but I'll have to look into that.

Maybe that's something we could launch.

We could launch some awards show for bad music, and then I don't know if we'd make any money on it, but it gives us something to do in our spare time.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that is so funny.

So I have to ask you though, going back to let's go back to the first bad thing that happened, having a heart attack.

How old were you?

SPEAKER_01: I was 40 years old, which is pretty young to have a cardiac event.

I I definitely had a lot of attention in the cardiac ward because I was the youngest patient in there by a good 20 years.

So needless to say, you know, they were always checking on me, but I was you know, basically low maintenance.

So, you know, they had me hooked up and you had an IV, and they were I was comfortable, and I really didn't need much from the nursing staff.

So they could address, and I told them, I said, I'm I'm good right now.

I said, everything's okay.

So, you know, I know there's other patients in this ward that probably have more needs than I do.

If I need you, I'll press this little button over here.

I said, and I said, this delivers morphine, right?

So you don't need morphine.

I'm like, why not?

Uh I want some morphine.

You don't need morphine.

So they they they knew at that point I was okay, you know, and that was before the procedure, but they knew I was, it's like, okay, you're gonna be all right, so we'll we'll leave you be.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: But but yeah, so I was 40 years old, and that's way, way too young to have a cardiac event of any stretch.

And for me, my left interior descending artery, which has a nickname in cardiology world, is called the widow maker.

That's the artery that I had two significant blockages in.

And my cardiologist who put the stents in my heart told me before he did the procedure, you know, he came in, and my mom and my former wife were in the room when he came in before the procedure.

And he looked at me and he said, You know, you should be dead.

And I looked at him and I said, I see you skipped bedside manner class at medical school.

And he laughed, and I laughed.

My mom and my my ex, they weren't laughing.

No.

But the doctor and I, he, he and I were having jokes with it.

As you can probably tell, I do make I make light of a very situation, uh, you know, pretty serious situation.

I'm not trying to downplay heart attack and losing all those things.

I mean, that was not exactly the best time of my life, but you know, I can look back at it now and I can look at it from a lighter point of view because I've made some significant changes in my life since then, that I can look at things like that.

I I look at life and the world much differently.

And not everybody does that.

And unfortunately, yeah, you know, the stats show that maybe one out of ten people that have a significant health scare like I did, make any changes.

Yeah.

Because they they approach it as, well, I survived that.

Okay, I'm good.

I don't have to make any changes.

I'll just take this medication, everything will be good.

Yes, I was on medication to help keep the arteries clear and blood pressure low and all the other stuff, but I didn't want to stay on those meds, so I thought, all right, what do I need to do to get off of them?

And worked with a nutritionist and exercise and all the other fun stuff to make myself better from a physical standpoint.

And then, of course, the mental side of things is where you know a lot of the work was done.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.

So, so that's what I was gonna ask.

So do they feel as though a big part that brought on this heart was stress?

SPEAKER_01: Definitely, it was definitely stress uh coupled with poor food choices, which tend to go hand in hand.

When you're stressed and you're working a lot of hours, you don't allocate time to prepare a healthy-ish meal or make a choice of even sitting down at a restaurant.

You're in my situation for you know a good solid couple years, breakfast, lunch, and dinner pretty much compromised of me ordering through a microphone, driving around the corner, paying for it, and getting handed a brown bag full of quote unquote food.

SPEAKER_00: Yep.

SPEAKER_01: And you constantly eat that, you know.

Well, you know, many of us have you know are familiar with the super size me movie and the guy that ate a particular fast food restaurant.

I don't think they're a sponsor, so I'm not gonna mention the name.

I don't want to give them any good or bad credit, but we all know what uh who they are.

You know, he ate that consistently for a month, and you know, he he developed all kinds of health challenges, which of course I think were corrected after not eating that stuff.

And, you know, again, I'm not gonna bash fast food, but anything in moderation, give or take, is is okay.

But you know, in my situation, I was, you know, kind of doing the same thing.

I was not eating well, I wasn't getting any exercise to speak of.

I quit doing things in life that I enjoyed doing.

You know, at the time where I was at was uh just outside of Windsor, Ontario, across the border from Detroit, Michigan.

I'm originally from the Detroit area and immigrated to Canada with my uh my then wife back in 2004.

And as I like to joke, you know, in 2011 I became a Canadian citizen, so I have dual citizenship, U.S.

and Canadian.

So I like to joke that I can vote and screw up two countries.

And I leave it there.

I never say who I vote for because half the audience is gonna hang up if I tell them who I voted for.

So I'm not gonna do it.

But at the time, I was a season ticket holder for the Detroit Tigers, and that was during that block of time, you know, they'd went to the World Series in 2006 and were, you know, competing for the playoffs, and they were a really good team during that window of time that I had season tickets.

And toward, you know, 2008, towards the you know, later part of 2008 and in 2009 and the beginning of the season, even though I had season tickets, I quit going to the games because I was too tired and fatigued to go.

And what's so disappointing about this, and looking at it now, is one baseball has always been my favorite sport.

I loved it since I was a little kid.

I remember buying baseball cards at a little general store up in Luther, Michigan in 1979 and, or excuse me, 1977.

It was 1977 that I did my first pack of baseball cards.

And so I loved the sport.

And the thing about having season tickets, especially with that package, was the ticket was paid for, the parking was paid for, the beer vouchers were paid for, the food vouchers were paid for.

All I had to do was show up.

Just walk in, concierge service, here you go.

You know, hand them a piece of paper, they hand me my hot dogs and my beer, and I go to my seats and enjoy the game.

I quit going because I was too fatigued.

So not only, you know, all that money was pretty much lost, because everybody that I knew that would go to the game typically already had seats, or they couldn't because of their schedule or whatnot.

So I you know, I think back of that now, it's like, oh, all those games that I missed out on.

Because when you're burned out, you just start cutting things out of your life.

Because either A, you don't allocate the time for it, or you're just too doggone tired to do it.

SPEAKER_00: Yep, definitely.

So now after you had the heart attack, then what was the the physical toll that that took on you?

I mean, as far as medical being out of work, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the fur for that 17-week period before I went back to a job that they decided they didn't want me there anymore, was a lot of rehab.

Thankfully, thankfully, there was a good cardiac rehab program through the hospital where I had my procedures.

So worked with a nutritionist, worked with exercise and things like that.

So it was exercise classes that I went to.

And there was also a mental health worker that helped me kind of come to grips with what had happened to me.

And those initial first few weeks were difficult because I was having some pretty significant side effects with the medication.

I mean, the biggest one was just this incredible need to take a nap around two o'clock in the afternoon.

Now, normally, you know, throughout my life, the only time I ever really took naps prior to being, you know, a little kid or something like that, more or less would be in the fall, yeah, on a Saturday, because I would, you know, I enjoyed college football, so I'd put the game on and fall asleep in a recliner and wake up you know a couple hours later after the game was over.

And of course, during this time, the internet was still, you know, kind of up, you know, not not as big as it is now.

So I'd have to wait, you know, to watching the television, I'd have to wait for the scroll to see who won the game that I was watching because I slept through it.

And I didn't have you know what uh the ability to rewind or record anything like that.

So none of that stuff was around then still, or a little bit it was, but we didn't do it on what I was doing.

So those are the only times I ever took nap.

But when I was on those medications, every day, 2 p.m., boom.

I mean, literally, it I had about a minute warning.

Like I could be sitting outside on my patio, and next thing you know, my head's dropping like I'm gonna pass out.

I'm like, okay, I gotta go, I have to go take a nap.

And I literally would get up to bed, call into bed, and out we go.

So I don't remember what medication it was because quite frankly, that probably would work better than sleeping pills.

Maybe it was.

I'm not sure.

I don't remember.

I don't I know I I I called my doctor, you know, after about a a couple of weeks of that and going, okay, doc, I feel good other than this having to take a nap every day at two.

And that's not going to work for the kind of work that I do because unfortunately in North America, or at least in the United States and Canada, that afternoon siesta is not something that's usually built in for places.

I know in other parts of the world they are, which I think North America is missing out on something.

They should allow that for people.

But so it's like, that's not gonna work.

So I don't know what medication is causing this, but can we can we look at some options here?

And you know, he took me off of that medication.

He's like, Yeah, I don't think you really need to take that based on the blood work and all of that.

So he took me off whatever it was.

I don't even remember.

Starts with an M, which you know, doctors love that one.

Yeah, doctor, I I took this pill.

It starts with an N, it starts with an M.

At least, at least they gave him the first letter of it.

So that narrows it down on the 10,000 medications that a physician could prescribe.

So, but he got me off of that, so it was good.

And then the need for naps subsided, and then I just started feeling better.

My color was better.

People would say, Yeah, you look better.

So I that was helping on that.

The energy level over time would build up too, is just the physical energy of being able to move around.

So by the time the 17 weeks were over, I was physically ready to start working again.

And then, of course, the organization wanted to go in a different direction and let me go.

So then my new job was to find a job.

And that was a full-time endeavor.

Again, especially in the area that I was in, being across the border from Detroit at that time, if you recall, during the Great Recession, the governments had to bail out the U.S.

auto sector, because Detroit, you know, the auto capital of the United States.

So there wasn't a lot of work to be found.

Anybody that had a job certainly wasn't going to risk leaving it.

So there really wasn't anything to be found.

So did a lot of traveling, you know, to different parts of Ontario and even in the U.S., looked at the U.S., but the U.S., the recession was a lot worse than it was in Canada.

Canada definitely had its issues too, but not as much as the U.S.

did.

So, you know, looking at different places in the U.S., there was nothing to find.

So it took me several months to find something, but I finally ended up, you know, getting.

Into a new role up in Toronto, which required the relocation, moving far away from everybody.

Again, growing up in Detroit, you know, Detroit Red Wings and hockey and stuff.

So here I am, you know, moving into a town with the Toronto Maple Leafs, which to this day I do not root for.

I will not root for them.

Do I want to see because they haven't won the Stan since 1967?

And that's a running joke that I tend to share quite a bit.

Do I want them to win the Stanley Cup?

Yes, I do.

The fan base deserves it.

It would be great for the community, but I'm not upset if they don't.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I'm just not.

I mean, I don't walk around town with Red Wing gear or anything like that.

I, you know, I don't, I don't hate on the Leafs.

I will more poke and jest, especially when they get eliminated from the playoffs.

That's when all the the golf jokes, because they're one of the running jokes, is because their their chant is go leafs go.

And the fans that don't like the Leafs, like the Montreal Canadians and everybody else, we all kind of pile on and we say golf, leafs, golf, because that's what the players are doing now.

They're golfing instead of playing any more games because they've been eliminated from the playoffs.

So on the internet, there's always different types of golfing references when they get eliminated from the playoffs.

And it's fun and adventure.

Again, I feel bad for their fan base because you know I've been fortunate enough to live in towns that have won championships.

And, you know, whether it was the Tigers or the Pistons or the Red Wings, you know, they've I've all witnessed either, you know, in person or, you know, at least in town, them winning championships.

It's a wonderful feeling for a community.

It's a wonderful feeling for the organization, the vendors, everybody.

It's a great experience to see that.

And I do want you know the Mate Beliefs to be able to experience that.

Um, but if they don't, they don't.

But I anticipate they probably will.

But we'll see.

Yeah.

But you know, getting up to Toronto and all that stuff, you know, once I found the job, I think that helped move things along.

And of course, for being in Toronto with the car repossession and the home foreclosure, both of those things were big, but not because we had a second vehicle, so we weren't without a vehicle.

But you know, when you have a family, you know, you need a couple vehicles if you drive.

So that was a little problematic for a bit.

And then, of course, having the home foreclosed, you know, definitely put a wrinkle into things.

But thankfully, we had found a place to live before that happened.

So we didn't, we didn't, you know, end up being homeless.

Obviously, if we didn't find a place in Toronto, then we could have been without a place for a bit.

And nothing, you know, I know a lot of people, unfortunately, especially during that time, uh, did end up in in situations like that where they were without a home for a while.

So I'm always empathetic for those that have struggled with any type of loss.

You know, you know, the four losses that I had, like you said early on, each one of those are huge.

But you throw all four into a year, that's that's a pretty big deal.

And that's why I do the work that I do today, because I see people flirting with that, and I don't want them to.

It's not fun, and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, even Leafs fans.

I wouldn't wish it.

SPEAKER_00: Definitely.

So now during that time, and I mean, especially when we start talking about like your home being foreclosed on and stuff, I mean, did you go through some really like down times, like beating yourself up?

Like what am I doing?

What have I done to my family?

Stuff like that, or did you always kind of maintain a positive outlook on the future?

SPEAKER_01: I did my best to maintain, you know, a positive outlook, but you know, I'm human, and there were there were moments of time, and you know, may not long, but there were moments where I was pretty pretty down and distraught about it.

But thankfully, I knew that you know, fairly quickly when I would have you know negative thoughts and disappointment and feeling I let people down or this you know the struggle or concerns of family members and you know my kids and and all of that, you know, I realized pretty quick, it's like, okay, that's not gonna help it get any better.

And I never, ever played the victim in any of it.

I didn't blame the fast food restaurants for feeding me food that helped clog my arteries.

I didn't blame my former employer for wanting a different person in that role.

I certainly didn't blame the banks for taking the car and the house because we had an agreement.

They give me money, I go buy a car and go buy a house, I pay them back.

Well, they gave me the money, I got the car in the house, and then I stopped paying them back.

They reserved their right.

The fact that they gave us as much grace period as they did was pretty nice considering there was a lot of people going through the same situation as we were as far as loss of job because of the economy and everything like that.

So there was a lot of people losing their cars and homes going into foreclosure.

Well, we know, you know, there was the mortgage crisis and all of that.

So there was a lot of people that lost their homes during that period of time.

So I get it.

I know what it feels like, but I never played the victim.

I never blamed anybody.

It was my behaviors, my actions, my thoughts, my beliefs that created those situations.

And I felt that with help, it would be me to dig myself out of those situations and then redesign my life in a way that that would never happen again.

And you know, before we continue, I want to warn people on something.

99% of the people that I deal with, whether it's organizations or individuals or whatnot, that are burned out, you do not need to reinvent your life.

I did, because the way that I was living was obviously not sustainable.

But for most people that are going through burnout, some simple adjustments here and there in a couple areas of their life will make a humongous difference in reducing their stress.

And if you don't have prolonged stress, you can't burn out.

It doesn't go from zero to burnout.

It's stress that's prolonged, that's unaddressed.

That's what ends up turning into burnout.

SPEAKER_00: Definitely, definitely.

So now at that point, I'm I'm kind of curious because when when your house was repossessed, which you know was like the fourth just major event to happen in this short amount of time.

And even though you know, you guys found, you know, you had another car, you were able to find a place to live, what though do you feel like uh shifted the tide that kept the dominoes from continuing to fall in and instead turn your life back around, get you back on track, you know, to get you to then, you know, where you are today.

I mean, was there any one event or one person or one thing that that really kind of was the catalyst for you?

SPEAKER_01: It was going back to the house after we had moved out, because we had moved out basically the week prior to the foreclosure.

And when we got up to our place in Toronto and unpacked everything, we realized that we forgot the bunk bed ladder for our daughter's bed.

And I was going back to that area and to Detroit to visit with uh some family members and some friends that weekend.

And so I said, well, you know, I'll swing by the house and grab the ladder and anything else that we may have forgotten.

Because when you move, you know, sometimes, especially, you know, house, you know, you might leave something behind, especially if it was in the basement.

And I don't know why the ladder was in the basement on the bed.

I don't I don't understand why someone would have moved it to a different spot, but it was.

So I went and you know, went to Detroit, had some visits with family and friends, and then swung by the house, you know, outside of Windsor.

And I go through the, you know, get ready to go through the front door, I open up the screen door, and I see the largest padlock I've ever seen in my life.

Can't buy this padlock at Home Depot or Lowe's.

The only place that gets access to these types of locks are banks and organizations that secure homes that are going into foreclosure.

And there was a small sticker on the door that said foreclosure.

And this is gonna come to a shock to a lot of people.

At that moment, I felt the greatest amount of peace that I have felt ever, even to this day.

I've never been more at peace than I was at that particular moment in time.

And the reason why was at that point I knew it was done.

The year all the things that had happened to me was over.

Everything was taken care of.

I lost my job, I had a new one, lost the car, had one.

Now we lost the home.

We had a place to live.

My health was getting better because at that point it'd been a year.

I'd survived a year after having my cardiac event.

And it just seemed like the world got really quiet at that moment.

I heard birds chirping, I felt the breeze.

It was a quiet, it was quite relatively quiet neighborhood anyway, but it was really, really quiet at that particular moment.

And just a nice spring breeze, you know, there was new leaves in the trees, and it was just a very serene moment, which is completely opposite of what most people would experience if they go open their door and they see a foreclosure sign on the door.

Most people aren't feeling serene.

They're like, oh my.

And probably swearing and doing all kinds of other things.

I didn't.

I'm like, okay.

So I at that point, I just I gently closed the screen door.

I put my hands on the brick that had a uh, you know, brick facing on the house, just put it on there, and I I just you know said it's a real quick prayer.

It's like, thank you for this house.

May it be a blessing to whoever ends up with this home.

Thank you for being able to raise my kids in this neighborhood for the period of time they were here, and then got back in my vehicle, backed it up, started driving off, called back up into Toronto and talked to my my former wife and said, Yeah, about the bunk bed ladder.

And anything else you may have left there, we're not getting it back.

Yep.

And and I was like, yikes.

So at that moment, I I knew it was done.

I there was really nothing else to lose at that point.

I was like, everything that I had lost got back.

And I realized, okay, how fortunate I was.

I'm like, okay.

Now, of course, from that point, over the next you know, couple years, was a lot of working on me.

On, okay, what did I do?

What were my beliefs?

What were my thoughts, my habits that put me in that state for all those things to happen?

Why was it important for me to work all those hours?

What was I trying to accomplish?

Who was I trying to impress?

What was I trying to get out of shortchanging me to help somebody else?

And of course, I did it in a non-judgmental as best I can way.

Because we are all our worst judges.

We judge ourselves harder than pretty much anybody else, usually.

So I I knew that I couldn't do that because it wasn't gonna get me anywhere, except make me angry and upset, and it's not gonna get me anywhere with that.

So like, all right, let's let's look at how I was living my life from a viewpoint of curiosity, going, okay, why was that important?

Why did I feel I needed to work all those hours?

Why did I have to answer all those emails?

Why didn't I establish boundaries with my boss saying, look, you know, I have a family to raise, I got things to do.

Let's agree on I'm available during these times.

If there's an emergency, quote unquote emergency, then we can address it.

But I never did that.

And my boss was a community pillar, was a small community, wanted to, you know, impress everybody.

And I'm not, I'm not knocking him.

He's since passed away, so I don't want to speak ill of anybody, and I'm not trying to be critical of him at all.

And I'm not, I was thankful for the opportunity to work for him.

But, you know, he had some skin in the game as far as what he wanted our clinic to do.

And unfortunately, that was projected onto me to do it all.

And I was lousy at delegating to my staff because we didn't have a large staff.

And it, you know, one thing led to another.

And I just, you know, I learned a lot of hard lessons, but it definitely paved the way for the work that I do today and you know, in the leadership positions that I had after there, you know, it definitely resonated because I was a different person on how I led and what I felt was important and what I didn't.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Well, I have to say, going back to the story of you going back to the house for the bunk bed ladder.

And I just had to had to comment on that because that was probably the most powerful thing that I've heard in a really long time.

Because what I'm a I'm a big sucker for like symbolism.

And I looked at that in the way that you told that part of your story.

And you really when I listened to you talk about it, I could tell that the lock on the door, it really was like a captivating symbol.

And I almost view that as and then and then though you were so right though, because your reaction to it was completely opposite from what I thought you were going to tell me.

But but then as you described it, I thought to myself, that's the symbolism of that lock.

Is basically everything that had been has been locked away back there.

It's behind that door, and now it's time for a new beginning.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Yeah, that door was literally closed and wouldn't reopen.

Well, I could have, I, I could have climbed in, I could have climbed in through the back, the back window.

Um hopefully they fixed that by now, but uh there was the back window and the house that never really locked.

So I could have got back in there, but I'm thinking, let's not get arrested because once a house is in foreclosure, that means you no longer own it.

That means you are trespassing.

And I've already had a challenging year.

Let's not get you know an arrest record on this.

SPEAKER_00: Let's Yeah, I I was gonna say, let's be honest, there was a small part of me that was hoping, oh, please tell me he got a pair of bolt clippers, and we tried and we tried to snip it off, and then the cops show up, and you know, there was a little part of me that thought, man, this is gonna get good.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, sorry that I took the boring route, but yeah, you know, it means it's like, you know, thankfully, um, you know, my my middle child who you know always claimed top bunk anyway in that bed, you know, is uh is a bit of a monkey.

So she she was able to climb.

She never well, that's why the ladder wasn't anywhere near it, I guess.

Because she just wouldn't use it.

It was like in the way, I guess.

So so she just climbed up.

She's like, no, not a big deal.

So it was like, well, you know what, we'll we'll limp along if we need to, you know, we'll see if we can find another ladder for it.

And never really did, because we really didn't need to.

SPEAKER_00: So yeah, but of course, of course.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure it was tossed out.

I I probably could have gone to you know the local you know, garbage place or junk hall place within a couple weeks and said, Do you have this red metal ladder come in anytime recently?

Oh, yeah, it's over there.

It's like I five bucks, all right.

Here you go, thanks.

And yeah, I could have done that, but didn't bother doing that because at that point we were already moved out of town and moved up.

And again, that was that's another you know, symbol of leaving, you know, moving on from a situation.

Exactly.

You know, living and working in in that town, and then you know, leaving it and you know, and left it behind, and you know, life has has been better since, you know, for me.

It's you know, I've I made the necessary adjustments in my life, and now you know I know what those adjustments look like.

They vary for you know from person to person, but the thing that I get when I, especially when I talk at conferences, because I spoke at a conference in Orlando a couple weeks ago.

And whenever I speak at conferences, whether it's virtual or face-to-face in person with real human beings and not a Zoom screen or Riverside or any other app, what I find is people are initially shocked on how simple it is, and it is, to stop burnout.

They think there's this magic formula.

You know, I've got some witchy spell that I come up with and poof, you know, you're no longer burned out.

No, it's that's not that.

There's simple adjustments you make in your life, and when you do them, you feel better.

But everybody, I think, because they're so fatigued and wiped out, they can't think that, wait a minute, this is all I have to do in order to help ease this?

Yeah, because that's what you do.

We we overcomplicate things on on many factors, and and we think that it's going to be so hard to get off of the treadmill that we call burnout.

And it's like, no, you can you can actually get off of it a little bit quicker than you think.

You know, the deeper work, of course, is you know, figuring out why you burned out in the first place.

And sometimes that can be that can be time consuming and and challenging and eye-opening, depending on the person.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

So, so kind of switching gears to that topic of burnout.

So tell me, and and you know, for the person listening, how do you classify, how does somebody know that they're burned out?

SPEAKER_01: Burnout is, again, prolonged stress that has not been addressed.

You're physically and mentally fatigued, you feel overwhelmed by life.

And it tends to be workplace related, uh, although you can have burnout in in family situations as well.

But stats show, and you know, my experience is majority of it is you're burned out because of work.

And what's so funny is in organizations, you could have two people sitting next to each other doing the same job, and one person's burned out and the other one isn't.

And same salary grade, same you know, career length, a lot of similarities, but one's burned out and the other one isn't.

And you go, okay, why is that?

And a lot of it boils down to you know, some signs of burning out.

So first one is that you can look at either in yourself or people you work with or people you love is how are you sleeping?

Are you sleeping well or are you tossing and turning all the time?

If you're not getting good sleep night after night after night, that's a big problem because when we sleep, we get a lot of rest.

Uh we get restful sleep, our body repairs the damage that we do to ourselves on a daily basis.

And it doesn't matter how unhealthy or healthy you live, we still do damage to ourselves just because you know the earth takes a toll on us, life takes a toll on us.

Information, the news, the negativity, COVID, frustrating coworkers, frustrating relationships, more month than money, you know, if you're financially struggling, you know, all these things take a toll on you, and they weigh on you and they cause some stress.

And of course, if you have prolonged stress, that's what turns into burnout.

So if you're not sleeping, because your body's fighting all of that information and you're not getting good sleep, then that damage isn't getting fixed.

And that's problematic from a gut bacteria standpoint, because your your gut tends to work while you sleep.

And if it's stressing, it's the energy to do all the work that your gut does isn't getting there because your body and your brain's saying, okay, we got all these stress things going on.

Let's address those.

So it impacts other parts of your life.

Another thing, and I kind of alluded to this when I was talking about the uh not going to baseball games, is when you're stressed and burned out, you quit doing things in life you enjoy doing because you feel you don't have enough time.

You don't allocate time to go do things that you normally like to do.

You start cutting them out.

And that's the worst thing you can do because then you're just all work.

And you don't have an you don't have an escape, or escape's not the right word, but you don't have a measure to counteract the stress from work.

And that's why we do things for leisure, hobbies, you know, doing things that are good for us, things we like to do, whether it's listening to music or, you know, just getting outside or playing with our pets or, you know, whatever, you know, things that you like doing in life.

We we stop doing those things when we're burnt out.

The other thing it impacts is if you find yourself with a lack of motivation, and I'm not talking about Monday morning lack of motivation, we all got that, but it's you're just not motivated to do anything, not just work, but fun stuff.

Uh, you just don't feel like doing any of it.

And another sign, too, is if your relationships start to suffer, where you're argumentative with your partner or spouse or friends or co-workers or your boss, you're just short, or you get short-tempered when you're saying maybe at a restaurant or a store and the food's not you know delivered to you in the time that you expect it, or you go to the grocery store and you can't find something because the supply chain is still messed up from the pandemic and everything else that's going on in the world.

Those are signs of burnout.

So those are things you want to be aware of.

Now, how to fix those things is one, make sure you get a good night's sleep.

And I talked about that before, but your cognitive ability is impacted by a lack of sleep.

Your relationships are impacted by your sleep.

Your digestive system is impacted by your sleep.

If you don't get good sleep, those things get impacted.

And then you start making mistakes at work because you're not recognizing things, you're not listening as clearly as you could, or interpreting what people are saying to you.

Because your brain is hearing something else than what's actually going on.

So if you can get really good sleep, then that's going to help with a lot of other things, and even to the point where I recommend people, instead of spending a lot of money on the latest and greatest gadgets or whatever you like spending a bunch of money on, start investing in a good bed mattress, a good pillow, good bedding.

You know, don't go cheap on those things because if you think about it, where do you spend the most consecutive hours of your day in one spot?

It's typically your bed where you sleep.

So it should be comfortable for you.

And by spending a good amount of money for the mattress that feels right to you, you don't have to go out and spend$40,000 on a bed, but you get a good mattress and good bedding and a good pillow.

When you lay down into it, it should feel refreshing.

Like, that feels good.

And that gets your body in more of a restful state.

And if you rest, that means your body can do all the work it does.

You know, the night shift, basically, as I like to call it.

The night shift gets to do all the stuff.

My first job was a grocery store.

I didn't work night shift.

My brother actually worked at that grocery store later on, and he did, and I knew people that worked the night shift and different character of individuals in many cases.

Yes.

But you know, I also worked, you know, first thing in the morning, I go in there and the shelves were stocked, and everything looked great, and we were prepared for the day.

It's the same thing with getting a good night's sleep.

You get rested, your body's like, okay, I'm feeling good.

That way you can start your day and you feel good.

You feel good.

That's going to impact every aspect of your interactions, what you eat, how you digest it, your awareness, everything.

So sleep, if there was a magic bullet, that would be the thing.

Make sure you get good sleep.

And then, you know, the second thing, going back to talking about again, the going to the baseball games and things like that, just make sure you do things in life you enjoy doing every week, even if it's only for a few minutes.

A lot of people will go have coffee meetings with a friend of theirs.

And okay, maybe you're working and you've got a busy time, and normally you like spending an hour with them, but you know what?

Maybe see if 15 minutes.

Just do 10 or 15 minutes.

You should be able to find 10 or 15 minutes in your schedule.

If not, you've overcommitted yourself and you need to start scaling things back.

And I think this whole situation now that we're seeing with what they're talking about is the great resignation or the great reset.

A lot of people have done a ton of reflection during this pandemic, which is good.

Something needed a budge because the way we were going wasn't sustainable, similar to my situation.

The way that I was living was not sustainable.

So there are people that needed to take a step and a pause and say, you know what?

While I love this work, I love you know the type of work that I do, either the environment or maybe the boss, or just the job itself may not be the best for me.

You know, that's why we're seeing people in healthcare leaving, which is scary for me because our population is getting older and more complex as far as their healthcare needs, and we're seeing healthcare people leave by the droves, thinking, hmm, who's going to take care of us when we're sick?

Well, as I tell people, you know, because I used to work in healthcare a long time.

They say, you know, what can we do to improve the healthcare system?

And I tell them, don't get sick.

No.

And and they they look at me like I got three heads and they're don't be sick.

Now that's a complex thing.

You got to make some adjustments, like getting better sleep, eating the foods that are right for you, do things in life you enjoy doing, you got a better chance of not getting sick if you do those things.

And get aware of how you live your life.

You know, my family doctor at the time, who came to the hospital, you know, after my cardiac event, you know, he told me, He says, you know what, you're not gonna, because he knew me well enough to say, you're not gonna be a hypochondriac, but you're gonna be more aware of your body than you've ever been in your entire life.

And no truer words have been said to me by a physician than what he said to me.

And it's true.

I am aware of how I feel.

And I if I notice something that's a little odd, I'm like, hmm, okay, why do I think that that's aching or why do I feel this?

And I'll go back and think, okay, did I eat something different or did I did I sleep well last night?

You know, I just kind of problem solve a little bit.

I don't immediately pick up the phone and say, doctor, I have this ache in my toe or something silly like that.

No, it's I keep an eye on it, and usually, you know, most of the time it goes away.

If not, then after a few days, then I'll reach out to my physician and explain what's going on.

And my doctor will usually tell me, well, it's probably this or this.

And let's sit on it for a little bit.

That's one thing I love about my doctor, she is not one that will just rip out a prescription pad and write me a prescription for something.

She's like, probably not a big deal.

Just try this out.

Yep.

And I love, I love that my physician is that way because I've seen some physicians that my mom has had that you walk in the door and they're handing you five prescriptions.

I'm like, um, I don't need these.

What the heck?

And I'm not gonna mention any names, no, but they they know who they are.

Exactly.

But for me, it's and for others, it's like you you do things in life you enjoy doing, make sure you do them every week, even if it's a shorter period of time.

Get some good sleep, eat the foods that are right for you.

Yeah, I'm not gonna tell you don't eat from the golden arches or any other places like that, but figure out the foods that are right for you.

And well, what I did last year, I shouldn't have done it years ago, but I did it last year, is I went and I got a food intolerance test, and they tested me on over 250 types of foods, which is a pretty robust list.

And I was alarmed by the types of foods that I have an intolerance to.

And they they vary in degrees.

And there are some foods that are absolutely no-go.

I cannot eat them because I'll have some stomach-related matters, and I'm not going to go into gory details, but you can figure out what those are.

But there a lot of it is inflammation.

Inflammation is one of the biggest things that really causes people problems.

And there's a lot of foods that were on that list that cause some inflammation.

Inflammation makes your body have aches and pains.

So your brain's going, oh, pain, got to do something.

Whether it's you know, inflammation of my nasal passages, which make me think that, okay, I'm congested, I'm all stuffed up.

Well, there's there's nothing up there.

It's just my nasal passages are inflamed, so there's they swell up just a little bit.

But of course, that restricts my nasal passages.

So knowing the foods that I have intolerance to, I've eliminated them from my diet, which means it significantly reduces the opportunity for me to have inflammation in my nasal passages or gut issues or whatnot.

But occasionally I have selective amnesia, and I will forget and eat something that I know is going to be problematic, whether it's a cheeseburger or pizza, and then I deal with the consequences.

I get a little judgmental with myself.

It's like you knew better.

And my taste buds would, of course, say, you know, you're not the boss of me, kind of thing.

So it's a battle.

It's ongoing, you know, and that's that's the whole thing with life, too, is it's not a set it and forget it kind of thing.

It's an everyday thing.

I don't want to call it a battle, but it's an everyday exercise where you go, okay, how do I feel?

How am I feeling?

And ask yourself that question.

Document it.

You know, I'm a big fan of journaling, and it's helped me a lot.

And I can look back and go, okay, well, how long have I been feeling like this?

And I can look back and go, okay, this has been three or four days.

Okay, something's amiss.

And then you address it accordingly.

But sometimes it just could be you know, you ate something from a restaurant, and maybe there was an undeclared ingredient that you have an intolerance to that you didn't know was in it.

Then you make a note of it and go, all right, well, I'm gonna eat something else from that restaurant next time.

Or I won't eat at that restaurant anymore.

I'll go somewhere else.

It's for me, it's almost an exercise of basically gamifying things.

You know, it's like, okay, let's make this a game.

Let's let's figure out what works for me and what doesn't.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.

And and I and I see this correlation when we when we talk about our health, or and I see that with a correlation to when we were talking about burnout in the workplace, is that a lot of times, for for example, let's talk about burnout in the workplace.

You know, what I get from you is the fact that if somebody identifies themselves or that, you know what, I'm burned out, work, I'm just over it.

I'm burned out.

Well, instead of immediately just thinking, okay, it's work, that's wrong, I need to go get a new job.

Or look at the other aspects of your life that may be contributing in making it bad, you know?

And like you said, maybe it's that you've not been sleeping well, or you've quit doing things that you enjoy on the weekends.

And and therefore, then all of those other kind of outward, you know, parts of your life are now negatively affecting the job.

So maybe it's not the job, it's other aspects of your life that need little changes that then you'll find, wow, work isn't so bad anymore.

SPEAKER_01: It's all about perspective and understanding the big picture of everything that's going on in your life.

As much as we would love to just have a pinpoint thing to blame or identify as the cause, the one cause of whatever situation we're dealing with, as long as human beings are involved, it's going to be multi-layered.

It's going to be a lot more than that.

And in the example I gave before, or I think I did before, I don't remember if I said this or not, but you know, in some organizations, you can have two people that are in identical roles, similar backgrounds, and all that kind of stuff, and one person's burned out, one isn't.

The reason why that person that isn't burned out is doing well is because they typically have boundaries around their work.

And not just boundaries of, okay, I'm going to work from this hour to this hour, and I'm not going to do anything after hours.

That's that's one boundary.

But the other one is level setting your expectations and your outcomes.

And it's one of these things, and I'm not going to pick on generations too much, but an observation, and there's been books written about this as well, is the millennial generation in Gen Y really, really is dealing with some stress.

There's a lot of stressors going on from inability to be able to afford a home at the age that they're at to organizations that work, they don't like the work, they want things to be sustainable, which is right.

We we should want the earth to continue without us destroying it.

That's a good thing.

But it really is.

I'm just saying.

So, you know, it's like even you know, right now in the news, you know, there's things about you know the shortages and supply chains and all that.

Apparently, there's a paper shortage.

So I look at that as like, this is not a bad thing.

And the reason why I say that, and it's completely a segue, but I'll get back to your question in a second.

A paper shortage is a good thing because it should force organizations and people to say, you know what?

We no longer need to print these 120-page annual reports to send out to our 50,000 shareholders.

When you can say, go to our website, there's the PDF, read it.

If you want, you know, hard copy of it, okay, we'll print it, but we're going to charge you this amount to ship it.

You know what that does?

It significantly reduces the amount of trees that are cut down to print a book that's going to get thrown in the trash or hopefully recycled at some point.

It's changing habits.

And sometimes shortages force our hand on things.

Remote work, for example.

I know I'm getting off on a tire rate, but I'm going to say this.

There were tons of organizations on this planet that were dead set against remote work.

Won't be done, they can't do it.

Well, pandemic said, hold my beer.

Guess what?

Everybody's going, everybody's going home.

And they did, and guess what they figured out?

In most instances, the work was getting done.

So that cat has not only left the bag, it shredded the bag.

So organizations that are saying, no, we we have to have everybody back, that's going to be an interesting dynamic to watch.

So let me get back to our regular scheduled programming of your question.

I'm concerned because there's so many different challenges that people are facing that when the person is sitting next to somebody that's not burned out, and there's one that is, again, there's a lot of factors into it, depending on the person.

And and the people that I've worked with, there was, you know, one story, again, I don't share too many details because of confidentiality and all that good stuff, but this was an individual that was very driven.

And I see that a lot, especially when I was working with executives, in order to get to the C-suite, they pretend to be driven.

So this person was very driven, put a lot of expectations on themselves, overcommitted to things.

And in working with this individual, it was tailed back to their childhood because growing up, their dad was very demanding, wanted them to excel, put them into certain types of classes when they actually wanted to do something different, and they really couldn't.

So they were driven and really good at what they do, but they were angry about it because they were they were basically using their work as a stand-in for their dad.

They felt that their employer was their dad, forcing them to do this work when that really wasn't the case.

But and that's some of the common things.

And that's why I went in and you got certified in cognitive behavioral therapy and neurolinguistic programming.

You know, I had no interest in doing any of that stuff before, but as I was working with people, time and time again, it kept coming back to their beliefs, their habits, their thought patterns.

We're creating scenarios that were creating prolonged stress, which turned into burnout.

Okay.

So I'm like, let me dig into this a little bit more, and then you know, discovered, okay, this is how we do it.

So it's it's basically, I want to say reprogramming yourself, but you got to look at your habits and how you spend your time and what you think about and why those things are important to you.

And sometimes that's a Pandora's box that a lot of people don't want to open up, but sometimes they need to in order for them to have that breakthrough to design a life that they can be free from burnout.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

It's such a powerful topic.

And I think it's something that that I hope that anyone listening to the podcast, it will cause them to kind of really just pause for a moment and really reflect on on your life and where you're at in your life and how are you feeling?

You know, we we kind of talked about that earlier.

It's just taking the time to just stop and realize how am I feeling?

Am I good with things?

Am I not?

You know, and if I'm not, what changes can I make so that I am?

SPEAKER_01: I agree.

You know, yeah, it's it's an exercise that I do frequently, not every day, but you know, for sure, I a couple times a year I will have a basically a committee meeting with myself.

I know that sounds a little silly, but no, it's good.

It's a it and it's and again helps if you journal or if you document how you spend your time on your calendar, you know, review what's you know gone on in the last six months.

And or if you want to do it annually, or you can do it quarterly.

If you want to do it even weekly, you can.

It's up to you.

However, you spend your time is up to you.

But I look back at there and I go, okay.

You know, what went well?

What didn't go as expected?

Anything blow up?

What did I need to learn from that?

Was there something that could have been done to help prevent the outcome from being what it is?

Sometimes it can be, sometimes it can't.

But another exercise that I do, and I learned this, and I forget the individual's name, he was a leadership guy and he was an advisor to multiple presidents, you know, including I think President Obama.

I don't know if he's advising President Biden, or I don't know if he did anything with President Trump or not.

But one of the things that he does twice a year, in July and in January, is he looks at all the things that he does.

Whether it's volunteering, being on the board of directors of someplace, coaching, writing, whatever the case may be.

And every six months, he looks at the list of all the things he does and he picks one that he's no longer going to do.

It's like I'm eliminating that from my life.

I'm not doing that anymore.

Pretty severe, pretty significant.

Maybe very difficult for some of us to do that.

You know, like if you're a parent, okay, I'm not going to raise my kids anymore.

Don't, don't do that, please.

Being a parent, I understand where you're coming from on that some days.

Thankfully, all mine are adults, and I go, well, you know what?

This nest is no longer for you.

Go find, go find your own nest.

You know how to reach me.

Nah, they're they're all doing well.

But at the end of the day, it's it's a good exercise because if there is something in life that you are currently doing that you don't like, it's an opportunity for you to make some adjustments and make and do some things to change it.

There's there's I know there's a lot of people that feel stuck, and there's a lot of people that say, okay, this is I just have to work here because I have to make this amount of money to cover my mortgage payment and my car payment and make my spouse happy and blah blah blah blah blah.

I get it.

I know.

I was there, I understand it.

But what's more important is how do you take care of yourself first?

Because no one is going to do that for you.

No one you may have the most supportive, loving spouse or friends or family, whatever.

But the only person that can really take care of you is you.

And and think about it, who do you spend the most time with in your life?

You.

You don't spend any more time with anybody else than you.

And you want you to be happy, healthy, successful, whatever your definition of success is.

And in order to do that, you have to make sure that your life is designed in a way to make that possible.

And if it's not, then you can change it.

Can you change it overnight?

Maybe some things, but not typically everything.

But you can take the steps.

Maybe you want to go into a different career.

All right, well, figure out what you like to do, find a career that somewhat aligns with that, get the necessary training to be able to do it, and then go do it.

I've had many careers in my life.

I get flabbergasted sometimes when I looked at my LinkedIn resume and go, holy smokes.

Yikes.

No wonder I can answer questions on everything, because I'm kind of done a lot.

It's like no wonder I'm tired.

But uh no, I'm not tired because I have a really good pillow and a really good bed, I get good sleep.

But 15 years ago, different, different discussion.

But at the end of the day, you gotta take care of you.

And you have to design your life the way that is best for you.

And I that could be difficult conversations with loved ones if things aren't you know working out.

But communicate, don't don't go in and say, I'm gonna change this and this is how it's gonna be.

That's not how you approach it.

Get their input on things.

Because people see things about you that you can't see because you're you know, they're outside of you.

So they can make some suggestions.

Hopefully they're they're supportive and and loving and caring and all of that.

If they're not, then work with a therapist and and see if things can be corrected in those aspects.

And that's that's my takeaway is when you need help, get it.

You know, there's no shame in it.

It's a tune-up, quite frankly.

It's like, okay, how do I make this vehicle that I call my body the best it can be so I can be the best for me and for the people I love and the work that I do and the things I do in life that I enjoy?

If you make yourself the best version of you, everything gets better.

Everything tastes better.

Life is better.

SPEAKER_00: I love it.

Such powerful, powerful life advice.

I've enjoyed talking with you so much today, and so enjoyed just learning more about your life, about the wisdom that you have to share.

And um, and I can only hope that you know, the those listening to us today have just taken away as much as I have.

And for those interested in in diving in deeper into the subject of burnout, do you have any resources, books, anything like that that that we could direct them to?

SPEAKER_01: Definitely.

We'll we'll start off with my latest book.

It's called Burnout Proof.

What a shocking topic for me.

It's available on Amazon, so you can get it on Kindle or paperback or hardcover if you really want to spend a lot of money on it.

It's a quick read, and that's intentional.

Because what I find is if here's a how-to book on how to do something, if it's 300 pages, you're not going to get through it because our attention span keeps getting shorter and shorter.

So it's a shorter book, and that's of course intentional.

I want people to go understand what burnout is, what are the signs of it?

Here's some things you can do to stop.

So that's one thing.

Secondly, my website, breakfastleadership.com, there's a blog on there.

I've got an online course as well.

There's a link at the top, it says courses.

If they use the code 90 N-I-N-E-T-Y, they can get 90% off of the course.

So it works out to be like$29 or something like that.

So it's basically the work that I do with organizations.

Thankfully, they don't the organizations don't pay me$29, or maybe they have, I don't know.

But I usually charge organizations a bit more than that for my time.

But this was a way for me to make sure that it's accessible for people.

And I'm on you know, most of the social media channels, uh, just look up Breakfast Leadership or hashtag Breakfast Leadership.

You should be able to find me on pretty much all the platforms.

SPEAKER_00: Well, awesome, awesome, awesome.

Well, well, I will be sure for you interested that that promo code will be left in the episode show notes along with all the links that Michael has just mentioned.

But before I go, Michael, I just want to sincerely thank you for taking the time out of your day to be on the podcast.

And it just means the world to me, and I appreciate it with the utmost sincerity.

SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate you giving me your time as well to be a part of it because time is one of those commodities that we cannot get back.

We can lose money, we can get money back, we can lose our car, we can get our car back, we can lose our house, we can get our house back, we can lose our health, and with the right things, we can get our health back.

But time is something that we don't get back ever.

So I always appreciate you and and the time that you spend and in bringing this show to the masses.

So I really appreciate being on your show today.

SPEAKER_00: Awesome, awesome.

Well, thank you.

And I want to thank you for listening to another episode here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

You are what makes this podcast what it is.

And well, just uh be sure if you haven't already joined our mailing list, be sure to check out the show notes where you can find a link so that you get a uh little note from me each and every week when the episode is released.

And uh that way you uh keep up to date on uh what's happening around here.

Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and just hope that something you've heard today can just leave an impact on your life and to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.

And that's the lowdown with Heavenlow.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.