[00:00:00.340] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.550] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:00:21.210] - Chris
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:00:24.490] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so and ultimately share, right? Like the coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help us a ton.
[00:00:58.440] - Chris
Right on. And listen, If you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110 point assessment for your business. And we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp. Com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp. Com/audit, and take the Boa. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business.
[00:01:38.810] - Brandon
What's up, G-Money?
[00:01:40.020] - Chris
Oh, not much, dude. It's been a full week. It's been great. It's becoming fall here. Yes. I've actually enjoyed throwing on the hoodie and the puffy a couple of times this week in the evening. It was raining last night. I had a bunch of buddies over and for on cold plunge. It was the first time in a long time. It was pouring down rain. We were sitting underneath our covered At the Boys Club out.
[00:02:01.350] - Brandon
Yeah. A bunch of guys, too.
[00:02:03.250] - Chris
Yeah, 10. It was awesome. Business owners. Epic. Yeah, it was great. It was cool. It was just a fun Motley crew. We have a buddy who's a pharmacist with a cancer, drugs startup company, and another buddy He's a real estate developer and teachers. Yeah, really. He owns a coffee roastery. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. Anyway, for those of you who are new to the Head Hard Boots podcast, just quick introduction. Brandon and I, we're the founders. This Head Hard Boots is really a passion project for us. It's not so much a profit center. It's a way for us to... We're a consulting company. We have a consulting company that services restoration companies of all sizes here in the United States. Our client base will do over a quarter billion dollars worth of revenue this year. We take all of that experience and knowledge that our team is gathering or our clients share with us. And inevitably, that stuff comes up here in the podcast. It's a chance for us to share it with the broader restoration world. So that's who we are, floodlightgrp. Com. And today, we have a really wild topic that Brandon is going to lead us out in, something primal, and I like primal things.
[00:03:17.080] - Chris
Here we go. It's so funny because a lot of people ask us how the sausage is made, the headhart boots. They'd be like, so, man, it must take a lot of work. You guys just, gosh, you're putting out so... And I just said, no, we literally, we show up. And most of the time we have, at least between us, one of us has a thought for something we've been noodling on. And then we also, it's funny, we did at one point put together an editorial calendar of topics, but it's just not how we do it. It just isn't. It's much more seat of the pants and tends to revolve around either conversations that have come up repeatedly with clients in the previous week or personal interests This is Brandon and I or something. Conversation we have with somebody at a conference or a book or a pot, whatever.
[00:04:06.100] - Brandon
Sometimes it's super tactical and free thoughts through. But a lot of times it's literally just actively in our own business. And what's going on. This is relevant stuff.
[00:04:16.950] - Chris
And so if you don't like it, kick sand. Go pick another pie. Just kidding.
[00:04:22.760] - Brandon
We wish we had that much confidence to say that. No. Okay, so I got a wild topic. So hang with me, guys. All right. So So as you guys know, if you've been listening to Head, Heart, Boots for more than a couple of episodes, you do realize that we cover the territory. Again, we have episodes that be very tactical. It's in the name. Black and white. And then we have others, right? Yeah, we're getting into the head. We're getting into how we think about our Ourselves, our business, our relationships, all the things. This is not tactical in nature, but this is definitely... I think it gives us all something to think about. All right, let me get into this. Let me set the stage. Okay. So some of you know it's September. And so for those of us that enjoy hunting and/or are oriented around hunting, this is about the time of year we start thinking about it. And then for many of us, we're doing it actively right now. So a couple of weeks ago, by the time this comes out, maybe three, four weeks, I was out in the woods with a friend of mine.
[00:05:12.070] - Brandon
We spent about five days, six days hunting, archery hunting. It's very secret squirrel, Ninja stuff, calling in animals.
[00:05:20.040] - Chris
That's funny. Were you in the Ochoa Coast? Where were we at?
[00:05:22.190] - Brandon
No, we're in an area called the Starkey Unit, which is just outside of Legrand, so like the northeast. Way far.
[00:05:29.980] - Chris
Corner of-About six hours from where we live, yeah.
[00:05:31.510] - Brandon
Yeah. By the time you do all the things in gravel roads, you're probably just under eight hours to get there. It's a bit of a trek. Then you're out in pristine, beautiful woods with lots of elevation change. There's this thing, it's just wild animals, and it was awesome. We could probably talk about that a little bit, get into the grind here. But okay, so let me set the stage. This thing got me thinking about this concept of primal joy. All right. Then I was I was listening to a podcast recently that was the guest was the gentleman that created the movie, My Octopus Teacher. About four years ago, this movie just skyrocketed into Fame.
[00:06:13.830] - Chris
It won an academy award.
[00:06:15.170] - Brandon
I just looked it up. Yeah, won an academy award. I mean, this thing got traction for all intents and purposes. Basically, it went viral. I'm not going to go into what the movie is. If you're interested, check it out. It's actually a very entertaining, very interesting story. I just downloaded it. For all kinds. Yeah, it's All right, so this dude, this guy, he's a South African. He's on this podcast, and he's talking about what led up these events that led up for him to be in a situation where he could record this film. And he just highlighted this idea that, look, it took me 10 years, probably, roughly, to create this film because of all the skills he had to go and gather prior to being able to spend this consolidated amount of time in relationship, again, with this octopus. This is him. The movie is about his relationship with the ocean in South Africa and him going into this. I can't remember what they call it, but they call it the Ocean Forest. It's a very specific type of geographic activity that happens in the blah, blah, blah. All right. One of the things that this guy ends up doing is he goes and spends an extended period of time learning, tracking from Aboriginal natives.
[00:07:27.030] - Brandon
There's a group, and they're present in some parts of South Africa and other areas where they have still carried this tradition that's hundreds of thousands of years old of speaking this language known as tracking. This guy makes this reference that this Tracking is a true universal language. It's as foundational to humans as humans are because it transcends nationalities, backgrounds, all the things. Species. It's species. It's literally learning how to speak nature so that you understand what animals are doing, what they're doing in relationship with each other, and then how do you leverage that information to ultimately find them and share life with nature, i. E, what hunting is. I was making jokes to myself that when I go hunting, it's the only time ever in the world where when I pick up feces, it's not weird. I literally... There was all these times as Olin and I are marching through the woods where we're picking up elk it and squeezing it to make sure that it's fresh, right? Because then that tells us where... Anyways, I'm laughing about this. So this is just one small element of this concept of learning how to track. Okay, where am I going with this?
[00:08:42.650] - Brandon
Well, as this guy spending this time, extended period of time, learning this language of tracking and studying under these Aboriginal leaders on how to track, he said, randomly, they were out in the field, in the jungle, and one of the guys just randomly starts laughing, almost bending over laughing to himself. They're looking around like, what's this guy eating mushrooms? What's happening right now? And literally what they reference, man, is this idea of what they call primal joy. It freaking thrashed my brain. It was this idea that when you are living in this place of absolute awareness and absolute connection to what's happening around you, there are these moments that you just experience pure joy. And it's not even based on in a certain exchange or anything. It's like there's just this overwhelming sense of well-being to the point that it can physically manifest itself into joy. This man in the middle of this multi, probably mile jungle walk just starts randomly laughing to himself. And it's not because he was thinking about a YouTube video or a short that he watched on the toilet the night before. Then I was thinking about this, man, and I'm like, How real is this?
[00:10:07.180] - Brandon
Is this bullshit or is this something I can actually point to in my own life? Man, I can. Okay, so here it is. This is my cheeky elk hunting story.
[00:10:18.930] - Chris
I have a story, too.
[00:10:19.530] - Brandon
Okay, cool. All right. My friend and I were out several weeks ago. We're hunting, and the animals aren't talking as much as that we would like. It's a different hunt. We can't just move to the sound and call them in and do the things. There's a little bit more of trial and error that we have to practice in order to feel where we think the animals are and then do something to try to coax them in a way where they'll move or do something that we can track where they are. So we're doing this. So my friend and I are finding these... We're walking ridge lines, and we're basically sending calls down into Thick Brush and into these areas that we know that they will tend to hold when there's a lot of movement or pressure in the unit. Olin and I, this is day three or four. We've been hunting our asses off and have yet to call in an animal. We buckle down. We're getting ready to do this thing where I'm going to send out a couple of cow calls into an area in hopes that we will attract a bull out of hiding, essentially, so that we can interact with it.
[00:11:26.580] - Brandon
He and I send this call and we're dead quiet. It's high alert, high adrenaline. And out of the corner of my eye, I see this tan face. Dude, if I could record it, it was like a bad cartoon where this side-engled elk head comes into my peripheral vision. It's right next to you. It's right next to you. And so I'm slowly, dude. I'm talking like... I'm not even sure how slow I was going, but I was literally slowly turning my head around so that I can see what in the hell just happened. I'm locked eyes to eyes, these big ass dark black eyes of an elk. And he's a bull. He's staring me in my face. How far away are we talking? We're talking 18 feet. I mean, he was under 20 yards. To an 800 pound animal or something. He's literally standing right behind me. And what I had done is we were just thinking the likelihood of him coming in behind us was almost zero. Well, it was enough that there was a chance, and that's exactly what this guy did. I'm turning around. I lock eyes with this bull. I can't turn my body enough now to make a shot because he will bolt.
[00:12:35.420] - Brandon
And my only thought in my head is if I hold totally still, eventually, Olin is going to look over and notice that I am locked eyes with an animal and he has a shot. So I don't move. I don't want to ruin the shot for my friend because I don't have one. Anyways, long and short of it, he does realize what's going on, but it's too late. He moves the bulb spooks and he bolts. Then there's this exchange for another 10, 15 minutes where we try to do some calcalls, try to get it to not go bonkers.
[00:13:02.260] - Chris
This guy is like, through you. I don't know what's going on.
[00:13:04.490] - Brandon
He's out. He's probably covered two miles at this point already. Then there's this moment, man, where he and I start the banter of going back and forth. They're like, Oh, this happened. And then this, and then I was thinking this, and you were thinking this. And literally, we both just fall down in the dirt and start laughing. There's this high adrenaline rush. As we have this exchange, we've been working our ass off. We're trying all these different methods and tactics, and we finally get this really beautiful animal to come in close, and it doesn't ultimately work out in our favor. And as soon as that adrenaline dumps over, we just land in the dirt and we just laugh about it. And I realized in that moment, I'm thinking about that and I'm like, Dude, that's it. That is this moment of primal joy. And it was unbelievable how rich it was and how much it penetrated by I can kill you up. Oh, it was unbelievable. I just thought to myself, for those of you that have never hunted, this is the thing that once you experience at one time, you will never not go hunting.
[00:14:12.960] - Brandon
Even for me, I spent a period of time where I went to rifle hunting, and I did good. I had more success in general. Then I didn't go for several years. This is my first time back after several years of not hunting, and I went back to archery. It's harder. Everything about it is way more challenging. But I just, in that moment, there is no doubt in my mind that for the rest of my years, I will hunt every year and I will hunt archery every year. Because in that moment, I felt that thing that penetrated my being that nothing else matches. And until I get it again, it won't be enough. It's just in me now. And so anyways, this is where my head's at after going on this hunting trip and then listening to this man talk about this thing that they've recognized over the centuries that exists in humans is primal joy. And it's, here's the way I think about it. And then I think, I'll shut up for a minute. We can chat about it is, the things that we wrestle with always seem to be this idea of looking backwards in time and regretting, wishing something was different.
[00:15:25.610] - Brandon
We're just stuck looking in the rear view mirror. Or we find ourselves in this constant state of what tomorrow, fears about things that haven't come, worries about what people are going to say or think. It's all about tomorrow. And we seem to spend our entire lives yesterday or tomorrow. And when you go hunting, and I think what these guys were talking about in this idea of tracking and speaking the language of tracking, you can't be yesterday and you can't be tomorrow. You have to be right there, right now, because you're listening, you're smelling, you're feeling, you're judging. You're so present and so aware of the moment that I'm not sure there's a way to be more alive. I think this joy comes from the fact that you're just not fucking worried about what didn't happen, and you're not yet worried about what will happen. You're just right here. And man, when I was sitting on some of these and I was just right here, and I hear a black bear, browning off in the distance, and I hear a bugle from a big bull, go rip-in off the canyon, or I'm hearing a branch break, and I think to myself, is that the animal I just called in?
[00:16:48.790] - Brandon
There's joy in it because I'm living. I'm in the moment- You're paying attention. Experiencing. I'm aware to it. I'm connected to it, man. Where am I going? I don't I don't fucking know. But it was just an experience I don't want to ignore. I just felt like, man, I want to talk about this because I don't know what else to do with it. But dude, it was fucking epic, man. That's all I can say. It's just this concept is it's profound. I just want more of it. I want to feel more of it.
[00:17:20.670] - Chris
You know what's cool about this is I actually had some exposure to this thing you're talking about. About five or six years ago, my kids, all three of my kids, were going to this thing called Nature School that we found out about from a friend. Paul and Shana, they still run it. It's called... I can't remember what the name of the school is, but our kids It was great. We went to it for several months, and we would actually pull them out of regular school, like one day a week to go to the woods. Oh, yeah. They learned tracking, they learned mindfulness meditation, and it was always out in the woods, rain or shine. Yeah. And they get their hands dirty, and they're tracking animals, they're identifying scat, they're learning how to build fires the old-fashioned way, how to spark and start a fire from a bow, right? And all of this stuff was very, very cool. And both my wife and I, occasionally, we'd swap, and one of us would attend with them. And that led to us going to this family camp with a bunch of other parents and kids from the same community.
[00:18:25.250] - Chris
And they invited to this family camp. It was in Paradise Valley. Paradise Valley? Right It's outside of Pleasant Hill, Oregon. Oh, yeah. It's incredibly beautiful spot, a hippy place. But they invited this guy named John Young. John Young is an expert in tracking.
[00:18:44.730] - Brandon
Okay. Yeah.
[00:18:45.760] - Chris
In particular, he's an expert in the language of birds.
[00:18:50.220] - Brandon
Oh, okay.
[00:18:51.260] - Chris
He wrote a book called What the Robin Knows. If you're interested at all in this topic, which I am, and this is a reminder of it, I have I'm so fascinated by this, but he spent years actually with, and I'm pretty sure I could be wrong. Please, somebody correct me if they hear this, but I think it was called the Hutu tribe in Africa. In South Africa, he spent years studying with this tribe on how they tracked and how the language of birds that they understood in that particular region. Then he brought it back, and he personally lives, I think, in Carmel, California. He goes around. It's It's like his life's purpose to teach people in Western culture how to leverage this language of the birds and this primal nature tracking to enhance our life. Bringing nature into modern life in one of the principles that he taught us at this family camp was how to use a sit spot. One of the things he teaches and that tribal cultures had is just a part of their mind We have this whole mindfulness meditation. We have yoga classes. We have all these techniques. But where a lot of that began in a lot of cultures was that people would spend part of their day in a spot, in a sit spot, and they became so familiar and accustomed to it that the meditation just involved them being fully present and learning what the birds were saying to them, essentially.
[00:20:27.350] - Chris
Because the birds communicate things to what you're speaking about. And the birds indicate what's happening in the rest of the animal kingdom and can give you an awareness of everything that's happening around you. So one of the examples that you gave or you were telling me about before we got on air was this guy could tell if there was a jaguar going through the jungle a kilometer away. Exactly. How do you know that? Well, you know it because of the way the birds are reacting and signaling. I just remember at family camp, so we had every single day, we would go to our sit spot. We'd all have a gathering, and John would speak, and he'd tell stories about different types of birds. As we're talking in this open air, beautiful field in the middle of this forest, he's hearing things. He'll just stop in the middle of his talk. He'll hear a bird. He'll be like, Oh, well, there's a red-crested Hawk or something. I don't know. I'm making shit up. But he would mention the name of the bird because he'd know it, and he would just be like, Listen, and we'd hear it again.
[00:21:27.020] - Chris
And he would talk about how far away it is and what that meant and what it means for the other animals in the forest and all that stuff. And then we would all part ways and go find our sit spot. Our whole task was just to sit and notice what's happening. Yeah, man. I remember how cathartic that was. I mean, it's really hard. I think you would say, too, it's hard to actually put it into words. There's something so organic or something that's so fundamental, so primal. I think primal is a good word for it. It's such a feeling in your guts that you get to that is very, very hard for us to notice or feel in our modern culture.
[00:22:09.440] - Brandon
Yeah, it is.
[00:22:10.830] - Chris
And I have found, we have this little forest walk. It's called the Brandt City Park. Brand is City Park in Corvallis, Oregon. It's like six blocks from my house, actually. And it's this 50 acre nature reserve that a land developer gifted to the city, I don't know, 20 years ago or something. They put a big housing tract in. And so you walk through a neighborhood, and then all of a sudden, there's a city park, and it's incredibly beautiful. These huge old growth dog bur trees. And it's like you're literally stepping out into a wilderness boundary right in town.
[00:22:43.010] - Brandon
From the city.
[00:22:43.960] - Chris
Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. Just the undergrowth in this forest. It's just all pristine forest of what would have been 200 years ago. It's like right there. These trees that are six foot in diameter. Ridiculous. And sometimes my wife and I will go and just sit with our dog right the trail and just sit. It's incredibly spiritual. Yeah. And not a woo- woo way. It's like there's this real sense of just being present with God, with all of it.
[00:23:16.270] - Brandon
Yeah. Dude, I think this stuff is so universal. I think that what sucks about trying to talk about it is it's never enough. You can't actually convey this over somebody just has to experience it. Then it's like when you're part of these communities that have experienced some of this stuff, the reason those communities are so meaningful, it's like somebody that sees aliens. It's so difficult for them to explain that to anybody else and nobody buys it, and they just don't get it. A lot of times this stuff is similar. It's like we're so disconnected from it that when people talk about it, our gut instinct is this woo-woo, it's foo-foo. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. No, you went in the woods. Sounds cool. Some people like to hunt. Yeah, some people don't. It's like, no, you don't understand what I'm trying to say here. I think what I've been connecting the dots on this recently, bro, and I don't know if this makes sense for you or not at all, but this year for Floodlight has been a challenging year. We've probably worked harder than we ever have in lots of different types of businesses. Because sometimes when you're operating, it's like your business is mature enough that...
[00:24:28.940] - Brandon
I don't want to say it's easy because it's never fucking easy. But you're just more is happening on autopilot than necessary this guided direction. I think right now with floodlights development, everything requires a lot of work and attention. Right now, we've been working on all this stuff internally that there's not a lot of fruit for it yet because A, it's just coming online and we're just now starting to expose our client book to it, blah, blah, blah. But there's just been no lack of hard, hard effort behind the scenes to push this thing to fruition. What I realized, man, is, and I know people talk about this all the time, but if you don't like the journey, this shit is fucking miserable. It's miserable. I think part of what I was connecting with with this whole idea of primal joy and this idea of what I was experiencing a few weeks ago while I was in the woods was, if I don't find a way to consistently enjoy the journey, I am going to leave a wake of things that I'm not proud of because I will be grinding gears so hard thinking that it's the next horizon that will be the bee's needs.
[00:25:39.200] - Brandon
The payoff. The payoff. I'm almost there. I can't tell you how many times a day I've used that phrase and how many times a day I hear business owners use the phrase, we're almost there. You're so close. A little bit more of a push. This time next year, we all live in what the tomorrow.
[00:25:55.190] - Chris
And there is no finish.
[00:25:56.530] - Brandon
And there's no finish line. There's no payoff. This is the game. If we find joy in the journey, these other material assets, values, milestones, it's the icing on the cake. You can really celebrate it because it will feel like enough because you were having fun in the journey. You know what I mean? Liftify. Com/bloodlight.
[00:26:20.610] - Chris
You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe even heard our episode with Zack Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recent And C, consistency. Two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25 % conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding Right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify. Com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify.
[00:27:01.280] - Brandon
Com/bloodlight. We spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is, sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like answerforce. Com is we can systemize that, we can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help. Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick. We We get a storm search, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce. Com can support you, be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So answerforce. Com/bloodlight. That's great.
[00:27:54.940] - Chris
Cnr magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully? She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Cnr is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. It is the water-cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine. Com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine. Com.
[00:28:38.360] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about Actionable Insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the Actionable Insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few % that we've just forgot over time. So actionableinsights, getinsights. Org/ floodlight, and take a look at what the Actionable Insights Xactimate profile could be doing for you and your team.
[00:29:33.560] - Chris
I talked with an entrepreneur that recently exited a big exit, a big eight-figure exit. And you know what he said to me? He said, Honestly, Chris, it's hard for me to say this out loud because I put so much effort into that thing that I just sold. The only real outcome is just made my bank account bigger. I just thought...
[00:29:54.950] - Brandon
I know some people are going, Well, that's good by me.
[00:29:57.200] - Chris
Yeah, no. But there is a point, and I think it's different for every single person what that number is. It's so funny that all of this stuff is aligned. I was talking with Lane at Clean Claims. We were having this exact conversation at the beginning of our call, just talking about how do we enjoy the journey because the outcome is never enough for people like us.
[00:30:25.760] - Brandon
It's not guaranteed.
[00:30:27.270] - Chris
It's not guaranteed. Not only are you potentially never going to get to the payoff because people die. Shit happens. Shit happens. But even more than that is that for people like us, and maybe it's an entire humanity thing, but I think it's certainly amongst entrepreneurs, is it's never enough. You and I have talked about that ad nauseam. It's like every single time, beyond a certain point, and there's a fair bit of conversation around this, but like I said, after a certain amount of income, your happiness does not track with your income growth. And I think for many people, and we see this, we work with a lot of really successful people, and in some cases, they're like, wow, I would have expected them to be happier people. Given all the things, the freedom, the financial security and stuff that they enjoy. But I'm more and more convinced that there's never going to be a point where I'm ready. There's no point where it's like, okay, I'm done. And therefore, how do we spend the rest of our life? I think it's prioritizing. I was going to say pursuing. I think it is about prioritizing and pursuing those primal experiences like you had because what else are we chasing?
[00:31:44.410] - Brandon
Yeah. And they're fundamentally altering of your being. It's not like, Yeah, it works for some people. No, no. If you experience it and you experience it, really, it will fundamentally fundamentally have an impact, and I don't care who you are, what age you are. That is all irrelevant. When you experience the stuff that this is, it is universally impactful. And I think I go back to, I think it's deathmer. There's a lot of stuff that you and I have referenced and that we read and appreciate. And he talks about the only way to remain... When you're in your ego, what that is basically is you're looking in the rear view mirror and worrying about something that did or didn't happen, or you're looking into the future and you're about what is or isn't going to happen. I think that just like the way that you manage some of your ego is by trying to spend more time being present and aware in the moment, I think that's where this joy component comes from. Because I was Here's another little story, right? On my front porch, I don't live in a multimillion dollar house somewhere. I just have a quiet place in the woods.
[00:32:53.680] - Chris
But it is a pretty cool place.
[00:32:54.940] - Brandon
Pretty damn nice. I'm not heard. I'm sitting out on my deck, and this is my front deck. I am fortunate. I live in an area that I'm going to see two cars come past the front of my house. When I'm sitting on my front deck, it's as quiet as it gets. I'm watching this Blue Jay, and my wife has brought this to my attention, so now every once, why I look for it. In the summertime, in the heat of the day, I'll randomly watch a Blue Jay land on our gravel drive, and it'll look as if they're hurt. They'll be flopping around on the ground. And then all of a sudden, it'll get up like nothing's happened. It'll be picking at its feathers and stuff, and flies off. Like, what the fuck is going on here? Well, lo and behold, what this Blue Jay does is it lays on the ground near ants, and essentially, I guess, acts wounded or something, and these ants crawl on top of it, and then it just stands up and eats them. It's literally like he's just baiting them so that they're within reach. Then he just eats them and he's done, he flies away.
[00:33:53.990] - Brandon
So that's crazy, right? And then this other thing that I've picked up over time is our garage Our yard is pretty sloped in the front yard. The way that my garage is oriented, there's our walkway and then the front yard and it begins to slope. I'll get five or six of these Blue Jays and they sit on the gutter and they're yaking at each other, bullshitting around. Then it's like they're taking turns, showing off, and they jump off my gutter, and they fly down the hill, down the front of the yard, and they do some shit, and they come back. Then there's this chatter, and then another one does it, and they come back, and then there's this chatter. I can't help but picture to my I'm like, these are a bunch of juvenile Blue Jays, and they're talking shit. It's like frat boys. They're talking shit to each other and showing off. I don't know what's really happening. But the point is, when I'm on my front deck and I'm watching the frat boys show off, and I get a chuckle out of it, and I get irritated because they kick shit out of my gutters.
[00:34:51.580] - Brandon
Then I'm watching this Blue Jay play dead to get ants to crawl on it. There is something happening in me that's great. I'm there. I'm appreciating what's going on around me. I'm not worried. I'm not stuck in fear. I'm not stressed out because I'm right there in the moment. I'm going, even a bird has these complex social structures. It's fundamentally awe. It's inspiring. I'm like, this world is so complex. There's so many amazing things going on, and I just spend 90 person of my day pursuing what was and what has yet to come. I just think that joy and that concept of joy, meaning not satisfaction where you're giving in or rolling over, but enjoying the journey. The only way I've seen a tangible way to get more of that is I have to engineer ways to be in the moment right now and be fully present. Because when I do, I'm actually really I am happy.
[00:36:01.770] - Chris
Yeah, dude. What's coming to mind for me is all these moments, this history of moments. I think about when we were in the Ochoa Coast with our attorney buddy.
[00:36:14.580] - Brandon
Gosh, that's been a long time, right?
[00:36:15.860] - Chris
It was. It was a few years ago. We were in this BLM land on this hillside with surrounding ranches in Eastern Oregon, Central Oregon. Thousands of acres. I think the Les Schwab, for those people from the Northwest or West I was the Les Schwab founders. They had a huge multi-thousand-acre ranch right next to this property we were camping on. And you guys were at the campfire, and I walked away down the face of this hill, and I was standing there, and I still remember it. I could almost still hear it in my ears. I could literally... It was so quiet. It was so peaceful out there, except for the crackle of the fire up by you guys about 150 feet away. I could actually hear the bugs bugs in the field.
[00:37:02.200] - Brandon
Moving. The shit moving. I could hear...
[00:37:05.200] - Chris
I swear I could hear bugs actually eating the blades of grass on this hillside. I could hear them moving in the ground and the field mice and stuff.
[00:37:17.780] - Brandon
It was that incredible. And that quiet.
[00:37:21.130] - Chris
I remember just sitting down in awe by myself, about 150 feet away from you guys. Then a storm storm started to roll in. It was just one of the most incredible, awe-inspiring moments of a feeling utterly in the moment and the humility of it all. It's as though, regardless of what you believe in terms of religion or whatever, it's like somehow we all got here. The awe and the mystery at the very base level in those moments, there's something about it that if you sit in it long enough, it just fills up your battery inside to a capacity you didn't know was there. That's right. It's like, it tops it off. It tops you off in a way that we just can't muster from working out at the gym or eating our Whole Foods, organic shit from the grocery store. It's like there's something out there that we need that can only be satisfied with that attention and exposure to that stuff. It is.
[00:38:31.820] - Brandon
I know for a lot of you that are listening, I know we're all differently wired. One of the things that I've recognized about myself, and this is sometimes it's similar to Chris, sometimes it's not, is I just run at a high RPM. I've got a high anxiety level all the time. It's in the gene pool. Part of my kids have some of this, others more than others, but it's just a thing. That I have. I think many of us have some version of that, whether it's your personal life experiences, the level of leverage that you have in the business, some of the things you're trying to accomplish. It's going to create these different levels of anxiety and angst and challenge and all the things. And I just... When you sit in that for too long, there's just medical support and data that says it's super negative for you. I just think that, like real-world application, many of the veterans returning from overseas, they can't point to a one event that was the catalyst that created some form of active PTSD. Actually, what it is, is that for extended periods of time, they're in a fight or flight posture.
[00:39:44.730] - Brandon
It's just like why cops over years and EMS responders over the years, they break down mentally and emotionally. It's not the one event. It wasn't the one call that fractured their life.
[00:39:56.430] - Chris
It's the constant strength.
[00:39:57.780] - Brandon
It's constant state of fight or flight. They are in that posture for way too long periods of time. It has super negative impacts on us, physically, emotionally, mentally. It's undeniable. There's data, they can track it, they can measure it. I think that as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as key leaders of people with a lot at stake, a lot on the line, a lot at risk. A lot of us, our entire family's well-being is wrapped up into what we're doing with our businesses. It is heavy, and it is the weight that we feel from it is absolutely validated. I think what we need to keep track of is that I think in many cases, many of us that own and operate businesses or lead big teams where there's a lot on the line, you are staying in a state of fight or flight way more time period during the week than you give yourself credit to.
[00:40:49.090] - Chris
Yeah, then you're noticing.
[00:40:49.600] - Brandon
Then you're noticing. It's got to be having an impact on us. I just can't see a way that it's not having, really to a certain extent, a negative impact. When I think about that, I'm trying to find a healthy way to compete against that, to reduce it, to give my system a break and a reset. Dude, I think this idea of primal joy is one of the ways that we can do it. It's not complicated. Maybe you're not a hunter. Maybe you don't go into the woods for two weeks at a time or whatever the thing is, but can you get better at 6:15 starting on your deck and just being there in a moment and just try to look around you and recognize what is happening around you. If we got a little bit more of that throughout the week, would we ultimately be adding years to our lives? Would we potentially be adding more joy to the journey? Would we potentially be creating a scenario where we're better partners, we're better leaders, we're better in relationship because we're just getting out of that fight or flight mechanism more than we got?
[00:41:59.130] - Chris
I think it's onIt's undeniable. It's undeniable in my experience. I think, yeah, we're always really careful, rightfully so as leaders, not to impose our experience on others, but I think there are some universal things. Yeah. There's some laws of the universe, and there is something to what you're saying. And many, many, many people and research has validated that. We've lost as cities, as we have more and more density in our cities, more traffic and more concrete. We remove these forest places. It has an impact. I think all of us know it. All of us know it because when we get outside, I think of we have clients in the Phoenix area. My parents have a house in Phoenix, and there's this place called Pine Top. Phoenix is like a freaking concrete jungle. It's just, oh, and the traffic around...
[00:42:51.090] - Brandon
The 110.
[00:42:53.060] - Chris
Gosh, man. Anyway.
[00:42:56.530] - Brandon
For native Phoenix, folks.
[00:42:58.250] - Chris
Yeah. You're like, yeah, but where do they go? Where do they go to get out to the forest? They got to get out into these forested places. It's like we all know. We all know. We all understand the value. And yet, I think most of us don't prioritize. We don't put the effort in. We aren't disciplining ourselves to create those times.
[00:43:18.950] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that's it. We don't recognize the value enough to allow it to change what we prioritize. And I think that's my encouragement. And again, I'm going to Bungle all of this up. It's going to be an entire year before I go again for that elder. No, it's not.
[00:43:35.050] - Chris
You and I will get out to the woods.
[00:43:36.370] - Brandon
Well, we'll get into the woods more often. I won't be able to chase a big ass Elm.
[00:43:40.780] - Chris
Yeah. Well, so if you know somebody that needs to get out to the woods, just share this episode with them.
[00:43:47.610] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:43:48.620] - Chris
Send them a text. Be like, dude, you need to get the brick in the woods. Yeah.
[00:43:52.330] - Brandon
Maybe you're trying to coax them into going down.
[00:43:54.480] - Chris
You got a spouse that you're unhappy with. Yeah, honey, you need to get out to the woods. Get the hell out of here. Go, man. Go get some primal joy and then come back to the house. That's right.
[00:44:02.810] - Brandon
Thanks, crew, for hanging out with us. Hopefully, as we muddle our way through some of these experiences and stuff that you guys can connect to and find valuable, we'd love to hear some report back from you guys or responses on some of this stuff if it does connect with you. But we appreciate your time. We understand that when you share your time with us, it's super meaningful. So thanks again for coming along with us, and we'll see you on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:44:31.050] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, or you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.
