From Hustle to Healing: Adam Cruz on Redefining Success and Sustainable Ambition

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a lot of times the worst thing for someone who isn't ready for scale or

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isn't healthy for growth is to grow.

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That's one of the most dangerous things.

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And for me, my drive and ambition years later, after a lot of pain,

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realizing that all of it was just an attempt to be significant,

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what If going harder and faster isn't the answer to success, but

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the very thing holding you back?

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Adam Cruz knows that tension firsthand.

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As a high performing design leader and church planner, he helped generate

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over 115 million in revenue for companies like Intuit and me, while

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also building Thriving ministries, But beneath the hustle was burnout,

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brokenness, and a silent collapse.

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Now through the healed hustle, Adam helps mission-driven leaders build

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ventures that flourish without sacrificing what matters most.

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In this conversation, we explore the hidden cost of unregulated ambition

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and the power of healing driven Adam, welcome to Seat Go Create.

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Hey,

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glad,

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glad to be here, Tim.

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Thanks for inviting me.

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Good to talk to you again.

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we chit chatted a while back, we're introduced by our good

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buddy, Mike, and, been doing well.

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Yeah, doing really well.

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I'm always on the journey trying to figure out what's next and how to survive.

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So I've got all these rascals running around, going back to school, and

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so I like the fall and I hate the fall kind of at the same time.

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fall

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in it.

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fall is our best time of the year.

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Gloria and I have our anniversary probably by the time this eight years, we would've

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Oh yeah.

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And our, both our kids were born in the month of October and, you know, we spent

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most of our years in the south, which I'm actually in Atlanta right now, and

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it's starting to cool off a little bit.

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So, so anyway, I like that.

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How many kids do you have?

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We have three kids.

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Yeah.

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High school now.

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Oh

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era.

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Is there a lot of hustle that's going on with that?

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No, they're very calm, very, you know, just honoring to themselves and to you,

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no activities.

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No activities, no demands.

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Just real light, light touch.

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I watch what's going on with our granddaughters and

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Hmm.

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they're young and I watch what's going on with people, with kids, and I'm just

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like going, you know, that might even be related to our topic a little bit about

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just that, the stress, the activities and all that's going on with just raising kids

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Yeah.

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it's a challenge, isn't it?

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Yeah.

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Well, and it's funny 'cause I find that I just translate all of

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my hustle dysfunction into them.

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And so then I start to see it in them and I go, Hey, don't do that.

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it's, it's an interesting reflection.

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Yeah.

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Well, let, let me kinda ask something.

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I usually ask this early on, but gonna ask it of you because I'm

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curious what the answer is gonna be.

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Truthfully.

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I'm gonna give you a choice to answer one of two questions, and I'm gonna

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let you just pick it and answer it.

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the question is, what do you do or who are you, which would you prefer to answer?

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Pick it and go.

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the easiest answer or the easiest one to answer is, what do you do The hardest one?

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That's probably the more meaningful one is who are you?

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But I go, oh gosh, how do I, like what lens do I answer that through?

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I'm curious, do you feel any pressure?

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Because you know, like where people of faith and all that,

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that you've got to answer?

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Who are you?

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Because I've, I've almost always had people answer that one.

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I've always wished someone would say, you know what, here's what I do.

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I'm a business guy.

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I am, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever.

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And I'm like going, I appreciate that authenticity.

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So do you feel some pressure at all?

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my immediate reaction was like, I should answer the who are you one, but

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I want to answer the what do you do?

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'cause that's the one I can pick up and go, but the who are you is like, well, who

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was I 10 years ago versus, who am I today?

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Versus who am I tomorrow?

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It's like, versus my broken identity and addiction with, with ambition

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versus my identity as a dad.

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my brain kind of did all that in about 90 milliseconds.

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So What do you do?

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Tell me what you do.

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I mean, at the core essence, I enjoy starting things.

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I love to make ideas real.

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That's honestly what I love to do more than anything, is to do that myself

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and to help others make ideas real.

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So what's the good thing about that and what is the challenge

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with the starting and the energy of the beginning that you have?

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I mean, the good, the, well, I don't know, maybe the hard side of it

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is all of us have something inside of us that we want to put out there.

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a lot of people who've got ideas, they've maybe already had put an idea

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out there and it worked and they're trying to do another thing, or they've

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just been sitting on something inside of them for a while, wanna try it?

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It's hard.

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It's hard to actually get traction and make it work, you know?

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And actually, be something that will be around in a few years, I'll keep doing.

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And so the hard side of it is figuring out how to create focus and clarity.

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And then I guess the good side is like, once you have focus and clarity,

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it's exciting to watch, the fuel kind of get turned on and the impact to be

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made and the alignment within teams.

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And so yeah, all, all of that.

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that.

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So the reason that I bring it up is I have at times in moments of

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self-awareness, wondered if I had a challenge with sticking to something.

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Yeah.

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because of exactly what you're saying and then some other things.

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I wondered if I was addicted to like, adrenaline

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Hmm,

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when things got hard, like I mentioned the company that we're in right now, we are

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building some things that are pretty hard,

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Hmm.

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necessarily, well, we're starting things too, but, but, I'm trying to

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think of another thing I could throw in the mix and let you respond to it.

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if I got bored too easily, I mean, I always wondered, man, did I

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just get bored and just want to

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Hmm.

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I mean, does any of that resonate or hit you at all?

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Yeah, I think so.

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I mean, for me, that I, I love the zero to sort of one space, and I think by the

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time something gets to one, you know, then I start to get maybe a little bit bored.

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And there's people who love the details of now going in and scaling

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that thing to 10 and, I just recognize that for me it's like, you know, that

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journey and it can take a long time.

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It takes several years to even get to one.

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I think a lot of people forget that as they're going in that it can take

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a while to get to one and so you're gonna have to hang on and find some

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motivations and some conviction somewhere.

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And, I think for me, I can hang on, you know, my boredom.

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curiosity sort of drives me for a while and then, you know,

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Then

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we gotta move on to the next challenge.

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Yeah.

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this is where it came up for me recently.

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been writing a lot more and I do a lot of my ideation or my ideas with some

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AI tools, and I realized there were all these book ideas that I had I was

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on chat GPT and I said, Hey, listen, you know, I'm thinking about I should

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do with some of these book ideas.

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And literally, AI told me that I started a bunch of stuff but never finished anything

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Unprompted.

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sort of unprompted, I mean,

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Wow.

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almost like

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Are you gonna really ask me one more idea?

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It's like, can we just finish one of these?

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That's hilarious.

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and I actually kinda went, Hmm.

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You know, and I went back and looked at all my project list and all my

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ideas and some notes that I've got in journals and I'm going, I do have

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just a boatload of things that I have come up with ideas, thought about,

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and I never even got 'em to one.

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it sounds like you at least move them to one, or do you have a lot of ideas

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st thrown along the, roadside on the journey of life you've been on?

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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You know, I've often thought of myself as I don't know if in leadership

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development, they would call it like a number two or how they would

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like the phrasing of all that.

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'cause like ones can be.

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The idea list is long, and then twos will move an idea forward.

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Maybe secondary leadership type stuff, because I've often thought

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of myself as to use a biblical reference, as an errand to a Moses.

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I enjoy the journey of coming alongside ideas and helping make them real.

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So what's interesting is I myself don't necessarily have the list of ideas,

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although my wife might differ, but I don't necessarily have like a list of ideas.

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I enjoy the process and journey of helping make ideas real

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in some form of partnership.

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So for me, a lot of times that's shown up in partnership.

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Hmm.

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Yeah.

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think that's good.

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So you could kind of come together with people.

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That's kind of unique in the role I'm at.

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I used to be the lead and then as I moved into a coach role, I recognized it

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just sort of allowed me to support a lot

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Yeah,

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Yeah.

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And it's really kind of got me in this place where I really was part of.

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My journey.

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I really don't have to, I was gonna say, have to be in front of things as I'm

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talking on a microphone, on a podcast.

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on camera,

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so,

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at least the podcast isn't called Tim Stevens, you know,

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it's at least got a name,

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the

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or Tim.

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One of the words that you use as strategist.

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Tell me more about strategist and what that

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Hmm.

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Yeah, I mean, I think at the core it's like so much of the journey I've been on

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is, when you're in early stage of an idea, it is very hard to get clarity because

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there's a million directions you can go.

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And as you get some kind of traction that just scales unless you have clarity on

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what we're actually trying to accomplish or trying to, measurably get done.

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And so.

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I think for me it's like all of the execution is on the backbone of strategy,

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but a lot of times we all spin our wheels.

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I need a website now.

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I need X, Y, Z now.

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As opposed to like, why, why do you need any of that?

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what are we trying to achieve?

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helping people spend time in understanding where we're going and why we're

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going there, helps us know when we're not on track or if we are on track.

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So I enjoy the, strategic development process of ideas and people,

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is that something you've always had in your 40 years or is that

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something you've developed over time?

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I mean, yeah, when you're 20, I don't know what I'm doing.

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You're just winging it.

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You know, when you're 30, you're probably winging it even more, but now you've

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got some, you know, arrogance probably fueling the tank because you've, you've

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done some things and then, I don't know, I'm sure it changes as you get even past

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where I'm at, but at 40 I finally start to go like, I don't know, we've done

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some things and learned some things, so there's some best practices here.

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So I, I don't know that it's always been there, but I've always been

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intrigued by, process and frameworks and like, I always used to obsess over

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like, how did somebody figure that out?

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not the fact that they did figure it out.

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I wanted to reverse engineer it.

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Like, what were the building blocks?

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What did you do that got you there?

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or if somebody like.

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Failed or had a falling out, I wanted to understand like, well,

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what were the inputs and the building blocks that that caused that?

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So, I've always been kind of fascinated by the process.

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Yeah.

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so let's back up.

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Let's talk about Adam the early years.

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It seems like you were I'm always fascinated with people that

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have gone the ministry route.

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yeah.

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and then they've moved over into a business setting.

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That's fascinating.

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The reason that's interesting.

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The audience, if they've been listening in, they know this about me.

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I actually was saved in a business setting and I have never.

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considered going a ministry route.

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I've always been fascinated by it.

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And I must admit, have never really liked the structure

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Hmm.

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of

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Of church.

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a lot of things like that.

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Hmm.

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tell me a little bit about, Adam as he is, the ages of your kids

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and you're moving along and you decide, this is what I want to do.

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And sounds like early on that was ministry stuff or, or was

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it something else before that?

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Yeah.

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You know, I mean, when I was a teen, I was a musician, so I was, I've always

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written songs and been in music and bands and, because you're in bands, you

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bootleg Adobe Photoshop and you learn how to create album covers and, you know,

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make posters and, promote your band.

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And so I was kind of always in that realm.

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And for me, my parents were, always involved in ministry, so I kind of

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grew up in, not like a ministry family.

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They were not vocational pastors, but they were always

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just very, very, very involved.

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So leaders,

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would require me to be there all the time.

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So I kind of grew up.

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In that world, I saw a lot of the behind the scenes before understanding

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what the behind the scenes was.

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when I, graduated college, I wanted to be in ministry, in some realm.

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that started as a youth pastor building a youth ministry at my home church

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that didn't exist and kind of grew it up and then, evolved into planting a

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church as the creative arts pastor.

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Jeff, our senior pastor and myself and two other families went down

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to Cheyenne, Wyoming and planted a church in the Capitol and did that

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for another seven, eight years.

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So, yeah, kind of a decade of building ministries and

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planting churches and things.

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So.

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were you from Wyoming, that area?

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Yeah, that was, high school.

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I was born and raised in Kansas, but when I was 13, my grandpa decided to

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launch a magazine called American Cowboy Magazine that went on to do very well

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and bought Buffalo and wanted to have a ranch and couldn't do that in Kansas.

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So we moved to Wyoming, all the families moved, and that's where I grew up.

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We didn't grow up on a ranch though.

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Well, we actually have spent quite a bit of time.

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In fact, it's the state of my driver's license in South

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Dakota and over in Rapid City,

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Oh, yeah.

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And, been through that area.

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Spent a lot of time in Wyoming.

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And, as I understand it, I mean y'all, you, you kind of built, worked with

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a pretty decent sized church there.

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And as I, as I heard your, your story, I was listening

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to you and Mike talk about it.

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I'm sitting here going, man, how do you get to almost mega church in Wyoming?

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'cause good gracious, there are more bison buffalo there than there, there are

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There's more cows than humans.

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Come on.

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Yeah.

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it's what makes it what people want and all that too.

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But yeah, you know, it was interesting.

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obviously, you know, we had conviction and passion at that time.

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I think Simple Church had just come out a book about,

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we,

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were really obsessed about doing three things and nothing else.

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we were passionate about serving the city before they knew who we were.

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And so, you know, coming into a city like Cheyenne, the capital, and,

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buying down the price of gas, at gas stations and, serving just in

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local ways, it created a good energy for a foundation to build off of.

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And then it's like anything, it's timing, it's people, it's God, it's

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so much of, it's not formulaic.

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And then parts of it are like, if there is any formula, it's like,

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do way less than you think you should and do it very, very well.

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And then, as you scale, you'll add things.

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that seemed to help us accelerate.

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Were you a hustler?

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Were you, high energy and making it happen?

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And, you know, the fact that it was for God, you dialed

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it up to 11, some people will

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Yeah.

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some people won't

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for, but for me, it took me years to have language for it.

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So at the time my language was just, work your dream job and chase

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what's in your heart and you'll never work a day in your life.

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Kind of like philosophy I grew up in the era of,

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Nothing matters more than sacrificing everything for the kingdom.

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and these are still things that drive me today, but the definitions

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of them are interesting because at the time, my identity was so wrapped

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up in, living on mission, living a purpose-driven life, and making impact.

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And a lot of times the worst thing for someone who isn't ready for scale or

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isn't healthy for growth is to grow.

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That's one of the most dangerous things.

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And for me, my drive and ambition years later, after a lot of pain,

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realizing that all of it was just an attempt to be significant,

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an attempt to find significance.

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It through my identity in ministry and the platform was the

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vehicle to drive the car a hundred miles an hour to work a hundred hours

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a week, to never stop, to not have a marriage, and then to somehow redeem it

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by saying, this is all for the kingdom.

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So I'm sorry I can't be here and connected with you and be intentional in my marriage

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and, intentional with my own life and my own health and my own addictions.

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This is for the kingdom.

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We're doing stuff here.

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See all the impact we've made.

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See the thousand people we've baptized this year.

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so it was confusing to be frank, it was very confusing.

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'cause it's like all this good is happening and there's no foundation.

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There's complete erosion, there's complete, like this ambition isn't on a

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highway, it's on a. have you ever seen those videos of the boat drivers that

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are driving so fast, they leave the water, you know, and then they're almost

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like a boat flying I've watched those videos because you know what's coming.

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But man, they're going so fast.

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It's pretty fun to watch them fly and hit the waves and think they're in control.

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And then there comes a point where the boat just goes outta control

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and flips That's how I felt like I was in so much of my life.

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I think there are two things that came to mind while you were

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saying that one, uh, interviewed.

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Gosh, I'm trying to think back.

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It's probably gonna be a handful of interviews before this one.

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And we got off on the conversation of Ecclesiastes and it's, you know,

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Yeah.

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This is King Solomon, the

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Yeah.

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speaking, the

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all meaning.

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you know, more women, all these kind of things.

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We could, we don't want to unpack that, but basically was saying that everything

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was vanity is the translation, but it's he haval, which is just poof, you

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know, it's just nothing that matters

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Hmm.

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And then the second thing that came to me, it's probably over in Matthew seven.

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I can't, I don't quote scriptures like a lot of people do, but it's the tail

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end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, there's two types of people.

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There's the one that builds there, house on the rock, the firm foundation

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of what he says, what he's just taught and shared for the last two, two

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chapters in the Sermon on the Mount.

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then there in the, there's the one that does not as builds it

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Hmm.

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And here's what comes to me when you mention the boat, this is what, I got.

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Yeah.

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It's that Jesus said, and you know what I, I listened to the Sermon

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on the mount all during COVID.

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I would listen to it almost every morning.

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So.

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of times.

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I have listened.

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It's 15 minutes by the way, which is a great sort

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Wow.

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and all just, it's kinda what helped me get away from some of the hustle and all,

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Yeah.

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But Jesus says for both of those people that the storms came and the

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winds came everything else came.

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Life circumstances comes to both of them.

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You know, I think in sometimes Christian circles, we think that when

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we punch our ticket for whatever that means, I won't get into that theology.

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I think some of it's wrong, but when we punch our ticket for whatever the next

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life is, everything's gonna be awesome.

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Yeah.

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said that the winds are gonna come, the storms are gonna come for both.

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And when you were talking about that boat, I was just thinking

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about how there was no anchor there.

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Yeah,

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does that sound like you, even when you were in ministry?

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a hundred percent.

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I mean, for me, what I realized is that as a young boy, I thought I was bad and

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that there was no way God could love me.

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Now, he had to love me because he had to love everybody.

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That's what he promises.

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But he doesn't really like me and he doesn't like me because I've

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got these addictions and these problems that I can't figure out

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how to get control of the problem.

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For me, the worst place for me to go, and this is me, this is not everybody's story.

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It was my journey and my story, but I've learned that I've met a lot of

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us, a lot of me, around the world.

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Un un unfortunately.

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But, um, the church was just a.

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Platform for me to try to earn God's love.

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And when you don't feel loved, how hard will you work to earn it?

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Well, you work really, really hard.

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And what happens is, so I've been, I've been kind of like reflecting on this and

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God gave me this picture of like, you can have the right what with the wrong why?

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And that's what creates the unsustainable.

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How so?

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the fact that I was a pastor in church or anybody that is in ministry or

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thinks about what they're doing as vocational ministry isn't always,

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sometimes it is the problem, but oftentimes it's not the problem.

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It's why, and when you.

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A lot of us think our why is pure, and we really do.

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we are, convinced that why we do what we do is noble and impactful.

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It's why we have to sacrifice everything.

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It's why we're willing to give everything is because there is some form of

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deeper why.

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For me, I realized later on why I wasn't deep enough in my why.

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My why was actually unrelated to impact on others' lives.

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that was a cool outcome and a cool part of what I got to do.

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My why was I'm gonna prove that I'm lovable and I'm gonna do that because I'm

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gonna be successful at what I'm doing.

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I call 'em mission driven leaders.

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These are people that are in churches, in nonprofits, in businesses, at home.

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They're all of us that we live a life on mission.

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But if we're, if we aren't grounded to your point, if there is no anchor,

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the mission often becomes a mistake.

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And when the mission becomes a mistake, we risk losing.

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The very mission we're even working on, we're building, because we can't sustain

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what it takes to, at the pace required at the, at the, intensity required

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then what starts to happen is that our beliefs start to get, jeopardized.

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Our, our behaviors start to become questionable.

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Like our community.

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We start to isolate all of these things start to have a recipe towards what I

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call chaos, and now we're stuck because I'm living on mission and I'm successful

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and it's working or growing or whatever, but everything underneath is chaos.

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There is, the boat is in the air.

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I can't tell anybody at this point that that's what's going on.

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I'll lose my job, I'll lose everything I'm building.

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So we're, we lie to ourselves.

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It's funny, even the visual of the boat driver, I wonder what he's

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thinking when he is flying upside down.

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It would be ludicrous for us to think I'm in control.

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You could hear the boat driver.

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I'm in control.

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I'll

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correct it.

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I'll correct the boat.

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I'll land the boat.

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If you're looking on the outside, dude, like, dude, you're done.

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Like this is, this is ending horrible.

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But we convince ourselves months along the journey, years along the

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journey, I'm still in control and we are, we're deceiving ourselves.

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Mm. I want to, remember to ask at what point did you realize

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you were deceiving yourself?

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But I want to drill down on a few things.

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There are people that believe there is no calling.

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Higher than serving in some type of a local church or, you know,

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missionary or missionary in Africa would be even higher than that, I'm

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Yeah.

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Yeah, noticed that a great deal when I spent a few years in Bible

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school with a lot of Christians and I can be hard on Christians.

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I am one, so I wanna be careful about that.

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But yeah,

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Yeah.

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I really observed it that there is this thought that there's this

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pecking order You were in that doing the thing that most people say, you

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cannot be serving and doing anything of a higher calling mission if you

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Yeah,

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mission in there.

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So what, what's up?

Speaker: 00:26:40

why couldn't you be sanctified?

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Why were you dealing with, you know, Addictions and things

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Yeah, yeah.

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You're asking, you're asking some tough questions and some very real questions.

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These are questions I've wrestled with for a decade now on, and my

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wife and I, because I'll answer it a couple ways, but I'll give an example.

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My wife is one of the most.

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Like interesting examples that I, I, I feel conflicted about

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because you're talking about me.

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That was me.

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There is no other thing to do.

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In fact, when I left, resigned from church work, 'cause I felt like,

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like I had to, I for the sake of my marriage and everything, but in

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my mind I could not resolve that.

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That was the only thing I was supposed to ever do in my life.

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So now I'm stuck, Tim, like I'm, I'm literally like stuck.

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I can't go do back into the thing that I always thought I

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would do the rest of my life.

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But, but I had to leave.

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I had left the thing and, and, because I needed healing

Speaker: 00:27:52

and, and it was interesting.

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I had such an idol.

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About what church work was.

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And again, I've gotta be very careful 'cause there are pastors out there

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that I think they should be and they should be doing what they're doing.

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And there should be churches.

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And like I actually went and we can talk about later, but I went through

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an interesting arc over the last decade of like, you know, you, you,

Speaker: 00:28:12

as you come out of hurt you, you go, this is everything wrong with it.

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Then you kind of heal and you realize like there was good in it.

Speaker: 00:28:19

and so I'm in a healthier place, but when I had first come out,

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I couldn't imagine a world.

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And yet my wife, who is closer to Jesus than I probably could ever get

Speaker: 00:28:33

in two lifetimes, the way she hears from God, the way she pursues God,

Speaker: 00:28:39

the way God loves her, the way I see his favor in her life, the intimacy.

Speaker: 00:28:44

she has the depth in relationships she has.

Speaker: 00:28:47

She's a dental hygienist.

Speaker: 00:28:52

And she would look at me and like, Adam, you like, so I can't be in ministry

Speaker: 00:28:57

as a dental hygienist, and I would struggle because there's part of me.

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And if I'm very frank and honest and vulnerable says

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no, like you're missing out.

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And yet I would never tell her that.

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And yet here I was, to your point, like living the life, chasing the dream, doing

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everything that I thought I was supposed to do, and miserable and addicted and

Speaker: 00:29:21

killing my life, killing my family, killing my marriage, killing myself.

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Um, who's

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living?

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Who's on in mission, who's living their calling?

Speaker: 00:29:35

and I think for a lot of us in the ministry space, we really confuse

Speaker: 00:29:40

what we're actually called to do.

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You know, we latch onto, we're compelled by, we're moved by a story.

Speaker: 00:29:47

We're compelled by a, a, a narrative that we were raised under.

Speaker: 00:29:53

And if our identity isn't healed, then it just becomes the thing

Speaker: 00:29:56

that we try to find the identity.

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But I don't think it's, to be honest and fair to the church and all of that.

Speaker: 00:30:01

It's not any different in business.

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I had a very tragic story happened, with the, with, with the CEO that I worked for

Speaker: 00:30:10

in my last company, and he had a tragic ending to his life and all this stuff.

Speaker: 00:30:14

It's no different in business.

Speaker: 00:30:16

So it's not a church problem, it's a human problem, But man, the church

Speaker: 00:30:20

is addictive for finding that.

Speaker: 00:30:22

It is the tough, the tough thing about I have to say it is, it is amazing how many

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dudes like us that have these issues.

Speaker: 00:30:37

and let me just say for those that might be listening in, Adam and I we're

Speaker: 00:30:42

not ugly dudes, but we wouldn't ever be confused for Brad Pitt or a model.

Speaker: 00:30:48

I did see a

Speaker: 00:30:49

True.

Speaker: 00:30:49

of your family.

Speaker: 00:30:50

you married way up

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Yeah.

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I don't know why

Speaker: 00:30:53

Yes.

Speaker: 00:30:53

like that are attracted to some of us that are, you know, lighting our hair on

Speaker: 00:30:58

fire, acting like maybe they think at some point we're gonna be super successful.

Speaker: 00:31:02

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:02

but it is fascinating but of the things that.

Speaker: 00:31:07

It a little bit different from business and ministry and I wanna

Speaker: 00:31:11

move on to kind of in your business and then talk about of the healing

Speaker: 00:31:16

hustle that you're working on now.

Speaker: 00:31:18

But I think this is important.

Speaker: 00:31:21

It is different when you throw God into the equation of achiever.

Speaker: 00:31:28

Leadership, money, success,

Speaker: 00:31:32

Yep.

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I do think that throws an extra bit of, I don't know if it's gas on the fire.

Speaker: 00:31:39

You mentioned that you thought you were bad and you were trying to prove, I'm not

Speaker: 00:31:44

putting words in your mouth, but you are

Speaker: 00:31:46

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:46

attempting to prove your goodness.

Speaker: 00:31:49

Yep.

Speaker: 00:31:50

And the way to do that is to go do stuff in church world.

Speaker: 00:31:55

but it sounds like some of your addictions even made you

Speaker: 00:31:58

feel badder than good, maybe.

Speaker: 00:32:04

well the problem is you can't sustain the pace that you're trying to

Speaker: 00:32:08

run at to prove that you're good.

Speaker: 00:32:10

So the million dollar question is, well, how do you recover your pace?

Speaker: 00:32:15

Well, we only recover.

Speaker: 00:32:16

There's two options.

Speaker: 00:32:17

Like if you're moving towards chaos, you numb.

Speaker: 00:32:21

If you're moving towards sustainability, then you actually recharge.

Speaker: 00:32:26

But healthy people recharge and they learn how to operate at high level and recharge

Speaker: 00:32:31

their body and do it in healthy ways.

Speaker: 00:32:33

Most of us just numb Numb

Speaker: 00:32:35

our numbing.

Speaker: 00:32:37

and what's funny though in, addiction work and all of that is we emphasize

Speaker: 00:32:41

so much on the actual addiction.

Speaker: 00:32:42

Oh, you're a porn addict, or you're a sex addict, or you're a alcoholic,

Speaker: 00:32:47

or, it's not even about any of that.

Speaker: 00:32:50

Like, that is the, drug the question is, what are you numbing?

Speaker: 00:32:53

And it's like, I'm numbing the fact that I'm not good and I'm trying

Speaker: 00:32:57

to earn that by a chaotic life and chaotic pace that I can't sustain.

Speaker: 00:33:03

So I numb.

Speaker: 00:33:04

So it's this back and forth.

Speaker: 00:33:06

It's because when you're baptizing a bunch of people and your church is growing to

Speaker: 00:33:11

a thousand people or 1500 in a small town in Wyoming, you're like, it's working.

Speaker: 00:33:16

I can't stop this.

Speaker: 00:33:18

So what, what has to stop the impact or the addiction?

Speaker: 00:33:21

Like, I don't know, the addiction.

Speaker: 00:33:23

It's, it's this tug of war and obviously like.

Speaker: 00:33:26

I needed to just move on and get out of the way, but because I'm a

Speaker: 00:33:31

Enneagram three, you know, wired for achievement kind of guy, you just stay

Speaker: 00:33:38

and you think you can manage it all.

Speaker: 00:33:41

and usually that implodes somehow

Speaker: 00:33:44

Yeah.

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Yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:45

I call it the ambition trap.

Speaker: 00:33:47

yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:47

Well, I'll, go ahead and share the addiction that I've recognized that I had.

Speaker: 00:33:53

problem with my addiction is that it is acceptable and often applauded in our

Speaker: 00:34:00

yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:01

My addiction was the addiction to more.

Speaker: 00:34:05

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:05

And that is, it wasn't necessarily money and it wasn't necessarily success, even

Speaker: 00:34:10

though that was part of that equation.

Speaker: 00:34:13

It was more business, more ideas.

Speaker: 00:34:15

I am fortunate that it didn't lead to more, women or that kind of stuff.

Speaker: 00:34:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:23

But an addictive nature is an addictive nature,

Speaker: 00:34:27

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:28

and it can cause challenges and issues.

Speaker: 00:34:31

For me, it was a crash that was external.

Speaker: 00:34:34

And some people would say, well, that was 2008 and wasn't your

Speaker: 00:34:38

doing, I, God hasn't told me that.

Speaker: 00:34:41

He brought the entire world's economy down just to get my attention.

Speaker: 00:34:45

But I know that when it happened, he said, ah, here's my opportunity.

Speaker: 00:34:51

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:52

so I haven't taken that burden on my shoulders, even though I

Speaker: 00:34:54

guess maybe I can, but, but what, what, tell me about transition.

Speaker: 00:35:00

'cause I don't think you just woke up one morning and says, you know what?

Speaker: 00:35:03

I'm gonna begin meditating and spending some

Speaker: 00:35:06

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:35:07

with the Lord and I'm just gonna work through this.

Speaker: 00:35:09

no, unfortunately it's a long journey of pain.

Speaker: 00:35:13

You know, none of us change until there's enough pain.

Speaker: 00:35:16

they say the healing journey is three to five years, you know, so it's a long

Speaker: 00:35:19

journey and usually it does come on the backside of some version of pain.

Speaker: 00:35:23

For you, it sounds like 2008.

Speaker: 00:35:25

For, for me, it was, my addictions finally taking me to a point that I never thought

Speaker: 00:35:31

I would go and, you know, outside of my marriage and then, and then that led

Speaker: 00:35:35

to I can't keep doing what I'm doing.

Speaker: 00:35:39

And my wife and I were questioning whether or not we should even stay married or not.

Speaker: 00:35:43

And, really facing the end of a life in one, in one degree.

Speaker: 00:35:50

And, um,

Speaker: 00:35:53

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:35:53

It's like, you know, we don't go to the doctor and tell our

Speaker: 00:35:56

heart really, really hurts.

Speaker: 00:35:58

I've met so many guys on this as I've shared this story and this journey

Speaker: 00:36:02

that had like literal heart, heart attacks, you know, physical heart

Speaker: 00:36:05

attacks, just strictly due to stress and business and living on mission.

Speaker: 00:36:12

and it's incredible what we will endure thinking we can survive it.

Speaker: 00:36:18

I left the name hustle in there because I'm not asking people to not hustle.

Speaker: 00:36:22

Hustle's a very real part of our world.

Speaker: 00:36:26

I just realized for me it was like there was such an addiction to hustle.

Speaker: 00:36:31

It was the chaos created this weird calm.

Speaker: 00:36:34

And for me, ultimately enough pain made me resign.

Speaker: 00:36:41

My wife and I were literally like facing the end of our relationship, but that

Speaker: 00:36:47

wasn't even the end of our healing.

Speaker: 00:36:49

That was like the beginning of the chaos in one sense.

Speaker: 00:36:53

It was like that was just admitting like we're not well.

Speaker: 00:36:56

And that sometimes is the hardest, longest journey

Speaker: 00:37:01

And like admitting to that is, is honestly just the beginning of unfolding the

Speaker: 00:37:06

things that you can do to actually heal.

Speaker: 00:37:08

But yeah, it was a long journey.

Speaker: 00:37:10

Did, I'm gonna, I'm gonna drill down a little bit and get slightly nosy.

Speaker: 00:37:15

You mentioned resigning.

Speaker: 00:37:17

I know you were in ministry, I know you were, you know, involved

Speaker: 00:37:20

with some things that in general probably churches don't approve of.

Speaker: 00:37:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:25

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:26

did you really have a choice or was it something that you were forced to do

Speaker: 00:37:31

and, and the reason why I bring it up is that for a while I had the illusion of

Speaker: 00:37:36

control when oh eight was, everything was

Speaker: 00:37:39

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:40

around me

Speaker: 00:37:41

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:42

And so I'm asking it not necessarily to put you on the spot or for

Speaker: 00:37:48

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:48

I'm sort of asking it for the person that's sitting there going, I wonder if I

Speaker: 00:37:54

am in a position where I've got control if

Speaker: 00:37:58

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:59

maybe Adam and Tim where they really, and because I, I actually described some of my

Speaker: 00:38:05

journey and I don't know that I've done it just to convince, I mean, we, I, I'll say

Speaker: 00:38:11

it bluntly, we were homeless and bankrupt.

Speaker: 00:38:14

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:38:14

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:38:14

yeah,

Speaker: 00:38:15

figuratively either.

Speaker: 00:38:17

yeah,

Speaker: 00:38:18

so what, can you tell me maybe just a little bit more about

Speaker: 00:38:21

your, separation from ministry?

Speaker: 00:38:25

yeah.

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So, fortunately for me it wasn't,

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something somebody asked me to do.

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I just knew that I couldn't continue in the role that I was in, Stand here

Speaker: 00:38:36

and not feel I, I was deathly afraid.

Speaker: 00:38:39

this is very specific and detailed and vulnerable.

Speaker: 00:38:42

But I had so much fear that God was going to expose me 'cause he hated me.

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Hated, absolutely hated me.

Speaker: 00:38:52

That this is how dark it gets and how jacked up in our mind.

Speaker: 00:38:56

I laugh now, but in the moment you got, you cannot take the laughter.

Speaker: 00:39:02

It was fear to the depth of fear.

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But I swept out a shed in my backyard with mouse turds that had, there was

Speaker: 00:39:11

mouse turds in there and there's, the thought that if you inhale mouse

Speaker: 00:39:16

feces, that you might get sick and die.

Speaker: 00:39:21

And I literally was overwhelmed with the thought that this

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was how God was gonna kill me.

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And until I resigned.

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I will keep facing these moments where I'm going to die, plane

Speaker: 00:39:36

crashes, all kinds of stuff.

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I mean, the fear just took on a life of its own that God hated me

Speaker: 00:39:41

that much, he was going to kill me.

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And so I did resign on my own.

Speaker: 00:39:45

but the desire was, and it wasn't even noble at the time,

Speaker: 00:39:50

it was honestly just running.

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It was like, I can't keep doing what I'm doing.

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I don't even know what it means to pursue healing because I

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don't even know where I'm at.

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So there was a lot of it that was just like, I don't know what I

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need to do, but I need to stop.

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And sometimes stopping is like one of the hardest things for a

Speaker: 00:40:10

mission driven, high achieving

Speaker: 00:40:12

Do,

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person.

Speaker: 00:40:13

feel like a failure leaving ministry?

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I've heard most people that have unquote left ministry as if they

Speaker: 00:40:22

have failed the utmost mission that they could have had on their life.

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And most things become secondary, but they're gonna do it anyway.

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They're gonna go after the filthy looker and chase after the money.

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Which you did well with that, but we'll talk about that briefly in a second.

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But did you feel like a failure?

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Failure.

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Failure feels like an empty word to describe what I felt.

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it doesn't feel deep and dark enough.

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I felt, I mean, to feel like God is going to kill you and find a way.

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You know, I, I would read scripture very, I had to actually stop reading

Speaker: 00:41:00

scripture for a while because I would read the story of Saul when,

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when Samuel came to Saul and said.

Speaker: 00:41:06

He was grieving 'cause Saul had, started the sacrifice and he wasn't supposed to.

Speaker: 00:41:12

And Saul, it says in the scriptures, he like uttered like, oh, what have you done?

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Like today, God has found somebody else and his spirit has moved on.

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And I was that God looked at me and goes, oh, who are you?

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I'm, I have all these other men around you that are way more faithful and I'm gonna

Speaker: 00:41:38

go put my spirit on them and good luck.

Speaker: 00:41:42

And I mean it was dark and I remember feeling just, I remember one moment,

Speaker: 00:41:48

Tim, where I was in my, I had a detached garage, not connected to

Speaker: 00:41:53

my house, detached from my house.

Speaker: 00:41:54

I was recording studio and I was back in there and I was weeping like a baby.

Speaker: 00:41:59

Just failure.

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My identity was a mess.

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Like this had been my decade, my lifelong work at that time, a decade of work

Speaker: 00:42:10

and didn't know if I'd even survive.

Speaker: 00:42:14

And I heard a knock on my door detached garage.

Speaker: 00:42:17

You have to go through my gate gated fence to get back to my detached garage.

Speaker: 00:42:22

And a highway patrolman was standing there and I opened the

Speaker: 00:42:26

door and I was a little bit scared.

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I was like, what is a highway patrol doing at my house at, in my detached

Speaker: 00:42:33

garage that she had to walk through a fence And she handed me $500 in a check.

Speaker: 00:42:38

And she said, the Holy Spirit told me to come here and tell

Speaker: 00:42:42

you that he is in this with you.

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And I don't know what you're going through and where you're

Speaker: 00:42:45

at, but does that mean anything?

Speaker: 00:42:48

And I, I just looked at her.

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I was like, you have no idea what you're doing right now and who you're talking to.

Speaker: 00:42:56

It was a lot of moments like that that helped me.

Speaker: 00:42:59

But yeah, failure.

Speaker: 00:43:01

so obviously at some point during that stage, you moved into a

Speaker: 00:43:06

business world, the Lord moved you, obviously you didn't, I don't think,

Speaker: 00:43:11

had that going on when you left.

Speaker: 00:43:14

Tell me a little bit about that transition and how long was that season?

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Because, I believe that there's someone listening in that's in a season

Speaker: 00:43:25

like that and they need to know that it will end, but it may not be the

Speaker: 00:43:31

ultimate end because you've continued on and now you're doing other things.

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Yeah.

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I think the Lord opens up doors for us to get us to other places

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Yeah, I mean, it's a wild journey and, and I'll try to keep it very brief,

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but, I didn't know what I was gonna do

Speaker: 00:43:44

was money tough?

Speaker: 00:43:45

I mean, were you broke,

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Oh, we left.

Speaker: 00:43:48

okay.

Speaker: 00:43:48

Yeah, I mean, we left, I lost my source of income and everything.

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but to make things even crazier, my wife decided that she was gonna quit

Speaker: 00:43:55

her job and we were both not gonna have jobs because we both wanted just

Speaker: 00:43:59

a complete transformation of our life.

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I posted my house on Facebook and sold it in two days, believe

Speaker: 00:44:05

it or not, sold it in two days.

Speaker: 00:44:06

And so then we had a little bit of money, not a lot, a little bit of

Speaker: 00:44:10

money to, figure out what's next.

Speaker: 00:44:13

Uh, my wife had a,

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felt like she heard a word from God that one night in August.

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And, and, God.

Speaker: 00:44:20

Spoke to her very specifically and clearly, again, I don't hear that.

Speaker: 00:44:24

And I was the one standing on stages.

Speaker: 00:44:25

But the dental hygienist that loves Jesus passionately and, you know,

Speaker: 00:44:30

hears from God that, that, he was gonna open up an opportunity, it was

Speaker: 00:44:33

gonna come from an unexpected place and it was gonna happen this week.

Speaker: 00:44:37

And I was like, you heard those, like those sentences and those phrases

Speaker: 00:44:41

and you know, she writes it down in a journal and I was like, that is wild.

Speaker: 00:44:45

And my buddy Adam calls me from another city in Wyoming,

Speaker: 00:44:49

opposite end of the state.

Speaker: 00:44:50

we hadn't talked in 10 years and, had an idea for a company but didn't

Speaker: 00:44:55

know really how to get it going.

Speaker: 00:44:57

called me and I said, I'm not your guy.

Speaker: 00:44:59

this is not what I'm supposed to go do next.

Speaker: 00:45:01

didn't even say anything to Amber He calls back a couple days later and

Speaker: 00:45:04

was like, no, I think you're the guy.

Speaker: 00:45:06

You're supposed to help us bring this to life.

Speaker: 00:45:08

And of course, I finally shared it and the rest is history.

Speaker: 00:45:11

we built Zmi and, left Wyoming and went to Idaho, which is where I'm at

Speaker: 00:45:15

now, but bounced around a little bit.

Speaker: 00:45:17

Went, Went,

Speaker: 00:45:18

to Idaho and built the beginnings of Zmi and then, moved to the

Speaker: 00:45:23

Bay Area, to California and San Francisco and scaled the team.

Speaker: 00:45:26

We raised a series A round and then came back to Boise.

Speaker: 00:45:29

But, it was just a wild journey because it was like, okay, now I work in tech.

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I'm a like early stage founder and I am, you know, trying to build

Speaker: 00:45:39

a company and an idea and also.

Speaker: 00:45:43

Don't

Speaker: 00:45:43

forget, heal my marriage and figure out who I am and what just

Speaker: 00:45:47

happened and what did we just come out of and where are we going now?

Speaker: 00:45:50

on top of building what's next.

Speaker: 00:45:52

So it was a very interesting season.

Speaker: 00:45:54

Were you still, you know, the word hustle, I'm not sure, sometimes captures that.

Speaker: 00:46:01

What did you throw yourself into that the similar fashion that you had in ministry?

Speaker: 00:46:09

or was there something you had learned and you did some things differently?

Speaker: 00:46:14

It's a really good question and I would answer it like probably most

Speaker: 00:46:17

of us, we do both at the same time.

Speaker: 00:46:19

You know, I had come out of that season and thought.

Speaker: 00:46:22

I'm never going back to the pace of life, the chaos, the drive, the addictions.

Speaker: 00:46:28

I'm gonna get the help.

Speaker: 00:46:29

You know, obviously I started getting counselors in my life, and

Speaker: 00:46:33

started processing the deeper things that we needed to work through.

Speaker: 00:46:37

And so there was a part of our life that was very peaceful and

Speaker: 00:46:40

it was very healed in the hustle.

Speaker: 00:46:42

we were starting the work and I remember, I could see it now in everybody else

Speaker: 00:46:49

because I knew it in myself, but now I had felt like I had been like, that

Speaker: 00:46:55

M Knight, I can't remember his last name, but the movie, the Village, when

Speaker: 00:46:59

at the very end of the movie, they walk out and it's like, wait, this is

Speaker: 00:47:04

what I've been doing this whole time.

Speaker: 00:47:06

veil had been torn off my eyes a little bit, so now I can see it everywhere.

Speaker: 00:47:10

Oh my gosh, I'm, and I'm moving to the Bay Area.

Speaker: 00:47:13

This is like sharky shark dog eat dog.

Speaker: 00:47:16

Like this is the worst of this world.

Speaker: 00:47:19

So I experienced some interesting dynamics where I could both see it in

Speaker: 00:47:23

everybody else, but also recognize I'm still healing from all of this, and then

Speaker: 00:47:28

I'm still doing it in different ways.

Speaker: 00:47:30

So it was a very like transitional season for us, but also a very,

Speaker: 00:47:35

it was like the beginning of our desire to do it differently.

Speaker: 00:47:38

How do you achieve?

Speaker: 00:47:39

And I started to draw this picture, and on one end of the picture was

Speaker: 00:47:44

ambition, success, achievement.

Speaker: 00:47:47

And it was just a line.

Speaker: 00:47:48

And on the other side was sustainability.

Speaker: 00:47:51

And I felt like the arguments and the conversation were just.

Speaker: 00:47:57

You have to pick, you get ambition or you get sustainability.

Speaker: 00:48:02

It's a spectrum.

Speaker: 00:48:03

And I just would argue and fight with myself and, and my friends and my

Speaker: 00:48:08

wife and like, how do you do this?

Speaker: 00:48:10

How do you actually achieve and sustain?

Speaker: 00:48:13

Is it even possible?

Speaker: 00:48:15

And it was years, years and years later of what I'm doing now, but God gave

Speaker: 00:48:19

me a picture of a quadrant of what it looked like to actually have a high

Speaker: 00:48:24

degree of sustainability and a high degree of ambition at the same time.

Speaker: 00:48:29

But if you're outside of that upper right fourth quadrant, if you're

Speaker: 00:48:32

in the quadrant to the left, you have a high degree of ambition and

Speaker: 00:48:36

a low degree of sustainability.

Speaker: 00:48:37

That's most of us.

Speaker: 00:48:39

And that is what I call chaos and what leads to most of the, you

Speaker: 00:48:45

know, for some tragic downfalls, for other, just the chaos in their life.

Speaker: 00:48:50

And then the bottom quadrants are a low degree of ambition.

Speaker: 00:48:53

If you have a high degree of sustainability, it looks like comfort.

Speaker: 00:48:56

And a low degree of

Speaker: 00:48:58

of sustainability and a low degree of ambition is just aimless.

Speaker: 00:49:02

But most of the world I live in is that upper left quadrant.

Speaker: 00:49:06

So it, it's interesting I shared with you a little bit before we

Speaker: 00:49:10

hit record about this role that I'm in now with COO of a company.

Speaker: 00:49:15

back in February I was meeting in a mastermind with a group of people down in

Speaker: 00:49:19

Sarasota, Florida, And I think that's what you do with the healed hustle too, y'all

Speaker: 00:49:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:49:23

I actually though feel if someone hasn't worked on some of this or

Speaker: 00:49:30

aware of it, those type environments can fuel some of the things.

Speaker: 00:49:34

'cause there were some masterminds I did back in the early two thousands

Speaker: 00:49:39

that man, I was like jacked up and competitive and all of that.

Speaker: 00:49:46

That's a whole nother story, but,

Speaker: 00:49:47

And you got praised for it.

Speaker: 00:49:49

Oh my gosh.

Speaker: 00:49:49

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:49:50

And then You found yourself fudging and saying things.

Speaker: 00:49:56

Just to make sure you looked okay in the eyes of others around.

Speaker: 00:50:01

Yep.

Speaker: 00:50:01

but I was, I was in this, it was just a, I don't wanna say a casual

Speaker: 00:50:04

mastermind, not one that a lot of people had been doing, interacting

Speaker: 00:50:07

with all these people were talking.

Speaker: 00:50:09

It was great.

Speaker: 00:50:09

And I love it.

Speaker: 00:50:10

'cause I actually, the coach in me loves speaking into

Speaker: 00:50:13

other people's lives that way.

Speaker: 00:50:14

when it came my turn, someone just called it out like an amazing thing.

Speaker: 00:50:21

They said, you seem like you're bored you might need a new challenge.

Speaker: 00:50:27

Wow.

Speaker: 00:50:28

And I'm just, yeah, I was kind of cruising along.

Speaker: 00:50:30

My wife and I were living in the RV and all that kinda stuff.

Speaker: 00:50:33

And so I was, I don't wanna say called out of retirement or anything like that.

Speaker: 00:50:37

I mean, I'm in my early sixties and I believe I've got a long life

Speaker: 00:50:40

ahead of me so I realized that.

Speaker: 00:50:43

I am not bored now and I'm extremely challenged, I've learned a lot

Speaker: 00:50:51

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:50:52

I'm attempting to approach things with a different pace.

Speaker: 00:50:56

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:50:56

I feel as if I'm productive and I'm right in the place I'm supposed to be.

Speaker: 00:51:02

Wow.

Speaker: 00:51:02

All that being said, where are you now with, the things you've

Speaker: 00:51:10

done in the past with what you're doing to offer and minister?

Speaker: 00:51:14

See, I actually wrote down that you went from Ministry to business

Speaker: 00:51:18

and now you're back in ministry.

Speaker: 00:51:20

I'm sure you're getting paid, I know you get paid for what

Speaker: 00:51:22

you do and stuff like that,

Speaker: 00:51:23

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:51:24

a lot of people conflate those two.

Speaker: 00:51:25

But, me about what it's led to now with the healed hustle.

Speaker: 00:51:31

well, I just wrapped up a 10 year career in tech.

Speaker: 00:51:34

half of that was in, ZMI and then I went through an

Speaker: 00:51:37

acquisition of, another startup.

Speaker: 00:51:39

I joined and ended up at Intuit for seven, eight years and, and, led teams.

Speaker: 00:51:44

And that was honestly where am i's healing journey really took off and it was a.

Speaker: 00:51:51

It was our attempt to answer the question is ambition and

Speaker: 00:51:54

sustainability actually possible?

Speaker: 00:51:56

And, as we leaned into that

Speaker: 00:51:59

question for ourselves over the last five to seven years, the answer's

Speaker: 00:52:04

obviously yes, but it requires a high degree of intentionality.

Speaker: 00:52:08

And that's, I think, the difference between who I used to be and who I am

Speaker: 00:52:12

today is I loved what you're saying.

Speaker: 00:52:15

It's like, I'm, I'm productive and I'm, there's a lot required of me right now.

Speaker: 00:52:19

and so is, is that bad?

Speaker: 00:52:21

should I not be doing that?

Speaker: 00:52:23

Should I be looking for the lazy options?

Speaker: 00:52:25

It's like, no, that message is not gonna resonate with high achieving

Speaker: 00:52:28

people, but what will resonate?

Speaker: 00:52:30

And when you study those.

Speaker: 00:52:32

Who have gone before us that have done very, very successful things and been,

Speaker: 00:52:39

to some degree sustainable in their life and family and all the things.

Speaker: 00:52:44

There is often a high degree of intentionality.

Speaker: 00:52:47

They're intentional about, the pace at which they live.

Speaker: 00:52:51

They're intentional about recharging versus numbing.

Speaker: 00:52:55

They're intentional about the community and connection that

Speaker: 00:52:58

they surround themselves and those that, that have a falling out.

Speaker: 00:53:02

Most of the time, they all talk about the moment where they ignored their

Speaker: 00:53:05

community, isolated and created the boundaries so that they could numb in

Speaker: 00:53:10

isolation and, and scale will do that.

Speaker: 00:53:14

I call, I, I mentioned a second ago, the ambition trap.

Speaker: 00:53:18

You, you get so successful.

Speaker: 00:53:20

You're the Lance Armstrong.

Speaker: 00:53:21

I'm, I'm on top of the world.

Speaker: 00:53:22

I, I can't tell.

Speaker: 00:53:23

I'm everybody.

Speaker: 00:53:24

I'm doping now.

Speaker: 00:53:25

So I'm just gonna wait till it all comes out and one day it will,

Speaker: 00:53:28

and then you lose everything.

Speaker: 00:53:29

We, we do that as pastors.

Speaker: 00:53:31

I pastor a church of 20,000 hour a business of, you know, my, my former, CEO

Speaker: 00:53:37

sold his company for three $65 million.

Speaker: 00:53:40

So we, we ride the journey up and then we're trapped in the storm that

Speaker: 00:53:46

we've created and the, and those, that, the difference is when you kind

Speaker: 00:53:51

of look at them as those that are intentional, have figured out how to.

Speaker: 00:53:57

do that in what I call the seven hidden variables.

Speaker: 00:53:59

I won't go into them all, but there's these hidden variables, our beliefs

Speaker: 00:54:02

and our pace and all that stuff.

Speaker: 00:54:05

So I think where I'm at today is we've learned the practice of how

Speaker: 00:54:09

to be intentional, in the midst of building and hoping to make impact.

Speaker: 00:54:15

I want to change the world.

Speaker: 00:54:17

Mission-driven people want to change the world.

Speaker: 00:54:19

We want to impact the world, however, that's laid before us.

Speaker: 00:54:25

but if we're not intentional in, some of these things and really

Speaker: 00:54:28

understanding why we're doing it, then it makes our how all jacked up

Speaker: 00:54:33

and when our, how gets jacked up.

Speaker: 00:54:34

That's to your point.

Speaker: 00:54:36

It's like you're changing that for you.

Speaker: 00:54:38

What

Speaker: 00:54:39

are some, and, and this is the really come to believe that

Speaker: 00:54:47

this is also a very personal.

Speaker: 00:54:50

A unique journey for every individual, that most people, you know, there could

Speaker: 00:54:57

be some people out there that they might be in that lower ambition level.

Speaker: 00:55:02

They're not driven by certain things.

Speaker: 00:55:04

In many ways, I admire them.

Speaker: 00:55:06

my grandfather, truthfully, this conversation wouldn't mean anything

Speaker: 00:55:13

to him if you had the conversation about his purpose and his mission in

Speaker: 00:55:17

life, it would be like, I just wanna make enough to put food on the table.

Speaker: 00:55:23

You know,

Speaker: 00:55:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:55:24

a guard at, the local, chemical plant down the street in my

Speaker: 00:55:28

guardhouse that I go down to.

Speaker: 00:55:31

Wow.

Speaker: 00:55:32

there

Speaker: 00:55:32

Yep.

Speaker: 00:55:32

People that won't even, can't even equate to this.

Speaker: 00:55:35

But what are I, I mean, I, I might share a couple of mine,

Speaker: 00:55:39

but what are some things for you?

Speaker: 00:55:42

And I wanna say that practices are individual.

Speaker: 00:55:46

This

Speaker: 00:55:46

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:55:47

mean it's for all I need to do, you know,

Speaker: 00:55:49

yeah,

Speaker: 00:55:50

Adam said,

Speaker: 00:55:51

yeah.

Speaker: 00:55:51

are a few things that you've latched onto at this season?

Speaker: 00:55:55

Yep.

Speaker: 00:55:56

I really do need to do X, Y, Z.

Speaker: 00:56:01

Yeah, I love that question.

Speaker: 00:56:02

So, part of the healed hustle, we do have four practices that we talk

Speaker: 00:56:06

about and one of them for me came out of, it's funny 'cause if you ask me

Speaker: 00:56:10

like, what podcasts do you listen to?

Speaker: 00:56:12

And it's like, oh, I listen to this, business podcast or

Speaker: 00:56:15

this, this or that podcast.

Speaker: 00:56:17

And those are great podcasts.

Speaker: 00:56:19

It's just not recharge.

Speaker: 00:56:21

And I challenge a lot of people sometimes of like, no, what kind of story?

Speaker: 00:56:26

Like recharges your soul.

Speaker: 00:56:28

That has nothing to do with you achieving anything or walking away going, I

Speaker: 00:56:32

need to go do X, Y, or Z. Or I'll meet somebody that like runs marathons

Speaker: 00:56:37

or, you know, I'm running today three miles, I gotta get my three miles in.

Speaker: 00:56:39

Why are you running?

Speaker: 00:56:40

You know, and we would call that healthy.

Speaker: 00:56:43

I'm, I'm learning, I'm growing.

Speaker: 00:56:45

I'm, and, and I, I just call it more addiction to ambition.

Speaker: 00:56:51

Running is great, but what I realized is that, so there's a

Speaker: 00:56:56

nature preserved down the street.

Speaker: 00:56:57

It's about a mile from my house.

Speaker: 00:56:59

It's got this really tall grass and it's got a trail in it.

Speaker: 00:57:04

And I just walk over there every morning and I touch the grass.

Speaker: 00:57:09

And so I have a principle called Touch the grass.

Speaker: 00:57:13

To your point.

Speaker: 00:57:14

You may not need to do it on a trail.

Speaker: 00:57:16

You may not need to touch grass.

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I don't know what you need to do, but the practice for me of touching the

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grass has nothing to do with achievement.

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I'm just touching grass because it puts me outside and my feet on the ground,

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and I get to see the sun kind of come up over the mountains in Boise, and

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I'm reminded that I'm not in control and that this, there's nothing I

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can do to control my life in all the ways I think I can control my life.

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The second thing that I did that I felt like helped me in a number

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of different areas was I moved my phone away from my bed and silly

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practice, but you know, I found myself checking my email or social whatever,

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first thing when I got outta bed.

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And I just find myself comparing, well, he's doing better, he's got

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more customers, he's building a bigger business, he's got more traction, he's got

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a bigger house, he's got more whatever.

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That's how you wake up.

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And so then everything in your ambition for the next eight

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hours is from that place.

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So I have this like thought or framework I've been wrestling with

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of how do we go from, I do this thing so I matter to, I matter.

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So I do this thing.

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It's just a simple reframe.

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And the thing that puts me in the, from state of I, I do this thing so

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that I matter is all the comparison and social media and all that stuff.

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And so getting the phone away from me so that I, I literally

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tell myself, go touch the grass.

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Then you can get on your phone.

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Helps me sometimes I guess like, you know, start in the right place,

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but it's always a, my wife's like, did you touch the grass today?

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'cause you're kind of grumpy.

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It's fascinating.

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I think you said her name was Amber.

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Yeah.

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journey is very similar and I, you know, we could probably do a poll

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of many men have gone through this process and there's a lot of grace.

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There's God's hand, miracles.

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But in almost all the situations, I would guess there is a woman

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Yeah.

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been there

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Yeah.

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heard from God and put up with it and all of that kind of stuff.

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So I love to touch the grass because that I was thinking before you even said about

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the phone was that you can't really touch the grass and scroll at the same time.

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Wow.

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Wow.

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be on a screen.

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and for me, and I'm at a different age and all that, but I've eliminated all

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what would be considered news media.

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it's good.

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still do some social, but social is like a pop in post and leave, not a scroll.

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and for me, I've noticed I really have to have still and quiet time.

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Early in the day and I don't get up at like four.

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I'm not like a four, you know, get up early

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Yeah.

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and you know, another thing that's weird, maybe this is old dude I was

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talking to you earlier about how I heard you and Mike talking about old dude.

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So this is kinda like old dude jumping in here.

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You know, it's like don't do the gym anymore.

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I'm not an anti gym, but man, I'd rather do a 45 minute walk

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Yeah,

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a good pace.

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You know, when you're in an rv, which we've lived for seven years,

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you don't have a gym all the time.

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And

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yeah.

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I'll look in the mirror and I'll say, I'm good.

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Yeah.

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You know what, I'm not, I don't need to, I don't need to impress anybody

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with the biceps or anything anymore.

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I, and I do think that's a lot of healthy

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hustle.

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Adam, tell me, tell me about the Healed Hustle, the program you have.

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We're gonna let you give, you know, where people can get to you and things like

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Mm-hmm.

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believe that you and I could continue talking about this conversation,

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but we may circle back later.

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Yeah.

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I'd love for me, you and Mike, and maybe one other, maybe we'll get like some

Speaker: 01:01:24

different ages to jump on a call, but, yeah, tell me about the healed hustle.

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What all, what's it all about?

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What are you doing there and where can people find it?

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yeah.

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So the healed hustle is really, it's eight steps that I went through to,

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answer the question is ambition and sustainability actually possible?

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And the eight steps are.

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That first you have to audit, and that was my first experience with taking

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inventory of my life, my family, and then you have to be willing to stop.

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For some of us, it's as extreme as quitting jobs.

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For others, it's a new position.

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Or for others it's just a season of pausing.

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But there needs to be an intentional stop and pause.

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The third and the most

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deepest part of Healed Hustle is what I call Heal Your Why.

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And that's where, Or, sorry, heal the lies.

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And that this is where we really get honest about what is driving

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my ambition in the first place of why I'm doing what I do.

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And then the fourth step is that we reframe our why.

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And really those four foundations start to set the, new trajectory

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for the drive of our ambition.

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So the other four are practices and the, first practice is

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to, prioritize connection.

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Most of us ignore our most intimate people because.

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I don't walk through the door and they go, Adam is here, founder and

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CEO of, you know, blah, blah, blah.

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My son goes, dad, can we throw the ball?

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And my wife goes, here's the trash that needs to be taken out.

Speaker: 01:03:01

But you walk into the Mastermind and they go, Adam Cruz is here, welcome him.

Speaker: 01:03:06

And that feels so good.

Speaker: 01:03:08

So we talk about how do you actually revalue the, the relationships

Speaker: 01:03:14

that matter most because that's who's gonna be there at the end.

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And then we talk about The recharge routines where we actually do an inventory

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on recharging versus just more striving.

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And we should talk about it another day.

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We talked about it at the very beginning, but if we're not careful, we just turn all

Speaker: 01:03:32

of our striving into our kids and we call it sports, and we make sure that they are

Speaker: 01:03:37

the best and they're in all the things, and we just teach them how to be addicts.

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then the, the seventh pillar is that we, reframe, or we redefine success.

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And so we, we, do a step on mission and our vision for our life.

Speaker: 01:03:51

And then the final step is that we actually put into

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practice the, all of the tools.

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It's called sustain.

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It comes from when I went on my healing journey and years and years

Speaker: 01:04:04

and years of walking this out and trying to answer this question.

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I met with one of my counselors years later at a coffee shop, and I said, man,

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it's, it's still so hard, you know, as a high achiever, you know, ambitious person.

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I just want to take the course and graduate.

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And I think a lot of people even think about the heeled hustle, like, yeah,

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I'm gonna do the course and graduate.

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And it's like he looked at me, he said, Adam, you never stop using the tools.

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And I said, man, isn't that the truth?

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And then I come home and no joke, about two weeks later, my 80-year-old

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neighbor was on his way out and I asked him where he is going.

Speaker: 01:04:38

He said, I'm headed to my

Speaker: 01:04:40

AA meeting.

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And I said, AA meeting, tell me more about that.

Speaker: 01:04:44

And he said, well, Adam, I've been sober for 45 years.

Speaker: 01:04:47

And I said, why do you still go?

Speaker: 01:04:48

And he said, you never stop using the tools.

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And I just laughed.

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I was like, I'm writing about that right now.

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That is the eighth pillar is you.

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You don't graduate this thing.

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There is no healed hustle.

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We're always in process of learning how to go back at another season of my life.

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I'm doing it right now, and take inventory and audit and slow things down that

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need to be slowed down and heal my why.

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it's a, contingent circle.

Speaker: 01:05:17

but that's the heal hustle and we take guys through it and, you can go to the

Speaker: 01:05:20

heal hustle.com and take an assessment.

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I have an assessment where it's the first step of auditing, so

Speaker: 01:05:27

is it a journey.

Speaker: 01:05:28

It's not an event.

Speaker: 01:05:29

Right?

Speaker: 01:05:29

See, that's one of the things, going back to what you said earlier, it's

Speaker: 01:05:32

like, it's an event and, you know, we're, we're all looking for the easy button.

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Yeah.

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I'm gonna go to this event and spend a day

Speaker: 01:05:40

Yeah.

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and fixed

Speaker: 01:05:42

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:05:42

right?

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It's a Journey.

Speaker: 01:05:44

Three to five years.

Speaker: 01:05:45

Honestly, that's not what the hill hustle is, but when you

Speaker: 01:05:48

choose to lean in, it's a life,

Speaker: 01:05:50

hopefully

Speaker: 01:05:50

just a lifetime, a new way of operating so that you can go back at 61 as

Speaker: 01:05:55

a COO and be incredibly impactful.

Speaker: 01:05:58

Yeah, man, Adam, I appreciate the conversation and I recommend

Speaker: 01:06:04

jump over to the Healed hustle.

Speaker: 01:06:05

I've got it pulled up here and there are some good tools

Speaker: 01:06:08

and all that you've got there.

Speaker: 01:06:10

And, I actually do believe.

Speaker: 01:06:15

That we are all at various places on this journey

Speaker: 01:06:20

Yeah.

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I appreciate I believe you are in all likelihood, ministering to a

Speaker: 01:06:27

group that's at a critical time.

Speaker: 01:06:30

And I know you're probably like me.

Speaker: 01:06:32

You would really rather people not have to go through a catalytic event.

Speaker: 01:06:37

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:06:38

To go through this change like we've had to, and I'm hopeful and my

Speaker: 01:06:42

prayer and I'm prayerful that people can, so man Adam Cruise, the Healed

Speaker: 01:06:47

Hustle, y'all go check that out and we'll have links and all down below.

Speaker: 01:06:52

There's been a great conversation.

Speaker: 01:06:54

We'll circle back because like we've discussed, it is a journey.

Speaker: 01:06:59

there's not an easy button with this.

Speaker: 01:07:01

There's not a three steps and you're done.

Speaker: 01:07:03

Even the

Speaker: 01:07:03

Yeah,

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are cyclical in,

Speaker: 01:07:05

yeah.

Speaker: 01:07:06

probably.

Speaker: 01:07:07

Yep.

Speaker: 01:07:07

and those last few sustainability, I believe that next to last on the

Speaker: 01:07:12

redefining of success, which used to be the tagline of Seek go create,

Speaker: 01:07:16

by the way, redefining success and.

Speaker: 01:07:19

Love

Speaker: 01:07:20

Let's go.

Speaker: 01:07:20

The story of success redefined.

Speaker: 01:07:22

That's my novel.

Speaker: 01:07:23

I think that was the tagline of my novel.

Speaker: 01:07:24

It's just like all about everything has been do we define success?

Speaker: 01:07:28

So,

Speaker: 01:07:29

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:07:29

And that's a constant process because I'm in the process.

Speaker: 01:07:33

Of redoing right now.

Speaker: 01:07:36

Yeah.

Speaker: 01:07:36

out Adam Cruise's stuff.

Speaker: 01:07:39

Go, go find him on all the, all the places that he is.

Speaker: 01:07:43

We'll have all the links down below.

Speaker: 01:07:46

We're seek, go, create.

Speaker: 01:07:47

And this message that Adam and I discussed is really what we

Speaker: 01:07:52

started back in 2019 talking about.

Speaker: 01:07:56

Hmm.

Speaker: 01:07:56

about this ever since.

Speaker: 01:07:57

It's the journey, the journey that we're on.

Speaker: 01:08:01

So Adam, I appreciate you talking to us about it here.

Speaker: 01:08:03

We have new episodes every Monday.

Speaker: 01:08:06

We have some great things going on on YouTube.

Speaker: 01:08:09

People can look at these two good looking dudes talk for an hour and 15 minutes.

Speaker: 01:08:15

I know that that is gonna sell it Adam.

Speaker: 01:08:18

And of course, we're on all the podcast platforms, all the socials, everything.

Speaker: 01:08:21

Join the conversation.

Speaker: 01:08:23

Thanks for listening in.

Speaker: 01:08:24

See you next time at Seek.

Speaker: 01:08:25

Go Create.