EntreLeadership - #396: How to Find Meaningful Work with Shawn Askinosie

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Once a successful attorney, Shawn Askinosie had it all—security, a winning track record, and good money. So why did he find himself struck by a panic attack as he left the courtroom one day? Shawn took a hard look in the mirror and discovered he was completely unfulfilled by his job and his life. And so, his search for meaningful work began, leading him from the courtroom to cocoa beans, and eventually, to Askinosie Chocolate. The community-changing chocolatier joins the EntreLeadership team to share his incredible story of self-discovery and how small businesses have the opportunity to create meaningful work and make a real difference in the world, one person at a time.   entreleadership.com/podcast Askinosie Chocolate website Meaningful Work by Shawn Askinosie and Lawren Askinosie Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom How to Create Core Values Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you realize it or not, we all have this one thing uncommon. This one thing that all of us can connect on, and that is that we want to do work that matters. It's human nature. We want our work, our business, what we do every day. We want it to be more than just a job. We want it to count for something. But if you're like a lot of people,

well, there's times in life where you look up and you realize, I don't feel like my work does matter. I don't love my job anymore. I'm not fulfilled. And if you get to that point, it leaves you asking, so now what do I do? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty.

And today, my guest is Sean Askenosi, founder and CEO of Askenosi Chocolate. Mmm, chocolate company, this one's going to be fun. Hey, Sean's been there. He asked himself, why don't I love my job anymore? Before he got into chocolate, he was doing something. he was really, really good at, but he wasn't fulfilled. And he hit a point where he knew he had to change. So today, he's got a chocolate company. But his passion, his passion started out, practicing law. Yeah, I was practicing law. I always wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be in the

courtroom and I wanted to work specifically in criminal law. And that's what I did. I did it for 20 years and specialized in really serious cases, felonies, murders, robbery, rape, tax fraud, bank fraud. I absolutely loved it. It didn't feel like work to me. And one day in the middle of, not in the middle, but near the end of a murder trial, as I reflect back, I know that was sort of a pivotal point for me, talking with a client in the ante room outside the courtroom before closing arguments and really pivotal for me. And then, you know, a couple of things. years later, I'm in the courtroom on a very routine matter, just super, I mean, there was no contention at all. My chest started hurting. I didn't know if I was having a heart attack or what, but I did

go to the hospital and my doctor said I was fine and that I needed to see a psychologist. And I did, thankfully, and ended up taking Lexapro for, you know, five years or so and really trying to address this issue of what's going on? What is happening? Because I don't love my job anymore. And I'm sure many of your listeners can relate to this idea of, wait, this is what I wanted to do and I've done it for a long time. Now I don't love it anymore because I feel it. I can sense it in my mind, body, and spirit. It wasn't that I fell out of love with, you know, working on justice and defending people who were accused of crime. It was just the whole package just didn't fit with me anymore.

But the problem is that I didn't know what else to do. I had a political science degree. I didn't want to run for office. And so I had no other skills. So I just did what lawyers do. I started researching and reading and thinking that the research and reading and talking and uncovering every stone that I could, that I would find the answer of what's next. I just couldn't do it. So I was literally searching in the darkness for about five years before I landed on chocolate. it. And I was still practicing law, still trying cases, still doing a good job. But, you know, as I reflect back on it, I would not have minded if the process wouldn't have taken five years, but I don't regret it. I don't regret that sort of circuitous, sometimes really challenging path. I'm curious, at that point when you went to the hospital thinking you're having a heart attack,

I've had the same experience. And I wasn't having a heart attack and they said it's stress. And I said, I don't feel stressed. I'm fine. And it turns out I was stressed and ended up learning about anxiety attacks and how those can cause these pains in your body that feel like really intense and can feel like a heart attack. I also did the lexopro thing for a little bit. In my experience, I'm very type A. I gather that you're also type A.

I really tried for a season to power through that. I didn't want that to be true of me that I needed to acknowledge. knowledge that I was over committed or overstressed or that I had some work to do in this psychological space to figure out why my body was doing this. Did you try to power through? Did you get curious really quick? How did you respond to that? The first thing I did was, this is like right at the end of that murder trial. I thought, gosh, what is happening? So the first thing I did, which is what a lot of people do, is I bought a convertible Mercedes.

or maybe not a Mercedes. People buy Ferraris and other stuff. I could only afford a Mercedes. So I was like, well, this will do it. I mean, surely I'll feel better buying this thing. And that lasted for about four months and I sold it. And that was my first kind of awareness, you know, response was to buy a car. And so I didn't have a high amount of self-awareness at that point.

But I did have enough to know that. something was wrong. And so I didn't stop there. And I continued to explore what is happening. Why am I feeling this anxiety? Why am I sensing it? Why am I no longer passionate about this job? And so all the while trying to find, am I going to buy a business? Am I going to start a business? Am I what, you know, praying about this? I prayed about it every day. Very simple prayer. dear God, please give me something else to do. And I did that for, like I said, almost five years. And so what happened is, yes, I did try to power through it. At first, I thought, well, maybe it's criminal law. And I started to take on some civil cases and still in the courtroom. But that didn't, it wasn't happening for me. And it was okay. But I needed to feel almost in my whole body a sense of inspiration. about the work that I was doing, and it wasn't happening. So as I tried to power through it in my law career,

I felt like I was just reaching a dead end. And that was, I think, really the low point for me when I felt like that it wasn't going to happen, that I wasn't going to feel this kind of inspiration again. And that's when I sort of just stumbled into this volunteer job at the hospital. I know oftentimes when leaders, especially if you've been doing something for 20 years and you're great at it, there's the sense of humbling when we go through things like this. And oftentimes getting through it is dependent on people around us who are instrumental and giving advice or giving encouragement. Oftentimes the people who stay in that valley the rest of their life, they stay isolated. Did you have people who are cheering for you? Did you have people that you were. confiding in and saying, I'm struggling with this. What do you think? How do I get to this next place in my life that there's more clarity about what I'm supposed to be doing? I will say, we talked about my wife. We've been

married for 33 years and she's my biggest cheerleader. But this was a struggle for her because you know, she helped put me through law school. And I was at the top of my game. I'd never lost a jury trial. I made a lot of money, a whole lot of money. And, you know, I didn't have to worry about credit card debt. Dave, are you listening? And, and so anyway, no, I made that kind of money, and we spent within our means. And so it was a challenge for her. But in answer to your question, the person that really was a sort of an anchor point for me was Father Cyprian, who is a monk at Assumption Abbey, a Trappist monastery in the Mark Twain National Forest, about an hour and a half from Springfield, Missouri. And I started going there on retreat about 20 years ago. And he was a person

who was kind of willing to provide some spiritual direction at that point. He's 90 now. But in those years, I would go there on retreat. Now I'm a family brother there. So I live with the monks when I go there. I live behind the cloister. I follow their schedule. It's a long story. I write about it in my book. But even to this day, I talk to him frequently. And he has been a sort of guiding light for me in a very gentle, subtle, non-judgmental way. And so I would say that he has been a stabilizing force in my life, and especially during those years. And I'm not Catholic, but the Catholics would call this period. at the pascal mystery. And so the paschal mystery is this representation of the valley that we can find ourselves in, and we can't see the mountaintop. We don't even know that it's there at this point in the depth of the valley, or really its representation in the Hebrew Bible is the Exodus. You know, it's this notion of darkness before light, and ultimately it's about the death and resurrection of Christ. And it's embodied in the paschal mystery. And so he helped walk me

through the Pascal mystery of that time in my life. I think this is really key for leaders listening because at some point in your time as a leader, business owner, entrepreneur, you're going to hit a wall. And I have found in my own experience, I'm hearing this in your story, and I've seen dozens of cases where leaders hit that wall and they do one of two things. They either run up into the wall and they blow up in this ball of fire, or they find somebody as a guide, as a mentor, or several people and make sure that they're not isolated. And these people help us navigate through that storm. And we grow through that.

And like you said, we go from darkness to light. We have this more enlightened approach to what we're supposed to do with our lives and how we lead. It's a transformational experience if we navigate that storm in the proper way. But it can also be the beginning of the end. And I think, you know, the difference is not being alone and having people around you, that you can talk to. I think you raise a very important point because especially in this age, we are sort of falsely presuming that with all of the technology and access to information that we have, that somehow

that will insulate us from, as you said, the impact of the wall, that the ultimate effect won't be as great because surely with all of the information at our fingertips, we can find the answer and the answer will sort of buffer that. impact. But in fact, it's not true because you can't have a relationship with a book. But you can have a relationship with a person. You can experience what it feels like to receive kindness, to receive compassion. You can't receive that from a book. Yes. I mean, you can be inspired by a book. So true. But you can't receive that from Google. Google will give you all kinds of I mean, there's, it's, I mean, yesterday I'm looking at, we're looking at technology for, you know,

Oculus glasses and can we find ways to be in meeting rooms together remotely? I mean, but that technology ultimately is not going to be a place where we find the embodiment of compassion and humility and kinship and mutuality. So that comes from people. So thank you for bringing that up, because I think it's, very important. Well, we know the punchline. You spend five years and ultimately you get into chocolate. But I want to hear about the season right before you had the clarity that it was going to be a chocolate company. You with your talent, with your background, with your resume,

there's a lot of things you could have done really well. You obviously have the drive and the passion that whatever you put your mind to was going to be successful. What was it that got you to say, hey, it's going to be chocolate? Well, I told you it was a It's pretty circuitous path, but the thing for me is after I bought the Mercedes and sold it and started kind of having almost an awakening of self-awareness that I hope that leaders will experience before they hit the wall, or maybe they need to hit the wall, and that might wake them up to a place of self-awareness. Like, wow, I just hit a wall.

What's happening here? And because I think that this is really the sort of preamble. to any kind of creativity, and it's a genesis point for all sorts of things, starting companies, changing careers, staying in careers. But for me, what happened is I decided that I needed to have a conversation with the brokenheartedness in my own life. And I think that this is true for everyone, not just business leaders, but we all at some point need to speak to our own broken heart.

And mine was my dad's death when I was 14. He died of lung cancer. He was a lawyer, you know, a former Marine physically fit. And I was with him when he died. And it was just terrible, you know. And the church people would come over and pray and speak in tongues. And it kind of freaked me out as a 13-year-old. And they would say he's going to be healed and the claim his healing.

and the leader of the group said, Sean, don't ever talk with your dad about death. Because if you do, then it'll be a sign of doubt, and Jesus won't heal him. Wow. And I believe that. And my dad would try to talk to me about it,

and I'd push him away and say, Dad, don't say things like that. You're not going to live. And he died, and fast forward, you know, 25 years later. And, you know, I'm winning cases and making money

and buying Mercedes and just wasn't working for me. So I thought, you know, I need to talk to that. broken heart because it's still there. It doesn't matter how many years go by. You and I can have a conversation offline and I can probably talk to you for five minutes and learn if you were willing to share your own broken heart. Well, it's funny you say that. It doesn't have to be offline. I had a very similar experience. My mom had cancer when I was a boy. And we were at a church where they said very similar things that, you know, we're going to speak life and it's she's going to be healed. And if she's not

healed it it implied a lack of faith and well then she ends up dying and you can imagine the at a spiritual level just the the shame and the guilt and in that environment and and the story's been redeemed many times over and it's it's amazing to look back in hindsight now and and see how god's used all of that but um i think you're right we all have these broken places and you and i we lost our parents but i think leaders listening may go well i didn't lose my pay i'm not really broken. And I would say we all have something broken somewhere that needs to be healed. And it may not have been as tragic as losing one of your parents. But when you say having a conversation with your brokenheartedness, what does that look like? It looks like walking alone on a road

and not having music or anyone, but just my own thoughts. combined with a sort of walking prayer, if you will, the contemplatives would say, resting in the presence of God. This is without agenda. It's just walking along and thinking with the backdrop and surrounded by this notion of union. And it's a sacred conversation because of its intention. And so this is what it looked like for me, literally walking. I don't mean like metaphorically, I mean like walking down the road, you know, out in the forest where this monastery is. And just letting these things kind of flow over me.

And to back up just one point, I would say, yes, I talk to people too who say, well, I haven't experienced that kind of tragedy. but when I hear people say, well, I really don't have a broken heart, hey, if you're 30 or 40 or 50 and you tell me you don't have a broken heart, well, then I say, we need to talk about your life. Yeah. Let's get you a broken heart. Right. You know, and it's important because we grow from these experiences.

And so in that conversation that we're talking about here, in that conversation with my own grief, my own broken heart, this idea came to me to go to the hospital and volunteer on Fridays in the palliative care unit, which is hospice in the hospital. Essentially, everybody's dying in this, and I visited just, I was just a volunteer. You know, I'd go, like I said, on Fridays, it did it for almost five years. I'd knock on the door. Many of these patients didn't have anybody. They were in the oncology unit, cardiology, or ICU. And, you know, I would read to them out of the Bible or talk about whatever. And I always concluded by saying, hey, one of the things I do as a volunteer is pray for people. Would you like me to say a prayer for you? Almost everybody who's dying

will take a prayer. I learned this. And then here's the key. This is the key. As I would say, okay, well, what would you like me to pray for? I didn't presume for them without asking, and this would open up a whole discussion for them of what they wanted me to pray for. And I would listen and I would repeat their words and prayer back to them. I'd ask if I could touch their shoulder or hold their hand while I repeated their words and prayer right back to them. And some would say, would you pray that I'm healed so I can walk out of here, I did that. Or would you pray that I die today because I'm in pain? I did that. Or pray for my family or pray that I live a couple of weeks for a wedding anniversary or whatever.

I did that. And this is the sort of penultimate point, I think, here, is that during those moments, which were measured in seconds, I actually thought about someone else besides me. and what I did is I'd leave their room and go to the next person and then when I would leave the hospital, I'd walk out to my car, and sometimes I would, what I would do is I'd go into the chapel before, and I would pray about these names of people I was going to go see, and then I would do it at the end of the visit, and I would just say a little prayer for those people that I'd just been with.

And so then when I would walk to my car, sometimes, not every time, time, only a few times. I'd walk out to my car and it's as if I was walking on air almost. My feet weren't touching the ground. They were, but maybe they weren't. And so to your listeners, you were thinking, well, that sounds morbid. You're just with people who are dying and you're, what's, what's going on there? Well, what's going on is joy. That's what happened. And Khalil Gibran says that our greatest joy is our sorry. unmasked. And that's what I, that is the result of the conversation with my broken heart that expressed itself in just complete and utter joy because it was from a place of deep pain

within my own broken heart, which was just as broken then as it was 25 years ago and I'm standing at my dad's bedside and he takes his last breath. Wow. Because our broken hearts are not on calendar time, right? They're not. They aren't. They aren't. And our broken hearts are. Emotions don't understand time. I mean, it's that feeling. We have a trigger that causes us to have a feeling. That's the same feeling we had 20 years ago.

And our emotions can't tell the difference between that it actually was 20 years ago and now we're safe. And it feels like it's right now. We're re-experiencing that same thing. Yeah, which is awesome because it gives us some glimpse of eternity, I think. and the sort of massive, you know, experience that we can have with our emotions, both good and sometimes traumatic. And so, anyway, it's from that experience, not while I was at the hospital or not, but just what it did is that that experience provided clarity to me. It gave me space. You're a type A person I am.

And so often, at least for me, I was so bound up. in researching the answer and finding the answer, it was just literally, and I was just so tight that I couldn't loosen up and create space for, you know, really crazy things to come into my head, like making chocolate from scratch. And so that's how it happened.

Well, during that phase, did you notice as you're doing the volunteering and feeling this joy? Did your body start to shift? I mean, you go back to when you had the anxiety attack and you're bound up emotionally and spiritually and then physically that's manifesting. Did you see a progress towards health where mind, body, and soul were starting to feel more levity in the experience?

That's a great question. I would say a little bit, a little bit. But I also at that time was experiencing some other health things that were kind of scary. But it was a time of healing for me. So right about the time that I started this company, I did turn a corner in some physical healing. But, you know, gosh, sometimes these things, especially chronic type things, it can feel like it's so long and there's no progress. And that can be a real source of depression and anxiety. And it was for me.

But I started to turn the corner about that time too. So you get the clarity that you can have joy again. And you get the clarity that being an attorney is what got you here, but it's not going to be your life going forward and you jump into chocolate. Right. Then what? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so within a few months of this idea popping into my head, I was in the Amazon.

And I found a way down there to go visit farmers who were growing cocoa beans. I'm still, you know, practicing law. I come back from that trip and it was a real sort of, I'd never been in primary force. I didn't know what it was. I mean, this is, this was a real creation experience for me. I mean, I'd traveled around the world a little bit, but I'd never seen anything that was just so much. I mean, the Amazon is just, well, I can't say it better.

It was a creation experience where I was just in utter awe that, you know, I could take like 10 steps in one direction and I would never find my way back, you know, to anything. And so I came back from that experience and I started, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I did all the stuff. I mean, I started putting a business plan together. I bought a building. Started winding down my law practice. That took a year.

And bought equipment. Nobody was doing bean to bar chocolate then, really. There were about three of us in the country starting at the same time. So it was hard to learn. And I started buying cocoa beans and started. I've been traveling to buy cocoa beans every year from every farm since 2005 until this year. This is the first year I've not been traveling. to buy those cocoa beans.

Unpack a little more of what bean debar means. So I'm going to these places, and right now I source cocoa beans in Deval, Philippines, in Ecuador, in the Amazon, southern part of Ecuador, northern Peru, and in a very remote village in southwestern Tanzania. I go there, I meet with farmers. This summer I would have taken my 48th origin trip. And these places take a long time to get to, and they're hot. and often very remote, and the farmers are in varying degrees of poverty.

And I've met with them. I help them open bank accounts. I help them become exporters so they can reduce the number of middlemen and women. I share profits with them. And Dave, if you're listening, you'll appreciate this. But we open our books to the farmers, and we translate our financial statements into their language. So when I'm in Tanzania, our financials are in Swahili, so they can understand how we calculate their profit share. We give them money, hand them cash, and then we get their cocoa beans, and the cocoa beans end up at my factory in Springfield, Missouri, and we make chocolate from those beans.

We roast them and grind them and turn it into a chocolate bar. That's fantastic. I've got a chocolate bar here, and towards the end of the show, I'm going to eat it and do a little taste test here, and you're going to tell me what I'm eating. I can't wait for that. I'd like to fast forward to that, but there's more to the story. Clearly, this wasn't just about chocolate for you. You have the sense of purpose to really just have an impact on humans. Your employees, these farmers, the customers, how much has purpose meant for you?

How do you define purpose? What is the thing that gets you out of bed every day that's beyond just the chocolate bar? The thing, the answer to that question is what you raised eloquently a moment ago, which is that the beginning point. of this and the sort of help along the way was a person. These are people. This is about relationships. And so that's what this chocolate business is about. It's not about a cocoa bean or a bar. It's about people. And it always has been and always will be. And so that's the driving force here. Well, why? it's because it's with people that we have the opportunity to experience love. Yes, we can experience

love of nature and we can love animals. We can love the beautiful sunshine. But there is no other comparable love, I believe, than that of love of our fellow human beings and to be in relationship with them because it truly is an experience of the divine. And that's what this is all about. Well, I want you to say more about this and the connection to people because we believe so much at Entree leadership that purpose is the thing that is the foundation for a peak performing business. And oftentimes because we're Ramsey Solutions, we're Entree leadership, it's easy for a business owner to look at us and go, well, yeah, you guys are saving marriages. You're changing the world. You know, it's easy for y'all to be missional and feel like

you have a purpose. We're just fill in the blank. And here we are with the product that you have, You could almost say to some degree as a commodity. It's chocolate. Now, I know you have a very special way of doing this, and it tastes amazing. So I'm not diminishing the excellence of the quality. But you're more in the space that a lot of business owners are, which is, I'm thinking of my friend Chris and Arizona, and they have a window graphics company, and they put graphics on windows of vehicles and signage and that kind of thing.

How do you help a Chris who does window graphics understand? It's not about the graphics, just like you understand. it's not just about the chocolate bar. Well, you teed it up for me. I don't play golf, but if I did, this would be perfect because one of the things, I write about this, I talk about this, I say this all the time. It's not about the chocolate.

It's about the chocolate. Well, to some people, that sounds very confounding. Maybe it's a little Buddhist because it's very non-dual in its thinking and in its expression. So when I say that this isn't about chocolate for us, for example, I mean, it's about these farmers that we're sharing profits with that we give money to. It's about young people in my town of Springfield, Missouri, where we created this program called Chocolate University to engage young people in our business so that they can understand that small business can be a force for good in the world. And that they can know there's a world beyond Springfield, Missouri. It's we've just surpassed feeding one million meals to malnourished school children in Tanzania and the Philippines.

Wow. All self, all sustainable with zero donations. In January, we opened to preschool in remote Tanzania for 300 kids to have early childhood education for the first time in the entire region. And so that's not about chocolate. It's not. It's almost like chocolate is about chocolate. It's like chocolate's the vehicle that lets you get to all those things. Yes, yes, yes.

But it's circular in the... a sense that it is about the chocolate, and yes, it is a vehicle to it because this idea of vocation, which is what we call it, or you could say calling, but this idea of vocation is driven by multiple facets. It's not just chocolate. But here's where I want to deepen this a little bit and suggest this. You are not able, the Royal You is not able to separate our behavior as a company from the product that we produce. So what I mean by this is not in a new age woo-woo sort of way. I'm telling you that if I gave our cocoa beans and our sugar and our machines to somebody,

you know, two counties over and said, here's the recipe. It would not be the same chocolate bar as the one that we produce. So what I'm saying is that who we are as a company, collectively informs the product or service that we provide or make. And depending on the degree to which this is executed in a company, they are literally inseparable. And so this isn't like we have a department in the company of community service and everything else is, let's go make chocolate. It's all wrapped up. It's all tied up. I don't track my time of when am I working on the chocolate university program or feeding kids or when am I working on marketing.

It's just all part of the same thing. And so what I would say to Chris, I love this point because you can look on my website, you can look in my book, you can look in our chocolate bar packaging. I do not like the phrase social entrepreneurship. I think it should be removed from the business lexicon. It is, it's not good. Why? This isn't about social business. It's about business. It's about business. It's just good business. So if Chris, he is running his business in a way, it's not about the graphics.

But it is about the graphics. Because Chris has a co-worker whose wife is suffering. She's suffering from something and she's debilitated. And Chris knows that this coworker is struggling because

of what's happening with his spouse. And Chris is providing kindness and compassion to this coworker, or maybe it's somebody down the street, or maybe it's someone he knows about that he drinks coffee with, and Chris doesn't have a label of social business on his neon sign in front. It's good business, because he acts, he behaves in a way that is kind with mutuality, with kinship, with others in his community, in his neighborhood. And this is how his, this is what makes Chris's product better.

This is what makes it fun to work at Chris's business. Yes. Because people care about other people. And they're not saying to themselves, well, you know, we can't care about that person today because we didn't get 10 sales calls in today. So we're not going to be kind to that person. No, no, no, no. That's not the way his business operates. Well, it sounds like what you're saying is he has the opportunity to have a heart and to use his heart.

And really big businesses oftentimes get so consumed with the bottom. line and the growth and the machine of, you know, and especially public companies, it's all about Q1 and Q2. And you have to lose your heart to do that. You can only approach it with, you know, from a place of the mind and transactions. And hey, I'm sorry, your wife's sake, but we got productivity and you're a unit of production here and you got to produce baby or otherwise you can't stay. And it's really sad when businesses get to that point. But it's why I love small business, because oftentimes the founders, the owners like Chris, who are in it with his coworkers, they really can express that compassion. And that's what you're saying you're doing with the chocolate company

and your team there. It is what we're doing. And we've been doing it for 14 years. And of course, there are instances where you have to make choices. This is what business is about. It's not perfect. In fact, the imperfection of it is what makes it beautiful, really. Because the small business, you know, you can go to the major universities in the country and all. All of them have either departments or classes that are called, you know, social business or social entrepreneurship. Right. And they need to stop that. I agree.

I agree. I agree. Well, if you look at business the right way, you go, it, you know, it is this vehicle that we get to show up. And there's actually a nobility and work. You know, I mean, we see this. Right. There's a biblical case for, you know, we were given vocations. We were given callings.

You know, God told the very first chapter of the Bible, we're given this guy Adam and he's given a job description. Go name the animals. Go tend to the garden. You know, you have a job to do. There's something holy and just doing the work and doing it with excellence and really caring about the outcome and the people who are on the other end of that. Well, it gives us an opportunity. I mean, the math people say we're going to spend 80,000 hours at work on average. Well, if given that truth, then what better place other than work would there be for us to express our humanity. It's a real opportunity for us. And the great spiritual teachers through the centuries, I think, have given us a framework where we can be compassionate and kind and have a business all

at the same time. I love it. One of the things you talk about in your book that I found to be interesting, and I'm not sure I fully have digested this, whether I agree or maybe we philosophically agree, but you're saying it in a different way. Don't scale, reverse scale. We talk about all the time scaling a business, building a business, becoming a peak performing business. If it's worth doing, take it to the moon. Life's short, baby, go get it. It's very Western. It's very American. And I think in some context, if you're doing something that matters, why not do more of it? But it sounds like you're maybe taking a different angle on this. I am. And I think that chapter in the book should be read in 10.

with Chapter 3, which is titled, How Much Is Enough? And I don't mean just how much is enough money. I mean, how many Instagram likes is enough. How many hits on your YouTube channel is enough? How much top line sales is enough? If we can, of course, these are moving targets. But as business people, if we can get together and at least address the fact of this moving target before we get there, I don't just mean goals or big goals.

I mean, but these things that are the everyday stuff of our business, then before we reach them, we can understand the value of what is enough. I learned this from the monastery. They basically operate on the sufficiency economy. I mean, in my monastery, they make enough fruitcakes to support the monastery. That's it. They could make more. And so, I mean, we know, we all know that more is not enough. And when people are trampling over each other on Black Friday and killing people to get

through the door of fill in the blank big store, then we've got a problem. And so what I'm suggesting in both of these chapters is that, well, and what I'm about to say is, I think, from what I know perfectly in line with the way that, with the Dave Ramsey philosophy. And the idea is instead of challenging the business people in our world to grow, and by grow, we mean bigger sales, more partners, more investors, more stores, more units, more franchisees, more sales. But what doesn't get talked about a lot is, well, what about reducing debt?

What about that? That's growth. That is absolutely growth, reducing debt. What about learning how to operate with what you have out of your cash flow? Yeah. That's growth. That's what we're focused on. And so my challenge to the culture is I'm essentially saying, yes, of course, we're in a place right now. Scale is important. When we're talking about a vaccine, let's talk scale. Please, I'm begging you. Let's talk scale. But when we're talking about a small business, if your focus is on scale, scale, scale, because of all of the pressures of your community, your friends, your family, your investors, or just the books that you read, you will become swept away. Yeah. You will, before you know it, be untethered to the reason that you started the business in the first place. Well, you'll implode. And I think what you're hitting on is something I do agree with, and that is that consumerism will not create fulfillment.

But I don't think you're saying to Chris in Arizona that if he has a coworker, that he's able to help. and the nobility of his work has this this broader purpose that having more co-workers to help and building this from a place of how can we help more people? We're not saying that you don't grow if what you're doing is meaningful. Sure. And at the same time, we can get so trapped in this idea of it's all about growth. And if we're not growing, we're dying. And if we're dying, it's bottom line driven and it's not human to human driven.

It's what it sounds like you're saying. Yes, thank you for, yes. I think another way to say reverse scale is human scale. So I'm not suggesting that Chris not grow. What I'm suggesting is that he fully understands the vision of his company in a 10-year cycle or even a 20-year cycle. And he understands in his mind how much is enough. How much is enough debt? How much is enough net operating income?

And he, of course, these things will change. but when he understands that, then he will also hopefully along the way of starting his business, he will have encountered the divine. I have, you know, and it doesn't happen every day. I've been doing this for 14 years,

and I would say there are three or four instances where I've, you know, seen the curtain lift, so to speak, and I've had, you know, just a glimpse of it. And when Chris is in this business, and he's had the chance to maybe help somebody or just be shoulder to shoulder with someone who needs him, then he probably has experienced it too. But what I'm saying is that as long as he is strong in understanding that that tether,

this is his behavior, the way he treats people in his company and out of his company, and the mindset that he has and had about why he started this business, as long as he holds that tether as he grows, then he won't lose it. But this requires discipline in our culture because the cultural pressure is to grow because we, despite our very good efforts, we're challenged by the bank and partners that we must do this. And what I'm saying is, at least for me, yes, I'm, I, grow, but I don't want to become a huge company because I want to be able to experience the things

that I'm experiencing and not delegate them to other people for me, just for me. You talk about this idea of discipline, and I'd like to connect this to something you speak to in your book, and it's something that I've seen Dave Ramsey model. I've experienced this myself and the value in this, and that is the time that a leader needs to take to be away and be a alone and to recharge their batteries. We get going so fast. There's so much white noise. And when we sign up for the responsibility of being a leader, it's difficult to be off. The team needs us. We've got to show up. We've got a obligation. We've got a responsibility. We've got customers. And if you're not careful, the thing that you love can be, it could be an amazing, beautiful thing,

and it can also at scale like you're talking about, it can suck your soul dry. And you have found a way to unplug and turn it off and get away and recharge. I've done some of these personal retreats, and I've got to tell you the first time that I did it, I didn't know what to do with myself. It was just so weird to feel like I'm offline and I'm by myself and I felt lonely and then I felt excited. And then I thought, what am I doing? And I should just go home and get back to work. And I was so tempted the whole time to open up my email and look because I just felt that addiction to that dopamine hit that we get from opening the next thing.

Say more about these retreats. and the value for leaders to, whether it's at a monastery or just, you know, a long weekend away with a hotel somewhere. Getting alone and getting silent and listening. The word, I thank you for using the word addiction because let's call it what it is. I mean, we are in many cases, especially leaders who are, you know, reading a lot. We're consuming tons of information in order to make good decisions, provide good leadership. we operate at a very high revolution. And we are sort of in many ways addicted to this distraction or to distraction.

And so it's hard and harder and become harder to truly unplug. And so for me, I think it's important if you can go anywhere, you can go to a monastery or you can go to, like you said, a hotel. But I think it would be best, especially if, if you're just beginning this, to go to a place where you will not have the internet. So you can't get it even if you want it. And those places are becoming fewer and fewer to be found. So that I think is one of the first things, and that is, can we get away from the internet?

Can we get away from email? Get away from this distraction. And I will, and you pointed this out. At the beginning, it's painful. Why? Because we're not used to being alone with our own thoughts. we're used to be able, we're used to being able to substitute that for something else. A podcast, a book.

Yes. Talking to a friend, texting, whatever, Facebook, Instagram, the whole thing. And so this is the challenge, I believe, of our age is to be alone with our thoughts. And in the beginning of, when I started doing these retreats, I'd bring 20 books with me. They still don't have the internet at Assumption Abbey. But so I would like bring all my books, bring my Bible, bring the Bible study, bring it all, you know, Tuesdays with Mori, which is kind of where this whole thing started. And, you know, I just, I bring, I bring those.

And, you know, now I go and I don't bring anything. I bring nothing. And that, you know, that took me 20 years. And so I think if we can just take baby steps, then we will find great, I don't want to, how can I say? I don't want to like oversell this because the, I, I've come back from retreats and not felt good at all. And especially if you are going to overlay any faith component to this, if you go on a retreat with some prayer agenda that you think you're going to get all your answers,

you know, in a long weekend or a week of, yes, it's possible, but you can also be in for some real pain and struggle. But I think this is very important. And I think, you know, people are listening. I'm like, great. This doesn't sound like fun at all. Why would I want to, I can just, you know, go to the beach. Just sign me up for, you know.

I think it's that. And, okay, so what's the value? Am I going to steer at my belly button all weekend? And then I come back and I, I had a, I slept a little bit more. I've got some physical energy. All of it. I mean, what's the real benefit here? Because I got a business to rush on, you know.

What do you, what do you want? Say more about that. Say more about that. Well, the, what benefit do you want as a leader? Do you want to, do you want a weekend of clarity? Are you looking for rest? are you looking for prayer? Are you looking for answers?

Are you looking to like start journaling? And if you can begin with a simple intention and try to do this more than once over a period of time, then you will find either A, that you're achieving the thing that you set out to achieve, it's very simply, or B, that something else happened that's quite mysterious. So, you know, I am a prayerful person, and I, so I have, you know, I don't just limit this to going on a retreat because it's hard to do now. And so I have things that I do in the morning during the day to sort of have a mini retreat, can we say, you know, to sort of point me in the right direction for the day. and this doesn't have to be a big deal. And so we sort of train our body, mind, and spirit to be ready for these longer retreats.

And for me, for me, I can't speak to just being on a retreat only for rest, although that's certainly happened. But for me, it's a very, it's a very faith-driven process. So for me, for 20 years, you know, this has been, this has been, it's been hard. I've shed tears at these retreats at Assumption Abbey are coming back. I've found that I wasn't rested. You know, I've come back tired. But it's all about prayer. It is all about this contemplative notion of resting in God's presence.

And that is not some end goal. It's a process to this very day, to this morning, to this very morning. to this very morning of trying to rest in his presence. And so this is, I don't even want to use the word goal, or what am I going to get out of it? For me, what I get out of it is, can I, in my life in this world, discover my true self on a daily basis?

Can I see him? Can I get to know him? that is that God created soul in me that kind of woke up a little bit 20 years ago, you know, maybe one eye half open, the guy who bought the Mercedes, you know, can I get to know him better? Can I continue to have conversations with my own broken heart in that sense? That's what I'm going to get out of it. For me, for Sean, that's what I get. Well, you're hitting on something that's so important, and we teach this all the time in Entree leadership, and that is that you as the leader are the linchpin, to use a Seth Godin phrase.

Yes. You're the variable. You're the difference maker. And we are not just the leader who's the business person. We're an entire person, mind, body, heart, and soul. And if we don't create environments to invest in our own growth, we will become the lid on the organization. We will become limited in what we are capable of doing what we're called to do if we're not recharging our own batteries and taking care of our heart. It can feel funny if you've never done that before, but I'm glad that you're doing it, and I'm glad that you abdicate that because a lot of leaders that I know that are very successful and sustainable long term.

A lot of it's about sustainability are doing things like this that are feeding their soul and on the surface there's not a lot of utility in it. And that's kind of the paradox. You go, but where's the utility? And like you said, what's the goal? And you kind of go, there's not a goal except to connect to something that is bigger than you are. Your creator is out there and you're connecting to him in a new way that you can't do just in the daily grind. I mean, Joseph Campbell says that we really don't, people are really not looking for meaning. What they're really looking for is an affirmation to know that they are joyfully alive.

So when was the last time that as a business person, as a leader in your job, that you felt joyfully alive? This isn't going to happen every day, but as leaders, you know, can we pursue those opportunities to experience this notion of living a joyful life just in a moment? And then the key here is, for anyone, but especially for a leader, is how can I come back from that moment of just knowing that I'm joyfully alive and integrating that into my business, into my life, into my family. This is what it's about. It's about coming back from that. And I'm not even really saying so much a peak experience because that would sort of oversell it. but it's about how we take these larger experiences and integrate them into our business, into our life, into our personhood so that we can, at least in my world, get to know God better and

understand my true self. You know, I love that, you know, I'm sitting here talking for the last hour to the real life Willy Wonka, and we haven't even talked about chocolate. We're talking about our hearts and our minds and our souls and people, and, you know, it's just such a good reminder that that really is what life is about. But I do want to talk about the chocolate, and I've got a chocolate bar in front of me here. And I need you to tell me what I'm about to have a bite of. This is a beautiful packaging. It says Tanzania on the front. There's a picture of a babu. A woman. A woman, okay. Her name is Mama Impoki. And Mama and Poki is the leader of this

60-member cooperative. Two of the four farmer groups we work with are run by women. Oh, wow. And yeah, and there was a string on the top of that bag before you. you opened it and the string was taken from one of our cocoa bean bags. Oh, cool. I love it. And this is a 72% dark chocolate. And to my knowledge, we've never done a tasting here on the Entree Leadership podcast. This is not the Food Network. So we'll see how this goes, but I'm going to try this out. And maybe tell me a little bit about it. Can you break off a piece for me? Can you? Well, this is cool, too. You've got the raised lettering here on the actual chocolate bar, asking you see chocolate. And here's a bite. Okay.

Oh, wow, that's really good. Oh, thank you. I was only going to have one bite, and now I think I'm going to kill this entire bar when we get off here. That's a nice little snack. So how much chocolate are you guys selling? Well, we go through about 40 metric tons of cocoa beans a year. But to give you an idea, the Snickers plant, and I think it's in Chicago for Mars, would go through that in two shifts. So it's all relative.

But that's a lot of cocoa beans for me from those four origins that I was telling you about. We have 17 full-time employees. Well, I got to tell you, it tastes amazing. Thank you. Everybody listening needs to go find something. And do you guys go direct to consumer? Can they go to your website and get some chocolate? They can go to our website.

askinosi.com. We ship it all over the country. And yeah. Well, I want you guys to get the chocolate. I also want you to check out Sean's book. A really incredible story and just so inspiring. the book is titled Meaningful Work, A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul. Sean, thank you for what you believe in.

Thank you for the beacon of hope that you are to small business, men and women everywhere. And I'm just so inspired by our conversation today. As we wrap up, any final thoughts or words of encouragement to our audience as they're pursuing their purpose and their craft. I would say, I would suggest if you're struggling and you're kind of in. a place maybe where you don't know what's next. I would suggest, especially in this time, right now, in this time of trouble and heartache, to do the thing that is very counterintuitive, and that is look around you, see who needs you, roll up your sleeves, and serve someone without expecting anything in return. This is mystical. It's magical. And I'm not saying that the ends justify the

means. What I'm saying is Jesus said this. Gandhi said, if you want to find yourself, lose yourself in the service of others. And this is what I would say, if you're struggling, serve someone who needs you. I love it. He is Sean Askenosi, the chocolate man. You guys got to check out this chocolate. It tastes amazing. I'm about to jump off here and eat the rest of this box of chocolate that they sent us. With a handwritten note from your team to boot, just a really cool symbol of the personal touch. you guys put into these things. So thank you, Sean, for your time today. Thanks for all the encouragement and best of luck as you guys move forward and move more chocolate out there and help more people. Thank you. It's been quite an honor. Thank you so much.

Well, I know it's not fair to you guys to eat chocolate on the air and talk about how amazing it is and you don't get to have any. So, well, go get some. You got to get some guys. It's amazing. I took some home for my daughters and they said, Dad, this is the best chocolate we've ever had. Can we get some more? So I want you to go get some of Sean's chocolate because it's really good stuff, but I also want you to reflect on his story. Here's a guy who knew there was more. Here's a guy who understood, I've got a calling on my life. I've got to figure out what it is based on what I value. What's my purpose? Why am I here? And he shifted his entire career pretty far along in life. And he said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much it cost. It doesn't matter what the

risk is. It doesn't matter what they are going to think. What matters is I'm going to listen to my heart and I'm going to lean into this thing. And now here's the guy who's fulfilled. He's helping people. He loves the work. He's making an amazing product. The way they work, their employees, the way they help the farmers, full circle. Because one guy said, hey, I'm really going to get serious about what I value. I'm really going to get serious about my purpose. I'm going to really put on paper, this is what I care about. Even if it cost me all the work I put into my career up to this point, because he understood life's too short to do something every day that you might be good at, but you're miserable. You're not fulfilled. Guys, don't do that. Don't be that person. You deserve better.

And it's not just about you. You have a contribution to make. But it all starts with getting really clear on what you value, what you care about. What's important to you? What do you want to fight for? Well, you hit the table for it and say, no, I'm not willing to stand for that. What are your convictions? What are the stories that you've lived through

and have distilled life lessons and principles out of? What are those things that you say, this is what I value? This is what I care about. We believe so much in the idea of core values, not as an exercise, not as something so you have the three things to put on the wall to inspire the team, but because you as the owner, as the person listening to this right now,

whether you own something or you're doing something and you want to do it well, or you're doing something you're miserable and you want to find the thing that you actually care about, wherever you're at, if you're not operating from a place of values, you won't make it, you'll implode, you'll be miserable, you'll get stuck. Having your values dialed in is the key to pushing forward through life. into the place that you are designed to live. We know this, and we work on it so much. Our coaching team is talking with business owners

about this very topic all the time, and there's some things that will help you as you're pushing in and developing your values. And there's some things you can kind of get tripped up on. So our coaching team said, hey, what if we just put together what we know about how to build your core values, put it in a free resource to help our audience out,

and so that's what we got for you guys today. It's a free guide on values. You can't miss this. It's amazing. to get this, all you got to do is text the word EL values to 33444. Again, text EL values, no spaces to 3344. Or you can just click on the link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership Podcast.

If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends about it. Also, for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card. You can review this episode by clicking on the link in the show notes. Be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership and you can also follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entiree Leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network,

like the Rachel Cruz Show. Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz, and I'm so excited to tell you about my podcast. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. They're in debt. They don't even know where to begin, but they have this need, this want to get in control of their money. And if that's you, you have come to the right spot. So in each episode, you're going to get a ton of inspiration and practical advice. If you're not subscribed to the Rachel Cruz Show podcast, make sure you do it today. To hear full episodes, just search Rachel Cruz wherever you listen to podcasts or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.