Good Life Project - Choosing People Over Profit: Dale Partridge

Episode Date: August 25, 2015

Dale Partridge was riding high, or so it seemed.A serial entrepreneur and founder of the cause-driven venture, Sevenly, the media loved him and thrust him into the spotlight. Sevenly venture was not only making money, it had also raised more than $4 million for hundreds of causes and more than a million people.From the outside looking in, everything was fantastic. But, inside, he was dying. Living a life at a pace that was destroying him, pulling him away from his family, ruining his health and making him question everything.Eventually, he hit the wall. And he decided to make some major shifts. Stepping away from the company he started, he picked up his family and moved to Bend, Oregon, a small town 3 hours from Portland to start the painstaking process of rebuilding his life, his health and his living. Reconnecting with the people and things that mattered, starting with his family.His recent book, People Over Profit, shares this story, taking you inside the lifestyle implosion that led to a good life evolution.I had a chance to sit down with Dale in his recording studio in Bend this summer to talk about everything from entrepreneurship to family, design and community, why people share things ("people don't share ugly!"), why being different matters and even the potential impact city-living has on life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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And imagine if you didn't start that. In 2011, Dale Partridge had this kind of interesting idea. He wanted to create a business that would inspire generosity, that would inspire social good. So he joined with a couple of other people to start a company called Sevenly, what they called a cause art movement. Sevenly would create these seven-day cause campaigns online, and they would invite customers to buy things, very often t-shirts, that then turned around and gave $7 out of the purchase price to a charity that was designated that week. It was a bold idea. It was very complex to actually make happen, and they were giving away a huge percentage of the purchase price to actually make happen. And they were giving away a huge percentage of the purchase price to actually try and pull this thing off. Flash forward four years later,

they have now raised more than $4 million to give away to more than a million people who've been helped through a wide variety of charities and foundations. And Dale has since moved on and is really focusing on his newer ventures and really diving into entrepreneurship and helping people with that process. So I had a chance to sit down with him when I was out in Portland, Oregon over the summer. I actually drove down to Bend where he lives and we spent some time in his pretty stunning new recording studio. He talked about a wide variety of things from his decision to move to Bend out in the middle of nowhere and away from the madness of, you know, sort of like big time entrepreneurship and VC backed entrepreneurship to what he values in, and to what he thinks are the missing pieces and his extraordinary focus on people as the centerpiece of everything that he does.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Hanging out here in a semi-lit room in a corner of Bend, Oregon with Dale Partridge. What are we doing in this weird little place? He's like, dude, come meet me at this place. I'm going to show you this rock. And we're like, we're in this closet cloister. We are in a small isolation booth. It's actually about two feet by two feet. So Jonathan and I are actually about a foot away from each other. No, I'm kidding, but we're actually hugging

each other for this entire conversation. Hey man, watch your hands. I know. Yeah. But yes, we are in a full blown isolation booth with two mics looking at each other. It's a great spot and hopefully you guys are enjoying the quality. Yeah. So this is so awesome. And it's, it's interesting for me, right? Because, you know, I've done a couple of hundred of these conversations and we started out with one type of recording and I'm used to being in control. So now I'm like, I'm in your home, right? So it's like total surrender. It's like, okay guys, but yeah, I want to go back with you. And I want to, there's a whole bunch of things I want to explore, but maybe an interesting jumping off place because we're hanging out here and we're in this sound isolation booth

and it's part of this extraordinary broadcast studio that you're building in a small town, three hours south of Portland, Oregon. Just give me a little bit of what's happening here. Yeah. So my company startup camp requires a studio, um, for us to, we do a lot of filming, we do a lot of podcasts and a lot of media. Dave, who is recording this for us, started a company called contentcapture.com and he said, Hey, let's build a studio. I've been wanting to have a studio and have a couple clients like you and, but you know, maybe you'd be my main client to start and maybe pick up two or three of you. And we built this incredible studio downstairs. It's got full psych walls. You saw that with built beautiful sets, great black magic, live stream

cameras. And we're shooting just high quality stuff. And I think the big thing, the reason we wanted to do that was in the industry of e-learning, which is the space that I'm in and teaching and coaching. The content's usually really good, but the quality isn't. Yeah. Production values are not good. Yeah. They're not good. And it's a little bit embarrassing. Um, and I look at stuff and I go, that guy is such a brilliant mind and author, but his video sucks. And I didn't want that to happen with me because I think that design quality tells customers that if they care that much about the smallest details, then they must care about me that much. So let's, I want to go into this because you and I are very much like

minded this way. I mean, we were not filming video anymore, but this, you know, our entire project started with video as a weekly video series. And when I did that, I kind of made a similar decision. And I said, you know what, if I'm going to do this, I don't want to just put out good quality information or conversations. The production values are part of the experience. They actually alter the way that whatever, quote, content you're putting out there, the production values that actually, you know, like serve it up are part of the content. And I think most people don't understand that there's a really nuanced but really important impact that that has on the way that people receive information and the assumptions that people make about the credibility and the validity of what's being offered. So this is summed down into one statement that I use often is that people don't refer ugly.

And we are in the aesthetic generation. No doubt. We are expected to be judged by the cover of the book. And that is very important. So credibility is beauty. So when I say people don't refer ugly, I mean, you look back as you're on the playground, you don't tell your friend about the not cute girl,

and you don't tell your friend about the restaurant that was really horrible ambiance, and you don't tell your friend about the store that had all the ugly clothes. People don't refer ugly. So having that in mind, being beautiful at every small, tiny detail is something that people go, I am fully engaged and actually want to share this with my friends and my community because I want to show that I saw it first. Yeah. It's social currency. It's like you want credit for having found something so cool and so beautiful. And you want to attach your name to it. When people first find brands that are awesome, you don't to attach your name to it. When people first find brands that are awesome and you go, you don't mind attaching your name to it, but if it's ugly, but the

content's good and you have to explain why, oh, the site's ugly, but I promise you the content's good. You don't want that. Or the video quality is not that great, but listen to what he's saying. That's just the worst. And I think that we're expected to be at a high standard, especially when we watch the news, like we watch CNN, we listen to these great radio shows and these other great podcasts. Like that's the standard, you know, and stepping up above is not easy. I think the bar is definitely being raised. But let me throw out an interesting counterpoint and see what you think about this. It's around the people don't share ugly thing. I think that my experience has been, you know, there's the top 2%, which is just stunning and gorgeous and beautifully produced, whether it's design or the audio design, sound design, the visual design, whatever it may be. But then there's also the bottom 2%, which probably gets shared a lot, too, because it is so like the production values are just so hideous.

People want to share it because they're like, oh, my God, you have to. I can't believe there's something which is so cool, but so absolutely awful. You have to see this massive cognitive distance. And then there's the middle. There's not that much interest and there's very little sharing. There's very little engagement. And that 94% in the middle is where most people play. But then somebody will say, well, you know, somebody who's playing in the middle will say, well, but, you know, look at somebody who's still using a flip video cam to send this out or doing something. And, like, if their content is getting a ton of traction, you know, obviously production values don't matter. Not realizing that it's really just if you play on the 2% at either end, for totally different reasons,

the engagement can kind of go through the roof. But when you play in the middle, you get lost. Yeah. So one thing is the reason people like the bottom is because people love irony and they love, they love the beauty and the beast. If you look at every possible Disney movie, there's typically ironic beauty in there. And, and people love that. People love the, the rags to riches. They love that kind of idea. And they love that the content's so good and it's so bad. The quality's so bad. I think that at the top end, you have those two spots.

In the middle, remember the point of branding, the reason we actually do all these things to make our companies and our brands stand out is to differentiate. That's why brands pay millions of dollars just to a branding agency. It's to differentiate. And because a brand isn't what you say it is. It's what they say it is. And at the end of the day, like I watched my daughter and if she's walking on the ground and there's nothing on the floor besides a small rock, she will walk and pick up that rock just because her brain only notices what's different. And in this floor of gray, right? She sees this rock. And if you put a wall up with a thousand circles on it, they were all gray on a black wall and one orange circle,

your mind will only see the orange circle. And that's just how our biology and our psychology is designed is that we only notice what's different. So when our companies don't stand out, when our brands don't stand out, we just blend in in a sea of gray and a sea of noise. And it's very difficult for us to understand differentiation. It's not being a little bit different. It's being incredibly different. And I think that's at every angle. I always ask myself every time I execute any portion of my company, how can I make this different? How can I make this different? How can I make this different? And when I do that, typically I find myself getting some great success with just being noticed.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it even goes beyond differentiation because I think a lot of people have heard that, you know, sort of like the classic Seth Godin's purple cow, right? So we've been told for a long time, you've got to be the different person, the different brands, different company, different product, and the more different, the better. But my sense is that we've both spent a lot of time working with entrepreneurs is that one of the things that gets lost in the quest to be different is, are you being dramatically different in a way that's authentically better? You know, so you can be different for the purpose of being different and a whole bunch of people will notice you,

but that doesn't mean that they're then going to follow you, to listen to you, to want whatever it, you know, the way that you want to serve them. It doesn't mean that they're going to want that because they may perceive you as different, but not in some way better than whatever the current, you know, thing that they're looking to to solve the problem is. Yeah. So, uh, there's a chapter in my, my book, people over profit that is called authenticity attracts. One of the points I make is that being able to consistently innovate while remaining true to yourself, it's hard because the problem is, is that what we do is we create companies around the customer, not around us. And that's actually wrong. You're like, we'll do anything the customer wants us to be. And even if it's untrue to who we are as the founders, and that's wrong because people, instead what you should do is say, this is who I am. This is my brand. This is the extension of my personality. This is what I love. And if you love it, that's awesome. And you could be our customer. Now, if you're in a niche that's got a decent size

of demographic, then you'll be fine. I mean, if you're super weird, then yeah, you might only have nine people on the planet that like your stuff. But I think that being able to consistently innovate while remaining true to yourself is a really hard balance to find. And the, but those brands that can figure that out win and authenticity is, is a, it's, it's, we spend a lot of time. Um, I've spent a lot of time trying to impress people to become something that I'm not just to make people around me happy. I hate it. I tell people in the book, I said, whatever you're doing, that's not you murder it, wrestle it to the ground, you know, drag it into your backyard and bury it, you know, get rid of it because those kinds of things in our life really steal

the purpose and starting our own companies and starting our own movements and being who we are. And there's beauty in that. And it tells people that you're not good enough the way you are. And I think that we need to be reminded that we are unique and we are worth loving just the way we are. And that's something that's deep. But I remember when I started really grasping that in my businesses and my entrepreneurial life, I thought, it's really cool when people like you because of who you are, instead of having to pretend to be someone else. And that's hard, especially with social media. It's the highlight reels of our lives. And you look at people and you go, is that person really like that? Or are they just putting

on a facade? So it's definitely a learning experience and a journey. And it's something that you can learn and something you can go back to, but it's worked for me. Yeah, no doubt. And we have, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but we have a Good Life Project creed, and one of the opening lines is actually don't try to be different, own the fact that you already are. Oh, I love that. And I think it's very we always, we're looking for ways to become different rather than looking inside and saying just, who am I? You know, cause there are a million ways that I'm unique and let me just step into that and then reveal it to the world. And I think that's a powerful lesson. Like you said, it's not easy for most of us to learn and then to actually act on. Yeah. I mean, there's a

lot of things as, as an entrepreneur, as a leader that we struggle with at the deep level. And it typically has to do with our brokenness from our childhood. And I'm a little bit of a psychology buff in terms of looking back at our childhood to figure out how we can become better leaders. Because I think what got us here isn't going to get us there. And a lot of us are sitting back and say, hey, we're, you know, mildly successful. You know, we've done well financially or, you know, we've started a small business and it's working. But, you know, hurt people hurt people. But on the flip side, healed people heal people. And I love that because as a leader, you know, at Sevenly, when I was the CEO there, I had 50 employees. And I remember thinking that these are all 50 people with 50 of their own stories with mortgages and bills and brokenness and baggage and fun and joys and hobbies.

And I'm stewarding their work life. And I needed to figure out how I could also be a source of healing in a way of letting people know like they're encouraged and to take care of them and to be empathetic with them, right? And those traits as a leader is really what I call emotional maturity. I think too many people are talking about tactics and strategies when we still struggle with the things we've been struggling with forever, you know, to not lie, to be honest, to share, to be kind to one another. It's interesting how we just, we beat around the bush and we just don't want to hold ourselves, our feet to the fire for those things. Instead, we just talk about tactics and Harvard Business Review. Those are so easy, right? Those are so easy to learn those tactics. The problem is not there.

The problem is at the core. It's the heart issue. And so leaders who can adopt that idea of like, let's just get better. Let's get healed. Let's understand maturity. And I find those men and women being incredibly successful, not just at work, but at home, because I stopped following millionaires years ago. I stopped following the guys that were like, oh yeah, I made $ millionaires years ago. I saw, I stopped following the guys that were like, Oh yeah, I made $12 million, uh, last year. Great. But everybody hates you. It's like, I don't want to be the wealthiest guy that nobody likes, including you hating yourself. Right. Right. And it's, it's so I started following men and women that were, uh, successful at business, but also had a successful marriage, you know, that had been

married for 10, 15, 25, 40 years, that had children that obeyed them, that respected them, that loved them, that had friends that were loyal to them. And I started examining the personal lives of these leaders. And that was the key for me to go, that's who I want to be. And, and I don't want to just be successful at work. I want to be a successful father. I want to be a successful husband. And I see that as being the next tier of leadership that I'm hoping to kind of spawn off with my writings and with my book. And, and just with my, my, even my idea for startup camp is it's about, I don't want you just to build a great business. I want you to build a great life.

Because without the great life, you know, great. You know, you're the wealthiest guy in the graveyard. Yeah. Obviously, since we're hanging out with someone in the context of Good Life Project, completely agreeing, completely on the same page there. I've seen so many people build wealth and power and fame and toys. And so many people in the outside world look at it and they're like, oh, you're successful. And they're dying inside. And that's, in my mind, that's not success. That's not why we're here. And it's, you don't have to be world-class great, but, you know,

I want to wake up every morning knowing that I'm doing right by me. I'm doing right by my family. I'm, you know, I'm conscious and in service of, and that there's joy and there's presence. But, you know, one of the things that I wanted to peel back and what you just said, and I completely agree with everything is that my sense is that there's actually something underneath it. That's the unlock key for all of that. And we can't get to all of those things until we develop it. And that's awareness. You know, my experience has been, and I'm curious if this has been your experience too, working with so many people is that we steamroll our way through life. You know, we open our eyes and we live largely reactively without ever pausing for

a moment to actually say, okay, what's in front of me? What's, what's happening in the present moment? Where's my mind at, you know, and just taking a heartbeat and saying, okay, just let me breathe for a moment. Let me pause. Let me get a little bit of clarity about what's, let me plant seeds of awareness everywhere that I go so that instead of seeing some projection of what I think is happening around me, I can actually move past the illusion and see what's really happening and then build the leadership and all these other things around that. But until we develop, we start to cultivate more of almost an Eastern philosophy minded awareness practice. Um, everything else is, is more difficult. So I have a story on that. A friend of mine who was 38 and he'd been crushing his career. Again, similar guy

where he's incredibly successful at 38, but alone. So he got so busy making a living that he forgot to make a life. And he took a vacation by himself to Europe. And he said, you know, the goal is that I wanted to, and it was a long vacation. I think it did two months. And he says, you know, the goal was to sit there knowing nobody and just let my mind go and see what I actually like. He says, I forgot what I like. I don't even know where my mind would go if I had nothing to do. And because he's spent the last 18 years just crushing out every task that was given him. And so he, he took that time and he realized like, you know, he wanted to be married and it's, it's, it sucks when you look

back and you're, you've missed so many years and you realize, man, why didn't I focus on that? We think that success is so much in business and wealth and influence. And when at the core of our human DNA, we want relationship, we want connection, we want significant others in our lives. That's not just like a dating relationship. We want commitment. We want that depth. And he wanted that. And so he changed, he's like, what do I need to change to, to really in my life, what behaviors need to occur, uh, so that I can set myself up for that. And he's like, I'm just too busy for a, for a, to find a wife. So he's got to change that. Right. Um, he's thinking, man, I'm, I'm coming up, like I'm getting late on kids. Like even if it's impossible to have kids, you know, uh, meaning that he, if he's got to find a woman that's younger and, and you know, there's a real biological clock that we've

somehow forget about. And the saddest thing in the world for me is people that don't have that awareness. When a woman is 42 years old and she sits in a room alone at night, unaware for so many years, and her biggest dream at her heart level was to have a family and she missed it, or she missed that opportunity to have children, or she's getting really close and she knows it, and it just wrenches at her heart. That's so sad. And the culture does it to us. I was telling you earlier, cities, I think, do that to us. I love cities for a season. I could live in one for a year or two, but I don't know if I could live in one forever because they're built for productivity. They're built for busyness, but they're not built for success.

And I should probably give some clarity on that because there's probably people listening going, this guy's an idiot. There's a thing called your pain body mass. A pain body mass is ultimately a calculation of a formula of what a city can do to you. And it's based off of crime, population, stimulation, light, sound, noise, homelessness, you know, cultural influences. And it's similar to if you sat next to a guy in a cubicle that cussed and was yelling and was loud and, you know, was vulgar for 10 years, how much of that would really just get on you, regardless if you wanted it on you or not, if you're sitting next to him. And cities often can do that to us i mean

you've said you lived in the city now for what 20 years probably closer to 30 30 years right so and you're saying at some point when your daughter graduates you're you're ready to to move out to some more spacious land maybe at some point outside of the city but still have the accessibility to go in and that's probably smart because it's we don't realize that I've lived in cities before and there's a pain body mass for like say New York City to say Bend, Oregon. It's completely higher. And people think that they're actually more successful in cities. But what this guy proves is that you're not. You're actually so overstimulated that you burn out so quick and you get sick often and you're so busy that you're not focused on like intentionality and versus when you live in a smaller town that has some space and some peace the way that i think the human mind was really designed you actually find yourself not burning out you can work way harder without hitting that that burnout edge and um there's a one other guy that had a similar story. His name's Chris Saka.

Yeah. So he, he had a great story where he was, he was hustling in San Francisco, you know, young VC trying to make it happen. And just every meeting he could possibly have, uh, with all the right people, nothing, just no progress, right? Like enough to pay his bills. But like, and all of a sudden he says, you know, I'm just going to move, him and his wife, just move out to like Tahoe area and buy this big piece of land, which is the worst place to live if you're a VC. Because he was in the Bay Area, right? Right. You're a couple of hours out of everyone. Yeah. Out of everyone. Right. And he finally forces him to be intentional about each meeting. You know, who's going to come out to my house and spend a weekend with me?

But it became this place where he was so intentional that people were sitting with him and people were having peace. And they actually thought, man, Chris's place was a place of healing for them. And it was the pinnacle catalyst for his success because it forced that intentionality. And so cities just, they prevent intentionality because it's chaos. And our brains crave order sometimes, right?

And so it's something that, I'm not saying all cities are bad, and that you shouldn't live in one. But I'm saying is that it's something to think about. Because whether we like it or not, that stimulation, it rubs on you. So, I mean, here's something that comes to my mind and I'm fascinated by this question because like you mentioned, you know, I've been in, I grew up just outside of New York city. I've been in the city since 89, you know, so long time there, you know, raising a family in the city and built a couple of businesses in the city. And interestingly, one of those businesses

was essentially an oasis from the city, which launched right after 9-11. It was a yoga center. And we were really just a place to come step out of what's happening on the street and just breathe and be and dial it down. One of my questions when I hear you talking about the pain body mass index in cities,

and I don't know if this can even be sort of tweaked out of the research, but now I'm fascinated by you know, more slowly to honor that pace of life and the depth of relationships that would come with being removed from a city. Is it that decision and everything that flows, the behaviors that flow from it, that actually cause the change? Or is it the actual shift in geography? And my question is around that is, you know, is it the fact that that person entered that mindset and then because of that chose to leave the city, it just so happens that they're sitting in an external geography. Or if you had somebody build, cultivate that same mindset, stay in a city and then build all these meditative instilling

practices and a deep sense of community and structure their day in a way where they could really function powerfully. Like, would that be equally well? And the thing that's triggering this for me is I was very fortunate last year, maybe the year before, to sit down with Milton Glaser, you know, greatest iconic living designer. 86 years old, still massively prolific, found New York Magazine, has done all of these things that everybody in the world has known, still works and still runs a design studio in the middle of Manhattan. But through my conversation with him, he's very chill. He's very deliberate.

He's astonishingly productive and prolific, in great health, loving, beautiful marriage. But he's also, you can tell he's made very specific decisions about how he's going to be in the city. So he's there four days a week, and then he goes up to Woodstock, to the country house for three days a week, just to be with his wife. He's in his studio, but he creates his work in a very particular way. He actually, He won't touch a computer. He literally will sit behind one of his younger designers and just kind of sit back and breathe and look and then ask them to manipulate some things on screen. There's a certain structure that he's built into the way that he interacts with everything that the city has to offer that I think allows him that sort of like real state of grace within a maniacal pace that surrounds him. So I wonder if, you know, part of it is the actual

moving, but part of it is the mindset that's cultivated that precedes the decision to leave the city. So that's a great question. I would say that it's a one-on-one basis, meaning that Bill Gates can also build big companies and this guy Milton can do great design, but not everybody has those skills. So what I'm saying is that it's like an alcoholic that lives inside of a bar, right? Like a bar is below them or something. You got to ask yourself, do you really have that discipline? Because I am such an extrovert. I'm addicted to busy. And I found myself, my relationships were six feet wide and one inch deep. And I realized that I knew everybody, but knew nobody. And that was something that at the core level, I just love people, but it wasn't healthy. I love people more than I almost than I should because I was dishonoring my

family because of it. You know, I love people to a flaw, which is like a very weird concept. And I think a lot of people are like that. That's why we moved to cities because we want to be surrounded. And also cities give us the ability to forget, to not have that awareness because we're constantly stimulated and we don't want to think about the hard parts of our lives. Yeah. They definitely feel the addiction to busy. Right. And so I think that if you have that ability to build those boundaries and to be consistently disciplined, ruthlessly fanatical, then you can try that. And there's few men and women out there that can do that. Milton is probably one of them. But if you can't, but you see what he did is that he actually did that.

So when I lived in Orange County, I had a house in Orange County in Corona Del Mar. And then we had a cabin up in Lake Arrowhead. And we would go, it was an hour and a half drive. And every weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Without it, I would have just died from panic attacks, uh, and insomnia and, you know, just constant stress. So I needed that. I actually, and remember there is a cost to balance, right? There's a cost because people, people don't want to pay the cost. There's a cost for integrity. There's a cost for health. There's a cost. And there's a, the cost is for me,

I had to buy an extra $400,000 house, right? That was the cost. And, uh, and I had to do that hour and a half drive twice a week for a few years. That was the cost for sanity. And we, we get lazy. We don't want to pay that cost. So cities again are, it's pay attention to those, those influences they have on, on you. I mean, imagine New York without Central Park. Yeah, I can't. Right. I mean, Central Park is the saving grace to that city. Um, and it was, it was built out of necessity. Like it needed it. Yeah, no doubt. You know, and we need that space. So I just encourage people to say,

don't find yourself 20 years later thinking, oh man, I'm single, I'm successful. I didn't hit any of my other life goals outside of work. I'm constantly busy. I have no time for anything that really matters in my life. And so I just let people know, just ask those questions now. I don't care if you're 50 or if you're 21, but asking those questions I think are just the thing that, that people for some reason have avoided.

And I don't know why. Yeah. I think, um, it's not validated in sort of Western society. It's just go, go, go, go, go. It is. It's, you know, and also we're so driven by comparison. You know, we define success and there's great research this, I'm sure you've gone deep down into that rabbit hole also in the world of positive psychology about how, you know, if you were, you know, people are taking a survey and said, you know, okay, if you could make, you know, $75,000 a year, but be making $25,000 more than everybody else around you, or make $100,000, but be making $25,000 less, most people take the lower number along with the knowledge that they're making more. And it's kind of horrifying the way that our brains default to that success

by comparison as a metric. And I think it causes so much pain. Well, I mean, the Bible says that envy is one of those deadly sins, right? And like envy is just a really dark thing. It's the lack of contentment with your own life. And that's a hard space to get into. I mean, it took me being wealthy to realize I didn't need to be wealthy. And that was a really, I remember feeling almost embarrassed about it. I hustled so hard and competitively to become wealthy. And, um, I'm first couple of years of my marriage, my wife and I made 50 grand a year and she worked at PetSmart and I was an entrepreneur. And, um, I remember just working so hard and I would watch these guys in San Francisco and I'd watch these other, and I was like, Oh gosh, I gotta be like them. And, and I would do anything. And it was, it wasn't until I made millions of dollars that I go, I don't need any of this.

Like, I don't even like right now I'm making great money and I just don't even work really that much. I'm just, I'm choosing this the first time in my life that I'm going, I can work or I can go to the movies with my wife. And I'm choosing the movie. It's a very weird space. And I tell you, I wish that I learned that earlier. Now, it means that I think anybody that is driven will get wealthy. In my experience, if you're driven, truly driven, and you're smart, you'll get wealthy. Don't rush it. It takes 10 years to build an overnight success. I spent so many years. I took a company sevenly from zero to 50 employees and, you know, almost, you know, $10 million a year in revenue in two and a half years. And then my relationships partially imploded because of the speed. It was the first time I realized that a company can grow faster than a human can. And that was really scary. When there's no amount of books

that you can read, no mentorship programs that can keep you more mature than the company is. And you're just like, it's just bigger than me. And I'm sure the greats like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have all dealt with this kind of stuff, right? Where they go, oh my gosh, I don't even know what I'm doing. And I should have just, in retrospect, I should have just taken it slow. I didn't need the investors. I didn't need to grow it that fast. I didn't need the steroid injection of it. I could have just taken my time. It's just this insecurity that you just have to prove that you're better. And I think part of that's healthy. I think that's part of that's healthy. It's competitive. It's capitalistic, which I love. Uh, but I just say,

just find that balance and that health and, and having people in your life. I always say self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from others is essential. And it's the idea that you need to have someone in your life that's you're vulnerable with that's willing to go, Dale, you got a booger on your face, you know, and it's awkward. It's embarrassing. And you got to, you know, that's the boogers of your life. You know, like I had a mentor once tell me, Dale, you hurt people, your staff right now, you hurt people, you go at breakneck speeds. And when you're on, you know, step G, they're still on step B, C, and D, and they can't keep up with you. And it's frustrating. And they don't keep up with you and it's frustrating.

And they don't like you because of it. And I remember thinking, holy crap. Like, wow. I didn't want to believe it. And then I had to make that change. And having someone in your life that can do that for you, I don't care how successful you are. It should be the very beginning. Having a mentor, an accountability partner,

a friend that says, hey man, you know that assistant that you have? I don't think you should be hanging out with her that much. I think you need to let her go. I think that I sensed something there and I don't know if your marriage is good for it. I don't know how many marriages that would save by having a good friend that would say that. And so we just need more brave, courageous men and women that are focused on integrity and truth and honesty to speak up and to be bold. And so that's been the journey I'm learning is that it's just, if you're driven, you'll be successful. It just takes time. Don't rush it because if you rush it, you'll end up hurting people and have a wake of destruction behind you. So let's talk about Sevently a little bit because we haven't really

got three hours into this now. We haven't even brought up one of these big companies he started. It's fascinating to me also because Sevenly was and is fundamentally a company that was built to generate revenue to then be generous, to go and turn around and give. I guess the name was a blend between giving away $7 for each sale plus Heavenly being sort of generous. Yeah. And you built this company where you were essentially selling a lot of different stuff, apparel and things like that, as a driver to be able to actually be generous on this level.

So it's interesting to me, and you built this into, like you said, a 50-person company, $10 million in revenue, two and a half years, huge success story. So it's fascinating to me to hear that behind the scenes, there's a different dynamic driving that from the inside out and driving you as an individual to get there. Because from the outside looking in, it looks like there's a big cognitive dissonance there. Yeah, this guy's successful. He's given away $4 million to charities. Like, oh my gosh, he's on the cover of magazines. Look at it. This is perfect. He's not just wealthy, but he has all the giving. Yeah. In my book, People Over Profit, I share the whole story, start to finish, and the lessons

learned there. But the outside looking in, it was a great idea. You're right. The word heavenly, the word heaven, in some definitions definitions will say that it means a world without need. So seven has always been like a biblical number of completion and seven days and $7 is kind of our model. We did every week. And so it was this idea that we wanted to create a world without need. That was the name, right? And we thought every week we'll partner with a new charity. We'll give $7 every time we sell a product, which is crazy talk, right? So 23% of our top line revenue. I mean, insanity. Nobody gives that much money. Target doesn't give that much money away per capita of money that's

coming out that way, right? And so when you think about that, you realize how incredibly generous that was. Now we look at Tom's Shoes, which I'm a big fan of Blake. And Blake actually wrote the foreword to my book, who's the founder of Tom's Shoes. They sell a $60 or $50 pair of shoes and they give a $2 pair of shoes away. So we're selling a $23 shirt and giving $7 away. So it's just a much different giving business model when you look at the back end of it. And it's hard. I mean, we couldn't do eight. Seriously. I mean, that's how close it was. So, you know, certain weeks we would have autism speaks, you know, we're helping people get speech therapy or, or, you know, we raised

like $100,000 in one week with them. You know, we, we did a campaign with Destiny Rescue, which was just so amazing. There was anti was anti-sex trafficking charity, um, that takes literally sends SWAT team type members to raid brothels and take little girls and bring them into a safe house and rehabilitate them spiritually and psychologically. And I remember getting a text message in the middle, maybe like close around like 11 o'clock at night from a guy that was with destiny rescued that had just raided a brothel and took three to five girls out and said hey just want to let you know we it was a success like the campaign you guys funded like we we did this then we got a video uh like a couple weeks later with those girls saying thank you in their own language.

It was crazy. I'm thinking these little girls are getting raped every day. Like raped. They're having sex 15 to 20 times a day with men. I'm talking between the ages of like 15 and 20, right? And I thought about that and I go, what if we didn't start this company? Like, what if I didn't? And that was a really huge heart check for me where I go, like this business for me, like I like I, I, I'm a spiritual guy. I'm a Christian guy. And I,

so I look back and I go, God, did you like, this was your plan, right? For this to happen. Because I thought if I, what if I didn't literally people would be dead today. If we did, if I didn't choose to start that company and that's a really heavy thought. And I'm going to reflect that back. I mean, people literally wouldn't have food. I mean, we've given millions of dollars away, which in Africa terms and Southeast Asia terms is just enough to feed nations and enough to feed or to give clean water and to rescue girls and to stop domestic violence and to cure malaria in small towns and whatever it is, right? And what I reflected that on is that I don't know what your dream is and what you're about to start, but just because you don't start isn't because like, that's your, like you have a bigger reason to start this company. You know, imagine if I didn't, what idea do you have that has a massive impact on people that it's not you? And imagine if you didn't start that.

So I encourage people to like, if you have a dream, it's not your dream. It's not about you. You benefit from it. You are receiving the result from that. But at the end of the day, like Sevenly was all about me for so long. And then I realized it was not about me at all. I mean, the effect that it had on the employees, the effect that it had on the people that we helped, the fact that it had on the charities, like that, that was why it happened. And I had it backwards and I had to shift from making a million dollars to helping a million people. And that was the big shift is that when you start focusing on helping a million people, instead of making a million dollars, you will become a millionaire. I promise

you. And that's just, it's, it's counterintuitive. Like life at the core is counterintuitive, right? If you want to be, if you want to be first, you got to be last, right? You know, if you, if you want to be strong, you got to be weak. It's if you want to be like at the top, you got to be humble. Like it's this total counterintuitive mentality that really has the best leaders. And so that was the Seven Leaves story. But on the inside, so all this great purpose and the significance and heart, I mean, growth, incredible growth. I was still irresponsibly working too many hours. I mean, I was, I'm okay with you working, you know, I always tell people, stop bragging about how many hours you work. It's embarrassing because entrepreneurs, good entrepreneurs

make more money with less time. You want to, I want to figure out how you can make a million dollars working 10 hours a week, not 80 hours a week. You just have, you know, two full-time jobs now, you know, it's, it's how do you make money, more money with less time? And I'm all for a season of intensity, you know, maybe a couple months of like 60, 70 hour weeks. But outside of that, the season needs to end just like summer ends. You need to take that break because if you don't, you'll burn out. And I was having panic attacks, anxiety. I was having insomnia. I got unhealthy. I was taking drugs just to stay like, you know, at a van or, you know, just prescription that doctors gave me and Ambien. And I was becoming medicated legally, but

medicated to stay functioning because I couldn't stop. And I don't know how many people can relate with that, but I bet millions that are listening, right? It's just like so many people struggle with that. So, but I mean, what was it Like, why couldn't you stop at that moment in time? What was the driver? There was no one else to take my place. And I was responsible for 50 people's income, right? And I thought about that. And I was also had the pressure of like, man, like this thing can't just stop right now.

You get in deep to those kind of things and you go, I can't just stop today. People think that the CEO has the most freedom. It's totally backwards. The employees have the most freedom. They can leave. Like, see ya. The CEO can't leave. Can't even go on vacation usually.

And that's a hard reality. It's very lonely at the top. And everything's really dependent. You realize as you get a bigger company that your whole job is to make decisions. That's all you do. You say yes or no, that's it. Right. But at that moment where you're like, things are out of control, I'm medicating myself to be able to sleep and then to be able to stay awake and I'm driving people insanely hard. And maybe this was around the time that your mentor also told you like you're hurting people. What was the carrot that you were specifically chasing at that moment

that pushed you that hard? Or was it just, you just were swept up? Did you know at that time even? Uh, it was, when I look back retrospectively, it was seeking approval. I had this like deep, deep desire from everybody, like that I wasn't worth anything unless I was successful, you know? And I don't know how much of it's rooted from my relationship with my dad. Cause my dad and I are still, we've always been pretty close, but it's just this, this need for like approval. Like the high was people saying, good job, Dale. And I was just, I was, I almost wasn't content if I didn't get that. And it's a drug, I mean, totally a brokenness drug. And then I just had to get content with just, you know, at the end of the day, if my wife loves me and I have a good relationship with God and I have a good relationship with my friends and close family, that's enough.

And then I need to be content with that. I need to be content with that. And if I'm successful on top of it, that's great. Was there a moment of reckoning or awakening that led you to that or was it gradually? It was gradually at first, but I mean, there was definitely a time where, where I was, I remember crying, like just crying and thinking like, I just can't do this anymore. Um, what, what is it? And I, I signed up for a, a year long executive psychotherapist course, which is like high performance leaders come

together once a month. It's really expensive. And to have these therapists like really dive into you and they just pulled out all types of stuff out of me. Like, you know, just, just that I was, I was a self-sabotager and I had lots of shame issues and like just deep stuff that you're like, whoa, I didn't know that, you know, and you, you look back at your past and it just tells the story. Right. And, um, so I made massive changes. You know, that's when I sold our, I sold one house. We moved to another place. We bought the cabin. We stopped the traffic things. We do that was the traffic was killing me because I was driving in traffic in Southern California. Um, I started eating healthy. I started exercising again.

Um, I started, uh, getting back into my spiritual life, just being consistent with that. I made boundaries work off at X time, uh, work started at X time and, uh, didn't work on weekends, took a true Sabbath, like just really just changed everything. What was the conversation? Cause you're married five years, five years. Yeah. Right. So, so you went through this because, you know, seven Lee is actually probably around similar. Yeah. Four years. Yeah. Right. So you're going through this whole thing. Not just as it's not just Dale going through this, it's like, it's you. And then a couple of years into that, a little girl. Yeah. So what, what are the conversations with your wife as you're sort of hitting this wall? She was really, um, encouraged to see that I was on this journey.

She told me she'd been praying for it for like a, like a year and a half, like just that I would really get this conviction. Did you know that? I didn't until then I didn't until after I'd already started making the change and that she'd just been hurt by it. And I looked back and I meant like, I owe my wife a few years of love just to get back that. But we also found out that we were pregnant at that same time when I was making that change, which was just again, a perfect timing for me to just make a change. I was about to have entrusted with a child and I wanted to be better. And so that's why we ultimately, we go back to the beginning of the conversation here is that we made even more change, you know? So seven, we decided we wanted to sell our stock. We had some disagreements with

some of the investors and we said, you know, let's just get out of this. It's just too intense. Like we don't need it. You know, we were making decent money, enough money to survive. I mean, when we left seven, I could, I wasn't making great making great money because I was dropping my salary and selling my stock was not meaning like millions of dollars because it wasn't a great time to sell. The company was still young. It was still growing. And so I thought, well, let's sell. Let's go to Oregon. We loved the Northwest. And we said, let's just buy a farm. And we bought seven acres and we're building a house now. And, and, uh, started a new company startup camp. And I started, um, finished writing my book and, and really just spent a lot of time creating a company that was, was highest amount of revenue, least amount of

employees, uh, geographically dependent has purpose. And so I have those things all in place now and my life is, is much better. Uh, I still struggle with anxiety. I still struggle with those things, but I make it, it's far easier here and it's, and it's far easier with a structure. And so we're happy here and we love the space and the quiet and it's good for a guy like me. And it took me 10 years to figure that out. So if you're one of those people that are listening, I mean, that's, that's what I want you to know is that, you know, you might just need a change, a geographic change. Um, and that's okay. That's okay. Sometimes not everybody's the same. Not everybody's gifted with the ability to live

in London or in New York and LA. I don't think most people are, but some people are, you know, one of the things I think that, um that really stops people from making these changes too, and I'm curious what your thought on this is, is having a sense of belonging, whether it's just with an intimate partner or a friend or someone in the family or a group group of people around them with a like enough sensibility and shared values so that they would validate your decision to shift the definition of success in your life and then make all the follow on changes in circumstance and behavior that would support that. And it's, it seems like that's one of the things that's, that's so many people struggle with is finding those people yeah because i mean a lot of people are selfish and they say you know if he moves that means i lose my person you know and so you got to be careful you got to have a friend that's good enough to

say hey man like this is better for you you should go and our friendship will still be there even if we don't live in the same spot that's that, that's a good friend. And, uh, sometimes they'll even say it will go to, you know, if they're really good friends, you know, um, or they have the same, the same hurts and pains. And we had that, we had actually a couple of friends move up here with us and it was great because we, we came to a new place with some community. But at the end of the day, your health of your family and you is more important because you can't do anything. If you're unhealthy, you can't do anything. If you're unhealthy, you can't do anything. If you're,

if you're burnt out. So your health and your family's health and your spouse's health, um, and your children's health is far more important than anything else. So sometimes there's a cost member. There's a cost and it might be, Hey guys, we got to leave for a few years,

you know, because it's just not good for, for me, for my wife, for my kids. And, and that's, that's a decision. Hopefully people will, will respect if you present it that way. Nah, I agree. And it's, you've got to start from that place. And, uh, when you find those people, I mean, and it could just be one person, like it could be your partner, right? You know, that can be enough. I mean, certainly, Yeah. I work full time with my wife. Yeah. And, um, and you know, she's my greatest champion, but she's also my greatest, you know, sort of reality check.

And we very much view what matters in life the same way, you know? So we, like you and like so many other people who I'm sure are listening to this, have had the opportunity to walk into a lot of different possibility and money and left a lot on the table in the name of approaching life differently, in the name of exalting different things the way we define a good life. Yeah. If I would have stayed, I probably would have been a million dollars richer. But I didn't. Right. But so what? So what?

Right. I'm happier. Right. And a million dollars sicker, a million dollars more anxious, more annoyed, more, you know. Yeah.'t. Right. But so what? So what? Right. I'm happier. Right. And a million dollars sicker and a million dollars more anxious, more annoyed, more, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's my definition of the good life. So, so lay that out there and let's come full circle here. So to live a good life in your mind is, um,

is to have the awareness of what you really need and to create that through understanding and having emotional maturity and choosing yourself and your family's health over the things of this world that will fade away and understanding the cost to be willing to pay them and to creating the life that you really want and that you really are okay with, not based off anybody else's assumptions or the media, the public, or the social media feeds, but for you and being content with that. I think that's the good life. That's where you find it. Beautiful. Thank you.

Awesome, man. Thanks so much for joining in this week's conversation. You know, I'm just thinking, if you've actually stayed till this point in the conversation, I'm guessing there's a pretty good bet that you've gotten something out of this episode, some nugget, some idea. If that is right and you feel like sharing, then by all means, go ahead. We love when you share these conversations and get the word out. And if you wouldn't mind, I would so appreciate if you would just take a few seconds, jump onto iTunes or use your app,

and just give us a quick rating or review. When you do that, it helps get the word out, helps let more people know about the conversations we're hosting here, and it gives us all the ability to spread the word and make a bigger difference in more people's lives. As always, thank you so much for your kindness, your wisdom, and your attention. Wishing you a fantastic rest of the week. I'm Jonathan Field signing off for Good Life Project. We'll see you next time. season meditations, whatever your vibe. Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

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