Start With A Win - Unlocking the 200% Life: Balancing Business and Fulfillment with Adam Hergenrother

Starting point is 00:00:00 How do you find success and fulfillment together? Today, we find out on Start With A Win. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Today on Start With A Win, we have Adam Hergenrother. He's an entrepreneur at heart,

Starting point is 00:00:17 and this is his second appearance on Start With A Win. He is the founder and CEO of a thriving organization, Adam Hergenrother Companies, which includes several organizations ranging from a national real estate company to leadership coaching and training. He's passionate about business and transforming lives. And he believes that when you focus on leading yourself first, the business results will follow. Totally agree with that. When he's not leading and growing his organization or working on his inner growth, you can find Adam in the Vermont mountains with

Starting point is 00:00:49 his wife, Sarah, and three children, Sienna Asher and Madeline. Adam, welcome to Start With A Win. Adam, it's great to be here. Thanks for all that you do and all the hard work that you put into bringing value to your audience and to the listeners. Hey, of course. You and I really see a lot of things on the same wavelength. And you just put out a new book, The 200% Life. I want to dig into that today because I think there's a lot of potential here for our listeners. We all get into this business doldrum or the whole grind and hustle culture, which I think is a bunch of BS. But the reality is we stopped taking care of ourselves and we stopped taking care of what's

Starting point is 00:01:31 inside here in order to have high performance. What is 200% Life and why did you write the book? Yeah, thanks. A lot of it was self-therapy for myself. You know, I had this, for me, once I hit certain financial goals early on in my life, I started realizing that, well, just back up a second. When I was, when I first got into business, I was driven for money, power, fame, right? And I was really, you know, Adam, really driven for what I kind of, what people think of like, what is the definition of success, right? And that means something different to everybody. But really what I think most people are looking at when they say, go and be successful in life, right? It's really go get enough leverage, money, power, fame to be able to control the situations around you so that you can control your inner experience. And that's really

Starting point is 00:02:20 what kind of people are saying to go look after these things, just a different way of saying it. And so for me, I went after and did that. And then I had this $500,000 net income goal. And I remember hitting this when I was about 26 or 27. And I was at a holiday party with my mom, who's the most unassuming individual. And I was like, hey, mom, I made $500,000 this year. And she was like, oh, that's great. Pass the ketchup.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And in that moment, I was like, man, she just doesn't care. Then I asked a deeper question that was, do I even care? And that's what kind of sparked me on this path 13 years ago of being like, I didn't want to go meditate in some Himalayan cave with a fire reciting haikus Indian style because it's not even comfortable to sit Indian style. And so I, but I, at the same time, I knew that there was more than just playing with the hustle, the drive accumulation of things because it just wasn't working. And so I didn't say it the same way I did now. So over the course of, you know, the last 13 or so years, I've just been on this quest to kind of merge the two together of how do you actually go build a business, have a successful life, get married, take vacations and go run Ironmans. And at the same time, not needing any of it to turn you on, not needing any of it to recognize

Starting point is 00:03:35 the fact that there is a whole other part of life that we all miss, which is 100% inner world. So to me, life is really not just 100% outer world. There is 100% outer world and it shouldn't be ignored, right? It's something that we should play into. But at the same time, there's 100% inner world that most of us have always been ignoring, which is why we always feel restless, unsatisfied, looking for the next adventure. The number one question I get from our listeners and people that have read the book so far,

Starting point is 00:04:02 which is, or a question that comes in there is like, how do I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing? Right. And that like these questions pop up in our, in our lives so deep and we're looking for answers. And to me, the 200% life is a, is a model. It's a framework for how you can, you can find the answer for yourself instead of asking somebody else for your life's purpose. Wow. So do you, I mean, is it safe to say that the majority of people who are driving hard towards this external, extrinsic success, whatever it is, the business success, do they start to, or continuously, you know, more than not ignore that internal piece? Is that why there's so many divorces and business leaders or, you know, horrible relationships or even depression, suicide,

Starting point is 00:04:49 things like that? I mean, is this a common thing that you're seeing? Yeah. You know, that's spot on. I think the majority of people buy into the goods that I bought into that was, you know, if you go and get, you know, the house that you want, the relationship you want and go make the money in the corner office that you want, that somehow you're going to have some magical fruit tree in your backyard. It's going to be filling you with peace every single day. Right. And I think that's literally what people are told to do. It's like, if I go get this, then boom, it's going to be here forever.

Starting point is 00:05:19 And I'll never have anything to worry about again. And I think more and more people are waking up and realizing it's not like their spiritual or growth or religion is room for any of that. It's just, you wake up and realize what I've been doing doesn't work, right? It doesn't going and chasing after to get one thing that leads to the next thing, leads to the next thing, doesn't permanently turn me on. If you think about this in your own life, Adam, things that were a luxury item to you at one point, once you acquire it, it's no longer a luxury item to you at one point. Once you acquire it, it's no longer a luxury item. It's just a necessity. And then people keep acquiring these things. And finally you wake up one day and go, man, I've just been digging myself in this

Starting point is 00:05:54 hole by thinking and falling into this trap that if I just go get one more thing, if I go make another $100,000, if I go get one more deal, if I go get a new relationship now, that, what's going to do it. Right. If I just go take one more vacation, right. Or if I just go write one more book or whatever it is, this is all about the external world. And what people are really doing is they're using what I call the nouns, right. People, places, and things to turn them, turn their inner experience to a better experience. And that's what they're trying to do with the external world. And for momentarily, it works. Like when you go get what you want or avoid what you don't want, you feel better, right? You have a better inner experience. So then you buy into

Starting point is 00:06:34 this world that I should be able to go manipulate the entire world all the time. And man, if I get enough power and leverage in my life, I can do this all the time. And you come to realize it doesn't work. You know, Will Smith had something, you know, Will's gone through his own emotions and things over the past couple of years. But in his book, Will, one of the things he writes in there, he's like, you know, when you're,

Starting point is 00:06:53 when you have nothing and then when you have this hope of getting fame and money and fortune, all this stuff, like it feels good on that journey. But he's like, once you have fame, money and everything you have, and it's still the same tape that's playing in your head, you realize it's the wrong path. Right. And it's, yeah. Let me, I'm sorry. Let me jump in there. So does that mean, you know, you talked about

Starting point is 00:07:14 this luxury item, things are a luxury item until we get them. Is happiness that luxury item that so many people are chasing then? I think people need to call off the search and realize you're already happy just being you. And the problem is people are just still searching for it outside themselves, which is the 200% Life book is to remind people that it's already within you. You're already whole and complete. You're already filled with peace or a lightness to you, a joy just for being here. I mean, the earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. We've been around for 40, 50, 100 years, 150 years.

Starting point is 00:07:52 It would be like reading, having a 300 million page book and reading two words and being like, I know what this is about. I mean, that's kind of how we wake up and do it. And so we just call off the search. So, I mean, is it then a realization that you need to open your eyes and look for it because you have it? Yeah. It's not even really opening your eyes. It's, it's a, it's a good way of saying it. It's really just stop trying to use the external world as a way to make your inner experience better. Cause that it's like you're,

Starting point is 00:08:22 it's like there's a shadow and you're trying to run away from it, but it's your own shadow. You're never going to run out. You're never going to outpace it. And so the minute you just, again, you either open your eyes, you call off the search, what you realize in that moment is that everything I've been looking for is already within me. Then you become a fierce business competitor. Then you become an amazing leader. The reality is, is whether you want to call this personal growth, spiritual growth is irrelevant. They're just made up words. The essence of all of this is just that I can handle reality. I can handle the situation in front of me. If you are a leader and you're trying to lead a group of people and you can't

Starting point is 00:08:59 handle an employee that's disgruntled or handle a client that is not happy with you or handle a lawsuit, then you're no good to the situation. If you're a doctor and you can't handle a sight of blood, you're not getting good to the situation. And so all of this gives you the ability to be a higher quality decision maker, which then impacts everything that you do in life. It impacts you as a father.

Starting point is 00:09:20 If you can't handle your three-year-old throwing a fit, you're no good to helping a three-year-old. And so the whole point of this is to let go of the part of you that can't handle life, i.e. surrender to that part of you, then take massive action once that part is clear, because the path becomes undisguised. Wow. So I know so many business leaders who struggle to get to this point. I mean, it's prolific in business because when we go to these masterminds or meetings or conferences or whatever, everybody sits there and talks about their KPIs. Or, hey, I'm using the EOS or any of these little jargon pieces about how I acquired something in my business. But what should business leaders be, you know, this is something that sounds like you should be spending some of your day on.

Starting point is 00:10:10 What recommendations do you have for business leaders to start to unpack this? Yeah. Well, for, you know, business leaders themselves, their work product are decisions, right? That's what our work product is. And so if anything, I think the difference between organizations that exceed greatness and achieve greatness for long periods of times is the difference between the collective decisions that are being made as a leadership team. So then I work backwards from there is you want to put yourself, Adam, in a situation where you're making the best, highest quality decisions every single day. And the only way to do that is to not be emotionally attached to any of the decisions,

Starting point is 00:10:47 which means you're detaching yourself from the decisions so you can see them clearly, which again is that's your personal growth. That's why business is nothing but a conduit for personal growth. So then you take this one step further and keep going backwards. Then how do you take preventative action every single day or preventative steps to keep yourself more centered. That could be journaling, meditation, exercise, walking, spending time with your kids. That could be any of the form that you're doing.

Starting point is 00:11:13 For me, it starts with a form of a meditation for Transcendental Meditation for 20 minutes, a series of journaling, exercise. And then I also meditate again around noon to kind of reset my day to keep that clarity in there to help make better quality decisions as a business leader. And that's really, as you start to do that, it gives you more of the ability to see things further and clearer so that you can, again, make better overall decisions for your life in terms of what you eat, how you exercise, better decisions as being a parent, better decisions as a leader. And it just makes you a better human being.

Starting point is 00:11:48 For me, the entire purpose of my life is to raise the moment that's in front of me so that the moment is better off for having passed by me. There's not really a higher way to live your life. And so for that, you have to be actually experiencing the moment in front of you and not experiencing mine. Wow. I mean, that's incredible to think about. Let me ask you a kind of a curveball question here then. So we're talking a lot about, I mean, essentially me internally, you know, as far as how we become the best that we can be by balancing out these different perspectives. How does this, I mean, this has to translate somehow into business results as well as personal results. Tell me, how does the consumer benefit in customer experience, employee experience,

Starting point is 00:12:37 things like that by a leader digging deep into this? You know, that's a wonderful question. When I first started applying this into my life, one of the things I would do is before I got out of my truck every day, pulling into my office, I would remind myself that I'm not here to get anything from my employees. I'm not here to get anything from my clients. I'm actually here to, again, raise the moment up. I'm also here to help serve or contribute to my employees or to my clients. And so when you start applying these concepts, what you can do is as you walk into a meeting, it's not about you being right. It's about finding the best solution for the organization.

Starting point is 00:13:18 When you walk in to help, if you have to fire an employee, it's not about firing them to fire them. You fire them with grace, right? When you have to hire an employee. It's not about firing them to fire them. You fire them with grace, right? When you have to hire an employee, you hire them with a different level of clarity. It doesn't mean that you stop making the tough business decisions or the decisions that need to be made as a leader. What it does is it gives you the clarity to make them most effective so that when you're making the most effective decisions, your overall organization, your employees, the benefits see that you're real. And they also see that you feel the organization, which then acquires more people to want to be around you, which then in turn gets you to have

Starting point is 00:13:53 better people and a better team and a more organized one that's rowing in the same direction because you're not whiplashing an organization every time you feel the need to go in there and start something new because it benefits you. What this really does is it drops the need for you to be right and gain any personal thing from the conversation so you can show up and actually enter it. And an example I love to give in the business world about this is if you ever coach somebody, which most people have that like for free, and then somebody asked you to go meet with this person for half an hour, an hour, and they come in there and you've never met them before, right? And they come in at them and they start telling you about their life and their business and you have some experience up on them and you instantly go, let me tell you

Starting point is 00:14:32 what you should do. And you're not doing it from a place of you're trying to get anything from them. You're not being rewarded and you speak to them differently. They take different level of action. And that's how every day you should be able to interact as a business owner or a business leader. It seems like when you act this way, you perform kind of with a, I've got nothing to lose by helping you. Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, it just, it's well said that unconditional giving, or, I mean, it's, that's really the foundation for love and really what causes success in a business partnership because a business transaction is not one-sided. It's a partnership. Both people end up benefiting, but both people typically end up giving in this. So this is a fascinating

Starting point is 00:15:19 concept. I think everybody should listen to this because right now in this economy, things like that, people are, especially like in a lot of the world that you and I talk to, the real estate, mortgage space, they're like, how do I get business? I'm struggling to get leads, whatever. Go out and give unconditionally like this. And guess what? People will start to give back. Yeah. I always found too that the minute you stop trying to wake up and needing to get anything from there is exactly when you'll end up getting the hire that you need to make an agent that joins your team, right? The deal that comes across your plate that you can now then go put somebody under contract in a, in a week, right? Like it's that, it doesn't just show up in like

Starting point is 00:16:00 an envelope being like, Hey, thanks for not, thanks for giving today. Here's in return of this, here's your giving, right? It's not, It doesn't show up that way, but it shows up in these cool ways. I mean, think about it. I mean, life supports life. I mean, you don't do anything to have the 25 trillion cells in your body function every day or your food to digest or your heart to beat. You just allow life to take care of it, right? It's the same thing in the external world. Just we have convinced ourselves that we can do a better job of life. And I don't think there's anybody that can do a better job of what all of this that we get to experience every day actually does. Awesome. So business people, especially entrepreneurs and such, stop chasing life, stop chasing business and allow it. And I mean,

Starting point is 00:16:42 it seems like it's such a more, I don't know, fulfilling perspective to end up pursuing. So I have another question for you. We, you're, you're talking about this and you use the word balance every now and then, but is there really balance or is it, do we have to intentionally do these things? Cause balance seems like we, you know, we're like, Oh, I'm aware. I'll, you know, I'm okay with it. Do we have to intentionally do these things? Cause balance seems like we, you know, we're like, oh, I'm aware I'll, you know, I'm okay with it. Do we have to work at this in order to find that internal fulfillment? Or do we just, I mean, is it just a sit back and ignore the problems? I mean, what tip do you have for people to find this? Yeah, it's a great question. It's never about passivity. It's never about not taking action. It's actually, you're taking skillful action.

Starting point is 00:17:28 You're taking right action. It's a different level of doing it. In fact, you may work 14 hours a day, but it's not working 14 hours a day because you feel burnt out. You're working 14 hours a day because it's the next thing that you need to be doing. And then you may take the next day off. The amount of hours that you end up working when you do this thing is irrelevant, right? It's actually skillful and right action that may put you in that path to do whatever it takes. I always like to think of this as work-life presence, which for me, instead of work-life balance, work-life presence. And the reason why I say it like that, and it's, I mean, I didn't come up with the term. I think I don't know who I took it from, but work-life presence for me always reminds me of the challenge why people feel burnt out so much is because when

Starting point is 00:18:08 people are working, they want to be with their family. And with their family, they want to be working, right? It's like this dichotomy that's always going in there. And so I've always approached this, which is if I'm working, I'm fully present working. If I'm working and I have to go and take a phone call, that's a personal call. Then I'm fully present dealing with the personal call. If I'm going to the bathroom, I'm fully present going to the bathroom. So it's really about this work-life presence that you bring to yourself. That way, you're in the actual moment, not thinking, which is just living mind. Thinking is just asking yourself a question. Then somebody else in there who's also witnessing it, answering it in your own head, right? That's all you're doing in there. And you end up just, even like I would encourage people as an example of this,

Starting point is 00:18:47 like as you're listening to Adam and I talk right now, are you really actually listening to us? Or are you listening to the mind narrate this conversation? And then telling you what, oh, I like what Adam said. Why don't, I like that. I don't really, who is this Adam guy? Who is this? What is he even talking about, right?

Starting point is 00:19:01 Or are you listening to that voice inside of you that's actually narrating our conversation? And that's what we end up doing is the mind narrates everything for us and we buy into the concept that that is who we are and that's not who we are. The minute that drops away and that search starts to fall away,

Starting point is 00:19:17 you actually get face-to-face with life. And when you're face-to-face with life, the path is undisguised. It's actually very clear for you. This is why people struggle so much with making decisions because you're trying to make a decision by asking the mind, which doesn't know anything. It's like a computer. It literally be like you go into Alexa and being like, what's the purpose of my life, right? Like, and then it's going to come up with an answer because it thinks, because it wants to, it wants to satisfy you, which is

Starting point is 00:19:39 what the mind does. It's like a two-year-old ego. It's like a two-year-old toddler that is, you know, very spoiled. It always wants your attention. And so it'll give you whatever answer feels best for you. But it's not about not working for these things at all. It's actually skillful action. It may take a lot of time and energy. And the personal growth, spiritual growth work to get to this level, by the way, is the hardest thing you'll ever do in your entire life. Making millions of dollars is way easier than the inner work that you will do to reach a higher state of clarity and consciousness that then allows you to be a better human being. Awesome. I'm going to try that, by the way.

Starting point is 00:20:12 Ask Alexa what's the purpose of this. Exactly. See what happens here. This has been an amazing conversation. Where can we find the 200% Life book and Adam Hergenrother online? Yeah, you can go to adamhergenrother.com. You can go to Amazon and buy it. By the time this comes out, most likely, I think our Audible version will be out as well

Starting point is 00:20:34 too. But it links to adamhergenrother.com, links to everything that we have, free downloads, free opportunities. And I just appreciate people interested in this conversation. I think it's really important for business leaders to realize there's more than just the bottom line spreadsheets and profits, which are wildly important in business. There's a whole other element that's wildly important too. And I appreciate people listening.

Starting point is 00:20:56 Totally. And I will reiterate what Adam's talking about here. If you don't get yourself right, your business is not going to be right, period. I mean, that's ultimately what we're talking about here. And when I talk at masterminds, talk to CEOs and things like that, that's the first thing I ask is, how are you personally? How do you feel in your heart? Does it feel like there's a golf ball in there and you're trying to dig it out or there's a lot of tension or who knows what? But are you truly fulfilled internally? Because that will guide

Starting point is 00:21:24 the success of your company. So Adam, thank you for being on Start With A Win. I have a question that you've answered before and I want to ask you again because it may have changed, but how do you start your day with a win? Yeah. For me, the first thing that I do is I make sure that I am 100% centered and clear, which is by surrendering to the mind as soon as I can, as soon as I start my day. I think last time I answered it with a meditation. But the reality is how I start my day

Starting point is 00:21:54 is to make sure that I'm centered and clear so I can serve whatever's in front of me the best I can. Awesome. Adam Hergenrother, an author, a great business leader, and just a genuinely wonderful human being. Thank you for being on Start With A Win. Thank you so much.

Your Ad Here

Start With A Win - Unlocking the 200% Life: Balancing Business and Fulfillment with Adam Hergenrother

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.