The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Solo Show - How To Transform Your Life By Making Small Changes With Massive Impact

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

#548: On today's episode Lauryn and Michael are solo discussing their transition period from 2019-2022 and the small changes they were able to make to change their life for the better. This episode dives into advice on what we can do to make sure we are making the best lifestyle decisons with the greatest impact. The episode also discusses how to prioritize what's imporotant to you personally and professionaly.    To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Use code SKINNY at checkout to receive 15% off your first purchase at cymbiotika.com This episode is brought to you by Beis Beis has thought of everything you could ever want in a piece of luggage...360 degree gliding wheels, a cushioned handle, built-in weight indicator, washable bags for your dirty clothes, and all the interior pockets you need to keep organized. Go to beistravel.com/skinny for 15% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Snacks Made with freshly-ground nut butter, organic honey and 20 organic superfoods, Perfect Bar has a variety of products that are good to eat and good for you. Go to perfectsnacks.com/skinny to learn how you can receive a perfect bar for free. This episode is brought to you by Sakara Sakara delivers science-backed, plant-rich nutrition programs and wellness essentials right to your door. Their ready-to-eat meals are nutritionally designed to deliver results—from weight management and eased bloat to boosted energy and clearer skin. Go to Sakara.com/skinny or enter code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off your first order. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Go to squarespace.com/skinny for a free trial & use code SKINNY for 10% off your first purchase of a website domain. This episode is brought to you by Jenni Kayne Find your forever pieces at Jenni Kayne and get 15% off with with promo code SKINNY at jennikayne.com/SKINNY Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a chia taste too. It's so delicious. And then I also really love their magnesium packets, but they also have magnesium spray. So what I'll do is I'll do their little magnesium packet in the morning with my vitamin C. And then later when I'm winding down at night, I'll spray their magnesium onto my body and it smells like lavender. So it just winds you down. So for me to be able to implement magnesium in the morning and at smells like lavender. So it just winds you down. So for me to be able to implement magnesium in the morning and at night, I'm about this. Their supplements are just so sophisticated. The formulations, I'm obsessed with the founder, Chervene, and they're scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling in the

nutritional gaps. Here's the thing. I would start out if I were you with the vitamin C and then I would move to the magnesium. The magnesium spray at night is absolutely lovely. And if you're feeling frisky, I would recommend adding the B12. I like to squirt it under my tongue. Zaza loves it. You can't go wrong with any of their supplements. 10 out of 10. Of course, we have a code for you. I've used my own code 100 times. It's symbiotica.com slash skinny. That's C-Y-M-B-I-O-T-I-K-A.com slash skinny. And you get 15% off sitewide. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to The Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today, we have a solo episode. For those of you that have been highly requesting solo episodes, mostly requesting, wanting to listen to us talk more, we have a ton of incredible guests on this show. And this podcast has become a well-oiled machine in terms of booking. So we're constantly having all sorts of different people pop on the show. And sometimes we forget that a lot of you want to hear us talk just us two on the mic. So we were brainstorming a solo episode. We were brainstorming something that we think that you guys could extract a lot of value from.

And we thought, let's talk about the evolution of how we've sort of transformed our life from San Diego to LA to Austin. And not that one move made a big transformation, but we've made a very purposeful decision to change our life when we made the move from LA to Austin. So that's what this episode will be about, kind of the evolution of our health and wellness journey. Yeah. And for those of you that are thinking, we're going to sit here and shit on LA, don't worry.

We're not. We had a lot of good years in LA. Still go back periodically and love it. But there was a period of time, call it between 2018 and 2020, where we kind of started letting the rails fall off, let life take us in a direction that we didn't feel at integrity with, started getting out of shape, not taking care of ourselves, not getting good sleep, just stuff because we were so caught up in how we were operating in LA. So I think it's relevant to talk about what we changed when we moved to Texas. And it wasn't

just because of the move to Texas. We just had to change a lot of the habits that we had when we were operating in maybe a dysfunctional kind of way. I think what we did is we prioritized our hustle for a long time and we put everything else on the back burner. And this is before we had children. So the priority was put on the businesses, which I think you have to say yes. I say this all the time to everything until it's time to start saying no so you can get to the

next level. And I think what we did with this move from LA to Austin was we started saying no and putting boundaries around our life and parameters and putting our health and wellness as number one. Where we are now, I don't recommend that to a lot of young people or even people that are early in their career and are trying to get a foothold. There was a period of time when Lauren and I were like 99% career focused and very, not very focused at all on our personal life or even personal health and wellbeing. And, you know, there's something to be said about that. I don't think that would have been sustainable. There's no way if we would have kept operating that way, but it was necessary maybe at the time to do that. So I don't want people to listen to this and be like, oh, well now they're not, they're not hustling. So we're actually maybe hustling even harder now, but we have the

facilities and the teams and the structures in place because of some of the work we put in early to do so. But it was brutal. I think the difference too is we were working very much in our business for a long time and now we're really focused on working on it. So let's go back to when we were living in San Diego. Michael and I were living there without kids. We had two dogs. And what we were doing is we were commuting to LA. Yeah. And I think this is a relevant story to tell because one thing that I don't like that entrepreneurs do is they kind of talk about the end result and they don't talk about the journey. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you've kind of seen the journey for a long time, but maybe don't know every single detail. But yeah, to Lauren's point, we met in

San Diego, we're living in San Diego. And in 2016, when we started the podcast, I was running other businesses. She was working different jobs and running her blog. And we were commuting back and forth to what at the time was a different podcast network to record these episodes. And it was literally just a straight side hustle. We started the show with no intention of making any money. Didn't even know how to make money in podcasts at the time. Just to give you a background, it's like three hours. So we would be in the car for three hours. So that was, it was, it was a huge undertaking to drive at night. Sometimes we would leave at like nine o'clock at night. You guys, sometimes we would leave at five in the morning. We constantly were commuting back and forth. So we really put all of our eggs in that basket of work. And then what

ended up happening is the podcast evolved. One of the things that happens all the time here now at Dear Media, and I'm just fast forwarding now to me as an executive of this business, I deal with a lot of talent and I deal with a lot of new talent coming into the space. And I always kind of get disappointed when I meet someone and the first question they ask is like, how am I going to make money? Because you're asking the wrong question. And this is for any creator out there in any kind of business. The first question you should ask is how do I provide either valuable content, a valuable product, a valuable service, some kind of value to an audience or a customer, a consumer. If you go straight into how do I make money and you don't solve for that first and don't think about that first,

it's going to be really difficult to make money. Well, when you say how do I make money, that's a very self-serving thing all about yourself. And to me, it's a scarcity mindset. That might sound abundant to ask how you make money, but it's not. It's total scarcity. To just be like, how do I make money? You're not looking at something from a big picture and you're not looking at something because you love it and you want to put the work in. I wouldn't even think about money for three years, but that's a different conversation. What's that book again that Rob Dyrdek came on the show that we both just read? The Science of Getting Rich. The Science of Getting Rich. Okay. So I'm going to paraphrase

some of this. It's a great book. Everybody should read it. After he recommended it on the show, I went in and devoured it quickly. And one of the main concepts in there is that one of the things to do to get rich is you create outsized value for the person, which is like, duh, no brainer. That's either buying your product, consuming your product, listening to your service, watching your content. So for example, if you pay $0 for this podcast to listen to it, which all of you do, because we don't charge for anybody to listen to this, we charge advertisers and you get any kind of value that either helps you in a relationship, helps you with your health, helps you with your

business. And we continue to deliver on that consistently. Well, the science of getting rich says that eventually you will actually potentially get rich or earn an income or make living because you're providing value to somebody for a very low cost. Another example would be maybe you've gone and you've seen some kind of speaker or coach and you've paid $200 to see them. And then later you get this idea to springboard your business. Well, it was worth it because what you paid them was disproportionately low compared to what you got. Or if you buy a book like The Science of Getting Rich or Think and Grow Rich or any kind of books we've recommended on this podcast and that book sticks and you pay 20 bucks for it and it changes your life, again, that author should be compensated.

So going back to the question of how do I make money is the first question you ask, that's the wrong question. It's how do I create outsized value to the person that I'm trying to serve? And so when we started this podcast and the reason we're long long winded about this is the intention was really just to create valuable content that people would either find entertaining, inspiring, funny, whatever it is, on a consistent basis. And we did that for years before we monetize anything. By the way, that still is the goal. For me, it's like going back to the slight edge of what makes you successful in the beginning. It's like, I want every episode for you guys to get something from it. You have to get something. And I'm constantly trying to make sure that the audience comes first. So we did that chapter of

our life in San Diego. We drove up. We were committed to the podcast. We were committed to providing value to you guys. And then what ended up happening is we started to be in LA, living in our LA house more than San Diego. Yeah, we started, we had a condo, we were going back and forth and there's some, about two years into it, fast forward to 2018 from 2016, we started to get a lot of momentum and the show and it started to kind of take off and people started actually talking about a podcast. Lauren and I no longer had to create slideshows to show people where the podcast app was. Obviously, we weren't the first people here, but we were still early enough where people said, what the hell is a podcast and what are you guys doing?

And so it started to take off. But keep in mind, during this time, the podcast was a complete side hustle. We were not monetizing it at all or barely. And we were running other companies. I, in particular, was running an agency. I was running a company called Jetbed. I was going back and forth. I in particular was running an agency. I was running a company called Jetbed. I was going back and forth. I had employees down in San Diego. Lauren had her businesses and she was down there too. And so we were coming back and forth. And then all of a sudden the idea of Dear Media started and we said, okay, let's create this

entity. And Dear Media, people don't realize, was started as a complete side hustle. Me and my co-founder, Raina, who's no longer in the business, we bootstrapped the business. We co-financed it together. We didn't bring in any outside funding. And I was running two other companies at the time, commuting back and forth. So essentially, what we started doing is just completely sacrificing our well-being, our time, our sleep, our stress, because we had no work-life balance. We did not have kids. We were living in a condo. Underneath us was a fucking nightmare. It was a fucking nightmare. There was this guy that partied all night long until five in the morning.

He was on God knows what, doing God knows who. And it was loud, cortisol-inducing, constant. is all inducing constant also our house was not set up in my opinion looking back to support our wellness well because we never thought we were moving full-time to la we thought it was like just a condo for part-time living yeah and i think like for instance we were using just to be like really hurt toxic cleaning supplies throughout our whole house, which like... I grew up with those. So yeah, I was immune. It was on your bologna sandwich. We were ordering Postmates all the time. We were not really focused on supplementing.

We weren't doing barely any supplements. We weren't doing any cold hot therapy. For workouts, it was like I would squeeze Pilates in here and there when I could. There was no emphasis on weightlifting. I would walk to Equinox here and there when I could. There was no emphasis on weightlifting. I would walk to Equinox here and there, but it was, you know, kind of half-assed workouts. I was not eating enough protein for sure. Like was not eating enough meat.

Looking back, like I feel so much better eating meat. I also think our space was just not conducive to healthy living. Like it was like we were on our phone until like 11 at night. And sometimes we'd be on our computer so late and there was like more drinking there it was just not more drinking there it was a fucking it was always drinking yeah it was a lot of drinking like we had to go to a lot of social events it was just it was just a lot here's it for anybody that lives in a major city you all know when you're listening that's what we're talking about when you're listening to this, what we're talking about. When you're in the belly of the beast, you're in it. It's hard to get, it's more unnatural to get out of it and have a normal life outside of

the partying and the drinking and the going. Not we were even partying, but just going out and being social and having drinks and like running around chaotically and not getting great seats. Like that's the normal version of living in a big city. The unnatural is like, hey, we're doing our well. Like those people are like unnatural in these big bellies of these cities. Never partying. I'm not a big partier.

No, we weren't partying. I like to be in bed at 10 o'clock. But I do like a cocktail. And so we were having cocktails. We were kind of on a hamster wheel, I would say. And it's so interesting because now I take daily walks, sometimes twice a day. And I don't even remember really walking in LA, which is so crazy. No, I mean, once in a while we'd go around the neighborhood,

you know, and then COVID hit and that was kind of a weird time in LA where people would like scream at you across the street if you didn't have a mask on. I was literally walking down the street like 8 million feet from someone and I got yelled at across the street multiple times. So it was just like cortisol inducing everywhere. Yeah, people just got nuts. And so we were just, it was wake up in the morning, slam coffees, no hydration, get out, some toxic cleaning supplies sprayed on the table the night before, go out. Postmates, lots of postmates. Postmates, no thought to wellness. And here's what happened. I've always been somebody that's tried to take care of myself. I've worked out and been in the gym my whole life. I've been an athlete my whole life. Also, we're very, very, very interested in

learning more about wellness the whole time. We're curious people. That's why I think this episode is relevant. It's because you could be listening and you could be very into wellness and health and still not be living your best, healthiest life. And I think that's what this episode is about. It's like how to make those little tweaks to transform your life so you feel the best. Well, here's the thing. I think I looked at myself in the mirror and this was about a year into having Zaza. The mirror that was cleaned with Windex. Yeah. And I was probably 20 pounds lighter than what I've been my whole life, but it wasn't like a good 20 pounds. Brushing your teeth with bleach. Yeah. It all came out of like my muscle mass went away. I started getting a gut. My eyes looked like shit. I just started and just wasn't taking care of myself. And really like at

the time, I think we both thought we were kind of like doing right and taking care of ourselves, but we didn't realize that that few years there just kind of floating along and working and not having any kind of work-life balance and just putting every single egg into the business basket was slowly starting to take us apart. I'm sure you've heard of Base. It's all over Instagram. They have the weekender bag. It's actually started by actress Shay Mitchell. She wanted to make sleek, affordable bags, luggage, and accessories. And she did that especially with this cosmetic case. The one that I like is in beige. And this is like a spill-proof cosmetic case. So every makeup and skincare lover can stay super organized. And it even comes with a little mirror. So the other day, I needed to touch up my lip gloss and

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slash skinny. Go to bastravel.com slash skinny for 15% off your first purchase. That's B-E-I-S travel.com slash skinny. Recently, if you follow me on TikTok, you know I redid my fridge. And in my fridge, I have a snack section, a section that Zaza can just walk up to, open the door and grab something. I also have it for Michael because he gets a little hangry. And in that snack section in acrylic drawers that are on my Amazon storefront, I have my perfect bars, 17 grams of protein per bar. It comes in 10 delicious flavors. I personally love the dark chocolate chip peanut butter.

So does Zaza and so does Michael, but they also have cookie dough and coconut peanut butter, which are very, very popular. So check those out. This is literally the perfect snack to have on hand. They're like very cookie dough texture-esque, and they're creamy, full of flavor. But the most important thing, guys, 17 grams of protein per bar, and the little ones that Zaza eats have six grams of protein. Perfect Bar knows it will be love at first bite. So for a limited time, they're offering you a chance to try the refrigerated protein bars for free. So here's how it works. You sign up for email or text and upload a picture of your receipt from your local grocery store, and they'll reimburse you for the cost of one bar directly to your Venmo or PayPal

account. This is so cool. All you have to do is go to perfectsnacks.com slash skinny to get a free perfect bar today. That's perfectsnacks.com slash skinny and you get a free perfect bar today. Go to perfectsnacks.com slash skinny to get a free perfect bar today. That's perfectsnacks.com slash skinny and you get a free perfect bar today. Happy snacking. So what ended up happening is I got pregnant with Zaza and when I got pregnant with her I got very in tune with this is gonna sound weird with nature and the vibration at what I wanted to live so I started really appreciating being outside and I started to want to slow down to speed up. And I started to want to manage my cortisol. For instance, like I turned the notifications off on my phone. I didn't want to wake up with a jarring alarm. I didn't want to constantly grab my phone in the morning. I didn't

want to go to bed with my phone anymore. I was just done with it. And then Zaza was born in January of 2020. And we all know what happened after that. Like two months later, the pandemic hit. Yeah, and at that time, you know, the world starts going crazy. Obviously, no secret, Lauren and I were, you know, not the biggest COVID, you know, I don't know. What do we want to call it?

There wasn't a mask up to my eyebrows. We weren't the most COVID compliant. No, it's just like... You know, it wasn't... I would just say it wasn't something... I wasn't wearing a hazmat suit. Yeah, yeah, we weren't the most COVID compliant. Um, no, it's, it's just like, you know, it wasn't, I would just say it wasn't, it wasn't something I wasn't wearing a hazmat suit. Yeah. Yeah. We weren't, we weren't, but in LA just became, you know, kind of crazy for us. And so we said, okay, like one, we have a kid now too. Like we want that kid to be running around outside. We were getting more in tune with nature. We, you know, felt LA had not been conducive. Businesses were

shut down. We had established the companies. We established the podcast. It was creepy town. And also, I want my daughter to grow up with her feet in the grass. And maybe some other people don't, but I do. I want her to play in the sand and be outside. And I want my dog to not have to go pee on a piss mat. I want them to be able to go out into a yard. And we just started to realign what we really wanted. And together, we started mapping out, wait a minute, what do we want our life to look like? And I think this is like a moment in our life when we started to really design our own future. And so we sat down and we were like, this is what we want. We were aligned. How can we get it?

Again, not shitting on LA. I think there's a lot of great things. But at the time, we were looking for a change. And listen, I understand people that are listening to this episode. It's not, not everybody can just up and leave and move States or move cities or move even down the street. Like you got to make do with what you got to make do, which was, we're going to talk about a lot of tactics that you can do right now in this episode shortly. But for us, we're like, okay, we want to change. We want to shock the system. We want something completely different for us. We also are the type of people that want to bounce around in our life. Who knows

if Texas is going to be the last place we might bounce around somewhere else. We don't know, but we, you know, we never thought that we would end up in one place for forever. Yeah, definitely. That's something that I've always said since I was little, I don't want to get a house and never move. Like that's just not my personality. I want to be super fluid and flexible with my life. And we came out to Austin and we saw it and there was the right, this is weird, but like the right vibration here. And we started looking at houses. And when we saw our house, it was so weird. I'll never forget this. I walked into our house and Michael and I just looked at each other and we just knew. We're like, this is the house. And we got laser focused on getting this house. And it was, there was like, it was a lot going into it. Like there was a lot of different things we had to do to get the house,

but we just knew that this was the house that we wanted to raise Zaza in at this point in her life. And I think she was one. Yeah. And I think for me, kids changed me a lot because it put a lot of stuff in focus. So for the young hustlers out there that are listening, trust me, she was one. Yeah. And I think for me, kids changed me a lot because it put a lot of stuff in focus. So for the young hustlers out there that are listening, trust me, I was one of them. I still believe I am one of them. But I started to kind of contextualize the importance of building wealth, building a business, building an entity. And I started thinking about the reasons that were

important for us to do so and important for me. And a lot of those reasons came down to not being financial. So I know personally that moving out of growth cities like LA, New York, Chicago, like a lot of the San Francisco, there are a lot of opportunities where you are leaving dollars on the table as an entrepreneur, as a business people, you're probably getting less FaceTime with certain people. You're not as accessible. You don't, you're not in the mix as much. But for me, the exercise was, would I be okay leaving a few dollars on the table so that I could get to somewhere where I could prioritize my life a little bit more? And when I say my life, I mean my life with my children,

my life with my wife, health, wellness. And the more I did that analysis, the more I realized that was much more important to me than squeezing a few extra dollars out of an entity or business. But here's something that I think people don't talk about enough. I feel like I'm like a cell phone battery. I am not effective when I'm on 2%. I need to recharge. And what I've realized about my personality, and I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate, is I have to slow everything down to speed up and be effective. Yeah, but the problem is some people don't get the opportunity to slow down or think that it's even effective to slow down. I was one of those people. You just think, go, go, go, go, go. So I have been reading a lot

of different books, and Ray Dalio says this. So many people say this that are hugely successful. You have to slow down to speed up. If you're constantly hustling, you're going to burn out. And listen, I've done the hustle. I get it. But I think if you want to scale a business and you want to have longevity in a business, you have to take moments of absence. So that's what Austin started as, is it was like pulled us out and sort of shocked the system of what we were doing. So here's some things that we did to make our life more healthy. Yep. And before we lose the people out there, they're like, no, I got to hustle and it's all about go, go, go. And I'm not ready to slow down. I will say this before we get into stuff that works. By slowing down, we actually

sped everything up in a much greater way. All the businesses accelerated and exponentially grew. Our relationship exponentially grew. I got 25 pounds of muscle put back on. I look fucking phenomenal. Right, Lauren? Looking great. Are you serious? Lauren looks great. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm not kidding, actually. I'm being serious. I changed my life. And your calves have never our parenting got better. We have two kids. And actually, the funny thing now that we actually took a chance to step back and get our life together, we're actually more effective operators in every way. Right. We can be effective parents, effective partners and effective operators in our businesses. But I don't I think we would have burnt out if we didn't stop for a second and recalibrate and reorganize. By doing all this with our businesses and our kids and all the things,

we also have these moments in the day that are so special and unlike LA. And let me give you some examples. We get to work out together almost every day. We get to do cold hot therapy. We get to take a walk in the middle of the day. I will walk for an hour to the lake while I do my conference calls. I will sit outside on my iPad and return emails as I look out into greenery. It's just so much more natural. I just feel like I'm in touch with how life is supposed to be as opposed to constantly

just grinding my gears at all fucking times. So here's some wellness-y things that we do here that you can do anywhere. Maybe we should talk about it in phases, how we kind of implement it. Because obviously, like, what I don't want to do is sometimes people say that we overwhelm because we give, you know, we tell a bunch of things. But I am an intense person. Yeah, no, I know that. So I want to focus tell a bunch of things. I am an intense person. I'm aware.

I want to focus you a little bit here. I can get done. One of the first things we did that I think everybody could have do and we could have done part of this in LA is we completely changed the look and feel of our space. Now, this doesn't have to be an overnight thing. You don't got to throw out all your furniture and repaint the whole house and get overwhelmed. But meaning our place in LA was very kind of congested. It was dark colors. Bachelor party. Bachelor. Yeah. It was very kind of like- Flamboyant. Loud. Yes. And what we realized is like, okay, we're not sleeping great in here. It's not the sexiest

environment. It's not really feeling- It was chaotic. Yeah. And so the first thing we did when we moved, and again, you can do this in your own house now, if you're planning on moving eventually, is we just completely changed it to be lighter and brighter and more welcoming and more open. Rounded edges. Yes. And also what else did you do? We just turned everything to be super calming. Changed all the cleaning supplies, branch basics.

We switched all our cleaning supplies to branch basics. We decided as least chemicals as possible. Natural detergents. We got air purifiers for the air. We switched to all natural detergent. We made sure that there wasn't like in our old house, we had like wasp killer and like all this just like, ugh. We got rid of any kind of snacks or any kind of stuff that wasn't good. And we have very basic like clean stuff in the house now. We don't even get any kind of junk foods. Sorry, no more Cheez-Its, no more stuff that you're snacking on the middle of the night. Literally, if I'm hungry in the night and I go look in the pantry, there's nothing there for me. You know what else we did that's been game changing is we cook at

home a lot. So we eliminated eating hot food out of plastic, which is like melting the plastic that is estrogen inducing. We got rid of any candles that were burning toxins. We got rid of the TV in the bedroom, which is the ultimate hack that Lauren and I will give you credit for. Lauren said no more TV in the bedroom. And we all grew up watching TVs in the bed. You know, everybody puts the TV in their bedrooms, especially if you live in an apartment with different roommates, right? This motherfucker in LA, this shows you

how we changed our life. This is just a little example. Had literally a movie theater in our room. Had a giant, like 55-inch screen that was literally, I could like punch it.

I was so close to the bed. It was so, looking back, you have to admit, there was wires everywhere. It was so big. It was the most gigantic television you've ever seen. And when we moved, I said, no. No television in my kid's room. No television. The room is for sleeping and fucking and for doing my skincare.

Well, you know, it's funny. This is what I always tell people that listen to the show. We are learning at the same time as the audience. So if you rewind back to 2018, when we set this place up, this is before we're talking to all these experts about light in the eyes and light before bed. This is now becoming very mainstream and people are talking about it all the time. But at the time, we were like, okay, we're watching the big screen before bed. We're watching the most cortisol inducing show. We're getting terrible sleep. We're staying up till 11 or 12. We were literally watching you guys 24, you know, when the bombs ticking. That is so everything we what I did is I started just really paying attention to my cortisol. Another thing I did is when I interviewed Melissa Wood Health in New York before I had towns, she told me, Lauren, you have to get in tune with meditation. And I just had this epiphany with her. And from that day forward, and it's been like a year and a half, I've meditated every day. And

that has been an absolute game changer. For me to meditate in LA, I would meditate to Headspace for two minutes. And that was it. Now it's like I can get up to 45 minutes. And I think that that really has to do with your environment. Yeah, it has to do with, I mean, I think our space particular and for people listening that are thinking about meditating, maybe it's like, maybe think about your space as a whole and say, is there a place that you can go in your place right now to feel relaxed? And that could be any kind of setup. But for us, there really wasn't. There was not a place that we could go and feel relaxed. And when we looked at that, when we were moving, we're like, listen, we can't be in an environment in our home. And listen, our home in LA was not so big. It was

like 2000 square feet or so. So I don't think we were living in some kind of mansion, right? It was, you know, but the problem is, is that we just set it up to be so kind of, you know, if you're in the living room, you're in the living with everyone else. If you're in the downstairs, so it was just, everybody was on top of each other. It was all dark. It was chaotic. There was just no place to actually go and relax and do something like that. Every single morning I do light movement and hydration and how I do my hydration is very detailed. I have a huge Stanley tumbler. I put a bunch of ice in there.

And I mix in lemon, some ginger slices. And then I do my Saqqara wellness drops. I do their detox, which is a chlorophyll. Really good for your blood, for your energy. And then I do their beauty drops, which are minerals. And I think it's such an easy way to habit stack a routine. You're already going to have water in the morning. So add the lemon, add the ginger, add the drops. So easy. I have it all in like a wellness drawer. I grab it on the go. I've got Michael to do it. And chlorophyll, you should know, is absolutely amazing. I feel like everyone needs the beauty

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And when you're ready to launch, you can use offer code skinny to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Again, that's squarespace.com slash skinny for a free trial. Use code skinny. I have been doing a whole closet makeover since I moved to Austin. I'm really zoning in on staples and I just kind of like toned it down. I wanted some like really chic pieces that I could wear all the time. And one thing that I keep reaching for that you've probably seen on my Instagram stories is by Jenny Kane. It is called the Everyday Sweater. And I am obsessed with these colors, you guys. They come in taupe white. It's like an ivory and a heather gray. I sized up, so I got a large. So much use out of the sweater. I wear it with a legging. Sometimes I'll pair it

with a really cute baggy sweat pant. The neckline is perfect. It hits your collarbone. It's just everything. The sleeves are long. It's just creamy. It's buttery. I cannot stop reaching for it. There's so many reviews on the site. So here's my recommendation. I would go to JennyCain.com slash skinny and I would get the everyday sweater in taupe. It's the best. I also grabbed the ivory. They have Heather Gray, like I said, and a couple other colors. This is a piece that you can literally wear every single day. They also have all different kinds of things on their site. I'm going to give you a code. You can find forever pieces at Jenny Cain and get 15% off with promo code skinny. I used my own code on this sweater. You're going to go to JennyKane.com slash SKINNY and check out the everyday sweater. Hurry before it sells out. I'm

literally going to buy another one. That's JennyKane.com slash SKINNY for 15% off with promo code SKINNY. I would say whenever you are, if you're looking for any kind of apartment, and I lived in a studio before Michael and I got married, I made sure that the light was good. It's so important to have that light coming into your house. Looking back, if I could give someone advice who is looking for a studio or a one bedroom, or even like if you have a roommate, I always used to make sure I had the lightest, brightest room. I think that makes such a difference. Another thing that we did that was game changing, and anyone can do this who's listening, is we audited our stuff. And what I mean by that is

when we were packing things from LA, anything that we were hoarding or storaging for no reason or clothes that didn't fit or clothes that we weren't going to wear, we collected and we donated. That is one good thing that's actually good about moving. And again, I recognize not everybody can up and move, but if you are somebody that is going to move and you're going to change condos, you're buying a new home or you're renting a new place, during that time, I think we got rid of 60% of the stuff we owned. But you can do this today right now. You can go audit and edit your home, your studio apartment, your room, audit your space. When there is too much shit in your house, it's overwhelming. It's not conducive to, in my opinion, to work. I like my workspace clean.

What I've realized with this move is like the minimalism thing. There's something really to it. Like I didn't want shit everywhere in this house. I wanted it to be a flow. Well, the sad fact is, is that most people, especially in this country, could get rid of 75% of the stuff they own and not skip a beat, right? It just, we get so attached because maybe we've told ourself, well, it costs me this, or somebody gave me this, or I've had this for a while and it's sentimental. But the problem is, is we just compound that year after year after year. And we hold on to so much shit. I promise as soon as you

get rid of it and it's gone and you donate it or you sell it or whatever you're going to do with it, but you get it out of your space, you will never miss it again. If you're even thinking about maybe I want to get rid of it, you will not miss it again. There's not one thing I can even remember that we got rid of that I'm like, damn, I wish we had that still. I also have the mindset that the more you give out, the more comes back to you. So I'll give you an example. There is an influencer who will not be named and she has a room in her house and in the room is all the things that brands and PR have sent her. So she has a room dedicated. It's a huge room. What does she do with this room? She just has it on display. Now. For who? For herself. Oh. Which if you want to do that, you go do that. For me, I'm in the mindset of giving, giving, giving away, giving away, giving away.

I don't want to hoard a bunch of shit. I feel like it's a scarcity mentality. It's not abundant. We all have that grandparent or parent that has the storage shed or the storage unit that's been there for 30 years. And they think there's stuff that's valuable in there. And then you go and you open it up. And there's cans of Diet Coke.

It's just a bunch of trash. Before my grandmother passed away, she said, I got to go clean this store. I went in there. There was old Charmin. There was old Coke cans. My grandma had cinnamon from 1965. What the hell are these people doing?

I don't know. Listen, I don't want any... When I die, I don't need somebody to roll up a storage and be like, holy shit, look at all the toilet paper Michael had. I am of the belief that if you can clear your space, it clears your mind. So that is something that we've done in this new house that's been game changing. Another thing we've done that is also accessible to everyone, most everyone, I think, is a cold shower. Yeah. I mean, in our house, people have seen it.

We now have a cold setup at Blue Cube. I almost want to mention them because they're great. And then we have a sauna outside. We have an infrared. Now, we didn't start out that way. So I don't want people screaming at the mic saying, oh, easy for you to say you got a sauna and a cold front. We started out with freezing cold showers. That was something we were doing in LA Daily. I had to do that just to break myself out of the fucking stupor that I was in every day waking up in that chaos. Just kidding, but actually being honest. We do our best as a population to seek out as much comfort as possible. Most people listening to this show are trying to figure out how to change their life to be more comfortable. That is a trap. You want to be more comfortable

in your business. You want it to be easier. You want it to be more comfortable in a relationship. You want to be more comfortable in your home. That is a trap. If you get to the point where you are so comfortable all the time, you become complacent and you become weak, right? Everyone's talking about this Ozempic stuff right now, Lauren. You guys were talking about it in the gym, about what do you think the long-term effect is on people. I don't know from a health perspective, but I know it's going to make more weak-minded people that are lazier and lazier because now they don't have to go to the gym and they're complacent and they're going to have flat, flabby bodies with no muscle at the end of the year and at the end of their life. That's my take on what will happen with something like that. It's the same thing when you get comfortable and you get complacent. When you get comfortable

and complacent, you become weak. And then guys and girls that come along that are strong, eat your lunch and you become very uncomfortable later because of it. So a cold shower, a hot sauna, going to the gym, eating right, cooking, stuff that makes you uncomfortable, walking up to somebody in a bar and saying hello without hiding behind a screen, all these things that make you uncomfortable, doing things in your business that's going to make you feel like you're putting yourself on a limb. This is the stuff that'll make you stronger. Another thing that we did that I think will help a lot of people that really helped me was I do this thing called the bookend theory. And so I bookend my day. I do not check my phone one to two hours upon waking up. And then I don't check it two hours before bed.

And people are like, oh, I can't do that. I have work. I work on my phone. I totally get it. You can do it and you can create boundaries around your space. There was no reason for me to be on my phone at 8 p.m. at night. There just wasn't, especially because I was on PST time. And so when we moved, I was like, I am not going to pick up my phone in the morning and be reacting to all these text messages of things that people need me to do. It's not proactive. It's not moving the needle towards my business. And it's also just not good for me to wake up and stare at a phone. There's so many other things that I could be doing with my time. And when people tell me that they don't have time on Instagram story and they're watching my Instagram story, you do have time. What's important, you make time for. So I would say try, just try to start with

30 minutes in the morning and the night of not checking your phone. That has been life-changing for me in Austin. And here's the pushback that people get. They say, easy for you to say because we're employers and we don't have to answer to a boss. As an employer, I get alarmed when I see people on my team emailing at 10, 11, 12 at night. And guess what? It happens very rarely now because I think we've created a culture where we're not rewarding that kind of behavior. I want the people that work with me, for me, however you want to code it, effective during the hours where they're contracted to work. I want them to be present. I want them to be mindful. I want them to have the most impact while they're at work. When they're off work, my hope and the example I try to set is that then they are taking care of themselves. They're taking

care of their mind. They're taking care of their bodies. They're getting time with their families. They're getting time with their friends. They're doing it in a healthy way. And they're not sitting there stressed out. If they get an email from somebody in the company at 10 o'clock that they got to answer it right away and that they're going to get hustle points for doing it and that their boss is going to say, oh, look, this so-and-so is up at 1130. So again, you might want to re-audit your work environment. Say, do I work in an environment where people are pushing this kind of culture where they're asking us to respond after hours at any moment for anything?

One, I don't think that's the most effective. I think it's all about being effective in the time you have. And two, do you want to really be in a culture for that long that is rewarding that kind of behavior and operating that kind of way? I know in Lauren and I's businesses, we don't operate that way. We don't set that example. And we have successful entities that are able to get by just fine by operating in normal business hours. Other things that we did to shake up our life. Added strength training for you. Strength training. I added weightlifting. Weightlifting and me getting back into it. The audit that I did that was a game changer was I don't want to be that dad that can't carry his kids around as they get older.

I don't want to be weak. I don't want to be setting an example of weakness for them. I want to be in prime physical condition for as long as I can. And for me, strength training in particular has always been the answer. You get a little cardio, you build muscle mass, you build fat burning systems in your body. It's just an incredible mechanism as we've talked about on the show. We also added way more proteins. So we started waking up with bone broth, random, but I made sure that my matcha that I drink every day has a scoop of protein in it. I started putting protein scoops in my oatmeal. I make protein pancakes with ritual protein. I started eating a lot more meat, so aminos. And then we really honed in on our supplementation. And you know that if you listen to the podcast. So

Symbiotica, we love Just Thrive Probiotics. We love Ritual Multivitamin. Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens. I really love The Holy Main by Dr. Will Cole and Agent Notor. I think we really focused on healing a lot of the damage I think that we did in LA. We also really don't drink like we drink in LA. We try to save our drinking sort of tickets for like New York and LA or when we're traveling. I want to talk about that in a second. But on the supplementation thing, I think you can go to any of our episodes where we talk about supplements and we talk about a lot. I would maybe start with the ones with Andrew Huberman and maybe some of the other wellness

ones where we dive into that. But I think in order to be consistent with stuff like that, we had to create an environment in our home where we could get easy access to the things that we would be well with. So there is a cabinet that is right above our tea kettle that has all of our supplements. If you want to go and make coffee or tea, it's literally the supplements are right in front of your face. There's nothing in there but that. I think everybody can go and create a space in their house where it's just right in your face. It's like a wellness drawer.

Yeah. And it's prominent, right? If you put it away in some cubby somewhere and you don't see it and it's not accessible every day, you're not going to do it. You have to really sit there and build a habit. And so anyone can do this at any time. Figure out the supplementation that's right for you. One of the things we did is we actually went and got our blood work done and had comprehensive labs to see what we were struggling with. We've done episodes on that as well. Check those out so you can see what's great. InsideTracker is a great platform. And yeah, I mean, really just like actually starting to pay attention to what our health and well-being was looking like. I really wanted to like dial out my diet after having a baby. And so far I've lost 40 pounds by working with the flexible diet coach.

He gives me like a meal plan. I told him like all the foods that I like that are non-negotiable. So I still feel like I'm eating all the foods I like. Like I eat sourdough toast every single day and he has everything measured out for me. So that just sort of took any overthought process out of the equation. I just think that there's ways that you can sit down and you can write down how to audit and edit your life so it's healthy for you in the long run. And just look at where things are upping your cortisol. So I'll give you a little one. I feel like a jarring alarm every morning is not good for you. We've had people that come on the podcast too that say waking up with an alarm is it's not good. So I was like, how can I do something that is going

to wake me up slowly? And so I found this thing on my phone called like bedtime app. And it's underneath the alarm and it basically like wakes you up slow. And then, you know, maybe getting like a hatch that like it's like hatch for sleep and it wakes you up with light, slow. I think editing and auditing where the cortisol is spiking and then finding ways to transform that. And if you're coming at me from a scarcity mentality and you're saying I can't afford that, I can't. There's so many things that we just gave in this episode that are free. Well, here's a free thing about free. It's free to take a walk. It's free to go outside. It's free to put your feet in the ground. If you don't have a shower in your apartment, go to the ocean. When we were in San Diego, we would jump in the ocean

for our cold plunge. Well, here's the thing too about alarms. The reason alarms exist is because people's circadian rhythm is fucked up and they need something to wake them out of their sleep. So one of the things we prioritize when we came here, like I said, our sleep was so bad in LA. I mean, it was terrible. We had under bag eyes. I looked like a fucking ghoul all the time. And we came out here. You looked like Ren and Stimpy. Yeah, I looked terrible. My eyes were red. And having the benefit of sitting on this podcast with guys like Huberman and so many other wellness people. But the reason I mentioned him is he sat down and he told us about getting light in our eyes the first thing and when to stop drinking caffeine and when

to start winding down and how to dim the lights and how to get your circadian rhythm back on. So for me, I'm in bed every day now by like 8.30, 9.30, and I'm up every day at five without an alarm because my circadian rhythm's back. And when you get your circadian rhythm back, then your hormones get balanced. And when you get your hormones balanced and you perform better in the gym, when you perform better in the gym, you want to eat better. And then when you're looking good and you're feeling good, you want to eliminate stuff in your body that's not good. So for me, and we've talked about this, that was alcohol. I'm probably a one to three times per month drinker now at most. It's completely changed my life. I just got to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm 36 years old. I can't go into my 40s slamming cocktails the way I used to and

slamming beers. And I think if anybody's thinking about changing their life, I would really also revisit the amount of alcohol consumption. I was talking to my trainer today. I was just saying, I have a goal to drink less than 10% of the days per year. So if there's 365 days a year, I have a goal that's like, I'm not going to drink more than 35 days an entire year. I don't know if I'm going to do that, but that's my goal. And I was thinking, think of how many people that drink 50, 60, 70% of the time throughout the year. And think about how that compounds year after year after year. Maybe in your twenties, you don't notice it as much. I sure didn't. 25 maybe, but you get into your thirties and then your mid th 30s. Think about the

amount of alcohol that is going into your system and what that's doing to your brain and your body and your hormones and your mind and your fertility. It's just not great. Also, if you're going to drink, we switched all of our wine to biodynamic organic wine. I have a box, Dry Farm Wines times the Skinny Confidential, and we even bring this wine, you guys, to dinner. So we sort of switched out our wine. Anything we could make over, we tried. There's so many ways that you can get creative and have fun with this. It doesn't have to be so overwhelming. If you take one thing from this episode, like the book and theory of your phone, that, in my opinion, will make your life 1% better. My friend Khalil has this thing. He's been on the podcast three times and he owns Sun Life.

And he always talks about being 1% better every day. So if there's 1% better that you can pull from this podcast and you can apply it to your own life, and then maybe in like another month, take one more thing and apply it to your own life. It just is about getting a little better every single day. And speaking of that, Lauren and I were talking in the car today, just us two. And I was saying, you know, the reason that people struggle with this kind of stuff so much is because we give ourselves such a short period of time to change our lives.

This thought process and this journey for us really started in 2019, where we started to say, hey, something's wrong. In 2020, we obviously made a huge change with the move. 2021 was really the year to say, okay, let's build a foundation. And 2022 was the year to kind of get in base shape. I look at 2023 as like, okay, this is the year where I'm actually going to get in good shape. And if you, if you hear what I'm saying here, we didn't sit back and say, okay, we have two months to do this or three months to do this or eight weeks to lose five pounds. It was, okay, we're going to slowly and consistently change our lives for a long, long period of time. And it might not be the greatest effort in like a shotgun approach right away.

But if you put enough time, two, three years, and you just build in these healthy habits, over time that compounds and all of a sudden that becomes your new life and your new lifestyle. So that is how we transformed our life. We are a work in progress. We still got a long way to go. It's all about the journey. If you guys have anything that you think that we really need to know about, I would love to know.

Drop in my DMs or comment on my Instagram. A lot of these things we talked about, Branch Basics, Symbiotica, Athletic Greens, shit, Peak Tea. Weightlifting, eating more meat. No, I was going to say there's a code. Oh, there is. There's a tea. Weightlifting, eating more meat. No, I was going to say there's a code. Oh, there is. There's a code. Code skinny for a bunch of this stuff. So if you want like a discount on a bunch of this stuff that we talked about, I'm a big believer in working with brands that I use and love and would recommend that are human and pet safe.

And so a lot of these things are cleaning supplies, the wine we're drinking, our supplements, are things that I have vetted and researched. So it's stuff that I would give my own kids and it's stuff that I would recommend to you, my friends, happy hour, whatever. So code skinny you can use. And that is how we changed our life. If you guys want to hear more solo episodes, just let us know. We're always down for a solo always down Michael where can everyone follow you follow me no just follow me

on the podcast I don't do a lot on social you don't do a lot I've gotten really kind of lukewarm on a lot of those platforms

yeah I just think you're not like social media vibes anymore no I never really was that's okay just follow me on the podcast

I like to talk you can't shut me the fuck up alright you guys this has been fun let us know what you want to hear more of and on that note we will see you next time this episode is brought to you by Symbiotica they have all of these packets of incredible supplements first of all I love the vitamin c it comes in like a liposomal package and you can put it in your water with ice.

It tastes delicious, kind of like orange juice with like a chia taste too. It's so delicious. And then I also really love their magnesium packets, but they also have magnesium spray. So what I'll do is I'll do their little magnesium packet in the morning with my vitamin C. And then later when I'm winding down at night, I'll spray their magnesium onto my body. And it smells like lavender. So it just winds you down. So for me to be able to implement magnesium in the morning and at night, I'm about this. Their supplements are just so sophisticated.

The formulations, I'm obsessed with the founder, Chervene. And they're scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling in the formulations. I'm obsessed with the founder, Chervene. And they're scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling in the nutritional gaps. Here's the thing. I would start out if I were you with the vitamin C, and then I would move to the magnesium. The magnesium spray at night is absolutely lovely. And if you're feeling frisky, I would recommend adding the B12. I like to squirt it under my tongue. Zaza loves it. You can't go wrong with any of their supplements. 10 out of 10. Of course, we have a code for you. I've used my own code a hundred times. It's symbiotica.com slash skinny. That's C-Y-M-B-I-O-T-I-K-A

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