Although money is an essential resource in living a happy life, time is something you cannot take back once it is gone. That’s why Wade Galt is helping entrepreneurs change their approach to work by teaching them how to create three-day weekends. Michael Silvers presents his online coaching program, the 3-Day Weekend Club, which assists individuals in developing a balanced lifestyle of both enjoyment and productivity. Wade explains how to reduce daily expenses, focus on earning more time to rest than building wealth, and dedicate Fridays to recreation. He also discusses the connection of self-esteem to the higher being and why work must always be about serving other people.
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Creating Three – Day Weekends With Wade Galt
I am excited. We are here with my dear friend, Wade Galt. He is an entrepreneur, author, life coach, and Creator of the 3-Day Weekend Club so that we all can enjoy our family and friends in life a little bit more. Welcome, Wade.
Thank you, Jonathan, so much for having me. I loved our talks and loved having you on my show. I loved what we talked about. I love what you’re all about. I’m happy to be a part of this.
I want to jump in. What is the 3-Day Weekend Club and why is it?
The 3-Day Weekend Club is an online site. It’s a coaching program. It’s a mindset. It’s about helping people create a lifestyle where they can enjoy three-day weekends or whatever their preferred schedule happens to be, not everybody wants three-day weekends, but where you have time to enjoy life. For some people, it means working the days that their kids are in school so that when their kids are off from summer that they can be off with them. For some people, it is specifically having a 4-day work week or 3-day weekend lifestyle, having Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off.
It’s about being able to know that inside work, whether you’re an employee, an entrepreneur, a freelancer, a side hustler, an executive, or a CEO, whatever it is, you can make an impact with your work. You can make a difference, you can do good stuff, you can make a good income, and then separately, you can have time for family, friends, and life. I tell people, “I want to be productive and impactful during my work and I want to be impactful and productive in my personal life. I want to have an awesome personal life. I want to have time for family, for friends, for freedom, for life.” It’s about making room for both of those.
My guess is you were not always living this three-day weekend lifestyle. What was your life like and what happened to you to begin this new way of living?
I’ve been blessed to have awesome parents. My father’s an entrepreneur, so I got to see from his perspective the idea of the freedom of being an entrepreneur, choosing your own schedule, and those things. I got to see from my mother. She chose to be a stay-at-home mom as my brother and sister and I grew up. She’s a thinker and philosopher. She’s the one that got me reading all sorts of things about psychology, spirituality, self-esteem, and those things.
It was always on my radar that you could design your life the way you wanted to. For years, even though I had that information and I’ve been an entrepreneur for over twenty years, I still, to a certain degree, accepted what I got in my case it’s because I know I’m blessed. I understand the situation in the world and it almost felt weird to ask for too much more.
I had one client situation where we were working on some things. We were working on his business, financial stuff, and how to grow his business. He mentioned how his son had already graduated high school, and he was like, “I missed the window. I love my son. I love my family. I was working on the business with the idea that I’ll have enough time to hang out with him once I get to this certain income level. When I got there, he was pretty much a senior in high school and on his way out. I feel like I missed it.” I said, “I wouldn’t worry about that. I know you wish it was different. Plan some activities and see what you can do.” I wasn’t coaching this. It was what I thought off the top of my head.
Six months later, we met again to talk about his business. He said, “Wade, thank you so much for that idea. It seemed like a simple one. It seemed so basic. I had some time with my son. We did some NASCAR racing at one of those places where you go.” I think it was the Daytona 500 or one of the off-tracks near there. They did some different things. He said, “That was so awesome. We have some more things scheduled.” I thought that was great, and I still didn’t think much of it. Six months later, he didn’t show up to our six-month meeting because he had passed away. He was in his mid-50s. He had a heart attack. It was one of those things.
I didn’t know the family very well. I know friends of friends, so I’ve never gotten a chance to talk to his son. I’ve never talked to his wife, but I know that he got something and imagined his son got something that was so precious. It was one of those things that reminded me of something that I’ve known. Other people don’t realize how important it is that we enjoy our life and how fragile life can be.
I heard another one of my friends from high school, unfortunately, passed away. These are the things that we know. We sometimes lose sight of it as we get caught up in the grind, the hustle, and all those different things. For me, being aware of that was something that once I experienced with a client. I had a couple of other friends get on me to say, “Wade, you’re at the beach on Fridays. You’re talking about shifting your schedule. Why would you do that? Enjoy life. Life is short.”
That’s been something that I’ve done. I’ve never regretted time with my family, with my friends, and in my case, playing beach volleyball and the hobbies I love. I’ve never regretted that. I’ve regretted investment decisions. I’ve definitely regretted some bad dating decisions. I’ve regretted so many other things, but I’ve never regretted the time. That’s something that comes first for me. It’s something that we do need to feel good enough about ourselves that we deserve it. Once you can do it, it’s so huge.
That’s a good point that you make about feeling good enough about ourselves to know that we deserve it. Did you always know that you deserved it, that you were good enough, or did you have to have a mindset switch?
Due to the way I was raised a lot by my mother and my father as well, I have an understanding. It doesn’t mean I’m right, but I’m right for me. I have known personally that there is a benevolent divine force in the universe and that force created me. It didn’t accidentally happen. My heart doesn’t accidentally beat all these times without me thinking about it. I know for me that that exists. Whether it does or doesn’t, I can’t prove it. I’m not interested. It’s worked for me for many years. I know that and I always know that.
My mom even talks about a time when I was younger when I was restless at church. I was raised Catholic. There’s a lot I’ve gotten from that, and that’s great. There are a lot of things that are not so great. We were there, and she said I was squirming to her. She goes, “Wade, kneel down and talk to God for a little bit.” She needed a break for me. She says, “I want you to think and hear what he says and come back to me.”
I kneeled down, and she said, “Wade, you got one knee down.” The other knee wasn’t down. I bounced back up and said, “I’m good.” She says, “What did he say?” “He loves me.” I don’t know if that was a clever answer because a five-year-old, how do you tell? It’s the right answer on some level, but I’ve always known that. For me, there’s a distinction. In my understanding, there’s self-esteem, which is, am I, as a unique individual in the universe, worthy of awesome things?
For me, that was never the challenge. The challenge was one of those other beliefs that came in that I’ve heard in different areas. I also got it through my upbringing, which is with a lot of opportunity comes a lot of responsibility. For me, the challenge was, “At least compared to the rest of the world, you’re very well off financially and abundantly. There are still people that don’t have water and food.” It was almost like you can’t stop working until those people have all that stuff. Over the years, I’ve taken a little bit of a lighter approach to say, “I’m doing what I can. I’m not doing every single thing I can.” There are things. I buy certain things. This is a nice shirt. I could have worn just t-shirts all day.
I’m trying to find that balance of what feels like, “Yes I can enjoy a level of abundance to a certain level and also, I can share with others.” I think of something that I heard Wayne Dyer once say, which I love. I don’t know if this is true, but I do think it is because I’ve seen it more and more. He says, “If you go to the ocean and you want water, you can go there with a thimble or you can go there with a dump truck. You can take out all the water you want. The ocean’s going to be fine.” To me, that’s something that I step into more. It was not so much about deserving individuals like, “Does God love me if there’s a God?” I believe there is. I’ll stop saying that. It was more of the abundant scarcity thing.
If I take my time off, what’s the opportunity cost? Could I have been working harder? Could I have helped more people get water, money, this, and that? As I’ve gotten older and also as I have less energy, I usually work about 30 to 34 hours a week. That’s my sweet spot. As I’ve gotten older, I can’t put in physically a good 50 to 60 hours like I could before. Maybe they weren’t even good. I was convincing myself they were. For me, the rest, the rejuvenation, is who I come back as. You and I were talking before this. I got back from Peru and flew the red eye. For the last couple of days, I’ve been not as energetic. I use a sleep tracker.
It basically told me, “Yes, you’re resting heart rate shows you’re not as well rested.” I get grumpy. I don’t make as good a decision. It takes me longer to make decisions. All of this, it’s been this combination of feeling that I’m doing my part enough as best as I can. Yes, to a certain degree, I guess maybe it is self-esteem to say I’ve done enough. I’ve worked hard enough. I’m good enough. I’m valued enough. Yes, I can take some time, have time with my family, my friends, and our children and not feel so much like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. That is also an arrogant thought as if I’m going to fix the world by myself, yet it’s one of those things that if we take it too seriously, sometimes it can be difficult.
What do you say to the entrepreneur? We hear all these things, “Go get your side hustle, but you got to hustle. You got to put your work onto it. It’s not 9:00 to 5:00 anymore. Now it’s 5:00 to 9:00. If you are going to make it, you got to put all your energy into it.” You’re saying no.
I’m saying absolutely no. If you’re working more than 40 hours a week, unless you’re in the first 3 to 5 years of something, it might take 50 to 60 hours to do something. If you’re working a job 40 hours a week, it may take you 10 to 15 hours to start a side hustle. Number one, if you’ve been an entrepreneur for more than about 5 years and you’re working more than 40 hours, you’re doing it wrong.
If you’ve been an entrepreneur for several years and still work for more than 40 hours, you are doing something wrong. Click To TweetYou could be doing it better. You could have a better delegation, and you could have better outsourcing. You’re missing something. If you look at the math, how is it that a Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ariana Huffington, or Jeff Bezos could literally, at least dollar-wise, be multiple zeros better than you or I or other people that are making six figures or less whatever? How could they do that?
Somewhere in there, they’re leveraging. They’re more productive. I don’t want to get into each individual and say this one’s likely whether people like them or not. My point is, results can be gotten in less time and nobody cares how hard you work. If I hire somebody to cut my grass and they say, “I just want you to know it took me nine hours to cut your grass. I was using scissors. I lined up each plate of grass to make sure.”
Sorry, dude. I’m still paying you the same amount as if you used a lawnmower. There becomes a point where it’s good enough. There becomes a point where you’re barking up the wrong tree. There are diminishing returns. There are a lot of different fancy ways to say it, but there’s a point where it’s good enough. A lot of the times, like that example I gave of me thinking well as if I have to save the world, as entrepreneurs, it’s a very seductive belief that we are so important.
When we’re in our own business, if you’re a solopreneur, you are that important in your business. If you look at a business like Microsoft and you say, “What if Bill Gates said, ‘No, I’m going to do tech support for everybody because nobody does tech support like I do?’” You’re never going to grow. You’re that caught up on yourself. You’re empirically wrong. That’s not a fact.
A lot of the time, when we get caught in these traps, we’re limited by a limiting belief. We’re limited by a function of how we do things. I intentionally said you’re wrong upfront to mess with people. It’s not wrong. You could be more productive, more efficient, and more effective. I watched it by myself. In the first four days of the year, because we were on this trip and coming back from Peru to the US, I got in an average of four hours a day. It turned out to be five days.
I thought, “I’ve gotten a lot done in twenty hours in a week, and I normally do 34.” I’m important, Jonathan. Don’t tell me otherwise. I’m an entrepreneur. All of a sudden, I’m like, “For me, that would be a quantum leap.” Years ago, I did the quantum leap from 5 days to 4 days, and I’ve been at 4 days for years. She’s like, “What’s that next thing?” It is not just what the opportunity cost is financially if you’re not productive enough or get enough results in less time. What’s the opportunity cost lifestyle-wise?
In my case, our children are 16 and 14. What am I missing out on? If I’m convincing myself I’m too busy, what else could I be present for? Even in life, even if I don’t have children, what other causes could I volunteer in? In my case, when I say 30 hours a week or whatever it is, that’s my work time. I look to do other volunteer stuff, but there’s some volunteer stuff. If I could get the same results in ten less hours a week, what else could I do for the world?
Before we get all high and mighty about, “I’m a hard worker. I’m sweating and I’m hustling. I’m grinding,” by the way, look it up. The Hustle is a dance from the ‘70s. It’s fun. Look up grinding. Maybe don’t search grinding in front of your kids, but that’s supposed to be fun too. In the dance in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, when someone says you’re grinding, you’re not working hard. You’re dancing. It’s good stuff.
People have taken something so beautiful. Even work, work can be an awesome way to express ourselves and to share our divinely given gifts of who we believe there’s a God, yet if it takes us longer, we’re missing out on things. Whereas if we can get the same results, not effort, in less time, then it expands our possibility to do more things and help more people.
Work can be an awesome way to express yourself and share your divinely given gifts to others. Click To TweetYes, maybe even make more money and say, “I’m going to make even more money so I can give it to people.” I have some friends that they say, “I don’t want more time. I want to make more and more money and donate to causes that I believe.” Let’s say Habitat for Humanity, which is a great organization. If I go and build a house for an hour for Habitat for Humanity, there are 100 other people that could do that or 1,000 at the same level that I could or perhaps better.
If I work an extra two hours in my business and then donate the money from that, I can make enough to buy one of those houses. Different people have different economics, so there’s no right answer. Overall, this idealization of saying, “I’m hustling and grinding,” is no different than saying I’m slow. That’s another way to look at this. I’m slow. I’m not good at my job. I’m incompetent and I suck at this job so it takes me a long time to do it. If you’re new, that’s not necessarily the case. To idealize and say, “I’m so awesome. I’m slow at this. I’m bad at this. Somebody does it in half the time than me and they don’t work as hard as I am,” maybe get more competent. I don’t know.
Where does somebody start? We got our gig and we’ve been doing it for a little while. It’s not brand new. We’ve been doing it. We know that we can get good results, but it’s taking a long time. Maybe I am slow. I hear Wade. I don’t want to postpone my life for twenty years, but I have no idea what to do because I’m in the thick of it. I’m not up here looking down. I’m in the thick of these 50 to 60 hours a week. Where do I begin to figure out what you’re doing? We haven’t been doing it for seven years. Where do I start?
The first part I’m going to say applies to whether you’re an employee, an entrepreneur, a freelancer or whatever. First, look at your expenses outside of work to see what you don’t need that you could reduce the expenses. If you’re an employee, it could mean you don’t have to work extra hours or it could mean you get to do a more enjoyable job.
For example, some people do love being teachers. Some people did it because they wanted summers off. Some people love being teachers and they reach a point where they say, “I can’t do this anymore. I didn’t do it for summers off. That’s pretty awesome, but my expenses are so high now that I can’t be a teacher and have the time I want.” Hold on, what are you spending your money on?
It depends. If you can say, “My levels of what I need financially are on the lower side,” then now that opens up a lot more job opportunities for you. Also, if you want to travel the world and say, “I want to work for some company and do tech support or something like that,” that’s a lower-income per-hour job but adds flexibility. There’s a balance of the more you spend in general, the more you have to work.
It is looking at what’s truly necessary for your personal expenses. A lot of times as entrepreneurs, we buy this coaching course or these paid ads. There’s nothing wrong with either, but we assume that they are going to do the work for us. We throw money at things. Whereas sometimes, the better thing might have been to keep the money in your pocket and take Friday off.
It depends. This is where it came down to for me. I understood this as an employee. I’m going to use a round number. I was making about $50,000 a year take home. I thought, “I’m working 250 days per year. My time is worth $200 per day. If it’s $200 per day and if I’m working about 20 days per month, that’s $4,000 per month. Every $200 I dropped from my expenses, I could work one less day.”
At that point, I was an employee so I didn’t have permission to drop those days. When you’re an entrepreneur and now that there are so many flexible employment situations, it is very possible. It is about finding out what’s most important to you. Sometimes it does depend. I play beach volleyball. It’s a rather inexpensive hobby. Some of my friends love playing golf. It’s a more expensive hobby. There’s no moral judgment there. It’s just math.
In all of that, there’s the math part, but that’s the second most important thing. The first and most important thing is what’s more important to you than working. If you love doing things, you travel, and you say, “I’m going on this ten-day trip,” you’ll find a way to cram before the trip. You’ll get things done and you’ll deal with it after. You’ll figure it out. You’ll make things work. You might sacrifice some expenses. “I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to get the premium cable TV channels. I’m going to cut my gym membership,” whatever it is. I’m doing this trip.
The 3-Day Weekend lifestyle is doing that every weekend and saying, “What’s most important, and what are the things I can drop?” If you don’t have something scheduled in your calendar, especially now talking to the entrepreneurs, and I’ll use Friday as an example. Let’s say you’re used to working five days a week, Monday through Friday. You take Saturday and Sunday off, and you truly take them off. You’re not doing email, you’re not working, and you’re off.
If you’re working from Monday through Friday, take every bit of work from your Saturday and Sunday. Click To TweetYou say, “How do we get to Friday?” Start scheduling things on Fridays that are flipping awesome to do because then you won’t miss out on those. If you schedule nothing and then you hit Friday morning, you say, “Now I have an alternative. It’s Friday morning. I’ve scheduled nothing. I can either do nothing and make no money and I have no plans or I could do something productive for my business.”
In that scenario, the better decision is to do something because you haven’t scheduled anything. You haven’t planned anything that technically scheduled something. It could even be that I’m going to schedule downtime to do nothing. If you truly are like, “I’m just bored,” most of us entrepreneurs are not the types of people that like to stay bored for long. We are restless enough that we’re the 1 out of 10 people on the planet that started our own gig. We’re like, “Something drove us for freedom, creativity, money, accommodation that we said, ‘No, I’m doing my own thing.’” By our nature, we’re usually not chill people.
I’m going to take Friday off because why not? There’s got to be something cool that we’re doing. If you start planning that awesome life and you start putting as much time into planning your personal life and your business life, and you start having these awesome experiences, then you start experiencing what you’re missing out on the not financial opportunity costs but the life opportunity costs.
What are you missing out on? How do you get to your deathbed knowing that you can look back and say, “I nailed that. That was awesome. I didn’t work too much. I worked well. I impacted people’s lives. I made good money. I helped people, and I had this awesome lifestyle where I was present with people. I did them both right.” It’s never been more possible on planet Earth to do that.
Tell me if I’m getting this right because many of the ads we see, they’re scrolling by our Facebook, “Get your 5 to 6-figure month.” Money is valued, and what you’re saying is it’s not that money isn’t valued. You’re saying time is valuable and your ad was there to be one though I’ve never seen it because you’re doing your thing, “Get your time back. Get your 5 or 6 figures of time in your life so that you can live your life now, not later.” Is that what I got?
Absolutely. There was a study that was done at Harvard. It’s a few years old so the numbers could be adjusted slightly. The bottom line of the study was that in the United States, up until $70,000 per year, people self-report what they said and how they said they felt about their life. They got happier as they made more money. There was no happy-o-meter. They just said yes. The $60,000 person did report being happier than the $40,000 a year person. It’s not a fact that $60,000 is happier than $40,000, but it is a fact that these people reported that.
The reports, that’s a fact. Once they hit $70,000, it tapered off. In other words, $80,000 was not happier than $70,000, and $700,000 was not happier than $70,000. It was marginally happier. The explanation of the study was they were able to get their basics met. In other words, I can still get from point A to point B. Does it make me happier to get from point A to point B in a more expensive car? For a few people, maybe yes, but for most of us, point A to point B, I got there, great. I have food, and I have time for friends.
There is a certain amount of money where if you’re earning below it, you do have inconveniences and problems that will take up your time, like if you’re literally homeless. You need to make the money first. That’s definitely relevant. Overall, time is a more precious commodity. There’s something I’m trying to remember. It’s Brad. I love this. I’m not sure if he made this up or whatnot, but I heard it on one of his TikToks. He said he’s done this, and maybe there’s a study done probably at Harvard. There’s a study done where he asks people, “Jonathan, I’d like to give you $10 million. Is that okay?”
Sure.
I’m going to add one clarification to the mix now, Jonathan. I’m going to give you that $10 million but you have 24 hours to live. Do you want the $10 million?
No, I don’t really need it.
What you said was that one day of your life is worth more than $10 million. That doesn’t mean we get paid the $10 million, but subjectively, you’re like, “No. Hold on,” but we are. We’re doing that. We’re trading our time at times for things that aren’t as important. For me, something even as simple as this stuff on my face. I’m Gen X. I was raised like you shaved, it’s a sign of disrespect if you don’t shave and all this stuff. I don’t particularly like to shave. I’m not against shaving. I’m not for it. My wife says I shave for love, I shave for money. My wife and I have been married many years, and she’s like, “I like it better when you don’t shave.” Maybe because of this positioning, I don’t shave.
With my insurance agency clients, I now shave most of the time. I’m like, “I don’t do that. It takes time,” and you might say, “Really?” Maybe I’m slow. It takes me a good fifteen minutes to shave. For me, if I did that even four days a week, that’s an hour a week. That’s 50 hours. That’s a week of my life. Work week-wise, it is going like this. It doesn’t do anything for me, so I don’t shave. Now I do shower, just so you all know, to brush my teeth and do all those things. It’s one of those things where you need to decide what’s most important for you. There’s an exercise we do in our coaching programs, and there’s also a tool we have on our website for your twenty most impactful positive life experiences, the twenty most exciting things.
I got married, and we had children, whatever it might be. I started my business, I won the championship, and I asked a girl out, whatever it is. You make a list of those things. For most people, somewhere between 80% to 90% of those are going to happen in their personal life, not their business life. You say, “If most important experiences happened outside of work, where are they probably going to happen in the future?” That’s not to knock work. There can be very meaningful experiences that happen to work. Usually, somewhere between 10% to as much as 20% to 30%. Still, it’s usually personal life stuff.
This is clever math. Let’s reverse the equation. If you have a two-day weekend and you say, “I have a two-day weekend and I’m going to live for X number of years,” if you had a three-day weekend now and if the majority of your best life experiences happened during those two days, you’ve now increased your valuable awesome life expectancy by 50%. You could still die the same day, but now you have more time to have more fun and do more things.
This is not work bashing. In fact, I probably even need to change my logo because the work says red and focused instead of some other prettier color. That’s because of how I started, and then it became now I enjoy my work. I do want more meaningful, productive, impactful, high-income, high-impact work, but I also want a lot more time outside. As much as I love doing this with you, as much as I love helping other people, I still have more fun on my weekends than I do on average than I do when I’m working.
It’s one of those things. This is in particular, because in my mind I believe this is going to help more people do this, this probably right up there is right up there with play. For me, this is as fun. I want to have fun in my work, and I want to have fun outside my work. These are my top three things to do, coach, connect, and create. It is connecting with people and podcast interviews. This is my best stuff.
Before this, I was responding to some emails and doing some things and saying about some stuff. Not as fun. I don’t think you’ve ever heard anybody say, “I wish I worked more,” but so many people say, “I wish I had more time.” It is something like that that’s not only been validated by the book by Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying and so much other wisdom in life.
There’s so much that says life outside work for the most part, or at least to put it a different way, life and connections that are not tied to, “I’ll only talk to Jonathan if I make $5,” which is more of a transaction. That’s not to knock transactions. We need transactions to make money. There’s something different about, “I’m here to give. I’m here to be present.” There’s some different thing about it qualitatively. I don’t know how to explain it, but it seems to be more valuable to humans.
If we took a look at your schedule and got your calendar, what is it saying it? Is it four hours of work, or is your fun scheduled in there? I want to know what your book is like.
Fridays are volleyball. I like to do one thing that I have to get done. Fridays is I have to play beach volleyball. I didn’t do it for about 6 or 7 years, and I became a grouch. That’s a nice word for what I became because I wasn’t happy. I thought that the best path to be the best dad was to not get any fun time and be present. I was hyper-present with my wife and my child and I worked from home. Anybody who’s been a parent was like, “No, that’s not a good idea.” It was a great intention but horrible execution. It doesn’t take me all day to play volleyball, but usually, Friday, I’ll start playing at about 8:00 in the morning and I’ll be done by about 3:00 so I’ll be home at about 5:00.
As my kids tell me sometimes, “Dad, you’ve played for a long time. It’s hot. You come home. You look stoned. You look like you’re burnt out because you’re exhausted.” I’m not getting much done that night. We’ll watch a movie. Friday is volleyball, and that’s it. Friday is my day. That’s me. My wife has what she does. She likes quiet time. She loves personal time and does the stuff she does. She has a three-day workweek. She already even beat me on that.
Saturday and Sunday are for family, friends, fun, and that stuff. No work. Technically on Friday, sometimes I’ll check my email. You mentioned, “Are you dogmatically off three days?” I have a small software business. In the software business, you’re expected to give support Monday through Friday. That used to be 90% to 100% of my income. Now it’s about 40% of my income. I’ve clients have had for many years. They know I’m not available on Fridays.
I will check my email after I’ve played my volleyball and after I’m exhausted to see if there was anything exploded because it’s not going to affect my day after I’ve done all the things I want to do. 99 times out of 100, it will be, “Can I check in with you on Monday,” or, “Here’s a quick form email.” I’ll do fifteen minutes because the opportunity cost of that is I would have to grow my software business to afford a full-time person that I used to have when my software business was bigger. Now, my software business stays the same without me doing a whole lot to it.
I’ll make that concession and I’ll give myself a pass. Again, it’s my definition. It is what I want. When I first did it, I felt like I was going to confess to telling people like, “I sometimes work fifteen minutes on a Friday.” It’s like, “Okay, great.” Long story short, Friday’s volleyball, and Saturday and Sunday is family. Monday is creative stuff I like to do like podcast interviews and me creating and having no appointments, and no agenda. Most of the time, it works out that way.
Tuesday and Thursday is coaching, and Wednesday is me doing what I want with my time productively work-wise. That’s evolved over time. That’s pretty much what it looks like. In there, there are different things. I try to do the Pomodoro thing where I work for an hour and take fifteen minutes off. There’s nuance in there, but overall, it’s one thing to get done. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have to generate income. I hustle on those days. I stir up stuff. I sometimes do the things that I don’t love doing but make sure I sent that extra sales email or whatever.
Any of the stuff about growing a business, marketing, getting to know your clients, follow-up, retention, and all that stuff, I do those things. As a family, we keep our expenses low. Two days a week, I can afford to focus and I pretty much earned my income two days a week. The other two days, I like to be creative. I like to work on the next thing. To use a baseball analogy, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m getting enough base hits, enough steady, solid income to pay for our expenses.
Mondays and Wednesdays, I’m working on fun projects and what could be the ridiculous World Series-winning grand slams. Things that could knock it out of the park and multiply it by 5 to 10 zeros, I don’t need those. It’s not to say I don’t want them. I very much want them, but I don’t need them. Even though with kids and we live in Naples, Florida, it can be a lot of pressure for our kids about this kid has this and they have this amount of money. There are certain things we have and certain things we don’t. No offense, but I’m not willing to work on a Friday so you can have a bunch of name-brand stuff that you don’t need.
Before, when they were like 6, 7, and 8, I’m like, “You guys are going to grow out of this in a few months.” My son’s now 6’3” and my daughter is close to his height where at least now, if we buy stuff, it’s harder to resist. “I could use this for a long time and you’ve always told us you buy quality brands, dad.” It’s a little harder. This does come back to the self-esteem part. I know I’m worthy of three days. As a father, I do a good enough job as a provider, at least I think so. Maybe if you’ve got surveys from my kids, they might say differently.
I’m doing well enough. I’m not perfect, but I’m doing my best. I’m content with that. That’s pretty much the schedule. The beauty of this is when your schedule is the schedule that you enjoy and that’s your default schedule, you don’t need a vacation. You want a vacation and you take a vacation, but you don’t need it. Also, if you have an absolutely horrible train wreck of a week or a day this week, next week, it’s still going to be good. You know that you’re still taking off on Friday.
Even if in a particular week, you’re working that Friday, whatever, God forbid, because it’s not that big of a deal. You know another good week’s coming. For me, it’s all about making your default week as enjoyable as possible with your family, your friends, and your hobbies. Have time to enjoy life. If you do that every day, you have a good day. At the end of your life, you’ve had a good life. It’s simple.
If you can make your default week as enjoyable as possible, you don’t have to take a vacation ever. Click To TweetDo you have a daily routine that you do to keep yourself energized and focused on this plan? Do you meditate? Do you do your morning pages or workout? What’s your routine?
I am not the greatest at executing routines consistently. I am good at organically adapting my routine. For the most part, there are a couple of things I always do. I always look to get to bed early. I’ve gotten more into tracking my sleep. This is one of those Oura rings. Sleep is huge for me because I’ve come to realize I make way better decisions and I’ve gone from being used to being average even from about 9 hours of work in a day to about 8. I’m getting it down to about seven. I do better.
I’ve seen a lot of the research. My sweet spot is 5 to 6 hours a day where I do my best work. I get to bed usually by 9:30 or 10:00 at the absolute latest. I’m up at about 6:00 and I meditate. I do yoga, a little routine I have, which is usually about twenty minutes. Other than that, I exercise. I bike once in a while. I have things I do regularly. I’ll go for a bike ride 3 to 4 times a week. I will do yoga at least 5 to 6 times a week. I’ll play my volleyball on Fridays.
Specifically at this time, because we had Hurricane Ian and things are a little off, I’ll technically play some volleyball on Fridays, and some volleyball on Saturdays. We got finally got to go back to the beach. For the most part, I take a lot of breaks. I work from home so it allows me to get up roughly every hour and walk around. Sometimes I’ll break down my yoga into fifteen minutes to keep doing things and getting up. I do projects.
There’s some that Tim Ferriss said in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek or an interview that I love is they said, “What do you do now? You’re making enough money that you don’t need much.” He doesn’t spend a lot, either. He’s like, “For me, an opportunity I’m going to choose is something that I’m going to love doing even if it failed by financial measures. I enjoyed the process, I learned something and I worked with people that I find awesome or fascinating.” That’s something I’m looking more at.
We don’t have any other children coming. From that perspective, I feel like as a father, we’re coming out of the, “I need to grind all the time to make sure the bills are going to be paid.” I’ve also gotten better at making more money and less time to where I’m finding opportunities that are more in line with people who are on the same wavelength as me, those people want what I already offer rather than me trying to find everybody.
I’m getting better at niching down. I never loved the whole avatar exercise of who’s that one specific person you want to help or what they like, yet I’m finding that whether I like it or not, there was a certain type of person, not necessarily a demographic, but a psychographic, a person that says I value time outside of work.
I value helping people. I want to make an impact in the world. I value relationships. When I’m doing that, ironically, I don’t care if I work 40 hours a week or if I work 20 as long as I’m enjoying the process. I’m balancing my time more and now having kids about to go to college or out of the house in the near future and having parents. I’m more aware of, “I want to get in more pickleball with my dad, more walks with my mom, things like that.” As much as I hate to think about it, reality would suggest that might not be around forever.
If I open your dictionary, the way dictionary said success, what would your definition be next to it?
I would say that knowing that I’ve impacted a lot of people’s lives positively, not in the sense that, “They all say Wade’s awesome.” I’m less concerned about that, but that I’ve made an impact on people’s lives. As an author and a podcaster, you know that sometimes you impact people that you’ll never see them. Maybe in the afterlife, I’ll see, “These are the people.” I don’t know.
It is to know that I’ve made a positive impact on people’s lives, to know that I’ve done my best to be a good, kind human being, to know that I’ve had a truckload of fun and enjoy life. I love to laugh, definitely. I love bad, stupid, inappropriate joke humor. I am laughing a truckload. I don’t use it on my podcast because I’m trying to make sure I don’t turn off certain groups.
It is having fun playing. I would love to know at least at this moment unless they’re lying to me, that my children, my wife, and my family love me and that they value who I am and who I try to be to them. The same with my friends overall. There’s a word that I’ve tried to teach my children to embody. If you could teach your kids to do one thing, and for me, the word is considerate. Considerate for me is when I consider what I’m doing and how it impacts Jonathan and the audience. We’re all human, and I certainly have moments where I’m extremely inconsiderate. If I can do that, it’s one of those things where that would probably fix most of what’s not so good in the world.
If we got past all the, “I’m on my soapbox.” Let’s forget about all the nuances of world religions. Let’s go to the 2 or 3 core things. Be nice to each other, love each other, and treat each other. It is the Golden Rule. Can we get those down first? Let’s knock those out first, then we can worry about all the news things like what you can wear, when you can eat, what type of food and how clean is it or how dirty it is. Let’s throw that aside. Let’s focus on these 2 or 3 things. For me, it’s like that thing to know that I’ve done that. I’m blessed to either have fooled myself or to have done well enough that I live that. I don’t have regrets.
I’ve published the books I know I want to publish. There are other books that I have in the works that I’d like to get out. I’m compelled to get out there. I’m not looking to die anytime soon. At the same time, I feel like I’m enjoying it. I feel like I’ve been semi-retired for years. For the most part, I get to do the work I want to do, work with awesome people like you and do work that I believe in. From that perspective, at least by my definition, I’m pretty successful. That’s pretty cool. Thank you for that.
One last question, what does self-love mean to you?
I’m going to first make a distinction and then I want to get to that if that’s cool. The word self-esteem is one of those phrases that has a lot of meanings. There’s a lot of great work on it. I’ve been blessed to get a Master’s degree in Psychology. I’ve seen at least 8 to 10 different definitions through coaching work and reading of self-esteem that I think are serviceable. We’re apples to apples.
For me, there’s Self-esteem. I have maybe gotten this from Deepak Chopra, your highest self, the creature that I believe God created. I believe that’s true self-esteem. Do you believe that the creator of the universe values you and that you are valued and all of us are infinitely worthy, God’s children, however you want to word that? You’re valued and you’re valuable.
If you believe that and you know that without arrogance, without like, “I’m better than people that to me is Self-esteem,” I believe what a lot of people refer to as self-esteem would be more accurately called performance esteem. “I’m a good athlete. I’m a good author. I’m a good doctor.” That’s very important. I think that shifts.
For example, I have very high-performance esteem as a beach volleyball player, as a coach, and as a father. As a brain surgeon, I have zero performance esteem. That’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing. I think self-love is more of the first. In my experience, if you believe that there is a divine creator of all, and if you believe that the divine creator is, for the most part, benevolent, and yet that divine creator doesn’t like you, that’s hard to recover from.
Think about it where if your mom and dad don’t like you. So much of our psychology profession is around that. They call it your primary relationship. To me, that’s your secondary relationship. Your primary relationship, I believe, is your relationship with your creator. If you don’t believe your creator likes you, and I’m not trying to knock religion, but if you’ve gotten that from your religion or spirituality tells you that, that’s tough to overcome. It’s like if the person, the being, or whatever it is that knows all sees all is like, “You suck,” that’s a tough one. That’s not Simon Cowell on the panel telling you that you suck at singing. For me, to have self-love, you have to believe the creator loves you, respects you, values you, and esteems you unconditionally.
I believe that’s required to have self-love. To me, self-love is when you say, “I agree with that.” It’s like, “Now, do I do stupid stuff? Did I do bad stuff? Am I sometimes being a jerk? Yes. Am I acting like whatever?” I don’t get the semantics. If you’re being a jerk, you’re being a jerk. It doesn’t mean you are a jerk. You’re being a jerk. You’re being a jerk for a real long period of time. Maybe people say you are a jerk and you’re still to me. At the end of the day, self-love is, “I did this, I failed. I still like me. I did this, and I succeeded. I don’t get too high on me, I still like me. I did this with bad intentions. I was pissed off and I tried to hurt somebody. That’s crappy, and I see me. That was the best I could do. Okay, I still like me.”
For me, it’s almost like self-like is even more. Again love, like self-esteem, has so many different meanings. If you can come back after and say, “I did my best. I’ve been blessed by all the mentors I’ve done and I have done work.” This is the part I would say, and I know quite a few people in my life don’t love themselves. I do think it’s possible to love other people and not love yourselves. I’ve seen a lot of people that they can do the verb of loving people and giving to them. They can be harder on themselves than other people. I don’t know why it works this way and I might be wrong, but that’s at least my experience.
Those people usually, at least the ones I know, have not done the work. Maybe there’s too much pain in why they don’t like themselves. Let’s say their parents were mean to them or whatever. They can’t bring themselves to do the work of looking at themselves to then get back to the point. I genuinely feel for those people because I don’t think they have a level of self-love and yet they seem to be able to give it to others like, “That person loves me.” I’ve done the work. I’ve looked at myself. I’ve looked at the things that are crappy that I’ve done.
This is not a joke either. I’ve not murdered anybody. I’ve not intentionally tried to hurt physically somebody other than being in fistfights. In other words, for the most part, I think I’m a pretty well-intentioned person, but most people are. When we do things that are not so good, it’s because we have tough situations we’re trying to get out of. Overall, after all of that, it is being able to look at yourself and say, “I accept. I still like me,” That is the most important work to do on the planet. There’s nothing any more important than that because if you look at the history of most of our most violent murderous leaders, they didn’t love themselves.
Hitler, Bin Laden, you hear about family problems, things where they didn’t love themselves. For me, the best thing I can do as a human being, as an employee, as an entrepreneur, as a citizen of the world, and definitely as a parent is to do my work and figure it out. Be willing to do that. You’ve done it, I can tell. I know you’ve done it. It’s not easy. It sucks.
The best thing you can do as an employee, entrepreneur, human being, and a citizen of the world is to figure out your purpose and do your work. Click To TweetSometimes you have to look at yourself and say, “Yes, I intentionally try to hurt somebody.” That’s crappy. If it’s the case, I believe that the divine can still look at me and be like, “I created you. You’ve got flaws. It’s okay. This isn’t a trick test. I didn’t make you with flaws or with a possibility for flaws and then judge you for that. I’m not judging you.”
This is my belief. I hope people get this because I do this. This is an area that a lot of major religions do have wrong. It’s inaccurate. It’s a faulty thing. It’s a misunderstanding to think that the wisest being on the planet and the universe would create us with flaws and then blame us for having flaws. You don’t even do that with our kids. We don’t set up our kids and say, “Here are five cookies for dinner and spinach in the morning. I’m going to judge you by whether or not you ate the cookies or the spinach.” Seriously? Come on.
I had a not-so-nice fight with my daughter. She said some things, which she then apologized for. I said some things, so much I apologized for. Still, I look back and say, “Maybe we had to have that fight because we tried to do it civilly and it went beyond civil, and then it was ugly. I’m not proud of it, but I’m a human being.” That is not an excuse. Not to say I can let myself off with any, but I did do my best at that time and I tried, and I’m going to try to do a bit again next time. I’m not going to do the, “I’m sorry,” but I’m going to do that again next time because I’m going to keep saying I’m sorry but keep doing it. To me, that’s not sorry.
If you can love yourself and be like, “I’m doing my best and I’m okay,” it’s so huge. That’s the obstacle between people that at least can host a podcast or be on a podcast. It’s one of those things that keeps or starts their own business. It is the self-love piece and the self-acceptance piece. Can I still accept myself if I fail? You’re going to fail as an entrepreneur. You’re going to get your butt handed to you, but you’re going to get that happening even if you don’t. Why not try?
Wade, it is always a huge joy to talk and hang out with you. It’s the 3-Day Weekend Club, folks. Join and make it a part of your lifestyle. Wade, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me, Jonathan. I appreciate being here. I appreciate who you are to me and the work we do. It is truly always a pleasure to connect with you, my friend.
We’ll see you next time.
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