Unlocking Why Work-Life Balance Might Be The Wrong Goal With John Azar

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Cold Start & Intro
00:03:47 – Meet John Azar
00:04:23 – Comfort vs. Failure
00:05:48 – The Work-Life Balance Myth
00:10:03 – Strategic Seasons of Imbalance
00:17:41 – How to Not Get Stuck in Hustle
00:22:44 – The Fear Conversation
00:25:46 – Why Failure Fuels Fear
00:31:47 – Moving Past Fear
00:41:17 – Skot’s Big Takeaway

John Azar (00:02.00)
Yeah, there’s no such thing as work-life balance. You can have a work-life balance if you just want to have a 9 to 5, come home, kiss your kids, play in your, you know, fence in yards and just go on and do that. If you want to do something a lot more than that, there’s no work life balance.

If I don’t show up this way, then everybody’s going to hate me. If I don’t accomplish this, then I’m going to be a failure. If I don’t get this thing done, then I’m going to just explode, implode my entire financial situation.

That’s just posturing. That’s just opinion. That’s not necessarily true danger.

Skot Waldron (00:40.00)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

All right. Today we’re hitting on the fear topic. We’re going to hit also, we’re going to double team this thing, right? We’re going to do imbalance and we’re going to do fear. We’re going to talk about imbalance and embracing imbalance and fear. And the whole thing here is interesting and John, so my guest John Azar talks about these topics quite a bit and he has embraced both of them in his life and he’s been able to conquer and do some great things with his business and growth and the things he’s built as an entrepreneur.

And so, it’s really interesting to hear about these two ideas. And I try to push him on some topics and try to ask him some questions. I think you’re asking about some of this stuff, because aren’t we preaching balance? Isn’t that what we preach in our culture? Is hey, you got to be better balanced in life. You seem like you work too much or you seem like you are playing too much, like there’s a little bit of a balance issue and topic that I think is really interesting. So, we talk about that here first, and then we get into the fear topic. And that is something that I’ve, you know, had to beef with a little bit overtime. And I think John and I agree on some aspects here, but I think it’s really interesting.

So, John, he’s a serial entrepreneur, he’s the founder of multiple enterprises in the finance and commercial real estate sector, actually. Most recently he is Founder and CEO of Peak 15 Capital. It’s a nationally focused Private Equity firm. We don’t talk private equity in this call, but we talk about the elements that he used to build that company. That firm specializes in commercial real estate.

John is a public speaker; he’s a coach and mentor. His approach to performing coaching and success is both nonconventional as well as highly impactful to those who embrace the notion of leveraging failure and imbalance to achieving extraordinary results. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. Here we go.

All right, John. Welcome to the show, man. It’s going to be fun.

John Azar (03:49.00)
Thanks man, appreciate you. It’s always going to be fun.

Skot Waldron (03:52.00)
All right. Here’s the thing. I wanted you on the show today because you kind of stick it to this whole idea of balance and I want to talk through the fear thing a little bit. But I always like, I mean, I want to talk to you about this idea that you know nobody so almost nobody likes to be uncomfortable. Like, sure we like to go to the gym, right? And like, push ourselves and whatever, but we don’t like to stay that way. We don’t like to stay uncomfortable.

So, let me ask you this. Are most people, are they failing because they’re afraid of failure or because they’re more addicted to the comfort aspect of life? What do you think?

John Azar (04:35.00)
I think it’s both, and by the way, fear by itself is enough of a deterrent. You don’t even have to say afraid of. Afraid, period, it starts to dictate whatever’s going to come next, whether it’s afraid of failure, afraid of you know, pissing off our spouse, afraid of not having a balanced household, afraid of not having a balanced life, afraid of not working. Afraid of not making whatever that we’re going after work, you know, afraid of what opinions of others are going to think about it, you know, afraid that we’re going to get it wrong. And let me tell you, you’re going to get it wrong. You know, you’re going to get everything wrong in life. I’ve gotten so many things wrong in life, and that’s not enough to stop you.

So, the biggest thing is fear itself but also fear of the two things that I coach for and against is basically imbalance and failure and these two things you have to be a lot more comfortable with if you want to make extraordinary results in life.

Skot Waldron (05:41.00)
But here’s the thing, man, like I mean okay, I don’t know how you feel about the work-life balance mantra. What do you think about that?

John Azar (05:50.00)
It doesn’t exist.

Skot Waldron (05:52.00)
I know it doesn’t.

John Azar (05:54.00)
Yeah, there’s no such thing as work-life balance. You can have a work-life balance if you just want to have a 9 to 5, come home, kiss your kids, play in your, you know, fence in yards and just go on and do that. If you want to do something a lot more than that, there’s no work-life balance.

Skot Waldron (06:07.00)
Okay. So, what do you think about balance in general? Like when we think about that word, when we think about what are we really saying we want that?

John Azar (06:18.00)
I think we want to feel happy. At the end of the day, all of us want to feel like we have made something of ourselves, that we’re happy, that we are surrounded with people. At the end of the day, I think that’s what all of us want. At least that’s what I want. You know, we want to have people around us that we love, that love us, that we care for, that we can show up for in financial ways as well as physical ways and other ways. We want to take care of our life and the life of those that we care for and there’s no number on that. Each person has a different number. I don’t know what you know, those are different numbers. Those are just numbers. Those are just paying bills. You know, but what we want to get to a point where we are happy and comfortable and safe and we feel safe.

But in order to feel safe, historically, man had to do something else to feel safe. We have to either protect ourselves, fight, you know, the safety doesn’t come for free. Safety has a cost to it in life, always. And the cost of safety that I always sort of advocate and coach for is that go through seasons of imbalance and uncomfort in order for you to get to a season of safety and happiness and balance in your life.

Skot Waldron (07:33.00)
Hmm. So, you don’t believe we can start out with safety. I mean, honestly, just from our you know, our primitive brains are seeking safety all the time. We move towards safety, away from discomfort, you know, that whole thing, as a natural instinct. But you’re saying we have to go through not feeling safe for a moment in order to eventually achieve that safety that we’re looking for? Is that what you’re saying?

John Azar (08:01.00)
Sure, we all come from safety. I mean, like, you know, we all start out obviously, hopefully feeling safe with our parents, with our, you know, when we’re kids. Hopefully we, you know, I wish that and I hope that for all kids, and that breaks my heart when kids don’t have that. But hopefully we have safety as young adults in society, you know, growing up. We don’t have to worry about that. And then later on when we realize, oh, we have to actually accomplish something of ourselves. You know, we actually have to, you know, create a self for us. And we have to create what we need, what we want ourselves to be in life.

And by the way, we have to find out what that is. That’s the sort of the machinations that we go through in life of, oh, let me find out what that is, what it is that I want, what it is that I love, what it is that I’m passionate about, you know, and we hopefully try to formulate and start to formulate a lot of that in young adults as young humans. And then eventually, you know, we find out that, okay, I want this as a target. What do I have to do to get there? What do I have to do to make my life, you know, produce the kind of results I want to feel eventually in my adulthood and obviously as a respected businessman or executive or whatever it is that you’re wanting to end up doing.

So, what I’m saying is we may start out with safety, but eventually we have to seek it. And we have to establish it for ourselves. Each of us have to establish that our own sense of safety and accomplishment and, you know, environment for ourselves and that process is where you kind of find out, you know, how are you going to handle that? That’s what I’m saying. I’m not saying we all start out feeling imbalanced and uncomfortable and we have to fight the good fight from day one when we’re 10 years old. You know, but eventually, yes, we have to go through different periods. It depends on what we want to try to get to.

Skot Waldron (10:03.00)
So, do you lean into the imbalance idea? Like is there a I mean, what does that look like?

John Azar (10:12.00)
It wasn’t natural for me to lean into the imbalance. But yes, I leaned into the imbalance because I wanted to get done what I needed to get done in my life. And I didn’t recognize it at the time. And I didn’t really probably handle it well at the time. And it makes life hard because you’re embracing this pursuit that you have so vehemently that you have to drop a lot of things in your life. And then you start feeling bad and you start feeling awful and then other things in your life start to come apart because you’re not pursuing, you know, you’re not balancing everything else in your life.

But the thing is you have to understand you, as soon as you embrace that, hey, you know what, I am for the next 2 years, that’s what I’m doing. This is my goal. So hopefully I can get buy in from those around me, whether it’s significant other or family or kids or husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever it is that I’m going through, hopefully I’ll get buy-in and support while I’m going through these this period that I got to really, really put the torch to the ground and just go all in.

And yes, I am going to be imbalanced. Yes, I am going to work a lot harder than I normally do. Yes, I’m probably not going to have a life. Yes, I’m not going to go out with a lot of friends. Yes, I’m probably going to just, Yeah, I hate to say it, but probably not going to be as much for my kids there for my kids as I would like to. But, you know, I know that this is temporary because I’m going to take my foot off the pedal eventually when I get to certain, you know, periods that would let me do that. And hopefully I have someone else supporting me if you have a family that will allow that transition or that balance to become reality. Because if you don’t, you can still do it, but your life is going to be pretty hard. A lot harder.

Skot Waldron (12:06.00)
Okay. I got a few thoughts about this though. Cause that sounds like everything that we preach against, right, in our culture and society is because everybody’s on the rat race, everybody’s burnt out, everybody’s answering 400 emails a day and everything that’s happening. And so, we’re sitting there going, wait, is that okay? Like is the imbalance like is that all right?

John Azar (12:35.00)
I’m not saying, Skot. I’m not saying it’s okay forever. And I’m not saying it’s okay sustainably. I’m saying you have to be okay with it for periods of time. You have to go through seasons of imbalance in your life. And that’s the difference between what I’m saying. I’m not saying you should live your entire life imbalanced. That’s very unhealthy, you know, obviously.

But if you recognize, like, hey man, between now and next year, this one year, this 12 months period, I’m going to be so focused on this one goal, this one target, this one accomplishment, this one project, that yeah, a lot of other things in my life are probably going to fall apart. Maybe not, maybe not my kids, maybe not my family, but I’m probably not going to go out with friends. I’m probably not going to or maybe it is maybe it is. I don’t attend as many kids’ events as I could have if I didn’t have this rabid concentration on getting this thing accomplished or getting through the next 12 months.

But hopefully I have some support system or some understanding and some buy-in from people around me that care about that hopefully form my team because my team is going to make this happen, not just me by myself. You know, if I have a team and the team includes family, includes your company, includes your coworkers, includes your employee, includes your executive committee includes your board members. You know, it depends on what that team is around you, but you got to have someone who hopefully supports you. And we’re not an island on our own.

So hopefully we have some people around you that supports that dogged pursuit that we have for that short burst period of time where we are completely imbalanced. We or we do from the outside in, looking in, seem like we’re just rabid dogs going after something that everybody else is saying, man, John is really off the deep edge. He’s just, nobody’s seen him. He doesn’t go out. He’s such a fun sponge. He doesn’t really, he doesn’t go out and drink with us anymore. He doesn’t go out and have fun. He’s not showing up to, you know, PTA nights, like, you know, whatever.

Like, you know, whatever that criticisms, those criticisms are to be, yeah, you’re going to be okay with that. And yes, it’s going to suck. And yes, you’re not going to be seen as the shining example of balance, which is the whole point. But at the end of the day, hopefully at the end of that year or 2 years or 6 months or whatever that period is that you chose for yourself, you can look back and say, “man, I kicked ass and I accomplished something. That thing. I kind of did it, or at least I made a really good headway towards it. Now let me take my foot off the pedal for a little bit, kind of adjust, figure out something else, do an after-action review, what happened in the past year, 6 months. And then if I need to do it again, okay, maybe I’ll go through another period of it’s almost like time blocking.”

I don’t know if you’ve done time blocking before, but very similar to time blocking, that’s basically what I’m advocating, is like you can’t do time blocking all 24/7, 24 hours a day. That’s not how time blocking works. Time blocking works when you have a very specific time preferably shorter than longer. Preferably 15 to 20, 15 to 30 minutes. That’s how effective time blocking works. If you say I’m going to time block the next 2 hours, it’s not going to work because it’s just too long to time block. You got to get up, you got to go to the bathroom, you got to do something else. So, 15 to 30 minutes I found is the very perfect ideal time to time block.

So, it’s the same thing. I’m advocating for the same thing except for life and completely imbalancing your life to go after something you want.

Skot Waldron (16:15.00)
That’s an interesting concept. I haven’t really ever thought about that. But yeah, I mean I use a lot of time blocking. I coach my clients to use time blocking and things they do, but I’ve never thought about for life or seasons of life using period blocking, almost like you would call it, right? Like it’s a season blocking or whatever you want to call it in that sense. I think that’s pretty interesting.

So, tell me this. Okay, so I’ve got some people that I work with, and they are, like, they love work. They drill in, they work 70 hours a week and it doesn’t faze them. They’re just like that is their thing. And they love it and they make a big impact, and they are moving through their careers in a really great way. And then they have young kids and a wife and or a husband. And they are, you know, they try to make time as much as they can. And then they take vacations, but they work a little bit on vacations and things like that. Okay.

So, what I hear you saying though is we need to communicate our intentions. We need to get that support mechanism is critical because it is going to be a “burden” on that other partner if we have that partner in our life. And our kids may not fully understand what’s going on at the time and depending on how old they are. Let me ask you this. How do we make sure that those people that are like gung-ho, laser focused all the time through their whole career aren’t caught in that season for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. How do you come in and out of it gracefully? Like, I don’t know. It seems like you would get addicted to it.

John Azar (18:03.00)
It’s hard. It’s really hard. It’s definitely hard. That’s probably the hardest part is to recognize that hey, I can only do this sustainably for so long. And even when I’m doing it, I got to be aware that when I take a little bit of, you know, rest periods out of this dogged pursuit, out of this this vehement work that you know, dogged work pursuit that I’m doing, take some periods for myself, for my family, or for whatever when you do take those periods, show up. Don’t take half-ass them. Don’t half-ass those periods. Just like you’re not half-assing the full-fledged pursuit that you’re going after for a year or 6 months and you’re saying, or 2 years, and you’re saying, I’m locked in. I am honed in. This is it. Like I’m, I’m doing that.

When you take small, miniature periods of connections with your family and loved ones, yourself, your dog, whatever, make it count. Like, just you know, if you’re going to say, I’m going to take the next this afternoon and go fishing with my son, go fishing with your son. Could put your phone on do not disturb and go fishing with your son and just be there, be present. You know, be present and be aware, be listening, be locked in with him, with her, with your wife, with your girlfriend, whatever. Like just lock in that time. It doesn’t have to be that long. It could be dinner; it could be an afternoon soccer game. It could be a weekend retreat, whatever it might be, but take the time and show up and be there. Your work is going to be there. Make sure that you’re taking care of whatever it is, your work’s going to be there and you know you’re going to go back the next day or the next hour or this afternoon and you’re just going to light the fire back up and you’re just going to go gung-ho again.

But during those period of rests in between, take the time, breathe, you know, show up for, tell people, show that for people around you that you care for them. You know, because if you’re just 24/7 only concentrating on that and you’re saying, well, I told you it’s in the next 2 years, I’m going to be pursuing that. Well, yeah, you told somebody, but they didn’t know you’re going to be that a-hole for 24/7 for 2 years straight. You know, they didn’t buy into that. They thought that, hey, every now and then you’ll show up for them, and you should. And that’s how you try to imbue a little bit of balance into that imbalance form.

Skot Waldron (20:34.00)
It’s about intentionality. I mean, I think it’s about checking yourself. I think it’s about communication with whoever that life partner is for you or even your people at work. Because I mean, I’ll tell you right now, when I owned my agency and I had employees, but I was also off venturing into my own world of building my own brand and speaking and consulting and things like that, where I was out to lunch with one of my, well, figuratively, I was probably out to lunch too. But I think that I was out to lunch with one of my employees and she looked at me and she goes, “hey, do I still have a job?” And I’m like, oh my, yeah, like you’re good. Like you’re totally good. She’s like, okay, I just see you doing this other thing a lot. And I don’t know, like, how much you’re on the agency side focused here.

And I think it’s just what we’re communicating through our behavior to the people around us. And are we communicating verbally and getting agreements with each other? So, I hear you saying that. Am I right?

John Azar (21:38.00)
Yeah, of course. Yeah. You have to. You have to. That’s how you make it and that’s how you do it right. You get agreements, you get buy-ins. People are aware that, they may not like it, don’t get me wrong. Getting somebody aware of what you’re doing and hopefully getting some buy-ins, not necessarily the same thing as them liking it and saying, “yeah, this is great. I’m going to love this. I’m sure your wife is not going to love this. I’m sure your kids are not going to love that. I’m sure your friends are not going to love you during those seasons of imbalance.” Hell, even your coworkers may not love you during those seasons of imbalance, but they are aware that you are going through these periods and you’re pursuing something and you’re hopefully going to be delivering something and hopefully through those small intentionalities of setting aside moments of intentional connections, hopefully that’ll be enough.

And, but again it may not be enough for some people, but it doesn’t set aside the fact that you still have to have that dogged pursuit, that imbalance that you have to embrace in order for you to get accomplished what you need to get accomplished.

Skot Waldron (22:44.00)
All right, let’s shift over into the fear topic a little bit. I want to hit on this one. Because I’m intrigued by this. I had somebody on my show when I first started this show years ago, and he talked a lot about fear. One of his concepts was like, you know, the shirts from the nineties, like no fear. And then I don’t know, it had some ridiculous comment on there. The idea of avoiding fear is not realistic, right? It’s like, how do we move well through fear? Because fear in and of itself is not the problem necessarily, right? It’s what we do with it because we all experience it. You’re not going to have no fear, like that just doesn’t work. That’s not how we’re built.

Well, my thought I mean, I guess my question to you is how do you know actually when fear is pointing you towards some growth opportunity versus helping us stay away from something dangerous, which is what fear is baked into us for, right? How do we tell the difference?

John Azar (23:53.00)
Well, I mean, you know, fear is a natural thing. You’re right. As you just indicated, fear is very natural. Fear and danger are two different things though. Fear is you know, made up of things that may or may not ever happen to us, you know, whether it’s physically, financially, emotionally, whatever it might be.

Danger, however, is something real, something lurking that is getting ready to happen if we don’t do certain things. That’s different than fear. That’s a real thing. Danger is real, a lot more real than fear is. But our fear sometimes creates a danger situation that where it doesn’t even exist at all. That’s what fear does to us. Fear gets in our head and tells us if I don’t show up this way, then everybody’s going to hate me. If I don’t accomplish this, then I’m going to be a failure. If I don’t get this deal done, then I’m going to lose my job. If I don’t get this thing done, then I’m going to just explode, implode my entire financial situation. That’s fear.

The consequence of what you just said happening, that’s just posturing. That’s just opinion. That’s not necessarily true danger. The danger is more of if I, you know, a more another better example of danger is I see a, I don’t know, one of those ads that come through my text that says, you know, a Nigerian prince died and left you, you know, five million dollars. All you need to do is send ten thousand dollars into this bank account. That’s danger. And that’s real danger. Because if you do fire that ten thousand, you’re out of it.

So, does that make sense? That’s not fear. That’s actual danger. That’s a dangerous situation. You know, so you got to be able to recognize that. But at the end of the day, what we fear most is failure. And that’s what I try to work with folks on. Because at the end of the day, it’s failure of something or another. That’s what our fear stems from. We are afraid that we’re going to fail somebody else. We’re going to fear; we’re fearing that we’re going to fail ourselves. We’re going to fear that we’re going to fail our own health and we’re going to put ourselves in moral danger. We’re fearing that we’re not going to get something accomplished and people are going to going to hate us.

Again, failure is very, very much associated with fear in very close-knit ways. And that failure, not necessarily has to be with business. It could be health failures. It could be financial failures. It could be a relationship failures. It could be whatever it is. And fear of that failure drives us to do insane things that may or may not ever happen. So, what I try to go through with mine is that as I’m talking about sort of managing your imbalance and managing your life through that, you have to always also be able to live with the fact that you have to live and breathe failure as just a normal part of life. That’s just what’s going to happen. Like it’s, failure is a normal part of life. Failure is not an occurrence that happens that we try to always avoid. Failure is just like breathing. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen whether you want it, not want it. It’s going to happen on a daily basis. We encounter small failures every single day that teach us something that may not teach us something.

So, the idea that these people try to avoid failure all the time 24/7 is exhausting because, don’t. Why are you trying to do that? Why are you trying to avoid something that’s going to teach you? It’s going to make you better; it’s going to make you stronger. You know, so it’s the same thing as us trying to as kids trying to you know, as kids our parents protecting us from germs all the time. Like, oh my God, like, you know, you got to live in a bubble because if you catch a germ, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re going to die. Well, you know, 99.9% of the time you’re not going to die. You might catch a germ, and you might get sick for a little bit, but then you get a little bit more resilient. And the more germs you catch sometimes as a kid, I grew up in a time, in an era when, you know, you were exposed to germs all the time. And you know, and I probably have a very, very good resiliency now in constitutions against like germs and bugs because I freaking got sick so many times as a kid. And I went out and played and got hurt and fell and took scrapes and got cut and like you know, so these are things that are going to be a natural part of life. If we try to avoid them all the time, we’re taking away part of life that’s so important, which is essentially figuring out how to do it better and how to do it and how to get through certain things.

So, fear and failure to me are very closely tied to each other. But failure in particular, I always try to work with people to identify failure as a learning tool and embrace it as a learning tool as opposed to avoid it entirely. You know, because if you always try to figure out your life to avoid failure, you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to disappoint yourself because everybody fails. At some point or another, everybody fails at something.

Skot Waldron (29:03.00)
Can I jump in real quick? Because I think part of the point here is in business, we’re trying to avoid the big failure, right? Sure. I think sure. We do strategic planning sessions, we have all this stuff to make sure that we are “successful,” whatever definition that means, whatever, however you define successful. But I think that the idea here is that we’re always trying to avoid failure. The big failure, you know.

John Azar (29:33.00)
Yeah, yeah. I mean and that’s natural. Yeah, we should be.

Skot Waldron (29:35.00)
So that is natural, right? So, I sit there and I say, well, the danger of me losing my job and all my people losing their job and my company going under is real, I would think. I don’t think that’s made up.

John Azar (29:50.00)
No, no, no, no. Don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying is the part that’s hurtful is what happens to us after we experience that failure. If we go through that what you just described and we end up failing, that project that end up not having produced the results that we want, or the project ends up not generating what we want it to generate, then that’s the danger. That’s where we kind of trip ourselves up. We go, oh shit, we failed. Like, I’m no good at this. I can’t believe I did this. I don’t know what I was thinking. I failed. This is not going to, you know, I should never do this again. I should never try to do this again. I don’t know, and that’s the hurtful part. That’s the danger of failure.

Failure doesn’t just come with the danger of failing you in that particular manner or subject or project or person. Failure’s danger is what it does to you afterwards. What it does to your psyche afterwards. And that’s what I try to work with people on.

Skot Waldron (30:53.00)
Yeah, I can agree with that. I think that, I mean, I think that that’s what instills the fear probably in people is the danger of what I experienced in the past, and you know, informs me that I need to watch out for that thing and to create more anxiety about engaging with this thing or this person or this type of business or whatever. I think that my past experiences will fuel, I mean, fuel that fear, fuel that element of danger in our lives? I mean, what would you say of that?

John Azar (31:24.00)
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you. But what ends up happening, Skot, is a lot of people end up not doing that thing at all because of the fear. They don’t even end up, you know, trying. They don’t end up getting out of bed. They don’t even try to initiate it because that fear that you just mentioned will stop them from even initiating whatever it is that they’re that they’re trying to initiate.

Skot Waldron (31:46.00)
How do we move? How do we move past that?

John Azar (31:49.00)
You move past that by recognizing that it’s not the end of the world if you do it and it failed. It’s not the end of the world. You know, the end of the world is coming, but none of us have any control of it. So, you know, none of us are God. None of us are, you know, none of us control the outcome of everything in the universe.

Skot Waldron (32:10.00)
Some of us think we’re God though, John. Some of us.

John Azar (32:12.00)
Some of us do think that we’re God. And you know, I’m sorry for those people. They’re going to experience failure a lot more and a lot more viscerally than other people will.

Skot Waldron (32:23.00)
Yeah, I think that this is an interesting you know, reading about stoicism and that idea and that philosophy of what is the worst that can happen and taking that mindset and walking through it. And I heard somebody even like talk about moving even through that element and coaching somebody through that. There was this idea of, you know, thinking about what’s the worst that can happen, oh my gosh, I could lose my job. And then it’s like, okay, and then what else? And then what else? What else could happen? And having somebody move from, because fear is a highly emotional state, right? It’s a highly emotional state.

So, when we move from fear, we start labeling all the things that initially we’re afraid of. And we keep asking, what else? What else? What else? What else? We start to move from the emotional state to our brain going into the logical state. So, we start moving from the emotional to the logical. And at that point, we start to become a little bit more rational with some of our thinking and the opportunities that are really in front of us that could really cause us harm.

John Azar (33:23.00)
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And that line of questioning is what I use with a lot of clients and students and coaching clients that I have is, we go through this machination of questioning, like, well tell me why you’re afraid of this. What is causing it? What is the end result that you’re afraid of? What is the failure that you’re, what does that look like? What does it feel like?

A lot of times I even go forward in time and I say, you know, give me a vision of yourself in 3 years, 2 years, 5 years, whatever it is that’s going to, you know, at some timeline that we end up picking, you know, together. And what does that look like to you? What do you feel in that time, in the future when you’ve done or accomplished or whatever, have gotten to those things? What are you feeling on the inside at that time, 3 years from now or 4 years from now? What does that feeling look like? What is that, you know, what are you doing on a day-to-day basis? What does your life look like?

And then we try to reverse engineer it and say, okay, so if you want that in 3 years, 2 years, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, what do we do now to try to set you up to start doing those things? And if it means going through some kind of a gigantic failure and an egg on your face, so be it. So what? You’ll figure something else out. It’s just a curve in the road and you’ll take the next curve.

So, that’s really what I’m trying to say is I’m not telling people don’t be afraid of something because yes, you’re right, being afraid and having, being calculated and having a plan together is very, very important. But it’s the damage of failure that I try to sort of work with people on to not ever be able to take that into account. Because what happens is, Skot, they end up calculating their odds and getting something done. Well, you know, my odds of getting this done are going to be 50%, 80%, 30%, 20%, you know, and I’m not, I’m just not going to try it. Like its small odds. Like, you know, am I going to go for that, you know, to speak to that guy or speak to that girl or get that project done or get that sale done or get that team off the ground like I want to. You know, I might fail. What are my odds.

A lot of the times what you hear me say in a lot of my public speaking, a lot of what I try to, excuse the French, but I say F the odds. F the odds. Like because the odds don’t tell you anything about what you’re able to accomplish yourself and how resilient you are in approaching failure and imbalance in your life to try to produce the results you want. That’s basically at the end of the day, that’s what I do.

Skot Waldron (36:07.00)
Nice. I like that. What do you think is the better teacher here? Is it success or failure?

John Azar (36:14.00)
Oh, absolutely failure. A 100% failure. Yeah. Failure is the only thing that success doesn’t teach us anything. Success just screws with our mind and convinces us that we can do no wrong. So, we all can do wrong. We all can do wrong. So, failure is so much more of a teacher. So much more of a teacher than success. And that teaches you how the odds on yourself are, you know, how you take those odds and what you do with them.

I mean, you know, I use my life all the time as you know, as an example of what I preach for and what I preach, you know, for and or against. I mean, you know, my family are immigrants. I came from nothing. I immigrated to the United States when I was 16 years old and we had nothing. You know, I couldn’t even afford to go to college when I was 17, 18 years old. I didn’t even know how to get into college. But eventually I did get into college. Eventually I did go to grad school. Eventually I got into finance. Eventually I got into investments. Eventually I figured out the rest of my life and life moved on. But did I end up failing? God, I failed so many times. So many times. I still do.

Skot Waldron (37:29.00)
So, to sum this whole thing up here, as an action item. What’s one area of life where you think the listeners here to the show could intentionally become just a little bit more uncomfortable this year? Where do you kind of push people where you’re like, hey, lean into the discomfort here a little bit?

John Azar (37:50.00)
Yeah, take small steps and something that would make you feel whatever it is, take something small, small project or whatever that makes you feel good about yourself or that makes you have a sense of accomplishment or something that you’ve been wanting to do and try to set some timeline for yourself to get it done and get yourself out of that comfort zone. If it means you working on that project from, I don’t know, from 7 PM until 9 PM for two or three nights a week and being away from your family or friends and having to not go out or whatever, then do that and see how you do it. See how you do for the next, just give yourself a small period of time. Don’t even make it a year. Don’t even make it 6 months. Make it 3 months. Make it a month. You know. Hell, make it a week. Just see how well you do in a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks and set a plan together and say, you know what, I’m not doing that because I want to do this and I’m going to concentrate my energy on doing this, whatever that is, for whatever intentionality that you want to set forward for yourself.

It could be business, it could be something personal, it could be a personal project, it could be a hobby, whatever it is. But make yourself uncomfortable in doing something for that reason that’s going to knock you out of your normal day-to-day habits. And see how you do it.

Skot Waldron (39:14.00)
That’s good. I mean this whole idea of long-term time blocking, whatever we want to call it. You need to coin some phrase for that, man. You come up with some. But that’s really good. It’s really smart. So, you know, you’re out there speaking, you’re out there coaching entrepreneurs and all kinds of people right now and building something and doing something. What’s the main thing you’re speaking on right now from the stage? What are people asking you to speak about? I’m curious.

John Azar (39:41.00)
I’m speaking about imbalance and failure. I’m actually giving a speech in California and about another month specifically about that. I’m speaking to a bunch of you know startup entrepreneurs about embracing that, about embracing those seasonalities and those periods of uncomfort and imbalance in order for you to get something accomplished and doing it right. Again, you know, just like you said in the beginning of the show. Don’t do it with scorched earth policy and screw up everything in your life. But, you know, I do have to. I always tell people like you got to be prepared to give up some things in your life. You know, it’s not going to come at a free price. Nothing worth pursuing in life is going to come at a free price.

Skot Waldron (40:28.00)
That’s right. It costs something, right? And it’s evaluating that cost, as we do with everything, right? Is the value there and is it worth it? So where do people find you, man?

John Azar (40:39.00)
I’m on Instagram, I’m on LinkedIn, Jalal John Azar or Azar, they can look me up. They can email me azar@peak15cap.com. I’m on Instagram @jjazar, and they can find me there as well.

Skot Waldron (40:58.00)
Well, hey man, thanks for the intriguing conversation. I’m just like I knew I was going to poke some things. I wanted to hear what you had to say and I appreciate the delivery. Thanks man.

John Azar (41:10.00)
Of course, man. No, I appreciate your having me. Thanks so much. I hope your audience gets something out of it.

Skot Waldron (41:17.00)
If you couldn’t tell, I was trying to really understand his idea of imbalance. I get concerned when I see some of my coaching clients doing what they’re doing. And I’m like, hey, are you cool with this? Is your partner cool with this? Like, what’s going on? Have you communicated this stuff? Are you making sure you have time to rest and time to play and time to do the things that you enjoy doing in life? I know you enjoy work, but are you also doing the things that you’d enjoy with life? Some of us use work as an escape. We use it to run away from life, some of us, okay? You know who you are.

There is a definite concern I have with the imbalance topic. But I think John did a good job. I think that it’s all about intentionality. It’s all about communicating your intentions and planning and getting that support mechanism in your life. If you don’t have that, there will be bad things that follow. There have been many of you, I think, that have experienced those bad things. When you are not intentional, when you just kind of chase, chase, chase, grind, grind, grind, and you aren’t communicating what’s going on and you leave your loved ones in the dust, like they don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, or maybe your employees are like, hey, what’s going on with you lately? I see a lot of stress building up in your life. I think that that has a negative impact on a lot of the things that we do and I think that that’s a big concern.

So, intentionality. I love this idea of macro time blocking. I keep throwing out different words because I don’t know what we’re going to call it, but I think that that’s really fascinating. And using fear and failure, I liked his, almost his idea of fear of failing something. Like I always talk about fear as an element of why we don’t do things. Fear keeps us in the element of self-preservation, but fear of failing something or someone is the next level. So, I’d like to analyze that a little bit deeper in some of my work that I do with my clients.

So anyway, awesome. John, thanks for being on the show. And thank all of you for being here yet again.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

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