How Ben Greenfield Crafts His Daily Routine, His Best Tips For Transforming Your Life From Chaos To Order & The History Of Building A Fitness Empire, With “The Financial Dad Podcast.”

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:04]: Routines are always fluctuating, right? They're always moving around, there's always something changing. But I can tell you that the main themes that no matter how my routine looks, are present is A morning solo time for spiritual work and preparing the body and the health for the day. B morning family meeting C productive work during my peak productivity hours D, some kind of afternoon reboot session. E, reactive work in the afternoons F, some kind of family dinner family meeting at the end of the day and then that's bookended with those couple of half hour check in sessions where I'm making sure that, you know, I know what to expect for the day if it's in the morning or for the next day if it's in the evening. And those are themes that are present no matter what, no matter how the routine fluctuates.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:05]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Podcast Intro [00:01:26]: Ben was recently a guest on the Financial Dad podcast.

Podcast Intro [00:01:30]: He enjoyed their discussion and wanted to share it here with you on the podcast. Big thank you to the Financial Dad team for allowing to share the episode. Please find the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/TFD.

Hallie Smith [00:01:44]: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Financial Dad. I'm Hallie Smith here with my dad, the financial dad, Tim Smith. And today we have a really special guest whose accolades could probably take up a whole podcast itself. But going to let dad do just a brief, brief intro on our guest.

Tim Smith [00:02:01]: Okay, thank you, Hallie. So our guest today is Ben Greenfield. Ben is, I hope he won't mind me saying it this way. He is one of the titans of American experts in the health and wellness space, probably even internationally. And I mean, literally, it would take us about five or eight minutes to read through his entire biology from the standpoint of business. There are numerous things going on with Ben that we're going to cover today. And so, for example, he is a New York Times bestselling author, so he has written a number of books. He provides personal coaching services to individuals.

Tim Smith [00:02:49]: He has a line of nutraceutical products called Kion, I hope I pronounced that right, Ben. And then he invests in and advises a number of companies in the health and wellness space. He does a lot of public speaking and I've seen him a number of times already. In doing public speaking, there are conferences as well as a part of his organization. And it's really amazing that he has all these different pieces going. On top of that, he has a wife and two kids. He has just moved. So he has his personal life to deal with.

Tim Smith [00:03:30]: And he likes to do things like playing the guitar, the ukulele, and playing pickleball. So sometimes, somehow he fits in time for himself. And I will just leave you with the intro. Leave off the intro with his mission statement, because I really loved the mission statement, in particular the last few words. So please listen to this mission statement. It is really a beautiful personal mission statement. Ben's mission is to serve those who, like himself, desire to live life to the fullest, experience deep meaning, purpose, happiness, fulfillment, and connection. Explore and enjoy every nook and cranny of God's great creation and discover how to achieve full optimization of mind, body and spirit.

Tim Smith [00:04:22]: And get this with boundless energy. And I think that is just such a fantastic statement. And with that, Ben Greenfield, welcome and thank you for being here.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:32]: That was a very gracious introduction, but you forgot that you can find the best steaks in the world on my back porch. I'm a grill ninja. You could just leave out the whole bio. What I'm proudest of is I'm a barbecue ninja.

Tim Smith [00:04:47]: Okay, well, I left out all the stuff about athletes and Ironman and, you know, so I. I did miss that part on the bio.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:55]: My crazy former life.

Hallie Smith [00:04:58]: I would love to hear your story. I would love for you to share a little bit about the journey that you've taken in creating the businesses that you have now. Where you got started. Did you start with just one? How did you branch out into these? I would love to know about the actions you had to take to get to where you are now. And insofar as you're comfortable, any financial decisions that you also had to make along the way.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:22]: Yeah, I started with just one business. I used to keep all my Halloween candy and hoard it under my bed when I was like 10 years old. Then I'd sell it to my friends in the summer or the months after Halloween where candy became a bit scarce. But my. My actual first real business was when I actually, at the same time, began being interested in fitness and physical culture and health and nutrition. And that was a tennis coaching business that I set up in my backyard. We had like an asphalt tennis court in our backyard. And I'd hang flyers around the neighborhood and send out emails to my parents, friends and make phone calls and basically coach Kids in tennis.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:10]: I got so interested in tennis that I wound up playing college tennis. And like a lot of student athletes do, I studied exercise science. So a couple years into studying exercise science, I decided I'd actually be super interested in medicine and becoming a doctor. So I took all the pre med courses, took the MCATs, and at the same time, I was doing personal training in the local community throughout. I actually had a lot of jobs in college. I was a personal trainer and a nutritionist. I worked as a strength conditioning intern for University of Idaho, managed the wellness program at University of Idaho, taught sports camps in the summers, worked at a French bakery where I'd sell croissants to people in the morning and then personal train them in the evening. So that was a great business.

Tim Smith [00:07:03]: That's an interesting business model. Create the problem and solve it, right?

Ben Greenfield [00:07:06]: Yeah, it works great. Frictionless business opportunity. I also worked at a coffee shop, and I held down five or six jobs through college. Eventually, I got accepted to six different medical schools and didn't like a lot of the ones that I visited and decided that I would like to reapply and to make myself a little bit more palatable, I decided to take a year off after getting my master's degree in physiology and biomechanics and go to work in the private sector. So I got a job with a company called Biomet in hip and knee surgical sales. I worked that job for about nine months, and I really didn't like it. There were no doctors that seemed happy with their jobs. Seemed like a broken medical system.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:58]: I'd stand there with a laser pointer teaching surgeons how to install, you know, $40,000 hip and knee implants into, you know, in many cases, you know, morbidly obese or overweight patients who might have been better served through, you know, fitness and nutrition modifications. And I just missed the whole world of, like, personal training and helping people out with their diets and, you know, the athletic culture that I was engaged in at the time. Leading up to that point, I played college tennis, like I mentioned, but I also played whole set for the water polo team, played middle for the men's volleyball team. I. I had a short stint in bodybuilding. So for a couple years, I was up on stage posing. You know, I got myself up to 215 pounds and 3% body fat by my senior year of college. So I was doing, you know, bodybuilding shows.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:48]: And at that point, though, when I was working for that hip and knee surgical company, I'd kind of got bitten by the triathlon Bug. So I'd already raced my first Ironman triathlon. I wound up racing 13 more over my career and six times at Kona Ironman World Championships. And so I was super into swimming and biking and running and missed a lot of the camps and clinics that I'd been teaching up to that point. So one day I basically quit my job in hip and knee surgical sales, walked across the street from my little apartment in Liberty Lake, Washington into the Liberty Lake Athletic Club, slapped my resume on the counter, which, based on what I'd done in college, was decent, halfway decent, and got hired as the manager of their fitness program. So I, over the next couple years, kind of morphed that into a highly successful group training concierge, personal training, very profitable personal training program. And one of my clients was the wife of Dr. PZ Pierce, who was the physician for Rock and Roll Marathon and Ironman Triathlon.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:00]: So he and I obviously hit it off right away. He actually proposed to me the idea of launching a one stop shop for sports medicine where we'd have chiropractic doctors and sports medicine docs, physical therapists, massage therapists, sports performance professionals, personal trainers, nutritionists, all under one roof in a warehouse type of setting. And long story short is we did that. We went into that business together. It was called Champion Sports Medicine. I was the director of sports performance and this was almost like early days biohacking. We had one of the first PRP machines for injecting joints. We had high speed video cameras, calorimetry machines for measuring calories and VO2 max.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:48]: And we were doing some really forward cool techy stuff. This would have been in 2005 until 2010 or so. During the course of operating that business, I was actually nominated by several physicians in the local community that we were working in close conjunction with at the sports performance facility and through the National Strength Conditioning Association, I was voted as America's top personal trainer. So that kind of thrust me into the limelight in the more national and international fitness community. And I began to be featured on the COVID of fitness magazines and began to travel around doing speaking at different fitness events, mostly on how to operate a profitable brick and mortar personal training studio. At the time, I was still racing Ironman Triathlon heavily. I raced for Team Timex. I was all over the globe, swimming and biking and running.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:47]: As a side gig, I would lead camps and clinics in places like Hawaii and Thailand, bring people to these places and train them and do races together. It was all working out pretty well. But I remember I was at one Conference speaking. And at that point, this would have been around 2000 and 2009. My wife was about to give birth to twin sons and I was kind of seeing the writing on the wall, right? Because my life was like, I get up at 4am, ride my bike 10 miles to one gym, train clients all day, get my workout in, ride all the way back home, slip into my office, get a bunch more work done, have dinner with my wife or watch a movie, go back into the office, work until about midnight or so, go to bed, get up at 4, 4:30am and do it again. I did that for like three or four years. And I kind of realized that was not conducive to the lifestyle that I really wanted, which was to ultimately be like a really at home and present father and husband. You know, I was raised as a Christian.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:58]: Family is very important to me. And I knew that my current modus operandi wasn't really conducive to a robust family life or, you know, being a stay at home dad, which was kind of like my dream. I wanted to, you know, write books and play with my kids and, you know, continue to compete. And at that point I'd started a podcast, which I loved and still do now. I've been doing it for 17 years, twice a week. I haven't missed a single week ever. And so as I was sitting there at the conference, this guy gave up and gave a talk about running, like online personal training programs and creating online fitness products. And I sat there and I'm taking notes on a little yellow legal pad, just every word that came out of his mouth.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:43]: And I thought, well, gosh, this seems pretty doable. And I could do this and do it from my home office. So I spent the next nine months working on a triathlon training program that was like an online program, right? You could buy it as a PDF and series of videos. I connect with a company in Texas that would like drop ship a physical version of me or of the program for me. And I launched the program during Ironman Hawaii week in October, when there were a lot of eyeballs on the triathlon world. And over those nine months, I incorporated some other tactics. I listened to this book that had just come out called 4-Hour Work Week while I was driving to a triathlon up in Canada. And one of the recommendations that that author made, now very popular book by Tim Ferriss, was to hire a virtual assistant.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:39]: So I went to Craigslist in the Philippines, in Manila, Philippines, I hired my first virtual assistant because at that point all I'd had is, like, personal trainers working under me and interns and things like that in the gym. And so her name is Marge. She still works for me.

Tim Smith [00:14:54]: We've been in contact with her.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:55]: Yeah, she probably set up this call. So she almost knows me better than my wife by this point. So, anyways, what happened was I launched that program, and I had a bunch of affiliates. You know, I'd started affiliate marketing. A bunch of people had signed up to promote for me. You know, I was already posting all over different forums on the Internet, which, you know, used to be a good way to market back in the day. You'd post all over forums and your bio would link back to your website. You know, almost like Reddit, except there were a lot of them back then.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:27]: And so, long story short is, during the course of the week of that triathlon, I did about $50,000 or so in sales at that point. I tried to sell a few ebooks online, made 17 bucks here or there, but I never really, truly put together a really good program and put all my marketing firepower into it. And I realized, I thought, well, gosh, this is like, almost half as much as I'm making as a personal trainer working, like 12 hours a day. I. I could. I could do this, you know, because I know injury prevention and personal training and marathoning and swimming and cycling and running. So I basically sold all my personal training equipment, stepped down from my job at these facilities I was operating, which had expanded into two separate facilities at that point, and transferred all my clients to other trainers in the local community. Got a desk and a home office, moved into my house, and I moonlit for a little while to make sure it could all work out.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:30]: But at that point, started doing a lot more of what I do now online coaching, writing books, doing podcasts, began to do some investing and advising for different companies, continued to speak all around the world, often at the same time as I was racing in different locations nationally and internationally. And so it was basically an online coaching business that I launched, along with information, product creation, a podcast that brought in advertising, and occasional speaking here and there. I also, a couple years into that, started to ship supplements out of my garage, because at that point, I had a lot of sponsors who sponsored me for racing, but, you know, I was selling their products for them. I thought, well, why don't I start my own company? So I started this little supplements company. I'd white label a lot of these products that I already knew and liked and trusted and would just ship products out of my garage. That was called Greenfield Fitness Systems. And we actually did maybe like 150k over the course of a year or two years actually in a row. And then I thought, well, I could grow this.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:43]: So I hired a branding agency, we turned that into Kion. So this would have been like seven years ago. So that company has since absolutely exploded and now we source our own raw ingredients, we create our own products. Super committed to quality. It's all E commerce, not a lot of wholesale or retail or grocery store. It's a very good predictable business. So I'm running that company and have a CEO who operates that. I still run Ben Greenfield Life, which is the arm of my coaching podcast, content creation, et cetera.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:19]: And then this month I'm launching a brand new membership network called Life Network, which is basically a house for a ton of the experts that you guys probably know in the health and the fitness industry. But it's all your favorite podcasters, content creators, et cetera. But they're all within the website available for Ask me anythings coaching support, a robust community workouts designed for all of our members. I wanted to take what some people are paying $2,000 to $5,000 a month for in personal training. And so for 15 bucks a month we're launching this site that just gives people access to the best of the best experts, coaching, training, testing, a robust community events, et cetera. So that's launching as well. So now I probably forgot some steps of the journey, but now my main enterprises are Kion, the supplements company, Ben Greenfield Life, this new Life Network, the other companies I advise. There's about 20 different companies in the space that I advise.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:24]: And then perhaps most importantly, I'm also co-CEO of Fried Pickle Games with my sons and they're 16 years old. They've launched a tabletop gaming and card company, so they're producing their, their first game goes live on Kickstarter here pretty soon. So behind the scenes I'm kind of helping them build that company as a gaming company. And I probably forgot a whole lot, but that's, that's, that's the basic story. I got to where I am now.

Tim Smith [00:19:54]: Ben, that is fantastic. I appreciate all of that. I'm actually going to go off script slightly because something that you, your story prompted a question in my mind, which is, it's pretty clear, like if I had to condense that down, it would be you have some natural gifts and natural interests that you have extraordinary ability at, that catapulted you into a place of prominence and from there organically, you've taken advantage of a series of opportunities that have led to you having these multiple, effectively multiple business lines going simultaneously. The question that I wanted to ask was, have you had sort of like a mentor along the way, as you sort of said, gee, maybe this is an opportunity, or who pointed out an opportunity to you to go into something? Or, you know, do you. Do you just have this entrepreneurial mind that smells the opportunity, says, I think I know how to do this, or I think I've got a way to do this? Like, to what degree are there have there been other people who have sort of helped you or guided you at all to create all of this?

Ben Greenfield [00:21:09]: Well, two things. First, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. You know, people have certainly given me advice along the way. You know, random good, some of it bad, questions to a different conference stuff. But no, I've never had a mentor in the traditional sense of the word. You know, we just moved into this farmhouse in Idaho a few days ago, and you should see the library I threw out or donated. I didn't throw them out. Donated, probably 500 books.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:37]: And that's maybe one fifth of the number of books that I own. My mentors are books, audiobooks, physical books, Kindle books. I read three to five books a week. And for me, I am a little bit of an autodidact, and I'd rather just not necessarily from the horse's mouth, but from their fingertips, delve into what anyone, from Ray Dalio to Tim Ferriss, like I mentioned, to other health icons to Mark Andreas, and just all these people who have built successful businesses. I really have used books and to a certain extent, podcasts and audiobooks, as my mentor, if you want to call them that. And then secondarily, you know, I have an incredible team. Up until the point I hired my first VA, I did almost everything myself.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:29]: I coded all my own websites, I fixed my own computers. I did all my own pay per click advertising. I did all my own media production. I did everything. And I prided myself upon that. I was like a renaissance man. But fortunately, there's a book by Gary Keller called The One Thing, about focusing on the one thing or the few things at least, that you do best. Yeah, I've certainly learned that by hiring people who are very, very good at what they do, whether it's the guy who specializes in membership programs and creation of websites that I brought on to run the Life Network to the guy who's the CEO of Kion.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:08]: Both of them are very good friends of mine, I typically build from the top down. So when I have an idea for a new company or I'm building a company, I'll first hire an operations manager, someone in a COO-esque role, have them build the team based on my specifications. Typically they'll become a CEO eventually and then bring a COO and a CFO in underneath them and then branch out to multiple sectors of the company after that. So like for Ben Greenfield Life, for example, we have a partnerships division, a social division, an editorial division, a podcast division, HR, tech and IT. And then just like my personal executive assistant team. And each of those divisions has a manager. Each of those managers typically have anywhere from one to three people working underneath them. And that's all run by a, by a COO who operates in close conjunction with the CEO.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:10]: And then I'm just operating typically as like the founder or the spokesperson. So, yeah, you know, so for me, I use mentor advice less and less these days because I'm just hiring people who already know what they're doing. So I can stick to, as you alluded to earlier, Tim, you know what I know I can do best.

Tim Smith [00:24:29]: For budding entrepreneurs, one thing that is often a difficult transition is to move from the chief cook and bottle washer role, you know, to the manager role and ultimately a chief executive role. And to do all of those, you know, to grow into each role, well, is a hard thing to do. And I think entrepreneurs, many of them, struggle from one level of that to the next because somebody who comes up with a great idea for something isn't necessarily the best one to execute at all and grow.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:04]: Right. And I also tend to, you know, I'll tend to get caught up in micromanaging or questioning if I could do better something my do something better myself. And then even though I'm over this now for a long time, you know, I'd do something myself, like create my own website. And then got asked somebody to do a website for me and they'd say, well, you know, I can do this for whatever, 15, $20,000. And I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, dude, that would take me like four days to do myself. And that happened so many times that, you know, it took me a long time to not question whether or not I was getting screwed by not doing something myself and hiring somebody else to do it. And since then, you know, I've learned that that all comes down to hiring decisions and getting competitive bids and things like that. But yeah, I certainly have a tendency to want to do it all myself and outsourcing is something that I'm now teaching my sons pretty intensively.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:55]: For example, they've got social media accounts for their company, Fried Pickle Games, but neither of them have any of the apps on their phone because I told them, hey, hire a social media manager from the get go so you don't have to spend a bunch of time getting distracted on there. Just send them what you want to post, they'll post for you. And it just saves you a lot of time and heartache doing it yourself and also having something highly distracting that you're managing.

Tim Smith [00:26:20]: I have a partner in my business for over 20 years and he's a billionaire entrepreneur. And one of the pieces of advice he gave me early on was, Tim, just hire great people and let them do what they do. And that's been the best advice that I, you know, that I ever got.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:39]: Sounds, sounds easy on paper, but it's hard to find great people. That's the issue is finding an A player versus a B or C player.

Tim Smith [00:26:45]: And you also have to build the cash flow to the point where it can afford those people. And so it's a, you know, it's not the simplest thing. Anyway, enough of me, go ahead.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:54]: That's also, you know, just, just in case people wonder, that's also where equity comes in, right? You can invest someone over four years, you know, pay them a little bit less to give them equity in the company and that allows you to scale and still have some amount of cash flow. So that's something I've done with pretty much all my companies is for those higher level C suite positions. You allow for a certain amount of vesting which can help out quite a bit versus just paying a straight up salary.

Tim Smith [00:27:21]: Yep, great point. Thank you. Hal, go ahead to your text.

Hallie Smith [00:27:24]: Yeah, well, I would love to ask about your time management. I know that now at this point you've, you know, outsourced a lot and delegated where you can. So I'm curious how you manage your time. I. Okay, I would love to hear how you managed your time when you were doing everything and then now how you manage your time now that you are more zoned into your specific abilities and strengths and have other people doing the other things.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:53]: Well, answer the first part of question is easy. I didn't like so many people do I have a checklist, right? The ever expanding checklist and I'd check off as many items as I could one day, whatever didn't get done spilled into the next day. Then you just wake up and go into Mad checklisting mode. Often working in your business, not on your business, all day long. Rinse, wash and repeat. That's something that I used to do. Now what does it look like? Well, I've got big five order of priorities.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:24]: God comes first, then my spouse and my kids. And the reason kids come after spouse is if you and your spouse don't have your oxygen masks on and you aren't connected, then eventually the family's going to get torn apart. So spouse comes first and kids, then health. Right? My, my body, my brain, my longevity. Because I don't want to be some, you know, old, wealthy, you know, 60 year old CEO who can't even enjoy their wealth because they've got, you know, buggy knees and can't swing a golf club or whatever. Not that I like golfing. It probably pickleball for me. And then comes business, right? Because if your business is the first priority, it'll eat you alive.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:03]: There will always be emails to tend to and tasks to create. And when you get to a million, you want to reach 10 million and then that won't satisfy and you want to reach 100 and that won't satisfy and you want to reach a billion and the business will eat you alive if you don't set your priorities in order. So for me, I'm usually up sometime between 4:30 and 5:30am I always have some kind of a sermon or a spiritual text downloaded to my phone so I don't have to turn my phone on. And for the first hour of the day I'm tooling around, taking my supplements, drinking water, stretching, foam rolling, jumping up and down on a trampoline, whatever, while I simultaneously listen to something spiritually uplifting as I kind of prepare my body for the day. Then around 6:30 or so I'm into the office where I'll spend about a half hour just reviewing the schedule for the day. I've only got one email inbox that I have to check. My team basically takes all emails, puts the ones that I actually need to see into one folder. So I have like a newsletters folder and a church folder and a family folder.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:10]: But I know there's one folder that I have to check, so I checked that one just to make sure there's no fires to put out. And I also have my phone on at that point, but it's in do not disturb mode that I've tweaked so that I'll only get messages from VIPs, like the CEOs of my company, my family, et cetera so I'll spend like a half hour just kind of making sure there's no virus to put out and making sure I know what to expect the rest of the day. And then we have a big family huddle. At 7am our family gathers. We do prayer, Bible reading, we talk about the day, if people have any blockers, how people slept, what's going on that day, what time dinner's at and who's bringing what for dinner, and where people are going, who's got the cars? And then we kind of end with a big family clap and hug like a football team. And then we're off to the rest of the day. Typically, after family devotions, around 7:30, I'll take my bathroom break, and by around 8 or 8:15, me and my sons are in the gym where we'll typically work out for about an hour. Sometimes it's a workout, sometimes it's sauna and cold plunge, sometimes it's some kind of kettlebell routine, sometimes traditional weightlifting, but usually done dusted, cooled down, and in the kitchen making a smoothie by around 9:30.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:31]: My team knows to put nothing on my schedule until 9:45, right? So typically I've got a team huddle with my Ben Greenfield Life team and Life Network team around 9:45 and then podcasts deep creative work writing. If I happen to be in book writing mode, all of that occurs between about 9:45am and 1:30pm so and I'm working with, you know, typically besides a few breaks here and there, notifications off deep work mode, total focus. And then around 1:30, I take a lunch break and I'll eat lunch for about a half hour while I, you know, I still work during lunch, but it's like, you know, watch this YouTube video about how to set up a certain product I'm testing or, you know, I'm listening to a podcast from somebody who I'm preparing to interview later that week. I don't do actual stressful work or meetings during lunch, but typically lunch is wrapped up around 2. Because I get up so early, I'll usually duck out for anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes after lunch to do like a nap or siesta or just read quietly for a little while. Just kind of reboot my battery in the middle of the day, which is clutch. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they burn the candle on both ends. They pride themselves upon getting up early, but they don't have a family.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:51]: They're not going to bed early enough to be able to get enough sleep. So I Sleep six to seven hours a night because I get up so early and by the time I get my sons to bed and hang out with my wife, I'm typically asleep around 10:15 or so. So that afternoon siesta session is kind of non negotiable. And similarly my team knows, hey, unless it's something super urgent, don't schedule anything on Ben's calendar from 2 until about 3:30, which allows me to relax, get back into the day, check my emails, make sure I'm ready to start the second half of the day. And then most of the afternoon is reactive work, right? Phone calls, emails, not the deep productive stuff that I know I do better in the morning. But more of the reactive activities are what I'm doing in the afternoon a lot of times just walking on my treadmill like I am now or outside on the phone with people. And my goal is usually to have most of that wrapped up by around 6:15, right? So I've got another three, three and a half hours of work in the afternoon. Around 6:15 I'll jump into something fun.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:53]: Ping pong with my sons, playing guitar, playing some yard games like bocce ball or cornhole, you know, one night a week I've got tennis league so I'll go to that. And then most evenings of the week we're meeting again as a family, 7pm sharp at the dinner table for a big family dinner. So we play games, we sing songs, we pray together, we hang out, we talk. And that's usually until about 8:30 or so. And you know, by 8:30 we're kind of cleaning up the kitchen. We've had a great time. I will usually go back into work mode for about a half hour after that just to make sure, you know, there's no kind of like the beginning of the day, right? I make sure there's no fires to put out at the end of the day, no last minute things that have come up that I don't want to not know about until the next morning. And then by nine, you know, phone's off, works off, and we're meeting in the bedroom, usually one of my son's bedroom for evening Bible reading, prayer, we memorize some scripture, we talk about the day and then usually my sons are in bed by 9:30.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:58]: My wife and I are in the bedroom around 9:30, 9:45. And you know, sometimes it's lovemaking, sometimes it's me reading a book, sometimes it's just hanging out and talking. And then usually lights out around 10-10:15. And the day starts again the next morning. So that's kind of how I chunk things and manage time now.

Hallie Smith [00:35:18]: Yeah, it sounds like you have found a way to optimize your energy while also prioritizing the things that matter the most to you. I'm curious, did you do a lot of experimenting with different ways to structure your day before you got there? Because it sounds like you've got such a well structured and personalized routine that is very like. Obviously it sounds like, you know, you move things around when you need to, or you have this one night, you have that one night. But I'm wondering like how long it took you to really reach a real routine.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:52]: Well, dirty secret is routines are always fluctuating, right? They're always moving around, there's always something changing. But I can tell you that my routine is based on principles that I've become aware of over the years. Interviewing successful entrepreneurs, reading books on circadian rhythmicity and ayurvedic principles of digestion and how a day should progress and when the body does productive work best and reactive work best. Based on those principles, I would say the main themes that no matter how my routine looks are present is A morning solo time for spiritual work and preparing the body and the health for the day. B morning family meeting C productive work during my peak productivity hours. D some kind of afternoon reboot session. E reactive work in the afternoons. F some kind of family dinner family meeting at the end of the day and then that's bookended with those couple of half hour check in sessions where I'm making sure that I know what to expect for the day if it's in the morning or for the next day if it's in the evening.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:09]: And those are themes that are present no matter what, no matter how the routine fluctuates. And yeah, it certainly has been developed over the years. And if you were to ask me this question ten years from now, it might be completely different. I might have 5am morning pickleball league or something like that.

Hallie Smith [00:37:28]: I think that's a really helpful breakdown for people who have similar values but don't know where to start or are struggling to structure their lives. Because obviously when you are an entrepreneur, you are responsible for your own success.

Tim Smith [00:37:43]: And I think so many people live life in reactive mode rather than taking control of their schedule and saying this is how I'm going to live my life and the business has to fit in it and.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:55]: Right.

Tim Smith [00:37:56]: You know.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:57]: Yeah, unless you have someone like triaging your email inbox, that's a very dangerous place because it's essentially a giant bucket full of people asking you to do things you hadn't planned on doing, you know?

Tim Smith [00:38:11]: Right, Right. Well, and just taking the time to review the useless stuff and make sure it's useless. I mean, just all of that.

Tim Smith [00:38:19]: So it's really.

Tim Smith [00:38:20]: It's awesome. Let me. Let me ask you this. You actually, I think, well, first of all, you just gave us an entire class in time management, so, like, that could be an episode unto itself, what we just talked about. But looking back now on your career and the business choices you've made and good things, bad things, et cetera, what would you say you've done right? And what would you say. I'm sorry? What would you say you've done wrong?

Tim Smith [00:38:51]: No, no, no. Okay.

Tim Smith [00:38:52]: What would you say you've done right? And what would you do differently?

Ben Greenfield [00:38:56]: Differently is easy. I would have outsourced and hired and built a team earlier. Much earlier. Right. I've just learned in a very profound way how much you can scale and exponentially multiply yourself by hiring others and ditching the scarcity mindset that you can't afford to hire others because very shortly after hiring others, if you're delegating properly, the returns justify any spend on those hirings. So that's what I would do differently, as far as what I've done right. Is consistency. I am a creature of consistency, and I don't get a lot of FOMO when I hear, hey, this is a great opportunity, and you got to build this in the AI sector.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:41]: And this is the latest crypto thing you can do. Like I mentioned, two times a week, release a podcast for 17 years, every day, work out for an hour every morning, meet with the family every evening, have family dinner once a month, take one of my sons on a date, everything I do. And this might sound like it doesn't allow you to get into creative flow or it's too rigid of a lifestyle, but I find that my schedule and my calendar and keeping that very organized allows me to keep coming back day after day after day. I rarely have any marathon weeks where I'm working 90 hours. I rarely have any recovery weeks where I'm working 20 hours. For years and years, since I was 14 years old, besides some of the years in College, I average 50 hours a week of work, and I rarely skip a day, if ever, besides a Sabbath day, which is Sunday. And even then in the evenings, I'm preparing the calendar and the schedule for the upcoming week. I would say the biggest thing I've done right is I keep coming back day after day after day.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:51]: And the reason that I can do that comes back full circle to how you introduced me, Tim, and that is that I have a very distinct purpose. I know what's getting me out of bed in the morning. I know that I love to learn and educate myself, not just for the purpose of learning cool stuff, but for the purposes of teaching other people in a manner that empowers them to have more energy and make a bigger impact in this world with their lives. And if I could name a secondary purpose, it's also that I want to build legacy. I want to build a family that is successful generationally, and I want to equip my sons to make an a bigger impact in the world than I've made. And if you have a big enough why, then you'll keep coming back day after day after day. Whether it's pulling weeds in the garden or doing a podcast. I think a lot of people think, hey, the work ends at some point, right? It doesn't.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:44]: Why doesn't matter. Right back to the Christian idea. In Genesis, God created the earth and he put man and woman in it to tend the garden and to work. God didn't even create a perfect universe void of work. In a perfect universe, before Adam and Eve ate the apple or whatever it was and got tempted and all before all that, we were supposed to just be working, putting our hands to use, mimicking the creator and creating things. And so you shouldn't think it's bad that you got to keep coming back over and over again day after day to plug up holes. It's like brushing your teeth. You don't just brush your teeth once for 10 hours and call it good every single day.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:28]: If you're doing the right thing, you brush your teeth maybe a couple times a day. It's not like you ever get to a point where you're like, well, my teeth are clean now, so I can stop brushing. No, it's like every single day, you come back and the work will never stop. Trust me, even after you retire, you'll probably have. If you retire, you'll still have an urge to work. But as long as you have a strong purpose and a strong why and your work in some way is allowing you to do what it is that God put you on this planet to do in the first place, then, yeah, I personally never get tired of it.

Hallie Smith [00:42:58]: I would love to hear, and I know that you are helping your sons build their own businesses. I would love to hear any advice that you have for new entrepreneurs, people who have entrepreneurial spirit and are not sure where to start or anything that you shared with your sons so far to help ensure that they become successful as they continue.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:18]: As far as the base foundation, it comes down to the concept of ikigai in Japan, the idea of purpose for life or plan de vida. I believe in Latin, but the idea is you need to figure out first via personality typing, personality assessments, asking family members, asking friends, going through questionnaires like Enneagram or strengths Finders. There's even a great book called Ikiguy 2.0. I think that one is free or not prohibitively expensive. It's on the Slow Co website, Slow Co. And you identify your strengths and what it is you're good at. And then kind of like a flywheel, you then go through another series of questions that identify how it is you can take what it is that you're good at and help people in some manner with that. Because it always comes down to giving people value.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:15]: So you don't ask yourself how to make money with this. You ask yourself, how do I make value for other people with this? And the money will follow the value. And then after you've identified that, then you get into the logistics. So how do I build an actual business around this concept? And then after that, then it comes down to, okay, so how can I multiply, scale, replicate exponentially build from what I've built at this point, whether it's multiple businesses or expanding into other categories with your business. So my sons, they love to draw, they love to tell stories, they love to write and they love games and they really love family dinners and family. And they realize that they could take all those skills and create games Also on their 10 year roadmap is to take those games and create graphic novels, cartoons, merchandise, T shirts, shoes, et cetera. But it's all based on them identifying, hey, package all of our strengths together. This idea of creating games has a lot of promise and also lends itself well to scalability across a wider variety of skus that go beyond gaming.

Hallie Smith [00:45:26]: I love what you said about it's not about finding a way to make money, it's about how you can help people and bring value. I think that that's something that people miss sometimes when they're thinking about, you know, how they can. Because obviously we're all focused on ourselves. Like unfortunately we have to think about our needs, right? And so people are thinking, okay, well how do I bring money in so that I can, you know, cover this and cover that? But I think that it's really, really insightful to start thinking how can you help people? Because when you can offer value, you're also coming from a different place energetically. Right. Of not like, please buy my services, please do this because I need the money. It's like, I can help you with this. It feels more genuine.

Hallie Smith [00:46:10]: And I believe in energy. I believe that that transfers over, you know, whether it's someone you're meeting in person or you know, the way that you market something online, you've never even met the person who's looking at your product. So thank you so much for sharing that. That's really, really.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:27]: Yeah. And just, just don't take it too far of an extreme. Right. Some people will do that and just be like, oh, you know, I'm just going to great value. And you know, there's hippie woo woo, you know, individual out there spreading love, but they're a horrible businessman because they're too nervous or too scared or too much of a people pleaser to ask for a sale.

Hallie Smith [00:46:42]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:42]: Like my, my MO is create as incredible. You create the most incredible content I can that's highly educational and informative and entertaining and helps a lot of people and makes their lives better whether or not they buy anything. But then if you notice, most of the content I produce makes your life better but also gives you an offer towards the end of it to actually purchase something, whether it's a book or a supplement or coaching. So I asked for a sale, but the way I think about it when I'm creating content is I want this to improve someone's life whether or not they buy anything at the end of it. If it's an article about NAD, I want them to know about fermented foods and sauna and exercise and how NAD works and how to keep it supported and what to combine it with. And yeah, there's an offer at the end, hey, if you want to actually use NAD is in supplemental form. Here's some versions that I like, here's how to buy them. But I don't lead with the sale or even lead with the idea of the sale.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:45]: I lead with the idea of value.

Tim Smith [00:47:47]: Yeah, awesome. Thank you for that, Ben. And you led us right into what is our final question for you, which is how can people find you, your product lines, your consulting, all of the things that you offer. Where can they find you in terms of websites and or social media?

Ben Greenfield [00:48:08]: Sure. I mean Google GPT, however people are searching these days, I'm not hard to find. There's a lot of Ben Greenfields in the fitness and health world out there. My personal website is BenGreenfieldLife.com, the brand new membership website I mentioned is GolifeNetwork.com yes, my supplements are at getkion.com that's K-I O N and most of my handles on social are Ben Greenfield or Ben Greenfield Fitness.

Tim Smith [00:48:35]: Awesome.

Tim Smith [00:48:35]: Great.

Tim Smith [00:48:35]: Thank you so much.

Hallie Smith [00:48:37]: Yes Ben, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I feel inspired. I hope other people are also feeling similarly inspired to go out and chase what feels good to them and how they can bring value to other people too.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:50]: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com in compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:00]: And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.