The Membership Freedom Podcast

I am no doctor and I don’t play one on T.V. I do have a very sloppy signature that has gotten people to ask if I was a doctor, though. So what I’ll bring today, as we wrap up this topic of Entrepreneurial Health, is based on the help I received, the research I did and the results that came from it.    I don’t want you to ever suffer from adrenal fatigue. It was the only time in my life that I felt like I was truly dying. Often, being faced with a desperate situation is the catalyst to make the hard changes. The changes that I made were not ones that I was interested in, or inspired to do when things were good. It was only when the pain was so great that I reluctantly made big changes.    So what did I do to turn my adrenal fatigue around and create what became a much more balanced, healthy and calmer life?   1- Eliminate added sugar and bread from my diet. Doing this sent many of my friends into a tizzy. The phrase, “I could never do that” was uttered more than I could count. You would if you felt like you were dying, I responded. I was challenged by my nutritionist to cut out all added sugar- meaning the only sugar I would consume would come from fruit- and to also cut out any bread from my diet. Do you know how hard it is for an Italian to not eat bread? And one with a giant sweet tooth? I could eat ice cream after breakfast, lunch and dinner and never get bored with it.    But I need to cut them both out- cold turkey? Cold turkey without the stuffing, since there will be no bread. I was asked to eliminate it for two weeks to see how it went. She then moved the goalposts on me and said it really would have to be more like two months. I’m not sure if it was a bait and switch tactic, but it worked. I wouldn’t have signed on for two months even feeling like death. But two weeks? Even I could do that.    What was remarkable was that after two weeks, I didn’t miss it. I felt a little proud that I actually possessed a little willpower. After a month, I was shocked to see that the sugar cravings were mostly gone. I also noticed that my taste buds were beginning to change. When I would have an orange- my fruit of choice- it began to taste sweeter. Almost like candy. It was almost like all of the artificial sugar dulled my taste buds towards the real stuff.    After six months, I fully embraced the change. Somewhere along the way, I decided that I would go a full year without any added sugar or bread. It was during this time when I realized how much societal pressures bleed into our decisions, even unconsciously. I didn’t even think about sugar or bread unless we went out to eat. It was then that I realized how unhealthy our culture really is. I had to accept that 90% of the items on the menu I could not get because of either added sugar or bread. On top of that, it was interesting to see the reactions from others. When going out to dinner with friends, I became a bit of a sideshow to everyone's curiosity and even their judgement.    I would get peppers with questions. Often, in a dismissive way. Condescending even. Alcohol was one of the things I gave up, which led to even greater scorn. I finally began speaking up, addressing the fact that I never even brought up the sugar or bread- it was only discussed by what I chose to order. From there, because I was different, there was this need to poke at me like I was some type of science experiment. I’m not questioning what you are eating (even though I probably had more of a reason to do so), so why are you questioning me?   That showed me how societal norms and peer pressure often help keep people unhealthy.    After a year, I felt physically better than ever, a side effect that wasn’t even the goal with cutting these things out. I lost weight, became leaner and even noticed changes in me face by reducing the inflammation. The mental side was harder. We were trying to reverse years of apparent stress that I never addressed, and reverse it after an adrenal crash. Just so you know, it’s much harder to repair your adrenals after a big crash. So I beg you not to let it get there.    Cutting out sugar and bread was a life changing decision for me. If I didn’t make those changes, the road that I was on was a dire one. Like is often the case, when we get healthier, we slip back into our old patterns. I did as well. After years of letting sugar creep back in, I got focused enough to do it again. On my 49th birthday, I decided to cut sugar out again for a full year. And after a fabulous, peanut butter ice cream sundae on my 50th birthday, I am once again going sugar free for the next year.    I did many things and made many changes to overcome my adrenal fatigue and become healthy again. Elizabeth and I set much more focused sleep goals. We invested in proper supplements. I intentionally got more sunshine, more movement, meditation as well as more breaks in my work. But the thing that changed my life for the better- and seemed to turn it all around- were the changes that I made in my diet.    If diving deeper into the topic of adrenal fatigue, food choices, or any of the areas of change that I made are interesting to you, please email me at vincent@totallifefreedom.com for any potential new topics for the podcast!

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's interview with Shawn Stevenson. Stevenson was instrumental in getting my health back after a severe bout of adrenal fatigue. My wife Elizabeth and I found his podcast, The Model Health Show, as I was pushing the boundaries on my health. My diet had become predictably unhealthy. Not in a dramatic way, and often, that can be the worst way. We can lull ourselves into thinking everything is just fine.    In reality, though, we have become just a little more tired. We’re getting just a little less sleep. Our clothes are fitting just a little too tight.    We don’t worry about the extra hours we are putting in. I have bills to pay and mouths to feed, right? It’s all honorable. How can you succeed without hard work? But it’s easy to run past the boundaries when you don’t know where they are. It’s even easier to stray when you don’t have any set boundaries.    Looking back, I had few.    And it hit me. And hit me hard.    It seemed to happen overnight. I learned later that it was years in the making. One evening, I stayed up way too late watching YouTube videos. One led to another, and somewhere along the way I began watching a few documentaries that got me worried. A few more, and I was panicked. The next morning, Elizabeth woke up next to a different husband. I remember lying in bed, feeling like everything was falling apart. She had to laugh because the night before, everything was just fine and dandy.    Although I knew that our world hadn’t changed overnight, something in my body did. With the stress that I put on my mind, something seemed to be fighentingly differently. Worry took over as I literally felt it in my heart. It was like it was shaking. What was so hard was even attempting to explain this to anyone else. How could everyone else seem so calm? How could they seem so stress free when I couldn’t stop shaking?   That night, I slept less than three hours. That pattern continued for more than sixteen months. I would finally fall asleep around 11pm. But like clockwork, I would wake up in a panic a few hours later. My heart would be racing. My chest would be pounding. I’d look at the clock.    1:58.   The next night, the same thing would happen. It became so common that when my eyes would open, I would guess the time without even looking at the clock.    “2:01,” I would say to myself. I was spot on. For months, I could predict the time within one minute of the actual time.    It got so bad that I would go downstairs and sit with my head on the dining room table, wrapped up in a combination of depression, worry and anxiety. Elizabeth would walk downstairs, asking what time I woke up. I’d explain that I only slept for an hour.    The burden that this took on our family was immense. Elizabeth essentially had to be a single mom for more than a year, while adding a nervous, adult child to the mix. Every day, I would wake up exhausted, I’d grab a blanket and drop onto the couch. I was tired before the day began. My body battled with each other- the exhaustion would fight against the anxiety. And it left me battered and bruised.    After six months of stubbornness, I finally went to get bloodwork done to see what was going on. It turned out that I had adrenal fatigue. Are you curious what adrenal fatigue is? So was I. Essentially, it is a group of symptoms that occur in people who have been under mental, emotional or physical stress. I will link to some articles to help. Eventually, it makes life too hard to handle. With too much long term stress, our adrenal glands can’t keep up and eventually give out.    Between a combination of a poor diet and lack of boundaries with my work time, it shut me down. I knew I needed to make big changes while on a weekend walk with my son AndrewI. In bright sunshine next to a kid with boundless energy, I could not keep my eyes open. That night, with the help of a nutritionist, I made a major change in my diet- eliminating added sugar- and began to turn things around. It would be another year before I felt like I was past it, and if I’m being totally honest, all of these years later, I believe I still feel the effects of it today.    In tomorrow's episode, I will discuss what I did to recover from my adrenal fatigue, things that you can do if you are experiencing it and- maybe most importantly- what to do so you don’t experience this. If this can help anyone change so that they don’t go through the torture that i did, my work here would be a success.    Join me tomorrow for the final segment of this theme on Entrepreneurial Health!

People often ask me what it is that I do. I’ve never been an ‘elevator pitch’ type of person. Once, I blurted out a quick line. I help lonely entrepreneurs. It was meant to be a joke but the person nodded, leaned in and sounded extremely curious. She mentioned that there is such a need for that. I said it jokingly. I had no idea how close to the truth that statement really was.   Helping lonely entrepreneurs was never what I set out to do. Eighteen years ago, when I first began planting the seeds to leave my career as an employee and build that life of freedom through entrepreneurship, the idea of it being lonely was the furthest idea from my mind. In fact, I would have gladly taken a large dose of loneliness, being that I was so tired of the politics of the newsroom and everything that came with the madness of the office that I worked in.    The thought of being alone with my thoughts was enticing. Nobody telling me what to do. Nobody telling me where to go. Silence. Heavenly silence. We’re still around a decade away from being empty nesters but I would guess that it’s like that parent that is overwhelmed by the noise and the mess of raising children, who desperately wants quiet. They long for the days where they can wake up in silence, sip their morning coffee and enjoy a peaceful breakfast without nerf darts being shot into their toast while children run around screaming.    And then they get there. The kids are on their own. They have their quiet. The quiet that they have wanted for years. But it’s not exactly what they expected. As much as they value their newfound freedom, they miss some of the madness. They actually miss the noise. Most days.    You don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone.    For lonely entrepreneurs, it’s not the same feeling as your kids growing and leaving the house. But so often, there is a void that is left when we don’t have co-workers any longer no matter how toxic, mundane and aggravating as it all was. Retired pro athletes have told me the same. They don’t miss the game but  they miss hanging out with the guys in the locker room.    So what happens to that void that was left? Where do we fill it? And so many of us fill it in the easiest, most convenient way available.    We go online.    Now don’t even get me started on the Metaverse. Call me out of touch, call me old, call me whatever name you want. I have no interest in living in a virtual world with goggles on. I never even liked wearing goggles at the pool. But as we slip deeper into these virtual worlds (many would say that we are already doing so in many ways), it has led to an ease of convenience and a plethora of negative effects.    Heavy use of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have widely been associated with feelings of isolation and depression. In a study by Brian Primack, the director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh, it turns out that people who spend more than two hours a day on social media felt twice as isolated as those who were only on for thirty minutes.    Whether it’s because we spend so much more time online or we feel isolated because we see others connected and connecting in ways that we aren’t that make us so lonely, but either way, we are sociatally feeling more lonely and isolated.    And there is no disputing that feelings of loneliness in the United States has reached an all time high. And the more we believe we are connected online, without the real benefits that come with true connection, is pulling us deeper into this trap. Lack of social connection heightens health risks to the same level as smoking fifteen cigarettes per day or having an alcoholic use disorder, according to Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University.    And entrepreneurs are especially vulnerable to this. We control our time more. We have less rules to follow or people to answer to. We enjoy our work, so much so that we often have no idea how much time we spend online, on social media or in front of screens. But we have to protect ourselves from the isolation. It’s simply become too easy to stay in our homes. It’s become too normalized to order online, connect virtually and slowly begin to shun real human connection.    All of this is making us more isolated. With that isolation comes a laundry list of health issues that we don’t see coming. Socially isolated people have a harder time dealing with stressful situations. Do you think that has had an effect over the past two years? They have a harder time processing information, retaining memories and making decisions.    The dream of entrepreneurial freedom did not include the trap of isolation. Yet more than ever, that trap has caught way too many. Whether you are working towards this life or are deeply into it, developing habits to combat isolation is going to be one of the greatest changes you can make for your health- both mentally and physically. 

It felt like a screwdriver was twisting through my temples. Not just one temple. This invisible screwdriver went though both ends of my skull and seemed to have the ability to dig in above my eyes as well, into the area beneath my eyebrows. My in-laws were visiting from Ohio, and up until that point, it was a fantastic time. But the pain struck fast, and it struck hard.    It was confusing because for so long, I never dealt with any type of headaches. But over the past few years, they have crept in with more regularity. Even so, this was different. The pain was unbearable. It was one of those headaches that makes you wonder how people that deal with consistent migraines even make it. Either I’ve become soft and a big baby or this really was a pain that was hard to content with.    I stumbled off into another room, trying desperately to get away from any and all noises. The only sound I craved was the sound of silence. What was astonishing was the level of sensitivity in my brain from this mental intruder. I can spend hours in this room, working away with all sorts of noises from the outside, including the loud impression that Dylan makes of a garbage truck. None of it slows me down for a moment. But when this type of headache moves in, every noise is like a needle shooting through my skull. The worst, oddly enough, is someone doing the dishes. The clanking, banging and sorting is my modern version of chinese water torture.    The pain lasted a few days. Everything was still sensitive, and the agony seemed to enter directly through my eyes. Were my eyes giving out? Are my contacts failing me? Is something psychologically wrong with me? All of those thoughts entered my pounding head.    What I didn’t consider was Computer Vision Syndrome. Computer vision what, you ask? Yeah, I asked the same thing. I’d never heard of it before. But you search for odd things when your head feels like it is in the crosshairs in a war between two armies.    Apparently, a more common term for this is digital eye strain. Ahhhh. Okay. I’m listening. My temples are pounding, but I’m listening. Your eyes are always working. But did you know that your eyes work harder when you are looking at a screen? I didn’t. I also didn;t know that letters on a digital screen are more challenging for our eyes to read compared to the printed page because the letters are not as defined, they aren’t as sharp and the glare and reflections from the screen makes it more challenging for our eyes.    If you add in any previous eye problems that you already have, that will increase any discomfort that you will feel. This was all sounding uncomfortably accurate. As I laid there in an awkward position, I also learned that looking at a screen in an awkward position can lead to pain in the shoulder, back and neck, the ladder which can also contribute to the worsening of a headache.    Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? Or did they, but I was distracted while on a screen?   Either way, this wasn’t something I could ignore any longer. As I sat there feeling like death warmed over, I had to change something. Not only was it affecting my work, because if being on a screen causes pain, I obviously had to do less. But it was now barging into my family time. I would finish work many days, excited to be with Elizabeth and the boys. But the noise became so unbearable that I then needed to go on my own for quiet.    This was not the life of freedom that we were striving for.    As is always the case with growth, great pain comes with valuable solutions. As amazing as all of this technology is- tech that affords us the option to create businesses from anywhere, connect instantaneously across the globe and have virtually anything we want in a short time delivered right to us- it comes with some fairly major pitfalls. We will discuss isolation and sleep issues in the next two episodes, but the physical detriment to our eyes, our brains and our systems is a realy thing.    And like any new invention that begins with almost all positives with little discussion on the downsides, we are reaching a maturity level here where a major disruption like Computer Vision Syndrome needs to be examined. Examined by healthy, well rested eyes.    So whether you have experienced what it feels like to be dying a painful death through your head or you can see how this really can add up to possibly take you there, taking preventative measures to ward off The Angel Of (Head) Death should be as common as “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” adage from a half century ago.    Some simple action steps that you can take immediately.    1- Utilize the 20-20-20 Rule that we discussed in yesterday's episode.    2- Keep your computer screen 15-20 degrees lower than your eyes   3- Utilize blue light coatings, tints or glasses to reduce the amount of blue light that your body sees.    4- Use the Pomodoro Technique, which is focused work for forty two to forty five minutes and then taking a fifteen to eighteen minute break away from all screens.    5- When taking a break, get outside, get movement and get sunshine. Not only will that improve your physical health and mental health, but it will also make you more creative, productive and happy with your work.      Tomorrow, we will discuss another health issue that is increasingly prevalent in the world of entrepreneurship and the solopreneurs of the world- The Land of Isolation.     

When we talk about health for entrepreneurs, there are quite literally hundreds of directions in which we can go. Finding information that is important about the health of entrepreneurs to share is not the problem. Choosing which direction to take is the challenge. So this week, I am going to go in a direction that you may not expect. I’m going to weave a storyline that addresses topics that we see touched upon often but hopefully making this a series and a combo will make it come together and have a deeper impact for you.    We discussed in the previous lesson that entrepreneurs, for the most part, enjoy the work that they do. Why is that more common in entrepreneurs than employees? First, they have more options to choose the work that they will do. Why would you choose to create a business that you don’t enjoy? And if you don’t enjoy it, as an entrepreneur, you have many more options to pivot and shift the work away that you don’t enjoy and spend your time on the work that you do like doing. You can hire to outsource the tedious tasks or figure out how to eliminate what isn’t important. We keep going back to that one word- options. Business owners are usually less afraid of risk so they might even just start over with a new business.    But when you like your work, you like to work. But unlike what work looked like for previous generations, much of our work done as business owners occurs in front of a screen. Even if you do your best to avoid social media, set up time blocks or use Parkinson's Law to be more efficient, we are still looking at a screen during much of that time.    So if we address two factors- 1- business owners work sixty three percent more than employees and 2- much of that work is done in front of screens- we see that we are heading down a dangerous path that we warn our children of, but we don’t heed that warning for ourselves.    We (hopefully) guide our children to not spend too much time staring at screens. But do we stop to consider how much time we spend on screens, and what that amount of screen time does to us physically and mentally? Unfortunately, this is all so new in the grand scope. According to Oxford University researchers Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski, the science being used to figure out how much screen time affects us is not solid, and it covers too wide of a range of people in too short of a period of time. Even Tim Cook, the CEO for Apple, has stated that we spend too much time on our devices.    The funny thing is, we use all of this amazing technology to become more productive. But by working to become more productive, we spend more and more time looking to do so that we actually become incredibly less productive, more sedentary and causing great strain to our bodies and our minds.    I got off of a series of zoom calls a few weeks ago and, after turning away from the computer, felt a dizziness that was becoming a little too common after calls. It was almost like I was drugged but it wasn’t a drug that anyone would have taken voluntarily. There was a dizziness that made no sense. Of course, I went online to see what the issue might be. This is a funny, ironic little world that we created, isn’t it? It was now so common to be on these calls that I never thought there might be consequences that come from staring for long periods of time at two pieces of polarized glass with a liquid crystal type material sandwiched between them. That sounds natural, doesn’t it?   The average American spends more than eleven hours looking at screens per day. Do you think this could be affecting our health in a multitude of ways? Now, at this point, you might be getting a little frustrated at me. You might be thinking, Vin. I’m not some schmo scrolling Youtube and Instagram all day wasting time. (We know you are a little, by the way). I run a business and I need to be on the computer otherwise things will not get done. And, guess what. I believe you. I’m no different. I also believe I don’t waste time online (I’m lying like you are) and I also know that I need to be on the computer to get work done. I mean, I’m writing this on a computer and unless you printed this out, you are reading on one as well.    So what do we do? Can we be more effective and spend less time online? Absolutely. That is classic 80/20, but it doesn’t happen immediately. Those are habits that we need to implement, and disciplines that we need to create. But is there anything that we can do right now to make an improvement? After my dizzy spell, I looked at a screen to get an answer that helped me improve my health while on screens.    The American Optometric Association suggests a 20-20-20 rule. I read it, utilized it, and, amazingly, it began to work. Here’s how it goes. For every twenty minutes that you spend staring at a screen, take a twenty second break to look at something twenty feet away to give your eyes a break. That one little suggestion gave me a boundary and a framework that I didn’t utilize before and it helped reduce the strain that was being put on my mind, and my eyes. It has allowed me to implement a few other practices, like looking out of the window while I’m giving an answer to someone online. Not only does it allow me to unlock my eyes from the screen for a bit but I also found that my answers were crisper and more thought out because I allowed my mind to focus clearer by taking my eyes off of the screen.    The problem with any type of comfort is that the problems that come from it sneak up so slowly that when they arrive, we don’t see it as a problem. It’s that way with bad habits. They don’t happen immediately and we don’t feel the effects right away. But compounded over time, they cause great pain and discomfort and we are so used to them, we don’t have the ability to recognize where the pain comes from.    And speaking of pain, tomorrow we are going to address a pain that comes with this topic that is becoming more and more common but, up until recently, is hardly being discussed. I hope you join us tomorrow!

The lure of entrepreneurship is something that, for many of us, is unavoidable. Those who know that this life is their destiny crave freedom more than security, the want options more than comfort and they desire control over direction. So much has been said to glorify and glamorize the world of entrepreneurship.    Admittedly, there is a lot to fawn over. Aside from having to catch a rare early flight, I never wake up by an alarm. My schedule is mine to create. That’s never the way it begins in business, but the beauty of running your own show is that you have the option and the freedom to dream, design and create the life- and schedule- that you desire. There was a long period of time that we valued extensive travel, and we built our business and schedule around that. Now that we have two teenagers and a ten-year-old, we have shifted our values and our vision to creating the most quality time with them as we bond in our relationships, prepare them for their future and make sure that we focus on the most important thing in our lives- our family.    That all sounds peachy, doesn’t it? That’s what all of the wantrepreneurs- a joking term for employees that want to be entrepreneurs- focus on as they dream out their lives. But often, in chasing their dreams, they overlook the darker side of entrepreneurship. The health issues.    Don’t let any of the images of these business owners on their yachts and chilling at the beach fool you. The world of entrepreneurship is closely tied to some potentially damaging health issues.    It all starts out so innocently. And passionately. Because entrepreneurs generally enjoy the work that they do, they actually like to work. That’s something that most of the American population crave. A poll conducted by Gallup found that 85% of employees are unhappy in their jobs. 85 percent! So when you are able to create a business where you enjoy the work, it’s not a stretch to want to work more. And often it’s not just for the money. It’s because of human nature- we want to be engaged in what we are interested in. That’s why so many employees tell me they are dying a very slow death- they get paid well but are disengaged and bored with their work.    So when they finally get out of their to do their own thing, the excitement of loving your work can tend to take over. Multiple studies have shown that entrepreneurs work sixty three percent longer than employees do. So it’s not a surprise to hear that, not only are they more engaged with their work, but they also earn more income. In Thomas Stanley’s book The Millionaire Next Door, he showed that seventy five percent of millionaires were self employed yet only twenty five percent of the population were self employed. Essentially, it’s really difficult to become a millionaire as an employee and you have a much greater percentage of reaching that status as an entrepreneur.    This world sounds pretty sweet right about now, doesn’t it? Are you ready to go tell your boss to go pound sand and go get your life of freedom? I can relate. I had that moment too. But as I ran head first into this world, there were things that nobody told me about what I was rushing into. And who would tell me, anyway? Nobody I knew was really in this world. All I knew was that I was so tired of not having control of my time and being paid a low wage with no options to increase it that I just needed to get out without worrying about the downsides. Part of me is glad that I didn’t know. Maybe, just maybe, it would have scared me off. Or caused me to pause. In full disclosure, I would take all of the health challenges that came with this life for the tradeoff that we made six days a week and twice on Sunday. But looking back, it wouldn’t have hurt to be more prepared.    So as we dive into this theme of Entrepreneurial Health this week, this will not only be beneficial to the newcomers but to the veterans as well. In our mastermind, the conversations and struggles are often around how we navigate the mental challenges of the work we do. The loneliness, the isolation, the overthinking, the sleep issues and the anxiety. The mental health as well as the physical health.

After fifteen months of not publishing the podcast, it's a pleasure to be back! In the first episode after relaunching and renaming the podcast to The Membership Freedom Podcast, I discuss why I took the break, what happened during that time off and why I returned to the podcast!  Also, if you are interested in becoming a part of the Membership Freedom community, check it out here! To celebrate the launch of the Membership Freedom community, the price is discounted until Saturday, September 16th at 10am EST when it goes to full price.    Check out our new YouTube Channel here!   

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