Seanwes Podcast

You either have margin or you get burnout. There's no other way around it. Margin is not a luxury you can't afford. Margin is a necessity. If you don't have margin now, you will fall apart in the future. You must create margin in your life before you think you need it. Margin is the space between activities. It is scheduled nothingness. It is the intentional setting aside of time for the sake of reflecting, de-stressing, and resting. Margin is time you don't fill. Sabbaticals are one form of margin. There are Weekend Sabbaticals, Seventh Week Sabbaticals, and Seventh Year Sabbaticals... But you also need margin in each and every day. Let's talk about how to get it.

This is the last episode of Ben and Dan's podcast "takeover"! Sean will be back on the podcast next week. We don’t think about time like we do money. We all know (hopefully we know) that if you spend more than you earn, the debt will pile up. It might not hurt you today, but over time it will continue to hold you back. Burnout has been recognized by the World Health Organization; that’s how prominent it’s become—or perhaps it’s always been this bad, and we’re just now recognizing it. When we talk about burnout, we don’t talk about it as though we’re suffering from a disease. But it is that damaging.

Download: MP3 (120.5 MB) We’re wired to be transactional. It’s linked to our survival. And in the modern world… that means we’re driven to make money. To make money, we need to do valuable work using our most precious resource: time. Hence the expression Time is money. It can be hard to imagine spending—squandering—that valuable  Continue Reading »

Download: MP3 (125.4 MB) Sean is taking off the month of July to write his next book, Sabbatical. During his absence, Ben and Dan will record new episodes of the show. Sean will return in August. At Craft + Commerce, Ben and Dan both started to get uncomfortable about something: “Doesn’t it seem like everyone  Continue Reading »

Hey, it's Sean McCabe with a sabbatical episode. Today's topic is on depression. Specifically, it's an update on my recovery from depression and a continuation of episode 380: Recovery From Depression (Part 1). If you haven't heard episode 380, go back and listen to that first. It's been nearly a year since my last episode on recovering from depression. What inspired me to record a second episode on this topic was a message from a listener. He told me he had pushed himself too far because he was comparing himself to me some years ago. "Sean's not burned out, so who am I to be?" Little did he know I actually was burned out! Of course, I didn't know it at the time. I talk about comparison in this episode and why you can't go off of what someone else is projecting. You don't know anyone's full story or what they're really going through. You have to focus on yourself and your own health. It's not worth ignoring the warning signs. If you're going through a hard time right now, know that it's temporary. It's

We’re not here to convince you that you need to write every day. We’ve covered how it all starts with writing in half a dozen episodes. But even though you know writing is the key to producing your best work, to working through difficult problems, to being able to communicate with the people you want to reach... You’re still not doing it. We’re going to help you start writing every day: We’ll dive deep into how habits work and how to apply the latest science to the habit of daily writing. The show isn’t over until Ben, Dan, and everyone listening has a step-by-step roadmap to writing every day for the rest of their lives.

Sean is taking off the month of July to write his next book, Sabbatical. During his absence, Ben and Dan will record new episodes of the show. Sean will return in August. Ben and Dan agree: we like seanwes. Sean McCabe is a great guy, and his brand has high-quality products and presentation (and great typography). But what is it, really, that keeps us in the seanwes Community? That keeps us working with Sean, year in and year out? Today we’re talking about how a brand becomes a movement.

Sean is taking off the month of July to write his next book, Sabbatical. During his absence, Ben and Dan will record new episodes of the show. Sean will return in August. At Craft + Commerce, Ben attended a workshop by Rachel Rodgers: “Million-Dollar Badass: Nine Steps to Scaling Your Business to a Million”. He asked Rachel a question, because it didn’t seem like her framework could apply to his business. Her reply: “What’s I’m hearing is, ‘I’m a special snowflake.’” Is that true? Could Ben really scale his business to a million dollars and beyond? And, if he did, wouldn’t he lose the creative voice that’s unique to his work? Dan is with Rachel on this. He thinks Ben is doing something we creators and entrepreneurs do all the time: disqualifying himself—avoiding the perceived pain of failure by finding reasons to never try. This is a fiery episode!

Ben Toalson and Dan Jacobson take over the seanwes podcast in Sean’s absence to talk about their recent experience at the Craft + Commerce conference. Sean is taking off the month of July to write his next book, Sabbatical. During his absence, Ben and Dan will record new episodes of the show. Sean will return in August. Dan was in the Community before he started working on the seanwes team. He will run seanwes in 2020 during Sean’s sabbatical year. Ben and Dan had the opportunity to meet in person at Craft + Commerce in Boise, Idaho in June. Today, they share their experience at the event as well as get into a bit of Dan’s backstory.

I'm taking off 2020 as a sabbatical year. In this episode, I share what I believe will come out of taking off a year. Speaking of taking time off, I'm taking off the month of July to write my next book called Sabbatical. I'm starting that month with something crazy: writing 100,000 words in a day. I'm live streaming the event on July 1st. More info on that at http://Write100K.com. In the mean time, Ben Toalson and Dan Jacobson are taking over the seanwes podcast. They have 7 total episodes planned out. I'm super excited to listen to their conversations. This will be the first time in 430 episodes that I'm not on the show! Ben and I will return to our normal schedule in August. Follow along with my book-writing journey at https://sabbatical.blog. Okay! On to the sabbatical topic. As I mentioned in e427 (https://seanwes.com/podcast/427-writing-100000-words-in-a-day/), I'm taking off an entire year as a sabbatical. We'll have no car, no house—just traveling. I mentioned the countries I plan to visit in e427

The majority of people give up when they face opposition. Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure. It comes as no surprise we read the following in Chapter 9: > Lack of persistence is a weakness common to the majority of men. Most people give up when they fail. Most people lack persistence. What this means is if you persist, you are uncommon. If you persist, you are the minority. With persistence, you will win. The book actually refers to lack of persistence as a handicap. > To get RESULTS, you must apply all of the rules until their application becomes a fixed habit with you. Persistence is a habit. You can develop the habit of persistence just like any other habit.

I recently read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Habit 5 fundamentally changed my life: Seek first to understand then to be understood. Specifically, the principle within this chapter, Empathic Listening, is what rocked me. I've often lamented that most people in conversations are not listening but instead waiting to talk. They're not listeners, they're wait-to-talkers. Two people take turns talking at each other and later say they had a conversation. Whether this constitutes a conversation is up for debate, but no actual communication took place. Communication is the sending and receipt of a message. If you're broadcasting and no one is receiving, are you communicating? I make it no secret that I value effective communication. While I knew I wasn't perfect, I certainly thought I was doing at least a decent job of listening. I was wrong. I couldn't have been more wrong. What I learned, and will share with you today regarding the principle of Empathic Listening, showed me that I was not listen

Quick note: Annual Membership is increasing permanently on June 30th. Sign up to become a member at https://seanwes.com/membership now to lock in the current rate and get a bunch of months FREE. Join the Community, tune in to live shows, and get access to over $7,500 worth of our courses and training by becoming a seanwes member. I'm on a sabbatical week and wanted to catch you up on a bunch of things! • If you've been thinking about becoming a seanwes member, now is the time to do so! We are increasing the Annual Membership investment forever at the end of June. Lock in the current rate at https://seanwes.com/membership. • On July 1st, I am writing 100,000 a day and live streaming the whole thing. Visit http://Write100K.com to learn more about how I plan to write a hundred thousand words in a single day. • While I'm kicking off the month by writing 100,000 words on July 1st, I'm also taking the entire month of July to write my next book, Sabbatical. • During the month of July when i'm writing my next book

Lack of decision and procrastination are holding you back: > ACCURATE analysis of over 25,000 men and women who had experienced failure, disclosed the fact that LACK OF DECISION was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of FAILURE. This is no mere statement of a theory--it is a fact. > PROCRASTINATION, the opposite of DECISION, is a common enemy which practically every man must conquer. Every single one of several hundred millionaires analyzed shared a single trait: they reached decisions promptly and changed them slowly. > Analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark, disclosed the fact that every one of them had the habit of REACHING DECISIONS PROMPTLY, and of changing these decisions SLOWLY, if, and when they were changed. People who fail to accumulate money, without exception, have the habit of reaching decisions, IF AT ALL, very slowly, and of changing these decisions quickly and often. How would you rate yourself on your ability to ma

Is your success taking longer than you'd like it to? Are you experiencing nothing but failures and setbacks? How many years does it take to make it? Many of the most prominent examples of success you're familiar with came just on the other side of more failures than you're probably willing to endure. From Disney, with nothing but failures and setbacks for the first 10 years, to Seth Godin, with 900 rejection letters in a row and being on the verge of bankruptcy for 8 years. How willing are you to put in the time and show up consistently? Are you committed enough to put in your 10 years? There is a lot of nuance to this topic—for instance, there is something to be said about knowing when to quit. But that's what makes a podcast such a good format for a discussion like this. As John Maxwell says, "I changed my question from, 'How long will it take?' to 'How far can I go?'"

I’m going to share an extremely powerful idea in this episode. I’ve talked about it with a couple close friends, but this is the first time I’m sharing the concept publicly. I want you to meditate on the question I’m about to ask. What if you already possessed the skills you need to make a million dollars a year and it was just a matter of alignment with the right people? You don’t lack any ability. You don’t need to develop more skills. Is it a good idea to continue to develop yourself? Absolutely. But right now, you don’t lack anything other than alignment with whomever would benefit significantly from the skills you already possess. The only thing that is missing is connection. It’s all networking. It’s all people. It’s all who you know. After I lay out this idea in full, we put it into practice. Ben has an idea for documentary filmmaking and we discuss it in the context of this idea.

You're working too hard! I'm not saying you should put in less effort necessarily, but you can get so much MORE out of the effort you're already putting in to produce content. It takes a lot of time and energy to create content, and you're working too hard to produce it. Instead of making new pieces of individual content from scratch, you can repurpose content creatively into different formats and mediums for distribution on more platforms. I share my strategy for generating 6X more content from a single topic. All it takes is a few tweaks to your production process.

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life, says neuroscientist and sleep expert, Matthew Walker. Think you can survive on less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night? Think again. You're more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than to possess the ultra rare gene that allows you to sleep fewer than 7 hours without mental impairment, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and cancer. You can't cheat your body on sleep. You're only taking years off the end of your life. Studies show you also can't make up for lost sleep. If you're shorting yourself on sleep in anticipation of "making it up on the weekend", you're doing irreparable damage. You can't pay back sleep debts by getting extra hours in later. Studies also show those who sleep five to six hours a night will on average eat between 200 to 300 extra calories each day, That's 10 to 15 pounds of obese mass each year. It also tends to be more of the wrong kind of food, which we'll talk more about in the show. As a chronically under sle

This is by far the longest chapter yet! There’s just so much packed into one chapter. Chapter 7: Organized Planning contains lists of dozens upon dozens of items on how to build practical plans, major attributes of leadership, and 10 major causes of failure (among many other lists). One notable formula provided is the the “QQS” Formula which is: Quality + Quantity + the proper Spirit of cooperation = Perfect salesmanship of service. While we won’t be able to get to every list in this chapter, we will touch on a number of items from some of the following lists covered: • How to Build Plans Which Will Be Practical • The Major Attributes Of Leadership • The 10 Major Causes Of Failure In Leadership • Media Through Which Services May Be Marketed • Information To Be Supplied In A Written “Brief” • How To Get The Exact Position You Desire • What Is Your “QQS” Rating? • The Thirty Major Causes Of Failure. How Many Of These Are Holding You Back? • Self-Analysis Questionnaire for Personal Inventory

This is a continuation (Part 2) of last week's Coffee With Sean and Ben episode. Last week, we covered three topics: Travel, Filmmaking, & Mastermind Groups. Today, we answer a mixed bag of questions from members listening live: • If you could be mentored for a day by one person who would that person be? (can be past or present). • I know that the right advice at the right time is the wrong advice. But how do you know when the advice you’re being given falls into that category? • Are there any rules of thumb for knowing when to give advice? • Have you traveled anywhere cool lately/do you have any trips coming up? • I wonder what you guys are listening to lately? I selfishly ask in order to glean some new things to experience. • How did you two actually meet? We all know you were in a band together. How did that happen? • What world/cultural event would you like to attend before you die? • What are your personal long/medium/short term goals currently? • Do you ever think you’ll stop podcasting?