Greg Voisen
Welcome back to another episode of Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen on this side of the camera, and on the other side joining us from Utah is Aaron Marcum. Aaron, good day to you. How you doing?

Aaron Marcum
Good to see you. I'm actually in Idaho.

Greg Voisen
Idaho, okay. Well, he's in Idaho. But it's good to know he's got a new book coming out. It's not coming out till.. what's the date in February?

Aaron Marcum
February 21st is the date.

Greg Voisen
All right, so February 21st. And it's called EntreThrive. And I pronounced that right?

Aaron Marcum
That's right.

Greg Voisen
And it's The Entrepreneur's Eight Laws to Eliminating Unhealthy Stress, Flourishing Personally, and Creating The Good Life. And we're going to be talking about that. And I want to let our listeners know a little bit about you because it's always good to kind of tee it up with that Erin. And so over the span of more than 20 years, Aaron has founded and scaled award winning multi million dollar companies that have positively impacted the lives of 1000s. throughout North America, his entrepreneurial journey began in health care. It was in the second startup that Aaron's visionary leadership changed, and the trajectory of his home care industry and positively impacted 1000s of lives of entrepreneurs and millions of seniors that were under their care. He founded the best of home care award winning program and created an innovative benchmarking and performance platform. Now the recognized standard in the industry. Prior to these groundbreaking programs, no framework existed to measure the quality of in home care. Aaron is the recipient of numerous awards, recognized his elite leadership, vision and service. He's been a sought after national speaker since 2006. And enjoys empowering his audience to make positive changes in their personal and professional lives. And I will say that, like me, he is an avid cyclist. And he has six children. So if you go to his website, entrethrive.com, that's e-n-t-r-e-t-h-r-i-v-e.com. There, you can get more information about his company, his organization, his book, his upcoming book, you can preorder it as well. So I'd like all of you to we'll put that in the blog. So Aaron, if you would, you know, let's start this off, because I know we keep our attention as Listen, listeners attention, for the first 14 minutes, we get it for the rest. So let's kick off with a punch. If you tell our listeners a little bit about your personal journey, which we just talked about a bit, but also define what you mean, I watched a few videos of you Instagram videos, where you're talking about the good life for an entrepreneur, and you're out in the woods, and both of these videos speaking about it, and saying the good life and we hear it. And it's an Aristotle term that you mentioned. And I want you to kind of define that for the listeners, and why you think this is available to everyone and why you're so jazzed about it. All right,

Aaron Marcum
I appreciate it. Greg, good to be here. I'm excited to talk to you about this. And I'm super passionate about the topic, obviously. Yeah, my background and we'll go right into the good life because it ties right in. So I've been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years, 2002, I launched my first in home care business, and grew that I didn't know a lot about what I was doing, you know, as an early entrepreneur, but I believed I could figure things out, you know, back then I had a lot of confidence in myself and in what we could do as a team and so forth. And but in the in the healthcare space, and you know, in particular, the in home care space, it can be exhausting, as well. It's a very emotionally charged industry, because you're taking care of others. And then over time, I, I you know, like all entrepreneur experience burnout. I remember the first three years of that company, I got to a point where I either had to close the business or I had to figure something else out and run run a better business because I was coming home. I had four kids at the time. I have six now but four kids when you know when I was feeling this coming home, having dinner with my family, going back to the office to like one or two in the morning, right and trying to just have that hustle on I was I was exhausted and so I figured some things out even back then, and running a better business and living a better life. I've always been fascinated with wellbeing and how to improve that. And I ended up selling that business in 2000 Nine launching another business based upon an idea of measurements and data analytics for that, for that industry for the home care, industry, you know, taking care of seniors and so forth. launched it kind of pioneered this new idea and concept. And it was amazing. It has honestly changed in industry over the over the next several years, raise the standards, I ended up having, you know, going around and speaking all over the country. But that was 2009, between 2012 and 2015. I was running into a wall. And I was really struggling as an entrepreneur, we were growing externally looked like we were flourishing, I was barely making payroll, because we're growing so fast, that I was really hard to keep up with that growth. And so a lot of stress on the things were happening there. And so 2015 hit that wall, completely. We have, we have pictures that we share in some of our presentations of me, in 2015, I did not look good. I was I was really struggling. And then 2016 I truly believe someone can accelerate to the good life fairly quickly if they really put their their whole heart into it. So speaking of cycling, April 2016, I was already kind of investing in my health going to the gym, physical health, but also my mental mindset. I was stepping more away from the business letting go of my business, that was also the year that we implemented ELS operating system, you know, as well, and we just started making all these changes. But more importantly, I was making some real internal changes to how I ran my business. I let go and allowed people to really do the how rather than me trying to figure it all out. But

Greg Voisen
yeah, just start. Did you start your meditation

Aaron Marcum
practice in 16? Not in 16. That came a couple years later. Okay,

Greg Voisen
well, I struggled with it. And even probably when you saw some of the bigger changes.

Aaron Marcum
I did, yeah, huge. And even more. So I've really gone all in and in the last two or three years with my meditation. And it's been it's been life changing for me. And so yeah, but you know, it's a crawl, walk run I talked about this in the book is that often we try to run so fast that we first have to crawl. And then we walk and that comes from the famous quote from from Martin Luther King. If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, keep moving forward. And you use the book on

Greg Voisen
that. Well, and you use a great example in the book. It's a parallel, but you're obviously an outdoorsman, you like outdoor activities, and you went on this Alaskan rafting trip. And I'd like for you to speak about the correlation between your rafting trip and the entrepreneur life because, hey, look, there's all kinds of rough waters you run into during rafting I've done it I've I've done, I think fours. I don't think I've done fives. Maybe I've done four fives, I don't know. But talk about that. Because that was great how you started the book, to give the reader an understanding of what it's like to be an entrepreneur.

Aaron Marcum
Yeah, you know, and it ties to that whole phase, like when I talk about my 2012 to 2015 That is so correlated with my Alaska trip. So a few months ago, that wasn't even that long ago, August of 2023. I went on this epic Alaska trip, and not a usual typical Alaska trip that you hear about these days where you go and stay in a lodge and like you have a guide, I went with these six intense like they've all been an outdoorsman. And we did a 55 mile float down the Alaska tundra fishing trip, where we had to get dropped off by a float plane in the middle of nowhere and survive for the next seven days. And, you know, tear down take, you know, our camp every day. And the first couple days of this trip, even though we've got rained on and there were some challenges. It was it was amazing because I still had that energy. I was super excited about this trip. And so even with some of these challenges, I just kind of pushed my way through it and catching fish decent amount of fish during that part of the river. It was a smaller tributary the first couple of days so I could cast it you know, fly fishing, I am not the best at it per se but you know, I love to do it. And my the team or the group I was with are really good at it. And so when we got into the very wide river about three times as wide, I had a hard time casting into it. So days three and four. Were really challenging rain poured around This got Barry windy on the third day where we're dealing with we're trying to go up river and about 5060 mile an hour winds. And they had storms last year, if you remember in Alaska and there are trees, like we came three or four weeks after these storms, and there were trees in the river, we had to navigate it was very difficult, broke my rod in those first those three, four days. But that's like the the entrepreneurial journey is like when we first start, we have that energy we're all in are excited about it, even with some of the challenges that might come and kind of push through it. But we but around the corner are those days three and four. Right. And that's really where it's where it's may be cashflow may not be there. There's team issues, there's people issues, there's all kinds of challenges. And these three and four can be experienced throughout an entrepreneur's journey. But when we got into days five and six, we are finally closer to the ocean where we are in the epic salmon fishing. And I was catching 3540 Sam and these big, you know, big fish, those those two days? Did the rain stop? No, not really, it was still raining, the wind did die down a bit got a little easier that way. The trees were still there. We were still navigating through it. But we're finally into the epic fishing and that's so much like the entrepreneurs journey is that the challenge is never really stop. But my mindset did, you know I was, you know, financial freedom. I think in those days five and six, that's part of that, that epic fishing, you're catching all these fish, you're experiencing success in your business still dealing with challenges. But it does change. And one point I'm making the book though, is that if we're not careful, we can also struggle on days five and six, if I focus. So

Greg Voisen
when I think though, Aaron, when you start off your entrepreneur journey, like you started off this Alaskan trip, nobody really knows what to expect. So those first few days, maybe a little uncomfortable. But then you got down to the middle of the trip and the trees and the wind and the rain and not catching fish and breaking your flag on on. Those are the challenges you've get up against. And then you get to the other side of that because you address those issues just like an entrepreneur, and you start to be more comfortable with the journey. Right? You start to understand how to navigate the waterways and the journey and the rafts and the boats and all that. And you know, I want you to speak about because that's a great correlation. But you're also an avid reader and I can tell that I look at your bookcase behind you used to be an EO s facilitator implementer I get that. And so you have a ton of knowledge behind you about helping businesses get out of these quagmires. But there was a book in there that I think made a big impact on you. And it was Martin Seligman, his book called flourish. And he used an acronym called perma P er. And this acronym is very powerful and dovetails into the eight laws that you speak about. And entre thrive. And what I like to do is have you kind of address that for the listeners, because I felt like in the book, this was kind of a key point for you. One of the key me, you admit you have a lot of meaning. Good point. Yeah. Well, thank

Aaron Marcum
you talk about Yeah, perma. So Martin, was my professor. Actually, after I exited my last company. I went all into positive psychology and thought and you know, when I say all in really next level stuff, like not just reading books about it, but I went and was accepted into the Top program in the world Master of Applied positive psychology at UPenn. Dr. Martin Seligman, he's the top psychologist of the last decade, very well known father of positive psychology. But 25 years ago, he came up with that acronym. And and I learned, I learned directly from him as my professor about perma and perma stands for Positive emotions, engagement. So the P is positive emotions, E is engagement, RS relationships. M is meaning and as accomplishments, and then when those things are working together and I and the laws that I that I have in the book, I'll correlate with perma when those things are working together. Our well being is enhanced. And the reason Martin started the kind of this movement, I mean, huge movement of positive psychology was because traditionally psychology was more reactive behavioral kind of based up until that point and he got to Tired of reacting as a psychologist he's the one who also came up with learned helplessness had a lot of breakthrough moments even before positive psychology. And but he got to that point where it's like we have to stop being reactive and be proactive. And so perma is the proactive way of handling our behaviors and handling our lives and thriving regardless of circumstance. Positive Psychology is the science well being that studies how Why do some people thrive? And why do some people don't? And when I went through the program, I asked the question, why do some entrepreneurs thrive? And why do some entrepreneurs don't? And that's what the book answers. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
And that's really an important point. And I think, thrive and flourish. The book is called flourish. And for all my listeners, you know, you might want to check that one out as well. Yeah, I know, we're talking about your book. But it could be a good one for anybody's interested to learn more. And you know, you speak about the fact that most entrepreneurs struggle with a lack of vision look as as an implementer, I get you know that and that is true, because they kind of lose their way along the way somewhere. So they may have had a vision. But the reality is, all those broken trees and things you had to navigate along the way, took all their energy, and we're talking about energy management here. That's a really big factor. And you say that their direction and therefore they don't have any clarity, can you address the importance of law of how you help entrepreneurs get clear, also address what you call your guiding truths. And the nine areas that one should examine in their life. You have at your website, I want to mention this to my listeners, you have the truth builder that you can go to entre Thrive E and tre thr iv.com. Forward slash guiding truth. And you have a worksheet they can download. Yeah,

Aaron Marcum
yeah. Okay. Yeah. And we can also make sure in the show notes we actually created, made that worksheet available to just your listeners. And I believe, Megan, and we'll get make sure what that gets in the show notes. But it, it has your specific audience in mind. And so we'll, we'll make sure that link is sent over to you, but you can also get to it, get to it there. The guiding truths really are the beginning, what I call the crawl part of the clarity law is that's the first law of entre thrive is this honor, clarity and getting clear on your guiding truths. For years, I've had my guiding truths, which, for example, our mind is at peace. My actions reflect character. My family receives them my time these are these are truths that I want to be true about myself at all times. I lost sight of that, again, between 2012 and 2015. And things started falling apart for me. I had my guiding truths before that, which is really interesting. And it's just on my wall on a canvas, and I still do in my office, my actual office in town. I'm home right now. But that's those truths have guided me and really guided me on my creating my core values for my companies. They all tie together. And with those guiding truths, then we can lean in and you'll appreciate this Greg being a cyclist is I use the term breakaway in that in that law. breakaways in cycling is when you are leaving the pack, right. And you're, you're, you're you're you're creating a gap between you and the other writers, often best done with a team with your most important relationships, right. And an entrepreneur has to have that team around them, be able to make that break be but guided by your guiding truths, which, you know, is really, really important. So the truth, the guiding truth tool, just ask some poignant questions on what's, you know, some of the most important things to them, their values and so forth, driving what people, you know, has the question about, you know, what, what do you want people to say about you what, you know, just just about, I think there's about 10, nine or 10 questions that we asked to help them get to their guiding truths. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, you talked about the breakaway narrative and I, you know, to me, that's what is the positive self talk, right? Because, like if you're going to go on a 200 mile bike ride like you have is this a lot tore jaw? Is that how they say it? That loaded jaw? Yeah, loaded with just one day 200 mile cycling. It's not just an event, it's a race. There's a difference between going on a cycle 100 mile cycling event or 200. And having it be a race, this is a race, and you've done this thing, what six times I've

Aaron Marcum
done it five times, and I completed it for four times, and I'm gonna do it my sixth time this year. Okay?

Greg Voisen
So people get that, you know, you are a competitive guy. You wouldn't be doing that if you weren't. But talk with us about the self talk how to change or create our breaking of breakaway narrative, because for people to get to this next level of success, no matter what it is significant success or significance in life, there has to be some breakaway narrative.

Aaron Marcum
Yeah, you know, again, the breakaway is, it is and the narrative behind it like, let's first start with the narrative a different from like, we hear what's the story, you're telling yourself? Well, that's the narrative, the narrative is really the story, right? And how we're that kind of talk that we're telling ourselves whether we frame our past in a positive light, or we frame it in a negative light, that really frames the narrative of what we're telling ourselves. And so often, we have to adopt a new identity. And speaking of cycling, and for my own Breakaway, literally, you know, that first year when I did Lotus jaw, I never had cycled before I ordered my bike in April 2016. Five months later, I did the race. And so I had to take on a new identity for myself. And that identity was I am an endurance cyclist, I had to tell myself that no, no identity is any good if we don't follow it up with action. And I make that point in the book is like, don't take on an identity that you're not willing to, like, bring on and take action on. And so I had to train harder than I had ever trained for anything in my life. And I had to go all in with this new identity, but but also when I would talk to people. And I would tell them what I'm doing, I would tell them, I'm an endurance cyclist, I was bringing on that identity, not just a cyclist. But for a 200 mile bike race, I had to kind of live that. And that made a world of difference. And helped me believe that I could do this that I could actually achieve something that a few months earlier just seemed impossible to me. When I did I finished it that first year but also with a great team around me to help me help me do that. So well.

Greg Voisen
Congratulations on that. And breakaway narrative, I think for the listeners, you know, that is so important. And one of the things you know, I've had Steven Kotler on here, we've talked about flow flow genome project, we've talked tons of things regarding curiosity. Curiosity is at the forefront before someone's purpose, and their mission and their vision. And then their goals. Right? So you speak about curiosity is the hallmark of creative people. And you actually cited many people in the book, you mentioned that creativity and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. I totally agree. If you're not curious, you're probably not going to be, I would say, an entrepreneur, can you tell the story about your sister in law and how she uses curiosity to really create this world class business. I thought it was a great story.

Aaron Marcum
It is a great story. So my, my sister in law and my brother, they are Chris loves julia.com. And so shout out to them. But they they started one of the most premier DIY blogs, you know, really in the world, they have quite the following. I'm sure some of your listeners are familiar with them. But they didn't start off that way is that is that Julia recognized in herself that she had this creative, she's very artistic. And she had this creative mind and love to decorate and love to kind of work on this. And they were not necessary. I mean, fairly newlyweds, they only been married for a little while. And she started creating a blog that really only included family members, but she just every day would post to the blog and create things with her home. And she allowed that creativity just to kind of just elevate and elevate. And I talked about kind of that process in the book. But over time, more and more people started following and then she started having some reach out, companies reach out and want to sponsor and which was a new batch. This was like, many years ago, and that kind of sponsorship was fairly new. For DIY bloggers. They were kind of a pioneer in that in that space. But then it just kind of unfolded from there. And now they've got millions of followers. And it all started with creativity. I mean, that was like the her focus on that and it just showed in her product in the way she kind of interacted along with my brother of course.

Greg Voisen
Well for people it's Chris loves Juliet, I just went there while we were talking. And it's interesting because one of my clients actually makes him designs for McGee and Company. Literally is there was a television series about this couple in Utah that have this amazing house.

Aaron Marcum
And aren't good friends with Chris and Julia, I'm

Greg Voisen
sure they are because they're indoors by the furniture there. So go check it out, because it is quite a business that they built. Now, can you speak about deep thriving session, we talked about meditation just a tad, the fact that your meditation has gotten more intense lately. But you call it a deep thriving session. I like that. Because meditation is kind of overused. And how has this changed your life and the lives of your clients? If you're actually teaching or advocating for them to do this? Not everybody's going to do it. But let's say you're advocating for I like, what you did is you change meditation to deep thriving session.

Aaron Marcum
Yeah, yeah, my deep driving session, it's meditation. But it's also journaling involves journaling. It involves gratitude, leaning into those thoughts and feelings. It it and and the reason it's in the, in the creativity, law is that, to me, it promotes creativity in me, I create in my creative genius kind of elevates that when I do that, you know, in any given day, and allows me to create personally and professionally things that maybe I wouldn't have been able to create otherwise. And so I use a meditation practice called Sky meditation. It's the Art of Living Center teaches this not as a well known, I think it's a great meditation for entrepreneurs. It's a breathing meditation. If you do the all in, it's about a 35 minute meditation sometimes, depending on the day, I might shorten that, but it's really helped me focus high nine activity.

Greg Voisen
Is it kind of more air? Aaron, like a somatic breathing?

Aaron Marcum
Yes, yes, yes.

Greg Voisen
They're very deep for my listeners who haven't experienced it, or for those that have somatic breathing is that real life term users, people that aren't become certified and helping people do their and I know you've we've probably got some Wim Hof listeners here, too. So if you're doing similar to Wim Hof, yeah. So if you're doing the Wim Hof and through

Aaron Marcum
the nose, and you're really, it's this, you know, and it's, it's, it's even using some of your throat and your breathing, which helps deepen it even more. And it's, it's a, it's a great, and there's, there's, there's certain levels to it. And you know, it's an I strongly recommend, if you really want to learn more about it, go to the Art of Living Center, I spent two and a half days learning this meditation in Boone, North Carolina. And it was transformational for me. Well,

Greg Voisen
you said it was life transforming for you. And I think we're the art of living, we'll put a link up for people that would like to go there. Regardless of where you are, you can get so much of this is available to you to make your entrepreneur experience, the good life. And I think the doing these kinds of things help you clear, you know, the Buddhists have talked about for years, the monkey mind, we don't always get rid of the monkey mind, but to learn how to live with it, and kind of coexist with it. Because my wife and I were talking this morning about, oh, when we wake up, you know, it's like all of a sudden, all these things about what you have to do today start spinning around. But if you start with a meditation, first thing in the morning, you can calm that and you can live with it so much easier so that it's not taking so much energy. The other thing is to record what it is you have to do and just write it down this morning. I recorded all this stuff in notion. So I think there's some simple things gratitude, journal, journaling, meditation, cold plunges, walks in the woods, walks in the beaches, bicycle rides, anything that basically takes your mind away from this constant chatter and puts it into what I would call a flow state as quickly as possible. So you know, you speak to listeners about the character strengths survey, and identifying character strengths. And you have this survey at your website. Right? So people can actually isn't there where they can get let

Aaron Marcum
me clarify that that's actually not my survey. It's the VI vi a character strengths.org Okay, here's the website. And we have a link on our website to them. And it's it's a positive psychology inspired organization. In fact, Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman, both kind of the, the fathers of positive psychology code co founders, I guess you could say along with me Hi, Chick sent me Hi, right, the author of flow, those three are kind of the three pillars of the positive psychology movement. And that they, Marty and and Chris came up with the 2420 2024 character strengths that identify with six different virtues. And so go to that site, you can take their assessment, it's it's extremely powerful in knowing what your five key character strengths are, like for mine, mines, the appreciation of beauty, spirituality, leadership are some of my top key character strengths, but also ideas on how to how to lean in and take on new character strengths, like one I'm working on this year, self regulation is another key character strength. But it's,

Greg Voisen
I wouldn't let our I'd like our little like to let our listeners know that it's vi a character dot o RG, we'll put a link to that VA dot character dot o RG. And it says Activate your strengths you push a button. And I think you can take this character thing for free. And literally find out more about yourself. And that's a great opportunity for any entrepreneur who's trying to understand and be better at becoming who they would like to become. Right. So, you know, we've seen the Carol Dweck book about grit. Right. And probably many of my listeners have already

Aaron Marcum
read that book worth as well. Sure. I'm

Greg Voisen
sorry, Angela Duckworth. Yeah, maybe I maybe I blew who it was whack was had a different book. But Angela's growth

Aaron Marcum
mindset was whack. Yeah, yeah.

Greg Voisen
So most of the listeners aware of grit. But can you address the five levels of great, great, and how it will help us make make us more resilient, right. Because you know, as an entrepreneur, that it requires grit, determination, focus, good character, to make it through an entrepreneur experience. Actually, this whole concept about grit, it's a very high one on the scale of us surviving your entrepreneur journey.

Aaron Marcum
Yeah, it's very significant. And I use this word staying power in that law and entrepreneur law, because depending on where you're at, and these five levels, really, the deeper you get, the better staying power you have. And so the first level is curiosity, we've already talked about that. But we first when we first think of something, or we have an idea, we are first, you know, curious about it, we first want to understand it, we start doing a little bit of, of research about it, we're, you know, that curiosity really kind of? I don't know, it's, it's a powerful concept, I think, you know, to start, you know, to start with that. And then, you know, as we are, as we become more curious, we move into the next. And these phases, they happen fairly, fairly quickly. Right. You know, as far as just, you know, when when, you know, the third phase being the practice phase, passion being the fourth phase, and then calling being the fifth phase is that, as we're moving through there, we often skip from, and I'm sorry, the second phase being interest, or curiosity and interest, are really early on. And the interest again, is going deeper as to okay, I'm curious, now I'm interested. And then the practice phase is the one that we forget, as entrepreneurs, I think, especially younger entrepreneurs, I think the generations might forget that, that before they can really develop the passion for something they have to practice it for a while. They have to keep doing it and really see if this is something that that they really can get passionate about or or lean into when it comes to passion. And so, again, curiosity, interest practice, and then you've got the passion phase of grit, and that's the one that most of us are in when it comes to our entrepreneurial ventures is that we're passionate about what we're doing. We're leaning into it, it feels right, we get energy from it. But that's not the end. I think there is another phase. I know there's another phase based upon research. And even Angela Duckworth talks about this is as the calling phase. You can call it purpose. But I like the the term calling when it comes to entrepreneurs is that when you feel called to something, in your entrepreneurial venture, your staying power is so much deeper than anything else. And your resolve to get over the humps and the obstacles that come and the uncertainties of entrepreneurship. They just feel like bumps when you have when you're feeling called, you know, to where you're like, Oh, this is just an obstacle get through this and you keep pushing forward. And and it can be you know, the unhealthy part of that is it can become obsessive. And so we have to make sure we don't we have other passions, like I chose cycling is another passion. So I'm not always obsessive about my calling in my profession. But it does help with staying power and with grit. And there's so much science behind that.

Greg Voisen
Well, and I would say I wrote a book that goes back to 2017. And I really emphasized how important for an entrepreneur intuition is. But intuition comes from your awareness, your heightened level of awareness as a result of meditation. What are you feeling? Some people are auditory they hear things? People say? Are you hearing something? Yeah, I am, I'm hearing a voice telling me to go do this, or I'm feeling something about this. And I think that if you look at some of the greatest successful people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and all these people, they've written about how important it is to cultivate very strong intuition about business decisions and moves and what you would do. And I just wanted to add that before. We talked about your fifth log, your fifth law of entree faith walk and this was a story you told in the book about your financial advisor, Dale green, who's not with us anymore, but Dale was somebody who made a big impact on you, and how his words were answers to your prayers. I felt like in the book, this was really a significant thing for you. So I wanted to profile it here. Yeah.

Aaron Marcum
And I appreciate it. No, I try to keep my emotions in check. Dale, Dale is uh, he's still I still I still feel feel that that man and his words, but he, there was a point. And this is in 2015, where, like I mentioned, we were growing, but we're struggling to keep up with the cash needed to continue to grow. Right. Right. And my partner and I had a minority partner a great, he's a great friend, still, Eric Manson, who? We were both praying for an answer, like, how are we going to grow to the next level. And out of the blue, my, my good friend Dale and I had been friends for for several years before that entrepreneur. He had some money that that was in the stock market, he wanted to pull out and needed to put it somewhere. And he's like, Hey, came to mind. Are you looking for an investor? Or you know, what, just the timing was amazing. So that was an answer to prayer. And he invested a significant amount into our business. But the thing he told me when he gave me that, that that check, he didn't ask for a profit and loss statement. He didn't ask for anything. He said, Aaron, I want you to know that this is how much I believe in you, and what you're doing. And I trust you, I invest in the person, not the product is another thing he told me. And rarely did he ever asked for a profit and loss statement. He just would ask how's it going? How's it going? How's the business how's my investment? Thankfully, we continue to in 2016 business really took off and I you know, in the in the interface, the first the crawl part, or I'm sorry, that not the crop part, the walk part is faith in others, like the impact of faith that you putting your faith in your team and the team putting faith in you or partner like Dale green makes a world of difference and increasing their own faith. And the run part is obviously faith in God and I'm a Christian and but whatever your faith is, whether it's doesn't matter, but there's science to show that a faith in a higher power does help with our well being does enhance our well being. And so it's whatever that is whatever that looks like for you. But faith in yourself is the first part faith in others is the second faith in God the third and that kind of encapsulates the entre faith and A second one with Dale, I just can't even like emphasize what that did to my confidence as an entrepreneur.

Greg Voisen
Well, we along our journey, I think Joseph Campbell talked about this many times in his books, this journey that we take, you know, you you venture out, and then you don't know who's there, they're gonna come along and help like jail's friend did or whoever this person was at loan to this money. As a result, you know, as Dale it was Dale himself, so it was Dale himself who gave you the money. And then we said, gave

Aaron Marcum
me the check. He's like, I believe in you. I, you know, I even asked for a

Greg Voisen
profit and loss. Oh, and what's interesting is he was a financial advisor and for financial advisor to have that much faith in somebody to just give them a check without the financial statement is saying something very, very high. So you know, you you had a great lesson there. And you know, your book is filled with great stories, great advice, resources, your website has resources that entrepreneurs could use, but I like to sum these interviews up with three significant points you'd like to make or leave the listeners with, that they can implement into their life in their business right away. In other words, what is the takeaway from entre thrive, that I literally am sitting out here? Okay, guys, I've listened to your interview for 40 Some minutes now, what is it that I can take away from this interview with you guys that I can actually implement? Yeah,

Aaron Marcum
you know, circling back to your original question I don't think I answered initially, is what is the good life? And how do you how do you accelerate to it? And the good life in the Aristotle terms was the complete life. And it's an it's a journey, rather than a destination, though. And the good life is more of a mindset. So the first thing that I would say is, is adopt kind of that good life mindset, that, you know, what is that to you? What do you want in life, and those guiding truths would be the first thing I would start with? And that's really the first thing in the book and onto clarity is, what do you want to be true about yourself at all times, and lean into those truths and have them guide you in your decisions, you know, as you're trying to make business decisions, personal decisions, relationship decisions, those guiding truths will help keep that nice and secure, because I constantly come back to my guiding truths. So that'd be the first thing. The second and again, surrounding it around the you know, the complete the good life, because that's, that's where I want all the readers to get to is their own version of the good life for themselves. And we talked about those character strengths, I would take that assessment. But then I and I talk about the character strengths and the entre habits law. And the reason I do is that how cool would it be like I have the self regulation, character strength that I'm focused on this year? How cool would it be that if self regulation just ran in the background, I call it the 43% in the book and Wendy woods, wrote a great book called Good habits, bad habits, she did a lot of research on the 43% and 43% of everything we do when it comes to our habits is unconscious. What if we made those character strings more unconscious this ran in the background we have to first make them conscious but they were just automatic this part of our lives part of what our makeup every day, how much better off and again, going back to the good life would we have if we did that? You know, I think it'd be amazing. The third is, is put it what you could do immediately going back to the interfaith what Dale did for me is who in your life could use your faith could use a boost your children, your spouse, a business partner, someone you're mentoring could use a more dose of your faith in them and your belief in them and and seek them out more than one person and see what the difference that makes for them. And and then I think it will also help reiterate how important that is for yourself to find to surround yourself with people who believe in you. They don't agree with everything you're doing. Dale was certainly not that way either. If you saw something arise he would tell me but who really believe in your ability and your potential to figure things out?

Greg Voisen
I think it's well what I what I think that you do with entre thrive the entrepreneurs eight laws to eliminating unhealthy stress flourishing personally and creating the good life is you give from your experience, Aaron which is there's so much being someone who's consulted business owner on their own businesses, as you provide a recipe Now, that doesn't mean when we get a recipe that we may not want to change it a little bit. Like we want to add a little bit of our ingredients to change the way the bread comes out or the cake or whatever it is. But I want to tell my listeners, this is a great recipe. I interviewed now almost 1100 people. And I will say that the book reads like, Aaron is speaking to you. And that's a huge compliment. Because a lot of books are not about this personal. Somebody. You know, I always tell somebody if you're in a movie, and you're watching a screen, and the person next to you whispered something about the movie, like the whispering in my ear. They're either whispering something about oh, that was a cool singing, you know, what do you think? Kind of thing. You want somebody who's that whisper in the movie theater. And Aaron's book is really that he's whispering in your ear all the way through the book about what it is that you might want to change to or become. So that's my personal endorsement. Erin

Aaron Marcum
means a ton. Really? That's

Greg Voisen
February the what? February 21. Okay, go to his website, you can actually preorder the book now. Okay. Based on the date that we actually released this podcast, go there and he's going to have a special form for us that we talked about, that you guys could download. And I want to make sure and go to the VI a character dot o RG to get your GED Character Strengths tests. Aaron, Namaste to you my friend. Thanks for everything much. Appreciate you being on Inside Personal Growth, sharing your wisdom and your advice and your expertise so that people can have the good life.

Aaron Marcum
Thank you, Greg.