038 | How to Work Less and Experience Exponential Growth with Steven Neuner

Patrick Longergan [0:05 – 1:18]: Welcome back to the Vital Strategies podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan. And in today’s episode, we’re talking with Steven Nooner. Steven is a successful entrepreneur, but more successful human. We talked through his evolution from pursuing dentistry to the stresses of being a new entrepreneur to eventually settling into a rhythm of having over 150 free days a year to rejuvenate and have a great life outside of his business. All of this while still seeing tremendous growth inside the business. Once he implemented the free day strategy, he started to see this newfound growth and was able to exit at a value of 120 times the value of his business before he started taking free days. Stay to the end to hear what Steven says is a foundational piece of success. Let’s dive in with Stephen Nooner. Stephen Nooner, I am excited that you are here today. I first met you through strategic coach, which is cool, but you’re also very successful entrepreneur. Currently owns Superpowers, which is virtual assistant service. You’ve written children’s book. You have a unique performance venue that I think is awesome that I like to dig into a little bit. Then you also co host of a podcast called the next level show. So I think all of those things are very cool. You’re rooted in your faith and being devoted to your wife, Corey and your three kids. So welcome to the show.

Steven Neuner [1:18 – 1:31]: Hey, man, thanks for having me. It’s always fun to connect and talk about important things. I gotta give credit. Co founder, Superpowers. My business partner, Ryan Cassin. Brilliant guy. He runs the show. So anyway, shout out to Ryan.

Patrick Longergan [1:31 – 2:05]: Very good. Thank you for that. I do appreciate it. And so I look back and I think we have similar journeys. I graduated from undergrad with a political science degree. My dad was an attorney. I thought I was going to go be an attorney. My dad actually tried to get me to be anything but an attorney just because he was like small town attorney, jack of all trades, master of none, like, go do something else. And then my dad, I’m going to be a corporate attorney. It’ll be great. And then I got to work with some corporate attorneys and it was not great. I quickly figured out that I needed to pivot and that’s how I became an entrepreneur. And I think you have a similar story. Right? Like, you were going to be a dentist and then volunteered in a dental office and we’re like, this is not it.

Steven Neuner [2:05 – 4:35]: Yeah. So, I mean, I’ll try not to overdo it, but I think I’m, at my core, always an entrepreneur. I was the kid getting in trouble selling misses Finnelli would take us to Sam’s club. We buy all the blow pops. We’d sell them at school, mark them up. We get in trouble, right? Always kind of doing those kind of things, mowing yards and just doing that, but really just didn’t know what I wanted to be. So my undergrad is actually in entrepreneurship, and then started going down the path. I didn’t know what I want to do, so I took a corporate job selling a huge payroll provider. Awesome training. But even inside of there, I was doing things entrepreneurially, the way that I outperformed my quota in a territory that had never been performed. I created new models of how we delivered this product and service, and that was cool, but it was a huge company, and it was really bureaucratic, so everything was really hard to get done, even though everybody could see the value. And it drove me crazy. And so it caused me to leave and start a business with a couple other guys. It took off. We were doing really, really well. 911 hit, company kind of fell apart. And so I went through a mini depression because we could have sold the business, but we didn’t because we thought we’re going to the moon. And I went through a mini depression trying to figure out what to do when I grow up. I was newly married, and so I went back to become a dentist, and I found myself in a dental office volunteering, getting ready to go to dental school, put ourselves in a tremendous amount of debt because I grew up without money or resources. First college grad in my family, and literally, I found myself volunteering in the dental office and daydreaming. I’m in the room with the patient. We’re literally pulling out. This guy’s like wisdom teeth. And I’m daydreaming about how do I get to three to five practices so I don’t have to practice dentistry anymore? And so when I caught myself daydreaming, I went to my wife. I was like, hey, who’s a school teacher, by the way, who’s supporting me through all this nonsense? And I’m like, hey, I know I’ve been back. Like, I’ve done all these hours, and I’ve worked, and you’ve been supporting us, but I don’t think I can be a dentist. So it’s like, well, what can we start? So that’s how I started insurance. Bought it, only kind of business that I could think of that I could start with no money. So we bought a list, a couple thousand businesses in Dallas. I cold called, I begged for meetings, didn’t know anything about insurance, but I found I was a quick study. I found a few people that taught me along the way. And so that is our first business. And the one I joined strategic coach with was I was just cold calling, banging for meetings and trying to no value creation other than I was a good guy and just trying to cram insurance down people’s throats with all my payroll training that I got back in the day. So just a fun journey to reflect on. Thanks for the question.

Patrick Longergan [4:35 – 4:58]: I love it. And just to continue on there. So you joined strategic coach in the insurance business and talk about how you qualified by, like $1. I was like the lowest level in that room, but I was committed to sort of really reshaping my mindset about what it means to be an entrepreneur. So can you talk us a little bit through how coach had an impact on that mindset and what it meant for your business?

Steven Neuner [4:58 – 6:44]: And, yeah, so I was in insurance and I was not in financial services, but I had a friend that was in financial service, similar ish type business who joined coach. And over a period of three years, I watched the guy double his income and work half as much. And I remember sitting there and I was like, okay, we party together in college. Like, this guy’s a little bit better looking than me and only a little bit smarter. So I was like, if I could just get half of what he got, it’d be totally worth the investment. So I joined, didn’t think I qualified. The bar was even lower back then. They’ve raised, since raised the bar. I wouldn’t even be able to get in at the time. But it was absolutely transformational because first and foremost, even though I had a degree in entrepreneurship, even though, like, I can look back and say, I think I always was an entrepreneur, I had not realized it yet. I saw myself as a salesperson who served entrepreneurs. The distinction between that and I thought that I saw myself as an insurance salesperson as well as kind of trapped up in that. And so the distinction between that and. No, no, no. You’re an entrepreneur with a specialization, insurance. There’s a lot of ways you can create value for people with your skillset was a complete paradigm shift. And the guy who taught me, and in fact, the reason why my coach was a guy named Dan Taylor, who was my coach when I started before Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan’s my coach now, but he literally was the guy who, like, shifted that mindset. And then he was super successful, incredible guy. Not like money wise. Yes, he had that, but he was just a really great person. He got brain cancer, and the guy literally coached us up to, like, weeks before he died. Like, the way he kept pouring into us even though he didn’t have to, he didn’t need the money. It really just fueled and stoked a fire for me that really leaned into all the concepts, mindset, shifts, et cetera, that really bore a lot of fruit.

Patrick Longergan [6:44 – 7:32]: That’s fantastic. Like, he could have been taking care of himself, but he’s embodying that, like, love your neighbor. Like, I’m just going to continue pouring into people until my last day. That’s so cool to hear. So when we talk about coach, there’s a few of the mindset things. I’m curious which one sort of resonated most with. You can look at the gap and the gain. That’s kind of an interesting one where if I’m trying to get to the horizon, I’m never going to get there. And it can be super frustrating because I’m just living in this world of discontent. That’s sort of what that topic is about. Then we’ve got, you know, who, not how, don’t. Don’t figure out how to do things. Go bring a who into your life that can probably do it better than you and make an impact there and then we’ve got ten X is easier than two X. We got a lot of these different concepts. We’ve got the four C’s. So can you just walk us through, like, what had the largest impact? And I’m sure they all fit in different points, but what was the piece that was like, sort of flip the.

Steven Neuner [7:32 – 8:36]: Switch for you, man. I wish I could narrow it down for you. I would say all of them. As an entrepreneur, like I said, I just had a lot of really bad mindsets. I just had a lot of mindsets that trapped me. If you were to measure externally the ones that certainly give me the most freedom and where I’ve had the most financial success and success serving other people and helping them create wealth for themselves and value, I would say it’s a specialization. Who not how is definitely would have to be up there. I don’t know that you can attract great who’s if you’re not a great who when I was constantly living in the gap, right. I don’t know that I could have been the who that would attract the great who’s without a ten X vision. I don’t know that I’d be as compelling to work with my business partner that I mentioned beginning the show. Ryan Castin. Right. Like he is an entrepreneur, successful in his own right. We came together to create really something special. But would that have happened without that ten X vision? So it’s hard for me to narrow one. But if I was going to go just, I got a die on the hill for you, for Patrick, I’m going to go who not how, who not.

Patrick Longergan [8:36 – 9:03]: How was really good for me. It also, I think, fit nicely for me. And the ten X is easier than two X because it was like, you can’t just do more work. You have to bring people in that you can leverage and you need to settle into your unique ability. And I think all those resources are great. And those are all Dan Sullivan. Some Ben Hardy contribution in there. Those are Dan Sullivan ideas that are fantastic, that people should definitely check out. We’ll have links to all that in the show notes.

Steven Neuner [9:03 – 9:12]: So if you’re a super high performer, anyone listening to this show, like, I got nothing to sell in these books or whatever, but even if you’re operating at the top of your game, there’s value in that book.

Patrick Longergan [9:12 – 9:32]: Absolutely. So I think that leads us to, I think another one of your superpowers, whether you admit it or not, is building championship teams. Finding a collection of who’s that can empower and you can provide opportunities for us. Like that is hard. Entrepreneurs oftentimes like to hold on to everything, you know, we don’t like to give any of that up. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve gone about developing teams?

Steven Neuner [9:32 – 9:45]: Yeah, I’ll back into sort of what some of my hangups were, and then if you’ll remind me, I’ll talk about how I’ve done it strategically, tactically. Once I sort of got rid of the baggage that was keeping me back. Would that be cool?

Patrick Longergan [9:45 – 9:45]: That’d be great.

Steven Neuner [9:45 – 13:46]: I would just say started out the guests from my home, bought a list, begged for meetings. I did everything. And so early on, there was the idea. Delegating is not like rocket science, right? It’s like, okay, I would. I was really, really, really bad at teamwork in the beginning. So bad. In fact, one of the best things that ever happened for building championship teams was actually getting me out of the hiring process. And the reason for that was because I couldn’t tell where my energy ended and someone else began sometimes. And so I’d be like, this person’s amazing. They’re so excited about what we’re doing. And then people around me be like, they’re dead. What are you talking about? Like, I just couldn’t tell. And so what that comes from that. As a kid, I struggled quite a bit. I had wonderful parents. I loved them very much. They were not really successful relationships. We had a lot of, like, marriage and divorce and growing up. Right. And just a lot of friction. I was unsupervised a lot and ended up getting in some trouble, like hanging out with the wrong kids, doing stupid stuff. I very much had this idea that I wasn’t good enough, right. And so that thanks to a lot of things and a lot of work, was ultimately transformed. Coach was certainly part of that journey and process, my faith and other things and that healing. But that transformation, when you lived a certain way and your life was very, very broken and times I was, like, borderline homeless and, like, really, really scrapping as a teenager and into my college years. When you’ve experienced a level of, like, redemption that I experienced, it’s real easy to have a very big heart and to believe everybody can do it. And so I had this mindset that I wanted everybody to come along. I wanted everybody to win. I would say we were things like, we’re a family in our business, and it was wonderful in certain ways. It provided a lot of ministry opportunities, but it also held the business back. And what I mean by held it back was we weren’t really always attracting values aligned people to our business, and we weren’t always, like, hiring for the right capability. I was just completely unaware and blind to it because of just me wanting to, like, be a part of the rescue squad. And so I had to look, really learn to discern ministry and then really making sure that we build a team that can deliver the value that we promised to our clients. So there’s multiple sides to the idea of ministry in your business. Right. And so I had to find that balance. And so I moved from this idea of, we’re all a family to, hey, we’re a championship team. I’ll go to the mats for you. But ultimately, we made a commitment to our clients that we’re going to deliver something, and we need the team member to be able to deliver it. Otherwise, we’re just stealing. We’re taking people’s money and not delivering. The more I got that idea, the more I became more intentional about observing the things that I could be intentional about. Right. I read all the books, I did all the things that everybody does around teamwork. But with that, I think makes me unique, Patrick, if anything, and there’s a million other people have been far more successful with me than this. But my experience is where I noticed where we have success. A lotters don’t is we have applied the knowledge, so we put it in emotion. I’m a systems thinker. I love systems and models, probably because I’m really disorganized. So the more I can get things into a structure and get it repeating better. And so we became insanely crazy about who was on our team. The way that we were about filling our pipeline for sales really approached teamwork. The right who’s on the bus? That became almost more important to me than the clients because when I had the right who’s, I noticed I had the most amount of freedom. We were having the biggest ministry type of impact. We were doing really great things together, but I had to get those right who. So that became sort of my number one priority in every system, process, hack, everything I could put in place to make that as consistent as possible. It’s still people, so you’re never going to bat a thousand. But the more I could get better at that, that’s become a lifelong pursuit for me.

Patrick Longergan [13:46 – 15:18]: That’s fantastic. There’s a few things in there I want to touch base on. I find myself maybe in a similar boat. I believe the best in people and when somebody wasn’t living up to their role, I’ll call it. I looked at it. I sort of believe in extreme ownership. I was looking at myself going, I’m not leading them well, right? Do they have the potential to do it? Yeah, I believe they do. So, like, let’s, let’s figure it out. Some people just don’t have the desire, you know, they might have the potential, but they don’t care enough to, like, get there. And it’s like to your point, on the championship team, hey, we’re playing basketball. We’re going to find the five best players or football, eleven best, and we’re going to get them on the field and we’re going to perform at a high level and it’s okay if that here you might be that somewhere else and we’ll give you that opportunity to go pursue that. That’s something that I’ve had a hard time getting over. I just constantly was looking at it as a failure in leadership versus like, this just isn’t the right person for the role. I am undiagnosed ADHD, but I just look at how my brain works and I have sort of hacked my life around systems and processes because it’s like the only way I can function. If I don’t, things just fall apart. I’m very regimented in how I navigate my day and I see systems and opportunities sort of everywhere and we have to get them plugged in. Just have some success. That is all fantastic stuff. Appreciate you sharing. Just to step back from a, I don’t know if tactical perspective is the right term, but, like, you brought up something about you’re really good at applying these concepts that you read and see into the business, not trying to make this a strategic coach commercial. We’ve got things like the impact filter and some of the other tools. Are those the things that you’ve utilized to take these concepts and bring them into practice?

Steven Neuner [15:18 – 16:28]: Heck yes, 100%. Just by being in a community like coach. And I’ve been in entrepreneurs organization, I’ve been in YPO. I’ve been part of Dave Ramsey’s entre leadership. Like, I’ve just continuously realized that I love to learn from other really smart people. Not that are like teaching doctor fuzzy face, but I really love people that are like, in the trenches. And that’s why I always promised myself and coach wouldn’t have any other way. But if I was ever, like, I could not coach if I was not operating and applying the concepts daily myself. I don’t want to tell you just the entrance story from 20 years ago. I want to be able to tell you about, like, what I’m doing right now. I’m always on the lookout, and it’s something I do sort of almost naturally, but I’m just always aware and curious. And if it’s not for me, I still like to kind of get like a high level because I may meet Patrick tomorrow and he needs it. Maybe it wasn’t the thing I needed to, but yeah, the tools and the thinking coach allows me to discern, I think, all of the noise because I’m a little adhd, too, like, all of that. And then figure out, like, what are the things that, what are the levers that I could really pull that would really move the needle and then I can take out of that connections, I can find the pathway that will yield or have the highest likely of success.

Patrick Longergan [16:28 – 16:51]: Anyway, I love it. So that leads me to my next question. It seems like you’ve got a real skill around. I’m going to call it seeing the issue behind the issue. We might be failing at this customer service thing, but that might not be the real issue. There might be a more foundational piece of that. Can you talk a little bit about that skill and where that comes from and maybe some application to some examples of how you’ve applied that to the businesses you’re in?

Steven Neuner [16:51 – 18:53]: I’ll use something that already just kind of came up. So there’s a part of it just comes naturally. So we were just talking about teamwork. You were talking about, like, your experience. You were thinking about it in your evolution. And one of the things that came to me, I was letting some of my best performers down. So while I was, like, doing the ministry projects, I lost some good people because I was trying to do ministry together. And then when I realized that, oh, wait a minute, like, you can do ministry all the time, right? You can love on people all the time, so you can actually let someone go. And I’ve done this, and I’m not, like, doing this, like, to pat myself on the back, but literally, I’ve continued to walk with someone after I let them go and continue to meet with them and help mentor them and try to get them into a good spot because I felt like I was supposed to. And so there’s a little bit of just, like, recognizing things in when you’re outside the jar, right. So I was hearing your story, and then I’m able to, like, see something that’s just because I’m outside of it. But then I think the other way that this happens is the more I’ve gotten better at being curious and learning. So you start out realizing that there’s a lot of ways to get things done every day. And very often in my mind, especially my early days, I thought very binary, it’s this way or that way. I can let this person go and serve in love on them, or I can keep them. Serve in love on them or let them go. No, no, no. There’s, like, there’s all kinds of ands. There’s all kinds of a, B, c, and D, e, f, and g’s. But I so often would frame things in my mind. So the more I recognize all these ways that people are having success and insurance did this for me. Plus just hanging out with entrepreneurs, like, there’s so many ways that people are successful serving people. Yes, I’m a systems, but don’t be so committed to a binary system. Just recognizing the patterns and then full throated. Yes. Like, go at it. So when it fails, you actually know why versus, like, I would going in half hearted, sort of kind of trying it, and then it fails, and you don’t know if it failed because you didn’t really throw your intention into it.

Patrick Longergan [18:53 – 19:29]: Absolutely. Some of that ties back to some of the four C’s, commitment, courage, capability, and confidence. And it’s like, am I committed? Can’t have one toe in one toe out. And I think we’ve seen some interesting evidence around entrepreneurs when they invest in their entrepreneurial journey. I don’t want to say like burn the ships, but they put a significant dollar figure into this next phase of their entrepreneurial career. Like they’re in and they’re, they’re going and they’re off and running. And that’s so true. We can’t have 1ft in, 1ft out. And we even see entrepreneurs that get distracted by new opportunities. Then the main business starts to struggle. It’s like we’ve got to have our focus dialed in.

Steven Neuner [19:29 – 19:52]: I’ve done that, by the way. Like, I’m not throwing stone, but it’s tricky. That’s what I love about coach, in fact, is a framework every quarter to like reevaluate and really look at slow down and why am I doing this? Why am I attracted this and does it fit with my lifetime goals? And if it doesn’t, again, maybe it’s for someone else and it’s just a cool idea, but it’s not cool idea I’m supposed to execute.

Patrick Longergan [19:52 – 21:01]: And so I’d like to take a moment and just, we’ve talked a lot about business, but I think a successful life is what we’re all after. Who cares if we have $100 million, if we don’t have relationships and we have this acronym called reach that we really like. So r is for relationships, e’s for experiences, a is for advancement, growth, c’s for contribution. The scriptures tell us it’s better to give than receive. And then h is our health. We think there’s three components to that health. Our physical health can’t give me cancer for any amount of money. There’s my emotional health. If I’m depressed and can’t get out of bed again, doesn’t matter how much cash I have. And then there’s a spiritual health. We think eternity matters. We look at all of those pieces and it’s like our objective is like, let’s just make sure our money supports that, right? Because the world tells us to go pursue things outside of our reach. Go buy a bigger, faster, shinier, fill in the blank. I could almost make it preach with a p like purpose, you know, maybe needs to go with the front of that. What is my purpose in life? How do you go about balancing, you know, this, this great life along with running great businesses? I know you’ve done some really cool things, like authored some children’s books and seen 50 states with your kids and, you know, you’re constantly investing in those arenas. So can you talk a little bit about how all of that fits together?

Steven Neuner [21:01 – 25:43]: First off, if you put the p on it and it was preach, you probably reach less people. And I hate to say that in this world, but that would be probably the truth. So you’re actually going to get to put the p into it. So anyway, I’m just having fun with it. I do really like it. I really love that it starts relationships, we’re talking about ten x. They’re exponential. They’re the one thing they truly get better with time. I buy the fancy car and there’s a period of time, maybe one month, three months, two months, a year, but at some point you’re just driving in it and you forgot about it and there’s something else. And so relationships I love because they can continue to just get better the more you invest in them. How do I think about all this stuff? There’s so many things. I mean, certainly we’ve talked about coach, and so coach has a thing called the lifetime extender. It’s a great deal thinking tool concept that we do in workshop one, a coach. And so just really, really getting clear on, like, what are those things that are important in my life? I want to make sure I put my ladders up against the right wall. And for me, considered, that is, prayerfully, you know, I’m constantly praying about those things. And while I have certain things I’ve written, I always try to remind myself and ask for the discernment to make sure that I’m holding things loosely enough that if there is purpose beyond what I really thought that I wanted, that I would lay that down and go for what I feel like I’m supposed to be called for, which is why I’m sitting in this barn right now. So while I love the structure, I love the thinking, I love the expanded vision, for me, there is a little bit in that there’s just that continuous renewing of the mind and seeking, not just like, what are the things that I could check out the box or write a book or whatever, what does that represent? What that is, is. That’s evidence. You know, the first children’s book I wrote, there’s no one lining up to publish me a book called dogs on Heaven street from a guy who’s never written a book. And by the way, when I had the idea, it was downloaded to me in a quiet time. I didn’t even have kids yet, so it was like, really creepy sounding that I wanted to write a children’s book. I had no kids, and so literally, I had the idea. I wrote it down, and I tried to be obedient. And so I tried to move that floor. I touched my wife. I kept hitting parts where it would stop or get stuck, and I’d lay it down and I’d get distracted. And then I’d, in my quiet time later, I’d be reminded of my lifetime goals, wanting to be obedient. So literally, like that first book, crazy, took 15 years. And when we finally published it, I had the idea in 15 minutes. Took me 15 years to publish it. I had a teenager when that thing came out. And what’s crazy about it is ultimately, we had gone through multiple people, like illustrators. That’s a big thing in children’s books. I had an illustrator. We got halfway through, they did brilliant artwork, and they were like, I’m sorry. We think that you’re being mean to dogs in this book. And it’s because when the dogs made a mistake in the beautiful heavenly mansion, they had to go outside. And so this artist thought that the dogs going outside was a mean thing. And so anyway, like, I had to depart. So it was just all this reboot and tons of ministry stories throughout that thing. But ultimately, to us, was a big chuck at the time. And we finished publishing it with a guy named Kerry Ober, a coach guy. He helped us get it across the goal line. I mean, we’ve probably sold hundreds and hundreds of books at this point, and we’ll never get the money back. I want to just give you the backstory. Like, my wife’s grandmother was not a believer, and we had been praying for her for our entire marriage. We pray, pray, pray, pray, look for opportunities to share the gospel with her. But she was completely shut off. And we loved her. Didn’t. But it was something that was on her heart. We made this commitment. We did the book, we paid this money to finish the book. Book comes out, and oddly, who do you think? My number one customer is my wife’s grandmother, who doesn’t believe, but she’s a big fan of me because all over the years, our relationship was just a really beautiful relationship. And so she reads the book and comes to a saving knowledge and a relationship with Jesus, which we didn’t even know about. We got a call and she was, like, really on her deathbed in a hospital and went to go visit her. And she told us, and she was buying the book to evangelize all the people in her retirement community. When we wrote that big check to have the book published that wasn’t aligned with all of our other financial goals at the time. But we felt like we were supposed to. We met Kerry. We felt like it was the right thing to do. This thing had been going on forever. We felt like we’re supposed to do it. But if you ask me, was that check worth the conversation I got to have with my wife’s grandmother on her deathbed? I’ve got tears. So my second children’s book, there’s actually a picture of me and her together in the hospital of when that happened. It was the best money I ever spent.

Patrick Longergan [25:43 – 26:04]: The piece of it that I love is we can get awfully hung up in what’s my roi and that type of thing. And when I hear that story, I think about the eternal perspective, the eternal rewards, being faithful in producing this book that, like you said, given to you through spirit. I love that. We will make sure we put a note in the show notes so more people can download that book and the evidence.

Steven Neuner [26:04 – 26:30]: Back to your question, though, right? It’s like, okay, so these are these lifetime goals. Lifetime goals are blurry. Like, okay, I want a wonderful marriage with my best friend Corey. What is the evidence today? How am I being generous today? I want a relationship with my kids, or I want to be a light. That is a today thing. And so any goal I set, they have to align on those. And the path isn’t always straight, but it’s a really fun, great adventure. Again, back to where I’m sitting right now.

Patrick Longergan [26:31 – 26:46]: So where you’re sitting right now, is this your house on your property? Because is this where you host the artist and bring in the food and all those other things? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that’s a pretty cool situation you’ve got there, this place called Barnhill Vineyards.

Steven Neuner [26:46 – 30:01]: And so it was started by a guy named Dean Dickshott, who’s become a dear friend of mine. He was not at the time, he was a music pastor and an entrepreneur, and he had a printing company. And so anyway, this was going to be his forever place. He was starting as a wedding venue, and he eventually figured out the wine and music and stuff like that. This thing was going, and my wife and I had had an exit from the insurance business, and so we were sitting there. Our goals, I want all passive investments. I want all things that pay me money where I don’t have to work. So we’re literally deploying money into passive investments. I’ve got a great who network of great friends I’ve built that are really smart, capable people. I’m looking for deals that they may want to invest and put their shoulder into. And I could just be like, a limited partner. Like, I could just be money in the deal, right? And I run across this beautiful property, and I’m like, this isn’t in Texas. This is too pretty. What is this? I’m looking at it like, this is like a fake thing on LoopNet going through. I click on it, and it’s got a seller’s disclosure. And I read the seller’s disclosure, and on the sellers disclosure, it’s like, why am I selling to. This may sound crazy. I’m a believer. I’ve been having this recurring dream. We thought this was gonna be a forever place, but I keep having this dream. My wife and I are supposed to go back to Houston, Montgomery area, and we’re supposed to take care of our aging parents. And so this is just my act of obedience. I took it to my wife, who’s in the bathroom, by the way. Our completely remodeled bathroom. Not just our bathroom. Our entire house had just been finished, remodeled, paid cash for the house, totally debt free, right? And so we’re literally, even our closets had been custom designed. Everything, it was like an all passive, all vacation, like everything, you know? So I go to her and I’m like, hey, check this out. She go, wow, that’s really beautiful. I’m like, no, no, no, don’t check that out. Look what this guy wrote in a seller’s disclosure. And she’s like, wow. And I was like, I want to meet him. She’s like, you want to buy it, don’t you? And I’m like, well, she’s like, we’re not buying it. Long story short, long story longer. How about that? We end up meeting him, becoming friends. We don’t think it’s for us. We’re scared. We don’t want more work. We want total passive everything. We even try to help sell the place for him. We’re telling entrepreneur friends of ours that are believers, hey, this is a place. And ultimately, I can’t shake it. And ultimately, when the children’s book came out, I spoke at our igniting souls conference, and my wife heard another speaker and sharing her story. She was like, I think we’re supposed to buy it. We ended up buying it. I could give you story after story after story. It made no sense. I don’t drink alcohol. I’m not against it or anything like that. I’m just part japanese, and it just doesn’t go well with my body. My wife drinks. I don’t I don’t play music. If I change a light bulb, I break it. I’m literally sitting on 40 acres, like, beautiful, that constantly needs someone that can actually, like, fix stuff, do stuff. But I felt like we’re supposed to do it. My wife felt like we aligned on it, and we said yes. And it has been one of the most incredible things we’ve ever done. The fun we’ve had, the freedom, the connection, the way we get to build community, the things we’ve got to be a part of, the people got to pour into. It’s been so much better than if I just had passive income and I just went to this place, to that place to stay at this place. So good.

Patrick Longergan [30:02 – 32:07]: Thank you very much for sharing that. So the next thing I’d like to talk about is something that I’m working on personally, this concept of freedom. The cool thing about my life is the Lord is not subtle with me. Keeps hitting me with the same message over and over again, different ways. First started off with a book called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It’s about how our lives are just busy. I read it twice. I don’t normally do that. I gotta go back through and really study this because this tension builds up inside of me. It’s like, I know that’s true, but I don’t want to accept it. Then coach talks about 150 free days a year, which, when you add up, you truly take weekends off and some holidays that’s like seven weeks off of, like, just not working. And this just does not compute. You know, I’m having a hard time putting this together. And then the last book was subversive Sabbath by AJ Swabota. And all these things sort of came together at the same time and really just convicted me. Like, okay, there’s something to rest. I think there’s this myth, and unfortunately, we see it with our clients. There’s this myth that you just have to keep grinding, and if you’re not grinding, you’re not going to be successful. You know, we’ve had a few clients that are put out. They’ll have an emotional breakdown. Like they’re just out of the game for a few weeks or physically, they’ll just not take care of themselves. And then they get sick and they’re out for a couple weeks. Clients will go on vacation, and it’s like they’re sick for the first few days. None of that is healthy. I think of these free days, and I’m starting to really pay attention to free days. And when I sort of deviate. We’ve got sort of a spectrum of free days. On one hand, sitting on the beach in Hawaii with my wife is a platinum free day. And then the other one could just be like the weekend at home. And I found there, there was this project I was working on. I was wanting to have it be a free day. It was a maintenance project on my property, and I kind of liked some of that stuff. It was just not working at all. Like, nothing was coming together. And I’m like, this is just my sign that I’m supposed to be resting, not working on this project right now. Can you talk a little bit about free days and maybe your experience with o’s, you might be cut from the same cloth when you’re doing sales. You just figure more time. I’m out there selling better, and so I don’t have time for free days.

Steven Neuner [32:08 – 35:52]: A foreign concept to me and hard to believe in was this idea that free day should come first. Now, it makes total sense, right? I mean, I live on a farm. We grow grapes. It’s a vineyard. We do live music. But my grapes, they’re seasons for the grapes. And to bear the maximum fruit, there’s seasons that we have to pay attention to and makes sense, in hindsight, how that could apply to us and how God works in patterns, too. But for me, I didn’t get it. And I believed and bought in the hustle culture. I started the guest room at home. I bought the list. I’m gonna cold call bake for meetings. Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Work, work. That’s how you’re gonna make it. I had no free days. I didn’t know what the thing. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t understand the concept. I had no idea how I was gonna make more money by taking days off. That literally makes no sense on the outside, right? But I did sign up, and I did write a check for the program, the coach. So I was like, okay. And I saw my friend get brute, so I was like, okay, I’ll try it. And for me, where the state of the business was at the time, Patrick, I was just trying to get my weekends back. I was working on the weekends. I worked all the time. I wasn’t even efficient. And realize it, right? That was one of the insights. It was just like, I was working all the time. Working on the weekends wasn’t a big deal. But I was like, okay. Like, it just makes sense. Let me just claim the weekends back. Let me just claim a sabbath. Let me just do that. I know that that’s an area that I don’t have to argue. I know, right? So, like, let me just do this. That was level one. We didn’t have any money. We’re still paying off debt and all kinds of stuff. We’re trying to become debt free. That was huge. But there was all kinds of things that I learned through that I didn’t know. Free days are about rejuvenation. You talked about the different kinds of rejuvenation you guys talk about in the firm. For me, I didn’t even know what rejuvenated me. I had no idea. So, like, I wrote down things, and I had to go through, like, a whole discovery process of, like, trying new things, which, by the way, can be kind of intimidating. I mean, I guess it’s golf. I’m gonna go out and golf. I’m gonna get the clubs. I’m gonna go do this thing, right? And everyone talks about golf. It’s the greatest thing. I’ll try it. Right? And so I had to buy it. I had to learn the lingo. I had to go out on the course. I had to go try it. And by going through it, I realized once I worked through that discomfort, that there was actually, like, things that I liked about it. I like being outdoors. I like hanging out and talking with guys like Patrick. But golf didn’t really do it for me. I didn’t feel any rejuvenated. I found it kind of worn out and frustrated because I suck so bad, probably, but ultimately, like, I had to sort of, like, learn and, like, just fail forward and, like, okay, well, what are other things I can do outside with people that I love? I started to kind of optimize and get better at knowing for me how I’ve been wired, what actually rejuvenates me, and what fills me up the most. And it’s not the same for everybody else, and so that’s okay. It doesn’t make people love golf. Wrong. It just meant it wasn’t for me. And so the more I could start to figure that out, I started getting better. And then once you start experiencing that, you start feeling more rejuvenated, and then all of a sudden, you’re more productive and more effective at work, and you realize that you are making more money and you’re seeing things more clearly, and you’re making better decisions because you’re not always burned out in crisis. Then all of a sudden, you become more of a believer, and so then it’s like, okay, well, I hired this new team person instead of me only repositioning the work that I’m doing. What if I had a few more free days? I’m going to start with just taking this day off in the middle of the week and if it burns down, I’ve got Thursday and Friday to fix it up. It gets to the point where, where I am now, and it’s a blessing to say, is like, I have a lot of freedom. I know what rejuvenates me and I don’t want more free days. I mean, like, I know what does it for me, but I also know when I need to plant. There are seasons where I take fewer free days and I, and I focus on the things I’m supposed to do.

Patrick Longergan [35:52 – 36:25]: Because it’s been a little bit of a journey for me and I’m definitely figuring it out. But I like the fact that you’ve got a good rhythm for how you, you execute on your free days. I think that’s wonderful. And I’m. I think about the deferred life plan. So many of us, I think, get caught up in that. Even if we have traditional jobs and it’s like we just keep deferring and we’ll figure out what we like to enjoy later. And unfortunately, people just, they lose all their hobbies, apparently. I’m going to just work until I die. That’s not what a great life looks like in my book. I love the fact that you’re like, I’m just going to test it out. I’m going to see what I do enjoy doing and we’re going to invest the time and energy in it. We’ll find it out.

Steven Neuner [36:26 – 37:40]: What a world do we live in? What a first world problem that we’re sitting here talking about, that it is difficult to actually learn how to rejuvenate ourselves. One, it shows you how upside down we’ve gotten this our worldview sometimes, but then, and also what a first world problem is, that’s a challenge. I got to figure out how to rejuvenate the second thing. Just anyone listening, one big insight and I just want to give it to someone because they may need it, is my identity was the business. My identity was being an entrepreneur and I was very, very wrapped up in like, business was my identity. If the business was good, I’m somehow a better person. I’m smarter, faster, quicker, whatever, right? Free days is weird as it sounds because it’s like taking time off. But the more I develop outside interests outside of the business and I became more of a complete person, the easier it was. For me to not be so trapped up in the things that could come with having your identity wrapped in the business, which is like ego and status and pride and all these things that regardless of your faith, no worldview, no one believes that those are necessarily always good things, are always healthy. And the more I could sort of develop as a whole person, and the business was just a part of my life, not my life, that was very, very healthy.

Patrick Longergan [37:40 – 38:23]: That’s great. And one thing that John Mark Comer talked about with the ruthless elimination of hurry was the days that you’re not sabbathing, you get really intentional about your time. And I think about that as an entrepreneur. If we effectively have unlimited number of hours to just keep working, I’ll take on any little task where when I’m like, okay, I’ve got a limited number of time to get these projects done, I better be working on the most important things and delegating or not doing the other things, you know? And it’s easy to just keep doing more stuff, feeling like you’re moving the needle when you’re just being busy instead of productive. That’s a benefit I found from free days. It’s caused me to have to focus on what is going to be the best thing for me to do today.

Steven Neuner [38:23 – 38:26]: And pay attention to what’s actually where the momentum is.

Patrick Longergan [38:26 – 38:37]: Wonderful. So, Steven, we’ve talked about a lot of things, about what it means to run a great business and live a great life. Is there anything that we’ve missed that you feel like is foundational that we should touch on the before we wrap up?

Steven Neuner [38:38 – 39:40]: I think it’s come as a byproduct of this conversation. I think that your community is really important. Starting early. We’re the blind leading the blind. When I got in trouble as a kid, the mindsets when I was an island and myself, early in the business, and I was just cold calling, begging for meetings, I didn’t have a community that was a really hard way to do business. Like it was an echo chamber. Now, especially with technology, we’re more connected, but disconnected. But actually finding communities that are values aligned feel like they’re supposed to have a bigger future than what it is now. The more you can surround yourself in those types of communities, if people will actually sharpen you, make you stronger, I can’t overstate the value of it. I just don’t think it’s possible. And it’s so cliche that I think that we’ll even hear this and be like, ah, I cannot tell you how many ideas, insights, blind spots, revealed, all happening through conversations like this or listening to a show or a podcast like this. So thank you for doing this. So many times there have been unlocks for me of just surrounding myself with values aligned, people that are going places or up to things.

Patrick Longergan [39:41 – 40:17]: And I think that is a wonderful underlying exclamation point. I just see it so true if we look at the five people closest to us. I don’t need to know anything else about you, but I probably know your income, I probably know your health status just by looking at those folks. I think that’s so critical to surround yourself with people that are moving in a direction that you want to be moving in. It makes an enormous difference in just the way we think what we believe is possible. So many different arenas. So this has been fantastic. I so appreciate you making the time. You’ve been a tremendous influence in me just facilitating and running our coaching meetings at strategic coach and I thank you for that.

Steven Neuner [40:17 – 40:33]: Thanks for asking me. Hopefully there’s value here. The best is yet to come. You influence the room, you influence me, and I’m sharpened every time I get to lead a workshop with you in the room. So thank you for that and showing up that way, and I’m just excited to see what’s next.

Patrick Longergan [40:36 – 41:43]: Thank you for listening to the Vital Strategies podcast. We wanted to give you the first look at the tools we are developing that will help you with the four cornerstones of wealth building to be an insider to get access to the tools to help manage your cash flow create a tax strategy to help you save thousands of dollars in income tax, invest wisely and protect the wealth you’re building. Go to vital strategy. You’ll be first in line to get access. These tools are designed to help you pay less tax so you can build more wealth and live a great life again. That website is vitalstrategies.com cornerstones. I want to remind you to rate and review the Vital Strategies podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us grow towards our goal of saving our clients and listeners over $1 billion in taxes. Those dollars are better used in your hands versus the government bureaucracy. Thank you for listening and for being a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you are the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities for your employees and driving growth. You’re vital to your family, fostering abundance not only financially, but in all aspects of life that matter. Finally, you’re vital to me because you strive to build wealth and make an impact through your business and live a great life.