Stevie Hendrix (@stevie_hendrix) is a globally recognized digital creator who has spent almost a decade connecting with millions worldwide alongside his wife Sazan. Together, Stevie and Sazan invite their 'online fam' into their lives through social media, cultivating an engaged community centered around kindness.
As a true influencer, Stevie's impact stretches far beyond the digital space. He has partnered with globally-recognized brands like Target, Disney, AMEX, and Macy's as a brand ambassador and spokesperson. His infectious positivity and compassion have struck a chord with followers and brands alike.
Stevie and Sazan have been featured extensively in major publications, including Cosmopolitan, People, Forbes.com, and graced the covers of magazines like Austin Living and Magnify. At his core, Stevie aims to spread more love, joy and inspiration through his work - regardless of algorithms, platforms or ventures. He is dedicated to uplifting others and making a difference through the incredible reach of his digital profiles.
Their book A Real Good Life will help you be more intentional with each hour of your day, build deeper connections, establish sustainable rhythms, recognize the value of reflecting, focusing, gathering, and resting, and inspire you to cherish life's gift in each moment.
What Travis and Stevie Discussed:
Work hard when you're young to set yourself up for success later. In your 20s, you have energy and time on your side that you won't have later when you have more responsibilities. Use that time to grind, take risks, and build skills that set you up for bigger success down the road.
Have a vision for your work. Grinding just to grind accomplishes little.
Understand the lifestyle you want in the future, and use the hustle of your younger years to build towards that vision. With a purpose behind it, hard work in your 20s pays off enormously later.
Struggle now or struggle later - the struggle is inevitable. It's better to purposefully take on hard things when you're young and able to control the circumstances more. Putting off struggle until later only makes it more difficult. Embrace the necessary struggle on your terms.
The hustle is about focused, quality work, not just quantity of hours. Work smarter by examining how you spend your time and cutting out unproductive activities. A few hours of deep focus outpaces unfocused work for 14+ hours. The hustle is about working intelligently.
Cultivate the garden you have. Your life circumstances may not be ideal or what you envisioned, but you can still cultivate goodness daily. Start with the garden you have rather than wishing for a different plot - make the most of the gifts and people around you now.
Stevie provides an inspiring perspective on making the most of your younger years and cultivating a life you love. For more insights, be sure to listen to the full conversation on the Travis Makes Friends podcast episode with Stevin and how his book "A Real Good Life expands on creating meaning through simple, daily moments.
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Transcript
Stevie Hendrix (0s): You can grind as much as you want, but do you have a vision for what you're Grinding towards and what you're trying to create? And, I think you really have to ask yourself the question of, hold on, what is the lifestyle I wanna live in 10 years and 20 years? And how can I start building up to that today? And if you do that, In your twenties, like when the pressure isn't as high, I think that's when you really set yourself up for success. Whether it doesn't matter what it is, man, I'm telling you, if you can just believe that you can do it and give yourself the time and dedicate a few years to even like an e-comm business Yep. You're gonna make traction by that time. You should have some real traction to build off of In your thirties
Travis Chappell (38s): Welcome. back to the show. I'm Travis Chappell And I believe that if you can connect with the best, you can become the best So. after creating 800 podcast episodes about building your network, I've come to realize that networking is really just making friends if you doing it the right way. Anyway, join me as I. make friends with world class athletes like Shaquille o Neale, entertainers, like Rob Dyrdek authors like Dr, Nicole, Lappera, former presidents like Vicente Fox, or even the occasional FBI hostage negotiator, billionaire, real estate mogul or polarizing political figures. So. if you want to make more friends that help you become a better version of yourself, then subscribe to the show and keep on listening. 'cause this is Travis Makes Friends. What does it mean to live a real good life? Well, today on the show, I sit down with one of the co-authors of the book, A real good Life.
Travis Chappell (1m 22s): To answer that exact
Stevie Hendrix (1m 23s): Question, You know what's funny is the number one thing we would ask people, what's good In your life right now? It was always somebody, it was always a who. It was never a what. We
Travis Chappell (1m 30s): Also talk about the importance of exchanging real life moments for transactional opportunities.
Stevie Hendrix (1m 35s): What we realized after living in LA for a while was just that You know what, we kind of checked all the boxes we wanted to check, but we're exchanging real life, like meaningful deep moments for transactional Opportunities. and we realized for like, it's, it's hard to walk away from them. Sure, but, but we need to,
Travis Chappell (1m 55s): Plus we break down hustle culture and then talk about the formula that people should really Embrace.
Stevie Hendrix (2m 1s): I think it's truly just consistency and going like literally just the extra step that people are not,
Travis Chappell (2m 8s): And be sure to watch until the end. Because we talk about how the good comes through the hard.
Stevie Hendrix (2m 13s): I believe that the good comes through the hard like, and the real, real good, right? Yes. Like, it's like if you want to have the life You know that you dreamed about at 50, then yeah, you gotta do the hard things now. 'cause then life gets easier. You don't wanna do the hard things later. Trust me, don't put all the good right now and do the hard later. That sucks.
Travis Chappell (2m 30s): So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Stevie Hendrix. What's happening everybody? Welcome back to another episode, Travis Makes Friends podcast. Today I'm making friends with Stevie Hendrix. Stevie, what's up? Do you welcome to the show.
Stevie Hendrix (2m 43s): What's up, Travis? I'm good, man. How's everything In your world?
Travis Chappell (2m 47s): You know, I I got, I got my coffee, so that always makes things better. And my kids aren't at the house right now, which makes it a little bit easier to record a podcast episode. So how about you?
Stevie Hendrix (2m 58s): I don't have any coffee right now. I definitely drank some And. I. Don't my, I'm looking like I'm definitely at home. You look like you're in like a legit studio right now. So you're, you're got the leg up on me. I'm gonna blame it on like having three kids, which we were just talking about. It's just, I, I literally, dude, people told me they were like three, my brother, this is my brother's quote, he has four. He goes, three broke us. And I was like, thanks man. He was like, I looking forward to being broken, but for
Travis Chappell (3m 22s): Encouraging. Thank you.
Stevie Hendrix (3m 23s): Yeah. And I remember like, I was kind of, I was kind of like, nah, he doesn't, he's kind of like, he's not really tough like that. Like I got this. Yeah. And, and it's just, dude, it is a whole other level of busy zone defense type thing, You know what I mean? and we love it. There's really, really great moments. And then there's moments where you're just like, dude, why isn't octopus playing the drums? You know what I mean? Like, everyone needs to chill. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (3m 47s): Well the good thing is that the five-year-old is probably getting to the stage where they can actually You know, put on their own shoes and yeah. Stuff like that where You know you have to do every single thing for them all the time.
Stevie Hendrix (3m 60s): She's great. My oldest is great, man. She's really kind of, it's weird. She, like, I saw her antennas go up when baby brother came home. Yeah. And she's like, oh, I'm, I'm big sister. Like, I'm not just like bigger to my younger. I'm like the big sister. And so she's leveled up. She's done a, the like, even in the last couple weeks too. She's just kind of, I don't know, she's grown leaps and bounds and it's really cool to see that we need it.
Travis Chappell (4m 25s): Yeah, exactly. So you need a lifeline. Yeah, a lifeline. Well, listen, dude, I, I appreciate you coming on the show. I know it kind of prevented us from doing both you and Cesan at the same time having a, a chat with all three of us. But I'm looking forward to getting her on a little bit later to talk about her perspective. But I'm, I'm excited to talk through a couple of things, but first off, before we get too far in the conversation, I wanna make sure that everybody listening right now goes and picks up a copy of your book, A Real Good Life. Hey, that just came out. And the man, the, these types of books are really timely to me right now, dude, because I'm doing a lot of st the show is called Travis Makes Friends. And the reason for that is it used to be like a really niche business show all about networking. Like how do you get around better people to level up in life? And through that process of, we did it for years, and through that process, I really kind of figured out that like the activity of networking and making friends, if you're doing it the right way, they're actually one and the same thing.
Travis Chappell (5m 14s): And then I started reading all of these mind blowing and surprisingly awful statistics about loneliness in the world and how loneliness can lead to long-term negative effects. And even in physiology that, that, that have a negative impact that is equivalent up to the smoking episode 15 cigarettes a day. That is just done by being lonely. And we're in a society that's more connected than ever, yet more lonely than ever, which is a weird counterintuitive place to be. But I think You know books like yours are real good. Life is a, is this is a really timely book to, to, to put out into the world. And so I'm, I'm curious as to, as to why, like why now, why, why, why this particular time and why this topic?
Stevie Hendrix (5m 56s): That's a great question. Question. That's a loaded, like, that's a, a loaded plate of nachos right there. It's all these different things thrown into it. Sazan basically, I wasn't supposed to write this book. I wasn't supposed to be on this book. Sazan got approached like five and a half years ago after our daughter was born. And this big publishing house was like, Hey, we'd love for you to write a book. We're thinking it should be this. And she was like, okay. Like, sounds great. And then like six months down the road, she was like, actually, I don't want to do that. That sounds like fake and fluffy. And like, that's not me. I don't want to do that. And so she went back to the drawing board. And at the time our podcast was really kind of, kind of catapulted us into a new space, into to having like a new voice instead of just being social media people.
Stevie Hendrix (6m 37s): We were now like podcasters who had a legit podcast. And a podcast was called The Good Life You know, when we put that out, it was really for the, the aim of saying like, let's put some good out into the world. Let's focus on the good, let's highlight the good and the people who are doing it. And so that really kind of became our mantra. It's like we took ownership over this word good You know. and we would ask people on our show, we're like, what does it mean to you to live a good life? You know, we would say, what's good In your life right now? You know what's funny is the number one thing we would ask people, what's good In your life right now? It was always somebody, it was always a who, it was never a what I would say 95%. It was always a who You know it's family. It's a loved one. I mean it's, it's relationships that they're loving right now.
Stevie Hendrix (7m 17s): And so Susan And I really just fell in love with asking that question, what does it mean to live a good life? Because we moved out to LA as like these young hungry kids who were like, we're taking the city by storm. I'm gonna go into Hollywood, Cezanne's gonna do like entertainment news and all that kind of stuff. And that was popping off. And God just totally like changed our trajectory and we had a total like heart shift. And so we started moving into this world of influence. You know when that really first started out, like 2012, when that like Instagram became this big thing. We were in the mi the mix, right? And so everyone's like, oh, I want to have like your job, what be doing what you're doing. Yeah. Like we were just kind of blessed right place, right time, right work ethic.
Stevie Hendrix (7m 57s): And You know, we kind of were in the mix of all of it. But what we realized after living in LA for a while was just that You know what, we kind of checked all the boxes we wanted to check, but we're exchanging real life, like meaningful deep moments for transactional Opportunities. and we realize we're like, it's, it's hard to walk away from them. Sure. But, but we need to, like, on a soul level, we're not being satisfied. We're not being satiated. And I always go back to that Jim Carey thing where he's like, I wish I could give everyone a million bucks to realize like being rich or being famous is not the answer. And I feel like, I mean, Jim Carrey, I mean he's like one of my icons. He's a legend. Yeah. Blister. We're just like this tiny little ant compared to him.
Stevie Hendrix (8m 38s): But I, I got enough of that, what he was talking about Yeah. To realize like, yeah, he, he was so right when he said that. And so long story short, it led to us moving back home back to Texas where I was like, I'm never moving back. I'm living the SoCal 75 degree weather live baby. Yeah. None of this live anymore. And, and we're back. It's, it's been like one of five, it's torturous, but You know what God has taught us a lot of valuable lessons coming back home, coming back to humility and simplicity. And really when we came back home in 2020 through the pandemic and everything we realized, we're like, man, we really want, want to write a book that's about loving your life. It's about loving where you are right now despite the challenges because you can actually love your life right now despite the challenges.
Stevie Hendrix (9m 22s): You don't need to go anywhere else. You don't need to change anything massive. You just need to look around and say like, what are the resources that I have right now? What are the gifts and the abilities that God has given me and the people that he's placed around me? And how can I cultivate those things to make that garden in a sense the best that it can be? And so that's really the heart behind this book.
Travis Chappell (9m 41s): I mean, we only get one of them, right? Yeah. We only get, we only get one, one shot, one one life to, to take advantage of. Man. And and you said it, you said it really, really nicely there. It's, you, you kind of have to choose You know sometimes between something that's good, something that's perceived as a high priority, maybe by other people. And you have to choose between that and this other version of life that actually maybe is more fulfilling, even if it means you've, you've sacrificed potential opportunity or upside. Sure. Because you are the one ultimately who has to define what that upside is. You know what I mean? Right. You mentioned something in there that I didn't wanna breeze over. You said right place, right time, right.
Travis Chappell (10m 22s): Work ethic. And, I think that a lot of people leave that last one out. They think that yeah. Is just right place, right time. It's like, well, if I could go back to 2012 and knew blah, blah blah, yeah. Then I could be just like, c and Stevie, And I could do this thing. Just like, but but, but that's just, it wasn't in the cards for me. And yeah, they, they, they like to project their, their lack of, of success or fulfillment in life onto external circumstances that's out completely outta their control. So I'm curious to hear like what type of work ethic went into building the influence that you've been able to build up to this point Now,
Stevie Hendrix (10m 53s): I think Suzanne And I are both kind of, we're similar in that we're just dogs that don't quit You. know what I mean? We're, we're not these, I don't know, man. We're just, we're pretty normal people. What,
Travis Chappell (11m 2s): What were you doing before?
Stevie Hendrix (11m 4s): So I moved out to LA to, to pursue acting and tv c And, I both met in the, we met in the, in the audio booth at our, at our college where we were running the newscast. My friend was the quote unquote news was he the news? Anyways, he was not the, I was an anchor. Cesan was an anchor on the same night he put us together. He was the good lord. Yeah. He was like the head thrown
Travis Chappell (11m 27s): Out words.
Stevie Hendrix (11m 27s): I can if station manager in a sense. There you go.
Travis Chappell (11m 30s): Okay. Yeah.
Stevie Hendrix (11m 30s): Yeah. So he was like, Hey bro, he is like, I, I remember I had noticed this on the previous semester, but I didn't know anything about her. And so he, he told me, he goes, dude, that girl that You know you, you thought was really cute. She actually auditioned for the newscast. He goes, and so I put you guys anchoring on the same night. And I was like, my man. I was like, let's go my dude. Good
Travis Chappell (11m 47s): Luck. Good luck. Yeah.
Stevie Hendrix (11m 49s): So I remember we were in the, we were in the booth You know, and And I just started like You know. It was like, I'm just gonna ask this girl You know. It was like, what kind of guys are you into? She's like, You know, dark, exotic and all that. I was like, cool. So not me. Yeah. Just moving on. Right, moving on. We're good. We lost that one. Take the l Let's just be friends. And I. Remember we just hung out all the time. We were, we were doing the newscast together and that's how we met. And that's ultimately we, we started falling in love. So we moved out to LA both being like, we're those two kids that were like, had our sights set high, like always been big dreamers, super motivated, shoot for the stars. and we moved out to la Dude, we just got some math You know, like, and the resume before didn't matter. Like I had a good resume.
Stevie Hendrix (12m 30s): I moved out and, and right before that I was on Ryan Seacrest and Mark Cuban's new access to TV where It was like interviewing like celebrities that were coming through And. I was in Dallas. So It was like Steve Aoki, people like that. But I'm like in the hotel room as a 21 year old, like, what's up? You know, like having a great time. And, I just, yeah. I just remember getting to LA dude like falling flat on her face and being like, okay, I'm nobody. Yeah. Nobody caress that I'm here and somehow I have to dig myself out of this hole. And, I have like no money in my bank account at all. I can't afford a Chipotle burrito even without the guac. Like It was like, You know. Like my boy's like, dude, just don't get the guac. And I was like, you don't understand dude. I can't. I can't.
Stevie Hendrix (13m 10s): Yeah. So that's where we were at And, I have to credit Cesan with first. Cesan had the vision. So before we moved out there in 2011, she was doing this online blog. It was something that was totally started from just passion. She was passionate about clothes, about beauty. And her brother had just gone through cancer at the age of eight. And luckily he did survive. But when that happened to her, something just sparked in. Her It was like, I am not going to waste my days. I'm gonna go after this thing that I love. And so she just started doing it as a hobby. But that hobby started turning into brands, reaching out to her like, Hey, we noticed you on Google search. Will you post our product? So she started doing that. Oh, really? So it all started as a blog. First started as a blog dude.
Stevie Hendrix (13m 52s): It was And I Remember taking photos with her in college. Like, like Suzanne has You know over a million on Instagram now. But when she showed me Instagram, like I remember at the college news station, she goes, Hey, you need to get this app. I was like, what is that? She goes, you take photos, you post 'em. I was like, who cares? I just, the concept I already have Facebook, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I was like, who Caress? The concept was like foreign to me, right? I'm like 21 And I. Remember she's showing me her thing. And And I was like, you have, you have like a thousand followers. I was like, that's insane. I was like, why are a thousand people following you, obviously. 'cause she's beautiful. That's like the start. But then, but then she started creating like a real platform. You know. She started posting her outfits and like going like, Hey, I have this outfit on my blog.
Stevie Hendrix (14m 34s): And more people started following her. So she really started gaining traction. And another credit to Suzanne was that her whole dream of being like Juliana Ranic part two was not working out. Like that was falling flat on his face as well. And so she realized like, You know I, I don't have a lot of wind in my sails when I'm heading this direction, but this blog thing is working. There's something about it. I don't understand it yet. I don't know how I can make money with it, but it's working. And I want to keep exploring that. So as she was pushing into the social space on the blog and growing that, I was out like trying to like do the acting thing. I remember I was taking all these different jobs, or I was like marketing jobs or I was traveling around and stuff like that. And I. Remember she called me, and this is before I even proposed to her.
Stevie Hendrix (15m 17s): She's like, Hey, would you with this job, will you come work with me? I, I, I know girls that are making a lot of money doing this. And again, I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, doing what? Yeah, yeah. Post like, and this is, this is like 2000 You know 12 and So. it was still super new. So I just remember I was like, okay, if this is the girl that I wanna marry, I had a conversation with my dad. My dad was like, dude, you just gotta take a leap of faith. Like if you wanna marry this girl, if you guys want to grow together as a family, And in business, you gotta show her that you like you're serious. And so that meant walking away from guaranteed like a good amount of money that I was guaranteed doing this, this job that I was doing. Yeah. And so I just jumped on board, dude.
Stevie Hendrix (15m 57s): I started quote unquote managing her. I was You know, taking inbox emails and negotiating all of a sudden with like L'Oreal, And, I, remember I negotiated my first deal. And I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, how did I do that? Yeah. Like You know, like multiple thousand dollars And. I was just like, okay. Like, hey, like we can, we can start doing this thing. Seems
Travis Chappell (16m 18s): Real. Yeah.
Stevie Hendrix (16m 18s): Yeah. And that's where it started. Cesan really had a vision for, she kind of caught the vision as it went along, but she never gave up on what she was doing. And so she just got really creative with reaching out to brands and just kind of just going hard in the paint. And her And, I would stay up late nights we're in our early twenties. You know we'd stay up late nights, just the two of us till 11 o'clock, midnight just working and Grinding. and we did that all the time. You know. 'cause the energy, we didn't have kids. and we were like, dude, we're trying to, we're trying to make a name for ourself. We're trying to You know honestly Level up, make some money. And So. it was really just like, what else are we gonna do? Like why would we walk away from this opportunity? And so we really just seized it. And dude, it was one of those things I say right work ethic because we didn't like it.
Stevie Hendrix (17m 3s): There was never a viral moment where It was like, okay, wake up tomorrow and you've got 500,000 followers. It was never like that. It was actually day by day we would see growth. Yep. and we track it and just be like, what's working? And back then, man, I'm talking about pumping out content. Like, like insane. We don't do that anymore at that level. We do a lot. But like back then it was just like It was like, It was like, yeah.
Travis Chappell (17m 28s): Right, right.
Stevie Hendrix (17m 29s): It was wild.
Travis Chappell (17m 30s): So where you are now and looking back on that and then making a decision in 2020 to move back out to Texas and kind of Embrace a You know slower, at least version of life. It's a question I've been kind of asking a lot of people lately and pondering myself. Do you look at it as like, man, I wish we would've enjoyed our twenties more. Or do you look at it as that was a phase that was required to set us up for the position where we're in now, we're able to make the decision to slow down and still be able to live life at this certain level?
Stevie Hendrix (18m 2s): I, I think that Suzanne And I, what we've realized is that we're busy bodies. We're we're like people who are like, we're, we're gonna work hard. We're gonna show up. We're naturally wired that way. I think it's a little bit of her coming from an immigrant background and then myself coming from a super blue collar You know, I just watched my parents work really, really hard background. And so we're just kind of wired that way. And it's interesting you ask about our twenties and like in some regard, I would say, if I'm being a hundred percent honest, 50% of me says yes, I wish that we had enjoyed our twenties more. And 50% of me says absolutely not. Like I have zero regrets. I I look at a lot of my friends that I've known since high school and college that I'm still close with.
Stevie Hendrix (18m 42s): And I think they're kicking themselves saying like, I wish I would've grinded a little bit harder in my twenties. I wish I would've had. I think the biggest thing though, and, and here's what I, here's what I wanna actually, I wanna point this out and set up the grind. You can grind as much as you want, but do you have a vision for what you're Grinding towards? Yeah. And what you're trying to create And I think you really have to ask yourself the question of, hold on, what is the lifestyle I wanna live in 10 years and 20 years? Right? And how can I start building up to that today? And if you do that, In your twenties, like when the pressure isn't as high, there's more pressure. In your thirties and forties. But when you do that, when your twenties and the pressure usually isn't as high, I think that's when you really set yourself up for success.
Stevie Hendrix (19m 24s): Whether it doesn't matter what it is, man, I'm telling you, I, if you can just believe that you can do it and give yourself the time and dedicate a few years, five years, eight years to even like an e-comm business. Yep. You're gonna make traction. Right? Like you're gonna, you, but by that time, you should have some real traction to build off of In your thirties. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (19m 42s): And even if you don't, so here's my thing, bro, is like, it, it's almost zero risk to do every, like, to do the big risk In your twenties because you have, you have so much time. Like time is on your side so much. Like even if you get outta your twenties and it's like, man, I'm still like I'm in debt because this e-comm thing, it didn't work out. And I put a bunch of money on a card for this supply and now we can't get rid of it and our ad costs went up and all this other thing happened. But then like you come outta that and you're 31 and you're sitting on inventory in a warehouse and you had to file bankruptcy or whatever, or you're just You know in debt up to your ears and you're just kind of wondering what's gonna happen next. It's like during that time when you took that big risk, you have learned so much.
Travis Chappell (20m 25s): Like you have stacked skills, you learned how to buy Facebook traffic. You learned how to set up your landing page, you learned how to integrate shop pay on your shopping cart. You learned like how to write an abandoned cart email sequence. Like you learn all of these things. Then you come up into your thirties. And the thing is, is like it takes one year, two years to just like instantly turn everything around and have this like kind of rocket launch moment. It feels like a rocket launch, but it's really not. It's from the decade of hard work and big risks, relationship building, skill stacking that you did In your twenties to put you in a position to crush it. In your thirties and or your forties And I think that kinda what you were saying earlier is like You know people who didn't take their twenties to do that.
Travis Chappell (21m 10s): It's not a phase that you can avoid. Yeah. If you want, if you want outsized success anyway. Right. If you, if you wanna live life on, on a level that most people will never understand, then at some point you will have to have like a grind, high risk, low reward, yielding type of a phase. Right? It's just, it's part of the process and you have to put that time in. It's just like, when are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it In your twenties when you have like no family and no kids, right? And no wife and no responsibilities. Or are you gonna try to pull that off when you're In your late thirties and you got three kids and you got school and you got a nanny, you got expenses and you got bills. And it's like, well, which one makes more sense? And to me it's like, ah, I think I might rather sacrifice a little bit in my twenties because like thirties is still super young and it's not like, it's not like if you try to go travel and live life and experience things, In your thirties, it's, I'm too old to do that now.
Travis Chappell (21m 58s): It's like, no, you can still do that for the next two decades. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I Well I think you're right.
Stevie Hendrix (22m 5s): There's a couple things I wanna pick up off what you were saying. This too is like it's, yeah, it's In your twenties. It's not just energy. It is like the time that you don't have to spend getting things out of your way. I have to spend so much time in my day getting things out of my way. Yep. And, I. Don't wanna, I don't wanna just phrase it like that because part of that is I'm like, I will not sacrifice spending time with my kids. I'm not
Travis Chappell (22m 29s): Yeah. Yeah. They, they can be good things too,
Stevie Hendrix (22m 31s): Right? It can be, it can be good thi but it's just like, I'm not like from five o'clock till seven 30, I need to be with my kids. Yeah. So like that's time that I just am not gonna spend working. And like you said, In your twenties, you have that. I think the other thing too is that people have to re refocus or re-see the re-see the word like grind or hustle or working hard because I saw it wrong for, for so long. You know, I think it's truly just consistency going like literally just the extra step that people are not, I think those two things literally will lead to so much more like measured success. Yeah. Than just saying like, it's not just like, it's like people that want to get in shape, right?
Stevie Hendrix (23m 13s): I've been on this like I've worked out my whole life, but this year I've really kind of figured out some secret sauce for myself. And that is consistency, like I said. And just realizing that it's gonna take time and showing up constantly. And so realizing that like instead of being that guy when I was in my twenties, like, I gotta go in the gym, go hard in the bank You. know what I mean? And you're like, you're going 105% every day. Yeah. You are not gonna sustain that. Like even Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think he said what, 75 or 80%? He's like, I always go 75, 80%. Because that, that leads to consistency. Yeah. So when you rethink things like that, you're actually like, okay, so if I am 30 or I'm 35, And, I do have an opportunity in front of me or something, I believe in that I have a vision for what does the grind look like for me right now?
Stevie Hendrix (23m 58s): And that could be okay, I have a family, I have a wife, so I don't, I don't wanna sacrifice those things. So either A, I need to get up earlier in the morning or b, I need to like work when my spouse goes to sleep so I'm not neglecting her. Or CI say like, Hey, I just need an hour and a half after the kids go down and we spend our time together. 'cause I'm still doing that right now. Like, I've not arrived. There's so many things that, that I wanna level up on and that things I wanna grow even our e-com business. And so Susan And I do that, but we constantly have to check back in and audit. Like we just did it the other day. We're like, Hey, relationship tank right now kind of empty. Yeah. Yeah. We need, well we need to cut the power hours this week and we need to be together.
Stevie Hendrix (24m 38s): Yeah. And so we're constantly going back and, and kind of checking in on that And I believe that you can still really make moves and achieve that success later on. But yeah, you have to be much more calculated with your time.
Travis Chappell (24m 50s): I think for me the, the biggest thing on the hustle, the, the biggest reimagining, re reimagining of what the word hustle was, was a realization that it's not like the hustle is not purely a volume play. It's a quality play. And what I found was that man, there's a lot of other people out there that work two or three times the amount of hours that I work, but get so much less done than I get done. It's like, it's not like the hustle doesn't mean that you gotta be working for 18 hours a day. It just means that you gotta put in four and a half to five hours of very focused work. Now the people who have the craziest outsized returns are the ones who do both, right?
Travis Chappell (25m 33s): Like Gary Vander, Chuck, Alex sch, moey, like the people that are putting in 16 hours of high quality output work every day. Those are the people that are getting the most out of it obviously. 'cause they have three workdays in one day and they're very focused and very intentional about what work they get done. But a lot of people, they work 12, 14 hours a day. But so much of it is spent doing stuff that is either like below their pay grade, meaning they shouldn't be taking their time to do it, or it's just frankly a complete and waste of time. You are like, you're spending an hour and a half on a call that should be 15 minutes, or you're spending 35 minutes on a call. That could have been a slack message. Like you are, you are filling your day with stuff, but that doesn't mean that it's productive stuff to be doing.
Travis Chappell (26m 13s): So you feel like you're doing a bunch, but then you look at it at the end of a month and you're like, man, what did I really get done? You. know what I mean? It's like the, the hustle does not mean that you have to kill yourself Grinding with hours. And frankly, dude, that was one thing that having kids actually helped me with. 'cause like when I, when I, when we, when we first had our, it was really when we had our daughter. 'cause like our son was a super easy baby. We got really, really lucky with him. And he was our first one. And so like, he would sleep through the night like 12 hours, bro. Like eight to eight from the time he was three weeks old. We never had a problem with him. He was, he would take this two hour, two hour nap every day. Just like he wouldn't cry unless something was up. Right? Like it was, he was a super easy baby. and we had our daughter and our son started becoming a rambunctious toddler.
Travis Chappell (26m 56s): You know. So we had our daughter and our son was like 18 months, but our daughter was a difficult newborn 'cause she had some health issues and some other things like that. I had just started a software company. So It was like, I had a baby software startup that I was raising money for. We had a baby, baby, a real one in the house, and we had our rambunctious toddler. And it was just like all of this was happening at this perfect storm. And it, it, it required me to adjust to the way that I viewed my work schedule from thinking that like I, it is physically impossible for me to just, to put in more hours. At this point I'm, I'm getting, I'm, I'm up at 4:00 AM I'm at the gym by four 30 to five. I'm putting in time, working out on my, like focusing on my fitness. I'm like helping my wife with the kids.
Travis Chappell (27m 36s): I'm doing this business. I'm doing like the new startup and I'm still building the old business that pays my bills. 'cause I can't just neglect that. Right. And it's just like there, I can't do more. That's not the answer. There has to be another answer because I'm not the only one that's ever come against this obstacle. And other people have figured it out. Something's up You know what I mean? Yeah. And it, like, it required me to get back into the, of the mode of like examining my hours and being like, okay, but do I really need to be focusing on that? Can I, is is, can somebody else do that that I can teach or pay to do that? Can I, like what happens if I focused my time doing this? Can I see a better return on that time? And it required that I, that I like readjust almost everything about like my, my daily routine, the hours I was putting into everything I was working on.
Travis Chappell (28m 19s): And it was all And in a way. Like it was the, the six months is like, I look back now, like her, the first six months of our daughter's life was just like, I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't really remember much of it. It was just a blur. We were You know no sleep. I, it was just like, I, I have no idea how we made it through that, but we did. And afterwards we came out like, I think in a, in a better, in a better place because it kind of forced us to restructure almost everything about how we attacked our day You know what I mean?
Stevie Hendrix (28m 45s): I I think that's life, man. Like, like we talk about that a lot in our book. And that's one of the main themes in the through lines of our book too, is like what you said. Like, I don't know how we got through that, but we did and we came out the other side better for it. I think there's a lot of people right now that are You know whether they're in their twenties or their thirties or forties. and we, even the conversation we're having about getting ahead and, and You know making those moves that you need to make to be successful. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that are, that go through their life avoiding the, the giants that are in front of them. Hmm. They, they don't feel like that they can take those things head on, but I think they need to see it the other way and realize they were designed to fight that thing. Yeah. It's like you designed to fight that thing that, like you, you put it in the corner, you don't wanna talk about it, you don't wanna look at it.
Stevie Hendrix (29m 29s): It could be your physical health, it could be You know your, it could be your bank statement. Like, but you were designed to face that issue. And like you said, I, so for me You know, know Susan And I got married at 25 and getting married at 25 nowadays is young and getting married at 25 in la being a social media person is like your child. Yeah. Right. Why are you, why are you doing this? And then having a kid before we're 30 people are like, what are you guys doing? Like we're all traveling, we're all doing stuff and yeah, like there's hard days that comes at a cost, but at the same time the reward always outweighs it. But I believe that's like a principle in life. I believe that the good comes through the hard like, and the real, real good, right?
Stevie Hendrix (30m 13s): Yes. Like it's like if you want to have the life You know that you dreamed about at 50, then yeah, you gotta do the hard things now. 'cause then life gets easier. You don't wanna do the hard things later. Trust me, don't put all the good right now and do the hard later. That sucks. That's the worst.
Travis Chappell (30m 27s): Well, 'cause the, 'cause the thing is bro, like everything's hard You know what I'm saying? You have to like the work, if you wanna live life at this certain level, the work will need to be done at, at a certain point, right? So it's like you can either decide right now to put that work off and then later on it's gonna be even more difficult. Like you will stru like the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not guaranteed. If you purposefully put struggle In your path, then you have some sort of control over how that struggle, like how big that struggle is when it comes and, and the results that come from working through that struggle. But if you don't put in the work right now, then guess what struggle's gonna be hitting you when you're 54. It's gonna be like, oh man, I don't have retirement.
Travis Chappell (31m 9s): I didn didn't, I didn't build a bunch of skills. I'm starting over from my relationships. Like, I didn't spend any time like really building an intimate relationship with somebody. I don't have a wife, I don't have kids. And like, if those are things that you wanted, you wake up at 54 and it's like, well now you're in struggle because of things that just happened because you let things happen. Whereas if you like have this concentrated purposeful struggle, then you can design it in a way that allows you to attain the things that you want so that later on you don't have to worry about it You know what I mean? It's just like this isn like the struggle's guaranteed the success is not right. And so you, like, you, you either struggle now or you're gonna struggle later. But I would rather struggle now and set myself up in a way that allows me to choose my struggle later too. You know.
Stevie Hendrix (31m 48s): Yeah. And there's so much beauty in it too, man. I think there's beauty and, and there's, you find so much more deep community. Like whether it's with your wife and your kids or the people around you, you really find deep community when you're going through those things with your loved ones. You know, And, I. I think that like we, we just look at the hard things and we say, well, I just, I just, but we don't realize the, the beauty in the struggle. You know, like we were designed to face our giants who were designed to do yeah. Things. and we weren't designed to just put them off because we got one life to live. And so it's like, I believe that God has a higher calling for us at the different ages and stages of our life. And so it's actually about us just saying yes.
Stevie Hendrix (32m 30s): It's about us saying like, yes, I am gonna stop avoiding that thing. Yes, I am gonna be teachable. Yes, I am gonna go, I'm gonna go do the work that I've been putting off And, I, I really believe that as we age and grow older, we were actually designed for higher, higher levels of, of stewardship You know what I mean? And in our life. And it, so it's about learning those lessons too now. I mean, even for me, it's like I didn't, no one taught me anything about investing. You know, didn't learn anything about investing. I'm like, how are they not talking about this in schools? Like, no kidding, bro. All this we talked about is like, what a waste of time. Yeah. I can't apply this in my real life for why didn't somebody like You know, even like back in 20 20, 20 21, Hey guys, money is free right now.
Stevie Hendrix (33m 13s): You can go to the bank, right? And if you got credit, it's two and half, 3%. Right? Go get some free money and use that to start your business. Like no money. It's just like, you can find it on Podcasts now. But like, like I said, that's not being given away in, in colleges and, and stuff like that. And so, which is
Travis Chappell (33m 30s): Insane. It's really like a crime against, against right
Stevie Hendrix (33m 34s): Culture. Oh my gosh. Hey guys, by the way, that student loan you took out You know. Yeah. That's at like 6%. So Right. Let's just frame everything from there. Like Yeah. Or
Travis Chappell (33m 42s): Even compound interest, like the beauty of compound interest. Nobody's like, you have the richest guy, the richest hedge fund manager ever You know Warren Buffett's calling compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. But you've gotta go to like finance school to learn about it. It's like this is not a, this is not a difficult concept. This is no more difficult than Algebra one. Like why are we not learning this when we're 14 To be like, Hey, I know you are only 16 years old, but if you can You know, scrape two pennies together, maybe start putting $25 a month into a account because that compounding in 40 years could be worth a couple million dollars even though it's only a hundred grand in principle because the beauty of compound interest. Why are we not like it's Yeah, tho those things infuriate me, bro.
Travis Chappell (34m 22s): I don't understand like how, how, how can that be something that we don't learn about You know, right?
Stevie Hendrix (34m 26s): Right. But we gotta be like teachable, man. It's like I was faced with that. I was like, I don't know anything about investing. This overwhelms me because first of all, I feel like I should have known You know we've been making good money. And I haven't known how to invest it You know what I mean? There was been like that weird thing where it's like, I'm upset that I didn't know. I don't know. So I don't know if I'm gonna go do it, but I was just like, and you
Travis Chappell (34m 46s): Don't know who to trust You know, because there's a lot of scam artists out there. It's just like, right. Yeah, yeah. Makes
Stevie Hendrix (34m 52s): Sense. Right? So I just like, okay, I need to go and investigate this and be teachable and ask around and take my time You know what I mean? Yeah. But it's like, even if it's that or something larger, it's, I just believe that we were designed to grow. We were. And and we only do that by facing those things and taking on the challenges of the things that we don't understand.
Travis Chappell (35m 11s): Well, listen, dude, I I want to get you onto the rest of your day, but I, I, there's one thing about your book that I really liked. And I wanted to see how intentional it was. So you, the book's called A Good Life, but the, the chapters are broken down into sections, which is the morning, which time to reflect the midday, time to focus, the evening time to gather and nighttime time to rest. And I thought it was really interesting that a book titled The Good Life is really about how to structure a good day. Because yeah, every single day makes up your life. And You know A good Life starts today. It doesn't start tomorrow. And a bad life also starts today. It doesn't start tomorrow. So how, how, how intentional was it You know to create this kind of like day framework rather than looking at it in terms of the scope of your life?
Stevie Hendrix (35m 55s): Oh my gosh. Because it was, because it became measured by that point. You know when we decided, okay, a good life, we really had the conversation. Like a good life is made up of one good day at a time. And if we can take it one good day at a time, then anybody can do it. Like literally you can read this book and not feel overwhelmed, right? Like this book is not an overwhelming book. this isn not this, it's not even like a self-help book. It has elements of that. But it's really a collection of stories where you're meant to see yourself, like I said, face the challenges around you, but also like framework of the day and how important even those sections of the day, So, it's even broken up You know into those smaller goals of saying like, if I can have a good morning Yep. You know if I can have a good afternoon and a good evening, what does that look like and how does that fit in with my life and my family?
Stevie Hendrix (36m 39s): And so that's why we chose to do it one good day at a time and break those days up into segments. We believe that those segments of the day are so crucial to living a good day and then ultimately living a good life. And I, like I said, I I know so many people, good friends of mine that are wonderful people, but they've never had a vision for their life at any, they've just been reacting, right? You know they're, they're living their life by reacting. They're not casting vision. Yeah. They're not asking the hard questions of like, what do I want and what do I not want? Where do I Right.
Travis Chappell (37m 8s): Failing on somebody else's ship.
Stevie Hendrix (37m 10s): They're just exactly
Travis Chappell (37m 12s): Sailing somebody else's, somebody else
Stevie Hendrix (37m 13s): Just pulling their sailed every direction. And it's just like, yep. When are you gonna start taking command of your ship? Where are you gonna realize You know that you were, you were meant for more that you can actually design and, and we say cultivate, we say cultivate a good life because I I do look at life as a garden. I believe we're all given a different garden. Your garden could be on three acres. It could be in, in a small corner in a city. Yeah. But how, well, what are you doing with that You? know what I mean? How are you cultivating that thing? Are there areas that have not been tended to You know that have been lacking nutrition? And, and how can you start cultivating that garden, what you've been given right now today, and it could change, but how can you start cultivating that garden that you have, which is your life Like right now? How can you go out there and be honest and say like, yeah, I kind of neglected this thing.
Stevie Hendrix (37m 57s): ces, And I looked at this. We were in the living room the other day and we have this really beautiful fake plant that sits up on our, our built in. And from like 15 feet away, you're like, man, that looks good. But when you get up close, you realize that actually the texture is kind of strange. You know it's synthetic, it's got You know, like hand painted or printed details on it. And you realize this is actually a counterfeit. What's interesting about the counterfeit is that you never have to water it. And there's this other plant that's in our kitchen and it's right by our sink. The reason it's by our sink is because if it wasn't, it would die. That plant every day seems to wilt like in the middle of the day. And you have to like, it's the most needy plant. And we're not even plant people, but we're trying to be it wilts, you gotta water it and it pops back up.
Stevie Hendrix (38m 40s): It's the weirdest thing. What we realized though is that like we are that needy plant, like every day that needs recharge, that needs sustenance, You. know what I mean? That needs goodness. We need care. And a lot of people are trying to be like the fake plant right now, especially in social media. They're trying to see like, oh, this is, this is manmade. This is what works. But the other plant is God made. But that plant that's needy is actually designed to grow just like we are. And so I think when you look at that, you can look at today's, you can look at today's climate And in social media especially, and you can say like, there's a lot of people that wanna look like that fake plant.
Stevie Hendrix (39m 20s): They don't need any help. They got it all on their own You know what I mean? They're totally satisfied and they look beautiful from a distance. But when you get up close, it's really lacking sustenance. And so I just want to encourage everybody, like, it's okay to, to ask for help. It's okay to to need care and it's okay to work on yourself and allow room for growth because that's what we were designed for. And so if you need a reminder, just go get a really needy plan. In your kitchen by your sink. But like, I'm like, every day I'm like, that plant needs to fricking water again.
Travis Chappell (39m 53s): So a real good life. Discover the simple moments that bring joy, connection and love. Stevie, this has been fun, man. I, I appreciate you coming on the show. Is there, is there a particular place you want people to go to pick up a copy of the book or is it just kind of, Hey, wherever books are sold, go, go get a copy.
Stevie Hendrix (40m 9s): Honestly, I'll wherever you get it, the cheapest, just look for the discounts. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, they're all running discounts. They're, it's in all the major retailers. You can go to our website, Stevie and.com or follow us on, on social media. But yeah, anywhere, man, there's people are running crazy discounts everywhere. So I would say wherever. And then if you're an audible person, we have the audible version as well. I'm an audible guy,
Travis Chappell (40m 30s): A real good life guys. Go pick up a copy, give it a listen or give it a quick read. I know that you're gonna get something awesome from it. Go follow Stevie and Sazan if you don't already. I know they put out a bunch of good stuff on YouTube on Instagram. They have their podcast always putting out a bunch of really good stuff. So Stevie, dude, thanks for taking the time. Look forward to sometime meeting in person.
Stevie Hendrix (40m 47s): Thanks Matt, it was fun.
Travis Chappell (40m 49s): That's it for today's episode. Thanks for spending some time with me and my friends. If you want to be better friends with me, then head over to Travis Chappell dot com slash team to subscribe to my free newsletter, your friend Travis, where I share what's on my mind about life, building a business, raising kids, being married, and anything else I would normally share with my close circle of friends. That's Travis Chappell dot com slash team. And my biggest ask of you, since I'm sharing my friends with you, is to share this episode with a friend of yours that hasn't listened to the show yet. And leave us a quick five star rating in Apple, Podcasts And in Spotify. It would mean the world to us as it helps us make sure that this show continues to be more valuable to you. Thanks in advance, And I catch you on the next episode.
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