Daily Content Machine

*This episode of the seanwes podcast comes from a call Sean and Dan had while Sean is on his Sabbatical year. We decided this segment was interesting enough to record and edit into an episode of the podcast. Enjoy! Ben and Dan will be back with a regular episode next week.*

Sean and Dan discuss a question implicit in the topic of this podcast: Who should, in fact, start a business? And why would they want to?

Entrepreneurship gets a lot of press. Starting and running a business is portrayed as more than glamorous: it seems like the only way to escape a lifetime of unsatisfying employment and “live out our dreams”.

But what does it really take to succeed at running a business, and withstand the workload and responsibilities required? As a longtime business owner, Sean shares his opinions, and we discuss the benefits of *not* being “Number One” in an enterprise.

In the end, the person who succeeds at the challenge of building a business will need to push through resistance. They’ll need to find a passion strong enough that they don’t give up when the going gets tough… and then stays that way.

Update: Laci is doing great! She is healthy and feeling much more like herself. Getting treatment has been fantastic. We are absolutely thrilled how well she is doing.

This episode was Laci's idea. She wanted to share the experience from her perspective. It's her hope that being vulnerable with her story might help someone else who is struggling.

If this is your first time hearing about her struggles with an eating disorder, here's a bit of backstory:

My wife's eating disorder almost killed her (as I talked about in a previous episode: https://seanwes.com/456).

If you heard the previous episode I shared, you know how bad things had gotten. After starving herself earlier in 2019, her cognitive abilities declined so severely from malnutrition, she was unable to speak a single full sentence. We could not even communicate. I had to take off work for several months to take care of her full time.

Later in the year, she was having panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety episodes that would last 6–8 hours a day.

Treatment has literally been a life-saver.

I'm happy to say, thanks to the generous support we received from so many, we were able to pay for the intensive care Laci needs. For a little over one month, she was in 7-day-per-week partial hospitalization at a recovery center, followed by 5 days per week of outpatient treatment. She's doing so well, this week, her team recommended she step down to 3-day-per week outpatient treatment. She continues to see multiple therapists and dietitians per week.

Her diet has been consistent, nutrition is good, and cognitive abilities have returned! She's sharp and able to comprehend and respond quickly. Her sense of humor has also been restored.

Her friends and I feel like we have Laci back. We are so grateful for your help. Thank you.

As you'll see in this episode, her speaking abilities have returned, and she's able to communicate incredibly well. I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to see her look and sound more like herself.

If you, or someone you know, is struggling with an eating disorder, anxiety, or depression, please see the many links and resources listed in the previous episode here: https://seanwes.com/456.

We look forward to it every year… or do we?

The holiday season is just about on top of us, and while it can hypothetically be a time for peace, reflection, and family, those qualities are easily overwhelmed by feelings of stress, overcommitment, and inadequacy.

Today, Ben and Dan give their best tips for making it through the holidays in one (mental and emotional) piece. A lot of these are perennial seanwes topics, and now is the perfect time of year to talk about them once again. (We also include a great sidebar on holiday travel, where Ben provides his recommendations for the best suitcases to pack your six kids in.)

Between managing your commitments and protecting your time and attention, focusing on what’s meaningful and setting yourself up for a great new year, let’s go into 2020 strong.

Happy Holidays! 🥳

The other day, Sean and Dan had a call. Sure, they could have talked about growing the business, or Sean’s upcoming sabbatical year.

But, no.

They had to talk about Dan’s lack of progress on his novel.

See, Sean had this brilliant id—well. Sean had this… idea.

“I want you to write a book called, 'I Tried to Write a Book'.”

It’s the story of an aspiring author. A harried, foul-mouthed aspiring author. His name is Dane Jacobson (no relation).

Today, Ben and Dan discuss this ambitious project: Is Sean for real? What is this cryptic book really about? And what the heck does any of this have to do with making a living pursuing our creative passions?

Tune in to find out.

In Overlap, Sean talks about the importance of the day job to protect your passion: you need to cover all your bills with something that doesn’t rely on your passion so that you don’t compromise out of desperation to make ends meet.

Compromise kills passion: do enough of the kind of work you love under circumstances you hate, and one day you’ll realize you don’t have that passion anymore.

We’ve talked a lot about the dangers of the wrong day job. A bad job, that drains your energy, that you resent, but you can’t give it up because it keeps you comfortable.

But today we want to explore something a little different: what happens when you have a great day job? A job you enjoy doing, with a flexible schedule, working with people you love, making a good living… That’s the ideal situation in which to pursue your passion on the side.

Right?

In his book, Turning Pro, Stephen Pressfield describes the “Shadow Career” as a calling we pursue because we’re terrified of our true calling:

"Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies that you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk becoming an innovator yourself?"

When you have a job you love AND a passion you want to pursue, is the job a stepping-stone, a companion on the journey… or just another way to hide from the work you were really meant to be doing?

Hey, Dan here. We’re doing something a little different for this episode of the seanwes podcast.

In the seanwes Community, we do a special live show every Monday morning, called Fired Up Mondays. This is our community office hours, where members can ask questions and get answers right there on the show. This is just one of the many benefits of seanwes membership. To find out more, go to https://seanwes.com/membership

Normally, Fired Up Mondays is members-only. But Sean suggested that we put this episode out on the regular feed.

You’ll notice this show is a little different from the usual seanwes podcast. It’s a solo show, and I’m answering questions from our members and touching on a variety of topics.

At the end, I give an update on my own “side-hustle”: the novel I’m writing. This is because Sean, well, basically dared me to talk about the novel every week as a form of accountability.

Ugh! This guy, amirite? ;)

There’s some context for what you’re about to hear. It’s a little different from the usual podcast, but still full of value. I hope you enjoy it!

Ben and I will be back next week with another episode of the seanwes podcast. Thanks for listening!

Your internal life is wonderfully complex. You have an endless sea of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and reactions, and, for better or worse, they’re mostly your little secret.

It’s not just you, of course: we all know, intellectually, that everyone has just as much going on beneath the surface as we do. But it’s one thing to know something, and another to understand its implications.

The truth is, it’s hard to remember, in the moment, that each of us is an iceberg—what’s visible on the surface only tells a fraction of the story. When we all react differently to the same situations, when we do and say things that baffle or enrage each other, it’s because we thought we were all basically the same, thought the same, felt the same…

But that’s a big “nope”.

This isn’t just a reminder not to judge one another’s actions too harshly; it’s also the reason that sharing our own iceberg is so important. If you want to connect with people—really connect, in a meaningful way—you have to reveal at least some of what’s hidden beneath the surface.

The problem? There’s nothing scarier than revealing what’s hidden beneath the surface.

Let’s talk about why and how and with whom to share yourself—not the carefully polished and manicured self, but your actual self—and ask how we can better understand others, no matter what they share.

Is it safe to say we have all struggled with self-doubt? Very little is more frightening than a sense of uncertainty, and when we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing, it’s easy to become paralyzed.

If you think you need to wait until you’re free of doubt and fear before you can accomplish anything… bad news: you’re not going anywhere.

The people who do things and make things have one thing in common: they start before they feel ready to start.

In this episode, Dan and Ben talk about the dangers (and inevitability) of comparison, self-doubt’s roots in your lack of skill and your abundance of ego, and the steps you can take to overcome self-doubt and build confidence in your abilities… in any area of life.

Something’s been going on for more than a year that I haven’t been able to talk about.

My wife, Laci, nearly died earlier this year.

She is currently in a partial hospitalization program. It’s still a dangerous situation. The recommended treatment period is a minimum of 30 days. But after only two weeks, our insurance suddenly decided to stop paying for treatment far short of the duration recommended by her team of healthcare professionals. I’ll explain more in a moment.

Warning: this article talks about anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders. If you struggle with any of these things, consider having a loved one read this instead.

What I’m about to share is extremely difficult for a lot of reasons, but we have decided it’s time.

We’ve been talking about content for the last few weeks: how to make it, why you should make it, what to make.

But the truth is, despite knowing all the tactics, despite having the path laid out in front of us…

Most of us still do nothing.

We have a passion. We have a message that we want to share with the world. So why don’t we do anything about it?

Today, Dan and Ben want to get to the bottom of this. What does it take? What does it take to turn intentions into action? What does it take to step past our barriers and do something? What does it take, to actually make the work we care about?