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Unleashing Potential: Balancing Health and Business with Ben Herbert
25 Plays1 year ago
Ben Herbert is third-generation self-employed. His grandparents ran businesses, his parents run businesses and age 20 Ben started his own business.
Like a lot of business owners it appears that Ben confused being busy, and working long hours with success. By his own admission, 'success' certainly didn't feel good.
Now Ben is on a mission to help business owners to break the cycle of crappiness. Ben coaches the business, the body and the soul. In this frank conversation, we discuss the stresses of business ownership and what we can all do to be kinder to ourselves.
Find Ben in Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/_benherbert/
Find Ben on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjherbert/
Becoming the unstoppable Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/2AJXcDSS4qcQeN8Sjfmcmp?si=e733d120146d4d10
**Episode Summary:**
In this enlightening episode of 'The Untitled SEO Podcast', host Andrew Laws engages with Ben Herbert, an online health coach and third-generation entrepreneur. Ben shares his journey from a sporty background to becoming a successful business owner and health coach. He discusses the crucial balance between maintaining personal health and running a business, offering insightful anecdotes and practical advice.
**About the Guest:**
Ben Herbert comes from a lineage of entrepreneurs and athletes, which profoundly influenced his career path. His early foray into professional football didn't pan out, but his passion for business and sports persisted. Ben's personal experience with health mismanagement while running his first business, a personal training venture, led him to a transformative period. He founded 'Become The Unstoppable', where he helps business owners enhance their health for better business outcomes.
**In This Episode, You Will Learn:**
1. The impact of entrepreneurial stress on personal health and relationships.
2. Strategies for managing health alongside the demands of running a business.
3. Real-life stories of transformation Ben has witnessed in his clients.
4. The importance of defining success and understanding the 'why' behind business and health goals.
5. Ben's personal journey of overcoming burnout and finding fulfillment in helping others.
**Notable Quotes:**
- "Your business development is always going to be limited to your personal development." - Ben Herbert
- "You are the power plant of your business. If you are not in a healthy spot, it's going to make business tough." - Ben Herbert
**Conclusion:**
This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs and small business owners struggling with the balance between personal health and professional success. Ben Herbert's insights and advice offer a roadmap to becoming more resilient, focused, and ultimately, unstoppable in both business and life.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Andrew & Ben's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to the Untitled SEO podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Laws. I am the white-haired Wizard of SEO at Yesio. This season of the podcast, season two, we're trying something a little bit different. We're doing what we call LAN, live action networking, where we get to know people in SEO, in surrounding industries, and just sometimes someone that I've bumped into along my merry journey of life that I think my listeners might like to hear from.
00:00:29
Speaker
and i have today with me right here somebody who i met on my journey through like so that sounded like so over dramatic my journey through life honored guest would you like to introduce yourself please andrew how are we my name is ben herbert i'm a online health coach we help business owners build a better body live with more energy to create more impact and freedom in their business and we specifically work with small business owners
00:00:59
Speaker
See, when I, when I, when I met Ben, it must have been only a couple of weeks ago, he was speaking at a small business networking event in, in lovely, lovely Woodbridge, a place, an event called CoastalNet. And I don't want to give too much away until we kind of dig deeper into, into kind of what motivates you and what we start, but you gave a presentation that I think struck everyone in the room right between the
The Toll of Business on Health
00:01:23
Speaker
eyes. And the summary of it was, is running a business killing you?
00:01:29
Speaker
Pretty much, yes, pretty much. I speak to so many business owners that are... How to put this politely? You don't have to be polite. You can swear on this. I've only got to put a tick in the box to say it's explicit. Absolutely buggered, shall we say. That's so much milder than what you're going to say. I really wanted to, but I won't. Absolutely buggered from their business, trying to run their business, small businesses just trying to, you know, earn more money.
00:01:58
Speaker
create the impact they want with their business and sometimes just keep it afloat for the time being depending where they're at currently if it's a startup or if they've been going a few years 10 years or whatever it may be and what I often find is that
00:02:12
Speaker
not even just physically, but mentally, emotionally, they are just absolutely tanked and have just neglected their health just from trying to make their business a success and almost just forget about themselves. And I can raise my hand on that one too, because for many years that was me. Ah, so let's get into that. What's your story, Ben? Because I know that you're, what, third generation self-employed, is that fair?
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, so if you was to go down my family tree, not that I have, but I've been speaking to my parents, speaking to my grandparents, they've all ran businesses. And I know my great, great nan had her own business as well. So if we kept on going, I'm sure they'd just continue. And I've always been around business. I've always been around sport as well. Most of my family are very sporty. So I was born into sport and business.
Balancing Health and Business
00:03:05
Speaker
And look where I'm today, hey?
00:03:07
Speaker
And what I found so often just watching my grandparents and watching my parents was like they were trying to make their businesses successful, which they were, and congratulations to them on that. But it come at the expense of their health, their wellbeing, and sometimes like it bled into their relationships of them not communicating well enough, the stress being incredibly high, the unnecessary arguments that you see, you know, you're taking stress home with you,
00:03:34
Speaker
Eating low-quality food you drinking a little bit more alcohol than usual not saying alcohols bad for you it's absolutely not we've all got our fun and we have fun in every one of us has fun in different ways but just seeing that actually impacts the quality of their life and how they're actually operating in their business just
00:03:53
Speaker
that close the doors of business day, they'd come home low quality food, they'd stay up late just watching a bit of TV, let's say a couple of beers or a couple glasses of wine, straight back in business the following day and they've actually not given themselves any time to unwind, de-stress, even though most people may think sitting on a sofa late at night may be unwinding and de-stressing, it's a form of a way. But if you really look at it, it's not fueling the tank of someone that's really going to look after their health.
00:04:21
Speaker
And not just a health from a personal perspective, but from a business health as well, because you will then neglect certain areas. You're thinking patterns won't be as sharp as they should be. Then you might miss, you know, certain admin bits, or you might miss a certain customer and then you're chasing your towel constantly. Don't be wrong. We've all got to have fun on the weekends and enjoy ourselves, but don't allow your health to be absolutely ruined by your business and your business health to be ruined from your own health.
00:04:46
Speaker
it's something that I find really interesting. I mean, I've been in business for 23 years. And when I first started there, there wasn't really social media as such. And the sort of this, this awful, I think it's an awful phrase, the hustle culture, wasn't, it wasn't a thing, you know, I started in the year 2000. And sure, you could read books, and you could, you could get inspired by other people's stories. And the internet was very much a thing. But there wasn't this whole
00:05:16
Speaker
online of people bragging about working 60 or 70 hour weeks. I mean, when I see people in the hustle culture sector, proud that they've done so many hours, I think you moor on. What are you doing? It's not hustle culture to run yourself into the ground. It doesn't do anyone any favors. I like that at the moment, there's some messaging coming out from some sectors, including yourself, Ben, who are completely flipping that on its head.
00:05:46
Speaker
and say, look, start with I don't want to steal your thunder here because I know what your message is.
Understanding Success and Health Goals
00:05:50
Speaker
So let's put this another way. If somebody comes to you and they say, look, the doctor has now read me the right act. They've told me I'm working too many hours. They said my health is bad. They've said blah, blah, blah. Look, but I've got to just carry on with my business. What's your day one thing? I assume it's different with everyone, but
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, it is different with everyone, but again, there's a simple word that we don't actually look at and we don't have time for because the hustle culture that we now live in, a lot of people believe in the 4am club of let's get up and let's get after it, right? And I'm all for getting after it.
00:06:33
Speaker
But again, it's like you need certain breaks in the days. If you're going to be that sort of person, then there's other people like you're going to be a little bit more realistic with it of like the time you now use the times available. Let's just work hard in those time brackets. And then the rest is for rest. Um, but if I was to, from day one, if someone comes to me and said, like, my doctor said this to me, or I'm sat on the sofa and I've had a huge realization or whatever it may be, I'd actually first say to him, like,
00:07:00
Speaker
What even is success to you? Because I can guarantee a lot of people won't understand why they're truly running their business, why they need the health for themselves and their business. And ultimately, you know that the phrase of why, like why are you actually doing this? A lot of people don't actually truly understand
00:07:19
Speaker
that to a deep, meaningful level. So something I will always do before someone steps inside the coaching process is the first onboarding part is to get them incredibly clear on the impact they want to have on their business and on their health. And why they actually really want to have it? Is it to be able to, you know, create a legacy for your family? Is it to be able to, you know, send your children's children's children's
00:07:46
Speaker
to private school, not even have, allow them to have to worry about money in time to come or like, uh, is this now for, you know, you want to buy multiple properties abroad and actually a lot of retire your whole family. Like what is that is the thing? It might even be smaller than that. It might just be, do you know what? I just want a really successful business, be able to leave it to my children or whatever it may be. But in order to have any of that, there's a person before the business, right?
00:08:13
Speaker
So you need a healthy person to then go into a healthy business. Well, none of this stuff happens automatically. I promise myself I wasn't going to keep using analogies during this conversation. I love analogies. The one I had for someone sitting on a sofa is at the end of a long journey in a car, you don't just pop the bonnet and set the engine on fire. You need to let the car rest. But the whole thing about building a business is that something
00:08:42
Speaker
I don't think a lot of people who start their businesses realise is that you're the seed and you're the seed that's going to make everything grow. And if you don't look after a seed, what happens, Ben? The seed does not grow. The seed dies, I'm afraid to say. The seed gets fed up with growing. They go and sit on a settee and not grow. One hundred percent. And don't get wrong, there's a lot of successful business owners out there that don't look after their health.
00:09:10
Speaker
What happens when they retire and they've got all that success? If they get to that age, I'm now an age I'm very nearly in my fifties and I'm now looking around at my friends and people who are my age. And you can very much tell the people who look after themselves and the people who don't because I'm now at the age where people my age have heart attacks. Well, obviously far younger people do as well, but this has gone beyond, you know, for my generation, it's gone beyond finding the perfect physique.
00:09:39
Speaker
And it's sort of, I think it connects to something far deeper than that. 100% and just pick my father and dad, if he listens to this, sorry. But he loves his golf. He loves, he's always been around sport. He's played football. He loves playing golf. But how he's looked after his health whilst trying to run his business, he most probably couldn't even play like five holes of golf.
00:10:06
Speaker
and he used to play 18 holes every Saturday and Sunday in his late 30s.
Success Stories and Consistency
00:10:11
Speaker
He's now somewhere in his 50s, forgot his age, but he wouldn't even be able to make three to five holes, which is for someone that loves golf, he obviously hasn't told me this, but if that was me in that position, I'd be furious with myself. It can be a frustrating thing, and that frustration can lead to
00:10:35
Speaker
making decisions that might not be for the best in the best interest of your business and your team as well. I'm really I brought you on because I wanted to kind of first of all celebrate what you do Ben, but also because I'm a real believer in that you have to look after your physicality and your mentality before you move on to do anything. Some people can fluke it to business success whatever that be the first business I
00:11:01
Speaker
I built and sold. I'll happily tell anyone. It was a complete accident. It wasn't because I was particularly skilled or anything. That's why it came as such a shock when I started the next business like 23 years ago. Oh man, I've really got to put some effort in here. But you know, I'm a firm believer in that. So what does it start with? You know, it's different for everyone. So it starts with defining success because, you know, if anyone in my experience says success is money,
00:11:29
Speaker
If they get the money, it doesn't solve the problems they have and it doesn't feel like an arrival. 100% success is different to everyone, right? But first port call is actually understand like what success really is to you and why that is success. So how do you help people explore that? Ask me how it would work is you and I would jump on a call very much like this. I normally have an iPad.
00:11:57
Speaker
and I'll share my screen with you. And we'll just start brainstorming. We've become thinking buddies. That's the only way I can express it. It's almost like I bumped my head together with yours, and I allow you just to sit there, give you time and space away from your business, away from life, to actually explore the avenues of one, why you want to be healthy, two, why you want a successful business, and what that really now looks like, what it's gonna feel like most importantly, and what it will consist of on a weekly, a monthly, and a yearly basis.
00:12:27
Speaker
So what sort of time periods do your clients work with you? Is it just sort of one-off projects or? No. So how it works is it is a minimum of a 12 month commitment because running a business and taking charge of your health, I personally believe there's no such thing as a quick fix. You can go and do all these quick fixes and you'll be back at square one. But if you truly want to transform, you need to go through behavior change. You need to shift through different identities to become the person you truly want to be. And all that takes time to embed in.
00:12:58
Speaker
of trying to run a business. It makes total sense to me. So tell us about some of the transformations you've seen. So we've recently had a gent come into the program and he didn't have a business, but he wanted to open a business, basically very startup. And he was way out of shape.
00:13:20
Speaker
for himself, that is. He was forced on over the weight of where he wanted to be, lacked a huge amount of confidence, didn't have any sort of like business. He had the idea, but he didn't have like the vision of why he was now really trying to create it. And ultimately like why the health was such an important like tie to it, shall we say. He's been with me nine months, he's dropped
00:13:45
Speaker
four and a half stone wow yeah drop four and a half stone he's swam a great north swim i believe it was like over a mile something he's never done before uh he's someone that used to be that on it and off it person just consistently in the gym out the gym in the gym out the gym but never really got anywhere
00:14:04
Speaker
He now goes three times a morning. We don't expect anyone and we don't game plan anyone to go more than that because you have a business to run. He has a family. He has friends that he wants to spend time with. He likes to walk his dog. So he goes to gym three times a week. That's it. That's the least he's trained in his life. He's the most consistent he's ever been and his business
00:14:26
Speaker
don't give his figures away because that's to him. But he let's just say it was a startup business with him working a job to now being full time in that business and being able to take his family away for Christmas. That's pretty exciting that that's the kind of thing I really like. And the more I talk to you, I can see how important consistency is with that. I guess accountability must come into it. You keep using the word coaching, which which very much kind of speaks to the accountability side of things.
00:14:56
Speaker
100% we've got another lady that's doing something incredible. You know her yourself. You went to her network and I'm not going to name her name, but she's someone that's always sort of worried about business, worried about her health and not actually really been able to make like any headway with it.
00:15:14
Speaker
And what she's doing with her health and what she's doing with the business side of things in literally three months is something I've never seen before. She is literally head down, working away at what she truly wants to achieve. And she didn't actually have a clue of why she really had it. She just knew she wanted to be successful in it, but didn't actually really understand why it was.
Mindset and Personal Transformation
00:15:37
Speaker
But the clarity she now has on like why that
00:15:41
Speaker
why she wants it to be successful, what it's now going to create not just for her, but for her family and down the line and also what it's going to give back to the community as well. Inward Bridge is absolutely exceptional and just seeing her energy, her focus, how confident she is now with around even just small things of like something I have to bring myself back to is like
00:16:02
Speaker
like the bare basics, like this person struggled with nutrition. Now they've got their nutrition in a consistent basis. And I'll put my hand up. Sometimes I forget like how hard that can be. Cause it's just, I normalize the norms, right? Cause that's just, that's me. I live and breathe it. But this lady is the most consistent. I think I've ever seen around nutrition. And we don't say you can't have this and you can't have that. Everything is, everything that's available in this world, she can consume, but just in portions that she believes, right?
00:16:32
Speaker
And she's just going from strength to strength. It's so much around mindset, isn't it? I quit smoking many years ago reading the Alan Carr book, but realized that reading a book doesn't actually make you healthier. It's a process of feeding the machine. There's a really good book I like that's written in the early 60s called Psychosibernetics. Fantastic book.
00:16:54
Speaker
you know it okay yeah so you you know that it's written by a plastic surgeon who realized a lot of the people coming to him to to fix problems they perceive themselves to have with surgery just didn't need it at all they need needed to change mindset and kind of kind of make make small tweaks and or sometimes quite seismic kind of changes to their life but those kind of things can be really hard to see subjectively because
00:17:18
Speaker
I can't speak for the whole of humanity here, but your internal dialogue is a powerful thing. And if that is allowed to run a mock unchecked, then it can make big mindset changes really difficult. So is that one of the ways you help people?
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. I was actually having a conversation just before I jumped on here with one of my clients, and she likes to fill a diary up with carnage, basically. I love to fill a diary up, just to feel productive, right? And I literally just put a phrase to her, and a lot of people don't like to go into this, shall we say, just because it can touch a nerve, but the only way you're gonna really understand where it truly comes from is actually looking down their rabbit hole.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I literally just said to her, with your diary being filled up, what was she taught as a child? What were the beliefs that were put into you as a child? And she literally come back to me and said, if I'd come back from school and I didn't get 100% on my test and it was 99, they would say, why didn't you do better? Wow, God, that's harsh. So now she's got that embedded in her thinking, if I have 30 minutes free in my day, I'm unsuccessful.
Generational Attitudes and Authenticity
00:18:36
Speaker
that's off the back of that, which is even worse. She now sees that and if she's got free time, she'll go and do something completely random that's most probably not even needed to do. One, that affects energy. Two, if she now doesn't become successful at doing that other thing that she's now just thrown in just for the sake of it, it leads her thinking, do you know what? I didn't do very well at that. I've now lost trust and confidence in myself. How's that now actually affecting her with her training, her nutrition, relationships? How's that now actually affecting her in her business?
00:19:06
Speaker
That's quite remarkable. It's well known that we are a product of our childhood in lots of ways, but I find it wild that if that's the influence that's given to us between age, what, three and 12, the most kind of impressionable. If you live to 80, you're carrying the instructions given to you when you were very young for 70 years. One hundred percent and something I- It's put some under a lot of stress as a parent.
00:19:34
Speaker
100% and something I always say like your business development is always going to be limited to your personal development. Because imagine having, being unaware of those skills that she's now carried on through her life. And she now takes that to her children and her children takes that to her children, their children. She's not doing it in a bad manner, but she knew she doesn't know any different. I'm really excited about the next generation of children
00:20:03
Speaker
So I'm more or less 50. And my daughter's 12. And her generation, the way they looked after pastoral at school is so good. When I was at school, if you weren't paying attention, you got in trouble. If you didn't do your homework, you got in trouble. There was never any examination as to why and what the root cause would be. And I did a LinkedIn audio event earlier today with a couple of friends who both had ADHD diagnosis as adults.
00:20:32
Speaker
They're saying that, you know, at school, they just they didn't care. It's that no interest at all. Whereas now my daughter's generation, these things are talked about. And if a kid is disconnected and disinterested at school, a lot of schools are now going, OK, well, now why is that? And what can we do to support them? So I think that coupled with the fact that my generation Gen X, because I'm old, is the one that's grown up
00:20:58
Speaker
as adults being a lot more comfortable to talk about how we feel and our experiences. I think those two things mean the next generation after that is going to be amazing. Who knows what we can accomplish? I shouldn't say this, but if you have very repressed baby boomers who kind of did not talk about feelings and didn't do these things and they managed to put someone on the moon,
00:21:18
Speaker
What society are you going to do when we can actually talk about how we feel? Sorry, that kind of went off on a side mission there. No, 100%. I think it's hugely important just bringing it back to talking about how we feel because I'm sure you've seen it. How many business owners really wear a mask? Because when I was in that room delivering that talk, when I stood up there, you could see people just taking off their mask.
00:21:42
Speaker
I was like, oh, human beings now. It was very disarming. Your way of your public speaking style is it's very, very cool. And I mean, cool is in a calm and well thought out. And that puts people at ease. It's it is going to be very interesting going forward because it's so easy for people just to wear masks because you've now got this social media. You now have an expectation about yourself. You now have the pressures of other things in the world of like, I now need to be successful.
00:22:12
Speaker
you then wear a mask because it's like well I'm not being successful at the minute business is really hard or you know I'm not showing up with my health did you know what I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say everything's all right when really deep down you're not and it's absolutely fine that is not but that's where I think's important and something I really enjoy doing is connecting with my clients and actually understanding
00:22:36
Speaker
that even when they're feeling fantastic, there's always going to be a flip side. And when they're feeling low, there's always going to be a flip side to it as well. But allow them to have the space and understand of how they can actually get through those barriers. Because even being really happy is a dangerous spot to be. Ah, there's a book I started reading called The Happiness Trap.
00:22:57
Speaker
which is very much what I can't tell you what about because I haven't finished reading it. I've read the first couple of pages so it might not be the best time for me to give a summary on it but it does bring me to something I was going to ask you just as a closing question Ben what's your why? My why? Ask me the reason why I do what I do is because
00:23:19
Speaker
I'll give the short story of it. When I first opened my business, I was athletic, I was healthy, I've always been sporty, always enjoyed business. And running the business for the first four years, I ran my health into the ground, I was burnt out, I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and thought, you know what, I'm actually going to sweat on this bit. What's the fucking point? I know how it feels of
00:23:48
Speaker
why business owners will feel that way. And I don't want that for any business owner going forward, going through the mistakes I've made. So I want to be able to coach and teach from a place that they can have the health, have the relationships, have the time away from business, but also be in business and actually enjoy the process of the tough times and the good times because you are going to have tough times.
Preparing for Business Challenges
00:24:09
Speaker
I went through tough times, but I want to be able to give people the platform and the space to allow themselves to express themselves of who they truly are within their business.
00:24:18
Speaker
There you go. So Ben, dear listeners telling you, you can have your cake and you can eat it. I never thought that was, that was, I never got why that was such an odd saying, but yeah, you can, you can have a healthy business, a healthy body, a healthy mind. And I think from what I'm understanding from you, one of the things that is in your messaging is that it's as much about preparing for the difficult times as it is celebrating the good. Is that fair?
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah, 100% because I spoke to a client about this the other day that had some sad news. And she actually said to me, I'm really grateful of a conversation we had like three, four months ago. And she actually remembered it word for word. And I was like, you always guaranteed three things, happiness, sadness, and frustration.
00:25:06
Speaker
You're always gonna have good weeks, good months and good years, but you're also guaranteed to have some real shit times. But as long as you're prepared from a healthy aspect mentally, emotionally and physically, you're always gonna be able to handle it all. But it's when you're not in a healthy spot and you've just lived in business and sold your soul to the business. That's where you almost become unstable, shall we say. And then you have that bad moment in business and you just start panicking, you just start flapping.
00:25:36
Speaker
And it's not healthy because you're so vulnerable at that time. And like I said, at the start of the course, you are the power plant of your business. So if you are not in a healthy spot, whatever health looks like to you, it's gonna make business tough.
00:25:53
Speaker
It's a good note to end on Ben. We'll put your links to your Instagram and your podcast. Tell us about your podcast actually quickly because I didn't even know that was a thing until just before I hit the cost. We're 20 episodes in. It's just a small podcast that I want to basically get the message out of how you can have a healthy business
00:26:15
Speaker
have a healthy life and healthy relationships and not actually go through the things that I went through when I first opened business and what I've seen my parents go through from when they started their business and when I was able to actually understand what they done from a business aspect. What's it called? Becoming the unstoppable. I will pop you a message off this because I know I forgot to send you it. So I mean, we'll have it in the notes after.
00:26:40
Speaker
Brilliant stuff. Okay. Well, thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. Really, really value kind of what you're doing and just want to celebrate, celebrate somebody I met who is making people's lives better. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Lovely stuff. Um, I am going to press stop now. I'm going to say goodbye. Do you want to say goodbye? Goodbye.