IAM158- Holistic Entrepreneur Focuses on Human Optimization of Health, Wealth and Happiness

Nathan is a holistic entrepreneur focusing on human optimization: his focus is on removing the blocks from people achieving optimal levels of health, wealth and happiness and becoming the best version of themselves. 

• CEO Hack: Using Google Calendar to map your entire day
• CEO Nugget: It's a marathon. It takes time. Don't get caught up in the small stuff.
• CEO Defined: (1) Being 100% responsible for everything (2) Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Website: https://stiunleashed.usana.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nathanmccullough1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanzpmccullough/?hl=en

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have at Nathan Poole Mccullough of Rising Phoenix Wellness. Nathan, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Nathan Mccullough 0:36

It's awesome to be here, brother. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

No problem, no problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Nathan, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Nathan is a holistic entrepreneur focusing on human optimization, his focus is on removing the blocks from people from achieving optimal levels of health, wellness, and happiness and becoming the best versions of themselves. Nathan, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Nathan Mccullough 0:59

I'm ready, brother.

Gresham Harkless 1:01

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was just to hear a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?

Nathan Mccullough 1:07

Wow, I guess the real launchpad was I got my Master's Degree in Philosophy and 2012. And wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with that, in 2008, they took most of the funding away from higher education. And so I got sort of left in a spot where I decided to finish up my education while I was in a ton of debt, and was looking at basically living, you know, being a professor and sort of living the broke college professor lifestyle, and I think it was about, I wasn't going to get out of debt until I was about seven years old or something. And at that time I played collegiate sports. And my body was breaking down a little bit. And I got really into nutrition and wellness at that time.

So I just did, I did a couple of personal development courses. And I just decided that I wanted to explore entrepreneurship, it's something that I did when I was much younger, I sold baseball cards, and I started a painting company was like when I was 17 years old and paid, you know, for the first couple of years of my undergraduate that way, and then kind of lost track of the sort of entrepreneurial way for a while because I got really fascinated by philosophy and higher education.

And then, when I came back to it, and I decided to move, I had a friend of mine that was growing, I was getting ready to launch a company in New Zealand was a wellness franchise, wellness clinics, and he had been calling me for years to try to get me to come out and partner with him.

And I was just really on the philosophy track and just couldn't be sort of persuaded. And then when the economy took a really big downturn, it was enough to propel me to take a look. So I just decided I'm gonna go for it and take a leap into it. And that's when that was my first sort of foray back into entrepreneurship and growing the business was in the area of health and wellness, which was already a big passion of mine. And the rest is history.

Gresham Harkless 3:13

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's always interesting. I remember when I was graduating during the economic crisis, and I heard that a lot of the most successful businesses and organizations actually sounded counterintuitive, but started during an economic crisis because it presents a huge opportunity for a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. So a lot of the best, and most successful businesses and entrepreneurs actually started during those down times as it is as crazy as it seems.

Nathan Mccullough 3:38

Yeah. 100%. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

Gresham Harkless 3:41

And I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear exactly what you're doing with Rising Phoenix Wellness. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're serving the clients that you're working with?

Nathan Mccullough 3:48

Yeah, so I think most of my clients are people that have experienced the sort of a breakdown in their health, or they're coming up against some sort of crisis, right after I sort of jumped into my entrepreneurial journey. I had like a breakdown in terms of my own health, I started drinking a lot and getting into substances.

And so I used my own path and health and wellness to sort of heal myself. And that really is where I come from now in terms of going through recovery and using entrepreneurship as something to sort of direct my obsessive kind of personality into and I got really hyper-focused on healing modalities and a lot of mindfulness practice and doing a lot of spiritual retreats, a lot of the same strategies that I used to get well are the same ones that I use with the clients that I have now.

So I focus a lot on like you were saying the in the beginning, working on the blocks that people have. I tend to get a lot of guys that are in business and they're using different strategies that don't serve them to deal with stress. And for whatever reason I think I just don't think I just manifest that particular type of person. But that's a lot of my main focus is those of the talks that I do in public are generally around those areas. And that's generally what shows up for me.

So I do a lot of one on one coaching and working with people online. And then I do a lot of group programs as well, where we walk people through detox, holistic cleanses, things like that as a sort of usually a first step into wellness base recovery, and going back to people reconnecting with themselves.

Gresham Harkless 5:41

Okay, that makes perfect sense. And yeah, and I've always heard that too. Usually, entrepreneurs and business owners are kind of built in a different way, because sometimes it all depends on what path you and what mission you're on.

So sometimes they can go left or right, it just depends on all and how you kind of put that energy, put that kind of entrepreneurial way in if you're pointing towards a certain goal. So it's great to hear that you've been able to not only do that for yourself, but you're also helping out sounds like similar people as well. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is kind of what you feel kind of does set you apart or distinguishes you or your organization.

Nathan Mccullough 6:15

I think what sets me apart is, in a lot of ways, it's the darkness that I went through, I really feel like you know, what's that movie with Batman where the guy is, he's born in the darkness.

Gresham Harkless 6:28

It's not a dark, dark night, though, right?

Nathan Mccullough 6:31

I can't remember the guy that wears the mask anyway, when he's Batman, he says he doesn't have any problem fighting in the dark. And Rising Phoenix Wellness is an homage to obviously the bird that comes out of the ashes. And so I feel like when I work with people, there's no judgment, because regardless of what they've done. I don't need to prove I can bring that to and bring that relatedness and bring that ability to bring perspective in dark times or bring awareness and mindfulness when people are going through difficult times.

So I think that really gives me a unique position and thread to work with when I'm working with people because they know that this space is the space is safe, you know, there's no judgment. And I think also that's given me a really unique advantage when it comes to the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship, you really have to, you have to have persistence and resilience more than anything else. Because yeah, there's gonna just gonna be really shitty times.

And so I think in my coaching, I think that's what gives me a really good leg up. And then also just entrepreneurship in general, that I've really believed that you can't kill me, right? There's nothing that can keep me down. So I've lived in four or five different countries. I've slept on couches, and I've done everything when I've been getting my business up and going. So I feel like you can't kill me. So I feel like that's a huge advantage.

Gresham Harkless 8:05

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, if you have that persistence, and you have that will, it's hard to be somebody that won't give up. That's what I always say. So that's a great reminder. And I think a great example of a secret sauce. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that you feel kind of makes you more effective and efficient as an entrepreneur, or business owner.

Nathan Mccullough 8:26

A CEO hack. Well, I think there are two things. I mean, the first one is hopefully people are already doing this, but using like a Google Calendar or something to map your whole life. So when I was going through my early leadership and coaching programs with a company called Landmark, they really drilled into me the use of time to win like Grant Cardone says you have to dominate time, right? You have to be the one that causes, not at the effect of time, because most people do not do that well.

And if you can schedule your life and make sure that you're like, I always teach people to take the five things that are the most important to them and make sure that that's the number one priority when you put it in your calendar. And then you schedule your clients, you schedule your days around those things, the more your days are scheduled, and the more that you have your time map down in advance, you can be so much more present when you're with people, you can be so much more effective because you're not in overwhelm because you know where you're supposed to be.

And when and for me having a really good grasp over that is so critical. I watched I listen to a podcast one time with Tom Brady. And he said that he has 365 days in his year planned out. He knows when he's eating when his practices are when his press conferences are everything is set out in advance. And the person was like, well, don't you think that's a little OCD and he said, yeah, you can look at it that way.

But the other way to look at it is that he knows everything that's coming. There's a very low chance of being blindsided by everything. He can be present in every moment. He doesn't have to worry about did he forget something. So I feel like that is just a massive skill that the most effective entrepreneurs master and the newbies generally struggle with a lot.

Gresham Harkless 10:14

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And yeah, you can always I always say control which you can control. And if you can plan out as much as possible and know exactly what you're going to do, and be able to kind of understand that everything's not gonna go according to plan, but you plan out what you can, as you said, Tom Brady knows when his workouts are what he's going to do for the next 365 days of the year, that gives you an advantage.

So I definitely love that CEO hack. And now I want to ask you for a CEO nugget. And this might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Nathan Mccullough 10:43

To me, I think the most important thing, and I think I really follow Gary Vee on this, that is, it's a marathon man there if you're in this for real, which you if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you got to be in for real, which means you're in for the long haul. And it doesn't mean that your business is always gonna look the same in one year's time, two years' time, four years' time, 10 years' time, it's not God knows my business is like, totally changed from when I first started. It grows organically.

But I think the one thing that I've done well, and I will always teach the people that I mentor is not to get caught up in the small stuff. If this is this is a marathon, you're gonna go through times when it feels like it's imploding. And that's okay. What I mean, is we've all gone through that it's part of the journey that's what have people quit. And that's what has the people that win, they deserve to win. And I think that's just so huge as being able to keep that mentality intact, where it's like, this is a long haul, I cannot be killed no matter what happens.

And you just got to, you know, if you're willing to keep getting up and keep putting one leg in front of the other, even when you're like everything's cramped up, you don't feel like there's any fuel in the tank. If you have the capacity, which is all up here, man, it's all psychological, to be able to remember that this is a marathon and this is part of the process and everything is happening for me, not to me, I think people will be just fine.

But I think in the grand scheme of things with the sort of immediacy that we have in our culture at the moment with everything goes so quickly, and everything's so fast when I'm coaching Millennials now, man, more and more, I see they want to make a million dollars in six months, or they feel like it's not working or you know what I mean? It's just like, man, that was not in the consciousness. When I first started Arsalan, I think there's one thing that you can teach the young people is don't give up on the massive, you know, the 10x and the 100x thinking and that type of mentality, but like Gary Vee says, what, I mean, do not discount the 100k a year. I mean, understand that it takes time, this is a marathon. And have that mentality. I think that's the key for me.

Gresham Harkless 12:56

No, that makes perfect sense. And I think that's a great reminder to like you've said the way the world is, sometimes, you know, you want everything to happen yesterday or a week ago, and but in reality, it takes time to do that. And it is a marathon in order for you to sometimes reach your goals. So I think that's a phenomenal reminder. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show and entrepreneurs and business owners and look at what that means.

So I wanted to ask you, Nathan, what does being a CEO means to you?

Nathan Mccullough 13:25

So, man, that's a great question. I think for me, being a CEO means two things, in particular, that jump right off the top. One is being 100% responsible for everything, being able to have the mentality where it's not just the victories that you take responsibility for, personally, for me, you know, coaching, whatever.

So, the first definition is you're 100% responsible for everything that's got to be the attitude. And the second thing is that everything rises and falls on leadership, as John Maxwell says. You're the law of the lid, you're the lid, and you have to be self-aware enough to know when you're getting in the way. And when you're in leading by example, I think that's just so critical, is the idea that you can never ask anybody to do anything that you haven't done or that you're unwilling to do.

And so those are the two things that I always keep in mind, I have to lead by example, no matter what, even if I don't feel like it, and I'm 100% responsible for everybody's results, no matter what I feel like those are the two mindsets that I'm constantly trying to keep in my own head when it comes to and I being effective when I'm doing my own self-analysis in terms of organization, if I'm doing those two things, well, generally things are going pretty well.

Gresham Harkless 14:55

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I love those two kinds of parts of the definition and I think that's a great thing to keep in mind for anybody that's out here hustlin' as a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner, so. Nathan, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule, what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then also how best they can get a hold of you.

Nathan Mccullough 15:14

I'm on Instagram, and they follow me on there also Facebook says otherwise, I think that I'm going to be starting my own podcast soon. So I have Rising Phoenix Wellness Podcast in the mix at the moment, but I'm really inspired by what you're doing. So I'm looking at this idea of being a holistic entrepreneur as my new sort of thing that I'm looking at it. I'm a holistic health coach.

And so I've been trying to integrate, okay, what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What's it mean to be holistically optimized, and trying to figure out how to sort of holistically optimize entrepreneurship, you know, what I mean? Because so many of us are in our business.

So being able to optimize our minds and our bodies is so important. So I think just keep in touch on Facebook and on Instagram sort of hook up with me there. And I'd love to just stay in touch with people and be able to roll out the podcast soon.

Gresham Harkless 16:08

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And we'll have those links in the show notes just so that you can follow up with you Nathan. But again, thank you so much for your time, and hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Nathan Mccullough 16:16

Yeah, appreciate it, brother. You're doing a great job man. Keep inspiring people.

Outro 16:20

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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