When is the last time you slowed down and took some time to rest? I mean really rested. And with the summer months behind us and the end of the year push coming, how is your energy level?
Our guest today is Max Schneider, and he talks with us about slowing down to produce your best results.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Slow down and listen to your business.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at:
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Connect with our guest on social:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwelaschneider/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandandsaltescapes/www.expertbookers.com
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
After a decade in consulting, Max was totally burnt out. The long hours, back-to-back-to-back meetings, and high stress took a heavy toll. He started experiencing anxiety attacks and felt like a shell of his former self. To help untangle his brain, Max and his wife took a month-long surf and yoga trip to Costa Rica. It was an incredible experience, providing the space to slow down and focus on himself in a way he hadn’t in a long time. As soon as he returned, Max was inspired to create this type of experience for other high-achieving professionals. Max knows what it’s like to work in high-pressure environments and the impact that intentional time away can have on calming the nervous system. Through mindfulness retreats and mindfulness offsites, Max helps high-achieving professionals connect with themselves and others in profound and meaningful ways.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I am wondering when is the last time you slowed down and took some time to rest, and I mean really took that time to rest. And with the summer months behind us and the end of the year push coming, what’s your energy level feeling like? And our guest today is Max Schneider and he talks with us about how slowing down and taking some time to slow your pace can actually help you produce your best results. Now, after a decade in consulting, Max was totally burned out. The long hours, back-to-back-to-back meetings, and high stress took a heavy toll. He started experiencing anxiety attacks and felt like a shell of his former self.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:55):
To help untangle his brain, Max and his wife took a month-long surf and yoga trip to Costa Rica. It was an incredible experience providing the space to slow down and focus on himself in a way he had not done in a long time. As soon as he returned, Max was inspired to create his type of experience for other high-achieving professionals. Max knows what it’s like to work in high-pressure environments and the impact that intentional time away can have on calming the nervous system. Through mindfulness retreats and mindfulness off-sites, Max helps high-achieving professionals connect with themselves and others in profound and meaningful ways. You’re going to love our interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it. Thank you for being a guest here and one of the things I was really interested in talking about is really what led you to starting your business.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (01:45):
I spent the first 10 or so years of my career in the corporate realm in consulting, getting a chance to travel around the world, travel 200,000 miles a year, working with some amazing companies and just living the life that when you’re starting business at least that I wanted to do and I thought was really exciting. What happened was I eventually hit some walls along the way with that. I mean, in 2018 I got shingles. My wife actually did around the same time, she’s also wired in a very similar way that I am where you just kind of learn how to push through things growing up. And I think a lot of us are very familiar with that mindset of pull yourself up by the bootstraps no matter what it takes. And we had this idea of what success means to us of the achievements, the awards, the accolades, the status on the airline, all of these different things.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (02:32):
And I was chasing that. And I really was enjoying it until all of a sudden I wasn’t. I started experiencing anxiety attacks at airports, on calls. I was just not a really happy person and I really burnt out really hard at the end of 2021. So with that, I’d always had a mindfulness practice but I knew I needed to spend some time going a bit deeper and really slow down and connect with myself because I had lost all sense of who I was. And through that process, taking some extended time off traveling through Central America, I also recognize that my experience isn’t unique. People in the corporate world, entrepreneurs, everybody, it doesn’t really matter what your role is, we have these ups and downs to our careers, to our lives where we lose touch with ourselves and we just feel absolutely exhausted. And I wanted to create a space to help people who are going through those types of experiences, and I wanted to do it in a very high end, white glove way. So with that, Sand and Salt Escapes was born and we run mindfulness retreats in Nosara, Costa Rica, for individuals. And we also run off sites for executive and intact teams to help them slow down, connect with themselves and connect with each other through mindfulness.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (03:54):
Your retreats as an example, I understand the idea for an individual, you mentioned your own experience of having the burnout and then really going into your own retreat that you self created and then launching your business. So I understand that from an individual standpoint, but from the organization standpoint, that’s very interesting. So I think about a leader tuning in saying, okay, well maybe I could go, but how would I get either my whole company, maybe a small business, or if you’re a large company, a leader of a large business or a division, how would I get a division or a department or a whole company to go? So how does that work with a whole bunch of staff and team?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (04:33):
Yeah. So we usually go up to about 20 guests is about the maximum that we’ll do, because we do want to create a small and intimate environment. But there’s incredible impact that happens when you step away from the business and you leave everything behind. We don’t use decks. We’re not looking at spreadsheets, we’re not having formal business conversations, but we curate every detail of an experience where we rent stunning estates in places like Palm Springs in Nosara, Costa Rica. I was just in the Smoky Mountains with a team a couple of weeks ago where we had an enormous villa overlooking a beautiful valley there. We bring in private chefs, we take care of every detail so that the guests and the teams don’t have to worry about anything besides just showing up as themselves. And we both practice mindfulness, so we’ll do sound baths, we’ll do breath work.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (05:25):
Sometimes we’ll paint, we’ll practice meditation. And we also learn about it in the process. And we have very deep facilitated conversations that help people just connect deeper with themselves and in the process with their colleagues so that when you go back, it does… The results we see from this where we have the flattened hierarchy that happens in organization because we start seeing each other as human beings, the silos that are broken down, the way that teams collaborate and work together, and some of the rhythms that we establish going forward during these off-sites that then get embedded into the way the teams meet, the way the teams interact.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (05:58):
Start really shifting the way the business operates because we’re not just showing up as our titles, but we get to show up as human beings. And I think that through COVID there was a massive shift in acceleration of trends that happened where people started really understanding the impact that their work has on their wellbeing when literally that was all we had when we were locked into our houses staring at Zoom screens and you start to question things a little bit. So leaders and organizations are looking towards the C-suite and saying, hey, how are you actually taking care of me as an individual? And this is also a really impactful way for teams to be able to help establish culture within their organization show that, hey, we actually care about you. So from a retention perspective and also a talent acquisition perspective, it’s an enormous tool for organizations.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:46):
Kind of leads into my next question, talking about this improving the wellbeing and mindfulness of an individual on the staff or your team members. How do you see that helping a company or an organization succeed? What have you seen come from that?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (07:01):
Yeah. So when we get together and we’re starting to share things, for example, looking over the last 12 months and reflecting on the highs and lows over the course of each month, both personally and professionally, and starting to get a chance to do a little bit of reflection on that and then the share out from that type of conversation, all of a sudden you’re sitting there realizing, oh my gosh, we were working on this project or we had this massive initiative we were going working together on, I had no idea that you were going through this enormous personal event like you just lost your mother or something like that. And those things generally don’t get shared at work, so it opens up this space for communication that then people can have going forward so that when we do show up and we have the next big project, the next initiative, those conversations are already happening and we’re working together not just in our titles, but as people because I think at the core of everything that we do, we’re a human being.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (07:56):
We layer on all of these titles, whether that’s senior vice president, whether that’s a parent, whether that’s a spouse or a partner, whether that’s a sibling. We layer on all these titles to ourselves as people, and at the core of that, it’s that connection to ourselves and connection to each other that’s so important. So when we curate these types of experiences, and they’re always different, we always bring forward different conversations, different activities, different mindfulness practice depending upon what the team is looking to accomplish, but the shifts that start happening and the humanization that happens and the retention that then happens. At the organization I just worked with two weeks ago in the Smoky Mountains I worked with last summer as well, and they’ve only lost in that time one person from their team. I’m not saying that it was entirely due obviously to the work that we did, but those are the types of organizations that are investing in this, the types of organizations that establish that culture and to do these types of events has true business impact.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:53):
Are there ways to measure a return on this? I mean, is that even feasible? Can you get an “ROI” on mindfulness?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (09:02):
It’s a tough thing to actually measure. So a lot of the clients that we work with are people who actually already have their own mindfulness practices because they understand the impact of it and the power that it can have and the shifts that it can make. But it’s not like anything in the learning and development space or talent development when you start looking at that, and I spent some time in that prior to what I’m doing now, it is difficult to quantify that. We’re not going to beat around the bush on that, but when you talk to people who have done this work and have gone through that experience and you can see some of those more intangible benefits, they’re extraordinary.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:34):
In some of my doctoral research, I developed what was called the virtuous organization scorecard to measure some of these more abstract concepts and ideas similar to what you’re talking about looking to measure other things like you had mentioned longevity, you could look at employee turnover rate, is that going up or down or staying the same or longevity of staff or employee satisfaction surveys that you can conduct once a year or every so often or things that you can do that are maybe, it just made me think about that.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (10:08):
Yeah. So we absolutely do some of that and you can measure that. But yeah, I think some of those results certainly do feel more intangible. And I also don’t like to beat around the bush with that too, because when you’re speaking with executives, you can see through things. Let’s talk about what’s at hand right here and not kind of massage and try [inaudible 00:10:25] on things, be pragmatic. I think also is important when we’re talking about a concept, mindfulness it is a little bit, sometimes people can perceive it as a little bit more woo-woo. And what we do really well is we take these concepts and we make them really pragmatic. We help people understand the science behind it, we make them very practical so you can actually take the tools and use them when you go back.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:45):
One of the things that I’m curious about, the idea of boredom, and we’ve been taught this concept being bored is an enemy. Look, I’ve got three kids and I even hear my kids say “I’m bored”. Essentially they’re seeking some kind of constant stimulation in today’s world with you can be stimulated with any kind of programming. So I’d love to get your vantage point on how this concept impacts business, the boardroom and so on.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (11:13):
If you think about your mind like a pond, every input that we get every day is like throwing a rock into the pond. So it’s the small things like the text message and the emails, it’s listening to podcasts, it’s watching the news, it’s driving down the street and all the things that are going on around you, it’s listening to music, all of these different inputs we’re constantly throwing into the pond. We do that all day every day, it kicks up water, it splashes around, they’re hitting the bottom, [inaudible 00:11:42] hitting the bottom, moving up muck, and it just turns into this giant mess. When we start to practice mindfulness, what we do is we give ourselves space where we don’t throw inputs into the pond, where we get a chance to let our minds settle, and when we start to practice that and we can do it for prolonged periods of time, all of a sudden that pond becomes real glassy and then you can start seeing reflections from the sun and eventually you can start seeing down into the water, you start seeing the different unique crevices and the different parts of the pond at the bottom, the logs, the rocks that might be down there, and you get a chance to have clarity in a way that you don’t when you’re constantly inundating yourself with these inputs.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (12:31):
When you’ve got five minutes between meetings instead of just pausing, breathing, not doing anything, what do we do? We pick over our phones, we scroll on freaking Instagram. That’s what we do. But it’s those moments when we can find that space to stop throwing inputs into our mind that allows them to calm and gives us a sense of clarity and better being able to see ourselves, to recognize our thoughts, our emotions, the sensations that are happening in our body and become more present so that we can actually respond to what’s happening within ourselves rather than just constantly having this attention being absorbed in something external that has really no bearing on our existence.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:11):
That’s a great example that you shared. Thank you. Well, Max, this is a great time in the show where we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (13:28):
I think every entrepreneur has more misses than they could probably remember, and I’m no different in that. The biggest miss that I made early on was not prioritizing rest. I viewed rest as a weakness and as something that I shouldn’t be doing because everything is urgent when you’re building a business. It’s very difficult to parse apart urgent versus important, so everything feels urgent, and I didn’t prioritize rest well at all. About a year ago actually started going to therapy every week, which was a huge help for me. I joined a mindfulness study group actually, which was also really helpful. And I built out a board of advisors, which was another tool that would both really, really impactful to create some accountability for me then to build some skills to be able to rest, because what I learned through this process is the harder you work, the harder you have to rest.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (14:30):
It’s the yin to the yang. If you continue sprinting a marathon at some point you’re going to cramp and seize up and it’s not going to be sustainable. So being able to shift the way that I look at the timeline of the output of my work and understand that, hey, if I actually do take the full weekend off, that’s going to allow me to do better work that next week because I had the opportunity to rest. And then in that process also learning what is high quality rest, what’s low quality rest. Low quality rest, we’re just sitting there vegging on Netflix, doing nothing on the couch, that’s not really quality rest. There’s other ways that we can go about resting that are much more regenerative. So that has been the biggest miss for me for the first couple of years was not understanding how to rest and the impact that it actually has on the output of the work.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:18):
What might an example be of a high quality rest? Just curious.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (15:22):
Going for a phone-less walk. Middle of the day, if you’ve got a 30-minute break, leave your phone at home. It’s one of the most liberating, like stilly how liberating it feels to just walk away from your home without your phone. Nobody knows where I’m right now, you’re almost like you’re getting away with something. But to be able to do that and to get out and just be present in the current environment that you’re in, not be distracted, trying not to think about what’s going on at work but just letting things settle. That’s a really easy example of some higher quality rest that we can do that’s not vegging on the couch. Because still when you’re still watching Netflix, you’re still throwing all these images, all of these things into the pond and the brain is still very active during that time. So finding those spots where we can just slow down and let the brain rest, that’s where we start getting a higher quality rest.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:16):
Well, let’s talk about a make or two. You’ve had some highlights in your career certainly, I’d love for you to share something.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (16:22):
The biggest make I think has been learning how to listen to the business and let the business tell me what it needs rather than me driving the business in a way that is what I think that it needs. I’ll explain a little bit more behind that. With in mindfulness, the way that we experience the world around us is through our bodies. Our bodies are that vehicle. So when the practicing mindfulness, a lot of times we’re slowing down and we’re tuning in and paying attention to our bodies and understanding what are they telling us? What do we need to do with this? How do we respond? Similarly, when you’re running a business, the business is the way that we experience being an entrepreneur, so we need to slow down and we can listen to what the business is showing us and telling us versus all these ideas that I have in my head of it needs to be this or it should be that, or this is what we have to do.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (17:12):
But if I can slow down and pay attention to the signals and be able to distinguish between signals and noise and understand, okay, this is what the business is telling me then that has been what’s opened up doors. So that’s actually what helped us move into the corporate space was when I burnt out and left corporate world, I said, “I’m never doing anything corporate ever again”. And then I started to get some asks from people in my network saying, “Hey, what you’re doing on the direct to consumer side is interesting. How might we integrate that with our organization?” And as I was able to slow down and listen and take some small steps in that way, realized, oh my gosh, there’s actually an enormous opportunity to make an impact in this space through that lens. But it was something that I had said I never want to touch, but just slowing down listening to the business has been a huge make for me and a different mindset that’s allowed me to move through this process with much more alignment with what the business needs.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:07):
Max, the name of the show is Multiply Your Success. And so we always like to ask folks, have you used a multiplier to help you grow yourself personally or professionally or grow your business you’re running?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (18:20):
The biggest multiplier that I’ve used is understanding how things are happening for me versus why they’re happening to me. I think it’s really easy to sit here and if something unexpected happens that maybe you didn’t want it to say, oh my gosh, why is this happening to me? And get very down, get in a little bit of a cycle you can spin yourself into on that front. And that’s normal and you should feel those types of emotions and that’s okay, but at a certain point we have the opportunity to step back and see the entire perspective of what’s happening and say, okay, yes, these things are true. This did suck for whatever reason, and there’s also some good that’s coming from this. And if you can place your attention on that and understand what the good is, it’s a much easier way to have moved through life.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (19:11):
I was hiking 12 weeks ago and rolled my ankle, felt a pop and knew that I had an issue. I had four miles still to get off the mountain, so that was a real bummer. Got off the mountain finally, and my ankle was blown up, ended up tearing a bunch of ligaments in it, and I was out and couldn’t exercise for seven weeks. There was just a lot of things that… And it was right as we were in the process of moving, I had to go to Costa Rica to run a retreat too. So it was a lot of stuff happening and in that moment it was really easy to sit there and say, why is this happening? This sucks. This is the worst timing in the world. I did that for about probably a day or so, and then started to make this shift of saying, okay, I’m going to be hurt for the next 12 weeks before I can get really back to where I want to be.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (19:54):
I can spend that dwelling on why is this happening to me and being upset, holding that tension, holding that anger, that frustration. Or I can say, okay, yes, those things are true. This also is happening for me in some ways. How can I start to explore that? I’ve always had a very adversarial relationship with my body, which I think a lot of us do, with working out where we push until we break. The shingles and the anxiety attacks, pushing through work that I mentioned before. So I use this as an opportunity to say, okay, how do I slow down and listen to my body? How do I tune in a little bit more and not be mad at my ankle for what happened, but rather say, okay, hey ankle, I’m here with you. We’re going to heal this together, instead of being me versus my ankle.
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (20:38):
And it was a subtle shift that allowed me to move through the process of rehab with a much just easier existence and a lot more at peace inside of myself rather than holding onto that anger that I think a lot of us do. It’s like anytime you get on an airplane and the Wi-Fi signal cuts out and you planned on doing a bunch of work during that time, you can sit there and just be ticked off to the entire flight. Or we can sit there and say, okay, this is going to happen. How do I want to experience the next four hours? Do I want to hold onto that anger or do I want to say, oh my gosh, it’s amazing. I’m even flying at 35,000 feet in the air at 500 miles an hour in this metal tube. I’ve had a great job that’s sending me to this place to go work. There’s a lot to be grateful for in that moment. What do I want to focus on? So that ability to be able to say, okay, how is this thing happening for me versus why is it happening to me has been one of the biggest multipliers for not just business, but also myself as an individual living a more peaceful existence.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:32):
Well, Max, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (21:37):
Success to me is having the biggest and most authentic impact that I can have in creating good in the world. The last day of work for me when I was in the consulting world was April 8th, 2022. I remember sitting down at practice Yoga [inaudible 00:21:54] April 9th and I just started bawling my eyes out because I was like everything that I had learned up until this point was gone and I had to start over. And one of those first things was, what does success look like? Because I was no longer subscribing to some of the ideas that you have learned growing up through school and through a lot of the corporate world. And getting a chance to step back and say, no, no, no, for me, impact is I just want to put as much good out in the world as possible and help people connect with themselves as human beings. Man, if I can do that and do it in a way that’s authentic to myself, that’s all that I want to be doing.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:31):
Love that. Well, Max, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you are hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (22:39):
No, this has been great. I really appreciate the conversation, the space, Tom. So yeah, thanks.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:44):
One other quick thing I forgot to mention is someone’s interested or in saying, hey, max, this sounds cool, what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, find out what you’re up to?
Max Schneider, Sand and Salt Escapes (22:54):
Yeah, two ways. First is you can check out more on our website, we’ve got all kinds of testimonials, videos, bring all of these retreats and all sites to life. So our website is sandandsaltescapes.com. Or if you want, you can just also reach out to me directly. My email is max@sandandsaltescapes.com.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:10):
Max, thank you so much for a fantastic interview, and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when Max talked about companies benefiting organizationally from mindfulness retreats and doing that together as a team. And what he found, and his clients have found, is that their teams end up working better together and create better cooperation and communication. Takeaway number two is when we talked about boredom. And Max gave a great analogy to think of your mind like a pond, and that all of these inputs that are coming in are like stones and rocks and sticks getting thrown into this pond, creating, in some cases, chaos. And maybe your mind might feel like that, I know mind does sometimes. And when you practice mindfulness, it helps you slow things down and calms that pond and it stops putting those inputs in so that your mind can rest and relax and create some inner peace.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:16):
Takeaway number three is when he talked about a miss that he had and his big miss was not resting when he launched his business, and he never rested because he thought everything was urgent and important. Actually, this was the quote, he said, “The harder you work, the harder you have to rest”. I thought that was a great little synopsis. “The harder you work, the harder you have to rest”. It’s just a great, great takeaway, and I’ll sneak in a second little takeaway here in this final third takeaway here is when he talked about the difference between high quality rest and low quality rest, and he said, high quality rest, for example, might be going for a walk without your phone and just no electronics, just walking and being present in that moment. And then he said, low quality rest might, for example, be binge-watching a Netflix show or vegging out on the couch. And now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:17):
So today’s win-win is when Max talked about how he learned to listen to the business and having the business tell him what it needs instead of him telling the business what it needs. And he said to do that, he had to slow down and listen to the business. He slowed down and listened to the business, and in doing so, he was able to discover and better adjust to what the business needed. And I thought that was a great little takeaway because sometimes when you’re trying to grow your business or to make decisions for your business, sometimes it can feel like you’re jamming a square peg into a round hole. At least I can say that for my companies and businesses that I’ve run over the years. And when I have done that, as Max has said, slowed down and listen to the business and really think about the decision before I make that choice, oftentimes I find my original decision was not the best for the business. And so that’s the episode today, folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
The post Improving Individual Well-Being for Organizational Success—Max Schneider, Founder, Sand and Salt Escapes appeared first on Big Sky Franchise Team.