439: Entrepreneur With Stage 4 Cancer Discusses His Biggest Regrets In Life With Chad Vanags

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I have a very special guest on the show and I’m going to say this right now. This is perhaps the most meaningful episode that I’ve ever recorded and it impacted me tremendously. Now as entrepreneurs and human beings, we all take things for granted and often lose sight of what’s important. Today I have my friend Chad Vanigs on the show, a very successful entrepreneur in e-commerce.

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and he recently got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. He’s never smoked in his life and doctors say that he has a limited time to live. So in this episode, we’re to talk about regrets, gratitude and perspectives from a successful entrepreneur. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online.

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Now you all probably know me well enough by now to know that my event has zero fluff. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business and not high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people and it’s a very intimate event. Everyone eats together and everyone parties together every single night. Now personally, I love smaller events and tickets always sell out far in advance. And if you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250K or $1 million per year,

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We also offer a special mastermind experience where we break up into small groups, lock ourselves in a room, cater in food, and help each other with our businesses. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. Hope to see you there. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing.

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SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source from my ecommerce store and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript which is my text message provider. Now why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in ecommerce stores and ecommerce is their primary focus. Not only is the tool easy to use but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers.

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So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S T R I P T dot IO slash Steve. And finally, I wanted to mention my other podcasts that released my partner, Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app.

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Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Could Have Job podcast. Today I’m honored to have my friend Chad Vanigs on the show. Now, the last time I had Chad on was back in 2015 in episode 65, where we talked about email autoresponders of all things. Now that actually means that I’ve known Chad for seven years now. He is the former cohost of the eCommerce Influence podcast. He’s the co-founder of Revflow, a payment processing service for SaaS companies. He’s also helping to run a B2B SaaS company with their sales training.

03:26
He also runs a tequila farm, believe. So basically this guy has got his hands in a lot of pots. Now here’s why Chad is special to me. During one of the e-commerce fuel events, I can’t remember exactly which one, Chad introduced me to custom audiences in Klaviyo, specifically the ability for Klaviyo to automatically export people to Facebook for my ads, which actually made a huge difference to my sales on my store. And

03:55
Anyway, recently Chad was diagnosed with stage four cancer and I wanted to bring him on the show to talk about how his perspectives have changed and to inspire all of you. Chad is a ball fire and we can all learn from him. And with that, welcome back to show Chad after seven years. What’s going on, man? Hey Steve, how’s it going? Yeah, it’s been a while. It’s definitely been a while. You know, well, I’m trying to think if I spoke to you within those seven years,

04:24
Maybe a couple emails here and there, but that’s about it. Yeah. We, was on the podcast long time ago, obviously. And then when I went to Klaviyo, so I built the partner program at Klaviyo and that’s probably where we corresponded a little bit more because I was trying to figure out how to get the right partners, you know, like you and Ezra and then like BVXL and like just trying to put everybody together into this, this partner program, which is now massive, apparently.

04:53
It is man, you created a great thing and it’s a, I want to say though, there’s a lot of red tape now. Back in the day, I just send you an email. That’s what happens when something scales up. You’re like, you could just talk to Chad and now it’s like, I got to go through all the system in process. And that’s what happens when, you know, companies like Clavio scale up.

05:17
Yeah, I mean, for the podcast sponsorship, took me like almost two months just to get in their system with I had to fill out these forms for like lawyers and everything. I was like, oh my goodness. Give me Chad back, man. Give me Chad back. Those are the fun, scrappy days for me. That was fun. anyway, yeah. Well, catch me up real quick. Since we haven’t since we haven’t spoken in so long, what have you been doing with your time and what you got out of e-commerce kind of, right? Yeah, I mean,

05:47
I mean, the short version, the fast version is simply was an e commerce went to Klaviyo built the program got offered a chief marketing officer gig at a payment processing company took the title and the salary and ditched Klaviyo might have been a bad idea. I didn’t realize it was gonna go that far that fast. So oops. And then I was Chief Marketing Officer of this payments company for four years. And it was a turnaround, right? It was supposed to be

06:17
supposed to be a technology company, they were like, Oh, we got this great technology. And, and so I was like, Yeah, cool. I’ll come down and you know, I was another tech firm. So I was like, this is great. I’m gonna be CMO of a great tech company only to find out that the private equity firm screwed it up and vetted it poorly. And then they cold stacked the tech so they like just put it in a freezer essentially said, here you go. We’ll see if it works later. And then I was stuck working on a turnaround company that

06:45
was brutal. So anyway, that’s what I was doing. And I finally, I just I gutted it out through the pandemic so that I could buy this property in California. And we started remodeling it for a year and turning it into a urban farm. And then I was like, I’ll do my own payment processing company. So that’s what I was doing. And then, yeah, I think then I got diagnosed and everything changed. So I’ve been

07:12
basically working at Winning by Design as a contracted sales trainer where I train sales reps at like Dropbox and Calendly and managers how to sell more and manage better. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. Nice man. Tequila Farm and Uncharted Spirits. Those are the two I care about. Yeah, the Tequila Farm. Actually, you know, of all the spirits actually Tequila is my favorite. That’s it’s called Tequila Farm. So, Chad,

07:40
Here’s the thing, man. You’ve been very open about your diagnosis. And I mean, we’ve hung out on several occasions. And I remember like you’re in shape. You don’t eat poorly. You’re a pretty healthy guy, man. What?

07:57
it just seemed like out of the blue and you’re not a smoker or anything either, right? No, no. So for those like to stage four lung cancer, I have a certain type of mutation. To give you a little context, like, I thought it was a COVID cough. So I let it go for a couple months thinking it was long COVID found out that I tumors in both lungs, my lymph nodes, my bones and then my brain. So the tumor my lung was five times the average and then I have 30 lesions in my brain.

08:26
And so obviously doesn’t doesn’t sit great. So how did I get it? It’s hard to, you really can’t pinpoint it, right? No radon in the house, all these things, but I will go probably more on a philosophical side of things. Cause I obviously, when it first happened, it’s just a matter of trying to come to grips with it. My first 45 days were pretty bad. Like when I say bad, mean, psychologically. And so I started reading books. There’s a book called

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book called cured, this one right there. And so this guy talks about how to heal and spontaneous remission and it’s heal the heal your diet, heal your immune system, heal your stress response, and then heal your identity. And so when you look at those, because he did the science, the research on like, how do people with terminal diagnosis, spontaneous, spontaneously heal.

09:24
And it’s those four components. And he says, that’s not only the way to heal, but those are the guardrails to prevent. So when I look at those four things, for me personally, it’s probably a little bit of each of those four things that what I call open the door to one cell mutation that led to all the tumors. And if I look at it, again, I don’t have answers, but if I look back on my life, I was fine with.

09:50
I was fine. I was okay with diet, but maybe I went a little too far. The issue here is I had a lot I was adding a lot of stress and I was adding a lot there was there was some identity issues. I’m just gonna say it upfront. Like, yeah, I was doing things that I didn’t give to. I didn’t care about. Are we allowed to cuss on this or not? You do it, man. Do whatever you want. Yeah. Basically, I was doing things I didn’t give two shits about. Right? Okay.

10:17
And basically, I was always doing the thing in order I was I was doing things to do eventually do the thing. And so what I’ll be easiest way to sum that up is I was not authentically living out the life I had imagined for myself. And when you’re not authentically living out who you are, you hold that in and your body actually responds to that. And so the combination of that plus

10:46
some stress stuff, right? It over overwhelms the immune system. And when the immune system is overwhelmed, trying to just deal with stress identity, you know, all that stuff, it doesn’t notice the mutating cells. Everybody has cancer cells in their body. The difference is your immune system is working to fight it. But when your immune system is shutting down or focusing elsewhere, those cells can sneak out and then mutate. So

11:15
Long story short, combination of somewhere I screwed up on diet, somewhere my immune system wasn’t working, somewhere the stress response was not great, and my identity of who I am and where I was going all played a part in that. Can we talk about the identity portion? I imagine some of that relates to business, right? 100%. Okay. 100%. So when you left Klaviyo and you went to this payment processing company, and this is just for the listeners out there who are…

11:41
pursuing these things as well. I ran into that trap too, where I was just chasing revenue and it was just causing a lot of stress with my wife and I. We didn’t even need the money, but like ego wise, I felt like I wanted to grow stuff. I’m just curious what your story was in that regard. Yeah, man, it goes all the way back to the days when I was in real estate. I left college and I went into real estate because I wanted to make a

12:08
shit ton of money in order to go and build a world excursion company for lack of a better term still working on that term. But like, think about a world excursion company. I was like, well, first, I’m going to go make all this money in real estate and then do that. Well, I started making a ton of money in 2005. And then I don’t know if you remember 2008. Yeah, I went straight up with it and straight down with it and fail. Then it was

12:33
moving into moving to LA and getting into e commerce, right, where I was doing e commerce influence, I was working there to, you know, build something great. And we started that process. And then for me, I had to get out, I had to get out. And like, there’s another one that I was like, well, that didn’t work well. Then I started getting into like, I’m going to build this thing called the scoopini. I came up with this thing for a catler scoop. And it’s like, I started doing all that. But the entire time it was, I don’t really care about these things. I was just using it to build a world excursion company.

13:02
And the entire time it was like I was driving down a highway, but looking at the road on the other side, like that’s the real road I want to be on. But here I am. I don’t keep going down this road because someday I’ll get to the other road. And that to me is the identity issue. And I did that for up until, you know, I don’t know, the last three months. And when you the way I describe it to people is like,

13:27
I was, if anybody drives stick, not many people drive stick anymore, but I drive stick. And if you drive your car at a hundred miles per hour in third gear, you are going to blow the engine quick. Yep. So not only was I driving in third gear because I was everything. was going to bed late, getting up early as an entrepreneur, trying to make things work. Right. At the same time, I’m driving on the wrong road. I’m driving on the wrong road. I’m looking at a different road the entire time.

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So my body finally had enough and it like pulled the parking brake hard. And it’s like, I started, I’m just giving you this metaphor, but I started fishtailing my life starts fishtailing and my car’s rolling. And it’s like, it’s like the worst wreck of my life. That’s what it felt like. But as I sat on the side of the road, I could tell I just wanted to get going again, but I couldn’t get going. literally could not get going. Cause my body was like, you’re no, you got to stop. And as I had that time to reflect, that’s when I realized I was driving on the wrong road the entire time.

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And I was never authentically me being me. So my identity was wrapped up in become a successful entrepreneur in e-commerce or in real estate or in payments, things I never gave two shits about. And so that to me is the identity part. And now when I’m looking at these other things, right. And I’m looking at these other things, or when I’m starting to work on the things I cared about, can already feel my happiness because happiness is what you need to optimize for not

14:53
Is my product gonna generate $10 million in revenue in six months? You know, it’s funny, Chad, I’ve interviewed probably 450 entrepreneurs. And what’s funny is the conversations that we have when the recording has stopped are a lot more profound than when they are on. It’s obviously not the case with you. But what I actually found is that a lot of these entrepreneurs who are killing it that I interview, they’re actually not happy or

15:22
there’s something missing. And I remember chatting with an entrepreneur who I won’t name publicly, but they were asking me about relationship advice afterwards with marriage and stuff. And I think this all kind of ties in maybe not directly correlated to what you’re going through, but people are unhappy because they’re chasing something and it’s not the source of their happiness. I think you use the word chase and that whenever you feel like you’re chasing

15:52
That’s when in my mind, you’re being, you’re not being your authentic self. And I say that because you think about some of the people out there that you can just tell are happy. They’re not chasing anything. They’re just living every day knowing that they love and I’d so cliche, but they love the process. When you’re chasing something, you’re not, you’re not really loving the process. You’re, you’re chasing. I mean, I think as somebody like, I don’t know if you know who Kai Lenny is, Kai.

16:20
I want to, I want to go surf Mavericks someday. It’s a big wave off Santa Cruz, like 30, 60 feet. Like I’m not in the shape to do that yet. But Kai Lenny surfs it like it’s like, you know, like it’s a two footer, you know, it’s like, it’s easy for him, you know, but he’s not chasing anything, man. He’s out there just practicing every day. He’s cause he loves it and he’s happy with it. Yeah. He’s, he’s a pro now, but I just realized how much I was just chasing every single day so that I could.

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have a feather in my cap and more revenue or this or that. It’s just like, I was unhappy. I was I’m a happy person. But like I was, I was always like, I’m happier now. Let me put it this way, I got stage four lung cancer, I was told I had like six to 12 months if medicine doesn’t work. And yet I’m finding that I’m becoming happier now with a diagnosis like that than I was previously. And that’s kind of saying something. That’s crazy. Well, let me ask you this, Chad.

17:19
For everyone listening, how do you get out of that rut without something catastrophic happening? Great. I’ve been trying to figure that out, right? Because, you know, I want people to have this, this now new sense of clarity that I have. But it’s like, I don’t want everybody to go through this shit. You know, it’s like, yeah, I think that if this is all reflective, so looking back, like, what would be different? Let me just put it this way.

17:48
It’s optimizing for happiness. But how do know you’re happy? Right? How do know you’re happy? And to me, it’s like, I am happiest. And I wrote down what is my ideal day look like? What is my ideal day look like? That was where I started because that’s where I had to see it’s getting up. It’s writing on something I care about. I like to write. So I’ll write some things I care about. Then I go outside and I work on my little urban farm that we’re building.

18:16
and I’m outside working on that stuff. I’m going to start learning how to weld soon. I like working with my hands. Right. And then I like being super athletic, like working out, etc. So I wrote out what the ideal Dave looks like. Now you have to what you have to do is like if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re like, I got to go do this and this and this I got to optimize my ads and like, look, I’ve run a couple email

18:40
email marketing, email agencies, and I just will never forget, like, I don’t give a shit about email. Like, I don’t care. Right? I didn’t want to be the next email guy. Never did. And so if you find yourself going down that route, like, I don’t care to be that and stop like, literally, that’s all I’m gonna say. It’s like, write out your ideal day. If your ideal day is not where you’re going, you’re on the wrong road, and you need to actually pull off to the side, don’t let your body or your life

19:10
pull the parking brake. I don’t know if that’s helpful, but it’s like right the ideal day. If the ideal day is different than what your day is now, that’s when you need to do something else. You know, it’s funny, uh, growing up with two, I don’t want to say tiger, but let’s say they were aggressive parents. Uh, we were always taught to have to pay our dues, right? Uh, we can’t always just do what makes us happy.

19:38
I agree with that to a certain respect. I guess from my perspective, what I try to do is not every day can obviously be a perfect day. But I would say as long as I have one or two of those days per week, I think I’m good. What’s your perspective on that? Yeah, I use the 80-20 rule. You’re gonna have 20 % of the bullshit you don’t want to deal with. Like you just got to deal with it. Right? So it’s like, that’s how I look at it. I’m looking to get to 80-20. The problem is I was the complete opposite. I was 20-80.

20:09
right? Even 5050 would have been better, you know? Yeah. So right out, like that’s what I so that’s good. That’s a good clarifying point, right? It’s like right out that ideal day. This is if every day was perfect, but know that it’s not but you’re you should be working towards 8020. And I was the opposite. I’ll never forget this. I wrote him. I always wanted to build this thing called Uncharted Spirits. What we do is we basically that’s the World Excursion Company.

20:35
Right. go around the world and like, for example, I did a boat race down the coast of Tanzania. I rode motorcycles through Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia. Right. And I’ll never forget when I was working towards building that route through Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. My wife looks at me and goes, Hey, do you feel like you’re, you know, living what you should be doing? I said, well, I’m not on that trip right now. So no, so right now it’s like 3 % of my life is what I’m actually doing. And I’d never forget when I said that.

21:04
I go, but when I’m on the trip, it’ll be like 80 % of what I want to do. And so if I die on that trip, I’m going to die doing what I should have been doing. The problem is I got back from the trip and I went back to 3%, 3 % working on the things I enjoy. So it’s like, and I wasn’t, I wasn’t moving that number to the 80 20. I was still at the three and 97. And so that’s, I agree with the take, you’re never going to have a perfect day, but

21:34
If you’re not working towards that, that feeling of this is who I am and who I should be, then you’re, you’re in a, you’re gonna be in a bad spot.

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22:15
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

22:26
Let me ask you this. What stopped you from pursuing that world excursion company? Was it money? Yeah, that’s a big part of it, Money was a big part of it. always thought I had that I thought I had to make thought I had to make money to build the thing, right? I thought I had to make money to build the thing, which is true in some sense. Okay, right.

22:50
The problem is, I live in California. I’m increasing my living expenses. And so I look at somebody like, there’s two people I think about. Alex Arnold, I don’t know if you know who that is. And then there’s a guy named Chris Picard. So Alex Arnold is the guy that free soloed that big one in Yosemite. I can’t remember. The Half Dome? Okay. He free soloed Half Dome, right? Yeah.

23:19
And I’ll never like his story is simply, I just love climbing. I just love climbing. And he would just be lived in a van and he just would climb all the time because that’s what he loved. He didn’t care about material possessions. And now he’s considered the one of the greatest, if not the greatest climber of all time. Right. It takes people days to scale half to him. He did it without ropes in three hours because he loved it. He got to the top. He got to the top and the filmmaker, Jimmy Chin goes, how do you want to celebrate?

23:49
Because I mean, this is a world class feat. And Alex looks at him and goes, I don’t know, probably just going to go back to the van and do a do a hangboard session. No, hangboarding is where you just hold your fingers here and you just hang so you can make your fingers tight. The dude just did the most incredible thing in the world. And he’s like, I’m just going to go back and practice hangboarding. And in my head, I’m like, I’ve been measuring myself based on like building a business versus

24:17
why didn’t you just go and like maybe lower the expenses, work with your wife to find something that, you know, would work for us financially, because we’ve still got to do things and build this thing, you know, with less stressful components. Like if I were to go back and do it again, I probably would have just taken a sales job where I can make a ton of money, but not be super involved and do that sales job, get my money saved and keep investing. Instead, I was like,

24:45
put my money into building e-commerce inputs, put my money into building this, put my money into this. And it was all the things I should have been putting money into. And when I say money, I’m talking time too, right? Money into the same thing. This is hilarious. You know what’s funny is now that I’m in my forties and I’m speaking to a lot of my friends who are Asian, I have a lot of Asian friends, and a lot of them are, and I think it’s just parental pressure really, but they’re stuck in these jobs that they don’t like.

25:15
The problem is that they’re getting paid so much. Like we’re talking about getting 500,000 to a million dollars a year in their profession, right? It can be hard to give that up, to pursue something that you really want to do. I mean, it’s easy for us to talk about this, but I’m thinking to myself even, like how would I even be able to do that? Yeah. So that’s a great question, right? Or a great point. Like, I mean, the version of the golden handcuffs, you know? Here’s the simple thing.

25:45
And like, I, it’s weird for me to say this, I got the benefit of being diagnosed and really having my life. Right? See, I can laugh now. Yeah, two, three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, like I wasn’t laughing. But now, you know, this is this is the hand I’m being dealt. Right? The easiest way for me to say this, because I was I was given a timeline on my life. Literally, the doctor signed an insurance thing that says less six months, about six months to live if medicine doesn’t work.

26:13
And I’m like, Oh my God, Oh, my life actually has a, has a, has an expiration date. And I said to myself, Holy shit, you’re going to die. We’re all going to die. The problem is we don’t think about death enough. And I guarantee if we thought about death more, and we thought about the, the, the finite, the finite component of our lives, you might actually say, is that money worth it? The problem is, like, I mean, here’s the simple thing. You’re going to die.

26:43
I don’t know what to say. Like, and no one’s gonna remember you. Like, I hate to, I’m just gonna be honest, like, 10 years after you’re dead, no one is gonna really care. Like, they’re gonna be like, I miss Chad, or I miss Steve. And like, you have kids, right? That that may go on a little longer. But at the end of the day, like, what are you here to do? So you making half a million to a million dollars a year, and unhappy? I don’t know, that’s gonna be really, it’s gonna be really problematic when it’s time.

27:13
So the answer is this, it’s like if you’re not happy making that half million, just remember you’re gonna die. And the question is, was it worth it? You know, it’s funny, for me, it’s less about the money than it is for like the lost times. I remember when I was growing up, my parents worked hard so they could put me through school. I ended up going through college without any debt. My dad took a second job so I could go to college. And I don’t want that to be the case with my kids.

27:42
I remember at ball games, I used to play volleyball and sometimes I’d look over at the sideline and I’d see that, you know, they weren’t there. And I remember those. It’s not like they missed all my games, but the they missed, I remember. And so that’s why I don’t want to miss anything of my kids. And so that’s my why. And if I have to suffer a little bit, maybe I guess this all goes back to your perfect day analogy, right? The 80 20. yeah, look, I mean, at the end of the day, everybody has their why. Like Steve, you, if you have a family,

28:13
then you know that like if 80 % of your time is given to your family and so the 20 % working on a business that may not be amazing, but it gives you that time with your family, I’d rather all day, like that makes a ton of sense, right? The minute it takes away from your family and the thing that you you want to be doing, that’s where it’s probably a problem. But in your case, yeah, like, look, my parents were both teachers, they showed up to every game because they were teachers.

28:41
Right. Because they got out the same time I did, they had all the same times off. But if they were in, if they were doing the things I would do, if my dad was a chief marketing officer somewhere, guarantee he’d miss a lot of my things. Yeah. And like, I guarantee you, I know this looking back, he’d be super unhappy with that because he cherished those moments. So the 80 20 rule, it’s like, yeah, maybe your business is that 20%, but it gives you the 80 % of the ideal day being with your family, going to the events and spending time.

29:11
So that’s where you have to really think about that. Yeah. So now have you essentially dropped all the things that you don’t want to be doing? Yeah, I’m getting like, it’s there’s still like, it’s like a transition, right? Okay. Yeah. I’m straddling. I told somebody the other day for the first 45, 60 days, I was just trying to keep the wheels on the bus. Like just keep the wheels on the bus physically, mentally, emotionally, and like financially, cause like dude, medical bills are starting to just

29:40
go right through the roof, right? Yeah. And now but because everything I’ve started to stabilize like those tumors in my brain have reduced in size by 50%. The medicine is working, but combination with all the things I’m doing, right. And so now I can start like I have space to think about the future. But now the future is like, I don’t know, is it six months? Is it two years? Could I live another 60? Like I don’t, I don’t know. So it’s like

30:07
I haven’t stopped everything because I’m in that transition year period, but I can tell you this much that I’m starting to shut down like Red Flow. You mentioned Red Flow. Yeah, I’m actually going to shut it down. I’m like, that’s not interest. That’s no longer important to me. And I’m just going to focus on tequila farm and uncharted spirits. And I got time to do that. You know, we have money saved. got insurance payouts. So it’s like, can go for a little while winning by design. I’m only doing things that I like now. Now, again, there’s the 20 % of

30:37
junk. But the point is I’m now able to cut most of the stuff that I don’t like. just like, I’m going to die someday. It could be soon. So I might as well do the things I love. Can we talk a little bit about health? I know for me, like, early on in my business, I used to neglect it, right? Sometimes I would skip meals. Sometimes I would just eat like whatever was there just so I could continue on. And I know health is huge, but people just don’t realize it.

31:06
What were you, you always struck me as a really healthy guy. That’s the thing. What would you have changed in that regard? Yeah, man. I, that’s why it’s been hard because I was generally, I mean, I surf two hours at a time. I surf decent size waves. I’m like, I’m working out, you know, the security guard at my, I had to go do a bronchoscopy at UCLA medical center and the security guards 400 pounds eating McDonald’s. I’m like, that guy’s healthier than me. That’s, that’s messed up. Yeah. So when it comes to that,

31:33
That’s why I’m saying at the beginning, it was those four components. It’s diet, immune system, stress and identity. And that’s why it’s like, I had the probably the food side, the diet side pretty well dialed, stress and identity side that probably opened it up. And so when my food was even just a bit off, it just piles it on. So I can tell you right now, 90 % I’m making that number up, but 90 % of health is what we eat.

32:00
And if you literally, I’m much more cognizant. I thought I was pretty cognizant of this now, but now I’m even more cognizant of like what’s in our food. America’s food system is totally destroyed. It is just a, it’s just bad, right? It’s bad. If you get anything from a box or a bag and you look at what’s in there, that’s, that’s, it’s not good. And I can tell you that sugar is the number one culprit. saw a stat the other day, 200 years ago, the average human consumed three

32:30
pounds of sugar in a year. Three pounds of sugar in a year. Now it’s 156 pounds a year. And sugar is the number one problem. Okay, so yeah, sugar, carbs, alcohol, even though we’re called tequila farm, because we love tequila. It’s gotta be careful on the boobs, know? Sure. It seems like the four things it seems like stress and identity are related, right? Very much so. If you don’t have your identity, right, you’re

32:59
probably stressed out. Yeah. And what was the fourth one? immune system. yeah, diet, immune system, stress, diet, immune system, and identity. Yeah. Okay. I just want you to share what you’re doing in all four categories. So identity, kind of have covered. Yep. Stress. I would imagine you’re a lot less stressed, especially once you drop some of these things that you don’t want to be doing. Yeah. What are you doing to change your diet?

33:26
And I’m assuming your diet was pretty good before, but what are you doing now? Yeah, so on the diet side, like, everything’s based the lack of just a summer. It’s basically all organic. Right? Okay. I love peanut butter. But the only peanut butter I get is peanuts. The ingredients are peanuts and salt. That’s it. But if you look at a Jif jar, it’s going to be loaded. Anything like that. Can’t do it. So on the diet side, I create what I call a ZFG.

33:53
which is basically me blending in a Vitamix all the all the vegetables I need to get and I call it ZFG because it’s called excuse my language but it’s called zero fucks given I don’t care what’s in it don’t care how it tastes I just got to get it down right and so all plants be spinach all that good stuff then I do I have a nutritionist I have a cancer nutritionist and she just tells me what to what to do and I got a meal service that they make it according to that so that’s like

34:22
That’s kind like the food side. Then exercise, high intensity training for me is big. So I started a CrossFit gym with a trainer and he’s getting these things going, right? Okay, I’m probably in some of the best shape I’ve ever been in. And it’s like, except for that one little thing, you know, before we started recording, you mentioned you cut out meat is meat bad, per se? That’s a loaded question because okay, I love meat. I would say there’s two schools of thought.

34:51
especially in this cancer world, there’s plant based only no dairy, no meat. And like, that’s the only way to go. Right? Not vegan, because vegan has a lot of crap in it, too. Right? Interesting. Okay, like, oh, I’m vegan. I’m like, that doesn’t mean you’re healthy. Okay. Yeah, the plant based, that’s the way to call it versus, you know, me. So right is me unhealthy. You’re gonna depends on who you talk to. But I can tell you right now that

35:20
when they look at meat as being unhealthy, it’s the processed stuff from stores like Vons or Ralph’s or Publix or whatever. So cold cuts basically. like that. Okay. You want the grass fed stuff at the very most with the least amount of whore bones and all that stuff. I know I’m talking to you right now, but this is what I eat every day and what my kids eat every day. The meat? Just in general, processed stuff like you know, we do what’s easy.

35:49
I know my kids a sandwich with cold cuts, right? But here’s the deal. Let’s look at that cold cut. Well, you got it. This is where you know, the financial ability comes into play. Like when I get bread, like I eat bread. So there’s a lot of wheat and gluten, all that problem in there. But that’s from the bread on the shelves. If you go to the bread in the freezer section where it’s sprouted grains, right, where it’s actual grains, like they’re in the freezer section because there’s nothing in there to preserve them. It’s like mostly

36:19
the actual grains that you need themselves. So like Ezekiel bread, right? That’s the good stuff. So just change the bread to that. Right? Of course, they’re gonna think it tastes like sawdust if you’re giving them something else. But yeah, but then the meat, right? If you can get you can get cold cuts that are like, non processed cold cuts. That’s that’s the hard part, though. Right? Yeah, I think I kind of understand how this all goes together. So these four aspects, really all it takes is it’s like a chain, right?

36:49
If one of those things goes down, then maybe the whole thing collapses. I would say for the listeners of this podcast, identity probably is the one that’s most related. I’m just trying, having gone through what you’ve gone through in the past somewhat, you know, on the, on the business side, it’s just really hard to make those changes. I’ll tell you what happened with us, with my wife and I, I was the crazy one.

37:15
I was always the one like, hey, we need to hit a million bucks because I just wanted a seven figure business for ego purposes, right? So I remember we were close one year and I was like, okay, let’s hit it. And so I started blasting emails. I started running ads that weren’t that profitable and driving my wife crazy because we weren’t staffed to handle all those orders. And then we hit it and then we were like, okay, great. We went out to dinner and I was like, okay.

37:42
let’s do another 20 % next year. And then my wife flipped and we got in this huge fight. And then it was actually, she was the one responsible for putting things in perspective, right? We make enough money. We spend all our time with the kids. Why are we stressing out for some more money that we’re not even going to spend? Like I’m cheap. Like I’m talking to you on a shared Zoom account. We were joking about this earlier. Zoom is only like 10 bucks. So.

38:12
Is there any way to figure this out with something catastrophic not happening? I mean, what advice you got? Yeah, that’s that. That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out. Like I my my my mission moving forward is like, how do I help people avoid what I got to but get the same realizations? Like that’s literally what I’m trying to figure out. And I think it comes back to just like, it’s, it’s so cliche, but it’s like, often optimizing happiness, I need to put this out there.

38:41
You’re gonna die, Steve. You’re gonna die. The thing is, is you’re assuming you’re going to keep going for the next 20, 30, 40 years. Yeah. But it could happen today. Right? The problem is, is like, you somehow have to put an artificial timeline on yourself. Right? It’s so cliche live for today. But here’s the problem. I’m living for today. But like, what if I end up do live in another 10 years? Oh, shit, I’ve a plan for that a little bit.

39:09
You know, I can’t just go out and do whatever. Right. So I have to say here and I say, if I live another 10 years, right? Am I doing the 80 20? Am I going to be living 80 % of like who I am the authentic self and if you answer that question and say, I’m not I’m not working towards who I want to become.

39:32
Right? And we can, here’s the problem. We can justify it all day long. When I was doing all those other things, I was justifying it all day long. was like, well, I’m just going to keep doing this in order to get the money so I can become that. So I guess the final component here is like one, you’re going to die. You got to tell yourself that you got to think about that. I contemplate death every night. Now I go to lay in bed and I just lay there and I think about dying because now it’s real contemplate it. Second, right. If your day isn’t optimizing towards that 80 20 where it’s 80 % of

40:02
your authentic self, right? You really got to have secondary, you got to have, you got to be hard on yourself and say, I don’t know if this is it. Right. And then third, it’s like, in that same component, those four pillars of life, right? Diet, immune system, stress and identity, and they all go hand in hand, they interlock, but start on one, start with food, right? And to me, that’s like,

40:31
That’s probably the best way I can say it. Well, let me ask you this question. How do you figure that stuff out? Like, how do you figure out what you should be doing or what your authentic self even is? I mean, for the longest time, I had no idea. That’s a really good question that I don’t mean you kind of knew on that trip, right? I knew. Here’s the thing I knew for like 1015 years. Oh, my God. Okay, I knew for a long time. Right? I knew for a long time. I think if you don’t know yet, the thing is, is

41:00
you probably do know you just haven’t sat down and really, you just you, it’s there, I can promise you it’s there in the back of your mind. It’s just not not illuminated yet, because you haven’t probably allowed it to come out. I knew for a long time what exactly who I was. But I just never did it. So how do you find that? I mean, I guess the question you’re gonna die. So what do you want to do before you die? And like, it’s not like I want to go travel, but like,

41:28
What is the thing you want to give back to the world? How do you want to leave it better than you found it? And if you’re not doing it, leaving you like, am I going to leave this better than I found it? Then you’re probably not maybe not doing the thing that you want to want to do. I’m working on that still. No, I mean, for me, I think this podcast is going to be profound for a lot of people. I mean, traditionally, we talk about business tactics and strategy on this podcast, but this is very important, which is why I wanted to have you on. There’s just so many entrepreneurs that I know that

41:58
on the surface are killing it, but there’s something missing inside. And it’s just, for me, it’s always been ego. I’ll just full on admit saying like saying stuff, right? the money, because I’m cheap. Like, I don’t need that much money. We don’t spend that much money because I’m cheap. the ego is always got even today, like, I have all these friends from Stanford that are running or have exited hundreds of millions of dollars. And here I am selling handkeeps, right? So I’ve always had that ego problem. Yeah. But

42:28
Well, let me ask you this, Steve. Yeah. You’re gonna die. Right? We’ve established that chat. I know. I’ve repeated it. I’ve repeated it multiple times. And I tell you why. Because you these things need to be repeated. I can’t say it once you got to say it multiple. So I’m glad it’s I think it’s finally hit. It’s hitting me. It’s hitting me. Yeah. So yeah, will your Stanford buddies care about your hankies when you’re gone or vice versa? Right? Like or reverse it? That’s my point.

42:57
No one’s gonna give a shit. Yep. Chad, I’m gonna make sure everyone listens to this interview. This interview for me has probably been my favorite one. And I don’t have as far as as long as I can remember, man. Okay. No, I’m serious. I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, man. I appreciate you having me. It’s good to catch up for sure. Yeah. And I know if anyone has any questions about this. I mean, where can they get ahold of you? Or if you don’t want any correspondence, that’s fine, too.

43:26
No, I like I said, I’m finally getting to the point where I’m this is right now how I give back. So people have given back to me in this process. And now it’s time for me to, I’m here to put guardrails up. I’m at the bottom of the cliff in the ambulance right now. Right. But I’d rather put the guardrails up so you don’t get to this place. The best place is, is probably LinkedIn. I’m actually, you know, that’s where I write a lot of my stuff on LinkedIn. So it’s simple. It’s just Chad Van Ainks, right? So LinkedIn.

43:55
whatever that URL is, slash Chad Vannings. You hit me up there and then can give you some email address stuff and go from there. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks a lot, Chad, man. It was great catching up. Yeah, you too, man.

44:11
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now my heart goes out to Chad and his family. And all I can say is that of everyone I know, I have faith that Chad can beat this. And I encourage all of you to follow his story because you’ll be inspired and grateful. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 439. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base.

44:40
SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at post group.io slash Steve. That’s P O S T S E R I P T dot IO slash Steve. Now I also want to hang out with you in person this year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, grab a ticket to seller summit and let’s meet up. Go to seller summit.com. That’s S E L L E R S S U M M I T.com. Now we talk about how I these tools on my blog. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitter job.com.

45:10
and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.