Our guest today is none other than the fitness icon Jillian Michaels. She was nice enough to share some of her Best Ever Advice with us, I highly suggest you make the most of it with pencil and paper ready! Jillian answers many of our listeners own questions along with sharing some of her personal life with us. What a truly inspiring and genuine person, she backs up all of her talk by staying committed every single day to her goals and family. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!
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Jillian Michaels Background:
-World’s leading fitness expert, renowned nutritionist and successful entrepreneur
-Launched new Jillian Michaels fitness app, with hundreds of fully customizable workouts
-International community of followers exceeding 100 million
-8 New York Times bestselling books, an award-winning podcast, The Jillian Michaels Show,, and keynote speaker
-Based in Los Angeles, California
-Say hi to her at www.jillianmichaels.com
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TRANSCRIPTIONS
Joe Fairless: Best Ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless, and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any of that fluff. We’ve spoken to Barbara Corcoran (Shark Tank), Emmitt Smith (Hall of Fame running back) and a whole bunch others.
With us today, I’m so pleased to say we’re speaking to Jillian Michaels. How are you doing, Jillian?
Jillian Michaels: Hey! Good, how are you?
Joe Fairless: I am doing well, and guess what I just got done doing?
Jillian Michaels: What?
Joe Fairless: I got done doing an advanced ab circuit for six minutes on the Jillian Michaels fitness app, and my blood’s pumping and my abs are burning.
Jillian Michaels: [laughs] Good, that’s what I wanna hear.
Joe Fairless: I love that thing. I just got married; my wife is a personal trainer, and she actually told me about it so I downloaded it, plus in preparation for our conversation, and I love that thing. Props to you on that app.
Jillian Michaels: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Are you gonna be doing the dad bod program in there any time soon you think?
Joe Fairless: I did… I have all the pictures. The dad bod one was the one that spoke to me, so yeah, I picked that one.
Jillian Michaels: Right… [laughter]
Joe Fairless: I want those fly abs, but I really want those big muscles, so yeah, I picked that.
Jillian Michaels: Today we’ve got a little bit of time and I thought the best way to approach our conversation with you is not for me to come up with questions, but instead I asked the Best Ever listeners to come up with questions that they had for you. I actually got some questions from Best Ever listeners around the country; whenever I announced a couple weeks ago that we’d be having a conversation, I got a bunch of responses, so I’ve got some questions. We’ll just roll with this if that works for you.
Jillian Michaels: Yeah, of course.
Joe Fairless: Sweet. So I’ll warm you up, because some of them are more in depth, so I’ll warm you up with maybe a quick one… This is from Andrew from Mesa, Arizona – “What’s your morning routine?”
Jillian Michaels: Well, obviously it involves the kids. I’m woken up at the freakin’ crack of dawn by two crazy kids wanting to eat and play and get ready for their day, so… It involves first getting woken up and having coffee; I have to have my coffee immediately. There’s a coffee company that we invested in called Lucky Jack actually, that I love so much we actually bought the company. So I have coffee, then I prepare my munchkins breakfast, they get dressed, and myself or Heidi takes them to camp or school. Then I come home and start my workday, usually. So it’s pretty kid-centric in the morning.
Joe Fairless: Two follow-up questions on that. One, coffee – what are your thoughts on caffeine?
Jillian Michaels: Caffeine – I’m a huge believer; up to 400 milligrams a day. I think (like anything) the right amount and proper quality is gonna be critical. Even if you have too much vitamin A, too much vitamin C, caffeine in the right dosage and the right quality has been shown to inhibit type II diabetes and improve insulin resistance. It’s literally improved cognitive functions, theoretically it helps to prevent Alzheimer’s, it helps to inhibit pancreatic cancer, it’s a performance enhancer in the gym… But if you do too much of it, then it taxes your adrenals, it releases stress hormone… And it’s also the quality of the caffeine.
If you’re getting it from coffee, this is where cold brew and organic is really important, because hot coffee has a lot of [unintelligible [00:05:37].08] and oils and is very acidic, whereas cold brew pulls out the bad oils… Hot coffee can lead to higher levels of LDL bad cholesterol, but if you have it cold brew, it strips out the bad oils and it’s less acidic on the stomach and the teeth and what have you.
You also have to make sure that the coffee is organic, because coffee is the second heavily sprayed crop in the world with pesticides and chemicals, second only to cotton. So it’s very important that when you have coffee, you have organic coffee, preferably cold brewed coffee. Even if you have it hot, the process of brewing is much better for you.
Joe Fairless: The second follow-up question – how old are your munchkins and what’s typically served to them for breakfast?
Jillian Michaels: Five and seven, and they go through their phases, you know? Right now they like Nature’s Path pumpkin waffles, so I’ll give them that with a little bit of grass-fed butter and a drizzle of honey or organic maple syrup. They’ll have turkey bacon, they’ll have eggs, because we have a farm, so we have [unintelligible [00:06:40].01] chickens, and everything… So they’ll have farm eggs with cheese in it, sometimes they have granola – they like this Love Crunch granola on Greek yogurt…
They kind of mix it up. They’re pretty typical. No Lucky Charms, none of that garbage.
Joe Fairless: Alright, now we’re gonna switch gears… This is Osh from Cincinnati, Ohio. He asks “What’s the one thing you could change about yourself to make you even more successful?”
Jillian Michaels: Patience, man. That’s the key, which is also tied up with impulsivity. You have to constantly [unintelligible [00:07:11].25] it’s not personal, it’s business, and you’ve gotta manage your patience and your emotions and your impulsivity. Luckily, when I know that I’ve had it with someone or something, I literally just hand it over to my business partner, who has great patience and diplomacy, and I’m like “I can’t. I’m gonna just roast this person. I’m handing the ball over to you.”
Joe Fairless: Thinking back and as objectively as you can look at it, would you have achieved what you have achieved if you had more patience along the way? And I ask that because sometimes I think that if you had approached it differently, then you wouldn’t have accomplished what you had, because you were in some cases impatient.
Jillian Michaels: I would say no to that one. I think the patience would have allowed me that more persistence with certain issues, or better tolerance of unethical individuals we work with that still have power and control… So I think that that could have helped. If I was to look back on mistakes that I’ve made, it would have been not fighting harder. I do think this is predominantly a female thing, I hate to say, but as a woman they constantly ignore you, they yes you to death, they ignore you, they yes you to death… Then you end up throwing a tantrum trying to get your way, because you’ve tried a million other directions or a million other avenues to get you them to listen, and then you’re difficult, you’re a bitch and all that stuff.
So the one thing that I wish I had done in these instances, where there were times I knew decisions were bad, choices were poor, and I thought “Well, they probably know more than me. They’re a producer after all, or they’re a buyer at this big bucks store, so they probably know better than me”, and then what happens is the project doesn’t work, and everyone blames you anyway. So that’s where you think, “You know what? I should have fought. Who cares if they called me a bitch? If it worked, then we would have continued working on the project anyway”, and instead I allowed these things to go on, even against my better judgment, and it doesn’t work and they never wanna speak to you again because nobody wants to be the owner of a failure, right? Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.
So I would have fought harder and not cared so much what people thought, and I would have been more patient in working certain deals, and having a bit more diplomacy instead of being like “I don’t care. These people are bad people, I don’t wanna work with them”, whereas my business partner is like “You know what? We need to find a way to work around them.”
Joe Fairless: I love that. Kathy from Atlanta asks “Who do you look up to and why?”
Jillian Michaels: In truth, I find my inspiration in what I call “regular people” in that they’re not privileged, they haven’t been given great advantages to success. To see them overcome obstacles and adversity is very inspiring to me. It’s one thing when you’ve been given tremendous privilege and access, and when you have, I think that the person to whom much has been given, much is required (right?) it’s your job to spread the wealth and make the world more fair. But when I see everyday people overcoming obstacles against all odds, that’s really where I find my inspiration and most of my respect goes. Because it’s easy to be successful when you’re standing on the shoulders of previous generations or nepotism and you’ve been given an unlimited amount of money to make mistakes and to find your way… So that’s really where I find most of my inspiration.
Joe Fairless: Erik from Cincinnati asks “What’s the biggest piece of advice you gave to someone or even yourself that helped remain disciplined and on track with your goals?”
Jillian Michaels: I really help people establish their Why, and I think this has become such a component of mainstream pop culture nowadays… But many years ago I had read a book called “Man’s Search For Meaning” by a guy named Viktor Frankl and he was actually a Holocaust survivor who had kind of taken a Nietzsche quote, and it was like “If you have a why to live for, you can tolerate any how…” – the work associated with the goal.
To me it’s like work with a purpose becomes passion, but work without purpose becomes punishing. So you have to help people find their purpose, because you may never love working out; you may never love putting in 12-hour days at the office, you may never love the sacrifices associated with what you want to achieve, but if you’re passionate about what you want to achieve, it’s worth it. I think that’s the most important thing.
Joe Fairless: And what do you wanna achieve?
Jillian Michaels: My goals are very diversified. Obviously, I have goals for my family and my kids and what kind of parent I wanna be and for how long… The longevity and the quality of my ability to parent my kids, and in fact, my son is home right now with chickenpox, which is why I had to take my daughter to camp today… If you happen to hear that in the background [unintelligible [00:12:12].25] being around for my kids and being an active parent with my kids. That’s important to me for years and years to come.
Also, on a professional level it’s about being a platform and a channel for up-and-coming brands and personalities that I think present affordable and accessible alternatives to better for you options, whether it’s food or boutique fitness, or healthy supermarkets online that thrive, that beat the food desert issue and the affordability issue, and petition to make food stamps available for healthier products… To me, when I look at my brand, it’s “How do I use this platform that we’ve built to shepherd (if you will) young and up-and-coming brands that I think are doing great things in the world?” That’s my business goal now.
Joe Fairless: And then on business goals, Maureen from Auburn, Maine asks “What advice can you give busy moms on how to manage and schedule their time with entrepreneurial endeavors and family?”
Jillian Michaels: I call it the 12-hour rule. My thing is that if you can cut out 12 hours a week for just you, then you can make it work. It will never be perfect, and I think that’s tough, because as Americans we get into this rugged individualism, and “all or nothing”, “perfect or not at all”, and I find the people who are motivated have that mindset, which is really dangerous, because it’s impossible if you have kids; it’s an impossibility, and you’ve gotta get into the “good enough” mindset and you’ve gotta have more patience.
So if you’ve got 12 hours a week – if you’re awake 16 hours/day, seven days/week, the math on that is like 112 hours a week or something of that nature that you’re awake. Let’s say you’re putting in a 60-hour workweek. Now you’re left with like 50 hours, and you take 40 of them and they’re all about your family and your kids, you can still find 10 hours to focus on you (10-12 hours) and you have to schedule it. So over the course of the month, that means you’ve got time to get your hair done, your roots done, your haircut; you got in time for the manicure, pedicure. You have four half-hour workouts in a week; you manage to get that date night in with your significant other where it’s just quality alone time; you’ve got a girls’ night in, or a boys’ night out, and that is the number – it’s 12 hours a week.
If you spread it out over the course of the month, one week is your checkup, the next week it’s your hair, the next week it’s the manicure/pedicure, it’s the massage that you needed, it’s the four and a half hours of exercise, it’s the food prep for the rest of the week… And you’ve gotta appreciate that it doesn’t happen all at once; it’s a slow and steady burn of moving yourself in the right direction. That’s what I do, and look, I owe people answers on things right now… I go “Okay, my deadlines for that” — i put them in order of priority and I’m like “My deadline to get back to you on this book proposal is gonna be Tuesday” and I paste it out, I put them in order, and prioritizing and communication is key.
Joe Fairless: And the last question – this is from Steve in Los Angeles… “Do you use visualization, and if so, how do you feel it has led to more opportunities in your life?” Talking about the law of attraction…
Jillian Michaels: In truth, I don’t necessarily know that I believe in the law of attraction in that it’s like “Think money and money will come.” I do think that focusing on your goals is important, because it allows you to visualize what you want, which I think is gonna generate positive emotion towards it, and that positive emotional connection is gonna help push you through the work and the sacrifice associated with the goal. So I think there’s benefit there.
But you also need to educate yourself about the goal, chart a very deliberate and specific roadmap of informed actions to take towards the goal in order to find inevitable success and learn from the mistakes along the way. But when you get into — the law of attraction makes me a little nervous in that it’s like “Oh, I just focus on it and it comes?” That’s total BS. Complete scam. That whole book The Secret is a total scam, and it really bothers me and I think it’s done a massive disservice to so many people in the world.
Joe Fairless: Well, Jillian, thank you for being on the show, from talking to us about the 12-hour rule for how we juggle priorities, which you are right now – I mean, you’ve got one of your kids with chickenpox and I appreciate you taking some time to talk to us – to identifying what our purpose is… And one of the things that really stood out to me was the patience aspect, where you mentioned if you had more patience at times then you would have more persistence; the patience and persistence connection, I had never thought of.
Thanks for being on the show. I hope you have a best ever day. Where should the Best Ever listeners go to learn more about what you’ve got going on?
Jillian Michaels: I would just say you can go to my social media channel – which is my name, of course – or go to JillianMichaels.com and you can check out the app; it’s available on iOS and Android, and it’s pretty much the hub for everything that we do that’s Jillian Michaels brand-based. So I’d just say JillianMichaels.com.
Joe Fairless: Jillian, thanks for being on the show. Have a best ever day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Jillian Michaels: Thank you, you too!
