Faisal Ensaun on Taking Ownership of Your Life and Redefining Success as a Dad

0:00 Faisal: If you're drained every day by the life that you're building, you should be reassessing. If you wake up every day for the next month and you look at yourself in the mirror, mirror, and you're like, I hate my life, or I hate, stop. As like, and I don't, I don't care what you need to do. Do you need to move? Do you need to change jobs? Michael: Welcome to Gap to Gig, the show for dads navigating the in-between season when work, identity, and priorities start asking different questions. Here we talk about what that season looks like and how to move through it with intention. I'm your host, Michael Jacobs, and today's guest is Faisal Ensaun. Faisal is a coach, entrepreneur, and father of two who knows firsthand what it means to rebuild a life from the ground up.

0:43 As an immigrant from a war torn country, he's navigated addiction, deep personal lows, and the long road to creating a life built on purpose, fulfillment, and presence. Over the last decade, he's coached more than 2,000 people from students and stay at home parents to CEOs and multimillionaires, and at the center of his work is one core idea: taking full ownership of every role you play, especially as a parent, changes how you show up in work, family, and life. Faisal, I'm excited to chat with you today. Welcome to the show. I'm really glad you're here. Faisal: I am excited to be here. Thank you for having me on. Michael: My pleasure. So your story spans survival, reinvention, now leadership, both at work and at home. I wanna start by going a little bit wide before we bring this into more about the dads who are listening right now and trying to find their own footing.

1:31 And I wanna ask you, when you look back at your early life, what experiences most shaped how you define success today? Faisal: Hmm, great question. Lots of experiences, I would say, but if I were to kind of hone in, there, there were a couple experiences overall that actually shaped how I think. Of course, growing up and, and it sort of, you could call it survival. We didn't call it when we were growing up that way because my, my parents left the, had to leave the country because war happened. They had to literally leave with their clothes on their back.

2:12 I was a little, I was three and a half years old, and they did their best. They provided for us. They did a lot in the process and they got us to where we are now. And we kind of moved that forward, but that, you could imagine somebody leaving their country, their livelihood, their culture, all of it, and moving on with not a lot of support to a different place that brings a certain kind of thinking in the process. You're not really concerned. I mean, consider a simple example of your crossing the road, and there's a car coming towards you. You're holding your child's hand. You'll be very, you're not gonna care much about how gentle you are with that child. You're gonna pull that child and get 'em out of the way. Imagine your whole life is about that.

2:52 It's about survival. They're gonna do their best to keep us alive and provide for us. But, but there's very little room for anything outside of that, and they will ask. Create whatever support structure that they can and they move forward. And that comes with them having to deal with their own challenges as human beings. It took me a while to figure that out when I started looking at my parents. And, I remember, it was a couple of moments in my adult life when I saw them really as human beings rather than my parents because I saw them kind of broke down in that moment, and I looked at 'em like, holy shoot, they're not just my parents. They're, they're, they're also human beings just like me with struggling with all kinds of issues and everything. And then fast forward a few years when the we, we came to the western world, to Canada.

3:39 Well, as exciting as that was, first of all, I couldn't even imagine how much abundance was here and, and place, and that's, that was about close to 25 years ago. And, but it was pretty fast, within a year, what set in was, and it's interesting how that happens when you come to a place where there's survival is not at risk. All the things come rushing back, or at least it did for me. And that's when I started, I didn't realize it, but I went towards running away from life rather than going towards life. And that's when addiction and other things came in. Patterns of getting involved in anything that was self-destructive from drugs, alcohol to it, anything else in between.

4:23 And I didn't know what was happening. And it wasn't until I hit rock bottom. I, I, I had to pull myself out. Well, and actually in looking back, in retrospect, it was, it wasn't me that pulled myself out because there were lots of people who went in the negative direction getting worse and maybe even possibly going towards suicide and other things. But for me, and I look at it from a spiritual point of view, was God's grace that, that gave me, that, that chance to be like, you know what? You need to pause. And I, I somehow got out of it, and I spent the next decade trying to figure out what went wrong. Well, as obvious as it might be now, it wasn't obvious then that, well, I was carrying a lot of the emotional challenges and physical challenges from a life of survival even if it was my parents carrying it.

5:18 And on top of that, I didn't know how to navigate as a young man this, this new world because I grew up in a different culture. I was 17 years old when I came to this side. So a lot of beliefs had set in ways of looking at things. A lot of things didn't make sense to me, so that was also a challenge. But in those decade, in that decade plus, I, I started realizing a big thing that I needed to grow. I couldn't live based on my past. I had to move forward. And not only that, I started to realize there were some advantages of my past. There were things that I dealt with that many people on this side hadn't. So what were the advantages that came with that? And then after a little while, I actually met somebody who mentored me, coached me for a good six months.

6:03 And after those six months, as difficult as it was, as painful as it was for me, it wasn't an, an easy process, I, I realized that I had grown about a decade plus, and I couldn't believe, I'm like, I didn't have access to that. I didn't even know how to seek that kind of support. And that actually pushed me towards, like, what if I could help people with that? I've been at this for 20 plus years and I didn't know what that would look like, but slowly I learned from amazing people around me who helped me kind of show, and that's what led me to entrepreneurship. It wasn't really around entrepreneurship. It was more around, I, I wanted to, to grow, and I wanted to share that with other people, whoever was on that path.

6:46 And one, one of those paths was entrepreneurship. And, and part of it also was that I realized that I had a message that I wanted to share and how would I do that? And one of the ways to create platforms is through an entrepreneurial path. And so I went on that journey and that was, that was also incredibly difficult because that's when I had met my wife. We completely changed our life around. We quit my engineering career and jumped in. We had our daughter within the first couple of years of me starting my business and I was a primary provider. We had decided that my wife would take care of the kids, and I'd be with, I do the, the, the business side of things, and there was a lot of pressure to make it happen.

7:32 That was about 11 years ago. Now, I have actually three kids, not just two. So there's a new third one, too, so maybe I didn't share that with you. That's, he's about 10 months old and, and being an entrepreneur and I have two businesses, both are on the coaching side. They're not separate businesses, but they're two separate entities. Being a dad of three, both my wife and I have big families on both sides, responsibility on that side and actually building a life that, that I align with, that I consider free for myself and is purposeful, one that is not an easy feat, but it constantly requires iterating and, and, and it's not a one time, oh, I built it and I'm done.

8:19 You're always working through it and the struggle doesn't necessarily stop. And, and I could say here that, well, my life is perfect and stuff, that doesn't exist. Nobody's life is perfect, but I've created a life that has felt aligned with me and a, and a path that that works very well for me. And, and I feel purposeful, I feel connected to what I've created. And I feel aligned with my family all and, and I get to do the work that matters to me. To me at least, that's smart, if, if nothing else. Michael: Yeah. That's, incredible story or journey that you have been through, from, essentially from the age of three and a half until your early forties now of, like, you went through things, most people that are probably listening to this show have never experienced, right?

9:06 And you have along the way, to me, it sounds like you've redefined success a few times during that journey or throughout that journey, right? When I think when you were overcoming, when you were moved to Canada, first at 17, I think you had a different idea or different definition of what success looked like than when you were starting recovery from your addiction. And I think that was different from when you started your businesses and where you are today of kind of aligning your interest with what you're good at and also what is best for you and your family.

9:47 And part of your interest is in giving back and helping others. And I think to me, it sounds like, you know, you've, essentially, leveraged your journey, right? It wasn't an easy journey by any stretch of imagination. I can't imagine it was at any step, but you've taken lessons from it and figured out a way to improve your life going forward on each, each stage. And now you've got, you know, a beautiful family. You've got great job where you, you're in control of your, your livelihood. I'm curious, like, how did becoming a father change the way you thought about responsibility and ownership as you transition from essentially into this new business, but also building this family, like how did having kids change how you think about responsibility and ownership?

10:41 Faisal: I, I mean, it has, like you said, it has success. I've had to redefine success consistently, and I watch lots of people around me. So, and it's interesting to see especially people who come from my side of the world, it's, my journey is not unique. There are millions of people who have come from that, that path. And I, I've often thought about like, well, what, what helped them create and not create the life that matters to them? And they, and the interesting is they might all believe that they're creating what matters to them, at least on the surface, but, and there are quite a few successful people, and that's a common trend that a lot of immigrants come to a place, and they work hard and they build a life. And I've had family members, cousins, lots of them built amazing businesses.

11:25 Very successful careers. But underneath it all, what I saw, that was one of the first things I noticed when I was kind of recovering from that process, and I realized, oh, I'm not the only one recovering. They're recovering too, but they're dealing with it differently. Well, let me backtrack. So they weren't, when I was kind of going through the addiction process, when I were coming out, out of it, I was noticing signs of addiction in everybody. It was like, oh, but it's not as apparent as I thought addiction was to other things. And, and it's an interesting when people make more, what do they do? Their addictions get more and more expensive. So it might be gambling, it might be something else, and, and it doesn't, and it was Dr. Gabor Maté that said that it's an interesting world we live in.

12:11 Some addictions, we, we put 'em in a negative category. Others we don't, for example, power. You can have addiction to power, but we don't look at that as negatively. Versus if you had addiction to, let's say, alcohol. We don't look at shopping as a big problem. Lots of people have big problems with that. Same thing, social media. We'll laugh at that, but it's the same exact process. And the process is very simple. You, there's a, there's something around you that, I mean, whether it's alcohol or shopping or something else, all of them in, in moderation is not really a negative thing.

12:51 It's a substance, but when you overdo it and it starts to affect your life and you can't stop it, that's addiction for you. And what I, what I watched in that process a lot, lots of them had built success, but internally I could see signs of disconnection. Then slowly as you kind of watch this over a decade, you start to see relationships breaking up, businesses going down or, or lots of things, health issues coming out. You start to see the outer effects of it, too, and, and so that actually forced me to rethink. I was like, well, I'm fairly motivated. I, I've been taught, my parents worked hard. They did lots of things. I've been given work ethic, and I, I have a lot of opportunities here.

13:35 What am I gonna do? Well, I'm, I'm gonna be successful, but what is gonna be my definition of that success on this path? And on top of that, I'm building a family and the responsibilities that come with that. What, what do I wanna model for my kids? And the more I ask those kind of questions, interestingly, I mean, those questions were asked by my coach in the beginning. Then later on, it forced me to ask myself and then like, well, even if I achieve something on the success side, what do I really wanna model for my kids? Well, I don't wanna model success at the cost of your wellbeing. I don't wanna model success at the cost of our relationships. I don't wanna model success at the cost of our freedom.

14:18 And like that, to me, that seems too costly, and I've also been privileged to watch over the past 11 years lots of people who have created that success. And I've worked with enough people who have it all. Time freedom, location freedom, all the money you could ask for. You don't even know what to spend it on, to be honest because there's nothing left for you to buy. I mean, you could buy other things with it, but like the high is gone from buying things. Like, I've worked with clients who live in different locations in the world. They have houses in different parts of the world. You ask them as a question about, well, how does that feel? It just feels normal.

14:58 To them, it's not to other people, it's a big deal, but to them it's just normal. In fact, they, they see problems in that process, and it is like, oh, I hate it when I have to travel this, do this, get to that place and the process. And so they kind of try to refine that, but then when you look at the quality of their experience in their life, they, it's like they were, they were incredibly disconnected at times. From themselves, from their relationships, even from the business that they do. Like, you know, a lot of times they even the business has left the high, so that's why they're trying to do more and more, trying to be more creative, which you take that to the extreme, you, you get the Epstein files. Take it to the extreme, well, what, what are you gonna do?

15:39 Eventually it becomes a sadistic process of creating pain. If you've had enough pleasure, and this is not a new thing, we've known this as human beings. For example, the Buddhists would say that if you take pleasure to the extreme, you end up in the Naraka world. What is that? That's that hell world, is now you have to, you get pleasure from pain only, from doing all kinds of weird things that we wouldn't consider that normal as human beings. So, the, is, my journey has been like being supported, coach, watching other people around me, I was like, do I really wanna build that? But that required me to kind of be honest and look inwards and see that like if I allowed my addictions to move forward, I would've just built the same thing as everybody else.

16:24 But, what I've gone towards more is I, I call it a process of radical honesty more than anything else. And that's the hardest thing to do for human beings, to be fully honest with yourself as much as people think honesty with others is hard, it's, it's actually not as hard as being honest with yourself because we're incredible, it's very difficult for a human being to look at the things that we're doing that are not working, and admit that first and then second be like, well, I wanna change that. Because both of those things, the admission part is the hardest, which is the starting of change. And then the change requires an immense amount of effort that your brain won't even support in the beginning because it takes a lot of energy, not to mention the social back-, backlash of that, that you're starting to change and will you or not have that support?

17:13 So all, all those factors got me to reevaluate what, and I'm still reevaluating. I mean, life doesn't, hasn't stopped. I'm still refining and looking for what matters to me, but at least I feel directionally aligned to where I'm going in the future. And I feel connected to what matters now. Michael: Yep. There's so many things I wanna unpack here. Like you, I love the idea of how you are trying to model for your kids, what you hope for them, or what you want for them in terms of how you approach your work. You know, you mentioned like you don't want to work at the sacrifice of freedom or work at the sacrifice of relationships.

17:57 Like, you wanna do work that supports those things, right? And so, because that's what you want for your kids as well. And I think it's so easy for us to get lost in our jobs. And, you know, you mentioned like you can be addicted to, we talk about certain addictions, drugs, alcohol, even shopping, you know, to some degree, but you can be addicted to, like you said, just about anything. And that includes work, right? Like you can be addicted to your job, and as a father, that is very challenging, right? If you get addicted to your work, you start, the first things that start to get sacrificed are the things that are not at work, which typically is your family, your children, your partner, your friends, the people that are the, that mean the most to you.

18:43 It's, I'm curious, like when you, in your coaching work, do you see patterns of, for particularly for men who maybe look successful on paper, but maybe they're addicted to their work or maybe they're just feel disconnected at home? Is that something that's common or is it, you know, for the most part, men kind of just kind of figure those things out on their own? Faisal: Well, we're gonna have to generalize a little bit, but there are certain patterns. So here's what it normally looks like. So I work with investors most of the time, or business owners of some kind. Usually they're, they'll get connected to me through a referral source. So, more than likely, they're having some kind of conversation around what they're going through with a friend or loved one, colleague.

19:30 And that colleague is like, well, you need to talk to Faisal. And usually when they come to me, it's usually, in their mind, it's a business challenge or it is like, it's a balance challenge or it's, it's, it's like people don't understand me around me. They don't understand the level of responsibility I have, which might also be true at a certain level, at a surface level. But, then, the interesting thing happens as I dig deeper, and usually if I'm working with somebody one-on-one call, they're going through a longer call with me, 90 minutes to two hours. And I, and I and the way I frame it is that that's, let's, let's, and I don't know where this gonna go, but let's figure out what you might have as blind spots or areas of opportunity.

20:17 And that's what I'm looking for. Not to tell them what to do, but let me let me ask those questions that was difficult for me to ask. My coach asked me and then later on I got used to asking myself, let me go deeper. And usually those questions are incredibly, ans-, difficult for them to answer, and they're not, it's not obvious to them what's happening, so it's not as obvious to say, well, I'm not taking responsibility for this area. What it shows up like is, well, my wife doesn't understand me, or, or people don't get how much of a bur-, burden of responsibility I have, which might be true at some level, but another level, you're also kind of dumping that on somebody else or they might be like, well, I don't have the time. Well, not taking responsibility for your time.

20:58 Well, where is your time going? Well, well this is, I'm working all the time. That's, that's not clear or specific. How are you tracking that? Or I don't have the energy. Well, where is your energy going? Or I'm trying to create fi-, freedom. Well, tell me what freedom looks like to you. They haven't defined it, or I'm trying to create fi-, even something as sounds like specific, but it's not, financial freedom. Well, what does that look like? Give me specifics, tell me what the ideal, they don't have it. And if I really push 'em, they'll say, well, I want this many million dollars. Well, why? Tell me. Let's dig into it. And do you understand the cost of that? What is the cost of that? Because everything has a cost.

21:39 Everything has a trade off. Are you willing to make that trade off? If I take you fast forward, you have $10 million and, and, in five years, you're making $10 million a year, but that has cost you your relationship with your kid. Is that worth it for you? Or, let's say, you're, let's follow through to the end of this goal. And let's say you did achieve that success, but it came at this cost. Is that worth it for you? And, and, and I know to ask this usually because I have a, I have somebody sitting on the other side who has a medicine full of cabinet. It was one of my clients who, like, during the session he kept popping pills.

22:21 I'm like, is everything okay? I'm like, what? What's going on? And he is like, he is like, oh, it's just my medication. I'm like, what's going on with your medication? Like I have to take blood pressure, this, and this. And and the guy's scared to start a new business 'cause he spent 20 years trying to build a very successful business, exited, and he has lost completely sense of purpose and, but the toll of that has been on his health. He's 50 years old, but he looks like he's in his seventies and his energy is that of an 80-year-old person. That person would give every million dollars to gain that back, but it's not as simple and it's not as easy and not to mention the, the broken relationships along the way. So, when I sit with a person like that and, and I've had opportunities when we do our in-person event, I've had very successful entrepreneurs come in, and there's a younger entrepreneur in my event, I'll, I'll, if I get the opportunity, I'll get 'em to sit in front of each other and I won't say anything, and I'll get the younger person to ask the other person questions.

23:20 And I, I actually had this opportunity a couple years ago, actually last year, where this younger entrepreneur was putting everything in it, and this other entrepreneur who had 20 plus years experience, very successful guy, built a really purposeful business, and he looks at it him and says business is easy. Let's talk about what you're doing in your other parts of your life. And he is like, what? No, business is difficult. He is like, trust me, you'll be successful. You'll be fine in this area, but what are you doing in this area, in this area, and your relationships, and your health? Because what you're gonna regret is this thing. And, and again, of course he's, he's exaggerating. Business is not easy to build. But, if, with enough effort and, and enough support, you will build it.

24:06 But that might not be the same on the personal side. That might not be the same with your sense of purpose. That might not be the same with lots of things. You can gain all the resources, but you're gonna have to do the hard work and the process to build all parts of your life. So I'll, I'll, and, and essentially what I'm getting at is, are you asking the difficult questions? And the problem is that us, ourselves, will, our mind won't even allow us to ask those difficult questions essentially. Either somebody's forcing you or you're in an environment that forces you to ask those kind of questions, or you're going through some kind of tra-, tragic situation. Like, for example, somebody gets a heart attack.

24:46 The pain of the heart attack is much worse than asking those questions. So the mind allows it to ask, and this is where people change sometimes. It's like they, and again, my journey is that I didn't learn this stuff because it was, I wanted to learn this stuff. I learned because my circumstances forced me to go towards this. Michael: Right. It's interesting that it's so easy to talk about this stuff on a surface, on the surface level, right? Of like, I can tell you like, okay, these are, you know, I wanna be successful financially. I wanna have money in the bank so I can go do whatever. I want to, my kids to be happy and go to college and get good careers.

25:26 The surface level stuff is easy. What you're saying is like you have to dig deeper to really figure out what the, the meaning is behind that 'cause that's what really matters at the end of the day, because as you said there, everything's a trade off, right? I could spend a hundred hours a week working and essentially no real quality time with my family. Where does that put my kids? Where does that put my spouse? At the, you know, at the end of a year, end of a couple years, at the end of their entire childhood, like they're, we're never gonna find perfect balance. That's okay. It's, what is that, what are the trade-offs that we're willing to make to get to the goals that we truly want?

26:14 Like what does mean something to us? And from what I'm hearing from you is like, for you, meaning is more than a paycheck. It's seeing others succeed. It's helping others kind of figure out their answers to some of these questions. And correct me if I'm wrong with it, that's kind of what is coming out of what you're saying is like you find your purpose in helping others find a new level of personal meaning and success, right? And we're not talking like making $20 million instead of making $10 million. We're talking about success in terms of happiness and purpose and life goals type of thing.

26:59 And so, but we can't get to those stages by just going on the surface level. At some point, to be successful, and what, however you define success, and I think that's probably personal for everybody, you have to dig deeper, right? Faisal: Yeah. Michael: And you have to ask yourself the right questions or have somebody ask you the questions so that you can start to figure out what trade offs are you willing to make and which ones aren't you Faisal: Yeah. Michael: willing to make. Faisal: And, and just to add to that, none of this means that you shouldn't go towards the version, for example, $20 million if you wanna head for that, but just know what the, what the trade-offs are in the process. And most people underestimate what the trade, trade-offs are, and the length of time matters.

27:41 And I'll, I'll give this to everybody, anybody listening to it: you have about 4,000 weeks if you live the average life of an adult in North America, about 80, 82 years, 4,300 weeks. You take half of that out for eating, self-care, and other things. It's sleep. You have 2,000 weeks, and I always tell people, I've lived my left about half of my life, so I have a thousand weeks left. It is not that many weeks. So you don't have unlimited amount of time and you don't get to do over, like as far as we know, we got this one life. Even if you have a spiritual belief, that life is likely gonna be different than this life.

28:22 So what are we, and especially if you have a spiritual belief, you, if you believe in something that's, that's an intelligent universe, there's a purpose behind it. So it means that you didn't come here randomly, but even if you didn't think that, you had a thou-, thousand weeks, what are you gonna do with that? It's not that many weeks. What is that gonna be for, for? Most of the time, we're just kind of floating through and trying to figure out what we want to do. I don't think we have that much time in there, but paradoxically we also have a lot of time and a lot of big questions in life are paradoxes which means if you're not asking the real questions, which are usually uncomfortable, then you, and this is our tendency as human beings.

29:02 We're a social species. We tend to copy everybody else. There was this one one business owner said that, like you, if I drop you, and this was in 1980, seventies, I think, like if I drop you in the middle of the US with a blindfold, do you open your open the blindfold in the middle of a downtown in any city? It'll be very hard for you to figure out which city it is because they kind of all look similar. The buildings are similar, some differences, but the reason for that is that every person, every business, copies each other. There are very few unique businesses per se. And so what are you gonna do as a human being? You're gonna go copy the next person's life that looks really good to you. And, and if you haven't seen this already, somebody's gonna, because marketers understand this.

29:43 They will market this to you if you haven't done it. Like they will tell you, this is the life you want. This is the thing you want. This is the, and that's all of pretty much, marketing is the thing that you don't really need or want. It's, it's fed to you, and it's like, well, that looks better than mine thing, but you only know the surface. And then pretty soon you're gonna go on about five to 10 year journey, and you realize, at the end of it, and this is the most painful thing for a lot of my clients, they've spent a decade building something, a life, a business, or a mix of those, and it's like, I don't even know why I did this. They don't know because they just, they subconsciously copied the next person, and that's when the painful journey starts. Like, huh.

30:23 Their biggest problem becomes regret is like, I don't wanna regret my life, because that's a really big pain for a lot of people. So, so, if you don't wanna regret living your life a certain way, whether that's related to your business, life, relationships, whatever, then it requires you to either ask the difficult questions, which in, in my experience, it's very hard to do that yourself. Very few people are able to, I wasn't able to, and you need some kind of support there. And that might look like therapy. That might look like coaching. That might look like a right community, right? And so I'm not here to say, well, coaching is for everybody. It's not. You might not be ready for that, but, what is it that, have you done the deeper work?

31:07 And usually, you know, you've done the deep work because it's incredibly uncomfortable. It's not easy. Michael: Right, right. I think it's, I love the, how you broke down the number of weeks. It kind of makes me think of like life is a budget, right? You have a certain amount of, set of, your currency is your time. Faisal: Mm-hmm. Michael: Right? Because you have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of time, you know, if the average age span is 82, you know, you've got 4,300 weeks to, to work with, and you know, half of those weeks are gonna go to sleeping and eating and just general care. So now you're, you're budgeting with, you know, 2000 weeks.

31:47 How are you going to spend those 2000 weeks, Faisal: Yeah. Michael: right? You only get to use 'em once. How are you going to spend it? And it's like, okay, you could, theoretically, spend it all working, but is that really what you wanna do with your life? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You could spend it all with your family, but then you don't have anything to support yourself with, right? Faisal: I don't think they would want that. Michael: Right. There's a lot of potential questions. I mean, that's going to the extremes, obviously, right? So, like, nobody probably wants the extreme of any particular, they don't wanna spend all their time doing the same thing all day, every day, right? There was some variety in there, but it's like, okay, how do you spend that, that time?

32:32 If time is your currency, how are you gonna spend it? Because like you said, we probably only spend it once, right? Like we only have this one life to live, so we gotta make the most of it if we want, but, okay, how are we gonna do that? Faisal: Yeah. And, and this is where like, this is a really important point that we're given, we're told that money is the biggest thing. But the interesting thing is people who actually have money, they don't think the money is the most valuable thing. In fact, they will turn around and tell you, my time is a lot more valuable than my money. In fact, this is a regular practice for anybody who has money. They will give away their money constantly to buy back their time. They will delegate. They'll build systems. They will do all the kinds of things to buy back because they know they're not gonna get that back.

33:16 And on top of that, they realize that, well, what, what are they using that, they, time becomes as essential component of their life. Now, whether or not they use it for, for what matters to them is a whole other story, but they start to see the value of that. Now, most people who are kind of climbing that ladder, they've been sold this thing about money is the most important thing because that's the dream that's sold, right? And, again, money is important because it, it, I mean, essentially has one function. It, it gives you options. It gives you options, but if you don't know what you want, what the hell are you doing with those options? Most people, so what, this is what happens if you just in, I mean, we, we've actually tracked this with lottery. Anybody who gets, gets a, wins the lottery, within a year, they're back to where they are or within two years, they're back to where they are because they don't actually know how to hold onto that responsibility.

34:09 So when somebody builds wealth, it slowly comes with the responsibility of it, the ownership of it. This is why most people who have never built a business, they don't understand how ownership actually works. And, and I've had a, a CEO I'm working with, one of his team members who had worked with him for several years, wanted ownership in the company, and she didn't actually understand what that meant. And he's like, well, I'll give you ownership, but then you're gonna have to take part of the ownership as well, which means that you're responsible when stocks go down, when company goes down, are you willing to do that? And now she's like, well, I don't know if I want that. And, and I mean, over the years he has, he's had to put his personal a-, assets against the business for it to survive.

34:55 I mean, that's ownership. That's, that's responsibility. And, and the problem is that we, for-, forget where that is. We only see the surface of that. We, in life itself is a responsibility. It's like, what are you gonna do with your body? What are you gonna do with your mind? What are you gonna do with your, like I look at all those as if you own it fully. You're gonna, and then this is what I mean by, by taking on owning your life fully, is that whatever happens, you're looking at that I have a part to play, if not a lot of part to play. I have a part to play. And what is my part? Michael: Yep. Faisal: If you haven't understood that yet, whether that's broken relationships, business not working, your health is down, what is your part?

35:40 And if you get uncomfortable enough, you'll find out that you have a big part to play in that process. And if you correct for that, that's when you start to see alignment. That, that's where you start to see enough hope and light, and now you can balance it out against, okay, what are the, the adversities I need to deal with? And it will actually help you become more resilient as well. So we're not essentially looking for a perfect life, but we're looking for what is a life that has, like you said, enough variety, but it has enough challenge, enough growth, enough purpose, enough contribution where it makes me feel like I'm a human being rather than a robot running around. There, there, there's one last thing I wanna share. There was this tech CEO who said this recently, and he was talking about the AI revolution.

36:27 He asked the question, he's like, what if since the industrial age, we've been running around like robots in assembly lines trying to build this by trying to build that, but we've kind of become robots in the process? What if AI's here to free us from that and we get to become more human? I was like that, that's an interesting take at it. Of course, if we, that, the question is we use it right? That was the function of automation and AI and everything is to get us to become more creative, get us to become more connected with our life, get us to work towards bigger purposes. Whether or not that happens is a different story, but at least there's some profoundness in the idea that we've been running around for a couple of centuries trying to automate everything, trying to push more, but at what cost?

37:13 Michael: Right. Absolutely. I think, you know, as we try to push more, I think as a society, obviously we've advanced quite a bit over time, right? And we're in a place now that I don't think many of us imagined we could be in, you know, even just a couple decades ago or a decade ago. But there, it is always this more, more, more mentality of like, we need to do more, we want more. The world is kind of requiring more, and I think for a lot of dads, they feel like they're always behind, right, either at home or at work, or maybe both. Is there sort of a mindset shift or something you would encourage dads to do the, who feel like they are behind right now, so that they feel like they can get ahead of the curve again?

38:01 Faisal: Well, the, the first thing is to ask why do you feel like you're behind? Behind on what exactly? Because when, with these things, if you become specific enough, you'll learn that you've actually picked up that thought or that pattern of thinking or belief from your environment. Why? Because every other dad talks about the same goddamn thing. Oh, I feel guilty when I work, when I go to business. And one thing I tell my clients all the time: when I'm with you, I'm just with you. Nothing else matters to me. When I'm with my family, you can, and I, my business partners have gotten tired of this. But eventually they gave up on this. They'll send me a message, something to the effect of, oh, we need to work on this thing. It's, it's, it's important. Client has come up with client needs support in this area, or we need to pivot in this area.

38:48 I'll get a message over the weekend. And my question always the same is like, can this be done on Monday? Michael: Yep. Faisal: I was like, if they say no, it's like why? What's, what is it costing us right now? Is it actually gonna crash something in the business? Is it gonna cost us a lot of money? Yeah. It might cost us something in the process. I'm like, oh, let's deal with it on Monday. Great. Michael: Yep. Faisal: But I don't feel guilty saying that. In the same way I don't feel guilty if I have, if I'm in a conversation with you, if my daughter came in before, I'm like, I don't feel guilty that she wants something from me. She knows that I'm working. And the same way, if I have time for myself, I'm going, I need that sanity.

39:31 For me to take care of my, my, my body, my, my, my ability to think, to be able to take care of my family, my business, employees, all the people that I, that I support in the process. If I'm not doing that, what am I doing? And, and the also in the meantime, if I, and this is the bigger question. If I'm not living a life that matters to me, and that's a purpose question, that's an alignment question, then eventually I'll become resentful of the people that I'm taking care of. Whether those are my kids, it's a weird thing to think about. You love your kids and family to death, but I can tell you every day somebody becomes resentful in the process. And I have, too, where they made a decision that went against their own core and their own, their own soul.

40:15 And that was my biggest problems to my wife. I'm like, I need to do this. My, I had, I was like, because I don't wanna sacrifice my soul for some job or some career path, but my promise was that I'm, I'm always gonna be there for them. That wasn't easy and I wasn't perfect at it, but I've tried to keep that, that promise, both promises. One, I didn't wanna sacrifice my soul for some financial or career path, which, which would've come with all kinds of things. And second was that I wasn't gonna sacrifice my, my family and my promise to myself was my health and wellbeing. Again, none of those areas are perfect, but my, I'm constantly in striving to see how can I do this better? So that's the first question. Now in terms of people love how-tos.

40:57 My how-to will be so different from the next person, but there are certain things you can do. Well, if you don't do anything, take account of your energy, time, and relationships. What, what that means is my, for example, I have my calendar. I'm, I'm a busy person. I have, I'm running two businesses. I have my family, I have my extended family, team. Every, everybody, a lot of people are constantly reaching out to me, so I look at my calendar, I'm like, well, how's my time and energy gonna get divided? It's not just time. Well, mornings are dedicated to me because I have the most energy. That's when I can think. That's when I can do those things, the things that matter to me. I can figure out how I can take care of my family, my business, those kind of things.

41:41 That's early morning, so I wake up usually 6:30. After that, I will, I'll get to see my family for a little bit, for half an hour or so. I'll get to greet and support them. I work from home. And then I'm back to my team, my clients, those kind of things. And evening is with my family. I'm done at, at 1:00 PM on Fridays. I'm done all of weekend, and I always joke around with my wife when she says, you're done? I'm like, I'm never done, but I'm here. That's just a, like, there, there's no done. I have to force myself to be done at 1:00 PM on Friday. In most cases, I can do it. There are exceptions, but we can talk about exceptions. But that's pretty much, and, and I'm not telling people to create that life, but I'm constantly tracking where my time, energy.

42:25 And who is, who are the people I'm interacting with. My relationships, time, and energy. If you can just track those and not just rely on your memory to tell you what you're actually doing, because we're human beings, and then, and I always say this to my clients, your mind will also always lie to you. Not to, not because of anything other than to protect you from your own discomfort. Your body doesn't know how to lie to you. And this is also why if you are around with a therapist, with a coach, psychologist, they'll pay attention to your body language a lot more than what your thoughts. They'll notice your inflection points. Your, they'll notice your emotions. They'll notice your body language changing.

43:05 Why? Because they know that you can share all kinds of things, but if you don't believe it or don't feel it, your body will react in that moment. So, pay attention to your energy. Pay attention to your time. Notice where your energy is good, not good. What's happening? Take, give yourself feedback, take care of your time, and know what kind of people you wanna be around because your relationships will be a big factor, especially your core relationships and how you move forward, the quality of your life, probably the biggest factor, the quality of your life and all that stuff. If you can just start with those three things and it's easy. It's a simple thing, but most people will not do it, again, because we're not gonna be as structured.

43:49 We're not gonna be as disciplined. We're not gonna take ownership of our time. Why? Because life happens. Routines get thrown off, and that happens to me, too. But are you gonna go back to it? And why are you gonna go back to this, your path? And that's where the bigger questions comes in. If your path is important to you, if your vision is important to you, if your purpose is important to you, you will keep going back. If that why piece that story is not clear, then you will just do something else. And it would just be like jumping from like a ping pong, ping pong ball going from one thing to another. And that's when you start to realize, well, I don't know what to do as a dad. Let me look at the next person. What are they doing? Well, you look at the next person. Well, that looks pretty good. That guy has a pretty good house.

44:30 That guy looks like he's good with his family. It's like, what is he doing? Let me ask him. They'll tell you. It's just like I'm telling you, and you're gonna try to copy, and it won't work for you because you're actually not asking those difficult questions. Michael: Right. Yeah, that's a great point of, yeah, you can still learn something from others, but everyone's situation is unique to themselves. Faisal: Yeah. Michael: And everybody's personality is unique and that what you tell me right now, I could try to , some of it might work, some of it might not. But there is that dichotomy between yourself and myself of like, we're two different people, and we're going to experience things differently.

45:10 And we come from backgrounds that are different, and we are in scenarios that are different. Yes, they can be very similar. Yes, we're both fathers of kids. Yes, we both have spouses that we love, and we both do work that we love, but it doesn't mean that Faisal: Yeah. Michael: everything is exactly the same. Faisal: Yeah, and I'll, I'll even say, so this is a funny point. So, and this is in pop culture where you see a lot of movies where somebody gets switched with somebody else's life and it looks amazing. Pretty soon they find out, I don't want this person's life. That's actually the, the, the, the most profound movies are those because you might want, like, and I always tell people like sometimes somebody will be like, oh, I love your life. You're traveling, you're doing all this stuff. I'm like, I can imagine somebody just popping into my life and hating my life from that.

45:56 It's like I love it because it's my life because I've built it, and I've owned it, and I look forward to the things that matter to me. Even the challenges I look forward to. Even the struggles. I accept it, but the next person might not. And same thing for you, like, you might wish somebody else's life. You go into it, you might hate it, you like, I'll keep my own problems. Michael: Yep. Exactly. Exactly. I love that. It's great. I also like, I appreciate the talk about energy, and, you know, the energy is more than just like you, you said like you have energy. Your best energy is in the mornings usually. I also think of energy of like where you get energy from, right?

46:37 Yes, you get energy from sleeping and exercising and things, but, you know, for extroverts, you know, they get energy from being around others and from introverts, it could be doing things like reading or, you know, meditation or whatever they do, like an alone time, and there's ways to, you can increase, you can't increase your inventory of time like we've talked about, right? But you can increase your inventory of energy and you can increase the value you get from the other. The, the third part, third piece of what you talked about, which is relationships by focusing on the relationships that matter most to you, Faisal: Yeah. Michael: right, and in de-emphasizing the relationships that might be draining you, right?

47:18 And so there's ways to, you know, yes, time is set. You can't add more time to your life that we know of, right? But you can add more energy to your daily basis. You can spend more time with the relationships that matter most to you and pull yourself away from the relationships that might be draining you. Faisal: Yeah. Michael: And it's so easy to forget sometimes 'cause, you know, as we're in the day to day and we're just trying to keep things afloat, it's a great reminder of like, yeah, there are things we can focus on and that we can control. And they always say, you know, focus on what you can control. The things that are outta your control, there's nothing you can do about, Faisal: Yeah. Michael: and time is something you can't control, but energy and relationships are things you can, at least to some degree, control.

48:02 Faisal: Yeah. Michael: You know, maybe not completely. It's really interesting. Faisal: Yeah. And, and, and just, just one point to add, and I, and I completely agree that. You're, think about it this way. You, everybody has 24 hours in a day. So why is it that one person can get 10 times more done or a hundred times more done than the other? Well, they have understood that they have renewable energy, but it's limited in a day. For example, you have a limited number of decision making energy. Think about it, the end of the day when you need to decide on something, your mind is drained. It's probably not a good time to decide, or you've gotten into a conflict and your energy's being taken up by that relationship, or you're feeling guilty in a moment, or you've just spent three hours doing heavy work, and you need to do the next thing.

48:55 You'll be drained. So, those who are strategic about energy, they understand that they need to leverage it differently. So that means where is my energy the most valuable versus somebody else's? And this is why they surround themselves with the right people. I might not be the most, even in my personal life, I might not be the most valuable person to be around my kids all the time, especially if I'm getting drained and, but somebody else might be. In this case, my wife is. I might not be the best person to lead some of my team members that somebody else can be. I might not know how to create a system that works well, but somebody else can. But also thinking of energy as you're either, you're either getting drained or you're getting energized.

49:42 I, I look at it that way. So, for example, you mentioned doing the work that you love. I don't, I don't think, I've never bought the idea of you need to do something that you hate. Yeah, so, for a period of time, maybe. So let's say you need to do some difficult work. And I did that, like I, I, I did all kinds of jobs to sustain our life because I had a responsibility. But in the background, I also had a plan towards the thing that mattered to me. And now that doesn't mean I constantly wanna do this thing, but when I'm working, I don't feel like I'm working. I, I mean, these are the conversations I'm around. I, I do them every day, all day. And I've been doing it for 11-plus years. And that's weird as it is to me, I keep wanting to do more of it.

50:23 Why? Because this matters to me. The, the work matters to me. The why, because that's very specifically tied to my story, and it's specifically tied to my purpose. The next person might hate it. This is why I get to do good work because I'm so interested in this work. Now you, you put two people together just in terms of success. One person is forced to be better at this through circumstances, necessity. The other person just so intrinsically pulled by that thing. We already know which one is gonna excel. One person is gonna be a master. The other one's gonna be a second, third best if, if, and if, if they stick to it because everything is hard. Michael: Correct. Faisal: Same thing with your life, like the life that you're building.

51:03 If you're drained every day by the life that you're building, you should be reassessing. If you wake up every day for the next month and you look at yourself in the mirror, mirror and you're like, I hate my life, or I hate, stop. It's like, and I don't, I don't care what you need to do. Do you need to move? Do you need to change jobs? And he was like, I love this quote. If you hate being where you are, move. You're not a tree. Michael: Yeah, it's great. Great thought. It's a scary thought I think for a lot of people, too, though, right? Of like, Faisal: Yeah. Michael: you know, change is scary. Nobody likes to, to change. Faisal: It's not, well, this, this is, this is what we were pointing to: it's scary. It's uncomfortable. If you, if you've spent a bunch of time, and there was a period in my relationship where my wife and I worked on a bunch of stuff, and I gave it a year.

51:50 I'm like, okay, we'll work on this for a year. After a year, I was like, I put my hand up. I'm like, we can't do this. I was like, we need help. So, and, and it takes humility to realize that you might need the support. I don't care who that is., Is, is that a friend? Is that a community? Is that a professional help? That, if I hadn't gotten the support that I've had, like I wouldn't have the quality of life that I have and, and that's why I can continue to invest in my own growth, whether on the business side or on on the personal side. I've invested more than probably I, I want to admit, but I would still wanna invest more because it has helped me shortcut, like one of my clients, I put up a testimonial, like I feel like working with me has been a cheat code.

52:31 And when I heard that, I'm like, yeah, I've worked with a lot of people that've given me cheat codes, but it was the working, the process of the work. It wasn't something they said, it was just the difficult process we went through that unlocked something that I wouldn't have been able to do on my own. Michael: Right. Yep. Yeah. Process, experience. I want to go from the super serious now to the super unserious and jump into our speed round if you're ready. Five quick questions, Faisal: Yeah, let's do it. Michael: starting, starting with what's the first kid show theme song that comes to mind? Faisal: Kids show theme song? Do, do, do, do, do.. I'm saying that Pink Panther. Michael: Oh. Faisal: So when, when I used to go to school, it was right before there was Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther.

53:13 Those are two shows that would turn on and I had like 15, 20 minutes watch that and go straight to school. So that, that's the Pink Panther has stayed in my mind. Michael: Love it. I have not thought of Pink Panther in so long. Now that song's gonna be in my head all night, and Faisal: Right. Michael: I'm not sorry about that. What was your very first job? Faisal: Very first job actually was in I, I was the most excited for that job. I was in, it's a theme park in Canada, Wonderland. It's called Wonderland. It's in Toronto region, greater Toronto area. And I was working at New York Fries. I still remember because I was so excited to get that job, job. Michael: Yeah. Faisal: I only worked for a little bit because my cousin ended up hiring me for his company for something, and I moved there, but that was my first job.

53:58 Michael: Very cool. Would you rather spend 24 hours with a toddler-sized T-Rex or a T-Rex-sized toddler? Faisal: I'd say T-rex-sized toddler. Michael: Why is that? Faisal: Because that'll help you understand what would, what would somebody that little with a lot of po-, power would do? Michael: Fair enough. What's your go-to karaoke song? Faisal: I don't know if I carry, I don't, I don't, I don't do karaoke, so I don't know. Michael: Or if there was, if you had to pick a song, what would it be? Faisal: A song? Let me pick a, I, I actually listen to songs in six different languages, so I'll pick an English one.

54:40 There's a song by Passenger. It's, some, turning away darkness. That actually helped me work through a lot of my business challenges at that time. If you watch the video, sc-, Scaring Away Darkness or Scare Away Darkness, something like that. If you watch the video, it just shows somebody stuck in an office, and he's kind of walking around with a guitar, and that was my situation 11 years ago, and I was li-, I would wa-, listen to that and watch that every day. To this day it stuck, in my head. That actually helped me through a lot of challenges that song. Michael: Oh, that's amazing. That's super cool. Last one, what's the weirdest thing you've ever carried around in your bag, briefcase, or pockets?

55:22 Faisal: I'd say snake poi-, poison antidote. I carried that around in my, not in my, it was like whenever I, I took that with me camping for like 10 years straight. I never used, and it was expired after a while anyway, I'm like, Michael: Right. Faisal: why am I carrying this thing around? Michael: Wow. That's a unique answer for sure. Well, Faisal,, this was great. You pack a lot of wisdom into a very short time and I appreciate how grounded you are amongst all of this experience that you've had, and you brought some really practical ideas and thoughts to the forefront, and I appreciate that.

56:03 But before we wrap up, I wanna give you the floor. Where should people go if they wanna learn more, get involved, or support what you're building? Faisal: Thank you. I, I appreciate that. So I, I believe in leading with value and contribution. So nobody has actually ever worked with me or paid me anything until they've been, I joke around with my clients, unless, I, I would have to put you through two to three hours of torture, of listening to me before you ever work with me. So I, I do lots of workshops, put out a lot of content to serve people. You'll be in conversation with me long before you ever pay me if you ever do. Most people don't. 96% of the people, I'd say, they get a lot of value from me for for free.

56:47 And that's by design, because that's how I want lead. Regardless of whether you pay me or not, I'll support you in some way. So, you'll find me on faisalensaun.com, my full name, or just search for that on Google. And you can start with downloading the PDF that will support you and join me on one of my conversations. I do those every other month. And, and we'll take it from there. Michael: Awesome. I appreciate that. We'll put those links in the show notes for sure. Again, thank you Faisal. I really appreciate your honesty and just the thoughtfulness behind what you do and why you do it, right? Like, you've had a lot of different experiences over the years, and you always come back to purpose for you.

57:29 And, it's, I think, a struggle a lot of dads have is what is our ultimate purpose, right? Like, yes, we know we need to earn a living, and yes, we want to be there for our families and our loved ones, but like, what are we doing to, that, brings us our energy, so that we can do the things that, that we want to do and need to do. So I appreciate you being on here today, so thank you again. And finally, before you go, if you're a dad listening to this and you find yourself in between, navigating a season that feels different, head to gaptogig.com, and subscribe to the Gap to Gig newsletter. It comes out every Friday, and it's a quieter space to reflect on work, life, and what really matters right now. And if this conversation resonated, consider sending it to another dad who might need to hear it.

58:09 Until next time, I'm Michael Jacobs. Thanks for showing up and listening to Gap to Gig.