With Dr. Richard Shuster, a philanthropist, TEDx speaker, and CEO dedicated to helping individuals and organizations unlock their true potential. Known globally for his hit podcast, The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, he brings listeners practical wisdom from top experts, reaching audiences in over 150 countries. Featured in outlets like The Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, and NBC News, Dr. Shuster’s work transcends traditional psychology, using innovative algorithms to transform lives and empower others to leave lasting legacies.

Join our conversation as Dr. Richard reveals how life-altering experiences shaped his mission to help others and maintain a healthy work-life balance. He shares practical strategies for effective work management and underscores the value of authentic connections. Tune in to be inspired and learn how to build a fulfilling life that aligns with your true purpose.

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Takeaways & quotes you don’t want to miss from this episode:

• The importance of automating and delegating to gain more freedom in your business.
• Why it’s crucial for entrepreneurs to have a mission statement and purpose to guide their decisions.
• How setting strict boundaries can help avoid burnout and improve personal relationships.
• The value of being genuine in business and how it leads to meaningful success.
• Why self-care is non-negotiable and how scheduling fun activities can lead to a more fulfilling life.

“If you’re listening and you don’t have a mission statement…you need to find out because once you have that nailed down, everything else flows from that. And it comes from the heart, it comes from a place of genuineness.”

-Dr. Richard Shuster

Check out these highlights:

• 04:52 Dr. Richard shares how his father’s entrepreneurial journey and values influenced his own career and decision to help people.
• 20:30 How Dr. Richard set up systems in his business to achieve both financial success and personal freedom by delegating tasks.
• 24:44 Why is there a need to focus on the quality of life, not just business hustle?
• 37:15 How being genuine in all business dealings fosters success and builds meaningful connections.
• 40:53 Dr. Richard’s final takeaway about self-care and enjoyment…

How to get in touch with Dr. Richard on Social Media:

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below:

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®… 

Dr. Richard Shuster  00:04

You can structure everything in your business in such a way that with automation, with delegation, there’s so many ways that people don’t realize that are very inexpensive and easy to implement, to where you can have this drastic increase in your freedom,

GGGB Intro  00:22

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell  00:50

Alrighty, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. I’m an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington, serving online information entrepreneurs throughout the US and the world. Welcome to another episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®. I am so excited to introduce my new friend and today’s guest, Dr, Richard Schuster. Welcome, Dr, Richard.

Dr. Richard Shuster  01:19

We are friends, aren’t we? I love podcasting because it’s what happens after you hit the stop button, right and you build these relationships. So you just graced my audience with your presence on my show, and I’m humbled and grateful for the opportunity to do the same on yours.

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:38

Oh, well, I’m super excited. We were introduced through our mutual friend, I believe JV Crum III, introduced the third. You can’t forget the third. If you forget the third, I know, you know. I know two thirds in my life, and the other one is also in the legal I mean, JV, he no longer practices law, but he is in the legal community, and then I went to school with a third anyways, I’m always so fascinated by those names that continue down the line for folks that don’t know. Dr, Richard Schuster, let’s get you introduced. Because I just want to jump into talking, right? But I have to remember, like, Oh yeah, I’m on a podcast. We should probably introduce you. Yes, good, yep. Dr. Richard is more than just a clinical psychologist. He is a philanthropist, a sought after TEDx speaker, and a cutting edge CEO who harnesses the power of predictive algorithms to help people and organizations achieve their full potential. His popular podcast, the daily helping with Dr Richard Schuster, delivers actionable insights from world class experts to listeners in over 150 countries. He has been featured in media outlets such as the Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, Inc, NPR, NBC news.com, Men’s Health, cosmopolitan and more, having survived multiple near death experiences, his newest venture helps individuals preserve their legacies for their children and future generations. Dr Richard, what a lovely introduction, what a lovely bio. Welcome. I’m so excited to have you here today.

Dr. Richard Shuster  03:23

It is awesome being here. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  03:25

Well, you have quite a story, and there’s so many parts I almost don’t know where to begin. So for folks listening, and I know like today, we are only going to be able to get to the tip of the iceberg. So if you’re listening, I really hope you pop over and will join Dr Richard on his podcast. He has a world renowned podcast. He is a leader in his field. There’s so much goodness there, and we’re just going to get to the, you know, the very tip top today. But I’m super excited to introduce you and have you here tell us a little bit about, because I’m curious about a couple parts of your journey. In our time today, I’m curious about lots of parts of your journey, but in what we have time to review one your pathway into entrepreneurship, right? Because you come from the psychology world, and I know there’s so much more there, but I would love to know where you got bitten by the entrepreneur bug.

Dr. Richard Shuster  04:25

It’s a question, yeah, okay. What’s the other question?

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:28

Well, and then, you know, of course, this whole scenario at the end of your bio, of the multiple near death experiences. You’ve had couple of experiences in life that have been, you know, really life changing from multiple standpoints. So let’s hear a little bit about your pathway into entrepreneurship, and then we’ll talk about some of these really pivotal points.

Dr. Richard Shuster  04:52

Absolutely. So entrepreneurship is something that much like yourself. I had a father who was an entrepreneur. My dad. It was a dentist. And so when he was very well, when I was very young, he got out of dental school, he trained in the army, and then he joined a practice, and it wasn’t all his own right, and he was the junior guy who had to build up his equity and do all this stuff. And his partners were horrible people. They were truly horrible people, and made him miserable. And he eventually divorced them. And they were vindictive, and it was a vicious lawsuit that he got everything he wanted, and then he opened up his own shop. And they actually when, when patients would go to the old place looking for him. They would say he moved out of town, or, you know, made up these things. They wouldn’t find it. But people found their way back to my dad and my dad, I used to sit in the office a lot of times in summer, I would just go and hang out, right? And he would sometimes give dentistry away. And, you know, if there was a kid who the family couldn’t afford to fix his mouth because his teeth were really crooked, he’d do it free. And he once told me, and I remember this so distinctly, he said to me, I could drive a nicer car. We could have more money, but we have everything we need. We had, you know, we have everything we would want and everything we need. And it’s really important to help people. And you know, that kind of just made its way into my DNA and laid dormant for a while, right? But it was there and then, when I was old enough to start working, I worked shining shoes at a sports club. And what I discovered, and so I’m 1617, that the more I hustled right, I could just sit in my little booth and wait for people to wander by, or I could go up and down the halls of the locker room say, buddy, you want me to shine your shoes, and I would make a lot more money that way. So whereas my friends and I’m showing my age here, we’re making four or $5 an hour, minimum wage at the movie theaters or whatever, I would walk out with wads of cash, right? Like I was a stripper, and I had so much money for my age at 16-17, and that always struck with me. I went to college, I got a degree in psychology, swore I would never use it. Said I just wasted my parents money getting a degree in psychology, and I went into it, and I did work for somebody else. I wanted to learn the industry a little bit, but I bid on a contract. I then went off on my own, first as a independent contractor, and I bid on a contract with the DoD when I was, like, 23-24 years old, I had no business in the world winning this contract, but I won it. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  07:49

And this we were, you know, creating weapon systems. This was basically to create a VPN for the medical records of the Army, before there were VPNs. And so now I’m this young, obnoxious, materialistic kid who truly believes that I’m going to have, I’m going to be able to buy an island and name it Shuster land, and I’m going to have a plane with my face on the wing and all of these things. And so the pivotal moment in my journey. And I think this was one of the most pivotal moments in my life, was I was in a car accident in which I broke my spine and I almost died. That was near death experience number one. And I actually talk about this pretty extensively in my TED Talk, which I’m happy to give you the link to so if you guys want to kind of take a deeper dive into what that meant and how I overcame that. You know, that’ll save us a lot of time to talk about but so that really shifted my mindset, because what came out of that was I discovered that it’s not currency that really excites my soul, it’s helping people right? And that led me on this path that I am now on, in which I get to help people every day in a whole lot of different ways, which is really fulfilling and amazing. But what was so? 

Dr. Richard Shuster  09:14

So I tell people like that created Dr Richard Schuster 2.0 right? If I wasn’t a doctor yet, technically, but the bigger one, the more recent one. And there are lessons to be learned from everything, right? I feel like we have two options when something really terrible happens to us. Heather, we either can roll our fist up and point it at the sky and blame whatever deity we choose to believe in. Or we can say, what are the lessons? What am I meant to learn here? How can I do things differently, right? And so, 2.0 version of me was merely going along, helping people. And you know into 2021, so the journey has been, you know. Moved along or 2020, I think it was. And so I’m having a great time, right? It was peak covid. I had my best quarter in my life. I’m not feeling the stress of covid because, as we talked about, all my relationships are over. Zoom with podcast guests and stuff like that. And so I just did my first TEDx. In fact, I was the first the TEDx. I spoke of, I was the first one to, first person to ever do it virtually. They had all been in person. And so I was very excited to fly to California and deliver this talk. And then, you know, pandemic, right? And thought it was never going to happen, they actually sent an email. We’ve decided to do these virtually. You have two weeks to record them and do them right. So I had this really short window upon which I had to write and deliver TEDx, which I’m grateful that it is pretty well received and helps some people. But anyway, I was rolling right. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  11:02

My businesses were doing great, and then I had a stroke, and I almost died, much like my car accident, which I got really I mean, it’s amazing. Had it been just a little bit higher, a little bit lower, I wouldn’t walk, you know, and had it been a little higher, I would would have been quadriplegic. The stroke itself, it’s remarkable that I survived it for a lot of reasons. Number one, I missed a part of my brain called the basal ganglia by less than a millimeter. I can’t even show you with my fingers how small that gap was, Heather, and if you see people with Parkinson’s that have the stuttering and the shaking hands basal ganglia, that’s usually where that that insult is to the brain. But what’s really fascinating about it is this was during the midst of covid, and they still like we were still Lysol and our kids and our groceries back then, right? And my wife drove me to the hospital, couldn’t come in with me, so I basically stagger, and literally staggered into this plastic tent where there was a worker in a hazmat suit, just like Darth Vader, the breathing, right? And she basically asked me, why do you need to be admitted to this hospital today? And I said, Well, I’ve had a stroke. How do you know? Well, I’m a neuropsychologist, I know. And I started naming like things, right? And then they put me in a separate area and stuck the thing up my nose, PCR, whatever it is. And I had no covid. So they let me into the actual hospital, and all the doctors and nurses were running around, totally frenzied, you know, wide eyed, because everybody was freaked out, right? And they missed on my skin the stroke. So the doctor comes to me says, Well, good news, I’ve looked at your skin. You’re fine, I’m just charging you. And I looked at him, and I remembered my first boss at my first job, he said to me, it was a sales job. This was after college. And he said, when you are making, when you’re in sales and you make your final offer, your best offer, the pitch, right, shut up, because whoever talks next is the one that gives in, and he just popped into my head at that moment, and I said to him, No, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me an MRI, because there’s certain kinds of strokes that show up on a MRI that don’t show up on a CT scan. Then you’re going to give me blood thinners to save my life, because I need them, and you’re going to do it right now. And then I locked in on them right. And the tension in the room was amazing, because at the end of there were probably six people in the room doing different things, and nobody talks to doctors that way. And it was like an old west kind of John Wayne showed on there should have been a tumbleweed like blowing across. And he rolled his eyes at me, and he said, All right, I’ll give you your MRI. And they did it, and it found it, and I got my blood thinners, and I’m alive because of that, because it’s not the stroke usually that kills people. Strokes are like earthquakes. It’s usually the aftershocks, and that’s what happened to Luke Perry. It wasn’t the stroke that killed him, it was the consequences, the kind of these after effects killed him, and so it saved my life. And you know, in the interest of time, I’m going to save a lot of this story, but I was reasonably young at the time, and had no risk factors. I worked out every day. I ate, right? I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I’ve never done drugs. I meditated every day. I had a gratitude practice, like I could sleep, like all the boxes, because, you know, I’m preaching this to people, like I should practice what I preach, right? Except for one thing. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  15:01

And so when my neurologist, who didn’t know what was wrong with me, sent me to every other ologist imaginable to try and figure it out, and all of their results were negative, he said, let me ask you a question, Richard. He’s sitting there looking at me, and my wife stands to me. He said, How many hours do you work each week? I said, Well, I don’t work at all. He said, what he’s like, Do you have a rich uncle? What do you mean? Like, you’re 46. What do you mean you don’t work? And I said, I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t really work because I love what I do. And he immediately, like I saw his face turn red and his brow furrowed and very annoyingly, said to me, he was so irritated, I could tell Richard, how many hours a week do you love what you do? I said, maybe 80 to 100, he said, let me tell you something. He said, Yeah, the odds of you being where you are right now, because I overcame all of my stroke symptoms in two weeks, which they told me was impossible. They said to me in the hospital, well, you’ve got a really long road to recover. And I said, I’ll be fine. I’ll be totally back to normal in two weeks. And they said, Well, we’re sending psych to see you. You’re in shock. I said, don’t send Psych. I’m Psych. I don’t need you. And I was like, you know, literally meditated for like, 12 hours a day, seeing my brain rewiring like I was literally to the day as I am now, two weeks post stroke. But what he said to me was that if I don’t make radical changes to my lifestyle, this will happen again. And there was the lesson, right? Whereas the car accident taught me that what I’m meant to be doing is helping people, not just chasing dollars. The stroke taught me that I need to have balance in my life, and I don’t need to be working so hard. And if you’re listening for this, you’re probably an entrepreneur, or thinking about a entrepreneur, maybe you know. And so the thing about entrepreneurship is that it’s so seductive, right? The freedom to be your own boss and go shopping at Costco at 2pm on a Thursday, right? You could do anything you want. And then there’s the lure of the money, right? So most of us who start businesses, we do so under the auspices of reasonably good causes, right? I want to give financial security to my family, and I want to be able to enjoy, you know, X and or I want to make the world a better place, like it’s you need. Most of us don’t start businesses because we want to hurt some group of people, right? It’s very easy to get caught up in this romanticized crusade about, why do I need to shut my laptop at 6pm if I work on this proposal till 10. This is for my family. I’m doing this for my family. The night of my stroke itself, I was on a call like if you had reached out to me pre stroke on LinkedIn and said, I’m in China. Can we meet at 11 o’clock at night? I would have done it if I thought it was a good opportunity. That’s am in the night before, like I got off a call at 11:30pm Eastern, I was talking to somebody on the west coast because I thought it was a good business opportunity. It almost killed me, right? And so what I have learned, and as I’m sitting there in the neurologist office with my wife, who’s crying as she’s hearing this, because she’s saying, head in her hands, he’s never going to stop, doctor, he’s an animal. And I just said, okay, and I don’t know where this came from, it just popped into my head. I said, All right. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  18:42

25 hours a week for the rest of my life. And she looks up and she wipes her eyes. Are you serious? I said, Yeah, and I’ve done it. I’ve done it. Yeah. That was for me, this opportunity to really reset some things. Because what I realized is that now that was like, close call number two, and that one really had a lot of things that happened to turn exactly the right way to which I’m here, like, it’s a long story, but I recognize that I need to stop and so, because I understand neuropsychology, and because I’ve been you’re a systems person, so you’ll appreciate this, right? I created systems for myself that allowed me to not only earn as much money as I did working 100 hours a week, but more. But give me that opportunity to have this tremendous life, a leveled up life, because I had a good life, like I’ve been have a great relationship with my wife. We’ve been married almost 15 years. It’s not like she was giving me ultimatum, saying, if you don’t spend more time with us, I’m walking out the door. Like it was a good life. But how many times, I can’t tell you, how many times my kids would come to me and say, Daddy, can we play? And I would say, No, I’m working. I’m sorry, right? And in my mind, I’m doing it for them. But I robbed myself of those opportunities, and so now I have very, very rigid systems in place that allow me to for me, it was about controlling my schedule. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  20:30

And so I’ll share with with your audience, kind of how I set up this filter about who gets on my calendar. Number one, the person has to care more about helping people than they care about profit, because profit will come if everybody’s aligned and doing good things. So if they check that box, the next box is, are they the chocolate to my peanut butter? Right? Like we’re good together, but are good by ourselves, but together, can we be even better, right? And then the third one, and the third one is going to be different for everybody. I know what my number is. You’ve got a number, I’m sure, but we don’t often think about this. This, what is the number that I’m satisfied making for both of us that will both profit in this, but it has to be a minimum of X to where it’s worth my time. If they meet a and they meet B, maybe we’ll hang out and watch football together on a Saturday, but there’s no way in hell they’re getting on my business calendar. And so what that did was it greatly refined who I did business with, who I interfaced with, because I automatically pre vetted them, right? And, you know, it’s pretty easy to find out if you just talk to somebody. And people can put up a put up a good front, right? But you can figure pretty quickly if somebody is just, all they care about is profit, you know, they can’t help it, all right? And so it’s pretty easy to figure that out. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  22:03

So what that did? It took 85% of the type of appointments that I used to book off my calendar, so that automatically freed me up to do things. And the way that I approached workflow was different as well, because now I understood how to better position. What do I need to do? How do I need to do it? When do I need to do it by, you know, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received Heather was that the work always gets done if you shut your laptop on a Wednesday and open it up on a Thursday, it’ll still be there. There are very few instances, and there are exceptions. And I have an exception list, but there are few people that are going to present you an opportunity at six o’clock on a Wednesday to where if you don’t do it, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, right? And so we as entrepreneurs, particularly early entrepreneurs, tend to perceive that every single client is, you know, the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs knocking on our door. It’s not true. It’s just not true. And what you have to understand is that your customers are people too, people with families, people with kids that have to go to baseball practice or ballet or whatever it is. And so I promise you, they’re not reading your proposal at 1030 at night. They’re not so why do it? Why not just say, Okay, I’m gonna go have dinner with my family. Why not say, You know what? I’m gonna go take my wife on a date. We’re gonna go to a matinee, right? Why not do these experiences? Because you can structure everything in your business in such a way that with automation, delegation, there’s so many ways that people don’t realize that are very inexpensive and easy to implement, to where you could have this drastic increase in your freedom. I understand when you’re a startup. I mean, we talked about it on my podcast, how you got your law career off the ground. You hustled like crazy, but then you had more work than you knew what to do with. And so what does that mean? Well, it means you hire somebody who can do the work well, you have more time to watch HGTV with your husband, right? And so that’s your that’s your aspirational goal. Right to you know, I read it in your bio on my show. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  24:44

So I think that we get so wrapped up in the minutia of what it takes to be in this business that we label things as urgent or emergent when they’re really not. I’m not saying. That there aren’t emergencies in your business. I don’t even have my work email app installed on my phone. That was a conscious decision, right? And so I work, for those of you that work in have a home office like this space where I’m sitting right now and I’m even so ridiculous about it, like I have a podcasting space right here, and then here I have, you know, my other business space because it I’m very intentional about, you know, my mindset and what I’m doing at a particular point in time when I shut the door on this and the lights are off, that’s it. That’s it. And I’m not going to get a notification over dinner about some customer or what have you, right, because I’ve got things in place now. If Rome’s on fire, people know how to get a hold of me, like if there’s truly an emergency, people can truly get a hold of me in a calendar year that might happen twice, if at all. So you know, if I think that, and a lot of times people hear this, and they’ll say, man and man, I can keep working hard, and you should, right, but like I’m telling you that your biology is not designed to have this type of strain on you as an ever present stressor, and you can only burn the candle at both ends so many times, you’re no good to your your spouse or your children. If you’re dead, you’re no good to them. If you have cancer, they’re no good to them. If you have a stroke, you’re just not I’m lucky. I’m really lucky. So you know, if any of that resonates, I hope it does, but my goodness, yeah, there’s just, there’s so many ways to approach business in an AI driven world that lets you have some of that freedom that we’ve never had before, and just as business owners need to take advantage of it.

Heather Pearce Campbell  27:01

All right, let’s pause for a moment and hear from today’s sponsor. Are you an entrepreneur who is on track to make a million or more in revenue this year in your business? If so, your business is likely facing a host of legal issues that are right for support. And if you are like so many of my clients at this level, you are likely tired of taking unnecessary risks and a DIY approach to legal support in your business. You’re ready to tackle the mess of legal documents, six legal gaps that you have. You want to take care of your IP, your clients, your business, and avoid unnecessary conflict and risk in the process. If this is you, and beyond just being an entrepreneur, you are a catalyst and are committed to your mission and your impact in the world. I invite you to get in touch. You could be a fit for my catalyst club, a small business legal support program that I designed for my high level clients. Just like you, you can find out more at legalwebsitewarrior.com. Just click on the Work with Me tab to learn more about the catalyst club and other ways that I support my clients, a fabulous group of world changing entrepreneurs, I might add, you’ve done the initial legwork in your business. And now you want to soar. And you know that you can only go as high and as far as your legal foundation lets you go. So get in touch today, hop over to legalwebsitewarrior.com, click on the Work with Me tab. And if you have any questions, get in touch through the Contact link on my site, I look forward to connecting it would be a joy to support you on your path.

Heather Pearce Campbell  28:45

Well, I mean, obviously there’s parts of your story that I don’t love, like those going through those tumultuous, hard times are, you know, like you say, you have a choice. How do you deal with that? Do you use it as a way to propel you into the next phase of growth and version 2.0 of self, or, you know, shake your fist at the sky. And when we do the former, you know, we have these opportunities to develop next level selves and to continue that path and hopefully avoid. I mean, you just gave a terrific example of how sometimes we just have to learn the lesson by making choices that are not serving us well, but the benefit of the way that information can be shared. I mean, we’re on a podcast, right? You have an amazing podcast like what I’m hoping is that people feel the truth of what you have just shared, as far as how essential it is to examine our lives and look at, where are we on autopilot? Where are we just doing things and going through our day because we feel like that’s how it has to be, and we. Have not carefully examined, can we do it better? What if we were hardcore with ourselves in the way that you became like that? That really poignant 2020-2021, experience for you of getting that close to death and having you look at your boundaries in a new way and get really hardcore with yourself. What if we could do that before experiencing that near death experience? Right? And unfortunately, so many of us wait for the canary in the cage to be a really significant, painful thing, rather than being introspective and doing the work that it takes to examine everything so consistently, so deeply that we make those changes ahead of time. It’s a real I mean, I’m just inviting people to sit for a moment and where do we need to create those boundaries, right? We all have opportunities to do this better. Entrepreneurship is rife with ways that we can do it wrong, right, that balance, that like really prioritizing the right things. 

Dr. Richard Shuster  31:14

I think what’s cool about entrepreneurship is I’ve never met an entrepreneur that isn’t also a self improvement junkie, like, they just go hand in hand. And so we have the benefit of learning from other people’s mistakes, right? We read a book and we get to learn, you know, like I’ve just shared something horrible that happened to me that ended up being really good because of how I chose to reframe it. But yeah, if you’re listening to this and you’re working too many hours, I hope I’m the cautionary tale for you so that you can rock your business and not ruin your marriage or your health, right? And so…

Dr. Richard Shuster  31:14

Or miss your kids childhood, whatever it is, yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster  31:25

So, you know, it’s about finding those things. You know that, as an entrepreneur, I love doing things wrong, because I know great, the next iteration will be better. And so it’s the same thing, right? We use trial and error. I mean, we are the ultimate guinea pigs, because we’ll try these things on ourselves. And so I just, you know, for me, I mean, it created a whole new platform. I mean I didn’t really intend to create a platform that helps entrepreneurs be more balanced. But that’s actually what happened, because I’m inspired, you know, to help entrepreneurs have the life that they should, right, like, what? What good is it? I don’t recall what year this study was done, but there was a study maybe 2010 ish, where I think maybe 100 Fortune 500 CEOs were interviewed, and they were all asked the same questions about their marriage, about their health, about their relationships with their kids and I, the percentages aren’t resonating, but overwhelmingly, many of them were divorced, or their marriages were not good. Many of them their kids had gone off to college and the kids presented them or had no relationship with their parent. Because at work at 5am and home at 10am like, it isn’t worth it. You You can have all of it. You really can, but you just have to be very intentional, much like you advise people with with, you know, having the legal system in place, have a system in place to bring balance and harmony to your business so that you can have it in your life.

Heather Pearce Campbell  33:41

Yeah, well, and like, get hardcore with yourself. I think so often we look at incremental change, like we think, oh, you know, here’s a way I can shave this off. Or do, like, what if we adopted a paradigm of, you know, to mean, how can I do this dramatically better. How can I do it dramatically different and even achieve more? I know we’ve got only a couple minutes left. You have got an amazing story, and you highlight multiple ways that these lessons show up in our lives. And, you know, give us the opportunity to make change for the better, which our listeners all want to do. Right? We’re all on this path of wanting to have more impact, do things better and hopefully not be waiting for the dramatic events that force us into those opportunities. Couple of very quick questions for you, and you know, it’s okay if you rehash some of what you’ve told us, but three questions related to this podcast. One, what’s the gutsiest thing you’ve ever done?

Dr. Richard Shuster  34:49

So I decided when I was young that I was going to play a prank on the world, and I created a fake endangered species, and was able to get it in the Wall Street Journal. It went so it went to the White House like it really got out of control. And it was that might have been the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:20

Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. That is a conversation for a different episode that’s so many questions about that. What event or challenge and obviously you’ve shared a few already, but what has required the most grit in your life?

Dr. Richard Shuster  35:36

I would say it was post accident, because when the stroke happened to me, I had already been in the business for many years of personal development and mindset, and so like adversity, like I was made for that, right? But when the stroke happened, I was or the car accident happened, I was very young and lost. And so from a grit standpoint, I had no sense of purpose. I was disillusioned. I was clinically depressed. I wasn’t suicidal, but I was absolutely depressed. And had to have a serious look in the mirror and say, how do you start finding meaning in your life? And I actually found it accidentally, as you’ll hear in the TEDx, because we don’t have time to talk about it. But that path, that stepping,  taking that first step onto that path, I would say, took the most grit, because I could have very easily just gone back and done something similar and gone back into technology. But in fact, I, you know, went to graduate school, which intimidated the hell out of me, with a bunch of students who were 10 years younger than me and got a degree that, you know, I never previously thought that I, you know, would be able to earn. So I would say that’s my answer to that.

Heather Pearce Campbell  37:01

That’s amazing. Okay, final question, and then we’re gonna find out where people can connect with you. What’s the single most important thing that you’ve done to helping you build a great business?

Dr. Richard Shuster  37:15

Be genuine. I think that you know when you are a genuine person, and who you are on camera is pretty consistent with who you are off camera. That resonates. And I’m very grateful for everything that I have, but I think that, you know, you will find that while I have multiple companies, and they all do very different things. They’re all on mission, and my mission is to help people be better than they were the day before, even if it’s no direct benefit to me, that’s that’s like my mission statement, right? And so if you don’t, and you didn’t ask this, but if you’re listening and you don’t have a mission statement, like if you don’t know why you’re on this earth, you need to find out, because once you have that nailed down, everything else flows from that. And it comes from the heart. It comes from a place of genuineness. And when you’re coming from a place of goodness, and people see that you’re passionate about it, and you really care people that’s infectious and they want to get involved.

Heather Pearce Campbell  38:24

Oh, I love that so much. Love that. Where do folks find you? Where do you show up online? Where do you like to connect with people?

Dr. Richard Shuster  38:32

So the mothership is now drrichardshuster.com, I know you’re going to link to it in the show notes, but I dare you to spell it any way you want, because I bought every domain with every possible spelling and it all links to the same place, I’ve actually got a really short free quiz there that people can take just 10 questions, but really will then custom curate a list of episodes that I’ve had with some really amazing people that will guide them through some things that will help them, and wherever they happen to be on their journey. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:02

Oh, I love that so much. A quiz attached to your podcast episodes, that is cool. I’m going to go do that, folks. You can find that at the show notes page. We’re going to share your primary website, your TEDx talk. Can find that at legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, find Dr. Richard Shuster’s episode. Dr. Richard, anything else you want us to share there? Obviously send over. Are you on social? 

Dr. Richard Shuster  39:29

The funny thing is, not really.

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:31

Okay, good answer.

Dr. Richard Shuster  39:33

I’m on social, but I don’t really use it. I guess LinkedIn, I’m most active, but okay, I really that’s a whole another episode.

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:43

Boundaries are clear. I love it. It’s right answer, perfect. So go take the quiz, connect with Dr Richard on his podcast. I’m so excited to have participated just today, looking forward to sharing that as well. Dr Richard, what final whole thought or takeaway would you like to leave our listeners with?

Dr. Richard Shuster  40:04

You know, on my show, I tell people to do something for somebody else as an act of kindness, but I’m going to flip the script a little bit. As entrepreneurs, we often sacrifice our own self care and enjoyment for the belief that when I reach this magical pinnacle of X number of dollars or x clients, I can do something, I can enjoy life. Do it today. Go do something for you that you enjoy. In fact, I schedule that into my calendar so that I have more fun, like I do the things that I selfishly love to do during the week so that I can be more present with my wife and kids on the weekend and do stuff that is really important to them so but make time to have fun, because life is precious.

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:53

Oh, I love that so much. Dr, Richard, thank you for joining us. I’m such a fan. I’m really grateful for your time with us today.

Dr. Richard Shuster  41:00

I loved it. Thanks so much for having me.

GGGB Outro  41:03

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.