In this Episode
- [02:34]Sagi Shrieber recounts his transition from a day job to full-time entrepreneurship and the challenges he faced, including financial struggles and debt.
- [16:15]Sagi discusses the importance of prioritizing personal health and mental fitness.
- [27:10]Sagi emphasizes the importance of listening to his gut feeling and intuition in making crucial decisions.
- [35:11]Sagi achieved his financial goals and launched a new community called Commit First.
- [42:10]Sagi indicates the importance of faith and trust in the universe’s plan for us.
- [47:36]Sagi reflects on the mysterious ways in which the universe works and the lessons learned from their challenges.
- [56:34]Sagi recommends the 75 Hard challenge, which involves five daily tasks to build mental resilience and discipline.
Sagi, it’s so great to have you on the show and to have you on my other show since we spoke maybe a month or two ago on Marketing Speak. Thanks for coming.
Definitely. Thank you so much, Stephan, for having me. It’s great to be here again.
We had such a powerful conversation, and we covered so many angles relating to personal development and growth and spirituality and so forth. I really wanted to bring you on this show because you have just so, so much wisdom and life experience to share. Our listeners here will definitely benefit from that. I’m excited to dig in. Let’s first of all, for someone who hasn’t listened to the episode on Marketing Speak, let’s give them a little bit of a backgrounder on you, how you kind of built your empire from nothing, and you have all this great experience in the tech industry, and now you’re playing around with AI a lot. Give us a quick rundown of your hero’s journey.
Number one, who doesn’t play around with AI a lot nowadays?
You’d be surprised. I mean, certainly a number of my listeners would be amenable to talking to ChatGPT and so forth. Around the world, it floors me that, out of the hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users, only 5% pay anything; 95 % don’t consider ChatGPT useful enough to pay a single penny to OpenAI.
Anyway, we can talk a lot about AI.
Yes, here is the journey. Let’s go.
Every time something challenging happens, there's a lesson to be learned. God's lessons that make you stronger. Share on XWell, I’ll try to make it very quickly. I came from the tech industry here in Israel. I was in the design UX, like UI/UX field, and was the first designer at Fiverr, the actual company I worked with the founders. After leaving Fiverr, I started a startup with a few friends. We got accepted to UpWest, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator. Flew out to Silicon Valley, came back.
Basically, eventually we were acquired by Similarweb, which is another company here in Israel. I became the first in-house designer at Similarweb, grew the team at Similarweb, designed the system, and everything. Similarweb became the design director eventually. And all throughout that, I was running two major blogs and podcasts in the design space, one completely in Hebrew called Pixel Perfect and one international called Hacking UI, where I interviewed like VPs and design directors from companies like Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Apple, and all the big companies.
I flew out to California and New York and sat with them in their offices and learned everything about design. Then, I was a mentor at Google for UI/UX, and they flew us out on their own for all kinds of training in California. So fast forward, the blog and podcast, the international one grew, and I left my day job in the tech industry to work on a blog and podcast full-time. And then that’s when I became an entrepreneur and understood the forces of a market. Like I had the startup before, it’s definitely not the same.
I was a designer back then. So now all of a sudden, I was the sole provider of my family. I already had two children and a mortgage, and I was supposed to provide. And the value that I put out to the world is what I got back in money. That’s where I fell into a funk. I got into debt. I had a period of six months. I didn’t pull a salary out of my own company. I took a loan from the bank. I wasted the entire loan. I was two weeks away from not being able to feed my family. It was a very tough situation. And that’s when I, for the first time, hired a coach. I never thought about doing that before, but it came to my mind, like, “Why not hire a coach?” I hired a coach. I flew him over to Israel with money that I didn’t have. It’s like some guy that I read, and he inspired me.
And I reached out to him via cold in Facebook Messenger. I’m like, “Hey, do you coach?” He’s like, “Yeah.” Long story short, he helped me build the business. I, with money that I didn’t have, flew him over two weeks after I was already making money, and I grew since then basically into a six-figure business. In 2020, I launched my agency, Contrast, a UI/UX design agency. I took all my skills, everything that I’m pro at and methodologies that I gained, and I was already teaching through my blogs and online courses. I took that and made it into a service-based business. And that thing, I grew into a seven-figure business.
Recently, I acquired a partnership in another business, like two months ago, I acquired a partnership in another business, 50% in a business of a very good friend who’s also ex-Google. He has an agency that builds personal brands for CEOs and founders. I acquired 50% of the company. Basically, I bought out his partner, and I became a partner.
So now I have another business on my hands, which is a very fun business for me because coming from creating content, a personal brand for myself in being in the circles of like, was in mastermind with like Pat Flynn, Chris Ducker, and all these big names and, now being able to help other founders and entrepreneurs do that for themselves. It’s amazing. I’m bringing all my skills of building a business and of personal brands into one thing, and working with my best friends. So really fun. We’re having a great time now scaling this business. So, that was in a nutshell. I wasn’t too long.
Who would have thought that you would get there from the low point where you were two weeks away from completely running out of cash and having used up your bank loan?
We all have these kinds of low points or we see them as like rock bottoms. I always describe those rock bottoms can have a trampoline if we see it, and then you use it. So you fall, but that trampoline is so, so good. It bounces you back up even higher to where you were before. I really believe that. I can connect it to the spiritual practices, which I also learned along the way. And it’s like every time something like that happens, there’s a lesson in it. Since then like every business owner, you experienced it. Everybody here listening experienced it.
Your calendar reflects your values. What's missing from your calendar tells you what you're actually not prioritizing. Share on XWe experience these challenges in life, and it’s like a punch in the stomach. For me, that’s sometimes how this feels in someone’s situations. Every couple of years, there’s this like big thing that’s like, “Holy sh*t, that’s a big punch in the stomach,” you can’t shake it off after an hour. You cannot shake it off after a day. And sometimes you can’t shake it off after a week or a month. That is God’s lesson, the creator’s lesson for you. Those points make you stronger—so stronger.
It reminds me of a quote from Joseph Campbell: “The cave you fear to enter has the treasure that you seek.” Just to give you a little bit more context around it, I learned about this quote, I knew about Joseph Campbell and his work on myth and so forth from previous reading, but specifically, Jonathan Fields, and he gave a talk, and it was about his hitting a low point about tinnitus. He had ringing in the ear that wouldn’t go away, and it drove him crazy, and he couldn’t solve it. He got to the point where he was even thinking about ending his life.
This quote really helped save him because it was a turning point in his understanding that this is actually what helps him get to the next level. Even though it was horrible for him, it was the cave that he feared entering. I love this part of the quote; “It is by going down into that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center. You find the jewel, and it draws you off.”
This led him to a whole awakening and exploration into mindfulness. And now he’s a mindfulness expert. He has a very popular podcast, and he has a book on this topic. His Good Life Project is known around the world, and it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had this situation with tinnitus; it hasn’t gone away. He’s just learned to live with it and to be actually grateful for it, which is really amazing.
A lot of the time we don’t see the lesson while we’re in it, but just knowing that every one of these instances is kind of like God stepping us up to the next level of ourselves. There’s no kind of better way of getting to where you want to get like that’s the only way basically. I love that. Nice quote.
Now it occurs to me that life is kind of like a fractal in nature, that you have an event or some sort of experience or challenge that if you don’t learn the lesson, it repeats itself in a different way. It just keeps replicating in various forms. I love this quote: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.”
Sometimes it rhymes. Nice.
Mark Twain came up with that brilliant quote. If you think about the past challenges that were similar to that experience, that hitting that low point where you ran out of cash, almost couldn’t provide for your family anymore. What were some other similar kinds of rhyming experiences from your past that maybe mirror what you went through there?
It’s interesting. In 2019, I lost everything again. Now, it’s not that I don’t know if it’s the same lesson I’m trying to think like everything teaches you about business, and I’m a late bloomer in learning. We can’t learn everything the hard way sometimes, which I don’t believe I have to do. That’s why I read books and listen to podcasts, and take on mentoring and coaching. It’s not limiting belief of mine, but it throughout my experiences.
We can’t learn everything the hard way sometimes, which I don’t believe I have to do. That’s why I read books and listen to podcasts, and take on mentoring and coaching.
I don’t know if there is, and that’s the thing I’m trying to. In 2019, I tried to launch something new, and I invested everything I had in that thing, and I lost all my design clients, I lost everything, intentionally. And by the way, it was written down on a piece of paper by the end of 2018: ‘I’m gonna lose all my design clients, have zero design clients, and start working on the launch of my new program.’ And it happened.
That was six months before the end of 2018 when I wrote it down. By the end of 2019, I had zero design clients. And for various reasons one startup got the investors pulled the funds, and no more. So what kinds of reasons? It doesn’t matter. Like I manifested it, no more clients. And then I found myself in January, and I launched this program, prepared, and built a webinar, and I followed all the best practices of selling webinars like Russell Branson, Amy Porterfield and all these people.
I studied them and built an amazing webinar. 100% better designed than any webinar I’ve ever seen because I was a designer. It was an amazingly designed webinar. Storytelling was off the hook. I studied storytelling. It was, for me, something I really wanted to be great at. Then, crickets, and a week later, I launched that webinar again. I changed the offer just a bit to make it more compelling, more irresistible, but still people showed up—just nobody bought. Well, one person bought it, but I had to return their money. So anyway, I remember I pulled my camera at this stage. I was already fascinated with documenting the journey, the highs and the lows.
I pulled out my camera, and I said, “If I ever get out of this situation I put myself in, just so I know.” I documented how I feel and what’s going on. I still have this video to this day. I’m thinking: What was the reason I failed? Wasn’t it me that manifested this? Wasn’t me that, with the name of the thing, Billy, good blockages. I currently don’t know. After this situation, I learned how to take care of my business and the profitability and not to lose clients and to manage retention of clients and all that stuff. I learned a lot from just that incident. It gave me a tool that I think.
The responsibility for finances in a business is what I need. I probably needed that too. Because although I grew out of my 2017 crisis and built a business, now I needed to know how to maintain a business, and I didn’t. It might be an instance where it rhymes because, life was like, “Sagi, you’re in the first time around when I lost everything. Sagi, you’re a business owner, get a grip of yourself, know the finances and manage the business properly. Cash flow is a thing.”
Entrepreneurship is a spiritual journey.
In 2019, another slap, kind of like God saying, “Sagi, cashflow is a thing. Now get up and learn it.” And I think I learned it since then. But again, I don’t know the exact lesson there, spiritually, but I know that, as an entrepreneur, I think we discussed in the previous podcast: entrepreneurship is a spiritual journey. I really try to make the most of every opportunity. I can give you an example of where I really learned the lesson and changed my whole life, I think it really changed my life and business since then.
It was the end of 2020, and I had my third child. It was COVID, and she was just a baby, so I wasn’t sleeping at all. I still had the company, but was not sleeping. It’s COVID—lockdowns every Wednesday. The kids were now facing the other challenges of COVID: small children, schools with masks, and these kinds of Zoom lessons, and the business was just at the beginning. It was just starting to grow. And then I got sued by a troll, and the troll who sued my business sued me for spam in my newsletter, even though I never spam. And actually, everybody has double opt-in and all that.
But you can break any law. You can find cracks in any law and just sue anybody and anything. And I found out he has like seven other lawsuits open on different businesses. I had to, for the first time in my life, just write a defense letter and stuff like that, lawyer up. I’ve never even been to court or ever talked to lawyers before that. At the same time, I had a project with a client that went badly. The project went really badly.
I brought in an external developer. We usually don’t work with developers, but I had to bring in one, and he erased my client’s website from production. The entire project. Then apparently, he was a lawyer, so he threatened to sue me. I was getting angry phone calls every day at like 10 PM. Like, “I can’t believe I wasted my time with you. Why did I hire you? You erased my website. This is a mess.” I took full responsibility. I didn’t take no. It was a very tough time, very stressful handling this guy in court and talking to another client-lawyer who’s like threatening to sue you and trying to fix this, whatever mess you’ve made, not sleeping at night, and all the other tons of pressure from the business that is just starting. Also, another thing back the, it was profitable, but not cash flowing properly, because I was paying my designers every month, but the client sometimes paid late.
A lot of the time, we don't see the lesson while we're in it. But just knowing that every one of these instances is God stepping us up toward the next level of ourselves—there's no better way of getting to where you want to get. It's… Share on XHandling cash flow, very extremely in terms of like, it was on the verge every time of going into the red. Again, stressful life. And then I’m still a sole provider for my household. Now that period was sh*t. It’s a period where I really was afraid to get sick. People get sick from prolonged stress. And so I doubled down on what I know, workouts and meditations, and it really, really helped me at the end of the day. I got this guy defending myself in court, always good on that front. He took full responsibility, fixed it, everything for him, obviously. He then later even thanked me or invited me for lunch and stuff. We closed it very nicely.
Now, when I sat down after this period, it was a kind of crazy reflection back on this, and the spirit, because it was like, “Okay what happened?” I’m looking at my values, and I always like to say your calendar is a reflection of your values. I looked back at my values, and I’m like, “What do I value?” And I say, “I’m a family-first entrepreneur.” I always said that. Family first, after family comes business. When everything ended, I reflected back and I said, “Okay, what happened?”
Let’s recap. Retrospect. So I look back and say, “This thing can happen again. I’m a business owner. These kinds of periods can happen. How do I make sure that I take care of my health 100% now? I know I’m not sleeping. What’s important?” Sleep And I was like, “I need a morning routine, but I don’t like it. I need to set myself up for the day properly, being good energy. The energy you put out, you get back. How do I do it?” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll see my calendar for a second. What’s missing?” I always like to think of my calendar as a reflection of my values. I check my calendar, and I’m like, “What do I call myself? Family first entrepreneur. What do I have in my calendar? I have times with my kids, like one-on-one time. I call it daddy practice. I have time with my wife, like date nights and stuff. I’m good on those fronts. What’s missing?”
What carried me through this period was meditation and exercise, taking care of me. “Where is that mental fitness is in my calendar?” It wasn’t there. I only did it when I had time. That’s when things changed for me. I said, “I’ve got to re-prioritize my values in life.” And then it just so happened that I heard a podcast from Hal Elrod. Do you know Hal Elrod? The Miracle Morning? He’s an amazing guy, and his podcast is amazing.
The energy you put out, you get back.
Yes, I had him on the show talk about hitting a low point his story about cancer and everything he was almost out. This was actually before he had his health crisis. I have to have him back to talk about what happened.
So basically, he had cancer once in 2017, 2018 or something like that. When he recovered, he recorded a podcast. And I think it was again at the end of 2020 when I heard it towards the new year, when he declared, “I’m shifting my priorities. So my priorities now are me first, family later.” It’s unpopular. Because you want to say, “I’m a family man.” A lot of parents sacrifice everything for their kids and their wives. Like, you’d take a bullet for your wife and kids, probably, but what about you? We don’t tend to take care of ourselves.
We sacrifice too much. And if we then sacrifice ourselves, our health, and our mental health. There was an entrepreneur here who just committed suicide. Everybody knows him here in Israel. It was a couple of days ago. Everybody knows him. My whole Facebook was like everybody writing about it. How they like are in shock and grieving, and it’s like this guy was a very successful person. But what happens when mental health is messed up? Things happen in life. So basically I said, “I’m putting myself first because if I don’t have myself, my family won’t have me, and my business won’t have me.” That’s why me first.
Yeah, it’s the concept of putting your own oxygen mask on first.
100%. Once I did that, I put time in my calendar. I said, “When am I going to take care of myself?” And my immediate answer was, I need it in the morning because in the morning, if you set yourself up for success, your whole day will be good. If your whole day is good, you have great days ahead. You’ll have great weeks and great months and great years.
So I put in my calendar from 9 to 12, just to block a repeating calendar invite. ‘No meetings. Sagi’s meditations and workouts.’ And that’s it. Ever since I called it my 9/12 club, I followed that religiously. Some days it worked, some days it didn’t until I stabilized everything, communicated to my team, to my clients. Everybody I know got from 9 to 12, “Sagi’s not in the building.” Like, “I can’t have meetings. Don’t call me. Don’t message me.” Obviously, everybody messages me and calls me all the time, but I still keep it to this day.
Nowadays, it’s more like 8.30 to 11-ish, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still me in the morning, and I don’t have meetings mostly before 12. Sometimes at 11, but that’s it. When I keep this promise to myself, it was the next year that I reached my first seven figures. Since then, I’ve been growing my company year over year.
It’s almost 2026. We’re talking the beginning of 2021. Ever since, that’s my morning routine. And why is it 9 to 12 and opting out of the regular life of everybody else? It’s because I had small children and I wake up early anyhow, but it’s for the children. It’s not for me. Back then, I was not sleeping at night because of small children. Now the small one is five.
They’re bigger and they sleep all night way better, but it’s still kind of like I go to sleep pretty much later and then I wake up earlier to get them ready and the whole house ready for the day. When I return from pickups, it’s time for workouts, spend time with my wife, or sometimes friends that I haven’t seen in a while. These are the times where you take care of me and build relationships, and it’s working well.
If you set yourself up for success in the morning, your whole day will be good. If your entire day is good, you have great days, weeks, months, and years ahead.
That’s awesome. Well, thank you for sharing with such vulnerability and candor. It’s refreshing and important. You’re revealing light in the world, and you’re helping people to relate and build their own tools through your experience. You learn from reading books and from watching videos and so forth. Well, other people are now doing the same with you, learning from you and your experiences.
That’s amazing. I can give it back 100%.
Let’s go back to this experience that happened for you where you were reading a book, and then, out of the blue, you contacted the author to get him to coach you. How did you find the book, and how did you come to the realization that you needed him to be your coach?
Interesting. It’s not such a big story. It’s pretty simple. I’m listening to podcasts all the time. And I listen to this podcast on John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire.
He was a guest on the show.
JLD recorded this. Back then, I didn’t know him personally. I was just listening to the show, and I listened to this guy on his show one time who was an amazing storyteller and a young entrepreneur who just built his business from scratch, but didn’t succeed and went into debt. He hired a coach, and kind of like, “Wow, what an amazing storyteller. What an amazing story.”
I remember I stopped in the middle; I was driving my back then scooter to my office. I pulled over for a second, and I just bought the book on Audible and started listening to it. This guy’s name was Calvin Correli. I listened to the book. The book is called Fish Out of Water. The book was amazingly well put together, considering that, like other personal development books, it had something special. Maybe it’s because of his story, just a regular guy, and he keeps saying that I’m just a regular dude. Maybe because of the thing of like, I never hired a coach. I never even thought about it, but when he tells his story, of course, it makes sense.
So when I finished the book, I was like, “I got to make this guy.” I already had a podcast. I’m used to reaching out to people who seem totally unapproachable and reaching out cold, and just like, “Hey, what’d you get on my podcast?” They’re like, “Of course.” People are way more approachable than we think. I friended them on Facebook, and then accepted my friend request. I sent him a message in messenger, and he just answered me like, “Cool, man.” That’s booking a Zoom call. That’s how we got together. It’s pretty simple. The funny part about it is that it was just at the beginning, when we were not profitable in my blog and podcast.
I had a partner back then, and we’re not profitable. We started understanding we don’t have money to pull salaries, and it was a perfect time to hire him as a coach. So I went on Zoom with him back then, and he said, “Yeah, I can coach you. It costs like this,” and that it was like a couple of thousand dollars. It seemed like once a week, half an hour, a couple of thousand dollars. And I went over to my partner and my dad and asked, “What do you think?”
They’re used to business coaches here in Israel. They’re like, “Wait a second, are you saying he’s charging double what a business coach here in Israel would charge basically, and what a business coach here would sit with you at a coffee shop for like an hour every week? He just Zoom call for like 30 minutes. What’s going on? By the way, was he ever a business coach? Have you ever coached before?” And the answer was no because this guy was just brand-new at this.
The funny thing is that while you’re talking about this, I’m imagining people having the same conversation with their trusted advisors, friends and family about hiring me for coaching. And my prices are sky high, like insanity, $5,000 a month for one hour a week. And I actually haven’t raised my prices in over a decade, but when you do the math and figure out what the hourly rate is, people are like, “What are you doing, Stephan?” But people hire me.
Yeah, 100%. It happens. And look, I don’t actually believe it was a good idea. I intuitively. I was like, “In my gut, it felt right.” My gut was telling me to hire him now. You need it. His story makes sense. You just ran out of cash in your business. You have nothing like you; you need him—my logical mind, and all the people around me were like, “Are you freaking crazy?” No. And I came back to him, and I said no. And I remember that call because of how I felt on it. I just felt wrong. It felt wrong. And I said “No.” And in my mind, it’s my logical mind and everybody around me that is saying no. And I’m just kind of like speaking on their behalf. I’m not telling, Sagi, I’m talking to everybody around me. And again, it’s not even that they, it’s not their fault. It’s just me.
I said “No.” But I let them get into my mind. By the way, if someone had asked me, I might have asked the same questions back. The other coach was like, “Probably it makes sense to ask logical questions for this kind of thing.” So anyways, I said “No.” Six months later, one thing he said to me when I said “No” was, “Look, next time you talk to me, the book is starting to catch like fire. And many people are now asking about coaching. I might. Next time you come, if you want coaching, I might charge double the price. I’m just saying, So you can lock this price now, but I’m saying, like in six months, I might be either too busy or just double the price.” Like, he said, “I can, in whatever months.”
Six months later, low and behold, I come back with the tail between my legs, and I say, “Look, man, and by the way, I was in such a bad spot.” I remember like it was one night, and I was walking my dog, and I told the story on some podcasts. So sorry if you heard it before, but it’s like, was it, that’s the true story. Like that’s when I had the realization I, six months after I wasted the entire loan, read in the bank by like a ton. I owe a lot of money to the bank already, and I have. I really don’t know where I’m going to monetize from. Have no idea. It’s been months since I worked my ass off until like midnight every day. haven’t seen my wife or my kids.
I was working late nights because I was trying to monetize, and that was my responsibility. As a father, as a husband, I like to provide. Back then, my wife wasn’t working. And so I was trying to do what I needed to do. And I failed, I felt like an embarrassment. I felt like a failure to my wife, to my children, to my partner back then, to my business partner, to my community, and everybody around me. I felt like a failure. And I walked my dog one night, and I was walking the dog, and I was just like, the sky was so beautiful.
And I was like, “Is the sky so beautiful?” You’re like just after sunset. And I’m walking and I’m like seeing, starting to see the stars and the beautiful sky. And then I started crying. And then, like for the first time, as an adult, I really started crying. I really didn’t know what to do. I was very frustrated. I was so, so frustrated. I had no way out, like no equation, equations running around my head, numbers and trying to make things work. Like, “Where am I going to get money? But I have no idea.” I tried for like six months, and nothing worked.
And then, like after crying for a couple of minutes, I was just like, a voice in my head said, “Sagi, what the fuck are you going to do about it?” Sorry for the language, but that’s what the voice said in English: “What the fuck are you going to do about it?” And so I said, “Well, I can do what I know what to do. I mean, I can reach out to people who have been in a similar situation, and I could get them on a free hour call with me. They will understand my situation. And with enough empathy, they would agree not to take any money and just help me get out of the situation.” So I went and approached a few people.
I will never forget it because two of them actually answered. One is like Jason Zook, an amazing entrepreneur. Back then, I interviewed him for my podcast, and we went back and forth a bit like an email. He’s a great guy, and he answered, “Sure, man, let’s get on a call.” And he got on a call with me, and it really, really helped me. One of the major things that I came out of that call was that I need to separate from my partner, as we are pulled in different directions. We need to, you and I need to, I need a reset. Like number one. And Calvin was a second person.
I want to teach others how to overcome the challenges I faced, build a vision, and create a successful business.
When he got on a call with me, he was like, “Look, man, I can give you a free consultation, whatever you want, but I can also just coach you.” And when he said that, “Well, okay. So maybe I can remind you of the pricing.” And he said, “Look, man, it’s double what it was. And you also have to fly me out to Israel because I want to sit with you in a room and we need to do a VIP day here.” Like it’s not going to work any other way, so I flew home over to Israel from the US with money I didn’t have.
So back then, the decision-making process was just different. I listened ruthlessly to my gut feeling and was very mindful of the consequences of my actions, but I was ruthlessly listening to my intuition, my gut feeling. I flew him over with money I didn’t have, and thousands of dollars just ahead, even before I understood what it was going to do. And then Calvin comes to Israel, and we sit down in a room in Tel Aviv, like in some office space.
And the room, I remember the lights were on, it was light outside, it came through the window, but there was no light. didn’t turn on the lights in the room. So it was kind of dark, but light was coming through the windows. And I’m sitting on this huge chair at this huge table in this meeting room. And Calvin’s just walking around the meeting room. And I’m like, “Sagi, what’s your vision?” And I’m like, “I don’t have a vision. What’s the vision?” And he’s like, Well, you need a vision.” Like, “Okay, so you don’t have a vision.” Like, “I don’t even know what that is.” So he says, “Okay.”
So he guided me through a meditation on what I’d be like in 10 years. First time I ever imagined myself in 10 years. I think most of us don’t do it. Most of us don’t even take the time to close our eyes and imagine ourselves, how we look, how we feel in 10 years from now, because we’re so far from it. But it was weird looking, and imagining this. It was so weird. Basically, I closed my eyes and imagined, and then he said, “Okay, where do you need to be in two years in order to get closer to that 10-year vision?” Like, “Aha, now that starts to make sense.” So I wrote down some things, and he’s like, “Great. Now let’s make it closer. Where do you have to be in six months? List down everything and write it in detail as if it already happened.”
And I remember just, I was in a flow, just very in a state of flow. I just wrote, started writing down things. And one of the things was, number one, I need to make like 14K USD. I wrote down 50,000 shekels, 50,000 shekels a month. Like if I make that in a month, I’m good, I’m gold, like I’m good enough. Like, even with taxes and everything like that, I’m good, I can pay my bills and the loan. And then after that, I said, “Okay, number two, I’m going to start a new community.” Like that’s what I, because I lost my part, like I stopped doing the design stuff, but now I want to teach others how to go through the challenges that I went through, build a vision and create a successful business. So I’m going to teach others how to have a vision, a new community.
And that new community is going to be called mindful and ruthless because, exactly like me, the decision-making process that took me there. So, that’s where that was the second item. The third item was that I’m going to be interviewed on a podcast by either JLD or Pat Flynn. Two names, just wrote them down. I didn’t know those guys. They were, I was just like an anonymous broke entrepreneur from Israel, and they were like super celebs from the U S fast forward a month later, I earned that 50K. So I wrote myself a check for the following six months of a 100K Israeli shackles to about the equivalent back now, like 28K I use this. I wrote myself a check like Jim Carrey.
Yeah, love that story.
Yeah, such a good story. So I just, I was inspired by that story again, put a check on my fridge, let it sit there. It started filling up with magnets in the meantime, and I built everything I could. It didn’t come easy, but I made time for my wife, time for my family, like my kids, my wife and everything. Meditated, went back to meditating after years, I haven’t meditated and worked up. Then six months later, something happened.
It was the beginning of 2018, and one, like the second of January, 2018. And my wife’s going over the accounting software. And she’s like, “Sagi, I think we have a bug here.” And she was in the living room while I was in the kitchen fixing myself something to eat. And when she says, like, Sagi, I think there’s a bug here. I’m like, what’s going on? So, she says, “It makes it look like you’re made over 100K in Israeli shekels in December.”
And I’m like, “What? It can’t be.” And all of a sudden, I remembered the check that I wrote to myself because I forgot about it. It was like on the fridge for months, and it was covered by, like, bills, magnets and stuff. I had to pull it out. I found it. I pulled it out, and I ran to the living room and put the check in front of the computer screen. And I looked at the check. says 100 K. I looked at the screen. It says 100K. And I took a picture with my phone. I have that picture to this day. And it just manifested the same week I opened the community was the first, I said, “This one, boom, community opened my community, my phone ruthless. Now it’s called commit first.”
It went through a few cycles, but it’s now a podcast and community called Commit First. And then I bought myself a ticket to 10 X by Grant Cardone in Las Vegas, where I met Calvin again, and he said, “You should come with me to the social media marketing world in San Diego. Let’s go there after 10X.” And I said, “Yeah, why not?” And we volunteered there to get like cheap tickets, like free tickets. So we volunteered at the conference anyway. And I knew Pat Flynn was speaking. He was a keynote speaker. So I said, “Okay, I’m going to meet Pat Flynn.”
Anyway, in the hallway and on his way to his talk, just enough shaking of his hand will bring me closer to my vision. I mean, I don’t care. Gialdi was not supposed to be there, so I didn’t even expect to see him or anything. But I said enough for me to put my face in front of Pat Flynn’s face. That would just bring you a bit closer to my vision. I don’t care that it’s after six months. I’m good. So that day before the conference, Pat Flynn had a meetup, and I’m like, “Okay, I gotta be there.” So we went to that meetup.
I’m making a long story short because there was a crazy situation, like with no tickets to the meetup, and now I got my ticket there. But anyway, I get to the space. It’s on WeWork San Diego, downtown San Diego, on the third floor. And we go up the elevator, Calvin and I, to the third floor. Now we wait in 15 15-minute line just to get our name tags. Like, the place is packed. We go inside, and the whole floor is divided into two sections. One is a packed networking area.
Everybody’s talking, networking. The other section is two queues. It’s a queue. It’s a queue, long, long lines. And you see the line that goes like a snake. You’re like, “Where’s this line leading to?” I’m like, “Okay. I go and check where the line leads to.” And with my finger, I’m kind of following the line, following the line, following the line. At the end of the line is Pat Flynn, signing autographs and shaking people’s hands and taking selfies. I’m like, “Pat Flynn, Pat Flynn.” I’m like fanboying there. Standing in line, and I’m saying, “Okay, now I’m in line to meet Pat Flynn face to face. It’s way better than shaking his hand and waiting for his keynote talk.”
Like that, I get one-on-one time with Pat. What am I going to say? I made this kind of thing where I said, “Okay, I’m going to offer him free designs.” That’s what I’m really good at. I just offered him some free design, something that I’m going to give instead of asking. And then while I’m waiting in line, I see that this very long line has another line next to it. It looks connected, but it’s not. So I’m like, “Where does this other very long line lead to?” So I started following with my finger. Like, “Where does this line lead to?” And then I get to the end of that line and I’m like, “That’s JLD.”
That’s awesome.
The two people who were on a piece of paper about seven months ago are now standing in front of my eyes in the same freaking space. What are the odds? was not even supposed to be there. It was not on the speaking list. So I’m like, “Okay, crazy.” So long story short, I did offer the free design thing. The dots connected. And also I did it with Gld. I ended up having Pat remember who I was and also Jld. And I started working with Jld. I redesigned his homepage back then, the top part of the homepage.
And then after that, Pat Flynn opened a mastermind, and I applied along with a couple of hundred thousand others, but I got accepted, and we were 12 entrepreneurs. I was the only one outside the States. And I ended up spending the year getting mentored by Pat and spending time with him in a villa in San Diego, masterminding and having amazing experiences. And the crazy first thing that he said, though, on the onboarding call was the one that blew my mind. And it was something I totally didn’t expect.
So we get on an onboarding call when I joined the mastermind, and he says, “Sagi, you got a hell of a story. Let’s get you on the podcast.” And there I was, with three items that were on my list completely crossed out. I was booked to be on Pat Flynn’s show. And that show became super viral —specifically that episode in 2018. I became one of the top three, according to the statistics I saw back then, including Pat Flynn’s show that year and Smart Passive Income.
And later I also was on JLD show as well, and he was on mine, and Pat was on mine, and a couple of times even, and yeah, so and I was another time in SPI again, and that’s kind of like how everything evolved. But I’m saying like, you never know those rock bottoms where they lead and what they have for you. The universe and the creator work in mysterious ways, and they lead you into different opportunities. So it’s always amazing to see what can happen. When you just try.
Yeah, amazing. You said earlier in this story, “What are the odds?” The thing that is so important for our listeners and for everyone to understand is that there are no odds. It’s a rigged game.
Yeah, 100%. That’s how quantum work. It’s a story of the matrix of anything quantum, quantum physics. It’s like you think about a friend overseas, and they call you. It’s how the world does these, how do they call it? Warm holes. And so it’s like the warm hole theory where things in the universe.
There are holes. Quantum entanglement, we’re all connected. And there is no speed limit. In Einsteinian physics, sure, there’s a speed limit, the speed of light. But when we’re all quantumly entangled with each other, that’s all outside of time and space.
Back then, I didn’t know anything about quantum physics or anything like that. It’s just a journey of entrepreneurship. And this started it for me back then. Like now it opened my belief, opened my faith in like these kinds of situations. Since then, I have had multiple of these, it’s crazy. It’s crazy how the universe works like that, creator, whatever you want to call it. I believe it’s a, scientifically proven now. Like you. We know it’s scientifically proven that we are beings made out of cells. The cells are made out of atoms. We all know that. So we’re all made out of atoms, and atoms are 99% energy and 1% matter. We’re 99 % energy. We just don’t know how to tap into our full potential. We don’t know, and the tool of meditation and all that stuff, let us do that.
We’re all energy slowed down to matter. That’s what matters. We’re energy, mostly as you say, what matters? It’s just energy slowed down, equals mc^2. And if you look at how quantum physics works, and the observer effect, that light gets turned into a particle when you observe it, and it is also a wave when you’re not observing it. So it’s a wave of potentiality. That’s how the universe is.
So it collapses down based on your expectation, and you’re observing it, and it becomes the reality that you experience. It has infinite potential until you observe it. And so if you go into a stadium and there are 50,000 people in the room, they’re real people. I mean, some would say that backdrop, backdrop, people are backfill people. Had a really fascinating conversation with a guy on this podcast talking about that concept. kind of pioneered that concept of backfill people. And first I heard about it from Dolores Cannon, an amazing author, in a video. But anyway, this idea that when you leave the stadium.
Do those 50,000 people still exist in that stadium? And my understanding is no. That it goes back to the potentiality, to the wave. Sure, you go back into the stadium, maybe you left something in your car, and you go get it and bring it back into the stadium. Now the 50,000 people are back. But did they exist while you were out to your car? My understanding is no. It’s inefficient to render 50,000 people, everything in the stadium, and the stadium itself when the observer is not there. And if you wonder, what about the other people who are also observers? That’s not relevant because they’re not piloting the universe you are. You’re the pilot of your universe, and they have their own, maybe similar, maybe quite dissimilar universe that you’re not aware of, but it’s in the multiverse.
So I love that. Buddhism talks about it as well. But it’s like all religions at the end of the day are the same. It’s just quantum physics.
Yeah, right. So the different ways of naming or describing this simulation—the illusion of reality we’re experiencing—are hyper-realistic. Some religions call it Maya, or some Sahara or just an illusion. In Kabbalah, all time, space and motion are illusions. So what is outside of time and space? That’s where real reality is. Fun times. Okay. So I want to share an idea with you. I know we’re going to have to wrap up pretty soon, but there’s a scene in The Matrix Reloaded movie that’s not nearly as good as the first Matrix, but there is a very inspired scene I love that popped to mind when you were sharing your story.
And that is when Neo is talking to the Oracle. The Oracle is sitting on a park bench, and she offers him a candy, and he says “No,” but then he says, “Okay. And then while he’s eating the candy.” He says, “Well, why’d you offer me the candy? You knew I was going to take it. You could just give it to me.”
And right, because you knew I was going to take it. And she’s like, “I wouldn’t be a very good Oracle if I didn’t know that. It’s like, well, essentially it’s saying, “Well, there, where’s my free will? I don’t, why am I even here? Why did I make that choice? To take the Canyon.” She’s like, “You didn’t make the choice. You’re not here to make that choice. You had already made it. You’re here to understand why you made that choice.”
So you made the decision and came up with the vision to hire that coach to get on the podcasts of John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn. And it feels like that just came out of the ether. But you already had, you were predestined to do that. It was already in your movie script. And now, through the experience of having that, you have new insights about yourself. But the fact that you had those amazing, miraculous events unfold was already written.
Life is mysterious in that way, 100%. I’m thinking about it now as we launch our new business, with the personal brands for entrepreneurs. It’s a lot of things are coming together from all my experience in the past decade. I don’t know what’s to come. I have no idea, but I’m curious and coming to it with a lot of faith. And I definitely I love it. I love it, I need to go watch that movie again.
It’s really insightful, and it’s like a documentary, especially the first Matrix movie. And I don’t know if you know the story about how the movie script was written, but it was probably stolen. And the actual author was this lady named Sophia, who submitted the script as part of a science fiction writing contest almost a decade earlier and never heard back. But then she goes to the movie theater, and that’s her script. She’s realizing as she’s watching The Matrix movie, and she filed lawsuits and all this sort of stuff. Didn’t really; she didn’t have enough evidence to really get what she deserved out of it. But everything happens with divine orchestration. So it was meant to be the way it happened. But she wrote the first one, and the second and third ones were not nearly as good and for a good reason, because it wasn’t the same author.
It’s 100%. That’s so true.
Yeah, so if we could switch to a lightning round for a few minutes, do you have a few more minutes to keep going, or do you have to go? Okay, all right, so lightning round. What do you do to keep things fresh and, I don’t know, variable and surprising for your wife with your date night?
So right now we haven’t had date nights for a long time. Have another one. We have something else. We have date mornings. And so we both work out together at the gym. Because I have that morning space now, we get to decide every day if we want to work out together or not, or, like. It’s very, sometimes it’s spontaneous. Like, I’m going on a walk. You want to join? Yeah, sure. So we go out and walk in nature, or we say, “Let’s work out.” So we go to the gym together, or we have an outdoor gym that I built. Now we have an outdoor gym. So we do it in our home, under the sun. And it’s really fun as well. And then we have like quality time. I think the relationship is a whole other, we can do a full podcast on relationships, and I’m no guru. I can always say, “You are, and it’s also in business, you are the energy that you put out.” So I really try to keep my energy positive. And even if it was a bad day, it’s not that I don’t share it, but I don’t come home with bad energy. And I try to be very mindful of my energy around my wife and kids.
Yeah, that’s good. What are your best sleep hacks that make the most difference to the quality of your sleep and being able to sleep through the night and get restful sleep, deep sleep and all that?
All right. So I got a funny story about that. So recently I got into longevity,, and I’m using like AI, and I ran this like DNA tests and blood work and like a lot of stuff recently. I put into an AI model and like, asked it questions and what kind of supplements to take. And one of the things I asked is like, what supplements to take before bed? It helped me find the perfect supplements for me. And then one night I had a call with a client from the US, it’s nighttime here. I find myself at like 1130 at night, kind of like walking the dog out. And then I’m like chatting with my AI module about this kind of, “Okay, so it’s late and I want to sleep soon.” And I just wonder like, “What supplement should I take?”
I keep my energy positive. Even if it was a bad day, it’s not that I don’t share it; I just don’t come home with bad energy.
Out of the list of supplements, like, wouldn’t be too hard on my stomach, but then also give me the best deep sleep and, now, REM sleep. And I’m like geeking out on the message, and the AI replies back to me. It was the funniest thing. Like you can take this and that supplement, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The rest, regular AI stuff. And then it ends with something I didn’t expect. It ends with real talk, though. That’s how it works. Real talk, though. Just go to sleep. As early as you can, just get the sleep in because all your supplements and stuff are like 10%, maybe, we’ll help you in 10%. But actually getting even half an hour more sleep instead of chatting to me about this would actually be more beneficial for you.
So it was very honest. That makes sense. So the tip for me is a tip that I try to give to myself: go to sleep. I would sleep. And sometimes I want to watch Netflix or I watch a show on Netflix, and you want to switch Binge, and you’re like, that’s my only time to unplug and clear my mind and watch something senseless on Netflix. And I’m like, “No, I will unplug by going to sleep because if I now spend another half an hour on this fricking Netflix shit, my sleep would be ruined. That will affect the entire trajectory of my week.”
And it’ll also affect what happens during your sleep in terms of, like, spiritually speaking, you’ll be occupied with lower worlds and lower vibration activities in the astral plane because that crap that you watched on Netflix is infiltrating your consciousness while you are in the other realms, let’s say.
Yeah, no, 100%. I I’m not a guru on sleep at all. I just try to hack at myself by getting more sleep. I do measure my sleep. The Oura Ring helps me. And a couple of days ago, I didn’t feel well. I just started feeling kind of really tired, but not regular tired, just a really like fatigue before sleep. I went to sleep, had a terrible night of sleep, and I woke up and Aura.
Yeah, me too.
The app is like, “Are you sick?” It has those like major signs like with a huge message. And I’m looking at the major signs, I’m like, holy shit, elevated body temperature, higher heart rate that didn’t go down and very low HRV, like super lower than usual. I’m holy shit. And I really felt bad, but it’s one of those days where I didn’t have any symptoms or anything. I could go to work, and I actually had to go to the gym with my wife and our personal trainer. And I tell her, “Look, I’m not sure I’m feeling well.” I’m just like, “The signs in my Oura are really bad.” And I’m like, “I slept terribly. I feel kind of really tired, but it’s just morning.” I wake up yet, you could, you could pull through. But basically, so she says, “I’m not feeling too much, too. Too good either.” So I said, “Okay, let’s cancel the personal trainer.” I canceled the personal trainer.
We are invincible in terms of confidence. We have real confidence because we can take on whatever the world throws at us.
We drove the kids to school and all, but we came back. We went to bed for like three hours. We just sat like zombies in bed. I fell asleep for a while. She read something and, and then, we woke up like I woke up and she wasn’t asleep, but we got out of bed after that and we felt so much better. We went upstairs to the gym. We had a good workout. Then we could start on the day, and the day went completely fine. So it was like if I hadn’t listened to my data there, I would have. Pushed forward like we push sometimes, and I would become sick. I really feel that.
Yeah, you dodged a bullet.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, let my body kind of rest.
Yeah. Metrics are important for tracking and making data-driven decisions about your health, routines, and so forth. A great episode on the show is with David Korsunsky. He has a tracking platform for health metrics, which is really interesting. It’s a company called Heads Up Health, episode 491. You’re an analytics geek about your health and someone who likes to use AI to help optimize it. think you’d like that episode.
I would listen to it. Definitely listen to it today.
I know we got to wrap up, but one last thing: if you could give one suggestion for our listener, I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say—two words, and begin with a number. But what is the one thing that’s going to make the most immediate difference in the quality of their life and their discipline and how they show up, their presence and their health? Their reliability and dependability to themselves, to their loved ones and to their company, what is that one thing that you would recommend?
No, I’m just kidding. Yes, it’s 100% 75 hard. I’m a big fan. Make sure you’re doing that for the first time.
Yeah, we talked about this on the other show, too. We had a great conversation about that. I wish we had time to really dig into it, but we don’t. Our listeners should listen to that episode on Marketing Speak, where we talked more in-depth about it. What, like, just encapsulate into a minute, what is 75 Hard and why should somebody do it?
75 Hard is a challenge invented by entrepreneur Andy Frisella. If you want to check out the full podcast, just go and search Spotify for Andy Frisella. I think it’s called Real AF, and it’s a new podcast now.
It’s a mental toughness or mental resilience challenge where you have to do five things every single day for 75 consecutive days. Those five things are two workouts a day. One has to be outside no matter the weather. They have to be 45 minutes apart and separated by hours from one another. Another thing you have to do is you have to drink a gallon of water, one gallon of water every day. That’s a lot of water; you pee everywhere.
Another thing is that you have to read 10 pages of a personal development book. You have to stick to the diet that you choose, but stick to it. No cheat meals, no alcohol and no cheat days, nothing. And lastly, you take one selfie a day, one progress peak every day. And those five things have to be done every single day. If you fall on any one of those five things on any day, it doesn’t matter when, you go back to day one and all over again. And this is now.
Now you start all over again. And you’ve done this challenge how many times?
This is the fourth time now. I’m on day one. Yeah, I do it every once in a while. It’s very good. Yeah. So, the why behind it is that we want to become people who know we can create habits and skills to build them. And so when we become those people.
And you’re in the middle of it right now. That’s awesome.
Make no excuses and hold yourself accountable at the highest level to do things that other people are not willing to do.
We are invincible. We are in terms of confidence. We have real confidence because we can take on whatever the world throws at us. And this program is like a challenge. It gets you there. Like, because after 75 days, and even if you fell on like day 66, like it happened to me, you started all over again, and you finished. And one of the instances I’ve done it, I had COVID and I pulled through with COVID, like two exercises a day and drank all the water and stuff like that.
And so many obstacles come your way in this challenge. We tend to be the ones who say we’re going to do something, and we never do it. But after you do this for 75 days, you become the person who says, “I’m going to do something and you do it. And there are no excuses. You make no excuses and you hold yourself accountable on the highest levels to do things that other people are not willing to do. And when you finish and you come on the other end, you come out a totally different person.” So every time it’s your mindset, it shifts you to the new, higher you. So that’s why I really recommend this.
That’s great. One thing I feel like I have to tell you, because I got nudged to tell you a couple of times during this episode from above, is it’s a quote from the Bible. And it’s actually part of Chronicles 29.12: “All wealth and honor come from you.” And the reason I’m being nudged to share this quote is that I recite it every day as part of my morning prayers. It’s in the shaharit service. But the reason why is because you didn’t have clarity on the lesson, and maybe this will help you with that clarity on that lesson from that one low point where you said, “Well, this is kind of a repeat of what happened in 2017, whatever, and I’m not sure if I have the lesson yet.”
If all wealth and honor come from the creator, right, from you with capital Y, then when you’re making a pile of money, when you’re getting to the point of running out of money, when you get an incredible new client or new deal or business partnership or whatever. That’s all from me, or you get some sort of accolade. You get an actual award or some kind of recognition. That all comes from God.
And it’s easy to think that this is based on my efforts. This is based on my focus, my attention, my intention. This is because I’m doing this right or this right, or whatever, and this is happening or things are going off the rails because I’m not doing it right or whatever, and I’ve lost my focus. But actually, it all comes from God. So, if that resonates or not, that’s what I was inspired to share with you.
I really believe that. I really believe that. It’s like the thing about you tapping into the creator. And I think that’s a worthy cause. So love it.
If it’s not separate from, you’re not separate from the creator; the creator is not separate from you. Like every cell in your body, every synapse, every connection between the atoms, all the space in between, it’s all God. It’s all infinite consciousness, infinite intelligence. You’re capable of so much more than you could possibly imagine. We all are.
Yeah, I believe that. Love it.
Awesome. So how does our listener or viewer learn more from you, follow you, subscribe to your podcast, your YouTube channel, all that? Where should we send them?
Sure. So number one is the podcast, Coming First. It’s not as active as your podcast. I record every once in a while when I meet someone very interesting. You should definitely come on the show as well. Like, you should come on my show. But yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn and on Instagram. I’m most active on Instagram there. It’s Sagi Shrieber, and on LinkedIn. It’s just my name. Obviously, I can find myself there and send me a message. Tell me what you got from this podcast. I’ll share a gift with you. I’ll share how I created a vision and how I walk others through creating one; nothing to sell there.
I don’t have a mastermind or anything like that. I have my businesses, but I’ll send it to you. It’s a Google doc. Put together, like with a few videos I created, to give it away. Other people can build. Their vision includes the spreadsheet template of my vision and everything like that. And if you want, you can also ask me for a meditation. I’ll send you the PDF of my meditation that I call Genesis. It really helped me to know it’s a 10-minute meditation. It’s really effective.
Awesome. Well, thank you. That’s very generous of you. Sagi, you’re a light in the world. Thank you for joining us on this show, and yeah, best of luck with everything that you’re doing. You’re really onto something big there.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
All right. And thank you, listener. You’re onto something big, too. Go out there and make the world a better place. We’ll catch you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.
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