Founder of Sevenly & Best-Selling Author Dale Partridge on 5 Steps to an Insanely Productive Morning

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, we’re interviewing serial entrepreneur Dale Partridge deals most widely known as being the founder of a half dozen multimillion-dollar businesses, including most notably seven, the company that became famous for donating $7 per purchase, and it’s seven day campaigns and seven percent for its cars themed collections to selected non profits. In 2014, Dale and his wife decided to sell the majority of their stock and their businesses to simplify their life. Dale and Veronica, his wife, and their three children left Orange County, California to raise their family on a small farm that looks out over glacier top mountains in Oregon. Dale is the bestselling author of safe from success, how God can free you from cultures, distortion of family work, and the good life. He’s also the best selling author of people over profit. Break the system, live with purpose, and he’s also the best selling author of be more successful.

Launch your dream a 30 day plan for turning your passion into your professional dylan, his wife, Veronica also hosts the ultimate marriage podcast. Throughout his career, he’s been featured on MSNBC, Tedx bend for Good Morning America. Fox News, NBC Eeg, Mashable, The Los Angeles Times, Entrepreneur magazine, and other leading media outlets, including the thrive time show. And now without further ado, it’s time to interview the man who puts his family and faith first, while still achieving as entrepreneurial dreams. Dale Partridge some shows don’t need a celebrity and a writer to introduce the show. This show to may eight kids, Koch, created by two different women, 13 mode time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time show. Yes, it is always ecstasy when z is next to me. Doctors,

each day we have a guest who’s kind of a big deal, kind of a big deal. He is a big deal, big deal with the founder of sevenly and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author Dale Partridge here to share with us about the five steps to an insanely productive morning. Why college might just be a scam for the vast majority of students and why? What he means when he says people over profit. Can we get it all in? We’ll see dale hall come onto the show, sir. Hey Dale Partridge you are a man who has achieved a lot of success, but I would venture to say that many of our listeners may be, don’t know your background. Could you share about your background kind of after you’re a promising baseball career wrapped up and in how you became the entrepreneur that you are today?

Yeah, so I never grew up thinking that I was going to be an entrepreneur. It was really getting fired from a 15 or 16 jobs that made me realize that I was unemployable.

That took a bit of time.

But, um, you know, I started my first company, uh, you know, it was a fitness company and then sold that company at 21 and started a, a rock climbing gym after that and it started to advertise an agency and was kind of a serial entrepreneur trying to figure out where I sat inside of the Niche of entrepreneurship. And it wasn’t until about 10 years in that I started the company, um, I guess I wasn’t 10 years ago, maybe seven years. And then I started a company in 2011 called sevenly and suddenly was a company. We raised money for charities and we sold products and every time we sold a product we get $7 to a charity. We raised about four and a half million dollars in $7 donation. There was a pretty incredible time. We went about zero to 50 employees and about 7 million in revenue and about a two and a half, three years. And it was a great experience. I’m on the business side. We made the cover of Entrepreneur magazine, did got a chance to open up as a keynote speaker for Mark Zuckerberg at the 10th anniversary for

wow.

Really crazy stuff. Um, you know what’s interesting though, the wall, everything from the outside look great on the inside. Everything was crumbling. And so my marriage was falling apart. Um, my relationship with my kids was falling apart. I was stressed, anxious, insomniac. Uh, you know, my, my face had dwindled. Like everything was kind of falling apart. And so it was, it was a pretty unique space and it doesn’t diminish what we did because what we did, we had a, a unique philosophy. I wrote a book on it called people over profit and it was the idea that if you value people more than profit, you’ll be more profitable. It doesn’t mean that you value people and don’t value profit, it just means that you value that more. And so, um, that book I think still has a fantastic business theory in there. And I still follow that theory today.

However, I definitely compromised my family and my health and my marriage and all these things that I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. I actually wrote a book about that that just came out earlier this year called saved from success. And that idea was, hey, you know, let me evaluate if my definition of success is actually going to lead me down to a life of a struggle and strife and, and sad relationships, divorce and, and, you know. And so, uh, I really turned that thing around after we sold that company was acquired and moved on to starting to a little bit of a healthier business structure. We moved up from southern California to Oregon. I now live on a farm, um, and it’s, uh, I, I, you know, have a beautiful view of the mountains and now my wife and I are actually, uh, you know, in marriage business, like we actually help create content to help people’s marriages and we actually really connect well with entrepreneurs because we get it. We understand what it’s like to work for yourself and how that can affect your marriage and family. So that’s what we do now. Yeah, we helped, we helped marriages get stronger. We have a podcast called ultimate marriage that has about 80,000 monthly listeners on it. And uh, it’s, it’s a blast. And so my life is totally different. I’m very much entrepreneur at heart just shifted my focus a bit to really make sure that I rescued my family and prioritize them above just making money

on your website or or somebody close to you wrote our world, makes it easy to forget. Obvious truths many of many of us have become comfortable with things we shouldn’t be comfortable with. I believe God has called me to humbly and lovingly remind people of his positions regardless of how uncomfortable or unpopular they may be. Could you share with us a few uncomfortable truths that you and your wife talk about, um, on your, on your podcast together or maybe that you’ve written about in your book saved from success?

Yeah, I mean, there’s just so many things that we do that has been kind of subscribe to the American dream, you know, that really have nothing to do with tradition or history. We’re kind of trying to go away from the old path and create new paths to success or to God or come morality and it’s not working. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a suicide rates are up. No progression rates are up, anxiety rates are up. I mean, we are absolutely crumbling as a society in every metric that you want to measure. And so I look at these things and I go, okay, like so singleness, people are not getting married, are people happier and more joyful. And the reality, the statistical reality is no, they’re not. Um, people are having less kids, you know, is this actually making people happier? I, no, it’s not.

Um, you know, we, we’re were utter freedom. I’m talking freedom is a straight up religion today, especially for the entrepreneur, right? It’s like I want utter and complete freedom. I’m going to make so much money that nobody can tell me anything what to do. And you think about that and you go like, is that helping people like being so completely disconnected from people you are 10 feet wide and one inch deep with everybody. Um, and that’s, that’s what happens. The more money you make, the wider you go and the, and you get way less depth. And so, um, I started questioning all these things and going, you know, what? Like, um, it seems to be that the people that are the happiest and the most joyful and most fruitful in terms of just having evidence of their life that it’s good happened to be the ones that were married and had had, you know, actually a lot of kids, not just like one or two, but a lot of kids and

he was just talking with the perpetual happiness to people who are experiencing while creating these. Back to you. Sorry, sorry.

Yeah, guys, what I’m seeing is this, is that there’s a different type of success with the guy or girl, but I’m going to use the guy example for now because I’m a guy with a guy who, um, he’s got a multimillion-dollar business, but he’s on his third wife and his kids. He’s got the whole world and lost his soul in every sense of the word. Um, there’s a difference between that guy and the guy who has a multimillion dollar business, a 25 years thriving marriage. His wife is cherished and loved his kids, respected. He’s got a good reputation. His financial houses in order. You’ve got a debt. Like there’s just another level of maturity there that’s rare and I’m, I’m finding those guys here and there and they’re just, they’re incredible and they do everything backwards. It’s very counterintuitive. And um, and so that that’s been my study lately is pushing against what I thought was success and trying to reevaluate what is actually success and I think it’s kind of opposite than, uh, than what we, what we think is popular here today.

Deal. I want to dive into some more uncomfortable truths real quick here. And again, if you don’t like this first question, you can just quickly point we can move on. But my understanding is that there is an uncomfortable truth and I saw this on a podcast with you and your wife did together I believe. And again, I watched so many, I eventually blacked out Z I’ve mentioned, but I believe that it was stated that you before marrying your wife, you dated her sister. Is this an uncomfortable truth?

This is not uncomfortable and as absolutely fact,

that’s awesome. Okay, so please can’t do the switch. Please explain the recovery move there. Do you guys ever seen her? Now? I mean, how did you do that? What do you think’s for the episode? You kids? Uncomfortable, uncomfortable truth.

I was 17 or 18 when I started dating her sister and Veronica at the time was, you know, 14 years old, she was the little sister, you know, and I, you know, she was in the background and I did it her sister for about six months and then we broke up and kind of split ways and I didn’t talk to her or her family for about five years. And then all of a sudden I bump into Veronica, my wife now, uh, you know, uh, we had, uh, a company, corporate party at a restaurant and at this restaurant she was there. And uh, we’re sitting there and I’d go up to her and I’m like, I was 23 at the time or something like that. And I go, Hey, oh my gosh, look, you’re old and hot now. And then she, uh, she laughed and it was probably really uncomfortable. And I said, Hey, I own a rock climbing gym. You should come rock climb. And so we invited a rock. Took me about six months of pestering her to even get her to go on a date with me and I told her that I was going to marry her before we even got on a first date. And so that again, that’s the entrepreneurial vision. Right? So it’s

exactly, it was. It was pathetic. But. So she, uh, she laughed at that, but um, how long did been parents take her over there and they. Okay. Are they okay with it? They moved on as a too soon in their mind still, or how are we doing?

They weren’t okay with it until the day after we were married.

It twists the fork there. Now we move onto college, College. We went on to college. Uncomfortable truths. Let you, I’ll let you interrogate, interrogate a deal about college as well. But there’s a youtube video that he produced called four brilliant reasons to not go to college. And in that you explained that to us, the student debt bubble is equal to that of the mortgage and consumer debt combined. Am I correct or it’s more than that, right?

More than that.

You explained that a lot of people are going to college, they’re getting a degree and then they’re going back to live with their parents again and you brought all sorts of statistical evidence that shows that 50 percent of millennials who have a degree, so they would’ve been better off to not go to college and just get a job. Uh, you, you’ve showed data that shows 85 percent of college graduates now return home jobless six months after graduating dale. Why are people so caught up in this idea that every single human needs to go to college? He was the uncomfortable truth.

I’ve been an employer for 15 years. I’ve probably hired over a hundred, hundred and 50 people. You know, the thing that I cared about is where they went to school. I don’t care about that. I’m now that I’m in the business world. If I was a scientist or an engineer, I’m sure there’s some, there’s some validity and making those decisions. But I go, I want to see how experienced you are. I want to see your portfolio and I want to see your personality. I’m like, probably the, the number one characteristic is, is your experience. Like I would much rather hire the dude that had jumped out of high school and has four or five years of experience in the industry that I’m in. Then the guy that has the degree, uh, that, that has zero experience, you know, I remember as an entrepreneur, uh, I had some venture capitalists that would’ve worked with me often.

And um, I, I was so against college at that time that I would say like, like, man, I don’t even want to hire anybody that went to college. And he actually said to me, he says, you know, the reason you hire people that go to college is not because they went to college. It’s just proof that you’re not firing an entrepreneur. It’s proof because entrepreneurs generally can’t finish college. It’s proof that you have a guy or girl that you can keep and they’re not gonna leave you and go start their own. I thought that was an interesting perspective and it’s not always true, but, but it’s an interesting perspective to say the least. Um, you know, I just, you know, I’m 30, almost 34 here and I’m sitting here and I have a lot of friends that have graduated and they’re still paying off debt. My wife and I, we have a paid off mortgage, will be paid off mortgage, we own some rental properties. We’re at a good spot financially and you know, it’s because we didn’t start off our life with $240,000 in college debt. Um, and you know, that’s high for certain schools, but the reality is, is that it’s not a great way to start life out is with a, with a mortgage and no house is what’s really going on.

Come on Bro. Now we’ve got about 90 seconds left. So I’m gonna go round the fire with a few quick questions in [inaudible] going to hit you with the, with the big question. Okay, here we go. You said that time is your most important asset. Time is our most important asset. What do you mean by that?

Money comes and goes. Time just goes.

You also said productivity tip, reward yourself with food. Reward yourself with food. What do you mean by that?

Like in the morning I’m still hungry and I just go, okay, I gotta get my task done before I eat, and so it’s the hardest, the hardest thing and the first thing, boom. And I just go and sit in there. I’ll start shaking sometimes like, oh, I gotta eat and it’s just, it’s a, it’s a fantastic motivator.

Okay. Talk to me about why you plan. You do. Did you do 10 minutes of critical preparation before bed?

Oh yeah. So every night you know, the tomorrow starts tonight is what I tell people and so I spend 10 minutes of just preparing my day every night before I go to bed on a three by five cards. I’ll tell you what, people I have made more successful decisions, activity businesses, profitability from just working off of a three by five card at night. It’s probably the most fruitful thing I’ve ever done.

First of all, how many times have you been teased about your last name on the 12 days of Christmas songs?

No, every year from kindergarten until high school. Every time it would turn around and go,

well, it makes you memorable, I’ll promise you that. And do you know which day is the first day of Christmas? Because I looked, I googled it, I googled that thing before we go.

Wait, wait, say that again.

Do you know which day in the season is the first day of Christmas?

I have no idea.

It’s actually Christmas Day itself. So it goes from the Christmas date of January. The fifth is the season.

Okay.

Now the serious one. So you counsel you advise you love on, you help a lot of entrepreneurs in their marriages. What is the number one problem you see and what’s your fix for it?

Prioritization for sure. Um, you know, a quote that I say it comes from a faith perspective is that God’s calling your life will never compromise your family. And so I hear a lot of guys would say, like my calling, this is my calling, you know, and they go, well, you’re calling doesn’t compromise. It’s not going to compromise the things that are most critical and important to you. It’s good work. And so, um, prior prioritization is the big thing, um, and what to a woman, it comes in the form of, of passivity, you know, so a woman who just thinks that her husband’s just completely passive and other things that she cares about because he’s so enamored with the things that he cares about. And so, um, that, that’s generally just the, uh, you know, I asked her, I was like, do you love your wife? And they go, oh yeah, of course, you know, and again, you know, the life you’re living, the calendar that you have, the prioritization and structure that you have pretty much makes her believe that you hate her. And um, and that’s how women view these things. When, when, when you spend 80 hours a week with your career and she gets to kind of, you know, the best of your life goes to your work and the rest of your life goes to her. Yeah.

Dale Partridge, the listeners out there, uh, we have, we have, we have, we just interviewed John Maxwell last week. Uh, we had the pastor of new life church just on the show. We have a lot of Christian listeners who love the show, pastor Brady Boyd just had him on. For all the listeners out there, whether they’re Christians or not, uh, I know a lot of people are going to want to know more about you. Learn more about your podcast, my friend. You have the floor. What’s the best, what’s the action item you’d like for all of our listeners to take today?

Ultimate marriage.com is kind of our main thing. We have a fantastic podcast that we rolled out every Wednesday. Um, instagram is kind of my jam at Dale Partridge. I right there, uh, you know, a few times per week and, and that seems to be kind of the centerpiece of my platform right now. So yeah, we’d love to have you over there.

Ultimate marriage.com. Check out the website, Dale Partridge. I appreciate you being a great inspiration for how to do faith, family and finances. You know what I mean? You’re doing well with the family, with the faith. Are you perfect? No, but I appreciate you pointing people in the right direction and for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today and we’d like to end every show with the boom z because boom, around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. If it’s okay, could you bring us a boom from the mountain view? Dale Dale.

Oh, are you there?

Here we go. Z. Are you ready for the bill and we’re ready. Three, two, one. Boom. Awesome. Give us, give us. He doesn’t want to give us a boom. He’s withholding the dope.

Sorry, you cut out one more time.

Give us right. Thrive nation. I’m not sure who out there. I’m not sure if it’s you or somebody else who feels like you don’t have what it takes to be successful, but I’d like to get into a brief argument with you. I’ve interviewed great entrepreneurs like Dale Partridge. We’ve interviewed a great entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, very successful people. Horst Schulze, the guy who founded a Ritz Carlton is going to be on the show here soon. I’m Lee Cockerell, who started who he was, the executive vice president who used to manage Walt Disney world resorts and 40,000 employees. Lee Cockerell doesn’t have a degree. He does not have a degree. Michael Levine and the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for prints for a Michael Jackson for just huge, huge, iconic people, doesn’t have a degree and he’s dyslexic. I could go on and on listing examples from real entrepreneurs out there who have had massive success that defied the odds, but what you have to do today is you have to be a doer of the word and not just a hearer of the word.

You have to be an action taker. You have to be somebody who implements what you’re learning because Thomas Edison, if he were here today, he’d be weird because he’s dead, but he said, he said, vision without execution is what thrive nation vision without execution is hallucination. Vision without execution is hallucination, so don’t hallucinate. Take the time today to begin to take the action. Go to thrive time show.com today. Do it right now while you’re still motivated, excited, ready to go. If you’re looking for time freedom and financial freedom and life balance, go to thrive time, show.com and book your tickets for the next in person, thrive time show workshop. It’s going to be a game changing event. It’s going, I, I promise you it’s going to impact your life and you are going to love it, but you shouldn’t take my word for it and that’s why we’ve interviewed some people who’ve actually attended the workshop so they could be real life case studies and so that they could share with you what their experience at the thrive time show workshop was actually like

Carlos Blount and I am from Anaheim, California. Originally heard about it through Robert Redmond, which is my business coach. And he offered it to me for free and one of our sessions on TCP commercial contractors. I was just looking to learn better systems and better ways to structure my company to support growth was very exciting. A very energetic, uh, motivating and inspiring people. A lot of place, good place to network plays. Very funny. A lot of jokes constantly laughing and making good points. And set an example. One of the most valuable things is, is this not beating around the Bush about getting rid of people, have the need to get out of the company, people that’s costing you money. A lot of people are outfitter selfish ambitions and you don’t want those type of people ruined your dream. My favorite aspect of the, the workshop is that the notes in the book and everything set up to where if you do miss something and there’s always a backup way to get to, well, they are missing out on all of the stuff that they think they know, but they don’t know. Um, and uh, just having the atmosphere in the circle of people around you that’s gonna influence you to help you and teach you the systems that you’re going to need you to know that to get yourself to the next level.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but we have over 530 538 google reviews as of the time of this recording. We’ve got over a thousand reviews on itunes and we have over 900, I think at 980 now, or no desire that 960 over 960 video reviews over 960 video reviews. As of today, you can go watch 960 people out there just like you on Youtube who would tell you with great passion and enthusiasm that you are missing out if you do not book your tickets to the in person workshop. Book your tickets. I’ll be there. Oh No. Oh, go. If you don’t go, okay, fine. You can go and then all hide, but the point is, I’m going to be there. You’re going to be there. Let’s get together. Let’s grow a business. Let’s create time freedom. Let’s create financial freedom. So to quote the Great Forest Gump, when asked for us to come, what are you going to do now that you’re a millionaire?

Forrest gump once said, well, it’s just one less thing to think about. Think about that. Once you have one bus thing to think about because you have financial freedom and time freedom, you are going to be able to focus on other things like skiing. Oh, becoming the best skier possible. Taking Guitar lessons, having marital sex. Yes, you could have marital sex all day because your business will run without you and while you’re getting horizontal and you’re getting parallel and you’re doing what you have to do in the context of holy sanctimonious marriage, you could be making copious amounts of cash and children. Think about that. Thrive nation. You could do both things simultaneously, making them and making them love. Oh, could be happening right now, but it can’t happen unless you build the systems, the processes that you got to implement. You’ve got to do it. I’ll calm down three, two, one, and now I will do an impersonation of your wallet.

I’m hungry.

Wow. That sounds just like a wallet.

Tiny debate. Great currency. Cash. Come on, man.

Wow. You’re really good at impersonations. Maybe on their next show you can impersonate a block of wood

getting scattered.

Wow. You are really good at impersonations. Could you personate somebody who’s and like Delaware or Texas?

Hi. I mean Delaware partners. Let’s raise from good.