E194 - Lessons from Cindy Van Eeckhout: Are You Rich on Paper but Poor Inside?

Rob Tracz: The second takeaway I wanna give you guys is you either win or you learn, but you never lose. What's going on and welcome back to another Friday recap of surviving the side hustle. Wanna kick it off as I usually do by asking you something. you have the courage to shut down a successful business?

Not a failing one, but a thriving one. At absolute peak. This is the part of the conversation that reframed how I think about challenge. And it's coming from someone who's been through 20 plus years of building and pivoting businesses.

I asked Cindy, what separates the entrepreneurs who collapse under pressure from the ones who pivot and actually succeed? And her answer was one word: mindset. Specifically, a growth mindset. The ability when a challenge arrives unannounced and uncomfortable to ask a different question than everybody else.

Because even though it looked perfect on the outside, it had stopped feeling right on the inside. most entrepreneurs never do it. We're wired to protect what's working, to ride the wave as long as it lasts, to chase the next number. But the being rich ⁓ on your account and poor on the inside is one of the most common and most quietly painful traps high achievers fall into.

And almost nobody's about it. us asks, not why is this happening to me, but what is the lesson here and how do I grow from it? And then she said the line that really stopped me. You either win or you learn.

You never lose. This week's guest walked away from two successful companies at their peak to chase something most of us forget to even measure. what she's learned about it is going to make you rethink what success even means. Think about what that does.

It removes the entire category of failure from your life. Every outcome is either a win you celebrate or a lesson you grow from. There's no third option. There's no losing.

But here's the part that it made it real for me because Cindy was honest about it. She said the moment, the challenge never feels good. So this week on the show, I sat down with Van Eckhout, calling from south of France. Cindy is an entrepreneur, a coach, and a former corporate sales leader who's lived the boldest reinvention stories I've had on the show.

She spent eight climbing the corporate ladder in Belgium. Good paychecks, good mentors, good people. She even met her husband there. But at a certain point, she and her husband both started to feel something.

Not a crazy You don't say thank you while you're in it. The gratitude comes later, after you've been through it once and then again. And you start to see the dots connect backwards. And eventually it becomes a game.

You start to anticipate the lesson, you start to look for the pain point and ask, where can I get better here? And the challenge stops being a threat and starts being the universe playing with you. This is everything for the entrepreneurs listening right now who are in the middle of the Crisis, not a conflict, just a quiet sense that things were getting misaligned. That success looked great ⁓ paper but didn't feel fully rich on the inside.

⁓ So they did something wild. They quit one day to the next, got in the car, drove down to the south of France with no home and no bulletproof plan. Just name Allegra. The Spanish for joy.

Three days later, found their dream house. Five months later, they opened their first business. And over the next 20 plus years, they built four companies: a boutique ⁓ BB, art brand, ⁓ real estate company, and Of something hard, a slow season, a pivot that isn't working yet, a launch that flopped, or a client that left. In the moment, it feels like losing.

It feels like proof that you're doing it wrong. But Cindy's whole point is that the biggest wins of her career weren't the wins, they were the learnings. The challenges taught her things that victories never could have. And if you can hold on to that, even while And then at the peak they shut down two of them because success without alignment and Cindy realized isn't sustainable.

Is uncomfortable, even before the gratitude arrives, you stop being someone who gets crushed by pressure and start being someone who grows from it. And this is literally the foundation of my entire prime performance process, which is built on resilience. I talk about all the time about how growth is born out of challenge, not celebration. Cindy said it from her own lived experience in her own words, and it's the exact same truth.

The discomfort isn't Today, she helps high-achieving women turn financial success into what she calls true wealth, a life that feels good as much as it looks. episode is all about alignment, joy, and what sustainable success actually means. So and check it out again if you haven't listened to the full guest interview. And this when you listen through it, listen through this lens.

The obstacle to your growth. The discomfort is the growth. Comfortable doesn't build anything. And this connects to something I unpacked in my recent TED X talk Are We Optimizing Ourselves into Burnout?

I shared with Cindy that for me, burnout was a byproduct of when speed outpaces direction. When I was grinding alone with no clarity, I was on a fast track to crashing into the wall. The growth mindset she's describing is part of how. Because Cindy made a distinction in the conversation that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

said being rich ⁓ being wealthy are two completely different things. Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having a life that you actually love. And the trap that she sees over and over with high-achieving people is those who are rich on the bank account and poor on the inside.

People who chase a definition of success, usually one handed to them by someone else, the way to the top, only to arrive and realize that the thing that they were climbing toward doesn't actually feel like anything. How you keep the speed in the direction that is aligned. So the challenge, they grow you instead of breaking you. And finally, lesson number three for you guys is: joy isn't the finish line, it's the road.

This last one is the soul of the entire episode. And I know this one personally because for years I chased a version of success in my fitness coaching business that somebody else had bestowed upon me. I hit the milestones because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. it wasn't until I stopped and actually defined what success meant to me ⁓ I could finally make decisions that led somewhere I wanted to go.

And it might be the most important reframe that Cindy offered. She said most high achievers are chasing joy as if it's a destination, and if it's the thing waiting at the end after the next milestone, the next exit, the next level. Once I get there, then I'll feel it. And so they defer it and defer it and defer it.

And eventually they wake up rich and empty, wondering why the feeling never came. But Cindy made a distinction that changes everything. She separated This whole episode about the difference between a success that looks good and a success that actually feels good. And to build the second one on purpose.

So the main takeaway, or the first takeaway, I should say, is the feeling comes first, and ⁓ body always telling the truth. Cindy says something that runs counter to how most of us operate, ⁓ and I it's the foundation of the entire episode. Everything she said starts with a feeling. Happiness from joy.

Happiness, she said, is a way of feeling. It's an emotional reaction to an external event. It's moment-driven and it comes and goes. But joy, joy is a way of being, it's a renewable source of vitality that comes from within, from alignment and presence.

And here's the line that reframes it all. before the burnout, before the crisis, before anything goes visibly wrong, there's a quiet feeling that something is misaligned. And if you're honest with yourself, you can feel it. The success looks great on the outside, but on the inside, there's no wow.

That's the first signal. That's the smoke before the fire. The problem is most of us are experts at feeling it. We're the signal out and Sydney named the tools we use Netflix, binge eating, doom scrolling, partying.

because those things are evil, but because we use them to stay ⁓ ⁓ ourselves. To the quiet long enough that we never have to hear what it's really trying to tell us. And here's truth. Your body is the smartest feedback system you own.

It's always telling you when you're misaligned. Joy is not a goal. It's not something that you achieve at the end. It's something you create along the way.

If you enjoy the journey, you have joy the entire time. It was never waiting at the finish line. It was available on the road the whole way there. And Cindy gave a gave us a diagnostics for knowing when joy has gone missing.

The only question is whether you're willing to get quiet enough to actually listen. And her prescription for hearing a beautifully simple one. Go into nature. Do something completely disconnected from your work.

Take a walk and don't go into your head. Watch the birds, ⁓ water, the sky. And by little you drop of your racing mind and back your heart where the actual answers live. She calls them the four joy four joy blockers, and every one of them traces back to misalignment, mental overload, the endless to-do lists and loss of clarity that led to overwhelm.

Emotional suppression, minimizing your feelings to stay productive until it leads to burnout. Physical depletion, skipping the rest and ignoring the body's signals until you hit exhaustion. And spiritual misalignment, when your daily actions stop matching your values and your deep. This hits home for me because it's almost exactly what saved me.

I was trying to figure out the pivot out of fitness, ⁓ thing that opened up the space to get creative was walking outside with no headphones, just silence, sunlight, and the air. People guess nowadays call it silent cardio. And supposedly a trend. ⁓ But for me, was survival.

The quiet was the place I could actually hear what I wanted. And here's what I want to sit down with. She said She said it's simplest like this. If you don't wake up with a smile to go to work, then there's a good chance one or more of those four is present in your life.

And it doesn't mean something's fatally like wrong with you. It just means you're misaligned. And alignment can be rebuilt. Here's what I want you to really hear, especially if you're a high performer, grinding towards some far off version of success.

If the plan is to suffer now and collect the joy later, the joy isn't coming. If you've been feeling low-grade sense of something being off, though everything looks fine on paper, that is not That feeling is And no amount of streaming, or staying busy is going to answer it. The answer only comes in quiet. So this week take a walk, the headphones.

⁓ Don't go into your head. ⁓ listen to what you already It's not how it works. You don't learn joy at the end like a prize. You build a life where joy is present in the building itself.

That doesn't mean every day is gonna be easy. It means your work, your effort, your journey is aligned enough with who you actually are that you can feel something good while you're in it, not just when you finally arrive. This one here really connects with my principle around optimization. And this is the absolute heart of my principle around energy and intentionality.

The whole framework behind it is much bigger. the idea is that your internal state is a gauge ⁓ on dashboard. And most entrepreneurs have to learn to ignore the warning lights until the engine seizes up. The signal there to annoy you, it's there to guide you.

⁓ The skill learning to read it before it breaks ⁓ down. The framework at its really core is the idea that the pace and the path have to be sustainable. And sustainability isn't just about not burning out. It's about building a life you'd actually want to live every day along the way.

Not just some imaginary summit. If the journey is miserable, you've already lost, no matter what's waiting at the top. Remember, joy isn't the reward at the end of the climb. It's something you create the way up, or you never get it at all.

Your body's always telling you the truth about your life is aligned and misalignment shows up ⁓ as feeling long before it shows up as a crisis. The walk nature with no headphones isn't soft. It's the most diagnostic tool you have. If your whole plan is suffer now, feel good later, the feeling good part never actually arrives.

Build the joy into the journey, or there won't be any for you. And to kind of wrap things up for you guys, the big thing, the biggest thing I should say that I want you to walk away from this episode is that there's a difference between being rich and being wealthy. Rich is in the bank account. Wealthy is a life you actually love.

The tragedy Cindy spends her life helping people escape is the one where you build the entire mountain of someone else's definition of success, reach the top and realize you feel nothing. Because you never stop to ask whether your the climb was aligned with who you actually are. You never listen to to the feeling that was trying to warn you. You treated every challenge as a loss instead of a lesson, and you defer your joy to a finish line that you never delivered it.

The way out isn't grinding harder, it's to get quiet enough to feel what's misaligned. Brave enough to learn from the hard lessons instead of being crushed by them, and wise enough to build joy into the journey instead of the postponing it to the end. Success looks that looks good is common, but success that feels good. That's rare and worthy of living.

And it's available to you the moment you start measuring the right thing. If this conversation resonated and especially if you're a high achieving woman who has the title, the money, and everything that's supposed to add up to happy, but couldn't. Quietly feels empty, Cindy is exactly the person you'd want in your corner. Her website is allegracoaching.

eu. That's Allegra, the word for joy with one L. A L E G R I A C O A C H I N G dot E U. She's got a free Joy of Life assessment there too, a two-minute quiz that gives you a personalized report on what's driving your overwhelm and how to get more joy and energy back.

And you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. And keep an eye out for upcoming podcasts and books. Both built around living a life that feels as good as it looks. So, Cindy, if you're checking in and listening to this recap episode, thank you again for coming on and for the joy that you radiate.

It certainly was genuinely an incredible gift. So I'm gonna leave you with one piece of advice Cindy gave at the very end. When I asked her what she'd tell someone building a side hustle who feels successful on paper but empty on the inside, she said, start with one question. What is one thing that will bring me joy?

Then take one step towards it. Don't blow up your whole life in two giant leaps like she did. Smaller steps are okay, but make sure there's commitment and make sure there's consistency. And she quoted Denzel Washington, who said it perfectly.

Without commitment, you'll never start. But without consistency, you'll never finish. Don't have to drive to the south of France with no plan to change your life. You just have to ask what brings you joy.

Take one honest step and then take that step again tomorrow and the day after. The bold leap makes for a great story, but the small, consistent step is what actually builds the aligned life. Start with one, then keep going. I'll catch you guys next Tuesday with the next guest interview.

And until then, stay sharp, stay aligned, and keep surviving the side hustle.