Rise From The Ashes
"Burnout to Brilliance: Great CEOs, No Burnout"
Leadership is tough. Burnout makes it tougher.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rise From The Ashes is the ultimate podcast for visionary CEOs and executives who refuse to let burnout rob them of their brilliance, legacy, and impact.
Hosted by Baz Porter, this show isn’t just about surviving leadership it’s about transforming it. Each week, we delve deep into the art and science of thriving at the top, combining actionable strategies, spiritual alignment, and raw truths that reignite your purpose and optimize your energy.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Bold Frameworks: Learn the exact steps to conquer decision fatigue, streamline your mental energy, and reclaim control of your leadership.
- Spiritual Awakenings: Explore the intersection of purpose, alignment, and success to lead with clarity and connection.
- Transformational Insights: Hear unfiltered stories and practical wisdom from world-class leaders who’ve turned their burnout into brilliance.
This isn’t just a podcast it’s a revolution for leaders ready to rise, inspire, and leave a legacy that outlasts them.
Rise From The Ashes
The DNA of Leadership With Len May (Part 1)
In this transformative episode, we sit down with Len May, the visionary CEO of EndoDNA, to explore the groundbreaking intersection of genetics, stress management, and executive performance. High-stakes roles often lead to burnout, but Len reveals how understanding your genetic predispositions can be a compass for tailored lifestyle choices that empower resilience, balance, and leadership clarity.
Dive into how your DNA can guide optimal decisions on diet, supplements, and environmental factors to reduce stress reactivity and enhance mental and physical well-being. Drawing connections to Dr. John Sarno’s groundbreaking theories on stress-induced inflammation, we explore the mind-body connection and its surprising links to chronic issues like back pain. Len and our host share actionable strategies like mindfulness and exercise that empower high-performing leaders to overcome physical and emotional challenges.
The episode also takes a personal turn, illustrating how moments of burnout can serve as pivotal opportunities for growth and transformation. Through Len’s insights, discover how confronting fear and aligning with a greater purpose can lead to sustained flow, fulfillment, and legacy-driven leadership.
This is more than a podcast episode it’s your blueprint for leveraging science and self-awareness to become the leader you were destined to be. Tune in to revolutionize how you lead and live. Don’t forget to share this episode with others striving for high-impact leadership, and subscribe to keep growing with us!
Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/
Friends, as our time together comes to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude. Thank you for joining me on this bold journey of self-discovery and leadership. My mission is to help you rise from burnout to brilliance, because Great CEOs deserve No Burnout.
If this episode struck a chord with you, please share it with someone who could use its message. Together, we can spark a revolution in leadership, one conversation at a time.
I’d love to hear from you whether it’s your biggest aspirations, your toughest challenges, or the lessons you’re uncovering. My door is always open, physically in Boulder or digitally at www.ramsbybaz.com.
Ready to take things deeper?
If you’re tired of confusion and craving clarity on your path to purpose, let’s work together.
Visit my site and schedule a coaching session to discover how the RAMS framework transforms results, breaks limits, and builds legacies.
This is Baz Porter, signing off with immense gratitude. Stay bold, stay true, and remember you always have a partner in your corner who knows the weight you carry and the greatness you’re capable of.
Until next time, keep rising.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Rise from the Ashes. Yes, it's season five and I'm so excited to hear and introduce my next guest. We've had him before, but I was so thrilled to interview him. He's a phenomenal inspiration. His name is Len May and he lives in California. He is intelligent, sexy, charismatic and, without further ado, len, please introduce yourself. What do you do? And we'll go drive straight into this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it, brother. I'll take the sexy I think it's the hair cut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can tell yeah.
Speaker 2:So what I do is? I am the CEO and co-founder of a company called EndoDNA and what we do is genetic testing analysis focusing on precision, health and wellness. And I'm a big believer that everything starts with your genetics, and the reason why genetics are really important is because it gives you your life's GPS. It shows you where your personal potholes are in your own road, so you can actually take action and be more of a control of your lifestyle to mitigate the expression that you're genetically predisposed to. People always talked about your genes. It's in your genes. Oh, it's in my genes. That's not really true, because a lot of your genes maybe 20 to 30% yeah, they're pretty much locked in their hair color, eye color, skin color, et cetera, but most of the rest of our genes we have the power to be able to control the expression. So turn those things on and off based on lifestyle choices, and lifestyle choices can include food that we intake, what supplements we consume, our own neurochemistry and our exposure to things like heavy metals, pesticides, etc.
Speaker 1:So if we know this about ourselves, we can take better care of our own health and wellness and really help ourselves to mitigate the expression of some of those adverse events, of some of those adverse events, and this is why I love what you do, and it's so complex, or it can be so complex, but actually it's so simple and it boils down to looking after yourself and not going into burnout, where a lot of these transformations and elevations in lives actually start. In your opinion, len, why do you think most CEOs, many CEOs, get burnt out, and what does it do to the leadership structures in not just their business but in their personal lives? Because there's.
Speaker 2:First of all, there's genetic predisposition. Some people have predisposition to stress reactivity, some people are predisposed to depressive states, etc. And if you're ignoring those things that you may be predisposed to, you're triggering and then you're actually trying to mask that. So you're turning to substances, you're turning to other things that may be detrimental to your health and eventually you just walk off the cliff and there's nothing you can do about that, without knowing that. The other thing is societal expectations about work-life balance.
Speaker 2:If you're a high-level executive or you're an entrepreneur, there is no such thing as life-work balance.
Speaker 2:It is everything you do is there and the people around you that you choose, and I really believe that you choose the people around you.
Speaker 2:They're either in it with you or they're creating friction in your life, and that friction actually turns all those things on as well. So, being able to be comfortable with the stress, comfortable with the work, comfortable with putting in the 14 hours a day, maybe not having that interaction with the family the way you're supposed to, based on societal pressures this is the sort of seesaw dichotomy that you're always struggling with. I want to provide, I want to do this for a family, but really my driver is I want to change the world. You have big aspirations, big dreams and if you're an executive in a company, there's a tremendous amount of responsibility for you and you're also responsible for running a business and there's a lot of people that depend on you that are not just your family members, and I think that type of pressure, if you don't know how to work within the confines of what you're presented, that creates all kinds of different challenges that people burn out fairly quickly with that.
Speaker 1:And that's a great analogy there. This is coming from an expert in 20, 30 years in the field and has been through pretty much a lot of things and seen these things within very high developed people. If you're just joining us now and you're going, what the hell is this all about? This is all about burnout. It's called Rice and Meashes Burnout to Brilliance. And it's about your stories and it's about you, as guests and as listeners, contributing to our future.
Speaker 1:The movement in America and across the world isn't caused by one person. It's caused and created by collective people on the same page. Roast from the Ashes is about you and your stories. Len May is one such guest and he's becoming more and more a friend as the months go past as we interact, because of his contribution to humanity and what he does to help other people. Len, this question is about leadership and the emotional impacts in decision making. The burnout and the fatigue around health not just mental health, but physical health and biogenetics causes us to collapse and create devastation results within our lives. How do you see the factors of slightly leading into burnout to dramatic crashes within the industry that you're specifically in?
Speaker 2:I've gone through this myself and it all depends where you physically hold your stress and being self-aware of what are the indications that something is going to happen to you are the indications that something is going to happen to you? So for me personally, I had a different business than I do now, maybe less passionate about that at the time, still putting in a tremendous amount of work and there was a lot of stress. And I started feeling that stress and I went down to pick something out of the oven. I bent down, I stood up and I felt there was an electric shock going in my back, all the way down my leg, and I was laid out. I was in so much pain I couldn't figure this out and I was called a doctor. They're like, oh, take some pain medicine. And then they said all right, maybe we'll schedule for you for an epidural, which we're going to do an injection of my spine and block the pain. And I was in so much pain that I was like I'll do anything.
Speaker 2:And I was laying in bed and I was listening to Howard Stern at that time this was many years ago and there was a celebrity on the show and he was talking about his back pain and Howard said do you know, maybe it's stress-induced? And the guy said, no, I really have a bulging disc in my back. And the guy goes, yeah, but that doesn't necessarily you have that, that doesn't necessarily mean you have pain associated with it. Have you ever heard of Dr John Sarno? I was like, all right, let me write this name down. So I got the book and it was the first book I think was called Healing Back Pain, and then the second book is Mind-Body Connection or maybe the other way around. Dr Sarno, who's deceased now passed away. But one of the theories that he had is that a lot of the pain that we have, whether it's neck pain, whether it's migraines, whether it's back pain, it is induced by stress. And for me I'm a science-y person so I'm like, yeah, but what do you mean? How does that work? When you have stress, you're secreting cortisol. That cortisol can stay long in your bloodstream. It can actually lower your pH level, make you more acidic. Your own body has an overactive immune response to that which we know is cytokine. Basically, and depending on where you hold that stress, that's where you can get some inflammation. And when you have inflammation, you already have a bulging disc. The muscle gets inflamed and starts pushing on the disc where you have the nerve and that's where you experience pain.
Speaker 2:So I started thinking about it. It used to happen to me every once in a while I would go on vacation or holiday and I would be so stressed Even though I'm supposed to have an enjoyable time, I'd be so stressed to make sure everything goes okay. I had an ex-wife now, but she wanted everything perfect it was supposed to be. So I was putting so much pressure on myself, even outside of work, to make sure that we have an excellent experience. So I go, pick up the bag out of the car and I'm like, oh, my back again. And the first couple of days I'm laid out.
Speaker 2:So as I started realizing and started curing myself of that, I started feeling the symptoms. So, as you feel it, I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm not drinking enough water, I'm not supplementing myself enough, and there's a little twinge in my back. I feel it and I feel coming on. And now I have to disassociate myself and take action. And what action can I take? One of those is mindfulness. Let's me quiet my brain. Let me find some quiet time to be able to overcome all that stress, exercise, yoga, things of that nature going on my hike, going on my nature hike, supplementing myself, so being able to understand that something is coming so maybe I can get ahead of it before it actually trips and expresses itself.
Speaker 2:So I really think that understanding your own physiology is really important, understanding your own genetic predispositions, where we carry stress.
Speaker 2:And the most important thing, is the people around you. And for me, I've always found that if you have really good people around you that are there to support you and vibrate at your own frequency, it's a much easier path. And when you have that friction of people, either it's a spouse, either it's your employees, either it's your partners, anybody else that's misaligned with you. That creates the extra friction and all that creates extra stress, which we then because at the end of the day, human beings, we're creatures of comfort down and say you know what? I'm going to disassociate myself from this, because that's something that may be a side effect of that burnout.
Speaker 2:Once you find passion in yourself and you find the people around you that are aligned with that vision and mission and can help you push through that, you can rely on them. You don't have to do everything by yourself, which is another thing that entrepreneurs and people who are highly successful, they want to do it all themselves. When you have that team, it's sort of that foxhole mentality, right, you know that the person next to you got your right side, you got the left side and you don't ever have to think about it and it's very rare to find. So all those factors together are, I think, where you may be lacking, where it leads to burnout fairly quickly.
Speaker 1:I love that analogy and just for the listeners now, you mentioned stress a few times in there. Now you and I both know there's many levels of stress and symptoms of them For the person who's going. I'm simple-minded. Just give me how it is. What, in your one words, is the symptoms? Distress. You deal with this a lot and you deal with the emotional and also the physical components and the results of it. What's the most common things you get presented with from high performers? What are the symptoms?
Speaker 2:It's usually either pain or headaches or poor sleep quality. So those are the things, and each one of them is represented. You can see some of these genetic predispositions, so I'll give you a couple of examples. So there is a gene related to stress reactivity. So what that means is it's how you deal with a stressful situation. Some people may experience more anxiety when stressed and if you have this genetic predisposition now, you may be in a position where you are secreting more neurochemicals that actually activate different things in your body. The second part of that is you may be predisposed to PTSD, so post-traumatic stress disorder. So now, if you're experiencing anxiety, if you have the genetic predisposition, it can actually pull that memory from. Oh shit, man, this happened to me last month and you're going in this hamster wheel of balancing that thought back and forth. So now you're preoccupied with that thought and that keeps increasing. That stress level keeps increasing those internal endogenous hormones and neurochemicals that are associated with stress and what that is.
Speaker 2:If we have a traumatic event in our life, usually our brain stores that traumatic event in our subconscious. Unless we have a neurological condition Under great duress, under great stress, it can bring that memory up to the surface and you're dealing with something to happen Like for me I got hit by a car on my bicycle when I was nine years old. If I have that slower rate of fear extinction when I'm under stress, now I'm dealing with something that happened to me when I was nine years old instead of dealing with the issue that's in hand now. So generational trauma, trauma that you had, all these different things they can lead to the expression of stress and how it shows up in different people in different ways. Like I was mentioning, there are some people my mom always told me she goes every single disease is associated with stress. So manage your stress always.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense, but how? What is the mechanism for that? Because I need to figure that out. And the mechanism for that is there is an actual physical mechanism for that and there is also, as you were mentioning, bazzi, there's also that mental aspect of it, but it's all related to chemistry. You can actually see neurochemicals being expressed. You can actually see your body being out of homeostasis and when you have that and which is a balance, when your body's out of homeostasis and out of balance, then your own body is trying to overcompensate for that. So if you're out of balance, your body is going to say I need to add something here as a neurochemical, which then seesaws you in this direction up and down.
Speaker 2:So being out of balance is where I think a lot of people are expressing their stress, and if they have predispositions to things like gut health issues, like IBD, it can actually trigger that. So some people will come back and say really bad gut health. One is like, ah, the food that I eat. But is it all food that you eat? Maybe some of this is more inflammatory? Have you looked at your gut microbiome? No, maybe you should start looking at that. But the more you know about yourself, the better you can help with mitigating the expression of some of these things that you may be predisposed to.
Speaker 2:But stress can show up in so many different ways and there's a pattern to stress and if you're being unaware of that pattern, then you're repeating that over and over. So being able to understand your own body chemistry, your own biomarkers, monitoring things, sleep, is a big one too. I was talking about stress reactivity. Think about it this way If you are prone to stress reactivity during the day and you also have a predisposition of bruxism which is grinding your teeth.
Speaker 2:If you're grinding your teeth, you're not getting the really good restful sleep, the delta, the theta, quality sleep. But you may be sleeping for eight hours a night and you're telling your doctor or your spouse no, I sleep great, I sleep eight hours a night. How do you know the quality of sleep is good? Some people sleep five hours a night and they're getting really good REM sleeping. Three hours of that is good restful, reset sleep. If you're not getting that good quality sleep, then during the day you may be agitated, which triggers a stress reactivity. You're still not getting enough sleep because you're stressing, you're grinding your teeth and you're clenching and you're on this hamster wheel. So you're never recovering from that and it builds up over time and then you can have that crash.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great analogy and thank you for that going into depth with it, it is a very good way to describe it and also the symptoms and also the effects of it. So if you're just tuning in now and you're wondering what the hell this is all about, first of all, welcome. And I've got a question for you Are you really ready to stop surviving and actually start thriving in life? If you are and you want that leverage in your own life, please subscribe to the podcast. I'm not trying to sell you anything, just subscribe to the podcast, because the guests and the content in here is life-changing and they're from real world experiences, from real people who are the leading thought leaders in their industry, not just experts, because everybody in the world is a fucking expert. These people are thought leaders who are pioneering the way for our next generation. Len May is just one of them. Len, I want to thank you again for being here.
Speaker 1:Firstly and this question is about reframing what has happened to us the burnout. Many people think burnout is a as a failure, but actually it can drive so much more than that behind the scenes. It may not look like at first. How would you advise or how did you create uh reconnect with your purpose after your episode of burnout?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, and that's a great way to put it, because burnout may be caused, or I'll talk about myself with a misalignment of purpose. So at one point in my life I thought that I want to do real estate. So I was a commercial real estate broker. And why? Because I thought that first I can generate a lot of revenue from that for myself, for my family, I can create generational wealth for that. But the one thing that was missing is I lied to myself. I was telling myself how much I loved real estate. It was so fun for me to do.
Speaker 2:Well, if I look back and I reanalyze myself, I loved the transaction. It was like that shot of heroin or whatever you take, because you get it and then it's done and you're like, holy shit, I'm still in the same place that I was at. I thought this transaction is going to make me happy, I'm making all this money. But it went away. And then, once again, you start again on this journey. The next one, because as a hunter, you're eating what you kill, you're a commission-only salesperson, you have a family to rely on, you have all this pressure, but you're doing well, you're making that connection to what you think your purpose is. But the one thing that I was missing in this purpose is what am I doing to contribute, not just to myself, to other people? And when I started thinking about that, I'm just making wealthy people more wealthy because I'm a commercial real estate broker? Yes, am I helping people? Sure, I'm helping them find properties. I'm helping them maybe do their 1031 tax deferred exchange, advise them how to save money. But what am I doing for the greater good? What am I doing outside of myself? And I think that was the biggest aha moment I got when my burnout happened. It was a perfect storm because we had the crash in 2008. So now my clients I can't get them financing.
Speaker 2:The second thing is I thought, outside of that, I'm going to go to the banks, I'm going to talk to the banks and sell non-performing notes, which I did as well. So I was trying to figure out a way to still continue to help my clients. But these were all signs for me. This was all a thing that am I doing something for a greater purpose? That's outside of myself. And when all these things happened, I wasn't aware, I wasn't self-aware enough to say these are signs and maybe I should think about what is that greater purpose outside of myself and at that time where all this thing went down, that I started going through a divorce, all these at the same exact time.
Speaker 2:And I believe the universe is telling me this. It's wake up, smack you around and say you're in a shitty place, not because of anybody else, but because of yourself. And maybe this is where you need to reconsider what really you want to contribute to the world. And if you come with that contribution, you're already passionate. It's not about finding your passion. It's about finding the passion within yourself to be able to say I'm going to connect to a purpose and then go out and do something about that. And at that point you're not pushing.
Speaker 2:And this is where I thought was really important. You're pushing real estate transactions, you're pushing and you can still be successful pushing, but it's much easier when you're being pulled by something and when I found that, okay, I can actually really help people. Yes, it's going to be difficult because I'm going after big pharma and doctors. Yes, I want to change the landscape, but because I'm being pulled by the purpose, and then that purpose that I'm being pulled with is reinforced by feedback, and what I mean by that is when I'm meeting a person that says, hey, I wasn't able to walk until we did a DNA test and we got a protocol.
Speaker 2:And now, look at me. I'm meeting a person that says, hey, I wasn't able to walk until we did a DNA test and we got a protocol. And now, look at me, I'm cleaning the kitchen. When you're getting the personal stories, it's Tony Robbins saying one of the things I do when I help people is it's selfish in a way, because I get so much more back which motivates me to do more, which motivates me, which gives me the feedback, that cycle of being pulled and getting the feedback. It fills my cup and allows me to maintain that passion. It's still hard. It's still that work-life balance, all that is still happening, but because you're driven by something greater than yourself. That's what I think is the difference between where it was and where it is today.
Speaker 1:And that's a great analogy. I think that they're learning. It's a state of I would describe like flow. So it's a perpetual state of receiving, giving, receiving, giving. But it's an equal exchange and when you come to that state of awareness, it doesn't become a job, it doesn't become work, it just becomes a lifestyle where that flow is always there and you're always filling up your own cup with your good deeds, with inspiring others, but equally, you're giving that exchange and that's a beautiful analogy of that. Before we close down for part one, I'm going to ask the audience to write something down for me, not for me, but for yourselves what's the one thing you've been avoiding? What's the one thing you've been avoiding because you feel too burnt out to do things? What do you have to face and what would you finally feel when you faced it? Because that, my friends, is freedom. So my parting words for this part of this show is face your fears and find your freedom. We're back very shortly with part two for myself and Len. I'll see you very soon.
