414. “Live a Balanced Life” | Designing Your Best Life with Bill Zujewski

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Bill Zujewski:
I think there's a playbook for life that is anchored in just having a balanced life, paying attention to all those areas.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Richard. And I am excited to share our guest with you today. He is awesome. His name is Bill Zajewski, and he is affectionately known as Bill Z. He's the founder and CEO of GoodLiife LLC, creator of the Life by Design system, the ZenScore app, the GoodLiife platform, and the author of What's Your Life Score, which we're going to talk about in a bit. 

Bill spent over 20 years in enterprise software as a marketing executive at Tulip, Exada, PTC, Oracle, and ATG. In 2017, he co-founded the Green Business Bureau and led it to a successful acquisition in 2023. He holds degrees from UConn and Boston College. And at the age of 50, he's embraced his passion for entrepreneurship, sustainability, and intentional living. Bill, welcome to the Daily Helping Podcast. It is awesome to have you with us today. 

Bill Zujewski:
Dr. Richard, thank you so much. I'm super excited to get into all the things that you mentioned - my book, life, how we can help people So thank you for having me. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely, all the things. We're gonna talk about all the things. But the first thing that I want to talk about is I'm gonna find out your superhero origin story. Let's jump in the Bill Zujewski time machine, and take us back to what put you on the path you're on today.

Bill Zujewski:
Sure. I mean, started in engineering and writing code. I got really lucky, by the way, right, Dr. Richard? Software is eating the world, so I landed in an industry that really helped me be successful, did corporate marketing for 25 plus years for high-tech software companies. And then, I got this. About eight to nine years ago, I was having dinner with a friend who was launching the startup Green Business Bureau. And I was kind of same old, same old with my corporate job, and I was intrigued by the brand. And I did marketing. I think Green Business Bureau had legs to it. People were looking for a way to certify their businesses. So, I left the corporate world, third employee. And over the next five years, we built Green Business Bureau and sold it.

Now, I was a little late. I was the third founder there. So, now, I'm really diving in. In the case of GoodLiife, I launched it last year as the sole founder. It's amazing what you can do with technology, software, AI. I'm a one-person company now, but I'm really trying to do something, build software with a purpose, really do something now that is giving back everything I've learned. And at the core, we'll get into it later, is this tool I've been using for 20 years, this personal dashboard tool that I think other people can benefit from. So, I'm going to try to create a company around delivering this software to help people get… what I say is "Get good at life."

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, I love that. And what you said, just as an aside for anybody listening who's thinking about starting a business, that the technology available today has leveled the playing field in such a way that there are lots of companies that have one employee essentially like you, Bill. I think Instagram was the first billion dollar company to have 10 employees or less at the time when they started. So, if you're thinking about doing something remotely that utilizes technology, there's probably things out there that you can do today to launch that business with very little capital. 

So, I'll get off my soapbox and let's go back to you. So, we teased it in the beginning, you've built these different platforms to help people with their lives and you wrote a book about it, right? So, the book is now available everywhere. What was the impetus for writing the book? Let's start there.

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, I realized… so, I came up… the core concept is these two scores. And one is called the Zen score, and one is called the Life score. So, this Zen score is something I've been doing for 20 plus years. I don't know. People out there do their New Year's resolutions at the end of the year. I would go and look at how my year went, and I would do it in a spreadsheet by category. How am I doing with my investments? How am I doing with my career? How are my relationships? How is my marriage? How's my fitness and all those things? And I would rate myself zero to 10, and I would just come up with this little report card for myself. 

And then, I started doing it. I have four kids. They're all in their 20s now. So, I started doing it with them and helping coach them with this little personal scorecard. And then, it led me to, then, create a playbook for my kids, which is here's all the best practices to have your finances in order, your health in order, your relationships. So, that's this life score now. If you do these 110 things, these are what the most successful people do, give you kind of like a credit rating for doing the right things in life.

So, I realized that's kind of new, and I needed to kind of start spreading the religion. So, hence, I wrote the book for people who maybe don't want to download the software, but want to do it on a sheet of paper and just change their mindset. Basically, if you look at the subtitle, it's a playbook for designing your best life. So, I've tried to document, what does it take to have a balanced life in eight categories and wrote this down.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
What are the eight categories, Bill?

Bill Zujewski:
So, the eight categories are easy to remember. And I got lucky, and I put my marketing hat on here. They spell HELP GROW, the first letter of the eight categories. So H-health, E-environment, which is your home environment, L for leisure, P for purpose, G for growth, R for relationships,  O for occupation, and W for wealth. So, if those who have maybe seen this wheel of life pie chart with the slices of a balanced life, it's nothing new. It's what life coaches have been kind of advocating for years, which is this wheel of life. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, you've kind of put your own spin on the wheel of life, so to speak, based on your experiences. And what sort of research went into designing this, figuring out, "Okay, well, these are things that one needs to do to be successful"? What went into that on the back end? 

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, so there's probably a lot of other people out there who have probably been studying happiness or seeking how they could have more purpose and fulfillment in their life. I've been doing it my whole life, right? Starting with Tony Robbins, and then going on to reading books about happiness, and fulfillment, and how to succeed in life. 

So, the catapult was probably, over the last couple of years. I read a book called GoodLiife came out of the professors from Harvard who basically said they studied 3000 people for the last 80 years and what was the common thing that led to happiness, longevity, health. And for them, it turned out relationships was actually the best indicator of a fulfilling, healthy, long life. 

And then, I read another book from two Stanford PhDs which is Design Your Life. And there are two engineers who said you could apply product principles and have a vision for just like a product, your life is a product, and design what your life wants to be and then execute that design plan.

So, those are the most recent books, but it's a combination of probably 100-200 sources, reports, books, and there was no such thing as a life score. So, I had to kind of invent it. So, I couldn't use someone else's, "Hey, here's a life score formula." So, I kind of came up with it based on all my analysis and studying. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, in the world of science, we kind of call that meta-analyses, right? You've taken a whole bunch of content out there, Harvard, PhDs, and just synthesized all of that, which you've learned over two decades, and created essentially a matrix that people can plug into. So, that makes sense to me. 

So, when you have something like this, and I love the acronym. HELP GROW is awesome. Do you find that these, kind of, are in a ladder? Are they siloed? Do they affect each other? Like kind of how does it work with these different categories?

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, I think people don't actually stop and think about those eight categories individually. So,I think it's creating, kind of, this framework in people's minds that they can almost go through in terms of a checklist basically. How is my health? How is my home? And so, that framework makes it just easier to, then, what I do in the morning sometimes is with my coffee, I just step through those eight things and say, "Okay, how's my health going today? I feel good. What am I going to do to grow myself? What can I do to improve my relationships?"

A lot of people feel like, "Something's not right with my life." And I'm either in a rut or feeling down, and they're not sure of what the causes are. And just by stepping through, "Is it my health? Is it my relationships? Is it my occupation? Is it the finances?" these things are all variables that could be impacting how you feel about your life. So, the HELP GROW forces you kind of to self-reflect in those eight areas.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay, so that makes total sense. And we're self-reflecting because we're essentially rating, right? You're asking somebody every day to check in. You do this during your coffee, check in and rate, "Hey, how am I doing on these things?" And so, say a person is going through and they find that their relationship score isn't what it ought to be. So, I know you mentioned 110 things in this book. So, let's start with relationships, because again, you mentioned, those Harvard docs thought that was the most important thing. So, what are some of the strategies that are talked about in the book that one can, if the relationship isn't where they think it should be, to level that up? 

Bill Zujewski:
Right, right. And I learned this over my lifetime is, you get out what you put in. That, actually, the relationships, you actually need to stop and invest time and effort into your relationships. So, some of the best practices that are in this are about going out with friends, calling your family, helping them. People reciprocate. It's human nature, right? That's how you build relationships. You do something for a person, they'll help you.  So, a lot of these best practices are around taking the time to have the conversations, have the experiences with your friends, with your family, with your wife, and just tangibly have a plan for your relationships.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And in the software – and I guess this is a general question, and then I'm going to get back in some more of these specific categories we talked about – I presume there is some sort of tracking mechanism within that, so that if one starts this the first of the month, they can two months later look in and see their scores, and look at trends, and all of that. Is that correct? 

Bill Zujewski:
That's exactly right. So, the Zen score is like a weekly check in. It's how you feel about those eight areas? So, there's one question around relationships. And you answer that, where are you, 0-10, with your relationships? But then, your life score in that is, how many times did you go out with friends over the last 30 days? How many times did you reach out to them? What did you do together? Those kinds of black-and-white action questions. If you answered it the first time, and your questions are mostly no, you know you'd have a low relationship score. And as you started putting more time in, spending more time, communicating more, helping others more, your score will go up. And the life score, you check in probably once a month, maybe once a quarter, to see if you're starting to change the habits in your life in that area.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. So, I wanna jump back to the E. Health is pretty obvious. E-environment. You mentioned your home. What are we talking about? Are we talking about dishes piling up in the sink or the lawn not being mowed? When you're talking about your relationship to your environment, what does that mean in terms of this system?

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, it's really… I think there's like ten things for that area. I think there's ten questions. It starts with your location. It's the most basic, right? Do you like the weather where you ended up living? I think the second question is around your commute. Are you happy with your commute? Do you live close enough to where you have to go to the office? Are you burnt out from a three-hour drive every day? 

And then, it gets into your home. Is it close to a community where you have access to everything you need for fitness and health and doctors and all that. Do you have lighting? Do you feel like your house is dark? There is one, by the way, coincidentally around the dishes, around the clutter. There is definitely science to having a clean, clutter-free home that doesn't have this baggage that's always on top of you of like, "Oh, I got to get to this. I got to get to this." So, whether you're taking care of your home or not, does it have the right environment for you to host people to come to your house? Do you feel like you can go home and relax? And that's a place where you got peace of mind. So, all those things kind of add up to the E, the home environment.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. No, that's a fantastic answer. I think leisure is also pretty self-explanatory. Are we spending enough time doing the things we love? Purpose is exciting to me. So, let's talk about purpose as far as it relates to your system.

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, purpose is the hardest because it's not as black and white. You know, finance is probably the easiest one. It's like, do you save 10% of your paycheck? Do you have a retirement account? Is your mortgage less than one-third, right? Those are really, really tangible. Purpose is more about what do you do for the world? What do you do for the local community? And then, what do you do for your friends? And what do you do for your family? 

You can find purpose in a lot of things. Even in your work, if you're helping contribute towards the success of a company, that leads to both your salary increasing, and then also people getting jobs in that company, and they don't get laid off. So, there's so many areas in life that you could associate your contributions towards some greater purpose than yourself. 

So, I go through all those questions around whether they're involved in charities, local community. Also spiritually, do they feel like they're grounded in something larger? There's a bunch of questions. I haven't looked at the purpose questions in a while, but each one of them in the book has a question. So the purpose ones here, yeah, philanthropy, causes, the planet, mentoring, motivation, integrity, intention, right? These are all black and white questions that someone could answer to get their purpose score.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
You have put spirituality under purpose as well, which I found interesting. And I'm sure it's non-religious, but you're just talking about one's particular spiritual level of connection. 

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, the question is, I can define and articulate my spiritual beliefs clearly. That could be lack of spiritual beliefs but you feel like where you've landed in your beliefs is aligned with who you are and will get you through through life one way or another, whether it's some religious group or some other greater cause or being, or agnostic. I mean, it's a complicated subject, Dr. Richard, right? We could spend the whole show talking about spirituality. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And I'm sure this is one that gets you super excited because of what you do and who you are at the G, growth. So let's talk about that one.

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah. I mean, if you're not growing, you're dying, right? I think that's so. I just feel from when I can remember, I don't know why I instilled this or my family instilled this in me. I'm a lifelong learner, and I just love it. And my kids love it. Like they always love just growing what they know about the world. And it's so helpful. It really contributes to your health and success. The more you know, the more you're able to navigate life. 

So, I think if you don't have a plan to better yourself, and have goals, and show progress towards those growth goals, I think you're going to struggle. I find that one of the secrets of life is having some goals. And then, at the end of the day, did I make any kind of progress? In those days where I feel like I made progress towards that, I feel much better. Days where I did nothing and I'm like, "Oh my God, I just threw away a day," I feel, like, depressed.  So, I think this notion of just making progress is a key part of happiness. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
It's interesting too, right, because a lot of times, particularly if somebody is working an 8:00 to 5:00, it can be pretty routine, right? Like you have your sub goals, obviously within a work setting, right? If you're in sales, you have to make X number of cold calls and schedule X number of appointments and close X number of deals, right? So, there are always metrics for anything that we're doing. 

But I wonder how we account for the fact that we, sometimes, just go through the motions at our job doing that but we're not really focused on life goals. So, how do we differentiate… Well, let me ask it differently. Does the system, this category in particular, differentiate life goals versus what you're supposed to be doing at your job? 

Bill Zujewski:
It does, it does. So, you have to actually… as part of the tool, we have something called a life book. And a life book is basically you take these 120 best practices and customize it. This playbook I've created, that's generic, and you create your own life book, and you set goals in each of those areas. So, in health, you're going to be setting your goals around weight, blood pressure, running, all those black and white kind of things. Finance is going gonna be net worth, how much you save every month, right? So, you're gonna establish.

That's the key actually is not just being specific, not like not being fluffy with, "I'm gonna improve my life in this one area." You really have to… and then, maybe it's the engineer in me, you have to look at all the categories and have goals in your relationships, in your career, in your finances. So, a life plan is life goals in each of those categories. It's not just about your mindset or your happiness. It's actually being more tactical and living a balanced life and paying attention to all those areas. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And I wasn't going to talk about health because it seemed pretty black and white, but there's been a couple of points in our conversation, Bill, where you've talked about happiness. So, does the health category also encompass emotional well-being, or is that kind of distributed throughout all the other seven categories? 

Bill Zujewski:
No, it definitely covers emotional well-being. That, sometimes, is harder than the physical well-being, right? So, there's parts of your health that talk about getting your ego under control, dealing with negative self-talk, and just dealing with mental fitness. There's also things around just staying sharp, and exercising your brain, and learning, and having that aspect of your mind exercised just like your physical body is exercised. 

So, health does capture… I would say it's probably a lot physical, around cardio, and strength, and energy, and hydration, but there's definitely five, six practices that are related to mental fitness as well.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And the W is wealth. I want to spend a little time there because on the surface, you think about wealth, right? There are some things that are very self-evident, right? Are you spending less than you're earning in a month and saving and these things that you've talked about? What are some of the kind of subtle things, the things that aren't very obvious to people about their wealth that your system taps?

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, one of the things that I uncovered with some of my early participants using the software was when they actually went and gave themselves a, how-are-they-doing-financially score, it was rock solid. But then when they filled out their how am I doing with my financials and security and all that, they give themselves like the two. And I'm like, "Why is there such a mismatch?" And then, I think a lot of people have this unrealistic expectation, like, "I need $10 million to be happy," "I have some number that I need to get to that's huge for me to retire happily," and all that. And that's often not the case.

So, I think, of course, if you're going to have leisure you need some money to spend on leisure, if you're going to enjoy relationships. So, there there's a minimum threshold. You need to work hard to get a salary, have income coming in, but you can't overly focus in that area where it's a detriment to the seven other categories of your life. There's definitely a point where enough is enough.

I've actually… I'm not going to have kudos to myself, but I've done a pretty good job of sticking to 40 hours my entire career, so that I can go to all my kids' games, and coach them, and make it to all the family get-togethers. And it might have cost me a raise here and there, a promotion here and there, but I've done just fine sticking to that kind of balanced plan around not wanting more constantly and knowing when enough is enough financially.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Nobody ever goes to their deathbed and is saying, "Jeez, I wish I had less time to spend with my kids and spent less time with my family," over the course of their life. So, you nailed that perfectly. 

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, there's actually a book that's pretty popular. I think, Die With Zero. Have you seen that book?

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Yeah, I'm familiar with that book.

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, it just basically goes over the fact that you really wanna… this is it, enjoy life while you can. What are you saving for the future for? I mean, so there's a balance there even for living now versus saving for the future? 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Right. Makes sense. Bill, I've loved our conversation today. The time has flown by. As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests this one question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to take away from our conversation today? 

Bill Zujewski:
Yeah, it's live a balanced life. I mean, really. And do it intentionally. And by the way, my definition of balance is not just work and other stuff and just managing those two buckets. Manage all eight buckets. Invest in your relationships, invest in leisure, invest in your physical, and go to the gym, right? So, I think if there's a playbook for life that is anchored in just having a balanced life, paying attention to all those areas.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said, well said, Bill. Tell us where people can learn more about you online. 

Bill Zujewski:
Sure. So, there's not many Bill Zujewskis in the world. So, you could just Google my name, and you'll find me. But start, if you're interested in the software, the mobile app, you wanna know what your Zen score or life score are, go to goodliife.com with two Is. That's my brand, goodliife.com. You can go to LinkedIn as well, Bill Zujewski. And if you go to Amazon and just type in Zujewski or What's Your Life Score? You can get the Kindle book or the hard copy of my book, What's Your Life Score?

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect, Bill. And for those of you in the car or at the gym working on your H in HELP GROW, we got you covered. Everything Bill Zujewski is gonna be in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Bill, I really loved our conversation today. Thanks for spending time with us on The Daily Helping.

Bill Zujewski:
Thanks, Dr. Richard, appreciate it. It was a great time.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Thank you. And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day, thank you as well. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you're going to go figure out what your score is, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and post it in your social media feeds using the #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.