“just get things out there, you will get 99% wrong but learn from your mistakes and keep iterating........put on your oxygen mask before you help others, if you prioritise you then you are helping others"

Marc Champagne is an entrepreneur and co-founder of mental fitness and wellness app KYO, Marc is also a photographer and podcaster.  KYO has over 140,000 subscribers and over 75m impressions in the app store. Expert contributors include world reknown organisational psychologist Adam Grant.  

 

We talk about wellness in the digital age, how and why he prefers mental fitness to mental health and while wellness is nearly mainstream it still faces many challenges. We discuss his morning routines and the questions that help to ground him each day, how his practice has been 10 years in the making and how entrepreneurship has exposed him to more stress than he has ever known but he himself is not stressed.  Marc exudes calm and deep insight, he is incredibly well versed and recognises that he needs to bring in experts to teach subjects which they have studied or practised for a lifetime. 

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"From the minute you wake up, to the time you go to bed, you get to choose how you spend your every minute. From what you eat, to what you do, each decision shapes your life.  Many of these decisions revolve around questions. What value will this bring to my life? What should I be focusing on? Am I happy?

Finding the right questions for you, at the right time in your life and in a way that is easy, is our goal. Because the individual who is grounded, clear and focused is the individual who can perform at the highest levels and can make an incredible difference in the world. By helping one, we help many.

Ultimately, we want to make sure you one day look back feeling proud of how you’ve lived. If we can play a small part in helping you reflect and grow each day, well that’s good enough for us. Because by being a better you, you make the rest of the world a better place. And ultimately we all win."

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• explaining KYO - how the journey started about 10 years ago and his morning routine to get a positive mindset before the craziness of the day (1.30)

 

• discussing the evolution of KYO how he was not happy with digital solutions on wellness - adding questions into your morning routine - Kyo is the Japanese word for today, to stimulate and get the most out of each moment (3) 

 

• providing relatable content and the right questions - how it is way more powerful to have Adam Grant talking about workplace feedback than him - pulling questions from Tim Ferriss guests and stories (6.20)

 

• background to his morning routine from Robin Sharma and Tony Robbins - if you can dial in the morning or own the morning then you chances of winning are that much higher (11.30)

 

• discussing the movie the Secret, Eastern holistic practices and visualisation exercises and being open to different practices (14)

 

• walking through the process of KYO - take it one question at a time, whatever resonates with you, start with breathing and try to for a few days - every Friday at 3pm take 15-20 minutes and reflect back on the week that has past, are there things I would have changed and finish it on a gratitude level (20)

 

• work and mental fitness, how the most sign ups are on Sunday (24)

 

• discussing the start up eco system in Toronto, 82,000 tech jobs in Toronto in 2017 and more than San Francisco (25)

 

• discussing SXSW - pitching to be on a panel - massive mental health crisis around the world - bringing a conversation about mental fitness to a wider audience (32)

 

• banishing the taboo of mental health and calling it mental fitness (38)

 

• how "coming into the work of entrepreneurship the most amount of stress been thrown at me but the least amount of stress" (42)

 

• discussing MVP's, Scott Belsky and the messy middle (48 & 59)

 

• his transition from the corporate world to entrepreneurship (51)

 

• on social media, prioritising time, selling into corporations, building relationships and partnerships, “what I have learned in this journey is that everyone is accessible, surround yourself with the people you want to become (57)

 

• his message for every day - "what made you smile today?"  - the message is to prioritise you, put on your oxygen mask before you help others, if you prioritise you you are helping others (62)

 

• his go to books and why Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic - Ray Dalio "Principles" and The  Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod on morning routines 

 

• his advice on daily mental fitness routines - start small 20 mins each day prioritise what you and discussing Vishen from Mindvalley interviewing Robin Sharma (68)

 

• if you can control the phone, we own the relationship with the phone (71)

 

• how to find Marc and his message "life is just a series of powerful questions that we navigate through" (72)

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Suggested books

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To contact Marc please click on the links below​