From Drained to Unstoppable - how modern dads can lead their lives and thrive with Jonnie Jensen

Hey Mark. Hey Katie. Hey you want to do a podcast? Yeah. Sweet okay. Welcome to the

Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of blue and the proof of science to help

you identify your blind spots and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking

thing you actually want to do. Absolutely. I'm Mark. And I'm Katie. And we're the founders

of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself system. Look, being a business

owner is tough with vulnerability and with humor, we'll be sharing with you the real stories behind

the success of those brave and crazy enough to start their own business and to show you that

you're not alone. Not from the accidental entrepreneur to the laser focus CEO. We have honest

conversations about how they get to where they are today. We talk about the challenges that they

faced and what they're currently dealing with in real time on the roller coaster ride.

Long the way we want to show you that it's you. You are the most important asset in your business.

Yeah you are. So let's cut the bullshit and start the show. Enjoy.

Okay, hello everyone and welcome to the show. Now, just a quick interruption to your normally

scheduled episode. If you wish more people knew you, trusted you and actually reached out wanting

to work with you, this is for you. Most experts try to post more, shout louder or chase attention,

but the truth is clients don't come from content. Clients come from real connections and that's why

we built the profitable podcast system. We'll help you create your own simple relationship driven

podcast that brings the right people into your world, build trust fast and turns amazing

conversations into clients, content and opportunities and all without you becoming a marketer or an

influencer. So you don't need a big audience. You just need the right people hearing your voice,

feeling your message, seeing your energy and saying, all right, I get you. I trust you. I need to

work with you. So if you want a proven way that actually grows your business, not just your

to do list, head over to profitablepodcasts.com and we'll show you how this will work for you.

And now onto your scheduled podcast episode. So today we have this, Johnny Jensen,

the founder of the High Value Man Project, a coaching and community driven business that helps

business owning dads to rebuild their lives from the inside out so they can leave better,

feel better and show up with more presence for themselves and their families. Through his three

XC formula and fire code operating system, Johnny guides men to create structure, momentum and

real brotherhood as they navigate burnout, relationship strain, identity, refsets and the pressures

of fatherhood and leadership. Now, Johnny's personal journey through marriage challenges, his brother's

suicide, burnout, divorce and a breakthrough moment in Austria's highest mountain demonstrates

how pain can become purpose and how leading with yourself first becomes the foundation for

rebuilding your entire life. And while helping good men stop white knuckling their way through

stress and start living the life they desire, rather than the one they feel stuck in, he is creating

a space where modern dads can thrive with clarity, courage and commitment. Johnny, welcome to the show.

Mark, you nailed that, like a baseball flipping boom out of the park. Thank you, yeah,

absolutely pleasure to be here. And yeah, that's who I am, Johnny Jensen, great to be here.

Nice, and another Brit with no hair. This is, this is where magic happens, right?

Yes, although no beard for me, I did grow a moustache once for November, hated it. I know they have

something might say that's the whole point, but no, no, no, I'll take on other challenges but not

in the hair on my face again. Nice. I can't stop touching it, you know. You didn't hear

a talk about bids and fantasies in the stashers. You came to talk about your business, though.

I did. Tell me, where are you today, you know, with your business? And tell me what those dads

who you love to work with? Yes, so I created the high value man project team, super dad is actually

how it launched in 2019. And that's very much a one on one coaching program, predominantly supporting

men getting over divorce, basically. But it was never, you know, it was never my intention to

just purely focus on that. The mission really was to see dads thriving so that they had the best

possible life they could expect, but also their family, their children felt supported and loved

their partner, their wife. Again, felt loved and supported. And the impact of men not achieving

that is all around us, whether that's strained relationships, whether that's, you know,

burnt out business execs or failing businesses or sadly, whether it's men's mental health and

and suicide, you know, the the world needs to men to thrive. It needs strong, confident men.

I don't mean like fully extrovert. Oh, look at me. I mean, literally happy, grounded,

centered, you know, loving what they're up to in the world, because that fund, you know,

fundamentally as, as creatures, that is the role of, of men. You know, yeah, that's what we all

want. It's what we all truly want. However, what do you see, like time and time again, the biggest

mistakes that we're all making in our, in our quest for this? Yes, so the sort of societal stresses

on men are that we have to handle it all. We have to have the one, the work, we have to have

the money coming in, we have to appear strong and grounded ourselves. And this doesn't translate

fully into all men, but the, you know, the good men out there, they're kind of their vision really

for most of us is poor enough, get married, buy a house, have kids, you know, make enough money,

hopefully have some fun, live happily ever after. And because that is the desire and like this

societal sort of expectations, we make that the foundation of everything that we stand upon.

Like if I can create all that, then I'll be happy. But the problem with that is it's actually upside

down. Because if you, if you can't be happy into all that's achieved, the moment the relationship

starts to go wrong or the job doesn't work out or some, or you know, you're flipping, you burn out,

whatever it looks like, then your world crumbles. So the high value man mission is about having men

be the strongest possible version of themselves, creating the life they desire instead of one they

feel stuck in so that everything else can be built on top of it. And you know, I could talk for

so long about that. But in, in, in crew terms, we become the shoulders upon which those around

us stand, but we don't take it on as a burden and a crushed by it. Yeah. Well, let's, let's unpack

that because your first description of that, I think it was so true, get the business, have the

family do this. Hopefully have some fun. That right there. Hopefully have some fun is an afterthoughts.

That's the biggest problem that I see. We, we should have fun. It should be present with our,

the business should be fun. It should be a playground almost. Our family, our relationships,

they should be fun. Now, fun means something different for a lot of people. But I think that,

that's what's missing. Maybe there's, maybe you can unpack this from, from your perspective,

where business is serious, money is serious. It shouldn't be fun. But I truly believe to bring

play and enjoy it back into these things. It changes everything. Yeah. So often when I say to

men, what do you want? What they tell me is what they don't want. Right? It's like, because they've

been so focused on the things that are doing their head in. I don't want this. I don't want that.

And I need more sex. And I wonder if this is right. It's not needed to nag me. I need my business

to be, it's like, no, no, no, no, what do you actually want? Like in the, in these key areas of

life, like, what, like, you know, let's focus on fun was the question you asked, what are you

like doing? What are your hobbies and interests? What's on your bucket list? Like when was the last

time you went to a concert or like, I like fishing? When was the last time you went fishing? Like,

when, when did you stop doing all the things that lit you up, but not just lit you up, that gave

your identity, that gave you that sense of, okay, that, what, yeah. What do you find of these things

that do cause these events, these situations, these fun things to stop happening? What happens?

The busyness of life and the pursuit of the things that we are led to believe are going to make

us happy. So we get married, we have kids, we build a business, or we get a career, you know,

we have the home. And then when our kids are little, if we're a good man, a good dad, right? We,

now we want to get involved, we want to be available, we want to make things happen. But then you've

heard it yourself, what comes last is, oh, well, I can't go to the pub and get pissed with my mates,

that would be horribly unkind to my wife or, you know, I just don't have to, well, how could I possibly

spend the money on myself? And then to make matters worse, if you do call your mates up and they're

all busy, because they're stuck in the same mindset as well, then all of you have stopped doing it,

which actually highlights one of the problems that's going on with men, right?

But you do, you just have to break through that a bit. And so in the, in an element of the

fire code, which is the E in fire for energy, the amount of fun, adventure and peace you're having,

literally planning it out. Like, what, if you bought some concert tickets, you know,

have your book to, it's not all about like splashing, you'd have to go to the mall devs, right?

If all you're going to forward right now is to go camping with your mates and your kids,

then flipping book it up so that bank holiday may, you're, you've got a call place booked where

you can paddle board and make fires and, and literally you're going to go and have a laugh there,

basically. And so when you just want to think about it, when you have plans to look forward to,

it shifts everything. So that day-to-day stress and struggle is bearable because you've got

something to look forward to. And when you've done it, you've got memories to look back on and laugh

about. We, we're losing this, this like the inner fire inside us, which, which actually is quite

basic when you think about, have I got anything to look forward to? Have I got some memories to

look back on and laugh about? If those were 10 years ago, that's not enough.

Yeah, well, I was, I was going to ask about the, the fire code, because this is so, it sounds so

obvious, it sounds so simple. But to have a framework, to have something you can rely on,

it really helps us put this in perspective and actually see the things we need to do because we,

with all the good intentions, we can forget. So talk to me about, about that fire code. Talk

to me about what it's like to put that into practice. Yeah, so one of my favorite quotes, and I use

it all the time, and I don't know where I got it off some podcast, right? The secrets of success

aren't that secret. It's just that most of us won't do what it bloody takes. And I've been studying

and reading and going to program, you know, my, my personal development and coaching journey is now

25 years long. The day I hit my head on the toilet and invent the flux capacitor, right? This

ain't what it's about. It's, it's, it's stuff that I picked up along the way. And then you start

to put it into your own program based on your own experiences that work. So the fire code is,

is the habits and routines of a man's life that works. It's, it forms part of commitment of

the three XC, which is the third C, right? clarity, courage and commitment. Inside commitment is

the fire code. And the fire code is the 16 habits and routines that fuel a man's sense of

identity, his happiness and his momentum forward. Now, some people will say, you can't give someone

16 things to do. I'm not giving someone 16 things to do. These are actually like a checklist. Like

if your car came into the pit stop, you know, these are all things that you would do to the car

to send it back out on the track, you know, ready to carry on racing. The first parts are about

focus, the F, like ourselves, our own fitness, our diet, our sleep, what we put it into our mind,

what we meditated, we journey, like, what's our, we're making, you know, what's our mind for

this practice? Like, is this part, is this thing that the me is at working? And then impact

our money and our business, like the work that we do and, you know, the impact we make on the

community. If, if that's all aligned with our vision and values, like we're not stressing about

that we're finding some pleasure in it, okay, that's that box tip, the R in relationships.

We can't be co-dependent on our wife because if we're not seeing other people, then we become

that. It's like she didn't marry us to be her, her, you know, a counselor flipping cook, a cleaner,

a lover of a mate, like she married us to have a shitload of fun and make kids and they've

happily ever after, right? So we need to have connection with our wife and partner. We need to have

connection with our friends and family, the relationship with our kids and also our mentors

and network. When you have that, that, that diamond alliance, I call it absolutely fueling a man's

self-worth and identity. And then the fourth part is energy, which is fun adventure and peace.

So being able to spend time on your own, having time yourself, that's the, that's the peace part.

But the fun and adventure as we talked about before is what have you got planned? Are you seeing

your friends? Have you got plans to look forward to memories to look back on? So as a barometer

in the fire tracker when I get men as their accountability to how many times did you work out

this week? How many days did you get seven hours sleep or not? How many times you had sex this

week? Have you done your cash flow? Did you plan and organize your week? Have you called family

and friends? Did you spend all the time with your kids? Did you have a date night? Did you have

any fun? Did you make time for yourself? Like it's not a rulebook, but as a barometer, when men

say, yeah, did, did, did, did, did. Guess what? They, you know, in terms of their mindset scores,

they're like, yeah, I feel, I feel awesome. I feel connected. I feel like I'm making a difference.

I feel like I'm having a shit load of fun. So the secrets of success aren't that secret.

If you're not doing the things that light you up and give you an identity as a strong,

confident man, then guess what? Your head's going to be gone. And that is the high value man way.

You, you, you follow a life that works. You feel great. You shop as the man that the people

around you love and want to see. Life works. So that's all good and well. But men, stubborn,

year driven, general, general talk here, but it's, I think it's important to, how do you help

those men to be able to reach out to start the conversation? Because I think that's part of it.

We don't reach out for help. We feel like we should take care of it. We should take it ourselves.

And then we start to just close, close off. What do you say, or how do you guide people to actually

get over that first hurdle, which is to actually reach out for help to start with?

Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, but it's also, I don't want to say cliché,

because that sounds harsh and new, but it can be a bit of a misnomer, right? There's such that the,

the increase in the volume on, oh, do men talk? Or even the flipping, misogyny bullshit and

take and all that sort of stuff, it's actually raising the conversation about what are men up to?

Are men happy? What are men? What's wrong with men today? Why do they? And it's, you know,

nothing does my head in more than hearing some blocs sitting there, or it's normally talking

on the touch line in the football. He's going, oh, the bloody misses, never guess this,

what I had to get permission, I couldn't play golf last week. Meanwhile, she's on the other side

of the pitch talking to her, the other mum's going, oh, lazy bastard, never trained,

never, never helped out, never did it, never left the whole of the Christmas to me. And so,

when, when you can, when you can put it to men, like, what's at stake here? Like, how,

what's it feel like to think these things about your life or about your wife? What's it like to

feel that everything you work for is slipping through your fingers? It's not that you're a failure,

it's not that you've got to go and do loads of therapy and counseling. It's, if we go back to

the pit stop analogy, it's literally, you've been racing around this track at 100 mile an hour,

thinking you're winning the race. You, like, update the car, put some more petrol in, put some new

tires on, like, what are you doing to cultivate the success that you really desire? And by the way,

what got you to 40, isn't what's going to get you to 50? And then when you can really relate,

when you can get to that point and say, look, look, look, what's at stake here? Like, wouldn't you,

wouldn't you much rather be loving life rather than feeling like struggling through it? Well,

I've got to be honest, yeah, if we could, we could have more sex, that'd be great. Like, let's say,

that's often the common one. And then we go like, well, yeah, there could be some work to do there.

But, you know, when I'm working with married dads and then they come back to me and they say,

yeah, we went away at the weekend. This is a particular example of a client. We went away at the

weekend. Yeah, it happened. Like, yeah, it's just sex, right? But it's, it's recognizing that how

he was showing up in his relationship, how he was running his life, how he was feeling like

everything was against him was then impact in how much passion and desire his wife felt towards him.

So it's about having a system and a solution. It's rather than saying, oh, yeah, come and have

some therapy, totally open and promote therapy where men need it. But also, when you can say to

men, I know you want to be over here, but you feel over here. Would you like a system to get you

there? Oh, yeah, how's that work? Well, I've got a system. Come and have a go.

Yeah. So what was it about this line of work that you were like, hell, yes, this is how

I want to change the world. What was that like? So the first, the first self-help book I read was

called Feel the Fear and do it anyway in kind of 1998, sort of time. I'd had a little bit of

sort of kid's teenage therapy, sort of my mum, Diabrine, I was nine. So, you know, that sort of

side of that kind of awareness had come into my life at that point. Then I read this book because

I had a break up with a girlfriend and I was sat on the tube and everyone was reading this

bloody book. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Read that, right? Then jumping a quarter

a couple of years, classic stoner story. I'm sat on the couch about two o'clock in the morning,

smoking a joint, Tony Robbins comes on the TV. I'm like, wow, who is this guy? Off the back of

that, I started reading Jim Rones, Exegler, Napoleon Hill and like, wow, okay, I mean, who moved my

cheese, the classic flipping half an hour read. And then in 2004, I broke up with a long-term

girlfriend, my girlfriend and I broke up, long-term girlfriend and I was miserable, miserable as hell.

You'd think I'd never done any personal development in my life. And a friend of mine said,

you need to go and do the landmark forum. I'm fed up you being a miserable shit. And I went and

did the landmark forum, which led to me pretty much doing all the work that landmark education

offers. And that that's off the back of Werner Airharts' work with Est in the sort of 70s in California

and stuff. And just I got to let go of my past. Completely, take my life. My mum,

I'm a different, I was a kid, you don't understand, like, my dad thrashed me. You don't understand,

like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. To take that, to take that pain out of your everyday life,

let alone your future life and and throw it away. And the guy on stage, like the Lamot

Form leader and the 250 people in the room, I was like, well, making a difference like this.

These people going out into the world and impacting their families and their extended families

and the people they work with, I was like, how can I, how can I make that kind of difference?

And then when the divorce happened, which was sadly after a shitload of terrible life

circumstances and things, miscarriages, financial challenges, starting a business, having babies,

you know, being a young couple. My wife had a sort of mystery illness after all that,

and it was really, really tough getting through it all. And then my little brother chucked

himself in front of a train Christmas 2014. And we broke up, not long after that. And it was

you know, I remember touching Google for Am I Burn Out? And like Google says, is before AI,

even though Chuck GVT would have definitely given me the load down on that. But Google's like,

this is the definition of Burn Out. Yeah, yes, you are Burn Out. And I was broken completely,

you know, but to fast forward this story to the point about actually creating this,

I was up and mounting in Austria, which you mentioned at the beginning, stuck in a blizzard,

thinking, how am I going to fix this? How am I going to fix this? And as the sun cleared,

and I look back, what I thought was this danger that we've been stuck in had passed, like,

they've been 500, 800 meters behind us. And it hit me. I'd been thinking everything was a problem

and life had been put on me. And it was all my, it was like, oh my goodness, it's not fair how

am I going to do this? And this literally like a, whether you believe in God or not, you know,

the universe, whoever, I got this message like, you think this has all been done to you? What if

it was done for you? All the experiences, all the books, all the courses, all the people you've met,

and here right now, what if all this had been given to you so that you could go and do something

magical for others? And I'd swear to you, that voice was audible in my head. And I just felt the

weight of everything, lift off me. I've got it on her. It's actually downstairs. I should have

grabbed it. It's a small piece of paper because we went into this mountain hut at the end of the,

where we were climbing up to. I said to woman, have you got any paper? Have you got any paper?

And all she had was a bar, a bar made like notepad. And I wrote down on there, which was the bones

of the three XC and the fire code. It like, like, I've got to write this down. And it, I mean,

that is my flux capacitor moment, basically. That's, that's what happened. That epiphany and here we are

today. So what's been like for you as the entrepreneur because having this download, having this

realization and then putting into practice, they're two very different things. So what's, what's been

maybe the most exciting thing about seeing this actually help more people? So you've been through

a life journey, lots of experience, having all these modalities and understanding. And then

I want to help other people with this, but for it to actually settle and bring this back in and

then help more people, what's it like for you as you do change lives? I feel like you've asked

two questions there, right? Like, how did I, what's it like putting it all together and what's it

like actually changing lives? I sat with a guy in the pub, let's talk about bringing it back up

to date, a new client sat with him on what day one's day, on day, sat with him on Friday.

He said to me, you've done more for me in 90 minutes than nine months of counseling as.

And it's because I was able to see in amongst everything that he was telling me about all this

stuff and all the experiences in life and all this pain, all this struggle and it's weird,

and all this and I was like, you don't trust yourself. And he just started crying.

Now, counseling is wonderful. Therapy is brilliant. You know, people can, you know,

release trauma and stuff and things that need to be gone through. But as a coach,

as particularly from the experiential side of it, like this is my journey and these are my

experiences and this is what I've turned it into, when that hits a guy square in the face like

it did to that guy on Friday, I know it was given to me. And it won't be for everybody.

You know, like the asshole bloke who doesn't help out and thinks his wife should just cook his dinner

and you know, shagging him, right? Like he's not coming to me. He's not coming to me.

But the burnout business owning dad who loves his kids and wants to create a, you know,

a life that works for his family, he will be sat in front of me. And when I, and when,

when him and I see eye to eye, I get goosebumps. I love the fact that my work gives me goosebumps.

And I think anybody's job, you say, you know, do a job that gives you goosebumps. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So where's all this going for you? What's, what are you excited about that's on the horizon

and that you're, that you've planned out or that you're so looking forward to? What is that for you?

Yeah. So it's, it's not always evolving, right? But it's always bedding down and, you know,

making sort of the single, the one-on-one work has been absolutely phenomenal since 2019.

But in order to really grow the business and to impact more lives, the group program has to,

has to thrive. And I've launched it a few times and it hasn't, hasn't caught, caught fire, right?

So 2026, the accelerator, the, the program is three cycles of 10 weeks. So it's like 10

week burst, clear goals, intentionality, fitness challenge, guest experts, you know,

relationship or, or, or, or break up recovery. Like it's all there in the 10 weeks and then we'll

hit Easter holidays and it's like, okay, great. Now we, now we, now we relax and enjoy everything

that we've worked hard for for the next four or five weeks before the second cycle kicks in.

And it, the three XC and the Firework fits beautifully around that. And, you know, it's,

like I say to people, it's not coaching, sorry, it's not therapy or counseling, it's a lifestyle.

It's a way of being that has life work out for you. And we're doing it with like-minded men.

We're having a shitload of fun. And, and it's, it's for your kids and family as well. Like

someone said to me once before about, imagine a party with all your clients at.

If it looks like a shit party, you're doing the wrong way, great. And I see my, my clients at a

barbecue, you know, we've, we've had barbecues, right? But, you know, to have them all there,

to be a DJ playing, you know, on, you know, somewhere in the garden and kids running about and

bloke, drinking beer and women and chat in. And then I was like, how did you meet all these

like? You're like, oh yeah, we're a part of the high value man project. It's been awesome.

That's, that's what we're pulling, pulling together.

Come back to how you started this episode, talking about the habits and the routines. This,

it's not that secret, but it needs the help, support, guidance, accountability to help you put

this together. So, Johnny, look, thank you so, so much for sharing not only the amazing work

that you do and the impact you'll make, but behind the scenes of your journey, what we spend

like to get to this point, it's always so interesting. So, thank you. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, absolutely pleasure. Real joy to, to, and I hope, just sort of wrap up, I hope

other men who are perhaps running their business, chasing their goals, feeling like it's

slipping through their fingers and they don't quite know why. It won't be, it's unlikely that you're

doing something wrong, or that you're not good enough. It's just about this slight shift in

mindset and putting more of the focus on you so that you can be more for others. It's not selfish,

it's self leadership, it's that classic, put your mask on before you, you know, you help others.

And that's what we're doing here. We're giving men the freedom to put themselves first so they

can be more for others. Oh, put. So, for those people that like, yes, they want to make more or less

super curious. How do they find it more? How do they reach out? Yeah, so, with, move the community,

I'll aspect of it all over to school, right? So, if you go to highvaluemanproject.com

forward slash group, that gets you in at the free level of the high value man projects on school.

There's loads of tools and resources there at the base camp and, you know, opportunities to book

a power call with me, which is a free introductory call, and of course, invitations to all different

levels in a circle or the 2026 accelerator, which kicks off in January for the first 10 weeks.

Fantastic. Well, there you are. If you're curious or think this town's amazing,

go and check it out and then start the conversation. And again, Johnny, thank you so, so much for

sharing. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, you're welcome. Good to have, good to be a

mark. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Hey, Katie. Yeah, Mark. Wanna do an outro?

Sweet. Hey, thank you so, so much for listening and making it to the end. Yay, you. So, what happens next?

We ask them the things that podcasts are supposed to ask at the end of an episode.

Can you please rate, review, download? Subscribe. Yeah. But why is it important? Because that's how

our podcast gets noticed. Some people find us. It is. And we want all their earballs.

All the earballs, all over the place. We do. Nice. Yeah, so please do all those things.

We'll be ever so grateful. And then more people here. You're a beautiful voice.

Or yours. Oh, yeah. See you next time. Bye.