Adam Torres and Pavel Stuchlik discuss lasting business success.
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Show Notes:
How can CEOs and executives incorporate values into their leadership styles without sacrificing performance? In this episode, Adam Torres and Pavel Stuchlik, Founder of NOA|AON, explore Pavel’s journey as an entrepreneur and how NOA|AON is helping entrepreneurs and business leaders.
About NOA|AON
NOA is a movement that embodies the essence of movement, harmony, and wholeness., NOA, represents Movement, while AON stands for All or None, indicating commitment to creating a space where everyone is welcome and valued. At NOA, they strive to achieve harmony as a primary goal, which is symbolized by the vertical bar in our logo. they believe that by embracing our differences and working together, we can create a better world.
Their mission is to produce live, on-demand, in-person immersive events, retreats, workshops, physical locations, and corporate events with frequency sound, meditation, breathwork, dance, and overall education of the teachings of NOA|AON to be the best version of yourself in today’s world! At NOA, they believe that everyone has the potential to be their best selves, and we are dedicated to helping people unlock that potential. Their events and services are designed to promote personal growth, self-awareness, and holistic wellness.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Pavel Stuklik, and he is founder of NOAA Aon. Pavel, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. Super happy and grateful to be here. All right, Pavel. So great, great topic today. So how ethical practices and relationship balance drive lasting business success? A lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives that listen to this show and a lasting business success. Who doesn’t want that?
So excited to unpack this with you. And I guess on my end, just to, you know, Just to, just to get this started, Noah Aon, whenever I, whenever I see a company name or whenever I see a particular spelling and I don’t quite get, I’m like, there’s a lot of thought that I’m sure the founder put behind this. Can you please maybe just start with that?
Where did this concept come from? Yeah. So crazy story. I used to be, you know, extremely busy, burned out CEO. I was running Orange Theory Fitness locations all over the country. And essentially I committed myself that every three months I’m going to do something outside of my box and something outside of my comfort zone.
And so I went to this dark room about eight years ago. As part of one of those, you know, uncomfortable situations, and I spent ten days in complete darkness in the middle of Thailand, with no food, just water, and, you probably wonder like, why in the Wait, how many days did you say? Ten, ten days.
And complete darkness? Complete darkness. Wow. Go ahead. I just wanted to make sure I caught that right. That’s amazing. Go ahead. Please. Yeah. No. So, so at this meditation retreat, and it was so profound for me. Well, at first it was extremely difficult because of this thing called monkey brain and that monkey brain, you know, is what I call this never ending mind.
It just keeps on thinking about future, past, and what do we do next? And. Yeah. Sometimes it can run and ruin our lives and because of this over exhaustion of listening to all these voices, I wanted peace. And so basically it was day seven inside of this dark room that I went into a complete state of, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t worry about the future, didn’t worry about the past.
I went into this state of peace. Deep state of meditation where , I just completely lost, you know, all of that sense. And in that moment I had this major realization, you know, what am I doing with life? Like why do I keep on chasing for, you know, more locations, more money, more fame, whatever it might be.
And I had this realization of Noah Aon. And so, what that is, it symbolizes duality, and essentially my whole life I’ve been playing, you know, tennis or ping pong match, and what I mean by that, you know, highs and lows, and good days and bad days, and high sales and low sales, and I was like, there is another way to life, and there is another way, it is coming back into harmony, health, and happiness, and that’s the middle line, what symbolizes.
And so literally inside of this dark room, I had this major realization that I got to follow my passion and that’s always been music. And I also got to follow my purpose, which was how do I give this knowledge and all of these tools that I’ve learned from these crazy experiences to the world. And so that became, you know, teaching and lecturing and, and doing retreats and workshops.
And then The third thing that I got out of this dark room was what type of legacy do I want to leave behind and that became Noah Aon as how do I live in service to others, but yet still be able to function and, you know, make true wealth and abundance in every situation of my life. And so now you have this concept, you have this and what point and maybe it was immediate.
So I’m just trying to get to the kind of the root of this. At what point do you know that this company is going to be like a significant focus in your life? And it’s going to be possibly even a calling. Like, when does that happen? Yeah. So it, it, it happened, you know, kind of right after was like that direct like vision and why, you know, most of our life, we’re so busy.
We’re chasing ourselves, you know, let’s say that we wake up in the morning, we go on the phone and we get taken over by our notifications. We get taken over by our meetings and, you know, whatever families you know, requests are, and then we forget that, We forget to realize what are our passions.
What are, what is our agenda? What would I actually love to do today? And then imagine that we go like this for years or decades sometimes with, you know, yes, chasing after great stuff and money and security, but then losing ourselves in process, losing our peace in process and sometimes families. Like it was for me, you know, I was able to achieve this incredible success at a really young age, but I got divorced and I lost so many different partnerships in the process.
I also lost tons of money in that same space. And so I was like, how do we do this sustainably? In from a place of, you know, true happiness. And so that’s, that’s what I’ve been gifted in this experience is the true sense of silence so I can actually hear what do I want and I can send, you know, where I want to go with this.
And so that’s really what, you know, escalated in that process. Talk a little bit more about your background. Like were you always an entrepreneur? Where’d that come from? Yeah, so I started my first company when I was 17 years old. I’m originally from Czech Republic and I used to be a professional cyclist.
Now, when I was 17, my dad gave me the choice. You know, you either go to school and your life is paid for, or do your little cycling thing and you’re gonna have to figure it out. Yeah. And so, what I did, I, I filled a need and I you know, this is, this is, Many, many years ago before Alibaba was really well recognized like today.
And so, I went on Alibaba and I started searching for carbon bike frames. And I found, you know, the same type of bike frames that you would find that are 4, 000 or 5, 000 in, you know, US or Europe. And I found them for 500 to 1, 000, you know, at cost. And so I literally listed it on eBay and then I start trading between Alibaba and eBay and then further on I, I created a whole, you know, carbon business out of this.
So that was actually my, my first business. Now, when I was about 21 years old, I basically, completely, you know, just lost it in a Czech national race. My body got completely over exhausted and I got diagnosed with, you know, Epstein Bauer chronic fatigue and I was literally sick every two weeks.
And that was the end of my cycling career. And that was the pivotal moment for me to learn about health and, you know, biohacking and, and, and how do I take charge of my own biology without using, you know, drugs and all of the Chemical stuff in in our society. And so I essentially I moved to America after and you know I was searching at different businesses that would qualify for a visa Because you know, I couldn’t figure out how to how to be here legally Otherwise, and so at first I found a sushi restaurant in in Boulder, Colorado So for a little bit I was there which later on didn’t qualify for this then I found a frozen yogurt chain in Hawaii and So I, I moved to Hawaii and I start, I don’t know if you remember the frozen yogurt era.
And so I started licensing that and I was a master franchisor and and then later on was supplying, you know, , the islands basically with, the frozen yogurt. But I got sick and tired of Basically making people fat, you know, claiming that it’s something healthy, and yet it’s all full of chemicals.
And basically , I moved to Florida, and I found Orange Theory Fitness. And this is, you know, at the early stages, maybe six locations open. And I was like 23 years old and I ended up getting the Georgia State as a master franchisor and without ever being there. And then further, I ended up growing it into seven different markets with almost a hundred locations under my belt before I sold it to private equity.
Wow. What a story. And so now as you’ve progressed through your, this is, I think this is a great transition. So you’ve obviously, and I wanted to set that, set that piece of things that you’ve been in business prior. Like this wasn’t, you know, just something that came to you when you went on this retreat and these, these 10 days of silence.
Well, the idea may have been. Come to you. But it was a culmination of like all these life experiences, right? Like all of this synthesizing. And at some point coming out in you in the form of Noah Aon. am I off on that? You absolutely got it. It’s like the total sum of all of the different workshops and teachings and retreats that I’ve been on.
And you know, and this is, this is this is what I basically did. I, as an entrepreneur, the one thing I was like, I’m going to do is every three months, just. Commit, commit that I will get out of the, the cycle so that way I can go on this exploration. But then it wasn’t until dark room where it was so clear that like, Hey, like you can just keep all of this knowledge , or tools for yourself.
You got to share it with others. And that’s what I start hearing the calling , to spread the word. So, in your work in NOAA and I know that some of the things that come up, of course, is like mind, body, spirit, like, balance. , how do you think some of these attributes can contribute to your little to business success?
Because some people will listen to this and they’ll say, Oh, you know, I never do that. Or, okay, I get it. And, you know, but how does this apply to me? Right? Yeah, no, absolutely. So I’ve actually, , the way I look at our life and time , is kind of in a three major buckets. There is yourself, which is, you know, made up of your physical, mental, emotional health.
And that is your, true wealth, right? If you are not healthy, You are not wealthy. It’s something that I’ve learned in the early stages because we can do everything that we want, but we can only push it so far as our health goes. And so it always starts with you. And so for me, I am very regiment when it comes to the discipline I have within my own health.
And I treat my own health just like a business. I basically have a dream goal. I have a, I break it down into a yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis. That, that projects into how I spend my time. So that way, every single day, you know, there is some form of exercise. There is some form of, you know, Connection to mindfulness, meditation, breath work every day I, carve out a time that I spend on creativity and also education.
And so that’s kind of that first bucket is you yourself. How do you want to really thrive within your own self? Now. In the regular world, business or, others a lot of times come first. And so I want to emphasize how important it is that you have to come back first. , and that’s the first bucket.
The second bucket is your family and also your friendships, your spouse. And, you know, in my learnings, I’ve lost my, my family because of the amount of time I spend in jobs and work. Essentially, this is every single day I spend, I call it the power hour. So I have a one hour a day that’s just fully dedicated for kids.
And then I have a one hour a day that is fully dedicated for my wife. And this is without cell phones. And this is, again, something that I’ve learned to be disciplined, just like any other meetings that we have. you know, for our companies. And then I’ve got a, the third bucket is our company or career mission, whatever we might call it.
And so this is kind of how I treat time, because when you own your time, you own your life and not the other way around. And so essentially these are the three buckets and I practice something I called the process of unhooking. And what I mean by this is you, I unhook in a cyclical way from that busy, busy world.
So you can keep on coming back to you. And so once a day, the first half an hour or an hour a day, I spend just by myself. I wake up before everyone generally. And this is that time I do exercise, visualization, gratitude, you know, I combine a variety of different practices that we teach to be able to really set in that intention, how do I want this day to be before the day runs me you know, the typical way is we just go on the phones and, you know, We get lost in it, right?
We go just from one task to another, and so this thing avoids that. Now, once a week, I spend a full day off without any technology, without food. I try to also fast once a week, and this is that cleanse and clear and also detox. But what I’ve learned is, if you detox from your cell phones, TVs, computers, at least once a week, you essentially reload your dopamine levels.
Which is what we are being, you know, hooked to, to all of these devices in our life. And that’s what just keeps that monkey brain, you know, going and going and going. , . I also spend the first part of the day just by myself, and then the second part of the day, I spend it with kids, family, and wife.
And I use that to reassess how was my week, , what do I wanna follow the following week? And just like with a company, you know, it’s like the, the, the weekly meeting with myself now. Once a month, I spend four days completely off and essentially it’s the same thing. I, I do not touch cell phone.
I go into, you know, journaling. I spend time with family and I unhook from the busy, busy world. And once a year I spend 15 days completely off. For me, it became the dark room. Of course, you know, it’s really Extreme, right? For a regular person, but it’s taking that time that it doesn’t have to be that extreme.
It’s, you know, shifting that focus on just you, your family, from the mission, from the work, so it doesn’t define us. So we can really also re identify where we’re going. Who are we becoming? Is this making us happy? You know, so we don’t get lost in it. And so what I found is when I follow this cycle, I don’t burn out anymore.
I have this sense of ownership, but also ability to continue projecting where am I heading. And you know, it changes with time and it’s not always perfect. It’s also important to don’t beat yourself up with a stick because we tend to do that as our society. But whenever I follow this, it’s just completely altered the way that The way I live, it brought me into balance.
Wow. And so , I love the framework that you give and there’s , there’s only so much we’re going to be able to do in one podcast episode, but I do know that this is the work you’re doing day in and day out with Noah Aon. So that being said, Pavel, it’s, it’s, Somebody’s listening to this or watching this and they want to learn more , about your company, what you’re doing and really how, it can help them.
Like, what’s the best way for people, a two part question, what’s the best way for people to connect and how have you found that maybe somebody’s ready or it’s ready for their, or they’re a good fit, you know, to work with you and your team. Yeah, absolutely. So we work with, you know, CEOs, executives, companies, and also individuals all over the world.
We do it in a three different ways. So we have a digital library which if you go on our website, it’s N-O-A-A-O n.com, noa aon.com. You can actually get a free access, and that’s where we have literally over 80 hours of recording. There is also courses. And then we do live stream recording and we do that either privately.
So with companies, executives, or we do it, you know, more in a, in a group. Then we have over a hundred events a year. So we literally travel across the world constantly from city to city, to country, to country, from retreats, summit, conferences experiences or immersive experiences that we curate. And then the third part is we also integrate technology.
So one of my really missions in this has been bringing, for example, EEG testing to measure and show how our breathwork, meditations, and mindfulness practices actually are changing. And especially in the corporate environment, we can literally show you whatever , your team or yourself is disengaged, or if you’re focused, we can bring and help you get you to the focus.
And that’s the technology piece. That , we have on our website as well, and you can also find us at NOAAEONOFFICIAL on any social media. Fantastic. And for everybody that’s listening, just so you know we’ll, we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and, and, and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time, First time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet. We welcome you to hit, hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new, new inspiration that’s going to help you along the way on your journey.
So again, hit that follow or subscribe button and Pavel, thank you so much for coming on, man. It’s been a real pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you so much.