Dhru 00:00

Hey everybody, this is Dr. Dhru Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast, Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship.

Dhru 00:26

All right, welcome, everybody. Welcome back to another edition of IIkigai Leadership. I’m here in a special place, here. This is not my normal spot. As usual. I’m sure you guys have known by now. I’m here with the amazing Peter Hurley. Thanks so much, Peter, for taking the time to talk today, man.

Peter 00:42

Oh my gosh, Drew, I’m so psyched you came in. This is awesome. I need, I wanted you to see the studio and hang out with you. But this is cool that we got to do this.

Dhru 00:48

The studio is awesome. It’s actually, the location is phenomenal. But this this actually is setup. I mean, I’m I’m blown away by how amazing this for folks. I mean, I brought my photographer and Peter already has everything set up here, which is pretty cool. So I can take advantage this amazing space. Super cool.

Peter 01:03

So no, I was excited. Because I knew when you asked me to do this, and you were gonna come up, I was like, I’ll be ready. I’m gonna have this place rockin and rollin by then.

Dhru 01:11

It’s awesome to have you on here. And a lot of folks who are watching us will not really know you, have an idea of your background in that kind of thing. But who is Peter, would you start by going to what what made you pick up pick up a camera? I mean, we talked about this a little bit. You told us a story back in Denver, but I mean, folks who weren’t there, obviously.

Peter 01:28

Sure. My name is Peter Hurley. I was born in New Jersey. The path for me to grab a camera was pretty random. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I went to BU and I was studying like human physiology. And I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. When I graduated. I graduate and I sailed for the summer. As I always did. I raced sailboats all my life. And I just I was really into it. I grew up on the Jersey Shore in a small town called Mantaloking. That summer, I was selling sailboats at a local sailors’ shop. And one of my friends owned him was my boss and kind of beat me up and taught me a lot about marketing and stuff like that. Actually. It was amazing. Actually looking back then at this guy, he was he was nuts. But he did things outside the box. Nowadays, but..

Dhru 02:10

What year was I’m just curious.

Peter 02:13

This was no, it was 1993.

Dhru 02:18

Okay, yes, so marketing was totally different back then, compared to now.

Peter 02:21

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I was 23. You can do the math. Anyway, I asked for a couple days off to seal on this national championship. And he gave it to me. And I was like, okay, so I won. And then when I won that fall, I didn’t know what I was going to do, because it was a summer job. And I was like, I’m gonna start training for the Olympics, because the boat that I had sailed mostly, predominantly had gone to be an Olympic class. And I was at the stage of my life where I was like, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my degree. And I didn’t know what to do. Anyway, long story short, I ended up sailing for a couple years. And somebody saw me sailing, well, Caggie Simaneli Bradfor saw me sailing, and she’s like, you could model and I was like, I don’t know about that. She goes, Yeah, I’m gonna get a photographer. She got a start. And then she goes, and I’m gonna send your pictures over to Ralph Lauren. And they really liked you. And you’re gonna go down to Miami and get in front of Bruce Weber’s camera, and you’re and then you’re gonna have a huge modeling career, blah, blah, blah. But no, it wasn’t that huge, but it was fun. But Bruce told me to pick up a camera. I became friends with Bruce. I was in Miami and I said, Hey, are you free this day I’m racing? Why don’t you come shoot this race. And he came and he put it in Italian Vogue. And it was just cool. If that time of my life I was really, it was crazy.

Dhru 03:34

That’s the point. You’re shooting and you’re modelling both at this time. Or just shooting?

Peter 03:28

No, I was just modeling and sailing. I wasn’t even modeling yet. I was just mod, I had modeled and I was sailing. And then I missed the US team in 96. And I came to New York and I decided to try the modeling thing. It was not easy. I’m not that good looking. Like it’s just like it wasn’t that easy. And it was hard. But I got some jobs and I plugged away. And I had the support of some diverse, one being Bruce Weber. And he said he’s I don’t know why he encouraged me to pick up a camera but he said well, what are you doing? Just pick up a camera and go walk around and take pictures on the street? So I did. That was it. I was like alright, I kind of liked this. This is cool.

Dhru 04:20

You’re the headshot guy. Like everyone knows Peter Hurley is the expert in headshots like far and away right? What was that moment where you were like headshots. It’s a thing for me. I just I love doing that Justin that’s what I’m gonna specialize in or, or was there a moment like that?

Peter 04:31

Yeah, I mean, it was a monetary thing I was trying to be with you know, I told her so I remember telling him I want to shoot like you I want to do like, like shots for of actors for Vanity Fair. And I want to shoot ad campaigns. I want to do this, that, and the other thing. And I was like, Well, I needed an agent. I needed to get commercial work. I needed all that stuff. And I was an actor. So while I actually picked up the camera to get out of a bar, I was bartending and I hated it. And in New York it was like till 4am. So I was getting out of the bar at four, and barely sleeping, I was falling asleep on modeling jobs, I had started acting, and I was like, Maybe this acting thing can take off because this modeling thing isn’t gonna last. Let me try this acting thing, but let me figure out how to pay for it. So I was like, let me take some pictures. So I’d done actor’s headshots, and I was like, this didn’t look like a bad gig. And these photographers were making a good living. And I was like, if I could get anywhere close to what they’re charging, I’d be alright. So I started and I’d go to acting class, just to try and get the actors to pay me to take the pictures and like I would do it like that. Yeah, sorry, guys running around doing that. I was like, I don’t have to go to a bar anymore. And then I was like, Oh, my gosh, I suck at acting too. Like, I should quit that. And then here I am.

Dhru 05:43

Let’s see, I think I just want to highlight something about that, though. Like one of the things I tell people a lot of times is that there’s not always a direct line to what you want to do necessarily, right. Life is all about the zigzag, right? It’s like moving around. And then if you didn’t want to get out of bartending, you might not have picked up a camera ever. Right?

Peter 06:03

Yeah, exactly.

Dhru 06:05

Which seems like random at the moment. But I mean, set the tone for rest of your life, which is crazy.

Peter 06:09

If I was gonna say like, one of my biggest things in my life that I’ve noticed, is like, if you throw me a bone, I’m gonna pick it up. And I’m like, I’m like, oh, there’s a bone over there. I’m gonna go for that one now. And then I’m gonna go for that one. I was never locked into a path. I never did a nine to five ever in my life. I never did. And I don’t think I could do a nine to five, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

Dhru 06:29

And most people don’t, frankly, I mean, like, I don’t think human beings are meant to do a nine to five, we’re not built for that, right? I mean, all these studies are coming out now. Whether it’s back problems, health problems in general, whatever, like, you know, attention deficit disorder, or whatever, ADHD, all these things are coming out where it’s like, 9 to 5 is actually really bad for us as humans, right? Like, just in terms of, I mean, just physiologically speaking, if nothing else, right, sitting in a cubicle, for eight hours, eight plus hours, cuz some people sit for longer, right? They’re just there is really bad for everything about us, right? Because we’re built to go hunt, and go find food and go, you know, find our next conquest, whatever that might be, right? Whether it’s food, whether it’s, you know, a new village or whatever a place to live. And we’re sitting here just crunching numbers on the computer or like, you know, whatever typing up or sitting in meetings. It’s like, the worst form of who we can be as humans. You know what I mean? And I think that the creative aspect that the part leading to that, like you did, is really powerful with what lights up you know, people’s I do because I watched you work. You light up behind the camera. Yeah, like a dimmed otherwise. But I mean, when you get the camera, you’re like, get a different person. I mean, in a good way.

Peter 07:33

I love it. Yeah, I love it. You love it? Don’t you need to get that person in there, and you just drill them, get them going and get him fired up? Like, I’m glad I don’t have that experience. And the pressure was there to go get the real job, you know, especially being a photographer, I don’t know, may artists are out there have probably gone through this with the parental pressure society pressures, like there’s so many guys and women that I coach that say, Hey, I was a yearbook photographer in high school. And then I went out and got the real job. And I did it for 20 years. And now I’m ready, I’m ready to get out. I’m sick of this stuff. And I really want to pick up my camera and start shooting again. Then they come and get coached by me. And I’m like, Wow, that’s amazing. That’s so I mean, it’s wild. It’s to think that the our career choices were chosen. And we’re kind of stuck in this rut, and I don’t think it’s happening anymore. I think that now, I think that the kids, I mean, I have twins that are 20. I don’t know what they’re gonna, they’re trying to figure it out. But I don’t think that the parental pressure, I mean, I’m not giving them parental pressure to go get a quote-unquote, real job. I think COVID actually helped in a way where people don’t expect you to be in the office all the time. You can, you can work from home, you don’t have to be nine to five on the clock anymore. And most companies eight, get your work done, do what I need you to do, rock it, and then go, you know,

Dhru 08:56

The good leaders say that though, the good companies. There’s still a lot of companies now trying to get anyone back to the office, because they’re afraid of productivity and whatever, which is also just a bullshit excuse. Right? It’s just an excuse for control. They want control of their employees. There is a shift, though, for sure. COVID definitely had an effect where a lot of people now are realizing the work can get done outside of the office. You don’t have to have everyone in the office sitting there doing nothing against you nothing at home. You know, but there’s a there’s a line going back to what you said earlier, which is an interesting… the movie up in the air with George Clooney. I think I saw it a while ago. Yeah, great movie. But there’s one line in there where he asked the guy he’s like, how much did they originally pay you to give up on your dreams? Right? Yeah. And that’s, that’s huge. That’s powerful to frame it that way. Right? Yeah. Because we don’t frame it that way. We’re like, Oh, I gotta get this job to pay for my life. And then 20 years later, fast forward. You just get caught up in the grind and you realize 20 years have gone by?

Peter 09:42

Wow, that’s interesting. Yeah, my brain just went to, I got stuck in what I consider headshot land, which isn’t a bad place to be. But I never went to commercial work. I never got the big commercial jobs. I may have done them. I’ve done little things here and there over the course of my career, and they come they come when they come but it’s not like I ever went down that path. I’m not doing ads for print, I’m not, you know, I just don’t do much editorial like I just I always wanted that never did it and I kind of sold out for because the money came in with the headshots. But now I’m like, wait a minute, hold on this has been great. You know, it’s just been a, it’s been an amazing thing to be able to not only parlay it into growing the community that I built, and having those photographers out there doing the jobs, and it’s been awesome.

Dhru 10:30

Yeah. And that that community, I mean, the headshot crew is really I mean, I’ve only been part of it for a very short period of time, but it’s a really cool community. But from my experience, it’s rare to find that kind of community where everyone is really invested in everybody else growing. Because oftentimes, you hear people advertise that. And there’s like, 20% of people to actually feel that way. And then the other 80 are just out for themselves and trying to figure out how to how to leverage this and how to leverage that and how to how to make it their own. What has been the difference for you, that you’ve noticed what they what the different photographers who join the Headshot Crew.

Peter 10:59

I think the one thing is that, you know, obviously I run the ship, so I call it an AFZ. And I’d use acronyms a lot, but AFZ is an Asshole-Free-Zone, and I tell people point blank, look, the competitive nature of people is out there. I think it’s you know, I’m competitive as they come like I train for the Olympics. I know. I’m crazy human competition-wise, but mostly, I just try and focus it on myself. So it’s got nothing to do with what the guys doing down the street. I don’t care what the guy’s doing down the street. I’m the one who have to go to work that guy, I don’t know if that guy’s working today or not, I’m working, I got shit to do. You know, I don’t care if that guy got out of bed or not. I’m outta bed at six or seven. And I’m rolling. I’m like, candle burning. You know, I don’t fool around. I go workhorse mode. And it’s game on. And that’s why I knew I was kind of unstoppable because of the work ethic. But the work ethic was based on the love for what I’m doing. Like, I don’t feel like I’m working. I’m in the studio, I don’t feel like I’m working. And going back to the photographers that I’ve been able to bring into the headshot crew, I think iit’s just the people that are seeing competition. I’ll give you an example. Chicago, I don’t have as many photographers in New York competing against me for my own headshot work that I’m coaching. I taught my first workshop. And this guy comes in he goes, Why are you teaching your competition? And I was like, I don’t know. I don’t see it like that. I was like, I don’t know how long it took me to get like the for me, I’m going to teach you I want you to succeed. There’s enough to go around, what are you worried about? And I always had a problem because I have this global community of photographers anyway Chicago has like I do the workshop out there. And there’s just so much talent and there’s a lot of photographers and I have seen them bond together and raise that market like no other just because of the headshot crew bonding through Chicago there’s a Associate Status that people get to and I think there’s more associates in in Chicago and it’s just a good example that I have because most people are used to this and in whatever you know, job you have or whatever is you’re used to competition and coming into competition and going no that person is competing against me the people embrace the fact that you know the headshot career I teach a style they do it and then they can you know actually grow together and change the and educate people on what a good headshot is. And then and then I’ve seen it elevate the entire city. So those people that are worried about the person next to them don’t stay long. They just don’t stay so.

Dhru 13:29

So, self weeding out process almost right. Which is great. That’s cool.

Peter 13:34

You don’t want them there anyway.

Dhru 13:36

Yeah, exactly. 

Peter 13:38

What do you want them there for? There’s a quote that I love. And I don’t know, I think maybe Bill… I don’t know who said it. Amateurs compete. Professionals create. And I’m a pro. So if I’m a pro… like you can’t play that game with me, I’m a pro. I’m creating new doesn’t matter what you’re doing. 

Dhru 13:51

I love that. I actually, let me use that quote because what I was thinking of was another movie grow work. I do a lot of movie TV quotes. The one I was thinking of was from this movie called With Honors with Joe Pesci back in the day in like 98 or something. And the quote is winners forget they’re in a race, they just love to they just love to run. 

Peter 14:10

Oh, wow, that’s cool. 

Dhru 14:11

I love that. Right? Because then that’s exactly what you just described right? It’s like you just love what you’re doing so much you don’t care about the guy next door or that kind of stuff. And that’s that’s also part of that mentality and you had a business coach for a while that mentality that you get when you work with a coach is like the getting out of scarcity and into that whole idea of abundance and just focus on creating as opposed to just worrying what everyone else is doing reacting all the time. And we talked about this briefly, creating versus reacting if you’re reacting you can’t be creative and when you’re creating.

Peter 14:37

It’s easier said than done though. Let’s be real you know, it’s when you got bills bills to pay, and that fucker down the street. 

Dhru 14:42

It’s like Maslow right? If you’re worried about putting roof over your head, you can’t be worried about self actualization the same time right? You’re worried about the very basic stuff like getting food, getting shelter, you know, making sure your family is fed and healthy. So you can’t sit there and we’re like, oh, I’m worried about the the baseline foundational stuff as well as the self actualization, like, top of the pyramid stuff, right? It’s not possible. But in terms of the work your do with Bob, Bob Proctor, you know, because he was your coach, what was the most impactful thing you learned from Bob? 

Peter 15:11

I didn’t know I was going to devote the report that I that I did with Bob years later, what happened was I was introduced to him in 1998. After I, it was was 1997. I think, after I was trained for the Olympics, already, I worked with a sports psychologist for the US team. And we were doing visualization stuff and some goal setting stuff. But I didn’t really realize that I was setting… I didn’t know about goal setting or anything like that. I walked into a Bob Proctor seminar and my jaw hit the floor. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this guy’s the real dude, this is crazy. And I think a lot of personal development, you know, the same message is out there, you know, think positive and set goals and work your butt off, believe in yourself. All that stuff is very similar. It’s the message that gets delivered from the different individuals. So I always tell people look, hang out with somebody that resonates for you. So Bob just was it for me, it wasn’t hocus pocusy. And it wasn’t you know, it was just, I was just like, I’m gonna grow with this. And that’s how I built I built my business based on his principles. It worked. I was like, Oh my gosh, it works so well that I forgot about him. So I started rolling. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m hitting every goal. You know, I couldn’t rub two nickels together before I met that guy. And I even though I’m damn good looking, I couldn’t make over 50 grand a year as a, as a model-actor-bartender-dude, that’s why I was in the bar. Right? So then I picked up the camera. And of course, the you know, I’m not to get into money. But the, you know, the 100k goal was, Oh, I was a kid, I was in my 20s. I was like, I gotta make 100k with it. I just turned 30 Actually, and I was like, I get it. And then my wife got pregnant. And then we found that they were twins. And I had just started shooting headshots, I better make 200 now, and I’m living in New York City. And then the two went to four and the four went to eight. And anyway, everything started with that trajectory into what I was doing. And what happened was, I got so busy, that I stopped studying and I stopped working on me personally, because I was, I was so focused on what I was doing. And at the time, it was great because I was hitting goals, and I was doing everything. And then the recession came in, like 2007, 2008. And my income went backwards. And I remember, it’s very difficult to live in New York City and have your income go backwards when you got twins. So I was like, This is not good. And I kind of got burnout with what I was doing a little bit. And then on a Facebook feed or something. Another thing for Bob Proctor . And you know, I haven’t really looked into bump stuff in a long time. And that’s when I signed up for a year coaching with him. And that changed everything. That was it. And the thing was, he always pushed multiple sources of income. And the thing was, I had to have a human being in front of my camera. And I had to press the button to make any income from 2000, When I picked up the camera until 2009, when I took this course. And he said you’re going to figure out other source of income. So that was 2009. In like 2016 or something, he brought me into one of his seminars to shoot people and he brought me up on stage to talk to them. And it was very cool. And I remember before I went up on stage, he was talking about sources of income. He goes Peter how many sources of income> Yeah. And I was all proud. I’m like, Bob, I have eight. And Bob goes, eight, you should have 800. And I was like and he’s right. And he’s right. So I always coach my people not only on photography, but on multiple source of income. And I’m constantly trying to evolve to figure out in this for instance, I’m going to start a podcast. I don’t know why I’m just gonna try and figure out how to monetize I’m like gonna start talking to people like it’s another source of income. There you go. Check it off, guys start a podcast. There you go. You know what? Hey, you never know you know, but that was that was the thing so now I’m back on track with that, that information, but it took me, I was probably stopped studying Bob when I picked up when I started shooting headshots. I was so busy. For seven years, I wasn’t really growing or, I mean I was growing and I was, my business was rocking. But it didn’t take off to where to where I am now without studying that stuff. So yeah, yeah. 

Dhru 19:26

What was the inspiration that started the headshot crew when you first when you first did it? 

Peter 19:27

Well, what happened was I was minding my own business in here just shooting and the F-Stoppers walked in F-Stoppers for those that don’t know, it’s like the one of the biggest photography blogs in the world now. But then they were just two guys that worked at a camera store that decided to start a blog. So they said, hey, what if we contact some photographers who we like and we’ll go interview them. So they showed up at my studio and they did an interview for me. And then the thing went nuts and then that people loved it. It was just one little video and people loved it. The photographer’s loved it so they said, hey, you know why don’t you teach a tutorial? They had never done a tutorial before. Now they do tutorials up the wazoo but they were like, Why don’t you teach it tutorial on headshots I was like the only thing I have ever taught is sailing. I don’t know how to teach photography I’m first of all, I’m the other thing that I love about what I do is that I’m self-taught, like I never took a course. So I don’t know any the lingo I to this day, like people will laugh at me that I don’t know some photography lingo. I was like, I don’t care, I make more money than you. You know, like, I don’t care. Like, I don’t really care. I mean, I shouldn’t say that. But, but it’s true. No, I’m very fortunate. But the thing is, is that it’s a medium where trial and error works. And if I can say anything to anyone, your genius is going to be capped on something that you were you might learn from somebody, I don’t want my genius to be capped. So I don’t want to know, like, I don’t want you to teach me anything. Because I want to figure it out for myself because I’ll do it the wrong way and it’ll be right. Like I always tell my students, and I do teach, so I do have to teach them, and I want them to learn from me, obviously, but I want them to grow and go. So I always say break my rules, go break them, do them, show me that you can do them, but then break them. So anyway, when when I agreed to do in that tutorial, by the way, it changed my life. Talking about multiple sources of income, it’s probably one of the most successful, I have one of the most successful tutorials in the photography world ever. It’s got to be top five or something anyway. But I know what I have, I think I have the number one most successful photography workshop ever. So what happened was they were like, you did the video. Now you got to do a workshop. And then my web developer was like, Well, where are we going? What are you going to do with all those people? Why don’t you teach them? I was like, I don’t know, he goes, Well, why don’t we make like a place like a Facebook for photographers? I was like, Okay, make that. So we made Headshot Crew. And then so what happens is I did the tutorials, and then I did the workshop, then they go into the headshot crew, and I coach them there. So it was all like that, that process. And it was all because the F-Stoppers knocked on my door. 

Dhru 22:10

And it’s art, right? You’re teaching art. Right? And so that that’s part of the, sort of the challenge is like, like you said, like, you know, when it looks good. And you know, when it doesn’t, right? You don’t necessarily know the technical reason why it doesn’t look good to articulate that somebody, but you know, it’s doesn’t look good. So like, let me try this. I’m try that. And let me get it to the point where it looks good, right? And that’s how I learned Photoshop the first time but so I teach coaching at Georgetown, right? And so like, I tell them, something similar is like, learn the rules. So you know when to break the rules. You want to know the rules, and then you can do whatever you need to do with your style, make it your own, right. But at least learn the basics and make sense. And like like you’re saying, like, you know, you’re teaching people your way, and then improve on it, like build on it make it better. And at least my experience wise, that’s a more powerful way to teach, and to really help people to grow up as opposed to like, do it my way or else. And then that’s it, right? 

Peter 22:55

Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of say that at the beginning. Because their stuff sucks if they don’t, but I’m like, look, you could break the rules once you do it. 

Dhru 23:00

Exactly. Yeah, you don’t want people breaking the rules, before they even know what they’re doing. Right? Because then they’re just gonna wonder why they’re not successful long term, right? So the chance stuff is always fascinating to me. Obviously, Bob was a big impact on your life and an influence. If you could think of someone else or other folks in your life who have been influential, or books or movies or any kind of reference for yourself, like what was. what were the biggest influences on your life and your career? 

Peter 23:30

Stuff that you don’t realize, well, I mean, this is kind of like, like, tough to get into, but my mom was such a badass, she’s gone now. But I didn’t realize it when she was here. Like, I had no clue that I was going to glean this. She was a powerhouse. And I didn’t know that that was going to do anything for me. Like I just was like, Man, I can’t handle I’m like, I was like mom, okay, all right, I’d like to set up my darkroom in her basement. And I would go out there and be like, working like I had to get shots done. I was processing all my own film, and then we’d go out to Jersey. And she was trying to be a mom. And now I, you know, obviously wish I was was paying more attention because she’s gone. But a lot of things that we realize about our parents and our upbringing and stuff you don’t realize until you really reflect on it. And then you really can’t do that until if the person’s around, I guess. I don’t know, my dad’s still around. I’m trying to reflect on him. If you look up to your parents, I think it’s an amazing thing. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mom was pretty, pretty amazing. I’m trying to think who else? Really? I mean, there’s photographers, you know, there’s obviously Bob Proctor, you know, there’s been people in my life that have influenced me, but when I picked up the camera, there were photographers doing amazing things that I was like, I want to shoot like that person. I don’t know. I think that the development of the eye is a really tough thing. That’s something I can’t teach either. So I feel like I found headshots, but I can shoot anything. I just don’t get myself out there to do it. I, I was inspired by like, obviously Bruce Weber, My only knowledge of what the top of the industry was was him. And then once I got into studying photography, it was Richard Avedon, who was still around. And one of my friends ended up shooting with him when that was a model. And I was always like, oh, I want to I want to shoot with him. I became the most annoying model when I picked up the camera, because I was like, I wasn’t, I was self-taught. So I was like, I just want to annoy the photographer on set, and they just be like, can you just get in front of the camera? Shut up. I was like, Yeah, but what’s that? What is this? What’s this over here? It was like that. Irving Penn, you know, the big ones were were the inspiration. But I always think about, like, what is what is the fiber or the being? Where’s that come from? Because I think that I’ll use an example. When I was training for the Olympics, the guys that were like the best in the world, even like the world champions and stuff, but everybody that we were training with those on the US team, when the Olympics were over, one guy went to the Olympics, the rest of the guys, like all dispersed and got jobs and got out into the real world, including myself, and you know, did that kind of thing. It’s so interesting to see how successful those guys were, like, everybody went off and did different things. But everybody did major, like major successes. I was like, Is there something about training for the Olympics, or having that mindset or that mentality that leads to you going out and needing to excel in whatever it is that you do? And I guess that obviously, there’s some sort of play there. So I think my biggest influence, if we are is going to be sailing. It wasn’t even a person. It was the fact that at the age of 13, I, I won this world championship, I remember, and it was like, it was like a little World Championship. But if you have little ones, it’s at my club. It’s like we made it up, because there’s only boats in this little area. So it’s not a big deal. But it was a big deal for me. And I was thrust into this thing. And I learned competition. I learned decision-making. I learned all this stuff from this sport that I love so much. So I don’t think people really know actually now. They’re trying to get sailing more popular, and everything I know Gary Vee just did something and signed something with Larry Ellison for SailGP. I don’t know what they’re doing. But I saw Gary on the feet. And I was like, Yeah, Gary’s getting into sailing. I love it. Now we’re talking. Yeah, the Jets and SailGP why not? But no, it’s, it’s interesting stuff. So this, the sport of sailing, will take you and it takes kids and puts them in an environment where I was out on the boat on my own. When I was 10 years old, in the middle of a bay, like in huge wind and a squall and lightning and thunder, and you’re, you’re challenged like up the wazoo. And then you’re like playing chess. But the boards moving with the wind changing and the waves changing and the boats changing. And then you got to, you know, anyway, it’s very, it’s extremely challenging, and it’s extremely rewarding at the same time. I just got inducted into the Barnegat Bay Sailing Hall of Fame, which was really a real huge honor. They asked me you could do it, you know, your acceptance speech to being inducted. And I was like, they’re like, we’ll give you five minutes. And I was like, What am I gonna same five minutes. I was like, nobody went five minutes. Mine was ended up being like 15, I think. But I remember it was really about the people who influenced me along the way. So getting back to and I think people think about this, if you if you really dig into it, sometimes you don’t think about your influences, because it doesn’t come to you. When you said that question. I mean, nothing popped in my head that was that concrete? The, my mom’s easy, right? That’s, if you have that scenario wasn’t easy. When she was around that it was not easy at all. She’s tough. But here’s one that really, I ended my speech with this, I don’t get emotional by my mom, but I get emotional about it, about my sailing instructor. So I’m 10 years old. And summer’s over and I’m walking around the club and we had this award ceremony and they gave us our trophies. And we had our trophies and I had a good summer I was I was sailing this boat called the duck boat which three years later, I would be the world champion. But I was 10 I was just starting. And everybody’s leaving to go north for the summer because it’s a summer town. And the head sailing instructor walks up to me in the parking lot. And I remember where I was in the parking lot. And he says to me, he says, he says it’s been a privilege to watch you grow and coach you this summer, he said you’re a natural and I can’t wait… he was leaving. He wasn’t going to be the sailing instructor. The sailing instructors usually don’t stay more than a summer. I did it and you stay in one place for more than one summer maybe. And he said I can’t wait to see what you do with it. So I ended my speech with that. Paul Magno he’s a good friend of mine. I sail against him now. But he did that, to that 10 year old and I just was like, I was in. I keep talking about it, now I’m 53.

Dhru 30:13

Because it had an impact on you. I mean, that’s the things that impact us. I mean, not that it didn’t mean anything to him, but it meant it was like the whole world in that moment for you, right, like the change or the course of your life. But, that’s powerful. I mean, telling a 10 year old giving the 10 year old, that kind of hope, and that kind of focus and support to encourage them 

Peter 30:29

At the speech, it’s on Instagram, I did it live. I did, I gave the speech live. So when he didn’t, he, I had told him this story, because we’re friends. And actually, I was modeling at the time. And he asked me to crew for him. No, I hadn’t started modeling. And I was crew for him. And he hit it was probably my fault. Because I didn’t tell him where to go. I was, I was supposed to tell him, there’s a channel marker in front of the boat. But he hit a channel of marker dead on and I went flying and I landed on my chin and split it open, I have a scar on my chin from that guy. But anyway, he didn’t know I, so over the years, I had told him I said, you know this story, I don’t think I don’t remember the first time I told him the story. But it was probably like five or 10 years ago, I told him, and then every once in a while, it comes up in conversation. So I don’t think he expected it at the induction speech. And the only reason why he was there is because his brother was getting inducted with me. So I knew he was gonna be there. I was like, I know he’s gonna be there. And it was awesome. I didn’t get emotional when I said it there. I don’t know why I think I practice too much. But when I think about that, and everybody has that, who’s the person? And it wasn’t even that I remember him how much he did for me that entire summer. I remember that encouragement that way at that moment. And that was the thing that I always go back to. And all my success in life, everything has revolved around a sailboat. Because the sailing was my identity. And then somehow, I picked up the camera. And I don’t know, I don’t know how that has to do with sailing. But I have incorporated the two very little some of the sailors out there. I get to photograph sailing every once in a while. 

Dhru 32:14

No, but I mean, I think something about that like that, like that. You mentioned that that kind of tenacity and resilience you build, being out on the water, right having to deal with all those the moving chessboard, so to speak, right. And I think about it, I had this conversation with someone a little while ago, I forgot when, who was talking to but we’re talking about traveling, right and traveling the world and how the experience when you travel by yourself in a place where they don’t speak English, or they don’t speak your native language, or whatever it might be. It’s so much more rewarding, and so much more growth is involved in that experience than it is going to like a country where they already speak your language. Right like going to London. Not I mean, it was cool amazing architecture, all kinds of stuff, you know, history and whatnot. But going to Japan, a totally different experience and the growth because you have to look inward. I think the same thing is true, when you’re talking about sailing are all you’re just you it’s just you on the water, right? So you have to look inward for that kind of growth and that kind of resilience. And what do I do next? I got to ask myself that question. And then just try it out and see what works. And I think the camera sounds like that, like figuring out the camera was almost like figuring out where to go in the water. For you. 

Peter 33:21

Yea, I just I parlayed that into the camera yet. So little knobs on a camera as opposed to trim and sheets on a sailboat. But yeah, same thing. But I love what you said, I love travel. And I feel like the challenge. Travel is so stressful and so rewarding at the same time. It’s like I got to get from point A to point B, and I was doing a six-week trip to Europe earlier in the summer. And I was like, I don’t even know how I’m going to do this. I was like, I gotta go. Because my buddy goes, Hey, we’re baptizing my daughter in Greece. And I was already going to Amsterdam to teach a workshop like that next week. So I was like, he’s like, would you come and I was like, I’m gonna be an Amsterdam the next week. If I move it a week earlier. Now I’m in, in Europe. Six weeks instead of five. I was like, alright, I’ll go. But then my daughter’s in Barcelona. So I was like, My wife wants to go to Barcelona. She doesn’t want to go to Amsterdam and watch me teach. Anyway, long story short, I’m in Greece, I go to Greece. I do the whole baptism thing. I go into Barcelona, the plane doesn’t make it because of the storm and I end up in Munich. And I’ve got this photographers there. So I’m like, Hey, I’m in Munich. And then Fabio comes and we make him Associate in Munich getting lit up at the, at the Moxie and by the airport or whatever. And then we jump on the plane and we go to Barcelona, and then my wife’s like, I’m not going with it. So I had to drop her in Barcelona, go to Amsterdam. And then in Amsterdam, Peter Roelofs is there and he’s like, Oh, I’m gonna fly you back to Barcelona. I was like, Okay, so he’s a photographer pilot. And I jump in the cockpit with Mo, apparently over there you can get in the cockpit. So I’m in the jump seat and I’m like filming stuff and I got my R5 with me and I put it down and he lands and the camera goes flying into the back of his head. I mean, it  hit the chair. It didn’t hit his head. But this trip was like, going into it. That’s why I always stress with my friends and stuff. I’m like, You got to travel and you going to place. I mean, like, you know, most of the obviously Europe most of its English speaking and if it’s not that, you can get away with it, but the challenge is just airport challenges like. Well, I’m a people watcher. So I love airports. I like I like just sit there and watch faces. I go crazy. I’m like looking at I’d shoot that what do I do with that, how’d that thing get on there? I’m like, wow, look at this person. Look at these two people. You know what the coolest thing is because I have my facial conveyance strategist is that I sit in airports when they’re not speaking the language. And I know exactly what’s going on in the conversation by the facial expressions. So I’ll be like, Oh, my gosh, I’ll be in another country. And it doesn’t matter. I just watch the face. And I’m like, Yeah, I got what’s going on there. I got it all. I took it all in. But yeah, I think that that if people haven’t traveled and gone through that, I think the amount of growth and stuff, I just think it’s cool. I didn’t leave the country until I was 23. I think when I started training for the Olympics, I went to Europe, my first trip, and I hadn’t left home at 23. I think I brought my girls out of the country when they were like four, I don’t remember where we went. I was like, I’m starting them early. You know, let’s get everybody traveling. And it’s just been awesome. The globes just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I have friends that are like, I don’t want to go anywhere or doing it. I’m like, go, get your ass out there. Come on. 

Dhru 36:31

Yeah, get out of comfort zone. I mean, this thing is like you stay in your comfort zone, you’re not gonna grow at all, like not even a little bit. Get uncomfortable. You have to grow, you force yourself to grow like, especially in situations where you gotta rely on yourself and be resilient and deal with stuff. You know. 

Peter 36:45

I think it’s daunting, like I was, I was setting this trip up, and I was like, how am I gonna pull this off, because I had workshops to do and I had sailing to do and I had a big job in Paris that I had to shoot, I had to shoot to see you in Paris before I was in. I was doing it all. And I was setting it all up. And I was like, I’m gonna, I actually and I got home and I pulled it off. And I was like, wow, I’m worried about I mean, it was challenging, but it was like, so rewarding. I was thinking about it when I got to some airport, and obviously something didn’t go well. And I was like, alright, well, this is what’s thrown at me. I’m gonna did why is this happening? All right, let’s see what happens. And I was like, I’ll just deal with it. It was great. Yeah, I know.

Dhru 37:24

And in another country, a lot of people would have would freak out about that a lot of people would have that kind of like breakdown, kind of like moment. I feel like and I think it’s a mindset, right? So my mental shift where it’s like, I’m gonna figure this out, as opposed to I can’t figure this out, right? It’s like, instead of, I can’t, or it’s how can I figure this out? What can we do here? You know what I mean? It’s like, make it free to do that your brain allow your brain to do it, and it will. 

Peter 37:43

It’s so interesting. And I think humans human nature is to help other people. So if you get in a fix, you know, or bind, somebody’s gonna help you step up to the plate and help you out. I mean, there’s a lot of corners of the planet that I haven’t you know, gone to yet that would be kind of cool. You know. 

Dhru 37:59

What is your number one right now? Where’s, like, the place you want to go to?

Peter 38:03

I mean, it always has to do with sailing. So there’s, there’s racing all over the world, but I was like, I haven’t raced in South America in a while. I haven’t raced in Africa in a while, but I’ve been, but I just haven’t. I haven’t gotten recently. Somebody asked me to go shoot, go on safari and bring a group of like do a workshop on safari and stuff. I was like headshots of animals great. I could do that. You know, I don’t know, I never did that. Maybe I should do that. I’ve heard great things about Africa and going on a safari so maybe maybe something like that. I don’t know. I don’t, right now I’m looking at I always put a workshop where my races are. So we’ll just see where the races end up and where the workshops end up and go from there.

Dhru 38:45

So what’s next for you and then and in terms of you know, you got the Headshot Crew, you got the workshops are doing amazing, you know, what’s next on the, on the, in the plan for you if you have, if you have a plan? 

Peter 38:55

Yea, well, one of the things I just started doing a lot of photographers you know, segue into doing video and I think video is hot right now. I mean, everybody needs a video, and you got to be shooting content all the time. I’m shooting content for my social for myself all the time. I figured why not do some for other people? So I think the skill set that’s been honed for the last 20 some odd years when people I don’t know if you noticed this but when people stepped foot in front of a camera, they act a little strange generally. Yeah. So a little bit so our job is to get them to chill out so I was like, I’m a master at that. This is like if I was gonna say a master anything, it’s getting somebody to chil in from the camera or trying to figure out how to persuade them to chill. And that works whether it’s a still camera or video camera. I found a lot of people don’t you know, when I was acting, I think my acting classes and stuff helped me immensely with growth, obviously I sucked at acting so I was not meant to be an actor, but I did get the acting skills from being in the classes and doing the things and pushing myself into and there was a lot of growth there. That’s the thing is that the camera sometimes stifles people and it’s such a huge way. And if I pointed at them, and I can talk them out of it, that’s a good skill. So I was like, I’m going to do some videos and get some people rockin and rollin and do that. So that’s one of the things that I’m working on and I’m excited to do is to work with people for their branding videos and stuff like that, and would tell their story and about how they’re, you know, changing the world. They’re doing whatever they’re doing for the planet or their customer just to, you know, help people out here on that one where revolving around this big ball of fire. 

Henry 40:37

I love that man. That’s awesome. Yeah, cuz video, I mean that I agree, it was the most compelling form of media right now out there, you know, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. That’s cool to make that pivot for yourself. And obviously gonna continue doing headshots. But, if you could shoot something else besides headshots what, what would you want to shoot?

Peter 40:50

I mean, I only want to shoot when there’s a human being in the picture. Like, I’m like, I don’t shoot, and I want to direct them. I like direction. So it would be anything, you know, it would be more of the stuff that I’ve already done at a grander scale. I guess. I don’t know what that grander scale would be, but I guess it would be, you know, being a go-to guy for somebody that needs a portrait for some important reason. And they would have to be like, this is the guy I’m going to I have that with, with a large group of my clients call me when they need when they need stuff. And I want to be their go-to guy. So that’s that’s kind of what I’m doing. One of my things in my message in, I don’t know if any, if anybody wants to check out I did a TEDx Talk with a with a psychologist and the they asked me to talk about, like portrait photography for this TEDx Cambridge. And I was like, at the time, I was like, I don’t know what I was, like, I I look up to Ted and TEDx is like, I was like, those things are cool. Like, I don’t know what’s so special about me that I should talk on that thing. But the coolest thing I had going on at the time was I was working with Dr. Anna Rowley, and we were talking about how the camera affects people psychologically and how our relationship with our appearance affects us on a daily basis. So I always say that your relationship with your appearance is a side door to, like your character, part of your character is baked into how you feel about your appearance. And I don’t think people take that very well. I was like, well, it is I mean, it’s just like, I hate when I show people their picture on the screen. And I hear that, and so many people do it. Oh, that’s terrible. Oh, my I had the person in here today did it, oh, my gosh, I had another product. Oh, that’s great. So I had the person saying, Oh, that’s terrible. I’m not photogenic I don’t know, I’m not good in front of cameras, be one of the picture look great. And then I had the other person that was like, Oh, my gosh, I look so good. And I was like, you’re a gem and this is what I get every day. So that’s an underlying theme. We’re wrapped in this body of ours that our parents gave us, we won a lottery and we ended up on planet Earth. And this is what we got. So if people are running around thinking of it negatively, I don’t love that. So I’m working on a talk to open people up to the conversation of changing the relationship with their appearance and discussing that in a grander scheme of things. So we’ll see where that goes. But that’s something that is definitely going to come down the pike for me because if you watch that TEDx Talk, it is the start of it. So and in that I said I was shooting Miss Universe, and she, I was shooting her for cover magazine after she wanted she had gotten married already. Her husband was in the room and she’s turns ot him and she goes, honey, I can’t stand my face. And I was like Miss Universe can’t stand her face. Are you kidding me? So I called her and I said, can I use that story in my my TEDx Talk? And she’s like, Yeah, you can use it. That’s how strongly I feel I was like, you can use I was like, okay, cool. And so I use, but there’s more to that, and I did that talk in 2015. And I haven’t extrapolated any more on it. I mean, I deal with it on a daily basis. And there’s something there. So there’s a bigger talk, there’s a more, I can dive deeper into that. And that’s what, that’s what I really want to do. Because I don’t think humans should be keeping that on their plate and so consumed with appearance and stuff like that. So or feeling they, everybody’s got beauty, and it’s my job to find it. And I want to find it for them, as well, so that they understand it when they look at it. 

Dhru 44:25

I deal with a lot of people who have impostor syndrome for example, right? And this title is saying similar things like how you see yourself how you see, I think others see you versus how they actually see you write that video you played for us at the intensive. The artists, the sketch artist, you sketch the person the way they describe themselves to him, and then it gets the person based on the same person based on how like someone that is met with met them. 

Peter44:46

Yea, the dove commercial. 

Dhru 44:47

Yeah, that was really, really fascinating. Because again, there’s there’s more psychology behind that. So I’m really curious to see where that goes. That’s cool, man. 

Peter 44:49

I’d be interested in talking to somebody that specializes in impostor syndrome. I think impostor syndrome is prevalent, obviously, but the one thing about impostor syndrome that I’m thinking I don’t know if this is true is that the people that have it, it’s between themselves. They don’t go around telling people that they’re experiencing that it just between them. The problem with the picture is that they verbalize it to me. But they don’t verbalize it to anybody. I don’t think they go around telling people I’m not good in pictures, or that’s a terrible picture of me or I’m so unattractive. But they’ll tell their photographer, so I’m like, what do I do with this information? You’re paying me to get a good picture of you and you don’t like any picture? You’re so I can’t? I don’t know. So it’s interesting. It’s an interesting thing. 

Dhru 45:30

Yeah. And I wonder if if it’s like something where, because you’re an expert in the field, they’re like, Oh, let me tell him so he can make me look better, or whatever. Because I know, we did some headshots for a guy a while ago, just before we went to your intensive thing, but on and did some matches for a guy like an associate of a friend of mine. He’s like, Oh, yeah, can you do this? Maybe then by the end of the all the changes, it didn’t look like him at all, it looks like in like, maybe 20 years earlier. And it’s like, what are you using this for? Dude? Like, why? Why are you trying to make it look like it’s not even you, you know, like, that’s, that’s this you are who you are, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, just it is, it’s where you are right now. And if you want to take a picture, and a couple years, and you will work on yourself, and really, you know, lose some weight, or whatever you want to do for yourself, that’s one thing. But if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna just make it some blanket statement, like I just I let it look good, or whatever. And I want to look like someone else and show this picture of someone totally different. So people are confused when they meet you. I don’t know. It’s weird. 

Peter 46:24

But that’s the way people are. And I always tell people, look, you’re gonna love this picture in 10 years, like, and that Eleanor Roosevelt quote is the best. She said, you’re the oldest you’ve ever been and the youngest you’ll ever be again, right at this moment. And I was like, I hit people with that. I’m like, you know, you’re the oldest you’ve ever been the youngest you ever be again, I think we should take this picture. Now.

Dhru 46:42

That’s a powerful call to make. Because I guess when you said that, again, the best one to use in the in the headshot intensive. And that was one that hit home for me too. Like, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s deep. That’s really deep. And it’s true. And it’s, it’s compelling in some ways, too. Because, you know, you’re never going to be, none of us are ever going to be exactly where we are right now. Right? Ever again, things might be the same location or same whatever. But we’re not at this moment is not gonna come again, right? For whatever it’s worth, but good moment or bad moment, whatever. 

Peter 47:12

Do you notice that like, as you age, the give a fuck factor just goes in? Like all of a sudden I’m like, I don’t care as much as I did. 10 years ago. I’m like, old now. I’m older now. 

Dhru 47:16

It’s rapidly fading for me as well.

Peter 47:17

It’s like, amazing. You’re so young, come on. 

Dhru 47:20

Well, yeah. But I mean, I also deal with a lot of BS a lot of times, I mean, not that you don’t but yeah, you know, as much as you know, especially business owners, we do a lot of bullshit over time. And it just it goes, the more you feel it, the more you deal with as long as you’re resilient about it. You have resilience meant mentality, the more you deal with, the less talent you have for it, because you like okay, well, I’m not doing this again. I’m gonna learn my lesson and set boundaries and make it so that again, asshole-free zone, right, you make your life an asshole-free zone. And suddenly you’re a lot happier. Here you go. 

Dhru 47:53

Yeah, get toxic people. So it’s a big one. 

Dhru 47:55

James here, actually, he did a documentary recently on a covert narcissist, because he went through an experience with one. I’m really close to him and fucked up a whole lot of shit for him, unfortunately, but he’s recovered from that, thankfully. But that’s a huge one too, because a lot of people don’t even realize if people in their lives and then they feel obligated to keep them around. Right? Because like, Oh, I’ve known this guy for so long. Or he’s my brother, or he’s my cousin or whatever. I can’t get rid of them. Yeah, you can. Yeah. You probably should. You know, it’s probably better for everyone if you do. It’s fascinating stuff, man. human psychology is always always fun. And that’s also why I like your approach. Because you do take that psychological approach with it. And I think that’s also part of it, because he taught yourself so you don’t have that you’re not hampered by the by the well, that mentality through like, I don’t know, anything that I don’t know, I think mentality frees you up to be like, I can absorb everything and make it all put it all together in a really cool package that isn’t bound by the rules of this particular context. Right? Whereas people who are confined to that, like technical this and that or whatever, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s great. But at the same time, it’s like, okay, well, you’re also only going to leave, stay that in that lane, you’re never going to leave that lane, right? 

Peter 49:05

I think so I think that people go through a lot of different areas of growth. This is kind of interesting. Like, this guy comes to me, and he goes, Hey, you don’t have that many Google… I like I’m just not good at asking people to give Google reviews or something. So he’s like, I got this AI-generating Google review thing where it doesn’t generate the review for the person. But what it does is it takes your email list of your clients and then it figures out because Google doesn’t like if they all give you reviews in one day or something. So it’s like this thing that takes it over a course of a year or whatever. So all of a sudden, like like I said, I try it because I’m a lot of the photographers are using it and it’s it’s interesting. I think the AI part of it is in the responses and I’m like, I don’t cuz it responds from, and I was like, No, I want to respond, but I should but I should go in there. Anyway. Long story short on this is that it was contacting clients of mine over the course of my career, and then people who didn’t review would be like, Oh my gosh, I had an amazing session with Peter. And I’m like, wow, that was like 12 years ago. And they’re giving a Google review now, this thing really works. Cool. All right. So now I went from 100 reviews to over 200 reviews, and it worked. But then it also has this, Hey, how was your shoot with Peter, and people will click and then they’ll write something about the shoot. And I remember those way more than the ones that are positive, and there were things that I was like, wow, I needed to grow. I remember that situation. I think I was too tough on myself and my clients, and the people that worked with me. And I think that I needed some growth in to turn it for me. I was like the artist, I was like, You can’t mess with my art. Don’t be messing with my art. And I think now I’m like, oh, wow, yeah, it’s my art, but I can, maybe their take on it or something is better for me, like I’m trying to grow. And I, and I didn’t realize that until I got some of these emails where they were like, they were like, well, Peter did this. And Peter did that. And I was like, and my other friend who is an influencer is, like, don’t read those. And I was like, Yeah, but I want to know what I’m not. I’m not feeling like, I feel like, I feel like I need to grow. And if I wasn’t like, it enlightened me, it was like, Oh, I was that strict, like I had, you know, I was just tough stuff. Like, I’m very tough on the people who work with me, and one of the clients was like he made the makeup artist cry, I don’t think I would do that now. But I did I remember, I was so tough, I was so mad that I was like, I couldn’t get what I wanted. And I was like, in my artists was not going to allow that, that it was I was and I don’t think I’m that guy anymore. What do you maybe have to go through that stuff? You know.

Dhru 51:57

I mean, reading the negative, or I’d say constructive. But when those reviews that they’re not always positive, I think as long as you can have a thick skin about it and look at it from that perspective of like, I need to grow and like, this is going to be feedback. And then you can let go of the ones that are just just venting and ranting about nonsense. It’s hard. It’s certainly harder than that. I say it as though it’s easy. It’s not easy. And most of this is all mindset stuff, right? It’s all like getting in the right mindset, and then be able to hold that back afterwards, like hold emotions back and actually be logical instead of human in that moment, you know, but But no, there’s there’s definitely, I mean, getting that that feedback. And thinking back to that moment, though, from 12 years ago, if you remember, something like that, like that happened back then. But then having that, what is it that hindsight is 2020. Right. In the moment, you probably wouldn’t have thought of that way. 

Peter 52:39

But now well, I want to get that makeup artist back in the girl back and do the shoot again. I’m like, but I don’t know. I don’t remember exactly. I probably made multiple makeup artists cry.

Dhru 52:52

I mean, that might be an exercise in healing some fences, I reach out to all the ones I might have made cry, and oh hey, by the way…

Peter 52:59

I was just terrible, oh, my gosh, and the assistants that I’ve made cry, those I had plenty of those, man. Yeah, I don’t think I would do that. I think I grew, I just remember that guy that used to be like that.

Dhru 53:11

As you went from different kinds of shooting to you know, from modeling to sailing and back and forth. And what was your biggest challenge that you have encountered, encountered in your, in your career, whether that be sailing or photography, or both?

Peter 53:26

I mean, sailing is sailing. Like, I wouldn’t say that there’s any challenges in sailing, like, I didn’t make it to the Olympics. Is that really that challenge? Like, you know, it was an uphill climb. It was fun. It was awesome. And I got to do it. Like, I was like, you know, I didn’t make it I, I think the biggest challenge there was that and it’s the same as anything. I looked at the guy that was the world champion, the guy that was the Olympian, I was like, I just couldn’t compete with them. They were just unbelievable in a different atmosphere, mentally, physically. The work ethic, like the belief in themselves, I think, no matter what, like you weren’t going to compeat with that. There’s no way, like the belief in the person that competes at that level. You just can’t get by them like it just like I couldn’t instill that belief in myself. The way that they had it, and you could see it a mile away. And when I was doing it, there were two guys that were competing against each other, and they were both maniacs. I was like, these guys are not beatable like, barely beat them. Like some whenever I beat them in a race. It was like a huge deal. I was like, this is cool. So I qualified for the Olympic trials. I’m 53 years old. I haven’t seen the Olympic trials since I was 30. So it’s 23 years, and I’m doing it in Miami in February, and I’m going in with this concept of I’m going to be sailing against the best guys in the in the United States. And the unfortunate problem is that the best guys in the United States are not good on the world level this particular quad. So I don’t have a shot at winning um, I just had my knee operated on I need to sail,I would need to have sailed everyday for four years and then maybe gotten good enough to start to beat these guys before but, I, but I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna have a blast. And I’m gonna go through an Olympic trials because I qualify, I’m good enough to qualify. And I love sailing. So that experience I think it’s going to be is going to be really, really good for me. So I’m looking forward to that. 

Dhru 55:10

That’s amazing. Congratulations. That’s, that’s huge. I mean, even if you even those guys are, you know, aren’t at the level of the rest of the world, so to speak, per se, but that’s still a nom phenomenon, especially having just gotten knee surgery and whatnot. So huge man. 

Peter 55:26

Yeah, those guys got to step it up, because the the country hasn’t even qualified for a spot in the Olympics yet. So we’re going to do the Olympic trials. And we won’t even know like somebody’s going to win the Olympic trials, but they won’t even be able to go to the Olympics, unless there’s only one other regatta that they can go to to qualify. And I’m not going to that, like I’m not good enough to qualify the country. I don’t think so. Somebody’s got to do it. But it might so somebody might win the Olympic trials and not go to the Olympics, which would suck, which means we really suck which we use, you really need work, which is kind of, you know, what can you do? So they definitely need some work around it and US sailing right now with the way that it’s going. So, but that experience for me doing the Olympics and everything opened up the pathway to get to the camera to get to the thing, and I leapfrog THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS. So I always tell young sailors and stuff and people that are doing campaigns, I was like, just keep doing it, like go like it was the best time like that. And you ever know, if you look back on your life, and you look at the, I guess I would say growth spurts. That time period in my life was like, like I was like nothing’s happened in like 10 years, like that period was like two years. And it was like everything in my life changed and like a year and a half or something. Those nine months like we’re like, packed with change. And I’ve been going 10 years I’ve had this studio since 2008. I come in here every day, I take headshots. I mean, I don’t know, like I mean, other stuffs changed. But you have these growth spurts in areas of your life. And you’re like, where’s the next growth spurt and what happened during that time to create that spurt? I think those are really important in people’s lives. And you can see that trajectory. Usually it’s when you come across somebody like you’re minding your own business and you’re walking along or you’re going along and whatever you want to do in life, whatever you’re trying to do, and you meet somebody, and they go, oh, yeah, you gotta go this way. Whether they take you or they point you that direction. That was Bruce Weber. For me, that was Bob Proctor for me. I was going like this, and they’re like, no, you gotta go that way. I was like, Okay, go that way. And then I start going that way, and I’m gonna hope somebody’s over. There you go. Now you gotta go this way. So that’s important. And I think we all have those people. So, you know? 

Dhru 57:38

Yeah, I think about it in terms like, like, I think it’s a great analogy, of like asking, like some kind of asking for directions. But I think the other part of it is you gotta be willing to approach it that way, and actually actually listen to the directions and not think, I like no, I know where I’m going if I’m gonna go this way, regardless, and end up running into a wall. 

Peter 57:52

Yeah.

Dhru 57:57

So awesome, man. Well, Peter, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk today, man, this is an awesome conversation. And I don’t even know how long we’ve been going for. But this is a lot of fun, hopefully, hopefully, as much fun as I did. And then we’ll put everything in YouTube and in the description of the podcast and stuff. And folks can reach out to you directly if they’re in New York and want a headshot and one of the go with it with the best, obviously. But anything you want to leave folks with any last thoughts?

Peter 58:21

That’s a tough one, I, I would say pick up those bones. Like if you get thrown a bone, you gotta,  like I think a lot of people take the safe route. And I think that everything in my life where, where the big change has happened is when when I was like, confronted with a decision on whether to go this way or that way. And I went with the tougher one or the spicier one or the one that’s going to be a little bit rougher while I could go this way. And it could be pretty easy. And this looks like the way I should go. I think that people that go off the beaten path. And this is like, I mean, everybody’s heard this a million times, like when you go do that. You’re taking the bigger risk, bigger reward, and I just always kind of operate that way. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out.

Dhru 59:05

But at least you tried vice, you know. 

Peter 59:07

That’s what I would say I said, you got one shot at this thing, you know, you might as well go for it. And I think I think I don’t want to go on and on and on. But the the thing that I do think is that the big risks or the challenges or things that scare us that we bust through are the opportunities and you don’t get that many things that scare people don’t step up to the plate to be scared, like they don’t. So when something scares you and you want to do it, then you should just be like, Okay, well, I don’t get that many opportunities to be freaked out and to be in this position. So I was like, well, maybe I should do that. And if you have that kind of personality, you’re gonna do it. There’s some people that just like they live off that stuff. Like they gotta get scared every day like they got to put themselves in those positions there. It’s a little bit much for me. But if you’re one of those people that just stays on the sidelines and doesn’t do anything. You can’t be that either. So if you have this opportunity, do you feel fear in something that could propel you forward? Go do it. That’s probably the best thing. I go. 

Dhru 1:00:00

Yeah. And even if people heard it a million times, sometimes it takes that million and one for them to hear it to actually act on it. 

Peter 1:00:09

Yeah, it’s just delivery. 

Dhru 1:00:10

Exactly. Awesome, man. Thanks so much, Peter. Yeah, appreciate it, man. 

Peter 1:00:12

Thanks for having me.

Dhru 1:00:21

Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all. And if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s @dhrubee, on Twitter, @dhruvabee, on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.

Dhru 00:00

Hey everybody, this is Dr. Dhru Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast, Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship. 

Dhru 00:27

Everybody, welcome back to another edition of Ikigai Leadership. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Dhru Beeharilal. I’m here with a unique guest who I’m actually excited about this interview because we can talk through just really just talk shit, Sajad Abid. Sajad, thank you for joining us today.

Sajad 00:42

Thank you very much. It’s Sajad Abid.

Dhru 00:45

Abid, sorry, my bad.

Sajad 00:46

It’s okay, well, we gotta get my dead grandfather’s name right.

Dhru 00:48

Fair enough. My apologies. 

Sajad 00:50

I’ve been called worse. 

Dhru 00:51

That’s true. That’s fair. I mean, I’m sure I think we all have but yeah, I’m sure you especially have.

Sajad 00:58

Thanks. I think. 

Dhru 00:59

No, it’s a compliment. So, we just talked a few minutes before we started this conversation here. And I’m actually gonna start with a little bit different than I normally do. And I want folks to hear about your idea about weekends, or lack thereof. So, we just talked about a unique perspective you have on weekdays, weekends, and just days in general. Do you mind sharing that real quick before we jump into your backstory and everything?

Sajad 01:24

Sure, I have no idea what day it is, until somebody tells me. There’s a quote that says, “If you do what you love for a living, you never work a day in your life.” So, my life is Groundhog’s Day. It’s the same thing every single day and it’s fun all the time. I work the vast majority of the time, but I love what I do. So, it’s not like work at all. It’s not like hard labour, or I’ve positioned my life, to be in the place where I get to do exactly what I want, be completely myself, have complete autonomy, help a lot of people make a lot of money. I help them make a lot of money, and I make a lot of money. So, it’s all fun, everything’s good. Every single day.

Dhru 02:08

The podcast title is Ikigai Leadership and that leads Ikigai, right, the whole, like, finding passion for what you’re doing. And then just leaning into it and doing it, right? And finding different aspects of yourself that you want to enjoy. And then really leading to all those aspects at the same time, because there are different things that are gonna light up different parts of you, right? Sajad runs a couple of different things. One is Cause and Effect Consulting, which is a, I’ll let you talk about what exactly it is. But my bad summary of it is business coaching and supporting people in positions of being business owners and leaders in organizations kind of thing, and how to grow their businesses. Right? That’s my short, really bad version of what you do. But I really enjoy pelagic networking, personally. The networking groups you run, because it’s not a typical networking group. It’s not the normal BS like hey, you say what you do and then here’s the networking question. And then here’s your here’s exactly what to talk about. And, you know, now that we don’t give you any prompts, you’d have no idea what to say to each other. I liked the way you run it, and it’s a lot more authentic, it’s a lot more real. First of all, share what you do with folks and then tell us how you’ve encountered this. 

Sajad 03:11

Cause and Effect Consulting is changing the world. By becoming extremely well organized, you will significantly increase your productivity, and you will substantially reduce your stress. I’m gonna run you through a six-week business development boot camp where I’m a beat you with a fucking stick. I’m gonna ignore your stupid feelings, you’re gonna hate me for six weeks, and you’re gonna be in love with me in four months from now. When you hire me, we’re together one hour per week, I’m on call 24/7. As I said, I don’t take off on weekends. And I also don’t celebrate holidays. You get one hour of homework. It’s an entertaining educational video, you’re gonna take copious handwritten notes to ensure that it pounds into your subconscious and that you’re not multitasking. You get access to my online community, which is 20 other entrepreneurs like you, as well as my online program and the support of eight of my former clients who I pay to assist you through the program. As a former attorney for over four years, I won all my cases including trial work. I was deputy chief of staff with the state of Illinois, the Department of Children and Family Services, fourth in charge of a $1.2 billion agency where I ran the biggest projects for the state. And I had a very successful tech company for six years, doing custom websites, custom CRMs and providing business consulting. It was very successful. So, my four-bed, two-bath house is paid off in cash. I drive the $76,000 twin turbo, and my girlfriend’s super hot. She’s not with me for my personality. How I got here, I had my tech company going, I had my law firm going. And then I got the job with the state. I was a social worker for 16 years before that. I’m old. I’m just really good-looking. So, when I was with the State, I was pushing people to work. And they would always say to me, you don’t know how things work around here. And that means we don’t work around here. And I said, Oh no, no, I’m Deputy Chief of Staff. So, we’re gonna work, we’re gonna go get shit done. And we did, we got a lot of things done. I created and led the team that cut the time from adoptions down from 554 days to 121 days. And I helped incarcerated people have the opportunity to engage in their children’s plans, their life plans, you know, whether they’re playing instruments or doing sports. That’s important, because the vast majority of people over 90%, get out of jail within a couple of years. And if they’re not engaged with their children, then when they get out of jail, they don’t reengage with their children. And so I led like nine projects like that. And then I had my law firm going, and my tech company going while I was working for the state. And people kept reporting me saying that I was trying to sell my services, which I didn’t. I never even mentioned my law firm, I never, I mentioned that I had a tech company when we were discussing things like organization in CRMs because that’s what it did. But I never mentioned the name of the company, I never tried to sell my product. I didn’t even say what the company name was. So, I wasn’t trying to do that. But they kept trying to get me on ethics violations, to get me to stop pushing them to work. So, I shut down the law firm, shut down the tech company and then after I left the state, I was offered four jobs, Vice President jobs at the major firms, nonprofits, like the ones that bring in 50 million – 100 million in revenue per year. And, you know, managed a lot of their executive staff through my projects. And so I was offered a lot of jobs, and I accepted one of them. And then I self-reported to the Office of Inspector General, that I was going to accept this position. And they said you’re not allowed to work for anybody that has a government contract or license with the agency for a year. It’s supposed to prevent corruption. I don’t think it does that. But it kept me from getting a job. So yeah, for two years, I was applying for jobs. I applied for over 800 jobs. I got eight interviews, four of them were scams. Three of them told me I was overqualified. And then one of them was Amazon operation manager. I interviewed for whatever, eight hours, 10 hours, and I was declined but they didn’t they didn’t tell me why. So, I was still doing consulting for nonprofits that didn’t have government or at least DCFS contracts. And so I was doing that for a couple of years. I had been an entrepreneur before, so I didn’t want to do it again. Because entrepreneurship is like dating a perfect-looking woman, it’s a fantasy. You don’t know what it’s really like till you do it. It sounds really good to be an entrepreneur, but you eat what you hunt. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do. It’s fun, but it’s not you don’t get a paycheck. So, I was trying to get a job, couldn’t get a job. I was doing consulting and then one day I just said fuck it, I’m going to go full time on my business. I actually got turned down by Wendy’s. So, they said, why do you want to work at Wendy’s? I said, You got 41 stores, the franchise, you have over 1000 employees, you only have two corporate people, you got an HR person and ops manager. So, you don’t have anything for the team. And they have problems with retention, and they had problems with engagement when they did events. They didn’t have like a corporate training person. And I have worked out with over 5,000 young black men as a social worker, helping them get jobs and go to college over 16 years. And I was a lawyer and an entrepreneur. So, I knew I could be, I was just going to be the best grill man ever then manage the best Wendy’s ever then create a corporate position for myself. And a week later, the district manager Dave called me up. And he’s like, I’m not gonna offer you the position, Sajad. I said, Why not Dave? He said you’re gonna quit as soon as you find something better. And I said it’s been two years. I’ve been unemployed for two years. I’m like Wendy’s cannot turn me down. You cannot. You can’t turn me down and they did. And then that night, I was like, Okay, I had an existential crisis. I said, either I gotta kill myself, or I gotta come up with something new. And the next morning, I was downstairs, brushing my teeth. And I said, man, I really need help here. And then I looked in the mirror, and I said, Oh, yeah, you could help me. And then that week, I got a website, I created a company name, and I started going really hard on Cause and Effect consulting. And within six months, it just exploded. And now it’s really big. I only work with up to five people every six weeks. But I have plenty of clients, I turn down more than half the people that want to work with me. So, if I think somebody’s going to fail, I just won’t work with them because I don’t want to take their money. So, it’s done really, really well. And thank God, Wendy’s didn’t hire me. I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’d be at Wendy’s.

Dhru 09:43

Awe man. A very important thing I gotta ask you. Was the guy’s name really Dave? Like Dave Thomas?

Sajad 09:53

Yea, no, it was really coincidental. When I walked inside, like a $3,000 Calvin Klein suit, you know, lawyer clothes. So, a very expensive suit and all that. And he looks at me and he looks at my CV and he goes, first thing, he says to me, what the hell are you doing here, man? I said I’m trying to get a job. And he’s like, well, of course, you’re trying to get a job. He’s like… I had already interviewed with the general manager. And she’s like, just so you know, Sajad here at Wendy’s, you have to work your way up in life. And I come from immigrant parents, both my parents grew up in poverty, neither one has a college degree. So, I’m like, Yeah, I know, you need to work your way up and life, I get that, I’m willing to do that. And like what she’s like, do you want the job? You know, then I’m like, I want to talk to the district manager first. So, I was gonna tell him, and then I told him my master plan. And he didn’t buy into it. So…

Dhru 10:36

But I bet he’s still dealing with a lot of retention issues.

Sajad 10:39

Yeah, probably. I could have helped. 

Dhru 10:45

Well, let’s think right? I mean, I think that’s a very common challenge that we deal with when we’re talking to clients, right? It’s like, they don’t look ahead, one, but two they cut money in the wrong areas. They try to save money in the wrong areas, right? It’s like, where do I save money? Oh, I can save money in the training development side of things and supporting my employees. Right? And really helping them to be better employees and better at what they do, because who cares about that? And then I wonder why people are leaving. You know, it’s just one of those frustrating situations. So, we can bang our heads against the wall trying to help our clients, but they need to help themselves too, right?

Sajad 11:19

Yeah, so the main thing I teach is self-accountability. Jim Rohn says a couple of things. If you want to make two times more money, make yourself two times more valuable. So, I teach my clients to be hyper-self-critical without taking it personally. So, be very hard on yourself, but don’t feel bad about it. You’re just growing to make more money. The other thing he says in correlation to what you said is, if you do 10-hour-an-hour jobs, you’ll end up making $10 an hour. So, I don’t clean my own house, I don’t mow my own lawn, unless I feel like exercising in that way. I pay people to do mailer light. I pay them to schedule my emails, I write my own content. Anything that I do, I pay a lot of people to do all the stuff that I can get done for 20 bucks an hour. And then just focus on what I’m an expert at. And that’s an ego, getting out of your own way and getting over your own ego, to not have to have control over every aspect of your, you have control over it. But you don’t have to do everything, especially as you grow your business. So, I have a bookkeeper, I have an accountant. I have marketing people. I have lots of people to do everything that I’m not good at and everything I don’t like doing. Tech, I have tech people.

Dhru 12:33

That takes a lot of self-awareness, right? I think that that’s a lot of things that people are not, well, one. That sounds like a lot of money right up front, right? So, how do you spend money on all that stuff, which, honestly, having gone through that process myself, I remember my first business man, like I was so excited because I did my own website. But I spent like 25 hours doing that, right? Where it was taking someone else it was a very simple website wasn’t even complicated. But if I hired someone to do it, I would have probably paid him like, you know, $1,000 back then. And they would have been done in like six hours, right? And I wasted 25 hours doing this thing. And going back to your thing about the task and what’s at hand. I always tell people nowadays, like look at what you pay yourself. You pay yourself certain X amount, like so let’s say you pay yourself $100 an hour just for example, right? If you’re doing this for 100 dollars an hour, you just wasted $2,500 to save $1,000, right? So, you lost $1,500 bucks, essentially. 

Sajad 13:26

An employee gets dollars for hours, an entrepreneur gets money for value. Also, I harp on that a lot with my clients to get their mindset to change in a lot of different ways for what it means to be an entrepreneur. And also what is your minimum dollar amount that you’re worth, like you’re saying, so if you’re worth $300 an hour, you can’t do low-end jobs. My insurance agent when I started my tech company, and he’s a very successful multi, multi, multi-millionaire. He said best advice I can give you in business Sajad, hire people before you think you can afford them. 

Dhru 14:02

I think you want to say that one  more time for the folks in the back who did not hear that–

Sajad 14:05

Hire people before you think you can afford them. And I was I just bought a luxury trailer. I bought a sports car last year. I bought a mountain last year.

Dhru 14:15

You bought a mountain?

Sajad 14:19

Yeah, I got land on the mountain. So, I travel for three months every winter. And a few years ago, I was coming up a hill and I saw this huge mountain. I was like oh man, I want to put you know, like the Hollywood sign. I want to put Mount Sajad on that mountain.

Dhru 14:36

Dude, that’d be hilarious. You should totally do that, actually.

Sajad 14:39

I couldn’t afford that particular mountain. So, then I started looking into where you can buy cheap mountains. You can buy islands too and Rivers. You can buy all kinds of stuff. Just go online.

Dhru 14:50

Just be careful with the island thing because that’s gotten a bad rap in the last couple of years.

Sajad 14:55

Well, there’s one that’s like haunted and it’s like huge but it’s like 100, no it’s like 10 I think they want 10,000. And it’s a couple of acres but it’s near Great Britain I believe, maybe near Spain, but it’s like everybody thinks is cursed. Nobody will buy it. 

Dhru 15:14

So it’s super cheap. It’s like The Conjuring House but in Island form.

Sajad 15:17

If you don’t believe in that shit, although if you buy it you might die fast, I don’t know.

Dhru 15:20

I thought it was the Island of the Dolls. Did you hear about that one? The island in like South America or something or Central America I think it’s this island. It’s like not super far from the coast but it’s like you got to use a boat, small boats to get there. And it’s all these like doll heads like over 100,000 or 10,000 doll heads that are all over the island and in various forms of disarray and destruction. And it’s creepy as hell, man. It’s super cool. But I am not a big fan of dolls just in general just because of just the whole conjuring thing, and you know Annabelle and whatnot. Because I believe in that stuff, personally. I believe in supernatural stuff. There is no way we’re the only thing out there. That just doesn’t make sense to me.

Sajad 15:59

I try not to think about it because it scares me. 

Dhru 16:03

It fascinates me, though. It’s like I get super interested with this kind of stuff. Honestly, supernatural stuff is. I mean, so your family’s Pakistani by birth, and your dad’s Pakistani, and your mom was from Belgium?

Sajad 16:15

Belgium, yeah. So, my dad is a capitalist, conservative, US Patriot Muslim. My mother is an atheist, socialist, revolutionary. They’ve been married for 56 years.

Dhru 16:29

So, that’s going well, it sounds like.

Sajad 16:30

I don’t know about that but they’ve been married for a long time. 

Dhru 16:33

It’s going, is what it’s going, right? 

Sajad 16:35

It’s still going, yeah. 

Dhru 16:36

Well, that means it can’t be too bad. And that’s the only compliment I’m gonna give you right now.

Sajad 16:41

I think they have core values. They don’t do drugs, they don’t really drink. They had core values in common. My mom wanted to be a mother and raise kids. My dad wanted to be a father but not raise kids, funnily. He’s just focused on making money, traditional Pakistani, traditional 1950s. Edith and Archie Bunker for the young people, you’re going to have to go to YouTube to even understand that reference. And I’m going to touch on a couple of things you said earlier if that’s okay. 

Dhru 17:05

Yeah, please. Go ahead. 

Sajad 17:06

So, I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t even call my company, a consulting company, now that I know, it’s like a bad word. Since there’s 800,000 business consultants in the world who’ve never actually started their own business before. And coach is the same thing. You know, I saw a 21-year-old life coach the other day, and I’m thinking man, you still have to learn how to wipe your ass before you try to tell anybody anything else in life. But I say, I’m more of a personal trainer. My clients, obviously, I change their lives. And they say I should say that and I say I can’t say that because it sounds like fraud. They say I should do you know, life transitional work, but I’m Polarizing. So, I have a couple of networking events that I run. And like you said, they’re totally different than everything else. And it’s legitimate fun, not conjured-up fun or contrived fun. It’s not attempting to make something fun. It’s actually just fucking fun. Polarizing was started in January of this year, it has over 50 people on average, seven of them are multimillionaires, it’s all legitimate business people. There’s no patronizing lecture about, you’re not here to sell, you’re here to form– no you’re here to sell man. We’re here to do business. This is our job. This is, we’re here to make money. So, my partner Kristin Spencer believes in know-like-trust, go-giver and it’s all about relationships. So, she’s wrong about everything, it’s all about driving a sports car, and owning a mountain. But she’s really smart and successful. We just have different ways of going about business. We have a guest speaker for 10 minutes, who adds massive value. To add massive value means to say things where people write them down. So, if you’re doing posts to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, or any social media, make sure you’re adding massive value everywhere you go. If you do a podcast, you do a presentation. That’s the number one key to getting sales is adding massive value not trying to sell it all. And yeah, 10 minute guest speaker, five minute interaction with Kristen and I. 15 minute interaction with the audience. And then 2×15 minute breakout rooms where there’s no questions and no rules. So if you want to talk about spiritualism, you could talk about that. If you want to talk about money, you can talk about that. You want to talk about your ex husband, you could talk about that. You can talk about anything you want and the event repulses poor people and weak people. And it attracts intellectuals and rich people, because people that need guidance and how to have a conversation, get very uncomfortable when you let them act like adults. And then I have another event with Jim Schulman that we’re starting out soon, called mini Shark Tank, we’re going to have three people pitch their businesses for five minutes, and then we’re going to do a mini Shark Tank with the guest, Jim Schulman and I in the audience. So each guest is going to get about 15 to 20 minutes. It’s going to be very fast moving, it’s going to be super fun. So if anybody’s looking for opportunities to speak and promote their business, I’m all about it. If you want to be my friend, I’m not interested. I have 23 of those already. But if you want to talk about making money together, let’s talk about that or If you need help, with getting promoted, I have a massive network. 

Dhru 20:04

Yeah, and you also got a list of 14 applicants for new friends as well. I heard.

Sajad 20:10

Can I talk about it? I love that we’ll get rid of it. Maybe 90% of the people, right?

Dhru 20:16

I think it’s hilarious. Because before he’s talking about, I want to I do want to highlight one thing he said, which is the beginning of what you just said about the business consultant, business coach, conundrum slash challenge with the world right now. The coach, I call it the coach conundrum, right? It’s like, people want, they need ultimately support, right? They need support, guidance, all these kind of things, because it does, there’s no handbook, they don’t teach you just how to do business in school. Right? They teach you the opposite, actually, how to be a follower, not not necessarily leader. And I’ll be honest, most people need that, right. Because not everyone is a leader, otherwise, there’s no one’s a leader, right? But there’s no, like, licensed process. Like to be an attorney, you gotta be you gotta go through a licensing process, which is a lot of faculty. It’s some of it that I see the need for it. But there’s also a lot of bullshit behind it. This is political and stupid, because there’s some complete morons who are attorneys and pass the bar. And, you know, it’s just a barrier of entry. But there’s no barrier of entry for coaching, there’s no barrier of entry for business consulting, right, you can just wake up one day and be like, “I don’t like my job, I’m going to quit. And I’m going to talk about how great it is that I quit my job for the dumbest reason ever. And I’ll make something else up and put on marketing, you know, on social media, whatever. And then I’ll just take a bunch of pictures of myself at the beach, and then just be like, live, laugh, love. Yay. And that’s it. Right? That’s what coaching is. Yeah, exactly. You know, and then and then be like, my car is better than your car. So fuck you. And it’s like,

Sajad 21:41

Let me show you my file on my computer. Yeah, people ask me online all the time to prove myself and I’m like, what do you want me to do like, 

Dhru 21:50

Show them a bar showing a bar graph. Right? Like, what was the budget? What was it the? The, just the chart that goes up? Right, isn’t it? There’s no titles. There’s no labels on the sides on the axes. Just random chart up there. Like here you go. That’s my net worth. Yeah,

Sajad 22:04

it’s the same thing. They say oh, if you got such a hot girlfriend, why don’t you show her I’m like then you’re gonna say I What is that called? That PowerPoint in there but you some tech that was the technology, Photoshop, Photoshop, my bank records. I photoshopped my girlfriend who shut up stupid. I tell them man, I’m, I’m really old. And I’m just really good looking. And oh, my God, I ain’t trying to prove myself to you children out here. You know, I’m telling you what it is. I’m not lying to you. I don’t need to prove myself. I’m a grown up, you know. So to your point. The first lines on my website are directly about that 95% of my former clients have been ripped off in current clients actually have been ripped off by fake ass business coaches. So there’s three things you should be asking, have you ever created a business other than a coaching business before that was successful? Because if they haven’t done it, they shouldn’t be selling it? May I talk to your former clients? And then what exactly are you going to teach me? So usually two weeks into my program, because 95% of my clients have been ripped off before two weeks into my program. They say, Why didn’t like, why wasn’t I taught any of this stuff? And this is two weeks in, right? I don’t know why the fuck did you hire that person? And they say, Oh, I liked her, or cuz she made a lot of money. So what the reason these people are able to sell so well as they tell you, there’s a magic pill. There’s a funnel system, there’s this easy way to getting rich, and it’s not true. The way to getting rich is to attract money, the way to attract money is to make yourself a lot more valuable. So the issue is you in a thing you need to fix because you you need to know how to pitch, you need to map out a strategy. You need to know ROI and CAC activity versus productivity. You need to know how to negotiate and close deals you need to know the mindset of entrepreneurship, which I teach all those things in the real thing is taking a really hard, constructive, critical look at yourself. That’s the key to the money. The people that sell all these programs, they’re making a lot of money, their clients are not making any money. They’re using a drip campaign. So they say for two grand, I’ll change your life, then after the six weeks or whatever, then you pay the 10 Grand, and you’re at the next level. And then when you finish that there’s the 20 grand thing, we’re really going to learn what you need to know when I meet with people for and they’ve been in a coaching program for six months or a year. And I say pitch me on your business Tell me clearly to pitch means to concisely and clearly articulate your value. And they can’t do it and like you’re six months into a program. You’re avyear into a program. You don’t even know how to say what you sell. I teach my clients that in the first 10 days. So if they’re not teaching you that in the first 10 days, they’re automatically a fraud. If they won’t let you talk to their former, if you go to Cause and Effect consulting.com my website, you’ll see I think more than 20 people and I can refer you do a lot more who will tell you exactly what they got out of my program? Yeah.

Dhru 25:03

And that’s the point of it too, which is people don’t understand what they’re selling even, right? They don’t understand what they understand, who they’re talking to who their audience is, and understand what their offer actually is. Right? They have no idea what either one of those things is. And you know, going back to something you said earlier, which is, which is tied in, the know, like, trust thing, right? A lot of people push know, like, trust or like all day, all day, every day, right? It works to a point but the same time I feel like people focus too much on the middle one, the liking part, right, and not the other two. For me. It’s like look, if you’re an expert in your field, right? If you’re if you’re that like the top of your game, then I know who you are, right? I definitely trust your opinion. And I wonder what what what’s there I don’t necessarily have to like you though. It’s for you to give me results. Well,

Sajad 25:45

No, it’s, you don’t have, that’s new age feminism. Third generation feminism. You don’t need to like somebody to pay them money. I don’t want to be your friend or have sex with you. I just need you to do the work. I need you to do. 

Dhru 25:55

Right, it’s a sales tactic. 

Sajad 25:57

We don’t have to know more than buying. We don’t have to agree with other selling No, like trust. That’s what Yeah, and trust. I mean, I mean, no, I don’t call somebody my friends. I’m too old. I don’t call somebody my friend for three years. Because we gotta go through a lot. You got to be rich, you got to be poor. I gotta be rich. I gotta be poor, you got to fall in love and fall out of love. I gotta, we gotta go through all these things together. To see if we’re really going to be friends. Are you going to shit on me when I succeed? Are you going to be there for me when I’m depressed? You know somebody after two hours? No, you don’t know. Like is irrelevant. It’s trust. Can that person help me get there’s a lot of people that don’t hire me because they don’t like my personality. That’s stupid. My contract has 12 lines all in plain English. What I’m says understand, I am your coach, not your friend for the next six weeks. Don’t get the relationship twisted. I’m not. I am here to push you to greatness. And that’s the people that hired me are super smart, and extremely hardworking, but they’re stressed out because they’re not getting the results they want. And I I don’t give a shit what they think of me, I have a job to do, which is to help them make a lot of money off of their passion. That’s my job help them and I’m successful 96% of the time, because I turn out more than half the people so I turned on the people that I think are gonna fail to the social media marketing, if you don’t mind. I’m having a lot of fun with this story right now. So here’s three tips for the audience. First, I’ll add value before I talk shit to social media, whether it be tick tock Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn anywhere you’re gonna pose. First step is catch people’s attention. Step two is to add massive value to add massive value means to say something where people write it down. So if you’re purporting yourself to be an expert, don’t say it, show it. Prove it by doing it. Give away all your information. People hire people for help with implementing that information, people can go to YouTube or Google and find out all the info in the world. How do they implement those concepts number three, and with a call to action, please hop on my calendar learn more, please check out the description below to attend one of my networking events. So catch people’s attention, add massive value and with a call to action, make sure their 15 second videos, I posted Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube every day, it takes six minutes, batch your videos on the weekend. So I shoot 45 videos in 30 minutes. All I do is take my notebooks, which are my client conversations, and the things my clients asked me about. And I turned those all into posts. My entire program is available without charge. And social media cuz it doesn’t matter if people hire me for the help with the implementation. They see it and they know they need to do it. But they don’t know how to execute. And so I helped them with execution. So I did a post. I travel in the winters. I own land in Chicago and then land in Arizona. And I did a post saying if you are a brilliant, beautiful down to earth woman who wants to travel the United States for three months, please let me know. And the post went up. I was mostly talking shit just to see what, you know, just having fun. 95% of the time I add massive value 5% of the time I’m just talking shit and having fun. And I have 14 young beautiful women who have applied to travel. It’s my most brilliant idea ever. It’s done completely by accident. I didn’t know what kind of reaction I would get. I knew I would get a lot of reaction to it. Engagement,comments, probably haters, but that just promotes the rest of the brand and the rest of the posts. But actually it turns out I might have met my future wife or future ex wife. I’m gonna have a prenup for sure.

Dhru 29:38

Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely a prenup on that one. That’s that’s not I think that’s hilarious. And again, it’s it’s just having fun right? That’s that’s what I love about your brand. And what I do is because you are having fun, it’s very clear you’re having good time with what you’re doing. And you’re the brand of being Sajad Asid? but and it’s like this guy who’s like pushing you, kind of an asshole, but I don’t see you as the asshole guy. So he’s actually the opposite, as the devil may care, but devil actually does fucking care, which, which is why I appreciate the work you do, because you do give a shit. And at the end of the day, it’s something that the way it’s like, it’s hard people are digging, they’re gonna see the exterior, right, they’re gonna stare at see the posts, they’re gonna see this shit talking to us, they’re gonna see the, you know, stuff that that is on the very big, very, very basic surface of things, but they will only dig deeper, right? They won’t dig deeper to see the fact that you give a shit about your clients, you’re taking people on because you think they’re gonna succeed. And it’s not about your numbers, it’s like people will see that and be like, Oh, it’s you only take people who are gonna succeed, because those people probably shouldn’t be business owners. Right? I mean, I’ve done the same thing, I don’t, I haven’t kept track of it, I probably should actually think about it now. But it’s like, I turned people away and tell them straight up, listen, you probably shouldn’t be a business owner. Right? You don’t have the mindset, you don’t have the drive for it, you don’t have the stuff for it, frankly. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing about saying that you’re something’s wrong with you, you just need to want people who should have a full time job, right, you should really rely on other people to do their own things. And that’s the other thing too, like you’re actually doing this, as a full time employee, you’re still doing a lot of work with doing a business owner, you’re just delegating other work, or having someone else delegate that for you, basically, and paying them for you to do all the visits development to do a sales to do marketing to do the admin tasks, right. You’re just having someone else pay them to do that for you. That’s the only difference really, between being responsible for those things, and delegating them yourself versus doing having someone else did that for you. So I mean, how much shit do you catch for the exterior version of the Sajad? 

Sajad 31:36

Well, I would say that I attract the intellectuals who can see through shit talking and get past curse words. So those are not the people for me, if you’re weak or stupid, I don’t want to associate with you. And I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t want to be your friend, I don’t want to do business with you. And I make way more money. My clients make way more money. My networking events are way better. You know, these other people that try to do events get like 10-15 people, whatever, 10-12 people, I get over 50. And they’re legit, over seven of the people that attend my events, on average are multi multi millionaires. So they get it, they understand what it is I crack them up. I got distracted by a text for five seconds of somebody saying you can screenshot at one of my posts and said, bro, you’re hilarious. So the rich people like me, and they know what I’m doing. I have three three quick stories for him. I also am repulsing the wrong people. You want to repulse the wrong people. So my ex-girlfriend was somebody that met with me because she wanted to hire me. She was brilliant. She was gorgeous master’s degree, world traveler lived in seven countries. Really cool chick in seven minutes in our conversation. I said, Are you money driven? Because she was talking a lot about caring about people and said, no, I’m not money driven. I said, I’m not gonna be able to help you. She said, why not? I said, because if you don’t care about money, you’re not going to, you’re not going to do what I teach. And she’s like, well, where do we go from here? And I said, well, how do you feel about traveling?

Dhru 33:09

Of course you did.

Sajad 33:13

We traveled for a while. And then I had a guy this year, I do try to vet people as best as possible. I want to have integrity. That’s my main value in the world is honesty with self and others. And I had a guy quit two weeks into my program who had paid me up front, like the vast majority of my clients do. And he said, um, I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, what you’re teaching, I understand is the right stuff and this sucks. And I said, but you said having a job sucks. And he says, it does. This sucks worse than that. And I said, Alright, what do you want to do? He’s like, I don’t want to do this anymore. But you can keep your money. I appreciate what you taught me. But I charge a decent amount of money, a fair market value. And I still saved them like 100,000 If he had bought a Subway or something, or 150,000. You know, I’d saved them a lot of time and money, because he doesn’t have to go investing into something that he doesn’t actually want to do. Being employees a lot easier. Entrepreneurship is a fantasy. It’s like dating a perfect looking woman. It’s until you do it. You don’t know what it is. And it’s not what you think it is. It’s a lot of problems. And then the latest thing is, or the last three, I had a guy hired me who was 65 years old, former military leader, and he was making 220,000 years something like that in this job. But every six months, he was making them like 65 million. So he said, Fuck it, I’m gonna start my own business. And then when he hired me, I’m like, You got to do this. And this and this. I’m showing them everything an entrepreneur has to do this goes back to what you said. You’re being your own boss is a misperceived phrase. You also have to be your own boss. You have to manage yourself. You have to do your bookkeeping, you have to do marketing. You have to do sales, accounting, legal, every aspect of your business until you have enough money to pay for everything. So he was like, He’s saying all this stuff isn’t getting done. And we said, that’s because you’re not doing it.

Dhru 35:09

I love that phrasing all the stuffs not getting done. 

Sajas 35:11

It’s your work, man.

Dhru 35:12

Yeah, cuz it’s your responsibility. I told them I like, Listen, if you want to be an entrepreneur, or a business owner or whatever, right, whatever you want to call it, you have to be responsible for every aspect of the business, you’re laser focused on your subject matter area, right? You start a business, well, guess what you’re trading in your, your one job for, like 40 jobs. And yes, you’re your own boss, but you’re also your own employee, and they don’t get that part of it. Right, you’re still an employee of but you’re an employee of yourself of your business. Now, the buck stops with you. Whereas before, you can call your manager supports that and support you and deal with something, you aren’t the manager now, right? You are the admin, you’re not gonna be like, who says my secretary, you can be like, Oh, let me schedule that myself. If people aren’t gonna understand that distinction. I mean, similarly, I had a client, this guy’s a really successful, really smart, really sweet guy, cared about his family, whatever wants, he wants to build a strong income for his family. And he just quit this job. He was working Tech Tech job. And he’s like, Hey, I’m doing this work. Right now. I want to start my own business. I’ve been doing it for a little bit on the side. I’m like, Okay, well, doing it on the side is very different than doing it, you know, as your only thing because you have a full time thing that’s supporting you. Are you ready to do this? He’s like, he’s like, Yeah, I’m ready. I’m ready to rock I’ll do whatever it takes. Alright, fine. Similarly, we went through like about a month of this stuff. It’s like working through like, exactly what he needs to do in the first two weeks is actually doing okay. He’s doing what he’s learning about the mindset he’s adopt. He’s learning about what he needs to what actually needs to do what his offer is going to be. And then when it gets down to actually getting the work done, you start having sales conversation, and he’s like, I don’t like this. I don’t like the sales conversation. And I’m like, I That’s great. Doesn’t really matter what you like, you got to do it right now until you can hire someone to do it. Right? Absolutely. We can get off your plate as soon as possible. But until you get enough clients in to pay someone else to do it. You can’t really do it, right, because he’s got a family to deal with and all that shit. And he has gotten a side gig at this point, which ends up being a full time gig. It’s a full time gig as a contractor with a company. He’s like, Hey, I think I’m good. I think that’s the only client I need. I’m like, This is not a client. This is job, bro. This is a job because they’re paying you what you want full time that taking up all your time. And they’re giving you like benefits or whatever, which is great. Nothing wrong with that. But if this is what you’re looking for, this is called the job. This is not a client, right? Because you don’t have to do your own thing. And he’s like, Oh, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll be okay. I’m like, alright, that’s fine. But if that’s what you want, then go for it. Just make sure that you understand it’s a six month contract. It’s not like a full time forever thing. And you gotta be looking for the next gig as soon as possible. He’s like, oh, I’ll be fine. Six months later, I get a call. He’s like, Hey, man, they laid me off. I’m like, No, your contract ended, there’s a difference. They didn’t renew you, there’s a difference. And again, it’s understanding different pieces of it. Like if anything law school taught us, right, it’s like, understand the difference between in terminology between a contract position, a full time position, and like a client, customer relationship thing. Those are different things. But I think the average person doesn’t understand that stuff, right? Unless you really break it down

Sajad 38:02

on a law school. In the books, as of today, the new tort law, and employees called a slave and the owner is called the master. It’s still that language. I when I saw that in the books, I was like, hey, there’s capitalism. All right, I had a few thoughts on your thoughts if that’s alright. So, a business owner is a misnomer. You’re not a business owner. Initially, you’re self-employed. Business owners, where I took my tech company and where Cause and Effect is pretty close to that as well. Where I have people doing the vast majority of the work, I meet with my clients up to an hour a week, and then they call me on average, four hours a week. That’s on average. And then I have a ton of support staff. I have the online program, I have people coaching people through my program before they so they have the online program where there’s a video and materials, they get the information there, then they talk to a former client of mine who was the best at that particular section, they get the information there. And then when when they meet with me, they refine, you know, we just polish the stones at that point. The business owner does not have to work or does not have to work very much at all. Now, in terms of being your own employee, here’s what I teach my clients every night before you go to sleep, create an hour by hour schedule with quantifiable measurements. 8am to 9am and you said you’re sending emails, are you sending three emails or 30 emails? And why are you doing that? I’m never going to tell you what to do. But I’m going to have you take a hard look at yourself. You’re gonna have an employee named Mike, you’re paying Mike $200,000 a year. Mike is going to hand you that schedule. What questions would you be asking your employee? You want to focus on money making activities. So you know reading, researching, creating, analyzing, get yourself out there, get people on your calendar, show massive value, add massive value and close fucking deals. There’s an abundancy versus scarcity something you brought up. So in order to attract more money, you have to not care. So if you want too bad, you don’t get your pulse, right? Just like in dating, you know, I just really need to get laid, you’re not gonna get laid, I just need this one client and everything will be fine. You’re not gonna get that one client, because you’re gonna have energy of scarcity. The last guy, the last guy, well, the second guy, two guys ago that hired me. During the pitch meeting, he said, You seem like you don’t give a shit. And I said, I don’t give a shit. I said, do you want to hire me or not hire me? I mean, it’s like, I definitely want to hire you. I said, okay, well, let’s keep doing that. That’s what we’re doing right. Now he goes, okay. So if you care too much. If you want too much, you its energy out into the universe. If you’re operating out of desperation, you’re going to be desperate. If you operate out of abundance, you’re going to be abundant. You know, the law of attraction is true to some extent, but you got to put the work in as well. But there are energy factors here and how you carry yourself as well. Last year, I made a ton of money. And there was seven weeks where I made no money. And I changed nothing during that seven weeks. And there was people that wanted to hire me during that seven weeks when I’m check to check I mean, that’s how you think, right? That’s how you operate, whether it’s true or not. You have to operate like, hey, I need to make money, I have to be on the hustle. Otherwise, I could wake up drink beer and play video games and go to sleep and then wake up drink beer and go to sleep. I can do nothing for years, actually, if I wanted to right now. And I work 16 to 19 hours a day. The billionaires keep working because they were billionaires before they became billionaires. That is who they are. So that’s how you have to be. And then the final thought here is on people pleasers. The number one reason why people can’t close deals is because they’re people pleasers. There’s three parts to being a people pleaser. Number one, I want everybody to like me. Number two, I never want to make anybody uncomfortable. Number three, I never want to face rejection. So if you’re a people pleaser, you cannot do sales. And if you can’t do sales, you can’t be an entrepreneur. Even if you have a sales team, you’re still the number one sales representative of your corporation. You’re the Ultimate Sales Rep for your company. So you have to separate between personal and professional. I’m, well I really am an asshole, but I’m much nicer to my girlfriend than I am to potential clients. I’m much nicer to my family and friends than I am in business. I’m not cutthroat and I don’t pressure anybody to hire me. But um, I don’t take shit in business. Personally, I’ll put up with a lot more than I will in business. So I’m much more of a nobody would ever accuse me of being a people pleaser. But unless we’re looking to please people personally, then I am professionally. Businesses is business Business is about money, helping people add massive value, get paid for your value. And then your personal life is where you cry and have feelings and shit like that. 

Dhru 42:51

I agree with everything you just said honestly, it’s true. Like you gotta celebrate, you know, you can’t really compartmentalize, you’re still the same person and in places and you know, I definitely see that. When you for example, right? Like, you’re obviously still a good guy, you still care about people, because you’re not, you’re not just doing this for the money. But you are doing it for the money. Like you have to make money. Everyone has to make money. And anyone who says I’m not interested in making money is, I won’t say they’re lying, but they’re being disingenuous or they’re not telling the whole truth. Unless they have so much money, they don’t really give a shit in which case they wouldn’t charge for what they’re doing. Right? So ultimately, yes, we are here to make money we’re networking is for networking to make money. We’re not meant for networking to make friends. Right? If that happens as a byproduct, which has happened before, then that’s awesome. And that’s great. You meet good people, and it’s just gel. That’s great. One thing I want to pull out was the scarcity abundance thing and dive into it a little deeper. And people don’t don’t talk about that enough. I feel like the ones who did talk about it. Are they into the people pleasing mode on social media because they’re afraid of getting cancelled? And they don’t really go into deep, like deepness about that. And I feel like for me, it comes down to fear and goals, right? Well, they want to call it love, desire, goals, whatever they’re all the same thing, right? It’s fear and fear and love, fear, desire. Those are the two motivators of human beings. And if you don’t want it bad enough, right, you’re not working for what you want anyway, right? Like, it’s just not gonna work hard enough for it. If you’re operating out of fear, though, back to your whole point about energy, right? You’re gonna be running away from something you’re running away from that you can run to wherever you might use the horror horror movie analogy a lot because it’s like, you got the person’s running away from from you know, Freddy Krueger. And what happens they ultimately trip over something because they’re looking back at where he is and not looking where they’re going. If it were something you fall, you break your ass to get killed, right? Simple as that. Same thing is true in business. If you’re looking at what you’re afraid of, you’re not gonna know what the hell you’re going. But no, it’s like people are always operating out of this fear thing, right? And so what’s what’s your method for getting for first diagnosis, somebody who’s operating out of fear versus operating out of the goals?

Sajad 44:46

Don’t think just take massive action. Don’t think. Don’t care. Don’t feel. Just do and understand that hate is love. Hate is a strong powerful energy. The more haters you get, the better that you’re doing. The higher up the mountain you climb, the more difficult it becomes to breathe. So I have in my online community, there’s a section called wins where you get to celebrate your wins. There’s a section called fuck ups where you talk about things you did wrong, sort of things you need to improve on business wise. And my clients will put, hey, I got my first hater. It’s a win. Right? It’s a mentality change that, you know, there’s people that talk a lot about me behind my back in bad ways. Well, right. Well, they don’t really know me. But yeah, they talk shit, right? I’m abrasive, belligerent, which I am. But whatever. But they’re talking about me. All press is good press. And so they’re not talking about you. And one of my friends, she made 5 million in her first year of business. She tells me all these people talk shit about me to her. And she always says back to them, you realize you’re talking about him, right? He ain’t talking about you? Well, it’s a paradigm shift in thinking there’s three keys to success as entrepreneur, which if you set up a 30 minute one on one with me already through that part, it’s a paradigm shift in thinking you eat what you hunt. Becoming an entrepreneur is becoming something totally different than an employee, like your story. That guy never changed. He never became an entrepreneur, he just wanted to feel good about himself. So he used language that said he was self-employed or a business owner when he wasn’t, but it’s the capstone to my program is the three keys of success. Even though we’re talking all along the way, about a changes in mentality, you got to just do. And once you do, here’s the biggest thing about fear. Once you do, you’ll realize it was nowhere near as bad as what you thought it was going to be. So the real fear, the anxiety, the panic, is in the thinking about it. Now, there’s a cool phrase I heard, depression is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future. So it’s the fear of what might happen. And then when you do it, it’s like, I have my clients connect with 90 people per week on LinkedIn by going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, like, I can’t do that, you know, like, Hey, can watch, go do it. And then they do it. They go shit, man, I 400 new connections in the past month. By going click, click, click, click. So you know, do podcasts, do presentations, presented networking events, put yourself out there, you’re not failing, even when it doesn’t work you’re gaining. As long as you’re being hyper self critical. You’re gaining because there’s, every time you figure out how it doesn’t work, it didn’t work that way, you are closer to the truth, you are closer to success every single time it doesn’t work. It’s only failure when you quit trying. I has one client week five, she’s like, I’m gonna stop doing social media posts, I’m making myself look like an idiot. I’m done looking like an idiot. I said shit, you’re not gonna make any money. And she was doing a really bad job. But you got it, you got to put yourself out there. Be willing to look stupid, be willing to fail, be willing to, because then you’ll get better and better. Everything I’ve ever done is sucked. And when I first tried it, and then I got better and better and better at it. I’ve been doing this consulting work over 10 years now six years with Intellectual Tech over four years with Cause and Effect consulting. And every year, I look back a year ago and say me, I suck last year. And right now I think I’m fucking great at what I do. And a year from now, I’m gonna say, Man, I really suck less. You know, it keeps improving. If you’re hyper self critical, you keep on getting better and better and better. Every time one of my clients struggles. I don’t say oh, that’s stupid, Bob, or that’s stupid Jen. I say, Okay, why did I not teach that correctly? Why didn’t that person get it? How can I do better? How can I improve? It’s 100% self accountability. So yeah, it’s it’s a paradigm shift and thinking about failure, fear. And you can’t do paralysis by analysis. You can’t sit there thinking, you need to get out and do work.

Dheu 48:58

Yeah. And there’s a big difference between self criticality and obsessive just like, you know, what’s the word I’m looking for? I mean, destructive criticality. Right. And if there’s constructive criticism, there’s destructive criticism, right? And you got to focus on the constructive side of things. How do you get better? Not what did you suck at? But what would you suck at? And then why do you suck at that? Is it something you can do to change that in the future? Because guess what, you can. I follow Gary Vee a lot, right? Because I like most of his content, but one thing I love that he said is just go out there and do it. Like you said, to get there and try it. You’re gonna you’re gonna, you’re gonna be better than the first right but you get out there and keep trying. I don’t know if you follow this guy named Jared Polin. He’s a, he’s a photographer. Really fun. His whole thing is like FroKnowsPhoto because he has big afro, and he’s he’s cool as hell. He’s funny as hell. But his whole thing was and actually, that’s one reason I started my YouTube channel was him and Gary Vee was talking about all stuff all the time. But Jared Polin showed his first his first FroKnowsPhoto video that he did like 20 years ago. And it was literally him just reading something I think the camera looks like looks like a bad news correspondence situation. And it was just he was like, he’s like, this is what I this is what my first video looked like, if you’re not doing videos like this, this is as bad as it can get folks, you know, like, and this is out there still you can go look it up and I was like. Okay, all right, fuck it, I’m just gonna do it. And I just turned 20 I was like I got going on because nothing was happening in my life. Why not? You know, it’s just me my dog. So let’s just start posting and, you know, I’m still not anywhere where I want to be. But I’m posting stuff out there. And to your point, you’re gonna get better by trying and seeing what what works and what doesn’t work. And Edison failed the light bulb about 4000 times 10,000 times, the number changes every time you every person you ask, right. But as x 1000 times he failed. And he just found more ways to prove it every single time if he knew if he gave up at attempt at 9999. We would not have a light bulb right now. Right? It’s just it’s one of those things where, like you said, you got to be critical, but I think critical in the sense of looking at ways to improve yourself not say, you suck. And then end of sentence, right? I think people mask that nowadays. To your point about the people with all the nice cars and helicopters and all that kind of bullshit that they flash around the place. It’s like, yeah, what does that really doing for you? Just because you happen to have that.  

51:13

That’s making them a lot more money. Michael Jorsan says, Nobody talks about how many shots I missed, you know, any of these stories. Mark Cuban says you only gotta be right once. Most people fail. I mean, I have a girlfriend or a female friend of mine. She says I have a a photo book of all your former business cards, you know, of all my fucking failures. So you know, I’ve been very successful a few times, my law firm, my tech company, and with Cause and Effect. I was successful a couple times before that as well. But I mean, I know a lot of shots and different things over the years clothing companies, publishing companies, promotion companies, you know.

Dhru 51:53

Yeah,I mean, like you said, I’ll just call a couple successes, right? But I want to be mindful of your time because I know we’re put up here, but dude, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. Anything you want to leave the audience with? And then I’ll ask one more question to end it. And then we’ll go from there.

Sajad 52:07

Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. That was a whole lot of fun. I’m pretty sure you and I are going to be good friends for life. I believe so. So you can come out to my mountain. If you want this winter. I have two separate RVs now. So you’ll be staying in my guest house. As long as I get along with my next girlfriend, you you’ll be sleeping alone. If not, you’re gonna have a company. I still offer all them, but I’m about to change this, a 30 minute complimentary conversation, I will research you, I will add massive value, I will not try to sell you anything I will tell you what I do. So if we can put into the notes somewhere how they get on my calendar, where you can go to causeandeffectconsulting.com Check out my website, check out the testimonials. And you can get on my calendar from there. And like I said for right now, I’m still offering that 30 minutes, although that’s going to be going away soon.

Dhru 52:59

And last question I will ask you which is it’s the question I asked everybody because I think it’s kind of cool to think about this, but who or what the book, movie TV or person right was your biggest inspiration and as you as you push through the day, the days between when you start a career now.

Sajas 53:16

Depends on which career but I have three thoughts rapidly Rich Dad Poor Dad version one for business. There’s a documentary called The Biology of Sex Appeal, personally had the biggest impact on me ever. So there’s three things women are looking for. It all has to do subconsciously with survival, the babies and social stature, money and sense of humor, because those babies are molded up most likely to survive. And then for feeding your energy subconsciously. Listen to Les Brown every single day. Start out with Les browns, You Got to Be Hungry. But watch Les Brown when I’m playing video games or just cleaning the house or if I’m in my downtime, and my downtime is still work. If I’m in my downtime, I’m listening for less roof. My best friend has two PhDs. He’s a medical surgeon, and he’s a psychotherapist. And he was here a few years ago and I was you know running the tech company running law firm and Deputy Chief of Staff for the state. And it was like two o’clock in the afternoon and I put on Les Brown. So we’re watching Les Brown, an hour and a half video of Les Brown. Halfway through he says, Sajad, can you please pause this for me man? He said you know I have my own medical clinic I also work for the state you do this that the other day do you think we need to be more motivated? I said, yea, James, we can do better. He goes, ah, that’s true bro put it back on. So give yourself a lot of Les Brown. read Rich Dad Poor Dad and if you’re interested check up the Science of Sex Appeal. That’s what it’s called. It’s a documentary. 

Dhru 54:48

That’s awesome. And if you’d like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, there’s one called this book called I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi check it out. It’s a different take on on money management with that which I really liked. It’s everyone else’s like oh cut out the car. face, you can save five bucks a day in coffee and he’s like, if you enjoy the coffee, make it work. Just put.

Sajad 55:07

Dan Pena says buy before you can the billionaires buy before they can afford to buy shit. And then I mean, I’ve done it with the sports car, the mountain, I just bought a Luxury RV last week, I bought a lot of stuff. And now I mean, I have money and there’s money coming in. But right now, my income is very close to my outcome. But it’s okay because I’m just I’ll just figure it out work harder. I’ll do more work I’ll do better work. I’ll do smarter work. I’ll do more podcasts, more presentations, more social media, but I work harder and I’ll make more money I’ll afford anything I want. I can afford anything that I want. Anything I set my mind to happens because I figured out Oh in Rich Dad Poor Dad and this will be my final thought. He says one guy looks at the Lamborghini and says I wish I could have that. The other guy looks looks at the Lamborghini and says how do I get that? As soon as you tell yourself how are you ask yourself how, your brain starts to figure out how to make that thing happen. No wish, no hope, no luck, no try. How do I make that happen and then put in the work to make that happen? Yep.

Dhru 56:09

And then the second part is when I want to stress because I say that said the same thing. The Secret is bullshit unless you work for it. Right you put all the energy won’t be for you not willing to work for you want it to just fall in your lap. Not gonna happen. But Sajad, thanks so much, man. This is awesome. Good times. Folks. If you want to find out more about the Sajad, it’ll be in the description below slash in the shownotes. But including his link will be there, his website link as well as a scheduling link for as long as that exists. Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all. And if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s @dhrubee, on Twitter, @dhruvabee, on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.

Dhru 00:00

Hey everybody, this is Dr. Dhru Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship.

Dhru 00:24

Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of Ikigai Leadership. I’m Dr. Dhru Beeharilal and I’m here with Dr. Steven Kirch. Steve, great to meet you, thanks for coming out today, I really appreciate the time. 

Steven 00:35

Dr. Dhru, hey, great to be here. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today. 

Dhru 00:40

Yeah. So, profit minds, it’s obviously it’s business coaching, for those who don’t know, and particularly different lens, as Steven knows, you know, everyone, every coach has their own little lens through which they see the world through which they help the clients see the world. And so what’s your lens? What does it look like for you? 

Steven 00:55

It’s interesting, because, yeah, my lens is quite different. I’m a scientist and I like to understand things in some level of detail before I prescribe some kind of a solution. And life is an experiment. So, we try something and if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else. And, you know, I’ve learned a lot over my years. That’s, you know, how I got the gray hair. 

Dhru 01:26

You earned the gray hair writing and getting–

Steven 01:28

I earned it, I earned every one of them. That’s right. 

Dhru 01:30

Yeah. So, tell us more about I know you’re a PhD in physics, right? How do you go from being a PhD in physics to being a business coach? 

Steven 01:39

Yeah. So, it is kind of an interesting story that, you know the first job I had out of graduate school, my wife and I both got jobs working for IBM, in New York, and moved there. And, you know, I had no desire whatsoever to be a manager in the IBM System, because a manager couldn’t do anything technical. And I loved technology, and I loved being on the cutting edge of developing new technologies. That was the reason that I became a physicist in the first place was to discover new things and the IBM System required that managers be managers pure and simple manage. We had a minimum of 30 people reporting to you. And that meant all you could do is manage. I’ve been at IBM for eight, nine years, something like that. And they did their first layoffs. And it was at that point, I realized I needed to take responsibility for my own career. When I joined IBM, I figured I’d be there for the rest of my life, you were called an “IBMer”, that was the expectation. But when they made that change, I said, well, I better do something about this. So, I started passing out my resume. And a guy from Intel called me and recruited me to come to California, which is where I am now. And also convinced me that I could be a manager because, at Intel, you could manage a team of three or four people and do technical work at the same time. And so for the rest of my career at at Intel, even though I was a manager, almost all of that 22 years, I was also able to contribute technically, so it was a good balance. But a few years into my time at Intel, I was introduced to, I was offered the opportunity to take the class, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. They were rolling it out to the entire organization and 1500 people are going to take this, they were taking three to five days off-site for every member of the organization. That’s a huge investment. And I found the course transformational. In fact, they were looking for instructors, because again, they’re rolling it out to everybody and I put my hand up, because I know the best way to learn something is to teach it. So, I became a certified facilitator and I’ve been able to do that now for over 25 years. And one of the other cool things about Intel is that each senior leader, I was director level at that point, is required to teach at least three classes, a year, every year. That’s the way they perpetuate the culture. And I loved the teaching, I loved watching the students’ eyes light up as they got some new concept. And over time, I got introduced to and certified in a number of other courses of that ilk, you know, personal productivity, organizational effectiveness, you know, those kinds of things and I found that I really loved it. And the other pivotal thing that happened to me while I was at Intel, this is 2008, so almost 15 years ago now or 15 years ago, I was a member of the senior staff for the factory that was here in Santa Clara. And we announced or we were told we had to announce that we were shutting down the factory. 800 people were going to be displaced by that single act. And what we did as a leadership team, I was Chief of Staff to the gentleman who were running the factory at the time, the entire leadership team said, we made the commitment to every employee, we said, we will find every employee a successful new beginning. We didn’t define what that was like, what that was going to be for them. We also put together courses to help them figure out what it would be. But the fascinating piece of that was that those employees, we had a turnover in the factory. And in here in Silicon Valley turnover is pretty high, we were probably averaging somewhere between 15% and 20%, annual turnover within the factory, right, you know, for the 18 months. And by the way, we announced the shutdown, and it was 18 months later that the factory was actually closing. So, we needed to keep those people to do the things that needed to be done and our turnover dropped from over 15% to around 5%. And the reason was because we made a commitment to the people in that organization. And they understood that we delivered for them. I would be willing to bet that of the 800 people that were displaced, there were less than 10 that didn’t have a successful new beginning. My real discovery of the enjoyment of teaching, I taught in graduate school, of course, but wasn’t the same, right? But my enjoyment of the teaching of some of these fundamental business principles and combining that with the value of understanding how important it is to tend to your employees. Those two things combined. So, as I started to contemplate this thing they call retirement, which I did now, more than seven years ago. I said, boy, it would be fun to continue that as a business coach. And so I hung out a shingle.

Dhru 07:16

That’s awesome. There’s a couple of things I wanted to cover on there, like you said a lot. And I wanted to touch on a couple of things. But the first thing actually I’m most curious about, honestly, is actually kind of a tangential thing that you mentioned just in passing, but being part of Intel, during the 90s, right? And IBM and Intel, both during the 90s when the with the advent of the Pentium chip, right? What was that like? And for some folks who are here who are not as much as a nerd as I am, if you wouldn’t mind sharing what that is, you know, but.

Steven 07:45

Yeah, so the Pentium was the big breakthrough for Intel, in terms of the microprocessor and really set Intel apart, as you know, the leader of the microprocessor movement. Now, I arrived, as the Pentium, the first Pentium was being certified. And I took over the organization that was actually responsible for the failure analysis of those devices as they came through. So, I was really there sort of, in the heart of it, at the very beginning. And some of the people that I worked with, and for, were solving those problems. That, you know, in the reliability space, I was part of the quality and reliability organization at the time. And it was a magical place. Let me tell you, you know, IBM was a great company, is a great company. But the thing about Intel, that was really and it impacts the way I coach, by the way, as you might imagine. Andy Grove was chairman at the time. He’s one of the founders, and he’s got a couple of management books. And I think the thing that stuck with me the most and was most in practice, at Intel, was this idea of management by objective, or key performance indicators. KPIs is what we call them today. OKRs is another objectives and key results. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of different ways of saying this, but it’s what gets measured gets managed. And that’s so critical to the way I work with my clients. We develop KPIs, leading indicators. Every salesperson that’s worth anything that does anything that’s worthwhile for a company knows that you don’t keep track of what you do keep track of how many sales you make, but the primary thing you count is how many calls you make because it’s a leading indicator of your success. It’s both predictive, and it’s influenceable. Those are the two characteristics that make a successful leading indicator. It’s predictive that is to say, the more calls you make, the more deals you’ll get. Right? And it’s influenceable, you can decide how many calls you’re going to make today.

Dhru 10:12

And a lot of people don’t get that, right? I mean, I think a lot of people look at the results, and they’re like, Oh, we’re not getting results I want well, okay, well, what are you doing to get those results, right? 

Steven 10:20

What are the behaviours–

Dhru 10:21

What are the behaviours? Like, oh, well, I just made my calls, right? The network or I talk to people or whatever. Okay, how do people and you break it down, like you said, what gets measured? Right? Is what you need to measure, what the key from saying, Oh, you have to measure that what you’re doing. So, you know, what the outcomes look like? And so eventually, you know, what their what your cost of acquisition is, you know, what the active actions are to get to the point where you get customers, and a lot of business owners, you know, in this situation, I use that term loosely, because it’s some people get in the business, and then they’re not meant to be business owners, right?

Steven 10:50

Yeah. That’s a different problem. We could talk about that too.

Dhru 10:55

Yeah, but you get into the situation, and you’re like, Okay, well, I’m not getting results I want okay, well, what actions are you taking? Right? And they’ll be like, Oh, well, I’m doing this like, Okay, how many calls you making? How many emails are you sending? How many meetings are you attending? And if they can’t give you that answer, then that’s the you know, they have to start looking at those kinds of things, right? Which is, yeah, it’s amazing. 

Steven 11:15

And you have to know what’s working in each step of the process, right? How many calls do you make? How many follow-ups do you get? How many emails do you send? How many of those get opened? How many of those get clicked on? And all of those things, you know that there are and you can look them up? Right? There are standards for what is a good open rate, what is a good click rate. And if your open rate isn’t good enough, well, then you probably need to look at your subject line. If your click rate isn’t good enough, you probably need to look at the content. And if your close rate isn’t enough, well, maybe you need to talk about or get some help with your closing script, or whatever that is, right? But measure each one, you need to know the top of funnel to the bottom of the funnel, the rate at for for each of those things. I like to say, look, it’s not rocket science. 

Dhru 12:08

No, it’s not. But it’s–

Steven 12:09

I can do rocket science and trust me, this is not rocket science. 

Dhru 12:11

Exactly and it’s simple. But it’s not always easy. Right? And I think that’s–

Steven 12:16

That’s absolutely true.

Dhru 12:18

And a lot of folks don’t take the time that they do to break it down like that, though. They’re like, Oh, I’m doing I’m having sales calls? Well, what do they sound like, what are your sales calls consist of? Right? Well, it consists of means find out what other people do and tell them what I do. That’s a networking call that’s not a sales call, right? You’re not gonna get any business that way. So, you got to break it down. And someone like yourself, having experienced that much experience in that world in the world of technology, and then and then coaching as well. And teaching, right? What are some of the most common challenges? I mean, obviously, that would be one of them, right? Sales and Marketing and that kind of thing. But what are the most common challenges you come across with clients?

Steven 12:53

I think you said it very well, right? People that get into business, they get into business, because they’re good at what they do. They’re not good at business. That’s not where their passion is. So they need another set of eyes, a coach, perhaps, somebody to help them. Sometimes it just takes a mentor, sometimes an accountability partners enough. But very often, a coach will really help you understand, you know, what it is that you’re doing and what you could do better, but just an independent set of eyeballs. By the way, I call myself a coach consultant. This whole thing about being a business coach, and you’re not allowed to tell them what to do? Well, sometimes you got to tell them what to do–

Dhru 13:45

You have to, absolutely. You understand the business coaching world, right? Because if you’re meeting them where they are, there’s an element of teaching and consulting that has to go into that. Coaching, I don’t think people understand the distinction between coaching and consulting, right? And there is a distinction. And I’ll tell you, honestly, most of my clients that I work with, whether they’re business owners, or whether they’re executives or leaders in organizations, in the beginning, there’s always some element of consulting that has to happen, right? It’s just a matter of switching that from 60-40 consulting to coaching, to 10 or 15% consulting to coaching, to like 85-90% coaching, right? That’s just reality.

Steven 14:22

Yes, it is. And oh, by the way, you know, out here in the Bay Area, we have a basketball team, the Golden State Warriors. 

Dhru 14:29

Do you really? That sounds familiar. 

Steven 14:31

Some people may have heard of that– 

Dhru 14:32

That sounds a little familiar, not sure, yeah. Who’s on that team again?

Steven 14:34

And, yeah, I know Steph Curry, I think is one of the guys that plays on that team. 

Dhru 14:39

Oh yeah, Stefan, Stefan. 

Steven 14:41

Arguably the best shooter ever. 

Dhru 14:43

Yeah, that guy’s insane, man, amazing. 

Steven 14:45

He has a whole bunch of coaches. 

Dhru 14:50

I absolutely believe it. 

Steven 14:51

And I’d be willing to bet that Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Warriors, spends a lot of time helping Steph Curry to connect with the basketball and make sure he really has his feelings in order around the basketball, right? No, he says, go there, pass here, cut there, get the ball back, shoot, right? I mean, he designs these plays, and he’s great at it but he tells the players what to do. And sometimes a coach needs to do that. Sure, they have to help with motivation too. But does that make Steve Kerr, not a coach? I don’t think so. 

Dhru 15:29

No, I like in sports teams. I think sports teams are a great analogy, right? I like in sports teams to organizations in the sense that you have a team coach, right? The person who’s coaching the whole team, as you go, individually might coach one-on-one here and there, you know, but then on top of that you have your star players or the players that are key players in the team will have their own coaches as well, right? To work on different things, whatever that might be, right, you have a coach, you can have a coach to work on basketball-wise, you can have a shooting coach, you can have a dribbling coach, you can have, you know, a mindset coach. And again, those things, those coaches can be the same person, if their skill set aligns, or they can be 3 different people, right? 

Steven 16:06

But everybody that’s at the top of their game has at least one if not multiple coaches. I have coaches. 

Dhru 16:16

I have coaches, I also coach other coaches. We coach each other a lot of times, right? Coaches end up trading services for that reason, right? And you know, the ICF, whatever opinions people have about the ICF, good or bad or ugly, you know, it’s they do have a mentor coaching option as well, where you can get credit for those kinds of things. And they have that for that reason because there’s an element of necessity in mentor coaching. To take your coaching to the next level. Because once you get to the certifications, right, there’s professional development, obviously, right? But there’s no one sitting in with you saying, hey, you know if you ask the question this way, or what happens if you ask this question instead of that question or because we all get into our own heads. We get tunnel vision, right? In our own lenses, right, going back to the whole lens conversation. We have our own lens, and we get really focused on that lens, and we start missing things. We start having our own coaching blind spots and so a coach helps you uncover those, right? So, who’ve been the folks who have who’ve influenced your coaching in terms of like, your coaching partners over the years that kind of got you started on the on the path? 

Steven 17:16

There are a couple of people that I want to call out. The first was my mom, she’s been gone now for almost 30 years. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t miss her. But my mom was the world’s best listener. And you know if I have any capability of listening, it comes from her. I have to tell a funny story. My mom, I am sure if Guinness kept track of this would hold the world’s record for the longest wrong number phone conversation.

Dhru 17:58

How long was the conversation? 

Steven 17:59

So, somebody called, she picked up the phone. 45 minutes later, she hung up. Dad said who was it? Mom said, I don’t know, it was a wrong number but he needed to talk. That was my mom. 

Dhru 18:16

That speaks volumes about who she was as a person. I mean–

Steven 18:20

Doesn’t it? 

Dhru 18:21

You know, like it’s funny on one side, but on the other side, it’s actually that person on the other end of that line lucked out, right?

Steven 18:29

Yeah. And, you know, I’ve had a whole bunch of different coaches along the way. But I have to say, I think the most inspirational person that I’m connected with right now, is my partner in Profit Minds, Randy Haykin, who was employee number six at Yahoo, was a venture capitalist for a number of years, and has now started an organization called The Gratitude Network. We’ve been around for about 10 years now and I’ve been on the board for the last seven. It’s a leadership development organization for social entrepreneurs and we work with scaling companies and leadership development for organizations, not-for-profit organizations that work with children and youth around the world. And Randy is in that phase of life where he is just giving back. And he’s such an incredible person, and so thoughtful about how can I help? So, I would, you know, I would say, Randy, is that person for me that’s been most influential in terms of how I do what I do. 

Dhru 19:49

Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, you got two great examples. Honestly. Your mom sounds like she was, honestly sounds like she was your first coach experience, right? And then Randy sounds like he’s doing some amazing work, man. That’s great. And The Gratitude Network sounds like a phenomenal organization. Are there opportunities for folks to get involved? You know, as a layperson who’s listened to this, maybe you might want to get involved in that? Is that something that people can get involved in at any level? Or is it something where you have to be a certain level or certain? 

Steven 20:17

No, no, absolutely. I mean, to be a coach, of course, you need to be a certified executive coach. And we have, you know, people at the highest calibre, donating their time, to these amazing organizations. We estimate, over the past seven years, the roughly 200 organizations that we’ve been helping the leaders expand, that they’ve impacted more than 45 million children. But go to gratitude/network.org and check us out, obviously, you can donate and become involved. We do have some opportunities there to even sponsor an organization that’s going through the program. And obviously, if people are coaches, and want to get engaged, we’re always looking for great people to help. 

Dhru 21:06

Fantastic. And I want to go back to your time, IBM versus Intel, in terms of the dynamic you felt with being asked to be a manager, right? And so many people run into that, right? When you’re a subject matter expert, you’re great at what you do, and you have a passion for what you do. And you want to be creative in that field, right? And then someone comes up to you and says, Hey, Steve, you’re doing amazing work. And we love what you’re doing. Now, we want you to stop doing it, and do something totally different, which is management, right? What did that feel like? Because I’m sure so many people listening to this right now are going through something similar, right? Or have gone through something similar? What’s your advice, your consulting side of things? What’s your advice for folks going through that right now? 

Steven 21:49

It goes back to what my mom taught me is listen and care about the people. By the way, I never really took off my technical hat at Intel, one of the things that I’m most proud of is that almost because I did a wide variety of things, I was never in any one job for more than four years, I think, in my 22 years at Intel. But I have patents more than 10 patents in almost every sub-area that I was, you know, have a patent in design, I was never a circuit designer. We were working in liquid crystal on silicon, held cost technology and I have patents in that field, right? It’s not something that I studied at any point in time. I have patents in failure analysis and X-ray inspection and all kinds of things. So, I never took off the technical hat but I always cared about the people. I was just give you a real quick example. My last position at Intel, I was brought in as a leader of an organization that was falling apart. I gotten a reputation as somebody who could hold organizations together. And again, because I cared about the people. And one of the things that I said to folks in my team, I had about 40 people working for me at the time, I said, I want you to come to work every day excited about what you do. And if you’re not excited, come talk to me. And I’ll find you a project that excites you. And if I can’t find you a project that excites you, I’ll help you find another job. In the last couple of years, I was working at Intel that happened only once that somebody came to me and I couldn’t find her a job that she was really excited about. So, I helped her find a different job and her career took off. Because excited, engaged employees are the best and they won’t ever leave you, doesn’t matter how much somebody else offers them. It’s not about the money. 

Dhru 23:54

And that’s my whole thing. Right? I say that all the time and it’s not about salary. They don’t leave bad salaries. They leave bad leaders, right? If the leader doesn’t care about the person it doesn’t matter. I mean. I’m going back to your–

Steven 24:06

They leave a bad manager that’s absolutely right. 

Dhru 24:09

Exactly, going back to your 2008 story about Intel about the starting on the factory, right? The fact that you guys saw such a drastic change in turnover when they knew the factories gonna close. They could easily just be like, alright I’m screwed, I’m out, you know, I mean, I’m done. They’re closing anyway, what’s the point? They stuck around, right? Because you guys cared, you showed you cared, right? And you promised them and you made the commitment to them. And you showed them put your money where the mouth was, right and showed them hey, we’re going to help you, we’re not just going to like throw you off to the wolves and I think a lot of companies can learn something from that nowadays. There is this or has been this disrespect and disregard for employees and people thinking I’ll just throw more money at the problem, right? If you throw them one more salary, we’ll still cut their medical benefits, we’ll cut their vision, we’ll cut everything, you know cut their vacation days and whatever or give them unlimited vacation day, which is not a real thing either. Though the reality is like you can have as many vacation days as you want as long as you’re working. That’s not a big deal–

Steven 25:05

As long as you get your job done. And by the way, there’s, you know, 80 hours of work to do every week. 

Dhru 25:11

Right, it’s like, that’s not a vacation at that point, right? And that’s just disregard for the employees, right? And I think more companies need to hear that story and get back to that. Where they care about the employees and put them first because they’re people. They’re not just numbers on paper, you know? That’s awesome. Well, Steve, thanks so much, man for sharing, I time actually flew by, didn’t even realize that we are done already. That’s, it’s been great. I really appreciate the stories, you got some really amazing experience. And again, like I said, I’m a little bit jealous, because you were around, right at the cutting edge of the Golden Age, as I call it of computing, right? Because that’s when everything started changing so rapidly. And nowadays, there’s so many cool things, right that, but back then, that’s when things were changing so rapidly, right? It’s like the technology had just started. 

Steven 25:55

It was lots of fun. It was exciting. It was a wonderful place to be. I feel so fortunate that I was able to be a part of that. 

Dhru 26:02

Well, I feel fortunate that I had the chance to talk to you and have you on my show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for your time and everyone else, if you want to reach out to Steve, his information will be in the description below. And please feel free to reach out to him and say thanks. Thanks a lot, Steve. I appreciate it. Take care everybody. Stay safe. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And we’ll catch up with you soon.

Dhru 26:22

Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all. And if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s @dhrubee, on Twitter, @dhruvabee, on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.

Dhru 00:00

Hey everybody, this is Dr. Dhru Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship.

Dhru 00:26

Everybody, welcome back to another edition of the Ikigai Leadership podcast. I am honored here to have my friend here, Tom Gay. He was the founder of EngagedPro among other things. Tom is a serial entrepreneur and like myself, which is why we get along, and we have similar ideas about business. But Tom’s done some amazing stuff and we want to talk to him about that and have give him a chance to share a little bit about his story with you guys. Tom, thanks so much for joining us today. 

Tom 00:49

Oh, thrilled to be with you Dhru. 

Dhru 00:51

So, tell us more about EngagedPro, and then we’ll dive a little bit under the hood later on. But I wanted to hear more about kind of what you’re doing right now and what you’re working on? 

Tom 00:58

Well, I’ve spent the last 20 years teaching professionals, coaches, consultants, professional service providers of all types, how to build a business by focusing on relationships and referrals. So, EngagePro is the extension of that background, where we’ve taken the steps that you need to follow to successfully fill your sales funnel with quality prospects. And we’ve systemized it so that you can do this easily, quickly, and in a repeatable way. Now, in training, I still train people, I just hung up the phone from a client who I’m working with. But not everyone needs that. Sometimes you just need the tool to help you stay on track, personalize your relationship, and then understand where to take that relationship so that it becomes a win-win for both parties. So EngagedPro is fairly new as a platform. I did build one, a predecessor Tool and Company that went to almost 5 million users, sold it a few years back. And as I’ve described, EngagePro, it’s now the grandson of that company, refer.com. I love teaching people how to bring relationships and bring people back into the forefront of their marketing to offset all the technology and noise that we’re dealing with every day. And I’ll guarantee you that you’ll get more business by working on relationships than you will by going out and buying ads on Facebook. 

Dhru 02:34

Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate that. And then I think that’s why I want to have you on and talk about this. Because on the one hand, you have the technology platform, EngagePro, right? But then I love that your focus is still on relationships. It’s not on the technology. It’s not on the just, I mean, obviously, we have to make money, we’re here to do business, businesses is reality, right? But like you said, you do more business building relationships than you will on focusing on some transactional situation. 

Tom 02:34

To your point, EngagePro is an enablement tool. If you buy into the principles that people do business with those who they know, like and trust, then you ask the question, well, how do I build trust with the right people at the right time, and build it consistently? So, that calls for a system. It calls for something to help you stay on track and calls for something to help you make it that you are trustworthy or trustable, and that’s where EngagePro comes in. Because once you build trust with, truthfully, a small number of people, you don’t need a lot of people to fill your sales funnel. If you can do that process with 20 people and 20 people, know 25 people that you should be meeting, you’ve got 500 people available to you to come in and see if you can help and serve their needs. So, enablement, systematic, repeatable, but still on relationships. 

Dhru 03:56

Yeah and, you know, I was thinking about this as you were talking, because I know you didn’t make it to Sajad’s call today, we have a mutual friend named Sajad’s, who I am hoping to get on here at some point. But um, you know, we were talking on that call today about the know, like, trust specifically, we talked about that. And I think, you know, the knowing is obviously relatively straightforward, right? It’s the last two I think people have challenges with is the like, and trust and they tend to tend to mix those two up, right? If you like someone doesn’t mean you necessarily trust them. And if you trust someone doesn’t necessarily mean you like them, right? And the other kind of caveat to that is do you have to like the person or do you have to just appreciate the value that they bring? 

Tom 04:36

Well, I’m gonna give you a third dimension to this that most people don’t get. Okay. So, know like and trust. The like part comes from, you’re being a giver. And by giving, you become someone that creates, in the person you’re giving to, a desire to reciprocate. The trust part comes when you establish your credentials. Your credentials really relate to your knowledge and your reputation. You get the opportunity to build that trust, when you focus on giving into the interests of the other person. When you talk about what they want to talk about or talk to them about what they do on weekends, or where their kids go to school, or what their favorite sports team is, and all that, that’s when you become likeable and trustable. Now, everybody stops there and this is the big mistake. And I can just tell you, the mistake was left uncovered today. What you have to do when you build that trusted relationship is you have to teach people how to reciprocate, how to give back. There is a perfect referral for you. If you don’t teach me what that perfect introduction or referral is, then I’m not going to be able to reciprocate in a way that brings value to you. That’s what I teach is how to teach people to refer you perfectly. And a perfect referral, I’ll give you one story. I taught people how to give me perfect referrals into my consulting practice. In 1, 30-day period, I had three people give me a perfect referral to the same person. True story, when I had those three people introduce me, independent of each other, to that one person. And I walked in the door to meet that person for the very first time, never had a conversation, didn’t know they existed, CEO of a company. In 15 minutes after our initial greetings, he had signed the agreement for us to go forward. Because trust was transferred to me. My credentials went before me, the red carpet was rolled out for me. That’s what know, like, and trust has to have added to it. Know, like, and trust teach, and then you’ll receive what you’re looking for. 

Dhru 07:19

I actually like that a lot. And I think that’s a great addition. I think people need to know that more often, obviously. So, when you teach people that what is the biggest challenge people have when it comes to learning that. 

Tom 07:31

There’s two challenges, one is getting over the fear of asking, Okay, and there is a perfect way to ask. And I have a little video that I’ve made called The Art of The Ask. It’s not high-tech, but you need to know it. If you don’t know it, you’re not going to do it. So, that’s the first thing. And the second thing, the hurdle. The hurdle is being other-centered, thinking about the other person’s interest and staying on that topic as opposed to talking about yourself. Kind of hard to be saying this here in this broadcast. But if all I do is talk about myself, and not learn about you and then relate to you, then I’m very much going to become known as being self-centered. I have a client in Washington, not far from you. He’s a young man who provides exit planning to small business people. He found out someone who he was introduced to was passionate about rugby. He learned from me that now that you know that now let’s go get some background and material on rugby to take in the doors to relate to this person. Well, after a couple of weeks of staying on point and focusing on what that other person liked, he got invited to go to a rugby game there in the DC area with one of his new best friends, who’s now introducing him to prospects for his business. That’s the hurdle. Make it about the other person. 

Dhru 09:04

That’s great. But I think the funny thing is and it’s fun, not haha, funny but ironic, right? It’s like that balance between those two things because they are they can seem like they’re at odds with each other, right? The idea of making an ask that’s, hey, I’m asking you for something for me. But then making it about the other person at the same time. I think people kind of struggle with that, right, with understanding where that line is. Where do I ask versus where do I focus on the other person? How do I balance those two things? 

Tom 09:28

Well, it’s interesting. There is a season for asking and if you’re working with a small group of people, now this is kind of the inner stuff that I teach, working with a small group of people and focusing on the right small group and you’re committed to making each of your engagements with them about them. What happens in the human emotional mind is, if I’m constantly receiving from you, because you’re giving in this know, like, trust building. If I’m constantly receiving, there’s a natural human desire to reciprocate, to give back. You know, if you keep coming to my house with an apple pie, there’s a point in time, I’m gonna say, Well, what can I do for Dhru because he keeps showing up with these wonderful apple pies. And, you know, that’s human nature. Now, if you don’t let me give back to you, I’m gonna get frustrated with you. Because I just keep receiving and you don’t let me give back, when you let me give back and maybe it’s a peach pie, let’s just stay on the example. You let me give you back a peach pie because it’s your favorite. Now, all of a sudden, the endorphins in my brain get released, because I’ve been able to do something nice for you. Now, when you teach the give back in, I’m going to link what we’ve talked about. When you teach the giving back is introducing you to the perfect referral opportunity, the perfect prospect opportunity. Now, you’ve trained them, you’ve taught them what it is that they can do to reciprocate effectively with you. And it’s beautiful, you’ll find people actually hunting, on the hunt, on the prowl for someone who they’ve been taught by you, would be the perfect introduction. And it’s beautiful. It just, you know, I’ve helped professionals build seven-figure businesses, by understanding it’s a human emotion that we’re working with. 

Dhru 09:28

Yeah, you know, and as you’re talking, I’m connecting the dots on a couple of things. One is the client story that I just had a while back, a couple months ago actually. This client, she was really successful, a very, very successful person, and she’s going through a personal challenge, right? And you know how it is when we’re coaching someone, it’s there’s a, there’s never really walls between personal and professional, It’s just kind of just bleeds into everything. So, we’re talking about this and her and her partner are having challenges because she’s going through a personal situation, and she usually one of those people who’s used to taking care of everybody all the time, right? She’s that rock for everybody but she doesn’t ever let anyone take care of her. Their arguments were about that. And when I reframed it for her to say, what happens when you can’t take care of someone and she was like, I get so frustrated. I’m like, Well, how do you think he feels, and a light bulb went off. And that is exactly what you’re talking about. Or it sounds like exactly what you’re talking about. Which is interesting.

Tom 12:26

It is. We’re wired this way. We’re wired to give and receive, we’re not just wired to receive, well some people are. Okay? You can change the word receive to take as well because they, they’re closely related. And we may be passionately wired to give but if we don’t let people give back, they’re going to eventually filter themselves out of our view and leave disappointed, frustrated, or worse. You nailed it with her. 

Dhru 13:00

Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking about your services with people and who has been your favorite client to work with over the last, you know, course of your career?

Tom 13:11

My favorite clients, wow. Well, I go back to my coaching business and I had one client. This gentleman was a CFO for a business that got acquired and he was out of a job because the larger requirer had a CFO, they didn’t need two. So, he went out and joined a company where he became a fractional CFO. There’s a number of large firms in the US that have filled with fractional CFOs. Now, this gentleman is probably late 50s, at the time, needed to work, had never made a sale, a sales call in his life, never ever. He was a classic, introverted financial guy. Everyone can have their own description in the word picture there. He was suffering from lack of business, three months into his new practice, and using up his resources. He came into my office, and he had heard about what I do, in those days. He sat across from me, and we learned what his problem is. And he was the most introverted person I’ve literally ever met as a prospect. I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. I said to him, if you will follow this roadmap, we will get results for you, it’ll take us about six to eight weeks. And at that time, it was going to cost him $4,000 to do it. He got his credit card out a few moments later and surprisingly to me and bought. Now the interesting thing about him because he was an accountant, he was used to following the rules. Like most accountants, they’re governed by a set of financial standards and GAAP and all these things. So, we taught, he followed, he did the work. In three months, he had three new clients, just doing things that were not natural from his career. He started about April of that year, by the end of December, his calendar was full, he had no more time to sell as a fractional CFO. Now, the reason why he was afraid of it, he became a friend, because obviously, I did something marvelous for him. He took me on fishing trips up the Salmon River, he introduced me to it, that’s an Idaho, he introduced me to his associates in other parts of the country. That set of introductions grew into 70 more clients like him. It was like a bacterial growth because they all needed a system. I guess you can say that. I didn’t say viral. We didn’t have face masks in those days to wear. But in any event, it’s a relationship-building formula, we call it a system. And the beauty of it, why it’s my favorite is because it just shows when you give it away by the slice to someone, you open up the opportunity to get it back by the loaf.

Dhru 16:30

I like that, phrase, give a boy about a slice, you get it back by the loaf. And I’m thinking about the client, you mentioned and first of all, that’s awesome. And then those kinds of results, or I can see why it sticks out to you. But I’m thinking about it in terms of when he came to you, right, what he was dealing with. And so many people deal with things like that, like I mean, because you said he never made a sales call his life because he’s never had to, right? He’s been a full-time employee his entire life, someone else was doing the selling for him, essentially, right for the company or for whatever, so you never had to get in front of a prospect. And when you’re transitioning to business ownership, you got to get into some level of sales, right? 

Tom 17:04

You have to. 

Dhru 17:05

And that’s a big mindset shift for people. 

Tom 17:07

Well, and today, I mean, the whole culture has changed in the last five years, between COVID, and outplacement, and job disruptions, and people wanting to freelance and be in control. The world is full of independent providers desiring to build a business or a life. And a good number of them aren’t sure how to get started. 

Dhru 17:33

You know, some of them probably shouldn’t be in business for themselves, right? I mean, because they don’t have the mindset for it. And there is nothing wrong with that. And people think they take it as a dig. It’s not a dig. 

Tom 17:43

Not at all. 

Dhru 17:44

It’s, there’s different people set up for different things, right? I mean, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’s always gonna think it’s a failure. But if you put the tree in the water, it’s not going to be able to swim.

Tom 17:54

Well, it’s kind of one of the reasons why I’m not playing quarterback for the New York Giants. You know, I’d love to be the quarterback, but, well, they’d be just as terrible afterwards as they were before.

Dhru 18:09

Well, I’m a Commander’s fan. So, unfortunately, I feel that pain.

Tom 18:14

Oh, hey, I got lots of examples. I didn’t say Commanders, I could have made it close at home for you. 

Dhru 18:21

That’s what I’m saying, I’m a Commander’s fan. So, I know that pain so well. We’ve had such poor leadership over the last 20 years. Really, man, it’s just but I mean, again, that’s just another example of something where it falls into the mindset of things, right, there aren’t the leader of the Commander’s thought the organization was, didn’t have the right mindset, he’s just not a good not a good person, and whatever reason, right, and his focus was not on the right things. And if you don’t focus on the right things, like to your point back to giving back full circle, if you don’t focus on the right things, you’re not gonna get the results you want, right? And people will focus on the results first, rather than the actions and the system that is set up for themselves.

Tom 18:57

It’s so true and you always have to focus on the pieces that need to come together to create the whole. Just like if you’re going to put, we’ll stay on the football analogy for a minute. If you’re going to put 11 people on the field, you don’t want all 11 people to be skilled in one role. Everyone’s got to play a role. And when they play it well with the right leadership, then you get over the goal line that applies to business in the exact same way. 

Dhru 19:28

Absolutely, I mean, do I care if my o-linemen can throw the ball? No, but if they can block someone from getting to the quarterback, right? 

Tom 19:34

Yeah, and keep them from breaking their Achilles heel. 

Dhru 19:38

Yeah, oh, man, that’s Jesus. I still can’t believe that happened. That’s, did you see? I don’t know if you saw, digress for a second, but I don’t know if you saw the video, where they showed that moment, it’s really kind of it’s painful to watch, painful to watch. But back getting back full circle. It’s also painful to watch business owners struggle with things that they can change, right? Whether they want to change it or not is a different story. 

Tom 20:02

There’s an interesting phrase used by one of my favorites. I call him a cowboy philosopher Jim Rohn. And Jim has passed away, but he’s famous for his speaking skills on personal growth. And he said until you change the way you think, nothing will change for you. And he’s delivering that to an audience. And that’s basically meant to shake you up and say, Okay, I have one paradigm now, what is the paradigm that I need to have if I’m going to be in a better place than I am now. 

Dhru 20:36

But that’s the thing, people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to change their mindset, because it takes work, they want to go out and get a certification. And I think part of that’s also a system and the way it’s set up, right? You go to apply for jobs or whatever, it took the employee mindset for a second, you go to apply for jobs, they’re looking for certifications, right, over experience. They’re looking for, you got to have this certification, that certification or that certification. They don’t take into account mindset, because you can’t on an application to be fair, but at the same time, they just want to minimize their own work, they don’t want to actually take the time and say, let’s have a solid interview with this person and make sure we know how to interview somebody to get good candidates in, right? 

Tom 21:11

I’m going to overlay another thread in this because it’s a powerful message you’re delivering there. And I’m working with a gentleman who has trained 1000s of insurance salespeople over his life. And he says as he’s come to the end of his career, he is now training still. But he says, what I’ve learned is that everyone who gets hired comes in with the credentials to be successful. There’s one distinction that you can’t test for objectively, but it is vital in an industry where 80% of the people are gone in their first year. And that distinction is, it’s not whether they can do the work to succeed, it’s the question of do they have the will to do the work to succeed? So, the can-do/will-do continuum is what you just described. And it’s a powerful continuum. Because you know, I can go get certified as a coach, let’s just say, and go to the International Coach Federation, and go to all the conferences and get all these letters. It doesn’t mean I’ll have anyone to talk to, if I won’t do the things to get my skills in front of. So, if my will-do doesn’t match, then I’m going to be stuck. 

Dhru 22:34

Yeah, I always say mindset is much more powerful than skill set, right? If you give someone the skills to do something doesn’t mean that they will do it. But if he gets on the mindset, they will find a way to get it done, whether they have the skills or not, right? 

Tom 22:46

They’ll knock walls down. I’d rather have a semi-skilled wall knocker-downer than somebody who’s been through 17 graduate courses. Let’s knock walls down and solve the problem. That’s where the results come in. 

Dhru 23:02

I love that. Well, as a wrap-it-up here, Jim. Tom, I think I’m thinking of Jim Rohn. Jim is in my head now.

Tom 23:09

 Yeah, that’s fine. I’d be honored to be considered like him.

Dhru 23:13

Well, your messaging is just as powerful, to be honest with you. So, I think you’re right there with them as far as I’m concerned. Because after all, we’re all human, right? We all make mistakes. We all have good things to say. 

Tom 23:22

And you know, absolutely. Sure. 

Dhru 23:24

So, the question I want to ask you is something I ask everybody as I come on, which is who are what are your biggest inspirations in your career as you’re coming up and creating the things you created over the years? 

Tom 23:32

Well, I have a lot of people I would consider to be mentors. I can say it started with my dad, who when he was in mid-Korea, left one, and started a company all by himself and did the entrepreneur thing. But I’m going to reference a different person very quickly in this was in my very first professional job where I finished college and working in a company and they promoted me to a regional headquarters. And the first day I started my boss, leader. When I moved from Massachusetts to New York to go to work in the big city. He gave me an article that was a reprint from the Harvard Business Review. And it’s one of their classics, and it was titled The Pygmalion Effect. And what it represented, what the article represented and what he intended, was that he was expecting me and supporting me to become the best version of me that I could be. Like in the book Pygmalion, where the subject of the book, the girl, the poor weight came into George Bernard Shaw’s scheme, came into being adopted, and she became a beautiful outcome because they saw the best in her as she grew from, you know, a char girl to a mature beautiful woman fulfilling her role in life. And that person saw that there was a best in me to bring forward and he was always going to be committed to me being the best version of me that he could be. And that’s lasted. It’s not only lasted, it’s governed how I look at people who have been in my companies, I’ve built some large businesses, I’ve had a team of almost 1000 people. And every one of them, I wanted them to be the best they could be. 

Dhru 25:39

I love that. It reminds me, back to football for a second but it reminds me of, have you ever seen the movie The Replacements with Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman? 

Tom 25:45

Yeah, I have. 

Dhru 25:46

Yeah. So, that one scene where Gene Hackman tells them, tells Keanu Reeves he says, When I look at you, I see two men, I see the man you are and the man you want to be. One day those two should meet, and they’ll make one hell of a football player. I love that scene. 

Tom 25:59

That’s beautiful. I love it. 

Dhru 26:00

Right? That line is like the essence of what we do, right? Someone or a person or a business or whatever, we see two coexisting entities, right? We see who they are and then we see the potential of what they could be. And our job is to bridge that gap.

Tom 26:14

You know, and consider, not everybody sees people through that lens. Some people say, Well, I want to govern you to optimize you as the cog in the machine for the role you’re playing. And what untapped human potential there is in that. That’s a shameful waste. 

Dhru 26:32

Yeah, because you’re shaping that person to serve you, not to serve them, right? 

Tom 26:36

Exactly. Exactly. 

Dhru 26:38

I think we could have a whole nother conversation just about that, and maybe we can one day, but that’s awesome. 

Tom 26:44

We could spend a week talking about that one.

Dhru 26:48

Well, Tom, thanks so much, man. I really, really appreciate the time. This has been awesome. And for folks who don’t know, please reach out to Tom. His information is going to be in the description below. I really appreciate the time. 

Tom 26:56

Well, I appreciate you Dhru. And I’ll always be here because the conversation is so valuable. And I think together we’re making rain.

Dhru 27:09

Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments, to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all. And if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That is @dhrubee on Twitter, @dhruvabee on Instagram, and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/n/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.

Dhru 00:00

Hey, everybody, this is Dr. Drew Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship. Everybody welcome back to another edition of Ikigai Leadership. My name is Dhru Beeharilal, and I’m here today with Dr. Dorothy A Martin Neville. Thanks so much for joining me today, I really appreciate it. It’s an honor to have you here and talk to you about the work you do because you’re also a business and executive coach. But your approach is a little bit different from most. So do you want to say a little more about that and who you are.

Dorothy 00:47

Because I spent 20-something years as a psychotherapist, in private practice, as well as being a pioneer in integrative health care here in the United States. What I do is combine the depth of knowledge I have around health and psychology and how leadership is impacted by their belief systems by how they hold their stress by their understanding of leadership, their understanding of who they are theoretically supposed to be. And when you move into levels of self-betrayal or levels of confusion, you may be in transition, where am I going? What am I going to do? And as a leader, you can create all kinds of illusions about what you should be doing and where you should go and all of this. And that ends up not only impacting the effectiveness of your leadership, it impacts your health emotionally, spiritually and physically, so that you don’t get to bring the best of you to the table. Yeah.

Dhru 01:45

Yea, and I think that last part is the part people don’t necessarily connect the dots on, right, that affects your physical health, we tend to prioritize physical health over other types of health, which is interesting in our society. You know, I think now it’s kind of coming around a little more where mental health is becoming more of a focus. But frankly, it’s become an excuse and a lot of the time sometimes, because how do you measure mental health? Right? There’s no like, objective way to measure mental health and in terms of like being like, Oh, you’re even pain, right? Because it’s your pain? Is it a five? Well, hers is a five, two, but you guys might have different thresholds for pain. And how do you how do you talk to people with the with that kind of feeling about that?

Dorothy 02:21

For me, what I look at is, what’s your functionality? If you’re emotionally healthy in and we all have stuff, I don’t care who we are, we all have stuff, you know that stuff to the day we pass. However, for some of us, we are working so hard not to see our stuff, that we spend our days pushing through it, thinking we are functioning well. And yet, when you’re working with people, they can see how quickly you go into defense, how quickly you go into rage or push and will and in or collapse. And although you think it’s not impacting you, it’s having a huge impact. So to me, when I see somebody emotionally healthy, I see them and I have recordings I’ve done on emotional intelligence, you know, because I truly believe in this. When I see somebody emotionally healthy, what I see is their ability to own their own stuff. To say God, I blew it. Sorry about that. Let’s regroup and go over this again, come up with it. Or I might have made a mistake. Tell me what are your thoughts on this? And can we look at this and do this differently? Because there’s a sense of who the “I Am.” When you’re emotionally healthy you have or mental health, you have a sensitivity ”I am” it’s far from perfect, but you know what it is you can define it, you recognize the strengths as well as the limitations, you’re not humiliated by the limitations you own them, and so that they don’t become an energy drain on you.

Dhru 03:49

I love that because I always say that the worst kinds of leaders are the insecure leaders, right? The ones who are have that in the back of their heads, like I can’t, I can’t do anything wrong. Right? Sometimes it’s imposter syndrome. Sometimes it’s just blatant basic insecurity. But either way it comes in manifests poorly with your team, with your with people you manage with the people, you’re supposed to be inspiring. And right. Yeah, it’s disheartening in some ways, but it’s also it’s something that we can look at, and which is why I love the fact that you’re doing this and connecting that connection that thought and in a very, very, like, direct way, because I haven’t done that with my clients really, in terms of, I kind of, I won’t say I shy away from I do some somatic work, but I don’t go as deeply as you do, right. Like you actually connect the dots and say this is a physical manifestation of your stress of your insecurities. And when you work with folks, how does that manifest for you? Like how What’s the process like when you work with someone and talking to them? This kind of thing.

Dorothy 04:39

Well with a potential client who called last week we’re gonna have another conversation next week. He called me up. He’s been in an industry he couldn’t stand for 26 years he hasn’t liked to since the day he graduated from college, but it was a theoretically good industry, and it was going to provide well for him and his family.

Dhru 04:56

I was gonna say, is it law? Because it might be law.

Dorothy 05:03

I’ve had a couple of those. So, the thing is that he doesn’t like it at all. And at one point, his company was downsizing. And he was let go. And he grabbed the first thing he could, which is the same business again, which he still didn’t like, what ended up happening, he was out of work for about a month and a half. And in that month and a half, he went through so much self-hatred, about being a failure, because a man supposed to provide for his family. So he failed as a man, those belief systems, I failed as a man which we won’t even get into the cultural ridiculousness of that concept. But that’s there. All right, I failed as a man therefore, I have no value or worth, while the self-hatred comes up, all the insecurities come up. The stress literally gets held in the whole prostate area. And because it’s around his manliness, his manhood, and he ended up two months later, you know, going and finding issues around prostate cancer. And so, when I said to him, you know, how is your health record? And he said to me, well, I have had prostate cancer. And I said, were you ever laid off or fired? He said, Well, yes. And I says, so when did the prostate cancer show up? He said, a few months after I was laid off, why is there a connection? I said, yeah, there definitely is a connection. So, let’s talk about what’s going on in your life right now. And he said, I’m fully aware that I could do this for 10 more years and take early retirement, but I don’t know that I’ll live 10 more years. So, I need out. That’s okay. Now we can talk because in working with him, if he chooses to come on one, obviously as a specialist in transition, I will help him begin to see that this time, what does he want to move into what is going to make him feel alive? What is going to make him feel? Yes, highly productive. Many of us are driven by being productive by doing something of value, making this world a better place. So what can he do that would make him feel excited to get up in the morning and go do whatever that is he’s doing. And in addition to that, help him develop the life skills, as well as the business skills needed, because it’s going to be outside of his realm. He doesn’t like what he does. So, it’ll be outside of it. But it’s looking at how that stress is held. It’s based on belief systems; it’s based on expectations that are frequently very unrealistic. And so let’s look at it because how you hold your stress is what impacts your health. And how you hold your stress depends on your belief systems.

Dhru 07:35

I like the fact that it was a male example, because I think there’s always a lot of talk about around self-care around women, right. And there’s not as much self-care talk among men. I feel like there was, for better for worse, I watched this show called Love Is Blind with my fiancé. It’s as bad as it sounds, sometimes. But it was entertaining in some ways. There was one episode and those are there little nuggets in that show. And I’m deviating for a moment. But the reason I call that out is because there was one scene with between two guys, and they’re both African American, they both are talking through dealing with it with their respective significant others. And they were just, they’re having a very honest and frank conversation about the stress about what they’re dealing with and how they were trying to kind of deal with it. And one of them said to the other one, he’s like, hey, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me, because I don’t really talk to it like this with my boys. Like he’s like, it’s not normalized for people like us to talk like this, you know, and that’s probably one of the best moments in the whole season. It was like a throwaway moment, and like, you know, whatever. But, going back to what you said about the culture aspect of around that, and it’s very, it’s very interesting that the topic that comes up with this physical manifestation of stress and whatnot, it was an example was a man, I’m dealing with these kinds of things. Because I feel like there’s not as many outlets for us, right? And it’s not as okay for men to be not okay.

Dorothy 09:02

Yeah, there’s this unrealistic expectation that you’re going to have it all together at all times. And you can take charge of everything, make everything work perfectly, and still be in a really great mood and loving and gentle to everybody all the time. And let’s do a reality check. Nobody can do that man or woman, nobody can do that. And what I have found is that frequently, when men get super stressed, their first thought is I’m just gonna go to the gym. Yeah, I’m just gonna go and work out for a little bit, and then they go and what’s actually happening is they learned how to avoid it. So theoretically, they’re letting the stress out, which works marvelously for a bit of time, half an hour, an hour, whatever the case may be. But as soon as they get back and they take the shower, and they go to the office, zoom, they’re right back to you know, so yeah, you had a great hour. But what did you change? You know, I’m all for working out, you know, I’m on my treadmill every morning and, and doing what I need to do. However, that’s to keep us that’s a maintenance piece. That’s not a growth piece, the growth piece is what is going on what is the belief system that is setting you up, to have this kind of stress? And when I speak to folks in corporate because I work with entrepreneurs, as well as those in corporate, when I speak to them is that you have no idea the levels of stress they put on us. I do. And I realized it’s absolutely ridiculous. However, how you take it in, is really what this is all about. How you take it in. And what do you do with it. Because when you can come to a place where you see what you’re doing as part of your life purpose. And I don’t care if you’re an insurance or you’re in manufacturing, is there a way in your belief system in your value system, you can see that what you were doing is about making this world a better place. If you know that you’re providing life insurance, I say that cuz I’m in Connecticut, and we have, theoretically the insurance capital of the world here. You know, so you’re in life insurance, not the most exciting industry. But if you can see that you’re helping those when they’re in their greatest period of need. And you’re supporting them, then you’re going into the office, no matter what you’re doing. There’s a wonderful objective at the end of it the end of the tunnel for this one? Well, you know, it could be manufacturing, I’m helping make the world a better place and making cars safer. It doesn’t matter what it is. How can you do that? And if you can’t, why are you in that industry? What are you doing in the industry, and maybe you need to go elsewhere. And it could be I’m in leadership, because I want to help develop great teams, I want to help develop the people behind me. Well, fantastic. Now you found something that feeds you, and you’ve got all this pressure coming in. But you know what feeds you and you keep doing what you can while you’re doing it. And it’s recognizing that when we go into I’m not good enough, and I have to push harder. I’m not good enough. And I have to do this. Or in Western culture, we’ve got such an expectation on catastrophe. If I don’t get this climb, I’m going to lose my house. If I don’t get this, I’m going to lose my family. If I don’t get it really take a deep breath. Is that honestly the truth? Is that honestly the truth? So the stories create the stress that makes me, I have to get it. And it’s like Whoa, now you don’t see clearly you’re not available to yourself, you’re not available to your family. And then what ends up happening, that affairs start coming into play. So now the affairs come into play, because you have a few minutes of an outlet where you can let stress go, that’s different than the gym. But now, where’s your value system? Now, where’s the fear of being caught? Now, where is all the other? So you’ve just found another way to create stress?

Dhru 12:59

Yeah, as coaches yesterday with some people about this, about exactly that, right? That making things bigger than the story we create. We weave these amazing stories that just don’t did just not true, right. They don’t serve us and they’re not true. You know, I remember I remember being in high school and applying for colleges, right this back when they had paper applications, write it up and then mail it in. And then everyone’s super like writing what do you what do you was writing speak of. But it was it was stressful at the time. Right? I think it is like getting all these essays written and whatnot. And like, you know, printed out and attached to these things. And I remember my parents, and you know, they did the best they could with what they knew they weren’t like intentionally trying to do harm to my mental health. But looking back, like they didn’t know any better. They were just like, you got to do what you got to get done to get what we’ve got to get done. Like just kept going with it. And whatever else I had to do for school and whatever. At the time, we felt at the end of the world. I was like, Oh my God, if I don’t get this application, and I’m never going to amount to anything in my life, my whole life is gonna go to hell. And then you look back and you’re like oh, like, I mean, so I would have gone to college a year later. Yeah, all my friends were going or whatever, like, you know, a semester later or something, you know, like, worst case, and that’s probably the really the worst case that would have happened. Right?

Dorothy 14:14

Right. And when you look at basic life skills, the reality is, you probably wanted to get that application done. And you wanted to meet your friends at seven and you needed to do something else at nine. What if, as an adult, we say, okay, if I can’t make my friends at seven, I’ll go to this place at nine. My priority is getting this done. I now can relax and get this done. I’ve got all night to do this, and I can do it. But that hopefully by the time you’re moving into positions of leadership, you can say okay, I’ve got eight things on my plate. But if I focus on this one thing, in peace, I can get this one thing done. And the reality is, if you keep all the stress of the eight other things that are going on and you’re taking twice as long to do it. So this isn’t about helping you become irresponsible. Do that one thing, get it out of the way, and then sit back and what can you do with the rest, you know, and find out what works for you. There’s no one right way to do this. For myself, if I’ve got eight things on my plate, I start with the easiest, because I know if I get four or five of those easy things done, and sometimes it’s 10 minutes on something, but I get four or five of those easiest ones, I feel like I’m on a roll. So that energy of I’m on a roll makes it theoretically more difficult ones easier. Because I’m on a roll my attitude going into it isn’t like, Oh, crap, this is going to be something else altogether. I’m exhausted before I start. And my mindset is like closing in, rather than expanding to make it easier.

Dhru 15:53

100%. And I think that one of the bigger issues that come up with comfort a lot of leaders, especially in toxic environments, where they don’t identify as a toxic environment, is that they don’t have that space to prioritize, right? Everything is a fire, everything is a priority one. And I tell people, I tell people all the time, if everything’s a priority one, nothing’s a priority one, right? If your boss is constantly telling you that everything is a priority one, they have no idea how to prioritize first of all. And second of all, nothing’s a priority one, then because if you get five priority one things at the same time, they’re not actually probably two one things which, frankly, almost nothing is a priority one thing, in reality, then which one do you do first? How do you do? You can’t work on all of them at same time. To your point, you can’t do that you can’t even work on that. Let me work on this first get this built up momentum wise, and then roll into the next thing. Because everything is always it’s like, oh, you’re working on one thing? Then you get pinged about the second thing. And it’s like, okay, well, how many things can I do at the same time, right? And when we as humans really, really can’t multitask.

Dorothy 16:51

We can’t and we get overwhelmed, which makes us incapable of doing anything well, which is why and I do know that when the boss has five things any Annie wants to hear she wants it all by five. I can’t do all of them by five. But what I’m going to do is do a really phenomenal job at maybe two or three of the five. And now you can have them in. And it’s going to be done. Now. Yeah, it’s after five o’clock. Listen, you got these three? And let’s do and yeah, you can’t become your boss’s boss. But you really can say, Listen, you gave me the five, I’ve got this much time, realistically. And his or her inability to deal with stress impacts everybody beneath them. Which is why for me being able to work with the leaders to allow them to begin to see the insanity that gets developed. It’s how unproductive it is and also how much illness develops as a result of it. Not just for the leader who keeps pushing this down the chain, but all the people down the chain. Now you’ve got all of these folks out, either with surgeries or if it’s minor, they may have a flu. And they’re not pretending they are so darn sick, they can’t get out of bed because the stress is impacting their immune system.

Dhru 18:07

That or it gives them like direct issues, right? Like shoulder pain. I used to go to a massage therapist. She, the way she categorized it was illustrated to me it was very interesting. She’s like stress and emotions in general, are like food for your body. But, so it depends on how you process it. Right? And where do you store it, they get stored just like fat. And I’m like, that’s interesting, because she’s like, rubbing my shoulder and there’s like this huge knot and it was hurting. And she was like, Yeah, this is where you store all of your stress. Like this spot right here is just so hard and almost calcified How hard is right now,

Dhru 18:42

but think about if you integrate that knowledge in because she’s completely correct. I had one client too. She had two girls, two daughters. And one on the shoulder was always this particular daughter in the shoulder was this particular daughter. And when she finally recognized it, that it was starting to tighten up I see okay, so what’s going on with her? Oh, nothing of any great deal. Well, yea this isn’t acute yet what’s going on? That has you stressed in the fact is we all do. Some of us when we get highly stressed we get migraines, there’s some get strep throat, some get diverticulitis, others, it’s the lower back that goes out for you with the shoulder. We all have developed patterns based on our belief systems. You know, right shoulder is really beliefs around you all the responsibilities you carry your inability to carry, believe the burdens you’ve got on your shoulders. And my first thought and working with you if I was, why is that a burden? Why are you perceiving that as a burden to start with? And then if it is more for you to handle, let’s talk about how you could deal with it. Who can you bring in to support you what else can you do with this? But basically what’s the belief system and you have all these burdens on your shoulder? Because that’s generally not the truth. It’s the filter through which you see things. Everything becomes a burden. You know, for something, being in a relationship is a burden because God puts so much stress on you, how do you do this? What am I going to do? I can’t do anything, right? And so just thinking about the relationship you feel stressed? Like, what if we change how you saw that relationship? What if we changed how you saw homeownership? Homeownership is exhausting. There’s so much work. Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s back up a moment. What if you hired somebody to do the lawn and you didn’t have to do it? You know, what if, let’s look at how you can do these things without that belief system. Without that, because changing that belief system changes the how you hold the stress in your body, which changes your physical health. You know, my doctoral dissertation was on the psychological and spiritual causes of physical disease and disorders. And I received NIH grant funding to do my work that we picked fibromyalgia, which was the disease of the moment, because diseases, literally are cyclical depends on the stress and the culture. All of a sudden people throughout the country develop that particular disease. And, you know, we have all these tendencies that are coming up now, people under 30, of becoming far more diseased with cancer, disease patients with cancer than previously, what’s the stress is on folks under 30? So again, there’s a cyclical element of what’s happening in our culture. And how do you deal with stress. Because some, some develop bladder disorders, when they’re highly stressed. Bladder is fear and an inability to protect somebody else. I’m making this very simple, because it’s a much more extensive thing. But to make it simple, it’s fitting in Eastern thought, the water element, which is kidney bladder, is about fear. And some people when they get highly stressed to panic attacks, some people highly stressed develop bladder infections. And that’s about the inability to protect people they love. Kidney disorders, those are the inability to protect myself. They usually happen when you’re frightened of being laid off, or when you’re getting a divorce, or when you’re being asked to move to another state. Fear when an inability to protect myself, somehow you get a kidney infection. Think, Oh, it must been something I ate. No.

Dhru 22:19

Yeah, my actual one my best friends, when he’s going through his divorce, he got kidney stones. And it’s something where it’s just, that’s fascinating. And it’s also going into the spiritual for second. You know, I love that intersection that you have there. Between those, those three things, right, that the physical, the emotional and the spiritual, because what you’re talking about the stuff that just stuff you’re describing, and the symptoms, especially with the different manifestations in the body, align very closely with the chakras. Right?

Dorothy 22:48

Right. Absolutely.

Dhru 22:50

It’s so fascinating that that these kinds of things were studied and documented 1000s of years ago, right. And they’re now kind of coming back up nowadays, you know, and even things like the like the Egyptians, you know, studying the fact that the heart was a little bit to the left, as opposed to being the center of the body, right. But it’s just fascinating how much of that is coming to fruition. And obviously, you know, Eastern medicine also gets a bad rap some ways, because people tend to be like, Oh, I’m not going to use Western medicine at all, I’m gonna go do Eastern medicine, and then they end up, you know, still being sick or whatever might happen. But I wonder if the answer is somewhere in between.

Dorothy 23:25

I believe, when we make enemies, whether it’s of medical systems, whether it’s of anything else, we’ve created problems that don’t need to exist. Western medicine, to use it in that term, is fantastic for acute disorders. That’s acute, if you break your leg, it’s great to go to the hospital, get it reset, get it checked out.

Dhru 23:48

You mean, you shouldn’t get a tea for that.

Dorothy 23:55

And pray. But and I believe from power of prayer, but let’s do reality here. But then when it comes to Eastern medicine, it’s a phenomenal approach to maintenance. It’s a normal approach to creating health, to create health and maintenance is with the Eastern component. Western medicine is wonderful for acute care, in a crises in an emergency, go in, you don’t have time to do any emotional, spiritual reassessment, go in and deal with the problem immediately. Then once you’ve dealt with it, now let’s step back and do the emotional and spiritual assessment so that we can prevent a reoccurrence so that we can support you going forward and getting back into full health again, you know, but all of this comes down to this stress, that crises we were talking about is really about the adrenals. The adrenals are here to support us in an emergency. If everything in life is an emergency because if I don’t get this and I lose my job, if I don’t get I’m gonna lose my house. If I don’t get this I’m going to lose. All right. So when I’m in a crisis, and when the adrenals start to become depleted, energetically they take from the immune system and the immune system, then stress feeding the adrenals so you can stay in survival mode, which then makes you vulnerable to any bacteria, any virus, anything that’s out here, it also then begins to cause distortion, biochemically, and distortions in cellular formation, because cells are always being recreated in your body dying and being recreated, you know, so all of that stress impacts this recreation. And we end up with all of these diseases. So let’s go back to not draining the adrenals, which means not living in crises, in high stress, which strengthens the immune system. And things are different. If you look at all kinds of different cultures, what are the diseases or lack of diseases in different cultures, and some of the islands in Greece and other places, people live to well over 100 without any major diseases? Why? Why does that happen? Why do people in the Caribbean have these diseases and not have other diseases? People in Tibet have these diseases and not other diseases? So let’s look at what’s happening in the culture. What are the belief systems for the people in those cultures? And then you’re going to discover why there are certain disease patterns in different cultures.

Dhru 26:32

I like the distinction. And I like that distinction, as well as the distinction about between the acute conditions versus the longer term kind of proactive slash maintenance conditions. Right. I mean, that’s something that I don’t think a lot of people I haven’t heard that distinction like that before. And I think it’s an interesting one, because it’s something that we don’t think about in this in this country a lot, right, which is that maintenance for us is you’re on Xanax good to go, you’re solid, you know, or you’re on you’re on this diabetic medication, you know, you’re taking insulin regular basis, or whatever. Like, it’s not, it’s not in the idea of let’s figure out how we can make it so you don’t need medication, right or so you don’t need to get to that point where you where you’re dealing with medication, it’s like, oh, I’ll just take a pill for that.

Dorothy 27:15

Also, and as you see, you can be on high blood pressure meds, you can be on diabetic medications, however, you can also get off of them. And I’m not saying you make that choice, I just don’t feel I take that I’m done. But you can, you can lose that weight, you can get in shape, you can change your belief systems that create diabetes, alright, high blood pressure, you can learn to deal with stress. Again, losing weight, working out, learning how to deal with stress can eliminate high blood pressure. And people will say to me, but it’s genetic. My whole family has said, yes, let’s look at the belief systems your whole family has. Because the reality is if both your parents are diabetic, and they have five children, statistically, we know two or three of those kids are going to develop diabetes. So what’s the variable of the other two? That don’t get it? And the reality is, if you look at the home of the three kids that got it, they eat the same way their parents do, they have the same political beliefs as their parents, they had the same worldview as their parents. Look at the two that don’t have it. They have dramatically different belief systems and lifestyles than the parents and their three siblings that have developed the diabetes. That’s not coincidental. You know, so pre-conditions don’t even need to be actualized.

Dhru 28:39

Yeah, their genetic preference. They’re not like a guarantee right? Lifestyle does make a difference. I mean, for me, I don’t have diabetes. My parents are not diabetic, thankfully. But on both sides of my family, like grandparents died, but Right. I have uncles and aunts on both sides who are diabetic and so I’m, I actually had diabetes a few years ago. But I had an amazing doctor. And luckily, she worked with me and was like, Look, I’m gonna get you on vacation short term so you can get off but Well, here’s what’s let’s make a plan to get you back to being healthy, and work our butts off. And I had to go to the gym, I had to eat different I had to do a lot of things for like a year. And I corrected that. I’m not saying I’m not the pinnacle of health or anything like that. But I’m just saying like, it’s possible to reverse those conditions. Right. I don’t think people understand that. And I think a lot of doctors don’t even understand that or say that to people, which is frustrating, because it’s just, there’s more money in a treatment than in a cure right?

Dorothy 29:31

Well, there’s more money in pharmaceuticals than not. All right. And I’m not making enemies out there. This isn’t about enemies, or ill intent. It’s just the reality is that when we take ownership for how we live our lifestyle, but also our belief systems. When you live in hate, or when you live in resentment or the illusions of victimization. What ends up happening is that you suppress everything in your body. When you begin to recognize stress, and we, you know, this was about talking about leaders, that when they begin to recognize that every single one of us on this planet has a spiritual purpose, everybody on this planet is here for a reason. And, and it’s to make the world a better place. And in doing so when we’re do that we’re fed, just as when you stop being completely stressed, running down the street and say, New York City, just because I’m close to New York, and you stop and help somebody who fell. Not only do you feel good about you, you allow them to feel good that there’s somebody out here to support them. And all of a sudden, think of what that does to your body. Think of what that does to the dopamine, think of what that does to everything, because you stopped long enough to open your heart, you stopped long enough to be present to the humanity around you. What ends up happening is you feel good about you, which says to me that we’re all intrinsically wholly good souls. But some of us choose to live under the stress of false expectations. Some of us choose to, not consciously, but choose to live in fear. And when we live in fear, we either go to collapse, which is depression, and other disorders, or we go to rage. And that’s other disorders, or this extreme competitiveness. Now we end up with strokes, we end up with heart attacks, we end up with those disorders. So really how we live, whether it’s in fear and defense, or to me the value of meditation, or prayer, or whatever your faith system is, when we stop in the morning to start our day, with some meditation or reflection, and we end our day that way, that starts to become a natural way of being for us. And that doesn’t mean we’re not passionate during the day, we’re not excited about things during the day, that we don’t have a ball playing sports or playing card games, whatever it is that that excites us, you can do all of that and still be at peace. You can be passionate and at peace. You don’t have to be passionate in stress or passionate in rage. You know, so we get to have all that vibrancy, but without the stress, the unhealthy stress.

Dhru 32:16

So let me ask you this question, what caused you to do this work? I was doing

Dorothy 32:19

therapy for about three years, with patients seeing 42 patients a week. And I started noticing that certain patients with certain personalities and belief systems were walking in with prostate cancer, or breast cancer or kidney disorders. And when I asked friends who are MDs have they noticed the personality construct of their patients seem to be similar? They said no, no, that’s coincidental. Well, when I could predict it, I knew it wasn’t. So, I then went and became certified in nine modalities of integrative health care, nine different approaches to it. I mean, reflexology, acupressure and so forth many others, and began to see that when I brought that awareness and could deal with my patients that way, they started changing, their health started changing, their joy started changing, their depression started changing. And then even emotionally, I worked with one of the men, the First Men in Connecticut here who had HIV. And it had just come out as in the 80s, it had just come out in across the country. And he’d only been in the country about six months. And a patient I’d been working with on depression, for about a year, came in and said to me, I’ve only got less than a year to live. I said, really? Why? What’s happened? He said, I have HIV. And I have listed here. So we’ve only known about this for about four or five months in this country. How can somebody predict how long you’re gonna live? We haven’t even known about the disease that long. He said, I know, the doctor just told me that. Then I said, so what if you had 20 years to live? What would you do differently? Oh, this is what I would do is I’m in insurance. I hate insurance. I want to be a DJ, I would quit my job. He said, and my marriage isn’t working. I realized I’m gay, and I want out. But I don’t want to lose my babies. My two boys. So, we worked with that. How can you do this? How can you approach this marriage? How can you tell his wife and about the two boys and it worked out that he got divorced. There was no interruption in this relationship with the kids. And he became a DJ. And over the next 20 years, what ended up happening this man was so happy. So in love with his life that he had two in 20 years, two issues that really showed up. He was blind for about three months, some bacterial infection he got, got through that and came through the other side, lived his life so perfectly happy. They ended up with the cocktails. The medicine cocktail said they developed HIV and lived his life with little to no impact from this disorder and just truly was alive. And he said to me that day when I said to him, what if you live for the next twenty? Do you know he says to me, Hey, Doc, I have no time for depression. I’ve got too much life to live. I’m done. And literally, not once did that man come in depressed for the rest of the time, we didn’t work together for 20 years. But the rest of the years we work together. Not once did that man come in depressed, overwhelmed on occasion, but never depressed. He always said, I’m overwhelmed, we got to put this in perspective, tell me how to do this. And then he went back out again, even depression, it was like, that’s a luxury can’t afford. I’ve got to live my life because I don’t know how much life I’ve got. And the joy that showed up when he became a DJ, the joy that showed up when he left a marriage that wasn’t working, all of a sudden, everything in his life changed because of a decision he made. And truly, it’s hard for people to believe it can be that simple. I believe life is simple. It’s not always easy. But we make it far more complicated than it needs to be.

Dhru 35:56

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I definitely think we complicate life a lot of times. I think that the stories we tell ourselves, right? And it’s cultural, it’s so many different influences, and on that side of things, but we can choose to see a certain path and to see that through. And as you were talking, you know, I couldn’t help but think about the the idea of, of, we’re all gonna die. And that’s something that, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk has this video, like, you’re gonna die, right? Like, I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die, everyone’s gonna die. And we don’t know when, right? We have no idea when it’s gonna happen. We’re assuming it’s gonna be at a certain point when we’re 90 or whatever. But we don’t really know, right? Could happen tomorrow. But we live, we live our lives, like we’re like, it’s like, oh, well, like, I’m gonna die when I’m 300 years old, I can just do whatever I want. I’m not going to, you know, bother caring about what I’m happy doing. I’m just going to slog through this nonsense, you know, just to do it. And I wonder, that guy, that perspective that that guy got when he was faced with mortality, right, is something that I think, you know, traumatizing as it might have been, I’m sure. But I feel like it’s a wake up call, we can all use sometimes. That realization or recognition of our mortality, the short time that we actually are here on the on the planet, right?

Dorothy 37:11

It really does. I’ve worked with so many folks over the years who have come up with cancer and given a short period to live and somehow they come through it. And they’ll say, I’m not the person, I would never wish cancer on anybody. But it has changed my life completely. It was a gift I didn’t know I needed, because boy, do I look at life differently. Boy, do I look at my career differently, my family differently. And it’s given me an outlook on life I never would have had otherwise. And everything in their world changed because they were faced with their mortality, and came out on the other side. And there’s so little they take for granted now. There’s so little they don’t value immensely now. Because it’s all a gift. It is all a gift to us. And when we can step back and realize that from day one, we don’t have to go for why, why wait till you have cancer? Why wait, you have HIV? Why wait till those issues show up? What if we really began to see that I have achieved what I have achieved at this moment. Because of every decision I have made in my life. From the time I was six or seven years old. Without knowing it consciously, I was making a decision to define the person I was going to become, and the path I was going to take. And we’ve done that through every step of it, if we can own that, that where we are isn’t by luck. Where we are is because of all the decisions we made, we can walk with a certainty that I’ve created this life. And the way I explain it to many of my clients is you’re sitting in this chair, and over there. And the other side of the room are all the friends you’ve had, all the lovers you’ve had, all the careers you’ve had all the jobs you’ve done, the homes you’ve lived in, that’s all the life you’ve lived. That’s the life you created, you’re over here, you are so powerful, you could create that life. And you have the ability, the power to create whatever you want in the rest of that life journey. It’s on the other side of the room that doesn’t define who you are, you are so much more than the life you created. And when we can look at that. And we can see that we recognize that these theoretical crises I’m creating in my life, these theoretical difficulties and leadership that I’m creating in my life. Why? Why am I creating these? Why am I looking at it as such? And why am I putting myself in this context? That is destroying me? What can I do differently? And that’s either reframing where you are, or getting out of where you are. But all of it is just a part of the journey. It’s not who you are. All right. And it certainly doesn’t define who you are.

Dhru 40:03

I know that I think that’s a good place to pause for the sessions. I think that’s a good period on that one. With this one caveat, the question I want to ask you, which I prepped you for a little bit, because I think we’ve talked about this for a long time. And I’d love to have you back for session two at some point to talk there more.

Dorothy 40:18

Any time, any time.

Dhru 40:20

But the question wants to ask what you already know is, in your, in your career, in your life and in your in the development that you’ve gone through in the course of your life? Who or what have been the most influential things in your life or people in your life?

Dorothy 40:32

There have been many, I was thinking, you knew that this spiritual element for me, Dan and Phil Berrigan were folks from years ago back in the 60s and 70s. They were Jesuit theologians who were real social, social activists, who really made it so obvious to me that we’re all in this together, that every one of us is in this together, and none of us is this isolated, separate being that we’re all here to care for one another. We’re all here on this planet together, that impacted me massively. When it came to becoming who I am. It’s really, many of the powerful people that I’ve met Martin Luther King that I’ve that I’ve read about or know about, that have been really aware that life is so much more than what we see that life is so much more than what we own. That that value, that way of life that says, these are wonderful things. So I love my home, I love my car, I love all of these things. But if I lose them tomorrow, life goes on. The gift of the journey is really what this is all about. And I think they have all inspired me. Many of the men and women I’ve seen, who have had all kinds of opportunity and still remember to be kind to other folk. They inspire me continuously.

Dhru 42:02

Well, thanks so much for joining us today and talking through some of the stuff that’s really fascinating, because I love that intersection of the emotional, the spiritual, and the physical, right, because I don’t think people necessarily think about those things being related, right, they try to compartmentalize, and as you know, we can’t do that.

42:19

Right, and you can’t, because it’s so integrated. This, this not boxes that are separate, there’s all one being. And for me, the excitement of working with leaders is allowing them to really lead from that place of that inner knowing leading from that place of I am all of this, I am this emotional, spiritual, physical being. And my leadership is just an expression of who I am, rather than a job I’m supposed to be doing. It’s an expression of how I walked through the planet, you know, very different way of looking at leadership.

Dhru 42:51

love it. Well, thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed this session today. If you want to reach out to Dr. Dorothy, her contact information will be in the description box below on YouTube. And there’ll be in the show notes in podcasts. Thanks. Thanks all so much. Thanks to Dorothy again. And we’ll see you guys soon. Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all, and if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s at @DhruBee on Twitter, at @DhruvaBee on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.