What Nobody Tells You About Becoming a Great Leader

Great leaders shape thriving cultures through shared values, align teams with clear purpose for motivation, and address blind spots via feedback and humility. This builds resilience, boosts innovation, enhances retention, and drives superior performance, transforming organizations into purpose-driven powerhouses.

In this episode, I sit down with Robert White, entrepreneur, leadership expert, and founder of Lifespring, ARC International, and Extraordinary People . With more than 1.3 million graduates impacted through his trainings and 21 years of experience across Asia. Robert shares powerful insights on leadership, focus, alignment, and living an extraordinary life.
https://www.extraordinarypeople.com/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership Challenges
02:58 Generational Changes in the Workforce
05:54 Finding Meaning in Work
08:56 The Importance of Clarity in Leadership
12:13 Personal Development for Leaders
14:52 Navigating Business Growth Challenges
18:01 Identifying and Addressing Blind Spots
21:08 Cultural Influences on Leadership
27:21 Foundations of Success: Awareness, Responsibility, and Communication
28:48 Cultural Differences: Guilt vs. Shame in Leadership
34:28 The Role of Faith and Values in Leadership
39:36 Personal Journey: From Adversity to Leadership Expertise
48:17 Consulting and Coaching: Supporting Business Leaders
52:41 Leadership Examples: Learning from Humble Successes

Transcript

Introduction to Leadership Challenges

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Everybody wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die. Yeah. You know, and uh paying the price of doing some deep inner work on yourself is very challenging. It has been for me and probably for you and for any human being. You know, change is threatening because it threatens our image of who we think we are. What working in different cultures does is it forces you, uh just for survival, into a heightened state of noticing, of awareness. I grew up in poverty and abuse. And uh what I've learned about that is some people, their reaction to that is to retreat from life. And, you know, they're the people that also use there's a tendency for uh drug abuse and and things like that, and and or becoming the guy in the basement that you know comes out to make a little bit of a living and doesn't talk to other people. They uh retreat from life. But there's another pretty big group of people that either get angry or get motivated somehow. I I became that. My product is putting people in these little fake artificial environments where they can experience what's working and not working in their leadership. And uh so my blind spot for years was.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Robert White. Robert is a renowned entrepreneur and leadership expert who partners with executives to build exceptional personal leadership, focused alignment, and commitment. He founded and led Lifespring, ARC International, and extraordinary people delivering high-impact training to over 1.3 million graduates. With over 21 years working in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and mainland China, he's Baden Powell Fellow of the World Scouts Foundation, Fellow of the World Business Academy, and a board director of a plant at 2020. His book, Living and Extraordinary Life, an award-winning audio program Achieving Extraordinary Success, have earned acclaim from leaders like Ken Blanchard. If you find the value out of this discussion, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with your friends. Your feedback is very important to us. Allow us to focus on the right discussions to help you grow and scale your business. So thank you again for your time. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Until next time, please welcome Robert White. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today we're guests is someone very special, Robert White. Robert, you've been mentoring a lot of business leaders. You've been helping them, you've been coaching them, providing the direction they need and helping them to achieve the goals they want to achieve. So I'm looking forward to a discussion, looking forward to learning from you. Thank you so much for time and welcome to the podcast. Garmeed, it's wonderful to be with you and with your listeners. Thank you. So you've been working with a lot of business leaders uh over the years, uh, Robert. You know, I know everybody's gonna have different challenges, different uh obstacles to deal

Generational Changes in the Workforce

SPEAKER_00 2:58

with. Is there a way to pinpoint some of the common challenges that you saw over the years that you, you know, people are up against, they get stuck, and they need uh help from you to get over those challenges?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Garmeed, as you know, my background includes I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur. And one of the things I've done is to found and lead three different training companies with a million four hundred thousand graduates now of our leadership training. So I've had that experience both on a personal level, but also on the level of running the companies from behind the scenes. That's that's been my most of my career. So I'm a little bit bifurcated in that my knowledge is in the in the training room somewhat and training trainers, but also the challenges of running a company. And one of the things I've discovered is that in the executives and their teams that I work with, that I very seldom run into a problem that I haven't had before. And either successfully or unfortunately as a failure, where the most, I think the most learning has taken place for me is on the failures. And but what I'm hearing a lot of is that there are always generational changes. You know, what motivated a team of people in 1910 was mostly survival. And then uh 10 years ago instead of 1910, there was one set of environmental challenges and and people challenges, and then there are there's today. And the generational change today, and you know, the young people that fuel a lot of energy in companies that are very important to our future, to meeting our goals, to particularly around retirement and sale of a company, you know, you want some of those younger people to be able to step forward and represent you and create results. And they have a very different background than many of the owners and leaders of companies. So I see that generational change being one of the major problems facing business people today worldwide is that the expectations of the younger people are radically different. You know, I joke around that I want to adopt a 14-year-old so that he could handle the, he or she could handle the tech challenges that I have, you know, and uh, but it's not just a joke. You know, the they have a different background. Their affection for those little screens and and their ability to use things like AI far surpass most of the people that I'm working with every day. So learning to handle that generation gap seems to be is a it was always an important skill. It's even more important today. The other thing is the rate of change. That's kind of

Finding Meaning in Work

SPEAKER_01 5:54

a line to it. But the change in markets, the change in the supply chain, the the change in politics, all of those changes that leaders have to confront successfully.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah. The first point you mentioned, the great point, uh uh Robert. You know, let me dissect a little bit. You know, mentioned the expectation change a little bit. So, you know, I manage a lot of young people uh as well. So, you know, they their expectations definitely, as you mentioned that to your point, they change what they're expecting from a leader is how they want to be managed. Um, so business leaders who are managing the new generation, to managing a people coming in a workforce, what do they have to change that in their approach to teach these young uh young uh people? Because they are expecting something uh different. They, you know, their their speed of understanding information is very good. You know, they're they're very fast, you know, grasping and understanding information. They're very good at technology. So they want to move fast, but you know, we're we're you know, business leaders, they may not be the same level, or they they have a different style of coaching and training and and and mentoring these the young people coming to workforce. What needs to be adjusted there? Is it more on a business leader side, or is it also out on a new graduate coming to a workforce?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah, you know, Garmeet, I have a dear friend and one of our graduates who is one of America's leading public speakers. He's actually training other speakers today more than he's up in front of a regular audience. But his name is his name is Alan, and Alan remarried to a woman who's 20 years younger than he. And and she's wonderful, and they've now been married now almost 20 years. But she gave him feedback recently that a lot of his examples were old people examples, you know, analogies and all of those things. And she's younger, and she would she noticed that, and it was great feedback, right? So with that as a caveat, with that that as a warning, I'll quote someone, and that's the late Will Rogers. And you know, Will Rogers was a humorist, a newspaper columnist, and a very funny guy. And one of the things that he said was that never ask a barber if you need a haircut. You know, he's always gonna, he or she is always gonna say yes. And so you should never ask me that question. You're always gonna get the same answer. And that is, I think that some things haven't changed, and one of those is that no matter what the generation, that we are primarily motivated by something that has meaning to us or or to that employee who's 26 years old or 35 years old. That but what's missing today, and there's a lot of research from Gallup and others, is a sense of meaning for our lives, bigger than the work, but that work is one-third or more of our life. And and uh that if we don't have meaning in that work. And again, I'll give you an example

The Importance of Clarity in Leadership

SPEAKER_01 8:56

from Alan. You know, he flies a lot, you know, that's the public speaker's problem, right? They're on airplanes all the time. And and you know, he's fortunate to fly first class and and and has earned it in his life. So he was in a recent conversation where it was the typical American airplane conversation. What do you do? Not who are you being, but what do you do? And this guy said classic word. If you listen to the language here, it's really important. He said, I'm just an insurance agent. And it just triggered Anilan, who who kind of went at the guy a bit, for you know, guy I had never met before, and said, What do you mean, just an agent? If I if I didn't have a life insurance agent, my wife would be perpetually at unease and responsibilities, but not getting. If I didn't have uh mortgage insurance, I could I couldn't be living in the home that I live in today. And he went on and on about the value of insurance and and you know, trying to get across to the guy that he's not just an insurance agent. But what that man, you know, an independent professional, most of them are, who was missing was a sense of meaning to the what he was doing with one third of his life and how valuable it was. And you know, that's true in every company, and ever whether it's a product, a service, software as a service, it it either has meaning to this team as a foundational part of their being, or they're going to be challenging to manage. Harvard says that most people in small, medium-sized growth companies have a big problem around people. You know, they're spending 70, 80 percent of their time with people problems. And if you look at the root of people problems, most of them go away the moment that that employee knows what they're really about, what is their purpose, what is their vision, what are their values, what do they live by, what are their standards, and that they're proud of working there. If you're proud of working there, then you solve a problem. You know, if if you're committed in a marriage and a problem comes up, you'll solve the problem. If you're a committed parent, you know, you'll get through that, you'll solve the problem. So I think what uh doesn't get enough attention, and this is the part where never ask a barber if you need a haircut, is that over the years and working with now over a million people, what I've learned is that clarity of purpose, vision, and values, and then your strategic intent, you know, those 90-day goals, and that all of that becomes like a part of your cellular structure. You know, that you wake up thinking about them, you go to bed thinking about it, you have dreams about it, you have luncheons about it, you have meetings about it, but it's always there. If that if the leader can help facilitate that happening in the organization, of course, that happens to be what I help leaders with. So, you know, be warned, that's what I'm gonna be talking about. But that's the leadership challenge today for a lot of problems. It's foundational.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, it's uh you know, before you help your team out, uh Robert,

Personal Development for Leaders

SPEAKER_00 12:13

to your point, the clarity, it you know, how important for business uh owner or business leader to tackle those challenges with themselves first, right? You you gotta be, you know, find a meaning for yourself first before you before you try to provide meaning for the company. You gotta have be a clearer vision for yourself as well and for the company before you start helping people. You know, some of these challenges are, you know, definitely there's a personal development, professional development, whatever you want to call it. But unless business owners get over these challenges for themselves, they won't be able to go help out other their team members and other people in a company, right? So so how important that is to get a handle on those challenges first and then go out and try to help out the team.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

You know, they uh another one-liner, and it's another old one, which is everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die. Yeah, you know, and uh paying the price of doing some deep inner work on yourself is very challenging. It has been for me and probably for you and for any human being. Yeah, you know, change is threatening because it threatens our image of who we think we are, and so changing that is not easy. My own experience recently, I'd say in the, you know, I spent from 2014 to 2020 in China. I mean, I came back to the US a lot for client work and family issues, but I was living in China, and one of the things that that I learned there is that working with a team is less threatening to the leader than one-on-one. Now, I do executive coaching one-on-one, I do that. But most of my work comes because I take the leader and the team into a three or four-day experience around purpose, vision, values, and their commitments. And what that often results in is the leader then saying, you know, there's some work I want to do with me myself personally. And it's somehow it's less threatening when they after they have a relationship with me that's deeper and more trusting. And but there's a lot of value for leaders in getting the feedback from the team. And, you know, our process facilitates that in a safe way and in a way that they are more likely to not fear it, not not react to it, not resist it. So that's that's a personal strategy that I've learned over the years. Work with the team, and then if any members of the team need some personal work, that gets kind of identified and the trust gets built, and then you can be very efficient in the personal coaching.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Does that I heard somewhere, uh Robert, I haven't got that far, but does that work changes? So let's say the business

Navigating Business Growth Challenges

SPEAKER_00 14:52

owner who are listening to us or watching us, or or business leader, when a company is on a five million, it's a different kind of issues, different kind of areas you got to work at. If company got to 10 million, it's different challenges, 20 million is different challenges, 50 million is different challenges. So, do those challenges come differently as the company grows? And how do you approach those different challenges? You know, how do you find out, okay, this is what I'm up against at this point, at this point, this is a flexion point in my business. I gotta deal it with a different skill set. I got, you know, it's a different vision maybe required, different approach may be required. So, first of all, when I confirm that, does that change? Is that true that you know people think that changes? And how do you approach that, that change?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Look, uh a personal example is that I started one of my businesses in Japan years ago. You know, we went on to become the largest training company in Asia with seven centers, training centers in Japan, two in Taiwan, one in Manila, one in Seoul, one in Hong Kong, one in China, one in Sydney, and then eventually back to the US. But the my first big learning was when we hit about 50 people. And that well, that was about a $10 million a year business at that point. And suddenly I started noticing we were losing people, really good people. And particularly we're losing new people. They'd join our company, they most of them had already been a graduate. That's how that was our primary recruiting tool, was just watching our graduates and seeing whose head popped up, you know. Because you then you know they already love our work. So that you know, I wasn't that conscious of it, but I later figured that out. And but what we noticed is they join our company and they're all excited and pleased, and and then they would quit. And they'd always always have a story. And I learned something actually from the I went through the Peter Drucker training program, and I learned something from that, which was don't do your exit interview on the spot, wait 90 days. That's one of the things he teaches, and because then they'll tell you the truth, you know. And and what I learned was that uh in in the early days, I mean, I set up chairs in meeting rooms. I, you know, I did all of the little work. I I ran trainings myself, but uh when we got up to about 50 people, I was doing no trainings, I was just training trainers in all of our operations. And so people were no longer working personally with me. And what I got from that was that uh people that had work face to face with me, they never left. And we used to have rules about how you have to use your vacation tonight because these people wouldn't take a vacation. We had to have rules about when you leave the office at night because they're working too late. You know, they're they're loving it and they get it, they get our purpose, our vision, and our values. Except what I learned was I wasn't articulating them. People knew them from face-to-face work as we set up chairs together. We painted the walls of our first training center together. We couldn't hire outside painters, so we did it ourselves,

Identifying and Addressing Blind Spots

SPEAKER_01 18:01

you know. Well, you know, you make bonds that way, working together toward common goals. It's the number one way to build trust. So I had this huge, you know, as I got from between 25 and 50, that's when this disturbance in the force started to happen. Because they were not people that worked directly with me. And so I had to be able to articulate what we were really up to. And it challenged me because I I had to get away from just my intuition and to be able to really see the need for systems, the need for training programs for our I mean, we were a training company who wasn't doing a very good job of training our own people. I mean, in our in our work, yes, they were very clear, but in terms of how to run a good meeting or how to hire, because now you know they have more responsibility. How to how to know what's urgent versus important, you know, all of those kind of basic things. We weren't doing it. So what we started at at about 50 people were some of the things that you're talking about, about a change. And then when we got to also, but also a big thing was when I realized that you know, we got up to a for about 45 million in revenue, and but when we hit about 30 million, I realized I need somebody way more skilled than me to handle money. You know, I mean, I kind of did it in an amateurish way. I mean, I mean we were so successful with revenue that we could make more mistakes. But you know, we had somebody steal a lot of money from us in one of our operations, and I didn't catch it. You know, and then you know, we teach personal responsibility, so this is of course a violation of that. I went straight to a victim role, you know, about this terrible person. Well, you know, it was not a very ethical person, and he was a bad hire, but he didn't I didn't have systems in place to check him, right? You know, so things like that happened. And so I think as you go along from that 10 to 20 to 40 million in sales, the need changes around systems, around meetings, around training, around outside resources and how to vet them and how to use them. You know, there were there are just a different set of challenges. And I think that's when you need somebody really in a consulting role as opposed to a coaching role. So I and today with my work, I'm about, I realize I'm about 50% consulting, just based on uh what worked and didn't work for me, you know, that that expression that it's useful to have somebody who's been there and done that.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

You know, well, there's so many blind spots, right? Uh Robert, you know, when you're running a business, we all come, you know, most business owners they come from tech background. So we were good at something, so we started a business, right? So um there's so much to learn. We gotta pick up leadership skills, we've got to pick up sales skills, financial skills. There's so many we can pick up those skill sets, but we're not gonna be master at those skill sets. We're gonna be good enough to

Cultural Influences on Leadership

SPEAKER_00 21:08

just to be operational in a business. And then that's where the blind spot comes in, right? So, especially on our leadership side, people management side of things, people coaching. And that's where we need people like you to first of all spot those blind spots and then help us to get over those blind spots, deal with them, and so we can we can stay on a progress of the business instead of trying to uh you know learn you know make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. So you know, that's where we need like yourself, figuring out those blind spots and dealing with those blind spots.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Look, my business for most of my adult life has been doing high impact experiential learning. And uh, you know, I'm that's my product. My product is putting people in these little fake artificial environments where they can experience what's working and not working in their leadership. And so my blind spot for years was. That you know, I'm hiring and at one point we had 70 full-time experiential trainers, you know, incredibly intelligent, incredibly passionate, incredibly skilled people. Well, they don't just do that with their audience, they do that with me and and with the leadership of the company. So they're selling me all the time, right? And there was a period where the primary product they were selling to me was their, they wanted promotions, they wanted to run things. Well, you know, whether it's Gallup or one of the other personality grids, trainers are not good at running things. They're really not, you know, they're like tech people. They've got a specific skill that they're very good at. And by the way, one of their skills, as opposed to many tech people, is they're very good at relationship and in selling. Because they're selling ideas to large groups of people, right? And so when they turn that on me, relentlessly and skillfully, they convince me that they can do things that A actually cannot do. And uh, you know, that that book, Traction, I don't know if you're familiar with traction. Yeah, EOS. EOS Traction, yeah. Yeah, and Gino, Geno Workman's work. And you know, an amazing, amazing book, actually, and that I refer to it. And I actually have stolen some ideas from you. I probably should send him a check. You know, one of the things that he talks about is in evaluating people is that GW's C, I think. G the G is get it. Do they get your purpose, vision, values, and strategy, right? And then the W is do they really want that job that they're in now? Or are they seeing the job you're offering them and paying them for as a stepping stone to something else? That's almost always a problem. And then the C is cape capability. Can they actually do the work? And what I learned from that experience is that in uh looking at your own blind spots, looking at that what you're trying to do, like especially in the tech field where you're as you get bigger, a lot of the people stuff becomes more important. You know, you know your technology, you know their your competition, you know their competitive role, you know, all kinds of things. And you've got a passion for whatever you're delivering. But maybe you haven't been prepared in terms of the people dynamic in your company, you know, in terms of strengths and weaknesses, which is going to determine who you hire and how you evaluate them, who you promote and how you evaluate them, who you fire, you know, and how you do that. And I mean, some of the biggest mistakes I've made as I look back in my career have been I used to fire people and not tell anybody why. You know, that that's an example of that. And I know I kind of know where it came from. And I, you know, I think I'm a reasonably generous person for one thing. Yeah. And also humility has served me well, frankly. And so when I I look at I have to separate this person, I look at my own accountability and what is it, what is it that I did in hiring that person or training that person or managing that person that brought us to this point where he no longer he or she no longer fits. And by doing that, I I put too much burden on me and not enough shared responsibility for bringing us to this point. So I, you know, I I separated one guy in Asia. He happened to be an American, an import, working uh first of all for us in Japan and then in Hong Kong. And, you know, this guy had two bad habits. One was dating our volunteer assistants, you know, people that had a great experience in our training, they want to come back, they want to volunteer and learn more. And it's it's a big key part of our system. And many of them are women, you know, at least 50% of them were women, and that he would date them and then dump them, you know, and create all kinds of problems. That's totally against our values. And then the other the the final straw was using cocaine in public, you know, in a nightclub in in Hong Kong. Well, I fired him, and that you know, we've kind of a three strikes and you're out kind of thing, and try to coach people or get them therapy or you know, work with them to keep them because he's a very good what he did, which was our advanced training, incredibly talented, actually. But when I fired him, I didn't say anything to anybody. I just, with my staff, I said he's no longer with us. Well, he went into competition with us, he stole our graduate list, he stole a few of our people, and raised a lot of money among our graduate base to fund his new company and became my biggest competitor in Asia. And told everybody that he left our company because, of course, people would ask him that. He told them it was because he'd had a didn't have a values match with Robert White, which was true, but that wasn't how he sold it, you know. Yeah, yeah. That's not the reason he left. Yeah.

Foundations of Success: Awareness, Responsibility, and Communication

SPEAKER_01 27:21

My values were not as noble as his. Yeah, yeah. Right? So my learning on that, again, it came from the outside outside work, uh coach that I had taught me about how if if somebody doesn't match your values and but gets you great results, those are the most dangerous people, as people that violate your values, and that when they when you fire them, it needs to be a public hanging. Kind of vivid term, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, you want to let the other people know that this would happen, right? With the values. So everybody buys into that.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yes, and your step, you know, my staff knew he was a problem, and they were actually judging me negatively uh the while during the time that we kept him. You know, they were talking, I later learned they're talking to each other. What's wrong with Robert that he doesn't see that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

You know, remind me, I let somebody go in and the you know, the I was asking for staff feedback, and the first feedback I got is what took you so long.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yes, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

You know, when you get that kind of feedback, definitely changes the perspective. So you mentioned very interesting. So, you know, you work in a different culture, Robert. So the leadership uh and and managing people, does that little bit change based on a cultural stuff, or is that that a same uh, you know, the the values, the meaning to work is it still same important, or does that change because the culture changes a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Gameet, you're aware

Cultural Differences: Guilt vs. Shame in Leadership

SPEAKER_01 28:48

that I have this book that unfortunately has become a bestseller called Living an Extraordinary Life.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Great book. I just went through it. Great stories, you know, a very interesting book, actually. Sorry, I just wanted to mention that.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Uh oh, were you able to get the new version?

SPEAKER_00 29:03

I just got it from yeah, that's a version I got it from Amazon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Yeah, we just changed that. Uh I revised some things in it and and we changed the cover. But, you know, that book is organized around awareness, responsibility, and communication, which are in terms of personal and organizational growth, I think three foundational uh bedrocks of uh success and joy and fulfillment and many things. And what working in different cultures does is it forces you, uh just for survival, into a heightened state of noticing, of awareness. The example would be that in the United States, if you're dealing either on the personal side, executive development side, or on the corporate team, that you you would talk about dealing with guilt. You know, guilt is a large part of a Judeo-Christian-based culture. Uh fortunately and unfortunately, you know, you can make an argument that guilt's a good thing. I don't make that argument, by the way, but so I guess that's why I'm not a minister or a rabbi or a priest. And uh but in it's an important thing to clear about your past is how to handle guilt. And so we have a process for that. Maybe we'll do another podcast someday and talk about that, you know, the nuts and bolts of that. But when you go to Asia, guilt is not a strong motivator to Asian people, whether Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Filipina, guilt is it's not the same. And what motivates people in Asia is shame. And it's a small distinction, but a really important one. You know, guilt is something you feel you violated your standard. Shame is you embarrassed yourself publicly. It's public.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

And boy, they'll do anything to avoid shame. You know, it I've I've actually, this is kind of a goofy aside, but I've studied some Japanese history and how it's taught because I've learned so much from my own native history, American history, world history. And uh, you know, if you study history in Japan, there's a an episode, and they use the the expression, the Nanjing, Nanjing incident in China. And most people around the world that study any history know that hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Nanjing, unfortunately, during World War II. In Japanese history lessons, it's taught that maybe 2,000 people were killed because of an uprising, an incident. No, it was a genocide. You know, it was a systematic elimination of anybody that wasn't uh towing the Japanese occupiers' wishes. So they did they do that because to do it would be to accept a tremendous amount of shame that they allowed the military to do that in their name, in the name of the of the Japanese invasion of all of Asia. But you find that in in small and very large ways in that culture. So our training, that part of it that deals with guilt, needed to be slightly tuned. Once we figured that out, once we got feedback and listened to it, we realized we needed to change our approach to match the culture. You know, today there's a culture among young people that leaders better get tuned into, you know? A friend of mine and I uh recently had uh lunch together, and it it turned, you know, it started out as going to be a late lunch. It really turned into an early dinner about five o'clock. And you know, the usual long story about that and why that happened. But the restaurant that we wanted to use wasn't open that early. It was open for lunch and then closed during the afternoon and early evening, and then it opened. So we went to the place next door, which happened to be a bar and restaurant, and that bar at and we were there between, you know, just after five o'clock. And by the time we finished our meal, it was six o'clock. And the bar and restaurant went from just a few tables, you know, people like us that were eating at an odd time, to jammed with young people. And what I learned, because I, you know, I talk to people and I'm curious, was that they were all competitors in a an amateur volleyball league. And what I also learned was that there was very little about it that had to do with any any sport. It was all about a way to meet girls or meet boys in your age group, you know. But that place was crowded, I mean hundreds of them, because after the volleyball deal, they go to the bar, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you meet girls and boys from different teams and have fun and all that. And what I realized is they all left work early that day. Now, I don't know about you, but I you know, I did work for someone else when I was in my early 20s. You did not leave work early for volleyball. Yeah. You know, not ever. And they were doing it

The Role of Faith and Values in Leadership

SPEAKER_01 34:28

once a week. Uh you know, and and then I dug into that and I found out that today, when they interview for work, they want to know what the culture is in terms of free time for them to go play volleyball.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, can you imagine? But a lot of them they work in one company, same company, and they all leave the same time. Yes. Okay. So very interesting what you mentioned, uh, Robert. You know, the shame and of worstly, we're talking about the guilt. So it's very hard for our North American people to understand that that, you know, the shame is the public shame, is even a lot more important than a guilt if you go to those cultures. Does that also explain? I talked to a lot of business leaders and and uh very successful business leaders, high number of them. They're very close to their faith, and they're a little bit spiritual as well, and they're very grounded people. Do you see that when you're talking to a lot of very successful business? And I'm trying to understand why that is. Is that part of being successful, or is that this is what it takes to be successful? That you you gotta be connected with your faith, you gotta be grounded, you gotta be uh, you know, have a belief system. You know, I see that distinction that you know somebody new in a leadership position, they're not there yet. But if you talk to, you know, somebody's been in a business leadership position for so long, they are very grounded people, they're very close to their faith and that they have the belief system that you can't shake off. They're the very, very, very strict. Is that a requirement for being successful, or is it what this is what it takes?

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Well, it's one of the things that change has created that is very problematic. You've identified something that is very challenging if you're a person of faith versus a person that's just that isn't important to them. And you know, again, a personal story. I have a again, it's something that maybe it would be a different subject for a different podcast. Okay. I had a lot of confusion as a young person around my faith. My family was a Protestant, uh Protestant upbringing. I I often said about my mother that she sent us to Sunday school at church every Sunday morning and Sunday night with separate events. Okay. And I often said that it was because she wanted to get us out of the house so that she didn't have to deal with these four rascals, including me. And I think there was some truth in that. What I learned later in life is that I actually learned some foundational principles there, even though I wasn't very aware I was learning them. You know, that the example set in my case by Jesus Christ and the values that came out of the Ten Commandments and things like that, which I didn't know that I learned that, but I did, and it became foundational for me. I basically learned it when people violated it around me, you know, and or I violated it and felt guilty, right? But the the point is that today that is less reliable. Now, in the last since since I came back from China, since 2020, I had spent about two years of being almost out of business, which was kind of okay, and dealing with my family and being back in the U.S. But then I started doing a series of executive trainings, sponsored by a guy who's a very strong Christian, happened to be, with very strong Christian values. But he started a program called Living a Better Story. And he was one of my graduates in the leadership training, and he asked me to come and facilitate this four-day retreat for executives who were people of faith. However, it were people they were Hindus and Jews and Muslims and Christians in the same room, all of them running successful companies. And what I learned is I found my tribe because what united the group was they didn't go to church, like I don't go to church, church, they didn't go to seminar to the synagogue, they didn't go to the mosque, they didn't go to the temple, but they ran their companies on faith-based principles. Now, I I don't teach about religion. I'm a student of spirituality, not not a teacher. But what I notice is that when I'm talking about values, I'm talking about what you're talking about. Because we when we talk about values, we don't identify where they need to come from. We just say, what are they? and you better bring them up to the forefront. You better choose, and our number is five to seven core values that you are so committed to that a violation of them is impossible for you personally or for your team. And you just don't identify it as religion, particularly in America today. You know, the it's just there's too much division, there's too much uh easy self-talk about it and and online talk about it. So to avoid that controversy, we just

Personal Journey: From Adversity to Leadership Expertise

SPEAKER_01 39:36

talk about values and the importance of connecting with them. But as I do so, and as I've gotten older, what I realize is the people that have a strong faith-based background, and it doesn't matter what the faith is, because they're all they all have some kind of a set of positive, life-affirming values. So we avoid the religious identification, but yep, but people need to get back to things that are just very, very important. You know, that that book, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago about everything I need needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. Play nice with others, clean up your messes, you know, that kind of stuff. Well, you know, that's faith-based values. And again, in his book, he doesn't talk about religion. Uh and and and it's a bestseller, you know, or was a bestseller.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Very interesting. Yeah, you know, that's what I noticed, but I think uh to your point, yeah, definitely, you know, the value has to have some sort of strong foundation, and and a faith gives you some of those foundations. Doesn't matter what the faith is, but the that's where the value comes from, right? For a certain extent. So very interesting. So I want to talk about a little bit about your journey, Robert. So how do you got so uh good at a leadership? And you know, you definitely build a lot of companies. So how do you got so good at this? And how did you decide that this is an area you want to uh contribute to where you want to help out other people?

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Look, a couple of turning points in my life. You know, I mean, I I grew up in poverty and and abuse. And what I've learned about that is some people, their reaction to that is to retreat from life. And, you know, they're the people that also use there's a tendency for uh drug abuse and and things like that, and and or becoming the guy in the basement that you know comes out to make a little bit of a living and doesn't talk to other people, they uh retreat from life. But there's another pretty big group of people that either get angry or get motivated somehow. And I I became that. So I I was an entrepreneur at eight years old. You know, I had the paper out, I scraped gum off the sidewalk of the local dairy queen. I I shoveled snow in the winter, I cut grass in the summer, I always had income to bring back to my family. And and you know, and then at 14 years old, I got a job in radio on the engineering side. That led to being on the air, to being to having a top-rated radio show at 17 years old. I made more money at 17 than my father had ever made. And but I also got named uh in school as most likely to succeed by a 300-person graduating class. I was a commencement speaker. I I had I was known. And but that most likely to succeed one is the irony, because 10 years later I had basically made my fellow students wrong. I had had three heart effects. I was had daily chest pain. I was told I would die by 35. I've obviously lived longer than that. And uh, but also I had been married and divorced and felt horribly guilty about it. And I didn't talk to anybody about that guilt, but it weighed very heavily on me and affected how I was with people. And my little sales business was struggling, late on payroll, you know, that's really struggling. And I went to one of the early human potential movement trainings at 27 called Mind Dynamics, and it changed my life for the better. I mean, not instantly, not overnight, but what I learned there, and then was not one word about money or business in that four-day training. It was about me and how I was getting in the way of success. So, yeah, you know, I went from broke to tripling my income in the first year after that training, and in the second year it went up 10 times. I started making more money monthly than I'd ever made in a year. And that led to enrolling a lot of people from my company, from my network into that mind dynamics training. So that company knew about me. I didn't know about them, and I didn't care. I didn't understand the training, I just knew it worked for me, and it worked for all the people that I enrolled. So one day I got a phone call from the founder or the owner of that company, and he to say thanks. Thank you. Because I put a lot of people in his not his training, but his people's trainings. And he flew me from New York to San Francisco to get to know me better. And ten days later I was president of that company, Mind Dynamics. So I ran the business of Mind Dynamics and learned the training business as an employee. Now the ownership changed. That founder left and sold his shares. And you know, it didn't work for me. So that's when I quit and went back to being an entrepreneur, frankly. And that but those were all formative experiences for me because running his company the first two years was kind of straightening out the mess, even though it was very successful when I joined it on the revenue side. But and then the last two years I was there, I ran around the world opening foreign subsidiaries, primarily in Europe, but also Australia. And I was recruited to come to Japan and open our company there. And it's the only place we said no to, ironically, because it was more expensive, the language is backwards. You know, there were a lot of reasons. And we were busy. So I said no. But you know a little bit about Japanese culture. They don't, yeah, they don't quit. Once a month, I got a some kind of communication saying, please come, please come, please come. And then when I left My Dynamics and founded my first company, Life Spring, and Life Spring went on to have 17 training centers in America, hugely successful, over a half a million graduates, and of the same kind of work, of course. And but I left. So I didn't build it to the 17 training center. And so, but I had put every penny that I had into that company. I it was self-funded, and I sold it to my staff for nothing down and forever to pay. That's a famous expression. And they did take longer than forever to pay, but eventually they paid me. And so now I'm broke, now I've got a new family, I've got a mortgage, you know, and I'm broke again. And I after uh three years of saying no to Japan for good reasons, actually, uh suddenly I get a fax from them that says, please come for just 90 days and install your system, and we'll pay you for one year. I was on the next airplane. Yeah. And it wasn't some noble, you know, gesture of vision, which is what people ask me about later. Did you have a vision for bringing experiential learning to Asia? No. I needed a job. And I mean, it wasn't like an employee job, it was an independent consulting contract kind of thing. But that 90 days turned into the first time to 12 years. And you know, Garmeet, I think you know this. I've been I've lived abroad for 23 years of my working life in uh Japan and Hong Kong and mainland China, and back and forth, you know, to the US several times. And and I'm going to Japan again in a couple of months. You know, it's just I have a lot of friends there and a lot of a good reputation, I guess. But you know, those are turning points. Uh taking a risk of of going to a foreign country and surviving, you know, and then thriving. You know, that's a huge risk. When I started a new company in Japan, I slept on a friend's sofa for eight months and sent my family back to the US. You know, the usual entrepreneurial story that is very good if uh with a glass of wine, perhaps, and some fellow entrepreneurs to tell their stories. But, you know, that's how I got to what I do. And I made a lot of good decisions, I made a lot of bad decisions, I I did my best to keep learning. And you know, part of that is is doing business in foreign countries. It forces you to be more aware. Uh part of it was learning the power of personal responsibility, owning it all. And then opens your mindset.

Consulting and Coaching: Supporting Business Leaders

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Opens your mindset, much bigger mindset, you know, if you if you work you get your power back when you get out of the victim role.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

And yeah, but you know, I'm a guy who wrote a book on personal responsibility, as you now know. And and yet, you know, I fell into being a victim occasionally. I just was a more sophisticated victim. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

You know, uh, Robert, there, there's so much wisdom in your experience. You know, you you made a mistake. You know, I think that's what we do as entrepreneur. We make a mistake, we learn from it, we move on. So yeah, you've been doing it for a long time. You know, I can talk to you, but but but you know, uh, all day just to understand you, learning from you so much wisdom. But I want to be mindful of the time as well. So in your capacity, so do you do a lot of consulting? Do you do a lot of coaching for people who are, you know, business leaders are listening to us, you know, uh, people who are watching us, if they need any help, do you do you work with the business leaders one on one more, or do you do a teamwork? You know, how do you help out business leaders who are looking for some help?

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Well, my team is primarily people that used to work for me full-time and are now independent trainers. And then I have some administrative backup that are employees. I'm involved in every one of our engagements. And sometimes somebody else may do the team training, but even there, I'm reading the evaluations, I'm talking to the CEO to check in regularly to make sure that's being done well. I do some of them myself and sometimes on Zoom, sometimes by getting on an airplane. And so team training is my thing to help executives get a more high performance, a high performance excellence in their teams. I do what generally comes out of that is some limit, a limited amount of uh personal coaching, either from me or my coaching team. And then finally, you know, I'm I'm I'm doing work to have these ideas be more public. You know, to have people, you know, in my little way of evaluating companies is are they focused, are they aligned, and are they committed? Because you can cover up a lot of problems if you're focused, aligned, and committed, frankly. And that's a lot of my successes come from that, that I just kind of learned over over the years. And my offer is, first of all, my book's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all that stuff, and on Kindle, which is probably how you got it. Yep. You know, and or if you want a sign copy, go on my website, extraordinarypeople.com, extraordinarypeople.com. But also on the website, you can sign up for my extraordinary minute, which is free. It's a an email once a week that is an idea that I've learned, something I've learned from a book, from a movie, from a poem, from another training that I attended, something that I've learned, and then my comments on it. And all designed to be read in one minute or less. So it's a little nice, it's a snack, not a full meal, right? But it puts you in touch with me because if you hit reply, it goes to Robert at extraordinarypeople.com and we have a chance to have a relationship and maybe a phone call. And then finally, uh something new for me that I just love it, is I've developed a quiz that helps you diagnose what's going on in your company in 90 seconds. So the quiz is very simple but very clever, and then AI comes in and extrapolates from your answers, from those quick answers. I admittedly, the questions are very clever to get you to betray what's happening in your company. And so you get a whole bunch of information and some time with me all free. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

I'm gonna include all the links below this video, uh Robert, you know, for your books as well and for assessment and for your website. I'll include all the links. People are gonna click a button and just uh uh connect with that and just access the resource. What is the best way to get connected with you? Is it a website or is it a LinkedIn? How do you how do people uh reach out to you?

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Best way is the website extraordinarypeople.com. Sign up for the easing. And oh, and also you get with the easing, you get a 28-page essay that I've rewritten 20 times over the years of some successful way to take a look at yourself

Leadership Examples: Learning from Humble Successes

SPEAKER_01 52:41

and your leadership effectiveness. So and it's shareable. You can use it with your team, you can use it with your church group, you can send it to your family. It's it's totally free and and I encourage its use. I get incredible feedback on it. So I'm I'm very proud of it.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Very interesting. You know, business leader for watching or listening to us on a podcast, you know, there's always a lot of blind spots, and you need a help with a lot of areas. You know, we can be master in every area. That's where we need a people like like you, Robert. Um, so I will strongly encourage business leaders who are watching us, listening to us, click a button below, reach out to Robert for conversation. You're gonna gain totally different perspective. I learned so much from our discussion over the last uh you know hour. I'm sure people who are gonna reach out to you, they're gonna gain totally different perspective, different way of looking at things. Who knows where the relationship's gonna go? But I think there's so much to gain from having a discussion with you, Robert. But before we go, I want to ask you this. Do you uh whether it's an entertainment, politics, business, wherever the area you want to look at, do you see some, you know, if are you able to spot some couple good examples of a leadership, Robert? Just one or two. If you can spot a one or two good leadership examples, whether it's entertainer, business, politics, any area you can think of think of.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

You know, I apologize for not remembering the name. Uh today the comp the company in the US called Walgreens is struggling. You know, as all most retail businesses are struggling, right? They're hit by online sales and all kinds of things. But the way Walgreens got built, I'm gonna say between 1985 and 2010, were nameless CEOs. No, they weren't in the cover of Fortune magazine or Forbes. They nobody knew who they were. They didn't speak at the big conferences, they ran successful businesses with humility and and focus, alignment and commitment. And I think in terms of a key aspect, they they were a great example to me. I mean, they were a very big company and I was a lot smaller. But what I realized is that some judgments that I made about me, that I'm not the right bleeder, that I'm not enough. And as you now know, that's a chapter in my book that not enough was, you know, it doesn't say that it doesn't say that chapter is about me, but it is. You know, I operated from I am not enough, and I converted it to I'm gonna learn, I've got to learn, I've got to learn more. So I converted it in a positive way, but it bothered me. And it also held me back in some ways. What I learned from that succession of CEOs at Walgreens and other companies that we had worked with, I mean, we have 14,000 graduates at Chase Bank. We have 18,000 graduates at Duke Energy. We did, we worked with a lot of major companies on culture change. And I learned as I seem, I think, I contributed a lot, or our company did, but I also learned a lot. And what I learned was that we're all human beings. That imposter syndrome, or whatever you want to call it, is very present still in a lot of leaders, and they stuff it because they're ambitious, they're driven, they work hard, they're smart. You know, our former president Clinton, you know, was famous for compartmentalizing. That's what they do. That's what I did. I put my personal stuff aside to go for it, right? And but that stuff is still in, if that stuff's still inside you, it's like a low-grade infection. You know, it gets in your way. And uh so dealing with it, getting that outside voice, you know. When I get feedback about me, it's I'm an interruption. I am not a rent a friend. You know, I'm a guy that's becomes probably becomes a close friend, but that's not the purpose. The purpose is to interrupt any patterns that are getting in the way of the real success you want, the satisfaction you want, the extra time you want for your family and your hobbies and all those things. So that's what I'm up to is to be that interruption for people. And that my team is it's it's all about interruption. It's all about people take a look at what you do well, do more of it. Take a look at what you're not doing so well, and let's see if let's see if we can improve on it.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Yeah, yeah. No, there's so much to learn from uh Robert. You know, I'm sure you'll be making a lot of difference in people's life and helping them to achieve their goals, their dreams, whatever they're trying to do. And you've been very generous with the time. I know we ran a little bit over time, but it was a very interesting discussion. Learned so much from you. Thank you so much for time. It was a pleasure talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

Great being with you, and and I look forward to figuring out something we can do together, Gourmade. I'll do something that's up out there in the in the future for us.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Yeah, we'll do. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'm I recommend to check one of these discussions on the top. Um, also don't forget to go back to that channel homepage. There's a playlist created just for you, whether you're looking for business discussion, technology discussion, or process discussion for business growth, all those categories are there, and I'm sure you will find something that you enjoy from those categories as well. So don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel for any upcoming videos. Your feedback is very important to us, allow us to focus on the right discussion to deliver value for you on a weekly basis. So enjoy until next time. Thank you for your time.