Ep. 99 - Rob Seguin - From Botox To CARE

We sit down with Robert Seguin—organizational health advisor and former leader behind the global launch of Botox Cosmetic—to unpack how caring leadership can scale a brand, transform a team, and change a life. 

We get candid about ego, ambition, and the discipline it takes to keep service at the center. Robert’s stories—from coaching Special Olympics to consulting oncology innovators—reveal how small acts of leadership ripple into real-world outcomes.

We also explore faith as a daily practice that sharpens judgment and fuels resilience. His most provocative challenge: stop chasing happiness and start building fulfillment. Use your God-given gifts, leverage your experiences, and multiply your impact by helping more people. That is the scoreboard that lasts—and the culture that wins.

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Transcript

Welcome And Global Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to the Leader Impact Podcast. We are a community of leaders with a network in over 350 cities around the world dedicated to optimizing our personal, professional, and spiritual lives to have impact. This show is where we have a chance to listen and engage with leaders who are living this out. We love talking with leaders, so if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions to make the show even better, please let us know. The best way to stay connected in Canada is through our newsletter at leaderimpact.ca or on social at LeaderImpact. And if you're listening from outside of Canada, check out our website at leaderimpact.com. I'm your host, Lisa Peters, and our guest today is Robert Seguin. Rob is the managing partner of Thrive Partnership Group since 2003, offering global clients organizational health consulting services ranging from culture strategy navigation to strategic and brand planning facilitation to high performance team development and leadership coaching. His two decades of corporate experience primarily in the life science industry culminated in the leading of the global launch of Botox Cosmetic in 2001. He has released his first book called Care: The Surprising Core Leadership Principle for the 21st Century. This guidebook provides inspirational stories, best practice processes, and practical tools for leaders and organizations to tap into the full potential of their technology through people and organizational development and exhibit care for their employees. Welcome to the show, Rob.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Oh, thanks, Lisa. Great to be with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

It's great to have you. So that surprised me, Botox Cosmetic.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, I know. A Northern Ontario boy, and these aren't my teeth because they got knocked out of being goalie from my older brothers and sisters. Yeah, trapes around the world launching something in the aesthetic space is just weird.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Wow. And when did you get well, it's I when did you get out of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Um we started the launch preparation in '99, and uh I was in New York at the time, and I got recruited to to well, actually they told me I could live wherever I wanted. They said you can live wherever you want, and uh, I'm Canadian, my wife's Canadian, so we say, okay, well, we're gonna come home to Toronto, and they said, great. And I turns out Canada was the lead country for the launch. We use it as a pilot, uh, which turned out to be great. And so we got to come home and do the launch here and travel all over the world. And then that was my last corporate gig for the last three years, and then in 2003, I started my own organizational development practice. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Wow. Gee, I got half your journey right there. But I want to hear more. I want to hear, we usually start with the first question is just hearing a little bit more about your professional story and how you got to where you are today. I know a little bit of it, but if there's any pivotal moments in those journeys that you can share with us.

Culture Collapse, Exit, And Return

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Well, the first pivotal moment has to be getting hired. I was uh gonna work in the high-tech industry because I was in Ottawa and there's a lot of high-tech going on, and my undergrad was in business, and I was interviewing with a digital couple company called Digital, and they were gonna put me in a sales position in Ottawa. And at the last minute, they changed their mind, said, Would you move to Halifax? And I don't know anybody in Halifax, I had no family. I thought, well, so I kept my eyes open to see if there were other opportunities. The economy wasn't so great. Well, I wrote my last exam, and one of the guys from my class who I'd been kind of social buddies with said, Come on, we'll go have a few beers. So we had a few beers. He had a few more than a few beers, and just before he kind of passed out at the bar, he slid a business card over the to across the bar to me from his brother-in-law, who is a national sales manager at a company called Smith Klein, which was a big pharmaceutical company, and he said, Call my brother-in-law, John, he's got a job, and maybe you can interview for it. Well, the next morning I woke up Friday morning and saw this business card in my pocket, and I kind of recalled that he said I should call him. So being a kid who needed a job because I was sick of eating craft dinner for the last three weeks and I couldn't pay my rent, I was broke. I called this guy John. He goes, Well, I'm in town right now and I've got one more interview slot open, so why don't you come downtown to Ottawa, put your suit on? So I did, and he liked what I had to say. So Monday I met with uh district manager, and Tuesday I was on a plane to Toronto. I was working not for Smith Klein, to my surprise. I was working for Allargan, which was a iCare division that they had just, I guess they had bought or were in the middle of transacting to for Allargan. So yeah, I was just it was a whirlwind. I had never flown before, and I lost my hearing on the flight because I my ears popped. So I'm going to Me's, I can't hear anything. I don't know what company I'm working for, so I didn't get off to a great start. But anyway, that was pivotal. But they thought I could sell. Uh so I sold, because I'd sold since I was a little kid, you know, paper roots to pay for hockey and retail clothing and all kinds of stuff. So a little bit of gift to gab, I suppose. And my French was horrible, but good enough for bilingual territory. So yeah, I did a couple years in sales, and then I had taken a marketing undergrad, and a job opened up for that in Toronto, so I took that and then bounced around all over the place. I ended up doing 18 of my 21 years with that company. I left and came back. Another pivotal part of that journey was about six years into my career, the culture had gone from fantastic, great learning ground. So many young men and women had come into Allergan in the mid-80s, mid to late 80s, and got such a tremendous grooming, great culture, great leaders. And then all of a sudden things went sideways. They hired some people who were talented, but just their values were not my values. And so a bunch of the young talent, myself and three or four other top, top leaders, young women and men left. And then uh they unfortunately, you know, I never wished this on anything, but one of those guys died in a car accident, and they found out that he was up to lots of bad stuff. He was having inappropriate relationships with people at the at the office, he was a drug addict, he was encouraging people to come into his little group, and all the poop hit the fan. And uh after it was done, they invited a number of the young people who had left to come back. So I came back and then they moved me to California to do a major launch in the U.S. market, which was a feather in my cap. And then I was in the right place at the right time in 1999. I was just happened to be at my desk in New York at my home office. My boss called, said, I'm glad I caught you. I said, Why? He goes, Well, you work for me. I need you to go to Vancouver. I said, Well, for all due respect, Sheldon, I don't cover Canada anymore. Why do I need to go to Vancouver? He said, Because they want to talk to a Canadian, and you know all the guys in California, and I don't have anybody up here who can do that. So you need to get on a plane Sunday night, change your plans, forget where you're supposed to go, you need to go to Vancouver and meet these doctors who have this crazy idea that you can inject neurotoxin and get rid of wrinkles. They seem to be doing it, they seem to be making a lot of money. We want to know what they're up to because there are a lot of our sales for Botox, which at the time was only indicated for uh what they call blepherospasm and strabismus. So strabismus is when little kids get crooked eyes, they'd rather not do surgery to straighten them out because they're little wee kids, right? So they inject them with a neurotoxin to straighten them out. They it calms down the overactive muscle, and the kids can see clearly and straight. The parents don't have to put up with their little child having surgery. So that's what it was originally used for. But this doctor who was a pediatric ophthalmologist was married to a dermatologist. So they're in Vancouver, and he's looking at her before and after pictures on some of the adults that she injected, and he said, Wow, those lepasm patients where the lids keep flipping, they look a lot younger. I can use that in my practice. So they started using it in the mid-80s, and then by the time I met them in would have been 98 or 99, that they they were like they were 25% of Canada's volume in the neurotoxin, despite the fact that it was being used for all kinds of stuff. And it was all cosmetic. And they had like Sylvester Stallone was one of their one of their patients, and all kinds of celebrities that you and I would know in common. So I went to visit them, and as I described in the book, it was a real lesson in leadership. Like it wasn't the science that was making them successful, it was the way they looked after the patient from start to finish and the way they treated their employees. It was remarkable. And uh it was so it impressed me so much that when we came back to do the launch, my boss said, So we're gonna tell a pharmaceutical company that we have to be customer friendly. I don't know that that's gonna go over so big. Uh but we designed the launch to be to try a certain model in Canada and we let the Americans do their own thing. And turned out our model was actually very successful following their their code of leadership. Care for the patient, make them have a great experience, like a top quality experience, treat your staff really well, and the world will beat a path to your door. And they were right, the numbers proved they were right, and then now it's a four billion dollar drug every year, year after year. So they they were doing something right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Wow. When I look at your path, and you know, you I'm gonna go right back to having beers with your buddy, and he slides across the card. Um, and you made a comment being at the right place at the right time. Your whole your whole journey sounds like just the I I feel like do you ever look back, just step back and sort of look at the whole journey of your life and go, it's exactly crazy.

Discovering Cosmetic Botox In Vancouver

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah. This is crazy, it makes no sense whatsoever. I'll tell you the other thing that doesn't make any sense is the negative part of it. So you're probably wondering how I I had the best job in the industry. Everybody was like so jealous. I'm flying all over the world, meeting really interesting people. I'm on the Chandlysée in in Paris, France for three weeks in a row. And I'm going up and down the Chandly telling plastic surgeons who think they're God that they don't know what they're doing when it comes to running the business side of their practice, and they're listening to me and they're making changes. And I'm thinking, how did I get here? Uh so the reason that all of a sudden I lost that great job was I ended up having a very difficult boss that was put in above the guy who actually sponsored the whole launch. So they replaced him, they brought this fellow up, and we had known each other, and I knew we weren't compatible, we had different values in life. He was really smart, he had a lot of skills, but just 180 degrees different in terms of our fiber. So it didn't take long for me to realize that God was trying to tell me I need you to go somewhere else and do something else. I know you're having fun, but fun is over. I went, oh darn. And I resisted it. My ego pushed back. My coach was trying to be gentle and finally just almost literally grabbed me by the collar one day, and he said, Robert, you need to listen to me. This is not a matter of if, but when. You know that this you've now heard confirmed through people that you know in common that he's coming after you and he's gonna get you. And you have to decide how you want to leave, not whether you're going to leave. And do you want to leave honoring your values, or do you want to succumb to get in the muck muck with him? And he may he really got a hold of me at the right time and straightened me out and said, Look, let's put a plan together with God's help to put your talent and skills someplace where it can be well used. It's just not here. You have to get over that fact and stop fighting it. And so to George's credit, he got to me at the right time, coached me, and I came to the realization after he gave me all this homework that you know coaches give you. Like, when do you lose track of time? And what trying to find my core talent. And it's funny, I tell the story in the book I just wrote. I had been on a 10-hour flight back and forth to the UK and Europe, and I came back, and I still didn't have my homework done. I had to come up with this purpose statement. And uh my son was having breakfast one morning and he was about eight years old, and he was struggling with a math equation. I'm pretty good at math, so I said, Well, bring it over here. I think I see the problem in your formula. So as I was fixing his formula, he took my homework and he wrote down human gardener at the bottom of this long paragraph of stuff that I had written. And I thought, wow, that's it. That's that's what I've been trying to figure out for like days and long flights trying to figure out what my purpose is. And this eight-year-old kid writes down human gardener in a scroll, you know, sloppy penmanship, and I go, Oh, smart little guy, he figured this out. It took me like three days, and I never even got close. So I took it into George that morning, my coach, and I explained to him, he goes, Yeah, that's it. That's what I thought you were since I met you, and yet you thought yourself as a strategist and a sales and marketing guy. But they were both right. Like once I really thought about it, Lisa, I realized that God's gift to me was to I just love seeing people get to their best selves. I coached lots of kids, um, coached Special Olympics now for the last 10 years, uh, coach a lot of people in their business and sometimes in their personal lives. And it's it's my it's it's what it's what stirs my heart. And so I feel so blessed that um people like George came along when they did, and my wife, my son, some other people grabbed me by the collar, so to speak, and said, You're not in the right lane here. God wants you to go somewhere else, so come on over here. And it was just, yeah. So I've been blessed now. I've been doing I've been doing this sort of uh organizational health, if you want to call it, uh for more than 20 years now. It's so it's so easy to very rewarding.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, it's so easy to um ignore that when somebody says get in your lane, like and and and multiple people come at you and you're like, No, I I know better.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

But people are, yeah, I know that about you. Or they confirm it, and it it's a good feeling if you you know, once you start to look for it, it's a really good feeling.

Patient Experience As Strategy

SPEAKER_00 13:03

But until you recognize it, yeah, and I think God had sent me some signals, had he sent me some signal men and women, and I just refused to listen. So he I suppose he hit me between the eyes with a two by four and gave me this very obtuse boss where I was so misaligned. And listen, I'm not saying he wasn't a good leader in his own way, but he wasn't for me. Um to be able to, yeah, and and for me to be able to land here. And then about ten years into my own practice, I was coaching sports with a gentleman that you might know, Steve Clements, uh, who is a big part of Leader Impact in Ontario. And uh Steve and his dad were running national sports at the time, and they want a little outside counsel, so I came in and did a little work with them, and I got to know Steve really well. And Steve was on his own spiritual path, and he said, Hey, why don't you come and check out Leader Impact with me? I know you you have that as part of your life, and maybe you'd like to join a sort of a fraternal opportunity. I said, Sure, I'll try that. So I went to one of those Leader Impact breakfasts with Steve, and I really liked, I was craving for an opportunity to engage in that kind of conversation with people who were also seeking uh harmony between their work life and their their spiritual and home life. And uh it's been a huge blessing to me. Uh now run my own Leader Impact group remotely. Everybody went remote in during COVID. Well, we actually did a remote group just before COVID, and then it kicked in and everybody went crazy because it it turned out to be the best thing because we had nothing else to do but get on the computer and talk to each other. So and it's it's been so rewarding, not only personally, for me to have such a blessing in that in my in my life every week, but it's so cool to have other men that I know from various walks of life, and half the people are people I recruited into the group who I would say at least half of them have really very little spiritual un underpinning. Or I was blessed to be raised in a very spiritual family. Four or five of the folks that I introduced to Leader Impact either had none or very little, but they were curious and they wanted, they could see that they needed something in their life a little different. And to watch their growth, like the other day, we were praying for somebody at the end of a Leader Impact group, and one of the guys said, you know, I gotta just share that the first time you guys prayed, I I felt really uncomfortable. But I kind of let it go because it's not my group, and I was invited, but he said, now I look forward to it. Now I I bring prayers to the group, and I know that our group has a heck of a track record. We've had four or five people go into remission. You know, one one in my neighborhood, uh friend of ours, Lou, who was diagnosed with pretty aggressive cancer, in addition to his Parkinson's. And his wife told us after we prayed for him, like, they can't find Lou's cancer, like it just disappeared. And we had somebody in our group just recently who's struggling with a pre pre, it's a precursor to a bone cancer, and or uh yeah, blood cancer. And same thing, his white blood cells just took off in the right direction. He feels great. Uh, we had a heart transplant guy in our that we prayed for. We had a young guy with a brain tumor we prayed for that came out the other side. Like Lisa, it's unbelievable. So this guy who's a skeptic, he's a scientist, he's came from the life science industry like me, said, you know, when I first started with this group, I thought you guys are all a little weird. Uh you know, and not it's an honest reaction, right? But it's so heartening to me, because I had the same reaction when I went with Steve in my first leader impact group. I was really comfortable with the group prayer thing, but as it's gone down now and it's 10 years, it's such a big part of our bond as fellow Christians or seekers, I would say, that we do this together.

Losing A Dream Job And Values Clash

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Yeah. Good. Uh getting back, we we talked a little bit about business, but I want to talk about um principle of success. You you've you know you've talked a lot about um your business and how you've got to where you are pivotal moments, but a principle of success, what what would you say is yours and if you have a a story that can illustrate that?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Well, I'm gonna steal it from my friends who volunteered to be guests on our podcast. So 20 years into my business, a friend of mine from the US I'd work with, Todd, got a hold of me. He said, Your 20th anniversary. And I go, Yeah. He goes, I go, I'm very touched that you remembered. He goes, Oh, I I remember it, I kept track. And I said, Well, thanks. You're gonna do anything special, he said. I said, I don't know. I'm thinking about a few things. He goes, I have an idea for you. Why don't you interview 20 of your favorite leaders over the years? And I thought, that's a brilliant idea. So my son, Eric, does podcasts for prof at university. I thought, okay, well, I even have a podcast guy. So I interviewed these 20 amazing people and men and women, and at the end of the podcast run, my last guest, Paul, asked me, so what have you learned? And it was one of those questions you don't expect to get, right? So I heard myself talking about some sort of real takeaways. And as I shared them with him, I started making notes about those things, and I thought, you know, I've always thought about writing a book, and I go away every Feb March with my wife Christine and take a bit of a break and update our intellectual property for our practice. So it really hunkered down last year. We ended up in Tampa area. Um we like to go to spring training, and all I did was write, and she would edit. Luckily, she's a gifted copywriter, copy editor. So we produced a book called CARE, and it stands for those four principles: compelling vision, authentic culture, role modeling leadership, and then encouraging people to be the best version of themselves. That's what the acronym stands for. So we tried to write what we learned from all of our 20 some years now being in the practice, getting to meet so many great people, and also borrowed from you know the other things that I've seen come across my desk or my life in the last little while. So it was fun to get it out there, you know, and to put it together. And now I'm getting feedback about the book. It's kind of cool. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Not all of us get to write a book on our best principle of success. So well done on care. Putting it down on paper. Um I'm wondering, you know, I think well, we all know we learn more from our failures and mistakes than on successes. And um, have you had any? Could you share just one?

Finding Purpose: The Human Gardener

SPEAKER_00 19:03

My biggest my biggest enemy is my ego. I'm a cup I'm a competitive person. I was gifted at school. Uh, I skipped a grade. I was in a very loving family of also very smart siblings. I had six older brothers and sisters, a couple of them skipped grades. They all finished first in their class. That's one of those things when you're youngest to seven, you're always getting compared to some one of your older siblings by the teachers. So I felt this very high level of sense of success and competitiveness. And so it that that's great if you keep keep your eye on why you have that those talents and capabilities, those inclinations. But if you but if you're selfish about it, you know, you can be a bit of an asshole. So you know Yeah, I think I think what I've learned the better version of myself is when I take those gifts and talents and experiences and I uh try to make sure that I'm uh putting them to work for other people's benefit, not for my own. But I guess like any of us, Lisa, we can sometimes get caught up in our own. So I have to watch like My nickname when I worked in the US was Sparky because I don't give up on stuff and I'm competitive. So sometimes I'll just run headlog into a brick wall just because somebody told me I couldn't get through it. So I've been my my own worst enemy sometimes, just missing obvious signals, not listening, not paying attention to what really matters in life, you know, trying to be there for other people, help other people grow. When I do that, I seem to be much better to myself and to others. So that's probably my biggest ongoing battle is maintain my focus on what God wants me to do, not what I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yeah. I appreciate that you just shared my ongoing battle. I was gonna ask you, how are you doing? Because I I think I still I'm doing so well, and then I'm then I I get my ego gets caught up, and I think all about me, me, me. And then I remember, but I'm supposed to be, you know, sharing my talents and helping other people grow.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Well, and what keeps me in check, and maybe Lisa, this is the same way for you, is I have to double down. I have to work maybe harder than most to keep myself uh feet on the ground and not let my ego run away and and things like that, my competitiveness. I find my spiritual practice is is not a nice to have, it's a have to have if I'm gonna be my best self. I really have to invest in it, work at it. So I work really hard at it. Very involved in my church. Leader impact has a big impact on me, it's very positive. But it's um something I've really leaned into, particularly in the last 10 or 15 years. Um and I think when I pay attention to God and what he wants for my life, and I really listen to him through not direct conversation, but you know, he finds his way to communicate to us through people and circumstance. And when I keep my radar on, then I find I'm in a good place. And when I turn my radio off, he's still broadcasting, I'm just not listening, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So yeah, I loved your comment. Just um, you know, hearing God comes in so many ways. I mean, it can come in people, it can come reading the Bible, it can come in, you know, listening to the radio. Like it just it can it can come to you in so many ways and just being open, right? And not turned off.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah, and it and it's you know, when I'm really tuned in, um I'll actually have a little laugh at myself because I'll see something like today. I had a conversation with a client, it's just amazing. They've got a drug that will put people with late-stage tumor solid tumor cancer into full remission. And they showed me a patient video last week when I was with them in Houston. This was a real live video that came in that day from someone who was told they were going to die, and this was their last chance. And they had one um infusion, and two weeks later they were hiking through a mountain, that mountain area stopped, recorded the video, and sent it to them and said, You guys work so hard, so I get to live. I'm I'm in full remission, and uh I'm going to my son's graduation and my daughter's wedding. I just can't thank you enough. I'm sitting there thinking, wow, I get to work with people who do this. And uh I think I think it was a little poke from God to say, you know, sometimes we don't know the little thing that we do that it can result in something like that. Like I am some infinitesimally small decimal point of impact on that person's outcome, but uh but an important part because I'm trying to help that leadership team move a little faster so people like that don't die. And uh I had to have a little laugh and think that was rewarding but also humbling to see that and just feel his emotion and think I I gotta take what I do seriously in a sense and uh not miss how important something that I might think is innocuous in a conversation one day with a leader. Well, what's the downstream effect, the real the far end of that value chain? It might be something like that, right? So sobering, yeah.

Faith, Coaching, And LeaderImpact

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yeah. We we don't know where we are in the story. We don't know if we're this little part of someone's big story, but we were instrumental for that needle to move, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Um so I mean you know, you're involved in leader impact, and you know we want to grow personally, professionally, and spiritually for increasing impact. I'm wondering if you're willing to share, but you kind of have many shared many examples of how the spiritual place a practical difference in your life as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I think for me, um the biggest thing that I've noticed of late is I have a fair number of people now. I don't know if the COVID was the onset of this. I think it had a big impact on all of us, but particularly that generation that was trying to find its legs, just trying to get into workforce, right? And now they're three, four, five years post-COVID. They're my son's cohorts. And I'm really enjoying my engagement with them because they're I see a bit of a return or uh an appetite for a sense of meaning and something that they can that can underpin their lives that maybe they didn't have until they got this point in their own journey, now that they're starting their families, they're getting deep into their careers. And I see this, I just read an article my sister sent me today, that there's a big resurgence in the attendance in church in North America from that cohort between 80, 18, and 30 years old. And I see that now in my in my day-to-day, and what they what that generation wants is some mentorship because they didn't have necessarily the underpinnings that Lisa you and I might have got when our parents dragged us to church and we had all that underpinning, and hopefully some of it sunk into our thick heads, right? That generation doesn't have much of that, so they need mentorship, and I've been blessed that I think in my spiritual journey, this has now become something that I have to pay attention to because I think there's a need for it, and I think that there's some things I can do to help, and there's some other people. So actually, you would know Angel Morales from Leader Impact, and so I connected Angel to a group of young men just this week and try and encourage them to start their no their a new a next generation group that is gonna be so much different than the old guys that I'm around with now that we've been together and we're all in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. These young guys are in their 20s and 30s. We're gonna let them have their own group, but I'm so curious to see what it's gonna look like and how it's gonna move forward because I know it's gonna be different, but it'll be kind of fun to compare notes with my two sons that hopefully they'll be involved in it.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah. We have a um, so my group is probably the 56. No, I think I'm the oldest at 56. Uh, so 45, 50, but we have a 30-year-old in our group, and she is the youngest, and we love her as much as she loves us, just to give the, you know, she's actually a manager uh and she manages people our age. And, you know, that that can be hard, right? For a 56-year-old to be managed by a 30-year-old. She's amazing. And so hearing both sides of the stories as someone who works with a 30-year-old or manages a 30-year-old or manage, you know, she's she's great. But yeah, they do need their own, you know, in their own age, and they're growing together as leaders, but we love having ours.

Principle Of Success: CARE Framework

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah. But you know what's very um encouraging to me, Lisa, is in the first few years where this has gotten on my radar, the one thing I find comes back and gets affirmed with me is the simple biblical truth, if you want to call that, or principle that if you first commit yourself to walk with God, to really do what He wants you to do to fulfill His purpose for your life, He'll look after everything else. Like I can't tell you that that's a pithy thing in our Bible, you know, that it says that in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But when you actually live by that principle, it has never failed to manifest itself. It doesn't matter if I'm uh exchanging some thinking with a guy my age in his 60s or somebody who's in their 20s, if they actually go ahead and dive into that end of the pool and get wet and and say, I'm going to live by your will for my life. I have yet to meet a person that doesn't come back to me and say, that's the best thing I ever did for myself and my sense of fulfillment. Actually, my next book is going to be about that because I've got some interesting stories that have come back to me in that last five years where I've paid attention to this. I think there's a there's a problem in our society that we've got hooked into this pursuit of happiness thing. And I think it's wrong-headed. You end up chasing serotonin and dopamine in your brain instead of this sense that you get when you do something that's meaningful and fulfilling. Like you would have to say in our lifetime, who do we think are some of the most fulfilled people we've ever known? They're not necessarily happy every day. Like my mother Teresa probably wasn't happy every day waking up with that much of pain and disease and people suffering on the streets of Calcutta. But was she fulfilled? You're darn right she was. So if we kind of use that as an example and think, what's a life well lived? It's not pursuing this false promise of happiness. It's living a life that matters. And I'm a bit of a math guy, so in my head I could write and make notes, and I said, fulfillment is the F. Our core talents are the things that God gives us, experiences are our sort of central talents, times the number of people we help. Like there's a bit of a formula there, right? And I think if you pay attention to that, it's kind of like you know, we have a performance review at work every year. At the end of the year, our boss sits down, did you have a good year or not? And blah, blah. Imagine if you just tried to put yourself in your life performance review. You really put yourself in that conversation with God at the end, and just boom, you're there, and he's sitting with you in whatever form, whether Jesus is there and Peter and Paul and everybody else, who knows? But let's say there's some accountability. What is the measure of your success? Is it, were you happy? No. I think he's gonna say, Did you do what I designed you to do with the advantages and the talents I gave you? And I think it's gonna be our success, if you want to call it that, in a life well lived, is gonna be about fulfillment, not happiness.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Yeah. Oh, that's good. I can't wait for fulfillment now. Keep us in keep us in the loop on that. Um, I have two last questions for you. Uh at Leader Impact, we're dedicated to leavers, leaders having a lasting impact. So as you continue through this amazing journey that you are on, have you considered what you want your faith legacy to be when you leave this world?

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, that I wrestle with God.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

You wrestle with God every day?

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Every day.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah. I think some people think it's easy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

No, I I I read as much as I do about it. I I'm in a course right now with my church, with a whole bunch of other people. It's kind of a formative four-year program. I'm taking it because it it allows me to really pursue that wrestling with other people. And Leader Impact does that for me too. Um that to me is at least a that that's what I hope people would say about me that are commenting on my spiritual life. He never stopped wrestling with God.

Ego, Competitiveness, And Humility

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah. I'm uh taking a course hearing God. And it is but when you say wrestle with God, it's yeah. It's it's a good course. So that's a great one. I'm I'm in awe. That was really good. Um, my last question for you is what brings you the greatest joy?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Uh, this one's not um hard to give you an answer. It's hard to talk about because it's very uh emotional, but my biggest joy comes from seeing people become the bigger version of themselves. Doesn't matter if it's a little kid I'm coaching on a ball diamond or someone who's preparing for the end of life. I I did some spiritual coaching in the hospital for a few years, or everything in between that. If there's something I can do, thanks to God to help them move themselves forward in any way, that's my harvest. Um it's nice that I there's some people who want to pay me to do that so I can pay my bills. But at the end of the day, I have my one of my first bosses, Dave, had this great expression when I was a salesman. He said, You don't have to sell something every day, you just have to think that I bring value to somebody's practice today. That's what you're paid to do. Uh, because I was calling on doctors at the time. So I I think about Dave quite a bit because I want to put my feet on the floor and every day when I wake up, think yesterday did I help someone be a slightly bigger version of themselves, as God as God defines that. That's that's kind of my scorecard, I guess, Lisa, if I had to pin it down to something.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Wow, that's good. That's deep. You're a deep guy.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Well, I grew up in a town called Deep River.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Is that jeez, Rob. That is funny. Uh and now you're in Port Hope.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Yeah. See, there's a nuclear theme here, so if the lights go out, you could just follow me home because it all glow. Uh, the little the little nuclear plant that I grew up next to, Chalk River, is actually where my dad was the Reeve, and we lived in Chalk River. So yeah, I don't know, the nuclear thing follows me around. Now they're building the world's biggest nuclear reactor right down the street from us. So I guess the theme will continue for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yeah, you're the guy that glows. You're the guy that glows and wrestles with God.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yeah. Rob, I want to thank you for spending this time with me. You have given us some great answers, some great, great discussion points that I'm going to take forward with some of my with my Leader Impact. Um, it's been a joy just spending this time with you. Um I look forward to your next book, which is going to be on fulfillment, so we'll look out for that. If people want to follow you and engage with you, maybe ask you some questions, what's the best place to find you?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Well, two places, probably the best. LinkedIn. You can always find me on LinkedIn uh under Thrive. I'm also associated with Barrett, which is the group we use for culture. Um and then our website, thriveatwork.ca, uh, or they can people can just good old-fashioned call me. The phone does ring, 905-717-7852. I'll answer. Um, happy to engage with people. You can get our book on Amazon. It's under my name, Robert Sega, under care, C-A-R-E, all capital letters. And uh look for fulfillment next time, this time next year, if I uh live up to my personal commitment.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Well, you're gonna have to get away to, I think, Florida and have your wife copy, write your book or editor.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Well, elbows up, we're going to Puerto Rico instead.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Oh, elbows up. I love it. Rob, thank you again for joining us. It has been a joy.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

My pleasure. Thank you, Lisa. Take care.

Tuning Into God And Meaningful Work

SPEAKER_01 34:29

All right. Well, if you're part of Leader Impact, you can always discuss or share this podcast with your group. And if you're not yet part of Leader Impact and would like to find out more and grow your leadership, find our podcast page on our website at leaderimpact.ca. You can also check out groups available in Canada at Leaderimpact.ca, or if you're listening from anywhere else in the world, check out LeaderImpact.com or get in touch with us by email. Info at LeaderImpact.ca, and we will connect you. And if you like this podcast, please leave us a comment, give us a rating or review. This will help other global leaders find our podcast. Thank you for engaging with us, and remember, impact starts with you.