Rob Dube on How to Achieve True Entrepreneurial Freedom

In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, Doug Smith interviews Rob Dube, author of Shine: How Looking Inward is the Key to Unlocking True Entrepreneurial Freedom, co-written with Gino Wickman. Rob shares powerful insights on how leaders can balance their drive with inner peace, manage their energy, and lead with humility. From understanding the nature of being “driven,” to implementing the 10 Disciplines that protect your boundaries and amplify your impact, Rob offers practical steps to help leaders align their inner and outer worlds.

00:00 Introduction to Rob Dube and Shine
01:00 Why looking inward fuels greater outer-world success
02:20 The power of sharing your inner story
04:55 Recognizing you’re not alone in leadership challenges
05:43 Discovery #1 – You’re driven: strengths, pitfalls, and management
07:52 Discovery #2 – Decisions from love vs. fear
11:23 Discovery #3 – It’s possible to be driven and have peace
14:55 The True Self Assessment and protecting your boundaries
17:10 Discipline #1 – 10-year thinking and living in the present moment
23:32 Discipline #5 – Knowing your 100% and working at your optimal capacity
27:35 Discipline #3 – Saying no with grace and setting mentoring boundaries
30:45 Discipline #10 – Being humble and practicing daily gratitude
35:02 Final encouragement to leaders: free your true self and shine

The L3 Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Andocia Marketing Solutions. Andocia exists to bring leaders’ visions to life. Visit https://andocia.com to learn more.

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Transcript

Doug Smith 0:00

Hey leader, and welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith, and I am your host, and we recorded this episode live from our Burgo Realty Studios. Today you're going to hear my conversation with Rob Dubai. Rob co-wrote a book with Geno Wickman, who is the founder of Traction and EOS, and the book is called Shine, How Looking Inward is the Key to Unlocking True Entrepreneurial Freedom. Rob's been on the podcast before and added a ton of value, and this conversation does the exact same thing. So you're going to love this. And let's just dive right in. Here's my conversation with Rob Dubai. Rob, it's been uh just a few months since we last talked. We were just joking about this. Uh apparently you're gonna come out with a new book every three to six months. So I'm excited uh to do this more often. But uh we are here because you have a brand new book coming out, and uh I'm really excited about it as well. And uh we'll just leave this really open ended. The book's called Shine, How Looking Inward is the key to unlocking true entrepreneurial freedom. And uh you tagged up with our friend Gino Wickman, uh, who founded EOS again on this one. And so why did you guys write this book and and why now? And what do you want entrepreneurs to get out of it?

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Well, you know, we both um had lessons in our long entrepreneurial journey. And, you know, what we learned was uh we were very focused on our outer world. And uh, Gino really talks about this a little bit more than I do because I started my journey, inner journey, a little bit earlier than he did. But, you know, an outer world success is amazing and we're not against it. We're all for it, actually. We want you to have more of it. But what we realize is that along the way, going inside is really what helps you with that greater outer world success. And we could talk more about what that all means. But that's why we brought our learnings and maybe some of our wisdom or what we believe to be some wisdom that might be useful and put it in a book so people could uh understand it, grasp it, follow it, and hopefully be successful with it.

Doug Smith 2:07

Yeah, and I know I'm excited, and I don't know how much if I got into this at all, our last conversation, but the inward world, the inner world is so important. You know, in the fall of 2020, I ended up having uh what I call a mental breakdown. I don't know if it actually, you know, was that or not, but for me it was. It was the darkest season of my life, and ended up going into therapy. And when you're desperate and when you're in the middle of it, you'll do anything uh to get help. And throughout that journey, you know, which ended up being, you know, a six to two, two years, six month to two year journey to fully get out of that. Um, man, I learned so much of it about so much of what got me to that place was what was going inside that I didn't even know about andor never dealt with. And so I I don't think there could be a more important topic uh than this one. And so you actually start off the book talking a little bit about discovery and how to actually start to look inward. And so why don't you just talk a little bit about that and that journey you take readers on?

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Yeah, for sure. Thank you. And thank you for sharing that, by the way, because you know, this the I'm gonna go a little back a little bit ahead and then I'll come back to your question. But you know, one of the things that we encourage people to do in the book is actually tell their inner story. And, you know, you can do that in different ways. Uh, you can tell it to yourself, you could write it and maybe work with somebody. You you mentioned you went to therapy, and that can be very useful for some people. It sounds like it it was useful for you. Definitely. Uh, the next thing you can do is consider going to people that you trust very deeply and that you're very close to and share with them what's going on. Some of those that inside stuff could even be uh stuff, imprints from the past that you may want to share, traumas potentially. Um, you know, a lot of times we keep that all tight and we we're walking around with it and we don't want to burden people with that. But truth is, is when we open up and people understand where where these things are coming from, you know, the love just pours out. It's quite beautiful, actually. So we share, uh we encourage people to actually share their inner story. And then to your what you're doing just now, um, you know, you shared what's happened, you know, since 2020, and you're doing this to a broad audience of some people you know and others, many others I'm sure you don't, and you're willing to open up your your heart and be vulnerable in that way. And I appreciate that because what that ends up doing is it inspires people to do the same thing. So I felt compelled to share that as you kicked us off in just the right way.

Doug Smith 4:38

No, it's it's so good. And I think you know, leaders listening to this, you know, we're gonna talk about this, but one of the the keys of discovery is just recognizing that as leaders we're driven and we all go hard. And but I think it's so important to realize that you're not alone. I remember meeting with my pastor, and um and and I just I asked him because I didn't know, I just said, Am I gonna be okay? And he said, Doug, I can't name a leader that I know uh that has not gone through what you're going through or something like it. And and you're gonna be okay, you're gonna get through this. And as I got healed from my journey and started sharing, just like you're saying, I'm shocked how many people come up to me after I'll share a talk in tears, either saying, I feel like I'm so close, I'm on the verge of that breakdown myself, or I'm in the middle of it and and I don't know if I'll ever get out. And and so many people I think just are isolated and they feel like I'm the only one ever going through this, no one else would understand, no one I'm gonna be viewed as weak. And I'm sure you've seen this with entrepreneurs as well. Nothing could be further from the truth.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Yeah, you're just so spot on, so spot on. And you know, this is a great time, you know, Gino and I feel in our uh history to start looking at things a little bit more deeply. I mean, I think over this has been an evolution to us opening up and knowing that we don't always have to have the tough, you know, suit of armor on anymore. We can still be really successful, but um, you know, learning about, and this isn't a mental health book, actually. Um, you know, it's really um uh a book around how to maximize your energy and uh you know how to make greater impact and how to find inner peace. And I think everybody can relate to that, and you don't necessarily have to have mental health challenges to uh want that. It's just being an entrepreneur going hard all the time. Now, you mentioned the first discovery, which is you're driven. Okay. And so uh there's a there's a book called Driven by Dr. Doug Brackman, and we're big fans of that book. And and what Dr. Brackman uh talks about is that the driven are about 10% of the overall population. And if you break that down, if you say there's 8 billion human beings on this earth, that means there's 800 million that are driven. They're not all entrepreneurs, thank goodness. It'd be crazy out there. But you know, they're scientists and they're doctors and you know, lawyers and you know, space explorers, et cetera, et cetera. So, but 800 million people are just highly, highly driven. And the thing about driven and why it's important to uh notice this in yourself is a few reasons. First, you're going so fast and nobody can keep up with you, and you don't understand why. It's so easy for you, it's just natural. Yeah, and you're looking back and you're thinking to yourself, why is everyone so far behind me? I don't understand what's going on here. It's so frustrating. So you're frustrated, and guess what? They're frustrated too. And and what ends up happening is we leave a black trail behind us. It affects people's lives because we're just not aware of our driven nature and the most important part of it, which is how to manage it. So we're going hard. We drive ourselves so hard that we find ourselves sometimes burnt out, we're workaholics, and uh we can't slow ourselves down. So that awareness is really key. So we always start with that. You're driven, understand what that's all about, and understand how to manage it. The next piece to understand about you as a driven is that decisions are made out of love or fear.

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SPEAKER_03 9:34

First, let's talk about love, your heart, and then let's talk about fear, your ego. So when you're coming from your heart, you're coming from your true self. It's what you know to be true already inside of you before things are hitting your analytical mind. Okay. So you already have a good sense of what aligns with you in your life. Now, what we end up doing oftentimes is driven, is we start getting all the inputs, and then we start analyzing and overanalyzing and thinking, I wonder what that person will feel, or maybe I'll miss out on this opportunity, or you know, this, that, the other. And so we end up making a decision from fear. That's our ego. Ego's not bad, by the way. Ego's good too. So it's good and bad, just know that. But on the fear side, our ego is trying to protect us. It doesn't want us to get hurt. And it's afraid that if we make that decision from love, we're gonna get hurt. And our analytical mind is is convincing us that we're gonna do something uh that that if we make that decision from our uh our heart, we're gonna do it's gonna be disruptive in our life. And so that's an important thing to recognize. So what we teach is the idea of slowing down, which we all get this now, pausing and just asking ourselves, where's this decision coming from? Now, ideally, if you can find a silent moment in a chair away from all your stuff, focus on your breath, and just really start to feel into your body as you kind of think about this decision and all the facts that you've received, and then what message that you're receiving about it. Because sometimes the facts, by the way, they're really compelling. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad decision to go that route. See, fear doesn't mean you're making a wrong decision, it's just a decision that may not align completely with you. Let's let's use an example in a business sense. You you come into contact and get introduced to an absolute rock star in your industry. They they have the know-how and the knowledge to bring your organization to a whole nother level if you bring them in. Everyone's telling you, you got to bring this person in. They're unbelievable. But you spend some time with them, and there's something inside of you that's like gnawing at you. It's like, I don't know, there's something there, but this person has everything else. So you ignore it. You ignore what your heart's telling you because you're afraid you're gonna miss out. You're afraid, you're afraid that you're gonna miss on all these wonderful things that you that you believe this person's gonna bring. And you we see this all the time as leaders. Doug, you see it, I do too. I've done it way too many times.

Doug Smith 12:35

Me too.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

You bring the person in, and it's six months later, it's three months later, and you go, I made a mistake. Dang it, I made a mistake. I knew it, I knew it, I felt it. You you you're like mad at yourself. You look bad. Yeah. So I'm sure many of the listeners, this is a leadership podcast, they you are relating with this right now, I'm sure. And there's a million other examples. So that's the second discovery. The third discovery is it is possible to be driven and have peace. And I have to explain this because, as driven, many of us have become wired to feel this sort of edge that we have, this speed that we go at. And we're afraid that peace equals slowdown, equals lose your edge, equals I won't be as successful. And so we're afraid to kind of give that up. And what we're teaching is you do not need to give up your driven nature. As I mentioned at the outset, you need to learn how to manage your driven nature. Once you know how to manage it and you're clear about understanding yourself, and you're clear about protecting your boundaries, so you will be doing the things that you love and making the greatest impact in this world, you will have peace. Yes. So you can be driven and have peace. It's possible. And that's our framework for it.

Doug Smith 14:08

Yeah, I love this. And I love that it's all about self-discovery because once you start becoming self-aware of these things, you spend the rest of the book, which we'll dive into actually giving them tools. You keep talking about you have to learn how to manage this. Um, I have to go back though, because my mind, when you're sharing the about the book driven, uh, 10% of the population, I think you said, is driven. Does that mean 90% of the planet are undriven people who yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

What is in a different way?

Doug Smith 14:34

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

Yeah, in different than you. Okay. Yes. They're they're they're they're wired differently. Yeah. So it's not to say everyone's just loafing around, you know, doing nothing. That's it's far from it. You know, these are all very productive members of society, just there are certain people, and and you know, you can point to athletes and yeah, let's use athlete athletics as an example, uh, because I I believe you're you are um interested in in sports, and I've seen some of your things. So let's let's you're in Pittsburgh, and you know, let's say, you know, uh Ben Rothensburger. Did I say his last name right, Roth?

Doug Smith 15:11

Rothensburger, you got yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

I mean, he was one of the top quarterbacks. Like, how come all the quarterbacks aren't the top? I mean, oh, Ben Ben had the the uh he just had natural abilities. Oh, I'm sure he did, and a lot of them do. But Ben did something differently, and he was driven in a different way. I mean, that guy was so tough. You know, some of those quarterbacks weren't as tough as him because he was just so driven, he was gonna get the extra yard, the extra whatever it friggin' took. That guy was gonna make it happen. Not all the quarterbacks are like that, they're really good, but they didn't have that kind of drive. Yeah, and so that's what I'm talking about.

Doug Smith 15:51

Yeah, and and I think a lot of leaders that are listening to this probably are saying, I totally get it. I'm one of those people. I was actually just having a conversation with one of my friends who started a company, it's blowing up, all this opportunity is coming his way, but now you know he's putting in you know all the hours and all of those things. And uh, you know, we're always just trying to challenge each other, like, hey, at what point is there a cost to this that's not worth it? And so let's start to dive into some of the you share the 10 disciplines. We talked about a few of them on the last time podcast, but these disciplines are so good to help us actually manage our drive. And so um, well, one, I guess I would just ask, there's a few I wanted to dive into, but when you think about you know making an impact and having peace with that inner drive, are there one or two of the disciplines that stand out to you that you think really help manage that tension?

SPEAKER_03 16:36

Yes, for sure. So before I mention which one or two, I want to I would like to provide a little bit of context. So first, in the book, we've created an assessment. It's called the true self-assessment. So we encourage people to go, and you can take it online at thetisplones.com as well. And every 90 days, take it. It's 20 questions. It's a different assessment. If you get a 90, it doesn't mean you're an A student. If you get an 80, you're not a B, etc. Every question kind of stands on its own. And what the questions do is they shine light where light needs to be shined. So you can put a focus on that question in your life and say, what do I need to do to improve that for myself? So we we always encourage people to start there. Now, as we get into the disciplines as a framework in your life, as a foundation, there are two critical pieces to it. They help you understand yourself better and protect you, your boundaries. It's important to understand you, and I mentioned that at the outset, your true self. And once you understand yourself, your true self, not the one with the armor on that's walking around and doing all the right things all the time and pleasing people and all that kind of stuff, then you know you are much clearer about why you make decisions in your life and what the right decisions are that align with you on your inside. Once you're clear about that, you need to set your boundaries and you got to get those really clear. And you have to protect them with everything you got. And that includes your team members. If we're talking in a business sense, your team members understand these are Doug's boundaries. We don't go into them. We actually protect him because when he's protected, let's use football again. When the line's protecting the quarterback, the quarterback can survey the field and make the best decision. That's what we need to do as leaders. So we need to have that in place. Because once you understand and are protected, then you free yourself and you shine. Hence the name of the book. So let's talk about the disciplines and a couple that come to mind, and it's always the first one, which is tenure thinking. And this is a great time to be thinking about that because it's early in the year. We're in the first quarter of 2024. And when we talk about 10-year thinking, what we're suggesting to people, what we're encouraging them to do is to shift their mind from short-term thinking to thinking in 10-year time frames. So let me explain this a little. First, this goes to understanding you. What is the most important thing you will have accomplished in 10 years? So it's if it's 2030, 2024 right now, you're sitting here and you're looking back over the last 10 years and you're saying, this is the most important thing I accomplished. Let's pretend, for example, it was, let's say somebody's married and they have a family. It was, I have a beautiful, loving marriage and three wonderful, healthy children. Well, if you're a workaholic and you're never home and spending time and paying attention and having the right energy with your family, you're not aligned with your 10-year thinking. But don't worry, you have 10 years to figure it out. So start aligning your behavior today to match where what you see in 10 years. So 10-year thinking is actually all about being in the present moment and having clarity about your actions in this moment. They inform your actions today. It's not goal setting, it's not manifesting. That's not what we're suggesting. What we're suggesting is awareness of being in the present moment and having your action actions be in accordance with that 10-year thinking. One other point I wanted to make, and you prompted it because you were so uh willing to share your own personal story. In business and in life, in a 10-year period of time, on average, this isn't scientific, and it's not for it's not everybody, but generally speaking, there's gonna be two really amazing years that are gonna happen. There's gonna be six years that are pretty damn good, they're really good, and then there's gonna be two really crappy years. Wow. Point is be prepared for it mentally, be prepared for it. Because when you know what you're clear about in 10 years, you know you're gonna get through challenging times. And you have that belief, like, okay, I'm I'm burnt out. I need help. I'm gonna find the help. It might take me a year or two to get my mind back to my mind back right, my energy back right, to feel back normal, but I have time. It's okay. You know, so we're we're actually taking some pressure off because we are aware that we work in 10 year time frames.

Doug Smith 21:56

No, I was gonna say, yeah, thank you for sharing that too, even just that. Perspective for me was like a light bulb just went off. It's like, okay, you know, I think we all try to build a life and a world in which, you know, we don't suffer at all. Uh, there's there's no plot twist, everything's up and to the right. But I mean, you just said like it's very, very simple. But like, if we look back on the past, I'm 38. If I look at my 38, like, I'm like, yeah, that pretty much lines up with the timelines that you were throwing out there. And and often, I mean, how many times have you talked to leaders where they hit those times and really all they are is a plot twist? But oftentimes, even the dark season I went through, it's like I wouldn't want to go back through that for millions of dollars. But the lessons that I learned and who I've become on the other side of that, I I wouldn't trade for anything in the world either. And so I I love that the reality that that brings. So thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, in the moment, it it might make you feel a little better, but it still stinks. You still want to get out of it, you're still motivated to get out of it. But you know, it does bring perspective to things.

Doug Smith 22:55

So yeah, and the other thing I love about the 10-year vision is just the clarity that gives you, it gives you a clear vision. And actually, you make prompts. Uh one thing I loved about the book is just the simple chapter summaries with actionable points and prompts. And um, at the end of the 10-year thinking, you just said, write down anything that you did in the last week that doesn't align with your 10 year vision. And then what's one action you could take that, and for me, I'm like, oh my gosh, if I actually sit down, look over my I'm like, I did all kinds of things that and it just gave me clarity. It's like, what am I doing, wasting my time on this? This is not getting me to that 10-year vision. So those prompts are so powerful.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about discipline number five, which is a uh another thing about understanding yourself, knowing you're 100%. Okay, so this in this one, what we ask you to do is decide on and commit to the perfect number of hours per week and weeks per year that you're gonna deliver your value to the world, your greatest impact. I know leaders want to make an impact. And and so what we have never really been taught is what's the perfect amount of time each week I should be working? Should it be 30 hours? Should it be 80 hours? Like, where's the point? Where's the dipping point, the tipping point where I'm not productive anymore, but I have stuff to do and I'm plowing through it. And so getting really clear about that, and it does take experimentation, and we talk about that in the book in terms of kind of playing around with it. We give, we give some examples of ways you can do that. And so you start to play around and you begin again, we're bringing awareness to things, so you have to pay attention. So let's just say you've been a 70 an hour, uh, 70 hours a week person, and you you start to notice like, wow, I am like exhausted. You know, on I work Saturdays and Sundays, I'm just like my body just like is drained. So you recognize, okay, I have a physical reaction to that. I can see I'm I'm I'm tired. My body's tired. So I wonder what would happen if I just cut out 10 hours. Oh my God, I got to look at my calendar and somehow find this 10 hours. Well, guess what? This is about protecting you. You have to understand what are I have to start looking at everything I'm doing and start making some tough decisions. Guess what? I can't do that anymore. I'm gonna have to delegate this, I'm not gonna be in that meeting anymore, and they really don't need me anyway. And so now you're down to 60 and you start paying attention to your energy with 60, and you start playing around with it until you get the perfect number. And by the way, as you ebb and flow through your professional life and your personal life, that number's gonna change for various reasons. You might have family members that you're caring for, so that becomes like a first job, and then you have your professional job, and you're at you don't have as much energy. So let's just pretend you only had 30 hours a week to do your leadership job. What would you do? You have to start making really hard choices because let's not take for granted that that could happen. And let's start thinking that way. What would happen if I only could do 30 hours a week? I wonder what kind of how your choices would be different. Now let's think about how many weeks per year make the most sense for me. So if I'm if I'm working, you know, most people take two or three, most leaders take two or three weeks vacation, they even take their full vacation if they have four or five weeks. They even take the full thing. So they take two or three weeks vacation. So you have to ask yourself, do I need more time away? And what we always encourage you to do, which is discipline number two, take time off, is to take at least 130 days off per year and not think about work the entire time. So no checking in, no emails, no reading business books and leadership books that you know you were looking forward to going on vacation to do more business. Like, wow. No, what we're encouraging you to do, and I think as a leader, you're it's going to serve you well in the long term and in the short term, is by not exposing yourself to constant business stuff, you're gonna get exposed to new things because you're gonna be curious, new ideas, new adventures, and you're gonna come back with a much different energy because you were completely away from it all. And your energy is gonna have a higher level of creativity, your team's gonna feel it, they're gonna get excited, and you're gonna have some sort of game-changing idea when you get back or when you were there that's gonna really impact the trajectory of your business. And so that's why we say do it 130 days, which by the way, is every if you count every weekend, three weeks vacation and every US holiday, that's about 130. So, but most people work on the weekends.

Doug Smith 28:16

Yeah, yeah, true. Well, I I love these disciplines. I love that exercise of cutting down. Um, you know, every year I try to do a time study, and it's amazing when you actually track the time that you work, how much time you're actually wasting. Yeah. And, you know, some people are listening to this and they say I work 60, 70 hours, but if you actually looked at where you're spending your time, you're probably working a lot less than that, and you could be a lot more efficient and effective. But if you never take the time to do it and actually, you know, experiment, like you said, you'll never get that.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

What did you learn about yourself, Doug, when you did the time study?

Doug Smith 28:49

Oh, uh, every year I learned something new, but uh I waste a lot of time. The big thing for me now is I'm reviewing my time, and and actually this leads to another discipline, which we talked about last time, but I'm like, I could talk about this every episode. Say no. Um, I'm really challenged. So, like, again, without going to my whole story, my life was headed one way, and I had a lot of mentors who were very generous and came into my life, and my life turned away, turned around. Yeah, and I'm so grateful for the time they spent with me. And now, you know, with what I'm doing now, I get so many young leaders and people that want to reach out and want to meet with me. And I cannot say no. I I I I yes, I'll meet with you. And I have narrowed it down and gotten a little better where it's like, hey, I don't need to meet you for coffee or lunch, let's just do a 15 to 20 minute Zoom. But still, when I look at my counter, I'm like, I'm doing way too many of these, but it's so hard. And I don't know if you have any advice for me. I'd love some. But like, how how to set those boundaries and you know, still because at the end of the day, like you said, I'm a leader, I want to make an impact. Yeah, I could pour into this person, it could change their life forever. It could also be a total waste of time. So I don't know if you have any thoughts, but that's what I'm learning right now.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

I do. So and and you maybe you've even already thought about this, but you know, so maybe you say to yourself, and I'm gonna oversimplify it, but then you'll uh you'll craft it into your own thing. So you say, Um, I work, do you know how many hours of a week you work by chance?

Doug Smith 30:10

Yeah, I'd probably say 50, 55. I do. I haven't, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

Let's say I'll get I'm gonna say 55, which means probably 65, but that's okay. So let's say you have 55. So you say I'm dedicating one hour a week, which and and I'll take I'll say you take three weeks' vacation. So that's 49 hours a year that I'm gonna do mentoring. Okay, so that is very simple. If somebody comes to me and I'm at my max, you just have to say, you know what, I want to do it. I'm dying to do it, but here's what I need to do. I need to have you follow up with me in three months because I'm at my capacity right now. It's such a bummer, but now follow up with me. And there, you did a kind of mentor them right there because now they got to follow up with you. You see how serious they are. The other thing is, and we always we teach how to say no gracefully. So there's one way. You didn't close the door, you gave some good advice. You could say, tell you what, read this book and call me in six months. I'll put you on the calendar right now. But you got to read this book. Okay. So now you get you that they have to learn something, you're providing value, and then you'll meet with them in six months. The other thing you could do is if you if you know somebody that's as you know, almost as good as you are as a mentor, you could say, I can't, but I'm gonna introduce you to my friend. And this person's gonna be unbelievable for you. So you can always do things in a very graceful way. We're we're not slam the door. We always try to help. Help first. So maybe there's something in there.

Doug Smith 31:50

Um yeah, leaders, you were listening to a live coaching session with me and Rob. Thank you. I literally, I was just slacking uh with my assistant last week, and I said, we have to figure out something because this isn't working. And uh the system, like you said, it is so simple, but putting hours to it, and and that's my boundary. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is exactly what I needed today. Um so we talked a little bit about saying no, we talked about going all in, the 10-year vision. Uh, the last one I'll just as we conclude our time, the last discipline I want to hear you talk about is be humble. It's an interesting one on how this ties in, but how does being humble tie into living a life of peace?

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Well, being humble is about understanding yourself and being honest with yourself. And so what we encourage everybody to do is view themselves as an equal to every person on the planet. And again, let's go back to that word awareness. So we I think everyone listening, and just from knowing you and having these wonderful interactions with you over the past six months, I know I'm talking to a humble person. Like there's no question in my mind. And so I imagine you attract humble people. So when you work as a humble person, when you make your way through your life as a humble person, you attract other people who are humble. And that's a wonderful life. Being around people that have great humility. So, so there's one reason to be really focused on humility. Now, how do we notice if we think we're humble? But you know, which most of your listeners, I'm sure, do. So a couple of things we encourage you to do. First, draw a line, and now you have a continuum, and on one side says humble, and on the other side says not humble, and put a tick mark somewhere on that line. Really easy way to just kind of place where you think you are. Okay, so there's some, there's a self, a beginning of some self-awareness. I'm not all the way to the humble side, but I'm three-quarters of the way. Okay, so you'll work to get to the all the way. Now, if you want to take it another step, send a request via email, make it simple or text to the people, the five people closest to you in your life.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

And say, hey, would you do me a favor? Draw a line, humble on one side, not humble on the other, and put a tick mark where you think I am on the humble uh scale. And say, be honest. I won't be mad at you. Okay, I need you to be open and honest and see where they tick marked you and compare it to what you did. And now you have some feedback. And so the last thing I always like to uh encourage people to do is notice how they're interacting with the world. My favorite kind of example is when we're out at to uh for a meal or the grocery store, and something's not going our way, and it's causing us some irritation, and we associate that irritation with a person. So it could be the person at the checkout, it could be the person who's in front of us at the uh store, at the grocery store, it could be the server at the restaurant. So we start to associate, like, oh, this person, they're so unorganized. They just can't get my order right. And you start to create this whole thing. Now, is this person equal to you? I mean, is that how you treat people? Is that how you what's going on with that person? We all know this. I'm just bringing it back to the forefront. We all know they have a life going on. Who knows what's going on with them? Maybe they're super organized, but tonight they're not because they just had some crazy news before they walked in the door for work. But they can't leave work because they have to make their rent. You know, so that's these are just simple examples that help us really check ourselves from a humility standpoint. And the last thing, and uh then I'll let you conclude our time, is I never met somebody who was humble who didn't express gratitude on a daily basis, whether that's a formal practice every day where they sit down with intention and jot down things they're grateful for, or they're just constantly every single interaction, every single thing. They're just like, I'm grateful, Doug, to you for having me back so soon and your willingness to you know talk about the book. Things like that. I really was asking that. I said to the, you know, when the team booked this, I said, Doug remembers we talked already, right? And I said, Wow, that's really great. And I'm so grateful for his openness to do this again. So I never met somebody who didn't who wasn't humble or who was humble who didn't have some type of gratitude uh practice daily in their life.

Doug Smith 36:42

Yeah, well, I love that. And I'm grateful for you and the impact that you're making in the world. That's why I had you back on again. I know it would add value. Little did I know that I would be grateful that you solved my issue with spending too much time saying yes to people. So uh it was a double win. And and again, the book is called Shine for all of our listeners. If you're interested, we'll have a link in the show notes. Uh go out and get a copy of this, read through with a mastermind group or some of your team at work and uh and do this together. So, Rob, anything you want to leave leaders with today before we officially conclude?

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Honestly, just don't be afraid to go inside, look to free your true self and make a huge impact in this world. That's you're driven and that's what you're here for. And you will begin to shine.

Doug Smith 37:28

Oh, well, thank you so much, Rob. And thank you, maybe you'll have a new book in three months and we'll do it again. Okay, my man. Thank you so much. Hey Leader, and thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Rob. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything that we discussed in the show notes below. I also want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Andosha Marketing Solutions. They are the producers of this podcast. And if your organization needs any marketing expertise at all, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out their services. You can visit them at and dosha.com. That's a-n-d-o-cia.com. And as always, I'd like to end with a quote today I'll quote McGannon, who said this: leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example. I love that. But that's gonna wrap up today's episode, Leader. As always, remember this: don't quit. Keep leading. The world desperately needs your leadership. Until next time.