SPEAKER_00: 0:01

And the funny thing about it is, we actually put ourselves in that position because we wanted to be the go-to person. We wanted to be the person that everybody calls. That was the identity that we were striving for. And then when we get it, we realize how unfulfilling it is because it's not actually everything that we want. And so what I talk to my clients about now is mastering your time instead of managing your time. And mastering your time is all about aligning what you do on a day-to-day basis, your activity, with your identity and your purpose.

SPEAKER_02: 0:33

Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. Today I'm joined by Robert Heath Sr., a nationally recognized empowering leadership strategist, executive coach, and keynote speaker who knows about leading with impact. He's a former U.S. Marine Corps officer who commanded one of the largest companies in the Corps. Robert now works with high capacity leaders to align with purpose, master self-leadership, and bring out the best in their teams. His background spans law, education, and entrepreneurship. And he's coached thousands from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 Giants. At the core of it all, his mission is simple. Help leaders get the best out of themselves and those they lead. Hey Robert, it is great to have you on the podcast today. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31

It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35

So you know why I brought you here was because I know that you have fun stories to tell all of the time. And we get to focus on one today, which was a significant inflection point in your life and career. And so what I'd love to do is, as every story should be told, I'm going to start in the middle. And I wanted to uh just ask you, you know, what is this inflection point kind of in a nutshell so our listeners know where we're headed?

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So starting in the middle, we're gonna be talking about that company that I commanded when I was in the Marine Corps. Um, and how I was, as I like to call it, hustling backwards when I first started, and what happened that actually got me figuring out how to do it the right way and how to actually employ a lot of the things that I had read about, that I had studied, that I had learned, and have a ton of amazing results at the end.

SPEAKER_02: 2:28

Amazing. That sounds great, and that's quite a transition and and quite a place to be in. So I'm eager to get there. But I also want to kind of go back to before then. What led you up to that point?

SPEAKER_00: 2:43

I was in Memphis City schools, Memphis, Tennessee, which was like the 20th largest school district in the country at the time. And I saw what I felt like was like my future, and I was all on board. I was a school improvement team coordinator at the time. I was a basketball coach, I was a union rep. I was on my pathway to becoming a superintendent of schools and the superintendent of schools for Memphis City Schools at that point in time. She had just been hired, and she was a former, you know, West Tennessee graduate of schools that went out east, gotten degrees behind her name, had gotten qualifications, had run school districts out in Massachusetts. And if you know anything about Massachusetts education, parentally kind of top five in the country. Absolutely. Tennessee, not so much, maybe not as high.

unknown: 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:29

Maybe just a scotia below, right? Um, and so what was happening was I was super excited about what she was bringing and the vision that she had that she was bringing to the to the school district. And within 18 months, she was no longer there. And it wasn't as if she had slept with the wrong person or squandered some money or done some shady stuff or anything like that. It wasn't anything that kind of, you know, necessary.

SPEAKER_02: 3:55

None of that shock value made it went viral on whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 4:00

Yeah. And what I realized, what I saw was, and this is it revealed to me a blind spot that I had, is that she just didn't have the ability to galvanize the people around the vision, around the mission that she was trying to take people to. So she couldn't make the change that she was qualified for, that she had studied for, that she had done the work for, because she didn't know how to lead people. And a large part of that leadership was casting a vision and galvanizing people around that vision. And what struck me was I thought that she was a good leader. And by the same token, I thought that I was pretty good, and I could just like I was on my pathway. I was going to get the qualifications, going to do that. And it immediately opened me up to a blind spot that I had that I was completely unaware of, that I didn't know how to lead people to do big things. I knew how to lead, you know, small groups and small places. I had been in leadership roles all growing up, but I wasn't a big level leader.

SPEAKER_02: 4:52

So I'm curious with that. You saw her as a strong leader at the time, before you realized this about her and subsequently yourself, it sounds like too. What were the characteristics that you did see that made you admire how she was leading?

SPEAKER_00: 5:09

Right. No, that's a great question. And the things that I saw, I saw the vision, right? And I realized that, you know, later on, I realized that that's something that I have a skill at. I'm very good at seeing other people's visions and helping them to become reality. And what I saw was where she was trying to go. I was, I understood what she was trying to do.

SPEAKER_02: 5:28

Even when she didn't say it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:30

Even when she didn't say it, or even when like what I realized was she hadn't necessarily won me over as much as me being able to see what she was trying to do, being in alignment with what I was trying to do was helpful. But for a lot of the people in the district, sh that wasn't the case. They couldn't see what she was trying to do, and she didn't do a good job of galvanizing the people to that vision. It was she was in charge, she had the title, she had the qualifications, she had the authority, and so this is where we're going because I'm the leader. And what I saw was that crash and burn. And I was like, oh, positional authority, titular authority, qualification authority isn't what moves the needle when we're trying to make these big changes, these big transformations. And so that sent me on the journey that actually wound up with me being in the Marine Corps and commanding a company because I went to learn leadership. I went to go seek out and find a couple of different things. Number one, I went to law school to learn how society works, how do rules get made, what are norms, what is the social contract, what like let's break it down to the to the to the base. And how does this thing work? And so I got really uh skilled at understanding how we create laws, where our kind of jurisprudence comes from, where our understanding of the social contract comes from, all the rest of that.

SPEAKER_02: 6:54

So I'm curious. So all of this was one of these like vision with steps where you're sitting there thinking, okay, I want to learn leadership. So I'm going to go to law school to understand the structures, and I'm going to go to the Marine Corps and learn how to really kind of motivate and persuade people and galvanize them, as you were saying.

SPEAKER_01: 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:17

So that was all very intentional for both of those steps. You had this long-term vision for yourself. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00: 7:25

I call it my leadership sojourn, right? I went out into the wilderness and tried to figure this thing out before I tried to come back and do anything, because what I realized was that's me in 20 years if I don't figure this out.

SPEAKER_02: 7:38

Absolutely. So what helped you pull those pieces together that that should be your path forward?

SPEAKER_00: 7:45

Yeah, and a lot of it for me, again, so when I'm in Memphis, so I'm a school improvement team coordinator, which is basically like I'm a teacher, but I'm the person that's making the the pride posters and putting them up all over the wall. I'm I'm the rah-rah person for the teachers in in the um in service. I'm like a quasi-administrator, not quite an administrator. I'm coaching basketball, I'm a union rep. Um I've got you know people in in my discipline that I'm connected with at the board who are running the World Languages Organization. So I'm hearing things from all different places about where the pushback is coming for what's going on, right? Yes. And so I'm getting a lot of people. I knew what the problem was, and I and I and it shocked me. I didn't the things that I heard, like, and most of it was from people who weren't at the end services, didn't do the time in the summer, didn't get the message as it was properly delivered. What I began to see was that there was so much more, there were so many more levers of power that you have to deal with rather than just convincing a small group of people to move forward. And that was the thing that for me was like, oh, this is different. And so what I saw was I need to understand how to do this. And law school for me was an was a kind of obvious thing because of the fact that a lot of the things that she was dealing with were political and were kind of between the the business community and the education community and the political community. Okay. But the Marine Corps for me was actually one of those things where I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki and a number of other writers talk about the Marine Corps and the leadership that the Marine Corps teaches. I know I remember Robert Kiyosaki was a Marine Corps Hilo pilot in Vietnam. He's the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Um Fred Smith, who was the founder of FedEx, is a former Marine Corps, um, Corporal. Uh, and one of the I remember at the time, this was early 2000s, I had heard a stat where at that point in time, the Marine Corps had produced more Fortune 500 CEOs than any other leadership academy or training pathway in the country at the time or in the world at the time. And so it was one of those things where I had it on good authority, and the last person um that kind of put it over the edge is my father was in the army, was a drill sergeant, was somebody that I tremendously respected. And even my father was like, if you want to learn leadership, if you want to be respected as a leader, right? That's where you go. That's where you go. He was like, if you want to be in your uniform and everybody know that you've done some things that you're actually, right, even amongst people who are in the service and in the military, go be a Marine. And so that was the thing that um kind of pushed it over the edge for me. And so then I went to the Marine Corps and now I'm learning leadership. And I'm learning, I'm like, I'm there and I'm a sponge. I'm trying to figure out all the things. And what was interesting is I went in originally and I started as a defense counsel. So I was a attorney as I went to the Marine Corps, and so I was a defense counsel for two years, and I wound up being one of the winningest defense counsels in the busiest shop in the Marine Corps. And during that period of time, I got to see, right? I always, you know, when I'm when I'm telling this story normally, I talk about it from the perspective of like I won 70% of the cases that I took to trial, not because I'm such an amazing attorney, but because they should not have been at trial, right? These are these are cases where they should not have been there. I got to see how the system didn't work. And luckily I got to do something about it. But one of the things that was a problem was I couldn't give my clients back the time that they were the accused. And in the Marine Corps, our core values are cur honor, courage, commitment, right? Honor. Number one core every value.

SPEAKER_02: 11:25

So when you're being dragged through court, that's really not a good look, right? And it's really challenging to be in that spot where it doesn't it does matter. I'm sure it mattered. At the same time, like you say, you can't earn that time back where what people were hearing about you is the negative story and not the positive, hey, this wasn't true, because that doesn't ring the bell in quite the same way. And you were talking too that this was a period in your life where you were what you called hustling backwards. What does that mean to you? What does that phrase mean?

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

So when I first took over um command of Bravo Company for Headquarters and Support Battalion, Marine Corps, base Camp Lejeune, I was over actually the smallest company in the battalion at the time. We had about 220 Marines and sailors. And over the first couple of months that I was there, um, there were a couple of things that were really interesting. Number one, I wasn't there were no lawyers in the company. So I didn't have any people working for me that did a job that I understood intuitively, right? Right. And one of the things that we were responsible for was making sure that the company was ready to go and be deployable at any point in time. And so there's readiness numbers that we had to hit. And when I took over the company, we started off and we were at 74% readiness against the standard of 85%.

SPEAKER_01: 12:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:53

Right. Two months into the job, we were at a st we were at a level of 70% readiness against the standard of 85%. So some way, Robert. Exactly. So when I talk about hustling backwards, that's exactly what I'm saying. Because I was putting in, you know, 12, 13, 14 hour days trying to figure out everything, trying to learn everything, trying to do everything. And no matter how much I was doing personally, our results were not improving. And that was the moment when we talked, you know, the inflection point, if you would, where literally my wife tapped me on the shoulder and she said, Hey, um, I didn't get married to be a single parent. And I was like, wait, ooh, that lands. Right, right? It was like a gut punch. And I was like, wait a minute, no, but I'm I'm working, I'm I'm taking care of my Marines. I'm I'm a company commander. Aren't you proud of me? Isn't this what I'm supposed to be doing? And she's like, uh, wait, hold on a second. Yes, and right? Because here's the deal. If you were deployed, I could completely understand. If you were in Iraq, if you were in Afghanistan, I could completely understand us not seeing you. But your office is two and a half miles away from our front door. We live on base for a reason. And we don't see you more now as company commander than we didn't see you when you were a defense counsel and you had to go see your clients in the brig and you had to take care of stuff and you were in court, right? And you like, that's not how this is supposed to be. I we need you to be home and we need you to be present, but especially because when you are home, you're still not present. Like you'll be watching a movie and your mind is still at the office, you're still over there. And so it was that moment that I realized that even though I was successful externally, I was successful professionally, I was missing and losing a part of what I had gone into this for, because being a good husband and a good father was something that was really important to me. Right. And that was the moment where, you know, again, all of this had led to me wanting to be a good leader and not to be the type of leader that is so singularly focused that I lose everything else, right? Because that was one of the flaws that I had seen, because the the the superintendent was so singularly focused on what she, what she, her vision was, what she saw, that she didn't take the time that she needed to get the people to be on board, to get the people to be ready and and want and willing to go forward.

SPEAKER_02: 15:10

Yeah. So with that, I guess I wonder how much of what you were doing was still mirroring what you had seen her do. Because the way that you describe that is I have a picture in my head, and what other people aren't doing, I'm taking care of, and I'm rolling the ball backward. Yeah, and I'm really just struggling here. And I wonder how where were the parallels between what you saw her doing versus what you were doing?

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

Yeah, I think that one of the things that had happened, and it was so interesting, right? Because part of the the reason why I was back in that place was because while it uh the two years while I was a defense counsel, right, I'm back in professional mode. So as a defense counsel, as a as an attorney in the Marine Corps, for the most part, you're not leading individual Marines. We had some junior Marines that worked with us, but for the most part, you have your caseload, you're taking care of your Marines, you're doing a service, and you're making sure, right? I am the bulwark between the system messing up their career or them being able to actually serve their country honorably and do what do what it is that they want to do.

SPEAKER_02: 16:15

In corporate speak, one might call that an individual contributor.

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

Exactly, exactly. And so I had gotten away from a lot of the skills that I already knew about delegation, the the skills, right? I coached basketball. I I taught a class, and I used to always joke when I taught my Spanish class that the kids actually got more done when I had a sub than they did when I was there because I didn't disrupt them because the the the lesson plan and the way that my classroom ran was very efficient and very effective. The students had a lot of jobs and did a lot of the work and did a lot of the reteaching and co-teaching so that they could, right? I I always had my A students extremely involved because they were teaching others, they were helping others, or they were doing extra, um extra work on their own so that they can enrich their learning, right? I I knew these things to do and I had learned them uh as as I was going forward. But when you're in that professional mode, you get back to it's all about me, it's all about what I get done, my reputation, my my ego is on the line, and right my passion for taking care of them, right? There was a there was a heightened feeling of if I don't do this, there's a travesty, right? It's a literal miscarriage of justice in a number of those cases, right? I had seven clients that that that I felt were innocent, yes, completely innocent of any of the charges that they have been done. And if I wasn't able to show that to a jury, then they were going to at the very least be convicted of a crime and have to be a criminal for the rest of their lives, and at the worst have some sort of jail time or something else happen to them. Um and so in that time and being being able to do that, it it it it pulls you back, it it focuses you back in kind of the world that you feel like you can control. And then you can't.

SPEAKER_02: 18:00

One of the things that the listeners can't see that I can, and I just really need to point this out, is that you keep on putting your hands like closer, like in front of your eyes. And it makes me think about like tunnel vision, right? Like it narrows your scope of even what you can see to be just this one place. So you can you can't even recognize all of the activity that's happening around you in that moment. Not everyone who is a professional goes into that. That's why I wanted to share what I could see you doing because it's so important to recognize that even when we're in that individual contributor role, we're still leading some way. Yeah. And we need to kind of keep that cue of what's going on around us. Yeah. And it sounds like as you switched into this other capacity that that was one of the key lessons that when your wife came tapping, yeah. That it was like, what do I need to figure out? So what were the things that you needed to recognize about that situation?

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

Yeah, that that's a really good question. And there were a couple of things, right? One of the main things that I needed to recognize about the situation is that I had to make room for all of the things that were important to me. Right. I couldn't continue acting as if just focusing on the most important thing was sufficient anymore. Right. And and for a long time, especially in my professional career, I had been able to focus on the most important thing. And then because I was good at that, I would have enough time to then figure out and focus on those other things. Right. But what happens so often is that we get promoted to take on bigger and bigger things. And like I said, I was taking, even though I had the smallest company in the battalion, it was a rat it was a larger company comparatively for um a Marine Corps company, because the standard Marine Corps company is somewhere between, you know, 100 and 50 and 200. Marines and Sailors, and this one was 220, right? And that's, you know, even a plused up company, even if it's a smaller company, it's somewhere around 160 to 180 Marines and Sailors, right? But um at the end of the day, we started with 220, and I'm doing a job that I'm prepared for, but don't don't feel like an expert in, right? I've got 16 different sections at that time. We had about 12 to 13 different sections at that time across three different bases. So I was having to go see people, right? And it was within about a 30, 40 minute, you know, drive to get to any of my Marines. But there was a lot that I was now in charge of where I had just gone from being in charge of kind of my caseload and my office to being in charge of a tremendous amount of Marines, and that's not even including the 3,000 civilians that were also under our charge under Bravo Company as well. So there were a number of different things that that that I was, you know, taking in at that time and trying to figure out. And what I realized was I had I knew how to empower, I knew how to delegate, but I was not employing those skills. And I was not employing those skills largely because of a fear of a lack of information, a lack of education on my part that I would be able to lead them properly. And what I learned in that time was right, I have to evaluate, examine and evaluate my expectations of what I'm trying to get done because that's gonna dictate how I engage, how I interact, what I do with my people, and more importantly, what I do with my time and what I'm what stresses and what things I'm feeling. And so over that period of time, I really looked at how I could maximize my time and be more efficient and more effective so that I could go home and give time to my family and do those things, but get the work done that needed to get done. And over the next probably three to four months, I read a couple books. I read, I reread Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is one of my favorite books. I like to, you know, I pick up a new nugget every time I read through that book, right? I read Tim Ferris's uh The Four Hour Work Week, right? I read How to Win Friends and Influence People Again, right? Uh and and I really dug in to a number of uh of sources to try to figure out how to master my time. And a couple of things came out of that. Number one, I realized that I had to define what success was. All while I was going, I was just trying to keep my head above water, figure out what everybody else thought success was in this role. And that's where my wife didn't be and my my kids weren't in that definition because why would they have that as a priority?

SPEAKER_02: 22:45

That wouldn't necessarily be the thing. And at some point, it sounds too like because I'm hearing you say I needed to be able to step out of all of the detail in order to see the full picture, but I needed to see my picture, which is fuller and different than what other people would see for me in this role. Because how could they possibly know all of the thing? I mean, they probably knew you were a father and a husband and those things, but not necessarily what your desire was to be in that role because that's unique to any person who is ha managing whatever is happening in their daily personal life.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

Exactly. And ultimately what I find what I what I what I know now was happening was that I had to get my life realigned, right? I call it when we talk about a lot of people manage their time, and that's what I was doing. I was managing my time, but when you manage your time, oftentimes what you're doing is you're managing other people's responsibilities, priorities, concerns, and desires. And it constantly feels like you're putting yourself last and putting others first. What and generally what winds up happening is I call it the resentful martyr syndrome, right? You get to the point where you're like, if one more person asks me to do one more thing, I swear I'm gonna scream.

SPEAKER_02: 24:07

Yes, yes, absolutely. Do not pick up that phone. Exactly, right?

SPEAKER_00: 24:11

And and the funny thing about it is we actually put ourselves in that position because we wanted to be the go-to person. We wanted to be the person that everybody calls. That was the identity that we were striving for. And then when we get it, we realize how unfulfilling it is because it's not actually everything that we want. And so what I talk to my clients about now is mastering your time instead of managing your time. And mastering your time is all about aligning what you do on a day-to-day basis, your activity with your identity and your purpose, right? And I firmly believe that everybody has a God-given purpose, that everybody is here for a reason, and that there is a seed of greatness within each one of us to be and when us being the best that we can be, literally, not just figuratively, literally makes the world a better place, right? And what I learned during that period of time was if I can get my time, my day in alignment with my purpose and my the identity that I'm that I that I that is in alignment with that purpose, then there's more than enough time to get everything done. There's more than enough time to make a tremendous impact. And so I found kind of five different steps that really helped me with that. And over that time, um, like I said, the first one one is defining what that success is, right? And so often that's the hard part. I always call it, you know, like it's like misalignment. If you've ever driven a car that's out of alignment, you know that feeling like exactly, right? But but but it doesn't start until you're you know you're going really fast. When you're going slow, you don't even know the car's out of alignment.

SPEAKER_02: 25:49

Yeah, it's a little bit wiggly, but yeah, your steering wheel goes a little bit, but when it's fast, it can be like, oh wow, that's probably a problem then.

SPEAKER_00: 25:56

That part, right? And you're going 30, 35, and you're just kind of just pulling a little bit, it gets a little bit more difficult, and you're like, I can I can deal with this. We well, I might need to get this checked, but it'll be all right. And then you get on the expressway and that's where the and it starts shaking it, vibrating, and you're like, oh my God, this thing is about to fall apart.

SPEAKER_01: 26:11

I'm gonna fly off.

SPEAKER_00: 26:12

Yes. Exactly. And so the only way for you to actually use that car is to just slow down and to go slower and slower and slower. And so for me, what I found is that like life is like that as well. And the funny thing about it is when you go to the mechanic and you think that everything is wrong with the car, and the mechanic's like, it's just a little bit out of alignment, a couple of millimeters. Yeah, and then they put it back in alignment, and that car can fly, right? And you're barely finger, two fingers on the steering wheel, and everything is good. Yeah, and it's quieter, and it's quieter, and it's safer, and it feels more comfortable and more calm. It feels like you get everywhere easier. That is exactly what I feel like happens when we are in alignment in real life, right? And where I was was I was at that point where I was going faster, I was doing more, I was in charge of more, and that misalignment that was just a little bit of an issue before. It's like and my wife was happy on the show, like, hey, we gotta do something about this.

SPEAKER_02: 27:09

Yeah, because we're we're getting we're getting really kind of beat up here with the car vibrating the way that it is. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 27:15

Exactly, exactly. And so in those five steps, like I said, the second thing that I figured out was once you know what is important to you, once you know what your purpose is, once you know what your your definition of success is, and that's one of the things that that that I found was I wanted to be a good Marine. I want to take care of my Marines, I want to be a good leader, but also I want to be a good husband, a good father, right? I wanted to see myself winning in all of the aspects of my life, not just in one of them. And that definition required different things. It required a different identity, like I said before. It required me to be more than just a good Marine. It didn't mean that I wasn't a good Marine, but I was a good Marine and Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 27:56

And I'm curious about as that vision opened up, because really that's what I feel like you're describing is that now I'm adding in the pieces that maybe I had set down or had not been carrying as closely.

SPEAKER_00: 28:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 28:15

In those kinds of situations, one of the things that I find with my clients is that they start to realize that it doesn't have to be fully compartmentalized, that some of the changes, kind of like that alignment piece, that a couple of the changes that you make actually flow across all of those, dare I say, stakeholders.

SPEAKER_00: 28:35

Exactly. You are 100% correct. Uh the the thing that I like to say when I'm discussing that is a lot of people talk about work-life balance. I personally think that's a myth, right? Work-life balance doesn't exist because what we f when you think about balance, right? You think about scales, right? You got one side of the scale, you got the other side of the scale, that and the two shall never meet, right? They have to be in balance. But that's a disintegrated part of you know, person, right? Like you got one part of you over here and one part of you over here, and you're trying to balance them out, right? And they never interact with each other except to throw each other off balance, right?

SPEAKER_02: 29:05

Exactly. One thing changes, and then all of a sudden you have to recalibrate everything in order to get it back into balance. Where if it's more like a I don't know. The thing that I'm thinking of, and my science folks might be like, um, Becky, no. And I get that, I feel you, you can write in emails, it's fine. But I think about it as like a gyroscope, right? Where it starts spinning and it starts to almost self-correct in a way. Yeah, yeah. Because it's in motion and there is a little bit of a vibration as it turns out, but it's subtle, yeah, and and it's almost something that you can direct a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 29:45

Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. The the analogy I always like to use is instead of work-life balance, I like the gyroscope idea though, so I'm I'm I'm I'm processing that as we see. But instead of work-life balance, I like to talk about work-life harmony. Right. And for me, right, as a music lover, one of the things that is so awesome with harmony is that it's not just that you've got the the different things that are existing that are integrating and coming together, but more importantly, they're synergistically integrating. So that when you hear harmonies, there is an experience for the listener and for the the singer or the the musician where the vibration is different because the sum is greater than, or I'm sorry, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There's a different vibration that's there. And that's where this energy comes, where one plus one doesn't equal two anymore. It equals a thousand, it equals a million. It it can create, you can create from that integration. And what I believe is that our lives and the disparate parts of our lives, right? Who I am at work should positively interact and and and um integrate with who I am at home. And who I am at home should positively integrate with who I am when I'm in the community because I'm the same person everywhere I go. And so the energy that comes from those being in harmony makes me better in all of those spaces, and it creates the opportunity for me to help others be better in all of those spaces. And so that's kind of the idea that I like to think about when we're talking about integrating ourselves and mastering our time and being aligned, it's that that alignment creates a harmony, it creates a resonance such that everywhere you go, you make things better, you become better, and there's a there there's a synergy that happens.

SPEAKER_02: 31:35

And it makes me think about sometimes with music in particular, it if you think about them in the parts. And this is in I I guess it is also in cooking, is what is occurring to me even as I'm saying this is that each of the parts you think, really, is that gonna go together? And yet at that point where that chaos comes together, then all of the sudden it it just smooths into whatever, like this fine dining meal or a beautiful song that you're thinking, this should have been hurting my ears, and instead I'm can't stop listening to it.

SPEAKER_00: 32:11

Yes, and it doesn't, it's not about equality, it's not about balance, because it can be just the slightest, if you're taking the cooking analogy, right? It's the slightest little bit of a spice that changes the over. Yes. Right. I remember I was in from a music perspective. I remember there was this um there was this song that came out in the late 90s, early 2000s. It was an Aaliyah song, and Timberland had been the producer on it. And I remember that in the song there's a baby like doing a little ah like like sound, and it's just over and over again. And it's just that little baby, like it changes everything in the song from just uh you know a bass and drums, but it's like ah that like it it made all the difference, but it only happened every eight or sixteen measures in the song, but it was such an important part of it, and it integrated with everything else to make that song so much different, and that's the that's the whole idea. And so ultimately, once you know what success is, the thing that I learned was you have to be able to chunk it down because then it can get overwhelming, it can seem really big, it can seem like too much. And so the next step that I learned was you have to be able to set and align your priorities now that you know where you're trying to go, what you're trying to do. And that's a process, you know. One of my mentors had explained it like expert chess players, you know, grandmasters in chess, can think 2025 moves ahead. But if they do move 22 when they're supposed to do move one or move two, they're gonna look just like an amateur chess player.

SPEAKER_02: 33:47

Yeah, because it's an amateur move.

SPEAKER_00: 33:49

Exactly. Right. And so it's not just about knowing where you're going and knowing what good looks like, it's also about being able to break it down and understand what order things need to go in. And that was one of the things that really helped me to reduce a lot of the stress because part of the reason why I was working so many hours is because I was sitting there and trying to figure out, you know, all of the things that I had to do with all the different sex and being able to break it down into component parts and see. But here's the funny thing I couldn't break it down into smaller parts until I knew what the what the big picture looked like.

SPEAKER_02: 34:20

Yeah. Until you have the end in mind, there's nothing to really break down because you don't have a whole piece, right? I think about I apparently I'm hungry because I'm thinking of bread. When you have, you know, like a piece of French bread or Italian bread or something like that, you have to have the whole thing in order to slice it. You can't slice the air before the bread shows up.

SPEAKER_00: 34:43

Exactly, exactly. And so that was the the next thing that I learned that was really helpful. And then of course, scheduling was was the easy part. Scheduling is normally what most people are really good at, right? We make to do lists and we're good at making to-do lists. But the beauty of the to-do list, once you know where you're going and you know what your priorities are, is that the right things get on your to-do list. And this is again a Stephen Coveyism, right? You want to put the rocks on your to-do list first and then the pebbles and then the sand, right? You don't want to start with the sand because then there's no room for the more important things. And learning and rearranging my schedule so that the important things on my schedule went on my schedule. If there was time with the family, it went on my schedule. If there were phone calls that I needed to make, if there were things that I needed to do, if there was working out for me, whatever it was was on my schedule first before I allowed it to fill in with any of the other things that were the extras that were the also things that I could do, right? The also rands, I like to call them.

SPEAKER_02: 35:34

I like to call that the noise myself. Exactly. I like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:38

The noise, right? And and it and it was so cool. But then I ran into this issue where you're trying to figure out, you know, because another new thing, when you get to a certain level of responsibility, unimportant stuff doesn't really get to your desk anymore. Everything that comes across your desk is important. It's just a the degree of importance that is, even if it's just because the person who's bringing it to you is important. And then you have to figure out how to set and enforce boundaries, which was something that I had never really had to, you know, deal with a lot, except for, you know, obvious boundaries, like I'm not gonna let nobody punch me in the face or talks about crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 36:16

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 36:16

Like, you know, just basic stuff. Right. But but now you have to figure out how to set boundaries around how people are gonna communicate with you and what me mode of communication are you gonna use and things like that. And it was, I mean, it was daunting at the beginning, trying to figure it all out. I remember reading Tim Ferris in the four-hour work week, and he was he was talking about how, you know, he was an e-comm business owner, and so he was like, I check my email once a week, and if it's really something important, you can call me and give me and leave a message, and then I'll get back to you. Right? And I was like, I'm a Marine Corps officer, company commander, there's no way that I can check my email once a week. That's not gonna work. But what I was able to do is I was able to implement a process that I call email triage, where three times a day, and I I reduced it, I checked my email three times a day. I would check it at the beginning of the day, I would check it in the middle of the day, and I'll check it at the end. And each check had a particular focus and job. At the beginning of the day, it wasn't I wasn't checking my email to see what had come through and to you know do my daily email digest. No. At the beginning of the day, I was enforcing a boundary, which was there were four people who were really important in my life, and if they were asking me to do something, could make me shift the priority of my day, those four people were my wife, my boss, my boss's number two, which was the executive officer of our battalion, and then my boss's boss. Those four people, if they sent me an email saying, Heath, I need you to do XYZ, or if my wife sent me an email saying, or call me saying I need you to do da-da-da, I'm going to consider it against everything else, and it can rearrange my day. Right. If you weren't on that list, then I knew that whatever it is you wanted for me, if I gave you what my list was, you could not tell me that your list was more important. There was no way that you could convince me that your list was more important because you didn't rank in that space where your list could be more important. It was more important to you. It wasn't more important to me, right? And so that was what that 8 a.m. check was for. When I would get into the office about 7:15, 7:30, I would then check my email and I would spend a half hour establishing my plan for the day. Then I would check my email at the end of that plan for the day to make sure that there was nothing from any of those people that would would mess up that plan. And then I would shut my email until noon. Now I had my solid block of time that I was executing my plan. And normally over the next couple of months, I got to the point where I was done by lunchtime most days with my plan because I was able to focus so much. But then at noon, I would check it again and I would see, okay, is there anything that's come in from any of those people first?

SPEAKER_01: 38:58

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 38:59

Always first, right? That will shift my afternoon. And if there was nothing from them, then I would look and see, is there anything that's come in from anybody else that I can address right now or that I need to address so that I at least can give them a 24-hour, hey, I've seen this and I'll get to it X when X, right? But normally I wouldn't even do that during the day because I had already emailed people and told them if it was an emergency, call me and leave a message. If you call, leave a message. I will make sure that I get back to you in a couple of hours. But if you're just sending me emails, I generally respond to emails at the end of the day. You will get a response back from me within 24 hours. And I gave that kind of buffer and barrier for people so that they knew what to do if something was urgent. But if it wasn't, then they could leave me alone. Because one of the things that I found that I I didn't even realize, you know, it's you know, after you figure it out, it's like it's so obvious. But until you figure it out, it's not it's not that way. I remember I used to always be, and you know, I used to just tell myself stories and I always say, you know, we're so horrible at mind reading, so we should stop doing it. Because if we were good at it, we could just go to the room. Vegas and we wouldn't have to work, right? But I used to think, you know, when people would send me emails, if I didn't respond right away, that they were kind of sitting over there, like, I can't believe he didn't respond to my email. I know that he noted I just sent him this email as important. What does he think? Oh, he's just too good to like I would have these conversations that people were having about me in my head. And what I found out was that it can not be further from the truth. And the way that I figured it out was I would impose these unreasonable standards of responding to people. And then I would send, like somebody would send me something and I would send back because I needed, I had a question. I'm like, oh, I need you to give me X so that I can give you what you're asking for. So I send that email, fire it right back off, and then one day would pass. Crickets. Crickets. Three days would pass. And now in their email, they were like, Can you get this to me as soon as possible? Right? So it seemed urgent. Right. But then I would send them back saying, Hey, I need this from you so that I can get that. And don't hear anything today. Don't hear anything tomorrow. I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I'm mis misreading this whole urgent thing.

SPEAKER_02: 41:02

Maybe urgent to them isn't the same as urgent to me. And part of that too becomes this whole process, right, of making up the story that someone else is telling. Because the fact is, there are folks who are like, I can't believe that he didn't respond to my email. And the question for me then becomes how much do you care that that person is speaking that way?

SPEAKER_03: 41:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 41:24

Because it's an unrealistic expectation. And if people are holding you to an unrealistic expectation, why are you twisting yourself in order to meet something that's not reasonable?

SPEAKER_03: 41:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 41:36

I guess I'm hearing too, right? Like there are these lessons that you learned that are what I might call the pragmatic kinds of lessons in this process.

SPEAKER_03: 41:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 41:45

I'm curious, what is it that you, as you look back on that time, would say that you learned about yourself in that time?

SPEAKER_00: 41:54

Yeah, no, I I think there were a couple of things. Number one, like I was telling you, like I was I had bad self-talk that was going on in my head. And to your point, as you were making it earlier, right? Like there may be people out there who actually do say those horrible things. I just have never met any of them, right? I've never seen those people in real life. I know that those people exist, right? Yes, they do. But but I've never encountered one of those people that actually was like, I can't believe you didn't respond to me in two minutes. Small number. Right. Exactly. And so oftentimes what we are uh what we are worried about is this gigantic kind of we we've made them much bigger in the world. Exactly, right? And instead of that person that you're like, yeah, I wouldn't care if you thought that anyway, because you don't ever do anything to help me. And like I give you a laundry list of things that I don't that I wish that you wouldn't, right? Like those people are generally the people that that you wouldn't care about their opinion anyway. So that's one of the things that I that I learned that I had to stop, I had to stop, you know, projecting onto other people ideas that A were not reasonable and B were not what they had ever demonstrated to me in real life. Right. The the the second thing that I learned, you know, was as we go through this, as I as we grow, and as I grew specifically, I realized that there was a lot of stuff that I knew how to do, but I would needed to apply it differently. And that was really helpful because it made me like the it again, it shrunk the job, it shrunk the the thing that that that I had to do. And the third thing that I learned was I learned about habits. I learned about how you could replace certain behaviors with success habits, and the way that the mind works is so amazing, is that as you hack the habit loop, which is right, trigger behavior, reward, as you do that over and over and over again, your brain intentionally makes the behavior easier and easier to do so that it takes less and less energy to get to the reward because your brain is a simplification and energy reduction machine.

SPEAKER_02: 44:09

It's a predictor of what is about to happen.

SPEAKER_00: 44:12

Exactly, exactly. Because the brain takes up about 2% of the body's mass, but it uses 20% of the body's energy. So it's always trying to figure out how to do what it does faster. And when I started making a lot of these behaviors that I was telling you the changes, right? Yes. Knowing what success looks like, knowing who was who my list was, having my priorities together. When I started making those behaviors, habits, it became easier and easier and easier. Over the next, like I said, three or four months, a couple of things happened. Number one, I started getting done by lunch generally most days, unless I had meetings in the afternoon. Number two, I was able to be present and be more available and see much more of what was going on. Number three, I was able to delegate more and teach more and train more with my staff because I was focusing on the things that were important that I needed to do, but I was delegating and getting off my plate the things that I didn't. That same company where we were hustling backwards before and where we went to 70% readiness, within another four months, we were at 90% readiness on a cap of the highest we could have gotten was 93% because 7% of our per our personnel were permanent limited duty, which basically means they would never be able to be deemed ready for combat deployment. And so I we we went from worst to first, and because of that, that's where we went from the smallest company in the battalion to the largest company in the battalion because they did a re-org and they were like, hey Eve, you're doing a good enough job. You can go ahead and get another 160 Marines, you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02: 45:47

So why don't we just double that up for you? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 45:49

And oh, we're not gonna give you any more company staff. You're you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02: 45:54

You'll be fine. You got to find it.

SPEAKER_00: 45:56

And and we and and to my staff's credit, we were, right? We ran a shop very well. We rearranged some things. We became uh I like to call we we we took over the deserter platoon. Uh that's a story for another day. But one of the things that was really fun with it was we were able to take Marines that nobody really wanted to, because it's really a babysitting job, right? You get deserters are people who've been away from their job for more than 30 days, and they're basically about to get fired, but there's a process for getting fired. Okay. And so you have to babysit them for that process, which generally lasts six to or I'm sorry, sixty to ninety days, right? What we were able to do is take those Marines who knew that they were about to get kicked out of Marine Corps, had no reason to be engaged or enthusiastic about anything. We were able to give them purpose, we were able to give them um leadership and mentorship. And to a person, as they were getting out of the Marine Corps, each of them I would have an exit interview with them, and they would talk about how their the impact of the time that they spent with us changed what they thought about the Marine Corps, changed what they thought about themselves, changed the the how they were looking at their future going forward. And that was one of the things that was really impactful to me to be able to do and to be able to have my staff be able to do because they were able to make an impact and see that impact clearly because a lot of the stuff that you do as a company office, right, it's behind the scenes, it's helping people get stuff that right, it's it's it's answering requests, it's doing a bunch of that type of stuff. But we were able to see the impact on those Marines and and and and let them see the impact that they had in the in the in the larger company as well.

SPEAKER_02: 47:32

Yeah. And one of the things that it makes me think about is that I hear about the amazing metrics and the turnaround on that side. And all of this starts essentially. I'm gonna I'm just gonna give your wife a lot of credit here, that she went and tapped you on the shoulder and said, right, so we need to fix this. Yeah. And so when you think about your personal life, right, with your family, with your community, all of that, what would you say were your measures of success there?

SPEAKER_00: 48:03

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And one of the biggest measures of success was that I got to spend more time with my kids, right? So one of the things that happened as a result of me being able to run my company well and be able to be home and be able to do things. I started teaching jujitsu out of my garage in, you know, during that period of time, became a jiu-jitsu Gracie Jiu Jitsu instructor and actually opened up a Gracie Jiu Jitsu um gym in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And I was able to work, run my company during the day, drive home, pick the kids up, take them to jujitsu for the kids' class with me, where dad got to be the instructor. And then they were able to either hang out with me while I was teaching, and or we had um uh or my wife would be able to take them, but then she was running uh a gym. She was a Zumba instructor and a and a and a group fitness instructor. So when we didn't have that, then we had a nanny that was there who was able to come in and watch the kids while they were at the gym with us, and then I would be able to go home, put them to bed, all the different things. And I was able to be present on the weekends. We were able to go and take trips, and I wanted to wanted the the kids were able to have you know piano lessons and voice lessons, and and I was able to be there for all of those things. I was able to coach my son's basket, my daughter's basketball team, and and and and and all of those things I was able to do. And me and my wife were able to hang out and and and and take you know our trip for our our our anniversary. And just the simple thing is being at home watching the movie and being present in the movie, those were types of things that I was able to do. We would host cookouts and all of those types of things. I was able to be a better husband, a better father, a better Marine because I was harmonizing my life to do all of those things instead of prioritizing or optimizing my life to only do one of them.

SPEAKER_02: 49:55

Yeah, yeah. And if you were talking to someone and they were describing their circumstance in a way where you were like, okay, you are hustling backwards right now. What is what is one piece of advice that you would want to be able to give them based on your experience with all this?

SPEAKER_00: 50:15

I love I love calling it hustling backwards. I think most people would would would recognize it as stuck, right? Yes. Um and and when people just losing their grip, right?

SPEAKER_02: 50:25

And sliding back even.

SPEAKER_00: 50:27

Yeah, yeah. And that that that that feeling like something's wrong and I don't know what. I think the one thing that I that that I try to talk to people about is that alignment is the key. And again, it's it's about work-life harmony, not like not about balance. And so sometimes we can be chasing the wrong thing and doing it very well. Um, and and so for them, the the first question that I always talk to people about is right, what does success look like? Like if you could wave your hands, wave a magic wand, snap your fingers, right, click your heels, whatever it is that you want to do, and and change the feeling that you have right now of being stuck, what would that look like, right? Can we articulate it? Because a lot of times we feel like we know what we want, but most of the time we are moving away from what we don't want. And the problem with moving away from what you don't want is that your motivation and your destination are inversely correlated. Right? The further and further you get away from what you don't want, the less motivated you are to continue in that direction. And so defining success is such an important thing because it allows you to align your motivation and your destination. The cool thing is when when I know where I'm going, the closer that I get to it, the more motivated I am to keep going. When I'm closer to the finish line, I'm more motivated to keep running. I remember when I ran the one and only marathon that I will ever run in my life. Um and once you could see that finish line, there was nothing that was going to keep me from sprinting across it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:02

Yes. Yes. I um I've not done a full marathon because I I just keep on thinking the time for training, like the race itself, that's fine. But I have to run how many miles, how often? Instead, I have stuck to the half marathon distance because I find that that suits me really well. And it is true because there are all of these people there too who are congregated, strangers who are prepared to celebrate this event and this achievement with you. And I think that that's really true in our work lives and in our personal lives too. That, you know, there may not be, you know, cowbells and wazoos and all that kind of stuff going on in that kind of scenario, but there are people who are around you who are watching and noticing, even when we don't see them in that place. And that's such a powerful thing. And I know you're no longer in the Marine Corps. And I'm wondering, you know, when you think about the primary thing that you like to do. I mean, when I was introducing you, right, I was talking about it as helping leaders get the best out of themselves and those they leave, lead, not leave. They don't leave them, they lead them. And those they lead. Yes. And so part of what I'm wondering with that is, you know, I'm I'm hearing like these five steps, and I'm hearing the enthusiasm that you have for them to be able to see that success and and strive for that. What are some of the things that you find yourself continuously doing for people who are seeking that?

SPEAKER_00: 53:49

Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, I think the biggest thing that I do is I hold space. So often, and like I told you the story of the frenetic nature of just going and being the professional and doing the thing, and and it was my wife who tapped me on the shoulder, right? And then of course I had to go and figure it out. But nonetheless, it was that that that ability to have somebody that can say, hey, and what I call it is holding up the mirror, right? Just holding up a mirror and saying, hey, this is the direction you're going. Is that where you want to be going? And what I generally do is then I hold space for people to process that because oftentimes in in life, we don't get there's a lot of questions that we know we should have the answer to, or we know we should think about, but but but we're on to the next thing, on to the next thing, on to the next thing. And so with my clients, oftentimes what I'm helping them do is to take the time to process, to think through, to, to get into a state of alignment with where their subconscious and their conscious mind and their their their sense of knowing, right? Which is that feeling, that resonance, versus that conscious knowing, which is that intellectualism, right? When those two can get aligned and you can have that harmony that that exists when you when you kind of are in the flow, when you are in the the the the that that zen spot, I hold space for them to to really get into that space and ask questions and help to, you know, shift perspectives and and and uh all the things that I do, you know, with with the different modalities that I've studied. You know, I've studied um I'm a master practitioner of NLP and clin and hypnotherapy and and time techniques and success coaching and and a number of other uh things. I have a friend of mine in his LinkedIn, he has, and all the letters that go behind the name, right?

SPEAKER_01: 55:32

Me and my alphabet soup, right? Exactly, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00: 55:35

But but but I've I've spent a lot of time and a lot of effort really learning techniques that can expedite this process for people because what I found is that when people can get aligned, that feeling, first of all, is liberating. And more importantly, when it becomes your new normal, now it's just getting back on track. It's I I heard someone talk about this one time. You know, uh an airplane, if it's taking off in LA and it's going to New York, if it's one degree offline, it can end up in Boston or DC, right? Um, just one degree. Yes, and and the other thing that I heard is that those planes, you know, the autopilots on planes and everything, are they out of alignment 99% of the flight. But they arrive at their destination with more than 99.99. Accuracy. And and it's like, how does it do that? And the way that it does that, even though it's not always flying in alignment, what it's able to do is it knows what alignment is. And so whenever it's out of alignment, it's correcting back to alignment. And so often, what I've seen with the people that I that I work with, what we've gotten used to and accustomed to is being out of alignment, so much so that being in alignment is the thing that feels novel.

SPEAKER_02: 56:53

Yes, and and strangely calm and comforting. And it's one of the things that I often think about in terms of, you know, I'm former HR professional, and we would do one-day, two-day, half-day training kinds of things, and there would be, oh, this is amazing. I've never, I've never thought about it this way. And then they go back to their desk, they hit the grind, and it's all gone.

SPEAKER_00: 57:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 57:19

And when I compare that to I'm connecting and coaching someone and supporting them through that process and that habit change, then what ends up happening is that they don't really see it for a while. And all of a sudden they look back and they go, Wow, why was I doing that?

SPEAKER_03: 57:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 57:39

And it well, but that's where you had trained yourself to interact. And that's really what I hear you talking about. Yeah. Is giving them that opportunity to say, I choose not to do this anymore. Exactly. I choose to go in a different direction. I may not know what that is yet, but I am willing and able to make that choice, and perhaps with your support, right? And and and really being able to find that path going forward.

SPEAKER_00: 58:10

No, you're a hundred percent correct. And I think that one of the things, and this is why I love NLP neurolinguistic programming, is because for a lot of my coaching career, it was that kind of slower, right? It was almost like I would, I would have to say, trust me, I I'm gonna be here with you. And what I love about NLP is that the change can happen so much faster. Yeah. Because you can cut through a lot of the the mess, right? And you can get them to seeing something different. So now that they don't, now they don't have to say, I'm willing to go a different direction, I'm willing to try something different. They can see that's not getting me what I want. What I want is over there, that toward versus away conversation. Right. And it becomes a, it becomes an intuition that is logical and it is the obvious next move for them, not because I'm telling them or not because I'm even pointing them in a direction, but because they're able to see it, because we're able to remove so many of the obstacles that were keeping them from seeing it before. What I like to do is call it clearing out the blind spots, right?

SPEAKER_03: 59:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02: 59:14

Yeah. And I think about that too, in terms of some of the other um like parts work techniques and things like that that I've used that, you know, can start to feel a little bit funny. Like I will have to say to my client, right? So this can be a little different today when I this thing. And if you're willing to play with me, then then let's do this.

SPEAKER_03: 59:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 59:36

And you know, they're always in a place of choice. If they say, Becky, this is just feeling kind of weird to me, then okay, we stop and we try to do something else. Yeah, we can't. Because if they're uncomfortable, they're not going to be able to embrace it anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 59:48

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 59:49

And that's what I hear you saying is that we can use these different modalities to accelerate things at the pace to which our clients are ready to receive. Them, which is fabulous.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:02

I love the way that you just said it. It was so much better than the way I said it. Um I don't know about that. And and but you are you are 100% correct in that, like it's about them. What I always tell my clients is you're the magic, right? It's not about me. I'm not gonna make the change. Whether you make the change or not, my life is still gonna be the same.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:23

Right. So at the end of the day, I'm gonna walk alongside you on this journey, and I'm gonna cheer and root and and and remove obstacles out of the way, but you've got to do the work. And and more importantly, you are the magic. The greatness is in you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:39

Yes. Yes, no one else can do this for you. And it really needs to just keep on going forward. And you know, as we've been talking about this, it makes me just think about all of the different ways that you have an opportunity to impact someone's life. And I guess I'm wondering, is there anything that you feel like we haven't talked about or something that you wanted to ask me about some of the things that I do that would be helpful for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:08

Yeah, I think one of the things that has always stood out for me about what you do is there is a warmth and there is a an ability that you have to kind of draw out of them or draw of people in conversation, things that they would not necessarily ordinarily share. Yes. And I wonder, like, where did you derive like where did you get that? Like, where did that come from? Have you always had that ability? Is that something that you developed as a skill? Like, tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:41

Yeah, thank you for that. I I I find that to be a big compliment, right? And I actually my HR career, so I know it goes back at least that far. I had one of my HR clients come into my office and we were talking for a while, and he just dropped his head at one point in time. He goes, I don't know what it is about your office. I come in here and I feel like I've gone to confession. And I was like, okay, so there are a couple of reasons that that can't be true right now. However, I love the spirit of what you're talking about. And I think I think it has always been that way. I think that I was definitely a big observer when I was a child growing up and kind of paying attention to what's happening, what's the temperature of the room, all of those kinds of things that made me very sensitive. Maybe I was born to be that sensitive. Maybe I developed it, maybe in my opinion, probably both. And I think that that has actually really helped me pick up on some of those subtle cues of what's going on with people. So I and you know, I can't help but ask the question. And so I say there was something that just happened there. Can you talk to me a little bit about what what just went through your head if you're willing to share that with me? And in a coaching conversation, they're all like, oh yeah, I'll share, right? That's why I'm here. Exactly. Exactly. But I've found that people are very willing to say, well, this is what that made me think of. Or, you know, I just had this moment that was really weird, and I just felt this thing. And there's a there's a safety, I think, that I create because I'm asking those questions in that way, because it's not like, what was that? Right. I mean, some of it is tonality.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:33

Yeah, the what I was just about to say is the way that you do it, and I've watched you, you know, in our interactions with other people and in our interactions with each other, and the way that you do it is so devoid of judgment. It's it's literally, and one of the things I talk about in in my communication course is leaning into curiosity. And like you are the embodiment of that. There's a there's a disarming that happens when you ask a question because you can you can you can feel the energy of your curiosity that I think is so powerful. And I just I I I thank you. I love our conversations because I I I love to be able to be in that space.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:11

Well, and I I am feel like I'm just obligated to say that judgment wasn't always missing, right? Like that was one of the things that I needed to learn because, you know, I've um my husband and I were in a place once, and they uh the uh bartender, if I'm honest, was came up and he said, Oh yeah, you're the judgy couple. And we both went home going, well, I mean, you're not wrong, but seriously, that's rude. How dare you? Exactly. How dare you be so honest with us? Um but it was it was kind of funny, and at the same time, I thought, wow, you know, I don't want to be seen that way. And it's funny how we hear something like that in a completely different context. And it's like, yeah, you know, like even if he was just being snide, which was entirely possible and likely. Um a little judgy there too, but there you go. But I think that there is a whole way of how we interact with people. And I'm wondering as you went through like the NLP training and and some of the other things, how did you develop that way to approach people to help them feel calm and safe when you were creating that space for them?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:22

That's a that's a I love that you asked that question. The answer is kind of a little bit along the same lines as yours in that I uh first horrifically and stupendously messed it up such that I realized that that was not what you wanted to do. I was the the so I am an ENTJ as a Myers Briggs, right? So I am a thinker and a judger. Um and I have always wanted to help people, but I'm a problem solver. I'm I I was growing up, I was the type person, you tell me a problem, I'll give you a solution. You give me a problem, I'll give you a solution. And I I I learned maybe 10 or 15 years ago that that doesn't work really well in marriage, um particularly, right? Uh because oftentimes people don't want a solution, they want to be heard, they want to be seen, they want to feel valued and feel like they can express themselves in a space where people will listen. And you can't do that if you're always trying to solve the problem. So I had to learn, and one again, one of the things the the wisdom uh that I learned with my wife was I had to learn to ask this question before I started trying to solve the problem, which was uh do you want me to try to solve this or do you want me to just listen? And what came away from that was interestingly three different answers. I had not it I had not anticipated this, but there were three different answers that were possible. Number one, of course, yes, I I need you to help me solve this, turn on your brain. Join me. Exactly. Join in, let's go. I know I want your solutions. That was rarely the answer, but every once in a while it was like, oh yeah, you did marry me because I have this skill, right? Um and then the other one, of course, is no, I just want to vent, I just need to talk it out, I just need to hear it out loud and get it out soon. Exactly, right? Yes. But but interestingly enough, that also wasn't the most common answer. The the most common answer was the third one that I did not know existed before I began to ask this question. And that was the the answer of, I'm not really sure what I want right now. And what I realized in that moment, when I was once I started, you know, doing the tallies and seeing I'm getting this, I'm not really sure answer a ton. What I figured out was when I would go and try to solve the problem, two out of the three opportunities that were there, I was doing the wrong thing, which is why my results were the way that they were. And there was this wise, um this wise teacher that once said something that went a little bit like this there is no try, either do or not do. And for the listeners out there who don't know, that was the great and wise master Yoda. Um, and what I took from that was we can't try to help. You're either helping or you're not. And so I became very attuned to is what I'm doing helping? Because that's the result that I want. And if it's not helping, I must change what I'm doing to make sure that I'm helping. Because the other person has whatever problem they have, they came to me with that problem, and so unless I'm helping, I'm not really helping.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:34

Exactly right. My intention isn't going to change which category I fall into either. It's either I am or I am not.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:44

And me trying to force it isn't going to get there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:48

So Exactly. I call that the intention trap, where our intentions blind us to the results of our actions.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:55

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I know I could keep a conversation going on with you for so much longer, so we'll have to find a way to do that again soon. But for today, I think that this is a really great place for us to kind of pause our conversation and certainly want to encourage anyone who is listening that if there are things that you heard Robert talk about that you're really excited to learn more about, we're leaving a bunch of information out there into the show notes. So make sure that you look him up and get to know him. I know that in my time getting to know Robert, it has been a great pleasure, and I appreciate you being here today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:30

Thank you so much, so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:33

If you have interest in connecting and learning more about today's guest, check out the show notes for ways to connect and follow up. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.