Embracing Responsibility and Awareness with Robert White

What if you could transform your life by taking full responsibility and increasing your awareness? In this episode, we bring you an enlightening conversation with Robert White, a renowned expert in high-impact experiential learning and the author of the bestselling book "Living an Extraordinary Life." Robert shares his life journey, from the pivotal moment of winning a writing contest at age 12 to his current mission of empowering individuals and organizations to achieve extraordinary experiences through personal responsibility and higher awareness.

Leadership isn't just about a title—it's about shaping culture and driving success within an organization. We dive deep into the critical role of leadership, drawing from personal experiences with Mind Dynamics and LifeSpring. This episode emphasizes the importance of purpose, vision, and values in creating a thriving organizational culture. Listen as we explore the transformative period in Japan and the unique role a CEO plays in fostering a unified company culture. The conversation also highlights how aligning with these elements can profoundly influence both personal and professional achievements.

Discover the path to authenticity and purpose through captivating stories of overcoming humble beginnings and achieving remarkable success. Inspired by a conversation with John Denver, we discuss the necessity of addressing past emotional baggage and honestly assessing one's current reality to uncover true purpose and vision. Throughout the episode, you'll also learn about the importance of global connections and authentic friendships. Connect with Robert for more insights and inspiration, and look forward to an episode packed with valuable lessons on leadership, personal growth, and meaningful connections.

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:02 Life Lessons and Personal Responsibility
• 18:08 Creating Culture for Success
• 34:03 Discovering Purpose and Authenticity
• 45:01 Leadership Insights and Lonely Marketplace
• 56:17 Global Connections and Friendship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. In today's episode, I'm your host, nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEO founders, entrepreneurs who are striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with our next guest, robert White.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Robert's passions for many years has been exposing individuals to high-impact experiential learning events and the transformation possibilities that includes. There have been over 1 million graduates from the companies he founded and led doing that work. Today, his passion is bringing those experiences to owners, entrepreneurs and executives of organizations for profit and non-profit. His mentoring role is supported by a best-selling book and an award-winning audio program with Nightingale Conant. In many ways, living out that vision has impacted Robert both professionally and personally. Welcome to the show, robert. It's amazing to have you, somebody with so much experience. It must be amazing to be you.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Well, sometimes I have that experience and unfortunately not always. But thank you, nico, it's wonderful to be with you and with your listeners.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Cool. So we read here that you are supported by a book. Which book is that exactly then?

Speaker 2: 1:56

Well, my first experience was one that most people don't know very much about, but I published a book called One World, one People, which is a photographic essay done by this very gifted Japanese photographer, yoshiaki Nagashima, and I wrote the seven essays that are part of the book, dividing up the sections of the book. It's a coffee table book, it's huge, and when I worked so hard on it then I learned that nobody reads the essays in a photographic journal. But my book that's now a bestseller in English and in Mandarin and in traditional Chinese and later this year in Spanish, is called Living an Extraordinary Life.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Okay, and so tell us more.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Well, it's what I learned. Actually, for 20 years people suggested that I write the book and I said no in many creative ways, many excuses. I became quite practiced at the excuses. The biggest one was that you can't do an experience in a book, which that was my belief and also my excuse, and I later learned that's not true, that if people have a certain amount of readiness they can have an experience from a book, including mine, and I have many reports from people that it's where it's been life-changing. So that blew that up. So after 20 years I got embarrassed into writing it because of the success of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits book. Our graduates were coming to me and telling me that they were going to go do the Stephen Covey leadership work because they had read the book and I went oops, I missed something here, and so I did the work and the book's been a delight.

Speaker 2: 3:55

It's not about me. That's a common thing that people wonder about. I think in some ways, my life has been extraordinary, in other words, very ordinary. I think in some ways my life has been extraordinary, in other words, very ordinary. But the book's about the interaction between our participants now at over 1,300,000, and our material. So it's a lot of stories around a framework of developing a higher level of awareness, taking personal responsibility for your life and learning a certain level of mastery in all forms of communication, but it's people's stories that really bring the book alive and what people often comment on.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Yeah, I could imagine. To be honest, I don't want to spoil anything, but I actually had the first epiphany by doing the COVID session, where you know the recording where they take you through your own funeral. It kind of opened up my eyes, which was kind of radical at the time I think I'm talking maybe 20 years ago, something like that but it did change my life Absolutely. But it did change my life absolutely and it's something that triggered within me is taking that responsibility, like you say, like you've also integrated into your book.

Speaker 2: 5:28

Now, if you yourself look at your life, what kind of points in life did you say, okay, this needs to be taken on as a responsibility by myself because nobody else might take it on, or anything like that? You know, I've lived long enough. I guess that in talking about my story and about the past, what I tend to do recently is to look for choice points or significant turning points in my life. For me, the first one was that I was 12 years old and I won a writing contest for our town and the prize first of all was a bicycle. And you know, with all of the accoutrement, you know it was really a nice bicycle and we were living in poverty, so the bicycle was really a big deal. But the other thing was I didn't understand it. But they said well, we're going to put you on the radio, on the morning radio, and you're going to read part of what you wrote. And I had no idea what that meant. But a teacher accompanied me, took me to a radio station and the first thing that happened for me was I fell in love with the space, with all of that wonderful equipment, with the magic of an announcer sitting alone in a booth and yet reaching thousands and thousands of people. Just everything about it just woke me up. People, just everything about it just woke me up and I asked on the way out I asked is there any way to come back and just observe what they're doing? And they said no, I'm shortening the conversation. But they said no, that their insurance would not allow that. And I was very disappointed, as you know a 12 year old can be and on my way out the receptionist stopped me and she said I overheard the conversation.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Our competitor down the street has a different setup where their lobby has glass walls and you can look in on the operations at any time, 24 hours a day, and there's a speaker in that hallway and you can hear what's going on in the station. So, nico, it can sound crazy, but for two years, almost every Saturday, I went to that station and just hung out in the lobby, wow and watch. You know you could look in on the, on the, the actual announcer, the DJ. You could look in on the control room where the put it off, they put it all together and you could look in on the marketing department and the AR guy that you know, the artists and rep for people and the you know the thousands of of pieces there. But that was how I spent my Saturdays for two years and then that led to, you know, they had a labor dispute and they fired all of their control engineers in one day, which meant the announcers had to. It's called running your own board, which is really, really a challenging thing. So they reached out to my school and found me, and so I went to work at 14 in radio. So that was a turning point for me in many ways, and primarily around self-esteem and being valued, being paid, receiving praise from people that I respected. And by the time I was 17, I was on the air. I had the number one rated radio show in the state of Wisconsin and because I was talking to my friends, my peer group right, because in those years nights and weekends in radio belonged to teenagers because of the music, and I made more money that year than my father had ever made and was named most likely to succeed by my classmates, and you know, things were pretty great.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I spent the next 10 years, and so this takes the next turning point, which was exactly 10 years at 27. By that time I had completely made my parents wrong. I made my classmates wrong the most likely to succeed guy. I had an early marriage that failed. I felt horribly guilty about it. I mean, I'm a guy, right, I don't talk about it but that dominated my thinking. I had a health problem. I had three heart attacks at 19, 21, and 23 years. I had chest pain every day. I'd been told I would die by 35. There was nothing they could do. So that was also something that I kept secret but bothered me a lot. I lied about it a lot. That's not good for the soul.

Speaker 2: 10:18

And I later learned and my little sales business was failing and a friend of mine went out to California and did one of the early human potential movement trainings called Mind Dynamics, mdi, and he came back raving about it and then I watched, you know, he told me about it. I said no way, I'm going to this crazy California seminar. You know, especially in those days it didn't have a good reputation in the rest of the country. But in six months he kept talking to me about it and I saw his life turn around in a positive direction and we were in similar businesses and he was doing a lot better than I was. And we were in similar businesses and he was doing a lot better than I was. So I finally went there with arms crossed, probably, eyes crossed, legs crossed, cynical, disbelieving, but I couldn't argue with the results I saw in him and Nico. It's a cliche all these years later, but it changed my life for the better and I went from that negative, cynical guy, critical guy, to being more open, more connected to my heart, more connected.

Speaker 2: 11:41

What I found out of my business is my critical self was driving the people away from me that I needed to succeed. And so people say, well, you went to the seminar and then everything changed. That's not true. But what changed was I found myself still being critical with people, but it was like a missile. I could see the words landing on them and blowing them up. It sounds crazy, but it was vivid to me, and so my first step in self-improvement was to shut up.

Speaker 2: 12:24

I later learned I actually have very strong critical thinking skills, but the way they were being expressed was landing like an explosion on people and driving them away from me and not letting them see who I am. I have fears, I have doubts, I have joy. I have all of that as a human being. I wasn't sharing that I was sharing my judgments and critique. So my first step was to swallow the words. I mean I literally would. They'd almost be out of my mouth and I'd just go. And you know, my relationships improved the moment I did that. And then, over time, my mindset started to change when I started seeing these incredible results by being more vulnerable, being more human, being more compassionate, more caring. Fulfillment, being more compassionate, more caring things that were within me but weren't being revealed. So that was a big turning point. I enrolled over 400 people into the Mind Dynamics training because it and I did it selfishly I discovered that with my family, with my friends and, most importantly, my sales force, that my life got better when they did the training.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Okay.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Yeah, and I still. You know I had a different level of consciousness, of course, at, you know, 27, 28, 29, 30 years old. Anyway, that company found out about me because of my enrolling so many people in that seminar and I got a phone call one day and it was from the founder and chairman of Mind Dynamics, alexander Everett, and he asked me to come out to California and meet him. And he sent me a first ticket my first first class flight actually and you know when you're that age that's a big deal and I met this wonderful man and 10 days later I was president of Mind Dynamics, running the business of the business, you know. He wrote the training, he selected the trainers, he trained them, he revised things, they did all of the content part and I just helped with the selling, with the straightening out some of the agreements that were not working very well.

Speaker 2: 14:59

And it also gave me that opportunity to go to Europe and start some companies there Incredible experience for a young guy who had never really traveled at all. So I spent four years there and then ownership changed and I resigned. I resigned and I founded a company called Lifespring which has gone on to be quite successful in the United States, and maybe something we could talk about today, knowing a little bit about your audience, is that after six months I did not want to go to work in my own company it's a short way of saying it and what I learned from that experience is what I do today in terms of working with owners, working with CEOs, working with investors that have major positions in companies to help them see there's a way through that kind of a wreck Because it was somewhat of a wreck. It turned out to be the absolute best thing that could happen in my life.

Speaker 2: 16:10

I went off to Asia, founded my first big company, ark International, where we had seven training centers in Japan, two in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong, one in Manila, one in Seoul, one in Sydney and one on the mainland an illegal business in mainland China at that time in Guangzhou. So that was another significant movement for me and a lot of learning. But when I look back to the failure because, if I'm really being accurate, my leadership of Lifespring was a failure and what I learned from that empowers what I do today- Okay, are you open to share what the failure was about, how it came to be?

Speaker 2: 17:05

Well, I mentioned that my book is about awareness, responsibility and communication, and so the first thing that showed up there in terms of awareness was that I didn't have the terms purpose, vision and values in my vocabulary. I guess I kind of maybe I knew the words, but I didn't know the deeper meaning of any of those terms. And when I was at Mind Dynamics, what I learned by leaving and by the failure at Lifespring was that Alexander Everett lived purpose, vision and values. He didn't talk about them, he lived it, he modeled it In every decision that he made, in every interaction that he made. It was purposeful, it was toward a bigger vision that he had for the world, not just for our work, and it was communicated masterfully. So there's a.

Speaker 2: 18:08

You know I lived in Asia, for I know I've lived in Asia 23 years of my working life, and one of the great Zen sayings from Zen Buddhism is that fish don't describe water very well. You know, whatever we're living in, we don't see it. Whatever we're living in, we don't see it. And so what I didn't see was that Alexander Everett handled in the Mind Dynamics company and it was four hugely successful years for me and for the company but he handled purpose, vision and values by living it and modeling it with everyone, and I was the beneficiary of that. On the business side of things. I was attracted to his purpose, without even knowing what that word meant, really, what it meant. I was enthralled with his vision and I bought into it. I was selling it, in effect.

Speaker 2: 19:05

And then, finally, I learned so much about all forms of communication, especially listening, quite frankly and so I was the fish that didn't describe water, and when I started LifeSpring, I made an assumption that what I later now call culture was something that happened automatically. It's not. It's not automatic, and when it is, it's magical. But then, as the company grows, you lose touch. You have to be able to actually explain it and teach it, and that's what was missing in Lifespring. People had different purposes and different visions and different ways of communicating, and it all added up to a mess, even though we, you know, we opened three training centers within 90 days. We, we were. It was growth. You know, I'm good at growth, so it grew it grew.

Speaker 2: 20:03

But you know I I ended up in Chicago, Illinois, in the middle of winter in February, driving a used Volkswagen the old Beetle, the Bug and anybody that's had one of those knows that they had a lot of strengths and they were cute and a lot of great things about that car they had the worst heater in the history of automobiles, yes, you know. So I remember clearly driving to the training center one very frosty winter morning, freezing myself inside the car and thinking I don't want to do this, I don't want to go to the work today. I better take a look at that. What is that about? For the first time in my life, I don't want to work. It was shocking to me, but it was so clear. And so that's that awareness piece, right.

Speaker 2: 21:05

And then, of course, your next piece is am I a victim of myself or of others in terms of why I don't want to go to work, or am I willing to take personal responsibility and dig into this and find out what this is about? And fortunately I took that choice, ended up taking a 90-day contract in Japan that turned into 12 years the first time. So anyway, that was my learning that the core foundation of a good culture, and you know the late Peter Drucker, the management guru, is often credited for this, saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Now I've also heard other people say it was diff. They said that originally and that Drucker stole it. But I don't care, that's a good statement.

Speaker 2: 22:04

I think that for the leader, in terms of wanting to get the maximum performance out of a team, I have a belief that the only role that is unique to a CEO, to an owner, is to facilitate the creation, the communication and, most importantly, the maintenance of a commonly held purpose, vision and values. And I've added strategic intent. You know what are we really up to here and is it consistent with our strategy? So everything else can and should be delegated, and you know, when you're small that's hard to do because you're doing everything, but that should be. One of your early goals is to get to the place where other people are doing the operating and you're paying attention to the culture. You know you could call it a high performance culture. You call it anything you want, call it something that works, you know yeah that resonates with everybody.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:05

Right, and people have very complicated definitions of culture. Mine is very simple. It's the way things are done around here, yes, you know, but it has a different meaning than just motivating your team. It's it's for me. Uh, many of my clients are in a place of success. Frankly, I don't get hired by losers. I'm hired by already successful people who are looking for something more. Maybe that more is personal, highly personal, and more sometimes it's business, quite often it's business that masquerades what they really want in terms of their personal life. In my experience, but for the individual, that purpose, vision and values piece comes first before the organizations, and so in the training and mentoring role that I jump into, that's what I pay most attention to first.

Speaker 1: 24:15

So and now I've talked too much no, it's been a very interesting point of view on how you've experienced all those different steps, and I agree with what you're saying about having a clear vision and a purpose for your organization. And I've worked with people, actually with somebody who has the same last name as you have. His name was Paul White instead of Robert White and he was an Englishman. Was Paul White instead of Robert White and he was an Englishman, and later I learned that he was actually a freelancer within the company that I worked for and nobody ever knew that he was a freelancer. He was so passionate and so vividly involved with everything that nobody noticed that he was actually somebody external and he gave us such purpose with our our teams. So I was in it at the time. It was a. It was a law firm, the uk based law firm where I was in. I was located in brussels and and managed the five different countries uh, at that time with different teams, and he had a beautiful vision of how IT support should have been done and he was actually.

Speaker 1: 25:36

What I now have as a daily mission for myself is being of service to others. I carried that with me after all these years and it's not that I'm doing it support anymore. Honestly, no, thank you. Uh, been there, done that. No, thank you. It's it's been, it's been fun, not anymore. Um, but what I've learned, indeed, is he had this. He could enter a room and we all knew that it was going to be about being of service. That was the bottom layer. The fundamental story of any meeting was how can we be of service and be better in the service that we have and become even better than what we were thinking we need to do? So it was always going that extra step higher in delivering and to all of us it was like a normal. And, like you said, I remember the saying one fish asks the other fish, how's the water? And that always comes to mind when they say this. And like, yeah, I was that fish who didn't know what to answer, because it was just part of the DNA and the mission of that team to give the lawyers such good service that they didn't even notice that we were there. That was his goal Be of service, be as good as you can be, but they shouldn't notice you, and that kind of drove the whole team.

Speaker 1: 27:09

For four years I worked there and I had a wonderful time traveled around Europe for several different things, actually doing things behind closed doors so nobody would notice that there was an issue. That was one of the ways of tackling it, and we solved a lot of problems that nobody ever knew. That was one of the ways of tackling it and we solved a lot of problems that nobody ever knew, and that's kind of what I still do now. I currently run a team with 15 people now and there's regularly moments that we see stuff come up and it's like, okay, let's tackle this, and then later on we'll tell our bosses and then, okay, we had this and this and this issue, and now she already knows. So my direct knows okay, how fast did you solve this one? And that's.

Speaker 1: 27:58

I find that that's one of the reasons I should be in my position. You know, avoid issues for the people that I work for and, on the other hand, I find it very, very nice to hear from you as well that how you can learn from your previous engagements or even the things that you've built and start to notice in yourself what the issue is. It's you know. Basically, it's sometimes it's the leader themselves that are the issue, but they don't know, because again, how's the water In?

Speaker 2: 28:32

our case. How's the air?

Speaker 1: 28:36

I have a lot of people that I talk to and so they're CEOs and founders and they are struggling and they see all these symptoms where their team is not talking to them straight off or they're showing them nice numbers, you know, putting everything in green, while the bottom line is so red that everybody almost kills themselves, to be blunt. But um, and then they're asking me what, what am I? What's happening? What's wrong with my company? And I'm like, well, honestly, I'm, I'm one for radical truth, radical truthical truth is this You're the problem? And they don't want to hear this. Of course, that's the first shock. But then you start explaining what's going on and I find what you're saying with the culture.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I really relate with what you're saying. I always tackle it a little bit different, but I really relate with what you're saying. Indeed, there is how we do stuff. Indeed, and what I hate is and hate is a heavy word but what I do not like is when they say we've done it all, we've always done it this way, so we're going to keep on doing it, that kind of blocks with me. It's like no, that doesn't feel right. You can say this is how we do it here. I I'm fine with that, but don't say we're going to keep on doing it, because then the growth mindset is all out the door. So yeah, but I can relate with some of the things that you're saying.

Speaker 2: 29:56

Yeah, you know, I I've uh, I've certainly noticed what could be described in the bigger culture in the world. Culture today could be described as chaotic, as just crazy, and so as human beings, and particularly in leadership roles, our job is to stay calm and stay clear, stay centered during a period of great chaos, and chaos is kind of the more dramatic form of simply the word change, and you know we have such a rapid rate of change today. I mean, it shows up for us, I think, most obviously in technology. You and I can have this conversation halfway around the world and then we can reach people anywhere in the world. I've been working on some videos that are going to be, by using AI, are going to be available in 100 languages. It's just amazing. But that's so radically different than even just five years ago. And for us, as leaders, to think that we don't need to change, even though the whole everything's changing Family dynamics are changing, Community dynamics are changing. Certainly, corporate structures are changing, Financing is changing, Everything is changing so fast. For us to think that we can do what we did five years ago, 20 years ago, and do it the same way, is ludicrous. It's a joke. We need to change and we need to get more aware, take even more personal responsibility and become even better communicators if we're going to enjoy the benefits of leadership and the value to society of good leaders and drive leadership down into the organization so that it's not just the people at the top. You know, I love what you said earlier about kind of not sharing with some of the people at the top what you're really up to. You know, I think I have very few regrets and I have a couple of stories about that and we'll save them for a later time. But I made a promise to a friend of mine.

Speaker 2: 32:16

The late American singer John Denver was a close friend and we went through some tough times together, tough times together, and during that time we were living in Aspen, Colorado, and down valley from Aspen is a city called Glenwood Springs and they have a hot springs and they also have something called a vapor cave. It's a natural cave and of course all of that heat comes up through the earth and all of that humidity, which in Colorado, extra humidity is a welcome thing sometimes. So you go there and you sit for a couple of hours and you cook and then you go take a shower and have a nice lunch and then you go back and cook some more, and then maybe you have a massage and then you cook some more and you talk. So we were talking about problems and one of the things that came up was, first of all, that God would not have presented these problems to us unless there was an awareness that something was within us that we needed to learn and that we were ready for it. And one of the things that came out of that is we made a promise to each other that we would live a life of no regrets, to the greatest degree possible, that we would make better choices so that we don't generate regret. And one of the things that came out of that for me was, you know, I kind of retired at 46, Nico I, you know, I moved to Aspen, Colorado.

Speaker 2: 34:03

I worked part time. I skied 60, 70 days a year. I reached 80 days one year. I remarried and had four children, two birth children, two adopted children and I was a more involved dad than I'd ever been. I was on six nonprofit boards. I traveled the world with John Denver presenting a program about creating a sustainable environment. I mean it was an incredible time.

Speaker 2: 34:35

And I started waking up each morning. I don't know the exact translation of measurements because in America we still use square feet, Because in America we still use square feet, but I think it was about the home that I built. There was about 1,600 square meters and you know, people tease me that it looked like a hotel and you know, and I bought a jet and I did all these things that the poor kid raised in poverty and all that from the wrong side of the tracks is the American expression. We literally lived on the wrong side of my family and all the physical stuff and being on six nonprofit boards of directors and traveling and just having a great life. And I started waking up each morning thinking God is not done with me.

Speaker 1: 35:47

Okay, sounds kind of ominous, it was.

Speaker 2: 35:53

I absolutely hated it and I literally would have an internal conversation. Everything's so good. Why isn't it? I'm not just enjoying it. You know why am I waking up thinking there's something in my future? And actually, when traveling with my friend John, we would do the presentation the sustainability presentation one night and he would do a concert the next night, or the reverse of that, and we'd travel. Well, when he'd do a concert, there's 10,000 or 15,000 people there and he comes off stage at 11 o'clock and he's wide awake. I'm getting ready for bed, he's all excited, right. So that's how those conversations got started and went into the night. And one of them he kind of went silent and he looked at me and he said Robert, you think you're a big deal?

Speaker 1: 36:54

Okay.

Speaker 2: 36:55

I said come on, where are you going with this? And he said no. He said you actually are a big deal and you've made a big contribution in the world and to me, and I treasure all of that. He said but you haven't done anything compared to what you're going to do in the future. It's like I just was thinking that this morning and I didn't tell anybody. Stay out of my mind, yeah, I just was thinking that this morning and I didn't tell anybody, you know how did you know that?

Speaker 2: 37:25

And uh, uh, and he said at the time he said you have a voice, and uh, and then he teased me. He said it's not a singing voice, but you do have a voice and you have something to say. And you need to look at what is it that you're not saying? And I don't know, nick, I don't know if you've done any of the body therapies, but I've done a few of them and one of the things I learned is that when I'm holding back something, I literally feel it in my jaw, it tenses up and it can actually get to the point of being painful. And that's what John was speaking to as a friend is that I had something to say and I wasn't saying it. I'm holding it back.

Speaker 2: 38:16

And when I look at some of my clients who have been really quite successful many of them they all work hard, they're all smart, you know they're just amazing people, but they don't spend as much time, I think, as they need to on why am I here? What is my purpose, what is my vision personally? And that you know our approach is to look at three things. Life kind of seems to show up to me in multiples of three.

Speaker 2: 38:55

But in the key work that I do with leaders, the first step is always completing the past, dealing with blame, shame, regret, guilt and even past success, because to the degree that and you know, all leaders have those things have happened, that we're human beings and what we're good at is compartmentalizing, at stuffing them down. But they're still there. You know, we wonder why we keep hiring the wrong person or firing the wrong person or running into the same set of problems, and quite often it's rooted in the past, in something that we've buried, that we've compartmentalized. You know, we had this president, bill Clinton, who was a brilliant politician and he was an absolute expert at compartmentalizing. You know, he had this crazy personal life and then he had this amazing public life and somehow he kept the two separate until it blew up on him.

Speaker 1: 40:02

In a big way.

Speaker 2: 40:03

yes, but he's a pretty good example of what happens when you don't deal with your past. So that's the first step when I'm working with a client is to assist them in reducing some of the negative energy on their past and also to see that the past is not the present, even though that's what we tend to want to do is to take our past and throw it into the future and call that a vision. It's not, at least it's not one that's freely chosen. The second piece is to learn to better tell the truth about your current reality, and that's that awareness and noticing thing, successful people.

Speaker 2: 40:48

In my experience and in my experience of myself, we live in a story that we tell about ourselves and about what we're up to, and we're pretty good at telling the story and that attracts people and that builds businesses and that gets us married and that gives us a role in the community and lots of good things. But that same story can be self-serving or it can be too humble. There's a lot of things that can be out of alignment with your story. So learning to better tell the truth about your current reality is one way to say it. The Buddhists say that it's developing a selfless regard for your reality. Yeah, to get your ego out of the way and see the truth.

Speaker 1: 41:39

Detached from what is.

Speaker 2: 41:41

Yeah, I haven't taken a lot of formal vacations, but one that I did was on a small cruise ship. It was just 52 suites on this boat with 60 staff. I mean this was a very nice. It's like being on a private yacht. But one of the people that I knew from living in Aspen was a guy that had five major homes, including one of them was in Aspen. He was worth $4 billion US, and I'm not telling a tale out of school. One of them was in Aspen. He was worth $4 billion US. Okay, and I'm not telling a tale out of school. He was a very public figure. His name was Melvin Simon S-I-M-O-N, and the Simon Property Group today owns more property than any other company in America. Okay, they own these huge shopping centers, they own office buildings all over the place and his son actually runs that business today.

Speaker 2: 42:44

Mel passed away about five years ago, but Mel and I really bonded on that trip. We were both business guys that never took a vacation, so we talked business mostly. But the reality for Mel was he had five children from three marriages and he was to some degree estranged from his own children, and two of the five had serious drug addiction issues. One of them actually died of an overdose and he compartmentalized those things and they ended up. You know they ended up. Not that ended up not well, not so public, because you know he could afford to keep things private.

Speaker 2: 43:37

But when I look at my friend Mel in the last few years of his life, here's a guy with $4 billion of net worth and a high level of unhappiness and what that comes from is having a story that isn't real, but you tell it like it is. And then, finally, if you've cleared your past and completed it to some degree, if you're getting better at telling the truth about your reality instead of telling your story, or, let's say, living a better story, one that really serves you and humanity, then you get to choose your future and humanity then you get to choose your future. You're not dealing with old stuff, and doing that work with senior people is tremendously gratifying for me, because that's been my process and the process of many successful people that I've studied. I really look at people that are in this mid-career place They've done well, they can go lay on the beach, and then something tells them they should not go lay on the beach or they should not just play golf, that there's something more for them, and that something more might be in a nonprofit. It might be in a radical transformation of their business.

Speaker 2: 45:01

Are you familiar with Dan Sullivan?

Speaker 1: 45:06

The name does ring a bell.

Speaker 2: 45:08

He founded a company called Strategic Coach, and I'm a past. I was a student or participant, whatever you call it, in strategic coach for two years and I learned a lot from there, and he has a recent book that he co-authored called 10X, yes, 10 and the letter X.

Speaker 2: 45:30

And his statement is that 10X multiplying your business by 10, is easier than multiplying it by two. And again, it would take us a whole day to talk about that. Yes, you know, but it's about a consciousness shift for already successful people. You know, if you're struggling with some little startup and maybe it's got a great future, but if that's where you are, it's not a time to talk about 10X. You know, it's time to make enough money to pay the payroll at the end of the month, you know.

Speaker 2: 46:07

But if you've got a business that's done well and you've done well and you've sourced it and you're wondering about your future, I think that's something to consider. Now I found the book a little difficult to read, but that doesn't actually. If you get the title, if you really get the title, I think it's got incredible value to think about. I wonder if there's something more that's in my future and that I would have fun doing it and it would work for me, for my family, for my community and for the world. And I think that's possible and the people I work with are starting to resonate with that and doing some amazing things. So and I have a sense that's true for you and your team Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 47:00

Thank you for that compliment. I openly and gladly receive it because indeed I am working on that and that part of the story now. Yeah, I do understand what you mean by those three steps that clearly kind of clean up the place and make it possible to open up for more opportunity. Indeed, and I think, in all fairness, there is a path that everybody needs to walk first before they come to that point where they can clean up the past and be very truthful with themselves you know how's the water or how's the air, that's a, that's a beautiful metaphor right there and then, indeed, see where their arrow can be pointed, but not one, but just empty up the quiver and um and shoot them all at once, because you're probably going to be able to, you know, catch the target anyway, kind of be able to, you know, catch the target anyway.

Speaker 1: 47:58

Yeah, robert, you've got so much wisdom and experience in your story. I think we could listen to you for hours, because there's so much what you can bring to us. I would love to re-invite you in the future when you've had another couple of visits to Asia, or aren't you going there shortly? Is that maybe just a little break and then going back, or what's the plan.

Speaker 2: 48:27

I'm not going to live there again. I've become spoiled by being in a country that's my country. You know that kind of ease. But I'll be going back in September for another three weeks to do some trainings, connect with people and contribute what I can. I got a phone call this morning from a Chinese friend who doesn't speak very good English and also I have a sense he had a few glasses of wine before he called me.

Speaker 1: 48:58

He had to drink up the courage to talk English, maybe.

Speaker 2: 49:03

I mean when he called me it was 1 am his time. Oh, okay, yeah, you know, and I asked him twice why did you call me? And he really didn't answer. You know, I don't think he knows why he called me, but what was interesting was that he's up to something he's building electric car charging stations all over China. He's an amazing entrepreneur I mean, he's the typical entrepreneur like five different businesses going at once, but that's been his big one is to install hundreds of these charging stations all over China. But what came through in the call was that when I went to Asia this last trip, I did not go to mainland China and he found out about that and he didn't like that that I made that choice. Oh, you know, and it's really about our need to sit down with people that we can resonate with and just have a conversation and have it be real. You know, not about some sports team, not about, you know, all of these distractions but about real, real stuff about getting real with each other.

Speaker 2: 50:22

And uh, uh, you know most leaders that I work with are lonely. You know, they know they can't. You know it doesn't work very well to have close friends in your company. I think that's rare, it's rarely works. And so who do you talk to? You know your wife has a different world or your husband has a different world that you had you do in leading your company. And uh, uh, you know the, the people you know when you're standing on the sidelines for your son's soccer match. Uh, the people you meet there are great and fun and it's wonderful socially. But who do you talk to? And having that network of people around you that have some understanding of the challenges and the rewards of organizational leadership, I think that's priceless. And what I realized when I got off the phone this morning was I missed that.

Speaker 1: 51:21

I missed that opportunity to be with a superstar entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 51:22

He's a graduate of one of my programs. That's how we got to know each other. But I missed that opportunity and he was gently letting me know that it was not okay with him.

Speaker 1: 51:35

So you know your destinations. That's good. So you know your destinations.

Speaker 2: 51:41

That's good, but I think that's one of the things that podcasting is helping us with is we get to listen in on some really fascinating conversations. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:52

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 51:53

So it's really why, when I found out about you and about this show, I thought, yeah, I might fit there and I might have a good conversation. So thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 52:05

Oh, I'm so happy that you accepted my invitation as well and wanted to join, because absolutely that's one of the things that I focused on is I started off as being a coach years ago, and one of the things that I know and learned as being coach is that you ask questions to get people somewhere, and that somewhere can be a breakthrough, can be change, can be whatever, and I use all different kinds of methodologies that I've learned over the years. I'm 45 years old, but I started working from 19, and I build everything from the ground up to where I am right now. I did 15 different jobs and I had teams of 300 people as well, so I had all these guys. I was a cable guy, so really pulling cables at the beginning of my career, driving forklifts, sitting in offices with big cheese and sea levels and whatever.

Speaker 1: 53:07

I've done all that in my career, and one, indeed, we cannot emphasize this enough is how lonely it is to be a leader.

Speaker 1: 53:16

If you're a really good leader, it is a lonely place to be because you're driving so many layers in a company towards a good goal or a good mission or a good vision, and that's indeed a difficult one to talk to, and I've been looking for years to find counterparts to have these conversations and I've noticed that indeed, in this podcast there's a lot of people that I talk to, whom I will be contacting again just to have those conversations, because sometimes you kind of miss the little differences in point of view where, when you ask the question so, for instance, let's play this off, if I would contact you in like a half a month time or in a few months time and say, robert, you know I got this thing going on.

Speaker 1: 54:05

Do you have any tips for me or any experiences? And you'll probably, you know, be able to go right into the pain of saying you know, nick, you're actually doing this wrong and I will be able to accept it because I know that it comes from a good place actually doing this wrong, and I will be able to accept it because I know that it comes from a good place. And that's that's where I think as well. That's that's why I switched over to to calling myself a confidant, because it's the relationship and the safe space of getting into those conversations and talking about the real deep pain, but not, you know, putting extra salt on it it's never good or reopening the wound to get the bullet out might be healthy, but it's not so pleasant. But in essence it's to get through that pain.

Speaker 2: 54:55

And on the other side there's always sunshine after the rain. Absolutely. Look, if you know my book is available, if people have an interest, you know it's in the bookstores, it's on Amazon or if you want a signed copy, go to therobertwhitecom. You know it's for sale on my site. But you know, one of my daughters says Dad, you think you're such a big deal, you're just a book salesman at this point in your life.

Speaker 1: 55:24

There's a lot of love in that statement.

Speaker 2: 55:26

Yeah, I trained, you know, I educated them to be independent thinkers and unfortunately they are. You know.

Speaker 2: 55:36

You've done well, but you know I do a weekly e-zine called An Extraordinary Minute. It's some idea that I heard from somebody like my friend, nick, and with my comments on it, all designed to be read in one minute or less once a week. So it's free and you can go to therobertwhitecom and you'll get that. There's also a 28-page PDF that a lot of leaders have said has been very valuable to them. It's what I've learned about success at every level, all in 28 pages PDF and it's shareable so you can share it with your team. So stay in touch. That's for you, nick, and for your listeners. Who knows where that might lead?

Speaker 1: 56:26

Yeah, absolutely, for sure, people Contact Robert because I think you might learn a lot in a very short time, and thank you, robert, again for joining us today. I will leave your website link in the show notes so people, when you're on your phone, just click the link and check out the website right now, and when you've done with Robert, go over to my website and check out my website as well. Wonderful, well.

Speaker 2: 56:56

I've got a new friend on the other side of the world. So, Nick, I've enjoyed it. Thank you for great questions. Thank you for your friendship.

Speaker 1: 57:04

Likewise, Robert. Thank you very much.