#104: A Millennial In Transit with Andrew Gottlieb

I call him E-Money.

E-Money. You call Eckhart Tolle E-Money. The power of now money.

That's a great question. No one's ever asked me the pronunciation of it. I've always said Tolle.

Yeah,

in my head about it, I could be butchering this my entire life.

Oh good, so I'm not the only one because I'm a huge fan of his, have been back to my lawyer days. In fact, when I was transitioning, I was pivoting out of full-time law practice and moving into this other training space, teaching and speaking work. Eckhart's book, The Power of Now, and then later, The New Earth, just blew my mind. I mean, it just blew me wide open. So I would love to know— you know what? Open that loop. We'll close it in just a minute. So that's a phenomenal bio. I mean, you've done a lot of great work. You've created an incredible company. You've worked with incredibly powerful minds and impactful people in the world. What's not written in that bio that you would love for people to know about you, Andrew? Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. In times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

I would say this is more an attribute and characteristic. Being from the East Coast as well, recently I've really started to connect deeper with what it means to be from Pittsburgh. And before we jumped on, I was chatting with your wife about the shooting that just happened in Pittsburgh. I'm also Jewish. What really came out of that for me is the 2 combination, being from Pittsburgh and being Jewish. I think Pittsburgh is a very gritty, resilient town that doesn't give up. There's so many times in its history where Pittsburgh should have been bankrupt like Detroit, half the population left, the steel mills collapsed, so many instances that Pittsburgh was a down-and-out city, and it's really had a resurgence. I think I view that story through the same lens of being Jewish and how resilient of a people we are. Same type of story, maybe a little bit more violent in our past of what people have attempted to do to us. And I think I've really started to appreciate those attributes and how they're just a part of my personality.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it differentiates me from the average Southern California person who's always been like you're describing, that's 70 and sunny. It's probably like hailing and 35 degrees out right now in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, exactly. Wow. There's so much there as I'm listening to you thinking to myself, wow, resilience, that is a big part of our message these days. It's part of what we are most— have been most called to speak about and offer insight on. How is it that resilience has become such a big part of us? I usually look at it through the lens of just having pivoted so many times in business and how resilience is such a key component in the successful pivot. But we know that we're pivoting daily and in so many ways. And then there's— to bring back Eckhart into the mix, this is lovely, I think, right now. One of the concepts that I remember reading, and I think it was in The New Earth, was this idea of a collective pain body, that we have our own pain body for sure and stuff that that is stuck in the cells of our bodies that creates pain, both, you know, everything, physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, all of that. But yet there's also collective pain bodies of groups of people, cultures, religions, et cetera. And for sure, being Jewish myself, there's a collective pain body among Jews worldwide for sure, because it's been a people that have endured and suffered and been on the receiving end of some pretty rough things. Yeah. Resilience, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but for sure, as DNA goes, as a trait, as you said, resilience is one of those traits that both may get passed down through that collective from generation to generation based on what people have endured. It's also, I suppose, something from an epigenetic standpoint that can be cultivated through environment. Yeah,

I hadn't even thought about it. From bringing the Eckhart Tolle perspective. And yeah, I don't know what it is about resiliency within myself. I think it's a combination of the two, of it's in my genes, and I think there are certain instances in my childhood that created that resiliency within me. I can give you an example. Growing up, I was a really small kid. Until my junior year of high school, I wasn't above 5 feet and 100 pounds. Wow. Super tiny while simultaneously playing competitive soccer, went on to play college soccer. So I was at a huge disadvantage being that tiny and trying to compete in a sport like that. And what it really instilled in me was that resiliency to not give up. There are so many instances of coaches telling me I was too small, I didn't weigh enough, all those things that made me dig deep within myself to keep on going for something I was really passionate about. On top of that, what most people didn't know is I actually had human growth hormone deficiency as a kid. I had to inject growth hormone into my butt every night for about 3 years straight.

Yes. Friends of ours from when we were living in New Jersey, their son also, same thing going on. I know that wasn't easy on them and the whole idea of it, I'm sure. There's so many ways in which we're meant to believe, I suppose, that we have to compete and part of that Being able to succeed in life and compete in life has to do with our size and has to do with our ability to be stronger, faster. Yeah, this idea that resilience even has a lot to do with just the physical aspects. But clearly, your story shows that, and so many others. I mean, it's just bringing up so many other stories I can think of where people have been told they couldn't do something, whether it was a physical limitation or some other limitation that someone else imposed on them and said, no, you can't do this. You're not— Listen, maybe you want to try something that's a little different because you're going to not succeed at this or you'll fail at this. It's going to frustrate you and all that kind of— and it only turned up the heat inside of them, not so much to prove, I suppose, but really just to live it out, whatever that looked like. I'm not saying it's necessarily a destiny to do it, but clearly when you were told, now physically you can't do this at a high level. Something inside you said, uh-uh, no.

Yeah. I would compare it as well to those early childhood instances that shape your character, which once you do landmark form and all that stuff in your 20s and 30s or 40s, you start to understand why you became who you are. I see it a lot with millennials my age, so I'm 29, who had the trust fund baby upbringing. And never were put in certain— they just had everything given to them and weren't really put in situations where they needed to develop that resiliency and drive. And I'm seeing it now of what it looks like when you're in your mid-20s and you're pushed against your boss's criticism or trying to build your own company and you have that first obstacle in your way and you have no idea what to do and you just drown.

Yeah. Well, that's a big topic right there, brother. I mean, there's no question. There's a lot of people in the entrepreneurial space now. Probably the bulk of those folks are millennials. I mean, there's a lot of people side hustling and starting up businesses at all kinds of ages, in their 50s and 60s. I think there's a resurgence of that, of people after age 50 who maybe run the gamut of their career path, so to speak, and they're sort of too old to hire and too young to retire. in that space. That was the title of a book that ultimately became Pivot. That was the early vying for that title. But there are those folks, and then there's this whole other group of folks that are still in the employment arena, and those are mostly millennials. I mean, the largest part of the workforce are millennials. Yeah. There's this sort of idea that millennials are a little soft in that area. I'm just sort of probing it, not even questioning what you're saying, but just sort of probing it because I remember watching Simon Sinek had a pretty well-shared viral video about millennials that was really negative. I thought it was super negative on millennials. And maybe I took it a little personally just because our oldest daughter is 26, and then we have a 24-year-old daughter, and then our next 2 are, I guess, Gen Z. And you know our oldest daughter pretty well, Chelsea. She's quite resilient and she's a hard worker and she's creative. Yeah. Matthew, her fiancé, same thing in the entrepreneurial space too and dealing with all that. I just feel like they want so much more out of the working experience than I wanted at the same age. At the same age for me and for my dad, we were sort of like, how can I earn a lot of money? Or how can I earn at least enough money to have a family, take care of my responsibilities, do all the things that a responsible adult does? Especially after you start to get married or start having kids and all that kind of thing. I wasn't thinking about how I trade my time and whether the trade was a fair trade. I didn't start to ask those questions. So part of my pivot came when in my late 30s, I'm realizing that I'm trading my time almost exclusively for money and that time I can never get back and the money is empty. The soul-sucking experience of just doing something for the money and not feeling driven by purpose. and not feeling like it's a part of a bigger mission for my life, that in the end, that just emptied me. It was like my cup was emptying and emptying and emptying, and then I'm waking up in the morning and feeling empty, which sucks. I want to dive into your pivot story as well.

Yeah.

But before we do, just any more thoughts on the millennial piece? Because I do think there's some element of, yeah, when you're a trust fund baby, And everything's given sort of to you, you can see how you could be a little soft. And there's no question that the generations of kids in the last 20, 30 years, that parents have gone out of their way to make things more easy for them and keep them germ-free and keep them out of harm and all that kind of stuff. So I'm just questioning, are they soft or not? I'm putting you on the spot here, Andrew. Millennials really soft?

Are all of my friends soft or not?

I'm going to share this with Eric. Everybody, brother, by the way. It's

definitely by the individual. It's a mixed bag. I would say my Pittsburgh friends tend to be more on the non-soft side of the spectrum, I would say, in full transparency. I would say definitely my Encinitas, California friends are on the softer side of how they just go through the world. It's much more about flow and is Divinely timed, which I totally get it. I think there's both worlds can be combined into one. I would say, I think with millennials though, we want our jobs and our work to have meaning and purpose behind it. And so I think that adds a layer to this that we don't like settling for work just to pay the bills. And sometimes I think that can be misinterpreted for being soft. Because we're not paying our dues and going through the system. We don't see the need to spend years of our life doing something that we don't care about, that's not making a positive impact on humanity.

Yeah. You really helped out there a lot, Andrew, because that's my instinct about it. And again, I'll admit I'm not the most objective, I suppose, because of our own kids, but that's how I see it. I see it as they just won't make the same trade That I was willing to make without questioning because there was no questioning in my generation. You just weren't questioning that way. And I know my parents weren't questioning that either. And so, I think it's an evolution, a good evolution that people today entering the workforce would be questioning how they trade their time and what's the purpose, the higher purpose for it because if there's a great purpose to it, then yeah, man, go all in and Develop the kinds of habits, work habits and work ethic that lead to great results because we all know that you don't get things without a price and that price is time, that price is your energy. It's putting in your love and attention and you can't shortcut that system. But why do that necessarily for something you don't believe in? Yeah, I think there's definitely a balance there and maybe it's a balance between grit and flow, like you say. Yeah. Sort of that East Coast grit And that West Coast flow. I don't know what to call that.

I would, and how I— an example of a friend in Sanitas quit her big corporate job and she was building up her own practice. 7 months later, we were chatting and she was like, I'm running out of money. And I was asking her, you know, kind of what's going on and trying to dive deep into her business model. And then she ended up finally admitting she's only been working maybe 4 hours a week on building her company. So it was like, so that was the— you can't build a company working 4 hours a week. I know you read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Oh my God, poor Tim. Geez.

So that was definitely an eye-opening conversation of she may have been an outlier, but I know she's not alone in just thinking everything's going to manifest and flow. And so there's totally that balance of Divine synchronicities lining up and pushing you in the right direction while still putting in the work to make it happen.

Yeah. Beautiful. Andrew, thank you for that because this idea of grit and flow and how important it is to integrate or at least have access to both of those things when needed is a key ingredient. Maybe that's something that can be offered even beyond this podcast to people in the community that don't maybe completely get that piece of it because I'm a huge believer in flow and manifestation and allowing things and not trying to force And yet, yeah, there's no question that the effort that goes into creating a result sometimes means you've got to put in at a minimum the time. If nothing else, you've got to put the time in.

And I will say all of those big clients you listed out, none of them were a result of me having my big business development list and going out prospecting. All of them came through what I just want to call sheer luck. There was no organized structure. It was just random synchronicities and it just happened. But I also was working super hard on progressing the business simultaneously.

Forget the definition of luck that somebody once used, but this idea where preparation meets opportunity is what you could call luck or you could call success. But being prepared so that when opportunities come, you're able to seize them is something That maybe isn't so sexy and people don't really want to— in the sports equation, with Olympic athletes or with professional athletes, they practice 90% of the time. They're only on the field of play or in competition sort of 10%, and the rest is prep time. It's preparation. There's a great older book. I think it's early '70s, Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World. Did you ever read that book?

I've not.

Yeah. It's a really powerful book, way cool, tremendous insights in that book. There's a place in it where, as part of a mantra, this character in the book is asking for ability, not asking for opportunities equal to his ability, but for ability equal to his opportunity. I think that's an important distinction, that we don't want to just get opportunities that meet us where we are in our things that we can handle now. We want to actually be able to grow. our ability to meet the opportunities that are everywhere. That is about grit. That's about taking a proactive approach to it, not just sitting there in the namaste pose waiting for the stuff to rain down on us. Let's dive into your pivot because you've got a wonderful story of change. Will you share that with us?

Yeah. One of the big pivot moments is a direction that took me from Wall Street to eventually launching my own business, but I can go back a little bit leading up to that decision point. So you've probably heard this from a lot of other people growing up, you're the straight-A student. I was preparing for SATs since the 7th grade. And you grow up studying super hard, getting good grades, but it doesn't actually lead you to, this is what I want to do with my life. And you just know you can show up and do really well in And tests and written exams. And so as I entered college, there was a lot of directions my career could go down. My dad's a dentist. He's the team dentist of the Steelers. He has his own practice. So it was a very clear road of taking over his practice if I wanted to. It would have been really simple. And I played soccer in college. And the first night of our preseason kind of get-together, I was chatting with some upperclassmen and they were asking me what I was going to major in and do with my life. And I had said, maybe I want to take over my dad's dentistry practice. I don't really know. That sounds like a cool idea. And so they asked me, so you really must love chemistry. And I said, no, I hate chemistry. It was my least favorite class in high school. And they go, well, you do realize to be a dentist, you're pretty much going to be a chem major in college. And then immediately I was like, okay, I can't be a dentist then.

Scratch that.

Within the first 10 minutes of college, I decided I was not going to be a dentist.

That's a good mark right there.

That led me to a question of, okay, what do I do? Being a Type A personality and overachiever, super ambitious, that led me to Wall Street. It was also almost an existential crisis I was having in my sophomore year. I injured my ankle a bunch that season on the soccer team and just had the realization that I was not going to be a pro soccer player and I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life. That led me to the exploration of heading to Wall Street and interning there, and that got all of that out of my system in 10 weeks that summer. You

got it all out of your system in 10 weeks?

Got it all out of my system.

Wow, man, you're faster than me. I've spent 18 years.

I was super resistant for most of the summer. What influenced me, and this is actually why Eric connected us, as this was what my talk was about back in August. I had 2 roommates who just poked at me every single day as one was working in entertainment, one was working in film, and they came home just so excited every single day talking about how awesome their internship was, the people they were meeting, the projects they were on. All I came back and could say was my pretentious little suit and briefcase I had, I was crunching a bunch of numbers in Excel. And that didn't change. I was every single day for weeks on end. And at first, I thought it was really important work. And then over time of them just poking at me and asking me, what do you actually enjoy doing with your life? I was in denial of it as I was in the worldview that you're just supposed to work and make money and die pretty much. And so that summer really opened my eyes to what would it look like to actually have a career that you're interested in and you're passionate about.

What a concept.

Yeah, it is.

So where'd you go from there? I mean, that's a great awareness. And then you speak to your family. I'm not saying your family, but, you know, they take that insight home and people are like, oh, that sounds great. Yeah. But now what are you going to do?

Oh yeah. My Jewish parents wanted nothing of follow your dreams.

No, no, exactly. Lawyer, doctor. I mean, come on, seriously, something. Wall Street, but it's acceptable.

Accessible. You got

to

wear a suit. I came back to college that fall and I was against Wall Street, but then I kept on getting lured back in for more internship opportunities. In the moment back then, it was really hard to say no still, as they were still being presented to me. I went on a really robust internship search, and I don't even remember applying for the internship. Still to this day, I have no idea how they found out about me, if I emailed a resume. I was sending in any and everything I could, and it ended up being a political consulting firm in Washington, DC. I decided to take that, and it felt like a step in the right direction, as politics had always been something that had interested me, and my senior project in high school was organizing voter registration for our senior class. So I went to DC the next summer in a very exploratory mode of, is this the right direction for me? And it was a step in the right direction, but it still wasn't it. I think that summer was a lot harder. I spent another summer, and it's now my senior year. My safety net's going to evaporate in 10 months. What am I supposed to do? And so I then went on and volunteered on a political consulting or a political campaign in my college town that fall, and it was still a step in the right direction, but it still was not it. The only time my parents got mad at me in this exploratory mode was— so on top of this, I got rejected from every job I applied to in college, not even a, here's an offer, come in and reject it. It was just flat-out rejections everywhere. And the only opportunity I had was to go to New York City that summer after graduating and volunteer. And I jumped on that opportunity and that did not go over well with my parents at all. But I also know if I didn't do that, Notypical Moments would not be in existence today.

So what volunteer opportunity was that? How did that actually turn into the pivot that became your your new business and take us down that path as well in terms of how the business got started. And was it kind of an instant success or did it go through some iterations before you figured out some recipe that's worked?

So I know you like the name and it may sound familiar if you've ever read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. So instead of No Ordinary Moments, I took a twist on that and said No Typical Moments. And I read that book entering my senior year, and it was really my first exploration into personal growth and development and awareness. And I still remember reading that book and then going outside and actually observing the sky above me because I was just so oblivious to all of that. And I knew after reading that book and just kind of scribbling in a notebook that I kept writing down no ordinary moments because of that moment in the book. I went on Google and found a synonym for ordinary, typical, and I came up with no typical moments. I was very convinced even then of one day I'm going to have a company called No Typical Moments. No idea what it was going to be about, but I knew it was going to be somehow related to the journey that I was on and I just experienced. Later that spring, I got sent a mass email from someone I connected with during those internships saying, hey, my friend just started a podcast and you guys should go check it out. And it was about this guy who was living on the beach in Costa Rica, running a blog, making 6 figures. And that sounded cooler than anything I'd ever seen or experienced in college. And it was like, I need to explore what the heck that dude did to have that lifestyle.

So now you really are doing typical millennial stuff right now.

Yeah. And so at first, an interest into how do you actually create a life like that? And then as I dove deeper into what he was actually doing, I realized how much I had a passion for the internet and technology and social media. It was still relatively new back then. And so I worked on it. Spring of 2011 was when I had the initial idea. Fast forward a few months, and I went to New York City and volunteered. And I would say that was more of an exploration of self and who is Andrew through just the constant volunteerism and giving back I did that summer. And so I worked on this for a year and a half on the side until September 2012. I was working for a minor league baseball team and decided to put in my 2-week notice leave that job and dive full-time into building up this organization. So a little over 6 years ago, I took that leap of faith.

Yeah. And how's it been for you?

Totally the entrepreneurial journey of— it's an

always roller coaster journey.

Yeah. It's every new level we elevate to is its own just new realm of challenges and opportunities. that present itself. I think I'm doing better in those ebbs and flows and reacting less. I'll give you an example of what's happening right now, for instance. As we entered Q4, our revenue started to dip a little bit. At first, I was like, crap, what's going on? This is out of the ordinary. We just had our best rev and profit month ever in August, blew it out of the water with anything else we'd ever done. I was thinking, we're going to keep on growing like this over the next couple of months, and then we had some clients pause unexpectedly. A few fired us unexpectedly. We hadn't had a client fire us in a year, and we had 2 do it in 24 hours. It was kind of a jolting experience of, wow, what is going on right now? Then that week, we had 2 others decide to pause. And so as we entered October, I started to feel a little bit of that dip because the new clients we have coming on board have been a little bit slow in onboarding at the moment. And so in August, totally stressed out going, how did we go from that in August and then 2 months later this is happening and we're dipping? But then I started to look at our numbers and then I saw in the last 2 years If I had detailed numbers 3 years ago, it'd look the exact same. I started to realize actually this is our business model, that we have a huge peak in August every single year, and then as we enter Q4, marketing starts to slow down and people are already prepping for Q1 2019. And so then I just went, oh, dummy, like if you would have known your numbers better, you would have just realized like your business isn't seasonal, but Q4 drops in revenue for you. every year and really like you're making massive gains the other 9 months of the year with a peak in August. And so when I sat back, I went, okay, well, it's still not cool that we dripped like that, but now I actually understand this is our yearly fluctuation of what we need to be preparing for as we enter 2019 Q4 and preserving profit better and more effectively throughout the year.

Right. You already said, and I think this is really important, that knowing your numbers is a big deal. For people who are entrepreneurs that aren't numbers people, that's what they say, I'm not a numbers person. I'm not a math guy or woman, but knowing your numbers is essential. Whether you know them or somebody on your team or some outsourced solution that you've got can tell you them, you really do need to know your numbers, especially to know, as you said, to identify a trend and a seasonal trend for you. That's one aspect of it. What else did you learn in that experience that you think might be valuable as part of your development as both an entrepreneur and a leader in a company? Wow! The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. If you're a leader, a business owner, or an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new, but the one thing that I've learned in performing at the highest The common thread of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

So what was funny when those clients fired and paused, when that was going on, I would say 90 to 95% of the clients we work with are truly values-aligned clients. We had a few that are kind of in this gray area where they're not doing anything bad, it's not doing anything good, they're kind of just there, and they became clients for one reason or the other. And I went to Al Gore's climate change conference and came away from that super crystal clear that any client we're working with that isn't focused on consciousness and personal growth and development or environmental issues, isn't a client we want to be working with. And like that, all of those clients left us within a week. So it was like a, be careful what you wish for, Andrew, because you said it and this is happening now.

It's so true. I mean, it really is remarkable how quickly the universe responds to our thoughts and to our true intentions.

I

remember when we were running a company, a large company in the training space, and we knew that We were going to be pivoting and that the next thing was going to be something different. Like you said, as soon as that is spoken out loud and even internally, but as soon as you give voice to it and there's language to it, it's incredible how fast the universe will respond to that. Clients are the same way. When you know very well who your clients are, I think you're attracting them. When you know who your clients are not, which is also very Powerful, you might repel them. Do you buy that or is it— what do you think of that?

Yeah. I repel a lot of people because they— well, I'm kind of the face of the company per se. I don't do that much personality marketing, but I'm the first person they meet and interact with from a sales process standpoint. I'm kind of this tree-hugging millennial. burner, and there's a specific type of person who loves that, and then there's another type of person who's completely repelled by that. So on the positive side of what happened then is within a week of all that falling apart, I also was told that we had some really amazing aligned clients. Like, we're—

Hmm.

We work with Eckhart Tolle through SoundTrue Publishing, if you're familiar. With that brand, and so we're told that Michael Singer is going to be on a project with us. We did it.

Love, love Michael Singer, man. Yeah,

we're told. Well, we did a pilot project with Jason Silva in October, which is leading into potentially some other opportunities. We'll see how that progresses. We're just told we're going to be working with Marion Williamson, and I'm going to totally butcher the name, but Thich Nhat Hanh. who's another author at Sounds True. So as I was calling that in, top dogs in the industry suddenly kind of came out of nowhere and advanced. Those are coming, but it still was a kind of holy crap, I've been playing a little small because I didn't think we may have been at that level to be working with just across the board amazing clients like that. And so on the positive side, it was the eye-opener of

Was this just your own insight and then a verbalization of that to yourself, or was this more formally put to the team as in, we need to know who's our— not just our avatar, but I mean, who's really aligned, as you used the word aligned before, so sort of heart aligned with us, and anybody that's not, we sort of want to gently allow to say no thanks or to Release them, so to speak. Yeah.

We have a lot of conversations internally with who we are, where we're going. We're very clearly a values-aligned company from who we hire to who we want to work with. And so we've done those exercises and verbalized it to each other and very clear of who we don't want to be working with and associating with. I would say it goes back to that luck component of it just kind of just happened. And what I was telling everyone during that week of clients falling off was something better is waiting for us. And maybe it was just my own way of coping. And I felt like I was lying to myself at times I was repeating it, but I just had to keep on repeating it of like, something better is coming, something's better coming. Even from a talent perspective, in all of that, we had a new PM we had just hired. Also quit during that week within the first 24 hours. And now we just got done with our interview process for a new PM who's 100 times more aligned for where we're at and what we're looking for as a company. And so it's funny how it does work out, but it, it also was a combination of definitely verbalizing it to our team in the universe. And we also put in the work to make it happen simultaneously. Like we hired someone back in April to vet out our hiring system because it was off and not fully functional. So back in April, we knew we needed a more robust hiring process for when we want to bring more team members on. And it finally got implemented in September after that individual left within 24 hours.

Yes. Wow. What's amazing to me is the level at which your company is conscious, or it's an organization that is aware. And just by being aware doesn't mean you necessarily get everything you want when you want it. How you want it. So I think every entrepreneur's journey is one where you've got to be okay with the unknown. You got to be okay in uncertainty and certainly when things just don't go your way. So it's applying consciousness to that in that moment, whether that's to breathe, to be present with what's happening and not trying to necessarily resist it or change it, but really embrace it, embrace the opportunity that either is There and you can't see it or is there and you maybe are not wanting to see it, sort of resisting it or what have you. But, that level of consciousness is a big part of business today. I don't think people knew that years ago, how much an organization itself, very much like us as individuals, is either conscious or unconscious. You're running an organization that you're designing from a consciousness standpoint, it sounds like.

Yeah, so we, uh, we should be legalizing our paperwork very shortly. I just texted our lawyer a few days ago to become what's called a benefit corporation. Um, have you heard of that new legal term?

I haven't heard of that as a legal term, no. What, what's the distinction there? So it's not a not-for-profit though, right?

It's a hybrid. So typically it's a for-profit company, but you have a charter like a nonprofit saying we're here to do this for the world. And so you're legally held to those standards. So for instance, if we took on an oil and gas company, I guess I own 100% of the organization, but let's say we had investors or we were publicly traded, you have a legal standard that takes precedence over what your investors want. So say you do have investors, they can't push you to maximize profit and take shortcuts, if it's going to impact your mission. Patagonia is probably the biggest benefit corporation. Etsy, what was interesting, and I haven't done enough research on it, is Etsy actually went public as a benefit corporation, which is super interesting from a case study perspective. They legally don't have to listen to Wall Street and their short-term demands for profit if it's going to negatively impact And

this is more than just the bylaws, or is it pretty much driven— is this—

It's a legal denomination.

It's a legal denomination. This is fascinating. I haven't heard of this, so I'm really excited. And I was going to ask you if you knew of any public companies, but you've named 2 now, so Patagonia and Etsy.

I think Patagonia is private.

Is it private?

Etsy is definitely a public company. Ben& Jerry's is a benefit corporation, but I don't think they're public. There's one other one that I'm— is it Kickstarter? Kickstarter is a benefit corporation, but I forget if they're public. The other element of this, which you may have heard of, is called a B Corp. Being in San Diego, I'm sure you've gone to Goodonya.

Oh, yeah.

Goodonya is a benefit corporation and they're a B Corp. It applies a lot better in their business model versus ours. With them being a storefront, having ingredients, their supply chain, having both of those certifications, they can't cheat on their ingredients and try to buy cheaper ingredients and have tighter margins. Yeah. And so B Corp then is kind of like a green building certification. It's a third-party system that comes in and you have to do their test and get a certain number of points to get their badge.

Have you done any research on the trend, this new distinction? Are there more companies coming on board with this? Does this look like a trend that's going to continue to grow to the point where in a few years, potentially, there'll be more companies forming themselves or reforming themselves as benefit organizations?

Well, I think this goes back to what we discussed at the beginning of the podcast with millennials and how millennials want to be working at the B Corps and benefit corporations of the world. So from a recruiting standpoint, it gives you a competitive advantage because you're not greenwashing your hirees that we're this cool purpose-driven company. You have actual data and examples and best practices to show how you're actually living and breathing this message.

Yeah.

I don't know all of the facts off the top of my head of like how it's accelerating, but I know there's studies of how purpose-driven companies outperform non-purpose-driven companies, like in Good to Great with Jim Collins. That's a lot of his work. He uses totally different language behind this, but correct me if I'm wrong, I thought his whole hypothesis and premise of his book was brands with purpose outperform brands that don't have purpose.

Yes, and I think there was some reference through In Start with Why, Simon Sinek's book, similar research used and coming to a similar conclusion, but this is different when you're talking about a legal entity. Yeah. Whereas, as you say, you can't sort of snow people. Millennials— I didn't say millennials, just people that have grown up with the internet, so that's, I think, the distinguishing feature— are more sensitized to And have a better nose for sniffing out the BS when it comes to that. I really feel strongly that that's the case, that they grew up being marketed to in such an overt way and such a deceptive way in so many instances that they're just more— their sensitivity for it, for detecting something that's not aligned, not congruent, all that kind of stuff, that they're more hip to it. And therefore, yeah, if the charter of an organization is that this is what we're doing and why we're doing it, you can't just deviate because the owners want to take more money in their jeans at the end of the day or the investors want a higher return. That will change the trajectory in so many ways of the corporate sector.

There's a great conference called Sustainable Brands where they bring together a lot of the thought leaders in this space. And they have a pretty big movement at the corporate level to get these best practices and policies in place. The thing with a small business to change their legal certification, it's not that big of a hassle, but if you're a publicly traded company, you're JetBlue, you're Coca-Cola, whoever it is, that's a massive, massive undertaking. So I don't know the practicality of it happening at that level, but definitely for the the smaller business, it's definitely a feasible thing to ship.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited. I'm going to do some research actually this evening on this. So folks that have not heard of how this would be incorporated in either a small or a large company, I think this is worth looking into it. Etsy, at least at the moment, the only public company that we know, let's say, that formed in this fashion and then went public, so the public knows as they're buying shares, That's mostly Wall Street, that's mostly managers, fund managers, and the like, that this is an enterprise that won't put profit first.

It's not that they're not a for-profit company, but they won't put profit ahead of the charter, whatever that charter is, and it's a do good, it's a provide a benefit charter. It's not a do anything that's required, and it's not an ends justify the means charter, which I think is, in many ways, what we see in the corporate arena for so many years.

Etsy may have taken away their benefit corporation status a handful of years later after going public. I haven't followed their case study. I remember someone telling me that it was a possibility. I don't know if they followed through on it. I think they had a change in senior leadership. So I think from a case study model perspective, it'd be interesting, say they did get away from their benefit corporation status, what was happening When they initially went public, did their stock rise, decrease? What was the reaction? Then learning if they shifted away, why did they?

Right, exactly. How did the marketplace meet them and how did they do in terms of attracting and keeping talent as well? Because there are all these different factors in terms of the hypothesis being that if you're running a for-benefit company that is a fully aligned enterprise, that people who are attracted to that believe what you believe. As Simon Sinek would say, people don't buy your product. by why you produce that product. So if people believe what you believe and are attracted and want to support that, they'll work and the engagement at work will be great. People will stay long. The longevity piece will be there. And presumably, the company would be able to have everything on its end, at least from that internally, to succeed. And then the question is, again, how did the market meet them as well? And that's a whole other conversation. I want to shift gears in wrapping up this conversation, which I've enjoyed so much, Andrew. This has been great. Rituals are important to me, and I really believe that in many ways, the quality of our lives are equal to the quality of the things that we do consciously, which I'm using the word ritual for that. What rituals do you have that you could share with us, or at least maybe one of the most important ones that keeps you in good headspace or heartspace during the day?

Yeah. I also will say that I'm not perfect at these. Even this morning, I fell off with my rituals, but it's vast majority of the days, this is what I'm doing. Meditating, I do Wim Hof breathwork, and exercise in the morning are my 3 go-tos that I really aim to be incorporating in my day. I would say at the very least, I'm meditating and exercising. Maybe for whatever reason, if I slack off in a meditation, then I make it up halfway through the day. Exercising has definitely been a huge component, sweating as frequently as possible.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy, It's not too late.

You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

Yeah. And the Wim Hof breathing is amazing. Do you get yourself in good cold water as well?

Well, that's where it sometimes can shift because When I'm out exercising, then say I do hot yoga and I shower right after class, I don't have an opportunity to do my Wim and then head into the shower. So in full transparency, that does get thrown off, but I do like my cold showers. And I'm actually supposed to head to his event in LA tomorrow. And like you mentioned earlier, the fires that are happening, it looks like they're— it's in Santa Monica and I see them coming that way. So I don't really know if I'm going to be heading or not. I just I have no idea what's going on with those crazy fires, but I bought this ticket the second I saw his email saying I'm going to be in LA. I instantaneously went on and bought it.

Yeah. When people are listening to this and perhaps even watching it on YouTube, that will have passed, but there's always something going on that we can put our prayers toward, send out love and everything else that would make it possible for people to be resilient in situations like that. So we started with resilience and there's just never a day that I don't feel that resilience and something we can cultivate and also wish for other people. So, I appreciate so much, Andrew, your time today and really enjoyed this conversation. So, thank you for being on the show. For folks that have also enjoyed and have a comment about it, you can go to adammarkel.com/podcast and leave a comment there. You can leave a review on iTunes and, of course, love your feedback. It doesn't always have to be positive. I'm not asking for— No. You know, the proverbial, you suck, or anything like that. But, I mean, if you've got feedback and it's constructive and it's helpful, we love it. We love to hear it. And whatever that looks like, I just really try not to make any judgments about it. Wherever you stand on these things is perfect for you. So, thank you for that time. Of course. Of course, the Start My Pivot community on Facebook is growing. We'd love to invite you to come and join that. You can find it as Start My Pivot Community on Facebook or go to pivotfb.com, and that'll take you to the front door there. At startmypivot.com as well, you can get ahold of our incredible kickstart guide. A team put together this beautiful kickstart guide with 6 questions to find out where you might be at the moment in the process of pivoting. It seems like we're always pivoting and sometimes that we're doing that by design. We're a bit more conscious of the fact that some changes are required in the moment. And sometimes we're pivoting because something just happened and we weren't planning it, we weren't thinking about it, but the universe had a different plan and it kind of catches us off guard. So this is a really great support guide in that arena and you can get that at startmypivot.com as well. I'll say in closing that gratitude has been the most beneficial thing to me for the last 10 years. I can't go a single day without feeling that gratitude is the reason why I enjoy my life and more and more I believe In the richness of simple practices that allow you to be in a state of gratitude. As far as rituals go, I don't think there's anything that's more impactful than how it is that you start the day, that how I start the day is equivalent of the most fertile time for our minds. And as soil goes, it's just great to take that seed and plant seeds in fertile soil. So as you wake up tomorrow, I am sending out this intention both for myself and for everybody else that we all get to wake up tomorrow. And as we're taking that first waking breath where we are conscious of the fact that we are alive, been given another day, that there are people in that very moment, that same moment, who are taking their last breath of life. So that moment is not ordinary. It's no typical moment at all and something that you can be grateful for regardless of the challenges that may be facing you that day. It may be a great sunny day. It may be perfect for so many reasons and it may be very imperfect. And yet, in that moment, there's something to appreciate and be grateful for. So our 3-part simple waking ritual is to wake up to begin with. So I hope everybody's agreeing to that. We'll all wake up tomorrow. And secondly, that you'll feel gratitude in that moment for that moment and anything else that might just feel good to be grateful for. And lastly, if you're willing to do this, to declare out loud from your bed or when you stand up, just to put language to this feeling, our words are, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. It has, again, been an honor and a pleasure to serve and to be with you today, Andrew. Thanks so much for being a guest on the show.

Thank you as well.

Yeah. Super fun. And we'll see you all soon. Ciao for now.

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