#185: Remaining Tough & Kind Through Adversity

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I'm feeling really blessed to be here at this moment, having a— just a moment for myself really to sit in gratitude for so many things really. In fact, I was even thinking this morning that there's a part of me that Is questioning whether I should feel guilty about feeling good at a time when there are so many people that are in a state of, gosh, I want to say suffering, but it's not really the word I'm looking for. I just know there's a lot of pain out there. And I have my own pain. I'm not free of pain for sure. And yet in the midst of this crisis that has caught everybody, many, many, many people off guard, I'd say, I am also finding more value in being in gratitude than almost anything else. And there is just so much for us to feel good about even in the midst of something like this. And I, so right now I know that the conversation I'm about to have with the gentleman that's no stranger to adversity, I've been in business for many, many years as I have been. I think he might even have a couple of years on me. And we were chatting just before getting started that our middle name could actually be the word that's on my shirt today. So if you're watching this on YouTube, it says resilience. If you're not, well, then it says resilience. The gentleman who I'm going to spend some time with today, and you'll get the benefit of that conversation hopefully, his name is Matt Sweetwood, and he is the CEO of LuxNow. Before he was the CEO of LuxNow, he spent 29 years as the CEO of Unique Photo. And during that time, he took that company from about $1 million to $100 million. We might get to talk about that, the trajectory change there and the pivots that he obviously engineered during that 29-year run. But he's also an author. He's the author of a wonderful book, a bestseller in the self-help category called Leader of the Pack. Leader of the Pack is a memoir. It tells a story of how he suddenly became a single father to 5 children. and how it obviously impacted his life, made him a better person, an entrepreneur, and a father. So I'd love to start right there with you, Matt, by saying thank you so much for being with us and welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm very grateful to be here.

Likewise, happy to have you. What's something that is not a part of the bio that I just read that you would love for people to know about you at the outset?

I think that when you read my story, it's a story of a single dad who went through a pretty rough time, a rough life. I grew up, raised my kids in New Jersey and New York. And so I get the reputation of being kind of a tough guy. The thing that's really true is that I'm really a softie. And for me, the premium quality that I'm most proud of is being kind. And so for me, that never comes out in my bio. You read all of this stuff, we do self-promotion and things like that, but for me, it's all about kindness. It's actually How I approach staff when I hire staff and when I engage with people. If you're kind, I can deal with you. If you're not, I really don't want to.

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And I'm originally from New York, but we raised our kids for the most part until they were— let's see, we were in New Jersey for almost 18 years. And then we moved to California when our little ones were still just in middle school. So I'm familiar with that area. And it's interesting when you're from the East Coast or you've lived on the East Coast for any length of time, it's almost like an attribute to have that toughness. It's something that you sort of either have to acquire or you can sort of get run over, I suppose.

I don't know, part of resilience. You build resilience like that, right? That's what you do, right? That's how you do it. You learn to be tough, to say what you mean and mean what you say, be straight to people. That's how us Jerseyans are. We like to, you know, really direct it at you.

And it's interesting. I'm just sort of sitting with that principle of both being tough and being kind. There's so many interesting paradoxes in life anyway. That may be one of those riddles, this sort of two sides of the same coin, that to be straight and to say what you mean and mean what you say on the one hand, but also to be kind. So I'm curious, how have you navigated the sort of the interplay of those two things that seem to be opposites almost?

That might be my favorite question ever on one of these. I've been on many of these shows. I really love that question. I think that that comes down to telling people the truth, but doing it in a kind way. So I use children since we're both fathers. I use that. It would be like allowing your child to do something you know is not right and ignoring it, right? So we don't tolerate that. I can tell. We've only known each other a short time, but you don't seem like a guy that's going to let your kids get away with much that you think is harming them or something. But there's a way to tell them. I mean, you can be mean and demeaning and hurt their self-esteem when you tell them, or you can tell them in a self-esteem-growing way. Like, for example, if they do something wrong, you can scream at them and call them an idiot, or you can simply tell them that they're too good to be doing that.

Yeah.

And if you sort of phrase it in— that's a pretty specific example. If you phrase it, you say, hey, Johnny, you know, I think you're much smarter than that. You're definitely capable of doing much better, as opposed to saying, Johnny, you're a moron and you're going to be a loser in life. So there's 2 ways to approach that. And I think that in business, it's the same thing. It's when you have staff or you're doing a business deal, being direct is really important, but you can do it without being mean. You can do it with being kind. I think they're almost the same side of the coin. And I think you're more effective actually when you can be tough and be kind at the same time. People respect you and follow you more. I think it's a principal quality of being a really high-level leader.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And 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. It's such a great point that you're bringing up because there's that old cliché about the nice guys finish last. And I think for folks that are listening to this, listening now who've been in leadership, senior leadership or executive roles in the past, you've probably learned that lesson the hard way that people don't really respond well To that sort of passive-aggressive behavior.

And they never forget.

And they never forget.

If you treat them like that, you can be nice to them 50 times, you treat them badly once, they'll remember that one time.

Yeah. And for people that have either yet to take on those roles or maybe are in startup mode or entrepreneurs themselves at the moment and looking to attract people to their teams, I want to get back to some of the origin story of your role Because you grew teams and you grew sales and you grew companies. Organizations don't grow like plants and other things. They require nurturing. And so I want to leg into that conversation a little bit with that concept of, or the question of, do nice guys finish last? Do you think that that's a true statement in your experience?

I think only with women. That might be the only—

No,

that's terrible.

It's very funny though. Hmm.

That's a different podcast.

That's for a different day, actually.

No, I think that, you know, of course, every saying like that has some truth. But I think that a better saying is weak people finish last. And strength is— it's not about being nice. It's about being weak. And I think you can be nice. You know, this is sort of the other side of what we discussed before. You can be nice and kind, but still be very strong. I can definitely accuse myself of being guilty of being too nice at times. I think, but niceness, and if you really want to be self-reflective, and I will, in my book Leader of the Pack, it's all about self-reflection and all the stupid things that I did and things like that. I think one of my weaknesses in the book is really being too nice to the wrong people.

Hmm.

And I think that's another sort of way of looking at it, is you pick your business partners, you pick your life mates, you pick your friends wisely. Being nice is a wonderful thing, but if you pick the wrong people and you're too nice, they will definitely take advantage of you.

I know that one myself. I know that one well. And self-discernment, the quality of discernment is really— again, I think that's a high-level leadership quality. It's not something you know when you're 25. Maybe, you know, there are uncommonly wise 25-year-olds for sure.

I didn't. I definitely didn't.

In fact, I didn't know that when I was 40 years old. I still had the propensity to sort of lean in. to the wrong people sometimes.

Yeah. I'm right with you. I did the same. I don't think until I, somewhere through those 40s, that I gained that skill. In Judaism, they say you shouldn't learn Kabbalah, the highest level of wisdom, until you're over 40 or whatever it is. I think maybe therein lies some connection.

Maybe. That's interesting. So take us back to your early start and becoming The CEO of Unique Photo. I know this isn't really sort of the trajectory we'll take the conversation on, but when we're going to talk about resilience, I'd love for people to just get a sense of what's your background and kind of the adversity that you dealt with along that path. Yeah.

I mean, so Unique Photo, when I walked into the company, we were delivering film, for those of you old enough to know what film is, photographic film.

Holy smokes.

Flashbulbs to small stores in the New York area. Used to put the stuff in paper bags and boxes and go out and deliver it. And by the time we were done, when I sold that company, we had a mega superstore. We were shipping thousands of packages of digital product all over the country and all over the world. So that's the end and that's the beginning. You can imagine what happened in between there. I'm in a business that faced a distribution challenge in that we were a B2B business selling small stores. Those small stores, pharmacies, for example, sold about 80% of the photo supplies in the country at one point. Within a very short amount of time, they started getting bought up. A lot of the CVSs and the Walgreens you see today actually were independent pharmacy locations. And once those big chains started buying up, they bought directly or they didn't buy from You know, a distributor like myself. So we had to change the business model. We changed the business model from a B2B model to a B2C model. And then if I sort of advance ahead, I mean, I can go into detail, but eventually film became challenged. My company—

Right, so the first pivot was recognizing obviously that that was changing.

That's right.

That more of these independents were getting bought up into the franchise model.

Right, and so we analyzed the business and the idea was say, hey, we're gonna do something interesting. We're gonna go to photographers who are really end users. And we're gonna treat them like a business and we're gonna sell them. And within a few years, we took the B2B business model of selling stores, applied it to wedding portrait photographers, and became the largest seller of that in the whole country. In fact, around 2000, I don't remember the exact year, my company had 5% of all the rolls of film sold in the United States. So we went from a 4-person company to a 100-person company with 5% of the rolls of film. To give you an idea, Disney World has had about a 5 share. So, we were selling as many rolls of film out of my New Jersey warehouse as Disney World was. And then if you sort of project forward, film in 2008 just disappeared off the planet. Digital photography came about. All the small stores we were selling, the camera stores, the one— all went out of— essentially all went out of business. We were selling a product which had a high margin, high volume, like the razor blade, to selling razors. And everybody was selling razors. And then you had on top of that, the internet come in and Amazon come in and all of these big sellers. So we had to pivot the business again. And at that point, the business pivot actually was to open a camera store. So I know you heard me, sorry, we waited till all the camera stores in that New Jersey area went out of business. I opened the camera store, reinvented the camera store model completely, completely. And that model actually took off. We ended up with one of the largest single-location stores in the country. Every camera store that operates today essentially uses a similar model that I have. And the best part is I eventually got to sell and exit that business, which is always a good result.

Yeah. You know, when you're in a business that long, there's a chance you could miss your exit. It's almost like driving down the highway and you go, hmm, I missed my exit. Because today, I think on the Fortune 500 side of things, used to be in— when that list was created in 1955, there were 500 companies on it, still are 500 companies. Except they're not the same 500 companies, right? In fact, 88% of the companies that started out on the list don't exist anymore.

Yeah.

And so the average life of a company on that list was about 60 years at the beginning, and now it's about 18 years. So you were in business 29 years and you had to reinvent yourself several times. In fact, you did something that Polaroid couldn't do, Kodak couldn't do. These are companies that That created the digital photography technology that ultimately went bankrupt. In fact, I think Polaroid declared bankruptcy on the same day that Instagram was valued at like $2 billion or something like that.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you some interesting stories relevant to that. It's a very excellent point, is that Kodak invented the digital camera, but yet got taken to lunch. And the reason is, I actually learned this along the way, is that you should be trying to reinvent your business when it's at its peak, not when it's about to fail. And that's the mistake that companies make is that Kodak was making so much money on film, they could not stop themselves or pivot and say, we're going to sell a technology that may for a while hurt our film sales. It may pivot us away, but they couldn't do it. I know somebody who was in the Sony boardroom. They were sitting in the boardroom at Sony. Sony had 60% or 65% of the video market, the camcorder market. And one of their techs, their tech team, presented the idea of a small point-of-view camera. They said, we're not presenting that, we own the market. 5 years later, Sony had almost none of the video market and GoPro had 65% of the market. So Sony had, I believe, the point-of-view camera first, but they just couldn't pivot to it. Canon. It's like business is just littered like that all over the place. So the thing that I learned is to not wait too long, is to sort of look ahead, see what's going on, and even if you're not Even if things are going well, figure out a way to reinvent the business while your business is going. That's really the key.

Yes. Self-disruption. It's so much easier to disrupt your own model than to wait for the market to do it for you or to you.

That's right. And usually it's too late. If you wait for the market to do it, somebody else is way ahead of you or you just can't, you can't catch up.

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 of Change Proof, 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 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. I got this lesson. It wasn't quite in this context that we're discussing it, but I was a Jones Beach lifeguard. You didn't grow up in Jersey, did you?

Oh, I grew up in Jersey.

Oh, you're a Jersey guy. All right, you're a Jersey guy.

I love everything about Jersey.

All right, so I'm a kid from Queens, New York. My wife grew up in New Jersey. I married a Jersey girl, and we ended up living near the shore. But back in— when we first actually met and started going out, I was a lifeguard at Jones Beach. And there, just like the Jersey Shore, really strong rip currents, you know, people drowning all the time, constantly lifeguards in the water making rescues. A little different than in California. California, you get more swimmers. People, they surf. They learn when they're 3 years old how to stand up on a freaking surfboard. So it's just a little different environment. And back then, I remember for us, we had to constantly be proactive on that beach. We were never waiting for the rescues to get serious. We wouldn't get in the water when somebody was already drowning. We'd see rip currents forming and we would use our whistles. We would use flags. We'd use boats. We'd use surfboards. We're constantly disrupting, let's say, our own status quo, our own sense of comfort, sitting in the stands with the sun and all the good-looking people to gawk at. And instead of being distracted that way, even when people were safe in the water, we were constantly looking at where that disruption might come from because Mother Nature is constantly changing. The ocean's changing, the wind, the sun, all the conditions are constantly changing. So for us to just get even a little bit ahead of that, And more proactively self-disrupt. That was an effective tool for us. And what you're describing is for you in your own career, every time you were sort of looking ahead and saying, all right, I've got to be the one to look at what might— You know what? I don't even want to answer that. What's your mindset in those situations where things are going well? Let's paint that picture because obviously people got caught off guard with COVID-19 and many businesses were not expecting or under any worst-case scenario thinking this would happen, right? And then there are others that are also experiencing sort of a boon. I know that a lot of online businesses are doing really well, et cetera. So take us back to a situation where you're in business, things are working well, and you decide to break this, to shake things up, change the status quo.

Yeah. I think the example I gave you of the stores going out of business is I sat there, I remember paying a visit to a Kmart And I'm like, uh-oh, these small stores that we're selling are really in trouble. And I remember one of the original customers of our company, he was a drugstore actually in Newark, New Jersey, had been around since they paved the roads. And I remember him calling up, spoke to me on the phone, and he said to me, I just want to thank you, whatever years of doing business with you guys, you guys are great. just want you to know, I forgot who the chain, let's just say CVS, they're coming in, they're buying me out, and I'm going on my yacht and going to Miami and get on my yacht and on off I go. And I thought for a second, I looked, we were doing really well at the time. I'm like, that's not the first time I'm gonna get that call. Right. That's coming. So I sort of put all the pieces together and I said, okay, let's look at our business. What do we got? We got all these great dealerships with Kodak and Polaroid and all of these things. We have great distribution, awesome customer service, tech we had put in even at that time. I'm going back to the late '80s. I had written all the software for our company. We had really good tech and it wasn't called tech back then, by the way. It was just called computers.

That's correct. It

was called computers. So we had good computers. We had whatever it was. And I'm like, okay, what can we do? How do we pivot this business right now? And that was the logical step to take it to a B2C business. Because in my mind, having a lot of small customers and ones that big chains can't go buy out, individual photographers all over the place, that was the way to go.

Right. Yeah. So you and I, before we turned the mics on, we were talking about resilience and how important that is, genetic, like as a DNA.

Yeah.

You know, a part of the DNA of any successful entrepreneur or business that's had any longevity is going to be this term This concept of resilience. What are the traits that you would say are the genetic markers of resilience in a leader? So if you were going to evaluate how somebody is or isn't a resilient leader, what are you looking for?

Okay. You need 2 things as far as I'm concerned, probably come up with a couple more, but 2 things come to mind quickly is one, you never panic. No matter what's going on, you never get into panic mode and never let your team see that you have lost your cool ever. And the second thing—

'Cause calm is contagious, right?

Calm is contagious, but also a methodical stepping up of what you need to do. And I'll tell you what we did at LuxNow, right when this happened, 'cause LuxNow is a travel company. We're a peer-to-peer marketplace for luxury yachts, boats, and homes. And there is no travel going on right now. And we had just built this company up, just started selling. So right away, you go right into, you sort of gain this. And this is really the second thing is there is no such thing As failure. If as a leader, you are determined to succeed no matter what. I have a favorite slogan. You know, it sounds a little like a meme, but I actually live like this. It's a question of how badly you want it. If you want something badly enough, you're just going to do whatever it takes to make that happen. I am not going to let my company fail. I don't care if it's COVID-19, '20, and '21. It doesn't matter. It's just what we're going to do, whatever it takes to keep that company going, to do what it takes, work hard, maneuver, think, beg, We kill whatever. Okay, maybe not kill, but you got the point. It's sort of like if you just have that attitude, that's always been the case. I sat there, I remember looking back at my 5 little kids, tiny little kids. Their mom left when they were— the youngest was 18 months old. And they're looking up at me and they're like, okay, Dad, what's next? Well, there's no failure. You can't fail. I had to go to work and run my company and figure it out and feed them and take care of them and do whatever it was going to take and fight the fights or whatever it is. Just, I love them enough to want it badly enough for them to succeed. So it's kind of the same thing now. I want success. I never want to fail. So I think for a leader in this kind of circumstance, resilience is about one, never panicking, keeping your cool, having a plan, and just the concept of you're just not going to fail. You want it badly enough to not fail.

And that's where the pivot and resilience, where those principles dovetail or overlap for me, is the fact that anybody that is a serial business person, owner, operator, whatever it is, they're a serial pivoter. They've had to become a serial pivoter. And you can't be able to do that. You can't successfully pivot over and over again unless you have the staying power, meaning you're not a quitter. You're tenacious. You will find solutions. You will figure out how to turn failures into insights and into opportunities. And that only comes from our ability to continue to bounce back and not just bounce back like Rocky, get back up, get back up, all banged up and lose the fight in the end, but to be able to get back up smarter, get back up with more insight, with more understanding, to be able to glean the meaning out of something that was a shitty event, something that took us down or caused us question or challenge, whatever the case might be. Because I'm not a big believer that you can't fail. I think what is not acceptable is not learning from failure because we're all going to fail. We're all going to make mistakes. I mean, this, you know, there were mistakes made now and be learning.

I got a bestselling book out of all the mistakes I made.

Yeah. How about that? Tell us about the book.

It's chapter 1, mistake 1. That's the titles. Chapter 1, mistake 1. Chapter 2, mistake 2.

Mistake number 2. All right. It's like you need—

It's like 40 chapters in the book.

So for me, it's, we're going to need a bigger book.

Right, exactly. Well, I still got some years left, so There's always a chance for the sequel.

Absolutely. Well, you and I have the same haircut.

So, uh, use your example right now in our company. So we have a peer-to-peer marketplace where people come and they host, they take their properties, their homes, their yachts, their cars, they put them out and renters come in and rent them. Well, nobody's traveling, but the one thing that we have is that we have very exclusive properties. So you can now take a vacation or enjoy this alone. So, we're going to pivot. We're going to talk about disinfecting the properties. We're going to do all sorts of things that we can do and try to pivot our way. Will it work? I don't know. But we are going to try it and we're going to try to pivot out of this. And when the economy picks up, we're going to try to be right there and ready to go.

You're based in Miami, right?

Right. We're headquartered in Miami, but we have properties all over. You know, we have properties in New York and Los Angeles, actually opening up Havana, Cuba, where you can Because luxury is extremely hard to find in Havana, Cuba, but we've got it. And, uh, we have a very cool business model. We're kind of like Airbnb for luxury. I was just thinking that. Plus Turo plus Boatsetter for luxury.

Wow, the pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different, something new, but the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height 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 All you have to do to get started 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. We had one of the co-founders of Airbnb was a student of ours back in the day. I want to say about 10 years ago, he was part of some programs that we were running at the time. I was just reading that Airbnb is actually pivoting their own model to more long-term stay, because these short-term arrangements are definitely not what people are thinking about now. And if people are going to—

I think that's what municipalities also are not thinking about. So they have some legal obstacles along the way.

Yeah. There are very interesting hurdles that come up even for a company that's that successful, that disrupted a model and became, I think, the largest hospitality organization in the world without owning a single hotel.

And yet right now, you know, for the most part, their business is shut down, I would think. I mean, there's not a lot going on with Airbnb at the moment.

So— No, no, of course. The whole travel business is shut down. I mean, here in this area, they've shut down all— I mean, all the hotels are shut. Everything is shut. Travel business is completely shut. We're going to get a little bit of a break here shortly because they're going to open up the boating business. So you'll be able to rent or go out on a boat and a yacht, because it's a very isolated kind of activity with social distancing.

Right. Yeah. So, as we wind things down, Matt, I want to find out a little bit more about the book, and then I want to come back with one additional question. So, tell us about the book. Obviously, you teed it up earlier that unexpectedly, talk about a pivot, a relationship pivot, your wife leaves, you got 5 kids, I mean, and a business to run. That's a recipe for pulling out your hair, and I'm making a joke about that because both Matt and I are—

We're good.

We have the same barber for sure. Yeah. My hair came went the wayside when I was a lawyer. And, uh, I'm not sure about you, but tell us about that period of time in your life and what led you to want to also write about it, because it's a pretty vulnerable topic for sure.

Yeah. And if you read my book, my book is— people who know me are like, I can't believe you wrote that personally about it. I think number one, I think a lot of people, to see a man open up emotionally is not something we see very often. And I really talked about the emotional side of what a parent goes through The loneliness, the fear, all of those things that I had to face. I was like this typical Jersey guy. I grew up, I was supposed to have a wife, 2 kids, a dog, 2-car garage, run a business, make some money, watch football on the weekends, and live happily ever after. And I tried very, very hard, in fact, way too hard, and to follow up, way too nice to the wrong person. And this thing all sort of decomposed on me. And I was sitting there with this unbelievable circumstance, 5 children who were ultimately hurt by their mother because she didn't act in a very civilized way on her way out. I had an incredibly painful and difficult divorce, ended up with a Supreme Court case as a side issue out of it, won that, had this business to run. And basically it turned me from a kid into a man, taught me how to really survive and brought spirituality into my life. Did all sorts of things so I can sit here today and tell you that her leaving and my raising those kids was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Right.

And that's really the story in my book is how you get faced with things in your life that you don't expect, that are unbelievable, that seem insurmountable, but somehow you find the strength within you. Within you. It's always been you. Even if you get help and you do all of these things, it's within you. And how you overcome this and the result of overcoming it is just tremendous to you as an individual. I mean, I'm— I wouldn't be half the man I am today, and I'm still only half a man, but, you know, I would only be a quarter of a man if I—

I really like you, Matt. We're gonna get along.

If I hadn't gone through, through all of this all the way. So the story is a really incredible story. I'm really proud. I've got like 115 5-star reviews on it. People write me every day. I just literally had someone Facebook Messenger me today, say, your book was a godsend. It changed my life. I know I need to get out of this relationship. Can you help me? Can you even talk to me and stuff? And I do that all the time. So for me, that's what it's about. Because if you've written a book, you know, it's not about making money because unless you're famous, you don't

make money. No, that is true. When did the book get published?

About a year and a half ago. It's out about a year and a

half. Beautiful. So people can find it. We're going to have full show notes anyway with links to it, but obviously you can go to Amazon and you'll be able to buy it there, Leader of the Pack. Last question for you, Matt, is about resilience again. What's something that you do on a ritual basis, regular basis to produce or create greater resilience for yourself? What's something you do?

Okay. I think for me, and particularly as you get older, I think that resilience starts for— particularly for a man as he gets older with physical strength. I always say that physical strength is the foundation for emotional and mental strength. If you're weak physically, you're not going to be able to handle the pressures, get through long days, to do whatever it is. So I think on a daily ritual, I pay very, very close attention to my health. I lift weights, I work out, I do cardiovascular stuff. It's tricky now, but it doesn't matter. When I'm done with this, I'm going for a run, I'm going to lift weights. I have some weights at home, you know, my apartment and things like that. Because when you get weak physically, you make mental mistakes. You don't have the emotional strength to deal with all the difficulties in life. You'll get depressed. You'll just weaken yourself. So I think for me, I— maybe that's a surprise answer, But I think maintaining your physical strength is fundamental to having resilience.

What I love personally about that answer, Matt, in addition to the fact that I resonate with that, because our way of talking about it's a little different language-wise, but taking care of yourself is a big piece of it. And being physically strong, it builds confidence. As you say, the days are long. I'm a big believer that sort of one of my superpowers is tenacity. And that I have a staying power that a lot of people don't. And that's because I've learned from those days at the beach, because we didn't work 8 straight hours. I mean, you've been to the Jersey Shore enough times to know, those guys don't sit on the lifeguard stand the entire day. You're cooked. There's no way for you to make the saves, to do what's required. And it's a very demanding environment because it's a life and death environment. I go back to that because throughout my legal career and as a CEO, and like you say, being an author, You know what it's like to produce a book, right? Produce it, edit it, publish it, promote it, market it, sell it. I mean, it's endless. Endless. And a lot of people who wanted to do that, had messages they want to share, things they want to do, they never see it through because they run out of energy. They're depleted, and at a certain point, it gets to be too much, and so they quit, and they find something easier. They find something else that now becomes their new passion. Same thing with TED speaking. We coach people to get on TED stages or deliver keynote talks or to pivot in a lot of different ways in their businesses. And ultimately, you've got to have the staying power. You got to be in the game long enough to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And the only way to stay in the game long enough is to actually physically, as you say, energetically have staying power. So I couldn't agree with you more. I think no one's ever answered the question the way you just did. So I really appreciate the novel way that you frame that for us.

One of the things I always say to illustrate that point is that if you have 2 sports teams playing each other, and the teams are really evenly matched, what happens is the team that wears down physically doesn't usually give up the goal right away. What happens is they start to make mental mistakes, and those mental mistakes lead to the goals against. It's not usually the physicality because they can hold on physically, They can defend, they can go into a more defensive mode, but it's when you get physically worn down, you make mental mistakes. And you see this in sports all the time, and it applies to real life, just like you said.

Yeah. And I could just use myself as an example. When I'm tired, I am not as patient as I want to be, as I know I can be. I'm not as kind. So go back to the very beginning point, first thing you said to me. When I haven't slept enough, or at the end of a day, if I know I'm exhausted, And I don't take care of myself. I didn't take that 20 minutes to put my legs up the wall and close my eyes and get a nap, which we can all do. Or I didn't take that 20-minute brisk walk, or I didn't do some yoga, or drop and do some pushups, or whatever it is to recharge my energy. And for me now, the way I would normally do it is to get in the ocean, get in the pool. That's my thing. It's the water. And I can't do that now. So I got other methods to recharge. But if I don't do that, I lose my patience. I stop being kind. I can be just not a person I want to be around at those moments. And so I think this is a fundamental thing that all of us can do to be better, to show up better, to be kinder, to be able to, as you say, not make mistakes or mental errors, but to be at our best as often as we can be. So those mental mistakes are less likely to occur. And emotionally as well, that we're in a better, sort of a more emotionally stable place, that we're not reacting to things as much as we're just able to respond to them.

When you're rested, you feel strong, you're dressed well, you have your mojo, and you're more likely to be successful. It's as simple as that.

It is. Beautiful. As we leg out of this show, remind myself and everybody else that we got a wonderful opportunity today when we woke up. Whether we knew it or not. And not every day is a great, easy, fun day. Sometimes there's lots of challenges and shit that we don't want to deal with, but it was a blessing nonetheless. I am setting the intention for all of us, for myself, for you, Matt, for all of us, that we get to wake up again tomorrow. We get that blessing again and have that creative opportunity at the start of the day. For me, I wake up, I take 10 seconds to sit just to feel what that is. feel gratitude around that, the miracle that's just occurred, because there are people in that moment that I'm waking up, I know that are not. They took their last breath. And so, I sit with that for a few moments and then put my feet on the floor. I stand straight up and I say these words out loud, I love my life. Those are the words I greet the day with. Do you have any words you say out loud, Matt, at the beginning of the day?

Well, it's not that I'm a very religious person, but we start every day with a prayer from Judaism. Which says you basically thank God for returning your soul to you. I won't say the whole prayer, but you're thanking God for returning your soul to you and giving you the opportunity to go forth into the day and do good work.

I so appreciate that, Matt. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.

It's been my pleasure.

Beautiful. Everybody, look for the show notes, of course, to find out more about Matt and his book and the work he's done in the world. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you've got a review for us, please leave it, subscribe, and also you can make a comment, leave a comment. respond to it at adammarkel.com/podcast. And until next time, I'll just say ciao.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.