Bringing In Extreme Leadership By Taking The Radical LEAP With Steve Farber - Replay

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

In today's replay episode, We have Steve Farber, who is the founder of the Extreme Leadership Institute, an organization devoted to the cultivation and development of extreme leaders in the business community. His 3rd book, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson in Leadership, was a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. His 2nd book, The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World, was hailed as a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit. And his first book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership, is already considered a classic in the leadership field. It received Fast Company magazine's Reader's Choice Award and was recently named one of the 100 best business books of all time. Farber's new book, Love Is Just Damn Good Business, was listed by Book Authority as one of the top business strategy books of 2020. Some of the things that we discussed today was his battle between a traditional life and his love of music. Farber shares how he had a successful business, a house, car, and family, but was miserable in his industry, which was the moment that he realized what he was truly meant to do. Enjoy this replay of my conversation with Mr. Steve Farber. Welcome back, everybody. I'm so excited today, man. It's a beautiful day. It's a magnificent day for so many reasons. And the most obvious of which, I'm not the sharpest tool in the box or whatever. To me, to be alive and breathing in this moment, for us to collectively be breathing together, wherever you are right now, whatever you're doing, I assume that you are breathing. And that is a good, good sign. I woke up this morning and put my feet on the floor, and I really sat there for just a couple of minutes feeling into what I was grateful for. It didn't take me long to remember that as I was taking those breaths, as I was searching for what I was grateful for, it was like something came out of the— fell out of the sky and hit me in the head and said, hey dummy, just be grateful that you can be grateful. Be grateful. That you can even be thinking about or focusing on gratitude in this moment. And how many people are waking up at this very moment, they're either not in gratitude or even more depressing, I suppose, is the number of people that did not wake up, that went to sleep last night and didn't wake up, or were taking their last breath at the same moment that I was taking my first breath. So one thing I know, like I know my own name, is that this moment is sacred, that this moment is holy even. It's a blessing to be here. It's a blessing to be with all of you. This day is a blessing. It's about to get even better. That's the good news. Rub your hands together. Yeah, baby. It's about to get so much better. And that's because I get to share something with you today in the form of an incredible human being, an incredible friend and colleague and somebody I have just the deepest respect for, admiration for. I love what this man stands for. I love what he does in the world. And I get to share him with all of you, which makes my life a joy in this moment, to be of service, to be able to give in this way. And for you all, well, it's just an exciting time to be able to sit back or whatever it is you're doing. Maybe you're sitting in a chair, maybe you're riding in a car, maybe you're running, Riding a bike or running or whatever you're doing. I mean, I just freaking love podcasts, and it seems that that is an ever-growing population of people that are just digging this medium to learn new things and get some education, get some entertainment even at times, take you out of the routines of the day, and even maybe if thoughts that you're having are less than positive or less than empowering, to be able to kind of push the pause button on your own inner thinking and maybe the critical voice inside your head and allow yourself to unfold into a space of listening, of curiosity, inquiry, all of that. This is a perfect time, an absolutely stellar time to get into that. And I'm going to allow this gentleman to say some things about himself. As you guys know, I don't do formal introductions. I always love it when our— Thank you. Our guests are in the moment, they're present with us, they can tell us what's really important to them at this time in their life. What I know of Steve Farber, who is our guest on the podcast today, is he's somebody that has taught and trained on the topic of leadership and other business topics, which he'll illuminate us on some of those things today. But he's taught all over the world. I happen to know him because we're both members of this group called TLC. So we get to retreat together a couple of times a year, which is really special, with a lot of other people that are wanting and are actually doing amazing things to make the world a better place on so many levels, whether it's in personal growth area, human potential area, or in business development, etc. So Steve's written some great books. In fact, Radical Leap was the first book I read of his. It was a radical bestseller. You guys can check that out, Radical Leap. Then he wrote The Radical Edge. I may be getting the order of things wrong, but I do believe that was the succession of things. It was Radical Lead to Radical Edge to then Greater Than Yourself, which is again an impeccable, life-changing book on mentorship and on business leadership. And so this guy is— he's the bomb. He's the shit as far as I'm concerned. You guys are going to find that out for yourselves. Without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Steve Baber. Thank you.

Why, thank you! It's great to be here, Adam. I've been looking forward to this for reasons that will become clear, I suspect.

Well, we hope anyhow. We'll see.

Yeah.

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 resilience 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. Steve and I like to— we have a lot of banter at times. I'm going to try to keep my banter pieces of this to a minimum today. Only when absolutely necessary so that I don't interrupt your flow. So Steve, if you could in this moment share with our audience who are some of them watching, some listening, some both, which is cool, a little bit about yourself, your background, and where you're at and what's important to you these days.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So my life's work, as it turns out, this was not what I anticipated it to be. If you were to ask me when I was in my early 20s, I would not have predicted this. But my life, which I know is true for a lot of people, my life's work is around leadership development, which is a really broad term. But I've been in the field for almost 30 years now. I've had some amazing mentors, including Tom Peters, who was arguably the most influential management thinker of the modern era. And I was vice president of his company. for a while. I left there in 2000, actually. I started there in '94, left in 2000, and went out on my own. And that's when I started writing books and doing keynotes and helping people to understand that leadership is a very personal thing and not a matter of your position or your title. So my exploration has really been around helping people to understand the influence that they have. So many of us have been conditioned to believe that Leadership is a function of your position of authority. It just does not automatically come with the territory. I think we can all think of examples that are kind of obvious like that. People have positions of authority but are not necessarily great leaders. I see it in organizations all over the world. We see it in the political arena. We see it in the business arena, et cetera. What happens as a result of that is, if I work for a company or I'm on my own or I'm a solopreneur, I'm an entrepreneur, I feel like a cog in the machine at a corporation. Wherever I am on that spectrum, if I believe that leadership is somehow something that would be bestowed upon me or that I have to— if I aspire to it, I have to achieve a certain position, then I'm missing out on a huge opportunity to lead today, right now, and to make a difference. And it's going to sound like a cliché, and I certainly don't mean it to be, but to really make a significant difference in the world around me and to change it for the better. That's really what leadership is. So, I'm really intrigued by this dynamic that on the one hand, we believe that leadership— we all agree. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I think we all agree that leadership is important, but we don't have a lot of agreement as to what that really means and what it looks like and how we can rise to that level ourselves. to a higher level of leadership ourselves. So my work is really about closing the gap between what we aspire to in terms of leadership and what we actually do every day. So that might sound a little abstract, but my focus has been primarily in the corporate world. And I'm doing more, you know, more and more work with entrepreneurs. And there's a whole side of my work that's really about creative expression as well, because As I mentioned earlier, I didn't start out thinking someday I should be a leadership development person.

You didn't aspire to that when you were 8 years old?

I did not, nor did I aspire to—

Astronaut, firefighter, galactic traveler, and leadership?

I wanted to be— actually, when I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I went back and forth, but I couldn't decide between veterinarian and heart surgeon.

2 good things.

2 good things. I ended up as neither, although I guess if you think about it metaphorically, perhaps I'm a heart surgeon. But I wanted to be a musician. I've been playing guitar since I was 13 years old. If you would ask me in my early 20s what I was going to do, it was going to be I was going to play music, write songs, and perform. And then I got married at a young age, married into my first child, my daughter Angelica. who's now 40, but I was 23. By the time I was 24, I had 2 kids, and I discovered, at least at that point in my life, that this idea of being a musician and feeding people—

Were mutually exclusive?

Were mutually exclusive.

Or potentially.

Right. So I got rid of the family, you see, and I hit the road with my guitar and my dusty boots. No.

Liar.

I know.

I think we've detected a lie.

Like a gunslinger hanging up his gun, I hung up my guitar and I started raising a family and that's when I got into business. And I discovered this, you know, I had my own company, I was in the financial services industry, had my own small brokerage firm. So I was an entrepreneur. I discovered I was an entrepreneur right from the very beginning.

So your first pivot on— well, I mean, we pivot from the day we're born, I suppose, but when we think about career and once we're sort of out of our parents' house and on our own, As adults, the first significant pivot was to hang up the guitar.

Yeah.

In favor of something else. So, not that we want to get stuck in that spot very long, but just curious, anything's come up for you about that? Because I know we can come back and talk about music a little bit later.

Yeah, yeah. It was extraordinarily painful. Not just because I, at the time, felt like I was abandoning a dream. Because I also had a dream of having a family. So it wasn't like I was some kind of a prisoner. And, but I did feel regret and I felt a level of grief in giving that up. Not only because I was giving up on a career path, or I don't know if you can call music a career in the beginning. It's more like for the lucky ones, it becomes a career. But in the very beginning, I wanted to at least give it a try. Right. But the other side of it is the music was from the time I was 13 years old was such a big part of my personality. It was a big part of the way I connected with people and the way I shared with others who I am. I still feel like people don't really know me well until they've heard my songs. When I gave it up as a professional pursuit, it was so painful that I just shut it down All the way. I stopped playing. That part of me was put on the shelf for a while.

So your music, part of your music was your identity.

Yeah.

And what it seems like, I don't want to put the words in your mouth, I would love to get your thoughts on this, that you had competing dreams because part of your dream was to be a father, to have a family, and part of your dream was to continue to do something that you loved, which was to play music, and that More than even, or not more than, in addition to it being a love, a passion, all that kind of thing, it was very much a part of your identity at that time.

Yeah, it was and remains a big part of my identity. But the problem back then, and it was part of it was a function of emotional defense mechanism and part of it was just immaturity. 'Cause you know, I was in my early 20s, right? I was still a kid by all At least it feels that way now. But in order to deal with it, in order to pursue the family dream versus the music dream, I felt at the time that I needed to shut it all down. Because otherwise, when I picked up a guitar, instead of feeling a sense of creative expression, I was feeling an experience of what I'd just given up. It felt like I was giving away— I had abandoned a part of myself.

That was the word that just came up for me. Every time I got in the car, I

was

faced with abandonment. Yeah. That idea that you abandon a piece of yourself. Abandonment's a strong word, Steve.

Yeah.

But to leave a piece of yourself behind.

Yeah.

For good, for a reason. You didn't do it just because you wanted to. You did it because on some level you applied logic and reason. You were like, in the law we call it the reasonable man. It's the reasonable man's standard. And you were a reasonable man. You're going to start a family.

Yeah, but there's no such thing as pure logic or reason.

No, of course not. It's what we, it's what we know of it in the moment.

Right. So the decision was logical and reasonable and responsible.

Sure. Right.

Um, the experience was abandonment. I've got no problem with strong words. Listen, if I had just given up that part of myself, that would have been tough. But to turn my back on it is what it felt like, to abandon it, to shun it, to say, That no longer serves my path as a family person. That's what it felt like. I had regret. I felt like I had given up a part of myself and I also felt a bit of resentment too that I had to do this somehow. And at the same time, I love my family. I love my kids. I was having kids for the first time. There's a sense of Gratification and bringing home a paycheck on occasional times where that happened. Because the business, the choice to go into business, that wasn't like stepping onto a golden elevator.

Well, you know what's funny about this is that this is where hindsight is so great, wisdom or whatever you want to call it. Life experience is so great because it informs us about reality in looking back in the rearview mirror. So at the time you looked at music as the wild, risky thing to do. And so, as you said, you turned your back on it, you abandoned it, and that's not the end of the story. So the good news here, that is not the end of the story. And so the story does not end in some sad fashion like, I abandoned my dream, or I abandoned my kids or something.

I haven't moved an inch since.

And there's never been any reuniting. So we'll get to the reuniting in just a minute, but it's kind of interesting you chose business out of all things, entrepreneurship, as the responsible in the moment the responsible path to take. As you're saying, that's a harrowing experience all by itself.

Yes, that's true. And I did not choose the entrepreneurial path immediately. I went to work for somebody. Somebody offered me a job in the commodities futures business, which I knew nothing about at the time. But it still, it was a pure commission, straight commission thing. So it was kind of an entrepreneurial venture, right? It was feast or famine.

Sales, baby. That's it. Sell or die.

It wasn't like, we'll give you a salary plus commission and healthcare. It wasn't like that. It was, yeah, you can come work for me and if you bring in some accounts, we'll pay you some money. So I was always either— it's funny, I hadn't really thought of it in these terms before. I really was an entrepreneur from the beginning because I did not go into a secure kind of a job. It was straight commission. What I discovered in that process was that I really was an entrepreneur. And I say that because I had some kind of semi-salary jobs that it evolved into, but I ended up with my own shop. And that's the real short version of the story. So I started my own small commodities brokerage firm. I'd gotten some experience in it, and I just realized that I had this mechanism in me that's always thinking about what can I create, and the sense of freedom that comes along one would think with having your own enterprise and all of that. So, I ended up with a small brokerage firm.

Wait, is um the start of a sentence?

Yeah. It sounds fancier than it is. Again, an entrepreneurial venture. It was still— I was able to pay myself a salary, but that salary came out of the revenues that the company had to create. But that's where I learned about everything from the financial markets, of course, but from the entrepreneurial side, That's where I learned about what it is to actually try to make payroll and all these things that every entrepreneur has to learn. I learned it very quickly, but ironically, the main thing that I learned was how much I hated that business. And from the outside looking in, it looked pretty cool, right? Got my own company, I'm my own boss, I've got kids, I've got a car. house, employees, and all that, and the so-called American dream. But the problem was I freaking hated it. I hated that industry because I saw people lose. It's a very speculative investment, right? So people lost their money left and right, clients I'm talking about. And I had a moral dilemma with my own business and I just hated it. So to recap, in a very short span of time, I gave up the music Which caused me grief.

Yep.

I got married and had kids, which raised the stakes in terms of responsibility as a provider. And then I ended up getting into a business that I hated. So now—

Sounds like my life. Holy shit.

There was no music. There was no music. There was no joy in going to work

for myself.

I had a family.

I need a newsflash. We need to take a quick 30-second newsflash, like, so people listening to this, Do not step out on a ledge. I don't want you to— watch both ways if you're walking near traffic right now. No,

listen, I'm telling you, I'm actually kind of sugarcoating it a little bit, believe it or not. It was an intensely challenging time, what ended up being my formative years. This is all before I was 30 years old, mind you. I got started really young. I mean, I'm 59 years old. I'll be 60 in January, and my oldest is 40. So, I got started pretty young.

Yeah, you got going in a hurry.

So, I had to figure this shit out as I was going along. I guess, I guess I'm a slow learner because it took a while. It took a while to figure this out. And what I figured out was— Is

this going to be, is this going to be the pivotal, pivotal moment or the pivot point?

No, it just goes downhill from here.

Does it just go downhill? I want to, I want to set people up.

I'm sitting alone in an empty room, an empty echoing room, 30 years later. It never really got much better.

Put the knives away, everybody. Seriously, if you're cutting a sandwich, I want you to make the cut and put the knife away.

My hope is that this podcast just really inspires you to give up and do nothing. So actually, so what happened was there was a pivotal moment, and there were a series of them, and they all happened— this, this was all like in the late I'm going to say like '88, '89. I had moved the family. We were living in the Midwest. I had moved the family out to San Francisco. My business had gone down in flames. I knew I hated that business, but then I was given a job offer in San Francisco. That's why we moved out there to work for somebody who was— put this in the slow learner category— to work for somebody who was just starting a commodities futures business.

Hadn't gotten the point

yet. But he offered me an opportunity to move the family to San Francisco and collect somewhat of a paycheck. So we did it. I took advantage of it and I did it not because, oh joy, I was going to do more things in the, in an industry that I hated, but because it just kind of facilitated a new chapter, what it felt like a new chapter was coming. So this was the pivotal moment. I remember this very clearly on my lunch break. walking around downtown San Francisco, which is really beautiful. And I was still kind of overwhelmed by, wow, what a great city. And I can't believe I'm here. But at the same time, I was still miserable. And I remember it was about as close as I come to prayer in a very overt sort of a way. I mean, I kind of live in a prayerful state, but it was one of those moments where I was like, I know there's something I'm supposed to be doing on this planet. I know it. I know it in my bones and I have no freaking idea what it is. So please give me some kind of a hint. What is it that I'm supposed to be doing? Tell me what I'm supposed to be doing and I will gladly do it because I had no idea. And this is the way it happened. So that was kind of the first pivotal moment. Where that kind of came together, where I just acknowledged that kind of aching in my bones that says, there is something I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't feel hopeless in the sense like, I got nothing. There's no contribution I can make. It wasn't like that. I knew there was something, but I didn't know what it was.

So step one, just step one, you had a real moment, a real conversation, a vulnerable—

Yeah.

Kind of on your knees, not literally, but sort of hands

Pretty close to it. Yeah.

Yeah. Hands in prayer and on the knees. Yep.

Walking down the street in the financial district in San Francisco and looking up at the buildings and going, come on, man, there's something I'm supposed to be doing here. Let me know what, you know, tell me what it is.

Got it.

And because it ain't this. And I don't remember exactly the time frame, but it was very short. It might have been days, at the most weeks. After that, I was having a conversation with an old friend. And who I hadn't talked to for a while. And we were talking about our mutual friends. And this person mentioned a mutual friend of ours whose name is Alexandra Leslie, still a friend of mine. I haven't talked to her for a little while, but really great person. And he was telling me that Alexandra was teaching some kind of workshops for companies. That was it. That was the level of detail that I got. And I am telling you, there's no exaggeration in this. All of my lights went on and I said, that's it. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. I have no idea what that is really, but, but that's it. So I started talking to people about that, including my sister and including close friends and say, listen, what do you know about this kind of corporate training thing? And lo and behold, there was a whole industry out there. That did all kinds of things. So, I started to—

Shocking! Shocking! I know!

I hadn't— no, honestly, I had no idea there was such a thing as a corporate training and development industry. I had no idea. So, I started to research it and find out who did what, and turns out there was a company right there in San Francisco that was looking for somebody. And in the meantime, I got hired by a small consulting company to do contract work to teach business writing workshops. Right? Because I was a writer. I'd always been a writer from the time I was a kid. I was a pretty good writer. And so, I learned how to teach their program and I started doing these little workshops, business writing for AT&T, and I slapped that on my resume, professional trainer. And I sent that resume to a company in San Francisco that was looking for somebody. They came out and watched me do my thing at AT&T, this little writing workshop, and they brought me on as a contractor to do an entirely different kind of a program, which was very customer service and culture-oriented, and it was a 2-day, very kind of performance-oriented show almost. And that's where I got my chops. That's where I learned my chops and started traveling around the world. And once I jumped onto that train, I'm not going to say it was straight trajectory to the top, but it sure was a new trend. And I fell in love with that kind of work and being up in front of people and helping them make their places better and get along better and communicate better. And over time, that's when I got hired. After doing that for a few years, I got hired by Tom Peters in 1994 and learned more about leadership and started working with senior executive teams and then developed my own point of view and started writing books and the whole thing. But I'm just trying to say, because, you know, I hear this question a lot, Adam, as I'm sure you do. You know, when you're out speaking at an event and people come up to you and say, oh, I really want to do what you do. How did you get started? Well, I don't, I don't recommend the path that I took. Well, first you see, you have to go into a period of very deep, dark abandonment pain, and then you gotta wander around the streets of San Francisco calling out to your divine.

Well, but you know, it's interesting. You're making— you're not making light of it. I want to just get serious for a second about that. And when you talk about being in that place of prayerfulness or asking the question, what am I supposed to be doing? If you were going to categorize that question, would you categorize it as humility or would you categorize it as arrogance?

Oh, it definitely didn't feel like arrogance. Yeah, humility is closer to it. It was more like—

Or the third option, something

else. It was despair. I mean, honestly, it was despair combined with a knowingness that there was an answer to the question.

Yeah. And that's how I look at humility. When I think of that word humility or humbleness, it's not making it— it's assuming there is an answer and also recognizing that you don't have it.

Yes. And again, I know maybe we're nitpicking a little bit in terms of semantics, but

So now

what? But it's really, really important. I didn't assume there was an answer. I knew there was an answer.

Yes.

That knowing— I don't know if that's something that's teachable or not. I would like to believe that everybody has that sense of knowingness in them, but for me it was very prevalent. It like rose to the surface. So there was that gap between I know there's something I'm supposed to be doing, And I know I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

So help me close the— I wasn't asking for riches to fall on my head. I was asking for an opportunity to live my purpose, to discover what that is, and then to live it.

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 and 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 The best way to take your own free resilient 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. Yeah, there's a difference between Believing and knowing.

Yeah.

And I think you're making it— this is a really important point here because there are a lot of people out there right now listening to this, watching this, that may be in a position in their life, whether they're in their 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s, where they don't know something that's important, like what is next for them in the doing area, in the career work area, in the business area. They don't know what that is. And they may know that there is something for them to do. Maybe they have that level of clarity that you have, and also at the same time knowing that they don't know, which is whatever word you want to apply to that. For me, the word will be humility. I have the humility to know what it— and admit that I don't know something, and also to be able to ask for help, whether it's— you know, not everybody's going to pray, not everybody's going to ask spirit, God, source, or whatever to get an answer. But you've got to ask someone or ask of something.

Yeah.

Inquire of something to get an answer to a question you have. Because, to me, the universal principle that's at play here is that you cannot ask a question and not get an answer. The only thing that's a variable, that's uncertain, is the timing. Truly, it's a knowing, not a belief. I think belief is very much what we want. and we suspect and what we might even— what's in place until we have more proof or evidence. A belief is— it's a pretty good hunch. It's a really strong hunch. Yeah. And it could be based on, you know, the experiences we've had or people that have been close to us. But a belief is a really strong suspicion, and a knowing is something that you can count on. And so when you went to prayer knowing 2 things— knowing what you were doing wasn't what you wanted to be doing, knowing that there was something for you to do that would be what you're supposed to be doing, and third, knowing that you didn't have the answer to it but willing to be guided to it, it was a foregone conclusion that you'd get an answer. The only question is, when would you get the answer?

Right. Yeah, so I think there's to that principle that you get an answer to every question, there is an answer to every question, you'll get it. It just doesn't happen necessarily in the way that we would prefer in the moment, right? So in other words, it may not be an instantaneous answer, or even if it is an instantaneous answer, it doesn't mean that you actually hear it. I may not want to hear that, or there may be too much noise, or it's like you look back and you go, how— when I see how many clues I had along the way that I completely ignored. By the way, I just got to say this because I think it's a great word. One of my kids years ago was struggling with that difference between humility and humbleness, and it came out as humbility, which I think is a great word.

Humbility. Humbility. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, I just had to say that. That's the way my brain works. If I get a thought like that in my head and it doesn't get expressed, I'm not going to be able to focus on anything else.

Well, humbility could be this whole— it could be the name of the whole episode. That's right. This podcast could be from here to forever known as Humility. It was the famous Humility episode. So, Steve, take us to today now, because you had this pivotal time where you asked a question, cause and effect, got an answer. It's not a linear thing, so you got an answer when the universe, or however you want to call it, the answer was going to show up at some point, and you actually heard it. Which is, you got lucky, or we don't have to call it luck, but in the moment that this answer showed up, you paid attention. You were ready to hear it. Yes. It's kind of like the student's ready, the teacher appears when the student's ready. So, clearly, you were ready and you were paying attention, and then you took action because you had this knowing now, not this belief, but really a stronger feeling inside that this was what you were meant to be doing. And then you started down that path, and fast forward a bunch of years, probably more years than we want to count, And you've been doing amazing things with that, with that knowing. Uh, it's not been a straight line. It's not been without its pitfalls or its challenges or its whatevers, but you've maintained that course ever since. So bring us up to speed where you're, what you're doing today. And, and did music ever appear, reappear back in your life, or is that the end of the tale of— Yeah,

no, it's a number of things there as far as the music goes, 'cause I want to come back to that a little bit later on. But after a while I did start, Playing again, just for myself. And after we moved to San Francisco, I did start playing a little bit more. I even went out and played a couple of open mics, just to get that feeling and all that. And so it did kind of take its place in my life again, to at least a small degree. I hadn't completely shut the door and left it closed. In terms of my career path, there were several pivotal moments. So, I had been working. I got hired by this company that was actually based in Denmark and had an office in San Francisco. They were the ones that came to watch me at AT&T, then offered me a contract position to do training for them, right? These were big training initiatives. So, one of our clients back in the day was US Airways, which is now United, right? Right. Sold into United. It was an organization-wide program, so we trained thousands of people over the course of several years, 120 people at a time, cross-sectional. So, there were people from various levels of management across different functions. We brought them together for 2 days in a room, and it was all about culture and creating an environment of service where we treat each other as customers. It was very kind of entertaining and presenter-driven, lots of skits and performances and lots of humor, and I just loved it, man. I was really good at it and I was a contractor, right? So I got paid whenever they tapped me on the shoulder to go teach some workshops and I was getting paid pretty well, you know, $1,000 a day or something like that to do these things and I was finding my stride in that industry. I woke up, it was like waking up into it and say, yes, this is what I was built for and really digging it. But I was still, you know, I was a contractor and one of my colleagues there went to work for the aforementioned Tom Peters, which was right down the road in Palo Alto at the time. And Tom, for your listeners who are unfamiliar with him, his original claim to fame was a book called In Search of Excellence that he co-wrote with Bob Waterman, which is one of the most, if not the most influential business book ever written. So this guy was a celebrity and a, just an amazing thought leader and all that. So I was really, when my colleague went to work for them, she was on the sales side. I said, well, what about, what about me? I want to go too. So she introduced me to Jim Kouzes, who was the president of Tom Peters' company at the time. And we had a really nice conversation. And my desire was that I wanted to be a contractor for them too. I had no interest in being an employee, no interest at all. And they came back to me and they said, okay, we would like you to come work with us, but we want you full-time. We want you to join the team as an employee of the company, not as a contractor. And that was a pivotal decision because the next 24 hours, 48 hours actually, they gave me 2 days to think about it. I went back and forth. I really struggled with the idea of being somebody's employee. It was hard for me to say the word employee without gagging on it. And I decided, okay, look, Farber, if you go to work for these guys for a couple of years, then you've got Tom Peters' company on your resume. And then, you know, you can go back and do your own thing. later on. That was kind of the deciding factor. So I said, sure. And before I knew it, you know, I started working for them. We started focusing on leadership, or I started focusing on leadership because that was their focus. And within a few years, I became a vice president of the company, was helping to run the place and had vested interest in the place. And I fell in love with it. I loved my colleagues. Some of them are still my best friends today. And that was really an incubation time for me. So making the decision to not be an entrepreneur Because it was the right place to go and I felt drawn to it, was really one of the best professional decisions I've ever made.

Yeah. How do you define incubation in that context?

I was developing my point of view on leadership. I was getting such great experience working with all these senior executive teams, working with a body of work called the Leadership Challenge, which was created by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. Still the must-read in the leadership world. Leadership Challenge, I think it's now in its 5th edition or something like that. So if you have any interest in leadership at all, you should read that. But I taught their workshop. I got really proficient at teaching somebody else's body of work. This is what I've been doing in my career. What I came to understand, what I came to experience, is that when I taught the Leadership Challenge, I taught it in my own voice. I had my own perspective on it. And that really worked and it felt great and people connected with it and resonated with it. And then after a time, I just started asking myself, well, what do I think about all this? If I were to, after everything that I've learned and all the people I've worked with and this great learning from my mentors and from doing all this client work, if there was one thing or maybe a small handful of things, if I could flip some kind of a magic switch and have everybody in the business world understand, what would that be? And in trying to answer that question, my own body of work and point of view began to emerge. So that's what I mean by incubating, right? It was gathering the experience, it was honing my chops, it was getting really, really good at the craft and the art of educating and training and speaking and facilitating and seeing how people apply it and helping people to apply what was learned. Getting in the trenches and really learning about business and learning about so many different— I mean, I had exposure to so many different companies in so many different industries and appreciating the differences, but also seeing the universal, kind of the universal truths from company to company. All that stuff was what I mean by incubating. That was all going in. And then it came together in the question, so what do I think? If you were to ask me, what is it? You know, if you just net it all out, what is it? And that's where the Radical Leap framework came from. And LEAP stands for love, energy, audacity, and proof. And that's been the core of my work ever since. And I first started playing with that framework, I'm going to say, right around the time I was leaving the Tom Peters Company in 2000, so 17 years ago. And then it eventually became the framework that I wrote about in The Radical Leap that you mentioned before, which came out in 2003. for, right? So really what that came from was that magic switch, magic wand kind of a question. What would I have everybody get? And at the foundation of it really was, we dance around it, we call it different things, we use the word sparingly, but the bottom line is that great leadership is really about love and that great business is really about love. And I'd seen it over and over again in my career that far, right? The really great leaders, the people that worked with them, for them, and around them, they loved them. They loved them. Yeah, they were, you know, respect and admiration and all that other stuff. That's all part of it, but they loved them. And the reason they did was because, again, the best leaders that I'd met made no bones about the fact that they loved their team, they loved their work, they loved their clients and customers. And therefore, because of that, they had much higher standards and expectations for themselves and for the people around them because they wouldn't tolerate subpar performance because love wouldn't let them do that.

Yes.

And these people generated tremendous energy in the way that they worked. They were audacious in their thinking. They weren't small-minded. They were change-the-world-minded. And it was really critical to all these people that it wasn't enough to talk a good game and say the right words. They proved that they meant what they said through their actions, through their results, through the steps that, you know, the specific measurable observable steps that they took every day. So love, energy, audacity, and proof.

And that's the LEAP curriculum.

Yes.

And you mentioned that question and I want you to just go back to that. see if we can formulate what that magic wand question was, because that was a pivotal question. And it seems like what's trending here in looking back at your life are these questions, these powerful questions that arose at certain points, and those questions are not ordinary by any means, and the answers to them changed everything.

Yeah.

So, what was the question?

The question that led to the framework?

Yeah, you said it was that magic wand question, it was the asking.

Yeah.

So I just want to put that into—

The question was, and I've posed this question to other people as well, that they should ask of themselves, right? If I had the kind of power to have everybody in my industry get it, what would it be? What is it that people need to do differently? What do they need to know? How would they act? If I had that kind of sway, what would I have people do? And I think that's a good question for any of us to ask about the industry and world that we live in. But again, I think the answer is going to be much more powerful if you've taken the time to gather the experience. So, for example, you know my experience with teenagers. To kind of come full circle on the family side of things, You know, after 2 marriages, 3 kids, and 3 stepkids now who range from 22 years old on the young end to 40, as I said before, on the old end. And if you look at older— sorry. And if you look at the span in between, I raised teenagers. Teenagers.

You want to say it again?

Teenagers for 25 straight years, right? So I know from where I speak. about teenagers. Teenagers love to tell you, based on their vast experience, the way things should be, right?

I haven't noticed that.

Yes, which is a wonderful impulse, but for the most part, thank you very much for your opinion, I'll take it under advisement, right? So I guess what I'm saying is that question If I could have everybody get it, what would it be? You're going to get a better answer with deeper experience.

Yeah.

I mean, I know it's kind of obvious to say, but I was not ready to ask that question in the first part of my career because I was still in the— even though I was out there teaching, as we all know, that's the best way to learn, right? So, I was in the learning phase of my career. I mean, I still am. We always are. But really, in terms of the foundational elements and understanding of leadership and business and how it all fits together, I wasn't ready to ask the, so what do I think about all this? question in a way that was really going to be useful to anybody else other than myself.

Yeah. I think there's no question that get it, the what do you want other people to get or what is it that you want people to understand, is based on experience. And look, not to dilute the experience of teenagers, but Because in some context, they may really get it. They may get what it is that they want other people to get, whether it's they've been bullied and they decide at 18 years old that their life, what they really want is for people to get that bullying— I'm just making something up here, but—

No, it's absolutely true.

That bullying is debilitating to our world, it's counterproductive to everything that our society is moving toward, etc. Whatever that is, they can get that early on. But clearly, it's based on some experience, and often, my theory anyhow, is that that experience is often a painful one, that it's not necessarily all roses and chocolate and stuff like that. So—

You're right. Let me qualify that, right? I'm not saying that teenagers have nothing of value to give.

Yeah, I don't think we were thinking that. I know I wasn't thinking that.

There could be nothing further from the truth.

Yeah.

And in fact, I think there's a level of combination of experience and innocence at that age where they can actually give a greater degree of clarity to what, how the world should be. Right? So I think kids younger than teenagers and teenagers have a wonderful perspective on how the world should be. And their experience is very intense. I mean, the experience of being a kid is very intense and you can look around your environment at school and see somebody being bullied. bullied and have the presence of mind to stand up against that and say, that's wrong. That happens every day. I'm talking about— so it's relative to the world that they're living in. On the other hand, you wouldn't take a teenager who has incredibly valuable experience in that arena and necessarily put them in a boardroom with senior executives to talk about business strategy because they don't have a context for it. They don't have, you know, that's all I'm saying.

It's context.

It's always relative to your insight. And really, you know, the bottom line on this is this very obvious point, which is we constantly need to be expanding ourselves. We constantly need to be getting deeper, wider, richer experience so that we can extract wisdom from that and share it with other people.

Yep. It's the precursor to insight. It's the prerequisite to insight. Experience of all kinds. So, wow, I am loving where our conversation has taken us and would like to conclude by asking you what rituals you have to sustain that growth that you were just advocating.

Well, that's a great question, but I'm going to answer a different one.

I am not at all surprised.

I have to close the loop on the music thing.

Well, you're going to close the loop for sure. Okay. Yeah.

And maybe that ties in with rituals. You know, I'm not really much of a ritual person other than I make Bulletproof Coffee every morning. And bring it upstairs to my wife. That's our big kind of domestic ritual. That's my territory. That's my role of service that I play. It's not the only one, certainly, but in terms of music, I have over the past few years been reawakened in the musician side of my personality. I mean, I've played over the years, but I've started writing again a little bit, and I've brought back actually some of the songs that I wrote 40 years ago. that I've always played and brought them more to the forefront of who I am and what I do. I've even started playing music in some of my keynotes. I know, Adam, you heard me do that once. I don't get the opportunity to do that every time, but when I can, I love to do that. So I've been through this musical reawakening, and as a result of that, going into the studio the end of September to record with the Brothers Koren, Isaac and Torald Koren, formerly known as The Kin, who toured with Pink and opened for Coldplay, and they're just brilliant musicians. I'm going into the studio with them and recording 6 of my songs, which we will then, you know, release on Spotify and iTunes and all that. I'm doing it just to give expression. I don't have any designs on, you know, a hit single or anything, but it's just an amazing thing to be completely, fully—

Honoring.

Honoring, that's the word. That's the perfect word. that really important part of my personality and my being. So this idea that we have to sacrifice one part of ourselves to nurture another is false. I mean, none of these things are mutually exclusive. I think our ideal, our ideal state is something that I've referred to as the radical edge, which is to be successful in our business ventures and prosper, to amplify personal joy and meaning in our lives, and change the world for the better all at the same time. These also are not mutually exclusive ideas. We don't have to be a martyr in order to change the world. You don't have to have a terrible job in order to live your— a life of joy on the weekends. It should all be moving at the same pace. That's what we're built to do, in my opinion.

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. Yeah. Just gonna circle back to one thing and then we're gonna wrap things up. You read Pivot at a pretty pivotal point in your life about a year ago.

Yeah.

What was the one thing out of that that you either took away or still somehow are influenced by, if anything?

Well, I think it's the prevailing wisdom. It seems to be an all-or-nothing point of view, right? I think you use this imagery in the book. Burn the bridges kind of a thing, right? If I'm going to pivot, if I'm going to move to a new direction, then I need to just do it all or nothing, take the leap in the literal sense and burn the bridges behind me. And I have done it that way before. And sometimes, sometimes I think it's needed, but this idea that we can start right now with small things that add up to big things over time, was something— I'm not going to say that it was the most important thing in the book, but it seemed to be the most immediate for me because we're pivoting with our business. We're taking a new direction in the things that we're doing and how we're doing it. And we're doing it incrementally and little by little. And sometimes I get frustrated that it's not moving fast enough. And I just remind myself that we're starting a completely different trajectory and it's better to get it right as much as we possibly can with the smaller steps.

Yeah, which is a great segue into, as we wrap things up, how can people find out more about what you're up to these days? What's the best place to send them so that they can either discover who you are as an author, speaker, facilitator? Is there one place you'd like to say, here, this is the website, go here and all your dreams will be answered?

That's right. All your dreams will be fulfilled at stevefarber.com. Yeah, that's the place. stevefarber.com is where, you know, there's lots of videos. Really good content. My blog lives there. I've got some good white papers and you can see about my speaking stuff. We're doing a lot of cultural change. We're having some really great results with helping to change cultures. You won't see a whole lot about that on there as of yet. There'll be a new website coming soon with some of the broader services that we do. But for right now, stevefarber.com is the place to be and there is a free audio series that's available There, which I get really great feedback on, and I invite you to partake in.

Beautiful, beautiful. And I know you're doing online trainings as well. Is there information about your online course?

There's tools, yes. There's a lot. Fantastic.

Good to know.

I just amaze myself at how relentless a sales guy and marketing guy I am.

You are. You're just so— too tenacious for comfort.

I completely forgot about our new online program, which is really quite good, I have to say. So you can find information on that there as well.

Fantastic. So, Steve with a V, Farber with an F, just as it sounds, 1B. Everybody else, you can figure it out from there. And as always, what a pleasure to have you join us, Steve. Thank you. For everybody listening, watching, etc., thank you for being with us, for giving us your most precious asset today, which is your time. It's always that. And remind you that tomorrow, your first and only task to begin with is to wake up. Literally wake up and figuratively to wake up. Wake up a little bit more your consciousness, your awareness, your appreciation, your gratitude. And in that moment, it's pretty easy to realize that as you're waking up, as you're taking that first breath, there will be people who'll be taking their last. So it's a special moment. You don't have to search far for where to be grateful in that moment. Yeah. And if you also feel inclined to do so, I do believe in rituals, which I have a specific definition most of my listeners, I think, are aware of, which is that not from a religious standpoint or some dogma, but more like upskilling habits. How do you upskill a habit? Stephen Covey's amazing book about 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I look at habits as things we do unconsciously. For instance, I'm committed to raising consciousness. I look at rituals as something that we consciously choose to create over time. It takes practice. And so not everybody loves their life, in my experience. Not everybody is grateful as much of the day as they could be and maybe even want to be, but somehow aren't. So conscious habits that become master habits or rituals are powerful. So tomorrow when you wake up and when I get my magic wand, This is what I would do with it. I wave my magic wand because the thing that I want the world to get, business owners, entrepreneurs, and everybody who's anything else, however you categorize it, employee or otherwise, is that you love yourself. That's the magic wand wish for me. You have to learn, and I believe it's a learning. I believe it's something that we are not necessarily shown how to do from the moment we're born. There's all the evidence to the contrary around us, in our parents, and in the world that we live in, what it's like to not love yourself and accept yourself unconditionally. First things first, we wake up, we're grateful, put your feet on the floor, and declare, if you will, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. You do that for a sufficient amount of time. 21 days to start. 75, 100, 200 a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years later. The universe has a way of helping you to see how easy it is and how intuitive it is to love yourself. And I love you all. I send you lots of love, and I wish for you— as I said, I wish for you today and every day— self-love. With that, I will say ciao. Steve, thanks so much, brother. Thanks for being here.

Thank you. It's been a real pleasure, dude.

Awesome. Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. BecomeChangeProof.com. BecomeChangeProof.com.