Building Sustainable Relationships For Success with Blaine Bartlett

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. 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 Pivot. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I am in a really wonderful headspace right now. It's the afternoon as we're filming and recording this podcast. I've had a bit, sort of a bite to eat and put some love into my food and spend a little time, not much time today, but a little time sitting out in the backyard, got some sun on my face, just feeling the breeze and watching the palm trees sort of swaying. And I know people listening to this and watching and listening are everywhere around the world. So I spent 40, more than 40 years actually. Geez, I won't even date this, but I spent more than 40 years in a cold climate. So if you are right now in a cold climate and the thought of palm trees swaying has you feeling that yearning, that craving to be in warmth, well, good, good. Come visit, come out here and spend some time on the west coast or go someplace warm. And if you're a cold weather person or you just would prefer that, well, then, good. Perfect for you. I am absolutely grateful to be here today, to be alive, to be. I feel it's such a blessing to remind ourselves. And I start with me, just a reminder of how blessed I am to be alive and to have all of my body parts working, functioning for the thoughts that I'm thinking and the fact that those thoughts are getting increasingly better. I will say I've cultivated too many weeds in my. In the garden of my mind throughout my life, and I say too many. And at the same time, I forgive that too, because I know it's a process. And each day, what I long for and what I intend is that I'm able to cultivate better thoughts. And that right thinking is something that takes practice and I know I need practice at it. I love being able to teach and share things about what it takes to create right thinking, whether it's on the personal side or it's on the business side, or it's in relationships or health. And part of that is that old adage that we teach what we most need to learn, most want to Learn. And so, yes, right. Thinking is definitely on the agenda for me and for us. And what a great space to be in together collectively here, breathing, sharing this breath, sharing this moment and committing to even better thoughts, cultivating even better thoughts together. So with that, I welcome you to the podcast. Today I've got a great guest, somebody absolutely. I feel honored to be able to share space with him and to be able to share him and his message and the work he's been doing in the world for a long time with all of you. This is just a wonderful community for that. So his name is Blaine Bartlett, and I'm going to share a bit of biographical information on him. You know, I do that. And then. And then we'll circle back to Blaine to see. See what, what he has to say on these topics. But more importantly, today we'll talk about pivoting and transitions and have an organic and really just sort of an agenda, free conversation. Although we've set intentions and did that before we even turned on the recording, we are going to allow things to flow and that's going to be fantastic. So. Blaine Bartlett is the CEO and president of Avatar Resources, a global consulting firm he founded in 1987. He has coached and consulted worldwide with executives, companies and governments and has personally delivered training programs to more than a quarter of a million individuals and has directly impacted the lives of more than a million people, which is absolutely magnificent. Blaine is an adjunct professor at Beijing University, is on the teaching faculty of the American association for Physician Leadership, and is the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Capitalism. That is not an oxymoron, by the way. He sits on the board of directors of the World Business Academy and the Unstoppable foundation foundation that Randy and I also adore and support, and is a member of the advisory boards of the All Japan Management Coaching association and the Asia Coaching and Mentoring Association. Blaine is also the author of the number one international bestseller, compassionate A journey to the soul of Business, the co author of Discover your inner Strength, written in collaboration with Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard and Brian Tracy, and is the author of Three Dimensional Coaching, which was published in 2013 and translated into Chinese and Japanese in 2015. Blaine, that's a lot. That's a mouthful. And I didn't even cover it all. So, first of all, first and foremost, welcome to the podcast.

Welcome to the show, Adam. My pleasure to be here. And as I was listening to that introduction, I was like, that's the truncated version. What did I send you?

I know, right? Blaine, here's the question for you, which obviously you've been doing amazing things in the world for a long time. What's not written in that bio? What did I not say that you'd love for our listeners to know about you?

I think probably the biggest thing, and it's the one that I'm probably the most proud of in my entire, both professional and personal life, is my ability to create and sustain high quality relationships. Just paying attention to that has been a game changer for me. I've got clients that have been with me. One client's been with me for 33 years. 33 years.

I was going to ask you to say that again, but you said it again.

Yeah, 33 years. The average length of most of my client engagements runs about a decade, which in the consulting business is crazy. And I'm very aware that it's not because I built in or build in dependency. It's about the qualitative side of the work that I do with the folks. And it's also true in my personal life. The relationships I have with my kids, my grandkids, my wife, they're just extraordinary in my experience.

Yeah. From your end of it?

From my end, all my relationships work for me.

You know, what you said really, really dropped in for me. I got a kind of a hit in my body when you said it. Because relationships are. To say they're fundamental is such a gross understatement. Their importance, the quality of our life is equal to the quality of our relationships. I don't know how. And to have great. To create and sustain great relationships, man, that's tough. Because we all know what it feels like to be able to be in relationship and feel good about it, whether it's a business partnership relationship or something more intimate or with friends, etc. But to sustain them, to sustain a great relationship, man, that's, that's a different, that's a different skill set perhaps.

I absolutely believe that it is because, I mean, every relationship has ups and downs, peaks and valleys and it's easy to be in when you're, you know, in the land of milk and honey, it's when things get a little bit rocky. And one of the things that I've learned in my life, and I think that's why I'm actually particularly proud of my ability, if I could call it that, to build sustained relationships is it focuses on the area of conflict. The problem is never with conflict, it's with my relationship with conflict. People don't know how to relate well to conflict. And what I mean by that is Most people on this planet would rather be right than get what they say they want, and that drives their behavior. And in a relationship, I can't afford to be right all the time. It's crazy to even think that I would be right even 50% of the time. So being willing to be open to, you know, my wife Cynthia and I, you know, we've got this little phrase that we actually work with when we are butting heads. And rather than trying to defend my position or her defending her position, the catch word is. Or the catchphrase is tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

Let's play this out. Just have a little fun. So your spouse is telling you, is saying to you, you know, you really, really annoyed me. You really pissed me off. This thing when you dismissed, you know, something I was saying, you spoke over me and, you know, we were talking to somebody and you interrupted me. So your response then is tell me more.

Now that's.

I'm so glad you asked, Blaine.

Here it comes.

I will tell you more. But, yeah, I'm making tongue in cheek of it. I'm married. I'm married. We're married, Randy and I, 28 years. So I completely get that there are going to be these conflict moments in all relationships.

Yeah.

So as opposed to defending, which is what we typically do when we feel attacked, when somebody is on the attack and wanting to prove or make their point. Right. We'll defend. Especially if we feel like our, our self esteem or our self respect or.

My identity is threatened here.

My identity, my, my, my precious ego is somehow, you know, in, in, in jeopardy. Right in this moment. It's vulnerable.

And, and, and, and it is vulnerable to say tell me more at that point. I mean, it's really vulnerable because I do open myself up to hearing some things that I would probably not want to hear.

What does that shift? I mean, I can't tell you how great it feels when, when things. There's been such a synergy of the podcasts I've been doing the last couple of days. We had, gosh, I had Ariel Ford on yesterday and we talked about relationship. Another friend of mine, Keith Leon, who's relationship expert, and him and his wife Mariah, we spoke about relationships and that wasn't exactly where we thought the podcasts were going to go, but man, oh man, this has come up in a real profound way in the last few days. So, yeah, thank you for contributing to that.

Oh, my pleasure. I mean, I spend my life in business and one of the things that I discovered early on was that all an organization is is a collection of people that are in relationship. That's all an organization is. And the tip of the iceberg that's most visible is the interpersonal relationships that people have with each other in the companies or in the businesses. But those, like I said, that's the tip of the iceberg. There's relationships with vision, with mission, with values. There's relationships that people have with their chairs, with their desks. Yeah, all of this stuff. Anything that I encounter in an organization has a relationship component to it. And the success of an organization, whether it's a family or a business, is going to be predicated on how successful the relationships are actually functioning.

I know it sounds funny, but I personally witnessed people being really attached to their chair. I mean, just try to take their chair, just try to move their chair, you know, and you might. You might be in for a. You might be in for a fight. So tell me more. What. What has that shown meaning? What I'm trying to say is what has happened when you've said that, when you've used that term? Tell me more what.

What.

What's happened to the context of the dispute or the conflict in that moment?

Just the very use of the phrase shifts the context. Virginia Satir has the most beautiful definition of communication I've ever come across in. Virginia Satir was a family therapist. She was just extraordinary. She was actually one of the models that Richard Bandler used when he developed neuro linguistic programming as a model. And Satir's definition of communication is this. It's simply the ways, plural, the ways we use to work out common meaning with one another. And until we have common meaning, we do not have a basis to even assume that we have communicated. We may have exchanged words, but communication hasn't happened unless meaning is common. The meaning of those words. So when I use something like tell me more, it opens up more room for common meaning to begin to be defined, to be understood. Most of the disagreements that I have are because there was an assumption in place. There was a story I built up in my mind about what was intended or what was going on. And it wasn't actually what was happening. Yeah, the look. Yeah, that. The look. The look.

Oh, we all know it.

People just spiral up on the look. Shit.

I think we should do a whole, like, series of episodes just on what the. What is the look?

What is the look in your relationships.

With your mother, your father, your kids, your spouse? What's the look?

Yeah. And so communication isn't just the words. It's all of these subtleties, these nuances. So tell me more opens up an exploration of that. Well, when you raise your eyebrows, it's kind of okay, thank you for letting me know. I wasn't aware that I did that. So I get to back up a little bit and go, okay, what triggered that? Because oftentimes those autonomic responses are out of my awareness. So rather than me defending and saying, I didn't do that, it's kind of like, well, something got triggered here. Let me take a look at it. And it allows me to own, literally own, the consequence of what was going on in this dynamic, rather than the language of because I'm angry, because it puts the source outside of myself, because it's outside of me. I want to be able to bring it back into me because this is the only place I can fix anything. I am the source of the experience that I have in my life. And I want to be able to have access to coming back to that source as quickly and as frequently and as elegantly, ideally, elegantly as I can.

But another great example of not being able to change the outer that anything that we see change, any manifestation is the result of the inside out. It's an inside out process, right? We don't change the flowers, we change the seeds. We change the roots. That's what changes the fruit. We change how we feel on the inside or how we respond on inside. We change how we, how we, how we own something versus wanting it to be different. And working at that outer layer, you cannot change effects. We can only change causality, right? Is that what you're saying?

In causality, the first cause is consciousness. Consciousness is the first cause. And when I'm saying consciousness, it is my, my thought process, which, how I describe something determines how I feel about it. How I feel about it drives my behavior. I want to be cognizant of how am I describing something, because that is the causative dynamic.

Right? It's the language. And I think this is so powerful. I'm glad we're spending the time that we are on this piece of it. Because everybody experiences conflict. And as you said, there's conflict with so many areas of our life where we find ourselves in relationships. So without getting too. I don't know what the right word is, but we can extend it to everything. So if we have a relationship with a chair, right? We, we. There's a potential that we have a conflict with a chair, right? It's a bit banal, but we'll also have relationships with People and. And those are the most profound relationships of our human conditioning. It's just how you could say it any other way. Tell me more. Is is a way in which we can respond, not react. It's not a reactionary word. We're not reacting, acting. And it's interesting that that word react is basically repeating an action, a former way of acting, of addressing a situation. And often we're addressing it from this place of defense or anger or insult or trigger, what have you, versus response, which is new. It's brand new in the moment. So it's present and we have a choice. And telling me more. The context is a context of opening that you're open to receiving, to taking in that feedback and then being able to formulate what would be a present response. That's not coming from being a place of being closed. Right. That fair to paraphrase.

That's a great way of looking at it. Tell me more. As a generative response. It is an opening. I mean it literally. Just the nature of the question. Contextually, it's an opening question.

That's what I wrote down. I just wrote down on my notes. Opening.

It's opening, yeah. If you want to be open to creativity, if you want to be open to solution, if you want to be open to anything, growth, to love, to business, success. Tell me more. Is a gateway. And what I love about it is it requires. Again, I'll go back to that. It requires vulnerability in order to do it well, because I have to be genuine in it. Tell me more. I'm open to hearing what's coming back. I'm open. Yeah. And in that moment, there's an exquisite paradox in my experience, the passion. Passion exists in openness. And I'll just go into some scripture here for just a moment. Not scripture necessarily, but the illusion, the allegory of the Passion of Christ. Passion, the Greek word which is the etymology of the word passion, is pasco, which means to suffer the suffering of Christ. The passion of Christ. Now, where it got all kind of messed up is. And this is meaning again, most people attribute the to the word suffering. They attribute pain to that word.

Yes.

Suffering does not entail pain. We think it does. But if you look in the dictionary, one definition does not in any way, shape or form include pain. What it includes is openness, vulnerability. And in that sense, it's really an exquisite aliveness to be fully alive, which is what the passion of Christ was. Christ was fully open to the experience. And that's where passion is derived. That's in that Openness and it's vulnerable and it's scary as hell.

Yes. And it's also trust.

Trusting is trust is ecumenical to it. I mean you have to. Interesting thing about trust. And this is where relationship. I have relationship with trust. Most people assign trust when they're thinking of trust. I trust that you won't hurt me.

Yes.

The real value in trust, if you pay attention to it is I trust that I can handle myself. Well, exactly.

Yes. The root, the root of trust is, or the root of trust issues, I believe is self trust. I have an issue in trusting myself, which is why however you, whether you're projecting it or just however it manifests that you have people betray, you know, leave you don't do the right thing, cheat you out of money, whatever the case is, it's all goes back to again. The one and only thing that we can make a change in which for us is ourselves. We can't change outer circumstances. We can only change who we are.

My relationship with self.

Yeah. Wow, beautiful. So my relationship with conflict, I wrote that down and I did want to circle back to follow that thread a bit too. So what do you mean by your relationship with conflict?

Tell me more how I. Yeah, well, I knew this might be a good place. There's two stories that I might offer up here and are they pivot related? They are pivot related stories, if that works.

Had a feeling. Good.

This one client that I've got that I said has been with me 30 plus odd years is a Japanese client. And about, oh, roughly five, six years into our relationship, there was a mutual contact that we both had. This mutual contact asked me to do something with their organization and I said yes, not thinking that there was any problem with it because it came unsolicited and it came outside of the circle in which I was operating with this, with this client, been with me forever. And my existing client went ballistic. There was a, you know, this was the Japanese culture.

That's the universal, universal term.

Ballistic. Yes. Yeah, everybody knows immediately what this is, but they, yeah, they were very upset. They felt that they had lost face. They felt that a relationship code had been violated and I was oblivious to it. I mean, yeah, I was a Westerner operating in a Japanese environment. These are both Japanese business people. And so there was a whole code of ethics underneath a lot of stuff that I wasn't aware of at the time. So this notion of tell me more kind of comes into play around this. But most importantly my, my, my relationship with that conflict. My, my client wanted to rip up the contract. And I mean, they were very incensed about it. And there was a fair amount of money that was on the table about this. And my initial reaction was, fuck you. I did nothing wrong. How dare you impugn my integrity.

Oh, not the. Not the impugning of my integrity. Kick my dog, do anything.

Not my integrity. I pride myself on being an integrous person. I mean, I do the right thing, you know, by people and all that stuff. So it's all about identity. It was very much so. My relationship with conflict had in large part to do with my relationship with my sense of self worth, my sense of self in the business relationship that I was in. And my interpreter, bless her soul, she's been with me now forever. She said, stop, I understand that you're upset, but let me tell you more.

Let me tell you.

I said, okay, I'm willing to listen, and I want you to know I'm not real happy. But she said, you don't need to be happy. Just listen. So she said, here's what's going to happen if you want it to. They are going to bring you into the offices. The chairman of the company, the president of the company, and four of the chief lieutenants in the company are all going to be sitting. You're going to be in kind of. And she kind of motioned, as if it were going to be you, a horseshoe, and you're going to be sitting in the opening. And I went, okay. And they're going to expect you to apologize. And I'm going, for what? And she said, don't get upset about it. All you need to say is, I'm sorry that I have, you know, step. Whatever the language was. I am truly, I am sorry that I violated a trust. I'm sorry it was unintended. Just, you know, however you'd like to see it. But an apology is warranted in their eyes at this point. And you can be right about it and not do that, or you can, if you value this relationship, you can just, you know, say, I'm sorry. And I'm going, well, that doesn't feel right. But I valued the relationship. And so I went, okay, you know, then what happened? She says, well, then what is going to happen? This is honest to God, this was kabuki. He said, then what the chairman is going to do, he's going to say, thank you for apologizing. He's going to get up out of his chair, he's going to have your contract in his hand. He's going to tear the contract up. And he's going to say, we will see how this moves forward. And then you are going to say, thank you for the consideration. And I went, really? And they went, interpreter said, that's exactly how it's going to go down. And so we had the meeting and it was choreographed exactly like she said it was. Now, as a pivot point here, this was really the first time I fully understood that the relationships were more important to me than being right. And the value of that has sustained itself for this, you know, 25 years now, at least, because this was about the time the company's been around. 30. 30 years. 30 years this last year. So five years into my company, this was a major relationship lesson. It was a major business lesson. Yeah. To take care of the client, to take care of it in a way that's integrous. And don't be too concerned about the small win, which is about being right. Be concerned about what is it that you want to have happen long term. And. Yeah, so I. It doesn't seem like a huge pivot in the describing of it, but it felt enormous in the experiencing of it, I was gonna say, but moving off of my need to be right and really appreciating how much of a driver that is in behavior. I was feeling so vulnerable. And I say vulnerable in the sense of. It felt wrong to say I'm sorry, but it was in service of something that was far more important. I would rather have what I wanted than to be right about what I thought had happened.

Gosh, I'm just envisioning how many people listening to this are thinking to themselves, either they have trouble with that word, I'm sorry, you know, the term I'm sorry, or it's somebody that they know quite well, family member, you know, somebody lived with, maybe that has trouble with that word because it. Yeah, it's interesting that that word or that, you know, I'm sorry, I apologize. It is very vulnerable to put yourself in that. In that space. And it could be that what you're sorry for is that the relationship itself is on this rocky ground. Yeah. And interesting, when you were speaking about your relationship with conflict earlier, too, what came up for me is that. And this is a bit of an opinion more than anything else, although it's based on my experiences, people are addicted. Often they're addicted to conflict. Do you find that to be the case as well?

I do, I do. I've got. And I know that you, as well as many of your listeners, probably have as well, friends or associates or acquaintances that are addicted to this. They are addicted to drama.

Exactly, exactly. They're like drama junkies. Right. Conflict junkies.

Yeah. If it's not dramatic, there's no juice. Oh. That's a paradigm structure that says if a relationship is going to be interesting, it has to be dramatic. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It can be exquisitely fulfilling and satisfying and interesting without the drama.

Yes. Be interesting. If everybody was more committed to their vision than they were to their drama.

Oh, boy, wouldn't that be wonderful? Yeah. Well, you see, the extreme of that, it is a pivot of sorts. War. I'll just take this out to an extreme. War is an exercise not in peacemaking. It is an exercise in controlling. And that's what we have. When conflict is in, drama is the focal point. Energy will follow attention. And if the attention is on being right, if the attention is on controlling, you're going to have drama. You can't not have drama.

Yeah. What do we say to folks that would say, well, use the example of war, for example, and the response of. Tell me more. So there's a conflict. There's two political groups that. Look, in our own country, I mean, we've got a war, a political war that's been going on. It's been waging havoc and wreaking havoc for a long time. And it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Soon. Can you imagine that the, you know, the one side or the other was to say to the other, you know, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more exactly why it is you wish to wipe me off the face of the earth. Now, I'm not talking about countries, I'm talking about Democrats and Republicans.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, what do you say to those folks? Because you and I. Look, let's. Let's call. Call it what it is. Right. We operate in a certain space of consciousness, meaning the people that we are working with and around, who we're attracting and who's part of our community. And there's a certain element, I think, element of what I want to say here, what we're saying lands with the people that we're surrounded by for the most part. For somebody that says, and I don't want to call them a naysayer, I don't want to put any judgment on it, but they say, hey, that's all well and good. That sounds great, fantastic. Maybe that works, you know, with a husband and wife or with kids and stuff like that, but the conflict that we're dealing with every Day, just turn on the TV and see the conflict that's everywhere. Is this applicable there? Does it have, you know, is there value that we can get by extending this into those spaces as well?

I believe that there is. Conflict is predicated on two parties wanting to be right about positions that are antithetical to each other. When you look at. And this is where language gets to be interesting for me, language is a creator of reality, and it's also a reflector of reality. So if we look at just two words in particular, the word discussion, we're going to have a discussion about this. Well, the root of the word discussion is the same as the root of concussion and percussion. And a percussion is the sound that's made when something is struck. A concussion is the consequence of being struck. A discussion is usually the activity of me throwing my point of view at you as hard as a I can and you throwing your point of view at me as hard as you can. Both of us, with the intent of winning, of dominating. The focus point of discussion is domination, control. Contrast that to a dialogue. And a dialogue is rooted in. Tell me more. You take the word apart. Dialogos. Dialogos around the ideas. Dialogos. Tell me more. When I'm genuinely interested in understanding how you can possibly see the world in the way that you tell me you are seeing it, you will then begin to feel understood. Even if I don't agree with you, if I'm genuinely listening and hearing, you will likely feel heard. And as soon as somebody feels heard, their need to defend their point of view begins to dissipate.

What a beautiful distinction. The notes I was taking. I wrote civil. Civil discourse tied to using or getting used. Getting the value out of this tell me more response is that it creates a civil discourse. That there's civility here. I mean, that's the prerequisite to the two parties, for example, having a conversation is that the context is that we. That there's an element of civility.

Civility. Yeah. Incumbent in civility is respect. I mean, I respect that your point of view is valid for you. I respect that that's true for you. It doesn't have to be true for me, but I respect and honor the fact that it is true for you from your worldview, which is what you.

Did when you sat down with your. Your consulting clients. Exactly. You just gave them respect, and then they felt heard.

And we move forward.

Yeah. Share, Blaine, about the work that you're up to now. I mean, we won't get a chance to talk about all of it. And I know that you sit on boards and you're doing some incredible things, done some incredible writing. What do you feel called to share with us now? And maybe it relates back to some of the things we've already chatted about.

Yeah, well, I, you know, my professional life is in the business world that I've consulted and coached and led companies and all kinds of stuff for the last 40 plus odd years. So that's kind of where my heart is and I kind of use that as a backdrop. The book that I am most proud of having written right now is the Compassionate Capitalism book. And it is an oxymoron in most people's thinking. Compassion and capitalism don't generally seem to go together. The tagline on the book is a journey to the soul of business. And that's important to me because business has a soul. Everything has a soul. And I don't mean this in a religious sense. It has a founding premise, it has a founding. Spark that when I'm connected to it, it's generative. Now, why it's important to me is that there is nothing on this planet today, Adam, that is not touched by the activity of business. Nothing. Jellyfish in the ocean are touched by carbon depletion in the water. I mean, it's, you know, businesses, activities for ill or for good touches everything. In the years that I've got left, I want to be able to have that activity more often than not. Serving the good, the collective good. I firmly believe that the primary purpose of business is not to make a profit. Profit is the secondary purpose of business. The primary purpose of business is to enhance the quality of life on this planet. That's the primary purpose of business. And if people can get connected to that in meaningful ways, I think we've got a pretty good shot at turning some things around. Because businesses will. They transcend national boundaries, they transcend fiscal boundaries. They aren't subject to the same sorts of things that governments are subjected to, which is both the boon and the doggle.

When you think about the purpose of business as you've defined it, to make. To make the world. Give me the exact words you used. I'm sorry, I was going to say make the world a better place.

Yeah. To enhance the quality of life. To enhance the quality of life on the planet.

Think about a business and its culture. I mean, back to what we said earlier. Building relationships, working on creating better relationships within that. Within that business is the job of the culture. It's the goal of having a culture of any kind is to Enhance the experience of the workforce. And that is making a difference in the world for the better. For sure.

Yeah.

So it's not so much this, this platitude that some, you know, it's been kind of made fun of, I think more in the tech sector than anywhere else. You know, like if you watch Silicon Valley, which pretty funny show, you know, everybody's wanting to make the world a better place. Yes. And we make. We make a compression device or compression software we created to make the world a better place. Right. It goes well. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting as a platitude. It's fun.

Yeah. For me, this is more than a Pollyanna sort of a hope and dream and aspiration. The World Business Academy. I'm on the board there. One of the things that we championed about four years ago was something, and this was in a conversation that the founder of the World Business Academy, Ronaldo Vertico, very good friend of mine, had with Deepak Chopra. And they were kind of battering back and forth about some things. And Ronaldo made a comment about, wouldn't it be nice if we had a different way of measuring. This is a very broad paraphrasing, a different way of measuring businesses activities so that we could actually have a way of assessing how companies are serving the greater good. The founding principle of the World Business Academy was business taking responsibility for the whole. That's the founding principle.

Beautiful.

Business taking responsibility for the whole. And so Deepak took that and ran with it a little bit, and Ronaldo got into the conversation. And long story short, that kernel of an idea became the founding of something called Just Capital. And Just Capital is a listing of the most just companies in the world. And Forbes magazine just published in December their second ranking of Just companies. And it's a fascinating ranking that does not take into account profit or return on investment. It does not take that into account because you need to have a viable business. But what it does take into account are standards of living, living wages, impact on the environment, quadruple bottom line, accounting, person, place, purpose, place, profit, and people. So how do you measure that stuff? So the first year and a half, almost the first three years, was getting data, structuring an algorithm that could actually assess these large companies in those parameters. And the intent is to change. You measure something, it starts to be paid attention to. So if we want to change how business is working, we need to change how it's measured.

Wow, it's so interesting how certain things just line up for whatever reason, we last year were working on the messaging for our company and we'd been contributing, created a foundation called Peace Feels like some time ago. And that foundation ultimately has sponsored a school and made some contributions to the Unstoppable foundation, which is.

Yes, thank you.

Your wife's beautiful foundation. And one of the things that it inspired us was these, what we call the three Ps, which was perfect purpose, profits, and Peace. And this idea that a business and business endeavor should or could choose to focus on those three, you know, this trifecta, if you will, of things that are so important in developing a sustainable business. A business with where employee engagement is high and the culture is positive and where the company is doing good things in the world. And also profiting.

And also profiting.

Yes. Because you can't have a business. I mean, just so we're clear to the listeners that might have, you know, not at all. Are we saying that profits are not important? No, absolutely not. It's. You can't have a business that doesn't run right, including a not for profit, which is misnomer, because they're all profit.

Huge misnomer. I give a keynote talk that is called Mission with a Business. And every company that's ever been founded, every company that has ever been founded was founded off of a fundamental mission whose, at least in part, intent was to enhance the quality of life of somebody. And somebody bought a product and felt better about it. If they didn't feel better about it, they stopped buying the product and the company went out of business.

Business.

Assuming that enough people started to feel good. I actually feel good because I bought this product or I bought this service. The mission of the company was being fulfilled, and it was selling goods and services. Companies grow and decisions made early on in service of the mission now begin to be supplanted by decisions made in service of the business. And there's a trajectory that happens where. And it happens with every company, where it moves from being a mission with a business to a business with a mission. And it's at that point that you start losing employee engagement, if I can put it in those sorts of terms. It's the mission that connects people. It's the access to that meaningful piece about why we do what we do. The business itself disconnects people. Nobody gets excited about a quarterly number. Nobody.

Well, some people do for sure, and certainly Wall street does. Investors do. But I agree with you, and especially with Millennials, which is, I guess, the largest now the largest work or segment of our workforce and will be for some time still, that being fulfilled and we have two daughters, our oldest two daughters are millennials in the workforce now. And what they do and why. Why they do it, why they're being asked to do what they do is very important to them.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's connection with mission, either personal mission or organizational mission. And if you can marry the two, you're off to the races. And that's a relationship. That is a relationship question.

Yeah. I mean, everything. It's so interesting to follow the thread on this because everything can be taken back to the subject of relationships, even though just in using the word relationship as a connection point itself, the relationship between things like back to Sesame street, you know, which one of these things, you know, it's like, doesn't belong? Well, I like to think that everything belongs.

Everything does.

And I'm so curious about the relationship between things. And for us, I think what's really fun and not always and is daunting at the same time, so not always easy, but. But is to find the relevant connection points. What is the way to keep. How do you connect the dots and see those connections? That's not easy to do at times.

That requires being awake. It really does. It requires. Most people don't notice what they're noticing, Truly. And, you know, when I'm coaching executives, one of the first things that I start working with them on is notice what you're noticing. And they go, what are you talking about? So just notice where your attention is drawn. It's probably going to be out of your awareness. Notice what you're noticing. Because what you're noticing, where your attention goes, is where your energy is going to go. You may be saying this, but if your attention is over here, energy, and the organization's energy is going to go over here.

Right.

Notice what you're noticing. Be awake.

So important. I mean, one of the things that we do as a company, as we train people to speak, to speak publicly, to speak more persuasively and influentially and effectively within their companies, whether it's to round up capital or it's to round up talent, or any of these things. And that idea of noticing what it is that you're saying, we point that out frequently. What are the words? Just notice the words just came out of your mouth. Because oftentimes there's words that will. When you put a little consciousness to it, you pay attention to it, you realize, oh, you know, I didn't mean to convey that message. And often that message is a message of scarcity or defense. It's a. It's A message of closed. There's a closed energy to the messaging, wording. Right. Versus what you were describing earlier, which is what creates an opening, what creates that fuller, more real relationship.

Yep. So that feeds back into the notion that language both creates reality, but it's also a reflector of an internal reality. So most people speak unconsciously, and if they start paying attention to their linguistic patterns, they begin to discover some things about themselves and the reality that exists inside them that then is being manifested outside.

Wonderful, Blaine. I so enjoyed this talk with you, Blaine. Really enjoyed this.

Yeah, me too. Just getting warmed up.

Feeling like the people who are driving now, they're going, oh, I'm not there yet. I've got another hour in the car. Seriously, somehow turn this into a Joe Rogan podcast, you know, make me. I want to drive for three hours. Listen to Mr. Bartlett. One of the final questions that I want to ask you has to do with your rituals, your rituals for success. Would you share more of those things that you're doing on a pretty. On a consistent basis? That's why they're rituals, right?

That's why they're rituals. Yeah. One of the things that I. And this one has been going on for about five years now, I started bringing the future, behaving today as if tomorrow were already here. Behave today as if the future were already here. So the idea there is, I wake up in the morning, and instead of looking at my to do list, I look at my to be list. How do I want to be today that is consistent with that future state that I say is important to me because I know that that beingness is the key to having that realized today. So that's one piece of it. That's in the morning, in the evening, I do a revise, a review and revise. Not really a meditation, but it's literally, it's a review as I'm laying in bed. Review and revise. I just kind of walk through the day, where was I? Off the mark. And then I revise it in my mind. I can't go back and change it in physical. Physicality, but I can change it in my mind. And I can change the words I said. I can change the feelings that I had. I can change the behaviors I actually noticed myself engaging in to match what it was that that state of being was going to inform. So that review and revise and the being list in the morning is really a key piece. The second ritual, and this is a couple's ritual that Cynthia and I engage in. We actually read to each Other every night. And what's interesting is we have been reading the same chapter out of Thomas Troward, who was a philosopher. He was an English jurist back in the turn of the last century, did a series of lectures in Edinburgh and they're colloquially called the Edinburgh Lectures. Fascinating material. I mean, from a consciousness perspective, from an awareness perspective. He has got one chapter in the Edinburgh or one of the. One of the pieces of the Edinburgh Lectures is called the Spirit of Opulence. And we have been reading to each other every night since, what was it, September, Last September, every night. So September, October, November, December, January, February. So for, you know, what's that been, six months now that we've been every night reading to each other. And the intent was both of us wanted to begin to shift our paradigms around opulence. What's the word I'd use here? Not opulence as much as abundance. Yes, abundance. And the way that paradigms get changed, the way belief systems get changed, is either through trauma or fascination. Fascination is hard to manufacture. Trauma, I don't recommend to anybody. The third way that it gets changed is through repetition. And so the ritual.

Affirmation.

Affirmation. So we read out loud to each other the Spirit of Opulence every night. It's about a five minute reading. And then we reflect on, okay, where's this showing up in our life and where is it? How is this being manifested or not? What are we seeing happening there? And it's producing some phenomenal experiences for us right now.

Blaine. It's so cool. Well, here we go. I know we're gonna wrap up, but it's gonna go on a little bit longer. I really am so thoroughly enjoying your company. And not to say that I haven't enjoyed other people's company, I want to imply that at all. I was. I wrote down and circled the word futurist as you were describing your thinking future casting, which may be sort of an NLP concept of how it is future pace or forward pace, you're a futurist. So in. In the activity, you become a futurist, which is so beautiful that to be list, creating a to be list versus to do list, which is so more. Much more prevalent for folks. I don't remember if you and I were at a TLC meeting. I got the. Had the privilege to do the emceeing one day at a. At a TLC meeting maybe a year and a half ago or so. Two years ago. Were you there?

I think that. I think that was one of, you know, was that one of your first ones.

It was, it was maybe second or third meeting we were at and I had to share this code of conduct that was sort of started with looking at Benjamin Franklin's code of I do.

Remember, I do remember, which is all.

About the state of being. The how do, how do I experience myself being and how do I want to experience myself being throughout the day and to start in the morning by stating out loud, today I experience. And it could be peace in my mind, my body and my heart, soul, etc. So that really was reminiscent of that. And I so love the fact that you revise it that you come back and you have this revision so that you get to celebrate the wins as well as look at where it is that you might.

Yeah.

Tweak it or make modification to it.

I'm making it all up anyway, so I may as well make it up the way I want it to be. And if I miss the mark, I get to make it up the way I want it to be. I get. And the key is I get to feel it the way that it was supposed to have been in my mind. And so when I remember the future, it's not just a mental exercise, it's a whole body process.

And the future is happening now anyway. Right. Do we get that like literally time and space collapse? Because just think back, if you don't buy that or believe that or whatever, just think back 10 years ago. It was a second ago. There's just, there's no 10 year distance between that moment and this moment. It's an accordion and it all collapsed on itself and it's, it all sits in this moment now, our entire life history, everything, however long that is right here in this moment. Right.

Yeah. I mean there's some stuff in physics that just can. Yeah. Albert Einstein famously said that time is an interestingly persistent illusion.

Yes. The illusion of time.

The illusion of time. And you know, if we, then we're not going to. Because of time, but if we took a deep dive in this. Yeah. John Wheeler, who is the theorist that basically postulated black holes, suggested a theory that said if we can change the, if we can make a change in the future, it actually impacts the past. And now that's, you know, get your head around that one.

Yes.

But theoretically they've actually proven this to be the case. Yeah. There's a number of lab experiments that have actually change something in the future. Don't ask me how to explain this.

No, no.

It gets weird.

Maybe, maybe.

But it's a relationship question.

Possibly equally weird. Maybe, maybe not so much. Do you remember John, obviously you remember Jonathan Livingston Siegel, right?

Oh, yes, I do.

Richard Bach, yes. Chiang the Seagull. Talking about traveling, and I don't remember the exact quote, but traveling from coast to coast, east to west, west to east. And he said something along the lines of the moment you decide. It's already done. And this is interesting because this point now where we decide something, where we affirm something, so that spirit of opulence was so beautiful. Cynthia sent that to me. So I have that.

Oh, good.

I gotta have it open on my desktop at the moment. We've been looking at another, older book, Ogmundino's the Greatest Salesman in the World. And again, just each night reviewing what those things are like. Today I greet the day with love in my heart. I will persist until I succeed. I'll live today as if it is my last. Right. Things like that. But as we affirm those things in the moment, because people kind of poo poo that I think, or they think, maybe I get it makes sense. I certainly not against it, but I don't know how powerful it is. You think about what you affirm into existence in this moment, how you create your future. Now, where what we said is, maybe we don't fully understand it or it's lead you off into a black hole to explain it, but time and space collapse and the one and the other are the same, cause and effect come together in an instant. There's no difference between cause and effect or future, past and present, you say. So you can actually create and do create your future in this moment.

This moment.

Because in the next moment will blink, will snap. It'll be 10 years later, right? I mean, yeah, that's the reality, Blaine.

Right? That is the reality. It's, you know, if this whole notion of time, I mean, I've got far less Runway in front of me than I have behind me now. And you know, my grandkids, I. Yeah, you know, the oldest one just turned 13. And yeah, for me, a year goes by that quick. And for him, the wait to Christmas is forever. And I look up and go, God, is it Christmas already? And so it's. My relationship with time is. I mean, everything is a relational dynamic. And you know, the theory of relativity was predicated on relationship, the relationship of the observer to the phenomena being observed.

I think we struck a theme here.

I think we did.

When they're naming this podcast, and in this moment, I know there will be a name for exactly what this podcast is called, but Right in this moment. It doesn't exist. And yet it exists, because this is crazy. As we're speaking, people will be listening as though it's happening in the moment, and then it's happening in this moment.

Yeah.

As we take a breath right now, I'm taking a breath with all humanity. And when this is consumed and listened to by vast numbers of people, wherever they are in the world, they'll be taking a breath as we're taking breath. And the future will be the present.

Exactly.

So. All right, I'm gonna. I'll put a fork in it right there. Wow. What a magic ride.

Medium rare. Not done.

No, not done at all. Just getting started, like you said. Blaine, thank you for your presence on the show today.

Oh, I've had a ball. One of my intentions coming into this was to have fun. And, madam, thank you for the questions and the banter. I love great conversations.

Me too.

Plural. I love a great conversation. Yeah. Wonderful.

And to our incredible community, I want to say thank you. Thank you for being there, for enjoying this, for subscribing, and I really appreciate the fact you've done that. If you haven't yet done that, feel free to. You can consume more of the podcast@adammarkel.com of course, and leave a review on itunes. We love the feedback, appreciate the reviews, whatever it means to you. I mean, so no requirement that you put five stars there, but we love those two. And the community itself is growing in a beautiful way. And if you'd like to be part of that growth and what that community is all about, which is vulnerability. It's just what Blaine was talking about. And real authenticity in our pivots, in the way that we're pivoting in our minds and our mindset, things that we do and the way we relate to. To ourselves, to each other. Oh, gosh, it's just the most beautiful thing. You can join that community on Facebook @StartMyPivotCommunity, and you can search for StartMyPivot Community on Facebook. Get us there. Or take this shortcut, which I'd like to is pivotfb.com, pivotfb.com you can find us there as well. Show Notes will provide access and information about Blaine Bartlett and the work he's doing and the places where you can find out more about him and his. His books and how to support some of the upcoming things that are going on. I know we. I'm not sure if we do have a date for what's coming up for you. I know I wrote Something down, Blaine, help me out here.

Yeah, the. I'm actually doing a soul of business program at the Whitby Institute up near Seattle on March 27th and 28th. It's actually one of the few public programs I do in this country. So if anybody's interested, whidbeyinstitute.com and they'll be able to handle any. Any room enrollments, or you can go to my website, blainebar. Calm. The information's there as well.

Beautiful. And that's probably the most timeless way to reach out. And it'll be in the show notes as well, because, of course, this. This podcast will be consumed for months beyond that date and years even. So, you know, there's an organic opportunity, you know, in this moment to read and to consume other things that Blaine has been involved in. So that's fantastic. I want to close out the show. The way we open, it's the tradition, it's the ritual here, which is to leave. All of us leave with gratitude. We entered with gratitude. We'll depart with gratitude. And it's not an ending, it's the beginning. So it's no end to the show or to our ongoing opening. And so I am grateful and feel so blessed to be here and to be with all of you, to share this space with Blaine and for us to all come together as we are, be breathing together, to be living together, to be working on ourselves and on the world collaboratively. Hopefully not in too great a competition, because there's really nothing to compete about, But I think we're slow to adopt the distinction there, that we can all win, but either way, what a blessing it is. And as we breathe, as we take this breath, of course we know there are people that are taking their last, taking their first, and that makes this moment sacred. So with that, I want to say thank you and blessings to all of you, wherever it is that you are, whether it's evening or night or some other point in the day, just have a beautiful rest of your day and a blessed evening and a blessed sleep. And of course, when you wake up tomorrow, I wish you and wave this magic wand that you will, in fact, wake up a little bit more tomorrow than you are even today. And that you are grateful for that opportunity to wake yourself up and to be woken up by whatever it is that you encounter, all the divine expressions that are everywhere when you open your eyes. And lastly, if you're willing to keep this ritual, I've been sharing this with you for some time now, and it's changed my life. It's these words that you can speak out loud and affirm to the universe, which is I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. Have a beautiful one. We'll see you soon. Ciao for now, everybody. 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 episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.