Finding Happiness In The Advent Of Technology with Ervin “Earl” Cobb

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 pivotal hey everybody.

Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and it is another beautiful day. What can I say? I never thought of myself as an optimist. I guess if I look back far enough into my attitudes, I've always sort of looked for what was right in the world and what was right in in situations before I would look anywhere else. So I guess that does make me an optimist, but not a blind optimist. And certainly of late, with everything that's been going on in our country and elsewhere in the world. And it's sort of been a call to action for me to be looking more critically at things and not running the risk of burying my head in the sand with that optimism. So it is a beautiful day and I say that not because everything in the world is perfect or because everything in my own life is perfect at this moment or ever really, but because we're alive and breathing. I am alive and breathing. And that is a profound blessing and one that I don't want to take lightly. And certainly in this moment, I can say categorically I am not taking it lightly right now moment. So I am feeling incredibly lucky and blessed not only to be with you all to be here, but to also have a great guest, somebody that I'm very enthusiastic about speaking to this morning. I know you guys are going to enjoy listening to this gentleman. I'm going to enjoy my conversation. So I'm being selfish when I say this. His name is Earl Cobb and he is a has an incredible rags to riches success story. He is a serial pivoter. I think you guys are going to absolutely love, love, love what you get out of the conversation with Earl today. And he's a publisher, he's an author of 10 books, both on his own and with his bride of 37 years. We've got a lot in common, he and I, and we're going to enjoy this conversation. So without further ado, Earl Cobb, welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us, Earl. Thank you.

Thanks for the invitation. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, it's a pleasure. You know what, you've done a lot of things. I would love it if you give us a little survey of your history, of your bio, so to speak, you know, in a condensed format. But love for people to know a little bit about how it is that you have come to be where you are today.

Certainly, you know, my history fits very well in the complete, unabridged American history. Okay. And I don't say that on a bridge, just occasionally, because I think that's the case, because most students who've gone to school in this country, say, in the last 40 years, haven't gotten all of America's history, which to me is a lot of richness that a lot of people don't have and which might be some of the issues that we're going through during this next hundred years of, of existence here. But I was born in a little town. I say little. It was about 2,000 people in Middle Georgia, right in the heart of segregation. Okay. And my mom and dad never went to school. Okay. My dad was painter, carpenter, barber on the weekends. Mom had eight kids. I'm one of eight.

Okay.

And doing all of the time. Growing up, two things never, ever entered when I was young into my thoughts. That is, I never thought that I was poor or disadvantaged. And I never felt that within my family and my community and the constraints that we were in that we could have been any happier. Okay. Coming out of that environment, loving family environment and small town, Southern environment, 47 years later, life's been good. I've got to admit, I never would have imagined that I would have had the opportunities and the income and the associated wealth that has come with that. When I was a little kid in Viner, Georgia, during the summers making go karts because I was known as the maker. Every summer I'd make something. That's probably why I went into engineering. But within that 47 years, there's a couple of engineering degrees. There's an excellent training program with Honeywell and Motorola. You know, there's a wife now 37 years. There's three grandkids, Jordan, who just turned 18. Jayden, the middle kid who just turned 13, and granddaughter, who will be 10, going on 14 in November, fortunate enough to have enough opportunities and work for enough companies earlier on where, you know, there was things called fixed pensions and, and a lot of, a lot of bonuses, and also ran a venture company with some luck. Now I'm sort of semi retired. You never retire. But I got out of Corporate life back in 2008 with my last stint at Wells Fargo, where I ran all of their critical data centers before they bought and integrated all of their data centers with Wells. And at that point, I wrote my first book on leadership called Focused Leadership. And if you get that book and you read the first. The intro, the first part, I tell you what that was all about. It was my pivot, okay? It was my realizing that I don't have that BlackBerry connected to me anymore, that I've got some options because my wife, you know, was still actively involved in her third career, believe it or not. And I've always wanted to communicate in writing. And people will always say, earl, what are you going to do when you stop getting off airplanes and flying around the world and building things and leading people? I said, I'm going to get this out and I'm going to write. He said, engineers don't write. What, you mean engineers? I said, wait a minute. I was an engineer for about eight years, okay? The first eight years of my career, the last 15 years of my career, I was a communicator as a senior executive, okay? That's what it was all about. And even in some of my seminars and presentations now, particularly the project managers, I let them know that if you're a senior manager, you don't produce nothing. You know, people who work for you produce the things, okay? And in that is where I had the gift of message. And back in the earlier days, you know, we didn't have the, you know, the zooms and all of this, and you wrote the memos and you wrote letters and you had communication meetings where you had to go to every location to sit up and talk to your people and meet people. And that's sort of how I sort of morphed into enjoying this publishing business and this. And I say that with a small p because, you know, the nice thing about what I've been able to do with Richard Press, which is a part of our company, is that when I get up in the morning, I've got over 40 authors that I've published that I market, that I promote. And unlike when I was in corporate America, everybody that calls my number, they're in my life now because I want them in my life.

Yeah. I want to circle back to a couple of things you said at the beginning. First of all, thank you for sharing a little bit more in depth about how it is you. You've navigated in the last several years, your career and otherwise. The math isn't adding up. So before I Get into this other thing I want to talk to you about. Something's not adding up for me. You said 47 years, now I'm 65.

That's when I left Vienna.

Ah, got it. Because I'm thinking to myself, 47 years and he's married 37 years. I'm about to have a bigger pivot than I thought I was going to get. In this episode, the man married his college, his sweetheart at age 10.

I'll be 66 years old, if the Lord's willing, in February.

Yes. Good, Good. What a blessing. I want to get back to something you said earlier, which was that you grew up in a small town and didn't have a lot of. But there were two things that were true for you, and I think this is really the. At least at the outset, the track I want to follow. One, that you never felt poor or disadvantaged, and two, that you couldn't have been. You couldn't imagine yourself being any happier. And this is growing up in a family of eight in a small town place with not a whole lot financially, let's say. That is very telling to me of what is possibly, possibly missing in our world now. I mean, we're living in a very, very interesting time again. Yes. I look at things in a way that say, everything's always happening for good. For a good. We may not see what that good is. You know, there's that old expression, everything happens for a reason. I always found that to be expression that didn't bring me a lot of comfort because it. Well, I should say it didn't until I realized it wasn't necessarily a complete statement. Everything happens for a reason. And then instead of a period, you can put a comma there and complete that by saying, and that reason is there to serve. What is it? What's the. What's the service that comes out of that thing? I mean, it could be a. Could be a child that passes away. It could be anything that's sort of on the outer edge of what you think, you know, that would be inconceivable or irreconcilable or something you can't. You could never get past. And even the worst of those types of things, or even tragedies, you'd say, well, what on earth could come out of this? But if we look at it through the lens of that, it will serve someone. It might serve me, it might serve my community, it might serve people that I can't even imagine at the moment. It changes things in a great way. So I don't look at what's happening in our world, even the divisiveness in and of itself as being a bad thing. But there's no question that it is causing disruption and it is causing pain right now for a lot of folks. And what seems to be not present in the world we're in right now is what you just described. And I'm curious whether you think social media, whether technology, because you were in the tech space, you're an engineer and you're an information. I mean, you were involved directly in the information side of technology. That technology and that information has only made communication more possible. It's made it cheaper. It's made it to the point where the work that people do is possible from anywhere. All over the world these days, remote working has created a revolution. The possibility of remote working is only expected to increase. More people are going to work virtually tomorrow than they did today. And 10 years from now, who knows, could be 80 or 90% of our workforce is working remotely. So the communication advances have been very positive. I just look and say, man, growing up and not knowing that you are poor or not ever thinking of yourself as poor, not ever thinking of yourself as disadvantaged, and that being coupled with this feeling that you are happy. Do you think technology. This is the question I've got for you. Do you think technology has disrupted that. That foundation of family life to the point where people look at others. I mean, kids know they're poor today because all you got to do is get on Facebook. And at least there's this idea that other people, you know, have a lot more going on for them than maybe you do. What are your thoughts on that, Earl?

Well, my answer to your question would be a conditional yes, And I'll get right back to that. You know, to me, it gets back to a. One of my favorite fables, and it goes back to some Socrates writings, okay? And he presents this fable about this. These men that were living in cave time, okay? So there was no Facebook or anything back then, okay? But they had a routine. The man would go out hunting, bring back the food, give it to the women. The women will cook the food. And before they would go and have dinner, remember, they worked all day. So they come back, the sun had set, okay? And they had lit in the fire. They'd all sit on these rocks and face this cliff, okay, with the fire behind them, and they would see these shadows on the cliffs in which they believed were their strengths. That allowed them to return safely from hunting. That allowed them to be able to bring back food to Feed their families, you know, stay away from religion. But I don't know what wasn't religious, but it was like, you got to believe that something's helping you, right? And over and over and generation to generation. Then one day, one of those men accidentally fell off the rock doing that ceremony and looked around and saw that what they had been valuing for generations as their strength and telling them at the end of the day, you did a good job, was actually the shadow from the fire, okay? And when the guy saw that, he got back on the rock and he tried to explain to them, no way. And he was never the same, okay? In my lectures today, I call that cognitive perspective. And perspective is so important. You go back to when I was growing up, why did I not feel poor? Because mother and dad, they worked enough. We worked enough. I worked in the cotton fields in the summer. I enjoyed it. It was with the family. We always had something to eat and we always kept in mind what was important for us and the family. And on top of that, my mom and dad, even though they didn't have a high school education, right? They had a 60, 72 year old marriage before mom died first, okay? And out of the eight kids, seven of them have at least a bachelor's degree, six of them have master's degrees and two have PhDs. Okay? Because we were emerged in reading and in education and getting a realistic perspective of the world that we had to understand that we were just a small part of. This is not our world. We are part of it, right? And to me, that's the difference. Today you got technology. Yes, okay? But you have. I mean, we, the country have tens of millions of young people and students that have the same Facebook issues, communications. But why do they still not go to jail and not get shot in the back and end up going to the Harvard's and the UCLA's and Arizona states or wherever becomes the attorneys and get on the Supreme Court, okay? Because they have a perspective and a support system that allows that to be okay. So that conditional yes is yes. But if you go back to the root cause is that it is so hard when you have generations of generations of generations of family. And I'm not just talking about black families in the South. I'm talking about Anglo families in Kentucky or in Ohio, where I lived, okay? That what's been baked into their perspective and baked in their ability to do more and baked in the opportunities to get more education, you know, has been a perspective that has been set or established, if you will, by the rules and the regulations and the institutions in which we all are part of, or at least we live in.

Earl, I was. I was saying what your perspective there is. It's enlightening. It makes sense to me. The bacon, the baking in process. Sometimes you could call that programming. It's the values that get passed down from one generation to another, whether a family is valuing education or perhaps it's not. I think there's a bit of that and that nature nurture debate that goes on as well. I was thinking more along the lines just of the fact that, you know, we're living in less simple times. There's no question that our times are. That we're living in are. There's just more access to information. There's more access to what other people are up to, and that's a good thing. There's tremendous benefits in that. I'm just sort of questioning for myself as I was listening to you, that at a simpler time, when it wasn't as easy for people to see into other people's yards, there's that old expression that the grass is always greener. With the advent of technology and in particular certain social media that is so prevalent with people today of all ages. I mean, age has no bearing on that, it seems at the moment it's very easy to see into other people's yards. It's very easy to see what other people are up to. And when you're a young person growing up to maybe not have had a lot. I grew up in a small little apartment, shared a room the size of a closet with my brother. And I would say my upbringing was very similar in the respect that we didn't know we didn't have. A lot was difficult for us to know that because pretty much everybody where we lived had about the same. Yeah, we could just walk a mile or so and see that there were people that were living in single family homes, and a single family home was certainly different than living in an apartment. So I had a sense that there was some economic difference there, but because it was less easy for me to know what people were doing elsewhere in the world and all that kind of thing, I just feel like I didn't know I was growing up without anything. I didn't feel disadvantaged, just like you didn't, and couldn't have imagined myself being happier. So, yeah, it's mostly an observation. Didn't know if just where you're sitting today that you think that technology has created any challenges that we can't reconcile, or are there things that you would Say, have to pivot in the tech space even to make it possible for people to return to maybe some simpler, simpler understandings. And whether that helps you, especially if your grandfather. You must, you know, be thinking about those grandkids quite a lot.

Yeah, yeah. No, I agree, you know, but. But I guess my, My view is just the opposite. Because the horse is out of the barn. We're not going to stand in line at the bank on Saturdays anymore. That's done. And if you go back through time.

Right.

Automobiles, when they first came out was just as innovative, you know, or productive in terms of now we can have wheels and we can do things right. That didn't stop, you know, Henry Ford, right, From, from. From understanding that I've got to make cars affordable so people can buy them, so that people who buy them can have money to buy my cars. I mean, I mean, so, so, so I don't think it's a matter of technology or anything slowing down. I think it's a matter of the mindset. I think. I think there's a reason why very few societies. I don't want to get too deep here. I know I tend not to do that since the Incas have ever survived, okay, the reason why the British still don't have the empires and all the. And the Spaniards. And it comes down to the human aspects of just people and society and what people wish to do. Because we could be just as effective in terms of communications and all the tools that we have and be doing 180° the other way. I mean, we could have kids getting PhDs because now they have access to the Internet at age 12. I mean, it could be going the other way, not adding to the distraction. It could be adding to the access and the growth and the development. And it could be adding to bringing people together. And it could be adding to tearing down walls and not building. I mean, it could be doing just the opposite. So it's not the technology in my sense, okay? It's what we choose to do with that technology and to be even narrow, that we has always been an issue. Me, okay, because that we is a very small percent of the population who have the wealth, who have the knowledge, who understands the power of divisiveness that has something to gain. It's not the majority of the people. Majority of people wake up like you and I and enjoy their family and don't, you know, really think about all this other stuff. You know what I mean? But history has shown, okay, that it's always a few and even in a Democracy that somehow will just taint the opportunities for the vast majority. Because controlling the vast majority has always been a societal issue.

Yes. Wow, Earl. I didn't expect that our conversation would take this turn, which is terrific. So I'm always thrilled when we could just follow the threads of things and hopefully close some loops. I don't know that we're going to close this loop, because this is an open. It's an open conversation about something deeply important. So I'd love to know a little bit about your Pivot story, and you could share one of the more profound moments in your life where you did Pivot. It was wonderful. Right before we started our.

This broadcast.

You said that you'd written. That you'd not only written 10 books, been part of writing 10 books, but you'd also read the book Pivot.

Yeah.

So I thought, you know, not every guest I have on the show has read the book or read the book entirely, although I never call anybody out.

For starting, and it took me about 30 minutes to read the first 50 pages. Okay, good man.

So, Earl, if those of you that have not read Pivot, there's a little bit of a. How would you. How would you. How would you phrase what. That is the beginning of the book, girl. What would you call it?

I thought it was cool with the boat, the lifeboat, and. Yeah, I mean, I know.

I mean, the 50 page.

Oh, the 50 pages. Yeah. I mean, you're. You're right. Remember, I'm a publisher, and I. I tell authors, you know, people don't read today, Okay? I mean, if you.

If you.

If you take all the books that have sold in the world, okay, probably less than a 10th of a percent of 10th of 1% of the people in the world are buying and reading, okay? There's far more people that don't read, won't read for whatever reason. And so getting anybody to read your material is extremely good.

And it's interesting, too, is that folks will buy a book but not finish it. And I guess that's the. That's what we're calling people out on some level in that first couple of chapters is just the. The idea that in so many ways, 50 paging something, writing or reading 50 pages and stopping, you know, there's a lot of people started books that haven't finished the books they started to write, and plenty of people who've started to read a book and didn't finish it. So this idea of 50 paging is actually a habit that we 50 page different aspects of our lives. You start Something, and then don't actually complete what you start. So it is a bit of a. Of a calling out, you know, calling people to the. To the carpet, so to speak. And I've heard that from a lot of folks that, hey, listen, you know what? Once I read that, how could I not finish the book? I mean, you basically telling me if I. If I stop right here, this is.

Very much what I do. Well, that's. And that's.

That's.

That. That's. That's what it takes.

Well, sometimes, yeah. So it was done intentionally, let's put it that way.

I think it's very well written. Of course, you know, the message, you know, isn't new. Nothing. There's nothing new under the sun. So what's always important is how that message is conveyed, you know, And I think certainly your analogy of the pivot and basketball and, I mean, all of that sort of adds to the. To me, the readability and really gets the message across. I mean, I've got people that I know would, you know, get that message before to get the same message that's provided, you know, in a different book. So, no, I think it's an excellent point. And you brought up the idea here of maybe picking one pivot in my life or something and sort of, you know, let's get a little lighter here and sort of kick it around and sort of see how did it follow the process that you put forth with the roadmap and the inspiration, the realization, and of course, the tools. I would say probably one of the major pivots, and I talk about it in our book, Living a Richer Life. In fact, in here, we got four of our pivots that we exposed to the public. It's actually the one that talks about staying in my daughter's life. Okay. And if whoever wants to get the book and read that, I think that's one of the most touching things, because what we do in the book, we. We follow, you know, the thing that we created, life Enrichment Continuum, where we have a thing called exploration mode, where you discover, you deliberate, you select, and you engage. Okay, that sort of.

Well, you know what's great, Earl, is it will, as part of our show notes, we'll have links to that. So. So people go find out more and also buy the book, et cetera. So if it's that story that you feel called to share right now about staying in your daughter's life, let's. Let's dig into that.

Okay? My daughter, who will turn 41 in December, is from my first marriage, okay. And my first marriage lasted a full two years. So when she was three years old, I was a single father.

Okay.

And having to deal with that. And in terms of getting a sense about what is this thing at what was I, 25, I don't know, whatever, about relationships and family and kids and stuff like that, I had to go through this process over the years of getting a grasp of where my daughter would really fit, fit, that is, in my life as she grew up, you know, And I won't go through all of that, but there were things that I'm sure every single single parent, divorced parent, married again, you know, multiple, both families on both sides. Something about daughters and particularly when you're executive flying around the world doing most of her time. And my wife Charlotte, her stepmother, basically spent the time with her and then her need to yearn back to her mother, if you will, and her side of the family. And so we went back and forth for years. But the pivot for me was for me to sort of get a grasp of what that was really all about in her mind and how to make sure that we stayed in her life and that we allowed her life to be the best of both sides and not one sided. And with that, of course, my wife and I had to go and we sort of got a roadmap. Okay. In terms of how are we going to do this? Well, first of all, we needed clarity, okay. And we spent the time over these years always saying we're going to think about what she wants and what she's asking for and where she's going to live. And so we just didn't decide on things based on emotion.

Okay.

Which is my thing about react, don't react, just respond. Take the time to get the clarity and respond. And then the second thing is the momentum. That is where my wife. My wife Charlotte and I getting on the same page, okay. About how we were going to go and how we were going to work through that. Okay. Different in terms of all the career pivots and all the business pivots, which sort of, you know, sort of traditional. You know, I didn't find myself in a situation where I had to, in any of my 34 years in the corporate world to make a decision other than am I going to stay here or am I going to go there? But the kinds of pivots that I think are more important when I say pivot in terms of things that need clarity and things that need momentum and things that need a plan and to see that plan executed to the objective that you're looking for are more of those soft pivots, like the one of keeping my door in my life. Okay. That involve other people, that involve emotions, those types of things. Yes, yes.

That's really. That's a great way to put that as well, Earl. The idea that there's soft pivots, there's something less extreme than quitting a job or being fired or let go from a job or changing a career there. Those are pretty extreme moments in time, but they're also daily pivots. There's soft pivots of your thinking, soft pivots of whether you hold on to a feeling or let it go, whether you're. You're willing to release your anger or forgive yourself or forgive someone else. Right. Those are. Those are also really important pivots. Yes.

Frank, Our common friend Teresa has written a whole thing about forgiveness, the power of forgiveness. Okay.

It's. It's a magical thing, forgiveness. It really is. And I remember there's a. A student of ours from years ago was a part of one of our programs many years ago who wrote a book, and her name is Juliana Erickson. Juliana Erickson. I recommend this book. I haven't mentioned this on the air in a while, but the other F word is the name of the book, and that. That F word is forgiveness, which is pretty. Pretty telling that sometimes it feels like a dirty word for a lot of folks that to forgive is, on some level, a condoning of whatever it is that you're forgiving. And I did learn. I don't say I don't need reminders of this learning, so I do definitely need to be reminded this time to time. But I did learn some years ago that forgiveness isn't about the other person. It's. It's about ourselves. You know, there's lots of studies that have been done about what. What it feels chemically, what's produced in our bodies. When we feel anger, when we feel resentment, when we feel guilt, when we're unable to forgive it. It's literally producing poison inside of us. And sometimes feeling that way is a bit like wanting to see someone else pay or suffer or just on some level, be held accountable. But that poison isn't harming them. The poison of that feeling is only harming ourselves. Forgiveness is the only antidote I'm aware of. The only thing I've ever learned that deals with that is forgiveness. So it is a very powerful tool. And a pivot tool, for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I got out of your book That I thought was. And maybe I'm unique in seeing it in the book. Okay, is. And it wasn't. Say it directly, but of course, inherently it is. Is that we take for granted, some of us, that we are all born with the same amount of frontal lobe in terms of our ability to have vision and plan and see things. You know, how to connect the dots and all that.

The same amount of what? Sorry.

The same amount of frontal lobe. The part of our brain that allows us to.

Yes, the frontal lobe.

Vision into plan. Okay. That's a gift. It's not a. You know, everybody isn't born with that. And so if you look at someone and they've got two arms and two legs and a nose and an ear and they look normal. Okay, that's not necessarily that. Those attributes that allow you to do what you do, even to pivot. Okay, Even in basketball, to learn how to pivot isn't something that everyone can do easily. Not that they can't do it. It just takes more something to give them a guide or a dose at a time or movement at a time, you know, to be able to do that. And how I've come about understanding how people pivot or change or do those things necessary for them to change, is that by them first. And you sort of mentioned this with forgiveness in a way. First them understanding their human configuration. That is how the brain works. The vision thing, the thinking thing. I mean, there are things that you don't even think about that you are doing that your brain is doing that's controlling you. That has to be. And it's not going to stop. You got to learn how to control that motions and those types of things. That's why a lot of the coaching and counseling and things that help people get through pivots or realize that they have to pivot has less to do with. With someone's motivation of wanting to do it physically and energy and that type of thing. They can't get this together. They can't get that ringing out of their ear, if you will, to be calm, to go through that.

Yes, that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And it is. I believe this is a great conversation, which we won't get into at the moment, about the difference between genetics and epigenetics, which on the one hand, genetics being what you said that it might be easier for you. I'm not saying this is true, but it might be easier for you to play the piano than it would be for me. Because you're. You're more, let's say, you just understand on an intuitive level something about, about music or about notes and, or it could be language that you're able to learn a different language more quickly. I was never good with languages. I'm not great with math. I mean, there's some people that just have a natur aptitude for some of these things, whether it's language acquisition or it's mathematics or it's musical ability or any of those things. So I agree with you on that side of things, that there's what's more innate, I guess, or easy for some folks to pick up. And then there's the epigenetics, conversation around what we can actually learn and how it is that we can almost reprogram our DNA on some level through practice, through skill acquisition and practice. Practice of something that we really want to be great at. I mean, I can't make myself into a, you know, to use that basketball analogy, I love basketball, but I couldn't fill up the hoop the way my dad could. And I wasn't 62 like he was, so I couldn't jump as high or you do other things on the court. But had I. And when I wanted to be good at it, I still found my place where I could contribute and I could enjoy the game and enjoy the process of playing the game. So I think it's a wonderful conversation, which I think leads into the last question I have for you because it dovetails nicely with the concept of how it is that we practice things. So for me, the most significant practice of my adult life, or this phase of my adult life, call it the last 10 years, has been the practice of prayer. The practice of me finding the presence of spirit on a, on a moment to moment basis. And that's just the, that's just a personal thing. It's. It's changed so many things in my life. And that practice of something that's acquiring a skill and then practicing, like writing. Writing is my dad, who's a professional writer, a creative writer, fiction writer for so many years. He said writing, he said, adam, writing is rewriting. That's what writing is. Writing is rewriting. That means you're editing constantly and constantly. And until you get to that thing that, that you feel like you can let go of that it's as good as it can be. And now I got to move on to the next thing. And that's a practice. I have a word, we use a word in the book, pivot for it, for that kind of conscious practicing of things. And we call it rituals. So Earl What. What is something that you do on a ritualistic basis to help you to be better as a person, better as a business person, better as a. As a father, as a husband, as a grandfather? Do you have a ritual or a set of rituals that you could share with us?

I certainly do. And I'm so fortunate that my wife and I pretty much on the same page. I was born on the 1st of February. She was born on 31st of January. The first thing is that I wake up every morning thanking the Lord for allowing me to have another day. That is, I practice the fact that this day didn't have to be. Okay? Did not have to be. There are a lot of people that didn't wake up this morning. There are a lot of numbers I can't call at my age anymore, and they aren't there to answer their phone. So this idea of being thankful, being grateful for the opportunity. The second practice is I never began a day not saying I've got control of it, but I never began a day without visioning how that day is gonna go with the schedule, okay? I just don't get up and say, see what I feel like at 10 o'. Clock. You know, that's not. I'm just not that type of person. And so I always have a schedule. I mean, even if it's on vacation or whatever. Here is what I'm. How this is how I'm gonna get everything I can get out of this day. The other ritual that I have is that I always find. And usually it's in the morning on the treadmill or on the bicycle, because I usually, six days a week, I'm in the gym or my home gym. I always find something to read that's new to me, okay? That. That, you know, new terminology, new finding, new something such that I can make sure that I learn something. This is what I tell my grandkids. If you can't read, you're lost, okay? Because that's the only way that you can really learn. You can really create and go and do things, you know, by doing the reading, okay? And then the other thing that I do is that I have set times that I give each of my brothers and sisters a call during the week, okay? My brother in Denver, we talk every night. My sister in Atlanta, we talk on Saturdays. My sister, who's now down in Florida, we talk on Wednesday, okay? Those are rituals that allow me to every day get a sense that this is what I'm about. I'm not about the talking heads on CNN and FOX or Whatever. This is what I am about.

Beautiful, beautiful. Earl, I want to thank you for being on the program today. Really thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

Same here. Yeah, really enjoyed it.

I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same. And as I bust through this imaginary fourth wall, I'll say this for everybody that's been listening, watching and listening, some of you please leave a review on iTunes. On YouTube, you can leave your comment or your review@adammarkel.com podcast as well. And we can respond right there. But the feedback is terrific and we really appreciate having it. We've got an incredible Kickstart guide. For those of you that have read Pivot or have not read Pivot, there's some really powerful questions. I truly believe that we are benefited by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves. And Earl was kind enough to express in his way some of the questions that he'd been asking himself. And you can get access to these six powerful Kickstarter questions. Find out where you are right now. Get a sort of a lay of the land. Are you pivoting? Is a pivot on the horizon for you? If you're curious about that or you want to even dig deeper, you can get that for free. There's no obligation and there's certainly no strings attached. You can go to startmypivot.com startmypivot.com and get access to that Kickstart guide, download it, and then of course, let us know how that's working for you and we can support you. We're happy to do it as well. And lastly, as an incredible resource we have on Facebook, if you're the kind of person that enjoys being on Facebook and being in a community of like minded and like hearted people, then you can go to pivotfb.com or direct on Facebook to the start my Pivot community there. We'd love to have you. It is a sacred space and someplace that you can feel, you can participate or you can simply observe. But there's just a lot of really amazing things going on there. So we welcome you to that space as well. I want to close the session just by reminding us, as Earl did just a moment ago. It's a perfect segue into how we conclude these podcasts, which is with a reminder and even with a prayer that we all get to wake up tomorrow when we got to wake up today. That's a certainty. You wouldn't be watching this. You wouldn't be listening to this if that wasn't true. I wouldn't be here if that wasn't true. And that, as Earl reminded us, is very much something to be grateful for. So my hope is that we all get to do it again tomorrow. That's my intention. We get to wake up and have the opportunity to also acknowledge and be grateful for whatever you feel like being grateful for in that moment that you realize you are in fact awake. And if you're also inspired to declare out loud to just say something at the start of your day to plant some seeds in the soil of your mind that may be different than the seeds that you might typically be planting. We wake up oftentimes put our feet on the floor and the first thoughts we've got is about our schedule or about work, about our commuting or about chores or that we're running behind time and there's lots of things and sometimes thinking about money or even a grievance. Oftentimes that can be the beginning thoughts of the day, and you could choose to change that by tomorrow morning, waking up, feeling grateful and declaring out loud these words, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. It's been a blessing to be with you today, Earl. Thanks for your participation. Yes, for sure. And we'll see you all again soon. Ciao for now, everyone.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@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 at pivotfb.

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