Operationalizing Courage: Your Business' Ultimate Competitive Advantage with Ryan Berman

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.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Pod, the Conscious Pivot Podcast. We're not going to overdub that. We're not going to edit that out. I love that. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and it's a blessing to be here with all of you today. I have an incredible guest. I'm going to introduce him in just a second, but I want to take a moment for myself to just get grounded in this moment. I think there's so much that's happening. I know, in fact, in the world, there's so much happening. But even in my own little corner quadrant of that, I am busy. And it pains me sometimes to say that word. I don't typically say the word busy, but there's a lot of things. It's a dynamic time in my life and I know that I am so connected to everything and everyone else as we all are, that it must be a dynamic time in all of your lives as well. So wherever it is that I'm meeting you today in that dynamic range, if you will, let's all take a breath for the moment, get grounded and be present for the moment. Now, the other things will certainly be going on around us. For now, anyway, I'll say this, it can all wait. This moment is special. So if you're driving, you're walking, you're on a treadmill, you're multitasking while you're at home or at the office, if you can give yourself this time just to be here now, in this, I think we'll all have a powerful experience. That's certainly my intention and I'm really feeling lucky, incredibly blessed to be able to spend this time with all of you. With that, I've got an incredible blessing as well in the form of Ryan Berman. He is the founder of Courageous, a change consultancy that develops courage brands and trains companies how to operationalize courage. I want to say that again. Operationalize courage. Through his online Courage Bootcamp, Berman has spent a career developing meaningful stories for household brands such as Caesars Entertainment, Hilton, Major League Baseball, New Era, Puma Subway, US Ski and Snowboard, and unicef. Ryan believes that Courage is any willing business being or brand's ultimate competitive advantage. I agree with that as well. His soon to be released book Return on Courage addresses this head on. He used the methodology unveiled in the book to launch his own Courage brand called Sock Production Problems, a charitable sock company that socks different problems in the world. This is way cool stuff. Ryan, it's so awesome to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate being here with you.

I got to say that that is a very. That's an amazing bio and a blessing for me to be able to read it because a few tongue twisters.

Sorry about that.

No, no, that's totally okay. But what I'd love to know, and I know our community loves this as well, is what's not written, what's sort of in between the lines of that bio that you'd love for people to know about you.

I'm just trying to figure it out like everybody else. You know, you read a bio and it sounds so perfectly in ink, like you have it all figured out. And that's 20 years of work. You know, what's that in the bio? Ryan Berman fumbled and failed over and over again for years. You know, that part gets left out of the bio. But those failures are sort of. They're just experiences that I've been able to use to figure out my what's next. As well. So, you know, what's between the lines is just there's so much more there. And you just, all of you just. I loved how you started even the show, like, just appreciate all of who I am, the good and the bad. There really is no bad, really. The imperfections are what make us who we are. And I totally agree with that. Open as well.

Yeah, well, look, life is. It's not neat. It's not necessarily orderly. I mean, and I'm not. I'm not somebody that even requires that, so to speak. I've been known to leave a messy room or a messy, messy situation in my life. I've created some of those and all that. So I don't need it personally to be so neat, gnarly. But I crave the certainty. I mean, this is something you and I were chatting about just before we hit the record button is how certainty is something that maybe we all, as human beings sort of crave on some level that security. And so to let go of the requirement and even the, quote, need for security and safety is not an easy thing to do. And I'll say this. I believe in my core that it's something. It's the journey that I'm on, and I think we're all on is this ability to let go and. And trust and to live in faith. And I don't mean spiritually, even. Even though that's certainly a part of my existence, but just the ability to know we're all okay no matter what. You and I were chatting about that. What's your thoughts on that? On the sort of the need for security and safety and knowing what's ahead, so to speak?

Yeah. I think there are places in life where we should be certain, and there are other places in life we should be okay with not knowing. I do think there's a clarity epidemic happening right now, and I think there are ways to help people best understand who they are. One of the things I found myself saying quite a bit is if you don't know what you stand for, you'll never know when to take a stand. Well, that's one place where I think we should be certain. We should have certainty and clarity in certain places and then know, like, you know, as much as I wish I could control outcomes, there's so much out of my control. So much out of our control. All you can do is try to understand who you are, who you choose to surround yourself with, what sort of journeys you go off of, go on to, and then, you know, the rest is sort of out of your control. Like, I love how you said life is a bit messy.

It's.

Someone once said to me, life is short, but it's very wide, too. And I like the idea of, like, wherever that may take me, I'm at peace because I know who I am now.

So what was the road like? I mean, you know what? I. Let's. I want to circle back to clarity epidemic, because that's a. That's a turn of phrase you don't hear all the time. What do you mean by clarity epidemic, Ryan?

I think, you know, again, when I talk about courage often, I'm talking about it from a corporate courage standpoint. But the irony there is, like, what is a business but just a shell of people? And so what I mean by clarity epidemic is right now more than ever, I think people don't totally know themselves the way that they should. One of the earlier interviews that I had the opportunity to run was with the woman named Loretta Hidalgo. She's a founding astronaut at Virgin Galactic, and the world is a funny place. Literally, a month into my journey on writing this Book about courageous, which I'm like, well, I'm not really sure what this word really totally means. And part of this is to come up with the definition of it. So the universe delivers Loretta to me as one of the very first interviews. And of course, it's in person. And no more than 10 seconds into the interview, she says, what makes you qualified to write a book about courage? Touche. Astronaut. Right? It's like, she's like, no, no, no, no. She's like, you need to go figure out why you're the perfect person to go tell this story. And then she proceeds to tell me her definition of success is when there's no daylight between the professional her and the personal her. That interview is in Orange County. I live in San Diego. You can imagine my drive back in silence. It was like me and my two knuckles on the steering wheel as I drove back down to San Diego and started to figure out what this concept of courage really was about. And it is. It's about finding yourself and knowing yourself. And one of the big aha moments I had on the word itself is that courage is a journey word. You know, you kind of need it when you're in the messy and in the muck to get to something meaningful. Doing something meaningful in your life, to me, is more of the destination. And so how are you going to know yourself well enough to at least do your best to impact whatever that future looks like?

Yeah, I mean, this is sort of where we were taking the conversation before we started the actual podcast, because you asked me about, you know, I don't think you knew I was a lawyer for 18 years. And then when I told you that, you had a kind of a reaction. You remember what you said to me?

I said, you're well protected. Yeah.

And I digressed it to saying, yeah, I've lived a guarded. Part of my journey has been to be able to not be so guarded. I've lived a pretty good guarded life. And when I was 18 years in that profession, I didn't just guard myself and my family, I guarded my clients. So this idea of well protected really dropped in for me. What did you mean about that? Because I sort of went off that way and I was curious, what were your thoughts on what does it mean to be well guarded?

Yeah, I think it means to feel somewhat from a perception standpoint, your definition, some version of safety that you know. And sometimes that safety feels good, you know, again. And your audience doesn't know my background. So my last life, I ran a 70 person creative agency and to be honest, I felt like a fifth year senior walking around the hallways of my own company where I really couldn't make the impact and the change, or I chose not to for whatever reason. I felt well protected, I felt it was safe, but I didn't feel like I was doing something at the level that I was really going to make my mark. And you know, for a show called Pivot, the conscious Pivot, you know, as I pivoted to my next, I feel very much alive right now. Even though there's not a lot of proof that what I'm going to do next is going to work, it's going to be adopted.

Yeah, I think this is the reason this showed up in the show anyhow at this moment, because our community is filled with people who are either sort of mid career and considering am I going to go the extra, the extra 50 yards to the finish line or the goal line. Right. Or am I going to pivot, am I going to transition? And then there's a lot of people already in their pivot at some point, beginning, middle, or ready to pivot again kind of thing. And there's no question that for me, as I was transitioning out of practicing law, I would say yes, I was well protected. And that, that feeling insulated, that, that actually felt claustrophobic to me. And I think that's probably the way it felt or feels to a lot of folks. I want to ask you that direct question. Whether that's a little bit about why you moved out of the more traditional space of running a company or being in a sort of an executive role and then wanting to go out and create something, do something that was yours. I mean, you definitely kind of expanded the size of the box. I think we're always living in a box, but, you know, it's small, insulated, protected, and that's a good thing on some level. And then at some point when you feel maybe like those walls are closing in or that you just not, you're not able to expand, you do something about it. So tell us about where you were when that happened, when that dropped in, because that must have been a shock to you and maybe even some folks around you that you were going to leave. What was the kind of, you know, the brass ring for a time?

Well, the irony, right, I'm here, I am writing a book about courage, right? And the real question is, am I gonna, am I gonna live the premise really authentically or is it gonna be fake? And I think unfortunately that's the don't lie to Yourself, like, how do you start? By just having the honest conversation with yourself and being like, am I. Am I really living out the life that I thought I would live at the level that I thought I would live? And when I was walking around the hallways of my own company, I felt like. And by the way, I think this happens to a lot of creators. Like, there's a. You talk about. Let's talk about the first maybe unconscious pivot with growth. You go from. Sometimes you go from creator to manager, and you're like, well, I love creating. It's not that I don't. I don't love people, because I do. But I know when I became like a manager and I hired smartly and I had people running that didn't need me because they got it. They got it. I empowered them, something changed for me, and I was like, you know what? This isn't. I'm not making an impact that I want to make at the level I want to make it. So the joke, of course, is if you're going to write a book about courage, you sort of have to live the premise, right? I thought I was writing this book to deviously position my last creative company, and it gave me the courage to fire myself.

I love what you said, that in some ways, when you write a book, it forces you to live. To live it. I think that's. It's the courage to do it, but it's also what then shows up as a result of it. So not only did you have the courage to sort of make that departure, but after making the departure, I think that's probably when the courage really starts to begin. So for me, leaving the law was the. Was a huge decision, but it was the pivots that happened afterward that required me to actually live into the book that he had written and put out in the world. And that, you know, and I. And that still is the case. So, yeah, I mean, you're probably called to courage a lot and more so now than even before you wrote the book. Is that accurate or no?

Totally accurate. And again, now that I believe it, state it and create it. Right? State it and create it. Like, get it out of your head and spout it somewhere. Tell someone you love. Put it on social media. The ultimate is a book that's going to be out in the world for everyone to see. And so what I like about that is that that book keeps me honest too. What I will say about the book, and I don't know if you felt this way when you were writing your books, but Like, I felt like I was writing more of a documentary than a book because I didn't have all the answers. So curiosity sort of took. Took me down all these different paths to see what I could find. But then once the book is out there and you're like, okay, how am I. How can I activate this in my own life? 1. I thought I was writing the book for one person. I'm a storyteller, so I studied story structure. So every movie and book is primarily the same. The hero thinks the treasure is one thing, and it turns out to be something entirely different. Perfect example. Who did I really write the book for? Who needed the book more than anyone else on the planet?

Me.

I needed the book.

Yes.

Did I just write a book for myself? How narcissistic does that sound? You know, in some ways, I was the first person that needed this, and it's allowed me to then break out of my last life into this new life.

Yeah, there's great irony in that. I mean, in Joseph Campbell's work on the hero's journey, and even recently I was reading Michael Haig. It's actually an audible, Great audible book called the Heroes Two Journeys, or the Two Heroes Journeys, I think is the actual title. This whole idea that not only is there sort of this outer journey that we can track and see and all that, but there's an inner journey that's happening at the same time on sort of a parallel path, if you will. And sometimes there's this. Yeah, this. This place where there's a disconnect for us in the journey, and it calls a lot of things into question. So, I mean, the question that you asked at the very beginning is, what do you stand. So what was the moment of truth for you? Where here you are, you're running a creative agency. It's your baby. But now you've moved. As I tracked your. What you said, you move from more the creative side to the management side. You're running a business. And then you. You have this sort of. Is it a dark night of the soul? Is it a moment of truth? What are you gonna. You know, where you have to determine for yourself, I'm gonna make a change. And is. Is the question, what do I stand for a part of that, or is it some. Some other process that you went through?

Yeah, I mean, by the way, like, for your audience, it's not like I'm feeding you questions, like, we didn't review questions, but, like, that is the question. Like, it always comes back to you. And I wish there was a Cooler way to talk about values, because I found myself saying, core values, they're not eye rolls. How the exceptional role. And, like, when you understand yourself and you know yourself, then you can, like, really, like, actually audit what's going to be a violation of those values or not. And when I looked at it, I had multiple partners, and I looked at what I was learning from people running really big companies, and they weren't. They weren't sacrificing their souls. They weren't lying to themselves. They figured out a way to really empower the people inside their larger organization. So it wasn't about the size of the organization. It was really about, like, is there true conviction for what I'm doing? You know? And when it came down to, the answer was, not this way. Not the way we were doing it. And it doesn't mean my partners were bad people or are bad people. It just means it was a violation of my personal values the way we were going at it. And it didn't feel right to me anymore. And again, I think because I had just spent a thousand days talking to astronauts and Navy SEALs and CEOs and fear experts, and you throw it all in the soup and you're like. Like, it's right there, front and center, and everything I'm learning from these amazing people, I'm going, I want that. I want that life. I want to design that life. And no one's going to design that life for me if I don't design it. So I remember the moment when I honestly, I went to my business partners and I said, I'm ineffective in this unit, the way I want to be, the way I'd like to be. Effective. Hard conversation to have, but the honest one. Um, and that opened up so many doors for my what's next? And like I said, this is sort of a great data point because there really is. You know, I'm launching this new thing called Courageous, and I've got the Courage bootcamp coming. But like I said, I have no idea if people will accept it, if we can turn it into something that can help people and that on the business side, that will be monetizable if I'm honest. But I'd rather try it, you know? You know, you pull the Ryan Berman string. One of the lines I find myself saying is that courage is regret insurance.

Say that again.

Okay. Courage is regret insurance.

Courage is regret insurance. That's an interesting one. I like that. That is Orionism.

Officially, it's Orionism. And I like that, too, by the way. And so I think if you are having that conversation with yourself, you think you might regret not going for it. Like, you know, how long were you. 18 years a lawyer. And so something maybe inside said this necessary evil, I want to flip to a necessary good. We need lawyers. So it's not like, you know, same. That's how I feel about advertising, which was my background. It's like, okay, feels a little bit like my necessary evil. I know it can be a necessary good, but I would rather put my time into inspiring other people or helping people be better versions or how do you take somebody that's stuck and get them unstuck? And that was like the best part of the book writing process was just the research of you're sitting with a guy named Nicholas Alp, who is a Cambridge PhD that studies the way that we're wired and you know, we broke down the central nervous system. And let's talk about these three words really quickly. At the core of you central is a system your computer designed for your nervous tick. Central nervous system. And it's calling the shots. It's calling every shot you make. And it's saying, don't say that, don't touch that, don't think that, don't do that, don't feel that. And so I was like, well, I wonder if I could help you combat that central nervous system with the central courage system. Like, could I actually hack your central nervous system and give you the tools you need? So when you're in a hard situation, your central courage system would take over? Well, that's, that's the premise of the book is like, is there a way to teach people how to actually operationalize courage in themselves and do it in a way where you almost take the risk out of the risky part of being courageous? Now you're never going to have all the answers. But that's what my journey's been over the last three years is figuring that sort of process out.

Yeah, Ryan, walk us through a little bit of that system. I'm curious in the corporate context and by that I mean in an organizational context. So for folks that are listening and you're the organization, you yourself and in you. Yeah, it's, it's just as applicable for you as it is for a company that's, you know, 50, 110,000 employees. So, yeah, what does that look like?

Totally, totally agree with that, by the way. Let's start by putting the business and yourself on pause and start with this question if you had to. And I'm not going to give you the definition of either yet. So, like, if you had to guess, is your company more a coward brand or courage brand?

Interesting.

Okay, if you're gonna put it on the spectrum, where would you put it from coward brand to courage brand.

So we'll say 1 to 5 is Coward brand, and 6 to 10 is Courage brand. Pick a number. Where are you. That's.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe right in the middle. We'll call it, like a stasis brand.

Got it.

So. So coward stasis, courage.

So meaning status quo. Sort of. Some. Some maybe equilibrium point. Is that what you mean?

Yeah, like stasis. Like you're not really taking action at the level that maybe you need to. I mean, one of. And just because we're talking about corporate here. So one of the. The statistic that set me off on this journey was that over 1 of 2 of the Fortune 500 since 2000 are now extinct. You say that.

Say that again. I want to hear this. I want our folks to hear that statistic. Yeah.

So it's actually 52% of the Fortune 500 since 2000 are now gone.

The Fortune 500 started, interestingly, in 1955. Sometimes they ask people, you know, how many companies were in the Fortune 500? It's not a trick question, Right. Although it appears as one, apparently. But, yeah, 88% of those companies, as of just a couple years ago, are extinct. They're gone. So I love this premise. So why. Right, yeah. So you take them next.

Yeah, yeah. And so. So the idea is like, well, how. How can I avoid that? Like, this is. By the way, when you say 52% of the Fortune 500 since 2000 are gone, you go negative first, but the flip is the positive. That means there's opportunity. Right. If you're. That means spaces are opening up. Right. This is good. If you're not in there, this is a good. This is good news. The question is, and I believe courage, of all things, like becoming a courage brand, is the sort of the remedy to this particular issue. So there's a price of being a courage brand, and price is actually an acronym. Price is my. The Five Steps to Becoming a Courage Brand. Price stands for prioritize, rally, identify, commit, and execute. And when you go back to prioritize, the first step is prioritize the values. So again, it's going back to understanding ourselves. And just to sort of seesaw between. I've already talked a little bit about core values that are not high roles or how the exceptional role. But. And I don't know how what the Audience how old they are. Millennials may miss this, but my favorite movie growing up was Jerry Maguire. I love this movie. And there's, you know, okay, so I don't know who's gonna get this, who isn't gonna get this, but there are three amazing lines in Jerry Maguire. Right. Okay. One, there was show me the money. This is a great line. I have no. Anyone have a problem with show me the money? Nobody has a problem.

Show me the money. Two was.

You had me at hello, which is a sweet line. And then three was, you complete me. And I think you complete me screwed my entire generation because I don't believe in you. Complete me. I believe in me. Complete me. I believe in you. Compliment me. But I think when you compromise too much, eventually you become compromised. And so I like the idea going back to values is knowing yourself fully. And this whole you complete me idea that so you need someone else to complete you is a fallacy. I think it's me completely.

Yes. That's utter nonsense, for sure. And it becomes a burden to the people around you, because when you require either your most intimate partners or friends or anyone else to complete you.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're giving them a task they can't handle, and they have a hard enough task just handling themselves.

You totally.

So that. So that is. That is. Let's call BS on that's great Hollywood line for sure. Yeah. It's. It's so ridiculously ironic. As you said earlier, Ryan, we didn't plan any of this out, but this is sort of the universe, and in full, or maybe not full glory, but we get a little peek of what this is like. So the TED Talk that we've got is all about four words that have the capacity to change things for ourselves. So the premise or the through line of the talk I gave in Lake Tahoe was, what if you decided to love your life no matter what? And the origin of that, the origin story for this whole I love my life thing, which has become part of our brand and a movement really, in many ways, towards self love, toward this idea of how it is that you love yourself first so that you complete you, just as you said. Right. The origin of that is Jerry's mentor in the movie. You remember the guy's name?

Oh, gosh, I totally forgot. His name. I remember. Just popped out of your head, right? What's his name?

His name is Dickie Fox.

Dickie Fox.

Dicky Fox. So Dickie Fox says at this certain point, he's talking about how he, you know, his philosophy of life of business and relationships.

He said, I love my life and.

I love my wife. And, you know, I wish you my kind of success. Right. And that was, I think, 1993 or 4. Our kids were really, really young. I think Chelsea was two and Lindsey. Lindsey was just born. I was just getting out of law school, and I remember seeing that and.

Thinking, man, I want to love my life.

I want to love my life. That's. I want to love my life. And it wasn't until maybe 10 years later that as I'm putting my feet on the floor in the morning and just dreading what I'm going to do for the day, just, you know, the money was great, the prestige or the respect was great. Like, I was fully insulated, like you said. I. It was well protected. And yet I'm putting my feet on the floor feeling this dread and thinking, I don't. I can't say honestly, I love my life because 8, 10, 12 hours of the day, I kind of hate my life. And when 55% of the people are in a job, are looking, actively looking for another job, there's a lot of people kind of hating significant portions of their life. That's a tough thing to admit. I don't like my life. But people will readily say, you know, I just hate my job. I hate my boss. I hate what I'm doing for a living. And so there's no question that to have the courage to be able to do something about that starts with who you are. So prioritize being the first step in that to get clear on your values. I think it's a huge starting point for. It was for me, and clearly it was for you as well.

Yeah. I wonder if you polled the country, you got 320 million of us here. How many have actually run a personal core values assessment on themselves and truly has done the hard work to know themselves and can prioritize the values and then obviously live the values that they're emoting. So even for myself, you know, I mean, playfulness is my number one core value of all things. I take my work seriously, but I don't take myself that seriously. I like to play. I want to play around. I want to have a good time while we're here. We're not here that long. So to me, I do really, really well with other people that are playful. And when I run into super serious birds, it's okay. I just recognize that we're wired differently and that's okay, too. They've got to go find their people. But for me, I do really, really well when I find my people. And which, that kind of leads to the second step of price, which is rally. Excuse me, it's rally believers. So I think you even make believers or fake believers. And in the corporate world, by the way, fake believers, they don't wear a T shirt that says fake believer. Right? They just sort of nod and smile and collect a paycheck. And then like you said, that 55% is looking for another job, hoping to be fulfilled and doing something else. I will say, from a corporate standpoint, when it comes to rallying believers, I like the concept of leadership. I think we need great leaders now more than ever. But I think poor leaders turn leadership into cheerleadership and they start rah, rahing to their team and maybe they think their team needs a pick me up, but basically they're kind of lying to the team versus, like, authentically giving people the truth of what's going on there. And cheerleadership may work with part of the staff, but the people that are really doing the work are gonna be like, hey, that's bs. That's given to me straight. I'd rather have the truth from you. Like I said, I like the word instead of leadership. I like the word believership. I think the believership, the sole goal of the believership is to make believers. Make believers out of your staff, make believers out of your board, make believers out of customers. And I just think it keeps you honest. It reminds you the whole goal of believership is to make believers and find your raftmates in life. And I love this concept of raftmates, by the way.

Raftmate. Say more about that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I think there's only so many spots on the raft, you know, too many people on the raft. Nothing is going to sink. If we're not communicating, people are going to be rowing in the wrong direction. So find your raftmates. Like, who are the five to seven people you can really trust in this world that are part of your raft? And go back to where we were before about even myself. Like, I felt like I was in a pretty comfortable raft and I was afraid to jump back into the cold, cold water. But I knew it wasn't the right raft for me anymore and I had to go find the right raft or create the right raft. And to me, that's what it's all about.

It's a great visual. I love it. I love anything that kind of touches on the water for whatever reason. I'm a Pisces, so that comes up.

But when's your birthday.

March 19th.

March 2nd. Look at that, brother. Love it.

Always reason for things. Yeah. You know, Simon Sinek had a big part of his book start with why talk about that. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And so that whole idea of believership is really. It's paramount. It's paramount both internally as well as externally and how the market feels, intuitively feels into what you're doing and whether or not it resonates with them. So, yeah, let's get. We'll. I is the next in the acronym. So.

Yes, yes. So again, it starts with know yourself, find your people. Right. Prioritize through values, rally believers. And then. And then we get into the heavy stuff. It's about identifying fears. And again, like you said it perfectly at the beginning. It. This is whether this is something happening in your corporate life or your home life, there's this famous proverb that fear encourage or brothers, that you actually can't get to the courageous choice without first channeling it through fear. But most of us, like, the last thing we want to do is address fear. In fact, we suppress fear. So this is flipping it. This is like you, actually. I want you to have more fear in your life and understand what the fear is. Smoke it out. Identify it. As a Seinfeld fan, I like to say I'm in the fear shrinkage business, by the way now. So, like, let's help people actually figure out what fears are in front of them and from a. To put it into a business context. And this is covered in the book. But the way that I'm looking to audit fear, I think is a better way to swat. You know, I don't know if you remember the SWOT analysis.

Sure.

To somehow survive 60 years as our standard.

Utterly amazing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.

Yeah. So, yeah. And so the idea here is, what if we looked at fears like that? So I'm looking at industry fears, we're looking at product fears, we're looking at perception fears, which is. Which is pretty much just marketing. And then we're also looking at personal fears. So again, if you can bring your full self to work, then you can actually be vulnerable and talk about the things that keep you up at night, which is, hey, am I gonna be on an island by myself if I recommend this? Like, who's really got my back? And unfortunately, in the office, you're even part of a watcher back culture or you're in a got your back culture. And obviously, if you're in a watch your back culture, then it's probably going to be very hard to share those personal fears. If you're in a got your back culture, then you can actually share. Hey, yeah, guess what? I don't want to get axed for this. Are we really all in this together? And business is so hard enough as it is right now. There's so much competition. The business apocalypse is very, very real. Like, the last thing you need is another war going on inside your own leadership team. So it's like, find your people and then address what could keep you up at night and then actually start to identify those fears so you can shrink them down. Down the line.

Yeah, agreed. Let's. Let's fill out the price.

Sure. So C is commit to a purpose. I thought you nailed it perfectly, Simon. So Simon's my old. My old colleague of mine from our New York days, and I love watching what he's done.

He's.

He's just so on top of his game. And so I agree that knowing your why is critical. So 75% of our workforce are going to be millennials in the next decade. They wear their values on their sleeves. They vote with their dollars. So not only do you need to know your why, but I think you have to inject a rally cry in your why. You have to actually put a rally cry in the why for people to actually stick around. And so really figuring out what that purpose is, why are you doing the things that you're doing? This is not a marketing ploy. There is no silo between your purpose as a company and how you react to the universe. CVS is a great example. I don't know if you remember, their whole purpose was putting on a path for better health. Well, they had cigarettes that they were selling in their stores. Well, how is that going to help somebody be healthy?

Yes.

So they pulled it. They pulled the cigarettes from all of their stores because it was on purpose. And by the way, society rewarded them with their stock price. That was their ultimate return on courage, was their stock price went through the roof. But to me, like, this is not a marketing thing. This is a. Like, what's the purpose? Why are we here? How are we going to help people be better versions of themselves? And to me, it's putting a rally cry in your why. So people want to follow you with something that's truthful and emotional and purposeful. And finally, it needs to also be differential, which are sort of the four pillars of a truthful purpose.

Yes. You know, reminded of that Starbucks situation that happened recently, last April. You know, the arrest you can imagine your Kevin Johnson sitting in your office feeling pretty good about your company and stock price and everything else is get a phone call that says, manager at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, arrest two people, not just two people, arrest two African American guys for no apparent reason for using the bathroom. Talk about something coming up. And, and the guy, contrary to what was probably a lot of conventional wisdom given to him, as in, look, we're being threatened with a lawsuit, we're under threat, we're a public company. You know, let's do an investigation, let's figure some stuff out. But definitely don't make any, you know, too much of a public statement here. And, and certainly don't do anything that indicates that we've done anything wrong. You know, classic lawyer advice. Play, play it safe, or at least be defensive. He gets on national TV the next morning. I think it was Good Morning America to not deny, not blame, not justify, but to do the opposite. Talk about a guy with a certain amount of, you know, cojones, courage, to stand up and be heard on the topic and say, listen, you know, this is unacceptable. This can never and should never happen at one of our. Of our stores. And we're going to get to the bottom, we're going to look at it, we're going to resolve it, we're going to do something about it. We don't know exactly what yet, but we will figure that part out. And sure enough, two months later, they resolved the dispute with these two gentlemen in a very amicable way, partnering on some training and some things. And then they closed down 8,000 stores, which, to the tune of about $11 million, it cost them to close those stores for four hours for unconscious bias training. You know, the idea that it's not just overt bias that we've got to be looking at, but what possibly is in the fabric of, of the company, in the culture of the company, even that's on an unconscious level, that is unacceptable. And so the guy put his, you know, put the money where the mouth is, put their reputation on the line and said, look, this is. We stand for something more important, and this is just unacceptable. So I think the return on courage was the same for them and something. I definitely respected how he handled it. There was a creative. And it's interesting because you brought up fear and hacking, fear and fear experts and things. I mean, this is something that they very well could have responded to or reacted out of fear, and that would have been a more conventional path to a threat. But instead what they did was they, they found A creative opportunity. I would say we're looking for a creative opportunity and found it and then utilized it to, to a great degree, to not only resolve things, but also to, I think, make the brand stronger in the process.

Yeah. And again, it's in that moment of courage. Right. Where there's a story that needs to be addressed and how you choose to respond to it. And again, we're going all the way back to where we started. Like, this is the. This is the value of values. Right. If your values are CYA values or just in case values. Right. And that's all you choose to use them for. You missed the point of what values are there for. Values should be there to, like, drive the decisions in a company, drive your hiring decisions in your company. It should be on performance reviews. And so I imagine if you're in that role as CEO of Starbucks, you're also thinking about the tens of thousands of your employees and their backgrounds and where his staff is coming from. And it's thinking through. I'm being watched not just from stakeholders, financial stakeholders, but stakeholders in the company, my employees. And what are they going to think of this situation? To me, that's the joy of courage I think is having when I talk about the clarity epidemic in that particular situation. Having the clarity to know what is the right move for that company to make is critical.

Exactly. And then ultimately executing on that level of clarity. He got to the execution piece, which is the last equation, so to speak.

Yeah. And price the E is execute your action. And it's almost like the do or do not. There is no try to steal from Yoda a little bit. And look, I don't think I ever shared my definition of courage. This is covered in the book Return on Courage as well. My definition of courage is knowledge plus faith plus action. And it has to be all three. So when you're in a moment where you think, okay, maybe this is an opportunity to unlock a little bit of courage again, in business, you're never going to have every bit of knowledge you need to make a call, which is why faith kicks in. And when we talk about faith, like you said, we're not talking about religion, we're talking about something inside you, this inner belief. And when the knowledge goes up, usually the faith goes up. But then at the end of the day, even sometimes when you know what to do, we don't pull the trigger. So that's the action piece. And by the way, two of three in any direction, not courage. So knowledge and faith with no action is paralysis. Faith in Action without knowledge is reckless. When I talk to my mom sometimes she's like, oh, that's courageous. She means stupid. Right. So we have the wrong idea of what courage is. And part of the reason is like, okay, knowledge plus faith plus action. By the way, knowledge and action. Without faith, if you don't feel that thing on the inside, you're probably working on status quo. You're probably working on safe. So it needs to be all three. Knowledge, faith, and action. And so execute your action talks about how to help companies actually take the action that they need wherever they're looking to make change inside their organization.

Yeah, without action, nothing. Nothing ever changes. And then you are, in fact, either individually or organizationally, working on the status quo, literally defending the status quo, which is defending stagnation. And ultimately, stagnation leads to death. So to circle back to what you said earlier, why is it that 52% of the Fortune 500 are gone since 2000? It's because they've probably been working on protecting the status quo. And that was a question I wanted to ask you. So I've given a. My answer to that. But I'll ask you. What if you could pin it down to one reason why those companies don't exist anymore? Why is that?

I think. Well, again, I'm now mirroring your answer, which was an awesome answer. It's fear of taking action. It's fear of losing what you already have. And so you don't put in any processes to create what tomorrow could look like. And as a creative guy, it's hard to admit the importance of. Importance of process. But if we're not creating any process or we're not creating any infrastructure to figure out tomorrow, you will get past or you will die in business.

Yep. Well, I mean, I think if. If there was one thing more than anything about our book pivot, that, and I say are because it's a team effort, as you well know, not just to produce a book, but to market it, to continue to. To convey messages to people. So I definitely feel blessed that we've got a team behind it. The one thing more than anything else is the fact that it's a process book. I didn't start out to write a process book, but it turned out to be that. Because without that foundation of how it is that things, you know, sort of the steps that you take along the path is even starting with. I'm not clear, you know, to go back to your essential question, what do you stand for? There are a lot of people who right now, listening to this who couldn't answer that question adequately for themselves. Yeah, what do I stand for? And so that level of clarity is kind of a fundamental and foundational thing, as opposed to where people want more often than not to start in their pivots, in the changes they want to make in their lives. They want to start with a strategy and want to start with a plan. And it's like, well, you can't get to the planning stage or the strategy stage until you start using a process like what do you need to get clear on? And fundamentally, your values is, you know, you explain what price means. To get clear on your values as a starting point is essential. So I want to kind of wrap things up by asking you a question about your own rituals. Because somebody that's practicing courage on a daily basis and wrote a book about it, both because it was your journey to that point and ironically, as the case is, you write a book about purge the universe just says, hey, I'm going to give you more and more reasons to demonstrate courage, to learn about courage, to model and be congruent with this thing that you, you've written about. So what are the rituals that kind of hold you and, you know, to keep you in momentum day to day?

Sure. Yeah. I'll tell you one very simple ritual that any listener can do. And it'll happen once a day if they follow this. And I. And by the way, my fears, because you start to look at, you start using your own process.

Right.

To go through your own situation. So my fears, I had two big fears writing a book in general. One was in my head. I was the least qualified person in my family to write a book, so I had to get over that fear. And then the second is, as a guy that's made a living writing pithy one liners, hiding behind a laptop, I had a hard time writing a book about courage. What could be more courageous than a guy punching away at his laptop right as I'm interviewing astronauts and Navy SEALs? Okay. But like I said, I recognize as a storyteller that this was a story that needed to be told. Now, what I did to get me over that was every morning when my alarm went off on my phone. You can actually change the label on your alarm on your phone. I'm going off of iPhone, for the record. And so every morning, my alarm goes off the label. The message that I tell myself is liberate with courage. And I needed to train myself to see that where it became a ritual for me. Every day I was writing the book, I saw Liberate with courage when I woke up. Liberate with courage. Liberate with courage. Trying to train my unconscious brain, train myself, where I saw it so many times that it became second nature and I habitualized it. Now it's my, it's the core values of courageous that I see when I wake up. But whatever it is that you're going through, like you go into your phone, this is where technology is so good. Go into your phone. What's the message that you need to see for yourself? You know, for you, it's like help people pivot every day. Help people pivot. It's just a trigger. It's just a trigger. And for me, it's a very simple thing. And that means you have to have clarity, right? We're back to clarity again on the thing that you know you need in your life. But when you have that, then it's hard to take action unless you, you sort of ritualize it and habitualize it. So for me, that's a very simple way that I go about attacking my problems, brother.

Once again, couldn't, couldn't ask for a better lead like you're handing me the baton. It's the perfect, perfect segue not only to first, first and foremost to thank you for your time today. Thank you for the great conversation. So thoroughly enjoyed this. I know our, our listeners, our viewers, because we get a bunch of people on YouTube watching this as well, that this community is, is going to really just enjoy this. Not just enjoy it as in great conversation, but great triggers for thought and self, self awareness where, where we are in this moment, I think is powerful. Especially when we, we get a little, you know, clue as to how. How what, what else is there to think about or what other ways can we approach a situation that we haven't yet come up with on our own? So thank you for your insights today.

Thanks, man. I'm so happy to be here. I wish I could be there in studio with you. I always love spending time with you. So this was a joy.

This is a joy. I will say as I, as we depart, the way we began was with gratitude. And I always have to bookend this because it's the most powerful ritual in my own life. So to ritualize and habitualize anything, it's gratitude for me. And that starts exactly where you start, brother. That's what I loved about what you said, Ryan, was just how important that waking ritual is, not just the morning ritual with people focus on those first few hours, which is key for sure, but those first few seconds when we're coming out of our subconscious or unconscious state and into a waking state. And what you say in that moment. So tomorrow, when we all get to wake up, which is, we know, not guaranteed, like let's get clear about this, there's no, there was no guarantee we were going to wake up today and that we were, we were blessed, lucky, have, fortunate. However you want to look at it, we got to wake up today. If we get to wake up tomorrow, it's nothing to be taken for granted. It's something to be profoundly grateful for. In fact, in that moment that we're taking that first breath and I say when we are taking that first breath tomorrow there'll be people who are taking their last breath. That's the reality of it. Like it or not, there'll also be probably thousands of babies that are being born taking their first breath of life coming into this world. So it is on some level, a very special, sacred, holy moment. And in that moment that is that important, we can create a thought, a thought of gratitude. And if for any reason you have trouble with this, the way that I operationalize self love for me and operationalized my pivot, and have continued to operationalize the ongoing pivots in my life is to have this thought and to put this thought out into the, into the field of things that I want to see grow in my own life by saying these words. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. So thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much, Ryan, for your time today. It's been a true joy and a ton of fun, everybody. Have a great rest of your day. If you haven't yet left a review of one of our podcasts, please feel free to leave a review on itunes. You can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast Leave a Comment we'd be thrilled to respond to you. There you go to startmypivot.com and join our Facebook community that's growing tons of people just like yourself. People got questions about their next pivot, the micro pivots, the larger things that are changing in their world. They just want to be in a community of like minded and like hearted people. That's a great place. StartMyPivot.com, we'll see you there and we'll see you soon. Ciao. Bye bye.

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 style you love, Join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.

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