Risk Versus Reward with Robin DeSota

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 Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I feel incredibly fortunate in this moment, just to be here in this moment, because there's always so much going on in our lives and in the world in general. So to have a moment of being present, feeling grateful for that moment, to be able to take a deep breath and be grounded and just know that it really is all good. I mean, not everything is something that we're pleased about or that we necessarily think is so great that we wouldn't want to change it. But this moment is still sacred in so many ways. And I don't know that we or that I'll just speak for myself, I don't know that I'm constantly or acknowledging, as often as I'd like to, just how perfect this moment is. And so, so I'm acknowledging it right now. I hope wherever you are, whatever it is, however you're consuming this, whether you're at work or at home or you're on the treadmill of walking or taking the dogs out or any other thing you might be doing that you can take a deep breath and recognize how perfect this moment is. I feel really blessed now, among other things, because I get to have a chat with a friend, somebody that is a fairly new friend. But we have all these things, these so areas of our lives that we have in common, including amazing kids, an amazing spouse, having started off in a similar place in college some years ago. So I'll read a little bit about his bio and then we'll dig into his story, his Pivot story, and how it is that we in fact came to know each other, collaborate together, and have become friends. So his name is Robin DeSota and he's the founder and CEO of Palisade Investments, an SEC registered investment advisor and fiduciary advisor with offices located in Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, Denver and Seattle. Palisade Investments was recently ranked 34th, 34th fastest growing investment advisor in the US out of, get this, 30,000 other firms. Robin has some very diverse interests and Robin that's an impressive statistic to be 30, 34th fastest growing out of 30,000 firms in a highly competitive space like that. So I'll just say, you must be working your tail off, buddy.

Well, we do what we can. You know, we always aim to please.

Yeah, that's a good thing. I don't know whether aiming, that's a. That's a great, you know, statement. Aim to please. But to aim to please, man.

That'S.

Kind of a relentless task, and it's exhausting, too.

To please.

Right.

Actually unachievable. But why not make it a goal?

Why not make it a goal? So you've had an impressive career, and I'd love for you to share some of the diversity of your career path with us. But, you know, what's not, you know, in sharing that introduction, brief introduction, what's not written there? What's kind of between the lines that you would love for our community to know about you?

Well, I mean, you know, I think it's real easy when you look at anybody who is, you know, sort of in sync with how they want to live their life and doing the things that they want to do and having some measure of success. And however you define that, I think it's real easy to look at that person and say, well, gee, they make it look so easy. Their journey is nothing like mine. My journey is a struggle. They're living a life that just seems to be. Everything's falling in place for them. But as you can imagine, there's much more to the story. And we've all had our highs and lows and moments in life where we've made positive changes, conscious changes, to get to a place that we're happy enough. And as they say it, you know, it takes at least 15 years to be an overnight success. So, you know, I think that's. There's a lot more hiding beneath the surface that allows one to get to a place that they're happy with. It includes a lot of work, a lot of struggle, a lot of work, a lot of potentially risk. But, you know, in whatever, however you want to define that. But I think that's one of the main things I think, is just that there's a lot more to the story that got you to a place that you feel happy about.

Isn't that interesting, too? Right. It's so easy to look at other people's life situation or what we can see of it and think that the grass is greener. And I made this statement earlier today, actually talking to my dad, and we're discussing something kind of similar to this. And I said, this might sound crazy, but I think the grass is never greener. I've not had an experience yet where even when I thought the grass was greener, that it really was in the end.

Yeah, totally. In whatever way that is, socially, business wise, etc. I think it's really easy to look at somebody else's path and think, well, geez, they're making tons of money and cruising along and seem really happy and. But again, I think what most people don't realize is, you know, they, the cost at which they spent to get to that point. And I don't mean cost in a dollar sense, I just mean cost in terms of a time commitment, a social commitment, a family commitment, you know, a psychological commitment to, you know, to be in that place. And I think, you know, to me that the goal really is, you know, how do we each identify what we actually want, then we can make positive steps to do that. And that sounds nice and easy. It's obviously not, but those are two pretty important, I think, ingredients.

I didn't plan on doing this with you, Robin, so forgive me if I catch you off guard, but you're an investment advisor, so there's criteria that you use, models and metrics and lots of things, I'm sure, that are sophisticated and some that are probably more just about gut instinct and experience, I suppose. But you guys are making decisions all the time on risk and reward and how to determine that proper balance of risk versus reward. And looking at what's the ROI for taking a certain risk, can you apply that formula to your personal life or to the way that you've made decisions in your personal or even in your business life outside of just specifically investments?

Oh, that's a very interesting question. And I think absolutely the answer is yes, there ought to be a risk reward sort of matrix for all of those decisions. Personally, the risk reward matrix ought to look like what's the risk of not living your true self and living your dream and living going after the goals that you want. And I think you'll in most cases find the risk far outweighs the, you know, the outcome of going down that direction. And similarly, in the investment world, absolutely, we analyze risk, and risk is looked at not only in terms of, you know, risk of loss, but. But risk of loss of access to capital or liquidity, those types of things. Just like in our personal life, we have risk of loss of time spent doing things that you don't want to do or aren't consistent with your value set or the way you want to live your life. And so there's absolute similarities there between the risk reward that you would take, you know, in a sort of a financial context and how you would do it personally.

And has your the modeling for that changed over time? I mean, I know the answer is yes, of course, but let's looking back at a different time in your life, did you assess risk differently? Were you making decisions in a different way? Because I think ultimately the quality of our lives, and this is not, I don't think, a profound statement, but it is, I think, true nonetheless, that the quality of our lives is equal to the quality of our decision making.

Right.

The quality of the choices that we've made. So at the root of it is how do we make choices to begin with?

Yeah. I would say one of the interesting similarities in the investing world and the personal decisions that we make are when you're young, when you're 21, 22, 24, something like that, you think you have all the time in the world, and you may spend your time doing things that you don't necessarily want to do because, hey, I've got lots of time left. And in your investing world, you can afford to sort of make small decisions that aren't hugely impactful, but are mistakes, investing mistakes, because you have time to make up for that. Ironically, if we actually made better decisions investing wise and in our personal life when we were younger, we would be in a much better position later on. Unfortunately, we're not blessed with that kind of foresight. And oftentimes we don't know ourselves well enough, either from a financial context or personally, to actually make those decisions. And as you get older, you get to know who you are and what's important to you. Unfortunately, we start to realize that time starts to run out or lessen, and we start to value that more. And so the decisions that we make both from an investing context as well as our own personal decisions are that much more important because we're running out of that yet perceived time, you know, later in our lives. So it is an interesting parallel.

It is for sure. Financial literacy is definitely something that isn't really taught early on. I mean, unless you're fortunate enough to have parents that were sharing that information or mentors that were sharing it early on. We certainly, at least I don't remember getting any education. The financial literacy space, even through college, even through law school, frankly, we weren't taught the business of law or anything related to sort of the management of money and that kind of thing.

Yes. It's amazing that something so, so important. Important and so central to our livelihood and our family's livelihood and health and happiness oftentimes isn't discussed at all like that. So it is unfortunate actually and I'd love to be able to change that at some point. That would be, I think, a great add on to get people in sort of a solid foundation of investment learning.

Yeah. So just to pivot a little bit in our conversation, which may have, may relate to this. You've had pivots in your life, you've had significant changes and more micro pivots of a sort. Where do you want to, where do you want to start that conversation? What's a good place for you to begin there?

Sure. You know, I've had, I've had several pivots, but really one fundamental pivot in my, in my sort of career life and I would say career and personal life which was, you know, I was just describe it for you if that's all right, please. Yeah. So, you know, I was sort of on the track of, you know, I'm going to be wildly successful very quickly, at least I thought so early in my life and so going to undergraduate school, going to graduate school, getting out. Okay, now we're, I'm, you know, at this great job and in a career oriented job. And it was, this was back in early 90s when the economy wasn't very good, pretty high unemployment rate, particularly out west. But I found a great job working for theoretically dream projects in my career at the time which was land planning and architecture, landscape architecture and design. And we were working on huge, very enviable projects. And I felt like, well, this is what I'm going to be doing. Fast forward a few years and I was miserable. Miserable for a whole bunch of reasons. Miserable because I wasn't living where I wanted to live. I wasn't living the life I wanted to live. I wasn't growing in my field. I wasn't even enjoying my field. I, you know, did some serious soul searching at the time and you know, and also soul searching into the patterns that I had growing up. And so, you know, my parents were both, you know, very. This is the job that you get, you're trained for and this is the job you're going to do for the rest of your life kind of people, I don't fault them for it. It was just a culture at the time that that's what you did. And so I had to sort of battle those preconceived ideas about you Know how to pursue your career and what that means for you versus personal and professional happiness. And I guess what made a pivot said, you know what? I want to pursue a career that I've always wanted to do, which was help people based on personal finance and investing, so that whatever it is that you want to do, we can help you be successful in a financial sense. You just be whatever you want to do. And let me help you with the financial side so that you're ultimately doing what you want to do with your life and you have successful life. And I'm being intentionally broad and vague about what that means, but that was sort of my goal. And I want to live in a place I really want to live in. And both of those things, by the way, were seemingly impossible at the space I was in at the time. How am I going to move to a place with limited career opportunities? Can I build this business up? What does all that look like? But at least I had identified what it was I wanted to do. Now I need to figure out the steps to getting there.

About what age were you at this point?

27?

Yep.

27, 28.

So you'd gone to Cal Poly, you got a degree. What was your degree in from?

In landscape architecture.

Landscape architecture. And then you got. You and I are. Both. Our alma mater is UMass Amherst. We both graduates of that school. And you got a master's degree there.

What was your master's in Land planning. In land planning, I was a researcher. I was a teaching assistant. You know, they claimed I was, you know, pretty talented at what I was doing that. Computer applications and geographic information systems and all that. It was all very interesting to me because I was growing as a human being and a person and as a student. So. And it was, it was interesting to me. It just, you know, reality hit when I was, you know, working on things that were supposed to be incredible projects. They weren't driving the feeling of success and happiness that I thought I was going to get out of it.

Right.

It led me to go on this sort of soul searching to some degree, backing up a little bit. You know, I grew up in a single parent household with an art teacher, my mother, who, you know, raised us three boys, us three brothers. And, you know, as you can imagine, on an art teacher's salary, you're not, you're not doing very expensive things. But, you know, we were fine. But nevertheless, what I got out of that experience was I want to learn as much as I can about investing and investments and personal finance so that I can Help both myself and my career and others. And that's what actually was my underpinning. Even with my other career and all of that, I still had a strong interest in the investment, personal finance side. That's when it sort of dawned on me that, you know, instead of just, you know, dabbling in it or doing it personally, why don't I go out there and truly help others and get in the field and deal more with helping others? That actually does drive a lot of happiness for myself.

Yeah. So was it a smooth ride right out of the gate or were there the usual challenges?

Oh, no, it was perfect right from the get go. No, you, you know, yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard. And it's really hard. Doesn't matter what you're doing. It's hard to start over. It's hard to start a business. Making money, good money is hard work. So if anybody says to you that it's not or it's going to be, you know, super easy, you probably ought to seek a different opinion and just to have a variety of approaches of an opinions, because the reality is it is tough. It's tough mentally, like, gee, is this gonna work? Do I have to, you know, find the confidence and the perseverance and the security to know that, no, we're gonna make this work and it's gonna work and to keep at it? And so, yes, there's small victories along the way. There's plenty of defeats. But just like everything else and every other adventure, I think the journey is truly what defines who you are at the end of all of this, and the journey of highs and lows and the strength of character, and also doing it in the way that you want to do it, doing it in a way that's consistent with your value set with. Consistent with how you want to approach your business. You know, oftentimes the quickest buck isn't the best buck. That may not be consistent with your value set. And so that was important. Those are important values for me.

Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to stress there. The idea of the quickest buck isn't always the best buck. Sometimes I call it clean money. There's a difference between the kind of money that you can earn if you're willing to, you know, sell your soul a little bit or sell out your values or any number of other things that just don't feel right. And I'm not saying necessarily anything illegal or immoral or unethical, but just something that just doesn't feel right. And a little, you know, those are sort of pinholes, if you will, in the container, and that will. Whatever leaks out of that container isn't going to be based on that one little pinhole. You think, well, not such a big deal, just kind of make this small sacrifice here. But after a while, those pinholes can really add up, can't they? And the leaks can be pretty significant. I would imagine that especially in the investing space that you. It's so important to have rules of the road for yourself. Not just the SEC rules and not just some other sort of rule of governance, but more along the lines of just what makes sense and feels right to you as the person in charge of that.

Wow. There's so much to be said about that. Absolutely. Unfortunately, the field is littered with all sorts of folks that are unscrupulous and forget even the obvious examples, just folks that don't act necessarily in the way that's in the best interest of the client. They act in their own best interest. And unfortunately, the field allows that kind of range of motion. And so you really have to have a compass in all of that, personally, that says, I'm going to do this, that's purely in the best interest, sometimes at my own detriment. But it's just the right way to do it, and it's just the right way to live your life, frankly, in every aspect. The beautiful part about where we've sort of come to is there's complete consistency with how I feel about something, how I act about something, and how I communicate that something just to someone. And that just feels great because there's no turmoil in that case. And it is what it is. So it's a. You know, for those books that do that in the financial world, it can be a tough road because you're competing against people who don't necessarily have the same value set, who can make claims that aren't necessarily complete or true, even. Yeah. So it's. It's good to have that sort of compass of sorts.

Yes. There's a documentary out right now that I can't remember the name of, but it's about the 2008 crash and what led up to that. What was going on with Bernanke and Paulson and a number of other people and, you know, on the street at the time you came through that period, obviously your firm has been around a long time. How was that for you? Was it as bumpy as it was for a number of folks, or were you set up to sort of weather that storm a little better?

Oh, no. I mean, I think everybody, it's human nature to definitely have that, that sense of panic or just sort of, you know, mild depression, you might call it. For a lot of folks, they didn't open their statements, they didn't want to talk about it, they didn't want to look at it. They just said you. They either ignored it or those folks who wanted to act on it. We try to explain the broader context of things. And so, yeah, it was an extraordinarily challenging time. One of the things we talk about quite often, and this is true with anything, it's not just an investment conversation, but there are two moments, two extreme moments in an investor's world which can parallel anybody's personal experience, which is when things are going fantastic and they're really high. So at that point, everyone's a brilliant investor, everyone's optimistic, everyone sees blue sky. Why do I even need an advisor at that point? I can do it all kind of thing. And again, there's parallels to everyone's personal life where you get sort of an artificial confidence when you successful, which may not necessarily be 100% the truth. Well, the contrary to that is like the 2008, 2009 scenario, which is, you know, just complete giving up. Gee, I don't know anything. Gosh, you know, the future looks dim. Extreme pessimism and, you know, it's the exact flip side where you're not taking advantage of opportunity, you're in fact wallowing in the darkness of it. Well, that's a lie too. And the reality is the truth lies in the middle. And really, it's sort of the oscillating curve of life, which is you have these highs and lows and not to get lulled into, you know, as Rudyard Kipling says, the imposters, those two are imposters. And we need to sort of live in the middle and know that we're going to have highs and lows, but let's appreciate those for what they are and continue on our journey. And the more we can do that ahead of time, both personally and professionally and investment wise, the more prepared we mentally are.

Yeah, it's like this too shall pass, that, that saying. Because typically when people say that, it's. It's because there's something that's gone wrong. And this is a way to kind of help you to get through it. This too shall pass. But the truth is it applies in both directions. So when things are great, when you feel as good as you could possibly imagine feeling, this too shall pass. I mean, that's just the nature of the whole experience that we're having. So to. To get all worked up in fear when things are look, you know, look as troubling as they did and actually were, I think, more troubling than most of us even were aware in September 20, 2008, or to be so irrationally exuberant to use. I think that was Greenspan. Yeah, exactly. You know, even as recently as September 20, which I think might have been the sort of the high water, recent high water mark of the market, where, as you said, describing people that can't feel like, you know, the market only goes in one direction and that direction is up kind of thing. And to think, as you know, in terms of how that greed and fear oscillate with people and how it drives different behavior. Yeah, yeah.

We're not well designed to be disciplined, certainly not disciplined investors. And you could argue in other parts of your life, we do get carried away with the negatives and the positives. But I think if you can look at things philosophically in that regard and again, both personally and professionally and sort of appreciate that, let's enjoy the great times, but let's not, you know, put too much pressure on the idea that it's going to be great forever or we're just bulletproof. Just like we don't want to put too much weight on, you know, when things are bad and frankly, out of our control, that, you know, things are going to be bad forever. And to your point, this too will pass. So, you know, I think the more you can sort of prepare yourself as a human being to sort of treat the upsides with grace and the downsides with humor, perhaps, you know, I think the more happy you'll be in life.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's. I want to build a bridge to the, to the way that you and I actually connected and came together. And it was with the theme of building bridges through a TEDx experience that you curated up in South Lake Tahoe. So I want to build the bridge to that. And I suppose what's coming up for me right now is there is a bridge that can exist between those two quite diametrically opposed or differing emotional states, that of fear and that of joy or exuberance. And that bridge, in many ways, I think, is how it is that we enjoy the ride, because without that, the ride that we're taking is very much this roller coaster experience of one day I could be up and the next day I could be, you know, like literally thinking it's all over. Based on things that are outside of ourselves. And to the point of the event and the talk that I was privileged to be invited to give it at your TEDx event, it really was more around the lines of how is it that we live within ourselves each day where regardless of the stock market is up or, or it's down, that we still have a loving experience for ourselves and every place where we are interacting in the world. So let's talk a little bit about that because you took on a big project, massive size project, if you don't mind my saying, and you've been doing it a couple years. I'd love to know how it is you got inspired to want to curate a TEDx event and what that's been like. And even if you want to give us a little lay of the land as to what, what's the good, the bad, the ugly, that would be great.

Yeah. So this is actually ironically the social pivot, I would call it, which really is, you know, I was at a point where I'm like, you know, I love my community, I love where I live and I love the community members that we have. And I've often looked for ways to try to contribute back to my community and you know, doing so in a way that was consistent with the things that I was interested in. I love the sharing of ideas, I love experts expanding people ideas, I love educating people because I think we're all better off when we all kind of get more information and get smarter about things. Collectively, I think we make better, better decisions as a society when we do that. So that TED was just the perfect TEDx was the perfect platform to sort of be able to do that. It checked all the boxes for me of great. This is something that I is sort of not traditional, but I could put this event on, I could bring amazing people in to share great ideas that aren't just ideas that we have here in our town, but they're ideas from the outside that people are bringing in that are at times international in scope. And so that was sort of how it was born is I want to do this for my community now. You know, as you can imagine, like I mentioned, with all the other sort of adventures in life, you know, you run through the gamut of emotions. You know, okay, I'm going to put this event on, spend hundreds of hours, if not thousands of hours on it and lots of money on it. And it's not money making, by the way. It's quite the opposite. We're not allowed to make money and we do A fantastic job at not making money at it. So, you know, so it's the one.

Area of your life where you're allowed to not make money, right?

That's right. Yeah, we couldn't make money and we did it with exception. So yeah, we were exceptional at it, put it that way. So, you know, you're thinking all these things like, well, this is going to be a lot of fun. But you're also thinking, is anybody going to care? Is anybody going to show up? Does anybody else care about the same things that I care about? Am I actually benefiting the community? So you always have these sort of questions and to some degree self doubt about am I wasting my time or is this going to be something of value? So three years ago we did the first one and it was, you know, we had to do a smaller one just based on the licensing and how it works with TedX. So we were limited to an audience of 100 people. You know, we sold out in 20 minutes. And so we thought, well, this is great, maybe we're onto something. We had a really nice event, great people, great speakers. And so we, lots of great feedback. Next year we grew in size, involved our local community college who were fantastic partners in it. And again though you're, again, as you grow, you're still having these nagging voices of saying, well that's nice that you want to grow. Does anybody else want to grow with you? Are we, is this going to, when are you going to hit the wall on this thing and is there a wall to hit? Anyway, sold out in a few days on that one and that was about two and a half times the size. About 260 people went to that one really nice event we had and some great feedback. So again we're growing and trying to do the thought being this, let's just spread this to as many people as we can. We're giving all the information away. We want to inspire people to do things and to do things either in their personal life or to do things that shares their passions with the world. Because the world needs people with passion. We don't need, nobody needs people who are beaten down. We need these ideas and we need inspiration. So I thought, well, let's make it bigger again. And we were very happy to have the speakers we had, including you last time. And you have left me actually with a fantastic mantra which has given me a lot of gratitude. So thank you for that and I appreciate that. But kind of adding on to what you're saying, you know, this, this sense of gratitude in Life, you know, is a place that can center. Can center us in those up times and those down times. And so, you know, you feel gratitude in the great times, it's humbling to some degree. And then in the real negative times, it's uplifting to feel that gratitude. So that's sort of been our journey with TedX. We had, you know, 400 and some odd 50 people or so in the audience last time in a much bigger theater with the potential to do more. So it's been a great journey. I've met some amazing people and made some great friendships, and it's just been a really fulfilling ride so far.

That's so beautiful. And I think the. Well, let me ask you this. Is it still your goal to see that event grow? Is there still iteration of it that's even bigger than I saw? Because it was quite impressive what you produced this last time around?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I'm willing to grow to the extent that the community is interested in growing too. If there's a demand for growth, then absolutely. I certainly don't want to push things on the community that there isn't interest for, but I certainly interested in sharing ideas and bringing the best of the best speakers and ideas and inspiration to our community, both from a sense of putting it out on the TEDx platform, because that then is essentially putting it out for, you know, forever and hearing those ideas out there forever. But, you know, also for our local community to bring some sense of pride and also to be there in person is quite a magical experience and I think very moving for a lot of folks. So that experience to provide, that is an honor for us.

Yeah. Being a speaker at this event, I didn't get to watch everybody's talk, but there were some that really moved me. Sandra Joseph's talk and Sam Horn's talk and Max Stossel. We just had Max on the podcast recently.

Max is great. Yeah, he's great.

And he shared a poem that was sort of an impromptu poem that came up while. While we were chatting. And I thought, geez, what a talented young man. I mean, he's just an incredible guy. Is there one particular talk over the. Over the last couple of years that still resonates with you or a message or something that still is part of your consciousness on a regular basis?

I can't really sort of like saying, oh, gee, which is your favorite child? You know, they. I am the collective whole of all the experiences that I've had there. You know, in terms of my memory and inspiration from TEDx. So there's a lot of individual ideas, like I mentioned your mantra there, but there is a bunch of either philosophies with DeWitt Jones of Celebrate what's right with the world to I love my life to listen to other folks. Don't wait some days, not a day in the week. Right. I mean, you can't do it now as the Dalai Lama. That said, the problem is you think you have time and you don't. So really it's a sum total of all those sort of snippets that I refer back to in a sort of a mental Rolodex kind of way. Art is very important to me, as you can imagine with my parents background in art and so some of the why art matters. I mean the expression of self, the sense of passion. I mean all of that stuff. There is a consistent thread through all of this stuff, which is hope and passion. Those are the things that I think if you're gonna draw a thread between it all. Yeah, it's hard to not. It's hard to go to a TEDx experience and not leave there completely inspired and hopeful.

No kidding.

Yeah, that is so true.

What was, what was the theme for your first event?

Boy, it caught me off guard there. I'm forgetting.

That's okay.

But, but, but to be honest with you, you know, our, our themes have really just been sort of placeholders in the sense that really what we're looking for is your best idea, not you to contrive your idea to fit our somewhat random theme. Yes, I, you know, most people have, Most people don't have a zillion great ideas. They've got a couple.

A couple. If they're lucky.

If they're lucky. That's right.

For sure.

I want that couple. I don't want you to make up something to fit the theme. I want you to bring your best of who you are because that is ultimately going to inspire others. One of our musicians that we had last year was Helena Kletch and she says, gee, what, you know, what do you want me to do? I really like this song, but I think this one's more poppy and maybe more popular. I said, you know, you got to do you, you got to bring what you're feeling in your heart that you're going to really be happy that you expressed. And she did. And she was amazing and really brought that emotion to it. And you saw it and we all lived it and felt it and goosebumps and all that kind of thing. And that's just true of Everybody who's a speaker and so on be you. Because, you know, it's obviously cliche at this point, but you know, everyone else is taken. So you be you in the best way that you know how to be you. So.

Well, there's, there's a lot of people who are looking for those opportunities or speakers anyway, that, or people that have something they want to say that are looking for a TEDx event. In fact, I heard some recent statistics on. It's pretty crazy. Some of these events, they've got people, 4,000 people applying for spots. I know somebody that's a part of now a. There's like an audition and there's 40 people that have been selected to audition to be part of that group. So I mean, you know, these things have gotten pretty, pretty competitive, I suppose, in some regard. So the advice that you've just given is probably priceless for those folks in our community who are thinking about, yeah, they might want to be part of a TEDx event at some point. I think the best advice is the one that you just provided to be you, to do you, you know, the classic way that that is. And then some people probably go like, well, if I only knew myself well enough to be me, to do me, I would kind of thing. Which is great because I tell you, part of the TEDx experience from my perspective is the, the way that you can distill an idea down. So for me, I ultimately started out with about 4,500 words of something that was really two talks, not one. And I think it was Hemingway that said that writing is a process of killing off your darlings. Now you think about that. That's not a word used today very often, but like to kill off your darlings, these things that are so precious to you that you love your precious words, your precious thoughts. Well, I had to kill them off in a way. It was like excruciating, Robin. Like, I went from, I don't know, 4,500 words down to like about 3,500. I thought there's just no way. I'll just have to speak faster, you know, like I'll have to condense things somehow bend time. And then after practice and realizing that I probably couldn't get from a word count standpoint strictly, and I'm getting technical here, but I probably couldn't say more than 2400 words without, without it feeling rushed to me and rushed to the audience, which would have been the worst of all situations to be. To be up there hurrying or speaking quickly as opposed to embodying whatever the message was and then delivering it at a pace that made sense. So, yeah, to get down from 35 to 24ish was. Was excruciating to cut things out. But. But that process of excruciating focus on getting to the clearest message, the most concise, precise way to communicate something has such great value. And so, you know, for anybody that's even thinking about it on the fence at all or never gave it some thought, but now all of a sudden, you're thinking about it. Yeah. If you're. If you're clear about what you. You want to say and what message, you have the idea quote, the idea worth spreading according to the standards, great, go for it. And if you are somebody who knows you've got something deep inside to communicate, but you're not clear about that at all, and you're thinking, well, that's a. Not to do it. Au contraire. Like, think of it the opposite. This might be your greatest opportunity in your adult life to get so crystal clear so that you could stand up in front of however many people, small or large group, and communicate that from the heart in a very powerful way.

Yes. Wow. Yeah, Absolutely. I always think, you know, everyone's got something to say and everyone has a story to tell, and it's your job to find out what that is as a human being. And it doesn't mean you maybe are doing a TED Talk, but. And if it is, great. Otherwise, it's a great place to come from. And it goes through. You go through a journey to find out who you are. And that's ultimately, the people who give the best talks are the ones who actually know who they are, because you have that sense of connection with your passion and what you're doing and have spent a lot of time in that space understanding what it means and doing the research and, you know, understanding how you got here and all of that. And that all of that depth adds to what, ironically, that the complexity of that depth leads to simplicity in the message. And the simplicity of the message is the essence of it. And that's what takes it from 10,000 words to, you know, a much smaller talk, but concise and with some. Some beauty to it, because it's the. It's the simplicity of it all that I think, you know, really appeals to, I think, a lot of folks.

Yeah. So not only do you end up with a great. Or you end up with your great talk, whatever that looks like, but you also end up with maybe 20 years of therapy in the procession. Right.

That's right. It is therapeutic, absolutely, to go through that journey.

Robin, last question for you. Is there a practice, sort of a ritual practice that you have each day that does something special for your outlook or your attitude or your remaining passionate about the road ahead, etc.

You know, I have a few, I would say I exercise daily, and that involves usually some sense of cardio, which I find to be quite meditative. And I sort of require it to be meditative. And so for me, that's a huge stabilizer. It's not only good for you physically, but great for you mentally. So I think exercise in some way, whatever way that is for anybody, is a great thing to do. I think the, the other thing that I've done for going on 20 years now is I wake up in the morning and I focus on all the things that I want in life. I'm not talking material things, but they could be, but just things that I want in life. And then in the evening, I focus on being thankful for everything that I have. And I have found that to manifest a lot in my life. So even if it didn't lead to manifestation, it leads you to a happier place, leads you to a more sort of centered place. But I think what it does is it allows you to, again, sort of maintain focus on the things that are important to you that you want. And it also gives you that sense of gratitude at the end of the day, maybe at sunset, maybe you allow yourself some minutes to enjoy the sunset. You're just thankful for that moment. And those two things which can work together, I have found to be quite productive for me personally.

Indeed, I have so enjoyed our talk. I really appreciate you being a guest on the show and I know our community is going to love having listened to you, learn from you, and maybe even thinking about some things that they, you know, some new things based on, based on this discussion so well.

I really appreciate you having me and I've enjoyed our discussion as well and look forward to the next.

Indeed I will. I'll leave our audience of pivoters with this that I think if you've listened to any of the, any recent podcasts or even any of them, I suppose from the beginning we always, we always, I think, come to this place, this fork in the road, I suppose, which is how will we choose to embrace the day? Because tomorrow, if we're lucky, as, or as fortunate as we were today, we'll get to wake up again. And you brought that up just a second ago, Robin, how it is that you wake and the ritual that you have when you wake up and even the one you have before you go to bed. So my prayer is that we all get to wake up again tomorrow. It's just, it's a blessing. It's not a guarantee. It's something that's, it's clear that when we're waking up and we take the first conscious breaths of the day, there'll be people taking their last breaths of life.

Indeed. Indeed. So if I could add on to that just real quickly, one of the things that's helped been quite helpful, particularly even when you're doing hard things in life or a hard training or something hard at work. I think the attitude of I get to do this, I get to do this. I get to be outside, I get to be working hard, I get to feel my body working hard or my mind or whatever, I get to have this human experience. It changes your perspective to your point. You know, the alternative isn't, isn't good. This, this is good. This, this moment's good.

This moment's good. Real good. Thank. And thank you, Rob.

Thank you.

Yeah, we get to, we don't got to. And how often when we catch ourselves in that got to energy of obligation or whatever that feels like, it's can really detract from the moment. So tomorrow we all get to wake up and we get to take that breath and feel gratitude for that moment. And if you're willing to do this as well, the way that Art Tedx talk ended was to propose that you take 10 seconds. Not a requirement by any means, but an invitation, I suppose, to take 10 seconds and as you put your feet on the floor, to feel gratitude and appreciation for yourself as you take those breaths. And then if you're, if you're inclined to do it, you can say these words. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. What, what would it take tomorrow morning to wake up and acknowledge yourself in that way? What could be different? It's something I've been doing for about 10 years now. And just as Robin said that these seemingly non business related practices pay tremendous dividends both on the side of the material world. And they pay even greater dividends in this invisible world that we all live in primarily within ourselves. So Robin, again, a joy, a pleasure and much gratitude to you brother for the incredible event that you both put on and invited me to participate in.

Well, thank you for all of it, Adam. I appreciate it and thanks for having me.

Awesome. So everybody out there, hope you've enjoyed this. Know that you have, of course and love to get your thoughts and your feedback. So if you go to itunes you can leave a review. We love to get those and just want your honest feedback, whatever that looks like for you. Go to Adam AdamMarkel.com podcast, you can leave a comment and I'll get to respond to you directly right there. And of course, if you want to join a community of like minded and like hearted pivoters, people who are contemplating what it is that you're wanting to incubate in the future, even what changes are happening in this moment, you can go to startmypivot.com and join that community as well. But we'll see you again real soon and we appreciate your commitment to this and you're giving us some of your time. So again, 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 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.