The Radical Leap, Closing The Gaps Of Leadership With Steve Farber

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. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Conscious Pivot. Oh, I'm so excited today, man. It is. It's a beautiful day. It's a magnificent day for so many reasons, and the most obvious of which I'm not the sharpest tool in the box or whatever. To me, to be alive and breathing in this moment, for us to collectively be breathing together. Wherever you are right now, whatever you're doing, I assume that you are breathing, and that is a good, good sign. I woke up this morning and put my feet on the floor and I really sat there for just a couple of minutes, feeling into what I was grateful for. And it didn't take me long to remember that. As I was taking those breaths, as I was searching for what I was grateful for, it was like something came out of the. Fell out of the sky and hit me in the head and said, hey, dummy, just be grateful that you can be grateful. Be grateful that you can even be thinking about or focusing on gratitude in this moment. And how many people are waking up at this very moment and they're either not in gratitude or even more depressing, I suppose, is the number of people that did not wake up, that went to sleep last night and didn't wake up or were taking their last breath at the same moment that I was taking my first breath. So one thing I know, like I know my own name, is that this moment is sacred, that this moment is holy even. And it's a blessing to be here. It's a blessing to be with all of you. This day is a blessing. It's about to get even better. That's the good news. Rub your hands together. Yeah, baby. It's about to. To get so much better. And that's because I get to share something with you today in the form of an incredible human being, an incredible friend and colleague and somebody I have just the deepest respect for, admiration for. And I love what this man stands for. I love what he does in the world. And I get to share him with all of you, which makes my life joy in this moment, to be of service to be able to give in this way. And for you all, well, it's just an exciting time to be able to sit back or whatever it is you're doing. Maybe you're sitting in a chair, maybe you're, you're riding in a car, maybe you're riding a bike or running or whatever you're doing. I mean, I just freaking love podcasts. And it seems that that is ever growing population of people that just digging this, this medium to learn new things and get some education, get some entertainment, even at times take you out of, you know, the routines of the day. And even maybe if the thoughts that you're having are less than positive or less than empowering, to be able to kind of put push the pause button on your own inner, inner thinking and maybe the critical voice inside your head and fold or allow yourself to unfold into a space of listening, curiosity, inquiry, all of that. This is a perfect time, an absolutely stellar time to get into that. And I'm going to allow this gentleman to say some things about himself. As you guys know, I don't do formal introductions. I always love it when our guests are in the moment. They're present with us, they can tell us what's really important to them at this time in their life. What I know of Steve Farber, who is our guest on the Conscious Pivot podcast today, is that he's somebody that is taught and trained on the topic of leadership and other business topics, which he'll illuminate us on some of those things today, but he's taught all over the world. I happen to know him because we're both members of this group called tlc. So we get to retreat together a couple times a year, which is really special with a lot of other people that are wanting and are actually doing amazing things to make the world a better place on so many levels, whether it's in the personal growth area, human potential area, or in business development, etc. So Steve's written some great books. In fact, Radical Leap was the first book I read of his, was a radical bestseller. You guys can check that out. Radical Leap. And then he wrote the Radical Edge. I may be getting the order of things wrong, but I do believe that was the succession of things. It was Radical Leap to Radical Edge to then Greater Than Yourself, which is again, an impeccable, life changing book on mentorship and on business leadership. And so this guy is, he's the bomb. He's the shit. As far as I'm concerned. You guys are going to find that out for yourselves. Without further ado, welcome to the podcast. Steve Barber, welcome.

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So my life's work, as it turns out, this was not what I anticipated it to be. If you were to ask me when I was in my early 20s, I would not have predicted this, but my life, which I know is true for a lot of people, my life's work is around leadership development, which is a really broad term. But, you know, I've been in the field for almost 30 years now. I've had some amazing mentors, including Tom Peters, who was arguably the most influential management thinker of the modern era. And I was vice president of his company for a while. I left there in 1990. When was it? 2000? Actually, I started there in 94, left in 2000, and went out on my own. And that's when I started writing books and doing keynotes and helping people to understand that leadership is a very personal thing and not a matter of your position or your title. So my exploration has really been around helping people to understand the influence that they have. You know, so many of us have been. Have been conditioned to believe that leadership is a function of your position of authority, and it just does not automatically come with the territory. And I think we can all think of examples that are kind of obvious, like that people have positions of authority, but are not necessarily great leaders. I see it in organizations all over the world. We see it in the political arena, we see it in the business arena, etc. And what happens as a result of that is if I work for a company or I'm on my own, or I'm a solopreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm just. I feel like a cog in the machine at a corporation, wherever I am on that spectrum. If I believe that leadership is somehow something that would be bestowed upon me or that I have to, you know, if I aspire to it, I have to achieve a certain position, then I'm missing out on a huge opportunity to lead today, right now, and to make a difference. And it's going to sound like a cliche, and I certainly don't mean it to be, but to really make a significant difference in the world around me and to change it for the better, that's really what leadership is. So I'm really intrigued by this dynamic that on the one hand, we believe that leadership, we all agree, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. I think we all agree that leadership is important, but we don't have a lot of agreement as to what that really means and what it looks like and how we can rise to that level ourselves or to a higher level of leadership ourselves. So my work is really about closing the gap between what we aspire to and in terms of leadership and what we actually do every day. So that might sound a little abstract, but, you know, my focus has been. Has been primarily in the corporate world, and I'm doing more, you know, more and more work with entrepreneurs. And there's a whole side of my work that's really about creative expression as well. Because, you know, I started out, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't start out thinking, someday I should be a leadership development person.

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

I did not. Nor did I aspire.

Astronaut, firefighter, galactic traveler.

I wanted to be. When I was eight years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I went back and forth. I couldn't decide between veterinarian and heart surgeon. Two good things, two good things. I ended up as neither. Although I guess if you think about it metaphorically, perhaps I'm a heart surgeon, but I wanted to be a musician. I've been playing guitar since I was 13 years old. If you had asked me in my early 20s what I was going to do, I was going to play music, write songs and perform and. And I got married at a young age. Married into my first child, my daughter angelica, who's now 40. But I was 23. By the time I was 24, I had two kids. And I discovered, at least at that point in my life that this idea of being a musician and feeding people.

We'Re mutually exclusive potentially, right?

So I got rid of the family, you see, and I. And I hit the road with my guitar My dusty boots no liar I.

Know I think we've detected a lie.

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

So your first pivot? Well, I mean, we pivot from the day we're born, I suppose. But when you think about career and, you know, once we're sort of out of our parents house and on our own as adults, the first significant pivot, or conscious pivot was to hang up the. Hang up the guitar.

Yeah.

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

That was the word that came up for me. Say that again. Abandonment. Yeah, that idea that you abandoned a piece of yourself or left, you know, like. Abandonment is a strong word, Steve, but to leave a piece of yourself behind.

Yeah.

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

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

Of course not. It's what we. It's what we know of it in the moment.

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

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

I haven't moved an inch since.

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

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

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

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

Wait is the start of a sentence.

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

So now sounds like my life.

There was no music. There was no music. There was no joy in going to work. I mean, you know, I had a fan.

I need a news flash. We need to take a quick 30 second news flash like so people listening this. Do not get, do not step out on the ledge. I don't want you to watch both ways if you're walking near traffic right now.

No, listen, I'm telling you, I'm actually kind of sugarcoating it a little bit. I mean, this was, believe it or not, it was an intensely challenging time. And you know, it ended up being my, you know, my formative years. This is all before I was 30 years old, mind you. So, you know, I got started really young. I mean, I'll be, I'm 59 years old, I'll be 60 in January and my, you know, my oldest is 40. So, you know, I got started, I got started pretty young.

You got going in a hurry.

So, you know, I had to figure this shit out as I was going along and it didn't, I guess, I guess I'm a slow learner because it took a while. It took a while to figure this out. And what I figured out was, is.

This going to be the pivotal moment or the pivot point?

No, it just goes downhill from here.

Does it Just go downhill. I want to set people up.

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

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

My hope is that this podcast just really inspires you to give up and do nothing, actually. So what happened was there was a pivotal moment, and. And there were a series of them, and they all happened. This was all, like, in the late 80s, I'm going to say, like 88, 89. I had moved the family. We were living in the Midwest. I had moved the family out to San Francisco. My business had gone down in flames. I ended up. I knew I hated that business. But then I was given a job offer in San Francisco. That's why we moved out there to. To work for somebody who was. Put this in the slow learner category. To work for somebody who was just starting a commodities futures business. Hadn't gotten the point yet, but he offered me an opportunity to move the family to San Francisco and collect somewhat of a paycheck. So we did it. I took advantage of it, and I did it not because, oh, joy, I was going to do more things in an industry that I hated, but because it just kind of facilitated a new chapter. What it felt like was. It felt like a new chapter was coming. So this was the pivotal moment. I remember this very clearly on my lunch break, walking around downtown San Francisco, which is really beautiful, and I was still kind of overwhelmed by, wow, what a great city. And I can't believe I'm here. But at the same time, I was still miserable. And I remember it was about as close as I come to prayer in a very. In an overt sort of a way. I mean, I kind of live in a prayerful state. But it was one of those moments where I was like, I know there's something I'm supposed to be doing on this planet. I know it. I know it in my bones, and I have no freaking idea what it is. So please give me some kind of a hint. What is it that I'm supposed to be doing? Tell me what I'm supposed to be doing, and I will gladly do it, because I had no idea. And this is the way it happened. So that was kind of the first pivotal moment where that kind of came together, where I just acknowledged that kind of aching in my bones that says, there's something. There is something I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't feel hopeless in the sense, like, I got nothing. There's no contribution I can make. It wasn't like that. I knew there was something, but I didn't know what it was.

So step one, just step one. You had a real moment, a real conversation. A vulnerable.

Yeah.

Kind of on your knees. Not literally, but sort of a hands.

You know, pretty close to it. Yeah, yeah.

Hands in prayer and on the knees. Yep.

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

Got it.

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

Shocking.

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

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

Oh, definitely didn't feel like arrogance. And I don't know. Yeah, humility is closer to it. It was more like.

Or the third option, something else.

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

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

Yes. And again, I know maybe we're nitpicking a little bit in terms of semantics. But it's. But it's really, really important. I didn't assume there was an answer. I knew there was an answer.

Yes.

And that knowing, I don't know if that's something that's teachable or not. I think there's, you know, I would like to believe that everybody has that sense of knowingness in them, but for me, it was very prevalent. It like, rose to the surface. So there was that gap between, I know there's something I'm supposed to be doing, and I know I don't know what it is. So help me close the gap. I wasn't asking for riches to fall on my head. I was asking for an opportunity to live my purpose, to discover what that is and then. And then to live it.

Yeah, there's a difference between believing and knowing, and I think you're making it. This is a really important point here because there are a lot of people out there right now listening this, watching, listening that may be in a position in their life, whether they're in the 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s, where they don't know something that's important, like what is next for them in the doing area, in the career work area, in the business area. They don't know what that is. And they may know that there is something for them to do. Maybe they have that level of clarity that you have. And also at the same time, knowing that they don't know, which is whatever word you want to apply to that. For me, the word will be humility. That I have the humility to know and admit that I don't know something. And also to be able to ask for help whether it's, you know, not everybody's going to pray, not everybody's going to ask spirit, God, source or whatever to get an answer. But you've got to ask someone or ask of something, inquire of something to get an answer to a question you have. Because to me, the universal principle that's at play here is that you cannot ask a question and not get an answer. The only difference, the only thing that's a variable, that's uncertain is the timing. It's a knowing, not a belief. I think belief is very much what we want and we suspect and what we might even what's in place until we have more proof or evidence. A belief is, you know, it's a pretty good hunch. It's a really strong hunch, and it could be based on, you know, the experiences we've had or people that have been close to us. But a belief is a really strong suspicion. And a knowing is something that you can count on. And so when you went to prayer, knowing two things, knowing what you were doing wasn't. Wasn't what you wanted to be doing. Knowing that there was something for you to do that would be what you're supposed to be doing. And third, knowing that you didn't have the answer to it, but willing to be guided to was a foregone conclusion that you get an answer. The only question is, when would you get the answer?

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

Humility. That's awesome.

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

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

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

Yeah. How do you define incubation in that context?

I was developing my point of view on leadership. I was getting such great experience working with all these senior executive teams, working with a body of work called the Leadership Challenge, which was created by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, still the must read in the Leadership World Leadership Challenge. I think it's now in his fifth edition or something like that. So if you have any interest in leadership at all, you should read that. But that I taught their workshop. I got really proficient at teaching somebody else's body of work. This is what I've been doing in my career. And what I came to understand, what I came to experience is that when I taught the Leadership Challenge, it came, you know, I taught it in my own voice. I had my own perspective on it, and that really worked. And it felt great, and people connected with it and resonated with it. And then after a time, I just started asking myself, well, what do I think about all this? If I were to. After everything that I've learned and all the people I've worked with and this great learning from my mentors and from doing all this client work, if there was one thing or maybe a small handful of things that if I could flip some kind of a magic switch and have everybody in the business world understand, what would that be? And in trying to answer that question, my own body of work and point of view began to emerge. So that's what I mean by incubating, right? It was gathering the experience, it was honing my chops. It was getting really, really good at the craft and the art of educating and training and speaking and facilitating and seeing how people apply it and helping people to apply what's learned. So getting in the trenches and really learning about business and learning about so many different. I mean, I had exposure to so many different companies in so many different industries and appreciating the differences, but also seeing the universal, you know, the kind of the universal truths from company to company, all that stuff was what I mean by incubating. That was all going in. And then it came together in the question. So what do I think? Well, you know, if you were to ask me, what is it? You know, if you just net it all out, what is it? And that's where the radical Leap framework came from. And LEAP stands for love, Energy, audacity and proof. So where that. And that's been the core of my work ever since. And I first started playing with that framework, I'm going to say, in. Right around the time I was leaving the Tom Peters Company in 2000, so 17 years ago. And then it eventually became the framework that I wrote about in the radical Leap that you mentioned before, which came out in 2004. Right. So really what that came from was that magic switch, magic wand kind of a question, what would I have everybody get? And at the foundation of it really was, we dance around it, we call it different things, we use the word sparingly. But the bottom line is that great leadership is really about love and that great business is really about love. And I'd seen it over and over again in my career that far, right. The people, the really great leaders, the people that worked with them for them and around them, they loved them. They loved them. Yeah, they were, you know, respect and admiration and all that other stuff, that's, that's all part of it, but they loved them. And the reason they did was because again, the best leaders that I'd met made no bones about the fact that they loved their team, they loved their work, they loved their clients and customers, and therefore they had much. Because of that, they had much higher standards and expectations for themselves and for the people around them because they wouldn't tolerate subpar performance because love wouldn't let them do that. And these people generated tremendous energy in the way that they worked. They were audacious in their thinking. They weren't small minded. They were change the world minded. And it was really critical to all these people that it wasn't enough to talk a good game and say the right words. They proved that they meant what they said through their actions, through their results, through the steps that, you know, the specific measurable, observable steps that they took every day. So love, energy, audacity and proof.

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

Yeah.

So what was the question?

The question that led to the framework?

Yeah. You said it was that magic wand question. It was the asking.

Yeah.

So I just want to put that into the question was.

And I posed this question to other people as well, that they should ask of themselves. Right. If I had the kind of power to have everybody in my industry get it, what would it be? What is it? What is it that people need to do differently? What do they need to know? What, what, how would they act? Right. If I had that, if I had that kind of sway, what would I have people do?

Yep.

And I think that's A good question for any of us to ask about the industry and world that we live in. Right. But again, I think the answer is going to be much more powerful if you've taken the time to gather the experience. Right. So for example, you know, my experience with teenagers. Right. So my. To kind of come full circle on the family side of things, you know, after, you know, two marriages, three kids and three step kids now who range from 22 years old on the young end to 40, as I said before, on the old end. And if you look at. Older. Sorry. And if you look at the span in between. I raised teenagers. Teenagers.

Do you want to say it again?

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

I have noticed that, yes.

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

Yeah.

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

Yeah. I think there's no question that the. Get it. The what do you want other people to get or what is it that you want people to understand is based on experience. And look not to dilute the experience of teenagers because in some context they may really get it. They may get what it is that they want other people to get, whether it's, you know, that they've been bullied and they decided years old that their life, what they really want is for people to get that bullying. I'm making something up here. But no, it's absolutely true that bullying is debilitating to our world. It's counterproductive to everything that our society is moving toward, et cetera, whatever that is. They can get that early on. But clearly it's based on some experience. And often my theory anyhow is that that experience is often painful one. That it's not necessarily, you know, all roses and, you know, and chocolate and stuff like that. So let me.

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

Yeah. I don't think we were thinking.

I don't. I know.

I wasn't thinking.

There is. There could be nothing further from the truth.

Yeah.

And in fact, I think, you know, there's a level of combination of experience and innocence at that age where it can actually give a greater degree of clarity to how the world should be. Right. So I think kids younger than teenagers and teenagers have a wonderful perspective on how the world should be. And their experience is very intense. I mean, the experience of being a kid is very intense. Intense. And you can look around your environment at school and see somebody being bullied and have the presence of mind to stand up against that and say, that's wrong. That happens every day. I'm talking about. So it's relative to the world that they're living in. On the other hand, you wouldn't take a teenager who has incredibly valuable experience in that arena and necessarily put them in a boardroom with senior executives to talk about business strategy because they don't have a context for it. They don't have. You know, that's all I'm saying. It's always relative to your insight. And really, you know, the bottom line on this is this very obvious. My staff is joining me in the background. There's very obvious point, which is we constantly need to be expanding ourselves. We constantly need to be. To be getting deeper, wider, richer experience so that we can extract wisdom from that and share it with other people.

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

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

I am not at all surprised.

I have to close the loop on the music.

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

And maybe that ties in with rituals. You know, I'm not really much of a ritual person other than I make bulletproof coffee every morning and bring it upstairs to my wife. That's our big kind of Domestic ritual. That is my. That's my territory. That's my. You know, that's my. My role of service that I play. It's not the only one, certainly. But, you know, but in terms of music, I have, you know, over the past few years, re. Been reawakened in the musician side of my. Of my personality. I mean, I've played, you know, over the years, but I've started. Started writing again a little bit, and I brought back, actually, some of the songs that I wrote 40 years ago that I've always played and brought them more to the forefront of who I am and what I do. I've even started playing music in some of my keynotes. No, Adam, you heard me do that once. I don't get the opportunity to do that every time, but when I can, I love to do that. And it's. So I've been through this musical reawakening, and as a result of that, I'm going into the studio the end of September to record with the brothers Coren, Isaac and Torald Coren, formerly known as the Kin, who toured with Pink and opened for Coldplay. And they're just brilliant musicians. I'm going into the studio with them and recording six of my songs, which we will then release on Spotify and itunes and all that. And I'm doing it just to give expression to it. I don't have any designs on a hit single or anything, but it's just an amazing thing to be completely, fully.

Honoring.

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

Yeah. And so just circle back to one thing, and then we're gonna. We're gonna wrap things up. You read Pivot at a pretty. A pretty Pivotal point in your life about a year ago.

Yeah, yeah.

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

Well, I think it's the prevailing wisdom is it seems to be an all or nothing point of view. Right. It's the. I think you use this imagery in the book, burn the bridges kind of a thing.

Right.

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

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

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

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

Yes, there's an awesome good to know. I'm, you know, I am just, I just amaze myself at how, how relentless a sales guy and marketing guy I you are.

You're just so too tenacious for comfort.

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

Fantastic. So Steve with a V, Farber with an F, just as it sounds 1B. Everybody else, you can figure it out from there. And as always, what a pleasure to have you join us. Steve, thank you for Everybody listening, watching, etc. Thank you for being with us, for giving us your most precious asset today, which is your time. It's always that. And remind you that tomorrow, your first and only task to begin with is to wake up. Literally wake up. And figuratively to wake up, wake up a little bit more. Your consciousness, your awareness, your appreciation, your gratitude. And in that moment it's pretty easy to realize that as you're waking up, as you're taking that first breath, there will be people who will be taking their last. So it's a special moment. You can, you don't have to search far for where to be grateful in that moment and if you also feel inclined to do so. I do believe in, in rituals, which I have a specific definition most of my listeners I think are aware of, which is that not from a religious standpoint or some dogma, but more like upskilling habits. How do you upskill a habit? Stephen Covey's amazing book about seven habits of highly effective people. I look at habits as things we do unconsciously. And since I'm committed to raising consciousness, I look at rituals as something that we consciously choose to create over time. It takes practice. And so not everybody loves their life. In my experience, not everybody is grateful as much of the day as they could be and maybe even want to be. But somehow aren't so conscious habits that become master habits or rituals are powerful. So tomorrow when you wake up and I, I, when I get my magic wand, this is what I would do with it. I wave my magic wand because the thing that I want the world to get, business owners, entrepreneurs, and everybody who's anything else, however you categorize, employee or otherwise, is that you love yourself. That's the magic wand wish for me. So you have to learn. And I believe it's a learning. I believe it's something that we are not necessarily shown how to do from the moment we're born. I think there's all the evidence to the contrary around us and our parents and in the world that we live in, what it's like to not love yourself and accept yourself unconditionally. So first things first. We wake up. We're grateful. Put your feet on the floor and declare, if you will, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. And you do that for a sufficient amount of time. 21 days to start. 75, 100, 200 a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years later. The universe has a way of helping you to see how easy it is and how intuitive it is to love yourself. So with that, I will remind everybody, if you have not yet subscribed to the Conscious Pivot podcast, go ahead and do that. Subscribe to get all the episodes not have to keep coming back to the website to pick them off here and there with itunes. In addition, join us at the StartMyPivot Facebook community. Just stories like Steve's people who are sharing vulnerably what's been going on in their world and where those Pivot points have been, where there's inflection points and what they've learned. Just as importantly, lots of incredible resources and tools and support that are happening in that community. Go to pivotfb.com takes you right to that Facebook page. You can look us up on Facebook @StartMyPivotCommunity. It's all there and I love you all. I send you lots of love and I wish for you. As I said, I wish for you today and every day. Self love. With that I will say ciao Steve, thanks so much brother. Thanks for being here.

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

Awesome. Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have 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.