Unlock And Instill Courage: How You Can Drive Change Into The Future With Ryan Berman

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, it's Adam Markel, and welcome Welcome back to the Change Proof Podcast. I've got an incredible guest today, an amazing guest and a dear friend. His name is Ryan Berman. He is like a brother from another mother. We have the same haircut, the same barber, and all that good stuff. But he is also the founder of Courageous, a think-feel-do change consultancy that's based in San Diego with more than 20 years working in courageous leadership, courageous ideas, and courageous reinvention. Ryan believes that your future is safe with change. He and I both feel that way. Ryan is a speaker, practitioner, and an authority on the subject who has been featured in Entrepreneur, Fast Company Inc., and Forbes. He's also spoken on the topic all over the country, including for Google, Snapchat, Kellogg's, Kraft Heinz, Logitech, PNC, and many, many others. His book Return on Courage shares why companies need to unlock courage now while providing practical tips on how organizations can install courage in their people today. We're going to have a great conversation and vibe hard. So sit back, buckle up, and enjoy my conversation with Ryan Berman. All right, Ryan, we're definitely brothers from another mother and all that good stuff, pals. I have wanted, and I think actually we went through some logistical hoops to get kind of you and I get our schedules aligned, get this show finally up and running. So I'm thrilled for the chance to sit down with you. And have a chat. And you and I have a lot in common. We've known each other a while, traveled similar paths and all that kind of thing. So I'm going to ask you something about your introduction, the bio that people just heard. What is one thing that is not in that bio, not written in your standard introduction that you would love for people to know about you?

Great question. I think the answer is that I'm just trying to figure it out. As a guy that has courage as a brand, I'm still just trying to figure it out like everybody else. And there are new things I want to create. I'm a creator. In fact, one of the things that probably brought me the least joy in my last life is the bigger we got, the further away I got from creating and the more of a manager I became. And it was like I became the guy that was solving problems on the way to solving the problems I wanted to solve. And so what I love about my life now is I'm trying to design a life where I could continue to create. And I mean, it's all under the lens of courage, right? Whether it's courageous leadership or courageous ideas or courageous reinvention. But one thing I'd like, I hope to add to my bio is starting to bring together a community of people that are courageous and to use your word, resilient, who want to know each other and want to create together. That events arena is really interesting to me when it's curated with People that have the same mindset. And I'm terrified of it, but I know that that's where my life is going. Is I, in the next 1,000 days, you could ask me, how successful were you on curating this group? That's what's coming next.

I'm envisioning like a Roman Colosseum and you bring only, instead of, you know, lions and gladiators and all that kind of shit, you bring other creative people, crazy people, entrepreneurial crazy courageous people together to have at it. I don't know what else it looks like beyond that.

I don't think it's Fight Club we're building, but I think it's really lonely to be the leader, and it's lonely to like navigate it. And you've gotten where you are and you feel like you finally got there, and then at the same time you're like, well, who do I trust? Who can I trust? And can I go there? And I think there's a lot of amazing people out there that would benefit from So I don't see it as Fight Club. I think they would benefit from like, hey, this is how we do it in this vertical. And originality sometimes is taking something from a different vertical and bringing it into yours. I want those collisions to happen, but it has to be with the right people that wanna make the world better and wanna use their superpowers for good.

Another C word, as I'm listening to you, that you just said was collision. And met who was just until recently was the CEO and chairman of the board at WD-40, this really amazing guy, Gary Ridge. You probably know Gary, right? He's a super, super wonderful guy based in San Diego. And why that word collision came up for me was I remember going down to their headquarters. We were doing, I think I was being asked to do a keynote for them and talk about some workshops and stuff like that. And he said, well, come on down, let's have lunch in the boardroom. And it was like no boardroom I've ever been in, the office that they constructed, this building where among other things they wanted, Gary wanted to have collision zones. That was his vision. Yeah. That people would collide literally, physically. They kind of run into each other for the purposes of conversation, for the purposes of creative expression. The thing that was studied in the early '70s that I think the term is used called weak ties to describe this phenomenon where people that don't typically run into each other, don't have conversations from all ends of an organization, as a result of that conversation, that unexpected sort of water cooler discussion, innovation occurs. You know, 3M and lots of companies really accelerated because that weak tie connection. I got to say, you know, that idea I think has legs. You could do a lot with that actually colliding the Coliseum, not like you say to wipe people out, but really to wrestle with the world, wrestle with the ideas that will change the world for the better today. And

you and I are a couple of guys that have homes in SoCal, right? Which is where WD-40 is based. But I stumbled into the concept of collisions first. Rest in peace, Tony Hsieh. You know, I got to tour Zappos, which is in Vegas, and it's like, I'm sure the last thing you're thinking is, we're going to Vegas, let's go tour Zappos. I get it. But like, you can now tour Zappos. I think it's like $5 or $10. And Tony was all about collisions. You couldn't walk the place without colliding in with a core value or a person that was living that value. That created a moment where 2 minds met. Maybe they didn't agree at first, but through the volleying of conversation, the best idea would percolate. I think that, to your point, that is the idea of creating space for collisions where, okay, yeah, like this is where the best idea comes from. And I think And again, you and I, we're just having a conversation, so it's not like we've got this planned out, but I think this is my— another C, the catastrophic concern of remote work. And I think the big loser here is innovation. I think the collisions aren't happening like they could. I mean, I've never run a 1,000-person company, but I've run almost a 100-person company. And the thing that I terrified the most was when someone would come to my door and be like, do you have a minute? And you're like, oh, shit. Okay, well, here you go. I just lost 2 hours. 45 minutes is about— it's never a minute. It's always like 45 minutes. But in that little, do you have a minute, was a collision moment and ideas got better. Innovation got better. And I think right now our schedules is like, it's so transactional. Your calendar's like 20 minutes, 30-minute Zoom, 15-minute Teams. 20-minute Zoom, you've got blue all over your calendar. Those do you have a minute collisions aren't happening. And like I said, the losers are the companies. And honestly, I think the losers are the next generation who think that they've got it good because they've got flexibility and they're like, oh, I'm so much more productive. But what's missing is those moments to collide. And when you collide with people that really share your logic, They become mentors for you, or you build relationships with those people, and it's slow cooked, right? 3 years down the line, 9 years down the line, those people are the same people that you wanna start businesses with. That's gone away for at least now. And I don't know how leaders can bring that back and be like, this is why we need to be in the office for the greater good of innovation.

Yeah. I mean, you said it, I was thinking it, and then it came right outta your mouth, which I wasn't surprised at all to hear. But mentorship, the collisions for innovation get that. What I also feel is that people who have not known mentorship because they entered the workforce while this is happening, and that's a big group of people, they will not know what they've missed out on. They won't know it until— not that it's too late, but at some point when you're deep into your career, mid-career, 30s and 40s, and you didn't have that mentorship, there's a gap. That will be palpable. I think that you will wish it's like if you didn't learn numbers by wherever you could have learned numbers, whether it was in business school or it was in math class or whatever it might be. As soon as you become someone in charge of money, and I'll just keep it in a business context because you're the CEO or you wouldn't become the CFO if you weren't a numbers guy. But I'm saying if you're in a leadership role of any kind, then you don't or you're even up and coming wanting to grow your career, and you don't understand money math, you don't understand. the way business operates, you wouldn't know a balance sheet from a bouncing ball, you have a gap and that knowledge gap will negatively impact the trajectory of your career. And if by chance you went out on your own and started a venture, you'll find really quickly that it's an impediment to the growth of your business if you just don't understand those numbers. So I think mentorship is one of those things as well that down the road, It's— there's a big price to pay for it. You said something earlier I wanna come back to as well. And clearly, when it comes to the remote workforce, as you said, there's this gap. They're missing something. But for those people who've started up a venture, so I'm just gonna speak now to the part of our audience that are either already business owners themselves, operators, entrepreneurs, or they might wanna be. Here's something we don't hear a lot of chat about. which is that if you don't have those collisions happening, if you don't meet people in the office in that way and have those ideas percolating, as you say, it also will impede or, or impact, let's say, the number of startups. This is my prediction. I don't know if this is right or wrong. It will impede or impact those startup formations down the road, right? Because how many guys do you know that are in the middle right now of a 7, 8, 9-figure business who met at a company that they thought— like, they cut their teeth, they learned stuff, good, bad, ugly, right? Whatever. And then they went out on their own because they met there first, right?

That's what's at stake. I think that's it. Until you're in it, it's the same thing as mentorship. Maybe this is a show about ships, kinship, friendship, mentorship, relationships. To me, until you have those moments where you are in the fire with somebody, And by the way, it doesn't even have to be like, hey bro, or this place is messed up. It's not that. It's like, we mesh our skills, right? We share logic, but our skills match. You're great. You're the artist. I'm the operator, or whatever it might be.

It's forged in the fire.

The fire is what's missing. And so again, it's like, if you don't have that— and by the way, just to like the audience, if you're like Because I'll tell you what I don't miss. I don't spend missing $25,000 a month on rent. Okay? I don't miss the price of rent. All right? I miss the collisions. There are ways to—

I don't miss the commute. I just want to put my own piece in it. I used to commute 3 hours a day, literally an hour and a half to and from Manhattan from the suburbs in New Jersey where we were raising a family. I don't miss a 3-hour commute every day.

I'm sure— Honestly, If I'm honest with myself, deep, deep down in my soul, I learned in New York City. That's where I learned from all the crazy madmen folks. The reason that I left, a major reason why I left is I could not visualize myself living out of the city and doing the commute. For me, I couldn't see it. I tried to see it and I was like, how much time am I going to be? Just like you said, those 3 hours. Same thing about LA. Like, I couldn't visualize myself in a car for hours. So I understand, to your point, I understand fully on like productivity, how tolerable is that commute? And there are ways to do remote work where you can be intentional to make sure collisions happen. And this is like 2 inspirational business leaders walking into a bar. So I always say, if remote work isn't emote work, That is the goal of the leader. If it's just remote work, you have not figured out a way to make remote work emote work. You will not— first of all, you're going to have a loyalty issue. But if you can make it emote work where they're like, I love this, it's emotional, I'm going to stick around for the cause, then you can get intentional about— imagine you put like, do you have a minute, 30-minute session on the calendar? And it's like, look, this is an open forum. It's called Do You Have a Minute? It's 30 minutes. We're going to do it twice a month. It's a safe place for messy conversations, and at least we can like— or a collision room. You can block this stuff off now on your calendar and, okay, no commute. We understand why we're colliding. And even if you're responsible for the calendar, you block it off on your calendar and then you invite the right people you need. To that room at that time. And at least there's at least a space for it versus what's happening now, which is like a Tetris. You're just trying to fit in the next 15 in a meeting.

The stuff that we do in studying resilience, it's the level of exhaustion, depletion from that, what you just described, that game of Tetris of meeting after meeting after meeting. It's just like, yeah, it's not a healthy thing. But I wanna just pivot for a second here. Go, go back to something you said at the very beginning. You were talking about some of the Just emotions of even where things stand in life right now and what a lot of us are dealing with. You said lonely. You used the word lonely. I think it was just recently, maybe it was a Surgeon General that came out with a study about how loneliness is affecting people. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that because I think the remote work situation might be another one of those lenses that you could look at that question about what loneliness is looking like for people through that lens as well.

Look, I think, I mean, it's right there in the name, remote. I mean, you're on your own, you're alone on an island. And imagine how you felt when you were with, around other people. Like, imagine walking by people in an office and still feeling alone. Now you really feel alone. And to me, it's funny, I've always done like different purpose statements, and the one that keeps coming up for me is I want to be the best friend. I could be. And I do, I blend work with just keep it human, keep it real. And what does a good friend do? A good friend is a good listener. A good friend isn't afraid to deliver tough love. Tough without love is you're an asshole, but tough love, it comes from intention. I don't see it any different than our world. I mean, yes, when your company's called Courageous, I think it does give you a little bit of permission to speak the truth if someone is stuck or scared or playing it safe, right? But like, I want to be the best friend I could possibly be. And if you know me, you know, like, I've always loved people. And it's just— that's all it is, is trying to like be on the hip of people and be there when they need you.

Well, loneliness is a real thing, as you said. It certainly preceded the pandemic and all the changes, but Again, just looking at what we're hearing and what I think is real anxiety, people feeling more anxious, feeling more in a silo of sorts, I think it's on the upswing. I think it's just something we have to be aware of. So again, when you think about who's listening to this, there are people of all— in leadership roles, to be sure. And people are wrestling with this idea of how do we get people back in the office where they want to come in? It's not mandatory where it's productive. It's not just checking a box that somebody's going, you know, hey, you know how much we pay in rent every month to have, you know, like 30% vacancy, you know, places, crickets. It's an echo chamber. And they go, gotta get everybody back in. And there's business reasons for wanting to utilize space and all that stuff. But I think the future of work is here now. This is something was being discussed more than 20 years ago, that decentralization and allowing people more autonomy and more freedom would be something that was more than just a perk, but would become more of a norm. And I think that certainly was accelerated. There's no turning it back now. It's just a question of where do we calibrate from here and what does that look like?

Let's go back to the idea of loneliness. Like, why are people lonely? If you really break it down, and I think I read somewhere recently, this is not my quote, I don't know how to cite, where to cite it, but I just ran into 79% of people right now in America are coping with mental health issues, 4 out of 5. So again, why? What's going on? Is that loneliness? Is it not feeling like you belong to something, that you're a part of something? And so for one, I feel like this is a great time If I'm the leader, if I'm listening to this podcast, think about your staff. Do they want to belong? Do they want to be part of what you're doing and what you're building? Imagine your business is a nation. You have citizens of the nation. Do they want to fly your flag? Are they proud of the flag you're flying? Do they want to tell their neighbors about what they're doing? I imagine the companies, if I'm at Patagonia, The citizens of Patagonia know, right, what the national anthem of Patagonia is, and they fly that flag proudly. If I'm at SpaceX, I understand that's a different flag. The citizens are there, they're passionate about being there. I think that's part of this, is as the leader, president of your citizens, why do people want to be a part of what you're building? Are they proud to fly that flag? I think if the answer is yes, you probably have a real culture. Attrition's probably lower. You go back to Gary, right? Gary is so intentional. Gary Ridge is, and again, I have not had a chat with Gary Ridge outside of the coffee conversation when his nephew worked for me years ago. Like you said, that intentionality, a lot of people talk about do they actually put their money where their culture is? And so I think when you do, you have a shot of losing that loneliness because people feel like they belong.

They belong to a higher cause. I think it just, again, these things are just exacerbating the kinds of issues. And we all have issues. So I'm not like, some people have issues, some people don't. Let's call bullshit on that. Everybody's got issues and everybody's got mental health issues, frankly, because what we call a mental health issue itself is an issue. Because it's not about being cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs or being clinically depressed or clinically narcissistic or any of the other terms that get used on a pretty regular basis. Everybody is a work in progress, to put it mildly. And everybody's just their own little brand of fucked up. And by that, I mean, we're all coping. And a lot of the ways that we learned how to cope, we learned in childhood. And some of those things that we did learn as a result of life, trauma, etc., when we were too young to even be able to process it, even precognitively speaking, those coping mechanisms are not good in adulthood. They don't necessarily serve us. My anger as a 14-year-old who needed to deal with bullies that I had since I was 5 years old, that anger might have served me in my 18-year stint as a litigation attorney. But it was also killing me, which led to my needing to create a midlife pivot instead of a midlife crisis for myself. So we have to just recognize that we're all dealing with stuff, processing and working through things. And in these times, as you said, a business, an organization where people spend so much time can really be a catalyst for better health all around, better wellbeing all around. We can create work cultures of wellbeing. That's what our company Workwell is committed to doing. That's an essential element of that. You brought up Gary. I'll go back to the one you mentioned earlier, which was Tony Hsieh. When I became the CEO of a company, it was about the same size as yours, you know, a little over 100 people. The first book I gave out to the entire company was Delivering Happiness. I mean, it's a killer book. It's a killer manifesto on culture, as you said, on having people wanna wear the company logo, the company mantra, the company colors, the company flag around. And that sense of belonging is a gap filler for sure. If you are still dealing in your life at wherever you are, you could be 20, you could be 60, but you still feel you're not good enough, that your self-esteem isn't always 100%. You're not always the most confident person walks into the room and many other things that are the remnants of our childhood past and traumas, et cetera. Then to be around other people that you can feel, to use a term of art today, psychologically safe to speak, to be heard, to be seen, to object, to do all those things. That's an environment like no other. That's not like being in 5th grade and being in a classroom. That's not that environment. That's definitely not 8th grade middle school environment. You know, we have an opportunity to create an environment that helps people to process and integrate things in their lives so that they actually are continuing to grow and can be, to use your word, to be courageous in their lives. And that means to deal with fear.

I totally agree. And I think, go back to your Coliseum. I mean, the irony here is who really needs to go to the Coliseum first but yourself? And I think never in the history of life— call me off on this, this is audacious— Has there been a time where mental health has been more normalized than now? Growing up, I'd never said mental health together. I said mental and I said health. I never said the words together. And what this means is, although a lot of our kids or a lot of the next generation workforce have their— mental health is a normalized term for them. Therapy might be a normalized term for them. So the real problem is for guys around my age who are probably leading companies, who never took themselves to the Coliseum and put the camera on themselves and figured out how to fix or address the shit that they've been suppressing.

Or just be aware even.

Exactly. Be aware of it. And look, I'll tell you what, Adam, For the first time, someone introduced me to a possible client to run their offsite, and I was on a call with this person, and I'm like, I know I will not take this person's money because I can't help him solve the issue because the issue was him. It's the first time in my doing this. And like, did I not have the courage then, like, to tell him that, like, you need to look like you are the problem?

Did you say that? I'm just—

No.

I'm not calling it. Thank you. All right. Thanks for being honest about that, because I had a conversation just yesterday with somebody I'm not deflecting this. I'll just say I don't think it's your job to do that, and I don't even know that it would've been appropriate to do that.

I couldn't do it. And by the way, my energy went away. So like, here's how you know if you're in like the right place or the wrong place. I think 3 types of people in the world: people you gain energy from, people who drain your energy, or people who— it's like an energy maintain. I don't think energy maintain's a great place to be either, by the way. But like, I got so small, like the air was gone. And I just knew in my heart, like, yeah, I know why there's a problem. It starts with the leader. And so anyone that's listening to this, get that self-awareness, as you said, Adam, like look in the mirror. What do you need to do to like better understand yourself? And we're kind of full circle on mentorship. What I missed early, when I got to New York City, I'm like, I will not fail. I will not fail. I'm like, I'm ready to go. I will live at this office. I will live here. There's no way I'm not going to be successful. And I did. I didn't have any money to hang out in New York anyway. I was like, where's the free meal at 7:00 PM? The big network in New York City. But I closed myself off to mentorship until later in my life. And thank God, one of my main mentors is a guy named Steve Willight, who was hired by Steve Jobs years ago. And like the amount of courage and confidence he gives me, and he can be tough love to me. So yes, maybe that's the theme. It's like, I think mental health gets bigger and bigger if you don't find a mentor. I think mental health gets bigger if you don't at least acknowledge mirror, mirror on the wall.

Again, you push back if you think this is inaccurate. I think we're the worst abusers on the planet Of anybody we know, we abuse ourselves the worst, meaning mentally inside in our own thinking. So when you don't have a mentor to not only just call you out on yourself, I was so blessed from really an early age. I mean, I want to say from like 17 to have had a series of mentors, including through my law practice. And some of them would call me out in ways that I won't digress in this conversation to call, to bring 'em up. But I look back on them, they were hysterical. They were just what I needed because then I wasn't making up stories in my own head about what this stuff meant. So mentorship on one level is you're not alone. Like, if you've ever, I don't know, not everybody has ever spoken to a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Probably many people have at this point. But the first time you ever speak to one, if you have recollection of it, it was like the first thing I got out of it was there's nothing wrong with me. Like, I'm not unusual. What my head is telling me is, why are you so angry? You know, like, oh, yeah, nobody's as angry as me. That's not true. But to be unaware that you have a tendency to rage or where the rage comes from or any of that stuff, that's what's dangerous. And when a mentor is in your life, whether that mentor is a professional that you see and pay, and that's a psychologist, psychiatrist, or someone else, or it's somebody that just takes an interest in you, Or is assigned to you is to parlay what you said earlier about creating those collision rooms and messy conversations and sessions for that. That's brilliant. That's a brilliant recommendation. Because in that mentorship relationship, you learn you're not alone. You're a part of a big club. And that club, it's not a small club. It's a very big club. It's called humanity. And when we're born, we're blessed to enter into that large club. We think we're separate. We think Somehow we're different, other people are different than us. We judge all that, right? But in the end, we're gonna all get the same answer. That's my view.

I think primarily we're all afraid. I do wonder— I have a theory. Again, permission granted since we're gonna keep it honest to call me out on this if you disagree. I do think that a remedy— not the remedy, but a remedy for mental health is nothing more or less than clarity. And I think we're on a path that can be cloudy, or when you don't know what you want, you don't know, then you're like racking your brain trying to find a path on a cloudy day. And I think if people had— and by the way, again, I'm a 47-year-old man, right? Like, It's been a journey to get to my version of clarity, but my mental health— and again, to your right, it's still not like, you know, I'm not talking to myself. There's stuff I'm still navigating, but I have clarity for why I was put on this planet. And, and I actually believe that. And there's belief. And then I try to surround myself with people that can help me fulfill that mission. And I think where it starts, by the way, is looking at like, what do you truly value? And for me, my values, every decision I make is through the filter of 4 values: optimism, creativity, courage, and excellence. And that's the order that they're in. And so it's not even like I'm a robot, by the way. It's just these are the filters for where I spend my time. The leader I mentioned on the phone, I didn't sense optimism. Or creativity. Maybe you wanted to be excellent. We just have very different ways of going about it. And I think it starts by getting clear on how you happened, why you're wired the way that you are. If you're running a brand, you probably have values for the company. Well, you're a brand, whether you like it or not. Adam Markel's a brand. Ryan Berman's a brand. What do I value? Have I actually treated myself like a brand? And like, why am I wired this way? One more thing and I'm off the rant. When you talked about Adam, like there's been shit that growing up pissed you off and you were angry. As an observationalist, my sense is usually when somebody violates a value of yours, even when we couldn't explain it, anytime you're angry, it's a violation of a value, right? Like your kids lie to you. Right? Tried to hide something from you and you're pissed at them, whatever it might be. Anytime you get pissed off, it's probably a violation of some known or unknown value that you've got. So why wouldn't you get clear on those values so you can understand why your emotions are going the way that they are? I'm like, oh, I get it. This person's an Eeyore. And as an optimist, that's going to be hard for me. I see the opportunity. I'm not going to spin for the next 3 days. What's the positive? And for that person, they're probably like, oh my God, do not call Ryan Berman. He's going to spin this in a positive. The optimist in him, he can't even see it the other way. So the club of humanity, I think, is still broken into little clubs. You got to find the thing you're passionate about. Why you and I work is you recognize the journey you've been on. There's self-awareness. I recognize the journey I am on. There's self-awareness. And it's like mutual respect in both directions. Not everybody's like that. There's a lot of robots out there.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to To me, it's also about what you mentioned before, which is about energy. And so you get to a place in your life where what you really want to do is be around people who give you energy and that you can give energy to. So it's a really wonderful exchange as opposed to— you describe like an Eeyore or whatever. To me, that is a personal choice. You can get to make a personal choice about who you're spending your time with and what the purpose of that time is. As the saying goes, can't select some people in our lives, family and folks. That's it. And that's fine.

But why isn't it a professional choice?

There are a lot of other choices that we get to make. You know,

I'll say, why can't it be a professional choice if I'm a leader of a company?

It absolutely can and it ought to be. Yeah. You know what it's like. You're wanting to create a great team. That's either something you do consciously or without a lot of consciousness. And in large part, everything we're talking about really has a great deal to do with consciousness. And that's something that, at least in my own experience, happens with time. It happens with age. It happens with experience. It happens with a lot of things coming apart at the seams. Maybe in the last section of our talk here, we could talk a little bit about what does it look like when things do come apart at the seams? Or there's the feeling that they might even, because I think part of what's causing those mental health challenges for a lot of people today is this just tremendous unknown. So much uncertainty and anxiety about the uncertainty. And look, I haven't been around the maypole more times than some, but yes, I have been around that pole more times than others. And so I've seen a few things. I've watched the economy crater and gone through cycles where it looked like the sky was falling. And I watch businesses succeed that I've been a part of, and I've watched them fail. And I've been a part of those failures, and I've been a part of those successes. So just like you, Ryan, right? We've been around long enough to have seen some of that stuff and to have gained some level of resiliency out of it. So I want to ask you about that. I want to find out how you've been resilient in your career, in your reinventions, in, in your life even. And that could take any number of, like, we can tackle it from a mental side, an emotional side, a physical side, spiritual side. Whatever you like, buddy.

I think that it's— we're back to consciousness. I think there's a famous Japanese proverb that fear and courage are brothers, that you actually can't get to the courageous choice without first channeling it through fear. But a lot of times when things start to come apart at the seams, we're so afraid that we suppress the fear versus address the fear. And I think leaders Many leaders think that they're supposed to have all the answers when sometimes it's about just posing the questions. And I think this is one of those scenarios. And to your point, we've both been around the block. I've gotten this wrong. I've gotten this right. I could get it wrong the next time. I think as a leader, what feels like overcommunicating is just communicating. And so if you feel like something is coming apart at the seams at the business, There's a way to do it where, with tact and grace, that the sky isn't falling. And there's a way to do it where it's not hubris or pretend mode that it's all figured out. And it becomes, in the sharing economy, just another thing that's shared. Usually when you surround yourself with the right people, they want to be part of the solution. They don't want to be told the solution. And it's like, this is our reality right now. It's messy out there. And I think it's coming right at it versus burying that fear, burying the thing that you're afraid of. I think it starts there. It just starts by bringing— I think the more we bury it and the more time that goes by, the harder it is to recover. And you think you have to hold onto it. Maybe that's why we're lonely, is that we're so holding onto the things that we feel are ours. And it's not about sharing the anxiety, but it is about sharing like what's at stake. And what we're dealing with and what we're coping with, and normalize it. Don't make it more scary than it needs to be. To me, this is part of the leader, is acknowledging it can be a shared reality for all. Just do it in a way that's not the sky is falling and now it's your problem and you figure it out. No, it's a we problem. And I think that's how it starts. By no means am I making it sound like a solution is easy. There is reality on this. Maybe there's a Cutback of people. Nobody likes to do that. But like, again, I would go at it and stay human as you do it versus what a lot of people do is they think they want to own it and they just bury it and then it's too late to address it.

So I want to turn it really on you now in terms of just your own personal brand and your business brand, which is about courage. So what's the connection between resiliency Having made it this far, having learned as much as you've learned, all that good stuff, what's the connection between your brand and resiliency?

So I've tried to articulate this in the past because I think there is nuanced differences. So let's agree that we don't get a say on change. It starts there. Change is happening whether you like it or not. You actually don't get a say. Did anyone vote for the pandemic? Probably some biotech or pharmaceutical might have, but realistically, like, nobody wanted the pandemic. That change happened to us. I think when change drives us and we have to really see what we're all about, that is an act of resilience. I think when you drive change and you're hitting the gas and you're proactive about it, that is an act of courage. They're both great skills that are needed. There's a lot of times where you're going to have to respond and react to what's happening in life, and resilience shows up. Change drives me. How do I respond to that change? Are we just going to bury that thing? No, we're going to come together and show our grit. That to me is resilience. When it's time to play offense and we're going to drive change, we're going to be proactive, that is where courage shows up. And that's it. Changes happen. That's the primal part. You drive change, change drives you. To me, that's the difference between the two.

I so appreciate that. I can't help myself because it's such a great, almost like planned lead into this. But I think the issue with resilience on some levels is for people how you described it. And by that I mean the paradigm of resilience. We use it to get through stuff that it's about grit. Or grind or perseverance, persistence, tenacity, any of those kinds of concepts. Yeah, there's an element of that that has worked for me in my life, that I'm a tenacious person. Quitting is not on the menu typically, unless it's like that's the only thing left on the menu. All that good stuff. And yet that for me was a road to exhaustion where I ended up in the hospital, where I ended up feeling as though my life was spiraling outta control and where I was having my own mental health challenges. was when I continued to play that paradigm represents to me this grit, this grind card over and over and over again. I think you're right. The pandemic revealed in so many instances a lot about us, not just even what we're made of, but just revealed things that were hidden from view, including to me the fallacy of the idea that we can continue to grind and grind and grind and grind without a cost. a cost that's not— we wouldn't wanna negotiate for. So to us, the resilience work is really more about how we recover. And that's where I think our courage and resilience aligns really well for me. And what I love about what you do, what your company does, what your brand is all about, because it takes courage to take care of yourself. Just primal thing. Because we think that self-care is selfish. Mhmm. And people don't realize that you've gotta develop resilience before you need it. If you truly wanna be able to weather everything you just said, which is constant, never-ending change, blastic change in the environment of your making, and of many times, most times, not your making, then you've got to be developing your skills to thrive in those environments and be creative in those environments long before the shit hits the fan. That takes a lot of courage to commit.

I think in the spirit of being courageous, I think that you have a harder sell. Like you're an insurance policy, right? Like you need resilience, but you don't know you need resilience until you need resilience, right? I mean, and so I think your heart, like I'll get brought in.

I don't think that's true anymore. It might've been. I think right now everybody sort of realizes, especially call it whatever the things are, the pandemic, great resignation, quiet quitting. Yeah. You know, attrition rates, engagement rates, mental health. I mean, People are just all kinds of banged up, right? Don't we get that already?

I sure hope so. I mean, from the right leader, I agree. I meant that, like, I already think courageous is a hard sell, right? Because I think a business leader looks at the word, and I know you never get 100% of someone's attention. You get like 18%, and they're like, my wife said this, and I gotta go pick up my laundry. And, and they're like, courageous? No, we're fine. Carry on. But what happens if a business really is stuck or they're spinning on something or they feel like, okay, we've been a little too safe and we do probably need to be a little bit more brave? I could see the moment where maybe I get a phone call. And you're right, if you don't see the power of resilience now, you're never going to see Like, wouldn't you want a resilient workforce? You probably know half of your workforce is resilient just from the response to the pandemic, right? I'm making that number up. I'm just wondering.

It's actually about 64.7.

I know it is.

I'm only saying that because, you know, well, that's based on a dataset of about 6,000 leaders, so it's not probably wide enough. But yeah, you get a lot of people who have made it this far and they are resilient. And it's just the question of like, to what extent are you mentally, emotionally, physically Resilient.

And purpose, to me, we're back to that. The point I was attempting to make on the remedy to mental health could be clarity. Do I really feel like I belong to the cause? Am I willing— if I was like, would you go 15 rounds? Because that's really what business is, right? Will you go 15 rounds for something you don't believe in? Why? Oh, okay. You need a paycheck. I get it. I don't necessarily want that for me. But if I'm like, would you go 15 rounds for what you absolutely believe in? Even if it's not totally figured out, you don't know how this boxing match is going to go, especially because I'm not the only one in the ring now, because I know that everybody else is in here with me trying to figure this thing out. We will box, we will fight. And so I think when you have that, kind of back to, it's not the facts, it's the feels, as I like to say. When you have the feels— And people feel like they're in, I will fight. Just like you have your spiel, the world needs more courage. And if I could be part of that, if I could inspire teams to be more courageous and, by the way, teach them how to do that in a way that's not a reckless move, that's a pretty good life. I'm down with 15 rounds. But when you don't have that clarity of where you're going, you can see why, like, People are spinning.

I'd say it's almost obvious when you look backwards at things, right? It's obvious. And that's why hindsight's 20/20. I think right now the world needs more courageous leaders. There's no two ways about it. How you develop your courage and where you can grow it. I had a Navy SEAL on the show a couple of years ago who talked, but I still remember about him saying that courage is contagious in the SEALs. Courage is contagious. Fear is contagious. Good attitude or bad attitude, contagious. All these things are contagious. Resilience is contagious. I think the way people feel today on some level, at least based on where things have netted out in our conversations and what we've been— it's a privilege, right? When people let you into their organization to look under the hood, I know you feel the same way, Ryan, but it's genuinely a privilege. I mean, I feel like I'm being brought to the dinner table Someone's home and you get to watch everything, like the kids fighting, the parents, whatever, the food that gets served, just the whole process. It's an intimate look. We don't take any of that lightly. And honestly, it's an honor. What we hear is that a lot of people, they don't feel like it's a 15-round thing. It's like every day it's like another round. Like, so if you said, hey, can you go 15 rounds for the cause, for the thing you're passionate about? You'd go like, Of course. And would you not go that distance if it was for something else? Yeah. It's like, well, what about the cause that you feel passionate about? But every day, there's no end to the rounds. Like, it's not 15 rounds. It could be 100,000 rounds. Come on, man. Like, how much do you want from me for a lousy— for whatever that paycheck is? How much do you want from me? My life, my soul?

But it's back to energy, right?

It's back to energy.

Right? Because if it lights you up, you will go 1,000 rounds.

You might.

And you're grateful. Just like you said, it's an honor for them. It's a privilege. Like, the amount of thought it takes to come to that conclusion— and that's context, because I feel the same way. It's like, I'm so grateful when someone reads my stuff, we have a conversation, and we connect, and to the point that they're like, I trust you to come in and Help me here. And you're just like, one, thank you, universe, that I'm not crazy, that my logic and my point of view is landing with others.

And is valuable.

Is valuable. I think that's it. And it's like they want to be courageous or they want to be resilient. They want their cultures to be courageous. They want to help their people. And you get the opportunity to come in, And keep it real and be on their hip. And it's not transactional. It's like there's a relationship there. And so just like you feel, and by the way, part I think of the journey, even though you don't know it at the time, is maybe you're exactly precisely where you're supposed to be at every phase. When you're 24 and you think you know everything, you're actually supposed to be where you are. And like the most primal way to describe it is like everyone remembers their favorite boss and their least favorite boss. You have to go through those experiences.

Exactly. I would say is we'll take a couple more minutes here and wrap up. I feel like it might even seem like, I don't know if people are listening to this thinking we're saying something like that we're in opposition. I don't mind being in opposition, but I think this is like a Venn diagram more than it is anything else. Because there's an element of, in my view, of resiliency for people where courage has a major component of that. And I would imagine that when it comes to being courageous, if you're exhausted and depleted and anxious, you're not gonna be likely— you'll be less likely to be courageous in that headspace or that physical space. So, so I think these things are super compatible. One thing, like you said, that you have a bit more self-awareness and you able to look at things objectively speaking, you go, well, I don't wanna run an organization that's just about how do I extract, what can I extract from whatever it might be, from the marketplace, from my employees. To me, that's what's depleting and that's what's being objected to in the world. And I think to, again, bring it back home to courage, what's been courageous is people saying, I'm not gonna put up with that and I'll leave and find someplace else. Of course, they take themselves with them wherever they go and all that good stuff, right? And they'll find problems everywhere they go. But it takes a lot of courage to just push back and go, no, I don't need to feel guilty about going to therapy. I don't need to feel guilty about attending my kid's recital instead of being in the office past the point of what makes sense. I don't need to feel bad that I'm not going to work extra hours, even though that might be what is being modeled by some of my own leadership. That takes a great deal of courage.

I have a shameless promotion alert, but I guess if we've made it to the hour mark, I can go there at this point.

But I did— we're going to have a lot of stuff about Ryan and his work in the show notes so you can get more there. But go ahead, plug away, buddy.

Yeah, well, 2 things. One, I totally agree with you. I don't think we're on opposite sides of this at all. I think it's basically the school of mentality and they're 2 separate courses in the same galaxy. I don't see how you get to one without the other, frankly. And it comes back to awareness and consciousness as a starting point before you get into the rest. So this is the shameless plug. So I have a Weekly Dose of Courage that goes out every Thursday. And I'd say 6 weeks, 8 weeks ago, I wrote one. I think we both live it, but you tell me if I'm off. It was about you have to care and not care at the same time. And I think like When you deeply care about your purpose, then sometimes you have to not care about what other people think. Now, you don't have to be an asshole, right? You could have grace and tact and be thoughtful about what you say and how you say it. But what I think I learned from coming out of story and marketing is that the very best brands on the planet pick a lane. They don't try to be all things to all people. And they're passionate about what they're talking about and they're at peace. Like I said, I'm not going to be able to help every Eeyore on the planet, and it's an energy drain. If there's an optimist with a problem, I'm your guy. And I'm trying to direct myself down that path. And that's hard. That's caring and not caring at the same time. There's 340 million people in America alone I'm not going to be everybody's best friend. If I could get 3.4 million, if I get 1%, inspire 3.4 million people to be courageous, I could transfer the light to them and then they can all unlock one person. Now we're talking. And so I try to stay intentional about, I can't save everybody. Let me stay focused on what I'm best in that's aligned with my values. Care and, and don't care at the same time.

Well, I was gonna ask you, how do you maintain your own resiliency? But I think, I feel like you just answered the question. I'll reflect it back to you. I feel like when managing your own energy and you're shaking your head up and down for people who can't see. So, Ryan, do you agree with that?

Yeah, I agree with that.

Do you finish it then? I'll just say managing your own energy. Tell me.

I like you, Phil. This is good

to me. I feel like that's one of the key ways people are always asking, you know, what are the tactical things? And I'm a big believer in something we call a recovery map. That creates these zones during the day that are everything from 60-second things to things that last 30 minutes at most. But tactically speaking, managing your energy is a big deal. And just what you just described, I mean, that's a big deal. Not setting yourself up for failure by trying to be pleasing to everybody. What a nightmare, hellish experience it is to try to please everybody or be liked by everybody, huh?

And I've been there.

Oh, I'm saying I'm still recovering from that pleasing nature or whatever.

I would say, I would challenge you as the listener, how valuable are your values? Get to know them and then use those for filters. Because my gut says your energy levels will be higher if you're meeting people or working on things that align with those values. And when you surrender those, the worst word in the dictionary is not moist, that's up there. It's actually tolerable. What— tolerate is the worst word in the dictionary. I will tolerate that behavior. That is a violation of who you really are, right? So get to know, do the exercise, figure out your personal core values and get clear on that. And then like you said, you can't do it with everybody. You've got family, but for those you can do it with, I'd be curious to see who really aligns with your values and who doesn't.

Plus that statement earlier, which is, what are you tolerating? What a great question to ask yourself on a daily basis. What am I tolerating? Do I tolerate mediocrity? Where and what? It's a thing you take a walk on. It's a thing you sit in stillness on, that you pray on, whatever your thing is. That's what I do. And I get those moments of clarity. So I think the through line for me today in our conversation really is that word clarity you brought up. Because there's just something that is very affirming and literally regenerates the energy when you have clarity. We do a lot of things in a moment. We could do a lot of things when we have a moment of clarity. As I heard said once upon a time, you know, we make a decision, we get married, ask somebody to get married in a moment. We'll start a war in a moment. We'll fight in a moment. It was like a lot of things that happen in just a moment. So that moment is powerful if you create clarity, just think about what is possible from that clarity. And you don't do that when you're just going from one matrix event to another, right? From one meeting to the next. That just, you don't get a lot of clarity in a day like that. You just get wiped out.

To your point, be intentional about creating space to think. Don't hate to think, man. Free to think.

Exactly. You're such a wordsmith. You're such a, thoughtful person and leader that I was already knowing we'd have a great vibe today. Love the conversation, love every ounce of it and all the insights you added. So again, for the audience, our beautiful community, show notes will have just chock-full of things about those insights that Ryan sends out, as well as more information about his work as a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, consulting. organization that he runs. So lots in there. If you have questions for Ryan and/or myself, then you can go to adamarkel.com/comment. Leave your question, your comment there. I promise, as always, it's not a bot, it's not ChatGPT. It's gonna be one of us that responds to that. So thank you for doing it ahead of time. Also, if you know somebody that would just resonate with some of the things you heard here today, it's our request as always, share this podcast with a friend, a family member, a colleague. Somebody that you think could benefit from it, please do that. And lastly, a request that if you feel good about the show, give it a rating. 5 stars is always lovely. We love that. But whatever rating makes sense to you, because that just tells the algorithm what to do next. And what we want is the same thing you want. We want it to get out to more people and have more people's light turn on, to use Ryan's lovely words. And with that, I will say ciao. And once again, Ryan, thank you so much for your time today, buddy. Thank you.

Thanks, Adam. Good to see you, man.

Oh, I had such a great time speaking with my buddy Ryan Berman on our Change Proof podcast today. I hope you love that episode as well. I'm gonna just do a little summary here of what I got out of it, and I feel like there's so much rich conversation and shared insights. He and I wrestled, chewed on a few things together. We talked about loneliness. That is not an easy subject for any of us. I think we all have bouts of loneliness. We feel it. It's something we need to pay attention to, of course, and it can bring us down. We can feel in need of support. We shouldn't feel alone. Even feeling lonely is something we should know we're not alone in. We're not alone about that. It's something we all feel, and we feel from time to time, and we also feel it profoundly at times. And in those moments, in those times when we do feel it profoundly, we need to have the support of other people around us, people that we feel get us, as Ryan was talking about. Being in an environment where you feel as though you belong is one of those sort of antidotes to that feeling of isolation that, again, is gripping so many people right now. And it's something that we have to just be aware of. We have to look out for ourselves, and we gotta look out for other people around us when we see it. We talked about delivering happiness, about the concept that the late, great Tony Hsieh brought to the table in his formation of a company that many of you have heard of called Zappos. And it was really a very creative process of creating a culture where people, again, felt as though they belonged, felt as though they could express themselves, that they had psychological safety in the workplace, which was a term that was not in use. It was not a term of art at the time that Tony Hsieh was the founder and CEO of that company. But it has since become the case, and it is ultimately very important. Ryan talked about collision. The collision of ideas. We talked a little bit about WD-40 culture and collision culture there. Really had a wonderful conversation about this coliseum, if you will, of not of combat, but of collision, of messy conversations and opportunities for people to connect and share ideas and innovate and disagree and all of that, which is, I think, what was modeled in my discussion with Ryan today. We know each other, we're friends, we're colleagues. We chewed on a bunch of things together. It was really inspiring for me to, to listen to him share his own personal philosophy of business, his life experiences around it. We talked about the difference and the distinction, if there is one even, between courage and courage culture in an organization and resilience culture in an organization. I think there's quite a bit of overlap there, Venn diagram, if you will, things that are not mutually exclusive, but really collaborate, coordinate, cooperate, quite well in crafting culture that is effective, that enables people to feel seen, heard, have their needs met, to be a place where people wanna spend time, wear the company colors and sing the company anthem and walk the walk and talk the talk of what that brand is all about. And that's not an easy thing to create. It really takes its genesis from leadership, the highest levels of leadership. So I am such a proponent of looking at how we make well-being workplaces and work cultures of well-being the norm and not the exception to the corporate rule that has existed for so very long. And that's the work that our team is at Workwell is committed to. And that when I get out and give keynote presentations on resilience, that's what I'm talking about, how it is that we sort of debunk this myth that resilience is about endurance. And how much you can grind and grit your way through challenges and changes, but rather how it is that you ritually recover so that you can go the distance, so that you always have the capacity to deal with whatever is around the corner, whatever the next wave that's breaking is, whatever the next uncertainty or unknown is that would create anxiety in the ordinary situation. But with the resilient, stress is not something we shy away from. Because we have a recovery mechanism to deal with it. So as Peter Drucker might have said, we eat it for breakfast. I so enjoyed this conversation. I hope that you did as well, and I hope that you will share it with a friend or a family member or a colleague that might need to hear some of these things. If you wanna take a snapshot or get a snapshot view of your own level of resilience in this very moment, there's no limit to the number of times that you can find this out because it's different. And hopefully it, based on these conversations that we're curating here and that you're consuming, that your resilience levels are increasing. You can go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com, and in just 2 to 3 minutes, 16 simple questions in 4 specific zones of resilience, you will find out how resilient you are mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. I so appreciate you being a part of this community. Thank you so much for your support. If you've got questions or comments, always welcome to leave them at adamarkel.com/comment, and I'll be the one to respond to those. But for now, I'll just say thank you so much.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.