Selfless Leadership with Marshall Goldsmith

Hey everybody. Marshall is a. Has sold millions and millions of books, multiple New York Times bestsellers. He's been called rated the number one coach in the world on numerous occasions. He's coached all kinds of people, some of which will like world leader figures that he'll share with us about today. So I'm just so delighted to welcome you to show Marshall.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Well, so his background starts in the center of the country, moves back and forth to the coast with his education, did a little while as an academic, wrote these books and has now coached so many figures and, and is a speaker, author and a coach at a very, very high level and has so much to share about the world of leadership. The probably the book you most know Marshall for is what got you here won't get you there, right? And, and I think is like you can get so much just from the title of that book which tells you you've got a good book. Like the notion that, that at some point we plateau and there's something else to reach for. So did I miss any.

That book is a perfect book. I just thought about for scaling. What got you here won't get you there. What got you to this point in your company is, you know what, this far better than I do. What got you to this point, your coverage is not going to get you to the next place. And you know, that is a. I'm sure again, you know more about scaling than I know. I've still, I'm sure you see this as a classic problem. You know, I behave this way, I am a success. Therefore if I just keep behaving this way, I will continue to be a bigger success. Maybe not.

Well, I think that's an interesting thing, right? Like something gets us to a point, we start to have a breakthrough and maybe we even have a bit of money. And then we start, well, I must be smart, I must be right about things. And, and then it stops working and then you're in new territory and it's not enough anymore. And then like whatever you had to survive at that point doesn't make any difference, right? Like, and then you're like, oh wait, what happened?

And as you said, the title of the book itself is good for people that you interface with because the title is an ongoing reminder of what got you here won't get you there. What got you to this level as an entrepreneur is not going to scale a business for you.

You know, one of your other book titles I'm reminded of in this conversation as well, it's like, at some point, I know that when I look in the mirror and that I've had my drop in performance or a breakdown or an upset, I think, God, I've lost my mojo. How do I get my mojo back? And I, and I, and I, when I'm talking to leaders, sometimes I'm like, wow, this is not the leader I started coaching. What happened? Where'd your mojo go, baby? Let's get your mojo back. And that is not a term or a thing that people always think about, but there is a moment where we, we, we stumble, right? Like it doesn't work anymore.

And, you know, I define mojo. That was my New York Times bestseller number two. I defined mojo as that positive spirit that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside. Well, it's a positive spirit about what you're doing now. And it's very important because leaders, like the leaders you work with, can lose that. And, you know, they were excited, motivated, enthusiastic, and now all of a sudden, they're not that individual doer anymore. And they have management and they have the people and all these things that if you're not careful. Exactly what you said, they can lose their mojo.

So there's a couple of things I want to talk about about, like, we like to tell real stories about real people, real companies that happen, or at least even if we keep them anonymous to bring some reality to it.

I'm unlike most coaches, I'm more than happy all my clients are known. The old days of coaching was you can never mention the names your clients. I never liked that. You know, why? What are they shamed or something? My clients are not dysfunctional people. These are great people. By the way, you look at my last book, the Earned Life, look at the first six pages. They're my clients. It's not some secret.

Yeah, yeah. Real. So. Well, let's talk about one. Alan Mullally. Just a small name, right? And just not to assume anything. Alan Mullally, former Boeing CEO, former Ford CEO, remarkable career, actually. Originally from Oakland, California, but grew up in Kansas and rose through as an engineer in the ranks. And really an extraordinary leader in modern times. And was one of the folks you coached. And there are a few stories about him that I've heard and share with our clients. But I'd love to hear your. How did you get started working with him? What was that like? What are you left with?

Well, I met Alan many, many, many years ago, and it was before he went to Ford and. Brilliant engineer. And in my coaching for 45 years, I didn't get paid if my clients didn't get better. Better is not judged by me or them. It's just right around them. So, you know, you get paid for results. You learn a little bit humility here. And so I'm working with Alan. It becomes ridiculously obvious that I'm going to get paid and he's going to get better. I think I could have spent maybe an hour coaching him, and the game was over. He figured it all out. He said, I do this and this, and this leaves it. Yeah. And I get better. Yeah. He said, you know, I. I built an airplane that's very complicated. I can do this. So, of course, Alan improves. And then after about three months, I said, alan, we got to perk this up. I'm charging Boeing lots of money here, and I could do something to justify my value. He said, why don't we have everyone get better?

Yeah.

Then he just rolled what I did down to the next line. Then he goes to Ford, of course, and his Stock went from 101 to 1840. He was the CEO of the year in the United States. Just and 97 approval rating for every employee in a union company. I love Alan. So I talked to Alan. So, Alan, we're working on a book together now. This is a great friend of mine. So I said, alan, when I was younger, alan, of all the people I've ever coached, you improved the most. I spent the least amount of time coaching you. Now. I said, alan, I made a chart here on one dimensions called time spent with Marshall Goldsmith. That image called improvement. There seems to be a negative correlation here between spending time with me and getting better now. I said, alan, the way this chart looks, you never met me. You'd really be good. I said, what should I learn about coaching from you? They taught me two lessons that changed my life. If everyone listened to learn anything today but these two lessons from Alan Mulally, this is a good call. Lesson number one, your biggest challenge as a coach, called customer selection. You work with great people, you win. You work with the wrong people, you lose, man, you got to work great people. Two, never make coaching about yourself and your own ego and how smart you think you are. Make it about the great people you coach, how proud you are of them. Then he said, as a CEO of Ford, my job ain't that different. I don't build the cars, design the cars, sell the cars. I never been in a car factory before. Every day I told myself, it's not about me, it's about them. Well, it's Hard for the people you work with, who smart people often founders. It's been all about me. I let it go. Now, you mentioned I got ranked number one coach in the world. Why? Nobody knows I'm a good coach or not. I can't say I'm the best coach in the world. I can say one thing with certainty. I get the best clients in the world. You. You work with the people I work with, you're going to look pretty good.

Yeah. You know, there's like, a correlate to that. Somebody said that, that, like, really great people know when to quit and when and. And to die young. Their reputation is still intact. It does bring up an interesting thing, though, and I. I think there are a few stories from Alan Mulally that struck me really well. One of them, he talks about a senior leader who wasn't upholding the standards and things in their company meeting. And he talked to the guy, and the guy's like, yeah, I know. And I've been doing this. It's just really hard for me. That's the way I am. And he's like, okay, well, I totally get it. He's like, oh, that's great. Right?

See, Alan is not. He wasn't being judgmental.

Right.

It's a very simple point he made. I'm very familiar with this story. It's a very, very simple point. He said, look, I'm the CEO of this company.

Yeah.

Here's the way we're going to act.

Yeah.

If I'm the CEO now, if you don't want to act this way, it's okay.

Yeah.

I'm not criticizing you, putting you down, judging you. Maybe I'm wrong. This is a decision I made. And, you know, if you don't want to do it, it's fine. I love you. You're gonna have a great career someplace. You just won't be here.

I think that's so great because, like, time and again, I hear a CEO, and we're talking about we're doing this or that, and they're all lit up. We're like, we're all in on this scaling up stuff, and we want to do daily huddles. But my team, they're not on board with it, so we're not going to do that one. I'm like, okay, who's the CEO?

You're the boss. Peter Drucker taught me a great lesson. I'm gonna share with everyone listening. See, again, I'm very lucky. Not only have I had great clients, I've had great teachers. Peter Drucker, I mean, I got ranked number one coach in the world. I could tell you my brain compared to him, 10 year old, he was a smart man. I got to spend 50 days with him. Very, very lucky guy. Well, Peter Drucker taught me a lesson. I'm going to share with all your listeners right now. Again, this is one of those. If you just learn this, it's a great lesson. One is from Alan. Two is from Peter Drucker. These are smart people. Peter Drucker said, we're here on earth to make a positive difference. Not to prove her smart and not to prove her right. We get lost on that. All you people listening to are engineers. Engineers get lost on this all the time trying to prove they're right. Smart. That's not what we're here on earth for you to make a difference. Number two. Every decision in life is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that. Not necessarily the best person, the right person, smart person. Decision makers make decisions. Number three, if I need to influence you and you have the power to make the decision, one word to describe you. That word would be called customer. One word described me as word called salesperson. Customers don't have to buy them. Salespeople have to sell. Now you want to scale up your company. You want investors, I want to help you. They don't have to buy. You gotta sell. And by the way, it's not their problem. No, it is your problem. Make peace. Now, on the other hand, back to Alan's point in the Peter Drucker point, connecting the two dots, right? In this situation, our instinct doesn't have to prove the other person wrong. Yes, I'm right. You're wrong. Useless. You're not gonna prove the wrong anyway. What? Alan didn't prove the guy was wrong. What do you say? This is what I believe. This is what I want to do. You want to do something different? Okay, maybe I am wrong, just not here. I'm the decision maker, though. I am the decision maker. I am the CEO, and I have made a decision. Here it is. This is what we're going to do. And he doesn't get angry or upset. He doesn't preach at the other person now, by the way.

No, he has compassion for their humanity. He has respect for their differences.

They.

But he has conditions of satisfaction. He has a line. He has like, look, this is the standard around here. This is what we're doing. And, and I totally get if you don't want to do it like it's.

Okay, look, Allan went to Boeing.

Yeah.

Two times people did what you said. There was that one in the second case where people just said, I don't want to do this. What do you say? Mine. By the way, one thing. There was no HR committee meeting.

Yeah.

No, there was no HR committee. There was no long discussion. There was no lengthy dialogue. Oh, no.

Yeah.

It's clear you don't want to do this. It's okay. I love you. Goodbye. That was it.

Yeah.

Now, by the way, you might say it wasn't that harsh. 2 people out of 16. He got rid of 2, 14 out of the 16 people that led the company to bankruptcy, turned the company around. Well, you know what he said? This business of changing the corporate culture. I want to go back to your point. This business of changing a corporate culture takes forever. Blah, blah, blah, big company, you know, he said, I don't have forever. They're going broke.

Yeah.

Now we change corp. Culture today back to the people you coach. And I totally agree with your advice. They want to do this stuff. You're the boss.

Yeah.

And by the way, if you make it a vote, it's not going to happen.

Yeah. You make what?

You may get a vote.

Yeah, yeah. It's not a. Yeah.

That scaling requires a lot of work and I'm busy and. Yeah, yeah.

It's a change. It's a. For sure a change. And it's not comfortable. It's not always comfortable. You know the other. I bet there's a few people begging him to come back and advise or lead Boeing again these days with the situation Boeing's in.

Yeah. You know, Alan unfortunately can't go into detail on this one, so that's one I can't talk about right now.

Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally get it. It's interesting that, you know, you sometimes will discount the story of a company because it had a period and then it's in a different place today. But I think we can learn from ge, we can learn from Jack Welch, we can learn from Alan Mulally, we can learn from Boeing. Even if the company is in a different place today. And like that.

Well, you know. Yeah. You made another good point about this CEO thing.

Yeah.

When you leave, you leave.

Yeah.

And you do not control the company. When you do not control the company.

Right.

And you might say, well, if you create this blah, blah, blah, it's. That's not real. The new person is going to come in. You know what the new person is going to do, what they feel like.

Yeah.

And look, again, this is Not a secret, but Jack Wel said was the biggest mistake he ever made. His successor. Yeah, well, hey, it happens.

Well, I want to ask you about where coaching comes from, but I also want to ask you about leadership results and goodness or whatever. I'm struck by something and I'm curious what you'll have to say about it. But I look at a number of extraordinary leaders who've accomplished great things who, who have like, human flaws. Like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs created this extraordinary company and there's this enormous legacy, but like, he probably didn't win dad of the year awards. Elon Musk is an extraordinary figure getting all kinds of negative attention today. Right. But certainly having produced things, Al Mulally doesn't have it.

Let's take Steve Jobs case study.

Yeah.

Excellent case study.

Yeah.

Steve Jobs was at Apple and he got fired. Yeah, he got fired. Okay. They brought him back. Steve Jobs, when he was at Apple originally, basically sent a message. Everybody's got to be an innovator. If you're not an innovator, you're kind of a loser. And everybody has to be this creative person. Remember they had the ads kind of like innovators and losers. Yeah. Well, guess what, who's the CEO of Apple now? Tim Cook. Right?

That's right.

You know what? Tim Cook is Safi Bacall's good friend of mine. He said we can break people into different categories. One's called artists and one's called soldiers. Tim Cook, soldier. He's not an artist. But guess what?

Yeah.

Combined with Apple alum. Combined with Steve Jobs. Great team. Why came back, he had a soldier. He wasn't a good soldier. He's an artist. Well, great artist, didn't work fine. Great artist, a great soldier. Guess what? Now you've got a visionary and you've got an execution person. Both his mistakes when he was young is he put down the execution person. They were considered inferior. That didn't work.

Yeah. He came back a changed person and led it to a whole new place. Right. Apple was disruptive to begin with, but the Macintosh didn't thrive until much later. Yeah.

Right. It was a great example.

Yeah. So talk about where coaching comes from. And let me just tee it up and say in business a lot I hear, well, I want a coach who has done what I want to do. I can't be coached by anybody who isn't a billionaire, who hasn't led a multi billion dollar, taken a company public or whatever. And I know you've coached all these extraordinary people. And that's not Your background and I think we get something wrong all the time. It certainly isn't true of sports. Why is that the case in business? What do you have to say about all that?

Well, the first thing is coaching has become much more pervasive than ever.

Yeah.

So it's not like I found some shortage of people who want to hire me as their coach. Right. So it's not really a problem. So coaching is much more pervasive than ever. You have to ask yourself, coach, to what you see. My mission is helping successful leaders achieve positive long term change in behavior. Now if you, you want to change behavior and you are at a very high level and you believe in it yourself and you will be supported. My coaching process is fantastic. My coaching process will not turn a small company into a big company. I'm not an expert at strategy. I am not an expert at scaling. Yeah, that's you. That's not me.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not you. Well, it's not like I'm worse than you or better than you. We're different. You do one thing, I do another thing. Okay. In a way you're a coach. I don't know how you define yourself, but in a way you do coaching. Right. I could not do what you do. I'm not an expert on what you do at all, by the way. Would not pretend to be an expert on what you do. On the other hand, you don't do what I do. It's okay.

It's a really useful thing and I think useful for our listeners, viewers to remember when you go looking for someone to help you in any domain. And I have had many coaches. I'm always looking for kind of the next coach for the next part of the stage of my life. But I've had a voice coach, speaking coach, writing coach, business coach, finance coach, coaching coach.

Yeah, exactly.

Different.

They have different skills and different knowledge base.

Yeah, yeah. You're going to get somebody and at some point you may need to move on to the next coach in that realm. Right?

Perfectly fine. I don't work with people forever.

For your whole life, right?

No, I get bored. I mean, I've known Alan my whole life. We're still writing a book together. I've known him not my whole life, but 30, 40 years. We're writing a book together. Right. And on the other hand, I haven't been his coach for ever. That's okay. We're still friends. We still talk all the time.

In your work, you. In our prep for the show, we got a story from you about Putting attention on yourself and receiving lots of awards and getting focused and letting that defocus you as a coach. Share that your mistake story. I think people love hearing.

Yeah. And I think what's really important is don't let stuff go to your head.

Yeah.

And it's very hard not to do this. I'm certainly not exempt from anything, by the way way I never pretend I'm some role model that is better than my clients. I am certainly not a role model who is better than the clients I have. Somebody called me up to help me every day. People ask me if I have a coach. I have some call me every day. My name is Marshall. I am way too cowardly and way too undisciplined doing this stuff by myself. I need help. You know what? It's okay. It's okay. We all get lost in our ego. I'll tell you a story. When I was very young, even before I became a coach, I was very young. I was at UCLA. I was in this group with old Dr. Tannenbaum who was the guru figure. And we're encouraged to talk about life. So I talk about people in Los Angeles. Oh, they're so screwed up. They write gold colored Rolls Royces. They wear 85 blue jeans, plastic, materialistic, shallow. I'm trashing people in Los Angeles. Given that I was broad from Valley Station, Kentucky, I'm sure that may be the world's authority on everyone in Los Angeles. But you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. After about three weeks, he looks at me, scratches his head and says, who are you talking to? I said, I'm talking to everybody, I guess. He said, every time you've spoken, you've only looked at one person and seemed interested in appearing. One person. Who's that person? It was you. Why me? There are 10 other people here. Well, I said, I think you can understand the profound significance of what I'm saying about how screwed up it is to impress people and all that stuff and that, you know, I think you can really understand the deep significance of what I'm saying. So he just goes, is there any chance for the last three weeks you've been trying to impress me? And I said, well, no. I said, I'm very disappointed. I think you've missed the, you've missed the deep point. So I was trying to make it. I, I don't think you understood at all. He goes, well, I think I understand. I look around the room, I see these 10 heads. I hated his guts for six months. Huh? Six months later, you know what I said? Thank you, sir. You just taught me a very good lesson here. Well, I've had that lesson repeat many times in life. Dr. Paul Hersey, my mentor, he called me in one day. This is a great one for your. Your. Your audience to listen to, because I was doing well. He called me and he said, you're screwing up. I said, what's the problem? I was worried. Right. Because he's a big, big guy, important person. Oh, your customers love you. Okay, that's good. And you're making lots of money. Very happy feedback. Good. You said you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, repeating the same day over and over again, and you will never become the person you could be. You can be more than this. Yeah, he was 100% correct.

Yeah.

I never forgot that. You can be more.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm putting words in your mouth, but the best of my knowledge, that's your whole job. You can be more. They don't want to be more. Is there any reason for you to exist?

To me, I think that's the fundamental premise of coaching. Right. If you want to be more, which is why you get a coach, and your coach has to consistently see you as more, even when you're not acting or looking like it. Right. Like, I'm listening. I see that future you and. Right. That's not what's in front of me right this moment.

That's a great way to say it.

I see the future you. It's not here right now.

I see a possible future for you.

You could get there.

Well, I got you here. Won't get you there.

I have opposite me a picture of me doing some working out and that kind of thing. And I have on it not finished yet. And then my company value and personal value is never finished. And for a long time, I've had the picture of Jack lalanne on there. And Jack lalanne's fairly dated now, but he was this old fitness guru from way back when who was, like, working out intensely into his 80s and doing extraordinary things. And I just love that idea of being at work on myself until I die. And the best clients that I have have this notion that they're engaged in some quest for mastery, which means never being finished. Right.

Like, well, look, I don't think I'm finished. I'm 75. I'm talking to you now. I hope you appreciate the true sacrifice I'm making to talk to you. Do you know what I'm giving up today that I could have been doing instead of talking to you? I could have been playing crappy golf with a bunch of old men at the country club while eating chicken sandwiches and discussing gallbladder surgery. You know what? I'd rather talk to you.

I love that. Thank you for that. Even though we hadn't met before today, I appreciate you coming on. Because you're not just speaking to me, of course, you're speaking to the thousands of people who will listen to this episode, watch us, right? And all those people and all of their dreams and hopes and aspirations, their goals, the things they're working on. Right. We will have contributed to that in some way, and we will never know what we did.

Well, look, as I've grown older, my mission in life has become simpler and simpler and simpler. You know what I want to do now? Help people have a little better life. I mean, look, my clients are mostly rich people anyway. And I'm, you know, One guy's worth $4 billion. What am I supposed to do a good job to 4.1 billion. You know, who cares, Right? I just want to have a better life. Look, a couple people listening to us today have a little better life, based on our conversation. It's a very good use of my time.

Then we've done a good job. Yeah. So just as a personal thing, I have long thought that I would like to work into my 80s. Not because I need to, but just like to be doing something really useful. But I suppose that work will change, like the tempo, the nature, the structure of it will change. But the fundamental core of, like, my life purpose is probably getting fulfilled. I wonder what you think about that, what your plans for yourself is, are.

I have an Advantage. I've done eight programs with retiring CEOs, so I'm familiar with what are you going to do now? And I've seen it with them, and I'm going through the same thing. What I'm not doing is I used to travel constantly on American Airlines. I only have 11 million frequent flyer miles. I had a second home in New York, second home in Dubai. I mean, I've been 102 countries. Well, you get older. I just can't do that like it used to. And the reason is, one, I could probably do it, but I don't want to overdo it. And, you know, it's not fair to them if I don't show up or have something happen. And you get older, things happen, right? It could happen. I feel very lucky. I'm in great health now. But you can't count on that forever. And so I think you need to Keep. Challenge yourself. What do I want to do next? And for me, I mean, I'm working on tons of things. I'm working on new book. I'm working on my AI project, which we can talk about. Fantastic project. And so I'm doing all kinds of new stuff. I think that's a healthy way to look at life.

Yeah.

Now. Now, there's one thing you said. I'm going to give you some feedback. Are you ready for one thing you said was incorrect. Wait a minute, here it comes. Are you ready for it?

Oh, sure. Yeah.

You said I won't need to keep working. I won't need to. Yes, you will. You will need to. You know what? You won't need to for money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're gonna need to. For inside, though, I can tell you I've spent enough time with you to tell you your odds on crappy golf with old man at the country club and eating chicken. It's not gonna happen. And a lot of these other guys, these old guys are married. First you gotta tell them your wife doesn't love you that much. Your wife doesn't want you lurking around the house all day. One guy said, he. He retired, and he walks down the stairs. You know what his wife said? Time to go to the office. Which I don't have office. I'm retired. So she said, you have an office now, a nice new office. And here's your keys. And now you're gonna go to your nice new office and. Which is, by the way, not in this home. And you're going to meet your nice new secretary, who, by the way, is not me. So you go to your nice office. So he said, well, what am I supposed to do? She said, I don't care, but don't do it in this house. And then she said, I'll see you at five. And she goes, no, six. I said, make it six. Well, I mean, come on, I can tell you, I've been around you longer. You got too much energy. Your mind works too fast. You know, your odds on successfully coasting are zero.

Well, it's funny because you opened that story talking about having houses in Dubai, in New York, and traveling too much. And two weeks ago I was in Dubai. Last week I was in Boston. It was pretty close to New York. And then I was in Nevada this week. And I just noticed, like, I'm exhausted. And there are some weeks that I'm in four cities, and I am just, like, this week I'm really feeling it. I'm like, okay, I need to. In the. In 2025, it's time to shift a little bit my tempo and that kind of thing. I've got somebody texting me this morning about meeting in New York or London, and I'm like, oh, really? Do I have to go somewhere again? Like, how can I modify that?

Good.

Yeah. Well, a couple that we're going to get to the AI thing. Before we go there, why don't you talk to us about working with Francis Hesselbein at the Girl Scouts?

Well, you mentioned that, you know, people like stories, so I'm going to tell you a story about her. One, Peter Drucker said she's the greatest leader ever met.

Yeah.

Two, I feel so blessed to have known her at all. She's one of my best friends in the world. I was a great friend till she died at 107. I gave the speech at her funeral. You know, just love her and always up and positive. I want to tell you one story about her for everyone listening that captures to me this is one of the best leadership stories I could ever tell. So I'm a volunteer when she was still the Girl Scouts.

Yeah.

So she asked me to do a speech or talk for the top women in the big cities. New York, Chicago, Louisiana. You know. Big cities.

Yeah.

Very distinguished women, by the way. So I said, francis, I'd love to do this. I'm booked every day of the week. The only day I could do it is a Saturday. She said, you know what? You work on Saturday. We work on Saturday. I said, well, thank you. I'm happy to do it. I'm embarrassed to say, though, I'm in a different city every day, and I got to get my laundry done. And is there any way that I could get my laundry done maybe? And then when I leave, I'd have clean laundry. It's embarrassing, but I, you know, you got to get your laundry done sometime. She said, not a problem. We have laundry facilities. So I said, what do I do? She'd take your dirty laundry, put it on a pile on the floor, and I'll have someone pick up your laundry, take it to the laundry place. You get done working, everything is clean. Life is good. She said, it's the least. I'm a volunteer. She said, it's the least I can do. You're volunteering your time? Are you kidding me? I'm happy to get this done. The next morning, I'm having breakfast. CEO of the Girl Scouts in New York, Chicago, Louisiana. Big cities. We're having breakfast. I look up, walking down the hall Carrying my laundry, dirty socks, dirty underwear. Frances Hesselbein, the CEO, in front of everyone, they all saw her. She did not say one word. What was the message she gave about servant leadership?

Yeah.

How about humility?

Yeah, yeah.

She didn't have to talk. That was her. I would start crying. My dull story. It's very touching story.

Yeah. Being selfless, being humble.

Yeah.

The service of something that you care deeply about. Yeah.

You can't fake that either.

The lives.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, just a great person. I feel very blessed. Yeah. Just an amazing, amazing human being.

Yeah. Years ago I, I wanted to develop my speaking and coaching, facilitating and I, so I volunteered to work with a woman who was good at doing work in front of crowds of like a thousand and more and like, you know, I could handle much smaller groups at the time. And she said, okay, well you could be like essentially my personal attendant for this week and like you, that kind of thing. And I'm like, okay, so great. So she said she had a few things. I don't remember all of them right now, but she was like, you carry my lipstick and, and then offer it to me frequently so I can make sure that my lipstick is on and good. And, and, and I want you, when I, when we break and we go, that you buttonhole me past and through the people because after you talk to a thousand people and stuff, they're going to want to interrupt you. And I need to take care of myself so, so that I could go be with them. And I could see it wasn't a vanity self absorption thing. She was just like, I have to do certain things to take care of me so that I can be for them, because my whole focus is them. And so, so I worked with her and put all the attention on making sure she was taken care of so she could put her attention on them and not on taking care of herself and the whole thing. And I got through the end of this thing and I, and she's like, so what did you get from this? And I just, I said I could just see the whole time how you sitting in there were just completely for them and you'd set up the environment in yourself with people like me and the whole thing so that you could just be for several days with a thousand people. And I got trained by that. Right. By carrying somebody's lipstick. Right. And running interference for them, I got to where I could be on a stage and work with a thousand people at a time. And you know, from that. Right.

That's a great story. Now I got A question for you. I'm curious about you and the people you deal with, which is, again, your people are similar in some ways, different than others, than most people I'm used to dealing with. All right, so I have a question for you. In my book, what got you here won't get you there. I talk a lot about overselling.

Yeah.

Winning too much, trying to be right all the time, letting go. In my book, How Women Rise, which was Sally Hoganson, very popular book in the world for women in leadership in the last five years, very successful book. But I talk about underselling, not promoting yourself enough. And I found that actually most more people are guilty of underselling than overselling. And I wonder if you're coaching somebody. I want everybody listening to think about this. A lot of people undersell, especially technical people, engineers, scientists, whatever. They have problems with selling. They feel bad about it. So I'm going to give you a I. I'd like everyone listening to a quiz and I want to get your thoughts on this. Here's what I say to people. I say, if you became more powerful and influential, the world be worse off or better off? Well, invariably they say better off. And, well, Peter Drucker said, we're here on earth to make the world better, not to prove it. Right. That's good. Better off. Then I say, just trying to become more powerful and influential sometimes make you feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable? A lot of people say, yeah, it makes you very uncomfortable. So then I say, okay, that's nice. What's more important to you? Making the world a better place or being comfortable? Choose. If you'd rather be comfortable, fine. Be comfortable. Don't complain about it, though. Don't brag about how self effacing and humble you are when basically you lack guts.

The humble brag?

Yeah. Yeah.

For me, it lives like comfort and discomfort are swings of the pendulum. It's like there's a time where I'm like, you know what, we're gonna sit on the couch now and I'm gonna watch all the episodes of this today. And we're gonna throw today to TV and comfort food because I've just spent, you know, several weeks doing something else. So it feels like there's times to be both uncomfortable and comfortable. I'm gonna go do something now. I'm gonna engage some training to be uncomfortable. Then I'm gonna go do something that's comfortable. Like it's an oscillation or. But there's conscious intention with it.

Let me ask you a question about the people you coach yeah. The people you coach, would you say their natural tendency, if you had to pick a default reaction, is oversell or undersell?

It varies significantly by the role. So I'm coaching the whole C suite most of the time. And there are people on it who will be oversell. They will be people in persuasive evangelical kinds of roles and they raise the money, they sell the goods, they. They will tend to be more like that. And then there are operation people who undersell things. Right. So I would say it's both.

It's both, yeah. It's interesting because I think most coaches, by the way.

Undersell.

They make no money. The median income for somebody doing coach, what they call coaching or life coach, 35000 bucks a year. So they make no money. Yeah. Terrible, terrible salespeople.

Yeah.

And they, they're good people. They just undersell people I deal with in my coaching, my work.

Yeah.

Their problem is that none of them need to go through this sort of training program. By the way, women or men, they don't need the assertive training program. They could sell. Yeah.

I would say I don't have any trouble at all being assertive, being persuasive, being selling. But. But I do have an Achilles heel and something that I work hard to, to make sure that I have listened and then I have relationship first because I will tend to be smart enough and arrogant enough to think I already know and understand something. And I probably do like 95%. But even if I am 100% right, I don't yet have relationship with the other person. So I'm like talking to like whatever. And if I don't catch myself and manage that tendency, I will just fill the silence. And there's. And I'm not selling effectively or coaching.

Very good example. One thing I teach is called the daily questions, where you write down a series of questions represent what's most. One of my daily questions over the years is how many times yesterday did I try to prove I was right when it wasn't worth it? I don't see too many zeros on my scorecard. Kind of hard, that old professor not to be right all the time. So maybe you're a little bit like me in that sense. You know, it's hard sometimes.

Yes. And there's something to manage over time, like it gets in the way. And I'm 60 now, so I've been doing it a little while. Those habits. Well, there's talk to us about the AI project. What have you done there? I think it's really cool.

You know, it's really interesting because. Let me just give you one second here.

Yeah.

Give away my material because I believe in the power of generosity and teaching, which are two of my core values. By sharing my knowledge and resources freely, I am able to help others grow and develop without barriers. This approach not only aligns with my personal philosophy, but also creates a ripple effect of positive change. It's a way of paying it forward, honoring the wonderful teachers and heroes in my life who have given so much to me. Through Initiatives like my 15 coaches project, I have the opportunity to give back and invest in the future of others, just as others have invested in me. Well, to me, that was my AI talking, of course. So what I've done is I have tried to teach everything I know to my computer bot. And it is ungodly how good it is. Now my goal was it would able. It would be able to answer 80 per session, 80% of questions as well as me. Right. You can answer any question better than me now and, and not only answer better than me, can answer questions. I never dreamed of that if I'd done the study, I could have answered. For example, my daughter Kelly is professor at Vanderbilt here in Nashville. Very smart. She had a PhD from Yale. I'm very proud of her. She's going to trick the computer bot. She asked the computer bot, how is your coaching related to utilitarian philosophy? I don't even know what utilitarian philosophy is. You know what happens? It studies utilitarian philosophy.

Yeah.

It studies my coaching. It understands me. I've spent hundreds of hours on this thing. It understands me. And it answers the question exactly as I would answer it in five seconds. No. Yeah.

The multiplying power of that is really, really pretty damn cool.

It's. It's amazing.

Yeah.

And you know, let me just see if I can find one of the things. Might be interesting. Yeah, this is pretty amazing because what happens is it has been trained to think like I think. Now, every computer bot is biased. They're all biased. Mine's biased by me. I am the Bible. So if you ask a question, for example, the same question, the answer may sound like this. It speaks Mandarin too. Right.

Well, thank God you worked on that, right? You worked and learned Mandarin.

Yeah, yeah, I've spent a long time studying Mandarin. So now it's not out to the world in multiple languages, but it's going to be available probably in a couple of months in 45 languages.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing.

It's mind blowing.

Amazing. So we've talked and we've given people a lot of stuff. MarshallGoldsmith AI, I think, is the URL. We'll throw it on the screen. We'll put it in the show. Notes Marshall, thank you so much for coming and talking with us today and sharing some of your stories and wisdom. I think we all got a little bit connected to not only our humanity, but also our aspiration and ultimately to live great lives that make a difference for others.

Well, thank you for what you're doing. I think you're dealing with a very important group of people, and it's different than what I do. I think it's very important, though, and you're helping people scale and become. You're really helping people achieve whatever dreams they had, which is so thanks to you.

All right. And thanks also to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, who created the whole scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that came before it. And to the folks at store on Christel, Seth Cameron, the folks in the background who get our show ready each week and then out the door and promoted and all that kind of thing. Thanks again to all of you for watching, for listening. Until next time, keep scaling.