CB LIVE! Courage to Leap and Lead with Dr. Ruth Gotian, Episode 88

Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday. And you know, on Tuesdays, it's CB Bowman Live. Hey, wait a second. We've got a new background. I'm testing it out. So, you know, our platform is courage. And we talk about how do you implement courage in the workplace and in life. And so I created this new backdrop. It's kind of loud, isn't it? But it's colorful and fun. And that's what we mean by courage. So I'm gonna be switching back and forth to my new backdrop. It's like having a new outfit to wear. I love it. And my special guest. So wait a second now. Let me just do some fun things here. How about that?

Okay.

So let's see if I have a secret for you. I know. My secret today is I'm going back on the speaking tour. And you know what? I just got a phone call and I have to turn her down. And that was a woman, Janice Perkins, who's part of my Women's Power Pack group and part of MG100. So, you know, we women are doing it up when you're around, CB. So Okay, let's talk about today. But before we do that, remember, please follow me on YouTube. Well, you're following me here on LinkedIn, and I'm on all of your favorite podcasts. Just look for CB Live and you've got me. Okay, and remember to subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn, of course. You know I'm BFF with LinkedIn, right? So, okay, let's go. Let's rock this out. My guest is Dr. Ruth. Now we're not going to just say Dr. Ruth because we all remember Dr. Ruth. This is— we have to keep it clean, right? So this one is Dr. Ruth Gotian.

Gotian.

Gotian. Ooh, the French. You know, I had on last week, I think it was. So we're going French all the way now.

I don't know if it's French, but I think it, you know, sounds better.

Better, right? Well, Doc, please introduce yourself to our fabulous audience.

Well, you know, I will start with this before I tell you a little bit about myself. You mentioned Dr. Ruth, the original. Right, the OG, who's about 93 years old now.

Get out!

Alive and kicking. Oh, a force, an absolute force. And the two of us joke around because we're both Dr. Ruth, we both got our doctorates from the same institution, Columbia University Teachers College, we were both in our 40s when we got our doctorate, we're both bilingual. In the same languages, but only one of us is a trained sniper. So all your listeners need to figure out who is the trained sniper, the OG original Dr. Ruth who's 93 or me. And I'm hoping they could put that in the chat when they figure it out. Is it the OG Dr. Ruth or the contemporary Dr. Ruth?

I'm going to guess, although I, Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I've heard the answer to this, but I can't pull it forward. So I know I'm gonna get it wrong. Okay, I'm going to put in my chat, it is— hmm.

Is it the OG or the new?

I'm going to go with that answer, and let's see where it takes us.

Let's see, let's see. Well, I will tell you Yes. That, uh, we did not study the same thing. The OG, the original, is a sex therapist. I'm not a sex therapist.

Yeah, but she had fun.

She did. I am actually an adult educator, a social scientist. I study adult learning and leadership development, and my research is about extreme high achievers. So I have studied astronauts and Nobel Prize winners and CEOs and Olympic champions to figure out what has made them so successful. Then I reversed engineered that path, created a blueprint, wrote the book The Success Factor, and here we are. And the reason I did that was as soon as I realized in my research that an astronaut is just like an Olympian, that's when I realized that success can be learned. And if success can be learned, I'm an adult educator. I can teach it. So here we are.

Okay, but before we go into that, listen, this is like a fireside chat. We're not gonna—

I got my coffee.

Yeah, okay. It's not— we don't start off talking about the here and now. We go back, way back, know the details of your life. So you want to know the secret, the secret sauce. So tell us about you, Dr. Ruth, before you became Dr. Ruth. Tell us about your childhood.

Ooh, I will start by saying that on my dad's side of the family, I am the only natural-born woman in 4 generations. All the other women had to marry in.

Wow.

So I've been surrounded by men my entire life.

No wonder. Okay, no wonder why you kick ass. I knew that you've got some kind of secret sauce there.

You know, I was only in my late 40s when I attended my first all-women's conference, and I didn't even know what to do with myself. I had never in my life been around so many women.

Wow, you have a lot of similarities there because I am an Army brat. Oh, my mom, tough as nails, even stronger, stricter than my dad, right?

Wow.

I, I remember when I was coming along, there was, uh, something that was up when you went to vote, um, that gave women more rights. And I said to my dad, are you gonna vote for this? And he looked at me and he said, hell no. And I said, what do you mean? I, I thought you were pro-woman. And he said, I am, but your mom does not need anything in writing to tell her she's the boss.

Love it.

Love it. To me, that was permission. I was all in that.

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

That's right. She was— and my mom never raised her voice, but she—

She had respect then.

Oh my God, my dad had so much respect for her. Yeah, it just was amazing. And I, I just never— she never told me the secret sauce. I had to figure it out myself, right?

But girl, it changes with each generation, doesn't it?

Yeah, but when I figured it out, forget about it.

You know my secret sauce?

What?

I surround myself with people who are better than I am.

I love that. I do too.

And smarter, for sure.

And willing to share.

Oh yes. Oh yes. And as they do that, it's just sort of, you know, these things that are passing in conversation that they'll say, They don't even remember saying it, but to me it's something new.

Yes.

And I just grasp onto that, and I, I really take it with both hands and, and run with it. And if I can learn these new things from different people, especially if they come from different industries, I'm like, oh, you tried that? Oh, how did that work? Oh, how did that— and I just, you know, I store it, and then when I need it, I can just bring it up.

And don't you love it when You share something with somebody who, you know, something that doesn't have a whole lot of meaning to you.

Yeah.

And then years later, you meet them, and you haven't spoken to them in years. And they say to you, CB, do you remember when you told me XYZ? That changed my life. And I'm having trouble remembering who they are, number one.

That's happened to me.

Where— how did I know them? And most of all, what did I say that was so life-changing for them? But I stopped worrying about those things a long time ago, and I said, who cares? What's important is you made a difference in somebody's life. That's right.

We call it microaffirmations, which is the opposite of microaggressions.

Micro—

Affirmations. So it's all these things that you may not even realize that you're doing, right? So microaggressions are those negative things, right? The roll of the eyes, the ignoring you, the looking you over, which you don't even realize you're doing.

Yeah, right.

And it has this negative effect on people. But there's also a microaffirmation where you don't even realize that you did something that has a positive impact on someone else. And it could be something like, good job, or that was incredible. Or when someone actually told me once, you're so smart. I don't remember hearing that growing up. And when someone said that to me, I was like, me?

Yeah. Now, does that relate to the imposter syndrome when we do that?

No, the imposter syndrome is you You got— so you've achieved something which you're not used to achieving, and you're afraid that people will think that you're a fake. People will realize that you're a fake. And this is actually something that impacts 70% of people. So it happens to everyone. It even happened in the Thinkers50 Gala backstage, backstage when the winners won, especially the women. They're like, oh my God, I don't deserve this. I was like, yeah, you do.

I heard that. I was there then, and I was in the front. But I heard that, and I'm like— I remember when Sanye received the award, and she was like, who, me?

Yeah.

Now, a portion of that is politeness, right? Probably from her culture. But then there's a large percentage of that that says, do I deserve this? What's going on here? Yep.

And that's actually— I, I wrote an article about that for Psychology Today because I noticed that a lot of the high achievers actually are faced with imposter syndrome. And I wanted to put a new spin on it because the imposter syndrome can be extremely stressful. And I realized that it's really— it's stressful because it's something new. We don't recognize it, and our body is confusing fear and excitement. So what if we put a different spin on it, that when we are faced with imposter syndrome, it's because we've achieved something that we've never achieved before? But it actually means we've achieved something. So instead of it being a trigger for success, why isn't it pushing us towards that achievement? You've achieved something. That's great. So it should be a sign of success, not a trigger for stress.

I like that. I, you know, I never thought I was a victim of the imposter syndrome. Until my platform came out about coverage.

Mm.

And I was talking to a friend who's known me X number of years, because then that'll give away my age, and we know we don't do that, right? Um, and I said to her, I hadn't talked to her for a while, and I said, so, I said, so what are you up to now besides the Association of Corporate Executives and DEI work. And I said, well, I'm now speaking about courage. And I told her the story about how that came about. I was asked to give a keynote on courage. And I thought, I don't know anything about courage. And I said, and I sat down to write this keynote and all of this information came out of me. And I thought, wow, I do know a lot about it.

Mm-hmm.

And how to implement it, right? So I was telling her this story and she said, it's about time. And all of a sudden I remembered when we were children together, she used to say, you have so much courage. And I would always deny it. Each thing that I did that triggered that comment, each success I had, I would deny that it was based on courage.

Yeah.

Yeah. And now I'm like, did I suffer from imposter syndrome? That's just not possible with me.

We all, we all have it. Look, if, uh, former First Lady Michelle Obama can have it, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and number one author J.K. Rowling, and Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, If they can have imposter syndrome, I can have imposter syndrome.

Yeah, that's right. Let's go for the imposter syndrome. Right.

But it just, it really, really is a sign of success because we've achieved something. And trust me, being, getting Thinkers50, you want to talk about a trigger? When you are surrounded by people you look up to, it it's it's surreal. And I was thankful when that happened. Marshall Goldsmith was actually backstage with me, and he just gave me this look. And you know how Marshall claps hands, gives you the thumbs up. You you know what that's like. And then he, he called me right after, and that just helped ground me a little bit. Remember I said we need to surround ourselves with the right people?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

That's what I mean.

He called me about Thinkers50 to let me know that I was in. And when he gave me the award for making a difference in the field of executive coaching and education, I remember at that reception, he said, okay, you now— I'm going to bring you up and you're going to accept the award and talk about it a minute. And I said, no, I don't want to do that, Marcia. And he looked at me like— A parent looks at the child that's put their hand in the cookie jar or something and did wrong. And he turned to Sally Hegerson, our friend, And he said, Sally, coach her right now. We're not having this.

Yes.

OK.

Yes.

I was thinking about this very bravely right now, here and now.

In front of everyone.

In front of everybody and all these other winners. And I'm like, OK, I've learned my lesson around Marshall. Do not pull that. Shy, imposter syndrome stuff, because he will call you out in a second.

That's right. That's right.

Because he knows how hard we've worked, and he knows we deserve it, and we should own it. And you don't play around in front of this man. He's going to say, enough of this shit. He will say it exactly like that. Or he'll go his famous, And you know you're in trouble, and then you take an oath. So now tell us. All right, so you were surrounded by men, and then next.

All right, so I went to a school. I grew up in New York, and my class had sixteen kids when I was in sixth grade. But in fifth grade, maybe there were twenty kids. Um, you know, this was a different time. It was around 1979, 1980, and recess was broken up by gender. The girls traded stickers naturally. No one told us we had to do this. The girls traded stickers. We had albums with pages, right? And if you had stickers with googly eyes, they were actually worth more in the trade. So we had the stickers that the girls were playing with and the boys were playing soccer. And I was not so interested in the high commodity sticker exchange. I would much rather kick a ball around and I wanted to play soccer. So I approached my teacher and he said, well, girls don't play soccer. Now, in reality, We didn't have cable. Mia Hamm wasn't around. You know, we didn't have it. So he didn't— he only knew what he saw. Well, this just didn't sound right to me. So that Friday I went to the mecca of education pre-internet, which is the New York Public Library. And at that time you can take out as many books as you wanted.

Right.

And I took out every single book that had a picture of a girl playing soccer. Come Monday morning, I put the 2-foot-tall pile of books on his desk, and I said to him, I would like to revisit our discussion about girls playing soccer.

Okay.

I was 10, and from that day forward, I played soccer. There was no girls team, so I had to play with the boys team. And, you know, I don't know how they felt about a girl playing soccer, but they did not take it easy on me. I can tell you, but you know what? I got good. I got really good. So much so that right away in high school, I played varsity soccer and continued all through high school and stopped then. But I was definitely the student athlete growing up and just try telling me I can't do something and that just fires me up.

From the same breed. I got into a situation yesterday at my doctor's office and I was fuming. And my husband is sitting there. He says, let's go. And that made me even more angry.

Or calm down.

Oh, yeah, exactly. That was his way. So we get in the car and I slammed the door. He said, what in the world? And I said, Darling, we've only been married a year and a half. I said, you know, you should know your wife by now. Do not challenge her in that way because all hell is going to break loose.

That's right.

Talked to him about it last night. This morning he comes and he says, are you calm yet? I said, no, no, not until I do every— I said, I'm going to find out who owns the company. I'm gonna report it on Better Business Bureau. I'm so fired up. Don't challenge me in that way.

You, you don't fight with a woman scorned, that's for sure.

You really don't. I'm just like the devil, you know, the devil wears Prada. Devil in disguise. I hear you. I'm a double Scorpion. And just like, no. And it was something simple like I had a doctor's appointment. They didn't put it in their schedule. And the receptionist said to me, no, you put it in your calendar wrong and we don't have it here. Now, one thing you should know is wherever I go, my computer goes. And I put appointments directly in my computer and confirm it with whoever's making the appointment at the time. And I said, oh, no, no, no, we're not going to go there. And I said, here's your out. Admit you're wrong and I'll be fine. She said to me, I'm not going to admit I'm wrong. It was a misunderstanding. I said, oh, we've got problems here. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Take the out.

I offered you the out. Get gloves. I said, you want to be a true woman? Admit when you're wrong and then move on.

Ah, that's hard.

So, okay, so then we went to soccer, and then what happened next?

All right, so then I, I went to college and I went to grad school. I studied business, um, in college and grad school. And like all good business students, I worked in finance and international banking for a couple of years. And quickly realized that just because you're good at something doesn't mean you enjoy it. So I left finance after 2 years. I always loved working with students, but most of my experience until that point had been with undergrad, and I didn't want to work with undergrads anymore. A lot of disciplinary issues. I wanted more the grad school level. And I said, what's the most competitive program I could find?

Hmm.

People who have too much to lose, because I want to run that.

Yes.

And I quickly found out that that's what's called an MD-PhD program. So the students, my students, would get both an MD and a PhD degree simultaneously. They're called physician scientists. And I ran that program for 22 years, cradle to grave— recruitment, admissions, budgets, operations, student affairs, alumni affairs, special events, Grants, you name it, I did it. And it was great because I got to do everything, so no 2 days were the same. I didn't have peaks and valleys, I only had peaks in my work. But at that point, I had done it all, and the challenge— I, I was still seeking that challenge. So at the age of 43, while still working full-time, at this point I had 3 kids and a husband, Um, I decided to go back to school.

When did you have time to get married and have 3 kids?

Actually got married young. I got married at 24 and a half.

Okay. Barely looked that now, but go ahead. I'm gonna let them decide.

And, uh, so I got my doctorate, same place as the original Dr. Ruth, and, uh, Loved, loved, loved it. And from there, I became an assistant dean for mentoring. I designed and launched a mentoring academy. I'm a chief learning officer and author of the book, The Success Factor.

So, okay, mentoring academy. What is that? Tell us about it.

So, CB, the research is clear that those who are mentored, who have mentors in their lives, Outearn and outperform those who are not mentored. They have higher productivity, higher efficiency, higher salaries, more promotions, and lower burnout.

Okay, let's, let's examine that for a minute. Are these mentors self-selected? Is it— are they appointed by an organization? And which works better?

Ah, so there's different types of programs. Um, some are assigned, some are more organic. I am of the camp that assigned mentors rarely work. If anything, they do more harm than good because—

Why?

Because they're assigned on completely random things, right?

So skin in the game.

My favorite color is, is royal blue, and your favorite color is royal blue, therefore we should be mentor and mentees. No, just like all people from New Jersey are not the same. It, it's really— when these assignments are made, they're made on something completely random, and they're very difficult to pull apart, and there's no exit ramp, and it's just riddled with problems. And as a result, when things go sour, the mentee is turned off to mentoring for the rest of their lives. Bad mentoring is worse than no mentoring.

How does somebody know that they have a bad mentor or the relationship— let's take it easy there. Let's say, how does somebody know that the relationship is not to their benefit?

So there's actually something— this is actually work from my friends Vineet Chopra, who is now the chair of medicine at Colorado. And Dr. Sanjay Saint from the University of Michigan. They actually wrote a landmark paper in JAMA, which is a big medical journal, called Mentorship Malpractice, which I think is the most brilliant approach to the way things go wrong with mentoring. And they talk about active and passive mentoring malpractice, and they talk about some of the passive things that your mentor might be doing, such as, um, they just don't have the bandwidth. They'll say, yes, I'll be your mentor, but they don't have time and they can't respond and they can't meet with you. But then there's also the active things that they'll give you busy work that's not really going to help you with your career, or they don't want you talking to certain people because they feel threatened by that sort of collaboration. Or they don't like that a spotlight is on you because they feel it takes away from the spotlight on them. So there's all kinds of things that your mentor might be doing, either passive or active, which is actually not good. And you know because you're stalled, you feel dejected, you feel depleted— all the bad signs. When you have a good mentor, you feel like you're on top of the world, like you can When you have a bad mentor, all you want is out. All you want is out.

How do you get out of a bad mentoring relationship without damaging the relationship?

That's why you need a mentoring team, not just one person. Having just one person is really an archaic approach. The more contemporary approach is to have a team of mentors. If whatever it is that you need, that you want, there's no one perfect person that can do that, but you can assemble a whole team. They don't need to meet together like a dissertation defense. They don't need to be on the same Zoom or around the same conference table. They don't even need to know of each other's existence. They just need to be there. So if you need help with something, there's different people that you can reach out to. So for example, um, when I was writing the book proposal for The Success Factor, I actually reached out to my former mentor who had written multiple books. She knew how to put a book proposal together. I didn't reach out to my mentor who's a lawyer who's never written a book in his life. That, that would have been futile. So, but when I need help with negotiation, who do you think I'm calling?

Mm-hmm.

So you give yourself options by giving yourself a team. And if one person doesn't work out, there's somebody else that you can ask. If one person is not getting back in touch with you, go reach out to someone else. There are other ways to do this.

What are you saying to the person that's not working out? Do you just not reach out to them anymore, exit left, or do you have a conversation so that they can A better mentor with other people?

Uh, it depends how comfortable you are with difficult conversations. And are you avoiding those kind of conversations? If so, if that doesn't make you comfortable, just reach out to someone else on your team. If you want it to be constructive, have that conversation, but fully understand you're likely not going to be able to change that other It's really hard to change other people.

Good point. Yeah. I remember when I was younger, to your point of a team, and I wish I could remember the book. It was written by a woman, and she talked about having your personal board of directors, which is in essence what you're talking about. And I have to tell you, that was the best advice I've ever gotten.

Yeah.

I don't think that I was able to implement it at that time.

Yeah.

Because you do have to be in a certain circle to be able to select who those people are going to be. And you have to know how to groom a mentor. That's something that a lot of people forget and don't know how to do. But that book has always stuck with me. And now I'm in the position to be able to execute Well, I was a while back. I started executing it. And I totally agree with you in every aspect that you've said. You feel different when you have a good mentor. You do. You feel like you can conquer the world.

So true.

And yet there's a lot of people who have mentors, the flip side, where they don't have the knowledge to train their mentors. Yeah, so important in a conversation, because a mentor to me is as good as you are clear on what you need.

Yeah, but you know, remember, CB, there's— people don't usually go to mentor training.

I wish they would.

I wish they would. I, I would love nothing more than to Teach mentors the different ways of communication, because what works for one mentee is not going to work for someone else.

Absolutely.

Because they have different ways of taking in information, different ways of processing information. And knowing that this one wants to read on their own in isolation and that one wants to talk through a challenge, know that you need to be able to pivot. Talk about having expectations and stretch assignments. And let's talk about appropriate challenges where you feel challenged but you don't feel like you're drowning. And you have scaffolding where you feel like you're— the person feels supportive, supported without being micromanaged.

Yeah.

Knowing how to do that, there's a lot of finesse and a ton of nuances. And a lot of people just, they don't have those mentoring workshops about how to be a master mentor.

In your academy, that you work with people on becoming a master mentor?

So I designed and launched it. I don't run it anymore. It was really inculcating the idea of mentorship into everything that we're— that we do. So we had 5 programs a month, both for mentors and for mentees, so that they can hear different perspectives And I believe, and the research has shown, that the better way to find mentors is not through assignments but through organic— this organic ecosystem where you're creating an opportunity for people to meet others. And that's what we did, is we created that ecosystem where you can meet different people in large group events but also small group lunches with 5 people, 10 people. And these are different ways that you can find senior people, you can find peers, you can find people who are junior to you, and you can start developing your own mentoring team with this cross-section of people who you're meeting. So we just created all of these opportunities.

And was it created within a company or—

Yeah, within an organization.

Organization. Okay. And so What did you train the mentee to do to have a rich relationship with a mentor?

Well, the one of the first things that I tell people is you have to meet your mentor at the 50-yard line. You have to do your part. You cannot walk into a mentor's office and say, CB, come plan my life. It doesn't work that way. You actually have to come in with a goal. And you have to come in with a plan. What are 3 actionable steps you need to take in order to meet that goal? Not your ultimate goal, the next goal. And then your mentor can help you finesse that, finesse that goal, finesse that plan, make introductions, get you to think bigger, get you to think wider, get you, if need be, to think smaller. But they can help finesse, but you have to come in with that. And if we can teach people how to do that, that would be great. And then what questions do you ask? Who else do you think that I should speak with who can help me actually develop this? What skills do you think I would need in order to achieve this? Knowing what to ask and knowing how to pursue is half the battle.

Does a mentor— this is going to be a tough one. Does a mentor relationship outlive its time?

It might. It might. But remember, being a mentor is not a life sentence. The mentors I needed when I was in my 30s are not the same type of mentors I need in my 50s. So I have new mentors. now. But I didn't throw the old ones to the curb. They've become really good friends. Really good friends. They saw me through that awkward stage. And I will always rely on them for their guidance. And they are extremely supportive.

Always.

So I tell people, you have like a bullseye, and they can become, you know, once they were in the towards the center of your bullseye, now there are these planets But they are still in your universe.

Okay, so let's go with— suppose you want to have a mentor.

Mm-hmm.

And you're not in an organization. Mm-hmm. Suppose you're a solopreneur.

Mm-hmm.

Suppose you're an entrepreneur. Suppose you're one person, small business. Kind of hobby kind of thing. How do you go about finding your mentors?

So remember I said it's about organic relationships? How do you find friends? Where are you going? It's the same kinds of ideas where you can find people. You can find people at conferences. You can find people who are keynote speakers and the— and you approach them. You can find people who are in the audience of that keynote speaker because they're interested in the same thing you're interested in. How are you starting these different conversations? What groups are you a part of? So even if you're a solopreneur or an entrepreneur, you must belong to some organization of people who do the same thing that you do. And within that, you can find mentors as well.

You go up to somebody and say, I want you to be my mentor.

No, please, no, please don't say that. Please don't say that. And the reason I say that, and I say that to people, and then I get messages, will you be my mentor? I was like, didn't you listen to what I said? If you're asking someone to be your mentor, you're asking them to take on another job. You're asking them to take on another obligation. I don't know anyone who has enough free time to be able to do that. But if instead you approach the person and you said, CB, I'm working on something. I know you've done this before. Can I grab a few minutes of your time to get your perspective? I really would love to get your thoughts on it.

I love that much better than what I get is, can I pick your brain? What am I, bird nest or something?

Pick it where— pick where do I start. But now I told you I'm working on this specific thing that I know you have experience in, and instead of my reinventing the wheel, I'd love to get your thoughts on it. What I'm doing right, is there a different direction I should take, etc. It's something very, very specific. It is time-bound. I told you I only want a few minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is. And who doesn't like to give their opinion?

Right?

Now, this is, it's all about developing a relationship, because people like to work with those who they know, like, and trust. And that relationship takes time. So before you ask for anything, make sure that you have a relationship where you know, like, and trust the person, And they know, like, and trust you. Because if you start to ask too soon, it's gonna bite you.

Okay. And what happens if you do identify a person, you like them, you developed a soft relationship, let me say.

Mm-hmm.

And you ask them, you say to them, I, I'm working on a project. And I'd love to get your advice. I'd love to get your mentorship on this particular project.

Don't use the M word.

Don't use it at all.

Don't even use it. It's a weight. But CB, now you've been helping me for weeks. You've been giving me guidance. You shared your perspective. You told me what you thought. And then after a while, I'm talking to some friends and you're hearing, this conversation. CB has been an incredible mentor to me as I worked on this project. Now what does that feel like? Now that feels like a title you earned, not a title you have to work for.

Okay.

Not an obligation, right? Now you want a crown on your head. It's very different.

Should people of color only have mentors That are people of color.

That's limiting yourself.

But why wouldn't they understand your plight, your goals, your mission better?

Absolutely, absolutely. And they should be on your team. But if your entire team looks like you, and that doesn't— that's any gender, any race, any ethnicity, any age group. If they all start to look like you, you're going to start thinking in the same way. So you want people who look like you. There's a certain kind of empathy that is understood amongst people who are alike. But if you want to grow and you want different perspectives, you also want people who are different than you on your mentoring team. And when I say different, different age, Different gender, different ethnicity, different industry. So my mentoring team has doctors, scientists, educators, business people, lawyers, and military.

And so you put together this mentoring team, and each person that you talk to is related to a specific project that you're working on. What happens if the advice that you're given is not something that you agree with? Sit your mentor down and say, I'm not in the same space as you. I know that you're here to mentor me. Will they feel that they're not contributing to you? How does that work?

So first of all, it doesn't have to be around a particular project. There are people who are on my mentoring team who are not helping me with any particular project, but they are helping me focus, focus on what's important, focus on how to get ahead, focus on trimming the fat, focus on releasing dead weight, releasing people who cause pain. It's about moving forward. It's not necessarily about a project. Now, at the end of the day, it's you and your life and your project and your career. People can give you guidance and perspective and advice, but you need to make that decision at the end. And you can tell someone, and I think the best way is to be transparent, CB, I really want to thank you for the help that you've given me with the Project. I especially appreciated your perspective on ABC. It was hard, but at the end I actually chose to go in a this direction, and the reason I did that is not because I didn't agree with what you said, but for me at this point I needed X, and this option was able to give it to me. But what you taught me has Actually, I learned from that, and I learned to do XYZ.

So Ruth, what you're talking about, though, is— I'm not disagreeing with you.

And you can.

I'm not here because it has absolutely been my experience in having mentors and being a mentor. But what you're talking about is being able to have tough conversations.

Yeah.

So does it make sense before you start looking for mentors that you take some sort of program, some kind of exposure to having difficult conversations?

Look, I think you can prepare yourself all you want, take all the LinkedIn Learning courses, all the workshops. At the end of the day, you have to have the courage to do it. You have to have the courage to do it. And I think it's just like finding a spouse. When you stop being on the prowl to always look for mentors is when you're actually going to find them. But you have to open yourself up to it. You have to have the courage to say, I don't know what I don't know. Who here knows something that I don't know? How can I learn that? How can I— what they forgot, I don't even know. And I want to know it. So I just want to be around them. And with the knowledge that they just sweat off, I want to absorb.

That's it.

You all know there are people like that.

I do know. So, all right. So you had this mentoring academy. I love what you did. And I so agree with you that People need training as mentors and as mentees for the relationship to work. How did you get from there to the success factor?

So, um, you remember I told you I went back to school at the age of 43, and one of the reasons that I did that was when I was running the MD-PhD program, Nationally, we had the same problem that we're having right now with the Great Resignation.

You can't run that program without having your PhD.

I did for a long time. Um, we're having— we were having the same problem that we have now with the Great Resignation in that, um, people were training so hard for a particular career. They went to the school, they had the training, they invested years and years and years. and then they would leave the profession. And we call that the leaky pipeline. And we had sessions at conf— at our national conferences about it. There were academic papers written about it. There were books written about it. The National Institutes of Health even created a task force to look into this problem. This is a big, big problem because we need these physician scientists To advance science and to get treatments and cures, etc. And nothing—the needle hadn't moved. The needle hadn't moved. We still had the same problem we had twenty years earlier. If anything, was probably worse. And I kept thinking the program I was running had a three and a half percent acceptance rate. These were the best of the best. And even amongst this group, there were people who would just rise to the top. And I kept looking at the way they were doing things. They'd be in my office, you know, every day, right? I knew them. And I kept saying, what if we did things differently? What if we looked at those who are at the top and try to create more people like that? Wouldn't their productivity more than make up for anyone who's leaving?

Hmm.

So when I decided to go back to school, I knew I was going to study physician scientists. I thought I was going to do a prediction model who would be successful and who wouldn't, but my mentor said something very important to me. Now, my mentor was from the National Institutes of Health. He used to run all MD-PhD programs, and he said, Ruth, you're looking at this population in a way no one has ever looked at this population. Do something important, not just interesting. Now, that one statement changed my study from an institutional study to a national study, because predictions are fun, but when you can actually create more high achievers, that would have a ripple effect. Now we're going to have more treatments. We're going to have them faster. We can change science. We can change medicine. That's who I started studying, and I studied Nobel Prize winners and NIH institute directors and a former Surgeon General of the United States and the people who won the biggest scientific prizes. And when I got my doctorate, I thought I was done with research. But this kept nagging at me. And I continued the research, but I said, I wonder if what I found in the physician scientists would be true in other extreme high achievers. And that's when I started studying the Olympic champions and the astronauts. So, and that's when I realized that the astronaut was like the Olympian and who was like the Nobel Prize winner. And then I put it all together and I realized they all had the same 4 things in common. And these are not habits that we can copy because we can't copy other people's habits. Our lives are just too different, but we can emulate mindsets. And once I realized that, I knew I was onto something. And that's how we got The Success Factor.

So what are the 4 things that they have in common is one question. And the question before that is, how did you get access to these people?

Hmm.

Did you just call them up and say, hey, I'm doing a study, or my mentor said I should reach out to you, or what did you do?

Oh, you know the statement, your network is your net worth?

Mm-hmm.

95% of the people were through my network. I only needed one Nobel Prize winner, one astronaut, and one Olympic champion. And then each one would actually refer me to others. Nobel Prize winners were not a problem because of where I worked and what I did.

Network to do something like this?

I— this is a network that I have been cultivating for a quarter of a century. And once people hear what you're doing, they want in and they want to refer you to the people who they know. So that's how I was able to do this. That because of where I worked, I knew many Nobel Prize winners. And at a conference, I met an astronaut, walked up to him, introduced myself. He introduced me to many others. I then was at another meeting where I volunteered. There was an astronaut. We got to talking. He introduced me to others. And then the same thing with the Olympians. And that's really how it came about. So almost all of them was through my network.

The reason why I'm asking this is it really relates to courage. There are many people that want to write. There are many people that want to speak. But doing the research becomes problematic because it requires courage to reach out to these people. Yes. So if you're saying that your network did it all for you, there was a point where you said, I want to talk to this person. Yeah, I'm assuming I have no contacts with that person. How do I have the courage to move forward? What is it that I need to do?

You know, CB, you know what my father told me? He taught me this from an early age. You don't ask, you don't get. And it's because I asked that I was able to interview people like Dr. Tony Fauci and 8-time NBA champion Steve Kerr and the most decorated Winter Olympian, Apolo Anton Ohno.

Okay, let's stop there. So you asked, but who did you ask? Their agent? Did you write a letter to them? Where did the courage start?

Um, well, so it depends, right? So, um, Fauci, I knew through my work, so I was able to reach out. Um, Steve Kerr, I actually got to him through someone in 100 Coaches, um, who was coached by him, Zaza Pachulia. Um, and, you know, that's just The way it, it just snowballed and snowballed and snowballed. Um, when I— once I interviewed astronauts, each one started recommending me to other astronauts, and before I knew it, I was interviewing NASA's chief astronaut, the former chief astronaut. So—

So what you're saying is you're meeting people and they're introducing you to other people. You meet people at conferences. How do you know which conference to go to? What— how do you know that these people are going to be at that conference?

So some of them I know, but I don't walk into a conference saying, who can I interview? Because my definition of success, and this was actually through the original research, are people who created a paradigm shift in the way we work, the way we do things, process things, achieve things. But also, as they started to ascend, they brought other people up with them. And when they got to that peak, they started to mentor the next generation and pay it forward. So it's not people who are famous, right? I don't have reality stars who might be millionaires in the book or in my research because they didn't meet those qualifiers. But I can walk into any room and find something about a person and listen to those conversations. So while I have a lot of famous people in the book, I also have people that you may not have heard of but who have done incredible things. I have the person who disrupted the hearing aid oligopoly. I have the person who changed the way depression is diagnosed in nursing homes. She did it as a graduate student. She took on the U.S. government. So these might not be people that you've heard of, but they've done incredible things. Incredible, incredible things. And it's just a matter of when you talk to people, you take an interest in people, and you start developing relationships with people. And when people understand how you will use their story and use it for good, not for tabloids, They want to be on board because these are people who want to pay it forward.

You are saying something that— and thank you for saying it. That's courageous. You're saying things like, pay attention to the small things because in that small thing, there are gems.

Yeah.

And those gems can lead to bigger things. But accept the gem, the original gem. For what it is. Yeah. And many of us don't do that. We're looking for that big diamond in the sky, that 15-carat.

Nope.

When that quarter of a carat could be so rich, so pure in its color, in its density, and no chips, no— absolutely perfect. That may be worth more than the 10-carat. That's flawed.

You're, you're so right. And what I always tell people when I reach out to them is, I'm not interested in what I can Google about you. I don't need to have this conversation for that, right? That's the tip of the iceberg. I want to know what's below the waterline. I want to know what it took to get there. I'm more interested in your failures than I am your successes. And no one asks them about that.

You're on par with Nelson Mandela and myself.

I don't know about that.

I want to segue a little bit because we have a little bit of time left, and I want to talk about something that you just did that was very courageous. And, you know, we think of courageous as this massive act of saving self or somebody else, and it's not. It's just about a decision.

Yeah.

In spite of adversity, in spite of allies. During COVID you lost your dad. And during that time, you wrote a book.

Yeah.

That is massive courage.

Yeah.

Massive courage of commitment, conviction, concentration. You can name all the C's. What gave you the courage.

So in early March of 2020, just 2 years ago, I got a call that no child wants to get. Daddy's in the hospital, come quick. And I stuffed some things in a bag and boarded a plane. And when I got to the hospital and I saw my dad, Um, I spent 18 hours a day at his bedside, and one of the things that I gave him was my first book. It was a textbook which had just been published 2 months earlier, and I gave it to him at the hospital. And as I'm sitting by his bedside, I, like you, always have my laptop with me, and I'm sitting and working by his bedside, and The hospital staff was incredible. They, they knew me. They gave me desks, they gave me chairs, they gave me internet passwords, whatever I needed. And I was doing work, and my father kept asking me, are you getting ideas for your next book? I could say, my next book? I'm looking for ideas how to keep you alive. And when he passed away, In August of 2020, shortly after I finished sitting Shiva, which is the Jewish mourning period, a book publisher reached out to me, book editor, and said, "I'd like to talk to you about your next book." And I knew, I just knew it was my father. Yes, me that push. And CB, the book was. Published on the 17-month anniversary of his funeral. That's when it launched.

That fast?

That fast. Now remember—

Before at all?

Say it again.

Had you been researching it and writing it before?

I've been researching it for years, but I was only writing this on weekends because I have a full-time job. So I wrote it on weekends, and for me it was really a coping mechanism.

But, but Ruth, you have a husband, you have 2 children, you have a full-time job, you're sitting shiva.

Yeah.

You wrote it on the weekends?

Yeah.

Isn't that your time to breathe?

I mean, I perceive that—

whatever.

But that was the problem, because work, I was more or less okay. I was so busy, my mind did not have time to wander. And anyone who's lost a parent knows that when your mind wanders, it's, it's hard to lift yourself back from that.

Yes. Oh, yes.

So I needed to keep as busy as I could so that I don't go to that That dark place where your mind starts to wander, because there's nothing harder than losing a parent.

I've been there.

So you know.

Twice.

Oh, so you know. And for me, it was a coping mechanism, and that's— it was staying busy until, you know, because remember, for Jewish mourning, we're also— we're not— not that there was anywhere to go, but we don't go outside. Socializing for a full year, right? So, and you know, no movies and no comedy and no music. So this was really a way. This was how I healed. Everyone has their own their own way. And you know, I have a picture, a big eight by ten picture of my dad over my desk. And every time I got writer's block, I would look at him and I was like, "What do I do?" And it was it was that gentle nudge.

Isn't it interesting how the universe works? The universe gave you time and the courage to write through losing your dad.

Yeah.

The universe said, Ruth, you will produce another book or two, and you're not going to be able to do it during the day. You're not going to be able to do it Even on the weekends with your normal pace.

Yeah.

I'm going to put you into our religion.

Yeah.

And I'm going to put your dad over your shoulders, and I'm giving you the time and the energy and the courage to write.

Yeah.

And you have the universe.

And here we are. And here we are. And I have to tell you, CB, a lot of the people who are in the book have become really, really good friends. Really good friends. And talk about people who are different. I'm not a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. I'm not an astronaut. I'm not an Olympian. I'm never going to be any of those. But we found a common ground. And What's so fascinating to me— excuse me, bless you— was that I was able to be the connector between some of them. So one of the Nobel Prize winners said, oh, I've never met an astronaut. One of the astronauts said, well, I've never met a Nobel Prize winner. And now I'm introducing to them, and I think there might be a bromance going on because I'm still copied on the chain of emails, and I'm getting such a kick out of it.

I love it. Absolutely love it. You know, I have to tell you, I have never in my life before found such great pleasure in introducing people to other people. I've done it all my life, but I never did it with focus, with intent. And now that I'm doing it with clear intent, it is such a pleasure. It's a joy. I just introduced 2 women that I knew had gone through breast cancer. And they knew each other from another group, but had never had a conversation. That's how weird it is.

Wow.

Talk about synchronicity. And one I knew had breast cancer. The other one I knew had a serious illness, but I didn't know what it was until I talked to them recently. And I said, you wrote me that you knew this other person. Did you know that they had breast cancer? And they— what? I said, no. So you two really do need to talk because you both are great connectors. You're both great at what you're doing. You're both out there supporting other women who are going through this. You two need to talk. Yeah. And it's just, it's such a good feeling to introduce 2 people that not because of the illness they went through, but because of their courage.

Yeah.

In going through it and coming out on the higher side.

Yes.

It's, you know, it's it.

But, you know, I think, CB, I think that courage comes from your environment as well. With which— what, what is the standard? What is the baseline? What is accepted? What is the norm? If the norm is to be courageous, you're going to start taking those strategic risks. If the norm is to always play it safe, you're going to be living in a world of status quo.

That's a really good point. Yeah. I sent it over to you. It's allergies.

No, I want to tell you something. Yes, about that. I had many launch parties, right? Because I don't believe— many launch parties, because I don't believe it could be one day. It was a week. It was 2 weeks. Right. But there was a private one for the people who are in the book, in the Success Factor. Because, well, I knew all of them. They didn't know each other. Mm-hmm. So talk about matchmaking. So I invited them, and one of the astronauts texted me, and he said, "Oh, will Dr. Fauci be there?" Because Fauci's in the book. And I said, "Well, you know we have a pandemic. He's a little busy right now." And I said, "Oh, but right." I said, "But this Nobel Prize winner will be there." And the astronaut said, Nobel Prize winner, now that's a high achiever. And I'm thinking to myself, you went in a tin can in the sky. And then I realized everyone he knows and everyone he surrounds himself with are astronauts. So to him, that's average.

Yeah.

That's what everyone does. That's the baseline.

Yeah. Absolutely.

So I was texting the Nobel Prize winner the other day. I said, were your ears burning? I said, I have to tell you the story. And I'm telling him the story of what the astronaut said. And he said, well, I've never met an astronaut. He said, but I know so many Nobel Prize winners, it's no big deal. We actually get together, we have conferences. I was like, oh, I can change this.

Don't you love it?

And that's when I introduced the two of them. And of course, you know, I'm on this chain of emails, and it is hysterical. It is— I am just getting such a kick out of it because, you know, like the candy store, right? They all want to do things better. They all want to— they want to see people achieve. They want to see people who love different parts of science and engineering actually get the access that they need, but they're coming from different angles. And I said, yeah, you two need to combine forces because the astronaut and the Nobel Prize winners— the Nobel Prize— if you guys got together, can you imagine? Do you know what you can accomplish?

I love it. Hey, Ruth, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you that we actually went overtime, which my audience knows that happens. I just get so into the conversation.

I love it.

Thank you so much for coming on board. It's been such a pleasure to experience your journey, and I love the information you gave out about networking. It is so important to women particularly because we tend to stay in our circles.

Yes.

Which are protective And wonderful nourishing circles, but not necessarily lifting us to the next level. We still have to get past that competitive framework. And it's interesting because men use competition to get ahead. Yeah, we use competition to stay back.

It's so true. And, you know, you mentioned Sally Helgeson before, and She said, and I 100% agree with her, women, we have no problem networking. We collect people, no problem. But we don't know how to leverage that network.

Absolutely.

We don't ask for what we need. We don't ask for what we want. And trust me, to all the women who are watching, and the men too, people want to help. They just don't know what you need. So say, I really need help with this, any way that you can help me with this. That's all. And people will jump at the opportunity to help you.

Learn to be clear. And I would say that so many women have said no to other women that it doesn't make a gunshot. Yeah. And, um, but I'm gonna end right here because my nose is running because of these allergies, and my— everybody's gonna know My nose is running, so I am going to say goodbye and thank you. And to the audience, next week we're going to have a rerun of one of our most popular shows, so if you missed it, tune in. And I'll be back the week after.

Wait, one more thing. Yes, you wanna know who the sniper is? Yes. You were right. It's the original Dr. Ruth.

I heard that. I heard that. I was in an interview or something about her and I went, whoa. Yeah.

But she told me that if I use this, it's true. I have to be clear. She's never killed anyone. She told me.

Okay. Okay. This is good to know. Hey, quick. How can people get in touch with you?

Thank you so much. It's just my name, Ruth Gotian. My website, my social media, everything.

Okay, great. You'll be hearing from some new folks. Okay, everybody.

Bye, everyone. Thank you.