Bob Castellini's Guide: 10 Principles for Wealth and Happiness

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of Contribute to Contribute to a greater cause, add value, have an impact in the lives of others. So if this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that's bigger than yourself. You don't necessarily have to be the face of the cause, but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others and you relish successes that contribute to the greater good of the team. You see group victories as personal victories. You're often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate and you often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy and resources to add value to other people and organizations. And so today I have a great guest for you. His name is Bob Castellini and his journey is a tale of two mentors, his rich grandfather and his poor father whose contrasting financial decisions deeply influenced his career. Inspired by his grandfather, John M. Fox, a founder of Minute Maid who lost his wealth due to a lack of diversification, and his father, Robert H. Castellini, who built and diversified the largest privately held wholesale properties produce distribution company in the U.S. robert witnessed the critical importance of sound financial stewardship with a commitment to preventing others from making poor financial decisions. Robert founded a multi family office and dedicated his career to serving as a financial advisor. He believes in creating abundant choices for his clients through proper planning and guidance, ensuring they enjoy financial security and freedom throughout their lives. Bob, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Gary.

This is going to be fun. I've been looking forward to this and I know what right now you're sitting in San Diego.

Indeed and it's absolutely beautiful here. And I'm blessed to be among a number of entrepreneurs who've made a lot of good decisions, both personally and financially in their lives. And we're here in fellowship to share in best practices and mastermind for what we call six forms of capital. Nice.

Well, let's. Let's go back in your life, Bob, where I know you live now, in Cincinnati mostly. Tell us a little bit about. Let's go back in your life. So where were you born and what were things like growing up for you? Because we just talked about you having a tale of two fathers, essentially.

Yeah. I was born in small town just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. My folks were very young, at least young by today's standards, when they got married in their. In their mid-20s. And my father didn't have two nickels to his name. He had been.

Left family of eight and some seven sisters and.

A devoted mother after his father had passed of a heart attack when he was just 10 years of age. So widowing his mother with eight children as a small produce concern that frankly no one would have known or cared about if it had gone out of business. And indeed it was suffering and.

Losing clients and losing traction, unfortunately, in its growth, and his sister was doing her best to run it. He got a letter while he was in grad school asking him to come back and try to save the family business, which just had a handful of employees and a few delivery trucks. And so he, he did not finish writing his thesis. He left grad school to go back and try to save the family farm, as you would say.

So you know what, Maybe we ought to go back even further because as we talked about in your introduction, your grandfather was kind of the opposite end of the story. He was very wealthy and then died with very little. So how did that happen? Let's. Let's talk. You okay going back to that, to your grandfather?

Yeah. I think it frankly important to, to complete the story because it truly helped me develop my vision of my life's purpose. I call it the Tales 2 Cities, because yes, indeed, my mom's father, who was born of English immigrants who were both artists, put himself through college repairing motorcycles, was fortunate to have a job during the Great Depression selling IBM punch card machines primarily to government entities. And he wound up working for a. A think tank during the Second World War effort and leading up to it looking on food preservation science. At that time, the war effort required as we would know them today, but it would have been known as C rations and K rations back Then and they had to be preserved and be able to withstand high and low temperatures in the field. And their laboratories were developing the sciences to preserve that food and keep it shelf ready. At that time, there was no refrigeration. But shortly after the wall war, refrigeration was coming. That's what was important to his story. Because they had to take some products to market after their biggest client reduced orders after the war. So they took what was a powdered orange juice and brought it to market in a concentrated form rather than a completely freeze dried form. Because my grandfather said as they tried to reconstitute it from freeze dried form, it smelled like a wet dog and tasted far worse. So in short, they named it Minute Maid, took it to market, had no marketing budget and gave Bing Crosby's script writers for his radio show shares in the company. They wrote a lot of their ads into his show and lo and behold, America started getting refrigeration. And the average American household at that time had two to three kids and two very busy parents. So the opportunity to make fresh orange juice was, was not availed. And concentrated orange juice became a household item.

Yep, I had it. I grew up on it.

And it's a fun story. My grandfather was a masterful marketer. He sold the company to Coca Cola. So you can imagine getting Coca Cola shares in the early 60s. You know, Warren Buffett was buying up company shares not too long after. And, and it's always been one of his top holdings at Berkshire Hathaway. My grandfather took all his stock and sold it when he was hired by United Fruit, which you would know today as Chiquita, and put all his money into Chiquita because that's what a good company man did. So unfortunately, that was one of his first diversification decisions that cost him later as Chiquita, then United Fruit, United Brands stock plummeted from three digits to a single digit and a hostile takeover. And he lost most of his fortune in that decision.

That's I'm sure. And how did he take it? Personally?

Yeah, you know, my grandfather was an ideasman. He, he was a masterful marketer and he was a phenomenal visionary and charismatic leader. But the idea of having lots of advisors and diversified assets, he wanted his net worth to be tied up in the company was running. That's what a good company man did in those days. And your whole pension, really everything was tied to the stock in those days. It was all restricted.

And it was just understood and accepted. He, you know, he's a resilient guy. He never fully recovered from it. While he served on a number of boards, they didn't have the kind of company pensions in those days that we see today. I think his pension was all about $60,000 a year, which even in today's dollars would have been pretty marginal. And he had very little equity to fall back on. I remember my grandmother used to love to buy these little beach cottages and fix them up and flip them, and she wanted to hold on to a few in New England before they moved. And he said, why would you want to own a bunch of toilets? Just going to maintain toilets. And a little cottage she had purchased for 50,000 was maybe worth 70,000, you know. He encouraged her to sell what she did. Thirty years later she got a note from the realtor saying it just sold for 6 million. And that alone would have, would have provided ample retirement funding. But sadly they had very little. And my parents were supporting them in the last, in their last six, six to 12 months of life.

And he passed away at what age?

They were in their mid-90s. They lived a good long life and that, that's really more the norm today. We're certainly seeing people live well beyond 90 and longevity is become a focus.

So when he was at his wealthiest, how old was he?

I would say he was in his, in his mid-60s. Okay. @, @ his, at.

His.

Peak. Yeah. And he, he was on IBM's board. He was on Rollins College board and a number of other Colgate's board, Colgate University in New York and a number of other companies. Waste management. He had a very colorful career and post career, but SA.

Just did not have a comprehensive holistic life plan or wealth plan. He didn't surround himself with a tribe of mentors or.

Advisors. Wow. Okay. And then that led to your, your dad. So your dad started out at the other end of.

The spectrum. My father was one of eight children. His father died of a heart attack and his mother was widowed with eight children. He.

Was just 10 years of age. His sister did her best to run the company and when he was in grad school, he got a letter from his mom saying, hey, we're gonna close the company. It's in the red unless you can come back and work with your sister to help make it solvent, which he did at age of 26. And he just got married to my mother between 26 and between 26 and 30, worked alongside his sister and then he bought out the company and he implemented Rockefeller's.

Vertical integration into what was a fragmented business. And if you remember, Rockefeller Owned everything from the oil on the ground to the pumps at the gas station. When he built Standard Oil and my, my father saw an opportunity in the produce business to not fully integrate. So he didn't want to own the fields and he didn't want to own the stores. Right. But, but fully integrate the supply chain between the two. And it was very fragmented, a lot of smaller produce distribution companies. He rolled it up along with a number of trucking, tractor trailer companies, company Thermo King franchises, and built out a regional wholesale distribution.

If you will, supply chain comprised of 23 operating companies and several thousand employees across the Midwest.

And Southeast. So he took it from almost, well from bankrupt to, you know, worth billions. I mean, just an amazing company that he built out over the course of. How long did that.

Take him? Yes, we never put a number on things, but yes he did, he did build a successful enterprise that he diversified into a number of other entities under the umbrella of a single family office that he built. So I don't, I don't know the exact number, but I would certainly say that it availed him a great deal of, of financial freedom but the ability to make an impact. And this is over a span of about 30.

Years. Gary.

So what was it like for you? Where was he at in that journey when you were born and when you kind of realized what was going on? You know, kind of the story of your. Yeah, yeah. Where were.

You at? I can remember when I finally, if you will, had an awakening of who my two mentors were. I was in my mid teens and to me, my grandfather had always been iconic. My mother's father had always been very present, my life devoted, as was my father. But he was working six and a half days a week. My grandfather was retired. He had a little more time with us and for us and it was, it was a privilege to get to spend that one on one time with. I remember he was taking me to a practice one day, they would come up for long visits. So we, we, we wound up in a conversation where I was vehemently complaining and venting about how hard my dad was being on me. And he said me, your dad may be tough on you. It comes from all the right places. And he made a lot of things to you right now that you don't fully understand. But I know one thing you can. He loves you dearly and he's one of the finest businessmen I've ever known. This is my grandfather, who I thought was the icon, right. Saying that about my dad. And that's when I certainly had the awakening that not only was I misguided, but I needed using my two ears and shutting my one mouth. God gave his two ears and one mouth for a reason. I needed to start listening twice as much to my father and paying close attention. And the things I learned were threefold. That one no person is an island. Success is never achieved alone. And surrounding yourself with a tribe of mentors and individuals that frankly are far more adept and knowledgeable and experienced in yourself in areas of weakness is a sign of strength, never a sign of weakness. It's about who, not how. If you get caught up in how you're going to do something, frankly it will seem too overwhelming and daunting. If you get focused on who you're going to surround yourself with to accomplish any task and frankly any goal, the goal becomes a reality. And that's drawn from Dan Sullivan, Ben Hardy's book who not how, but I connect the two because they frankly have a great meaning. And I look at that as great as lesson in life that I do not have to all the answers, but I do know to whom I need to draw them from and where I need to go find them. The second lesson that I learned in my grandfather's case, he was very loyal and loyalty is valued in any company. But he was loyal to a fault in that he didn't see past, if you will, his roles and responsibilities as a CEO to not only protect the company, but protect himself. So what he did was honorable with United Fruit and he stayed and basically went down with the ship as all of his C suite was, were taking their golden parachutes. He stayed to try to salvage it as they were suffering a hostile takeover. But he did so unfortunately at the detriment of his his own well being. And he did not diversify. My father started diversifying at a young age. He was in a business that had 1% margins, had perishable product sellers, smell it. Teamster unions, fuel, rising fuel costs. At the times, if you can remember in the 70s and early 80s, inflation, tough business to be in. He knew he had to diversify. Cash flowed well. And so he did diversify into a number of other areas that had nothing to do with the produce industry. And then finally, and most importantly, you really only have time to master two things in your life. What is where these, what are they going to be at that given time. Now, over the course of your life you can master many things, but at any given if it takes 10,000 hours to truly master something as they say, and maybe it's 20,000, but I know it's at least 10. You have time to master two things and frankly.

Truly focus.

On one.

To be if you will, without.

Any lack of confidence would say keeping it simple and blocking out all the noise and distraction. I think was, was essential for my dad not let, not letting himself get pulled in too.

Many directions. Well and those are great lessons to learn at such a young age. And so when you were in high school then what were you, what were you like in high school? What were you like.

Growing up? Yeah, so I was.

A very good student and ambitious at a young age and I got very distracted as an adolescent. Wound up being less focused on academics and more on what was going on outside the classroom and really didn't come to my studies until grad school. Me, that was like a full time job and I.

Definitely had a wake up call with, with a number of poor choices earlier in my life that frankly saved me later. So at the age of 22, three weeks before I graduated college, I realized that I should never have a drink again. By the grace of God having for 34 years, I realized that I needed to embrace.

A career that optimized my play to my strengths but enabled me to surround people.

Who could support and play to my weaknesses. And I realized I didn't want to go in the family fold, but I wanted to certainly an arm's length.

If you will, fiduciary and always be willing to be a steward to my family. But I wanted to go my own way. And that decision, frankly was life changing. That was over 34 years ago.

So I never worked in the family fold other than.

High school and a few years in college loading trucks, working in some of our, our factories and plants that were processing fresh produce. I went off into the world of finance and investing and I have no regrets. I've been working now for over 30 years as a wealth advisor and now run a multifamily office for other entrepreneurs. Most of them are first gen who've had full or partial exits and they go from being the air traffic controller company to trying to be the air traffic controller of their lives and realize that frankly there's a lot more to it and they can't truly enjoy their, their wealth and their success if they are also still trying to be the air traffic controller or steward of it. So we come in and partner with them. I would call it more of a partnership and help them. You will make the right decisions. I share my personal story quite often because I feel like it has a great deal of Implication on some of the decisions my clients make today. One is a lot of them think because they had the Midas touch in one business they'll have the same in others, that all businesses are the same. And while most of the principles of business are industries and sectors can vary as, as do their market cycles. And that can have a pronounced impact upon the type of team you build and frankly kind of decisions and experience that you need surround yourself with. I also would say that when folks have their first exit, if they do not have a vision or plan for the rest of their life and their career, it can be absolutely devastating. You know, some of my most unhappy clients are ones that had some significant exits and did not have a plan for the rest of their life. And I don't just mean career, all aspects of their life. And I think that's essential whether they continue to work or not. Having a life plan and purpose.

Was essential. So just having a lot of money doesn't equate to.

Guaranteed happiness?

No. In fact, it's really a recipe for misery because wealth without purpose and life without purpose is one that's going to unfortunately get filled ultimately by decisions and distractions that don't serve what makes us whole. What made us whole when we were running and building an enterprise isn't always what's going to make us whole again and again. Doing that evaluation, that self reflection, having that self awareness, I think is beyond essential. People don't do the work on themselves. They do all the work on the enterprise, the entity, the people that are working with them for them, but they don't do the work on themselves and there's a big void there. Their whole identity gets unfortunately enmeshed with whatever enterprise or practice.

They'Re building. So you've been down this path with a lot of people over the last 30 years. What have you seen? Like if you could create a prescription for. You had your big exit, you've been the big dog. You got your big.

You know, chat bank account. How do they find their next phase? How do they find their purpose? What have you seen that works for making sure the, the next phase of their life turns out to be something they're.

Proud of? Yeah, well, frankly.

You know, and that this, this question.

Wasn'T positioned by you to in any way be self serving? That I know, but I will tell you, until we discovered your process and Y institute, we were using a number of different modalities, questionnaires, funnels, personality tests, but we didn't have one silver bullet, one simple solution. Your program helped Us find a very streamlined, powerful but simple solution that identified, if you will, nine areas we could then narrow down to three for our clients to truly drill down on their why and purpose. And most clients don't have won't come commit the time to working on themselves or doing that discovery work. I mean an eight minute questionnaire, as soon as I just say look, it's just going to be an eight minute questionnaire and then we're going to do the rest. That that is not overwhelming to anybody. And they download an app, complete the thing in minutes and we deliver a powerful report. Thanks to your good work. That really has been life changing for people. So in all sincerity, and I know you weren't, you weren't trying to drill down or funnel down to this point, but that has been a way for us to make this simple and powerful. What we were doing before was far more complex than it needed.

To be. Yeah, getting people to sit, you know, in the back end of the yos discovery is over 4,000 possible question options. But who's going to answer 4,000 questions right? Are you going to get anybody to sit and answer 50 questions or 100 questions? They just won't do it right. Or they lose their focus. But thank you for saying that. I did, I did not know that's where you were going to go, but I'm, but I appreciate that. And so the power of purpose is what they need to have for their.

Next phase. Absolutely. And whether that's in the for profit or nonprofit world or in their, their family endeavors, whether you're going to go on to be a mentor coach or serve on nonprofit boards or for profit boards, it doesn't matter. It's aligning your passions, interests, your values, your actions. And if they're not aligned, you're going to find out real quickly because fulfillment is something that is not tangible. But I do know every morning when I have a purpose because I'm, I'm full of energy. I have an absolute clear vision of what actions I'm taking towards goals and all those goals are towards a life purpose and value and then sharing them with my spouse. So we, we're aligned and sharing our vision and purpose together in our community work. We serve on boards that align with our vision and purpose. We've got similar passions, but even we didn't, the fact that I understand and know hers and support them and vice versa is important. So surround yourself with people who value and support you will what your vision is. So I share it with people. I share it in my, my Business forums. I share it in my closest social circles and I. And obviously I share it and I'm aligned with my wife. And that's important. That's not just in my, my community or my business endeavors. That's also in my self care and my spiritual life and my, the circles that I keep, which frankly are, are everything. You know, they always say you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I believe that. I believe that sincerely. So making those decisions about who's going to be on your dance card. I always loved Warren Buffett's analogy about picking investments. It's really the same. It's picking out who you're going to invest your time with. Then imagine you have a punch card with, with, in this case, five holes you can punch. Once you punch it, you can't put the hole, you can't refill the hole. So decide, you know, certainly with great intent and thoughtfulness, who you're going to surround yourself with, how you're going to invest your time and frankly, how you're going to invest your wealth. And I just again, always encourage people to surround themselves with the right, who's both in a mentorship role, but also in who. Who they're going to seek advice from. People I hold in high regard. I like asking them, where are you getting your best guidance and advice? Financially, spiritually, socially? If we are an island, frankly, in everything that we do, we will suffer. I know that I would not frankly be sitting here today if I had tried to do any of this in isolation. And I know what I.

Don'T know. What's fascinating about your story for me, Bob, is that this isn't something that you just read about. You lived this. You've seen it from the way it can go well, and the way it can go not so well firsthand and probably many, many, many times. So listening to your perspective on it is incredibly valuable from knowing that you experienced it. And I appreciate hearing what works and what doesn't work. And what you were just talking about is incredible advice, not only for somebody exiting a company, but for somebody at a very young age as well. Like what if you had started, or all of us had started with that advice at a very young age, how long our Runway could have been, Would we have been open to listening to it? That's probably a big question, right? What does it take for someone to really.

Want to hear.

That advice? Humility and some failure. I mean, until we fail at something.

Until we realize we cannot go through life Siloed I don't think we have the desire to seek out mentorship, coaching and frankly, fellowship.

And support and advocacy of others is what's got me through my toughest times and helped me celebrate, if you will, the moments that mattered. Life's not meant to be journeyed in isolation. And I would certainly say the analogy of the draft horse, which my my wife loves to use, is one that I love, and I'm gonna just use, if you will, round numbers. But a draft horse, very powerful, can by itself pull a considerable amount of weight. But when it's paired with another draft horse, the amount of weight that the two can pull isn't twice as much as one would assume. It's actually more than three and a half, almost four times as much. So the power of working in concert with others with complimentary skill sets is beyond.

Really anyone's comprehension. In grad school, all the work we did was in teams that was new to me. I was used to doing everything on my own, being accountable for everything that I did to my my own work in undergrad. But in grad school, it was all teamwork. Because the lesson is this is how businesses succeed or fail, and you're only as strong as your weakest link in a team and vice versa. But collectively, we were not able to complete the projects, the case studies in business school. Without good teamwork and careful selection, who was going to be on.

Your team?

Your how has your team changed over.

The years? Without question, we became.

The most productive when each of us owned our strengths and our weaknesses. Embracing my weaknesses was absolutely essential. Understanding them, embracing them, frankly, accepting that someone else could do something far better than me and relinquishing that to someone else, it was empowering. And so being able to focus 80% of my time on what I did best.

Brought our team to an elevated growth rate. Because I was far better at rainmaking than being tactical and operational. And my attention to detail, while good and so Mary's, was sorely lacking in others where the details mattered. And so surrounding myself with others who had skill sets and execution that exceeded mine at the operating level enabled me to not only change my roles and responsibility, my title. I stepped down as the head of my team and made myself Chief Growth Officer. I realized that my time and energy was far better suited to making rain than being the company's CEO and Chief Operating officer. That alone made an instrumental and impactful difference and also re energized me. Now suddenly, I was not being held back by the things I didn't.

Enjoy doing.

You Are the. My experience with you is that you are the epitome of your. Why the word contribute? I mean from my, from what I've seen, everywhere you go you give and find ways to help people and become part of their success. And it's been amazing to watch just how you operate. So it's like you're right in your zone. If I can find a way to help somebody, I will. What is the. Is that what kind of the conversation you have in your head or how do you.

See that? Honestly, you know, in, in recovery we have an adage that says in order to keep something you've got to give it away. So to. To keep sobriety you have to give it away. That's. That's 12 step work. And the 12 step is serving others.

Who are.

New to the program or are have had a relapse and are coming. Coming back to sobriety. And it's true of life. I mean I would say recovery gave me tools for life. There's. There is far more received in giving of time, talent or treasury than frankly one could ever imagine. So having an abundance mindset I think is first and foremost that if everyone has something to give and offer and offers it freely without just serving self interest, not only is the world a better place, but we're all more productive and better for it. We're all fulfilled. Right. There's. There's far greater fulfillment in, in serving others more other. Knowing what my weaknesses are I think is. Is essential and enable me to find the right who's to surround myself with to support those weaknesses and then play to my strengths. So my strength was building a portfolio of who's. And Gary, you're one of those so individuals who have great specializations and skill sets far beyond my scope who have invested the 10,000 hours mastering something that I don't have mastery skills in and knowing when to bring them in to serve others. I mean that. That's huge. So you gave me something after I took your, your why questionnaire and I wear it every day. I mean literally never leaves my wrists. I don't read that on there. But it's my, my contribute bracelet and I have it on every day and I have to. I. I'll often forget it's on my arm and then every once in a while I have to adjust it and forces me to look down. Remember that's my purpose, that's my why. And I'm able to contribute through the contribution of others that I've gotten to know like yourself and they've been Able to impact a lot of people. So basically adding to my draft horse team has made my life far more impactful. I'm blessed to have a lot of who's like you that I'm surrounded by to bring in to the lives of others. I don't have to have all the answers. And frankly for me ego has a number of meanings. Ego generally gets someone in trouble. I've often heard the acronym that ego is edging God out to. I don't ever pretend to be someone that is going to have all the answers or be all knowing. And my higher, higher power keeps me humble every day. So have to be mindful of the fact that I'm, I'm very human. I'm very susceptible to distraction and very susceptible to thinking that I have all the answers and it's far from it. I will forever need to surround myself with more who's and more resources that are far more knowledgeable than I am to.

Help others. Do you remember back to when you realized that? Because you know, when you.

Contrast that with what you were like when you first got into the financial services world. You know, I think back to when I was a brand new out of dental school. I was, you know, looked so young and I'm trying to prove myself right. So I had the answer to everything. But as I remember when I retired from dentistry, one of the most valuable.

Things that I could pass on to somebody as a dentist was the value in the words I don't know because I, after getting, you know, after a career in dentistry of 30 years, I realized I don't know everything. I definitely don't know how everything's going to turn out. And that was so empowering for myself and for the conversations I could have with a patient. When was it that you learned or maybe you always felt that way, but that you know, how valuable? Humility and not knowing everything and not having to have.

Every answer. Yeah, I love that question because I remember being so fearful that I didn't have all the answers.

Coming out of grad school and going into a job where I had to get a number of licenses and designations. And I remember two people.

Pretty much saying the same thing. One, my father saying to me, hey, don't think you're going to have all the answers come out of grad school with your mba. Frankly, you're going to realize what you don't know. But you will know how to find the answers. Like you will pursue education to teach you how to find answers, but never think that you have them all. And if you're not always.

Learning and if you're not always seeking new information, the ever changing dynamic world that you're in will absolutely humble you and pass you by. Secondly, as far as continued learning, we have to learn, if you will, on the job and outside the job. If I had just relied upon my company to give me all the training I needed and all the exposure I needed, it never would have been enough and would have been woefully mediocre at what I did. The study had to take place outside of the classroom as well. So I had I built a library of materials on my own personal development, health, well being as well as financial. So I've got shelves and shelves of books on finance, investing, but also a number of books on human behavior and psychology and health. And frankly, what most of my clients suffered from wasn't a lack of wealth. They were lacking in some other area of their life that was going to compromise their wealth. And in many cases it was their health, whether it was physical, emotional or mental health. So being able to also direct them to who's that could serve those needs was essential to me. And knowledge is power. The more you can retain if you will identify those resources, the better. There's a great speaker I just heard last night and he's also an author of a best selling book, Jim Quick. He wrote the book Limitless, yet it suffered a severe brain trauma through a head injury when he was a young child. And he had a very difficult time retaining information.

So he developed his own modalities and methods for remembering things. And that so powerful to me because I've watched him perform memory exercises that seemed impossible. And last night in a short talk, he taught us how to retain information. Knowledge is power. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I need to know enough though to identify what I need to drill down on further and who I need to go to. So I need to remember enough. And so I want to in any way dismiss the fact that we still need to learn and we still need to retain. But in the end I'll never have mastery skills of everything. So I still need to know who I go to and have the relationship. I've developed a nice friendship with you Gary. I know I can pick up the phone and call you and drill down on a client and their why institute results and that's invaluable. I need to add value by bringing more valuable resources to them and that's usually in the form of human capital, not.

Physical capital.

So take us through a day in the Life of Bob Castellini because in just the last, you know, we've talked a couple times in this last week and I, and I think you were in Cincinnati, San Diego, Hawaii, back to San Diego, I think. I don't know all the places you've been, but what's a day like in the Life.

Of Bob? Well, it looks a lot different today than it may have 10 years ago. I'm now an empty nester. So I have time, if you will, to immerse myself in more communities and embrace more learning opportunities. So I certainly want to emphasize that what I'm able to do today and a day is far different and I'm able to work virtually, far more robustly. I used to be chained to a desk in an office. Today's world and technology doesn't require that. And my clients want to be with me personally, not virtually must be present to win, as they say, on the back of the church.

Raffle.

Ticket. Right. So I need to be present in my client's life. So I spend a lot of time being present with those clients that live across the United States. And I will plan my, my visits, if you will, in clusters so I can go and see multiple clients in, in my travels. And then I'll have periods of time where relieved to be just working from home. And.

Every day is different in that I'm blessed to serve on a number of nonprofit boards as well. So I'm able to make an impact outside of my, my career and that then extremely fulfilling as well. So what's great about those meetings? They don't all have to be live. I can attend many of those virtually as well. But I am a big believer that true relationships and discovery come by being physically present and so have the ability to go deeper but choose not to go as wide in my reach. And so we'd rather go deep and do a lot of meaningful work for a select group of clients or for a select number of boards rather than go wide and try to just touch everybody. Because I, I can touch a lot of things, but I can't truly make an impact until I spend some time and, and can be hands on. That's been a game changer for me. But no two days look alike. Gary And I am blessed in that like clients live, literally live from Maui to Maine. So I can, it takes me to a lot of interesting places and I get to, I have the privilege of walking alongside them and doing life.

With them. Yeah. One of the things I've noticed about you is that I know you're very busy. I know you have a lot on your plate. I know you're involved in a lot of things, but when I'm with you, I don't feel that at all. I feel like you're 100 present. And how do you do that? How do you not let your mind go to all the other things that you've got going on? Even when we were at your house, I mean, you were there, you were present. I didn't feel like, oh, you were rushing everywhere to try to get something done, you.

Were present. Well, that was about who, not how. I was able to finally figure out that if I didn't try to wear all the hats and I truly delegated and empowered others on my team to accomplish other tasks, not only were my clients better served, but I my life was better served and that I could be in the moment, not just at the moment. And not multitasking. I mean, multitasking is disastrous and it's less productive. We've all heard that. We know that, you know, takes at least 10 minutes to refocus. When you take your focus off the present. Even just looking at a text or an email while you're sitting in a meeting, you know, it. The day we spent together, I had to turn off my phone and put it away. Something I've learn to do more of. Just having your phone on a table, even if it's turned face down, they've done studies, makes an impact on your ability to focus and forgot what all the percentages were. But I know that there's diminished focus just in having any other area of distraction in front of you. So staying in the moment and being in the moment were something I had to work on and putting the phone away.

Was critical.

I love it. Okay, last question for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given or the best piece of advice you've.

Ever given? Yeah, the best piece of advice that I was ever given undoubtedly was to thine own self be true. If you are truly.

Living a life that has complete and rigorous honesty and transparency with yourself, first then and only then can you true and transparent to others. So I think rigorous self awareness and self honesty is, is essential and foundational. And I guess the best advice that I've ever given has been advice that was given to me and that was that. And it came from my grandfather. People don't always do what's expected of them, but they will do and accomplish what's expected of them. And by that I mean by being self awareness, this ties back to to rigorous honesty. By being self aware, you're being you're having an inspection every day. Am I working to my greatest potential? Is this task leading me towards this goal or is this just a distraction? Inspection starts with self reflection but also accountability. By creating accountability with our fellow team members and those who are in my forum and in my family, that's an inspection as well. So I think self reflection and inspection every day.

Is important. I love it. Bob, thank you so much for being here with us today. And, and I know if there are people, if people that are listening want to connect with Bob, just send us an email. Send me an email@teamy institute.com and and we'll be able to connect you the right people with Bob. But Bob, thank you so much for being here and I look forward to staying in touch with you and doing some wonderful things together. So thanks for taking the time to be here.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.