Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously

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, 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.

So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine why, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so today we're going to be talking about the why of challenge, right? To challenge the status quo and think differently. So if this is your why, then you live outside the box. You do not believe in the norm or following the rules or drawing inside the lines. It is far more natural for you to rebel against the stereotypical or classical way of doing things. You aggressively seek unique ways of approaching the world and finding solutions that no one else can has considered. You like to create and innovate, especially in game changing ways. You have eccentric friends and eclectic tastes and a large variety of both. You may have diverse interests with little in common with each other. As an entrepreneur, you prefer to create a new market versus serving an existing market. You love to be different, think differently and challenge virtually anyone or anything that is too rote or conventional. People with your why often accomplish amazing feats. When you say you want to change the world, you actually mean it. Pushing the envelope comes natural to you. So today I've got a perfect example of that. His name is Howie Milstein and he decided early in his career to question conventional thinking and seek the truth that is rooted in unbiased observation as the world of medicine tries to evolve towards a system of evidence based care. So how he believes that it's more meaningful to live an evidence based life and lead evidence based communities as the Twin Cities first personal trainer in the 1980s, how he found that available resources that promoted certain ways of Motivating his clients did not resonate with his observations. Spawned from his curiosity to learn the basis of the human condition was passion that guided his studies and leadership principles. These principles have been implemented in many roles since his personal training days, including over 25 years managing teams in the medical device industry. Now reinvented as a leadership consultant, author and career coach, his titles are Vocational, Irritant and Provocateur. Proudly annoying. Howie has many victims, including his clients, audiences, community stakeholders and nonprofit agencies and board members. A strong adherent to the ideas of self determination theory, including the principles of autonomy, mastery and purpose. How he learned that acquiring an understanding of motivation was only half the battle. In order to optimize culture, employee engagement, and predictable outcomes, he had to become deeply introspective and choose the best leadership style to nurture innovation, passion and growth. So, as the CEO provocateur of the institute, to stop taking yourself so seriously, Howie's message is that while there are a myriad options to attempt cultural change in organizations, perhaps the only thing is, is for individuals to seriously manage their egos. Jobs and careers aren't just for economic sustenance. Rather, they are a means to access and contribute to healthy communities where individuals are emotionally bolstered, challenged and valued. Howie, welcome to the podcast. That was a mouthful.

You know, I couldn't have said that better myself, I think, by the way, that was written many years before I paid your fine organization to tell me who I was.

Isn't it wild? Yeah, crazy. Isn't it?

Just reading that the description of challenge could have been the description of you.

Well, maybe. I don't know. Listen, it was nice to know that I'm not alone in this world in this way, but I became very comfortable knowing that that's who I was many years ago. And I just said, you know what? I guess, you know, I gotta be me. And it's, you know, listen. And sometimes in certain organizations, it's complicated for them to have people like us around, but, you know, it really is. I try to challenge in an entertaining way. Right. So we have some. I always have some fun with it.

So let's go back in your life here for a little bit. Let's go back to high school because, you know, oftentimes people with the YF challenge felt like a misfit or felt like they weren't like everybody else. Did you go through that stage?

Well, you know, I think.

One thing that I didn't like were the natural cliques that formed. I didn't want to associate myself with any one Identity or one group. And it actually worked out pretty well for me because I got involved in so many different things with so many groups of people, and it was probably a better experience for me. I just didn't have to subscribe to, you know, this identity that I'm part of any one particular group, you know? Yeah. And I see people now. I see them at my reunions. I've had plenty of them at this point. And the nice thing is, is that they'll. They'll tell me, you know, Howie, you haven't changed a bit. And I know they're not. And then. And I know they're not talking about my looks.

Right?

Yeah. So for those of you that are listening, I'm looking at Howie, and he's wearing a jacket that's got a lot of cats on it. I think you've got a super dog in the background. You've got an underdog in the background. I'm sorry, Underdog. Underdog, that's right.

Yeah.

And I don't know what all you got in the background there, but a lot of different things, that's for sure.

Well, that's Mike the elephant back there. You see Mike? Yep. People ask me why his name is Mike, because I say he's kind of embarrassed about his real name, which is Myron, so he likes to be called Mike Mike. Okay.

And tell us about this jacket. Why do you have cats on your jacket?

Well, this is just one design. I, you know, I love color. I love just being. Just having fun. I love entertaining people. This design happens to be called Cute Little Pussycats, and it was actually a joke design by the company that makes these things. And we, A number of us, encouraged them to actually go ahead and make the design. And it's a pretty good seller. So this is about as ridiculous as it gets.

Yeah.

Go to loudmouth.com to see.

So you. Okay. After high school, you went off and you became a personal trainer. Was that your first career?

No, I went to college. My undergraduate. Actually, my undergraduate degree is in biochemistry. Decided by my junior year that I didn't want to become a physician. I didn't want to have a career that was just so linearly, solely focused. No, my first job out of college, armed with that fine degree in life sciences, was as a salesperson for the local distributor of Haagen Dazs ice cream. Made perfect sense to me. Right.

And then I entered graduate school just part time, to get a master's degree, which I eventually did. Took me 26 years, but I got it in exercise Physiology. But I took another job, a bigger sales job with a larger organization because I love sales. And. And that's when I thought, okay, I have this itch. I had the idea for this. I didn't call it personal training back then. I didn't know what it was. I made this up when I was taking elective classes in like 1978 and 79. And I thought, God, people might really appreciate having a guide and an exercise lifestyle. So I just made it up. I got a guinea pig to work with me a little bit, spend some time with them. And then I said, okay, I'm leaving my job. I'm going to create this enterprise. I have no idea what the heck I'm doing, but I'm diving it. And, you know, I kind of grew it. It was kind of fun. I did it for four years, but then.

Somehow we got pregnant. You'd think a life sciences guy would know how that happens. But I thought I better. You know, I had the capacity to make a better living, to raise a family. Cause it was that personal training thing was still really new. And then I got into the medical device world. Growing up through the sales ranks and then running teams in sales and then general president, kinds of chief operating officer type roles.

Then you decided to get out of that.

Well, you know, yeah.

Sometimes those decisions are. You're helped with those decisions too. But I had an epiphany before I got out that, hey, this just is no longer resonating with me entirely depending on the organization. And I studied. I became the student of the human condition while I was doing all this. Eventually got a coaching certification just for the fun of it. And, you know, I just realized that, you know, I've been studying people, I've been studying leadership. And I just got incredulous when I realized how bad so many leaders made me and people around them feel. And I just didn't think that was real productive in the. In the organization. And I just had this epiphany, you know, sometimes all that you need to do is just stop being such a jerk and things get so much better. So that's when I decided I get out. I was talking to somebody, told them she's an organizational development person with like a PhD, like, really incredible person. And Rosie says, howie, you know what? You know, you got this thing about stop taking yourself so seriously that maybe that's a business. And like 12 seconds later, it was a business. So I created this, you know, it's a speaking and consulting and coaching enterprise. I wrote a book. It was Published theoretically, you know, by the Institute. So there's a book out there and the focus is Emotional Intelligence, how to Build Trust. But a real emphasis on how to destroy trust through overblown ego, which is self interest or taking yourself so seriously. So this is where I try to encourage leaders to show up, check their egos at the door. And things are so much more pleasant around them when that happens.

So how do you feel that humor plays into that?

Oh gosh, it's so much nicer to have a sense of humor. If you have it, use it. If you don't, let it manifest somehow through the organization or the community, with people that do have it, you know, if you can't, if you're taking life all that seriously, it's stressful. I think that there are like bad things that circulate in our brains and bodies when you're stressed all the time and you're the, you're the medical guy, you tell us, right? Catecholamines, all that crazy stuff. Right. So no, my life, I think of funny stuff. I can't help it. It's just how I'm naturally wired. I'm the kind of guy that thinks of funny stuff at funerals. And there's my wife looking at me and I got this stupid grin on my face and she goes, now what? I said, that's for me, right? I can't, you know, so it just happens, right? So that's just how I'm naturally inclined. I'm going to laugh my way through life if I can.

So you work with executives and CEOs to help them stop taking their life so serious. Right.

And other leaders and people that are leaders that don't have titles that denote leadership.

Okay, yeah. Now how do you do that? Okay, I'm a CEO and I'm fully into it. I'm fully engaged. I'm running my ship like a well oiled machine and I got my finger on everybody and I'm pushing hard. And this is important, this is serious stuff. How do you help me to like figure out where I'm supposed to quit taking myself so seriously? How do you do it?

Well, we always start with the empirical evidence of how people are feeling around them. And oftentimes people aren't aware that they're showing up as a narcissist or an egotist. Right. They think everything is fine, their business is making money, which to them is the metric of success, when in fact are you really successful if you've got a lot of people with one foot out the door Engagement is such an issue, and it starts at the very, very top. It's hard to have a highly engaged organization without the CEO on board.

So I think if we just start with evidence. By the way, you think that you're impacting all these people positively and they're happy and they're really loyal and they're very passionate and living true to the company's values. Well, guess what, 73% of them aren't. Right? That's kind of like 70% is a statistical average. I mean, there's disengagement is rampant. So once we start with that and then we try to figure out what is it, how are you appearing to others, what's your evidence of what's going on around here? And then we just start picking things to start being aware of. It starts with self awareness and managing your own emotions, you know, and understanding how what you say and do affects other people's emotions. So that's how it is. It sounds so easy. It kind of is if you choose to just go down the path. But don't say that. Don't put that out on the podcast, otherwise, you know, people aren't going to think it's worth paying for.

While we take a moment to give our guest a quick break, I hope you're hearing how important it is to know your why. If you're ready to put an end to your frustration and unlock the code to your personal and business success, then after the show, make sure to head to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It only takes about five minutes. Let's get back to the show.

Well, let's talk about self awareness. How do you define self awareness?

Self awareness is seizing conscious control of those natural human impulses and biases and thoughts that we have going on in our brains. So it starts with understanding a feeling, a sense that you may not even be able to put a word to and say, hey, okay, that was a funny reaction. It's a gut reaction. Now let's try to understand why you had that reaction and the fear behind it. We always process things through our limbic system first, the emotional center. And it works so fast. I mean, like a few milliseconds and I don't know anything else that takes milliseconds. I mean, I think that's a really short period of time.

But it dictates how we immediately respond to any sort of a stimulus around us. And we're such fear laden creatures, which is an evolutionary remnant, that we go to fear right away and then our reactions and responses aren't really all that productive when fear is controlling it.

So the self awareness is to. What's that feeling? Let's put a name to it. And now that you got a name on it, it doesn't go away. I mean, that's not the goal. The goal is not to make it go away. The goal is to at least take a moment to say, okay, now I've got the part of my brain working that I can choose my response that I know is going to be more effective rather than just let this fear dictate my response. So it's about intentionality and choice.

So is it about.

What I think I'm hearing you say is I want to look at how I respond in a certain situation, name it, and then decide if that's how I really want to do it once I know what it is. Is that what you're saying or is.

It how I back at a time where you maybe had a response to somebody that didn't work out so well, or you regretted it, or you know that you hurt them and to sort of unpack that. And then the next time you have something happen, you, you have a process by where you just pause for a brief half of a second and choose to respond in a more productive way based on your knowledge that, hey, my first response, what didn't work out so well? You first have to want to have an organization that's happy. Let's start with that. You don't care that people are happy and thriving around you. Game over. Right? We're seeing that playing out very publicly. Right.

And that's where the narcissist, you know, the malignant narcissism and the sociopathy and just really the overblown ego is out of control. Those are like pathological conditions. Right. Unfortunately, there's a certain percentage of the population that just has that like 4% are psychopathic. That's crazy because I always look around in a room of 25 people, I'm thinking, which is the psychopath here? There's one person.

And if you can't identify them, you got to think, how does it mean.

Yeah, exactly. So what do you mean when you say evidence based life and evidence based communities? What does that mean?

Let's look at the data accurately. Let's call that spade a spade and say, okay, well that is what's going on as opposed to relying on conventional thought. And this is the challenge to conventional thinking or paradigms. And especially in the business world. Business world is wrought with paradigms. I'm speaking later on today to a group of the local. It's called the HR Executive Forum. It's all the chros in the Twin Cities. It's wonderful people. But the way we hire people, right? The way we try to line up the bullet points on.

A career resume with the job description, because we're hiring people who are so qualified for the work that we're hiring them for. And.

In fact, what people really want is to be challenged so they can grow. So we hire these people, they get in the job, they're not learning new stuff. And then the HR community and others wonder why they're so disengaged, they're not being challenged to grow. So the empirical evidence, to me, and I learned this when I was hiring people, was intentionally hire people who are fully unqualified for the jobs you're hiring them for.

Whoever does that. And I gotta tell you, Gary, I had unbelievable results. I had, like, no turnover.

Because I was challenging people and challenge people. You know, this is all self determination theory, part of one of those things. Parts of self determination theory is competence or mastery. We love achieving mastery. But once you're a master at something, now you gotta challenge yourself with something else. We have to keep growing, I think, to stay motivated and happy.

That was really insightful there. I love what you just said. Huh? You screwed it all.

I thought you said you screwed it up.

No, I made it up. Yeah.

No, but it was really good because you said hire people that are fully unqualified for the job, however, they have the right ability to learn.

Character. Yeah, right. Let's hire for character first and desire.

And by the way, likability counts a lot. A lot of people hire for that subconsciously, whether they realize it or not. Right. Yeah. Another thing. How do we define leaders now? You know, I think leaders in my world, I want a leader who unifies a community with a diversity of thought and heritage and everything else around a common goal or an objective. Any leader that behaves in a certain way, that somehow the result is divisiveness. I don't call that a leader. I call it something else. I'll have to come up with another name for that. But it's not in my world a leader, you know, and title doesn't connote a leader either. Right. So, you know, just because you're, you know, selected by a board of directors to be the CEO doesn't really mean you have inherent leadership qualities in my thinking.

Yeah, let's talk about that. What are the qualities you see in the best leaders? And how do you help coach somebody to be a better leader, because there's going to be a lot of people in leadership positions listening to this, and that's a challenge. I mean, I don't know that you're born a leader, but some people seem to excel there. And how do you coach people to be better leaders? And how do you define a great leader?

Oh, gosh. I think it's really about listening and understanding who you're working with and then to make sure that you're accommodating their needs.

In order to harness their skills, efforts, and energy towards meeting whatever goal you have. So it starts with great listening, it starts with empathy, it starts with warmth. But ultimately, and this takes courage, is vulnerability. Be willing to be so authentic that if you make a mistake, you're willing to share it and don't hide it. Because when other people around you are feeling like it's okay to make an occasional mistake, all of a sudden innovation in product services and systems just goes through the roof. I'm no longer worried that I'm going to get called to task for making a mistake. I'm going to learn from it, and I'm going to be better for it. And that's where you just build up all this competency within an organization. So vulnerability is one.

And it's a choice to be vulnerable and it's authenticity. But it's not like, I think, how really conventionally thinking boards of directors hire their CEOs. They're not going to go out and say, look, let's find the most vulnerable CEO we can find. They don't. But we've worked with people who are vulnerable. How endearing, Gary, is that to you?

Yeah, right. Well, a little. Let me put it this way. I think a little bit of vulnerability is good. Too much vulnerability maybe isn't so good. There's got to be a. Like, for example, I know at the school that my daughter went to, they had the head of their school. The guy was always crying and he was, you know, anything came up and this guy's crying and it just was over the top. But understanding that maybe he made a bad decision and wanting to rectify it and change it and make it better. Okay, I can see that. So a little bit. So how much is the right amount?

There's also some emotional intelligence that plays into managing. Managing your emotions as well. Something happens around you.

Get in touch with that emotion quickly move through it, and make sure that you're not being disruptive by, you know, getting puddles of tears on the table in front of you because it's so distracting to others.

So, no, we hear emotional intelligence. People say emotional intelligence and talk about emotional intelligence.

What is that?

What are we talking about again?

It's just the awareness, Gary. It's just the awareness of you being able to put a label to your own emotions and to understand.

How what you say and do affects other people's emotions. That's all it is. But guess what? We're not good at it. You know, it's not easy. It's, you know, again, we are such. We're on autopilot and it's going from autopilot pilot to intentionality. Right. And I'm not going to let what you just said that just created this emotional charge. I'm not going to let that get the best of me. I'm not going to yell. I'm not going to yell at you. You know, I'm not going to. I'm not going to dismiss you. I'm not going to shut the door on you. I'm going to say, okay, you're coming from somewhere. That made me feel kind of crazy. Let me just approach this with curiosity and ask you what's behind all that, which would be of service to you now.

Yeah, So I do what I do is not a good strategy. I just do what I do, man. That's how I do it. That's not a good strategy.

It doesn't sound like, well, that's inertia. Isn't that the definition of inertia?

I'm not a big fan. Yeah.

So you make it fun, you make it interesting, you make it crazy and different. And I'm sure people resonate with that.

Well, you know.

The tagline that I have for the institute is annoying people since 1959. So if your math skills are intact, you know how old I am. Yeah. I think you need to sort of entertain people through this a little bit. You know, I'm provoking in a playful way because you can provoke in a painful way. But why?

Why light up other people's fears in a provocative way? Because, no, they can no longer hear me. Right. I'll just.

I'll just stick that knife in, twist it a couple of times, and they don't even realize it's in there because, you know, it was done in a light hearted way. And why not make it lighthearted? Life's too short to not make any of it light hearted if we can help it.

Yeah, you've really embraced your why of challenge. You've taken it in. Here's the Interesting thing about the why of challenge. People with your why either find lots of success or don't find lots of success. They go the other direction. And why do I have to be like this? Why can't I do it like everybody else? Why am I not, you know, asking the negative side of the why? Why can't I be like everybody else versus how you're taking it as I'm excited, I'm not like everybody else because I can then go show them things that I see that they don't see.

Oh, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm excited to be who I am. Let's just say that I'm totally accepting of who I am and just willing and made a choice to just be authentic. It's so much easier to be who you are than to try to be anything else. And that's true of all the other whys. Yep. You know, you sometimes, and this is why I hate job interviews, because we think we need to be something else or exactly what that person is interviewing for, even though it's not authentic. And it's risky, you know, to be authentic sometimes if you think somebody else wants something else in a. In a candidate and you want that job. So.

It'S a delicate balance, and it's going to be an imperfect system in society because of that.

So take us back to when you became okay with being you.

I've had epiphanies in my life, and one of them. So I started off in medical devices as a surgical sales rep in orthopedics. And there was a decorum in the operating room. There was this rule. You don't speak to your spoken to. You know, you're just sort of in the background. You know, you can't add any life to the conversation. You're supposed to sort of like melt away. I thought, okay, well, I'll give that a shot, see how it goes. Right.

And you know, I did okay as a sales rep. I was just sort of like a non entity.

And after about a year or two, I thought, you know what? I see these people are having a little bit of fun. Let's just see if I can just throw myself into the mix. And lo and behold, I said, okay, well, I'm thinking of funny stuff here, and let's see what happens. All of a sudden, I'm connecting with people really more intimately. I decided, oh, this is who I am. Just be who you are. And all of a sudden, things got great. Gary. I mean, I had the last year I was a sales rep, was the fourth year of my career.

I didn't lose one single competitive sale situation, except my very last one where the head nurse in orthopedics.

She thought that. I can't remember what the exact comment was, but she just thought that I was maybe too relaxed or she just didn't appreciate the sense of humor.

So, you know, again, you're not everything to everybody. But I gotta tell you, when I just decided to let the full Howie manifest itself, things just got way better, and they've always been better.

But I'm wondering if it was before then, because I can't imagine high school. You were typical and traditional and followed the rules like everybody else.

Oh, you know.

I don't know.

Well, your. Your classmate said you haven't changed a bit, right?

Well, partly. I think this because there I was, always the class, the guy sitting in the back of the room. I remember my math classes where I. The problem with me and math was that I was good at it back then, so I didn't have to work that hard. And, you know, the teacher would go through a half an hour of the lesson, and then another half an hour of everybody's doing their work. Well, I didn't do any of the work. I just sat around and joked with everybody, you know, so kind of annoying, but, God, did I have fun. And the teachers really couldn't get all that mad at me because I got really good grades. That was good. Right. But so I think I was just kind of known as a disruptor back then, but a positive one.

You know, I don't know. It was. We always want to fit in when we're younger, and then we always just have that slow transition to saying, I'm going to work so hard to fit in, to saying.

You know, I'm just going to be who I am, and if I fit, fine. If I don't, I'll go find somebody else who I fit with. We get tired of that game, I think. So Some of this just comes with age, I think maybe I had certain epiphanies a little bit earlier on which has served me well. And I would encourage your listeners to, if they haven't gotten to that point of saying just be themselves. Good time is right now to start being yourself, right?

Yeah. That's one of the biggest challenges with the why of challenge. And people that have that why often hide themselves for whatever period of time that is until they finally say, you know what? I'm okay the way I am. I'm fine like this.

And I'm curious as to if there was a time where you noticed that you went from, okay, I'm tired of not being me, to I'm just going to be me and whoever likes me, likes me. And when that was and what advice you would give to people that are in that position now. Because there's going to be people listening to this that are. They're there right now.

Right. Well, again, maybe it's emotional intelligence, maybe getting in touch with how you actually feel about some of these options that you have. Maybe, Gary, this happened. So you're provoking some thinking in me. Maybe this happened when I made this choice to not go into medical school. So as a biochemistry major, I mean, like 97% of the people going to medical school, and if there's 33 people in your program, you're the only one who's not right. And that was probably me. So maybe it was. This isn't it for me. Right. And I had all this background and I thought, well, so maybe that's it. Maybe just say, be really authentic. I knew I loved people, I loved social situations. I put myself through college working in the entomology laboratories at the University of Minnesota. And I was by myself most of the time. And I thought, okay, you know, the work was good, the pay was good enough, got me through school, but I. I know I needed more people around me. So, you know, just pay attention. You just have to pay attention and then just make this choice to say, I'm going to be me. And you will find people who are okay with it. There's plenty. You can't be everybody's. You can't be everything to everybody. We said that.

You know, edit that out because I repeated myself. I hate to. I don't want to do that here. So, you know, I think it's just. Gary, it's just being sensitive to yourself. It's self care. You know, you get to be who you are and the evidence is not what you think, but how you feel.

Yeah. And you've taken that and turned that into a career, which I think is fascinating because there's a lot of ways you could have done what you do, but you just do it in your own way. And you. If people like it, they like it. If they don't like it, if they don't like your jacket, well, too bad. I got another one.

You're not going to like this, Gary. Too bad.

Dog lovers may not like that. It's cats.

Well, don't forget, this is all. But by the way, so the institute is just one of three enterprises that I operate. I'm also a career coach with Launchpad Career Coaching and I'm a Vistage chair currently building a group of CEOs because this is another way for me to scale this thinking is through this group of CEOs where we have these great intimate relationships and now to just bring more of this better thinking and better decision making back to their organizations through the work that we do with them.

So tell us what you do at the institute.

Well.

I do workshops. So I just finished a workshop with a big company in Minneapolis. It was a two series workshop, but the second one was focusing on vulnerability. The manager of these other managers, leaders wanted people to become more autonomous and to feel safe doing so. Yet people have a hard time making mistakes that work because occasionally they've been called to task for it and they needed to feel safe becoming more autonomous in their own leadership. So I did a workshop on vulnerability, right? And.

You know, gave people some exercises and then I'll follow up and coach you to these people and say, okay, how's that working? And you know, where you, where do you want to take this, you know, this vulnerability thing? So, you know, so it can be on anything, you know, any of the leadership principles. I talk about trust a lot. I can do trust workshops, general leadership.

But my favorite thing to do is mostly just get in front of people in general and, and talk. Because I have this healthcare background, I wanted to bring some of this thinking to the healthcare community. I have spoken to a large group of orthopedic surgeons a couple years ago, basically telling them how they became the way they are, a unique breed. So that went off pretty interestingly.

Next month, I'm speaking to the entire family practice section of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, trying to provide them a little bit more perspective and light in their lives. They're getting beat up. So I have 65 physicians and 35 nurse practitioners and PAs to just try to again, help them think better, instigate maybe a little bit of growth and put a smile on their face.

I bet they love it and I bet they love you. So if people that are listening to this, if they want to get ahold of you, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Howie? Just look for Howie Milstein, 1L on LinkedIn. I'm like the most public guy anywhere. All my contact information is on there. Easiest to find. Howie Millstein. M I L S T E I.

N. No wonder I pronounced it wrong. You didn't even correct me.

Milstein is fine. It's either way it works. My mom said Milstein. My dad said Milstein. So I grew up with a lot of immediately with some dissonance in my life.

You couldn't have anything consistent, right?

Exactly.

Well, Howie, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. And for those of you that are listening, get a hold of Howie. If you want to think differently, get outside your box and stop taking yourself so seriously. Thanks, Howie.

Thanks for the opportunity. You're a blast. And good luck with the institute. The y. I mean, you got it going, so this is really important stuff you're doing.

Thank you.

Take care, by the way.

Thanks, Gary.

Thank you.

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 why Instagram 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.