What Will Make You Grateful, Inspired, And Positive

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez. At the why Institute, we've helped over 40,000 people discover, make decisions and connect using their why. This show will be much more powerful for you once you know your own why. So head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why. Today you're going to meet one of the leaders who've discovered their why with us and is going to share their story and the powerful lessons they've learned.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of Clarify. Now clarify is a very Rare why. Only 5% of the population has that why. And the characteristics of somebody with that why is that they are masters in communication. They seek to be fully understood at all times. It's important to you, if you have this why, to know that people get what you're saying and generally employ numerous methods to express a given point. You'll use analogies and metaphors to share your views and in interesting and unique manners. Individuals that share your why often suffer in a dysfunctional communication environment during their upbringing and now seek to make up for that with extraordinary clarity, both spoken and written. You feel successful when you know with confidence that your message has been fully understood and received and have a tremendous command over language generally superior to most others. And so today I I've got an awesome guest for you. I'm so excited for this guest. Now, the common thread that permeates Warren Rustin's experience is one of vision, strategy, executive leadership and achievement. He has created, led and grown many successful private, public and not for profit entities. He has a passion for family, entrepreneurship, public policy and community. Warren's background includes the following. He's the CEO of Providence Services Corporation which is a company NASDAQ $2.1 billion social services and healthcare company. Chairman and CEO of Rural Metro Corporation which is a 500 million dollar emergency services company. Chairman and Interim CEO of TLC Vision, a 400 million dollar LASIK eye surgery company. Chairman and Director of more than 50 public, private and non for profit organizations ranging in size from multi billion dollar companies to mid size early stage and startups. He was selected as a White House Fellow. Following a nationally competitive process, he was a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce, co led the first ever executive level trade mission to the former Soviet Union. Special Assistant to the Vice President of the United States, Appointment Secretary to the President of the United States. Chairman of the YPO WPO Public Policy Conference titled Public Policy and a private sector for 30 years in Washington, D.C. warren, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much. I thought for a second I closed my eyes and I was being eulogized. Maybe I had passed on and didn't know it.

No way. No.

That was way over the top. But thank you.

There was a lot there. And so that tells us you've gotten a lot of experience over the years.

Well, it tells you that I'm really old. I think that's the key. Right? You got to be 100 years old to accomplish that kind of stuff.

So. Well, you know, I remember when we first started talking and you were you. I want to go back a little bit in your, in your life because you've done a lot of amazing things and now I know you're helping other people do an awful lot of amazing things, mentoring them. I know you've mentored me, but let's go back to. I know you were a basketball player.

Some people would say that my opponents never thought that. Right.

So where did you play basketball and what position were you?

Well, I moved from an isolated farm in Minnesota when I was 12 to Southern California, became surfer and had some fun. And then somebody handed me a basketball when I was about 14 and said, if you'll dribble this, maybe some good things will happen. So I started dribbling. I'm not very smart, so I started dribbling. And by the time I was 18, there were a lot of colleges and universities that wanted me to play, and I was a point guard. And so I was invited to play in a lot of different places, as I said, and I ended up going to the University of Arizona. I like blue sky and sunshine. I love the desert. So went down there to play basketball, had a little fun, became an All American, and then ended up being drafted by the then San Francisco Warriors. They're now called the Golden State warriors, obviously. And so I had a chance to play and I wasn't very good again, but it was a lot of fun and it was a good experience. So, you know, basketball's been good for me.

Now, how tall are you?

I'm six two.

So six two was probably pretty tall for a point guard.

Yeah, it's okay. It was good at that time. Point guards today can get much bigger. Obviously some are smaller, but much bigger. The NBA has gotten bigger, stronger, faster overall. And so the athleticism of these great athletes is just extraordinary and remarkable. You look at somebody like LeBron James at 6, 8, 6 9, 250, the way he moves, or even a Michael Jordan. In a previous era, it was six, six, you know, 210 pounds. Really gifted. And so it's. It's fun to watch them. They're really talented athletes.

So I'm sure you learned a lot in your athletic endeavors that translated over into the business world. So how did you go from being a pro basketball player to being in the business world?

Yeah, I've never taken a business class in my life, which is a real indictment of me, I think. But I was a political science major, you know, and so I love political science, and I stay close to politics. Obviously, in going to the White House and spending time in politics, that was interesting. But I just really feel that sport has a great translation to almost everything we do in life. But for me, it was about understanding, discipline, commitment, dedication, teammates, team opportunities. Right. Preparation for big moments and how you perform in big moments, those kinds of things. And I think all of that translates to the many things that we do as fathers and mothers and children and aunts and uncles and CEO and all the other stuff that we do in our lives. So I would say for me, basketball was a great teacher of what I needed to know to be successful in other parts of my life. And I've been able to apply those lessons learned on the basketball court to virtually everything that I do with probably, if I picked out one quality that's really helped me because I wasn't a gifted athlete, I wasn't a talented athlete, I'm not a gifted student, I'm not anything in particular. But discipline is what was really the difference for me, that pay attention to every task, large or small, do it as well as you can do it. And my dad would always say, if you do something poorly, when are you ever going to have time to do it again? So you might as well do it right the first time and apply the discipline necessary to be successful the first time. And he was a great influence in my life. And I saw, I watched a man growing up on the farm, very disciplined. He was a doer, he was a worker, he was achiever. And so discipline maybe has made the biggest difference in my life.

Wow, I love that. And then you went from. So what was the first. What happened to you when you retired from Basketball other than maybe had some bad knees. Then what happened after that?

Well, I got to tell you a fun story about my basketball career. I thought I was really a special basketball player. Drafted by the Golden State Warriors. Coach was a guy named Alex Hannam, who'd grown up in the 40s and 50s playing professional basketball. Kind of a big, burly guy. One day after practice, he called me over and he said, you know, Warren, there are three qualities that you have to have to be a great NBA player. And I said, coach, I want to be a great NBA player. What are they? And he says, well, first, you have to know. You have to be intelligent. You have to know the offense, the defense, the transitions, the matchups, all the stuff we're trying to do. And he said, you score very high in that, Warren. Good job. I said, well, what's the second quality? So the second quality is you have to give great effort because there are a lot of great athletes out here, and they all want to be great NBA players. And so you have to match their effort. You have to give great effort. And, Warren, you get great scores there, too. You're giving us great effort. And I said, coach, I really want to be a great NBA player. What's the third thing he said? Well, the third thing he said, you're missing. And I said, what's that? And he said, talent. So.

I started looking at graduate school shortly after that.

Well, you went a long ways with no talent.

That's exactly right. I figured I went as far as I could. Right.

How long were you in the NBA?

No, I was there a short time, just a year or so. And then I went and got my amateur status back. And I played for the best amateur AAU team in the United States, the Phillips 66ers, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. We had a great year. I think we won about 60 games. We played for the national championship, the national AAU championship. And then following that, I was invited to play for the US Team that went to the World Basketball Championships in Santiago, Chile. We won the silver medal, got beat by a few points by the Yugoslavian team, but had a great experience representing our country, and that was a good capstone to my career. And then I became the assistant basketball coach at Arizona while I was going to graduate school and had a good time doing that. So I've had a good time. Everything I've done, it's all been educational and instructive. Right. I'm not sure I've been good at everything I've done, but I've enjoyed Everything I've done.

And so through the schooling then you. That's where you became real interested in political science.

Yes.

Off to then. Then what happened?

Yeah, I already completed my undergraduate degree obviously, so I got my master's degree at the university in political science. And then, you know, I had a chance, somebody came by and gave me a chance to run a company as a 24 year old. And so my first job as a CEO in a small company, I was 24 years old and I turned it around and we had some fun and made a little money and did it again and did it again. And so suddenly I was sucked into business. Right. Not having a business degree.

The word I keep hearing you use is fun.

Yeah, I think life is pretty interesting and pretty fun. I see my life as just series of really good and fun and interesting experience. That doesn't mean they're all successful and it doesn't mean they are all without pain. But from each of those experiences, good and bad, I think we can draw from that lessons for our future that make us better. I don't dwell on the past. I don't think much about the past at all. We recently had a reunion of all the guys that played together over a 10 year period for our college coach. And we were celebrating him and honoring him as he got older. And there are guys in the room that could remember every basket, every opponent, every game, every score. I could barely remember that we played basketball. It's either an indictment of my memory or it means that I focus on other things. I don't think about the past. I learn from the past, apply it to my future, but my sole focus is on my future. My best day is going to be tomorrow. My best week is next week. The best acquisition we're going to do is next month. It's all about the adventure and the opportunity that lies in front of us, buoyed up by that which we've experienced from the past and that which we've learned from the past. So I constantly think about the future. I rarely think about the past.

How the heck do you do that? Is that something you learned? I mean it's so easy to get caught up in the past because it's right there. I mean, it's kind of made you what you are and then how do you block that out? I guess.

Well, that's true. I think it's compartmentalization. I think men maybe have a better opportunity to do that. Women, I think that we know enough about the brain to understand how different men and women are in that respect, I think, secondly is it's about that word discipline we talked about earlier. It's the discipline of determining how am I going to spend my time and energy. Am I going to dwell on the past, live in the past, think about the past, or am I going to look at current state and go to the future? And I don't think I'm probably smart enough to embrace everything. So I better focus pretty carefully on what I'm doing today and where I want to go in the future. Now, you and I both know that we've been at cocktail parties and other places and we'll run into the occasional person who still caught the 60 yard touchdown pass and ran for the state championship and that they sort of live by that. Right? That's their signature in the past. That's the biggest moment in their life. My biggest moments are still ahead of me now. I'm 77 years old, but my best days are still ahead of me. The greatest things I'm going to accomplish, I believe are in my future. And that gives me reason and purpose to live and live hard every day. I hope when I'm done, I'm worn out, sweaty, tired. They push me across the finish line and put me in a pine box somewhere. Right. I don't want to end life with a lot of energy. I don't want to end up not doing what I wanted to do. And I think there are a host of people, Gary, who say, I wish I shoulda, coulda, woulda. I wish I'd lived my life differently. I hope I can live back, live in my life and look back over my shoulder and say, at that moment, I did the best I could. I may not have always been right. I may have made a mistake, I may have failed. But given that circumstance, with that information, at that moment in time, I did the best I could. And therefore I don't have to look back and with regret. I don't have to look back with regret. Wow.

Have you discovered your why yet? You can join us for that essential first step in a live virtual event with myself and the other leaders from the Y Institute. Head over to yinstitute.com and register for the Y Discovery Live webinar. Now let's get back into it.

How do you define discipline?

It's the ability and willingness and strength of mind to do what's required at the moment it's required. It's doing our best when it matters most.

Yeah.

And it's oftentimes doing our best at the worst time, when all odds are stacked against you when it's really tough, you still perform at your very best. I think that's the essence of discipline, at least for me, as I think about it. Right. Like you think about where we are right now with the COVID virus and all the stuff that's going on. It seems like an eternity since we got into this mess. Yeah. And it seems like an eternity before we're going to get out of it. And it's this notion of staying on task, being diligent, being disciplined. Know what you're doing every day. Don't get caught up in the panic, the frustration, the anger, the whatever that we might be feeling, but stay focused. Be positive. Understand that this is a learning experience. Whatever we're learning here, we will apply sometime in our future. So why not learn? Yeah.

I love that definition of discipline. And it's. Makes it possible, makes it doable, you know, for a lot of people, they avoid discipline, I think, and the results probably show from that.

Yeah, I think most of the people that I know, in fact, there was a list published not long ago, the 14 things that ridiculously successful people do every day. And I read down that list, and one of the things is they have a disciplined morning routine. Every single person, and they were Olympians, CEOs, billionaires, I mean, all kinds of interesting people on the list. And they all have a disciplined morning routine. And that's something I've been practicing for 45 years, is that when I get up in the morning, I do very specific things every day, all the time, and I don't deviate from that. And I found that it puts me in a position to have more successful days, to be better at what I do. It creates focus and discipline.

Are you comfortable taking us through your morning routine?

Yeah, absolutely. I teach it, I coach it a lot. It's 10, 10 and 10. The people in our management teams try to practice it as well. So when you first wake up in the morning, the question is, what do most of us. What do average people do? What do they do? Well, they go to the bathroom, brush their teeth, turn on tv, reach for their cell phone, make coffee, go for a walk. I mean, it's pretty routine that most people in an audience or in a group would do similar things. And I say, you know, not one of those things that I just mentioned starts your day for success. Not one thing. If you read a newspaper or go to social media news. Right. About 80% of everything you see is negative. If you turn on TV, it's about 70% negative. If you reach for your cell phone. It's over 50% negative. So why would I start my day digesting negative information? It runs counter to everything I know about being successful. That'd be like sitting in a locker room before a game with a bunch of basketball players. We're sitting around saying, we're gonna get killed tonight. This thing is not gonna work. We're not good enough. These guys are gonna beat us like a Tom Tom, Right? So that's just not what you do. You build yourself up to be successful in the game. Well, we do the same thing in the morning. So what I'd ask you, Gary, to do, or anyone who's listening, when you first realize you're awake, swing your legs over the edge of the bed. But sit on the edge of the bed and ask yourself this. Why am I alive today? Why has my life been preserved for this moment? You're really asking yourself, what's my purpose today? What's my purpose? So get that firm, fixedly fixed firmly in your mind. So it might be that I got to be a great negotiator or that I have to be a great teacher, or that I have to be a terrific husband or father or grandfather. But fix firmly in our mind a vision of what we have to do really well for our most important activity. Some days we have more than one thing that's important. We might have to be a great negotiator in the morning, but in the afternoon, we've got to be a great team leader for our management team, right? So keep our eye focused on what's most important, not what's most urgent. What's most important? Push the urgent aside and do what's most important. So you do that for a minute, and then for the next 10 minutes, find some place quiet and just be grateful. We know that gratefulness creates better attitude and a better perspective than anything negative. So just be grateful. And. And people say to me, well, I can't think of anything to be grateful for. And I say, my goodness, I could fill up books full of gratefulness, right? For the sunrise, the sunset. In New Mexico, where you live, you get some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets every day in the world. For the home I live in, for the family I have, for the spouse or significant other with whom I live, right? For my profession, my opportunity to make a living, the city I live in. I mean, I can fill up books about what I need to be grateful for. Okay, so that's the first 10 minutes. Then the next 10 minutes, read something inspirational.

What I'M reading right now is the hundred greatest speeches ever Given. So it's Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy. Right. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill. They make the hair stand up on my neck. They're so inspirational. They're so powerful. Right? But there are smaller books. There are books like thank you, the Treasure Chest, the Manual for Living. These are all books that will inspire us and prepare us for the day. Just for 10 minutes, just read quotes, right? And then the third 10 minutes, have a journal and write in your journal the great things that happened the day before so that your journal is filled with positivity. It's filled with great thoughts and great lessons learned. I don't need to read it to write about the junk that goes on in my life and the bad stuff. Our kids are going to have more than enough of their own bad stuff. They don't need to read about mine, but they can learn from the lessons I extract from my failures, from my difficulties, from my challenges. So it creates learning for them. And when I'm gone, right when I'm. They put me in that pine box. Those journals go to our children and grandchildren, and they're going to be able to read about their granddad and their father in his own handwriting. My dad left me 45 years of journals every day. If I want to know what he was doing on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I turn to that page and read what his thinking was on that day. That's very instructive to me. That's very helpful to me. You know, if I die today, our children will have years and years and years of journals of their father and what he thought when he was in the White House, when he was playing basketball, what he was doing as a CEO when he failed. Right? And lessons learned from failure. Doing stupid personal stuff, making mistakes, what I learned from that. So I just think if we could spend 31 minutes every morning, a minute on the edge of the bed, 10 minutes of gratefulness, 10 minutes of inspirational reading, and 10 minutes of journaling. Where are we at the end of 31 minutes? We're on fire. Our mind is in a positive place. We're ready to have a successful day. And the reason why all those many people have those 14 things in common, one of which is a disciplined morning routine, is because they know they have to put their mind in a particular place to be successful. And they all do it. They all do it. So I hope that's helpful. I hope that's helpful.

No, that's super helpful. And it's interesting because I have a morning routine and I do some of that, but I'm going to change it now. You know, when I journal, I write YOS w H Y O s which stands for what happened yesterday of significance, right? But what I'm going to do is just focus on the positive things that you're talking about there. Because sometimes I will put some of the negative things. And I'm like, why am I writing this? I don't need to.

At least I don't think so. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. And one time I was asked by somebody who said, well, what happens? What should I do if my glass is half empty? I said, get a smaller glass, okay? Just get a smaller glass. The same volume will go in and fill it up. So it's okay. You can always have a glass half full.

So where do you get all your energy? That's something that really hit me when we came out to visit you and we. I think we showed up about, let's say, one or two o', clock, something like that, in Tucson. We drove over there. But you had just gotten back the night before from like India or something, and then you got up and played a golf tournament. And then you were there ready to go with us, and you had more energy than all of us had. I was like, what the heck is. What is he taking?

Well, energy is a part of a couple things. Number one, energy is a state of mind, right? I mean, I can be enthusiastic and energetic and happy, or I can choose to be angry, frustrated and sad. That's entirely up to me, number one. Number two is if we keep our bodies in good shape and we get good sleep and we eat decently, then we're going to have more energy than other people around us, right? So that's really important. So there are three things we have to get right and particularly important during the pandemic that we're in right now. The first is that we have to work out rigorously at least four days a week. I work out every day because it helps me release endorphins and get pumped up and so forth. I like working out every day, but at least four days a week, 150 minutes a week, we have to do that. The second is we have to get decent nutrition. And what happens when we're in crisis? We frequently start eating junk food. We reach for the Pepsis or Cokes or whatever it is, the soft drinks, right? Because we're frustrated, we're uncertain, we're Nervous, we're anxious, all those kinds of things. And that tends to play havoc with our diets. And then the last thing is, the third thing is we got to sleep. Well, about 68% of Americans have a sleep problem. And sleep is just symptomatic of what's going on in our life. It's not the issue. Sleep isn't the issue. It's what's going on that keeps us awake. Is it that we eat too late, we drink too much, we're not exercising? We know that people are in good physical condition, require less sleep than those who aren't. Right. So the better shape you're in, the less sleep you require. So all of those things kind of come together in a way that says that we can have about as much energy as we want to have. My body will do what my mind tells it to do. If I'm running a marathon, it's not my body that quits, it's my mind that quits. So we have to be sure we're controlling our mind and putting our mind in a place that allows us to be successful. So that's just how I look at it. I think energy, I can't imagine living without it, you know? So do I ever get tired? Sure, once in a while. But, you know, when I go home tonight, I got to clean out the horse corral. My horse has been pooping all day long. Right. I got to clean out the corral. I don't get to go home and sit by and watch TV and stuff. Right. And we've got 19 grandchildren and seven children that live on our property with us. So we have three generations living on a 60 acre parcel in Tucson, Arizona. We got animals to take care of, we got trees to cut, we got tractors to dry, we got stuff to do. It's like my dad. My dad had a bias toward action, and therefore my downtime is spent doing things. It's just that I change the things I do. It's just fun.

Yeah. You know, and there's that word again. It's fun. And you can just feel it in you, you know, in every aspect of what you do. Just in our conversation, sitting in your living room talking, you made it fun. When we went to dinner, you made it fun. Everything was about having fun. And I love that. That's such a great. It comes from, I'm guessing, the energy that you have.

Well, I think so.

One comes from the other.

Yeah, that's right. And it's also just perspective on sort of what's our life about. I Think life is about happiness. I don't think it's about sadness. Does that mean we'll suffer sadness? Absolutely. You know my father died, right? That was sad. But we don't have to stay in that state. We can choose to be in a different state. I became grateful for my father's life very quickly after he died. I had a moment of sadness and then I began to reflect on all the things he had taught me, all the things that I learned and that made me happy. Right. So let's focus on that which makes us happy. Even during this difficult time where we're locked down, where we don't have social interaction, we have to keep social distancing, wearing masks and so forth. And a lot of people went into this thinking, well, this will be over in a few weeks, maybe a couple months. Ain't happening. This thing is a long term deal. We gathered our whole family together first week in February and agreed that it's long term. We then agreed on a two year plan. And so we built our expectations around two years. Do we have enough money, do we have enough organization, discipline and enough computers and everything for the kids to learn and be online and get their education? How are we going to get our groceries right? All the stuff that you need to do right and still protect your family and protect yourself. So we had a game plan and our game plan is still two years long. We don't think it's going to end a lot sooner than that. So it's a ways out there. Wow.

So here's another question that comes to mind for me, and that is you have a lot going on, way more than most anybody that I know. And you always seem to have time to talk or to think or to spend time with your family. And you know, I feel like I'm juggling enough things and it's hard for me to do that. And I have a tenth or less of what you have to do. How the heck do you do that?

Well, first of all, I don't agree with you. You do a lot and you got a lot going on. So I understand how busy you are and you accomplish a lot every day and I admire you for that. So don't sell yourself short here. I think all of us who are busy, all of us who want to accomplish a lot in our lifetime have to be really good at managing our time. And if we're not, time will manage us. If we don't have an agenda with discipline, then we will be reacting to other people's agenda and their discipline. And I really learned that I was always good because with time, because my dad was so good with time. So he was a good teacher. But I really learned it when I scheduled all the time for the President of the United States, where I really learned that every minute counts and the presence ability to find focus on what's important, not urgent. What's important has to be really center place. And so we were able to assist the President in refining his time in such a way that he became very efficient and very effective. And what happened was that made me more efficient, more effective in my own planning. So I discerned pretty quickly what's important versus what's urgent. If you want to read something good on that, Stephen Covey's book, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. He has a quadrant in there about how to spend time and how to think about time. And I subscribe to that. He walks you through that. And the conclusion of that is do what's important, not urgent. Push urgent off to other times or other people and get done what is most important. And when you always focus on what's important, it's amazing what you get done because you're always doing important things, at least as you define it, as we would define it in our lives right now. My important may be different than your important. That's okay, we just got different stuff to do. But if we can stay focused on that which is most important, then we tend to get done what's most important. And therefore our lives look like we've accomplished a lot in the same way that the person who always gets sucked into what's urgent, the distraction, the shiny moment, right, the little shiny object that bounces around. We each get about 40 million stimuli a day into our brain and it's called voices and choices. We hear lots of voices, but the key is about our choices. Who do we choose to listen to and what are we going to do? So I just think, I don't think life is complex. I think it's relatively simple. And when you break it down to the simple stuff, then I even I can understand. I'm an old farm kid from Minnesota, right? I've got to be able to understand this stuff.

Well, I know that your why is clarify and I know you talk a lot about being clear and the power of clarity.

Talk about that for a minute. Why is this so important to be.

Clear from an early age, I didn't like vagary, I didn't like murkiness. I was always asking the follow up question. My dad would say, let's go do this. And I'd say, why are we doing that? Or I don't understand what it is you want me to do. Right. Can you explain that? Again, I was always asking the follow on question that gave me more information, more knowledge, more clarity. And I believe that if I had to say, what is the most singular, most important thing in being successful? I've talked about discipline, other things. It's clarity of vision, and it's clarity of vision about everything we do. If we're asked to join a board of directors, what clarity do we have about what it is we're going to be doing? What's expected of us? What experience are we bringing? What value do we have to that? Right. It's getting clarity around that before I ever accept that role of being on that board. Right. Really understanding that. So if I were to join a board of directors, I'd ask first to meet with the chairman of the board to get his clarity. I then want to meet with a CEO to get his clarity, to see if it's aligned with the chairman of the board. I then want to meet with every director individually to see what their clarity is. Right. And then I'd want to meet with the CFO to get clarity around the financial statements to be sure I understand what kind of business it's doing. Right. So I can gain different points of clarity, all of which then I can distill in a way that gives me a very clear picture of what it is I'm going to be doing on that board of directors. And I just think clarity helps me a great deal. If somebody comes and asks me to do something for them, I'll probably ask two or three questions about that just to be sure I'm really clear. And I may say, yep, I'm going to help you. That's great. But what is it you really want done here? How many hours is it going to take? What role do you want me to play? How can I best use my talents to help you in this circumstance, in this situation? The more information I get and the more clear I become, the better I'm going to be at helping him. But if I just say, sure, I'm going to help you, let's go. I don't know anything, nor does he necessarily know what I can do best. So it's just the way I think, and I'm not sure, it may drive other people crazy, but it helps me a great deal to get clarity.

And you did that with us. So for those of you that are listening, Warren, as you heard in the intro has had a lot of success in a lot of different areas. And now you give back quite a bit by mentoring other CEOs. And you spent a day with me and with my partner and Jamie Duraghi, and you asked us a lot of questions. The first, I don't know how long was all questions, but super helpful.

Well, and it helped me and maybe even helped you clarify where you are going and what you want to do. But it was super helpful for me to know what you wanted to accomplish. And then we could have better discussions. Right. More clear discussions. And that gets us to the outcome faster. Yeah, right. Just gets us to the outcome faster. Jamie Draghi is particularly good at that and effective that asking questions, questions of clarification. Really, really helpful. So, yeah. So my. Why I've always had it. I've always known it, but I didn't know it in the way it's now described. You know, Simon Sinek's book helped a great deal in terms of clarification. The why Institute, what you're doing is super helpful. I mean, it's extraordinary what you're doing to help thousands of people. And once we understand that, it's just that clarifying piece. Right. And we had it done for our entire family. We brought all of our family together over the age of 10, had it done for everybody. And it created fantastic discussions within the family because we suddenly began to realize why individuals do certain things. And once we understood that, it allows us to accept them in a different way. And that was very powerful stuff for our family. We do it with our management teams. Right. We just think it's so helpful. So the work you're doing at the Y Institute is just fabulous. It's terrific. So keep doing it. Keep doing. Thank you.

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. What was it like for. First of all, the youngest one was 10.

Yeah.

And how did it go for him or her?

Him.

How did it go for him?

It was terrific. I mean, it was like a light bulb going off. Oh, this is. Oh, I get it. This is why I do this. This is what I like. This is what I want to do. This is really fun. This is great. This is my passion kind of thing. And that was really helpful. Among the teenagers, created tremendous discussion. We had like eight teenagers and they were just all. I mean, just buzzing in the corner, talking. What were you. And what do you mean? It was just fantastic. But I think, you know, stepping back from that now, months later, years later, that there's greater clarity in our family and we better understand how all of us are going to react and do certain things so we understand expectations better. And I just think that's powerful for a family, a management team, a corporate culture, you know, husbands and wives, you know, children. I just think it's so much better. So, yeah, I think it's really good stuff and it's been very helpful to us.

So one of the things that I noticed that you and Jamie both do is yes, you ask a lot of questions, but the way you ask the questions is disarming, it's comfortable, it's, you have a weight and maybe it's because you've been asking questions for so long, but you have a way to do it that makes people talk or I don't know if it makes them talk, but makes them want to talk. And would you describe that?

Well, I think that it's first of all, it's an acceptance of the person you're asking questions. You got to care about the person across from you regardless of who they are, shape or size, color doesn't matter. It's this notion that you accept them as an individual human being and that you're interested in. And then the second thing is that I want to ask questions that are reasonably open ended that will allow the person receiving the question to be able to construct an answer. If I ask it too narrow, then maybe I'm asking for the answer that only I want. But I ask, if I ask a broader question, it creates space within which the individual to whom it is asked can create an answer which is helpful for them. It gives them space to talk. I think that's helpful. And I'm open to whatever they say. I'm open to whatever the answer is. It's not a prescribed answer. It's what is it you're thinking about? And that way I learn more. And then there was a book written many years ago and I have it here on my shelves in my office and it's called qbq, the question behind the Question. And frequently we ask one question and we don't follow up. And it's the second and third question that really elicits the information and knowledge that you need to have. We all say, hey, how you doing? What's going on? But few of us stop to say, how are you really doing? What can I do to help you? Because we get into these routine responses sometimes and we have a lot of those sort of interesting kinds of interactions but nothing comes with them. But the people I know that are really curious and interested in people ask the question behind the question. And frequently, that's what gets us the information that we want. Wow.

Now, I know that you currently mentor Quite a few CEOs. I know you're involved with YPO, Neo, and WPO, and those are all CEO leadership organizations. What kinds of things are you seeing? The same kind of stuff that all the CEOs come to you with. Is there like a. Or how do you help them the best?

Yeah. No, it's all different. And it's all customization. Right. It's all about their unique and individual circumstances. So right now, I have about 40 CEOs that I spend time with, and that goes from an hour a week to an hour every two weeks to once a month, depending upon the pace and what they're going through. And it's a holistic process. It's across the four buckets of life. Family, business, community, and self. And so it's not just about business. It's not just about personal stuff. It's about the whole thing. Because I believe that our lives are integrated. I don't believe they're separate verticals. I think all too often we've talked about life balance. Life balance makes it sound as if we have four or five separate verticals, and we're making decisions across those verticals. It's like the person who's juggling plates and they have them on sticks, and you get five or six or seven of them going at the same time. And every once in a while, you got to give them one a spin to keep it going. Right. And I think that life is holistic. It's integrated, and that each of us has a different rhythm and pace about our lives. It's everything. Everyone is unique in the same way that nobody has the same genetic structure, nobody has the same DNA. No one has the same fingerprints. Right. Even identical twins are different in some ways. And so this notion is that if we're all individuals, then however we talk to each other needs to be individual and customized. So every single CEO that I talk to, I address their issues, where they are in their life, whatever it might be. I had a young man who was a Navy SEAL here in my home for the last two days, and he had a particular set of challenges that was unique to him. Right? And so we addressed those challenges, and then we put it in the context of not just the narrow challenge he was having, but. But the broader challenge of, okay, then how does that affect your family? How does that affect your business? How does that affect you in the community? And so you begin to widen the perspective of the individual. So they too can see that there's more to it than just this narrow problem. And I found that that kind of discussion, asking a lot of questions and helping people find their own answers, rather than prescribing answers to really find their own answers, is the best way for people to learn. So I don't see myself as a guru who's got all the answers because of my experience. What I see is somebody who can ask questions, understand, ask follow up questions, and allow people self discovery. And when we have self discovery, we tend to learn better and more.

When I was talking with one of my team members here about doing our podcast right now, that's kind of how I described you. I said, you know what? Warren is not necessarily a problem solver, but he's a really good storyteller. And so you got a problem, he's got a story which tells you the answer, but he doesn't actually say, this is what you do. He's like, let me tell you a story.

Stories are fun, aren't they? Yeah. And we, and we learn a lot from stories. I think the metaphors that we can create, I think, I think our lives are really just a series of experiences and stories. And the more we live our stories. My dad was really interesting because I was a little bit introverted as a child and a little unsure, but my dad was a very social, gregarious guy. And when we go into town from our isolated farmer, I always observed him. He'd strike up a conversation with anybody, have a good conversation. When we go to travel, he would go into a restaurant and strike up a conversation with a total stranger and just have a great time. And I asked him one time, what is it that makes you so social? Because I was sort of trying to figure out where I was going to fit in this process. And he said, you know, everybody has a voice and a story, and we need to listen to their voice and their story. He was a great questioner. People had confidence in him because he was always asking questions about them. And the one thing that's true, we all love to talk about ourselves, right? And so if you can engage someone like that, it's great.

Sounds like somebody we know.

I'm not so sure. I just hope my dad would think I'm doing okay.

I think he would. Can we switch topics for just a second? And I'd love your perspective on leadership. What makes a great leader?

Wow, that's really a great question there. Well, there are many things that make a great leader. We could easily tick off a list So I think there are five things that I would say that I would put on my list, okay? The first is humility. The second is to be a listener. The third is to have high EQ emotional intelligence. The fourth is to be a great communicator. That's the clarity piece for me. And the fifth is iq. Now, not everybody would agree with those five in that order, but I think if I look at leaders, I found the most successful leaders that I've been associated with in government, in the military, in corporate life, in athletics and so forth, have had those five in pretty good order. And I think if I could say one leadership quality that stands out more than anything else, it's humility. It's the ability for us to realize we're not the smartest, we're not the brightest, we're not the most able, no matter what success we've had in life. And that our experience is just our experience. And other people have had their own experience, and we need to respect that.

And how important is great leadership in building a great business?

I think everything about the business emanates from the CEO. The culture, the corporate culture, the values, the quality of the people, and the humility of the leader. I've always believed, and We've done about 250 acquisitions in our lifetime, so we evaluate businesses regularly. I've always believed I want to go into a business and not be able to tell who the leader is. If I can walk into a business and not be able to tell, because there's a distribution of leadership, because there's an equality among people. There's a peer group there, and you can't really discern. Nobody's giving orders, nobody's yelling and screaming, nobody has the biggest office. You know, that kind of stuff, then that's the kind of culture that we're interested in. That's the kind of people we want to have around us, right? Because there are enough of the other kind. There are enough of the yellers and screamers and the commanders in chief and all that kind of stuff, right? The people who disavow anything when it goes wrong, but who want all the credit when it goes, right. Great leaders in times of crisis step forward and in times of great good, step backwards. So you take accountability responsibility for your organization when things are going bad. But when things are going really well, you step back and you promote others and tell them how good they are and what a great job they them. That's the humility of leadership. I think that's the ability. And we see that Often. Not often enough, but we see that often. Then when things go wrong, the leader steps up and said, it was my responsibility, it's my accountability. And he or she will protect the people who were working on that by taking on their shoulders. Right. Instead of pushing. No, no, no, that was Joe's fault, or that was Joe's assignment, or no, they did it wrong. Right. We can be pretty sure that person's not a leader. And we see that play out in a variety of ways in public settings and private settings. It's always interesting. So I want to go into an organization, and you really can't tell who the leader is because everyone's a leader.

I love that. Well, what's the best book you've read on leadership?

Oh, my goodness. There's so many great books out there. I couldn't tell you a best book. But one of the books that I would recommend would be True north by Bill George. He's now a Harvard professor, but he became CEO of Medtronics when it was a $10 billion company. He took it to $60 billion, and he had a great corporate culture. And True north is a look at people across corporate life who have stood firm for their values, their beliefs in times of difficulty, trial and struggle. They've been humble, they've admitted their mistakes, and they've built great organizations because in the end, the CEO, as I said earlier, everything starts and ends with a CEO and who they are and what they believe and how other people feel comfortable in that environment. And when you get a cult corporate culture where people believe in each other, they trust each other, they trust in their CEO. He's modeling and she's modeling the behavior that they want to have. Great things happen. In the same way, when you've got a hypocrite as a CEO. Right. Nobody buys into that. Everybody knows that they're not going to act like that. They're going to do whatever they want to do. So there's a big difference between those two. I hope that's helpful in some way.

Yeah, it is. And you know, there's a lot of pressure on the CEO to perform and to learn this stuff because it's not necessary. Do you think a great leader is born or a great leader is.

I think leadership is mostly an acquired skill with certain natural instincts. Some people have a natural instinct for people and being with people and the way they are. Right. Some people have greater vision than others have. Some people are more natural in creating strategy or priority. So there are skills that you can learn, but some have natural Gifts. Some have natural gifts, but mostly leadership is acquired skill.

Okay, so there's hope for the rest of us.

Hope for all of us. I still hope someday I can be a leader. So I'm working at it every day.

You've been an amazing leader. And you know, Warren, I know we're running out of time here, and I know I've gone over the time I told you we were going to go, but, man, I could talk to you for hours. And it's funny, no matter what I ask you, you have an incredible answer. I even feel like I'm trying to stump you. And I can't stump you.

Well, please, anytime, ask me anything. I'm pretty much an open book. And there's a lot I don't know. And I'm happy to tell you I don't.

So what's next for you, Warren? I know you're. Like you said, you're already mentoring 40 CEOs. You've got lots of business things going on. You got a huge family that just is right there with you. You know what you told me one day and it's always stuck with me. When we talked about your family, you told me about your schedule and how you invite family members with you on trips. And I love that. It's part of my what I write every morning and my beliefs and tell people about that, because I just found that really awesome.

Well, when my wife and I got married, we wanted to have a large family. We thought that 15 children would be a good number. Right. That seems like a great number. And it was because that was my uniform number in basketball. Fifteen. Right. I thought that was a good number. And my wife said that it's also my iq, so that worked out really well. So we want to have great children. And four years into our marriage, we were told it was biologically impossible for us to have kids. We would never have children. So we got ready to adopt. We're enthusiastic and optimistic. And we met a young doctor who specialized in fertility and other things. And he put my wife in the hospital and me in the hospital, checked us both out and did some reconnecting of stuff and all that. And we ended up every two years for 14 years, we ended up having babies. We had seven children. So it worked out great for us. We didn't get to 15, so I was an abject failure at that. But we got halfway there, which was good. So we loved and we wanted children and we wanted babies, and we just included them in our lives from the earliest time. If I had a meeting with a governor or a senator or I'd just take one over two of our kids along with us. They'd play on the floor or do whatever. When we were in the White House, the president, after I was asked to be appointment secretary, which is sort of a 24, 7 job. And I knew that I would be asked to be in the White House on the weekends, some weekends and stuff. And I said, Mr. President, I'll accept the job, but only if I can bring one or more of our children with me on the weekend. He said, absolutely, no problem. So we have some wonderful pictures of our oldest son Eric, playing football with the President of the United States in the hallway of the White House. It's fantastic. So it's this notion of always including them, always having around. So it's natural for me as I travel in my life, to first ask my wife if she wants to go and she has a green light, she can go anywhere she wants to with me anytime. And secondly is to invite one of our children and now as our grandchildren get older, to take one of our grandchildren. But I put out my schedule for the year in January, and on a first come, first serve basis, our children can sign up for any trip they want to go on with me. And I visit about 20 to 25 countries a year and I travel around North America a great deal. And I just love having kids with me. It's great, one on one time. It's a lot of fun. They're great, they're smart, a lot smarter than I am. We always have a good time together. So, yeah, I was in China as the virus was just being publicly announced. I was in China, Thailand and Vietnam. Our second son, Scott, was with me as all this stuff was rolling down right in Asia. And we got back here and we talked about that, you know, the fact that we were in that area when the virus came down. So, yeah, it's just a classic experience and a wonderful experience. So I've been very fortunate in that respect.

That is now part of. So I had to. In one of the groups that I'm part of, we did a lifestyle vision and what we want our lifestyle to be like. And I incorporated that into my vision. You know, when you told me that, it was just like hit home boy, why aren't I doing that? Why aren't I bringing my kids and my wife with me on all these trips? And of course now we don't have any trips, but when we do, that's going to be part of it. And so you've impacted me in a lot of different ways, even outside of just our conversation that we had. And so I really thank you for spending the time with us here today. The last thing I want to ask you is what's next for Warren Rustan? What is next on your plate? I mean, what have you got left to accomplish?

Well, in about 90 days there will be a book published that I'm authoring right now and I'm just finishing up the manuscript right now. And it's about the eight principles of leadership and it's about some of the stuff we talked about here. But it's the things that I've been practicing and believing in for a long period of time. So that'll be that. And I continue to mentor and will continue to mentor. I love the one on one discussions that I have with really smart people, good people that help me get a better perspective on life. And then every other Thursday on Facebook Live, sorry for our plug, but I just want to mention that every other Thursday at 9am Pacific Daylight Time on Facebook Live, I speak for about 15 minutes and then we do Q and a for about 30 to 45 minutes, about whatever's on the mind of the listeners. We've had thousands of people watch that and it's just fun to respond, particularly in a time of crisis like we're in right now. And so I sort of see two waves that have hit us, right? The pandemic is the first, but social unrest and the criminal justice system and these social issues right now are really front and center and not just here in America, but across the United States and I mean across the world. And I think we need to engage, we need to be smart, we need to make some fundamental changes about our society and other societies because discrimination has been with us since the history of man. And it's time we do some things differently. And and so this creates that opportunity to do that. And so I'm engaging in that and trying to spend time. So I think there might be a third wave coming at us and that really is starting right now. And that is in the United States especially, we're going to be in the midst of a presidential campaign that's going to play into both the pandemic and civil justice. And it's going to create tremendous turmoil with three fronts moving simultaneously in the United States at any given time. And we've not seen this before. I lived through the civil rights movement. I was a college student then. I lived through the Vietnam War and served during the Vietnam War and all the difficulties we had in this country, the 1968 Democratic convention. I lived through a period where we had four national leaders associated, I mean, assassinated in a six year period. John F. Kennedy, his brother, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were all killed during an interesting time in American history. So we're in one of those times of slogging and we got to be smart, we got to be good, we got to provide good leadership, got to pay attention. So, Gary, you've been great. I love being part of this today and invite me back anytime. I'm happy to chat. It's great. I love what you're doing and what the Y Institute is doing. It's so important. Keep up your good work. You can touch millions of people, which is so important. So thank you so much for allowing me to just be with you today.

Oh, God. It's been great, Warren. And I just heard that I'm going to get back to you and get you back on here because I mean, seriously, I could go for hours and just loved speaking with you and I'm getting back on your book somehow so I can come visit you again and we'll get on the golf course.

Good. I look forward to it. I can't wait. You're a better golfer than I am. But we'll have a good day and a fun day. All right.

Thanks, Warren. Have a great day.

Thank you. You too. Take care of yourself.

Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Every listen, share and review helps others learn about their why, how and what. Together, you and I can help 1 billion people find their why. If you haven't discovered your why yet, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover yours today. See you there.

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