Marshall Goldsmith: Pioneering Leadership Coach and Author

Here's something remarkable and not in a good way. Disengaged employees cost US companies almost $1.9 trillion a year. That's a lot of zeros. Why? Because when teams lack the right skills, productivity declines, turnover increases, and strategies stagnate. But it doesn't have to be that way. At Project Management Institute, home of the PMP and globally recognized certifications, your people can learn to collaborate, deliver on time, and actually get things the cost of not upskilling way higher than the investment Project Management Institute. Find the answers@pmi.org hello, I'm Jane Goodall.

And I just want to tell you that I've been on Guy's podcast twice now and had a great time and I really hope that you'll listen to it. Of course, especially the one when I'm on but the other two.

I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. I am on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me today is Marshall Goldsmith. He is perhaps the most famous executive coach in the world. He has worked with some of the highest profile leaders, including the CEOs of Pfizer, Ford, Best Buy and the World Bank. Marshall is the only two time winner of the Thinkers50 award for number one leadership thinker in the world. Marshall is the author of what Got yout Here, Won't get yout There and Triggers. Amazon named both books to its top 100 leadership and success Books Ever Written list. Marshall's new book is the Earned Life, Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. It explains no less than what you should do with your life before you reach the end of it. In short, you are about to hear the advice that the most powerful executives in the world pay tens of thousands of dollars for. And last but not least, Marshall and I negotiated my adoption. In this episode. I hope he's aware of how many surfboards I need every year. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here's the one and only remarkable Marshall Goldsmith. He was dressed, by the way, in his signature tan pants and green polo shirt. Even for the interview.

Last week I interviewed Neil DeGrasse Tyson and I don't know how we got on the subject, but somehow we got to the dichotomy of is a glass half empty or half full? And in your aspiration section, where you list all those variables and you say completely cross out or redact the ones that are not pertinent to you, but the ones that are pertinent, pick one of the two. So one of the variables in there is half empty or half full, right? So I happened to ask Neil, is the glass half empty or half full? This is why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and I'm a mere mortal. And he said, guy, the way you figure out if a glass is half full or half empty is if you're pouring water into it, it's half full. If you're taking water out of it, it's half empty.

I like that.

Drop the mic.

I like it.

Huh. That is utterly fantastic. Maybe you can use that one day in presentation.

I'm writing that down.

All right, good. Be sure you attribute it to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, not me. I don't. I don't want to get credit for something that wasn't my brilliance.

He probably didn't think of it either.

Well, it doesn't matter. You know, one of the things I learned in my career is you got to know what to steal. So indiscriminate stealing, it's not sufficient. Let me start off with a relatively hard one, which is Marshall Goldsmith, World's greatest executive coach leader, etc. Etc. How do you explain Elon Musk and Steve Jobs? Because they are hardly in the paradigm of ask and listen and following your techniques to be a great leader.

Well, one thing Steve Jobs did is very, very interesting with Tim Cook is Steve Jobs originally just trashed people who were not innovators. We need this company filled with innovators. And Tim Cook is what you'd call a soldier. He's the guy that makes the trains run. And Steve Jobs realized that just incredible focus on innovators and forgive people who have to execute didn't work. So I think to his credit, he actually in his later years, started practicing a lot more of that than he did in his earlier years. Point one, point two, we're all successful in spite of and because of. I'm sure that you're successful because you do many things right in spite of doing a few things that are idiotic. As am I. Absolutely. And so sometimes we pick people who are successful in terms of they get results and we don't really ask in spite of and because of questions. I don't know enough about Elon Musk to express an opinion one way or the other. But Steve Jobs was an interesting case study, and before he died, he would say he would have made some changes in the way he treated people.

Thank you for clearing up that mystery for me. So let's just dive into it first. Let's start off with the basis, just please explain earned success and earned life.

What do you mean?

Well, I mean by the earned life, it's when our levels of effort and the focus we're putting into project and our risks are aligned with our higher aspiration life regardless of the results or outcomes. So really, are we achieving alignment between three things? One is our aspirations, second, our ambitions. And third are day to day actions. Are they aligned? And the interesting thing in the definition is regardless of outcomes because one of the problems that we have in the west is what I'd call result addiction and achievement addiction. And everyone that I work with is just ridiculously high achievers. They're all ridiculously high achievers. They don't need me to help them achieve something. They just need to look at why am I doing this?

And is this earned success? Is it about avoiding regret or obtaining success?

I call it fulfillment. It's more about choose fulfillment over regret. And I'd say it's both. One of you want to achieve fulfillment in life, but two, you do want to avoid regret. You don't want to sit back and look at your life and say I wish I would have.

And does it matter if the success is earned or not?

Well, yes and no. I'd say largely more yes than no. For example, people that are trust fund kids don't tend to do very well in life and especially in our society. I think there's a lot more respect when you feel like I did earn what I got as opposed to what I got was just given to me. And the point about earning is it's not something that you get. It's not something you can rest on your laurels. I mean, you could probably retire and play crappy golf with old people at the country club and eat chicken sandwiches if you felt like it. But. But you know, what's the point? So at a certain level, the idea of the earned life is it's not a place you get to, it's a process. And the process is an ever changing, always reincarnating process of life.

And from the outside looking in, can you tell if someone has earned it or hasn't? Are all trust fund babies or is it possible to take the worst case? Can you have a trust fund baby who's actually earned it?

You can have a trust fund baby who's constantly earning life and you can have a trust fund baby who's doing nothing. So there's nothing good or bad about being a trust fund baby. The good or bad thing is what are you doing today? What are you doing today? And to have a good life, to have a good life you need to have, I think, a few things. One is you need to have a middle class or above middle class level of income, but you don't need to be rich. If you look at studies on happiness, once you get to a certain point, more money doesn't make you happier, more money doesn't make you less happy. You need to have some level of money to be happy. Then you need to have good relationship with people you love and you need to be healthy. Now if you're healthy, you get good relationship with people you love, then what matters in life when you have some higher aspiration, why am I doing this? You gotta be doing this for some reason. What is that higher level of aspiration which doesn't have a goal or finish line. Then you need to achieve something day to day, so that is hopefully connected to that higher aspiration. And then finally, you need to engage in day to day action which provides joy in your life and in connection to your life. So if those three are aligned, you win. In the game of life. The people I coach tend to be stuck on phase two. They're so focused on achievement that if they're not careful, forget why am I doing this? Number one. And then number two, forget to enjoy the process of doing this. And you know the study of the marshmallows? Yes, that's one of my favorite parts of the book you got, you get the marshmallow studies. I love the marshmallow study. So you give a kid a marshmallow, so you tell the kid, eat the marshmallow, you get one, but if you wait, you get two. Now, according to their research, which I a little dubious about the kids, that he's one marshmallow, all become drug addicts. And the kids who all get PhDs from Harvard, a little bit exaggerated, but anyway, the essence of this is that delayed gratification is good. What they didn't do in the research is they didn't take the kid that got two marshmallows and say, Kid, wait a little bit more. Three, wait some more, four, wait a little more. Five, 10, 100. And where do you end up? An old man waiting to death in a room surrounded by uneaten marshmallows. And I talk about in the book, Jack Welch almost died. So he had a triple bypass surgery, right? He almost dies. And my friend Mark Ryder is his agent. He says, what'd you learn about life? Jack Welch said, why am I drinking the cheap wine every night? He has his wine cellar surrounded with spectacular wine every night, he's drinking cheap wine why? He was waiting for the other wine to appreciate in value. He said, I am Jack Welch. I am rich. This wine appreciation is not going to matter. And I'm drinking cheap wine every night. I'm insane. He made a commitment. No more cheap wine.

Speaking of wine, I. I love the story about how the guy who became the wine expert started turning down wine because he figured out that he's going to be dead before they reach peak.

That's it. The Runway is over.

That is a great story. I figured out that maybe there's no sense doing any more venture capital investment because I may die. I'm gonna die before those things go public. What difference does it make?

He'll be dead anyway.

Don't you believe that? Most successful people believe they earn their success.

They do, to a degree. And again, most of us grossly override our contribution to everything. 82% of all of us think we're in the top 20% of our peer group, and 70% think we're in the top 10, and 98.5 think we're in the top half. So we're all basically delusional. And look, you've been phenomenally successful. And let me give you one word that pops into mind. Luck. I'm sure you must have had a zillion look at me. Oh, yeah. Let's get real here. A lot of this stuff is luck. And I think one thing we do in the west, and even your question kind of alluded to that, is kind of like, there is this place you can get to that you quote, get there. That there is a there. Well, one of the points of book, there is no there. There's no there. If there were there, you'd already be there. I'd be there.

How much more there can you be?

Yeah, there's only here. There's no there. Right. In the great Western myth is everything will be fine when. That's the great Western story. Now there's the great Western art form, is this. You may have seen this before. There is a person. The person is sad. They spend money, they buy a product, and they become happy. This is called a commercial. Have you ever seen one of those? How many thousand times has that been hammered into your brain? You will be happy when there is no win in reality, you spend money, you buy product, you have a product or less money. That's it, you know? And so this, the whole idea of the earned life is every time I take a breath, it's a new meme. And I'm a Buddhist. So the book is Largely Buddhist philosophy book. And I called Buddha. I said, buddha, can I use your stuff? Do I need to send you commissions? You know what he said? It's free. All free. So basically the Buddhist philosophy is, every time I take a breath, it's a new me. It's a new me. Start over. And we're always starting over in life. There isn't some there you get to. And then once you get there, everything kind of floats along for eternity. That's a myth. There's one book that always has the same ending. And they lived happily ever after. What type of book is that?

Fairy tale.

Yep, that's a fairy tale. And they lived happily ever. That's not the way it works. It's always starting over. It's always starting over. Why are you doing what you're doing? Why am I doing what I doing? God, because what are we going to do? You got to do something.

Is there any acceptable duration of basking in glory and savoring success? Or is it like Phil Jackson, You've got to win the NBA the next year.

That's it. There's very little basking in glory. The reality is what happens after you cross the finish line. And look at the studies on this, you know, NFL. The NFL's statistics are abysmal. They should be ashamed. We're talking 80% bankrupt. Depression, anxiety. Michael Phelps won 25 gold medals. What do you think about doing? Killing himself? You know, I mean that, that victory, finish line, gold medal stuff, that's good to a point. I've done nine programs at my house. Nine programs with retiring CEOs. The topic is, what are you going to do now? Now what? A lot of them don't think about this till it happens. What are you going to do now? These things range from hilarious to tragic. Mike Duke was a CEO of Walmart. He was in my class. He said, I used to tell this joke and everybody laugh, ho, ho, ho. And it didn't offend anyone. I love my joke. And then he said, I retired as a CEO of Walmart. And I told my little joke and in his group. And he said, nobody left. Then he said, I'm another girl. I thought they must be grumpy. Tell joke again. Nobody laughed. He said. Finally his wife goes, mike, you idiot. Did you actually think that joke was funny? Walmart. It was really funny. He's not the kill. Walmart is not funny anymore. They're not laughing. So you can't get addicted to that stuff because you know it's not real.

Why is it so difficult for People, especially successful people, to ask for help.

That's a great question. Let me tell you one thing I'm proud of. In my life, years ago, and you're a little bit older, so you might remember this, coaching was seen as something for fixing losers. One thing I'm proud of, and I think I've really helped pioneer this, I don't coach losers. My clients are not losers. They're big winners. So I've really worked on. Coaching is important for fixing winners, helping winners, not fixing losers. How many of the top 10 tennis players have a coach? 10. They all have coaches, right? Why'd they have coach? Well, that's why they get better. So everybody can get better. I'll use myself as an example. I have someone call me on the phone every day, almost every day for 25 years. Somebody said, why do you have somebody call you on the phone every day for 25 years? Don't you know the theory about how to change? I wrote the theory about how to change. That's why someone call me the phone every day. My name, my name is Marshall Goldsmith. I'm too cowardly and undisciplined to do any of this stuff by myself. And I need help. It's okay. I need help. It's okay. You need a little help. We all need help.

I love the story in your book where you say the golf Pro says that 15 or 20% of the people who are members ever asked for coaching. All the others are. I don't know.

Yeah, I know. They just go out there and screw up every day, wonder why they don't get better.

I took up surfing late in my life and I figured out it doesn't matter why you caught the wave. There's nothing pure about you. Self taught. All that matters is you caught the wave and you had fun. And whether that's because of coaching or youtubes or whatever, in my book, I.

Have a little surfing story. It was a boogie board. Dumbest thing I ever did, right? I talk about stupid risks I took, right? I broke my neck when I was eight years old. Surfing. Broke my neck. You know, why did I do that? Because of idiot. I'm trying to be macho, right? Here comes some giant wave, boom, breaks my neck. That was the end of that.

Well, would you say that ambition overtook your aspiration?

What happened there? I use that as example of the action phase. You get so locked into the short term gratification that I was like, everybody's egging me on and I'm all macho. And yeah, you get a Thrill. You get a thrill. So I signed right there. You know, I'm 27 years old. I got a little. I got a wife, little baby. I'm sitting there breaking my neck. I'm very lucky I could walk. I broke my neck in two places.

Back to the question about asking for help. So now we know why it's so difficult to ask for help. But how can people fix this?

Let me give you some good case studies. One of them is my friend Uber Jolie. You met Uber? He wrote a book called the Heart of Business. You'd have him on your show. He's a great guy. Hubert wrote this book, the Heart of says, I'm Uber's coach. He stands up and he turned Best Buy around. He stands up in front of everybody, says, my name is Uber Jolie. I got a coach. I'm getting feedback. I need to get better. Please help me. Alan Malali, C.O. ford. Best CEO in the world, probably last 20, 30 years, same thing. He stands up in front of everybody. I need help. To me, the best leaders stand up and they say they need help and they get better. Here's why I wrote an article about this. To help others develop. Start with yourself. You want other people try to improve? Let them watch you try to improve. Don't preach at them. Let them watch you try to improve. And to me, the good news is this has changed. In the old days, leaders never did ask for help. Today they do. It's a new world. My friend Mark Thompson and I talk to every weekend. And these were like, Pau Gasol, the basketball star, and Curtis Martin, the football player, and telling young Broadway star and president World bank, and at the head of the Olympic competition committee, all these godlike people. And every weekend they talked about their lives. And every weekend they step up and say, here's my name. Here's what I did. Well, here's what I screwed up. And they all asked for help every week. Yeah. How many of them every week said, you know, I had no problems? None. Just as human as everybody else? Just human like everybody else. Everybody's got parents, got Alzheimer's, kids with drug problems. Yeah. They're the same stuff. Somebody else. The only thing is, in my coaching, I only work with people that care. So I'm not really in the motivation business. People ask me, how do I motivate people. I don't. If somebody doesn't want to do what I do, I. I don't care. I just don't do it. Fine. Just don't waste my time. So I only work with People that care. So I'm not really in the business of getting people don't care to care. I've learned a hard lesson. My role as a coach. You know what that lesson is? My name is Marshall Goldsmith, not Jesus Christ. So I'm not in the savior business. No, let somebody else do that. I only work with people here.

I'm glad you clarified that.

You were confused there for a little bit.

I was.

Okay.

So now many of us are parents and, like, what's your recommendation for how to teach your kids to earn their success?

Oh, start with yourself. You have kids? Four of them. How old?

29, 27. 20 and 16, approximately.

All right, now, have you been asking them, what can I do to be a better dad?

Not lately.

That's. What do you want to do? You want them to get better? Let them watch you try to get better. You're going to call them up, say, what can I do to be a better dad?

When I end this podcast, I'm going to go see my 16 year old and ask him that.

That's good. Yeah. They may all say, dad, you have no room for improvement. That's possible. Yeah. I have another. Are you married?

Yes.

Have you been asking your wife, what can I do to be a better husband?

No.

You got your cell phone there?

Yes.

Okay. I would just send a text to your wife right now and ask one question. What can I do to be a better partner in our relationship? Send a text message.

Are you gonna wait?

I've done this with thousands of people. I get some hilarious responses, usually from the wife. Here's some of my favorites. One wife says, who stolen my husband's cell phone? Another one is, are you sick? Are you drunk? Who have you been sleeping with? I get so many funny.

I'm going to try both of these things, but not in real time. So, speaking of kids, what does one do? If you're rich, what do you do with your estate?

I'll tell you, half my clients are billionaires, so I have to deal with this all the time. You have to be very careful not to screw up your kids or even more dangerous, your grandkids. Because sometimes it's not so bad with the kids as it is with the grandkids. One time I had breakfast with Rob Walton. He was. Sam Walton was his dad. And he said, I saw my father make the money, so at least I knew what was involved. He said, my kids didn't. My kids were just handed things. So I think I wrote a story in the book about what didn't work. So this is what not to do. One guy in my what are you going to do now? Class was a CEO, and he said, I worked 80 hours a week for 40 years with one goal, so my kid would never have to do that. My kids would never have to do that. So it was the worst thing I could have ever done for myself or for my children. So what he gave his kids was a gift, but not an investment. So if you're going to give kids money, I would say, look, I would like to give you money. Here's what I expect back. I expect you to do something meaningful with your life. I expect you to be grateful. And he just gave the kids money. And you know what he got back for it? I nothing. Ungrateful, didn't like him. Bum0. So I don't think it's inherently bad to give the kid money, but I would look at it more as an investment than a gift, because a gift, by definition, is a gift. You know what they're going to do with money, whatever they want. You can't really complain. You give somebody a gift, it's theirs. So I would look at it more as an investment than a gift and say, kid, I'm going to try to help you. Here's what I expect back. And I'm sure you have expectations for your kids. I mean, yeah, I'm not. I'm giving you money so you can be a bum. No, look, my good friend has three friends who all are on trust funds, and they're all bums. They're nice kids. They're not bad. They're in their twenties. They're just bums. They don't do anything. They're rich bums, but they're bums.

And when this episode ends and I go see my son, he's gonna say, dad, what happened to you today? You're asking me how to be a better father. You're telling me that you're making an investment in me. You expect a return. My wife's gonna say, what happened, honey? Did you get hit on the head surfing?

Who is this guy? What happened to him? Yeah, well, here's the key to what I do. The key to what I do is follow up. Because nobody gets better because they have a coach. Nobody gets better because they read a book or listen to a podcast. You have to work. And with my clients, it's the day after day after day after day work. Then they get better. And, you know, you're talking kid once, it won't make much difference. But you called your kid all, every Two months, for a year, it starts to matter. Then the kid realized, dad's serious, he actually is trying to get better. My husband, that guy is serious. He actually gives a shit. You have to do it though. You can't just do it once.

I'll integrate this podcast. I interviewed a guy named BJ Fogg and he talked about tiny habits. So how you create tiny habits. So if I combine Goldsmith and Fog and I got it made, would you explain the very awesome concept of the.

Paradigm of every breath?

It's a very hard concept for Western people to understand. And again, this is a Buddhist concept. Every time I take a breath, it's a new me. Now, the you that is at the end of this podcast is not the same as the you that's at the beginning of this podcast. You're a different person, I'm a different person, we're all different. So the every breath idea is every time I take a breath, it's a new me. Some people ask, is Buddhism about reincarnation? It's about nothing but reincarnation. That's all there is, is constant reincarnation. There is no fixed you that stays the same over time. The you is always changing. So this is to me an incredibly healthy concept in two ways. One is looking at your past, getting people to forgive themselves for what they did in the past. We all made mistakes. Well, the way you look at it, that's a previous renditions of me. They did some things right and they did some things wrong. It's done. It is done. We're not going to change the past. And then the other thing is looking to the future. And I have an exercise where you write a letter to that you in the future. You write a letter and say, I'm willing to make a sacrifice for you. Now here's what I expect back from you, future me. So it's a really fun way to look at life is the previous renditions of you and the future renditions of you. And this is one I find a lot of people have trouble with self forgiveness. I, by the way, I'm not one of those people. I'm very gifted at forgiving myself for all sins. I have committed a lot of practice. I've got a lot of I'm good at forgiveness from for me gone, gone. A lot of people trouble with that. And what I tell them is take a breath and think of all the previous use, think of all the previous use and think about all the gifts they've given you and think about how hard they tried and think about the nice things they did. And then you say, if any group of people did this stuff, what should you say? Those people. Thank you. Now, did they make mistakes? Sure they did. Let it go. Let it go. Why carry this stuff around? Let it go. That was them. That was the previous renditions of you. You can't change them. They're over. In the future you. Well, that's a future you now. On the happiness. On happiness quotient, there's only one second you can be happy. The great Western disease. I'll be happy when I get the money status BMW. No, you won't. There's only one second in time you can ever be happy.

Now.

That's it. There's only one place you can ever be happy. Here. Now, where is Nirvana for you? Nirvana is talking to some bald guy on a podcast. This is it. Here it is. This is heaven. This is hell. This is the whole show. This is it.

I loved in the book where you said this about I'll be happy when I get this. And you say, yeah, when you get your Tesla with higher mileage. That's just hilarious. It's just not a pushback. But I just want to be sure that people interpret this right so I understand the every breath paradigm about forgiveness. And every breath, you're a different person. But what about when you watch some politician or some business leader and he says, yes, I cheated on my wife, I cheated on my taxes, I violated this law, but I asked God forgiveness and he gave it to me. So now I'm a new man. It's like, what? Like, how did that. Why is the slate wiped clean instantly?

Now, number one, although I am a wonderful coach. No, no doubt living up to my esteemed reputation, I am not going to help you change some politician that you watch on tv. So the amount of utility you're going to get from trying to change TV politicians is phenomenally close to zero. Zero. So, yeah, I learned a great lesson. Peter Drucker, that's really helped in my life. You know what his lesson is? We're here on earth to make a positive difference. Not to prove we're smart, not to prove we're right. And before you do anything, ask a question. Am I willing to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? If the answer is yes, go for it. The answer is no, let it go. You're not going to change that politician. Why you waste your time even thinking about it. You're not going to do anything about that. By the way, did that politician ask you for your Opinion? I don't think so. No, let it go. Let it go now. If you're going to do something to try to change it, knock yourself out. The reality is, 95% of the time, you're gonna do absolutely nothing. You're just talking. But what if. Now, now you wait one second. Now. I teach my clients, you never start sentences with butt. And that's the third time you've done that. I charge them $20 every time they do that. That's a terrible habit. But, but, but. Say it again. Believe out the but.

Okay. What happens, though? What happens if someone listens to this and starts forgiving himself or herself too easily? That they just say that I breathe another breath, it's okay. I don't have to think about what I did.

Well, I think people should have a good life and they try to be the best person you can bum. Wrapping yourself for the past doesn't help. That does not help. What good does torturing yourself do? Let me give you another example. In the book, I talk about empathy. I used to think empathy was good. It sounds good. Empathy, good. This is a great example, what you're talking. Empathy good. Caring good. Well, in the book, caring can be good. Caring could be a disaster. Let me give you an example. Caring. One of my coaching guys is in charge of St. Jude's Children's Hospital. He used to watch little kids die of cancer every day. Now he can't take that home. That's not fair to his wife. It's not fair to his kids. And that doesn't even make him a good doctor. It's good to care to a point. You need to learn to let it go. You need to learn to let it go, because if you can't let it go, you don't help anybody. And one of the big problems we have in the healthcare system was burnout after Covid. You got to let it go. You can't carry it home. You got to let it go. And empathy is. Who do I need to be now? For the person I'm talking to now? Not I feel bad about something that happened last week or some kid that just died. I give a funny story in the book that's really counterintuitive. A guy who's venture capitalist guy. Oh, and some hedge fund guy. You think anybody doesn't care? It's hedge fund guy. Biggest problem they have is caring. Anything that's not going to happen. One interviewing one hedge fund guy's worth a billion dollars. He's interviewing another worth 3 billion. And he says, why don't you have a fund and 3 billion guy says I'm not as good as I used to be. I started caring, he said, before, in the old days, I did make billions of dollars, but I lost billions. I made 52, lost 48. Hey, I'm rich, he said, I got older, I started thinking this retirement fund and people's money, it became much more conservative and he said, much less effective. Now I only invest my own money. Well, that's why doctors don't operate on their kids. See, caring is useful only to the degree caring is useful. And when you're caring about something that doesn't involve the people you're around or your life, it's not useful at all. It could do more harm than good. So the people I work with, by the way, are good people. I'm not worrying about them taking advantage. I'm not worrying about them not caring. On the guilt O meter scale, is there a problem they don't have? They have too little guilt? No, I don't work with too many people with that. I worry because their guilt is not going to be too low. They have too much guilt.

I love the part about you can be more. So how do you optimally give. You can be more advice?

To me, that's very positive advice because it's a compliment to someone. And the times I mentioned in my life when people have given me that advice, I wasn't doing bad, they were not putting me down. Like Paul Hersey, my old mentor, said, you know, you're making too much money, your customers are too happy. If you're not careful, it's going to run around like a chicken with your head cut off. And you're going to be doing the same thing day after day. And you'll make money and your customers are happy. But you could be something bigger. And to me, that's an ultimate compliment to give someone you can be more. And if I look at my own life, in my own life, my heroes were all people who were people like Peter Drucker and Paul Hersey and Francis Hesselbein, Alan Lawler, these great teachers. And my mission in life was to be like them. That was my goal. And more or less, guess what I am.

Let's just say, Marshall, that not everybody's hanging around Peter Drucker and Francis Hesselbein.

You know that's true. You'd be a little smart to hang around Peter Drucker. Francis Hesselbein is nice. Peter Drucker, the old saint, does not bear fools gladly. He was a poster boy of That I can tell you if he thought you were stupid. You get about two minutes of his time by next. Next. Next. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Nice guy. Nice guy. If you thought you were smart and interesting. But if you thought you were dull and boring out.

I read the effective executive and his book management and they were big influences in my life when I was young. Huge influence, effective executive especially you meet.

That guy in person. I got ranked number one leadership thinker in the world twice. My intellect compared to him. 10 year old child. I mean, no offense to me, but I was not playing with the same deck he was. That guy was smart and he taught me a lot. I got this program. I shouldn't have you join my club. So I went to a program called design the life you love. And the woman said, who are your heroes? Or there are all these great people like Peter Drucker and Francis and these people. She said, you should be like them. I decided to drop 15 people, teach them all I know for free. But the only price is when they get old. They had to do the same thing. I thought adopting 12 disciples sounded a little tacky. So I go from, it's been done. Somebody else did that. So I made a little video and put it on LinkedIn. I'm thinking 100 people would apply for adoption. I adopt 15, 18,000 people applied for adoption. Wow. Now I've adopted about 370 people. And the rules are give everything away for free. And people, thank you. You don't critique anybody. Nobody has to do anything. And there's no expectation of payback. The only expectation is you help somebody else. So it's a wonderful idea. I should adopt you. So I think you should.

I'm available.

Oh, good. I'd be your honorary father. I'd be proud to have you as honorary son. The age ranges from about 30 to 106. So I have a wide range of adopted children. Yeah.

Wow. 106.

That's. Francis is 106.

She's 106.

Yeah, she is.

Wow. I had no idea. I know why she lives so long. It's the girl scout cookies. It's the Samoas.

I guarantee I got a hilarious story about Francis. Are you ready? I said to my wife, well, let's just donate $25,000 a year to Francis foundation thing. You know what I said to my wife? She's 70 years old. How long can this last? Bye, bye. 900,000 bucks.

That is a great story. I'm gonna call up Neil degrasse Tyson and tell him that story. Since I. Okay, back to some. Some topics that people will gain perspective on. All right, so how do you break out of inertia?

I think the way you break out of inertia is you keep challenging yourself. And rather than waiting for somebody else to say, you could be more, you look in the mirror and say, you can be more. And inertia is very hard to break out of. It's very hard. And you've got to consistently say, starting over, starting over, starting over, starting. That was then, that was then. And back to the looking at the past. The good news about looking at the past versions of you as a previous person is you're more likely to forgive them. The other good news, though, is you're less likely to coast because you know what? All that stuff that happened in the past, I didn't do it. Those previous renditions of me did that. Jim Kim is one of the greatest people I've ever met. He saved 20 million lives as president World Bank. And he said, I develop my legacy every day. I think it's a healthy way to look at life. Every day we start over. Every day we're developing our legacy. Every day we're trying to make some positive difference. And Bob Dylan has a good quote. He who is not busy being born is busy dying. I think that's a good quote. Why are you doing what you're doing? You don't have to do this. I don't have to do this. Why you do it? You try to make a positive difference and you enjoy it. That's it.

I think this podcast is the best work I've ever done in my career. This thing about forgiving your past, but it also means forgetting the past accomplishments. It's not just get rid of the negative, it's also get rid of the positive.

You gotta move forward. You're not cursed on those accomplishments because if you do, you're like the football player now. I mentioned Curtis Martin in the book. I love Curtis Martin. You ought to have him on your show if you ever get a chance. Curtis Martin is a formal NFL All Star number five rusher in history, but really is happy, is fulfilled in life. He's always out trying to do good. He's in the book and he doesn't live on G. He's not. The guy said, I won Super Bowl 3 and sitting there getting drunk while telling stories of winning the Super Bowl 30 years ago, and that's over. And by the way, the person won The Super Bowl 30 years ago wasn't you. That was some kid that wasn't you. That was somebody else. You didn't win the Super Bowl. This kid did. That's over. And Curtis is a great role model of that because he's always trying to be better and different. And he's also happy. He's also happy. He's a happy person and very successful, good business guy helping people and why it's. He's not coasting.

How do you deprogram yourself?

It is amazing how we stereotype ourselves and we say things like this. I'm no good at. Like, I'm coaching, saying, but I can't listen. I can't listen. I've never been able to listen. I can't listen. So I said, well, if I put a gun to your head, could you listen? Well, yes, I guess you can listen then. We program ourselves constantly, I can't do this. I can't do this. I'm not this. And I always tell my clients, do you have an incurable genetic defect? Now, if you have an incurable genetic defect, you're right, you can't change. Assuming you do not have an incurable genetic defect, you can change. The people I coach can change. Hey, for years, I didn't get paid $0.01. If they didn't get better, guess what? If they couldn't change, I wouldn't get paid. Anybody can change. The point is, though, you're not going to change. If you tell yourself, I can't change. I can't change. I can't change. This is who I am.

In your section about aspiration, you talk about capitalizing on your ability, looking for areas of adjacency. But can't those practices conflict with aspiration? Because it'll mean that you'll stick to what you can do well and what's related to what you do well. Don't you need to get out of the comfort zone?

Well, that's a very important point. Now, I talk about the value of getting out of the comfort zone. And in fact, comfort can be detrimental to your future aspirations. The idea of agency, though, is a very interesting point. The idea of agency is how can you go someplace else? And in your case, what you're doing as a podcast might not be what you're doing as a writer. Yet it's adjacent. Yes. You're a speaker, it's adjacent. You're a coach, it's adjacent. I'm talking to you. It's adjacent. I'm not going to be a football star. And so the idea of adjacency is not that you can't do something different. It's that the highest probability is doing something that is least connected to your previous lives. You spend all those years building something, you're probably going to build something that is connected to those previous years. So that's where the concept came from.

What happens if I decide that I'm going to become a classic cello player at 67? It's not adjacent. I have no natural ability.

It's not going to have to.

So I don't understand. So what's the rule of natural ability?

You can become a cello player. Player. You're just not going to be a great cello player. So if your goal is I'm going to be a cello player for fun, it's fine. If your goal is I'm going to become a great cello player, it's not going to happen.

Now, when is it time to quit? An aspiration.

Well, back to this. Am I willing to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? Then answer is yes, you shouldn't quit. The answer is no, you should quit. Back to the Peter Drucker point. We're here to make a positive difference. Not to be smart, not to be right, not to prove a point. Just keep focused on that. Is it worth it? Am I willing to try to do something good? Is it going to matter? Or am I just complaining? Or am I just spending time spinning my wheels? Or I'm just doing it because I always did it.

So much of your book requires a lot of introspection and honesty. Your book is not an easy book.

Yeah, you know, it's very interesting. That's some of those common feedback. It's a very dense book.

Yes.

Yeah. It's not like one good thing about the book, you can't say it's one chapter repeated 15 times.

That's for damn sure. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, there's a lot in there.

How long did it take you to write that thing?

Depends. Either a year or 74 years. Depends how you want to look at it.

I. I absolutely understand that answer.

Yes.

So perhaps for my last question is because I found this one of the most fascinating topics in a wholly fascinating book. What is your advice to high school seniors or college freshmen about the purpose of college?

Purpose of college. Very interesting question. Three things. Is this going to help you achieve some higher aspiration? Is there something other than getting a degree you're doing? Two, is it going to help you be an achiever so that it's connected to that? Or three, are you going to enjoy it? And if the answer is I really don't enjoy this, and I'm not sure it's going to help me have a better life then just to do it. To do it is probably a waste of time. Yeah. I think too many kids go to college.

Too many kids go to college.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Why? They'd be better off in trade school or learning some practical tools or something other than studying stuff they don't remember and just wasting time. And.

And how do you feel when you read that Harvard and Stanford get 15,000 applicants for whatever, 400 positions or it's some tiny amount. Like I think it's 3 or 4% get admitted. And if you took the athletes out of that 3 or 4% and the, you know, legacy kids, who gets in anymore?

Well, let me give you an example. I have a Ph.D. from UCLA. You know how many people applied to the freshman class at UCLA last year? 165,000. There's no way I could get into the freshman class at ucla. Now. How do I feel about that? Fine. Raise the standards. I've graduated. What do I care? Let me tell you though, on a serious note, I do a lot of counseling with kids about this. And we know a lot of sad stories of kids who work very hard and just had their hearts broken because they couldn't get into these schools. You've got to tell kids today, don't take it personally. The chancellor of UCSD is one of my adopted children. And he said that basically you take the classic gets in equal number, equal number and equal number, the fourth four level down. You couldn't tell the difference. His word. It's a lottery. Getting into these schools is a lottery. Back to what I said. Do not put your soul on any result. Never measure your value as a human being on the result of something. Why, number one, you do not control the results. And there's no better example in college admissions. I tell these kids, look, you don't control the results. A lot of random variables. You can be the best student in the whole world. You still might not get in. Don't put your soul there. And then, number two, this is what you've talked about after you achieve the results. How much happiness does that bring anyway? He just said a week, two weeks. How much happiness that bring anyway? It doesn't. One of the guys in my group, do you ever meet Safi Bacall? He wrote a book called Loonshots. Great guy, anyways, really smart guy. So Safi said the one thing he learned in our groups is he used to think that happiness was a dependent variable upon Achievement. He learned no. Happiness and achievement are independent variables. You can achieve and be happy, you can achieve and be miserable. You can achieve nothing and be happy and you achieve nothing and be miserable. He said, I finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables. That's very good point. You're not going to achieve enough to be happy. By the way, if achievement would make you happy, everyone I coach would be dancing off the ceiling every day. Everyone I coach and ridiculously high achievers. One other thing I like about the book, it's as opposed to the typical self help book. Who says achieve more? Delayed gratification is good. Here's how you achieve. More, more, more, more, more. This book says, don't put your soul there. Don't put your soul on those results. Because when you do, it's a fool's game. You're never going to win that game. You've sold books. You sell a million books of one book, 2 million books, whatever the next book you got to sell, 5, 10, certain point how much money you need to make certain and more, more, more why you need to make more, more, more. You know for what. And by the way, if you do, how much satisfaction does that bring in and of itself? Not much. Not much. So.

I think that you have conflicted with, defied or maybe even destroyed many, many commonly held beliefs about management and progression and all career and all that kind of stuff. So maybe in this last minute or two to just give us clear direction, summarize, this is what you should do.

I'm going to answer all your questions. Here's the best advice you're ever going to get. Anybody's going to. All right, is everybody listening? Here it comes. Take a breath. Imagine you're 95 years old, you're getting ready to die. And that person looking at death has given a great gift. The ability to go back and talk to the person. Listen to me and you right now. The ability to help that person be a better professional, more important, have a better life. What advice was that old person facing death? Who knows what mattered and didn't half. For the you that's listening to us, whatever that is, do that. In terms of performance appraisal, that's the only one that matters. Three things come up from people facing death. One, be happy now, not next week, not next month, not I'll be happy when we all get the same win. That old person looking at death, that's called win number two is friends, family, relationship. The people you love don't so busy climbing a ladder you forget the people you Love. And then number three, just go for it. You've got some aspiration in life. Just go for it. Business advice is much different. Number one, life is short. Have fun. Now, this is not in this book, but in a future book. So I hope nobody quotes me on this. But my new research has found something very profound. You know what it is? To the best of my knowledge, we're all going to be equally dead. Last time I checked, you know, I think wrong equally dead here. So let's have some fun. You know, was that fun? And then do whatever you can do to help people. And then, you know, just go for it. In life, we old people, we don't regret the risks we took and fail. We regret the risk we failed to take. And finally, as I've grown older in life, my level of aspiration has gone down, down, down and down. My love of impact up and up and up. Why quit worrying about what I'm not going to change. Let me give you my goal on our wonderful podcast here. You ready? If one person listens, podcast has a little better life. Good. Podcast. I'm declaring victory here. Good. And you know what, if they don't, let's say nobody has a better life. I feel like I'm anyway. How about you?

Marshall, you are, you are truly a mensch. This has been just delightful. So thank you very much and I'm gonna end this podcast and I'm gonna go see my son and ask him how I can be a better dad. I kid you not. I'm gonna do that right now.

Thank you. You look up 100 coaches one then. And I would love to adopt you. I'd be honored. You're a good guy, good sense of humor. You would love the people in our group. So if you're new honorary father here, I would be. We have rules though. No money, no guilt, and no expectations.

You got to remember the rules and no buts.

That one you've got to work on.

That's my new aspiration.

Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Marshall Goldsmith said the unearned life is not worth living. May you go out there and earn the life you're living. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable and achieve that earned life. My thanks to Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff C, Shannon Hernandez, Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana, and the drop in queen of Santa Cruz, Madison Nismer. They are all living an earned life. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. This is remarkable people.