Ep.169- The Roadmap to Self-Leadership with Marine Veteran Bobby Harrington

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

All right, welcome back everybody to the You Winning Life podcast. But you already know that at this point, the title and how to reach out to us. But one thing I do want to ask is if you are listening to the show, if you are benefiting from this, please reach out to me directly. I'd love to know what topics and what guests you have really enjoyed, what you're taking away from, how we can be more helpful to you specifically as the listeners and part of the community. I want to know what— who, who you are in our community. And one of the beautiful things is like having guests like today, like having Bobby here today, is allowing us to grow and develop even more. So Bobby, first of all, thank you for coming and spending some time with us.

Yeah, Jason, thanks for having me. I'm grateful for this opportunity.

Also, of the billion and one things we can talk about, in your world and all the things that you've achieved and are accomplishing and will continue to accomplish. But you're, you're really focused on leadership and, and, and creating and helping people facilitate leadership one person at a time. And I think that there's a lot of misnomers or a lot of misbeliefs about what leadership is. And one of the things that I see consistently is that people who might even be employees or working in a system or believe that they don't have power, that they're just doing a job, that it's their 9 to 5 or whatever time that they're working. They go home, that they don't have influence and impact. And it leaves them very frustrated, dejected, lacking a mission, lacking a purpose. It's, you know, they may have sacrificed purpose for paycheck. So I'd love to just hear one, your thoughts and your personal definition of what leadership is. And maybe just start off our conversation with just that relevant perspective of starting there for the average person. The average person is in that world, and hearing your thoughts on just that mindset about what could evolve for them. Sure.

I'll start with one small anecdote just to give the audience perspective. You know, when I decided to write the book, first place I went was Amazon, and I realized there were 60,000 titles on leadership. And I say that to say that there is no one style of leadership that's the greatest. It's usually an amalgamation. So let's talk about what leadership is and leadership isn't. So leadership at its core is action. Leadership is not a title. It's not being a manager. It's taking action. It's having a line of sight, you know, or, you know, vision for your organization. But at the individual level, everyone is a leader because first we have to lead ourselves. The best example I can give you on that is how people lead by examples, right? You could be a subject matter expert, you know, with specialized knowledge, and people will gravitate to you. They'll see you as a leader, you know, because specialized knowledge is action and it gets you to the front of the line., you know, every time. So leadership, you know, again, at its core is action, and everyone has the opportunity to be a leader. You don't need a title to be a leader, you know, leading by example and doing the things you're supposed to do and, you know, displaying your character and your values, you know, people will naturally see you as a leader.

So talking about the empowerment perspective, right? So someone's been working in a, in a job, they're part of a big system.. And they may be frustrated, disappointed, perhaps even, you know, they check in, they check out. How can they reignite that? Like, you know, I'm working with, with someone who's in a system who's in a governmental-based system, and they know that they've brought stuff to the powers that be about how they know they can improve and have impact, not only them but also the environment, the culture, the greater, you know, the greater good for everybody around them. And they're not being, they're not being listened to, and they're not being asked to help in the space of leadership. I mean, obviously, it takes someone who is a good leader to hear and acknowledge that someone else also wants to be in that space with them. But if someone doesn't have that opportunity, right, like in this situation, How can one start retaining and reclaiming that feeling of leadership, that feeling of empowerment, that feeling of lack of frustration? Because I'm finding that this is happening with a lot of people that I'm working with. And have that back.

Yeah, that can be very frustrating. I think we've all felt that at one time or another. Typically, when you go to a leader, manager, however you want to couch them, and you bring them a, you know, a good idea or a great idea, you know, great idea always has a business in. So just say you bring them a great idea and, you know, they're not listening. Well, number one, they probably don't trust themselves. They're probably a little selfish, right? And they might be a little bit intimidated, right? They might, they might see that individual as a threat. You know, I think we've all, you know, lived through that as well. What I've done in those situations is I had to reverse course and focus on myself., you know, because what is, what is the possibility of changing that person, right? Not, not very high, right? But what I, what I can do is change myself or improve myself. So then I'll look at this. What are the standards of performance, right? Because every large organization has performance standards. So I would look at those performance standards and I would just try to blow them out of the water every chance I got. Yeah, I'd make myself so strong that they had no choice but to listen. You know, that's what I would recommend people do. You know, if people are feeling that, okay, so let's, let's not blame the leader first. Let's look within first, right? You know, do I have the right knowledge base, right? Am I showing up at work and not just physically showing up? You know, am I showing up Wednesday and Thursday or am I showing up Monday through Friday?, right? So I would say look inward first and make sure you examine yourself and make sure that you're doing everything absolutely necessary, right, to be seen as someone who others would want to listen to. Because influence is, it's, uh, it's easy and hard, right? It's easy in the fact that if you do the right things time after time, people will listen. It's hard because you really have to put those repetitions in intentionally, right? Not just pop up every 2 weeks and say, hey, I got this good idea. You know, how about demonstrating that every day to where your peers recognize you? And once a group of your peers recognizes you, well, team leaders have to recognize you. Once team leaders recognize you, you know, the word is out on you that, hey, this person has something to say, this person has something to contribute., you know, so there are ways to engineer being heard, you know, rather than just one-on-one. But again, I would go back to the, you know, to the individual and, you know, examine your character, your values, you know, how you're living those, how you collaborate. It could be a number of things, but that is an interesting question and a relevant question to large organizations, you know, because people, people look for two things. They look for recognition and growth. You know, it's proven, you know, a lot of people leave companies, but money is usually never the number one, uh, factor. It's usually growth opportunity or recognition.

And I think hand in hand with that, with the growth and the recognition, goes impact. And I think that, that now in our, in our generation of workers, for those who are, you know, newer to the workforce system, let's say over the last 10, 15 years, I'm finding that impact is important. And mission, right? There's a mission, there's a desire, you— well, there's times where there's still people like, "Well, I fell into this job. It's very lucrative and wasn't what I originally wanted to do, but I'm making the best of it and it pays my bills and I'm, you know, having a great lifestyle because of it." But I know when it comes to the idea of leadership, I see it as like the more that you have buy-in to mission-critical beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and outcomes, the more it can feel authentic. And the opposite of that is if you're just there because it's a paycheck, I get it, right? That may be your highest priority, right? The highest trait is like, I just need to have the lifestyle that I want. I'll do my stuff outside of work. I have no problem turning that part of me off at work to have that impact. I'd rather have— I'd rather use that as leverage to have impact elsewhere. And this is the tool to get there, not the end-all be-all. So there's both of those lenses, and not one is more right than the other. But I'm sure it's probably helpful for someone to realize what that motivation is for themselves.

Oh, for sure. You know, there's an old saying, you either like the job or you like the paycheck. If you're lucky enough, you like both. Yeah.

So when you've gone through— yeah, but I want to take that to your career.

Yeah. Let's turn that last question around though, about, you know, the person, person not being heard about, uh, from his leader or his or her leader. If I'm a leader and I set up a hiring team, which they usually do in the corporate, you know, space, and, you know, you've taken in 200 resumes and you whittled it down to 10, you had a few rounds of interviews and you hired this person. Well, that's a whole lot of energy to hire someone, onboard them, and have them sit there and not contribute, right? So what I'm trying to say is, as a leader, I want everyone's, I want their best mind every day. I want to hear, I want to hear all the ideas. I don't care if they're left field. I can't tell you how many left field ideas that I heard or proposed, but there was one component. There was one component that fit in the overall scheme that helped, you know, to me, there's, there's no such thing as a, you know, a bad idea or a, you know, left, left field idea. They're just ideas, right? Yeah, but leaders should strive to, to extract the best out of the people they're privileged to lead.

Well, makes sense.

Sorry, I just want to get that in there.

No, and I think that's such a nice— again, I see this all the time in different, different circles of, um, even before I became a therapist and I was working in nonprofit worlds, and, you know, there was so much control from a, you know, a board of directors or staff that have just been there and they're just burnt out and things are just kind of on life support, and you bring new ideas in and they're like, oh, we want someone new ideas. And then when you try to implement them, they're like, what do you mean? Why are you changing things? I remember when I was doing like my first internship, it was at a school. And I was definitely the most progressive style and personality of the therapists. And I know a bunch of the other people that work there, and it's a great school. And I was just so different than those that are just coming in from a very clinical mindset, because I don't believe clinical needs to be boring, dry, and hierarchical. And they got upset that I was playing box ball with the kids. And my whole thing is, how am I gonna let them feel safe and comfortable with me if they don't see me being a normal person that they can relate to as an adult that has a very different role than anybody else in the school? And no one else in the school at the, at that adult level is doing this with them, and you want them to trust me and feel comfortable coming to me? That I— and they were— they— it was just so far out of their mindset that it was also one of the many reasons why I chose not to go back, and one of the reasons why they chose for me not to go back, because that system wasn't thinking outside of that box.

Yeah, sounds like they, they saw themselves as being very omnipotent and prescriptive. Yes. Whereas your, your approach was, uh, to be approachable, right? You know where they're at. Meet them where they're at. You know, if you want to have a conversation and build rapport and build relationship and get your intended result, well, the first thing is to, you know, to put on the, you know, the face or the persona that you're approachable and behave that way, right? To build, to build trust. I mean, trust is built through transaction too.

Exactly. So, so the idea of leadership and, you know, going through the different stages of your career when you're just talking about approachable, there are certain industries there are certain cultures that approachability isn't necessarily baked in to that. And I'm assuming some of your background is very applicable to that. So what was it— what were some of the challenges that you had, um, working and figuring out what you wanted to do and how you wanted to skill— skill and scale your unique talents? Uh, what were some of the challenges with that, and what were some of the things that you took away that helped you get to where you're at today?

Yeah, you know, my lessons in approachability probably start with, you know, football and the Marine Corps and stuff like that, because you're kind of dealing with, you know, gruff people, you know, not that they don't have feelings and emotions and not that they aren't compassionate, but, you know, it's an intense type of thing, right? But here's what I learned about those type of environments. Not everyone who is direct has bad intentions, and intention is the key word. What is the intention behind the way this person is communicating? Right. You know, to me, I love, you know, direct feedback. And it probably comes from how I was raised with my parents, my father being World War II, Korean, Vietnam veteran, and my mom, you know, her people were from Yugoslavia, right? And, you know, those are tough people. So, you know, I had a lot of directness, you know, growing up. So it just carried over to football in the Marine Corps. But that, you know, was sort of another level. No, but I always look for the intent, right? If the intent was to improve me, well, hey, who cares? But if the intent was to denigrate or humiliate or something like that, then, you know, I wasn't okay with that. And I wouldn't want to hang around, you know, those spaces. But, you know, I would say, you know, how I built my leadership chops was, you know, first the informal, you know, training at home in the household, and then in the Marine Corps, learning leadership in a very structured way. And then going out into the world and, you know, applying that and learning along the way. And, you know, in the book I have those leadership traits and I added to, you know, I added compassion and accountability because I found out along the way that, you know, the best leaders I ever had, the strong, the very, very strongest leaders I ever had were compassionate, right? They weren't bleeding hearts 24/7. That's not the point. The point was, you know, at such a time that's appropriate, they were compassionate, right? And, you know, that means a lot to people. And then, you know, as a leader, accountability is everything. You know, if you're privileged to lead people, everything is, you know, if there's mistakes, it's on you, you know. And if people do good, well, then give them the credit, you know. But it's all, it's all sort of goes back to personal accountability.

Yeah. The one thing with accountability, and I'm seeing this especially with couples, right, and relationship dynamics, is that— and you can see this in a business setting or anytime where there's two people who are kind of trying to figure out or solve a problem— is, um, the ownership and accountability of what they may not even have realized that we're bringing to the table. And, and, and one of the things I love, um, you know, challenging and pushing back in my— especially with my couples— is like what one spouse will say, or one partner will say, like, oh well, 'But he's always that,' or 'She's always that.' I'm like, 'Yeah, but when did you notice that?' 'Well, I noticed it 6 months in.' 'Okay, but then you went on the next date with them, and then you either proposed to them or you said yes to that proposal. In other words, you still willingly knew this and you went along with that the whole time, and now all of a sudden it's the big issue, right?' So where are you? You know, so why aren't you taking accountability and ownership for not identifying that, or, and, or stepping away from that at that point? So the fact that we have to cut that we now as a universe, as a world, are always blaming things outside of us. Like, the context for me is like, you can either be empowered or you can be a victim, but you can't be both at the same time.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. So going through that, like, when we're talking about leadership and we're talking about empowerment, and really like the whole idea of book Lead You is this internal process. Walk us through, walk us through some of that. Walk us through the idea of what that means what, what we have available to us, what we don't even realize is there, and some of the tools and tactics to get there.

So just like companies have governance, right? And governance is the way people run a company, right? We have that same thing for ourselves, right? How we show up every day, how we wake up, how we go to work, how we do work, how we get along. That all starts with a process of knowing who we are. Right. You know, and life is in phases, right? So, you know, college, early career, mid-career, you know, late career, marriage, kids, you know, there's all kinds of phases in there. And, you know, at some point wisdom starts to sink in, probably about 43, 45. Hopefully, hopefully. Well, yeah, hopefully, you know, we give people the benefit of the doubt, you know.

Yeah.

But, uh, it starts with an honest conversation with yourself because I say that the most important conversation you have as a leader is the one you have with yourself. Because if you're not truthful with yourself, you can't hope to be truthful with someone else. If you don't have self-trust and self-belief, it's impossible to believe in other people genuinely, right? You could say you do, but it's not so. So it's asking yourself, you know, those series of questions, you know, where am I at? Where do I want to go? And how do I get there? And just being as honest as you can. The more honest you get, the more painful it gets, but the benefit and the dividend at the end is you have a truthful and actionable plan to follow. And, you know, sort of, you can read in the book, that's what I did at, you know, age 45. So I've been on an 8-year, you know, improvement journey, and I've improved, you know, all parts of my life, you know, faith, family, my financial status. And, you know, my health, you know, 53 and never been healthier, right? As numbers go, you know, I probably could lose a few pounds, but, uh, you know, as far as the numbers go, I'm, you know, I'm as healthy as a 25-year-old.

Incredible. Yeah, that commitment, it does it. I mean, it's a scary— there's a— the idea of being either risk-averse or it really, right, is change-averse, or is it, you know, this accountability and taking this insight and looking at ourselves. Like, it doesn't have to be a harsh process. I know you said, right, it could be, it could feel really bad. And yes, it could, right? And this feeling bad doesn't have to be bad. Right? And I know that's, it's, we're playing with the words a little bit. But I know that there's a lot of like, we're so overwhelmed today with everything going on, and things are, are, you know, we're just brought this barrage of just data and information, and how do we sift through it? And, you know, obviously, we have confirmation bias of only hearing and attracting things that are in alignment with our biases. But, but even and just to have simplicity on the far side of complexity, to willingly say, I don't want these things in my life anymore. I don't want to be doing these things. I don't want to be participating with these things. I find a lot of people are just afraid, or the way I would say it is, you're more willing to treat yourself like an asshole than be afraid that by turning down a person's proposal to participate with something with them, or not going out with them, or not going to the bar with them, or not going to an event with them, or not spending time time with them that you're afraid they're gonna think you are one. And you're— so you're more likely to treat yourself like crap so you don't think that someone else thinks that you are treating them like crap.

Here's my counsel on that. You know, we all have goals, right? And I'll correlate this to how I work with my, my children. You know, they're 23 and 26, and they both have big goals. And, you know, my counsel is ask yourself every time you're with someone or go to do something or think about a purchase or what have you, is this getting me closer to my goal or further than my goal? And if it's, if it's not getting you closer to your goal, truly, genuinely, well then why do you need it? You know, and then that's just a simple, like, first pass, right?

Right.

And then you ask yourself, what's the worst thing that can happen, right?

With it or without it.

Powerful question.

Yeah. With it or without it.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, two, two easy things.

But then I hear all the, you know, the voices in my head of like, well, I can start tomorrow, or I can rebudget next week, and it's really not going to be that much, right? We, we all have those justifications to stay stuck in our brain. For, for those of you who like the neurology side of stuff, uh, those who are listening, right, our brains are four likely— four times as likely to focus on a negative outcome than a positive outcome. So that negative outcome could be the self-risks that you unconsciously believe about why making the same decision decision that keeps you stuck would actually be a better decision than doing something different. Yeah.

Well, I always like to go back to the Kubler-Ross curve, you know, it was adapted at some point for business and, you know, it's in the change management space. But, you know, the gist is, you know, when there's an event, it starts with shock and then denial and then bargaining and then exploration possibilities and then acceptance.. And I always coach to go straight to the possibilities. But that takes, you know, a little bit of resilience and it takes a little bit of unselfishness, you know, to get away because people love to stay stuck in the bargaining phase, right? They're not in, they're not out, you know, they feel good about themselves because they're not in denial anymore. They just won't take that step to see the possibilities. And I constructively nudge them always to look at the possibilities.

How does someone in your— in this, in this lens realize that the possibilities they have— like, in other words, there are times where I talk to people, and we talked a little bit about this in our pre-conversation, of like realizing that what they're hoping for is really just an action step, but what they're calling it a goal. And, and they, they shortchange themselves, they minimize the possibilities for themselves, or they even, uh, diminish or can't even start to think about what the positive attributes or advantages are to doing something different. How would you walk someone through that by, you know, challenging their assumptions, or, you know, by hearing what they're, what they're saying to you is realizing that, oh, they're, they're, they're playing way too small on this?

So imagine a mountain, uh, just say Everest or K2. And the big goal is on top of the mountain. Normally, these people will look at the top of the mountain all day instead of breaking it down into, say, 10 incremental goals and then taking the first step for that small goal, right? So there's the vision of, of, you know, success. But guess what? There are a series of wickets to get through first. Focus on the small to get the big. And I'm, I'm simplifying, but that when I examine the things that I've gone after in my life, that's how I was successful. And when I've had failures, I usually look to the top of the mountain too much, right? Because I've had successes and failures. I've had them all, but I've learned through, through everyone. So that, that's the coaching I, I would give folks is to break down these big goals into smaller goals. And don't let the top of the mountain overwhelm you every day.

Yeah.

Put one foot in front of the other. It goes, it goes back to some of these, you know, old adages. Put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. You know, probably the number one thing I learned, you know, through growing up in the Marine Corps is keep moving. Just keep, don't stop. Keep moving.

You know, momentum. It's building momentum.

And here's the thing. Um, another riff on this is the road is long and folks have no concept today of delayed gratification. And it's hard, you know, like, uh, a man, as a man at 53, you know, I know all about it now. You know, when I think back to my younger self, you know, it was trusting the unknown. And I think people are looking to the, into the abyss. And, oh, this, that might never come. Well, you never know if you don't try. Yeah, but yet again, take the first step and keep moving.

I also see it as like, I'm about to— so I, I, uh, as a good example, personal example, I stopped playing violin around 5th or 6th grade, so, and I just got reinspired to pick it up, and I'm now 45, so that's a long time. And of course, you know, I see people playing and I'm like, oh, like I would love to just, you know, Dave Matthews Band or, right, anybody, any of these bands. They no longer have their violinist for ethical reasons. And, but like, you know, that type of, you know, I want to like, I can, I could have done that and I could do that, right? And whatever it is, but then I pick up the violin for the first time and I'm like, oh God, this sucks. And there's those— it's hard. And I'm not at that level. And I never really was at that level, even when I was in 6th grade, even though I was at a decent level for a a 5th or 6th grader, but I wasn't at an amazing level for a 5th or 6th grader. So, you know, the level of impatience that I might have knowing where, as an adult, I'm able to pick up certain things easily, but it doesn't necessarily make me a master of the craft like the people who I know are doing it that I want to emulate it. And it's slowing down. One of my, one of my mentors quotes this all the time: you have to slow down to go fast.

No, 100%. 100%.

And I think when people try to set that big goal of climbing the mountain, that it's like, okay, well, you can't— even if you had all the tools and you had the perfect weather day, doesn't mean your lungs are conditioned to that altitude, even though you could have just ran a marathon and that's far longer of a distance. Than climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro.

Oh yeah.

It's, it doesn't mean, right. It doesn't mean it's like a 40-day journey, you know, crazy.

I wanna climb, I wanna climb K2.

So, so I've researched, oh, so you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And it's like a, you know, 40 to 50-day journey.

Yeah.

You know, of getting there and, you know, getting outfitted and, you know, acclimatizing.

Right, right.

Because we're talking, we're talking like 24,000 feet. Yeah. Above sea level.

And each one of those, those stages is in and of itself a goal that majority of people will never reach even in the first place. To just even start brainstorming and researching it, to start identifying those things, is already putting someone in that mindset. Okay, like you said, okay, so what's the next step? And what's the next step? And here's another perspective: people talk about getting up the mountain, but they don't talk about getting back down the mountain and what's on the other side of that for them.

Yeah, yeah.

And we don't take that into consideration of, well, and I think that's one of the questions that I like asking is if you were successful with what you want to achieve, what's going to have to change on the other side of that? Oh, who's going to have to change? What, who in your life is going to be, have to be different? What else is going to have to be different if you do achieve this? And that sometimes is the limiting. It's not the goal, it's what has to come along with the goal.

That, that's a great perspective because I've, you know, been to the top a couple times in my life and seen a lot of people get to the top, and it's a far drop down. It's a far drop down. But I would say that, you know, along the way, the struggles and the setbacks were, you know, so to say, it's, you know, it's not about the journey, it's about— it's not about the destination, it's about the journey and about the ride. And I've come to, I've come to believe that's true because I look back at all my struggles and setbacks and all the pitfalls along the way, and it's It's where I learned the most and it's where I learned the most about myself. When I started to see failure as a signal to rearm and to learn from, right? And not to have poopy pants and, oh, woe is me. You know, when you learn to flip that, it's powerful. It's, you know, a lot of people say mindset. I say, I kind of use the language of psychological toolset, right? Because You know, we have compartmentalization and, you know, different things, emotional regulation. And, you know, I teach a little success pattern, you know, sort of like I have in the book, but it's, uh, it's in my coaching practice. And, you know, people love that because it just, it opens their mind to the possibilities that the mind is strong and the mind is a tool to help you accomplish your goals, right? Yeah. You know, getting, getting past those limiting beliefs and limiting identities and so on and so forth. And all, you know, most people, all they need is just a little bit of an encouragement, you know. You know, some people are just so brash and confident. Look, I'm gonna go do this, okay? You're behind me, great. If you're not, I don't care. There's, there's another group behind them though that just, just need a little bit of encouragement, you know. And that's, uh, that's the fun and awesome thing about leadership is building a rapport with people and learning what makes them tick personally and professionally.

Yeah. And I love calling— I call that for my clients, I call that, let's help— I want to help you build your dream team. Because I'm not the end-all be-all. And I'm not an expert in everything. I'm an expert in what I know, but I'm not an expert. But I might be really good at helping you find that expert who can help you build that team. And I think, you know, when you're talking about the different traits of the character-building traits, and one of the things you have here is in the circle from loyalty, dependability, judgment, initiative, you have bearing. And you have an image of a kind of like a castle with two sidewalls. And I think that's such an important trait of like, who is helping you get there? Who are you asking and looking for to help support you in that process? But I'm wondering, what was your intention of that? Because bearing, right, what is your bearing? What's your direction? But what was your intention with that?

Yeah, there's a couple of different meanings for bearing. You know, bearing could be a coordinate, right? Uh, but in the context of Marine Corps leadership, bearing is, um, you know, not getting emotionally hijacked, right? So if you're in a heated conversation and you stay calm and cool, you know, in the Marine Corps, that would be, okay, this person kept their bearing, right? And staying, you know, someone who can really emotionally regulate themselves. Yeah. On the other side of that, yeah, you know, bearing could, you know, could signify what values you have, right? So you wouldn't, you wouldn't sail the ocean without coordinates, would you?

Right.

So why would you live, why would you live your life without any values? And it's funny, you know, because some of the, some of the people I work with, I say, okay, we're gonna do a little exercise, then we're gonna write down your core values. And I'll say, give them a piece of paper and a pen and say, okay, let's, let's go ahead and write them down. Your 5, 3 to 5 core values. And after about, you know, 15 seconds, I say, okay, you know, pens down. And who has 5? You know, poll for hands. You'd be surprised that a lot of folks don't have any. Some can only write 1 or 2. Some don't know what it means. And it's, it's pretty astounding. And even explaining to people and providing anecdotes of what values mean is powerful for people. Because if you can pick 3 to 5 core values based upon your phase of life, you know, you can win. You know, if you're young, you might— ambition might be a core value. You know, there might be some that you carry along the way, like hard work and family. You know, I've carried those throughout my whole life. You know, respect, you know, Respect should be through every phase of life, right? Because it's the, the end-all be-all of everything, you know. Do I show self-respect, right? Usually if you find a person who respects others, you find they have great self-respect. The inverse is also true. If you see someone who goes around not respecting people, if you examine them close enough, you know, they really don't have a lot of self-respect. You know, so it's really people's behavior amplify, you know, I'm probably, you know, speaking to the choir here, but, you know, people's behavior amplify, you know, what's going on internally.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm such a big fan of the core values and values-based decision-making. And anybody who's been listening to the podcast since early on knows that, like, I am obsessive about that topic. And I even do this with my couples. And, you know, It's kind of like that old-fashioned family crest, family shield. That's what core values are. What is your personal brand that you're putting out to the world internally and externally? And a lot of people don't have that. And when you brought up that idea of like, well, you wouldn't get in a boat and just see where the water takes you. We drift aimlessly and our life will be chaotic and choppy, and we're going to go into tsunami-type waves. And but we have to take ownership that we brought that upon ourselves by the lack of clarity of discerning our core values up front. One of my, one of my coaches, and when I really got into the entrepreneurship world, and then seeing how much psychology and personal development is invested in doing, being entrepreneurial, whether you're an entrepreneur and you're working for someone else or inside a system or an entrepreneur and you have your own company, It's still about this. It's still about that at a mission-critical level. And why I see, even when I'm working with other therapists or I'm working with people on their businesses, it's that they don't have a clear sense of what their core values are. They may say, well, I like seeing this type of client and that type of client. I'm like, okay, but what makes you different? Oh, well, I'll call them back quicker. Okay, well, no, that's not a deciding fact. I mean, that might help with the sale tactic, but what's going to keep them and help them? Them. And, and it's a— it's very difficult for people from all industries to really get to, to get to that level of that discernment of, this is the core values of my practice, this is the core values of my business. And the companies that do that, that are polarizing like that, even if I disagree with them, means that there's still 50% of the world out there who do, at least.

Yes.

Yeah. And, and you don't need 100% of the world to keep your business afloat.

Of course not.

I have 8 billion people in the world.

Of course. No, you know, it's a beautiful thing when you can educate people and give them anecdotes and you kind of see the light go off and then to see them actually start living the values and realizing that, yes, there's 8 billion people, but I can differentiate myself just by choosing some of these core values and making my, you know, actions, choices, and decisions based off those., you know, and I, you know, stay sovereign to that because there's some of them, there's some values that you stay sovereign no matter what, you know, like for me it's respect and hard work. You know, I've had a lot of challenging times in my life and when I look back through it, you know, I just always worked hard, you know, and just, just working hard, it brought me through it, right? And working hard and keep going, you know, there's always the other side of something., right? You know, terrible things usually, you know, not gonna last forever. So just keep moving. Just like realizing a goal or it's, it's on the other side of that hill. You just need a little bit of courage to get up that hill and, and get over it.

No one walks outta the gym the first time with a six-pack.

Well, wrote about it in the book. You know, you don't, you don't get the 500-pound squat in week one.

Right.

You know, leadership and, you know, building your mind and stuff like that. It's the same thing, you know. I mean, I've been on a focused personal improvement journey for 8 years now and I'm still not where I want to be. I'm in a good place, but you know, there's, there's more to get.

Yeah.

Right. It takes time.

Well, that's that whole good. That's that whole Good to Great from Jim Collins. Right. And it's, you know, a lot of people don't even realize that they're at good. And if you don't acknowledge that you're at good or what you need to get to good, you can't get to great. And a lot of people also don't know what like great even looks like for them. And that's where, you know, those of us like you and I and other people in our spaces are helping people get there. But it's also one of the things that we can't do it alone. We do need that. One of the things I always promise my clients is I'm going to be the sideview mirror and sometimes a rearview mirror, but I'm also sometimes need to be your high beams because you're— we're usually going through life making decisions on what shows up in front of us. Again, going back to that, that aimless unclear core values. And even with my couples, right, like when I have my couples sit down and write what are their individual core values, and what is the core values of the relationship slash family. And then now, what are you guys doing? What have you been doing that align with those core values? And what have you been doing that don't align with those core values? We know which ones to get rid of, and we know which people to get rid of. We know which activities to get rid of, we know which ones to amplify. It's going to make things a lot easier. But it also is a broadcast signal to the world of what who you want to join you, who you're going to let into your house, who you're going to let into, who you're going to hang out with, who you're not going to hang out with. And people aren't going to like that necessarily, but again, you want to attract your tribe. I know, uh, there's a great book, uh, Patrick Gentempo, and, um, his book is called Your Stand Is Your Brand. And it's really like, it is putting it out there. This is what we believe, this is what we're looking to accomplish. Do you want to be part of that mission?

Well, you know, life in business is not about pleasing everybody.

Say that again, please.

Life in business is not about pleasing everyone. It's not, you know, if you have core values and you live them, guess what? You're probably gonna lose some business opportunities. You probably, you might lose people you thought were friends, but it's addition by subtraction, man. Yeah.

And a lot of people will decide that. I have a referral that yesterday that someone said I'm the person for them to help them. And they call me and I'm absolutely not the person to help them. But they've already been convinced because they've gone to so many different people that no one else has helped them. And I'm— but now, because of their perspective, I'm just going to be another person on that list who doesn't help them. It's not, you know, there was, there was no wiggle room in that because they're so— and of course, that feels awful for me because I know this person is struggling. But it's so beyond my, you know, my level of, of security clearance, and it's so beyond my level of skill set that I can provide some insights, but I'm not gonna— like, I'm like, hey, listen, you should look at this, this, and this. But here's who you need to see. I'm not rejecting you. I want you to take this as not rejecting you. This is just— I can't be good for you. I'm not going to be— I don't want to be on the list of another person who disappointed you, right? So I think there's a lot of that fear, and that took developmental stages of me to turn down clients. And I actually am more likely to turn someone down than I am to say yes.

At this point, saying no is powerful and it's good. You know, sometimes it's the best answer. It may not feel good, but again, you know, it's, that's why it's called business, right? You know, you're not, you're not going to, in leadership, you're not going to feel good all the time. It's not the point.

Yeah.

Now the point is to accomplish the mission. And for you, you know, your practice is built on your knowledge and, and so on and so forth. And if you can't help this person, well, the right thing to say is no. You know, also, again, moral, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

And we have so many people out there, and you know this from your world, of how many people have opened up a business and they're guiding or consulting and coaching and they just take everybody because it's not— they're not, they're not at that— they haven't figured that out yet, that that's not actually doing anybody any good, including themselves.

Yeah, I would see that as a disaster. Yeah.

So walk us through for the— just the— as we, as we get close to wrapping up, walk us through a little bit more about the book, but also talk us talk us a little bit about the Stronger You coaching program.

Yeah. So, you know, the book, I knew I was going to retire a few years back but didn't know when. And, you know, I said to myself, you know, how can I give back? And, you know, leadership's one thing that bubbled to the surface because I've been leading teams, you know, since high school and the military and stuff like that. And, you know, I looked at Amazon and, you know, gosh, 60,000 titles of leadership. So I wanted to write something different. And I had a theory of doing a few books. So the first one is Lead You: The Winning Combination to Achieve Personal and Professional Success. And it's about, you know, at a core, having that conversation with yourself, you know, making that course of action and then really examining, you know, leadership traits, characteristics, you know, examining values, learning about what self-trust and self-belief are and how self-trust precedes self-belief, right? Because if I don't trust myself, how can I believe in myself? You know, what would I believe— be believing in if, you know, I didn't develop some trust and You know, I go back to Stephen Covey's definition of trust is character and competence. You know, do I have good character and am I competent at what I'm doing? I can trust myself, then I can believe. And, you know, I talk about discipline and commitment and I have a chapter in there on perfect, you know, chapter 10. It kind of gives the reader permission to say, hey, you know, I don't need to be perfect. Sometimes good is good enough. But at the same time, in things that matter, we should always pursue excellence. Right. We should always pursue excellence and even have a chapter on self-care, which is something that took me decades to learn, uh, that I really, I needed. And I really didn't start performing self-care until I was about 45. But, uh, when I went from sleeping 2 to 5 hours for decades to sleeping 6 to 7 to 8, I'm telling you, sleep, you know, totally changed my life. Yeah. And, uh, you know, there were things that, you know, I had to engineer out of my mental headspace, you know, obviously to, you know, start getting that sleep. But again, going back to, you know, that conversation and course of action, you know, systematically working on things. And then it rounds out with, you know, the leader's journey is long. It's the hero's journey, you know, departure, fulfillment, return. And, you know, life, every culture has a story of that, right? So I think people should, you know, sort of study that. But I end the book, you know, with 6 questions that that people should ask themselves if they truly want to be a leader. You know, what values are non-negotiable no matter the circumstances? You know, am I going to have the grit to make disliked decisions today? Because it's possible. You know, am I willing to embrace self-awareness and the demands of self-leadership? You know, am I willing to take accountability for my actions and decisions? And am I willing to struggle for self-improvement? Improvement, you know, because there are some things you can improve fast. You know, sometimes the greatest gain is in that last 5 to 10% of things when it really gets hard. And that's, you know, where struggle is good. And, you know, lastly, are you willing to build and protect trust, you know, with yourself and others, right? You know, protecting your self-trust, you know, means a lot. That means doing what you say you're going to do. And, you know, sometimes people, and I've, you know, fell prey to this, you know, like during the course of the day, I want to do 20 things and maybe I overcommit, right? And then I didn't get those accomplished, you know, that erodes my self-trust. So, you know, you have to gear down and okay, maybe I want to do 1 to 3 things very good today and not intend. And let's not overcommit, you know, and it comes from good-heartedness, but it's a recipe for disaster.

Sure. You know, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that last part specifically.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So that's the book. And then the Stronger You coaching program is, you know, directed at CEOs, executives, and business owners. And, you know, we get them, we assess them to see where they are and where they want to be. And, you know, what's unique about our program is we have a 4-day retreat, you know, during the year. It's a 12-month program and we'll go out to the ranch. In Kerrville, Texas for 4 or 5 days, and we mastermind and talk about leadership. We have a lot of adventure, and, you know, that's where the magic happens. And, you know, people, people find another part of themselves, right?

It's all these experiential opportunities is, is so powerful because it's, it's, it's obviously you and I get to have conversations with so many wonderful people, uh, our clients, our friends, right, colleagues, whatever it may be.. But doing something experientially is a whole different ballgame. You're getting yourself out of the situation, you're getting yourself out of the day-to-day, you're, you really are, especially if you're on a ranch and you're in nature and you're doing all those other things. And as a good example, I have an accountability group that I've been in through my book, through a business program. And we're the only group that I know of in this, of all the accountability groups, that not only went from doing our one call a week, but we went to, when I joined the group, we eventually pushed for them to go to doing one above and beyond the 1-hour week is every quarter we do a 4-hour. And then after we did that for a few quarters, I pushed them to doing a weekend retreat in person because we're not seeing each other. They're in different parts of the country. And then especially during the pandemic when they weren't doing the twice-a-year deep dives through the organization, we— I wanted to recreate that. And it was obviously great to see them every week on Zoom, but I pushed for us to do a retreat on, you know, to do an in-person, and I helped with curriculum. I came up with a curriculum and everything like that, which I love doing with other people in other businesses as well, but I did it for us. And so we did that for 2 years, and now this year we're actually doing— we just booked it all, uh, the other day— we're doing a 5-day cruise.

Yeah, awesome.

And we're gonna do everything we did on the cruise, but we also went for like more simple. So we don't have to cook, we don't have to worry about picking up groceries, we don't have to worry about anything, just showing up with what we need for ourselves. And, and it was worth the extra little bit of, right? But everything is, and it's just like, that's even more simplicity, but it's moving the ball further along. And it's experiential. And we're just now, we're getting really, really out of our comfort zones and really into a different level of playing.

No, that's great. That's where the growth is.

That's where the growth is. And it started off with 1 hour a week, right? And that's— and we still have the 1 hour a week. But I, I think that's like where what you and I are uniquely, uh, trying to— is, is those things can happen for us in ways that we never, never thought. And by the way, it's also a full 100% tax write-off because it's our retreat.

Sure.

So, you know, that's that whole thing. So, so when, when people are are— so where they're finding the book, they're going to— where are they going to find you, to find, um, to find the coaching program? How do they, how do they reach out to you? How do they connect with you?

I'm primarily on LinkedIn. Yeah, just search for Bobby Harrington.

Beautiful. And then the, and the coaching program is there through that? They can get you?

Absolutely.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So everybody out there, right, so even if you're not thinking and you're hearing this and, and you're Am I a leader? Am I not a leader? You do, do, do, do yourself a favor. Treat yourself to Bobby's book. Go online, go treat yourself to that, and, and, and just, just do it anyway. Push yourself to a place of uncomfort, right? Again, like we said, you don't need to be in that if you're working for somewhere else. If you're a teacher in a school, if you're working at a job, if you're working whatever, right, where you're not an employee of yourself, you're not self-employed, and you're not running a business, doesn't mean you're not a leader. It doesn't mean you don't have leadership capabilities. Or if you've ever like like, yeah, I don't see myself this way. I want to challenge you, Bobby, and I want to challenge you to start seeing yourself differently because that's where the magic starts to happen. And, and one of the things that you said when you were talking about the possibilities and the capabilities that people don't have, I like the idea of like, how does someone become a force to be reckoned with? And I think that the way that you go through these steps in the book, the essentials, you know, the self-leadership traits of character building and the 8 essential leadership traits, I see that from my context— and feel free to, to borrow that— is you can become a— people can become a force to be reckoned with. And I think, who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want that?

When you think about it, you have power over yourself to do these things. You don't need anyone, anyone's help to do it. There's things— there are things that you can wake up and do every day and work on that make you that force to be reckoned with.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you know someone out there who's listening to this, and if you're listening to this, and you know someone who you know would benefit from this episode, please, please do share. And if you haven't yet left a review for us, specifically on Apple, on iTunes, and so more people can find us, we'd appreciate that as well. And Bobby, once again, thank you so much. First, congrats on everything that you are doing, have done, and will continue to do. I can't wait to, to hear the next, the next book. And when the next book comes out, where you're— please, please, please come out and let's talk more about that next stage. So therefore, I'm challenging everybody, listen to more of what Bobby has to say, listen to more of this, right, this internal leadership that starts with us. And so when Bobby comes back, you guys know where to take the next step in the next level too.

Thank you, Jason Wasser.

My pleasure. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.