97: Conscious Business, Superconscious Capitalism, and The Meaning Revolution with Fred Kofman: a Teacher Who Changed My Life Without Knowing It

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What'S next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the only Move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back. I am deeply honored and blown away to have today's guest, Fred Kaufman, here with me on the Pivot Podcast. Fred doesn't even know this, but he changed my life. I went through When I first started working at Google, I was fortunate enough to work under Sheryl Sandberg's umbrella of the organization in online sales and oper. And although I wasn't reporting directly to Cheryl, I got to go through a leadership program through a company called Axelant, which Fred started and based on a book called Conscious Business. This training changed my life in so many ways. It taught me for the first time principles like player versus victim mentality, total responsibility, and ownership. After this training, I never I really try to avoid saying I'll try as a commitment to anything, it's either yes or renegotiate. I learned not to say sorry I was late, there was traffic, but rather sorry, I was late, there was traffic and I didn't get up early enough or I didn't leave early enough. But the biggest influence was that I got a coaching session through this program. And for the first time in my life, my coach Eric asked me, what is your life purpose? And when I told him I wanted to help others, he said, well, who? I said, maybe young professionals who feel a little lost and lonely in their career or a little confused. And he said, you know, I normally don't advise this, but maybe you want to go to a coach training program or orientation like me. And so because of that advice, because of Accellent, I went to CTI's coach training. I became a career coach. I started Life After College, my first website, which became my first book. I created Google's global career guru program that's still in place today. 10 years. And it just created this epic fork in my life. And after reading Conscious Business, I dove way more into self help, personal development, Buddhism, business, spirituality. And it just has changed my life in the most epic way. So it's really a trip to be able to have Fred here and get to talk to you and say thank you, Fred, one on one, almost 12 years later after I first experienced your program. So thank you and welcome.

Wow. Thank you so much.

I'm blown away right now. I didn't know all this. Jenny, I'm very grateful to be here with you, but I'd like to adjust. One of the things you said, the principle of absolute responsibility cuts both ways. It's true that when you're late you have to take responsibility, saying I did not get up early enough. But when you do something phenomenal like you just described, don't credit the book. It wasn't the book and it was an Eric and it wasn't the course, it was you. You also need to take credit for that. So I tell people, look, if, if, if you don't learn anything, don't blame me. But if you learn a lot, don't credit me either. You're, you're coming to the gym, the course, or any conversation. It's like a gym that is available for you to do your practice and grow, but it's you who have to do the practice. And it's also you who deserve the credit for the fruits of your effort. And that's a wonderful story. I'm so proud to have participated in some small way, but I'm sure there were lots of other people that went through that program and it didn't do anything to them. So it's not the program, it's you with the little support or invitation from the program or my work. It's delightful that our paths cross again after all these years. Hopefully we can have a good conversation that will help your audience also develop some skills or find themselves in a way that's more powerful than what they had available before they listened to this.

So well said, Fred. Thank you. It really is humbling and it's true that not only to also take credit and responsibility when things go well, but of how many people shone that light. So you with your book Conscious Business, Cheryl, making the decision to bring this concept and this type of culture to Google. Eric, you know everything along the way and you describe this. So let's catch people up. We are also celebrating you today and your book just launched. It's called the Meaning Revolution. The Power of Transcendent Leadership. And you've made your own pivot. You're now an advisor in leadership development at Google. Funnily enough, speak of the devil. And that's you're working with top CEOs and executives around the world just to catch everyone up on Fred's background. Fred is an economist trained at UC Berkeley. He taught finance at MIT before founding his global consulting company. And in that time, Axelant trained over 15,000 executives. So, Fred, I'm so excited to dive into the meaning revolution. Can you tell us just let's start with how do you define transcendent leadership?

Well, let's start with leadership. For me, leadership is eliciting the internal commitment of others to pursue a common mission. So leadership is not about telling people what to do, but about letting people find their way to participate in a common project in a way that is self motivated and that comes from their own will, not from fear or from their unmet needs.

That's leadership in general, any type of leadership. But I want to go further than that. And when I describe transcendent leader or transcendent leadership is the leadership that evokes that commitment based on a project that goes beyond the personal needs of the person. Like for example.

When Eric asked you, what's your life purpose? You didn't say, well, to make a lot of money and have a lot of things and.

Build a great house. That I'm not saying that's wrong. But you wanted something beyond yourself, which is to have the meaning in my life of having a positive influence in others or helping these young professionals find themselves and so on. As you described, that's a transcendent mission because it transcends the boundaries of your small self or your ego, and it encompasses the other people in a way that you feel related to them with care. So that's how I define transcendent leadership in a business. Example would be a company needs to serve its customers. When a CEO or a senior executive says.

Let'S build this and we'll all be rich, that will inspire certain people or will inspire people after a certain level. But after they all get rich, well, what's left? There's no motive to continue going.

If a leader inspires people or invites people to join a project that will make other people's lives better, then that goes way beyond what people can get for themselves immediately. And it connects them to a much larger community in a way that's meaningful.

That's one of the things I love the most about your work, is that you make the point, particularly in the meaning revolution, that Business can and should be seen as a spiritual endeavor. That rather than some compartment of our life that's off to the side, that the most successful leaders inspire hero's journeys among their teams. And I love the way you described kind of the old model or the broken model of leadership that's about carrots and sticks. And you say, this is ludicrous. Imagine a thief pointing a gun at you and commanding, give me your respect, your support, your friendship.

It's so true. And when you put it that way, that, like, of course that's not going to work. And then I would love for you to share later in the book, you say even certain efforts at employee engagement, which is an area that I work with a lot of companies on through pivot. You say they don't work. And you give the analogy of a marriage proposal. Can you describe that to everybody?

Yeah. Well, imagine if I came to you, Jenny, and said, jenny, you know, I'd like to marry you. And you say, why? Why would you like to? And I said, well, because, you know, I read the statistic that married men live five years longer than unmarried men. I mean, let's just do it real. What would you think of me if I told you, I mean, literally, if I just said that to you and if you said, like, what would be your thought?

And if you said, like, male engagement in society is low, so let's get married, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'd be like, you're crazy. What's in it for me? You know, why? That's no incentive.

Exactly. You know, it would be like the story, like the story of the thief.

That we were discussing, that instead of pointing a gun at you saying, love me and I'll pay you $100,000.

Like, well, that's prostitution. That's not love. You know, you can't buy love. You can buy sexual services or a pretense, but you can't buy love. And that's the problem of many of these engagement programs that they say, okay, we're going to give people a lot of goodies and then they'll be committed. And that's just not the way it goes. And if people ask the managers, and they are asking implicitly, why do you want to engage us? And the answer, the implicit answer is, because if you're engaged, you're going to be more productive and we're going to make more money, that seems disrespectful, that seems abusive, manipulative. Just like the guy that says, I want to marry you because I feel Lonely or I feel that my health is going to improve if you take care of me, it's like, oh, really? So as you said, what's in it for me? Why would I want to marry you? The question is not why do you want to marry me? But why would I want to marry you? What? What's in it for me? And that's a much harder question that most companies don't have a good answer for. Because most leaders have not thought about that because they think, oh well, you know, I'm paying you, that's enough, so shut up and keep rowing. Like, oh, really, I'm not a slave. I mean, you're going to get, you're going to get the minimum effort that I need to spend for you not to fire me. Which is true. It's like a thief is going to get the minimum level of collaboration from me that I need for him or her not to shoot me. But that's it. There's no discretionary effort. There's no creativity, there's no intelligence, there's no commitment, there's no flexibility. There's nothing that is discretionary is going to come out of a course situation.

It's interesting that there is this gap because I think a lot of those leaders would say that they're well intentioned, like, of course I want my employees to be happy. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on how this relates to the burnout conversation as well, where, let's say, employees are giving so much to the organization and the company says, oh, we want to make sure you don't burn out here. We'll create meditation classes and rooms. But that there still seems to be a gap between leaders caring and again, maybe partly for these.

More of the thief type reasons.

Yeah, yeah.

And then partly out of care as well. But there's this gap remains. And so.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Well, Jenny, there's a very corrupting influence on everybody in every human's life. And that's the desire to achieve the goal without committing to the practice. So I remember and I wrote in the book when I wanted to run a marathon and I went to a personal trainer and I said, hey, I want to run a marathon. I said, everybody wants to run a marathon. The question is, do you want to get up at 5 in the morning to train every day?

I was blown away, of course. I mean.

I never thought of the practice. I mean, the practice is something I had to do to run a marathon, but I would do it begrudgingly. And he Was saying, no, no, no, love the practice. You have to fall in love with the process, not the outcome. The outcome is cheap. Of course everybody falls in love with the outcome. But that's corrupting because then you want the outcome without the pro. It's like, I want to lose weight, give me a pill, or I want to be healthy, so just operate on me. And most of the problems are behavior. I mean, I'm not denying that in some situations it's necessary to take a pill or to have surgery. But the vast majority of diseases that afflict us are behavioral diseases. They are related to diet, smoking, not sleeping, drinking, lack of exercise.

Whatever, lack of self care. So if I go to a company and say, what do you want? I want to engage my employees, it's like, okay, that's nice, but what are you willing to do? Do you want to do what it takes to engage the employees? And it's not giving them pills to make them happy or giving them goodies to make them happy. It's a lot deeper than that.

And that's the hard challenge that every leader has. It seems obvious what's the right way to run the organization.

What is not obvious is what are the practices that you have to do day in and day out as a life commitment that are going to yield those ways of managing and leading. Just think of a diet. It's the easiest example. You know, reading the book of diet is the easy part. I mean, you need to know what to do and of course, but you know, you want a diet, just stop eating sugar and eat healthy fats. That's it. Sugar, starches, flours, rice, stop all that and eat healthy fats and a small amount of protein. That's it. I mean, of course you can write hundreds of pages, but that's the beginning. Now that's a non starter for 99% of humanity. It's like, what? I mean, no bread, Are you crazy?

I want my donuts. It's like, okay, then have them, but don't complain when you know you don't lose weight. It's just, oh no, but I want to lose weight. The question is not whether you want, everybody wants to lose weight. The question is, do you want to stop eating that which prevents you from losing weight? And most people in leadership are just not willing to do what it takes to become a source of inspiration, to connect with people with care, with love, with understanding, invite them to join a common mission. And that doesn't mean being, I would say, nice. I write in the book, I disagree with the idea of servant leadership, that the leader is in service of the people. For me, the leader is in service as everybody else, in service of the mission. And there are some missions that will require sacrifices. In the extreme, it could be the sacrifice of my own life or. I mean, there are things I would die for and there are things that if you're in my team, I would tell people, if this happens, then we're going to die for this. And if you don't want that, then this would not be a good place for you to go. It's like a plane. This plane is going to. If you don't want to go to Florida, this would be an excellent time to deplane because we are going there. And I would tell people that. And then whoever wants can join. But that doesn't mean you come here and it's guaranteed you'll have a good time.

Without making it so dramatic, there are companies or jobs where you have to say, look, there's some risks to this job and there's the need to work long hours and be exposed to these risks. Are you willing to do this? Is this important enough or is this aligned with your life mission in a way that you would be willing to accept these risks as a part of your commitment? And if the person says yes, then that's wonderful. If they say no, then this is not a suitable agreement for both of us.

I like how you encourage leaders to describe the company mission in a way that would make their children proud if they told their friends at school, how did you arrive at the children proud benchmark of this mission?

Oh, it's a. It's a sweet story. I have to do it in a hurry. I hadn't thought of that. I was about to go. I was working with axa, the insurance, the French insurance company, and I was gonna fly. I lived in Boulder and I was going to fly to Paris for a month.

And my at that time, seven year old daughter, her name is Michelle.

Now she's 19. So Michelle looked at me with her big eyes full with tears and she said, daddy, please don't go. It just broke my heart. I'm like, oh. I wanted to say, well, sorry, Michi, Daddy has to go. Which is a total victim state.

So I didn't say that, but I was tempted to say, I don't have a choice, I have to go. So I had to think, you know, what do I tell her? And I just said impromptu when she, you know, that if I died, it would be really bad thing. She was shocked. I looked at me like, yes, that would be bad. And I said, but it would be probably worse because if I die, there'd be a lot of hardships that fall on you and Mommy and the rest of the family, because Mommy would have to go work a lot more, and you would have money issues, and you couldn't continue going to school, and you probably couldn't stay in this house. And now she was freaking out, like, oh, my God, that's really bad. And I told her, well, the people I work with, they can't stop that I can have an accident. I mean, that's just life. Anybody can have accidents anytime. That's unfortunately the reality in which we live. But what they do is they guarantee I pay them a little bit every month, and they guarantee that if something happens to me, they'll give Mommy enough money that nobody has those sorts of problems, you or your brothers and sisters, and you'll be all right. And that's a beautiful thing, because these people allow me, and a lot of parents like me to take care of their loved ones even after they die. And that's just an amazing superpower that we have to love people beyond their physical existence and take care of them. And that's thanks to them. That's what they do. And she just literally said, go, Daddy, go. She pushed me. It's like, go, Daddy, go. I was, like, so proud. I don't even work for axa. I mean, I was just a consultant, but I felt so proud to participate in that. And then, of course, I got to France and I told them the story. They said, oh, you should be sad selling insurance. That was the usually selling life insurance. And one of the executives who was there around the table said, no, you guys don't understand. We don't sell life insurance. We sell love.

That came from one of the leaders there. I was so impressed. It was such a beautiful thing. And he was the only one who said that. The other people laughed a little bit, and then we continued the conversation, but he wasn't kidding. And I wasn't kidding either. You don't sell whatever you sell. You sell love. So with your book or with your podcast or when you coach people or when you create a program that other people use, you are not just giving a material or even a conceptual product to people. You are creating the conditions in which they can flourish. And they participate in that program or read the book or listen to your podcast or hire you as a coach or a consultant because they see that your presence in their lives helps them flourish. And that's. That's A. That's a noble thing. And the way you introduced the podcast made me feel so proud and I would. I hope my kids are going to listen to this podcast. They're all grown up now, but for sure I'm gonna send this podcast to them because they're studying now to become the same thing in whatever career they're following. They all want to do something that will leave a mark in the world. And the best mark that we can live is to participate in the lives of others so that they flourish and they grow and they find themselves.

So beautifully said. And when you were talking about love as the root of what we all do, at least in the best case scenario, it's true. I think the. The work I'm proudest of has my heart in it. And in fact, when my heart's not in it, I just can't continue. And I don't see a reason to continue. And I think you'll like There's a quote I've shared at the back of pivot in the. In the Acknowledgments from Carlos Ruiz Laphon, who said every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. And it seems like that's what's possible in business as well. Not just a book, but in the best case. And what I love about your work is you're such an advocate for putting our love into what we do and our meaning and our mission.

Yes. That's beautiful, Carlos. I love Luisa Phone. His book the Shadow of the Wind is one of my favorite all time books. Just an amazing novel. And this idea that every product or everything you create has a soul and this soul is evolving seems very metaphysical, but it's shockingly practical. I mean, that changes the way you deliver your services, changes the way you think about your products, changes the way. And it's just, it's very sound economics. You may not know this, but the guy who's credited from being the first economist, Adam Smith, who wrote the wealth of nations, was actually a moral philosopher. And his first book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, was a book about benevolence. And he went into economics because. Or at least he drifted towards the economic considerations because he realized that pure benevolence was not enough to maintain cohesion in society. You feel benevolence for the people you are close to, but then this decays like gravity with the square of the distance, so to speak. The farther people are in a spiritual sense or in a relational sense to you, the less you feel benevolent towards them. So it's not sufficiently strong force to maintain cohesion in society, but self interest, as he described it is. Now, I'm trying to put those two things together and say the ultimate self interest is not the interest of your ego, but the interest of something that's bigger than your ego, and it's a larger notion of self. There's this a bit metaphysical, but the implication of it is that you can love other people as thy brothers or sisters, because you can love them as you love yourself. And you find that they are fellow human beings which have hopes and dreams and fears and pains. And they say, oh, I'd like to participate in their lives as a source of growth, of solace, of rest, of satisfaction, of meaning. And now you create whatever product. It could be a book, but whatever you create could be a course, could be a podcast.

It could be a search engine to talk about Google. It's something that will develop a soul and it will become part of human existence. And that's very, very, very practical.

It's not something for the church or your spiritual practice only when you're meditating. It's something to build any team, any company around. And whoever comes to your team or your company enrolled in that mission will have a completely different disposition than someone who's there just to collect a paycheck.

100%. I love your chapter on superconscious capitalism. And you talk about returning to the market with helping hands. And it's funny while reading your book, because I'm thinking about my next at the intersection of spirituality and business. And I was like, well, Fred just went ahead and wrote it. We quote all the same things. Like you cited Kahlil Gibran's work is love made visible. And I just love what you described and even how you're saying this is practical. It doesn't just have to be about self interest, nor does it have to mean that we can't love each other and bring in what. What this is what I think the gap that you're bridging is that what might have been considered metaphysical in the past, especially as it relates to a traditional business book, you are putting front and center. And you even describe in the book your interest in shamanic journeys and your experience with psilocybin and the insights of that you discovered. And I'm wondering, were you at all hesitant to share that, or you just kind of so clear on your mission that you're. You're willing to put all this forward in your book and in your work.

Well, I was, I was conflicted about it. Not, not about what I did, but about sharing it so widely. And then a lot of people, friends, editors, it's like almost unanimously were against it. This is too exposed against sharing.

It's too exposed. You're, you know, and it is a sort of sacrifice. But I have to say I was very inspired by the book Waking Up. Sam Harris, who wrote a book on meditation and he, because he's so iconoclastic and he's considered, you know, the anti religious extremist. And yet he wrote this fantastic book about neuroscience and meditation and spiritual practice, but spiritually in a different way. Not in a religious, traditional, religious way, but more in a personal, introspective and transcendence way. And he says it all started with taking MDMA ecstasies. And he tells about that experience and he's like, wow, this guy has guts. And I was so. I admired him so much and I thought, oh, well, you know, if Sam Harris can do it, I can. Do.

Was kind of my mantra. Why can't Sam Harris talk about it? And I would not. And he said, well, this is my sacrifice. And if somebody doesn't want to work with me, you know, I'm not a neuroscientist. I work in a corporate environment. I'll see. I mean, the consequences haven't ensued yet. You know, I. I have to see. Maybe some people will be horrified or they think I'm promoting drugs. I'm certainly not, but. But that is the truth of my experience. And I wanted to share with people what I did, what I learned, or what psilocybin taught me by transcending certain, not like automatic states of mind. And what I brought back from that hero's journey to share with my community, I felt that was, I don't know, a statement of integrity. I'm gonna do it myself before. If I'm inviting other people to do this, then it's just my moral credibility depends on me being out there and telling my truth. So.

That'S why I put it. It's really a meaningful story for me and I hope it will be meaningful for other people to learn something about themselves.

That's what I love about is that regardless of someone's position or whether they're going to do that or not, it's the courage that comes through. And just like your experience of reading Sam Harris and I loved his book as well. But I had that experience reading yours. Not because I've never done psychedelics and who knows if that's in the cards for me. My general gut instinct tells me it's not. Not for me, but doesn't matter. It still is the courage. And I still read that and I thought, cool, you know, like, I love that you're blending this in. I love your courage and the, and the, and the truth. You said the word truth. And I think that that ties in so closely with love and especially in a business context. And that courage and truth and soul that comes through when you share what has authentically been very powerful for you. We get to benefit from the message and from that boldness. And I think that just that alone is leading by example, especially in a business context that needs it, where people, and myself included, can sometimes check myself at the door out of fear of what will people think.

Yes. Oh, if you, if we were physically together, I'd give you a big hug.

That's a very sweet thing and it warms my heart. And it is exactly what I was hoping to do with the book, what I hope to do as a teacher. And just my mission and my gift very similar to yours, which is to kind of go search and find the fire and then bring it back to the community so other people don't have to do the same thing. And people can go into their journeys with the knowledge of the structure of the journey, but they don't have to go to the same place. Each one of us will take the journey that's appropriate to their life. And part of what I am trying to do is to bridge this gap where it seems that if you really want to have a meaningful life, you have to drop out. You have to leave the world and go live in a cave or in a monastery. And if you want to be successful in the world, then you have to sell out and you have to lose your soul and just be a regular.

How would you say, somebody that is greedy and is trying to achieve material success without scruples. And I think both are. It's a false polarity, it's wrong. And there's a way to define love which is very, very practical. It's a commitment. It's not a hard feeling. Only in fact, you can have this commitment without feeling it. It's just something you do because you know that's the right thing to do. And it's a commitment to support the evolution and the well being of others. So this is a very impersonal notion of love and it's called agape in Greek. And it's the love, the charitable love, the love that in the Greek translation of the Bible, the word Jesus is supposed to have used. Not the love like love your enemies in a way that they're family members or the way you love your spouse. But love your enemies as you know, commit to support their evolution and their wellness, and may they grow out of their fear and their rage and the hatred that perhaps is guiding them to do nasty things. And that's true not just in Christianity, but every, every wise tradition will have something like that. So why can't we have that for business and say, if we go to the marketplace with the intention to help others with this agape love, that's how we are going to accomplish just beautiful things that we couldn't accomplish otherwise. And if you are looking for a career and you're thinking, what's what, what do I want to do? Well, the question what's going to make your heart sing and where do you want to go to contribute to the growth and well being of others? And then you start seeing the company not as a place you work for, but actually as a platform that works for you. This is a radical shift. I don't work for Google. Google works for me. I'm associated with Google because Google enables me to pursue my life mission in a way that's much more powerful than anything I could do on my own. And when I work with LinkedIn and I gave my gift through them to them and through them I felt the same, it's like this is a beautiful opportunity that they are giving me to support humanity in a way that's way bigger than anything I could do on my own. And I'm infinitely grateful for that. I'm still affiliated with LinkedIn. I love those guys and I would help them any way I can. And I'm still talking to them and all that. So there's no, I don't know, there's no sense of, oh, they're abusing me or they're making money with me. It's exactly the opposite. What a blessing that people like Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner have.

Reed is the founder of LinkedIn and Jeff, the CEO have created this kind of platform that helps so many people develop their careers, find jobs, connect with other professionals, and that they give me a chance to be a part of.

But I will forever be grateful. And now I'm thinking, wow, Larry and Sergey created this amazing organization and they started on Eric Schmidt, then and now Sundar. And these are all the executives at Google. And now they have this fantastic platform to contribute to humanity. What a blessing to have a chance to participate there. Oh, my God, this is an incredible journey. So when you start thinking of your career like that, it really changes the perspective with which you approach any job opportunity.

It's such a great example of the fluidity with careers as well. You and I both have sort of. We work with these companies and you and I in particular have paths crossing where I worked at Google in 2006 and we did conscious business training and then I left in 2011. I still work with them today. They're using Pivot internally. And you've kind of done this dance also from Google as a consultant, then LinkedIn, now back to Google. And so there can be a fluidity when we see each other as brothers and sisters in this agape love where nothing is final. These relationships are fluid and evolving and even the form that our businesses take and are, you know, the CEO of me, you know, kind of as Reid Hoffman talks about startup of you and even tours of duty, like, you're such a great example. And you read my mind because I wanted to ask you. Your book, by the way, arrived unsolicited. Like, it just showed up on my doorstep one day. So the publisher sent it to me proactively.

And I was surprised to see that you had pivoted from excellent to LinkedIn. So I'd be curious if you could share a little bit about how you made that decision. And then even from LinkedIn to Google, like, how do you know when it's time to pivot? And especially kind of leaving the business that you had started.

Yeah.

Well, that's a very personal.

Answer. How you know when it's time to pivot is you feel. You feel the pull. And it's a. It's a bit of a mystery. It's like asking a bird, how do you know when to. I don't know. I guess the bird just feels like singing and it's an irrepressible urge to sing. And you can do research on the outside what triggers the bird to sing. But the truth is, it's just a mystery. Deep down, something emerges that says it's time to pivot. But perhaps what I can share is what is the sense I make of these pivots? And it's always, at least it's been for me, about the life mission. As you said at the beginning, when Eric asked you, what's your life mission? That's a profound question that I think every person needs to ask. Just like A company needs to ask itself or the leaders, what is our mission? Why do we exist? What's the point of our journey? And the point of my journey has always been to help people just.

Remember their true nature and find ways to invite people to.

Rediscover who they are deeply. And that deepness or that depth of exploration about the self has always called me. Now, my particular gifts are intellectual and business like. So I wouldn't be teaching philosophy or I wouldn't be perhaps in a spiritual environment.

In this whatever. My life evolved in a way that I'm shaped to be a good instrument for intervening in the business world. So I was doing that first in mit and then when I felt like it was time, I pivoted and I started my company, which developed into becoming Accident for many years. And then Accident became quite big and I found myself managing and leading other people. But I'm not personally a great business leader. I don't feel that's my calling. I'm a teacher. I like to teach. I like to engage with the individual human beings with whom I work. So when Jeff invited me to join, and I had known Jeff Wiener from many years ago when he was in Yahoo, I thought, wow, this seems like an amazing opportunity. And I did it. And after five years at LinkedIn and giving my gift and working with all their leaders, people have very long tenures in LinkedIn. So most of the senior leaders have been there for the five years that I have been there. I just felt they learned everything that I can share with them. I can stay around and this very loving and they all wanted to just have me stay.

I said, we can be friends and I'm available and we can do stuff. But the truth is, if I were the owner of LinkedIn, I wouldn't hire someone like me at this point because I've given my gift and you have received it and you have taken it to a place where, I mean, it's just fun to be around, but I don't think I can contribute that much more. And yeah, they agreed. So it was a very friendly transition to this new mode. Google showed up. It wasn't from pivoting from one to the other. It was first. The truth of the relationship with LinkedIn had shifted. And as I opened myself to, well, what am I going to do next? I thought I was going to be more of a consultant to many companies, but Google said, oh, we'd love to try you advising us in similar ways that you developed for your book in terms of aligning people in pursuit of A common goal in a complex organization that seemed like such a fascinating project. And Google is such an amazing company with, you know, the impact on the development of humanity that I was like, of course. I mean, just tell me, what do I need to do? I'll do anything to have a shot at participating in this epic story that you guys are writing. And that's how I feel. I started with them, you know, like a month ago. Wow.

So recent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very recent. And it was completely.

Synchronistic. It wasn't like a long conversation or anything. It just happened. So that tells me it was a good thing. And I am ecstatic about it. I'm still learning. But the guidance of the mission is what has, in a sense, unfolded with all these or through all these smaller decisions.

I love the synchronicity and the timing. Even with your book launching and the Google opportunity. It's always amazing to see how these things seem to come out of nowhere and then they make perfect sense somehow once it's in front of you. And so fascinating to me because when I started at Google in 2006, there was about 6,000 employees. And so in a fascinating way, you and conscious business planted so many seeds. And I know many of the people. I was in a training function training thousands of people. Many of them are still there today. So it's interesting that you're diving back in and you have these like, trailblazers and people who you've already. Who will already know some of the culture that has. And then I think it's good at 60,000 to get a refresh. You know, I think now's the time for them to have you, and they're. They're lucky to have you, and vice versa, I can understand for you, it is so compelling to get the chance to work at that scale. And I just love the image of you as going and finding the fire and bringing it back. And the last thing I'll say, there is even a company like Google for all the culture and all the perks. It's not easy to grow to. I don't know exactly how many, so don't quote me on this. Just pulling around 60,000. That, of course.

85,000.

It's 85,000.

85,000 people. Yeah. And expecting to be 100,000 very soon.

That's really wild. So, yeah. What a fascinating time. Fred, I could talk to you all day, but I know you're busy launching your book, so. Wow. Before I officially close, I would love if you could give listeners. I always like to leave them with one practical, actionable thing that they can try or practice. What would you have them do?

You already said it. Ask yourself what's your life mission? And then start planning your activities in a very fluid way in support of that life mission. And the only thing you need is a next step. You don't need to plan all the way how I'm going to accomplish this mission, but you only need what's the next step that is going to bring me in the right direction. But you need to know the last step, which is this is my life mission and the first step. Don't worry about the rest of the process.

Wonderful. Fred. Thank you so much for your time today. This is a dream. I didn't even dare to dream that I would get to talk to you in person. And thank you. And thank you. May I be a testament of the soul of your work and carrying it forward and just that you don't even know the extent of your reach and influence and your work has been with me for over 12 years and will continue to be and I'm just so excited for the Meaning Revolution. So those of you listening, please don't miss out on this book or Fred's work. Go to Amazon or wherever you get your books and check out the Meaning Revolution, the Power of Transcendent Leadership. Thank you Fred.

Thank you Jenny. It's been an honor really to see how you are creating your soul imprint in such a beautiful way.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for PivotList, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.