Marshall Goldsmith joins Louis Carter on Newsweek's Leader Show

All right, my next guest is my friend and mentor of more than 20 years. He's the world-renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. He's coached more than 200 CEOs and their management teams throughout the past 40 years. I was lucky enough for Marshall to choose me as one of his top coaches for his MG100 that brings together the world's leading executive coaches, top business thinkers, and best leaders with the common purpose of making good executives better. In his New York Times bestsellers Triggers and What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Marshall helped readers identify the psychological and environmental roadblocks that prevent us from achieving our best performance. Now, in his new book, The Earned Life, Marshall uncovers the source of today's existential crisis. Regret, the kind stemming from choices that alter our lives, reroute destinies, and haunt our memories, particularly timely themes as the pandemic and Great Resignation inspire people to seek meaning in their lives, get unstuck, and make changes. Marshall, congratulations on your new book, The Earned Life, and welcome to The Leader's Show on Newsweek.

Me. I'm so happy to be here, Marshall.

So great to see you. I want to hear about the— your definition for the new book, The Earned Life. What is your definition for the earned life?

Well, I'm going to make sure I get it right. We are living an earned life when the choices, risk, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcomes. And I think the interesting part of that sentence is, regardless of the eventual outcomes.

It's, it's, it's interesting, and it's not about the outcomes, is it? Right, it's not about the outcomes, it's about the journey. And that's what you were saying in your book as well.

Exactly. I think one of the great problems in the West, particularly as we get our, our egos and our identity get focused on the results we achieve, and ultimately that's a fool's game for two reasons. One, We don't have total control over the results. Many things happen that are outside of our control. And number two, what happens after you achieve the results? Well, how long does that bring lasting peace or happiness or satisfaction? A day, a week? Not much, not much. And then all of a sudden, guess what? Do it again, do it again, do it again. And the Buddhist term for this is called the hungry ghost. I'm always eating and I'm never full.

This crisis you speak about and you've always taught me about is, "I will be happy when..." And so, is this a huge problem for executives and all of us? We have to do something in order to be happy. Yeah, we can be fulfilled now, can't we?

I completely agree with you. I mean, to me though, it's not a— no wonder we feel this way. You know, you know, Lou, the great Western art form you may have seen a few thousand times, it sounds like this. There is a person. No, the person is sad. They spend money, they buy a product, and they become happy. This is called a commercial. Have you ever seen one of those before? Well, you know, how many times have you seen that message? Thousands of times, day after day after day after day. It's the same message. Happiness is out there. Oh, the reality is happiness is not out there. It's in here.

You know, so, so is it possible to live unbound by regret and, and how we can avoid the temptation to wallow in it?

Is that possible? Now here's the important point of the book. The important point of the book is you, you have, if you say I have to do this every second for eternity, you'll never succeed. That is the opposite of the intent of the book though. The intent of the book is there's only one second. You have to learn to find peace now. Not next week, not next year, not next month. Now. And if you look at now, it certainly seems possible.

One of the things I tell people is— who really— that I've learned from you as well, who really are feeling like they're regretting what they've just done, is that every breath is a new breath And A Time to Be a New Me. And this, this concept for that brings Feedforward together, saying you can be a new you in every single second and every single breath. How have you seen that play out with the hundreds of CEOs that you've coached throughout the many years?

Well, that's a really important point of the book is every time I take a breath, it's a new me. And I've seen this play out not just with CEOs, with human beings, period. I mean, One of our biggest challenges, Lou, that you've brought up is forgiving ourselves for being human. And, you know, I have a great exercise. Take a deep breath, and every time you think— every time I take a breath, it's a new me. So think, new me. Everything that happened before was done by an infinite set of people called the previous versions of me. Well, think of all those previous yous and think about the gifts they've given the you that's listening to me right now. And think about how hard they tried and the nice things they've done. So if any group of people did that many nice things, what should we say to these people? Hey, thank you, thank you. Now, did they make a little mistake or two? Uh, yeah. First person we need to learn to forgive, this person.

You know, you know, one of the things Johnny Carson, I remember him saying once, is that, you know, never try to complain or convince. And remember that it's an old saying, you know, is there really any point of convincing someone, you know, of your, of your viewpoints? What's the use?

What's— yeah. And again, in my book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, people— I was asked by the Harvard Business Review, what's the number one problem of successful people you've coached over the years? My answer is winning too much. You know, it's important, we want to win. Meaningful, we want to win. Trivial, we want to win. And not worth it, we want to win anyway. It's very hard for especially successful people not to win all the time.

It's a sort of a pandemic in and of itself. We talked about this existential crisis. You talk about that in your book. How has it helped you and others really in the earned life, as you say, to really become more fulfilled and reset? I've seen it for myself as well. It helped me reset. And rethink?

Well, you know, I think if you look at what inspired the book, the pandemic was what inspired the book. You know, you've been to my old house. I lived in Rancho Santa Fe for 30 years in the same home, and we were gonna sell the house and move to Nashville. Well, then what happened is, you know, we put on the market right before COVID hit, then COVID hit. Well, we rented a place in La Jolla on the beach. Thank goodness. I wanted to get a crappy little place, but Lyda said, let's get a nice place. So we lived on the beach in La Jolla for a year and a half. If you gotta get stuck, it's a good place to be stuck. And then every weekend, I did these life plan review calls with 60 amazing people. Mark Thompson and I did 6 hours a week. They would rotate in groups of 10 each and listen to people talk about their lives. And who the people were is not a secret. You've met many of these people. Curtis Martin, the National Football League, and Pau Gasol, pro basketball star. And then we had the Broadway star and the head of the Olympic Committee and the head of the, you know, World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. Amazing people. And every week they talked about their lives. And these dialogues are what inspired the book. And they loved it every week. One guy, Mike Kaufman, is head of Cardinal Health. He said, I love this because I'm accountable, yet I'm not being judged. I'm accountable. And, and also, you know, there's an old saying, it's lonely at the top. It used to be lonely at the top. It is lonelier at the top today. Today it is incredibly lonely. Why? Social media, you know, people say things, they take it out of context, they make you look stupid.

It's tough.

One person said, you know, I love these programs because for an hour a week I get to act like a human being.

Is this— so tell me, what has it— what are some of the main learnings you've learned from these, these kind of superstars, right? What have they, uh What, what have they done? How have they transformed or shifted as you've seen? Sort of the, the, the main theme of Shifts.

Well, you know, one of the first things you learn in the group, and I always ask people, what do you get out of this? And what's, what really hits you? And the first thing that hits people is we're all the same. I mean, you have the image, you read these people's bios, you'd think they're all the second coming of God and they have no problems. Other reality is they have kids with drug problems, parents with Alzheimer's, get divorced. You know, they don't escape life just because they're successful in business. You still are human and you still have to deal with a lot of the basic dramas of life that everyone has to deal with. So that the first thing you learn is how human we all are. And the second thing that I really focus on, which is in the book a lot, is about achievement. In the book, I talk about 3 major elements. There are aspirations, which are the higher purpose. What am I here for? The answer to that great question, why? And they don't have a timeline. Second is our ambition. And our ambition is our achievement. What am I trying to achieve? And it does have a finish point. And then the third one is our day-to-day actions. What am I doing at this instant? What am I doing now? So if we look at these three, really key to having a great life is they need to be aligned. If I'm enjoying the process of life, I'm achieving something, and I think it's meaningful and connected to my higher aspiration, I just won the game of life. Well, if you look at the people in these groups, most of the people in the history of the world, our ancestors, you know, Lou, your ancestors, my ancestors, they were poor. They didn't have anything. I mean, they were in caves. They're just trying to stay alive every day. They didn't have time to think about these lofty thoughts. Well, a lot of humans today are still lost in the action phase. You know, they're basically lost in action. They're living day-to-day lives. They do what's in front of them. Not bad or good, it just is. Some people who you and I both met are really lost in their heads. They would be lost in the aspiration phase. They have lofty goals and ideas, but they don't really achieve very much. And they, um, don't enjoy life necessarily. For example, one of the problems with human service leaders is they love humanity. They just hate human beings. So, you know, it's very common when you do work with these, you know, morally self-righteous people, but they're just totally out of touch with humanity. Lou, the people you have dealt with in your life, and they're very parallel to people I've dealt with, don't have either one of those problems. They have another problem: achievement. They are achievaholics, and they tend to think, once I achieve something, everything is going to be okay. Now, one of the people in the group I talk about is Safi Bacall. Safi is a member of our 100 Coaches, just a great guy. Safi has a PhD in physics from Stanford. One. Number two, he started four businesses and made millions of dollars. Fine. He also has consulted the presidents, and he wrote a New York Times bestselling book. So Safi said, I finally learned something in these groups. And he talks like a scientist. He said, I used to believe that happiness was a dependent variable based upon achievement, and I finally realized happiness and achievement are indeed independent variables. And he learned that from Curtis Martin, the football player who's achieved a lot and is a very happy person. And Safi wasn't actually that happy. And he said, I've learned something. Be happy to be happy. Achieve to achieve, but don't think achievement is going to make you happy. Well, the irony of this is here's a guy— I told him, Safi, exactly how much do you need to achieve? Now you already have a PhD in physics from Stanford. You're worth millions of dollars. You started 4 businesses. You wrote a New York Times bestseller and you consulted the presidents. That's not enough. That's not enough. Well, exactly. When are you gonna get there? Because he's already a 99.999 on achievement now. Does he really believe going to a 99.99999 is gonna make any difference? You think all of a sudden, whoa, now I did it. You don't get there.

You don't get there.

That's one of the deepest learnings in our groups.

For someone like Safi and Curtis, you know, it sounds like they overweight aspir— one of the three: aspiration, ambition, or action. You know, would it be true if we said to Safi or Curtis, you know, if take aspiration, ambition, and action and make sure that there are in fact thirds of your life?

They don't have to be in exact thirds. They just need to be aligned. And in fact, better than looking them as exact thirds, a good way to look at it is can do them all at the same time. And Curtis, a great role model. He loves what he's doing. It's totally connected to a high level of aspiration, and he achieves a lot. He won, and, and, and you won, you won. Well, that's about it. Kelly and I, my daughter Kelly, who you've met, we've done some research on, you know, happiness and meaning. And what we found out is really to have a great life, you need to have simultaneous happiness and meaning. In other words, I love what I'm doing, and it's connected to my higher aspiration, and it's making a positive difference. So I'm not just achieving stuff to be achieving stuff. I'm doing something that, number one, I enjoy doing it. I'm not a victim, I'm not a martyr. And number two, it is connected to a higher aspiration in my life.

How do we disconnect ourselves from that, where that, that kind of, uh, thought that we, we're a martyr or we're doing this because we have to do this? It's sort of that, uh, you know, we're just continuing just for the fact of continuing. How do we disconnect and then get to that kind of effective feeling that, uh, that we really do want to be doing what we're doing.

Well, I— one thing is there's two, two ways you can look at it. If you're not doing what you love to be doing, option A, change what you're doing, or option B, change your attitude. If you have to do it, change your attitude. I mean, there are two flight attendants. One's positive, motivated, upbeat, enthusiastic. One's negative, bitter, angry, and cynical. Have you ever been on that plane before? We've all been on the plane. Same pay, same uniform, same everything. What's the difference? In here? Well, part of it is, if you don't like what you're doing, change what you're doing. If you can't change what you're doing, which is possible, okay, fine, learn to make the best of it. Now, one thing you've seen is my research on 6 questions. They all begin with, did I do my best to— okay, one of the 6 questions, did I do my best to be happy today? Well, how do we get better at this? The first thing is just try to get better at it. Most of us never even think of it. Most of us think of it. I mean, in my book Triggers, I talk about 3 people who you've met, Dr. Jim Kim, who was president of World Bank, Dr. John Noseworthy, who's head of the Mayo Clinic, and, and Dr. Raj Shah, head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Now their average IQ is a zillion. I ask all 3 of them individually, how'd you do on an average day? And did I do my best to be happy? They all had the same answer. Never dawned on me to try to be happy. They're all medical doctors. I said, did it dawn on you you're gonna die? Did they cover that in medical school? Death? Oh yeah, yeah, they brought up death. I said, do you think this is a silly question? He said, it's a great question, I just forgot to ask.

And the ones— people that I've noticed that don't ask that question or don't work at it, other behaviors come up, like they threatening people and trying to control sessions, you know, these, all these things. Yeah, have you seen that as well, you know, with people who control and, you know, or even for that matter threaten? What do we do, uh, in those situations, right, with those kinds of people who really don't think about they only think about their immediate, you know, sort of action gain in the moment.

Well, you know what I typically do is, do they want to change? If the answer is yes, I'm happy to try to help. If the answer is no, you know what I do? Smile, take a deep breath, and let it go. I've learned a good lesson. I can't make people be who they don't want to be. If people don't want to change, what am I going to do about it? Nothing. Ah, let go, let go.

Moving on, right? Moving on. Moving on. This is the train we're on. We don't need to let people on who perhaps aren't doing those things that we want. They won't help us in our journey. So, and you talk a lot about successful people, right? This addiction to achievement. What is your coaching been for them? And when they're really changing their behaviors, what are some of the challenges that they've gone through in their journey? And how have you helped them to, to break those really addictive and destructive?

Well, there are two different issues. One issue is interpersonal activities, behaviors. Our behavior, our interpersonal behavior, and my basic area of expertise is helping very successful people achieve positive long-term change in behavior. And the way I do that is stakeholder-centered coaching. They get feedback. They pick important behavior to improve. They talk to people.

They follow up.

We measure. They do it over and over, and they get better. The second issue though that I really worked on in COVID, which is different and comes out this way, is much more internal. That's how do you make peace with yourself? Not just how do you become more effective as judged by others. How do you make peace with the person you look at in the mirror every day? Uh, how do you forgive that person? How do you make that person happy? And so, uh, they're both important yet different. In my coaching, I never really did life coaching until I was much older. All of my coaching was basically helping people achieve positive long-term change in behavior, and I'm very good at it. Well, as I've grown older, today half the people I coach are billionaires. Like one guy I'm coaching, well, I said, well, I'm supposed to help you get from $4 billion to $4.1 billion. What does it matter anyway? He said, you're right, it doesn't matter. Well, he doesn't need a business coach. He doesn't need to, quote, achieve more. He needs to make peace, be happy with his life.

Yeah, and it comes through. You, you hear— I've heard as well with billionaires, they're not looking to improve their businesses, they're not looking to necessarily improve their own behavior every day. It's about making peace, understanding the self, and loving themselves again, because perhaps they haven't felt loved and they need to feel it again.

Exactly, because the end of the day, we're all humans. At the end of the day, we're all humans. And once you get to a certain point of achievement, you, you really— it's healthy to start asking the question, why? Why do I really believe a little bit more is going to make any difference at all in my life? Because the reality is it won't.

So the, the end of that equation of more is really the self. It's really self, isn't it? Yeah, this, the, the honor of the self, the, the the value of the self, revaluing yourself.

It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Once you get past a certain point, you need to be working on self-actualization, not just working on achievement. And it's making that leap from achievement to more towards self-actualization is a very positive, you know, it's a very positive change that people need to make.

One of the things that are coming out that I see coming out today is this kind of over-empathy that people are having inside of the world. It's just over-empathizing. And it's abundant everywhere. It's, it's changed that, that I've seen. Is it possible that empathy can cause more harm than good?

Well, this is a very counterintuitive part of the book. Now, I, like you probably, I always heard empathy was a good thing. It sounds like fuzzy puppy dogs and teddy bears and warm and nice stuff. I always thought empathy was uniformly good. As you read in the book, empathy has positive and negatives. Now I talk about 4 types of empathy. The first is the empathy of understanding. I know where you're coming from. I'm good at this. You've seen me before. I can see things in people I can't see in themselves. I'm very good at understanding people's motivation, which is very good for being a coach. That same skill can also be used to manipulate people. It's used by people who understand propaganda. It's used by people who understand advertising. So it could be very positive. It can also be misused in a very negative way. The second type of empathy is the empathy of feeling. I can feel your pain. And you mentioned a lot of people do what I call virtue signaling. They're bragging about how they feel other people's pain. Could be positive. It makes me more sensitive to you. But Autant se les gentils, who you may have met, said, you know, I need to be able to touch this but not live in it. One of the people in our 100 Coaches is Dr. Patrick Frias. He's the head of the Brady Children's Hospital in San Diego. He said as an intern, the first 2 months of his job as a doctor, he was around dying kids. He went home and cried every night. He went home and cried every night. He was feeling the pain. You know what he finally had to realize? I can't do this. If I'm gonna do this, I'm not gonna be an effective doctor. This is not increasing my effectiveness. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm also the volunteer coach of, uh, you know, Dr. Jim Downing's head of St. Jude's Children's Hospital. If you ever go to St. Jude's, it's tough. You're around kids dying of cancer every day. Well, that's his life. He's got a wife, he's got kids, he's got a family, he's got grandkids. He can't carry that stuff with him. He's got to learn to let that go. He can't carry that around. Now the next one, Luke, that Lou, I love in the book is the empathy of caring. The reason I love it, I talk about a hedge fund manager. Of all people, of all people, they wouldn't have a problem with the empathy of caring. It would be a hedge fund manager. You think, well, they don't care about anything other than making money, right? So I'm watching— this is years ago— I'm watching a guy that's worth a billion dollars interview another guy's worth 3 billion. And this was back in the day when a billion dollars was a lot of money. So that the billion guy says to the 3 billion guy, why don't you have a fund? And the 3 billion guy says, I'm not as good as I was. The billion guy says, why not? You know, now more than ever. He said, I know that. He said, I started caring. He said, I started caring. So the billionaire goes, what do you mean you start caring? What does that mean? He said, well, you know, When I was young, I never thought about people and their money. I just— it was a game. I just played this game. Now, and obviously, he said, I made tens of billions of dollars for people, but I lost tens of billions, and I didn't care. I made 52%, I lost 48%. That's why I'm rich. You know, he said, I got older, I started caring. I started thinking, this is some kid's college fund, this is some old person's retirement fund. I started worrying. You know, he said, I became much less effective. He said, now I only invest my own money. I started caring. Well, you don't think of that as a negative, right? Especially from a hedge fund manager of all people. It was. That's why the surgeon can't operate on their children. They care too much. And then the final empathy is the empathy of doing. It sounds good. Not only do I understand and care and feel your pain, I'm doing something about it. Could be good. Could lead to dependency. You might be creating children, making them like infants. They're not doing the work on their own. They're not growing up. They're not taking responsibility. Why? You're fixing everything. One of the people in our group, she said, my biggest problem in life is I'm a fixer. I'm a fixer. I solve everyone else's problems. They don't grow up and solve themselves. So each one of the empathy, bad and good. And finally, the empathy we recommend though is the, what I call singular empathy. And that came from our Broadway star Telly. Now Telly's gay, but you know what he said? Every night I gotta demonstrate empathy. I fall in love with that princess every night. I gotta fall in love with that princess. He did, he did play Aladdin on Broadway at that literally 1,000 times. I said, how do you motivate yourself 1,000 times every night to do the same play? He said, you know, I was an 8-year-old boy and I went to the Broadway theater and it was dancing and singing and music and lights and I loved it so much. It made me so happy. He said, every night I think of that 8-year-old boy. I'm thinking, if there's one of them in the audience, this kid, kid, this is for you. This is for you, kid. And if there's one, it's worth it. And if there's not one, I'm still doing my best. And, and he really pointed out, real empathy is not, I feel your pain, or virtual signaling about how much you care. Real empathy is, I'm doing what I need to do for you now.

That's a beautiful example. And how does that— how is that coming up, that singular empathy, with some of the most— it's a new definition of great leadership, isn't it? Singular empathy, because you're serving directly the people who need you the most.

Exactly. You know, Margot Georgiades is a member of our group. She's a woman that went over to Ancestry. She was CEO of Mattel. She went to Ancestry. Turned it around, sold it for $4.7 billion to Blackstone. Wonderful leader, nice woman. She said, you know, this Zoom call I'm on at the end of the day may be the least important Zoom call of the week for me. It may be the most important Zoom call of the week for them. And we got to keep reminding ourselves back to singular empathy. I'm being who I need to be for these people now. One of, one of the guys in the group is a CEO of a huge nonprofit. He'd been working on this deal, billions of dollars. It came through, it was going to save lives. He's all proud and happy. He's at home though on a Zoom call. He walks out of his little Zoom place and his family's there. He's jumping up and down. Yay, we did it, we did it! Uh, his daughter is crying, she just got dumped by her boyfriend. Uh, his wife is incredibly angry. His son's computer is broken, he's frantic, he can't do his homework. The basic message to him was, you're an asshole. Now, he wasn't trying to be rude. He forgot where he was. He wasn't on that Zoom call anymore. He wasn't on that Zoom call into this family. He was just showing off. He was lost at work, bragging about how great he was, and totally insensitive to them. Well, to me, singular empathy, as defined, is not what do I feel like. It's how am I making everyone else feel right now.

Yeah, it's funny, I've seen tears come to your eyes before, Marshall, and when you talked about singular empathy, I saw them come to your eyes just now in that story. And, uh, in, in the way that the, uh, especially the, the gentleman who, um, was speaking to that one kid in the audience, right, when he goes out, it was beautiful. Tell me what, what for you, because you are Marshall Goldsmith, I want to learn, you know, it's really the deep The Deep Marshall Goldsmith, what, what is your singular empathy?

Well, you know, my singular empathy right now is pretty simple. Uh, why am I on this call? Well, basically I have a simple mission in life: help the people listening to this call, and hopefully you have a little better life. That's all.

That's it.

I'm not going to solve climate change. I'm not going to cure cancer. I am not going to influence national politics. I'm not going to know about strategy or marketing. But you know what? Maybe I've helped you and maybe some people on this call a little better life. I'm declaring victory here.

That's a, that's, that's a cool way of looking at it. As an executive coach, we— you talk about, and also as, as the author in The Earned Life, you talk about credibility has to be earned twice. Tell me more about that. What, what do you mean by that?

Well, if we look at the concept of credibility, it's being trusted, admired, looked up to, credible. Sounds great. Nobody wants to be not credible. We'd all rather be credible. What do I mean by credibility needs to be earned twice? And Lou, you and I have talked a lot about this. Part of it is doing a great job. To be credible, you need to earn that credibility by doing great work. On the other hand though, you need to be recognized as someone who can do a great job, which is totally different. It's totally different. And just learning to accept that. And Peter Drucker said our mission in life is to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart we are, not to prove how right we are. Well, the credibility matrix looks at two dimensions. One, am I trying to prove myself? Am I striving for approval? And two, is it going to help me make a positive difference? Well, if we look at that, we talk about four different dimensions on the credibility matrix. The first one is I'm trying to prove myself and it's not going to make a positive difference. So my book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, is largely about that box. It's about winning too much, trying to be right, proving yourself when you don't need to prove yourself. You're already the CEO. You don't have to win. You're going to win anyway, right? Let it go. The other side of the box, and this has been very interesting recent, is that box that says, I'm not trying to prove myself. The world would be better off if I did. And a lot of people undersell The first box I talked about is oversell. The second, undersell. And I find a lot of people undersell. They hide their light under a barrel. They might have this stupid belief. You ever heard this before? My good work should speak for itself. What nonsense! Your good work is not going to speak for itself. If that were true, no company would have a marketing function. Yeah, your good work doesn't speak for itself. You know, you got to be responsible for your own marketing function. Now, when I do these calls, a lot of times I'll have a chat feature. And I ask people a question, how many of you think you're overselling and underselling? What's your natural tendency? Oversell, undersell, if you had to pick one? Interesting, not like the people I coach, more like my book How Women Rise with Sally Hoggason. More of the people pick underselling. About 70% say undersell. Now I've got, okay, if you're ever around an underseller, I'm gonna give you 3 coaching questions that are best in history. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Question number 1: Would the world be worse off or better off if you became more powerful and influential? Most people say, well, gee, after mumbling around a little bit, they say, well, it'd be better off. I say, good, good. Uh, just trying to make you— just trying to promote yourself and become more influential, does that make you uncomfortable? And then they say, oh yes, yes, very uncomfortable. Then I say the, the buzz line is, what's more important to you, making a positive difference in the world or being comfortable? Well, if your goal is being comfortable, don't change. If your goal is make a positive difference in the world, get over yourself. And then the positive box is, of course, you know, I am trying to promote myself, and, and I believe it. Why I'm on this Zoom call with you, part promote the book. Well, why am I promoting the book? I think the book's gonna make a positive difference in the world. I, I've been, you know, Hubert Joly, you've met. Hubert's a great guy. Hubert wrote a book and after he finished being a CEO, I said to him, Hubert, most CEOs write books. No one buys the books. They're egotistical. They don't try to sell the book. They think they're above that. You're gonna write a book, get out there and bust your butt. Get out there and promote the damn book and try to sell it. You know, he said he did. I'm so proud of him. He worked so hard promoting that book. Well, to me, that's positive. He was promoting that book, and he did believe that book would make a positive difference in the world.

And it did. At Best Buy, people loved it. Everyone around there, they loved it. They believed in it. It changed the company even after he left. He did a tremendous job. And, uh, and what a— what is it? It is very— it is wonderful. It really is. Um, So I, you know, you, you say you have so much to say, Marshall, and you've said so much today. Today I just, I really do appreciate the time, and I, I completely, I, I really suggest everybody goes out and buys The Earned Life, um, not just to learn Marshall Goldsmith's, uh, you know, point of view and to his, his teachings and his incredible, you know, body of knowledge, which is indisputable. It's if you're going through a stage in your life perhaps where you're looking inward and saying, what's next? And how do I choose that what's next? And also, do I have any regrets for what I've done? And how do I let go of those regrets? And Marshall, would you— is that who you're looking to talk to for this? Is that the person that you want to pick up this book? Tell me more.

This book is not really a business book. This book is much more of a Buddhist philosophy book about having a good life, and it really applies to everybody. It's not a religious book either. It's a philosophical, psychological book about here's some things I believe are going to help you have a great life, and it doesn't matter what your job title is or your status in life or all that stuff. To me, it applies to people, you know, around the world. And it also, it really specifically applies, you know, Lou, to your listeners and my readers. The reality is your listeners and my readers are not in some absolute sense normal people. You don't think about that. Normal people don't buy books. A tiny number of people buy books. Normal people don't listen to this podcast. A tiny number of people do that. A tiny number of people are really working hard at self-improvement. It's not everybody's doing this. It's a small number doing this. That's who the book is for.

It's self-improvement. It's a whole new world of the, uh, it's, it's the millions and millions of people, not just the sort of, uh, the top 2-3% of society, right? And, uh, those, uh, brave people like you who are changing their lives and improving themselves. Marshall, thanks so much for coming on today.

You're a good friend. You've been— how many years we known each other?

It's been 20 years, more than 20. It was 1998 when I first met you, and, uh, I remember the first time when I was sitting in a lonely booth in a conference and you came over to me and you said, Lou, what are you doing? Why are you sitting here alone? You can do better than that. And I did. I worked harder.

And I'm so proud of you also not only for what you've achieved— you've achieved a lot— you're also just a happier human being. Thanks, Marshall.

Thank you, Marshall.