The Key Traits and Practices of Effective Sales Leaders feat. Markus Neukom

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The authentic leadership is the antithesis for imposter syndrome, in my opinion and experience. So I help my clients to empower themselves, and once they empowered, Guess what? They can start empowering their people.

This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi, I'm Jeb Blount, bestselling author of Fanatical Prospecting, Objections, Sales EQ, and Inked. And I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.

Welcome to the Sales Gravy Podcast. My name is Keith Lubner. I'm filling in for Jeb Senior today. And, um, today we have an incredible guest that I know is going to bring a lot of great content to you. Uh, We're gonna dive into some really interesting concepts around leadership EQ, change management. We'll probably talk about imposter syndrome at one point. All great, great things around and topics around leadership, if you will. Now, onto the podcast. I'd like to introduce you all to Markus Neukom. Now, Markus is— I got a chance to talk with Markus a little bit, and he's a really, really interesting and fascinating person. But the most important thing you need to know about Markus is that he is a world-renowned leadership expert. He works with executives, he works with boards, he works with organizations that want to transform their, their young leaders. And we'll get into young leaders today because it is an issue these days with young leaders and grooming young leaders. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Markus Neukom. Markus, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you so much for having me as a guest, Keith.

Leadership is a big, big topic these days. And, uh, and I teach here at Sales Graver, I teach a lot of leadership classes myself, and I'm actually looking forward to learning a lot from you, uh, you know, because you're an expert in this world. Let's start off with this. In your career as an executive coach, and you coach a lot of executives over the, over the years, what has been the most significant change in leadership styles? that you've observed, and how should leaders adapt to these styles?

That is an amazing question, Keith. It brings me back to a day, I would say it was almost prophetic what happened that day. I was invited by one of the biggest police corps in Switzerland to give a speech on feedback. And I just realized, it doesn't make sense that such a renowned police corps has such low ratings in terms of feedback. There must be something to it. So I said to the chief of staff, do you trust me? And let me just do what I'm going to do. And he said, yeah, if it doesn't cost me my job. The annoying one. So I opened, and I'm done. I opened with the following sentence. I said, ladies and gentlemen, the question is not if, the question is when you have to adapt your leadership style. Because what I figured is, in this room of 24 management team, you have already one-third of the Generation Y, And in your core, you have already 2/3. They ask you why with intent. And if you cannot answer the question, why I should do something, they simply won't. And the next generation and the next generation will be even worse. Do you see where I'm going? Yeah. What really has changed is not if we have to adapt our leadership style. The question is when. If we don't do it fast, we will bleed. And, you know, you can hire salespeople, you can hire management consultants. If you don't realize that the problem is in-house with you as the leader, pardon my French, but you're screwed. Literally.

Well, now let's take this to another level here. So when, you know, in this situation here, when you were discussing this with with this group? And I hear this often too, by the way. What were the tactics that you recommended to the group to deploy in order to start to make those changes and to start to adapt and to start to do all of these things?

It started with a mindset change. And I said to them, look, this new generation, Generation Y, is known as very self-confident, almost cocky. But what you have to understand, it is weakness, it is fear that's speaking and makes him so confident. So the thing I told him to do is start asking questions. And imagine those were like generals, if you compare them to military, into the army. And this guy just sat there looking at me like this. And then he came to me in break time and said, sir, you actually hit the nail on its head. So if we assume that we have to ask our people, what can I do to make your job even better? What can I help you with so you can produce even more of the better results? It is not we say, you do. It is actually us assuming They need help, but they don't dare to ask. And this is what I hear from, especially from my tech clients ongoing. The young generation doesn't dare to ask anymore. It is us who have to go into a coaching mentor mentality as a leader.

Well, you bring up a really good point here. And I work an awful lot in the tech field myself. And this is why I was looking so forward to this podcast with you is I'm seeing a a great divide happening out there. You have the leaders, which are a little bit older on the spectrum and more seasoned. I don't want to use older, but more seasoned a little bit. And then you have the younger generation that's coming up through B-school and such, and the divide is even greater. And here's what I'm noticing, and I'd love for you to comment on this, is Is organizations are struggling with grooming young leaders. And what's gonna happen is what we're seeing is in, uh, in not too many years ahead of us, you're gonna get a lot of people retiring and moving outta the work— workforce, but there's gonna be a big gap in leadership. So how do you address that with your clients, that big gap that's gonna come up? Young leaders and how do we enable them appropriately?

You see, what it really comes down to is what I just addressed briefly before. What I'm doing with my clients is I help them by changing their own mindset and their own attitude toward leadership. In our generation, it was very easy to groom a leader. You had great skills, you had good personality, you had a good communicator, and you basically were able to send them to a couple of days of leadership training. That's it. However, today you work with people, young people, they don't even have anymore the setup of becoming a leader in the economical sense. So I say to my clients, look, what we have to understand is we first have to groom the person behind the potential leader. We have to get them on board. We have to get their buy-in. And when we have got their buy-in, then we can actually start grooming them as leaders. But if we believe we are here, old generation, or as you say, seasoned generation, and the young generation is here, They basically have so many why questions in terms of, does it make sense? And unless you have addressed those, you can actually totally forget to get their buy-in to do leadership in the sense as we want. And what does it come down to? It's making profit.

Yeah.

They say, why should I do that? I'm interested in making the company better, but not in terms of profit. The profit will follow once we have developed a we mentality. So it literally comes down to— and imagine that conversation, Keith, took place 20 years ago. That's why I'm saying it was prophetic. When I said the question is not if, the question is when. And if someone as a leader has not gotten to that point yet, they're bleeding to death. Yeah. Because it is a people issue we have today. Like all the McKinseys, it is so easy to walk into a company and give some predictions and say, look, you have to get rid of 30% of overhead. It won't change the problem. It will probably better your numbers slightly. But no, it won't change the problem the slightest. So that's what it comes down to. The buy-in has to happen with the person. And once you have the buy-in with the person, then it's easy to groom them as a leader because they buy into you. They buy into your philosophy. But you see what it comes down to? You have to dare to be vulnerable. That's what I basically said to that management team. You have to learn that vulnerability is the key. And now we're 20 years later, so.

Yeah, well, it's very interesting. I've been listening to a lot of, of other podcasts lately about vulnerability and leadership and that being a very, very key trait these days of, of leaders of, of any, of any generation. I love what you're talking about with the, with the young leaders because I think you're absolutely right. I think the, they have to have a why to, to wanna do that. And not every one of 'em is capable, right? We, we have to put them into a position to win. And put them on a seat on the bus that they're going to be successful. And it all does come down to economics, right? I mean, if they're successful in what they're doing now, they tend not to want to be a leader, but they— and maybe they're not good at being a leader, right? So we have to start identifying those people now and start to get them to take those steps forward. In fact, just Just the other day, a client of mine, we just signed off on a young leaders program exactly for that reason. Right. They have to start grooming their younger leaders and identifying. And he knows, which is really great, he knows that not all of them are gonna be great, great, great leaders. Some of them may go back to being individual contributors, which is okay. But he has to get some leaders into place. This brings me to something else I was reading about is it's your 5-Shift Strategy, right? And I'd love to understand a little bit more about this framework because I think this is in line with what you're talking about with the, with the young leaders as far as career, life goals, grooming them and their why. Can you get into that a little bit for, for our audience?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to. You see what it really comes down to, I realized it is 5 shifts and I tried to find an acronym. At first, I went with CLEAR, but then I realized if I talk with people about clarity, it's almost an insult. Who isn't clear, right? So then I followed the advice of my coach. We had a session and I came up with LEAPS. LEAPS. And I realized if I put clarity away, and then it starts with leveraging. I realized so many companies have their strength in-house, but they never learned to identify it and to unlock it. So I'd rather buy stuff from outside, as I said, management consultant, hire new people, get new methodologies, new techniques. And it costs a lot of money. Instead of freelancing, gosh, learn how to leverage your existing resources. That's how it usually starts. The second one for me is empower. For me, it's about stepping into authentic leadership. And, you know, like we most likely will talk about imposter syndrome later, and you will see that the authentic leadership is the antithesis For imposter syndrome, in my opinion and experience. So I help my clients to empower themselves. And once they empowered, guess what? They can start empowering their people. And then alignment is extremely important. For me, it's literally integrating mindset, values, and action. Quite often with mindset and attitude people, Action is on the afterburner or not even existent. But if action does not follow mindset and values, there will be no results. And the last one is, which is really my pet peeve, Keith, is partner. I help my clients to build and nurture a strategic relationship network. And that goes into, in the end, it's all about strategy. So I start by looking at what is your strategy in regards to hiring now? What is your leverage in terms of how you strategize in terms of leveraging your resources? And then when I see what their strategy is, often it's nonexistent, to be honest, there's no strategy. And then I say, okay, now we develop a strategy together based on leverage and power of align and partner. So, you know how to hire the right people, how to retain them, and how to then develop especially A-players, which I'm specializing in because, you know, that's a topic, uh, probably even for an entire show, to be honest.

Oh, I, oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So, so where do, this is a really interesting framework that you're talking about here. From your experience, where, where do leaders, as they enter into this framework with you, where do you see them Typically getting stuck in that framework?

That's an interesting question. Mostly, it's actually about empowerment. One could think it's leveraging or partnering. It's not. It's about the empowerment. If you look at what I mean with that, stepping into your authentic leadership. You remember when we talked about the youngsters before?

Yes.

They first have to buy into your authenticity before they open up. With us, it was jump. All we asked was how high. They say jump. What exactly should I jump? And what's the benefit? And we were looking for the benefit for the companies. The youngsters are looking for the benefit for themselves and for the greater good. So if a leader does not learn how to step into their own authentic leadership, I believe the rest is pretty much nice clicks.

Yeah.

That's where they struggle the most. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a tough road for them too. Absolutely. Yes. For the audience, Markus and I were talking about imposter syndrome, and I want to bring that up now because This is a very, very big topic these days when it comes to leadership across the board. In fact, just the other day I was listening to a podcast by Adam Grant and he had on the president of Iceland. And one of the things that the president of Iceland, before she was running for the presidency, she was questioning herself whether she was capable of doing The job. And I hear that a lot from leaders of questioning, are they good enough? Questioning, are they worthy for, for the role? Should they be in the role? Markus, can you comment on imposter syndrome and what you're seeing and how you help leaders overcome that?

Definitely. And you will see it's probably the topic I am the most passionate about. Because I had a conversation with one of my mentors, David Meltzer, and he actually said that, Markus, I believe imposter syndrome is a more prevalent problem than mommy issues. How's that? And a friend of mine who actually listened to the recording said, yeah, he meant money issues. Then I went back to him and he said, no, no, no, Markus. Mummy issues.

Very interesting. Yes.

Let me start by asking you a question, Kate. Have you ever seen a lazy person struggling with imposter syndrome?

I have not. No.

No, neither have I. Have you ever seen someone who is a mediocre person called a badass struggling with imposter syndrome?

Interesting. Yeah. No. Yeah.

On the bottom, and he's from the drug delivery business with a huge catalog of certificates. Proof, proof, proof. How is that possible? You see, that's the question I follow. I started sharing on LinkedIn of all platforms about imposter syndrome. And some of my friends reached out to me and they said, Markus, I totally resonate with the symptoms of imposter syndrome. I totally get what you call imposter syndrome. And that brought me to a thought. And then it suddenly hit me. The problem is buying into the problem of imposter syndrome, which is the real problem. Because let's be honest, If you buy into imposter syndrome, once again, I use that word, you're screwed.

Mm-hmm.

Because doctors take symptoms which they cannot explain, put them together, and it becomes a syndrome. And now good luck if you receive that diagnosis and you start buying into it. You feel like an imposter, and that's connected to a syndrome. You never get out of it. So my fellow coaches often help people with imposter syndrome. And I say, stop it, because you are cementing the problem. So then I thought, how would I call it instead? And then I had an aha moment. It is an authenticity struggle. Meaning, if I was aware of all I have accomplished so far, And if I would see immediately my successes, I would say, based on reason, I'm not able to do that. And yeah, if I look at past of my career, I actually am the right person to do it. And does it freak me out? Of course it does. It has to. Please give me one more minute. I saw a beautiful image. Here you have space, here you have the atmosphere. It's like going up with a little rocket ship. And every single time when you come close to the space, you shrink because you're afraid to go through that thing here. Atmosphere, space, it's quite a leap of faith for human beings. So you go down, down, And you see, I'm going down even further until you say, you know what, Kees? My life, my career, it's as good as it gets. And that's where most people end up. Instead of understanding the process is having the courage to go through that level and then being in space, because believe me, in space, and that's from experience, I went through the imposter syndrome, I debunked it, and I understood it's the fear of greatness. Remember, some people say it's not actually that you're afraid of not being good enough. It's actually the fear of being really good, which keeps us back. You know? Wow. It's shocking. And the antithesis, as I said before, from imposter syndrome is authentic confidence. There is all this cockiness out there in leaders today. And just have 5 minutes conversation with them, listen to them, and you realize it's arrogance. And arrogance is masked fear. Yeah. So when I sit down with a client, I say, look, let's look at your career. Dissect your leadership successes, you know, your sales successes, and let's understand what led to them. And suddenly say, you know what, Markus, I just replicate what I've done before and deconstruct it. So yeah, I'm actually a baker who helps people come up with beautiful cakes and we deconstruct them and then they can set them together in whatever form and shape they want in the future.

Yeah, I, I, I like your analogy there. I, I also really like that you were getting to the heart of this, and that's the courage. Like, leaders need to have the courage to be able to do, uh, to do, you know, the things that they, they know they can do. And, uh, and, and, and, and by talking about, you know, they get to a certain point and they're afraid of having maybe too much success is a really great way of kind of looking at it instead of they're afraid of the success. It, I, I agree with you 100%. I think it's more courage than anything. Yeah. And, uh, and you're right, you could see through, uh, fake arrogant leader leadership, uh, in, in about 2 minutes when, when you're talking with them, because you can see that they're, they're afraid. Um, the ones that are really, really open are the ones that are curious, the ones that, uh, have that mindset of curiosity, of, of using questions and, and all of that. Mm-hmm. Let me ask you a question about emotional intelligence, because I think that's One of the core pillars of really great, in my opinion, really great leadership. And how can developing EQ enhance effectiveness and more importantly, team dynamics?

My answer might surprise you. One of my philosophies is inside out. So if a team leader wants me to work with him Or with her on the team, I refuse because it won't work. It's patching up and putting some Band-Aids on it. And then you have huge amounts of Band-Aids on that body instead of understanding emotional intelligence starts by understanding myself. Know thyself, right?

The

old verbiage, know thyself. Mm-hmm. And to be honest, it is kind of hard to find leaders who are willing to get to know themselves. So it takes, it takes quite a personality to admit, okay, before I work on my leadership style and understand my management style, I probably should start working on myself. And, you know, my intro is very easy. It's not your fault. No one is born as a leader. It's not a God-given talent. It's an art form.

Hmm.

I'm a pianist and a classical singer. Goodness me, have I been born with my voice? Really? I maybe have been born with talent, and it helps if someone has a leadership, natural authority, And that is a God-given gift, but it has to be honed. It's an art form. And once someone gets that, emotional intelligence becomes a given, simply, but only inside out. Otherwise, no chance.

Love it. Love it. We often talk about, you know, a lot of times leaders take out the proverbial stick hit people over the head and they're not truly understanding what people are going through inside out, right? They don't understand what they're, they're going through. And how can you have great emotional intelligence if you really don't understand what the person is actually going through? So, uh, you're talking about a concept we talk about a lot. It's, it's slow down a little bit. You'll speed up in the end, but slow down and understand 'em a little bit. Yeah. And, and step into their shoes. And what we've let— what we've found is that this world that we're in is so hyper-fast with everything that leaders are afraid to slow down. They're— because they're afraid they're gonna miss something, which is the, the paradox of what we're talking about is if they actually slow down, they're not gonna miss things, they're gonna catch things, and they're gonna actually speed up in the end. Why do you think that's such a hard, hard thing for— For leaders to come to terms with?

I would say, especially in the United States, it's what you've just been taught, basically with the baby milk. It's all about competition. It's all about winning. It's all about beating everyone else. It's all about being the first. And I told you in the intro conversation, I've been married to my wife for 16 years, and she's originally from Boston. And I thought, how amazing is it to grow up knowing and hearing you are the best, you can reach anything, you can accomplish anything? But then I quickly learned, gosh, there is another side of the medal, and that is not healthy. That is not healthy. And that's where I believe is a huge lack of emotional intelligence coming from. Because the emphasis is so much put on IQ and winning instead of understanding, gosh, winning is actually admit, I do not know.

Which is a phrase that many leaders cannot say. Many leaders cannot be vulnerable enough to say, I don't know the answer. They're afraid of what people will think. Makes them weak. And it, yeah, it's really interesting. You see that?

Yeah.

So take this into 2025. We're on the cut, you know, at the recording of this podcast, we're at the cusp of 2025. What do you see the top 3 challenges leaders will have in 2025?

It all boils down to the new generation of employees. Leaders will have to come up with the Damn good answer to the question why. They have to learn that leadership is an inside-out job. And the third one is to understand that the future employees and clients, by the way, because the generation of clients changes as well, are looking for authenticity. So the question is not if, the question is when. When?

Mm-hmm. I, I, I'd love, and, and for our, for our listeners, the, can you say that again for our listeners? Because it's a phrase I think that's just really perfectly dead center of our conversation today. Can you say that phrase again for our leaders, Markus?

Which one?

If not when.

Oh yeah. The question is not if, the question is when you have to adapt.

Yeah. This is really important for—

20 years ago, 20 years ago, they said that. And we have 3 more generations since, and it got worse and worse and worse for our generation of leadership.

It's something very, very, very important for our leaders. Let's get into something here around conflict, okay? And conflict resolution. So the role— I want you to kind of elaborate for our listeners The role of executive coaching in preventing and managing workplace conflicts, because we're seeing more and more and we're hearing more and more, uh, about that these days. And, and quite, quite frankly, it's, it's because of the prevalence of social media and, and media in general that brings these things out, out front a lot quicker than, than before. So talk to me about executive coaching and how that plays a role in all of this.

How I see it, Keith, is the number one problem my clients have is that they jump into conclusions and make assumptions. Let's say you're a team leader, and this can actually be on any level of hierarchy. You could be the CEO, and you have 2 human beings, a female CFO battling with the CEO who's a male. And some people ask me, you know, why on that level? Because it's human beings.

Mm-hmm.

It's basically children grown. That's pretty much it, to be honest. It's children grown. We are not more than children who have grown up. So what I say to a CEO is, look, you have to learn to observe. That's where emotional intelligence comes in, by the way, you mentioned beautifully before. You have to ask questions and you have to learn to listen. Observe, ask questions, learn to listen. And I can tell you, when you get those 2 people in a room and you ask questions and you let them speak, half of the solution is here already. Literally, it's the same. You married?

Mm-hmm.

Honestly, I can speak to that. When I learned to listen, ask my wife questions instead of jumping to conclusions and then actually ending her sentences, which she hates the most. I know. It's literally, or observe. Ask question and you allow me to say it. Shut up and just listen. And don't think already what I'm going to say next, because really listening is a part of emotional intelligence. It's literally being open, totally focused on the other person, and hear with all 5 senses. That's the beauty of it. How does it feel? How does it sound? How does it make me feel? What kind of a smell is in the room? Oh, there is hostility. Okay, take note. Why is that person hostile? Ask questions about that. Use that. But when I feel like I have to be the solution, I've lost.

I love that you're talking about this. Listening is— when I call When I talk to a lot of leaders and I ask them the same question that I asked you, I get the same answer. Listening. Listening is— and you're absolutely dead right. You're absolutely right. Listening is the number one skill of the best leaders I've ever, ever, ever seen or spoken to out there. Listening.

It's the most difficult one.

And it's the most difficult one is right. If, if, you know, and as our audience is listening here, think about this, what Markus said. You get the listening through asking questions. And that's the key with great, great leadership. You ask those questions and you listen and you don't make assumptions. Assumptions will, will, you know, you may be right 80% of the time, but it's that 20% of the time that you are not right. that are gonna cause the problems that you simply don't need as, as a, as a leader. So it's, it's, it's really interesting. You, you had mentioned something earlier as you were talking about listening and, and everything, and I wanna get into, um, women in leadership. All right? Because this is a, a big, big topic. I have 2 daughters, um, myself, and they're moving into the work. They're in the workforce right now. My youngest just entered into the workforce many, You know, probably like 6 months ago. And it's, it's like top of mind with every organization. It's empowering our young women to, to thrive in the workplace, but also empowering women to get into leadership roles. So can you talk about the, you know, that, talk about the unique challenges that they may have and such?

How many more hours do we have?

Yeah. Well, I'm going to be taking notes for my daughters on this one. So yeah, 100%. Yeah, we could go a long time on this one. It's a big, big topic.

Yeah, there's a huge problem connected with that. And I have the privilege to be surrounded by really powerful women. And I can tell you, as soon as he goes about walking into a boardroom, Or into an executive team or into a team meeting itself, that's when they shrink. It's almost like, are you familiar with Superman? The only thing that was able to stop him was kryptonite.

Mm-hmm.

And to be honest, toxicity at the workplace has done its deal with women. So they can meet at a leadership summit where they're probably, your mentioned Iceland president is there, and they are absolutely thriving and saving the world behind the scenes. And as soon as an individual walks into a boardroom, he shrinks because of the sheer overpowerment of men. And the worst advice you can give a woman is start copying the traits of men and become man-like. That's absolute worst. So what I say to the women as well is it's an inside-out job. The ones who suffer the most from that pseudo-imposter syndrome is women. Despite of all the evidence they have, they still dare not to believe that they have what they actually have, right? Yes. So in the end, it really comes down to, and yeah, this might surprise a lot of male as well as female listeners. Many of my friends actually say, Markus, it's not the male who are the worst perpetrators. It's women.

Interesting. Yeah.

It's women. Yeah.

Imposter syndrome does play, play a big, big factor there. It, it, it's, it's interesting you say, you say this. I was, I was, I'm reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell, and it's The Revenge of the Tipping Point. And in, in this book, he talks about the magic third. And in particular, in the book, he brings up women and boardrooms, just like what you were bringing up. And he brings up the point exactly what you said. If there's 1 or 2 women on a board, they tended to want to try to be not themselves, right? And it's not their fault. It's just the board makeup, which is a bigger problem in corporate America. Yeah. But they try to go that way. But as soon as they get to about a third of the makeup of the board, their voices get heard.

Yeah,

because absolutely the makeup there. So it's fascinating that he translated this into numbers and, and, and brought that forward. So it's, it's, it's really interesting how that works. I would agree with you 100% though. I mean, we need more people to be authentic and their own voices, male or female, regardless, right? But it seems to be a problem that way. Let me roll with, with some other questions here for, for you. And I'm really interested in, in a couple things here. What's the best advice you've ever received?

Trust your intuition.

Oh, I love that. Trust your gut, right? Trust your gut.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no.

Oh, no. No. Trust your intuition. That feeling. Many of my Feel and Make clients, They say to me, Markus, how can I trust my gut feeling? I said, to be honest, no, you can't. Intuition is something that is way beyond gut feeling.

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Yeah. So you could, you could spiritually say intuition is something that comes from the outside and gut feeling is something you developed over years, but you cannot really trust your gut feeling. But intuition, you can and you must trust. That's usually when you start to say, can it really be true? That's when imposter syndrome kicks in, by the way, especially with high-level leaders.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

And then I say, so I didn't end one sentence, I realized, and that's such an important add-on, Keith. Imposter syndrome, by the way, is a compliment by life. Telling you and me and all the viewers and listeners out there, you are onto something worthwhile. So just push through it. It's basically the kiss. It's basically the, the, you know, the final, the final seal from life saying, if you are onto something worthwhile, push through it. It will be worth it.

Oh, I love that advice. And boy, I learned something today about gut feeling and the difference.

It's worth looking it up. Intuition literally is the thing, you know, like, like I meditate a lot. So when I meditate, everything that comes, I know is not coming from the gut. And to be honest, I do not trust my gut feeling because, you know, I've recruited more than 1,000 physicians. And what I realized is trusting my gut feeling is always based on assumptions. But when I dare to listen to my intuition, something I could not put into numbers, figures, and data, that's when I usually was right. And that's why I'm called the Intuitive Strategist. I bring the 2 worlds together.

Yes. Very interesting. I love it. I love it. Well, you bring up something because I was doing some research ahead of time in meeting you, by the way. And I was listening—

Now I get afraid.

No, don't be afraid. No, don't be afraid.

Your body language said, Markus, be aware now.

No, no. I want to get into— because you just brought it up. It was a beautiful segue. Your 21-minute routine you have to begin the day. All right. Talk to us about your— because this is usually, I do the same thing you do. I meditate in the morning, but the 21-minute routine, I would love to hear this. And I think our listeners would love to hear this as well.

It's wonderful that you picked up on that because I haven't really mentioned it often. So congrats on your research. Wow. It was back when COVID-19 hit. Basically, all around me were in depression, and I had some friends who were still up, and then it hit me. And I just thought, this might just be a reaction to the depression around me. And it didn't dawn on me that I actually walked into a full-blown burnout. And it was around my birthday, April 18th, when I realized, Markus, you either give up Or you dive in. And I started searching and I came across the very famous Sadhguru from India. And he introduced to me, you know, through media, his Inner Engineering. And he said, look, we went to the moon. Now we plan to go to Mars manned, but however, we have no bloody clue who we are and how this inner thing functions. And if someone tells me that he's a scientist and he's no guru, he calls himself little guru, that appeals to me. And I went into that program in engineering, and then I had the chance to dive in further through the Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya. And that's the 21-minute thing you mentioned. Now I learned, Keith, that he's actually offering the entire program in one program. So someone is able to learn DNA engineering, which I highly recommend. Just to be honest, I believe I had ended up either in an asylum or I probably would've harmed myself because I was at that low of a point. Wow. And I know probably quite a few viewers and listeners are at a similar point if they're honest. So had I not taken up meditation, and he said, you know, you will have to do it twice a day. What? 21 minutes of silence? Like me, 2 minutes quiet? No chance. And now you'll be surprised. Now I sit down, do my preliminary stretching things, and then I just go into 21 minutes of silence. You learn that process, it becomes second nature, and it basically is all about breathing, breathing, And breathing because he says, look, breath is the source of life. So I do nothing else than 21 minutes of breathing, different breathing exercises. And to be honest, it not only saved my life, it brought my life to an absolute new level.

Wow. Wow. I mean, it's— what a great way to end our podcast today. Think about that, you know, you know, meditation and it saved your life. Markus, I really, I wanna thank you so much for spending the time with us today talking about all of these different topics. It's been a pleasure, Keith. And, and you're so correct. I think we need to have a couple more podcasts to talk about women in leadership, imposter syndrome, a couple other topics that we, we just scratched the surface on today.

I'd laugh at that.

But, but thanks for joining us today, Markus. I really appreciate that. So does the Wholesales Gravy. Team. Um, everybody, uh, that's listening now, don't forget to like, subscribe, follow us, and share this podcast wherever you are listening and watching. We'll catch up with you next time on the Sales Gravy Podcast.

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