Can You Really Find Your Purpose?

We are zipping across the ether at the speed of bytes. And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, once again, defining, defying all common sense, we've made it. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, a show about making a better living and a bigger impact by defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. My name is Scott Perry. I'm Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to get clear about who you really are so you can get closer to what you really want in life, please visit creativeonpurpose.com. Let's meet today's guest. Randy, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and why we can't find you online.

Go ahead. Well, my name is Randy Massengale, and I've been around for years and years, too many years to really say in public. But one of the things that I've been and what I continue to be is an infrastructure player. I am the person that works behind the scenes with the other people that are in front of the scenes. And making sure that they have what they need to be successful. I have worked with everybody from Intel to Microsoft during the '90s. I've worked in my own company for years. I've also taught at Seattle University program called Extraordinary Leaders. I continue to work with them and work with businesses. My whole thing is to make sure that people, that are around me have a better time of doing the things that they want to do. And so I push really hard to find who they are, meet them at their point of need, and then I tailor everything specifically to the people that I'm working with. So if you're looking for a one-size-fits-all, go out shotgun approach, Yeah, you're not looking for me. But if you're looking for something individually that's going to propel you to the next level of not only achievement, but also self-satisfaction, then I'm that person. So thanks for having me, by the way.

Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure. And just a note to our viewers, we got, got started late today. Entirely my fault. I had forgotten to take— get rid of the Google Meetup. And so Randy, very patiently waited for me, and we got it all sorted out. But my apologies to you, Randy, and to the viewers that were sitting and waiting for Randy and I to appear. I love what you just shared about providing experiences for the people you work with that are, that are tailored and bespoke and individualized. I was actually having a conversation just yesterday on this broadcast with our mutual friend Nick Peterson about that. You know, we live in this age where all the gurus and influencers and experts have figured out some sort of process and they sell it at a very high price and they just jam everyone through that process. And then everyone's surprised when individuals don't get the same results as the guru, the expert, whatever they are. How did— I would love to hear a little bit more about how you kind of arrived at this work that you're doing. You don't have to go all the way back, but I'm guessing that little 9-year-old Randy wasn't sitting there saying to himself, you know what I want to be when I grow up? You know, how did you come to be doing this work that you're doing?

Actually, if you look at anybody's output, and then you look at their family of origin and the things that they went through as a kid, you'll see a pattern develop. And there's no— I'm no different than anyone else in that regard. In fact, I was just looking around my office here. I, I wasn't actually planning on doing this. This is a book called Six Lessons for Six Sons. And this was done by my dad, okay? He had six sons, no daughters. And so my five brothers and me were very privy to his philosophy. He came from East Texas, came out of segregation and went to Los Angeles, raised his family in Los Angeles. Became really prominent there as a business person, as well as just an entrepreneur. And he instilled in all of us— I'm fourth out of the six— and he's instilled in all of us the importance of not only working hard and being focused and all those kinds of things that you all know, but also representing who you are as an individual. You know, he came out of East Texas to Los Angeles, and he was determined to make an impact. He was determined to make sure that his boys made an impact. And so all of us had to figure out what we were about in order to do the things that he wanted to see happen in our lives. And so as he got older, he decided to instill his philosophy in this book, Six Lessons for Six Sons. And it's a— You know, Random House book. And I remember when he was going through the whole process, it was about 20 years in development. And so when I think about the things that I do that have taken me over 40 years of development, of talking to people, of being around the top people in the, in various industries, I realized that the program that I come up with— and I say program, it's really a process, excuse me. The process that I've come up with is based on those 40, 45 years of exposure to all levels of organizations. You know, whether it's from being at Intel in the early '80s, or being at Microsoft in the '90s, and doing my own thing in the 2000s. Being a professor of leadership at Seattle University. You know, all of those things are conglomerates, okay, of what I teach today.

Really, really fascinating. And it— I love hearing a little bit about your background. And I can't wait to check out your dad's book. But, you know, one of the things that happened, you know, in my work is Oftentimes people will be coming to me saying, you know, I'm really unhappy with the way my life has been going and I want to completely reinvent myself. And I always kind of hit the pause button there and say, I think it's probably less about reinventing yourself, like exploding who you've been and building something brand new. It's actually more about, I like to say, the person that you're meant to become lies in being more of what you've always been, but maybe just haven't really recognized. And so. I think all of us have that silver thread, that theme in our lives that exists almost from childhood. And I know in your work, when you are trying to help people define— I know you have some really interesting thoughts around how we find and cultivate purpose in our lives, but you do some archaeological digging into people's past to kind of find those hidden talents and those values that maybe are not coming into full expression. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that process?

Yes, the, the thing is, I don't want you to be somebody else. I want you to be the best you, you can be. And most people don't know themselves well enough to become the best you, you can be. So, for example, the word self-discipline, and everybody talks about having self-discipline, that is becoming a disciple of yourself. Now, how many of us are disciples of ourselves? How many of us can go out and say, this is what I actually do, this is what I should do, in order to get to where I want to be? And what I find is most people want someone else to tell them. I'm not going to tell you what you want to do. I'm going to show you who you are. And then the array of options will manifest themselves And then you'll go out and do the things that you're supposed to do.

So yeah, that's— well, and you actually just spoke to something that I have been talking about quite a bit with my community, my audience, and it's probably the subject of my next book, which is— you mentioned, I want you to become the best version of who you are. And I think that there's some danger in kind of the start with why approach, not that I don't You know, think that why your why is really important. And I appreciate all the work that Simon has done to bring purpose back into like the everyday cultural discussion. But how can you know why you exist, what you're meant to do with your life if you don't first understand who you really are? And it goes all the way back into antiquity where, you know, I always reference the There's 3 exhortations inscribed above the Oracle of Delphi, and the very first one is "Know thyself." And it's something that we, you know, don't address in our public educational systems. It's something that we don't really dive into in most corporate occupational settings. And so I would love to get your insight, like, you know, how do we do a better job at that self-awareness, that self-efficacy, that, and, and achieve that self-discipline to lean all the way into our distinction so we can do the work that we're meant to do with our lives.

Well, you brought up some pretty profound things. I'm surprised that this is a 20-minute podcast, webcast, because just— we could do a whole 20 minutes just on the why. Okay. Because— and no disrespect to Simon Sinek and what he me is doing. But the why should be the last discovery of what you do. Okay. And I always talk about 3 things: frequency, intensity, and then purpose. Frequency, just start with doing something. Okay. Not I'm going to have some big grandiose dream that I'm going to start on tomorrow that I never even thought about before. Until yesterday, and then I'm going to sustain that through my whole journey to greatness. That's 99 out of 100 times, even greater than that, that's not gonna work. Okay? The way that you come to a why is through frequency, intensity, and then purpose. Not purpose first, and then frequency and intensity. So if, if I am just going out and doing something, okay? Whatever it is, it really doesn't make any difference, Scott, what it is, because once you start doing it and you develop the habits of it and you develop the, the sinew and the muscle behind it, okay, then you start putting some specifics behind it to say, oh, I want to go out. Say you're, you're a runner. And you just start running one day. Okay, then one day, next day, you're going to say, um, I think I'm gonna sign up for that 10K. Okay, so you go from just running to all of a sudden doing some 10Ks. And then after doing that for 6 months, a year, so, you know, I'm going to run a marathon, or I'm going to do some other kind of— and all of a sudden you're putting your stamp on what you do. And then after that, you say, you know, I'm really into this marathon thing. I'm going to go do this anywhere I can see it, anywhere I can do it. And it's interesting to see that. I've got a daughter who is a marathon runner who decided that she was going to run all 7 or so marathons around the world. And but it all started with her practicing when she was in college at USC to run the LA Marathon. And then, okay, I'm going to run another one. Oh, now I'm going to go to Greece and do the regional marathon course, then South Africa, and then, you know, Peru and other places. So I'm just, I'm a real big proponent of gaining the experience that you need before you start talking about your big dream. Okay. You know, I worked at Microsoft for many years. I'm, I'm actually writing a book on extraordinary leaders. I'm on the last chapter and happens to be last chapter on Bill Gates. And it's interesting because having worked with Microsoft and Bill Gates and other folks, the, the idea was that they are lone wolves, coming up with great ideas. And then the whole world lauds them and puts them in some category of brilliance. And that's— I don't think there's anything further from the truth. Not that they aren't brilliant people. Yes, we give them that. But they always had a partner, a partnership, okay, and someone else to refine the vision that they had for what they did.. And so the idea of, you know, you're going to show up and you've got a big why and you're going to do that, that's just, that's just not true. You talk about who you really are. Know yourself, you know your enemy, and you can fight 1,000 battles without peril. Okay. And that's 2,500-year-old advice. Okay. And yet we still act like it's brand new. Know yourself first, okay, then know your circumstances. And now you can fight 100 battles or 1,000 battles without peril. The most important thing about that is knowing yourself first. And so by knowing yourself first, you know what doesn't fit then everything else, if you figure out what fits, everything else is counterfeit. Everything else you don't use. And so what I do is we spend a lot of time on family of origin. We spend a lot of time on your experience, a lot of time on what you want to do in the community with your name. King, and how you want that to be manifested. And then I do a lot of listening. And the thing that is different about what I do is that your assignments are tailored to who you are, versus an assignment for 35 other people in the room, and expect you to get something tailored out of that, expect you to get something useful out of it. So even as a professor, I would make people do individual projects, what I call a personal excellence project. Okay. And it's what you decide that you want, not what me as a professor going to say, oh, do this, and that's going to really make you a star or something. It just doesn't work that way. And I find that it works best if I can take your individual propensities, whatever they are, okay, and help you shape and design those. And then you go out forward and make something happen.

I really appreciate that. It's one of the things that I am frequently saying about purpose. And I absolutely love frequency, intensity, purpose. I've heard that from Dan and Nick both, and it really resonates with me because fundamentally, You know, I think that most people, when, if purpose comes up at all, someone's saying, go find your purpose as if it's this thing out there that you have to, have to go on a quest to find. And then once you find it, you have to figure out how to do something with it. And then other people say, like, look within, find your purpose within you. Like you have to excavate this thing and then figure out what to do with it. But what I, what I frequently tell people is very similar to what you're saying, which is if you just bring purpose and passion to the things that you're already doing, the relationships you're already in, more purpose and passion, more clarity, and more, more purpose and passion will manifest, and you will earn confidence and clarity. You know, this idea that, that we can sit on a mountaintop or seek wisdom on a mountaintop and that and then figure out what to do with it, uh, is— seems very, very backward. Because all you have to do is look back at your childhood. How did you figure out how to talk and walk? You didn't gain wisdom and then use it. You just did it until you could do it.

You know, it, it is amazing that we have experienced the quote-unquote right way. We've experienced the right way, but we We've socialized that out. Okay, we've gone to school and they taught us, hey, that's amazing, you ride it. You, as soon as you get to school, you probably learn to ride a bike. They didn't teach you that in school, to ride the bike. Yeah, your dad or mom or somebody, older brother, put his hand on the seat and on the steering wheel, pushed you down the street until you've got enough speed and momentum to figure it all out. That is the prototype for how we work. It's just a higher level of sophistication in terms of vocabulary and some other things. But what we're doing is teaching you how to ride that bike, so that in case of riding a bike, and in the case of pursuing whatever your success is, that once you learn it, it doesn't go away. So when we talk to people about the psycho-cybernetics of learning successful habits and those kinds of things. We are expecting these things to stay with you. Not that you're going to have to go to another seminar. And yeah, you may have to get a booster shot every now and then. But the fundamentals of what it takes for you to be successful will stay with you. And that's what we need to teach. I think that's what everybody needs to teach a lot more of.

Yeah, I thoroughly agree. I mean, the things that, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of talk about AI and AI is going to replace, you know, humans. And, you know, people are afraid of their jobs and, and all that. But the, you know, it doesn't seem to me that AI is going to replace anytime soon the things that fundamentally humans are best at, which is critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, connection, all those things. And just to go in a slightly different direction, I'm curious about your thoughts on this. Because, you know, one of the, one of the things that I find is that you, you know, when, when you or I are expressing this idea, like, you can, you can get clear about who you really are by doing things right now, by establishing, you know, committing to a frequency and a daily discipline of showing up and doing something, whatever you decide that that's going to be. People still often resist. And there's, you know, Steven Pressfield's resistance. And then there's just, you know, fear, anxiety, whatever you want to talk about. And I, and I wonder sometimes if, you know, I think what you're saying is just, it's true just because it's true. It just makes sense. And yet I think, at least in my experience, people sometimes really have a hard time and like do just getting started. And I think that's because At some level, people wake up to the idea, like, actually, you know, there might be this greatness in me that I might realize. And that— so they've defined what success looks like, which means they've also defined the thousand ways that failure looks like. And so it's really difficult for people to even get started because I think we have these dual natures. We like to feel safe. We like to know what's expected and where we stand. We also have this nature to explore the edges of our understanding and ability. But we kind of want the roadmap, and there is no roadmap. You know, we can learn to use a compass. What's your take on why, why someone, and how would you help someone step out of the shadows of their own fear, doubt, self-loathing, unworthiness, or what have you?

We inherit some real junk from family of origin, from neighbors, from a very early age. They're socializing us not to do something. If you aren't deliberate about either forgetting that or going against it, you probably will develop some habits that you don't even know exist. And once those habits are ingrained, it is just difficult to ever break those. Every time you go to do something, okay, you— as I say, your experiences either go in your trunk and you carry them around, or they go in your tank and you use them as fuel to get to the next place. And so when you think about people not doing something, it's because they've got this junk in the trunk, okay, got this stuff in there. And every time they go to do something new, or innovative, or do something outside of their comfort zone, they open up the trunk, and they look at all the junk in there. And they say, man, there's no way I can get through all this junk and, and move forward. But the people that actually make something happen, Every adverse experience, every issue, every good thing, it all goes into the tank and they burn it as fuel to get to the next place. And I have seen people go through some horrific circumstances and come out even stronger because they put the experience in their tank. And so when we talk about the trunk versus the tank, I want to know where is that experience? That thing that's holding you back, is it in your trunk? Or are you burning it for fuel to get to the next place?

Yeah, I love that. I love that metaphor, trunk or tank. And one of the examples I'm always, you know, when someone says, is referencing some sort of past trauma or some sort of current difficulty. I just, I always tell the story of Viktor Frankl. And, you know, Answers for Meeting is a book I read again and again every year. You know, if Victor can emerge from that experience whole and human and even stronger and more focused in, you know, what he's going to do with the rest of his life, I think that we can get over whatever, whatever we've been through. So I really appreciate that.

Well, the best— if I can, just a second on Viktor Frankl, because the best anecdote that I know and story about him is when he's speaking in German to a crowd and a woman comes up after and says, "How can you speak in German after what those people did to you?" And he said, "Ma'am, do you own knives in your kitchen?" She said, "Yeah." "You know how many knives have killed people?" It's the tool. German wasn't the the end result. It was the tool I'm using to communicate. And that's what you need to be able to do. So anyway, Viktor Frankl is one of my favorites. And that's— I appreciate that. I love that.

I'm not familiar with that story. But just to build on, on the tool analogy, I mean, this is something that I've wrestled with myself. And that I— and I've changed my position on several times. But I know you're not present on social media. But, you know, I've got— I've been using social media for some time. I've gone, you know, I used to say I don't have a love-hate relationship with social media. I have a hate-hate relationship with social media. And I've quit it multiple times. But the thing that woke me up to how I could use it, you know, with integrity and intention was, it's just a tool. It's like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house or smash someone's skull in. You decide how you're going to, you know, or you let the tool use you. But if you decide to employ a tool with intention, with integrity, you can use it to, use your analogy, as fuel to make more, you know, to catalyze your forward progress. And so I love that. I know that our time is coming, is winding up. I have two 2 last questions for you. One is, I am an amateur philosophy lover. Most of my heroes, you know, go back into antiquity, both in Eastern and Western traditions. But your company is called Spinoza Technology. And Spinoza is someone I don't know a lot about, but he really intrigues me. And I recently read a book that was about him. I'd love to hear, you know, what's your connection with Spinoza? Why is that important?

Why is it important? Well, there's two things about Spinoza that sort of prompted me to use his name, image, and things in terms of the company. One is that He was always looking for the next, I would say, the best way to make a connection with people. And one of the things that he talked about was basically knowing yourself, knowing your enemy, being able to work through all of those kinds of things. But he, he believed that God, okay, and science weren't mutually exclusive. And in my company, we believed that when we started that the wired world and the wireless world weren't mutually exclusive. They were two sides of the same coin. And so that, uh, those two things happen. And Spinoza is amazing because he was kicked out of his Jewish community, okay, for believing that there was multiple ways of hitting spirituality in your life. And when I look at what my background is, I went to liberal arts college. I don't recommend that unless you guys want to learn how to think. But, and plus graduate school, but the idea that there's a connection between everything and everybody, and that connection Okay, can be used to propel your personal interests as well as other interests for the benefit of humanity. And that is what I really respect Spinoza for being, is not just a philosopher, but a philosopher that gave back to humanity, that was kicked out of his community. Okay. And wasn't able to actually interact with his community, but it didn't stop him from giving back to the world. It's just, it's amazing. I get sentimental about it. But you get to the next thing before we run out of time. Sorry.

Yeah, no, that's— I really appreciate that. I'm very intrigued to learn more about Spinoza because from the book I read, he which references some of the things you talked about. He was not just a deep thinker, but a really fascinating character. The last question is always the same, which is, you know, you've already shared several nuggets of wisdom that I know this audience is really going to resonate with. And you've given some fresh, put some fresh perspective on some things that we talk about, you know, in different ways here. If there was just one final, and it could be a quote, it could be a book or a tool or just an idea, a principle that you would share for anyone that's tuning in that is wanting to get a little bit clearer about the difference only they can make and start developing that and delivering that in the distinct way they only can? What would you share with them?

I would say, learn to preach your own sermon. There's too many people that try to pick up somebody else's message and then try to amplify that. And what you need to find is what is inside of you, and everybody has it. That's, that's the beauty of what I do, is to see that light come on. Now, some people fight against it tooth and nail because they don't want to have to be exposed.. But if you learn to preach your own sermon, great things will happen.

I love that. I'm fond of saying, you don't need to find yourself, you need to face yourself. And that's exactly, yeah, that's what that sounds like. Well, Randy, I can't thank you enough, not only for this conversation, but for your patience in making it happen. And for those of you that are tuning in, please seek out Randy if you can. He is very hard to find on— I think you can't me on LinkedIn.

I'm still on LinkedIn. The picture is 15 years old.

We all do that. We all appreciate the gift of your time and attention. We hope today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility and to keep go-go going, defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. Please visit creativeonpurpose.com. If you're watching on social media or YouTube, leave a comment, share a question, tell us your biggest takeaway, or aha from this conversation. If you're listening to this as a podcast, please leave a 5-star review to help more of the right people collide with these conversations. And now, take the insight and inspiration that Randy has just shared and go out and play your game all in and full out. Randy Massingale, thank you so much for the gift of your time and wisdom today.

Thank you, Scott Perry. Appreciate it.