"DO THIS To Improve Yourself RIGHT NOW!" (Secret Success Habits) | Mike Robbins

Down at our core. I feel like there's so much universality to being human and that to me has always been fascinating. And I feel like that drives so much of our motivation and our success and our connection with each other when we're talking about leadership or teamwork. So it's just always been a part of who I am. And then as I got a little bit older and started to understand it more, it became a part of my work as I realized, oh, we can't really build confidence or build trust or connection with other humans if we're not willing to be real.

Welcome to Stuck to Unstoppable, where we interview the world's foremost thought leaders to break things down in order to help you get past your hurts, habits and hangups and finally level up and move forward. I'm your host, Stephen Scoggins. Now let's go ahead and get into today's guest and our featured conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. My special guest today has thrown thousands of pitches until an arm injury ended his professional sports career. But as a true overcomer, he began to dissect what it actually takes to predictably scale any business or team for ultra performance and is now logged thousands of miles as an expert in leadership and team performance and company cultures that deliver keynotes and seminars all over the world to empower leaders, teams and organizations to be crazy successful. Mike Robbins is the author of five books included his most recent bestseller, we're all in this Together. His talents have led him to work with some of the world's most powerful brands such as Google, Wells Fargo, ebay, Gap, Microsoft, Schwab, Airbnb, the Oakland A's, Harvard University, Coca Cola, Oprah News Radio. Dude, seriously, that's just to name a few. Guys, help me welcome my good friend, Mike Robbins. Dude, what's going on man? How you doing?

I'm good, Steven. Thanks for having me, man.

Absolutely, dude. I've actually been looking forward to the interview some time. I've been, I've been. I guess a cyber stalking is probably the best way to do it, but I stumbled across that, that the TEDx talk that you did back in 2015 that literally sparked interest and I remember it kind of like almost going on this viral kind of scenario when I first saw it. Then with my friends over at Entree Leadership who recommended that I take a look at it, you know, so now we're full circle. You've had multiple best selling books, you've got a whole bunch of cool stuff happening, you've traveled Thousands of miles opened up lots of doors, inspired many, many crowds, you know, so I want to make sure that the audience gets the full weight of everything that you've discovered and learned and transitioned. But I always like to start off with the origin story, because I think a lot of people forget that every start is not the end. So tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got into what you got.

Yeah, well, I've been doing this for 20 years now, which still kind of blows my mind. It feels like it was, you know, just a few weeks ago that I started. But, I mean, basically, you know, I grew up here, Stephen, in the San Francisco Bay area, where I still live now. I grew up in Oakland, and I was a baseball player growing up. That's what I loved. That's what I was super passionate about. I was pretty good at it. I actually got drafted out of high school by the New York Yankees. I didn't end up signing well, you know, I think I was. I'm all right. But I didn't end up signing with the Yankees, though, at that time, because I got an opportunity to play baseball in college at Stanford. So I went to Stanford. I played baseball there. Then I got drafted out of Stanford by the Kansas City Royals, and I signed a pro contract. And the way it works in baseball, most. Most of the people listening to us watching us now probably know, you know, you get drafted by a major league team, whether it's the Yankees or the Royals or the Dodgers or the Cubs or whoever, you got to go into the minor league. So I go into the minors with Kansas City. I was a pitcher working my way up, trying to get to the big leagues. Unfortunately for me, my third season, still in the minors, I went out to pitch. Pitch one night, I threw one pitch. I tore ligaments in my elbow. I was actually, at the time, I was playing for the. For the Wilmington Blue Rocks in the Carolina League, and we were playing against the Durham Bulls, which I know is not that far from where you are, Right. So I hurt my arm against the Durham bulls. This was 1997. They sent me back to California. I had an operation on my arm. I ended up having two more operations over the next three years. I did everything I could to come back because I love playing baseball, but I wasn't able to make it back and was forced to retire from baseball when I was 25 years old. I had started when I was seven. So now I'm like 18 of the first 25 years of my life. Is this one thing that I'm good at. That's my whole world, my whole identity. Like, the heck am I going to do now? I mean, I'd gone to college and gotten a degree, but didn't really know. So it was the late 90s. I get a job working in the tech world out here in the Bay Area, you know, in sales, online ad sales. And it was interesting, but I wasn't that passionate about it. But what I've noticed, because as an athlete, what I'd been fascinated by, in addition to I love the game, I was fascinated by the idea that it wasn't always the most talented people that were the most successful. And it also wasn't always the most successful people that were the most, you know, the happiest and most fulfilled. So I was like, okay, there's something there. And then on the team side of things, it wasn't always the teams that had the best players that were necessarily the best teams. I mean, you needed to have some good talent. But there was that thing we call chemistry in sports. And so I was really interested in all these what I would now call sort of intangible aspects of success and fulfillment individually and then also team wise. But. And then I started to. I got really interested in personal growth and development for myself, like trying to heal mentally, emotionally, not only physically, from this big life transition, trying to figure out, what the heck am I going to do next. And I immediately started reading lots of books that were inspiring to me, you know, following authors like Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer or Richard Carlson or Dan Millman or Tony Robbins. And I was like, I was loving that stuff personally. And I had this kind of secret fantasy in the back of my mind, Stephen, maybe one day, if I ever can, like, figure out whatever the heck I'm doing with the next phase of my life, maybe eventually I could do that. And then the universe kind of intervened and I lost my job in 2000 when the DOT com bubble burst and I was out of work. And then I just decided, you know what? Even though I'm young and I'm scared and I don't really know how to do this, I'm going to try to start my business. And there was no Twitter or Instagram or podcasts at the time. It was just like, how am I going to get out writing and speaking and coaching? But that was the desire back then, 20 years ago. And I got a lot of help and support, but I was able to get myself into the coaching world and then ultimately into the speaking world and the writing world. And you know, 20 years later, I'm here talking to you, which it's been quite a journey.

That's awesome. And you even have a nice haircut to go with it. That's what I'm.

Hey, you know, I love it, man. Nice and easy, right?

That's right. Well, look, is it when you started working through the identity struggles of, obviously, a career that you thought was going to be and started, you know, kind of pivoting, what was that journey? What was that particular journey like? Cause I find that identity isn't really discovered until you're later in life. Even though people think they're one thing, a lot of times they discover something more.

Yeah, it was hard. I mean, it was really hard because, you know, growing up as a kid, I mean, you know, I started playing baseball at 7. I was good at, and I started getting attention for it. And I, you know, single mom, we didn't have a lot of money.

Life wasn't easy. I mean, I wouldn't say that I had this, like, horrible childhood, but it was challenging and stressful. But baseball was the thing that was always like, oh, that's my thing. That's. That's what, you know, And I thought as a kid and then as an adolescent, and then as a young man, this was the thing that made me special, made me unique, made me, you know, and so to have that go away, it was the disappointment of the dream, my own personal ambition and goal and all that I'd worked for. But it was also, like, people related to me. Like I was Mike the baseball player. So now it was like, well, who the heck am I if I'm not that? And what am I going to do without that? So, you know, it's not that common that someone at the age of 25 like me has spent 18 of those first 25 years doing something. But I think a lot of us can relate to identifying with what we do and then at some point along the way, having a setback or a real challenge that knocks us to the ground, and we go, oh, wait a minute. Maybe I'm more than whatever that thing is. And so that was the process I had to go through was clearly baseball's now not in the cards for me anymore. But that does not define who I am. Now it's time for me to figure out who I really am if I'm not just a baseball player.

Is that how you stumbled your way into, you know, something that I mentioned just briefly, as we were kind of kicking off and getting started, and something I've discovered By watching a ton of your content. Is this spirit of authenticity the importance of being authentic to one's core? You know, I have a terminology we use within my organization called the seven enemies of identity, and one of those enemies of identity is not being authentic to yourself. Is that how you discovered the importance of authenticity?

Well, yes. And it was kind of a journey for me, Steven. You know, it was like I was this. I mean, it started early, where I was always this really sensitive, emotional kid. And you and I both know, you know, you're probably a few years younger than me, but, like, as boys and as men, like, we get trained in this way, like, suck it up, be a man. Especially in sports. And, you know, and I was raised by a single mom with an older sister, and I was just wired in a certain way. And the way it manifested itself was like. And I was a good athlete, right? I was good. But I would look around at my teammates, and this was true not just in sports, but even in school. And I did pretty well in school, too. But it was like I had all of these thoughts and feelings and doubts and fears and insecurities running inside of me, and. And nobody was talking about those things, right? So I thought, well, maybe I'm just weird. Like, maybe I'm just crazy. Like, maybe something's wrong with me. And I actually do come from a family where there's a lot of mental illness. My dad suffered from bipolar disorder. So I thought, well, maybe, you know, I've got some of that. I didn't know what the heck was going on. But as I started to get a little bit older, this was long before I even started writing and speaking and talking about authenticity as, like, a topic or a thing, I. I just found myself really drawn to people who would tell the truth about their own experience. Because whenever I heard someone else who got real about something, even if I didn't necessarily agree with them or couldn't relate, it always made me feel safer. It always. Like. One of my favorite days of the baseball season, as weird as this sounds, and I've written about this over the years, was the last day of the season. And usually on the last day, if you won the championship, it was awesome because you won and you got to celebrate. And I love that. Don't get me wrong, but more often, you. You lost. The last game was a loss that you got eliminated from the playoffs or whatever, right? And as much as that sucked, and I didn't like it, like, the competitor in me, what I appreciated was some of the guys would cry and it was like the one day of the year that the sort of boys don't cry rule went out the window and nobody made fun of each other. It was like guys would sit in their lockers with their glove over their face. It was like a very private thing. But you were allowed to show your emotion. And I liked it. Even, like the biggest, toughest, strongest guy on the team who I was kind of scared of, I'd look over and he'd be crying, too. And I'm like, oh, maybe I'm not so crazy. So that's a long way around, to answer your question, that I've always just been drawn to this. There's this deeper truth that runs within us, I believe. And even though we're all different and unique and we have different perspectives and values and backgrounds and down at our core, I feel like there's so much universality to. To being human. And that, to me, has always been fascinating. And I feel like that drives so much of our motivation and our success and our connection with each other when we're talking about leadership or teamwork. So it's just always been a part of who I am. And then as I got a little bit older and started to understand it more, it became a part of my work because I realized, oh, we can't really build confidence or build trust or connection with other humans if we're not willing to be real.

Yeah. I mean, I stumbled across one of your quotes, and I'm gonna botch it up so you can clarify for us. But essentially you said, why be somebody else when you're. When you're. No, I'm sorry. Why be anything other than yourself when somebody else has already taken something along those lines? I just thought it was brilliant. I just thought it was brilliant.

Well, yeah, I appreciate it. It's actually. So. It's the title. One of my books is Be Yourself Everyone Else has Already Taken, which is actually a. A great quote from Oscar Wilde that I found when I was writing my first book back way back in 2006. My first book, Focus on the Good stuff, came out in 07. I was googling. When I'd get stuck writing with my first book. I didn't really know what the heck to write about or how to write. I was sort of making it up as I go, which I still kind of do, by the way. But anyway. But I would go, right. I would Google stuff as I was writing, right? Just like, trying to find inspiration, trying to find quotes. And I found this great quote from Oscar Wilde that said, Be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. And when I was working on my book, my second book on authenticity, the working title was. Because my first book had been focused on the good stuff, the working title of the second book was Focus on the Real Stuff. But then I used that quote with my editor, the Oscar Wilde quote. And he was like, oh, that's the title. And I was like, really? Can I use someone else's? Anyway, but so that quote, to me is so important, though. And over the years, I've gotten. Every now and again, I'll get an angry email from someone. You wrote a book on authenticity, and you stole someone else's quote for the title. I was like, if you read the introduction, I actually acknowledge Oscar Wilde within the first couple paragraphs. But that's beside the point. But I think, again, the message is ultimately that we spend a lot of time, understandably, in our culture trying to, you know, emulate and at times imitate others, which is not a bad thing to do, especially when we're first learning something or first developing. I mean, we all do that with our parents. We do that with our teachers, our coaches, you know, but at some point, and it's tricky because, you know, the world is such that I see people that I respect and admire and think, oh, I want to be like him or like her like that, which is great, but I got to do it my own way because I can't be like you, and I can't be like anybody else. I can only really be like me. And the more. As corny as it sounds, the more we can get that and really embody that and celebrate that. The more freedom we have and the more power we can ultimately have.

Yeah, well, you know, there's the absolute truth of the quote, for sure. No matter whether whether or not Oscar Wilde said it first or used it on the book cover or whatever, it still doesn't erase the truth. I mean, I think about all the times that I was most frustrated and most fearful, most concerned, most anxiety ridden, most prone to sorrow or despair or whatever. I was trying to fit myself into a mold that wasn't created for me.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and I. And I feel like that the subject of authenticity is so underrated. Right. You got yourself and a handful of other professional speakers that have really done the research, really taken the time to really study it, that have done in everybody's best effort to make it more of a. More of a life truth kind of thing, you know, that I find that it still needs to be said over and over and over and over again. You know, I look at children, for example. They grow up, they have a natural gift to paint, they have a natural gift to play sports, they got a natural gift to do all kinds of things, but yet they end up going into college or end up going into school or something like that to do something totally polar opposite because mom and dad wanted them to do it. Yeah, or mom and dad, your life should look like this or look like that, you know. And when you look at authenticity as a whole, what does authenticity really mean to us as a community and us as individuals?

Well, two things. I mean, I do think, you know, with respect to children and, you know, our Girls are now 14 and 12, and watching them develop over the years has been fascinating just to see how we're born with this natural authenticity. And sadly, the world tends to train it out of us to a certain degree. So we have to be mindful of that. But to your question, in terms of what it means, the way I define authenticity is that authenticity is honesty without self righteousness and with vulnerability. So I sometimes even talk about it as an equation. It's honesty minus self righteousness and plus vulnerability. Self righteousness is the I'm right, you're wrong.

And look, we all fall into that, whether it's with so many things and there's nothing wrong with having strong opinions, there's nothing wrong with speaking up. But there's a difference between self righteousness, which is I'm right and anyone agrees with me is wrong, or an idiot versus conviction, which is I believe this to be true. I'm willing to speak up about it, but I have enough humility, enough self awareness to realize I might be wrong, which we're all wrong. Often actually, or at the very least, maybe there's other ways to look at this thing that I can't currently see. So we got to be able to remove our self righteousness and then add vulnerability. And vulnerability is really about embracing risk, emotional exposure and uncertainty. And those things we've all been taught that vulnerability is weakness or we shouldn't be vulnerable or protect your vulnerabilities or all these things. But in reality, if we're going to be successful, if we're going to take risks and create anything extraordinary, if we're going to build trust with other human beings, we got to be able to embrace uncertainty, we got to be able to take some risks, and we got to be able to be somewhat emotionally exposed. I mean, again, just think of this whole year as we've been going through Covid. It's a collective time of uncertainty and vulnerability. So many things have changed and have been forced to change. Many of us are fortunate enough to still be healthy and still be able to do our work and still right. But so many others have not been nearly as lucky. And all of us, I don't know a single person on the planet who has not been significantly impacted by this. And this was not what we planned at the start of 2020, but it's what got dealt to all of us. And then it's just a matter of how do we adjust and pivot to that and continue to do so until we find ourselves on the other side.

Of it and we're getting closer ever so slightly.

Yes, I know. Well, each. Each day we're closer to the other side of this, whatever that means and whenever that is.

Right, right. Well, look, you know, so authenticity is. It's one. One attribute of what I refer to as the self awareness axis. The other one is another concept that I think that you brilliantly articulate. And that's the concept of wholeness and how authenticity over time breeds wholeness and why wholeness is so important, because I find a lot of people try to segment themselves. Well, I'm a. I'm the business guy, I'm the sports guy, I'm the. I'm a this, I'm a that. Not realizing that everything blends together.

Right.

How did you discover the importance of wholeness? And how have you been able to use it to not just shape your own life, but shape the lives of thousands of other people you've had the pleasure of talking to?

Well, it's a great question. I mean, I think that.

Another book that I wrote is called bring your whole self to work. Because the truth of the matter is, look, it's not that everything that we bring forth is effective necessarily.

Right.

It's like I've got strengths and I've got, you know, liabilities and things that aren't as strong, but the freedom to fully, you know, bring all of myself to integrate it. That means that what's valuable, again, look, we all have certain skills. So on a team, it's like if someone's really good at sales, have that person be the salesperson. If someone's really good at the technical stuff, have them be focused on the technical stuff. But that means in those roles, just as an example, you can also bring your whole self, and there's a certain importance to that wholeness. You know, again, on a sports team, it's like I was a pitcher in baseball. I wasn't also a catcher and a center fielder and a third baseman. Right. I mean, I played other positions when I was growing up as a kid, but it's okay to specialize in certain things. But that doesn't mean we have to limit ourselves. One of the things to your question that's really important, like, I do a lot of work with big companies, big Fortune 500 companies. I do a lot of work with leadership teams. And when I'm working with particularly like a senior leadership team or an executive leadership team, and you have people sitting at the table, you have the CEO and you have the head, you know, the cfo, and you've got the chief people officer, and you've got the head of product, and you've got the head of sales and, you know, engineering and.

I'm sorry.

Cfo, Exactly.

But the thing that's really important that I often will say to those teams is like, look, there's a difference between a team of leaders and a leadership team, because a team of leaders all sits there and it's like, I'm head of sales. And of course, those roles are really stressful, and they've got a lot of pressure. And oftentimes, like, I could talk to the head of product at a technology company and he or she could have thousands of people in their organization to report to them. But when they sit at that table, they are both advocating for the team that they manage and their area of expertise, but they're also an executive in that company. That doesn't mean they don't have a thought or an idea about something related to legal or something related to sales or. You know what I mean? And so that's true also, again, just in life in general. And that doesn't mean we should be stepping on people's toes and telling everyone what to do. But that sense of. To your question of wholeness, like, there's a lot, to me that isn't just about the specific things that I might be, quote, unquote, an expert in. And so, again, the more freedom that we have to bring some of that. You were talking earlier about kids who paint or whatever. It's like having these gifts and talents or interests or.

Right.

Like, we're all complex human beings with lots of different interests. And I think creating environments, whether it's at home or at work, where we can express some of that benefits all.

Of us for sure. You know, when you start looking at the concepts of authenticity and you start looking at the concepts of conflict resolution, you start looking at the approach of wholeness. I Find that people who are self aware in their authentic self, people who are self aware in their strengths and struggles and blind spots, people who are self aware in the areas of wholeness tend to be a whole lot more emotionally quasi intelligent, if you will. So talk to us a little bit about the importance of how those things play in emotional intelligence, because you just mentioned it. So you got a team of leaders versus a leadership team. Yeah, a lot of times, from what I've seen, at least as an experience as being an entrepreneur for over 20 plus years and having a leadership team of my own and maybe think myself. Okay, do I have a team of leaders or I got a leadership. All right, leadership team. Okay, good. Right. You know, but what I've seen and I've experienced this and done this wrong myself before is ego kind of slips into the way, you know, and as a result, the authenticity goes out the window, the wholeness goes out the window, the. The intention of connection goes out the window. How do these subjects, all these different parts and pieces, play into an emotionally healthy individual that then plays into a team?

Well, look, it's complicated because we're complex human beings and we all have egos, we all have blind spots. And in business a lot of times, and as an entrepreneur, as a leader, we're driving to certain outcomes. I mean, and again, things happen. You know, a recession hits, a pandemic hits, and all of a sudden it's like, I could love everybody I'm working with and on the team and. Right. And at the end of the day, we're running a business, so we have to make hard decisions sometimes. That said, to your point, emotional intelligence is about self awareness and self management first and foremost. And then it's about social awareness and relationship management. And it's a lifelong, ongoing process for us to continue to deepen our awareness of ourselves. And it sounds like, I mean, this is the work that you do and you know this. Right. So I'm preaching to the choir here. But it's like I'm the. Every single day of my life from now until whenever I'm no longer walking around on the planet, I have an opportunity to learn more about myself and to continue to deepen my ability to manage how I make my way through the world. I can also continue to pay more attention to the people around me and to people in general and learn more deeply how to interact. I mean, again, just think about using a simple example of just zoom, right? You and I are talking on zoom right now. If you'd asked me a year ago, or five years ago about Zoom. Like, first I would be like, what the hell is zoom? And then is that like Skype? I guess, you know, but the point is. But it's like figuring out how do we communicate with people on a platform like this where it's more two dimensional as opposed three dimensional. I can't. I can see you, but I can't really feel you. It's not like sitting in the same room, but it's a little better than talking on the phone. But it's become this thing where like. Like I'm now just. I'm sure, like you are leading meetings on Zoom or speaking to people, large groups of people on Zoom, which is 20 years of doing this. And I'm, you know, in the. In March and April, I was terrible at it because I was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know what to do. We even. Where to look or how to interact.

I'm used to people. I can't even feel you. Yeah, right.

But I realized that, I mean, just for me, just like what I do for a living, where I'm up on stage speaking to groups of people, or sometimes I'm with a small group of people sitting around a table or whatever, but often feeding off the energy of the group. And then when that was taken away, it's like, oh, okay, I've. It's. So I'm using that as an example, like, having to learn how to tap more into self awareness, self management, what do I need to do to show up? And then social awareness, relationship management, how do I connect with people even though I can't see them? I don't know exactly what's happening. And again, for all of us, whatever. Not everybody's out giving motivational speeches, but as human beings interacting in the world using this platform, we've had to ironically use our emotional intelligence in order to be able to navigate through the technological ability to. I mean, how amazing is it that we have this technology? I say to people all the time, if this were 15, 20, 50, 100 years ago, I don't know what the heck we'd do. Most of us just be sitting at home writing each other letters. You know what I mean? Like, so. But that would be. Yeah, I mean, and you know, and there was a pandemic that impacted the world 100 years ago in a pretty catastrophic way. And people did not have the ability to even use the telephone, let alone zoom, as much as we might have. Zoom fatigue. And it gets annoying. It's like, it's pretty cool that we can do it. So anyway, to your question, I think though continuing this is one of the things I see individuals, leaders and teams struggle with, especially in the entrepreneurial cycle. And when we're really working hard to grow something or build something, we get so caught up in the tactical execution aspects of it, which we need to, of course we forget though, to continue to develop a lot of those softer skills. But as I've said for years, soft skills are hard.

Yeah, yeah, they're definitely hard to create. You know, it's funny actually, it's not funny, it's impactful. I ran across a story that you told at one of your events where at a very touching moment, your daughter was having a hard time understanding how you had not moved away from or moved on with baseball specifically. And.

If you're all with it, I'd love to invite you to kind of share that story because I think there's a beautiful lesson in it, not only teachable moment between you and your daughter, but I think there's a vast amount of learning lessons in that, in that moment for us all, even to now. Because 2020 did not meet our expectations.

No, not at all. Yeah, well, yeah, So I was so Samantha, my older daughter, who's 14 now, she's a freshman in high school, she and I were in the car ten years ago, she was four at the time. Her younger sister Rosie was about a year and a half and was home with Michelle, my wife. And we were driving, just me and Samantha, we were driving to a baseball game, actually a college baseball game in Berkeley. We were going to see Cal and Stanford play. And Samantha, little four year old Samantha in her booster seat in the back of the car says to me, hey daddy, hey daddy, are you going to play in the game? Because she knew that I'd play baseball. And then I'd go, no, honey, Daddy's not going to play. Well, why not? And I said, well honey, you know, Daddy doesn't play baseball. Well, why not? You know, when they're three, four, they ask a lot of why, why not questions, right? And I said, well honey, and I thought she knew or maybe she'd forgot, I don't know. But I, well, you know, daddy hurt his arm and I had surgery. I explained, first she's a little scared, then she's a little confused and eventually she gets it. Oh, I get it, Daddy, you mean you can't play baseball anym. And then she asked me, Steven, she asked me a simple question, but one I wasn't quite prepared for. She said, daddy, are you Sad about that.

And I paused for a moment when she asked because I was like, you know, I wasn't expecting my 4 year old to ask me about my emotional well being, but I appreciated the question. And I paused and took a breath and I said, no, honey, you know, I'm not sad. I said I was sad when it happened. I was really sad. It was a big deal. I said, but that was a long time ago. I'm not sad about it anymore. I said, in fact, you know what, honey? Grateful. And she said, grateful. Grateful because even at four years old, she knew what grateful meant. We talk about gratitude a lot at home. She said, why are you grateful, daddy? That you hurt your arm and you can't play baseball anymore? And I said, well, honey, if daddy never hurt his arm, I never would have met mommy.

And I wouldn't be your daddy. And then I literally burst into tears. And she was like, daddy, are you okay? And I was like, and it's ever happened in a moment. I was shocked at how emotional I got. And I was like, yeah, honey, I'm fine, I'm fine. Like, whoa. Like I, I was surprised. It really hit me in the heart and I have no idea if my 4 year old Samantha got it in that moment, but I know that I got it at a whole deeper level. Look, the issue isn't whether it's 2020 and the pandemic and every. Or anything. The issue isn't whether we're going to have setbacks or challenges or get stuck. Like that happens. Like every successful person that any of us know or hear about. It's not like a straight line up to the success. There's a lot of.

But I'm so.

Look, and some of us are more fortunate to start at a better place than others, let's be honest. But along the way, everybody falls down. And the issue is, can I get back up? And am I willing to get back up? Am I willing to learn from the experience as opposed to feel sorry for myself or stay stuck in that. Look, I mean, there's a legitimate story that most of us could have about how unfair what's happened this year has been to so many of us. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And again, it's like, okay. And I'm not, I'm not discounting the impact of all that, what's happened. But the reality is, and look, in some situations, I mean, again, if you're running a company that is in the entertainment world or in the gathering people together space, that's kind of a hard business to be in. Right. If you're in a business that serves people who are sitting at home in front of their computers or whatever, like, okay, do you know what I mean? So there are definitely some haves and have nots in this experience. But ultimately, like everything in life, we get to choose how we engage with it. And I had a therapist years ago, Stephen, say to me this great thing. She said, mike, don't waste a good crisis. Which I thought was kind of insensitive at the time when she said it to me because I was going through a really tough time. And she's like, here's what I know. She goes, here's what I know from years of being a therapist. You will get through this difficult stretch that you're. I don't know how long it's going to take. I, I don't know exactly what's involved, but I know you will get to the other side. What I don't know is how you're going to be on the other side. And that's not up to me as your therapist. That's up to you. If you utilize this challenging time in your life to learn, to grow, to change, to evolve, to, I don't know, you will be better and stronger on the other side. If you simply just focus on surviving this thing, that's all you're going to do. And it was a little bit of tough love. But I tell you what, I really appreciate her saying that. And that was true then and it's true now. And I think about it whenever I'm going through something big or small, it's difficult. It's like, okay, I'm not going to waste this crisis because it's here for a reason.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all of that is life truths, you know, the moment with your daughter, the self awareness that pops in your mind. I think we would be surprised at some of the wisdom that comes out of us when we are being authentic and transparent and vulnerable. Like that moment with your daughter. I think that also sets the tone for today's environment where you and I both share this belief that everything that you have to go through is really meant to build you up, not tear you down. And kind of look at everything as like a brick. Right. You can look at a brick by itself and you can build a foundation or you can bust a window. Totally, you know, so totally on that. You know, this, this world has been a little nuts for 2020. I hope we close it out strong. But it's, it's, it's been interesting to say the least. Yes, you know, you released a brand new book smack dab in the middle of all this. Yeah, right. Called We're all in this Together, which I think is a great term. Right. It's a book, by the way, I'm still waiting on Amazon for. So if you got any people there that you want to like, you know, call or something like that. Yeah. One of these things that I picked up from it is the four pillars. The four pillars. I'd like you to talk about the four pillars and how we can use that in today's post Covid world, hopefully healing world.

Right.

You know, nature vastly separated and all that kind of stuff. How can we use those to pull everything back together and become more in our own lives?

Well, you know what's interesting about the book? So I finished writing the book in 2019, not knowing it was going to come out in the middle of the pandemic and everything happening. It came out this spring. I did very purposefully though, want it to come out in 2020 because I figured this was going to be a tumultuous year and with all the division. The book is really about creating a team culture of high performance, of trust, of belonging. A lot of the work that I do with teams, but secondarily it's more about how we find common ground with each other, even and especially when we're different or things are challenging. Now that said, I mean, the four pillars, the first one is about psychological safety, which has so much to do with authenticity. Meaning like any group, any team, any organization, any community that we're a part of, can we create an environment where people feel safe enough to show up and be themselves?

The second pillar is related to that, which is about focusing on inclusion and belonging. Like really making sure that we do anything and everything we can so that people are included. And ultimately, you know, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right. It goes from physiological needs to safety needs to belonging. Needs is the third level before we go to esteem and so self actualization. So the need to belong is a fundamental human need that we all have. And sometimes, sadly, we end up wanting to belong in opposition to others, which is the lowest level of belonging. Right. Oh, I belong to this group and we're against that other group. Or, you know, I mean, even like in sports, we love sports. It's like I put on my Yankees jersey and you put on your Red Sox jersey and we yell at each other. But we all kind of know at the end of the day it's just a game. Like, you Know what I mean? We're just wearing different shirts. We're not really different people. But that's something that sadly, and we have to be mindful of this in our country and our world right now. There's so much separation and disconnection in us versus them. I mean, look, I've always been Stephen, again, I don't mean to sound either holier than thou or corny about it, but, like, always have struggled with this notion of who's the them. So, again, so much of what the book is about in the pillars.

It'S about that usness, if you will. And the third pillar is about embracing what I call sweaty palm conversations, which are those hard to talk about things, right? The conflicts, the feedback, the differences of opinion, the elephants in the room and being able to engage. Not to prove my point and that I'm right and you're wrong, necessarily, but to be able to actually talk about things. Because, as you know, as we all know, bad news doesn't age well and we often avoid it to our own detriment. And then the fourth pillar is about caring about and challenging people at the same time. And I had actually, on my own podcast, I had, one of my coaches from Stanford was on about a year ago, he since has retired. And he said this great thing, Steven, that really epitomizes this pillar in so much of my work. He said, my philosophy for coaching was always simple. I gotta love you hard so I can push you hard.

And I said, what do you mean? He said, I knew that if I was going to push you and get the most out of you, you as an individual, you as an athlete, your team, the guys you played with, all the guys I coached. And he coached at Stanford for 37 years. He said, I knew the first thing I had to do was make sure that I established that I loved and cared about you as humans. Once you knew that, then I could push you as hard as I needed to push you to get the most out of you. And I think that's true for a leader, whether it's a sports coach or a business leader. I think that's true for teams and groups if we push each other, but first and foremost, we care about each other, and we do both of those things, then people can really thrive.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great tug of war. It's, you know, it's not easy. It's not easy to achieve, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Yeah, absolutely.

We have a. We have, you know, in the organizations that I own, I got six now total, with about probably 450 team members across three states. And to take my heart and scale it into my leaders and my leaders scale it into them, then my leader, you know, this, so on and so forth. It's been tricky, you know. Cause you have that. That cup approach where you speak in a one thing thing, and by the time you get a year down the road, it's like, he. Yeah, he said this. I'm like, no, here's the video of what we said right here kind of scenario. And it's. It's always. I found as a leader and as an owner of, you know, multiple businesses that the most difficult thing I struggle with is what's the truth.

Yeah.

You know, because you're. You're trying to balance is this person. So we have this principle here that I would rather have a team member come to us and say, hey, look, I've got this going on in my life. Because we believe in wholeness and authenticity as well.

Right.

I've got this one on my life. I'm really struggling with it. I don't want to lose my job, but I don't want to harm the company in the process. Anytime a team member has come to us and said, this is what's going on, and we've had people go through deaths, we've had people go through Covid. We've had people go through.

Divorces and all kinds of things that. I mean, no offense, but you're not going to be your best when you're going through certain circumstances, period.

And so we've always had this principle that we've adopted. I think one of my friends over at the Ramsey Organization, Dave Ramsey's company, shared this with me a long time ago. We've had this thing where you come to us and say, hey, this is what's going on. Right. We'll go to you and say, okay, great. Hey, team. Team, over here for just a minute. Whistle. Come on over here. All right, here's the deal. See, John. John's been really awesome with the company. John's got some stuff going on right now, and we're going to. Because we're going to surround John right now while he goes through this, and we're going to walk with him through it. Now, if John wants to tell you what's going on, that's up to John. But for the time being, for the next 30 to 90 days, we're all going to rally around John. Right? Yeah. Okay, great. Right.

Awesome.

Because we've created that environment, we started to see this the safety environment. Right.

Yeah.

Where typically in a typical hierarchy of most companies, as you know, most people don't want to share this with the CEO or the president, the vice president, something bad that happened. Right. They're like, fearful. My job. Right. Because of that, we actually have people at every single level of the organization who step up and very, very easily say, hey, look, this thing over here is broken and it can be better.

Yeah.

Really? We hadn't thought about that because it's not your viewpoint. Right, right.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. I mean, this presence of psychology, of safety is a real, real thing.

Oh, absolutely. I love that you do that. Thanks for sharing that. Because that's such a. It's such an important thing. It sounds like, for your team. It sounds like the Ramsey organization. By the way, we love Dave Ramsey. At our house, we refer to him as, I'm sure many people too, Uncle Dave, because he saved our marriage and our life many years ago when we first couldn't figure out how to. How the heck to get ourselves, you know, financially sober.

But here, Nashville, speaking of it, I'll introduce you to him.

Oh, he's great. He's great. Well, but the idea, though, too, when you think about that, for his organization, for yours, for your team, if you can create an environment where people feel safe enough, they can come forward to let you know when they're having a hard time. Look, I mean, this is one of the tricky things as a business owner and a business leader. On the one hand, your job isn't to solve everybody's problems or to, you know, have everyone have therapy sessions. Yet at the same time, to your point, you can't expect people. I mean, look, right now, a lot of what I do when I'm talking to leaders at Google or Wells Fargo or Microsoft or these other big companies, it's like when I talk to them, they're saying the people on my team are really struggling because their kids are home doing online school, or they've got a family member who lost their job or their parent got Covid or whatever it is. And those are real life things that if we don't feel like we can't share that stuff at work and with the people that we work with, we're going to then withhold it. And it's just taking up an enormous amount of emotional space on our emotional hard drive. And so to your point, if you can, then. Oh, it's safe to say that. And we can get some love and support. Right. That's what teams do for each other. That's what really healthy, strong environments create that we lift each other up when we need it.

Yeah. And the crazy part is that, you know, just flipping it around just a little bit. We've also discovered that anytime that we're able to articulate love with boundaries, but articulate love with boundaries. Anytime we're able to do that, team members are willing to pick up and fight for you six months later, a year later. Like, for example, you know, with the. With the whole Covid thing, where I had to go to everybody, okay, all right, here's the real deal, guys. Nobody knows what's going to happen. As of right now. You know, one of my businesses is a large construction company. As of right now, we're okay to work. Right. We got to take extra precautions. We're going to need everybody to dig in and help out and stuff like that. Here's our trip wires. So no one has to live in fear. Nobody has to be scared about losing their job. I've been doing this for a long time. I've got money in the bank. It's intentionally for this specific type of situation. That's why we have a massive emergency fund. We have months of operating capital to get by until we figure out what's going to happen. So nobody's getting fired today. We are going to tighten our expenses. We are going to tighten our discretionary stuff. We're all in this together. The reason I say that is because the people that bought in and believed it were the very same. The mouthpieces, the people who were the megaphone for us. Right. Were the same people that we had helped a year earlier or two years earlier when they were going through a tough time. And they're like, no, when he says it, he's serious. Yeah, we got to do that together.

Absolutely. That's such a great story and example of people do that. I remember back in 2009, 2010, as we were still coming through the economic crisis, I remember my very first meeting down at Google. Now Google, very successful tech company. Even back then, they had about 15,000 employees, which was a lot.

Right.

But what I. In general, but for the size of their brand and their company, even at that time, but they were still hiring and doing a lot of really interesting things in the. In the height of when everybody was letting people go and really struggling. And I remember remarking at that meeting, I was like, wow, I'm interacting with so many companies in the tech world. Big, small, small businesses. Everybody is doom and gloom and fear and layoffs and cuts, because that's the world we were in, remember 10, 12 years ago, and what. What someone, one of the leaders at Google said to me was like, look, we're fortunate in that we've managed some things well, but we know that a, we got to still continue to grow in smart ways during this time. And we also know it's really important how we treat our employees right now, because right now, most of them are just happy to have a job. But when this thing turns around, and it will, people are going to have options on where they can go and what they can do, and they're going to remember how we treated them. So it goes both ways. To your point, you help people out, they're more likely to be engaged and bought in, but also you treat people well. And when things get tough or people have other options, you know, Now Google has 115, 120,000 employees and has continued to grow exponentially over the last 10 years for a lot of reasons. And not that they don't have their issues, but I use that as an example. And again, for you and your businesses, it's like being able to really care about people and value people and give them space to show up and maybe, you know, give them a hand when they need it. Boundaries. Right. But that comes back around, you know, and another thing around this, a big part of my work has focused for years on appreciation. And Glassdoor found there was a study that Glassdoor did a few years ago for people who left their jobs voluntarily. When they were asked, why did you leave? 53% of people said, I would have stayed longer if I felt more valued and more appreciated by my manager or by my company.

Yeah.

So that's huge, you know, and again, we have to manage all of these things simultaneously. But caring about people, valuing people, listening to people with no agenda, it doesn't even necessarily have to mean praise. It means just caring about. Right. Loving them hard, like my coach said. So you can push people hard. They're more likely to be open to that if they feel really loved and valued.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it all goes back to, you know, we kind of open the show up with life truths. Right. There's everything that we've discussed in a roundabout way is treating people how you want to be treated, especially if that person is looking you back in the mirror.

Yeah.

Right. And if your work is so important and it's so timely, especially right now with everybody trying to reset and trying to, you know, grasp for new strings of hope and inspiration, stuff like that, I think it's so Vital. I think that everybody should go out and get, you know, your new book. I think everybody should have it. I'm still waiting on my copy. We are all in this together, and it's definitely in the snippets I've been able to get my hands on while waiting for my book. You know, I've already learned a lot, you know, and there's also tons of content that you've already got all over YouTube and all over the Internet, which people can kind of connect with you. But for the meantime, what is the best way for the whole audience to connect with you moving forward and learn more? Obviously, go out and get the new book, for sure. But on top of that, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Well, I appreciate the kind words. Thank you. And thanks for having me on the show. I mean, the best way to connect with me and learn about all the books and the work is at our website, which is Mike Robbins.

Very cool, man. Well, dude, I have appreciated. I know we went a little over on time thanks to my technological giggles, but I appreciate the time and can't thank you enough for spending some time with us together today. It has been. It's been a true inspiration. It really has.

Thanks for having me.

All right, my friend. Well, you take care. We'll see you soon.

Sounds good.

What can I tell you? Mike Robbins is an amazing leader. Make sure you check out his new book. We're all in this together. And in the meantime, check out this interview right here, because I know we'll keep you moving. What I did was nothing spectacular. Getting in some cold water for two minutes was not that difficult, really. Right? Walking through some mud was not that difficult.