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0:01:13 900 million people in 142 countries feel unfulfilled in what they do.
0:01:17 How many of us are intentional about where we want to take our lives?
0:01:23 We pursue what we should do for a career versus what’s really driving the passion inside of
0:01:24 us.
0:01:30 And when we chase the money, the possessions, and we realize that none of that is bringing
0:01:36 us fulfillment or happiness, we’re left with this profound sense of quiet desperation.
0:01:39 Passionstruck is really about how do you close that gap.
0:01:58 Young Improfiters, do you ever feel stuck?
0:02:00 Do you feel like you’re just settling for good enough?
0:02:05 Do you feel like you really haven’t found your North Star in your life or your career?
0:02:09 Well, today we’re going to talk all about passion and purpose.
0:02:13 Joining us on the podcast today is John R. Miles, who has followed his passions throughout
0:02:21 his career, going from the U.S. Navy to becoming a C-suite executive in top Fortune 500 companies,
0:02:25 to now being an accomplished podcaster and new author.
0:02:30 He’s got a new book called Passionstruck, 12 Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose
0:02:32 and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life.
0:02:35 John, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast.
0:02:38 Hala, thank you so much for having me.
0:02:42 Your show is incredible, and it’s an honor to be here to serve your community.
0:02:44 I’m so excited for this conversation.
0:02:46 I think it’s going to be so valuable for everyone.
0:02:49 So I want to just dive in right into the meat and potatoes of today’s interview, which
0:02:53 is all about becoming Passionstruck.
0:02:55 So you’ve got this very popular podcast called Passionstruck.
0:02:57 I always see you around the charts.
0:03:01 You’re doing an incredible job teaching people about entrepreneurship and how to have purpose
0:03:02 and passion.
0:03:05 You also have a new book called Passionstruck.
0:03:09 And so I’m curious to understand, what does Passionstruck mean to you, and why are you
0:03:12 so compelled to teach on the topic?
0:03:16 I love this question, and thank you for it, and I’ll give you the origin story.
0:03:23 So first to answer it, Passionstruck is about having an intense, what I say, almost inexplorable
0:03:29 drive to mold one’s life in the pursuit of becoming our ideal self.
0:03:36 Now this phrase wasn’t even in my vocabulary up until about four years ago.
0:03:43 And as I was on my own journey of how do I cross the gap from where I was, which is
0:03:49 really in the state of being my odd self, to going on my own journey of trying to become
0:03:56 my ideal self, I started studying luminaries, many that people on the show will have heard
0:04:02 of, people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oprah, et cetera.
0:04:10 And I started to wonder in my research, what allowed them to break through and to themselves
0:04:17 reach this state where they are willing to put it all on the line with the goal of taking
0:04:22 on a problem that they see so inherently needs to be solved that they’re willing to devote
0:04:23 themselves to it.
0:04:28 And I was talking to a friend of mine, Keith Crotch, he founded a company named Arriba,
0:04:32 was the CEO of DocuSign in case people have heard of his name before.
0:04:38 And he says to me, “Well, it sounds like what’s happening is you’re going from being stuck
0:04:41 in your life to becoming Passionstruck.”
0:04:48 And that phrase just hit me and from that point forward, I knew it was the one that
0:04:53 I was destined to use, but I really feared it wasn’t going to be available until I found
0:04:57 it that it was miraculously on GoDaddy.
0:04:58 I love that.
0:05:03 And here you are now, this whole journey, ten-year journey of working on Passionstruck.
0:05:05 So you have a really impressive background.
0:05:10 You started in the military, in the Navy, you went into corporate, you had C-suite roles,
0:05:16 senior executive roles at big companies like Lowe’s and SwissWatch, very, very impressive.
0:05:21 And I’d love to understand throughout all these phases of your journey, were you Passionstruck,
0:05:24 were you more Passionstruck in one experience than another experience?
0:05:27 I’d love to learn a little bit more about your career journey in that way.
0:05:34 One of the things I talk about a lot on the podcast and in the book is this need to reinvent
0:05:35 ourselves.
0:05:39 And I think it’s something that more and more people are going to experience on a faster
0:05:41 pace than even I did.
0:05:47 But I went through periods of my career, some of them self-induced, some of them induced
0:05:53 by external circumstances where I found myself needing to reinvent myself.
0:05:56 Coming out of the Naval Academy, I was absolutely Passionstruck.
0:06:02 I had been selected as one of only a few people who got a coveted billet to go work for the
0:06:05 National Security Agency.
0:06:10 And the backstory for me is I had always wanted to be a Navy SEAL, but I had some traumatic
0:06:17 brain injuries when I was playing rugby that precluded me medically from going that path.
0:06:24 But being an officer, especially working for the NSA, it’s kind of like being the CFO
0:06:28 in a company or the head of HR, where you cut across all the different disciplines of
0:06:29 a company.
0:06:33 I got to do the same thing when it came to the Navy and Marine Corps.
0:06:41 And so I was able to not only get the opportunity to work directly with SEALs, and I was assigned
0:06:43 to Naval Special War for Unit 10.
0:06:51 But I also got to deploy on aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, aircraft,
0:06:57 and really had a very fun Passionstruck part of my life.
0:06:59 And I wanted that to continue.
0:07:03 And so when I got out of the military, I did so only because I’d gotten an appointment
0:07:06 to become an FBI agent.
0:07:11 And I’m literally Thursday or Friday the week before I’m supposed to report on a Monday.
0:07:17 I just left military service when I get a call from my Detailer telling me, John, Congress
0:07:19 can’t pass the budget.
0:07:21 Your class, unfortunately, has been recycled.
0:07:27 My naive sense is thinking, OK, I’ll go back in a couple months.
0:07:32 What I found out in a couple months was that it was literally going to be three to four
0:07:33 years later.
0:07:35 And so I quickly had to pivot.
0:07:41 This led me to join Booz Allen, a management consulting firm, which turned out to be a
0:07:42 blessing in disguise.
0:07:49 It was such a great transition for me because they had a lot of military veterans and knew
0:07:51 how to transition them.
0:07:54 And then I went from there to Anderson Consulting.
0:07:59 And so that was a really passion-struck period of my time learning the corporate world and
0:08:03 really changing my trajectory from where I thought it was going to go.
0:08:08 And then I would say I faced another pivot that I never expected.
0:08:15 When I was at Anderson, we had about half our office dedicated to supporting Enron.
0:08:20 And when Enron had their terrible fall, so did Anderson.
0:08:25 And so I found myself in a matter of weeks, again, pivoting, having to reinvent myself.
0:08:31 And this time, I went into the Fortune 500 world first as a chief information security
0:08:36 officer, then went to Lowe’s, then eventually to Dell.
0:08:41 And during that journey, I was absolutely passion-struck until I would say the tail end
0:08:48 of Lowe’s going into Dell, where I really found myself starting to experience being in
0:08:54 this quandary that Henry David Thoreau describes as quiet desperation, where I really found
0:08:57 myself stuck down a career path.
0:09:01 That looking back, I never expected myself to take.
0:09:06 And now I couldn’t seem to pull myself from its grasp.
0:09:13 And that really led me into a period of soul-searching where I wasn’t passion-struck on the journey
0:09:19 to finding myself again and eventually creating this brand at the back end of it.
0:09:21 As you were talking, I had an idea come to my head.
0:09:23 I don’t know if you already say this.
0:09:26 You can be passion-struck or you can be passion-stuck, right?
0:09:30 And it just really depends how you’re feeling throughout your career.
0:09:31 So talk to us.
0:09:33 What are some of the feelings of feeling passion-struck?
0:09:37 What do you feel when you’re in the zone, you’re passion-struck?
0:09:43 You have this deep, exceeded desire that goes beyond ambition.
0:09:48 It’s this relentless quest for growth, for impact, fulfillment.
0:09:55 It’s the kind of passion that transforms anything that you face into stepping stones of growth
0:09:58 and really discovery.
0:10:03 And in order to do this, there are a number of mindset shifts and behavior shifts that
0:10:06 are required to achieve this state.
0:10:11 And it’s fundamentally rewiring how we think, how we feel, and act.
0:10:20 And most importantly, intentionally aligning our values with our long-term ambitions and
0:10:27 aspirations and making sure that they are all interconnected, not as it often happens
0:10:29 where they’re independent variables.
0:10:32 So you were alluding to this.
0:10:36 At the end of your corporate career at Lowe’s, you started to feel stuck.
0:10:39 And I learned that something really triggered this.
0:10:41 It was a couple of traumatic experiences.
0:10:46 You actually were faced with an armed robber in your house, and you had a gun pointed to
0:10:47 your head.
0:10:49 And at that point, everything changed for you.
0:10:53 So talk to us about that moment, some of the events that happened that led you to eventually
0:10:57 become an entrepreneur and what you were feeling that day.
0:10:58 Yeah.
0:11:02 So this was just a normal Tuesday.
0:11:08 And I was in my normal routine, took my daughter to school, went to the gym.
0:11:10 At this time, I was going to Orange Theory.
0:11:15 And then something happened that was completely out of normal.
0:11:20 We had an electrical fire at the gym that started in their air conditioning systems
0:11:25 that forced me to go home earlier than I typically would have.
0:11:33 Unbeknownst to me, the person who ended up confronting me had been canvassing my whereabouts
0:11:35 and looking at my patterns.
0:11:40 And it used this moment when they knew I would be away to come into the house.
0:11:47 And so I walked in on them unexpectedly for them and unexpectedly for me.
0:11:51 And you’d kind of get that feeling in the back of your mind that something’s just not
0:11:52 right.
0:11:57 And I had gotten in the house to change clothes so I could do a different workout routine.
0:12:02 And when I went up the stairs, was confronted with that burglar pointing what turns out to
0:12:04 be my own handgun at me.
0:12:10 And when that happens, I don’t care whether it’s in combat or in this situation, you’re
0:12:12 forced into a decision.
0:12:17 Either you’re going to charge up the stairs and try to take them out and there’s probably
0:12:23 a low likelihood of having a positive outcome without yourself being shot.
0:12:28 Or there’s how do you elude this threat to live another day?
0:12:36 And in the split second that I had chose that second option and was able to elude them and
0:12:37 get out of there.
0:12:44 And I guess the double whammy of what I experienced was just a few days later, I remember spending
0:12:48 the weekend with my really good friend, Tim, talking about all that had happened.
0:12:50 I was starting to process it.
0:12:57 Monday morning comes around, I’m in New York, ready to do some interviewing and a keynote.
0:13:01 When my phone starts blowing up, I answer it and it turns out that my friend Tim, who
0:13:06 had been there to comfort me, had committed suicide.
0:13:12 And so in a matter of five or six days, I had these two traumatic events really hit
0:13:20 me and it caused me to just awaken inside and realize that my life could have been over.
0:13:28 Tim’s life just ended, I need to rethink everything I’m doing and to chart a new course.
0:13:35 So that was really the impetus for me then spending a couple of years really doing profound
0:13:38 introspection into how I wanted to transform my life.
0:13:43 I want to stick on this a bit because I feel like it’s so important for us to be the best
0:13:45 versions of ourselves.
0:13:50 We really need to think positively about our past and reframe our past.
0:13:56 And I know that you had a lot of self-blame turn up after these events.
0:14:01 Can you talk to us about some of the self-blame you were facing and how you were able to reframe
0:14:03 your past a bit to move forward?
0:14:04 Yeah.
0:14:08 So this is something I really talk about in the first principle in my book, which I call
0:14:15 “Becoming a Mission Angler.” And the origin of this phrase, “Mission Angler,” is I wanted
0:14:22 to pick phrases or metaphors that people could understand so when they read the chapters
0:14:25 or heard about them, they would remember them.
0:14:31 So where I live here in Tampa Bay, we live in some of the best fishing area in the world.
0:14:37 And my friends who are really master anglers, they don’t just get on the boat on the weekend,
0:14:43 in any direction at any time, and just go and hope they’re going to catch fish.
0:14:49 They go out with a very disciplined, intentional plan of knowing what’s in season, knowing
0:14:56 where it’s located, knowing the tides, knowing the moon phases, et cetera, and being extremely
0:14:59 intentional about their pursuit.
0:15:04 But how many of us in our own lives are that intentional about where we want to take our
0:15:09 lives? And in my case, it wasn’t only finding that direction.
0:15:13 There was also a huge gap that I had.
0:15:19 And this was a gap where earlier in my life, I had experienced profound trauma, both as
0:15:26 a child in combat and then later on in my life as we had just discussed.
0:15:33 And for me, it was really dealing with this trauma that I had put aside, because when I
0:15:39 was growing up, and especially when I was in the military, we were told to suppress it,
0:15:43 to not bring it up, you’re going to lose your security clearances, people weren’t going
0:15:50 to respect you, this PTSD that everyone keeps talking about doesn’t really exist, et cetera.
0:15:55 And so all this stuff from earlier in my life, I had buried deep down.
0:16:00 And when these two incidents happened in that short period of time, not only did it
0:16:06 on Earth, I guess the emotions from those two circumstances, but it brought up everything
0:16:07 in my past.
0:16:13 So as I looked at becoming this mission angler in my life, I realized that there was this
0:16:15 gap that I had to cross.
0:16:19 And Dr. Benjamin Hardy writes about this in his book, “The Gap vs. the Gain.”
0:16:27 And so much in our life, we think about ourselves and we compare ourselves to other people.
0:16:33 And when we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others, we actually find ourselves in the
0:16:34 gap.
0:16:39 It would be like you or I trying to compare ourselves as podcasters to the success of
0:16:41 Joe Rogan.
0:16:45 If we do that, we’re constantly going to be in the gap.
0:16:50 Whereas the gain is where we’re looking at where we are in our life compared to where
0:16:54 we were in the past and the incremental gains that we’re making.
0:17:01 And so for me to cross this chasm of where I had been, which was living out, if you look
0:17:08 at self discrepancy theory, my “ought self,” which is who I thought I should be, I wanted
0:17:11 to get to who I could be, which was my ideal self.
0:17:16 And the starting point for that was dealing with unresolved trauma.
0:17:24 And so after I experienced those two things, I then went through two years of just intense
0:17:32 cognitive processing therapy, EMDR, prolonged exposure therapy, and a number of other modalities
0:17:36 to start working on getting rid of those stuck points that were holding me back.
0:17:41 And one thing that I like to tell people is that we have to have a fixed point that we
0:17:42 start from.
0:17:49 And when we start mastering it, that’s when it opens up opportunities for us to pursue
0:17:54 other areas in our lives where we can also change the course of our lives, whether it’s
0:17:59 our health, our relationships, our career, our finances, et cetera.
0:18:01 I love that you brought up Benjamin Hardy.
0:18:06 He is one of my favorite guests who’s been on the show three times, and you brought up
0:18:07 the gap in the game.
0:18:10 It’s so true when we’re living to these ideals.
0:18:14 For example, I want to become as successful as Joe Rogan.
0:18:18 And every time you reach another level in your career, that target just keeps moving,
0:18:20 moving, moving, moving.
0:18:22 And you never actually reach that target.
0:18:27 And so if you’re always comparing yourself to the future version that you want to be
0:18:32 or the person that you want to be like a competitor, like you were saying, you’re really just in
0:18:37 that gap rather than being in the game, which is measuring yourself against your past.
0:18:41 The other thing that Benjamin Hardy talks about is becoming your future you and the
0:18:44 fact that you’re not even your past self anymore.
0:18:49 You’re not the same person that you were last week, let alone last year, let alone 10 years
0:18:50 ago.
0:18:57 So you have permission to forgive your past self, to reinvent your past story, and your
0:19:02 memory is, and your narrative of your past is constantly changing.
0:19:05 So he applies the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle, to your past.
0:19:08 80% of your past probably doesn’t serve you.
0:19:10 So what is holding you back?
0:19:15 How can you reframe your past so that you can move forward and attract more of what you
0:19:19 want to be in the future and be more like the future self that you want to be?
0:19:21 So I love that you brought up Benjamin Hardy.
0:19:22 He’s great.
0:19:26 He’s been on my show as well and that whole mission angler and what I was talking about
0:19:31 with self discrepancy theory is really what he talks about in future self.
0:19:37 It’s really how do you rebuild this image of yourself, this ideal self that you want
0:19:43 to create as your future self and do it in a way where you’re not looking back on your
0:19:50 past and the mistakes that you’ve made, rather you’re looking at yourself anew at the opportunities
0:19:53 you have to pursue becoming who you would like to be.
0:19:54 Okay.
0:19:56 So let’s move on to your new book, Passionstrike.
0:20:00 You quote Henry David Thoreau at the start of your book and argue that most people today
0:20:03 lead lives of quiet desperation.
0:20:08 So why do you think most people are hesitant to pursue their own dreams and passions?
0:20:12 Well, I think it’s we get stuck in becoming our odd self.
0:20:22 We get stuck in this life oftentimes where we pursue what we should do for a career versus
0:20:26 what’s really driving the passion inside of us.
0:20:30 And the farther we get into these careers, I call them portfolio careers, the harder
0:20:36 it is to change because all of a sudden now we have the car we drive, the house we live
0:20:43 in, the financial commodities that we’ve built up, the social standing, the family we’re
0:20:44 supporting.
0:20:49 And we start seeing that gap between where we are and where we want to be and it keeps
0:20:50 growing.
0:20:55 And we’re so comfortable in the life that we’re in that it just compounds itself.
0:21:01 And what ends up happening over time though is we start realizing that the things that
0:21:05 we thought were bringing us joy bring us anything but.
0:21:11 And we wind up feeling more and more like we wake up in the morning and that the actions
0:21:14 we’re taking, they just don’t matter.
0:21:18 We don’t matter and our lives don’t hold significance.
0:21:25 And I think that’s exactly what Henry David Thoreau was talking about when we chase these
0:21:31 extrinsic things that life teases us with, that we think are going to bring us joy,
0:21:36 the titles, the money, the possessions, whatever have you.
0:21:42 And we realize when we get there that none of that amassive wealth that we’ve had is
0:21:46 bringing us fulfillment or happiness, et cetera.
0:21:52 And then we’re left with this profound sense of emptiness or as he calls it, quiet desperation.
0:21:56 And if you look at Gallup, it’s a clear indication that this is going on.
0:22:03 Their surveys evaluated 1.3 billion people across the world and they found that 900 million
0:22:07 people in 142 countries feel unfulfilled in what they do.
0:22:13 And another thing I’d like to cite here is research from Tom Gillovich, who’s a psychologist
0:22:17 at Cornell who’s been studying people and what causes their regrets.
0:22:24 And what he found was an astounding 76% of people that he surveyed in their third trimester
0:22:29 of life all cited that their biggest regrets stem from the same thing.
0:22:32 It’s not the mistakes that they made in life.
0:22:40 It was not pursuing the what-ifs, the should-haves, not going after becoming their ideal self.
0:22:45 And it mirrors what Gallup found and it mirrors what David Thoreau says.
0:22:49 So then passion struck is really about how do you close that gap?
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0:27:53 I love that, and thank you for sharing all that data.
0:27:58 I’m curious to understand how you feel about the state of the American dream.
0:28:03 I know you mentioned it in your book, and I had Dean Graziozian and people like Harley
0:28:09 Finkelstein from Shopify, and they all believe that American dream is live and well.
0:28:11 It’s no better time to be an entrepreneur.
0:28:15 Lots of people are able to explore their passions because of the internet and the abundance
0:28:17 of the internet and things like that.
0:28:22 I’m curious to understand how you feel about entrepreneurship and the American dream and
0:28:24 the state of everything right now.
0:28:28 Well, I respect all the people that you just said very much.
0:28:34 However, I completed and wholeheartedly disagree on the state of affairs.
0:28:36 Dean’s got a couple of younger kids.
0:28:40 I happen to have a couple of kids who are 20 and 26.
0:28:45 We’re a little bit further ahead of them and are experiencing the world right now head
0:28:46 on.
0:28:53 I have to tell you, if you look at the data and you look at what I put in my book, entrepreneurship,
0:28:59 the pursuit of small business, has been on a three-decade decline, not only in the United
0:29:02 States but in most of Western civilization.
0:29:08 There’s almost this inverse ratio of people going into large companies instead of pursuing
0:29:13 the entrepreneurial path that really took the United States coming out of World War
0:29:16 II to the precipice of greatness.
0:29:21 Fewer and fewer people are going down the path of entrepreneurship or taking the risk
0:29:23 of doing something on their own.
0:29:29 It’s easy to see why because you come out of an MBA at Harvard and you’re offered the
0:29:36 opportunity to go into a hedge fund or into a management consulting fund, private equity,
0:29:39 and they give you all this money.
0:29:45 So many people see that and they don’t want to make that riskier choice of going down
0:29:46 the entrepreneurial path.
0:29:48 They take the safe path.
0:29:51 This has been going on and compounding.
0:29:57 What you see is the bigger companies have more and more people flocking to them and the smaller
0:30:03 companies and entrepreneurs keep on dwindling and the gap has only gotten worse.
0:30:12 What that creates now is an environment where fewer and fewer people of my son’s age, 26,
0:30:14 I talk to all his friends.
0:30:21 None of them see how they can go right now unless they’re in a select few, how they’re
0:30:24 going to make the American dream a reality.
0:30:28 What’s happening is we have outsourced so much to other countries.
0:30:34 So many of the fundamental middle class jobs that made America what it was, that we’re
0:30:41 collapsing that and now we’re getting more and more into a growing upper class and a
0:30:49 growing lower class with a completely shortened or eliminated middle class that was really
0:30:51 driving the country before.
0:30:57 Now, I believe that we are also on the cusp of a major change.
0:31:01 I think history repeats itself.
0:31:07 Just as you had people who had individual professions, whether it was a blacksmith back
0:31:13 in the day, a printer, something like that, I think we are going to have in the future
0:31:17 more people being solo entrepreneurs.
0:31:24 This is something I do agree with Dean on that because of technology, because of where
0:31:31 digital is going, et cetera, we have the opportunity to retrain people to be their own bosses.
0:31:35 I think more and more people can be solo entrepreneurs.
0:31:41 I really think that that’s where things could go and will go, especially as we’re faced
0:31:47 with more automation, AI, robotics, et cetera, displacing what is going to become hundreds
0:31:51 of millions of people over the next five to 10 years.
0:31:56 How does your concept of passion really relate to the fact that it seems like you’re trying
0:31:57 to create more entrepreneurs?
0:31:58 Yes.
0:32:06 I am trying to really say that what I found for my career, and I chose that path that
0:32:13 I’m describing, where I joined the big companies, I went for more of the comfort and the security
0:32:18 of having the check, of having the stability, that that is going to be harder and harder
0:32:25 to do for people in the future, because unless we change the way that companies are evaluating
0:32:29 how they’re viewed by shareholders and the boards that are running them, it’s really
0:32:35 driven by creating shareholder value, which you do by top line growth and eliminating
0:32:41 or impacting your bottom line and trying to take expenses out.
0:32:45 All the companies that I’ve ever been in, if we could eliminate headcount, which is the
0:32:53 biggest cost burden that you have in a company, you’re going to do it 99 times out of 100.
0:32:59 There are some companies, Accenture is a great example, where as they’re bringing AI into
0:33:07 Accenture, they’re trying to take the jobs that can be automated through AI and retrain
0:33:15 those positions that they’re really using the AI to make decisions and to really expand
0:33:17 the role of their jobs.
0:33:23 I think far and wide, more companies are going to use it just to take cost out of the businesses,
0:33:28 which means more people’s livelihoods are going to be at threat.
0:33:34 This is why I’m pushing people to wake up and realize that the one thing that we have
0:33:39 as being human beings that differentiates us from all the other species is that we are
0:33:43 really the ultimate learning machines.
0:33:49 We need to get into the habit of becoming constant learners to stay ahead of the digital
0:33:55 trends which are only going to grow faster and to reposition ourselves, as I was alluding
0:34:02 to earlier, in a way that instead of being at the mercy of a large company that we’re
0:34:08 working for, being a solo entrepreneur and really choosing our clientele that we want
0:34:15 to serve, so that if one would fire us for whatever reason, we have safety nets in place
0:34:18 that can protect us and our livelihood.
0:34:22 This reminds me about a chapter in your book about comfort.
0:34:25 You say that comfort is the enemy of adaptability.
0:34:30 Can you talk to us about this, why we need to be adaptable as entrepreneurs, and also
0:34:34 maybe some examples of people who have been adaptable and who have thrived?
0:34:38 The person I really speak about in this whole chapter is Jeff Bezos.
0:34:44 It’s interesting because when I started out this chapter, I originally wrote it about
0:34:46 originality.
0:34:52 Adaptability wasn’t part of it, but as I read the chapter and really thought about it and
0:34:58 what causes the people that we see who are passion-struck to excel, it’s really this
0:35:02 combination of originality with adaptability.
0:35:09 In this chapter, I really talk about Jeff’s journey through where he was himself being
0:35:13 an investor to wanting to start Amazon.
0:35:16 A lot of people think when you hear about Amazon, it doesn’t sound like an original
0:35:18 idea to me.
0:35:24 The original idea behind Amazon wasn’t being an online bookstore.
0:35:31 Amazon has already existed with Borders and Barnes & Noble to some point.
0:35:36 What Bezos really wanted to create was the everything store, but he was smart enough to
0:35:41 realize that if that is what his longer-term goal was, he had to have a starting point
0:35:47 that would allow him to enter the market at some point where consumers were used to doing
0:35:52 something, books, that he could do more efficiently on the internet.
0:35:56 By doing so, he could start perfecting his supply chain, et cetera.
0:36:01 I think the other original thing that people don’t really consider when they think about
0:36:07 Amazon is Amazon is really a data company, more than it is a retailer.
0:36:13 First, he started to grab data on individuals who, using the platform, he then created the
0:36:15 prime platform.
0:36:21 At the same time, they created AWS, which is now housing everyone’s data.
0:36:26 He was using that power of data to really power all the algorithms that were deciding
0:36:33 what products were being put in front of people and to really customize each person’s view.
0:36:40 Along this path of originality, he also had to adapt to competitors coming after him,
0:36:46 the biggest being Walmart earlier in his history, obviously the bookstores.
0:36:53 He had to adapt to regulators coming after him, people wanting to try to disrupt his
0:36:56 business model.
0:37:02 I think the way he ran the company, and it’s still being run this way, was phenomenal in
0:37:07 that he really started to create entrepreneurs within Amazon.
0:37:14 It’s a great case study of entrepreneurs in the way that he would have a need that he
0:37:20 saw and would farm it out to three or four different groups who didn’t know that they
0:37:24 were getting the same assignment and then have all of them come to him to give him the
0:37:32 most original idea with the most adaptable way to undertake it that Amazon could then
0:37:35 take, implement, and grow from.
0:37:41 I think Jeff Bezos is a great example of combining this originality with the adaptability that
0:37:47 you’re going to have to have in your life or your business, especially in the future.
0:37:53 The adaptability really harkens back to what I was talking about when I was describing
0:37:55 the need to reinvent yourself.
0:38:01 That reinvention and adapting to the way that the market and technology are unfolding is
0:38:06 going to be paramount to everyone who’s listening to this podcast.
0:38:10 This reminds me of a really famous quote by another awesome entrepreneur, Elon Musk.
0:38:15 He says, “Running a startup is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss.
0:38:19 After a while, you stop staring, but the glass chewing never ends.”
0:38:23 Really, what he means by this glass chewing is that as an entrepreneur, you always think
0:38:24 you got to be innovative.
0:38:25 You got to be creative.
0:38:26 You got to do new stuff.
0:38:30 You want the sexy thing, the exciting thing, but a lot of running your company is chewing
0:38:35 glass or doing the things that you know you have to do, the problem solving, adapting,
0:38:39 adaptability, having your nose to the ground, understanding what’s actually good for your
0:38:43 business, not just what’s new and exciting.
0:38:48 The other part, staring into the abyss, is really all about your facing extermination.
0:38:50 90% of startups fail.
0:38:51 You’re scared of failure.
0:38:56 Eventually, that goes away once you have more stability, but you’re always having to combat
0:38:57 the problems and chew glass.
0:39:03 Do you have any advice in terms of as entrepreneurs, how can we get better at chewing glass and
0:39:07 doing the things that we don’t necessarily want to do but have to do to run our business?
0:39:13 In the book, I highlight the story of Jim McKelvie.
0:39:19 For those who don’t know who Jim McKelvie is, people know his more famous other half
0:39:25 of Square, who started Twitter, Jack Dorsey, very well, but the two of them really started
0:39:32 Square off the back of Jim McKelvie’s journey of being a glassblower and having an expensive
0:39:38 piece of art that he wasn’t able to sell because he wasn’t able to accept the payment at the
0:39:41 time that the person wanted to buy it.
0:39:48 We started to think, “How could I disrupt the payment industry with a device?”
0:39:56 It’s a great story if you haven’t studied it of doing what you have exactly described.
0:40:00 Which you find a problem that’s worth solving.
0:40:07 When I talk to Jim and he describes all the people he’s tried to mentor into entrepreneurs,
0:40:13 one of the biggest reasons he says that they fail is because, as you describe, hardships
0:40:15 are going to come about.
0:40:19 You’re going to be in a state where you’re chewing more and more glass.
0:40:25 He says, “It’s during these times where people get distracted from solving the main thing
0:40:28 that was the whole genesis for them starting their journey.”
0:40:36 The further they waver from their focus on that main thing, the more times those companies
0:40:43 don’t achieve profitability or don’t achieve the outcome that they came into existence
0:40:45 trying to solve.
0:40:51 What I learned from that is really this whole thing that Stephen Covey talks about, that
0:40:55 the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
0:41:02 It really becomes an art of balancing what is important versus what is the most urgent
0:41:09 thing, and staying on top of that so that you’re not in a point where what becomes urgent
0:41:13 to you are the things that aren’t important, which makes you drift farther and farther
0:41:18 from the problem that you’re trying to solve to begin with.
0:41:25 In all these problems that entrepreneurs have to solve, it leads to a lot of stress, anxiety,
0:41:29 burnout, and you say the antidote to this is really perspective.
0:41:34 Can you talk to us about some of your guidance when it comes to having more perspective and
0:41:37 how that can reduce our anxiety and stress?
0:41:43 We live in a world since most of us are brought up in Western culture of looking at things
0:41:50 as black and white either/or, and so what this is causing is so many of us to live on
0:41:52 the extremes.
0:41:53 Is it left?
0:41:54 Is it right?
0:41:55 Are we right?
0:41:56 Are we wrong?
0:42:03 What this chapter in my book is really about is exploring more Eastern philosophy of both
0:42:07 and thinking, of paradoxical thinking.
0:42:12 The person I highlight in this chapter is a dear friend of mine, Chris Cassidy.
0:42:14 Chris Backstory.
0:42:17 We graduated together from the Naval Academy.
0:42:24 He became an Navy SEAL and then was selected into NASA and was eventually the chief astronaut
0:42:26 for NASA.
0:42:31 But I remember interviewing Chris for the book and we were talking about his time at
0:42:37 basic underwater demolition school, BUDS, when he was learning to become and training
0:42:38 to become a SEAL.
0:42:44 He was talking about at the Naval Academy it was difficult enough to get from one activity
0:42:53 to a next, but when you’re in BUDS, especially during Hell Week, it becomes almost unthinkable
0:42:55 how you’re going to get through it.
0:43:03 He said he started to learn that instead of looking at the boundaries, meaning can I get
0:43:09 through this or can’t I get through this, he started to look at the both and in it.
0:43:16 He started to see that life could very much resemble a rubber band and time could be expanded
0:43:20 or extracted depending upon what you were going through.
0:43:26 He said during periods of hardships, he started to get the perspective that all I need to
0:43:33 do is hold on for five more minutes, or all I need to do is hold on for another 45 minutes
0:43:35 and we’re going to break for lunch.
0:43:40 All I need to do then is to get through the next evolution so that I can make it to dinner
0:43:42 and go home.
0:43:50 Then there were times when it could expand when he was experiencing flow state and time
0:43:56 could be a weapon in your arsenal where you could use it to really take on a different
0:43:58 meaning in what you were doing.
0:44:04 He described to me as he was sitting there during Hell Week and they were freezing and
0:44:10 just wanting to give up that there was an exchange officer who happened to be from Thailand
0:44:17 who was there who, even though everyone else was in a difficult situation, this person
0:44:25 had virtually no body fat and he just saw the person just buckling and just using every
0:44:31 ounce that they had to stay in the moment and to use their mind to battle through it.
0:44:38 He said that’s where this whole concept of this rubber band and expandability or extraction
0:44:44 really came into being because he thought if that Thai officer has the brain power and
0:44:50 willingness and mindset to get through this, then I can too and so can the men who are
0:44:52 with me.
0:44:58 It’s really just a different way of looking at our circumstances and thinking about it
0:45:04 in a different paradoxical way, which becomes a different perspective for how we get through
0:45:10 challenges or struggles that we encounter or how we use the good times as a glide path
0:45:13 to do more with.
0:45:21 It reminds me a lot about Ethan Cross’ self-distancing guidance, the fact that if you have anxiety,
0:45:26 if you’re struggling, thinking of yourself in the third person can help, talking to yourself
0:45:31 in the third person and then also something he talks about called the Batman effect, which
0:45:36 is basically having some alter ego where you think of yourself as a superhero who has all
0:45:40 the strengths, where you’re weak and what would they do in that situation.
0:45:45 So that reminds me of what you were just explaining with the rubber band because in the moments
0:45:50 of being expansive, you might be just trying to figure out what would your greater self
0:45:52 do in this situation to get out of it.
0:45:53 Is that right?
0:45:54 If I understand that correctly?
0:45:55 Yeah, it is.
0:45:59 And I’m glad you brought up Ethan because he’s a good friend of mine and his book chatter
0:46:00 is great.
0:46:04 But yes, I mean, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
0:46:09 And it also leads into another thing that I often talk about is what ends up happening
0:46:19 to us is we become our own visionary arsonist, we end up arsoning the very goals and ambitions
0:46:26 that we want to have in life because of our own self image that we have of ourselves that
0:46:27 we cannot do it.
0:46:33 So we put roadblocks in the way almost unintentionally at times or they seem unintentionally, but
0:46:38 they’re all intentional and we vision the very things that we want to accomplish.
0:46:40 That’s another way of looking at that.
0:46:43 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:50:54 Okay, so I want to get into some leadership stuff, because you have some really great
0:50:57 leadership advice in the book.
0:51:01 One of the things that I really liked is this phrase you have, “Think with your feet.”
0:51:06 I can’t wait to use this moving forward, because I lead a team of like 60 people, and I just
0:51:08 feel like I’ll always remember it, think with my feet.
0:51:10 Can you talk to us about what that means?
0:51:16 The origin of this is I had a great mentor, Jay Skabinski, who was my CIO when I was at
0:51:24 Lenlice, and Jay was really trying to take on a lot of projects that were going to change
0:51:25 the company.
0:51:31 But many of these things were initiatives that the people who had been there for a while
0:51:33 didn’t want to undertake.
0:51:38 But what happens, and I think we see this all the time, is you go into these meetings,
0:51:43 and he was good about getting everyone globally, because Lenlice was a global company together
0:51:50 into a room to discuss what we were going to do, and then have everyone go out there
0:51:53 after they’re nodding in unison and accomplish it.
0:51:59 He said to me, after one of these offsite meetings that we had where we had flown everyone
0:52:04 in, he goes, “I want you to watch people over the next couple of weeks.”
0:52:09 He goes, “Because you’re going to see pretty clearly who is speaking with their mouth and
0:52:12 who is speaking with their feet.”
0:52:13 He was so right.
0:52:18 There were so many of them who came into that meeting and were just nodding approval.
0:52:22 And then the second that they left, they were doing everything in their power to thwart
0:52:24 the success of the project.
0:52:29 And then you had people who were speaking in their feet in the opposite direction, who
0:52:33 were coming out of the meeting and doing everything that they could to move the project
0:52:34 forward.
0:52:41 And it is such an interesting way that people live their lives, whether it’s in a business
0:52:51 setting or even doing a self-help exercise where you see someone like Tony Robbins talk
0:52:55 about something on the screen, and you say you’re going to do it, but then your actions
0:52:59 go in the exact opposite of doing them.
0:53:05 And so you were actually speaking with your feet by not pursuing that thing that you signed
0:53:07 up in your mind to do.
0:53:11 So that’s really what speaking with your feet is all about.
0:53:15 I love that, “think with your feet, lead with your feet, speak with your feet.”
0:53:16 It’s so true.
0:53:18 You’ve got to actually lead by example.
0:53:23 You also talk about the need to practice eyes on, hands off in leadership.
0:53:24 Can you talk about that?
0:53:31 Yeah, where this really came from was I was having a discussion with General Stan McChrystal
0:53:35 and also Keith Crotch, who I referenced earlier.
0:53:40 And I realized that what I was trained to be throughout most of my career was a servant
0:53:41 leader.
0:53:45 And there’s nothing wrong with servant leadership that served me extremely well.
0:53:53 However, when I think of servant leadership, it really does revolve around being more hands
0:53:55 on with our employees.
0:54:00 And I think with the way that companies are operating, more and more people are working
0:54:02 outside of the office.
0:54:07 We have more people in other countries who are part of the teams, et cetera.
0:54:13 And so as I was thinking about this, I thought that we needed a new leadership paradigm that
0:54:18 I call Gardner Leadership, which is really leading with intention.
0:54:24 Because just as a gardener nurtures their crops, a gardener leader intentionally nurtures
0:54:26 their team’s growth.
0:54:33 And it’s really doing so in this eyes on, hands off approach, where the leader becomes
0:54:40 informed without micromanaging, which is so critical in today’s innovation driven workplaces.
0:54:46 So this eyes on, hands off to put this into perspective.
0:54:51 And just since I brought up General McChrystal, I’ll use a military example of this.
0:54:56 So imagine him as the leader who’s in charge of all forces in Afghanistan.
0:55:03 And he’s got a team of rangers who’s trying to take an al-Qaeda position or a Taliban
0:55:08 position on a mountainside that’s 1,500 miles away from him.
0:55:15 There is no way that he is going to be able to micromanage what is happening on that operation
0:55:18 because he’s not there, he’s not a part of it.
0:55:25 So what he can do is he can be eyes on from the standpoint of observing what they’re doing,
0:55:30 giving them the best training that he possibly could, making sure that they understand the
0:55:35 rules of engagement, the parameters of the mission, what their expectations are.
0:55:41 But then he needs to be hands off, realizing that he’s given them all that information
0:55:43 and training.
0:55:50 And in the moment where they’re experiencing what the enemy is doing, letting them make
0:55:57 split-moment decisions on the battlefield and being eyes on but hands off in dictating
0:56:04 what their behaviors are, it’s the same thing that happens on the workplace where you have
0:56:10 a gifted software developer, oftentimes we want to micromanage the results that we get
0:56:17 out of the developer and what I’m saying is, in the same way, we need to give him or her
0:56:23 the parameters of what we want accomplished but be hands off and letting them use their
0:56:29 creativity and innovation to develop the best way to approach it and to create the results
0:56:31 that we’re looking for.
0:56:32 Such good advice.
0:56:38 And I want to go back to chewing glass a bit because as leaders, as entrepreneurs, we’re
0:56:44 always competing with long-term vision and what we want to do in the future as well as
0:56:49 all the short-term needs and all the problems, you give a really good framework called the
0:56:51 turtle and bee effect.
0:56:55 Can you talk to us about that and how that can help us plan and be more effective leaders?
0:57:00 Yeah, well, I’m glad you brought this up because you used Elon Musk’s quote to describe this
0:57:04 in this chapter is really about Elon Musk.
0:57:10 So something that I found out about him from a long-term mentor of mine, astronaut Wendy
0:57:17 Lawrence, was that when the space shuttle was going away and President Bush put out the
0:57:23 elective through NASA that companies could bid on this, not only was SpaceX at the time
0:57:30 a startup, but they were the only one who bid both on crew delivery and supply delivery,
0:57:37 meaning they decided that if they could attack both with the same rocket, the same capsule
0:57:44 parameters, that they might start out a little bit behind the competition.
0:57:50 But over time, they would position themselves to be so far in the forefront, which is exactly
0:57:52 what we’re seeing today.
0:57:56 But at the time it happened, it was an extremely risky move.
0:58:03 But Musk used the same thing in how he angled for this that he’s used to pursue everything
0:58:09 that he’s done, and you’ve got to think about what he is really trying to do if you ask
0:58:11 him is to save humanity from itself.
0:58:16 He thinks that eventually we’re going to have to get off a planet Earth, and in order to
0:58:21 do that and survive on another planet, you’re going to have to perfect different things.
0:58:25 You’re going to have to have a way to get there, of course, but you’re also going to
0:58:30 need to learn how to harness electricity in a different way and to store it differently.
0:58:37 You’re going to have to learn how to go under Earth in order to create civilizations because
0:58:42 we can’t survive on top of the planet, which is his boring company.
0:58:48 And so the way that he does all these different things, whether it’s creating the solar cells,
0:58:57 the cars, SpaceX, is he looks at the long-term strategy of saving humanity from itself,
0:59:05 which is akin to the tortoise who takes very slow logical steps on its path to achieving
0:59:06 its ultimate goal.
0:59:13 But then in the day-to-day moments, in operating these different ventures, he’s acting more
0:59:19 like the bee, where the bee’s purpose is to serve the queen and the hive, and they are
0:59:26 very much about doing whatever they have to do in the present moment to achieve what needs
0:59:27 to be done.
0:59:34 So the real art here becomes how do you combine the best virtues of a bee with the best virtues
0:59:40 of the tortoise so that your actions that you’re doing in the micro moments that make
0:59:47 up your day are leading you towards where you want to go to fulfill your long-term aspirations,
0:59:54 but you’re doing it in the daily repetition or daily movements of meeting your midterm
0:59:56 ambitions.
0:59:59 And so that’s what the bee internal effect is really about.
1:00:04 It’s how do you use deliberate action, whether you’re in a business setting or a personal
1:00:11 setting, to take the actions that you want to align your values and your workload to
1:00:16 your shorter-term ambitions while pursuing your long-term aspirations.
1:00:18 I love everything that you just broke down there.
1:00:19 I love the story with Elon Musk.
1:00:23 So we’ve mentioned a lot of entrepreneurs in this episode.
1:00:26 I feel like we name dropped like 50 people.
1:00:29 One person we didn’t talk about was Steve Jobs.
1:00:34 And you draw a really cool story of him in your book where you talk about his ability
1:00:37 to overcome the fear of being wrong.
1:00:40 And as entrepreneurs, we’re risk takers.
1:00:42 We have to be creating new things.
1:00:46 There’s a lot of failure involved and a fear of being wrong.
1:00:51 So can you talk to us about how we can get better at this fear of failure?
1:00:57 Yeah, I picked Steve Jobs because he’s a very recognizable name.
1:01:04 And people often see the output of what he created at Apple without really analyzing
1:01:11 the backstory of all the things that he had to overcome to have that success.
1:01:17 And one thing I have found, and this is really about being a boundary magnifier, is sometimes
1:01:20 being right means being alone.
1:01:29 And in the case of Jobs, he felt so passionate that the right path for Apple was the path
1:01:36 that he was advocating for, that he was willing to give up his role there as CEO because he
1:01:38 was so passionate about it.
1:01:43 And it’s something that I found in my own career in multiple circumstances.
1:01:48 And I’m sure it’s something that many of the listeners have found themselves in too.
1:01:55 Sometimes we’re asked to do things in our jobs that go against who we are, what our
1:01:59 values are, what we think is the right thing to do.
1:02:06 And so often we lean into what the popular thing is to do or what’s going to bring job
1:02:09 safety instead of doing the right thing.
1:02:14 And this chapter is really that on your entrepreneurial journey or your business journey, you’re
1:02:21 going to be encountered with many circumstances, we’re doing the right thing, and embodying
1:02:26 your values means that sometimes you’re going to be standing alone in your convictions to
1:02:27 do it.
1:02:30 And that’s exactly what we saw with Steve Jobs.
1:02:35 And not only did he leave the company with those convictions, but he doubled down on
1:02:37 that vision.
1:02:41 And that’s what eventually brought him back and led him to creating the Apple that we
1:02:45 see today and the legacy that he left behind.
1:02:48 Well, John, this was such an amazing conversation.
1:02:49 I’d love to have you on the show.
1:02:52 I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests.
1:02:57 So the first one, and you can answer this however you’d like, can be about today’s topic.
1:03:00 It could just be whatever comes to your mind.
1:03:05 What is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more profitable
1:03:06 tomorrow?
1:03:10 So one thing I love to tell people is that when you get up in the morning, you should
1:03:17 look at yourself and the image that is shining back at you and realize that that person is
1:03:21 the most incredible person on earth that you are ever going to meet.
1:03:26 Now, you also have to come to the realization as you’re looking at that person that they’re
1:03:31 also the most self-critical person you’re ever going to meet.
1:03:38 And so really, your battle to greatness is really the battle between those two dimensions
1:03:39 of yourself.
1:03:46 And it’s really mastering wearing the true you, the true authentic you that realizes
1:03:53 the capabilities and the gifts that you have and that you were put here to do something
1:03:55 that only you can do on earth.
1:04:00 And your goal should be finding out what that is, the problem you’re called to solve, and
1:04:03 then doing it to better humanity.
1:04:04 So good.
1:04:06 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:04:12 And this can, of course, be on just financial profiting in all the different ways of life.
1:04:19 When I was at that tail end of Lowe’s going into Dell, I happened to come out of that
1:04:26 time and met with a psychologist who had me analyze my life by picturing myself sitting
1:04:28 on a kitchen bar stool.
1:04:34 And what I realized is that although I was on that stool, the supports underneath it
1:04:36 weren’t in balance.
1:04:42 For me, the constant grind had become overwhelmingly a greater support than every other one in
1:04:44 my life.
1:04:48 And whether it’s the constant grind or something else, I think we need to ask ourselves are
1:04:51 our lives truly in balance.
1:04:56 And going back to Benjamin Hardy, what he got me to do is to picture myself sitting on
1:05:02 the stool that my future self would want to sit on if I could become my ideal self.
1:05:06 And if I did so, what would those supports look like?
1:05:11 And what would I need to do to go from the way it looked today to the way that I wanted
1:05:13 to look in the future?
1:05:18 And I think that that’s an exercise that all the listeners should go through.
1:05:23 And a great way to think about this, if it seems like it’s too difficult to go from point
1:05:28 A to point B, is to do a reverse bucket list.
1:05:29 And that is look at your life.
1:05:34 And instead of examining all the things that you want to accomplish, look at all the things
1:05:39 that you have already accomplished that you never thought would have been possible.
1:05:44 And to use those to gain the confidence to understand that you can change the parameters
1:05:49 of what’s underneath your stool to whatever you want it to be in the future.
1:05:50 Such good advice.
1:05:52 I really, really love that analogy.
1:05:56 John, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:06:04 If you want to learn more about me personally, you can go to my website, johnrmiddleinitialmiles.com.
1:06:08 If you want to learn more about Passionstruck, the podcast, the book, what the company is
1:06:11 doing, you can go to passionstruck.com.
1:06:12 Awesome, John.
1:06:16 Thank you so much for joining Young and Profiting Podcast.
1:06:17 Thank you so much.
1:06:28 And it’s such an honor to be here.
1:06:30 [Music]
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0:01:13 900 million people in 142 countries feel unfulfilled in what they do.
0:01:17 How many of us are intentional about where we want to take our lives?
0:01:23 We pursue what we should do for a career versus what’s really driving the passion inside of
0:01:24 us.
0:01:30 And when we chase the money, the possessions, and we realize that none of that is bringing
0:01:36 us fulfillment or happiness, we’re left with this profound sense of quiet desperation.
0:01:39 Passionstruck is really about how do you close that gap.
0:01:58 Young Improfiters, do you ever feel stuck?
0:02:00 Do you feel like you’re just settling for good enough?
0:02:05 Do you feel like you really haven’t found your North Star in your life or your career?
0:02:09 Well, today we’re going to talk all about passion and purpose.
0:02:13 Joining us on the podcast today is John R. Miles, who has followed his passions throughout
0:02:21 his career, going from the U.S. Navy to becoming a C-suite executive in top Fortune 500 companies,
0:02:25 to now being an accomplished podcaster and new author.
0:02:30 He’s got a new book called Passionstruck, 12 Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose
0:02:32 and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life.
0:02:35 John, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast.
0:02:38 Hala, thank you so much for having me.
0:02:42 Your show is incredible, and it’s an honor to be here to serve your community.
0:02:44 I’m so excited for this conversation.
0:02:46 I think it’s going to be so valuable for everyone.
0:02:49 So I want to just dive in right into the meat and potatoes of today’s interview, which
0:02:53 is all about becoming Passionstruck.
0:02:55 So you’ve got this very popular podcast called Passionstruck.
0:02:57 I always see you around the charts.
0:03:01 You’re doing an incredible job teaching people about entrepreneurship and how to have purpose
0:03:02 and passion.
0:03:05 You also have a new book called Passionstruck.
0:03:09 And so I’m curious to understand, what does Passionstruck mean to you, and why are you
0:03:12 so compelled to teach on the topic?
0:03:16 I love this question, and thank you for it, and I’ll give you the origin story.
0:03:23 So first to answer it, Passionstruck is about having an intense, what I say, almost inexplorable
0:03:29 drive to mold one’s life in the pursuit of becoming our ideal self.
0:03:36 Now this phrase wasn’t even in my vocabulary up until about four years ago.
0:03:43 And as I was on my own journey of how do I cross the gap from where I was, which is
0:03:49 really in the state of being my odd self, to going on my own journey of trying to become
0:03:56 my ideal self, I started studying luminaries, many that people on the show will have heard
0:04:02 of, people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oprah, et cetera.
0:04:10 And I started to wonder in my research, what allowed them to break through and to themselves
0:04:17 reach this state where they are willing to put it all on the line with the goal of taking
0:04:22 on a problem that they see so inherently needs to be solved that they’re willing to devote
0:04:23 themselves to it.
0:04:28 And I was talking to a friend of mine, Keith Crotch, he founded a company named Arriba,
0:04:32 was the CEO of DocuSign in case people have heard of his name before.
0:04:38 And he says to me, “Well, it sounds like what’s happening is you’re going from being stuck
0:04:41 in your life to becoming Passionstruck.”
0:04:48 And that phrase just hit me and from that point forward, I knew it was the one that
0:04:53 I was destined to use, but I really feared it wasn’t going to be available until I found
0:04:57 it that it was miraculously on GoDaddy.
0:04:58 I love that.
0:05:03 And here you are now, this whole journey, ten-year journey of working on Passionstruck.
0:05:05 So you have a really impressive background.
0:05:10 You started in the military, in the Navy, you went into corporate, you had C-suite roles,
0:05:16 senior executive roles at big companies like Lowe’s and SwissWatch, very, very impressive.
0:05:21 And I’d love to understand throughout all these phases of your journey, were you Passionstruck,
0:05:24 were you more Passionstruck in one experience than another experience?
0:05:27 I’d love to learn a little bit more about your career journey in that way.
0:05:34 One of the things I talk about a lot on the podcast and in the book is this need to reinvent
0:05:35 ourselves.
0:05:39 And I think it’s something that more and more people are going to experience on a faster
0:05:41 pace than even I did.
0:05:47 But I went through periods of my career, some of them self-induced, some of them induced
0:05:53 by external circumstances where I found myself needing to reinvent myself.
0:05:56 Coming out of the Naval Academy, I was absolutely Passionstruck.
0:06:02 I had been selected as one of only a few people who got a coveted billet to go work for the
0:06:05 National Security Agency.
0:06:10 And the backstory for me is I had always wanted to be a Navy SEAL, but I had some traumatic
0:06:17 brain injuries when I was playing rugby that precluded me medically from going that path.
0:06:24 But being an officer, especially working for the NSA, it’s kind of like being the CFO
0:06:28 in a company or the head of HR, where you cut across all the different disciplines of
0:06:29 a company.
0:06:33 I got to do the same thing when it came to the Navy and Marine Corps.
0:06:41 And so I was able to not only get the opportunity to work directly with SEALs, and I was assigned
0:06:43 to Naval Special War for Unit 10.
0:06:51 But I also got to deploy on aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, aircraft,
0:06:57 and really had a very fun Passionstruck part of my life.
0:06:59 And I wanted that to continue.
0:07:03 And so when I got out of the military, I did so only because I’d gotten an appointment
0:07:06 to become an FBI agent.
0:07:11 And I’m literally Thursday or Friday the week before I’m supposed to report on a Monday.
0:07:17 I just left military service when I get a call from my Detailer telling me, John, Congress
0:07:19 can’t pass the budget.
0:07:21 Your class, unfortunately, has been recycled.
0:07:27 My naive sense is thinking, OK, I’ll go back in a couple months.
0:07:32 What I found out in a couple months was that it was literally going to be three to four
0:07:33 years later.
0:07:35 And so I quickly had to pivot.
0:07:41 This led me to join Booz Allen, a management consulting firm, which turned out to be a
0:07:42 blessing in disguise.
0:07:49 It was such a great transition for me because they had a lot of military veterans and knew
0:07:51 how to transition them.
0:07:54 And then I went from there to Anderson Consulting.
0:07:59 And so that was a really passion-struck period of my time learning the corporate world and
0:08:03 really changing my trajectory from where I thought it was going to go.
0:08:08 And then I would say I faced another pivot that I never expected.
0:08:15 When I was at Anderson, we had about half our office dedicated to supporting Enron.
0:08:20 And when Enron had their terrible fall, so did Anderson.
0:08:25 And so I found myself in a matter of weeks, again, pivoting, having to reinvent myself.
0:08:31 And this time, I went into the Fortune 500 world first as a chief information security
0:08:36 officer, then went to Lowe’s, then eventually to Dell.
0:08:41 And during that journey, I was absolutely passion-struck until I would say the tail end
0:08:48 of Lowe’s going into Dell, where I really found myself starting to experience being in
0:08:54 this quandary that Henry David Thoreau describes as quiet desperation, where I really found
0:08:57 myself stuck down a career path.
0:09:01 That looking back, I never expected myself to take.
0:09:06 And now I couldn’t seem to pull myself from its grasp.
0:09:13 And that really led me into a period of soul-searching where I wasn’t passion-struck on the journey
0:09:19 to finding myself again and eventually creating this brand at the back end of it.
0:09:21 As you were talking, I had an idea come to my head.
0:09:23 I don’t know if you already say this.
0:09:26 You can be passion-struck or you can be passion-stuck, right?
0:09:30 And it just really depends how you’re feeling throughout your career.
0:09:31 So talk to us.
0:09:33 What are some of the feelings of feeling passion-struck?
0:09:37 What do you feel when you’re in the zone, you’re passion-struck?
0:09:43 You have this deep, exceeded desire that goes beyond ambition.
0:09:48 It’s this relentless quest for growth, for impact, fulfillment.
0:09:55 It’s the kind of passion that transforms anything that you face into stepping stones of growth
0:09:58 and really discovery.
0:10:03 And in order to do this, there are a number of mindset shifts and behavior shifts that
0:10:06 are required to achieve this state.
0:10:11 And it’s fundamentally rewiring how we think, how we feel, and act.
0:10:20 And most importantly, intentionally aligning our values with our long-term ambitions and
0:10:27 aspirations and making sure that they are all interconnected, not as it often happens
0:10:29 where they’re independent variables.
0:10:32 So you were alluding to this.
0:10:36 At the end of your corporate career at Lowe’s, you started to feel stuck.
0:10:39 And I learned that something really triggered this.
0:10:41 It was a couple of traumatic experiences.
0:10:46 You actually were faced with an armed robber in your house, and you had a gun pointed to
0:10:47 your head.
0:10:49 And at that point, everything changed for you.
0:10:53 So talk to us about that moment, some of the events that happened that led you to eventually
0:10:57 become an entrepreneur and what you were feeling that day.
0:10:58 Yeah.
0:11:02 So this was just a normal Tuesday.
0:11:08 And I was in my normal routine, took my daughter to school, went to the gym.
0:11:10 At this time, I was going to Orange Theory.
0:11:15 And then something happened that was completely out of normal.
0:11:20 We had an electrical fire at the gym that started in their air conditioning systems
0:11:25 that forced me to go home earlier than I typically would have.
0:11:33 Unbeknownst to me, the person who ended up confronting me had been canvassing my whereabouts
0:11:35 and looking at my patterns.
0:11:40 And it used this moment when they knew I would be away to come into the house.
0:11:47 And so I walked in on them unexpectedly for them and unexpectedly for me.
0:11:51 And you’d kind of get that feeling in the back of your mind that something’s just not
0:11:52 right.
0:11:57 And I had gotten in the house to change clothes so I could do a different workout routine.
0:12:02 And when I went up the stairs, was confronted with that burglar pointing what turns out to
0:12:04 be my own handgun at me.
0:12:10 And when that happens, I don’t care whether it’s in combat or in this situation, you’re
0:12:12 forced into a decision.
0:12:17 Either you’re going to charge up the stairs and try to take them out and there’s probably
0:12:23 a low likelihood of having a positive outcome without yourself being shot.
0:12:28 Or there’s how do you elude this threat to live another day?
0:12:36 And in the split second that I had chose that second option and was able to elude them and
0:12:37 get out of there.
0:12:44 And I guess the double whammy of what I experienced was just a few days later, I remember spending
0:12:48 the weekend with my really good friend, Tim, talking about all that had happened.
0:12:50 I was starting to process it.
0:12:57 Monday morning comes around, I’m in New York, ready to do some interviewing and a keynote.
0:13:01 When my phone starts blowing up, I answer it and it turns out that my friend Tim, who
0:13:06 had been there to comfort me, had committed suicide.
0:13:12 And so in a matter of five or six days, I had these two traumatic events really hit
0:13:20 me and it caused me to just awaken inside and realize that my life could have been over.
0:13:28 Tim’s life just ended, I need to rethink everything I’m doing and to chart a new course.
0:13:35 So that was really the impetus for me then spending a couple of years really doing profound
0:13:38 introspection into how I wanted to transform my life.
0:13:43 I want to stick on this a bit because I feel like it’s so important for us to be the best
0:13:45 versions of ourselves.
0:13:50 We really need to think positively about our past and reframe our past.
0:13:56 And I know that you had a lot of self-blame turn up after these events.
0:14:01 Can you talk to us about some of the self-blame you were facing and how you were able to reframe
0:14:03 your past a bit to move forward?
0:14:04 Yeah.
0:14:08 So this is something I really talk about in the first principle in my book, which I call
0:14:15 “Becoming a Mission Angler.” And the origin of this phrase, “Mission Angler,” is I wanted
0:14:22 to pick phrases or metaphors that people could understand so when they read the chapters
0:14:25 or heard about them, they would remember them.
0:14:31 So where I live here in Tampa Bay, we live in some of the best fishing area in the world.
0:14:37 And my friends who are really master anglers, they don’t just get on the boat on the weekend,
0:14:43 in any direction at any time, and just go and hope they’re going to catch fish.
0:14:49 They go out with a very disciplined, intentional plan of knowing what’s in season, knowing
0:14:56 where it’s located, knowing the tides, knowing the moon phases, et cetera, and being extremely
0:14:59 intentional about their pursuit.
0:15:04 But how many of us in our own lives are that intentional about where we want to take our
0:15:09 lives? And in my case, it wasn’t only finding that direction.
0:15:13 There was also a huge gap that I had.
0:15:19 And this was a gap where earlier in my life, I had experienced profound trauma, both as
0:15:26 a child in combat and then later on in my life as we had just discussed.
0:15:33 And for me, it was really dealing with this trauma that I had put aside, because when I
0:15:39 was growing up, and especially when I was in the military, we were told to suppress it,
0:15:43 to not bring it up, you’re going to lose your security clearances, people weren’t going
0:15:50 to respect you, this PTSD that everyone keeps talking about doesn’t really exist, et cetera.
0:15:55 And so all this stuff from earlier in my life, I had buried deep down.
0:16:00 And when these two incidents happened in that short period of time, not only did it
0:16:06 on Earth, I guess the emotions from those two circumstances, but it brought up everything
0:16:07 in my past.
0:16:13 So as I looked at becoming this mission angler in my life, I realized that there was this
0:16:15 gap that I had to cross.
0:16:19 And Dr. Benjamin Hardy writes about this in his book, “The Gap vs. the Gain.”
0:16:27 And so much in our life, we think about ourselves and we compare ourselves to other people.
0:16:33 And when we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others, we actually find ourselves in the
0:16:34 gap.
0:16:39 It would be like you or I trying to compare ourselves as podcasters to the success of
0:16:41 Joe Rogan.
0:16:45 If we do that, we’re constantly going to be in the gap.
0:16:50 Whereas the gain is where we’re looking at where we are in our life compared to where
0:16:54 we were in the past and the incremental gains that we’re making.
0:17:01 And so for me to cross this chasm of where I had been, which was living out, if you look
0:17:08 at self discrepancy theory, my “ought self,” which is who I thought I should be, I wanted
0:17:11 to get to who I could be, which was my ideal self.
0:17:16 And the starting point for that was dealing with unresolved trauma.
0:17:24 And so after I experienced those two things, I then went through two years of just intense
0:17:32 cognitive processing therapy, EMDR, prolonged exposure therapy, and a number of other modalities
0:17:36 to start working on getting rid of those stuck points that were holding me back.
0:17:41 And one thing that I like to tell people is that we have to have a fixed point that we
0:17:42 start from.
0:17:49 And when we start mastering it, that’s when it opens up opportunities for us to pursue
0:17:54 other areas in our lives where we can also change the course of our lives, whether it’s
0:17:59 our health, our relationships, our career, our finances, et cetera.
0:18:01 I love that you brought up Benjamin Hardy.
0:18:06 He is one of my favorite guests who’s been on the show three times, and you brought up
0:18:07 the gap in the game.
0:18:10 It’s so true when we’re living to these ideals.
0:18:14 For example, I want to become as successful as Joe Rogan.
0:18:18 And every time you reach another level in your career, that target just keeps moving,
0:18:20 moving, moving, moving.
0:18:22 And you never actually reach that target.
0:18:27 And so if you’re always comparing yourself to the future version that you want to be
0:18:32 or the person that you want to be like a competitor, like you were saying, you’re really just in
0:18:37 that gap rather than being in the game, which is measuring yourself against your past.
0:18:41 The other thing that Benjamin Hardy talks about is becoming your future you and the
0:18:44 fact that you’re not even your past self anymore.
0:18:49 You’re not the same person that you were last week, let alone last year, let alone 10 years
0:18:50 ago.
0:18:57 So you have permission to forgive your past self, to reinvent your past story, and your
0:19:02 memory is, and your narrative of your past is constantly changing.
0:19:05 So he applies the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle, to your past.
0:19:08 80% of your past probably doesn’t serve you.
0:19:10 So what is holding you back?
0:19:15 How can you reframe your past so that you can move forward and attract more of what you
0:19:19 want to be in the future and be more like the future self that you want to be?
0:19:21 So I love that you brought up Benjamin Hardy.
0:19:22 He’s great.
0:19:26 He’s been on my show as well and that whole mission angler and what I was talking about
0:19:31 with self discrepancy theory is really what he talks about in future self.
0:19:37 It’s really how do you rebuild this image of yourself, this ideal self that you want
0:19:43 to create as your future self and do it in a way where you’re not looking back on your
0:19:50 past and the mistakes that you’ve made, rather you’re looking at yourself anew at the opportunities
0:19:53 you have to pursue becoming who you would like to be.
0:19:54 Okay.
0:19:56 So let’s move on to your new book, Passionstrike.
0:20:00 You quote Henry David Thoreau at the start of your book and argue that most people today
0:20:03 lead lives of quiet desperation.
0:20:08 So why do you think most people are hesitant to pursue their own dreams and passions?
0:20:12 Well, I think it’s we get stuck in becoming our odd self.
0:20:22 We get stuck in this life oftentimes where we pursue what we should do for a career versus
0:20:26 what’s really driving the passion inside of us.
0:20:30 And the farther we get into these careers, I call them portfolio careers, the harder
0:20:36 it is to change because all of a sudden now we have the car we drive, the house we live
0:20:43 in, the financial commodities that we’ve built up, the social standing, the family we’re
0:20:44 supporting.
0:20:49 And we start seeing that gap between where we are and where we want to be and it keeps
0:20:50 growing.
0:20:55 And we’re so comfortable in the life that we’re in that it just compounds itself.
0:21:01 And what ends up happening over time though is we start realizing that the things that
0:21:05 we thought were bringing us joy bring us anything but.
0:21:11 And we wind up feeling more and more like we wake up in the morning and that the actions
0:21:14 we’re taking, they just don’t matter.
0:21:18 We don’t matter and our lives don’t hold significance.
0:21:25 And I think that’s exactly what Henry David Thoreau was talking about when we chase these
0:21:31 extrinsic things that life teases us with, that we think are going to bring us joy,
0:21:36 the titles, the money, the possessions, whatever have you.
0:21:42 And we realize when we get there that none of that amassive wealth that we’ve had is
0:21:46 bringing us fulfillment or happiness, et cetera.
0:21:52 And then we’re left with this profound sense of emptiness or as he calls it, quiet desperation.
0:21:56 And if you look at Gallup, it’s a clear indication that this is going on.
0:22:03 Their surveys evaluated 1.3 billion people across the world and they found that 900 million
0:22:07 people in 142 countries feel unfulfilled in what they do.
0:22:13 And another thing I’d like to cite here is research from Tom Gillovich, who’s a psychologist
0:22:17 at Cornell who’s been studying people and what causes their regrets.
0:22:24 And what he found was an astounding 76% of people that he surveyed in their third trimester
0:22:29 of life all cited that their biggest regrets stem from the same thing.
0:22:32 It’s not the mistakes that they made in life.
0:22:40 It was not pursuing the what-ifs, the should-haves, not going after becoming their ideal self.
0:22:45 And it mirrors what Gallup found and it mirrors what David Thoreau says.
0:22:49 So then passion struck is really about how do you close that gap?
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0:27:53 I love that, and thank you for sharing all that data.
0:27:58 I’m curious to understand how you feel about the state of the American dream.
0:28:03 I know you mentioned it in your book, and I had Dean Graziozian and people like Harley
0:28:09 Finkelstein from Shopify, and they all believe that American dream is live and well.
0:28:11 It’s no better time to be an entrepreneur.
0:28:15 Lots of people are able to explore their passions because of the internet and the abundance
0:28:17 of the internet and things like that.
0:28:22 I’m curious to understand how you feel about entrepreneurship and the American dream and
0:28:24 the state of everything right now.
0:28:28 Well, I respect all the people that you just said very much.
0:28:34 However, I completed and wholeheartedly disagree on the state of affairs.
0:28:36 Dean’s got a couple of younger kids.
0:28:40 I happen to have a couple of kids who are 20 and 26.
0:28:45 We’re a little bit further ahead of them and are experiencing the world right now head
0:28:46 on.
0:28:53 I have to tell you, if you look at the data and you look at what I put in my book, entrepreneurship,
0:28:59 the pursuit of small business, has been on a three-decade decline, not only in the United
0:29:02 States but in most of Western civilization.
0:29:08 There’s almost this inverse ratio of people going into large companies instead of pursuing
0:29:13 the entrepreneurial path that really took the United States coming out of World War
0:29:16 II to the precipice of greatness.
0:29:21 Fewer and fewer people are going down the path of entrepreneurship or taking the risk
0:29:23 of doing something on their own.
0:29:29 It’s easy to see why because you come out of an MBA at Harvard and you’re offered the
0:29:36 opportunity to go into a hedge fund or into a management consulting fund, private equity,
0:29:39 and they give you all this money.
0:29:45 So many people see that and they don’t want to make that riskier choice of going down
0:29:46 the entrepreneurial path.
0:29:48 They take the safe path.
0:29:51 This has been going on and compounding.
0:29:57 What you see is the bigger companies have more and more people flocking to them and the smaller
0:30:03 companies and entrepreneurs keep on dwindling and the gap has only gotten worse.
0:30:12 What that creates now is an environment where fewer and fewer people of my son’s age, 26,
0:30:14 I talk to all his friends.
0:30:21 None of them see how they can go right now unless they’re in a select few, how they’re
0:30:24 going to make the American dream a reality.
0:30:28 What’s happening is we have outsourced so much to other countries.
0:30:34 So many of the fundamental middle class jobs that made America what it was, that we’re
0:30:41 collapsing that and now we’re getting more and more into a growing upper class and a
0:30:49 growing lower class with a completely shortened or eliminated middle class that was really
0:30:51 driving the country before.
0:30:57 Now, I believe that we are also on the cusp of a major change.
0:31:01 I think history repeats itself.
0:31:07 Just as you had people who had individual professions, whether it was a blacksmith back
0:31:13 in the day, a printer, something like that, I think we are going to have in the future
0:31:17 more people being solo entrepreneurs.
0:31:24 This is something I do agree with Dean on that because of technology, because of where
0:31:31 digital is going, et cetera, we have the opportunity to retrain people to be their own bosses.
0:31:35 I think more and more people can be solo entrepreneurs.
0:31:41 I really think that that’s where things could go and will go, especially as we’re faced
0:31:47 with more automation, AI, robotics, et cetera, displacing what is going to become hundreds
0:31:51 of millions of people over the next five to 10 years.
0:31:56 How does your concept of passion really relate to the fact that it seems like you’re trying
0:31:57 to create more entrepreneurs?
0:31:58 Yes.
0:32:06 I am trying to really say that what I found for my career, and I chose that path that
0:32:13 I’m describing, where I joined the big companies, I went for more of the comfort and the security
0:32:18 of having the check, of having the stability, that that is going to be harder and harder
0:32:25 to do for people in the future, because unless we change the way that companies are evaluating
0:32:29 how they’re viewed by shareholders and the boards that are running them, it’s really
0:32:35 driven by creating shareholder value, which you do by top line growth and eliminating
0:32:41 or impacting your bottom line and trying to take expenses out.
0:32:45 All the companies that I’ve ever been in, if we could eliminate headcount, which is the
0:32:53 biggest cost burden that you have in a company, you’re going to do it 99 times out of 100.
0:32:59 There are some companies, Accenture is a great example, where as they’re bringing AI into
0:33:07 Accenture, they’re trying to take the jobs that can be automated through AI and retrain
0:33:15 those positions that they’re really using the AI to make decisions and to really expand
0:33:17 the role of their jobs.
0:33:23 I think far and wide, more companies are going to use it just to take cost out of the businesses,
0:33:28 which means more people’s livelihoods are going to be at threat.
0:33:34 This is why I’m pushing people to wake up and realize that the one thing that we have
0:33:39 as being human beings that differentiates us from all the other species is that we are
0:33:43 really the ultimate learning machines.
0:33:49 We need to get into the habit of becoming constant learners to stay ahead of the digital
0:33:55 trends which are only going to grow faster and to reposition ourselves, as I was alluding
0:34:02 to earlier, in a way that instead of being at the mercy of a large company that we’re
0:34:08 working for, being a solo entrepreneur and really choosing our clientele that we want
0:34:15 to serve, so that if one would fire us for whatever reason, we have safety nets in place
0:34:18 that can protect us and our livelihood.
0:34:22 This reminds me about a chapter in your book about comfort.
0:34:25 You say that comfort is the enemy of adaptability.
0:34:30 Can you talk to us about this, why we need to be adaptable as entrepreneurs, and also
0:34:34 maybe some examples of people who have been adaptable and who have thrived?
0:34:38 The person I really speak about in this whole chapter is Jeff Bezos.
0:34:44 It’s interesting because when I started out this chapter, I originally wrote it about
0:34:46 originality.
0:34:52 Adaptability wasn’t part of it, but as I read the chapter and really thought about it and
0:34:58 what causes the people that we see who are passion-struck to excel, it’s really this
0:35:02 combination of originality with adaptability.
0:35:09 In this chapter, I really talk about Jeff’s journey through where he was himself being
0:35:13 an investor to wanting to start Amazon.
0:35:16 A lot of people think when you hear about Amazon, it doesn’t sound like an original
0:35:18 idea to me.
0:35:24 The original idea behind Amazon wasn’t being an online bookstore.
0:35:31 Amazon has already existed with Borders and Barnes & Noble to some point.
0:35:36 What Bezos really wanted to create was the everything store, but he was smart enough to
0:35:41 realize that if that is what his longer-term goal was, he had to have a starting point
0:35:47 that would allow him to enter the market at some point where consumers were used to doing
0:35:52 something, books, that he could do more efficiently on the internet.
0:35:56 By doing so, he could start perfecting his supply chain, et cetera.
0:36:01 I think the other original thing that people don’t really consider when they think about
0:36:07 Amazon is Amazon is really a data company, more than it is a retailer.
0:36:13 First, he started to grab data on individuals who, using the platform, he then created the
0:36:15 prime platform.
0:36:21 At the same time, they created AWS, which is now housing everyone’s data.
0:36:26 He was using that power of data to really power all the algorithms that were deciding
0:36:33 what products were being put in front of people and to really customize each person’s view.
0:36:40 Along this path of originality, he also had to adapt to competitors coming after him,
0:36:46 the biggest being Walmart earlier in his history, obviously the bookstores.
0:36:53 He had to adapt to regulators coming after him, people wanting to try to disrupt his
0:36:56 business model.
0:37:02 I think the way he ran the company, and it’s still being run this way, was phenomenal in
0:37:07 that he really started to create entrepreneurs within Amazon.
0:37:14 It’s a great case study of entrepreneurs in the way that he would have a need that he
0:37:20 saw and would farm it out to three or four different groups who didn’t know that they
0:37:24 were getting the same assignment and then have all of them come to him to give him the
0:37:32 most original idea with the most adaptable way to undertake it that Amazon could then
0:37:35 take, implement, and grow from.
0:37:41 I think Jeff Bezos is a great example of combining this originality with the adaptability that
0:37:47 you’re going to have to have in your life or your business, especially in the future.
0:37:53 The adaptability really harkens back to what I was talking about when I was describing
0:37:55 the need to reinvent yourself.
0:38:01 That reinvention and adapting to the way that the market and technology are unfolding is
0:38:06 going to be paramount to everyone who’s listening to this podcast.
0:38:10 This reminds me of a really famous quote by another awesome entrepreneur, Elon Musk.
0:38:15 He says, “Running a startup is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss.
0:38:19 After a while, you stop staring, but the glass chewing never ends.”
0:38:23 Really, what he means by this glass chewing is that as an entrepreneur, you always think
0:38:24 you got to be innovative.
0:38:25 You got to be creative.
0:38:26 You got to do new stuff.
0:38:30 You want the sexy thing, the exciting thing, but a lot of running your company is chewing
0:38:35 glass or doing the things that you know you have to do, the problem solving, adapting,
0:38:39 adaptability, having your nose to the ground, understanding what’s actually good for your
0:38:43 business, not just what’s new and exciting.
0:38:48 The other part, staring into the abyss, is really all about your facing extermination.
0:38:50 90% of startups fail.
0:38:51 You’re scared of failure.
0:38:56 Eventually, that goes away once you have more stability, but you’re always having to combat
0:38:57 the problems and chew glass.
0:39:03 Do you have any advice in terms of as entrepreneurs, how can we get better at chewing glass and
0:39:07 doing the things that we don’t necessarily want to do but have to do to run our business?
0:39:13 In the book, I highlight the story of Jim McKelvie.
0:39:19 For those who don’t know who Jim McKelvie is, people know his more famous other half
0:39:25 of Square, who started Twitter, Jack Dorsey, very well, but the two of them really started
0:39:32 Square off the back of Jim McKelvie’s journey of being a glassblower and having an expensive
0:39:38 piece of art that he wasn’t able to sell because he wasn’t able to accept the payment at the
0:39:41 time that the person wanted to buy it.
0:39:48 We started to think, “How could I disrupt the payment industry with a device?”
0:39:56 It’s a great story if you haven’t studied it of doing what you have exactly described.
0:40:00 Which you find a problem that’s worth solving.
0:40:07 When I talk to Jim and he describes all the people he’s tried to mentor into entrepreneurs,
0:40:13 one of the biggest reasons he says that they fail is because, as you describe, hardships
0:40:15 are going to come about.
0:40:19 You’re going to be in a state where you’re chewing more and more glass.
0:40:25 He says, “It’s during these times where people get distracted from solving the main thing
0:40:28 that was the whole genesis for them starting their journey.”
0:40:36 The further they waver from their focus on that main thing, the more times those companies
0:40:43 don’t achieve profitability or don’t achieve the outcome that they came into existence
0:40:45 trying to solve.
0:40:51 What I learned from that is really this whole thing that Stephen Covey talks about, that
0:40:55 the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
0:41:02 It really becomes an art of balancing what is important versus what is the most urgent
0:41:09 thing, and staying on top of that so that you’re not in a point where what becomes urgent
0:41:13 to you are the things that aren’t important, which makes you drift farther and farther
0:41:18 from the problem that you’re trying to solve to begin with.
0:41:25 In all these problems that entrepreneurs have to solve, it leads to a lot of stress, anxiety,
0:41:29 burnout, and you say the antidote to this is really perspective.
0:41:34 Can you talk to us about some of your guidance when it comes to having more perspective and
0:41:37 how that can reduce our anxiety and stress?
0:41:43 We live in a world since most of us are brought up in Western culture of looking at things
0:41:50 as black and white either/or, and so what this is causing is so many of us to live on
0:41:52 the extremes.
0:41:53 Is it left?
0:41:54 Is it right?
0:41:55 Are we right?
0:41:56 Are we wrong?
0:42:03 What this chapter in my book is really about is exploring more Eastern philosophy of both
0:42:07 and thinking, of paradoxical thinking.
0:42:12 The person I highlight in this chapter is a dear friend of mine, Chris Cassidy.
0:42:14 Chris Backstory.
0:42:17 We graduated together from the Naval Academy.
0:42:24 He became an Navy SEAL and then was selected into NASA and was eventually the chief astronaut
0:42:26 for NASA.
0:42:31 But I remember interviewing Chris for the book and we were talking about his time at
0:42:37 basic underwater demolition school, BUDS, when he was learning to become and training
0:42:38 to become a SEAL.
0:42:44 He was talking about at the Naval Academy it was difficult enough to get from one activity
0:42:53 to a next, but when you’re in BUDS, especially during Hell Week, it becomes almost unthinkable
0:42:55 how you’re going to get through it.
0:43:03 He said he started to learn that instead of looking at the boundaries, meaning can I get
0:43:09 through this or can’t I get through this, he started to look at the both and in it.
0:43:16 He started to see that life could very much resemble a rubber band and time could be expanded
0:43:20 or extracted depending upon what you were going through.
0:43:26 He said during periods of hardships, he started to get the perspective that all I need to
0:43:33 do is hold on for five more minutes, or all I need to do is hold on for another 45 minutes
0:43:35 and we’re going to break for lunch.
0:43:40 All I need to do then is to get through the next evolution so that I can make it to dinner
0:43:42 and go home.
0:43:50 Then there were times when it could expand when he was experiencing flow state and time
0:43:56 could be a weapon in your arsenal where you could use it to really take on a different
0:43:58 meaning in what you were doing.
0:44:04 He described to me as he was sitting there during Hell Week and they were freezing and
0:44:10 just wanting to give up that there was an exchange officer who happened to be from Thailand
0:44:17 who was there who, even though everyone else was in a difficult situation, this person
0:44:25 had virtually no body fat and he just saw the person just buckling and just using every
0:44:31 ounce that they had to stay in the moment and to use their mind to battle through it.
0:44:38 He said that’s where this whole concept of this rubber band and expandability or extraction
0:44:44 really came into being because he thought if that Thai officer has the brain power and
0:44:50 willingness and mindset to get through this, then I can too and so can the men who are
0:44:52 with me.
0:44:58 It’s really just a different way of looking at our circumstances and thinking about it
0:45:04 in a different paradoxical way, which becomes a different perspective for how we get through
0:45:10 challenges or struggles that we encounter or how we use the good times as a glide path
0:45:13 to do more with.
0:45:21 It reminds me a lot about Ethan Cross’ self-distancing guidance, the fact that if you have anxiety,
0:45:26 if you’re struggling, thinking of yourself in the third person can help, talking to yourself
0:45:31 in the third person and then also something he talks about called the Batman effect, which
0:45:36 is basically having some alter ego where you think of yourself as a superhero who has all
0:45:40 the strengths, where you’re weak and what would they do in that situation.
0:45:45 So that reminds me of what you were just explaining with the rubber band because in the moments
0:45:50 of being expansive, you might be just trying to figure out what would your greater self
0:45:52 do in this situation to get out of it.
0:45:53 Is that right?
0:45:54 If I understand that correctly?
0:45:55 Yeah, it is.
0:45:59 And I’m glad you brought up Ethan because he’s a good friend of mine and his book chatter
0:46:00 is great.
0:46:04 But yes, I mean, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
0:46:09 And it also leads into another thing that I often talk about is what ends up happening
0:46:19 to us is we become our own visionary arsonist, we end up arsoning the very goals and ambitions
0:46:26 that we want to have in life because of our own self image that we have of ourselves that
0:46:27 we cannot do it.
0:46:33 So we put roadblocks in the way almost unintentionally at times or they seem unintentionally, but
0:46:38 they’re all intentional and we vision the very things that we want to accomplish.
0:46:40 That’s another way of looking at that.
0:46:43 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:50:54 Okay, so I want to get into some leadership stuff, because you have some really great
0:50:57 leadership advice in the book.
0:51:01 One of the things that I really liked is this phrase you have, “Think with your feet.”
0:51:06 I can’t wait to use this moving forward, because I lead a team of like 60 people, and I just
0:51:08 feel like I’ll always remember it, think with my feet.
0:51:10 Can you talk to us about what that means?
0:51:16 The origin of this is I had a great mentor, Jay Skabinski, who was my CIO when I was at
0:51:24 Lenlice, and Jay was really trying to take on a lot of projects that were going to change
0:51:25 the company.
0:51:31 But many of these things were initiatives that the people who had been there for a while
0:51:33 didn’t want to undertake.
0:51:38 But what happens, and I think we see this all the time, is you go into these meetings,
0:51:43 and he was good about getting everyone globally, because Lenlice was a global company together
0:51:50 into a room to discuss what we were going to do, and then have everyone go out there
0:51:53 after they’re nodding in unison and accomplish it.
0:51:59 He said to me, after one of these offsite meetings that we had where we had flown everyone
0:52:04 in, he goes, “I want you to watch people over the next couple of weeks.”
0:52:09 He goes, “Because you’re going to see pretty clearly who is speaking with their mouth and
0:52:12 who is speaking with their feet.”
0:52:13 He was so right.
0:52:18 There were so many of them who came into that meeting and were just nodding approval.
0:52:22 And then the second that they left, they were doing everything in their power to thwart
0:52:24 the success of the project.
0:52:29 And then you had people who were speaking in their feet in the opposite direction, who
0:52:33 were coming out of the meeting and doing everything that they could to move the project
0:52:34 forward.
0:52:41 And it is such an interesting way that people live their lives, whether it’s in a business
0:52:51 setting or even doing a self-help exercise where you see someone like Tony Robbins talk
0:52:55 about something on the screen, and you say you’re going to do it, but then your actions
0:52:59 go in the exact opposite of doing them.
0:53:05 And so you were actually speaking with your feet by not pursuing that thing that you signed
0:53:07 up in your mind to do.
0:53:11 So that’s really what speaking with your feet is all about.
0:53:15 I love that, “think with your feet, lead with your feet, speak with your feet.”
0:53:16 It’s so true.
0:53:18 You’ve got to actually lead by example.
0:53:23 You also talk about the need to practice eyes on, hands off in leadership.
0:53:24 Can you talk about that?
0:53:31 Yeah, where this really came from was I was having a discussion with General Stan McChrystal
0:53:35 and also Keith Crotch, who I referenced earlier.
0:53:40 And I realized that what I was trained to be throughout most of my career was a servant
0:53:41 leader.
0:53:45 And there’s nothing wrong with servant leadership that served me extremely well.
0:53:53 However, when I think of servant leadership, it really does revolve around being more hands
0:53:55 on with our employees.
0:54:00 And I think with the way that companies are operating, more and more people are working
0:54:02 outside of the office.
0:54:07 We have more people in other countries who are part of the teams, et cetera.
0:54:13 And so as I was thinking about this, I thought that we needed a new leadership paradigm that
0:54:18 I call Gardner Leadership, which is really leading with intention.
0:54:24 Because just as a gardener nurtures their crops, a gardener leader intentionally nurtures
0:54:26 their team’s growth.
0:54:33 And it’s really doing so in this eyes on, hands off approach, where the leader becomes
0:54:40 informed without micromanaging, which is so critical in today’s innovation driven workplaces.
0:54:46 So this eyes on, hands off to put this into perspective.
0:54:51 And just since I brought up General McChrystal, I’ll use a military example of this.
0:54:56 So imagine him as the leader who’s in charge of all forces in Afghanistan.
0:55:03 And he’s got a team of rangers who’s trying to take an al-Qaeda position or a Taliban
0:55:08 position on a mountainside that’s 1,500 miles away from him.
0:55:15 There is no way that he is going to be able to micromanage what is happening on that operation
0:55:18 because he’s not there, he’s not a part of it.
0:55:25 So what he can do is he can be eyes on from the standpoint of observing what they’re doing,
0:55:30 giving them the best training that he possibly could, making sure that they understand the
0:55:35 rules of engagement, the parameters of the mission, what their expectations are.
0:55:41 But then he needs to be hands off, realizing that he’s given them all that information
0:55:43 and training.
0:55:50 And in the moment where they’re experiencing what the enemy is doing, letting them make
0:55:57 split-moment decisions on the battlefield and being eyes on but hands off in dictating
0:56:04 what their behaviors are, it’s the same thing that happens on the workplace where you have
0:56:10 a gifted software developer, oftentimes we want to micromanage the results that we get
0:56:17 out of the developer and what I’m saying is, in the same way, we need to give him or her
0:56:23 the parameters of what we want accomplished but be hands off and letting them use their
0:56:29 creativity and innovation to develop the best way to approach it and to create the results
0:56:31 that we’re looking for.
0:56:32 Such good advice.
0:56:38 And I want to go back to chewing glass a bit because as leaders, as entrepreneurs, we’re
0:56:44 always competing with long-term vision and what we want to do in the future as well as
0:56:49 all the short-term needs and all the problems, you give a really good framework called the
0:56:51 turtle and bee effect.
0:56:55 Can you talk to us about that and how that can help us plan and be more effective leaders?
0:57:00 Yeah, well, I’m glad you brought this up because you used Elon Musk’s quote to describe this
0:57:04 in this chapter is really about Elon Musk.
0:57:10 So something that I found out about him from a long-term mentor of mine, astronaut Wendy
0:57:17 Lawrence, was that when the space shuttle was going away and President Bush put out the
0:57:23 elective through NASA that companies could bid on this, not only was SpaceX at the time
0:57:30 a startup, but they were the only one who bid both on crew delivery and supply delivery,
0:57:37 meaning they decided that if they could attack both with the same rocket, the same capsule
0:57:44 parameters, that they might start out a little bit behind the competition.
0:57:50 But over time, they would position themselves to be so far in the forefront, which is exactly
0:57:52 what we’re seeing today.
0:57:56 But at the time it happened, it was an extremely risky move.
0:58:03 But Musk used the same thing in how he angled for this that he’s used to pursue everything
0:58:09 that he’s done, and you’ve got to think about what he is really trying to do if you ask
0:58:11 him is to save humanity from itself.
0:58:16 He thinks that eventually we’re going to have to get off a planet Earth, and in order to
0:58:21 do that and survive on another planet, you’re going to have to perfect different things.
0:58:25 You’re going to have to have a way to get there, of course, but you’re also going to
0:58:30 need to learn how to harness electricity in a different way and to store it differently.
0:58:37 You’re going to have to learn how to go under Earth in order to create civilizations because
0:58:42 we can’t survive on top of the planet, which is his boring company.
0:58:48 And so the way that he does all these different things, whether it’s creating the solar cells,
0:58:57 the cars, SpaceX, is he looks at the long-term strategy of saving humanity from itself,
0:59:05 which is akin to the tortoise who takes very slow logical steps on its path to achieving
0:59:06 its ultimate goal.
0:59:13 But then in the day-to-day moments, in operating these different ventures, he’s acting more
0:59:19 like the bee, where the bee’s purpose is to serve the queen and the hive, and they are
0:59:26 very much about doing whatever they have to do in the present moment to achieve what needs
0:59:27 to be done.
0:59:34 So the real art here becomes how do you combine the best virtues of a bee with the best virtues
0:59:40 of the tortoise so that your actions that you’re doing in the micro moments that make
0:59:47 up your day are leading you towards where you want to go to fulfill your long-term aspirations,
0:59:54 but you’re doing it in the daily repetition or daily movements of meeting your midterm
0:59:56 ambitions.
0:59:59 And so that’s what the bee internal effect is really about.
1:00:04 It’s how do you use deliberate action, whether you’re in a business setting or a personal
1:00:11 setting, to take the actions that you want to align your values and your workload to
1:00:16 your shorter-term ambitions while pursuing your long-term aspirations.
1:00:18 I love everything that you just broke down there.
1:00:19 I love the story with Elon Musk.
1:00:23 So we’ve mentioned a lot of entrepreneurs in this episode.
1:00:26 I feel like we name dropped like 50 people.
1:00:29 One person we didn’t talk about was Steve Jobs.
1:00:34 And you draw a really cool story of him in your book where you talk about his ability
1:00:37 to overcome the fear of being wrong.
1:00:40 And as entrepreneurs, we’re risk takers.
1:00:42 We have to be creating new things.
1:00:46 There’s a lot of failure involved and a fear of being wrong.
1:00:51 So can you talk to us about how we can get better at this fear of failure?
1:00:57 Yeah, I picked Steve Jobs because he’s a very recognizable name.
1:01:04 And people often see the output of what he created at Apple without really analyzing
1:01:11 the backstory of all the things that he had to overcome to have that success.
1:01:17 And one thing I have found, and this is really about being a boundary magnifier, is sometimes
1:01:20 being right means being alone.
1:01:29 And in the case of Jobs, he felt so passionate that the right path for Apple was the path
1:01:36 that he was advocating for, that he was willing to give up his role there as CEO because he
1:01:38 was so passionate about it.
1:01:43 And it’s something that I found in my own career in multiple circumstances.
1:01:48 And I’m sure it’s something that many of the listeners have found themselves in too.
1:01:55 Sometimes we’re asked to do things in our jobs that go against who we are, what our
1:01:59 values are, what we think is the right thing to do.
1:02:06 And so often we lean into what the popular thing is to do or what’s going to bring job
1:02:09 safety instead of doing the right thing.
1:02:14 And this chapter is really that on your entrepreneurial journey or your business journey, you’re
1:02:21 going to be encountered with many circumstances, we’re doing the right thing, and embodying
1:02:26 your values means that sometimes you’re going to be standing alone in your convictions to
1:02:27 do it.
1:02:30 And that’s exactly what we saw with Steve Jobs.
1:02:35 And not only did he leave the company with those convictions, but he doubled down on
1:02:37 that vision.
1:02:41 And that’s what eventually brought him back and led him to creating the Apple that we
1:02:45 see today and the legacy that he left behind.
1:02:48 Well, John, this was such an amazing conversation.
1:02:49 I’d love to have you on the show.
1:02:52 I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests.
1:02:57 So the first one, and you can answer this however you’d like, can be about today’s topic.
1:03:00 It could just be whatever comes to your mind.
1:03:05 What is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more profitable
1:03:06 tomorrow?
1:03:10 So one thing I love to tell people is that when you get up in the morning, you should
1:03:17 look at yourself and the image that is shining back at you and realize that that person is
1:03:21 the most incredible person on earth that you are ever going to meet.
1:03:26 Now, you also have to come to the realization as you’re looking at that person that they’re
1:03:31 also the most self-critical person you’re ever going to meet.
1:03:38 And so really, your battle to greatness is really the battle between those two dimensions
1:03:39 of yourself.
1:03:46 And it’s really mastering wearing the true you, the true authentic you that realizes
1:03:53 the capabilities and the gifts that you have and that you were put here to do something
1:03:55 that only you can do on earth.
1:04:00 And your goal should be finding out what that is, the problem you’re called to solve, and
1:04:03 then doing it to better humanity.
1:04:04 So good.
1:04:06 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:04:12 And this can, of course, be on just financial profiting in all the different ways of life.
1:04:19 When I was at that tail end of Lowe’s going into Dell, I happened to come out of that
1:04:26 time and met with a psychologist who had me analyze my life by picturing myself sitting
1:04:28 on a kitchen bar stool.
1:04:34 And what I realized is that although I was on that stool, the supports underneath it
1:04:36 weren’t in balance.
1:04:42 For me, the constant grind had become overwhelmingly a greater support than every other one in
1:04:44 my life.
1:04:48 And whether it’s the constant grind or something else, I think we need to ask ourselves are
1:04:51 our lives truly in balance.
1:04:56 And going back to Benjamin Hardy, what he got me to do is to picture myself sitting on
1:05:02 the stool that my future self would want to sit on if I could become my ideal self.
1:05:06 And if I did so, what would those supports look like?
1:05:11 And what would I need to do to go from the way it looked today to the way that I wanted
1:05:13 to look in the future?
1:05:18 And I think that that’s an exercise that all the listeners should go through.
1:05:23 And a great way to think about this, if it seems like it’s too difficult to go from point
1:05:28 A to point B, is to do a reverse bucket list.
1:05:29 And that is look at your life.
1:05:34 And instead of examining all the things that you want to accomplish, look at all the things
1:05:39 that you have already accomplished that you never thought would have been possible.
1:05:44 And to use those to gain the confidence to understand that you can change the parameters
1:05:49 of what’s underneath your stool to whatever you want it to be in the future.
1:05:50 Such good advice.
1:05:52 I really, really love that analogy.
1:05:56 John, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:06:04 If you want to learn more about me personally, you can go to my website, johnrmiddleinitialmiles.com.
1:06:08 If you want to learn more about Passionstruck, the podcast, the book, what the company is
1:06:11 doing, you can go to passionstruck.com.
1:06:12 Awesome, John.
1:06:16 Thank you so much for joining Young and Profiting Podcast.
1:06:17 Thank you so much.
1:06:28 And it’s such an honor to be here.
1:06:30 [Music]
1:06:40 [MUSIC]
One day, John R. Miles came home from the gym to find an intruder pointing his own gun at him. Days later, a close friend’s suicide further shattered his world. These traumatic events forced John into deep introspection and a transformative life change. Emerging stronger, he founded the Passion Struck movement to help others find fulfillment, just as he did. In this episode, John offers actionable advice on transforming adversity into purpose and living a passion-driven life.
John R. Miles is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and host of the Passion Struck podcast. With experience in the U.S. Navy and Fortune 50 executive roles, John offers real-world insights into personal growth and self-leadership.
In this episode, Hala and John will discuss:
– What it means to be passion-struck
– How traumatic events can lead to big changes
– Reinventing yourself in different stages of your career
– Strategies for overcoming trauma and finding purpose
– Aligning your daily actions with your long-term goals
– Why values are important for personal growth
– Moving from a corporate job to entrepreneurship
– Lessons from military service applied to business
– The impact of deep thinking on life choices
– Practical steps to pursue your ideal self
– Balancing short-term actions with long-term vision
– How to avoid feeling stuck in life
– And other topics…
John R. Miles is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur dedicated to helping people live passion-driven lives. He hosts Passion Struck, a popular podcast and national radio show known for its profound insights into behavior change, health and wellness, and self-leadership. Before his current ventures, John served in the U.S. Navy and held senior executive roles at Fortune 50 companies like Lowe’s and Dell. His latest book, Passion Struck, provides a science-based roadmap for personal growth and fulfillment.
Connect With John:
John’s Website: https://johnrmiles.com/
John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/
John’s Twitter: https://x.com/John_RMiles
John’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles/
John’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m
John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnrmiles
John’s Podcast, Passion Struck: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/passion-struck-with-john-r-miles/id1553279283
Resources Mentioned:
John’s Book, Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life: https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Struck-Powerful-Principles-Intentional/dp/B0C8G5R5FZ
The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers’ Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by Benjamin Hardy: https://www.amazon.com/Gap-Gain-Achievers-Happiness-Confidence/dp/1401964362
The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time by Jim McKelvey: https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Stack-Building-Unbeatable-Business/dp/0593086732
LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life:
Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.
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