Capitalize on Chaos & Lead Through Toxic Workplaces with Rob Kalwarowsky

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to executive coach and TEDx speaker, Rob Kalwarowsky, about how you can capitalize on chaos. Listen to the whole episode to find out how you could win a copy of Rob's book and six weeks of free coaching. Thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that's built to scale, visit digitalocean.com or just click the link in the show notes. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:33) Well, dude, it is good to have you back. Last time we talked, had a great conversation about leadership. And now today you have a book out, Capitalize on Chaos. Is that correct?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:00:44) Yep. Capitalizing on Chaos came out. It's an Amazon bestseller right now in a few categories, so that's incredible. And yeah, I mean, the levels of chaos in the world are unprecedented. And so, literally, there's a metric to track this, so I'm not just making this up.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:01:06) There's something out there called the World Uncertainty Index, and it tracks the number of times the word uncertain or uncertainty is used in government documents around the world. And it is at all-time highs, even higher than—it's almost twice as high as COVID. And so that's the sentiment. You'll have to go to one of the different graphs.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:01:38) Yeah. So you can see that one. And so in the fall of September 2024 or fall of 2024, it starts taking off, just like my book sales.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:54) Nice. This is crazy. That's like a massive spike in uncertainty inside of these government documents.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:02:03) And we're seeing it, right? It's not just governments. Right? It's like we're seeing it from a lot of the companies and businesses too.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:02:12) And so at the end of Q1, there was the highest percentage of CEOs not putting a company forecast in their 10-K documents because they didn't know. Right? And everything's changing. Government's changing. Technology—you guys would know better than anybody about how fast AI is disrupting businesses and what are CTOs and CIOs and businesses doing about it.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:02:45) And so there's a lot of uncertainty, and the key is how do we take advantage of this moment instead of turtling up in that fear that a lot of folks are, and probably a lot of your competitors are too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:03) Yeah. I had a conversation with a guy who's building world-class AI assistants specifically for CEOs of large companies. And he shared with me, I don't know if it was on or off the podcast, but here we go. The level of confusion for the CEOs, he said, was mind-boggling. So he's giving this specially trained AI assistant, strategy assistant, to the CEOs, and he's watching how they're interacting with it. And they are just scared is the takeaway.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:03:38) And for me, this is where it starts with self-leadership. And so our brains are designed to keep us safe, right? And part of that is that's why we like control. That's why we like things like patterns. That's why we like things that we've done before, because our brain goes, "Hey, we've done it before. Therefore, we can predict that at the end of this action that we take, the outcome is gonna be good." Right? Of course, that's not necessarily true, but that's how we perceive it. The problem with chaos is literally we can't predict. And so what happens is our brain gets stressed out. Well, I can't control the outcome. I can't get certainty. I don't know what to do. And it puts—that kicks in the stress response of the fight or flight. Also, there's freeze and fawn are part of this too, but that kicks us into those four responses because our amygdala takes over our brain. And when that happens, it's called an amygdala hijack. We literally lose executive functioning of our brain, which means decision-making, logic, looking at data, perspective, innovation, creativity—all gone. And we're left with fight, flight, fawn, and freeze. None of those make us good leaders for ourselves, for our people, or for our company. And that's the biggest problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:27) What is fawn?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:05:31) Fawn is basically a version of people-pleasing to somebody that has power.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:38) Oh, okay.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:05:39) And so if you're a CEO, maybe that's the chairman of the board or some people who have a lot of power and influence or it's your investors. Or maybe there isn't somebody that you can do that towards. But definitely, your brain will naturally go into one of those, and then that's where we become poor leaders. And it's not our fault. It's literally just neuroscience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:02) Right. So how do you take advantage of the uncertainty?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:06:06) The key is to build that self-leadership internally first. And so what self-leadership really is, is getting out of the stress response so then we have access to our entire brains regardless of what's going on around us. And so the first tip that I can give folks for that, the easiest thing that you can literally do in the next one minute, is you can take a deep breath in followed by a big sigh and just say to yourself, "I'm human." Because we all experience moments where we're not at our best. We all experience moments where we're stressed and we're not a great leader or we don't know what to do. And nobody expects you to know everything and do everything. But if you acknowledge it, that helps you reduce your own stress. And then going from there, that's when you can start opening up your brain and opening up perspective. That's a quick tip for folks. Of course, you can do a lot more work on that, but that's just a quick tip that people can action right now that can help.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:28) I like that. That's a little more optimistic. I use the fact that I'm gonna die a lot. I really do. I'm just like, whenever I get stressed out, I'm like, "Oh, that's right. There will be a day when I'm, like, 80 years old and I'm on my deathbed or whatever it will be, and none of this is going to matter."

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:07:44) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:44) And what's going to matter is my memories of my kids and my family. And so I'm just gonna go do something over there.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:07:50) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:51) My wife thinks it's really dark, but because every once in a while she'll be upset and I'll be like, "Hey. Don't forget. We die." So she's like, "Uh. Alright."

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:08:02) It is perspective, though, right? And so, literally, I was in San Francisco about a week and a half ago working with a team at a big tech company, and I was saying, "Hey, you can use I'm Human as not only for yourself, but also with your team." And so I could say to you, Joel, when I'm feeling stressed, like, "Hey. I'm Human."

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:08:28) And then you know it's not time to just lump stuff on Rob.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:33) It's time to replace him with AI.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:08:35) Yeah. Time to fire him and replace him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:39) Let's go. Yeah.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:08:41) And the other side is, conversely, right, is if you notice that I'm not at my best, you can say to me, "Rob, you're human," and then it helps me parachute down. They, the team, they were like, "Hey. I don't wanna use that keyword. I'm gonna use Cheesecake Factory."

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:01) Cheesecake Factory?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:09:02) Yeah. They're gonna say to each other "Cheesecake Factory" when they or their teammate are stressed instead of "I'm Human." That's totally cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:11) That makes sense. Cheesecake Factory is a stressful place to be. You got so many items on the menu. It is a stressful—that is a good indicator for stress, Cheesecake Factory. I like that.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:09:22) Yeah. I mean, you know, maybe the double peanut butter, double chocolate cheesecake with caramel is not great for your waistline, but it's great for your team leadership.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:32) Okay. Actually, this is a good point. This is what I wanna use now. So we're gonna be giving away six weeks free coaching with Rob. Rob's an executive coach, world-renowned TEDx guy. He is brilliant. Go look at his website. But we are going to be giving away six weeks of free coaching with him. To enter, there are going to be 11 winners total. And to enter, what you do is you email [email protected]. And in the subject, you just put "cheesecake." Okay? And there's a special Gmail filter I'll have for cheesecake, and that will be your entry. Make sure your signature—you don't have to write me a message or anything. You can send me an emoji if you feel like it. Just make sure your signature is in there so I know who it's coming from and all of that. But then we'll pick a winner and we'll email you and you'll get those six weeks of coaching with Rob for free. Are there any strings attached, Rob?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:10:19) Well, we're giving away one coaching package and 10 books. So one coaching package, 10 books. Email Joel, and we'll make that happen. There's no strings attached to the coaching. We can do this. I'm happy to give this away because I wanna help people, and that's been my goal with all of this. And that's partially why the book is also out there. Literally, it's 99 cents for Kindle if you want it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:50) Oh, nice.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:10:50) You can get the soft copy. It's $16. And the audiobook will be coming soon. But literally, if you're around the world and, you know, whatever, you can get the Kindle version. It's 99 cents. It's affordable. So the more important thing is the message and doing the work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:10) Can they get it today, or is this a release thing in the future?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:11:14) No. The Amazon Kindle price will be 99 cents all the time going forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:19) So right now, today, they can just go into Amazon Kindle and then type in the title of the book, Capitalizing on Chaos, and they can just have it for 99 cents?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:11:29) Yep. There we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:30) What a deal.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:11:31) We're working. We're working.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:31) And by the way, for people that are listening, which is you, I'm doing this largely because I had Rob on a couple months ago. He had some great insight, and then he connected me with another individual who I also very much enjoyed. And then we're like, he's got his new book. Let's have him back. So we like Rob here at the show.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:11:53) Thank you. I like you too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:55) Yeah. It's mostly not because of your content. It's mostly because your studio is outside. I think it's so cool. You got the rainforest. You can hear the little birds chirping. I can see the—where are you located again?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:12:07) Yeah. So I'm down in Costa Rica.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:09) That's right.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:12:10) It was funny when you mentioned it. It's literally raining right now. So, yeah, you may—hopefully you don't hear that because the mic's good. But, yeah. We're on the balcony or the porch, so it's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:23) Real quick, before we continue, I wanted to give a special shout-out to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode. DigitalOcean is cloud infrastructure that's simple to spin up, complete with integrated AI dev tools plus 99.99% uptime SLAs and industry-leading pricing on bandwidth. We all know DigitalOcean. It's super reliable. It's been around forever. And now with DigitalOcean's Gradient platform, developers can train, fine-tune, deploy, and scale AI workloads all in one place. DigitalOcean is reliable and affordable at any budget. Companies can save up to 30% on their cloud bill when they come to DigitalOcean. Use code DO25 and get $200 in free credits to get started. Simple cloud, powerful AI, built to scale. That's DigitalOcean.

(Intro Narrator at 00:13:12) Now, back to the episode.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:14) I love it. Alright. So let's go back to this capitalizing on chaos thing. Alright. So step one, we gotta get ourselves right. We gotta get this leadership component. There are people that are listening that feel like they have a lot of that, you know, they're constantly improving. They feel like they've got a lot of that down. What's the next step to capitalizing on chaos?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:13:31) So improvement is just one piece of this, right? I work with a lot of folks that have what I call the DIY mask. But it's "do it all yourself." And it makes sense because a lot of us, especially folks listening to this show, right, you are high achievers. That's why you've made successful careers in tech and as CTOs, and you've been able to climb the ranks, right? And when people like that come to me, it's not that they're not doing personal growth. It's not that they're not achieving at a very high level. Often, what I hear is, like, "I'm burnt out," or "I'm tired," or "I can't trust my team to do this really important task, so I gotta do it myself." Or, like, "I need to fix this mistake because if I don't, it's longer for me to teach somebody else how to do it than to just do it myself." And that doesn't mean you're ineffective, right? It's actually helped you in your career. The issue with that when you're trying to capitalize on chaos is that's still a part that's driven by fear. It's a part that's driven by, like, you not performing at your best or you not being good enough or you not experiencing this success that you are shooting for. And that leads often to you being burnt out or feeling like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders or not being able to turn off those thoughts at night about, "Hey. I got to do this. I gotta do this. I gotta do this. I gotta do this." Or you not being able to enjoy time with your family on vacation or even things like, you know, just watching TV on the weekends or watching college football, right? And so, again, right, that is still needing you to be a self-leader. And the way I start off thinking about self-leadership is we all have these different parts of us in our minds. That DIY mask, another one I see a lot is a version of imposter syndrome. Like, "I feel like I can't be myself," or "I feel like I don't belong." Or "I got this promotion to CTO, and I'm like, do I really deserve it? Are they gonna figure out that I'm not good enough for this?" You know, that kind of thing? I've actually heard that from real clients before. And the key here is once we can allow those masks to let go of the fear, then we can be ourselves, and that puts us at our best. And that allows us the innovation, the creativity, the ability to be the leader that people want that drives employee engagement, which engagement leads to everything—profitability, productivity, well-being, less turnover. Literally every good outcome. So it's a win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:50) I love it. I love it. Okay, cool.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:16:53) So when we're in this stress response, what happens is we become poor leaders for ourselves and others. And, of course, as an MIT engineer by training, I can't just come out and say, "Hey. We have all these different parts," which we do, but I wanted to look and see what is the research telling us. And so I found a paper out of Sweden that breaks down the leadership that they saw across their country, and they identified six destructive leaders and one called non-destructive leader.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:17:55) And the six destructive leaders, they're just parts of all of us. And it's when we're in these responses we do things like we either get aggressive and we yell at people, or we micromanage people, or we try to control outcomes, or we give away everything. Like, if we have that imposter mask on, maybe we don't accept responsibility, or we don't accept accountability, or we don't give proper direction, right? And so there's a spectrum in between.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:18:31) But ultimately, what destructive leaders, why they're called destructive, is that you are destroying your team's ability to perform at their best. You're destroying your company's ability to succeed in the long term, and you're destroying people's health and well-being too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:51) What was the non-destructive one?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:18:53) It's basically when people aren't in fear. So when they're self-led leaders, right, they're not having that stress response. They're not fighting or flighting, and so they're called non-destructive because they're good leaders. And actually, it's 34% of the workplace has a non-destructive leader. And so that's the power of starting with self and then rippling that out to your teams.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:19:21) And here, I'll give you another stat, right? When you are leading yourself first, your leadership gets better. Because when you're happy as a leader, your happiness trickles out to your teams, and happy people are 300% more innovative than unhappy people. And so if you want to truly capitalize on chaos and do things like we saw in COVID where a vodka brand pivoted into hand sanitizer, or one of my clients, they were doing some air filtration stuff, and they added UV lighting to sanitize the air to that next level.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:20:05) Right? It's like if you want to create solutions like that, you need innovation. And in order to get there, you need, one, full access to your brain. But when you have full access to your brain, you're gonna show up as a better leader, which will give your team the full access to theirs too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:25) Chuck E. Cheese during the pandemic, they switched to pizza delivery, and they overhauled their whole pizza situation. I found that out because I was at Chuck E. Cheese for one of the kids' birthdays, and I reluctantly ate a slice of pizza.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:37) And I'm like, this doesn't suck like it used to. I was like, what happened? And then I went down this whole Chuck E. Cheese rabbit hole.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:20:43) Yeah. Do they bring the ball pit to you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:48) No. They were gonna shut down, so they took all their locations and turned them into, like, the best quality pizza they could given their abilities to make pizza. And so now when you're at Chuck E. Cheese, you'll just notice that there's a constant stream of people coming in just picking up to-go orders because it's lasted throughout the post-pandemic. So I like what you're saying. I didn't know happy people are 300% more innovative, but it doesn't take much push for me to believe that because I've been around happy people and I've been around unhappy people, and I know what it's like.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:10) But I did like this concept of you working on yourself gives you full access and stability in your world, in which then your team can feed off of that and have a greater ability in their world. And so I've always imagined as I've done this show and I've learned and got to do all these interviews, it's always like, I've never seen it not the case, but the team always assumes the personality of the—it's like we're ants and it's like the queen bee and then they're doing what—it's always interconnected, the relationships to the personality of the leader. So if I meet somebody who seems pretty toxic, usually, and they're pretty toxic people around them at their company too. And when I meet really great leaders, it's usually just a stream of the best humans I've—Ramsey company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:12) You know, Dave Ramsey? Dude, I haven't met a bad person at Ramsey ever. Like, every person I meet is just smarter, better, and nicer than the next person. And I'm like, they've got something going on there, you know?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:22:25) It does trickle down, right? And it makes sense, right? Like, if I come to you and I yell at you for making a typo in your email to the client, you're gonna feel bad.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:22:40) Right? Like, you could be sad. You could be frustrated. You could be mad. Like, whatever that response is, you're gonna feel bad.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:22:47) And that's not gonna just end in five minutes. It's like that's gonna ripple out. And so, and then the next time, you're gonna have to really be nitty about your email, and you're gonna be worried that after you sent it, like, oh, did I make a mistake? Did I screw it up again? Is Rob gonna yell at me?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:23:07) Right? And so that's why it breeds out, right? And ultimately, the stat from Gallup is that 70% of people of their engagement is directly related to their direct manager. So it's not even the CEO of the company.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:23:30) It's literally, you could be an individual contributor, and your frontline supervisor is basically the most important person in how engaged you are, which is effectively how happy you are. And so it does matter. And obviously, that goes up the chain because if you have a toxic boss at the top, at the CEO level, it trickles down to the next level and then, therefore, all the way down the chain. And so it is a wildly important thing. And for people out there, right, it starts with you. And you can, at whatever level, you can break that cycle with your team.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:24:16) Right? Now, if it's really disruptive for you—I forget, I probably told this before—but for me, I had a toxic boss early in my career, and I was struggling with depression and mental health problems. And those are times where it may be good for you to consider internally transferring to try to get a new boss or to try to get a new job, those type of things, because you can only work on yourself so much, and you can only progress so far if you walk into a workplace where you're at war.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:56) On the flip side of it, obviously, it's trickled down. Your manager has a direct ability to influence your mood and all of that. But also, there is a certain level of personal responsibility, right? Like, so how do you think about that? It's like, yes, you have to teach people that their behavior affects and it goes downstream, but also you have to teach people the other side of it. Like, you are responsible for how you feel and you need to either accept that this is acceptable, this is okay, this is how I'm gonna be living my life, or you need to say that's unacceptable and move on and find some other place that you fit better.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:25:33) Yes. And that's why I always start with self-leadership, right? Because one is, you need to be the person who chooses for yourself.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:25:45) And often, when we're in these fear states, these parts of us, some of them are destructive, right? Like, I had a part of me that was like, Rob, you need to do better. If you don't do better, if you don't achieve more, you're worth nothing, right?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:26:03) And so I was stuck in that. And that's why, you know, when I struggled with mental health and I attempted to end my life in 2013, the next morning, I got up and I went to work because that robot achiever of me was like, I don't care how bad you feel, you have to achieve. And so I didn't have the ability to choose because that fear was driving me. And so it was not abusive or toxic to other folks. It was toxic to me. And that's a lot of it.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:26:42) Right? It's like, if we become less toxic to ourselves, that ripples out, right? And so you become a better leader. You become more connected with people.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:26:54) You become more coachable, or you coach other folks on your team. Because if you look at the top five behaviors for what drives employee engagement, literally one of the first ones is having a caring manager, and the second one is basically coaching your team, helping them develop to the career they want, giving them regular feedback, giving them projects that help them accentuate their strengths. Like, those are the behaviors that drive people to want to work for you, and they also make them happier and more innovative.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:32) Taking notes.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:27:35) You can find all that research on gallup.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:39) Is it in the book?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:27:40) Yes. I have some of that in the book. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:42) Alright. How do people buy the book?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:27:45) Best place is Amazon. Wherever you are in the world, Amazon. Just Google Capitalizing on Chaos in there, and then, yeah, get a copy. And for folks out there, I'm running some special speaking deals on that. So if you are remote, if you order 25 books, I will do a virtual call, like a virtual keynote for you.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:28:13) If you're in person, I will be traveling to Boston, New York City, Ottawa, Portland, Vancouver, Atlanta, a bunch of places in Canada and the United States. And so you're welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or you can email me. And for 50 books, if I'm in town, I'll do a talk for you for just 50 books. So it's a huge discount. Like, regularly, I charge, you know, $10,000 for that plus travel.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:28:46) And so you'd literally be getting it for less than $1,000. So it's amazing discount.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:52) Yeah. Don't be cheap, guys. Pay the $10 and buy the books.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:28:54) Yeah. I hope we all do that as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:58) Yeah. We've got some very cool people that listen to the show. Alright. So you talk about this concept of parts versus self, like a psychological framework. Can you tell me more about that?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:29:08) Yes. Parts and self. So self is who you truly are. It's best known as what you were when you were born or right as you're young. Like, Joel, you know, you have kids, right? When they're playful, when they're exploring, when they're trying new things, they're climbing trees, or they're just experimenting and testing, and they don't, you know—and it's like, hey, I want to wear a dinosaur costume. Or, like, I asked my nephew once when he was young, I was like, what do you want to be when you grow up?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:29:41) And he said, I want to be a rabbit. And I was like, hell yeah, brother. Go for it, right?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:29:49) And so there are elements to self, right? And some of them are curiosity, compassion, courage, clarity, confidence. And there's elements like persistence, playfulness, perspective, presence. That's you at your best.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:30:09) And everybody listening, you have felt this before. When you were at your best, when you were in flow, or you were enjoying time at the office or with your family or doing whatever you were doing, playing sports. You have felt this before, and it feels just like you are almost unthinking. It's like you're just there. You're just doing.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:30:36) You're experiencing, and it's you at your best, right? There's no constant ruminations. There's no, like, hey, I need to judge myself for whatever. You're not trying to prove anything. It's just you. That's where you want to be. Because you know if you're that at the office, at home, with your family, in your community, and in the world, you will get the best results and you will feel incredible doing it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:06) As you're talking, I'm like, yes. I have found, and I'm curious if this factors into your coaching at all, that there's a couple baseline things that I need to do that. Like, I will ruminate. I'll go stressful. I will get, I'll be in a spot where I can't even do anything if I don't have financial peace. So my twenties were really hard because I wasn't doing good with my financial spending, and I was buying stuff I shouldn't have been doing. Like, it was very stressful constantly. And then once I built up enough cash to—it just, I became an entirely different person because of that. Because I got rid of that fight-or-flight stress to feed myself and family bills.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:50) And that doesn't mean I'm a billionaire and have crazy money, but it means that I'm not waking up today and scared about paying the bills at the end of the month type deal. And getting out of that was a huge part of growth for me. Companies can be in that. Even if you are doing well financially personally, your company can be in that. So how do you—do you ever—I guess the original question is, do you ever coach people around their finances as one of the first things that you cover to just make sure you have that box checked?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:32:21) A lot of people experience that. So you're definitely not alone, Joel. There are some things here that, like, of course, if you're somebody out there and you're struggling to pay your bills, this is part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like, it's the bottom level, right?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:32:42) And so if you're struggling to eat or have a place to live or feel secure, like, these are things that will put you naturally in fight or flight, and that's not, like, there's not really much you can do about that because that's what it's gonna be. Like, you know, it'd be great if we could all float on top of a mountain, right, and transcend, like, probably three people in the world can do.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:33:13) But it's just not in our nature, right? And this work is not about that anyways, right? But so that's the first thing to just understand. Now the second thing is that if we're a company, we have to look at what is going on.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:33:30) And so I've done work with entrepreneurs or solopreneurs where it was, we're not charging enough, or we're not asking for the sale, or we're not—like, I had a call with somebody the other week, and it was like, they do a lot of research. They're looking at different opportunities and different people and different clients and different, different, different, but they're not actually doing the outreach. They're not actually booking the call. They're just paralyzed and looking. And so those are things we can address.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:34:10) And with some clients, literally, I have one where we addressed it in the first call. And later that week, she closed the client for 60% more than she would have before. Obviously, those results can vary. But if we're, if you're a business, part of that is psychology, but part of that's also the nuts and bolts. And that's why you hire an executive coach and not a psychologist or a therapist, because a therapist is not gonna evaluate your outreach or your business strategy.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:34:43) Right? And so what I'm about is matching the two, right? There's gonna be parts of your psychology, but it's not about digging into your past and your trauma. It's like, how do you achieve your goals?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:34:59) And then the other side is actionable insight into how do you actually go and do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:07) Because that's what you walk people through.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:35:09) In your first calls, you understand their baseline, figure out where they're trying to go, and then put a plan in place to help them get there. I love it. How long have you been doing the executive coaching thing for?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:35:18) It's been full-time for over five years now. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:24) Nice. So you enjoying it?

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:35:26) It's, I mean, it's when I'm in my self. And I have clients that are in the—you know, where we have kind of deep work on all the way from spiritual stuff to people who want to get into the nuts and bolts of building yourself as a speaker or accountability systems so they can start moving on their goals, right? And so that spectrum is really interesting for me, and I love it. And I, above anything else, I want my clients to succeed.

(Rob Kalwarowsky at 00:36:11) And so I want to work with people. One is where they're at and what they want and make that happen for them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:18) I love that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:20) You get to basically be like a dream assistant. People come to you with dreams, and then you help them walk that path.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:36:29) Yeah. And I mean, the reason I say this is it's more than, you know, what you would call executive coaching or whatever. Some folks, it's purely business. I do it all because I've experienced it all.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:36:49) I was in Edmonton, Canada working at a pipeline company. I was depressed. I didn't feel joy or love in my life. Part of that was the fear that I was in. And even though I was making six figures, I was in a long-term relationship with my now wife. And it was just—I was that robot, and I was trying to win. And that was all that my life was about. And it wasn't fulfilling, and I didn't have the ability to choose what I did or how anything. It was just, I gotta go. I gotta look for promotions. I gotta look for my next jump to the next company and move up and keep going.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:37:37) And that led me to a really dark place. And now where I've gone—and the book will tell you all about this, but I'll tell you all about it too—is my, it first starts with you, but then it ripples into the world. And so my wife and I, we've been living here about two and a half years now. Here in Costa Rica, I'm a coach now, which at the beginning of my journey, I didn't know it was something I wanted to do, nor was it something that I even really knew was a job. I did a TED Talk. It's been seen by over 300,000 people. My book's a bestseller. I coach some of the top folks in the world, and my impact has increased to levels that I can't imagine, and where I live, I couldn't imagine ever being here. And so it is crafting that. And it does take work.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:38:43) If you're listening to this and you think that in six weeks, I'm gonna help you build your dream life—I can help you start, but it's gonna take longer than that. But in six weeks, you can absolutely start working the path, and then you can continue. Sometimes you can just continue on your own.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:03) Mhmm. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And then you can pull along help as you need it on the journey. Absolutely. The power—honestly, it sounds so cliche because it's so true, and it works so much of the time—but that whole 1% or, you know, one degree off, just the long-term consistent action is the thing that people ultimately respect. You see it in bodybuilders. What you're really excited about is how consistent they have been. You see it in everybody that's at the top of the game, you know. And you always think it's magic too, because especially when you learn about somebody new that's at the top of an area you weren't looking into, it's magic. But if you track back their history, they've just been incredibly consistent and disciplined for a very long period of time.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:39:50) Yeah. And it's alignment, right? And this is part of the work too, is once you become self-led, you align yourself and you manage your parts. And I literally talk about this as I'm a coach, and I put people into the game when I need them. And so that high-achieving part, it's like, hey, I gotta write my book today, and I gotta write 25 pages. Hey, high-achieving part, you're in the game. And it doesn't feel like fear anymore. It's like a supportive way. It's just like you would lead your team at work, right? And then you're like, hey, I'm done writing. It's time to hang out with my wife. Hey. You go back on the bench. Yeah. And that's more how I live and how you can live too.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:40:41) And then that allows you to do things like—we moved to Costa Rica, four suitcases and the dog, and we'd never been here before. And people look at me, and they're like, you're crazy. And I'm like, no, no, no. I built the level of trust and the leadership here where I knew that it didn't matter.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:02) And you picked up another dog, didn't you?

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:41:04) I did. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:05) Yeah. That was—I thought that was you. Yeah. Yes.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:41:09) And a cat too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:11) I think the Costa Rican rainforest is telling us to wrap it up. So make sure to email Joel at moderncto.io with the subject cheesecake, and we'll put you in the drawing to win a six-week coaching session with Rob here. And then for everyone else that doesn't get the six-week session, there's 10 other people who will get copies of the book. Very excited about it. Joel at moderncto.io. Rob, we made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:41:39) Thank you so much, Joel. It's awesome. Actually, why don't we do this too? Everybody who emails Joel, I will send you—or Joel will send you—a free worksheet, which helps you get started. And so it's called—I call it Find Your Reason, and it's how do we start overcoming the status quo to get moving towards our goals? And so you'll get that for free. And then yeah, so everyone will win something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:08) Alright. Everybody gets something. Thank you so much for doing this, Rob. I appreciate it, bud.

(Rob Kolwarowsky at 00:42:12) Thank you so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:13) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or a colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn, or send me an email—[email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.