The Pillars of Life with Marshall Goldsmith

27:55Do you know who Curtis Martin is? Curtis was a football star, National Football League anyway. He was number five rusher in history. And, you know, a lot of ex-athletes have huge problems. You see, they focus on results, but what happens after the game's over? Yeah, right. Or their career is then relatively young. Like, what happens when their career is over? alcoholism, drug addiction. A lot of money is spent giving money to their friends because they try to buy love. That's what happens when you focus on results all the time. So how do you learn then to not have any external or man-made metric to evaluate your self-worth?

28:31You were on a roll until you said self-worth. I think it's fine to have external metrics. I'm sure you look at external metrics. You probably know how many people listen to your podcast. You know how many people you and I both do on LinkedIn.

28:48It's not like you have no metrics here, right? You're very familiar with these metrics. And it's okay. I have metrics. You have metrics. Coach K has metrics. John wouldn't try. He wanted to win the national championship, but he didn't fix that. He said, you win, you win, you lose, you lose. That's life. And don't get fixated. This is basically the oldest poem in history. It's called the Mahabod Gita. And the whole purpose of the Giva is never focus on results. Never place your value as a human on results. You can't win. You cannot win when you do this. By the way, most motivational speakers, what's the old message?

29:27Achieve more, achieve more, delayed gratification. Are you familiar with the marshmallow research at Stanford? Yeah. Yeah, give a kid a marshmallow. eat one, you get one, but if you wait, you get two. Oh, and so allegedly they did this longitudinal research. The kids that ate one all become losers and junkies. Kids that eat two are all heroes, right? Well, and the message is delayed gratification is good. Every self-help book, delayed gratification is good. I'm sure you had speakers. Here's how you go on a better diet. Here's how you work out more. Blah, blah, blah. Delayed gratification is good.

30:01Here's what they didn't do in the study. I didn't take the kid with two marshmallows and said, hey, kid, wait a bit. You get three. Let's wait some more. Four, five, ten, a hundred, a thousand. Where does the story end? Old man. Old man sitting in a room surrounded by a thousand uneaten marshmallows. Sometime you need to eat the damn marshmallow. Yeah, that's a good point. So, right, like what was the big deal about getting two marshmallows? Why not just eat one? I didn't do the research. I just won one.

30:37I didn't do the research. Anyway, you can look it up. It's interesting. Jack Welch almost died. You know, Jack Welch was a famous CEO. So he had triple bypass surgery. My friend worked with him on his book. So he said, you know, Jack had triple bypass surgery there. For a second there, he thought you might die. What did you learn about life? He's waiting for some deep comment, right? What'd you learn about life when you had triple bypass surgery? You thought you might die. You know what Jack Wells said? Why am I drinking the damn cheap wine every night? Jack Wells has this incredible wine collection.

31:14He's drinking cheap wine, waiting for his wine to appreciate in value. And he said, I'm Jack Wells. I'm rich. This is insane. This is a really good point. Like a lot of these people, like you said, they're all rich. They're all successful. What about somebody who's listening to this who's really afraid? Inflation's gone up. Maybe they lost their job. They might not be able to feed their family. Their spouse no longer cares about them as much, and they think it's because they don't have a job. They're just afraid. Start working on getting a job. Hit the shot in front of you. What are you doing?

31:49Sitting there being afraid doesn't help you any. What are you doing? it's almost like you can't you you can't think your way out of out of fear or depression or anxiety you have to you have to act your way out of these things well let me give you another example there's a common misconception of the clutch shooter in sports you heard that you know he's a clutch shooter it's all bs somebody's done research on this right in fact the more pressure you're under you tend to do worse and even the you know how good the best players are under pressure they're as good as they are when they're not under pressure what does that mean that means they don't choke oh i see they don't let the back to results they don't focus on the result they focus on the shot you want to hit the shot don't think about the result you think about the result you're not thinking about the shot yeah so how can you how do you go about let's say training yourself to to not focus on the results when, when the results are really important to you.

32:55Well, again, I didn't say achievement was a bad thing or it should be unimportant or you shouldn't try to achieve results is fine. Just don't believe that's ever going to make you happier. Find peace. It won't. And, and, and again, like, let's say, let's say someone like David Chang, who, or you, you, you were able to motivate him with the, with, through the story with his, or linking happiness to the happiness of his child. Right. But what general techniques can – like let's say one of these tennis players is always miserable. Another but there, by the way, but go ahead. Okay, and now it's$100,$200 or whatever.

33:34So how can I, on things that are very important to me, how can I not focus as much on the results? Let's say I publish a book and it's not a bestseller. You keep saying don't focus on the results. I didn't say that. I didn't say results are trivial or unimportant. And what I said is you don't place your values as a human being based on the results. And you don't think the results are going to make you happy. Let's take you. Now, you do podcasts. You probably count how many people listen to podcasts or some nonsense like that or followers you have on LinkedIn. Such foolishness, right? Well, that's fine.

34:05I do too. I mean, I don't have a podcast, but I count how many followers I have on LinkedIn and all that crap. So I do the same thing. Here's the key, though. Don't fix on it. Don't fix it on that shit. So let's say you do a podcast and you're podcast of the year. Okay, fine. Who gives a shit? How long is that going to last? You're going to be podcast a year forever. Well, he'd say, I still want to have a great podcast. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to enjoy this podcast. I'm going to do the best I can. I'm not saying you don't try. John Wooden didn't say don't try to the basketball players.

34:36Coach K didn't say don't try. What he said is play the game. You're thinking about winning the game. You're not playing the game. you play the game, you improve your odds, you're going to win the game. That is interesting. So are we just talking some bullshit semantics? Or is there something real there? No, there's not just bullshit semantics, because let's take the guys that coach. If you place your value on achievement, your happiness on achievement, you're just not going to be happy. You may or may not. Let's assume you don't achieve any more in your life at all. You. Let's take you as an example.

35:16You achieve no more. Who gives a shit? You've already achieved a lot anyway. But let's say you do your best and you achieve a lot or you achieve none. Let's say out of this phone call or Zoom call, you only got one thing. Or let's say you break even. You neither become more nor less effective. And very few of my clients would say I made them less effective. Okay? So let's say you don't become more effective or less effective, but you're happier. Bad call or good call? No, that would be a great call. And so the question is, how do I get to that point where, like, look, let's say I'm afraid if I don't achieve more, people won't like me as much, which maybe is a legitimate fear for me.

35:56How do I kind of move in a direction where I don't think like that as much? Well, the first thing you say is, if I don't achieve more, people may not like me as much. Okay. I'm not arguing. Maybe they won't. That reminds me actually of like Byron Katie's approach. Like you ask yourself, is this true? Well, maybe they will, maybe they won't. My thing for you is though, look, when you wake up in the morning, just try this out. But I'm giving you a suggestion that takes about two minutes a day. Now, you're not gonna be out much if it doesn't work here. And I doubt you're going to achieve less. Are you ready?

36:36Yes. Every day you're gonna ask yourself one question. that I do my best to be happy today. And you're going to write it on a scale. If you just do that, you're going to get better. You're just going to remind, look, it's very interesting. I coached one guy who's worth$4 billion. I said to him, what am I supposed to do? Get to 4.1. He said, no, I'm not really happy. He said, you may help my friend be happier. I said, fine. I worked with a guy for like a year, year and a half. He got much happier, doing great. I called him up, oh, maybe four or five years later. How's it going? Not so good. So what happened?

37:12He said, I forgot to be happy. I forgot to be happy. And so what did he forget to do? He forgot to remind himself to be happy. He woke up in the morning and he forgot to be happy. He got so busy doing shit that he forgot to be happy. This happens all the time. You forget to be happy. Why, you're too busy. Too busy to cheat your things. Going back to what John Wooden said, play the game and probably maybe two things will happen. Probably the results will be better and B, you'll be happier. It's right. Play the game. Three things. One, you need a higher purpose in life. You need some answer to the question, why am I doing this in the first place?

37:58And nobody can tell you what that is. Yours is yours. Mine's mine. well, you need some sense of why am I doing this other than I'm just doing it. Number two, you need to achieve things. I'm not saying achievement is bad. I'm pro-achievement. You need to achieve things that are consistent with your higher purpose. And number three, though, is you need to enjoy the process of life itself. You don't want to die and say, look, I had a higher purpose. I achieved a lot of shit and I was miserable. I mean, that's not a particularly great idea. So these are three things you need to do, but they're not the same things.

38:32And, you know, I know you take a Buddhist perspective to a lot of your coaching. Right. In Buddhism, it seems like there is no man-made higher purpose, that you're one's fooling oneself if you think there's a higher purpose. Well, it depends. There are many schools of Buddhist thought. So really, I don't say in Buddhism they do this, that, or the other, because you can take five schools of Buddhism, they believe five different things. Buddhists that only do what I teach works for you. So really, there is no Buddhism says anything. So I don't want to voice this off on Buddha. I'll just give you my philosophy.

39:11My philosophy is, look, it's good to have some higher purpose in life. So all that work you're doing is for some reason. Two, it's good to achieve things, because then you're actually doing something other than just having a higher purpose. And three, it's good to enjoy the process of life itself. Four, don't assume that one of those gets you to the other. It won't. You can achieve a lot and make$20 zillion and have no purpose in life. You can also have a higher purpose and achieve nothing. And you can also have a high purpose and achieve everything and not be happy. So those are three different things that are all very good in and of themselves.

39:54But as Safi said, they're independent variables, not dependent variables. most people listening right now think that peace of mind and happiness are dependent variable based upon achievement i can guarantee you one thing they are not that's one thing i can say with certainty you're never going to achieve yourself to peace you're never going to achieve yourself to happiness there's no amount of money that's going to buy it in making money and achievable to make you happy the people i coach those 60 people every weekend would jump up and down off the ceiling every day.

40:49You know, Benjamin Franklin once said, in any year, if you make$101 and you spend$100, you're happy. If you make$99 and you spend$100, you're unhappy. So there is something to peace of mind in just paying the bills. I'm not arguing about paying the bills. I'm not arguing it shouldn't achieve. I'm not saying you shouldn't make money. I don't say any of those things. But it might be easier to have peace of mind and happiness if you simply could pay your bills. Not really. Look, for people listening to this call, let's get real. The people listening to this call are not going bankrupt. People listening to this call can pay their bills.

41:31People listening to us right now read books. They listen to talks like this. The people you're talking about, none of those people are listening to this call right now. None of those people buy my books. I've done studies who buys my books, your books. None of those people buy these books. We're not talking to any of those people right now. On this call right now, you've got a bunch of very smart, highly intelligent people that are trying to get better in life and are very driven to achieve. I doubt very few people listening to this call are bankrupt. Who do you think buys your books? I did a study on that.

42:04Two-thirds have graduate degrees. 95 % graduate from college. They're mostly very bright people who are focused on trying to get better. And so now you're doing this AI thing so people can access. I can go to marshallgoldsmith.ai and ask questions to Marshall Goldsmith. I can talk to Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall's wisdom, ready for all. And it's free. So I'm going to ask you the question right now. Okay. Now let me ask you the question. He'll talk to me. What's a good question? Why am I never happy? Well, slow down. Let's start and ask you 12 questions. When I achieve my goals. What can I do to be happy in a way that is not dependent on achieving my goals?

43:03And I'll see what my friend says. I haven't asked you this way before, but I'll find out. To be happy in a way that does not depend on achieving your goals, you can focus on the following. One, practice gratitude. Regularly reflect on what you are thankful for. Gratitude can shift your focus from what you lack to what you have. Two, engage in acts of kindness. Helping others can provide a sense of joy and fulfillment that is not tied to personal achievements. Three, cultivate mindfulness. Live in the present moment. Mindfulness can help you appreciate the here and now. rather than being preoccupied with future aspirations.

43:48Anyway, it goes on. It goes on. It's interesting about the gratitude. Like Stephen Kotler, who's this expert on flow, said that the easiest way to kind of hack flow is to practice gratitude. I never thought of that. Yeah, I don't know for sure if it's true, but I like the sound of it. Yeah, it sounds good. You know, a lot of times people suggest, I mean, I have a lot of people who come on this podcast who suggest certain things, certain diets, certain ways of thinking, certain attitudes. It's hard to know if anything is true. What's that? It's hard to know what's true. Well, you know, I'm certainly not an expert, but probably for my guests, most of the diets probably work.

44:33Yeah. By the way, my coaching process, I did a study called Leadership as a Context Sport. You want a copy of it, send me an email. Marshall and Marshall Goldsmith.com. I'll send you a copy. 86 ,000 people. you do the stuff I teach, you will be perceived as a more effective leader by all those key stakeholders. It's not a theory. It's a fact. It's hard to do. I teach something called a daily question process. Every day I evaluate myself on questions. It's hard to do. I've had to have something. People ask me, do I have a coach? I have somebody call me on the phone every day for 27 years almost to help me.

45:06Why? My name is Marshall. I'm too cowardly and undisciplined to do any of this crap by myself. I need help. And so what's a daily question you ask yourself? One of, did I do my best to be happy today? Did I do my best to set clear goals? And then I have a bunch of health questions. You know, how many steps did I take? I'm good on the step one. How much do I weigh? There's a bunch of questions about life every day. And I guess what it does is it helps you keep discipline. So like, let's say you're concerned about health and you make this something that you consciously ask yourself and write down.

45:42and so it's there front and center in your head. You might not, it'll help you notice a little bit more when you're being undisciplined and snacking and whatever. It's almost like the Honda effect. Like once you get a Honda, you notice all the Hondas on the street. So once you're focused on happiness as opposed to achievement, you start noticing all the opportunities to be happy rather than the opportunities to achieve. I did not say happiness as opposed to achievement. One of my questions is, did you do your best to be happy? Another question is, do you do your best to set clear goals? And number three, did you do your best to make progress toward goal achievement?

46:18I'm not knocking achievement here. It's on the list. It's on the list. It's not the same one as happiness, though. What's an example of someone you coached who wasn't coachable, who didn't really, you know, you couldn't really get through to? See, back to my friend Alan. Number one, I never try to make anyone change. if people say to me, prove to me this is worthwhile, you know what I'd say? It probably isn't. Don't bother. I got plenty of business and money. I don't need this. You don't want to do it. It's okay. Maybe a terrible idea. It sounds stupid. Probably is. Probably a dumb idea. Don't bother.

46:59I never coach anybody. How do I inspire people to do this stuff? I zero effort inspiring anybody. Option A, you will do all the stuff I talk about. You do this hard work, et cetera. You want to do but great, you know, goodbye. I'm not going to work with you. So how do I deal with persons who don't want to be coached? I fire them. I just don't work with them. I'm not putting them down. They're not bad people. I don't care. Yeah, so have there been cases where you had to fire people, fire clients? Of course. Oh, yeah. Like sometimes people just don't really want to do this stuff. It's okay. Or sometimes people, back to our conversation, Well, you proved to me that this is going to help me get promoted, make more money.

47:43It may not. Don't bother. Right, because you're getting promoted while is a decent goal is not necessarily related to being happier or being a better person. Well, look, and also it's not necessarily related to being a good leader. I can help you be perceived as a more effective leader by your key stakeholders, right? I can help you get better with these behaviors. You picked the wrong behavior. Look, I didn't pick the behavior you did. I didn't pick the stakeholders you did. I didn't say this is worthwhile. You did. I'm helping you get better what you said was important. It's judged by people you told me were important.

48:22I'm not making you do anything. What if, though, excess ambition is really leading to less happiness? So, yes, it's good to be goal-oriented and achievement-oriented and happiness-oriented. Right. What if they are not independent variables? What if? Number one, I do believe they're independent variables. That's a whole different thing. So on the other hand, what's your question again? They're independent variables, but what if excess ambition is keeping you from being happy? When you say excess ambition, what does that mean? Let's say a politician is only going to be happy if they want to be president of the United States.

48:57And so all their goals, everything they do is just, I got to be president or I'm going to be unhappy. Maybe they'll be president. Great. Or like one of these tennis players, I'll only be, you know, they're so ambitious. It's hard for them to get off of the addiction. Here's the point. The tennis player has no idea what they're talking about when they say that. Hey, go talk to Curtis Martin. Ask him how the national football players do after they win the Super Bowl. Curtis gave the speech at the NFL this year to all the rookies. You know what he said? I want you to think of somebody you hate. someone you want to have a miserable life, I'll tell you what to do.

49:41You give them a lot of fame and money when they're very young and watch what happens. Curtis is a very smart man, very deep guy. My question is, how do you wean yourself off that addiction for fame and money? Well, again, you don't have to try to achieve fame and money. That's okay. Nothing wrong with achieving fame and or money, right? That's fine. I mean, I don't have that much money, but I have a moderate amount of fame. You have a moderate amount of fame. Okay, nothing wrong with that. If we didn't have any fame, nobody would know who we are. We're listening to this call right now. It's okay.

50:17The key is don't just fixate on it and make that your value as a human being. Right. And so let's say some people fixate on it more than others. So how do you wean yourself off the drug? Like, for instance, I don't fixate on taking crack every day. So it's no problem for me to not smoke crack every day. Only occasionally. But if someone's addicted to crack, it's a little harder for them. I don't recall saying anything was easy. This stuff's hard. Why do I have to have – look, if I had my shit together, would I have to have someone call me personally on the phone every day for 27 years? Like what's a time when you've been unhappy?

50:59Let's say – I'm very happy on the whole. I don't have that as much of a problem. but like what's a time when you really needed that coach you know i can look back at my life i'll give a story i was working the la city planning department this story changed my life and i was negative angry blah blah blah judgmental so my old advisor dr case calls me and says marshall uh well what's the problem here it's just marshall goldsmith you have discovered that the city government of Los Angeles is inefficient. What a stunning breakthrough. He said, my barber knows that. Do you have any other problems? He goes, oh, Marshall Goldsmith, the wise one.

51:42You have discovered when people donate millions of dollars to politicians, they're probably nicer to those people than those ones that don't give them money. My barber knows that. Now, Marshall, you're coming across as negative, pain in the ass, judgmental. You're annoying me. Now, Marshall, moving forward, you're going to have two options. Option A, son, let's have a good time here. He's still trying to do good, still trying to achieve. Have some fun. Just have fun and enjoy yourself. Option B, you're fired and you're never going to graduate and you wasted the last five years of your life. I said, son, what's it going to be?

52:12I said, Dr. Case, it's time to be happy, sir. Yes, sir. That was great. I'll tell you, that was great advice. I never forgot it. Grow up. You know, a few weeks ago, I tried something that I'll call a no complaining diet. So I tried very, very hard to notice whenever I was complaining and just stop it. Good. And it was very interesting because I found out I'm complaining almost all the time. And so is everyone. And then you start to notice when other people are doing it. And so is everyone else. Everyone is just complaining all the time. Right. I agree. Right. So you did it, right? You're getting better.

52:57I think I got a little better and then I kind of forgot to do it. You want to continue to improve? Yeah. All right. Every day you can evaluate yourself on one question. Did I avoid complaining today? Now here's the point. There's one point you don't get about all this stuff. You keep thinking that you're going to get there. And if you don't get there, there's something wrong with the process. There's no there. if you want to do better at this complaining thing, don't think you're going to get there so you never complain again. You can totally understand everything, get better for a year, and someday you're going to get pissed off and start complaining.

53:37That means the end of the world. You say, start over tomorrow. Yeah, start over tomorrow is an important insight. Yeah, start over. Because sometimes I think, oh, I just spent the last X number of months wasting my time or whatever, and then I regret. Maybe you did. Are you ready? I'm not sure you've done this. Now, your first name is James, is that correct? Yes. Raise your right hand, repeat after me. Okay. My name is James. My name is James. I forgive myself for just being human. I forgive myself for just being human. Yeah, you haven't quite got there yet. This is good. This is good. Just forgive me.

54:21You're human, man. You're going to screw up. We screw up all the time. Look, I said, my name is Marshall. I'm cowardly. I'm undisciplined. I can't do all this shit by myself. I need help every day. Why? I'll forget it. I get busy. Crap happens all the time. Act like an asshole. Well, I'm a human being. Let me ask you, like, you do a lot of coaching. You spend a lot of time writing. You're writing all these books. You've written excellent books. what do you do when in your spare time what do you do for as like a hobby you know what i do for fun if i could do anything right now for fun you know what it'd be bird watching i talk to some guy with crazy hair on a podcast now you don't know this james but i've made a real sacrifice to be here today talking with you i'm i don't want to make you feel bad about it but you know what i could have been done today rather than talking to you.

55:19I could have been playing crappy golf with old men at the country club while eating chicken salad sandwiches and discuss gallbladder surgery. You know, I passed up that opportunity to talk with you. I'm grateful. I have gratitude for that. What the hell am I going to do anyway, right? Play bad golf with old men? I don't want to do that shit. You think you could do that? Oh my God, forget it. It might be worse than me. Oh, definitely. My wife and I went to play golf once and she was so, I don't want to say we were bad. She was so ashamed of being around me. And I'm literally like, she, and by the way, the other people, there was another group paired with us.

56:01They actually went on ahead of us because they didn't want to be seen. I was doing, I didn't really understand the etiquette of the golf course and it just got like, the guards or whatever had to come up to us and say, hey, are you guys okay? Like we were just, I was just messing up so bad.

56:20I can't play golf either. Look, my neighbor where I used to live was a guy named Craig Stadler. So he won a master's degree. He's a big pro. And his kid was Kevin Stadler's now the pro tour. His kid was the number two golfer in the world when he was 12 for his age. Wow. Kid comes over to visit my house. My daughter's there. He's 12 years old. He says, oh, my daughter says, oh, this little Kevin Stadler, he plays golf. You know, I'm going, oh, don't, don't, don't go there. He goes, my daddy plays golf. Oh, shit. So the little guy says, what's your handicap, sir? I said, 31. And then he starts laughing.

56:52He says, what's really your handicap? He couldn't believe any human could be that bad. He was 12. He had a handicap of one. Oh, my gosh. And is he on the tour now? What's he? He's on the tour now, you said, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. He's on the tour. Seems like that's a fun way to live life is to just play a game all day. well could be or not yeah yeah maybe you might think it's unfulfilling you think of those people on the olympics oh man look at the statistics there after they quit not too pretty no i know i've had several olympic athletes like medal winners on this podcast who were suicidal that's right and I think it's a hard thing.

57:41That's particularly hard because the rewards are so small. There's no monetary reward, and then the fame, the quote-unquote fame is only very fleeting unless you're like Michael Phelps or something, and then even he gets depressed and so on. It's tough. That is if you think this is going to lead to happiness, peace, whatever. or you know what we believe? It's all going to be okay when. When I get the money status, BMW, condominium, everything's going to be fine when. There isn't a when. Every day you start over, there's no when. And you keep pointing out correctly that I keep associating that with not desiring achievement.

58:30And I feel like in my head I'm still making, like what if you lose your desire for achievement? Now, remember, one of my daily questions every day for me is, did I set clear goals? Did I make progress toward achieving my goals? It's one of my every day I do that. That's right. Okay. Right. So you have to kind of like ignore, I have to ignore this weird gut feeling as opposed to focusing on the questions themselves. This is very good. Okay. Ready for some free coaching? Yes. For some reason, you seem to have a fear

59:03that if you don't have some sort of fear or aversion or something, that you're not going to achieve enough and that you won't continue to be this ridiculous achiever that you have been in the past. Yeah. I am not worried in the future about your lack of achievement. I think you may have other problems in the future, but that one is not really crossing my mind. and by the way, it's not like I haven't achieved anything. I've achieved a thing or two. It's okay. Right. So, but I almost said, but let me figure out how to, how to say this.

59:47Is my desire to achieve related to that fear though? Could be. And it's also probably related to this. Some, which I think is a totally misguided belief that, after I achieve that, I'm going to be happy at peace. Life is good. Everything will be fine. Yeah. Not really. I mean, look, how much you've already achieved. Good Lord. I mean, come on, man. Give me a break. Give me a break. That was yesterday, though. I wouldn't be too hard on the boy there. You've done okay. You did okay. That was yesterday, though. What about today? Well, it's okay. You know, it's starting over. Start over. Maybe today.

1:00:24Now, let me give you another possibility. Let's assume you try something new and fall on your ass. Okay? So what? Try something new later. You're not going to die. You're not going to starve to death, right? You're not going to die. Who cares? You do something, you try hard, you do your best, you enjoy it, and it didn't work. Okay, it didn't work. Shit happens sometimes. Yeah, and that's the forgiving yourself. Yeah, just start over, forgive yourself. I'm just a human here. Yeah, you're just a human. I screw up sometimes. So let me ask you, what's your goal for this MarshallGoldsmith.ai? Well, what I want to do is give away as much as I can to as many people as I can.

1:01:11Okay? And I'm 75. I'm going to die anyway. So, you know, intellectual property, what do I care? And I can say, you send me$10 million tomorrow, my life's not going to change one iota. I'm not getting another car, house, kids. You know, I'm going to buy anything anyway. So I just want to give everything away. And for me, it's a great way to give away everything I can. The damn thing is amazing. Let me give an example. My daughter wants to trick it. And so she says, oh, my daughter's a professor of marketing at Vanderbilt here. She went to trick it. She says, how is your coaching related to utilitarian philosophy?

1:01:46I don't know what utilitarian philosophy is. He studies utilitarian philosophy. He studies my coaching. Figures out how it's connected. thinks of what I would say. By the way, put three million words in this thing so it knows me very well. Figures out how I would answer the question and answers it in my voice in five seconds. It's mind-blowing to me. I don't know if it is to you, but to me, this is just mind-blowing. No, it's amazing. When AI talks back, it's amazing the things it says. I find it mind-blowing. And so also I use the other AI bots to train my bot. Right. I like the Claude bot myself.

1:02:25That's my favorite of the others. I've never used it. I've used just ChatGPT. You should try the Claude bot. I like it better. So I'd say, again, I don't want to criticize other bots, but I like the Claude bot of those, and then I like yours, the second one, and then the Gemini I'm not that fond of. So I like the Claude bot. The Claude bot's actually more literary, I think, too. So I'll ask, if my bot can't answer a question, but I think it should be able to answer the question, I ask the question to Claude. Then I ask Claude, what would Marshall Goldsmith, how would Marshall Goldsmith answer?

1:03:01Or no, let's say, who's a philosopher you like, say? Pick one. Me? Or you're asking the AI? No, you pick a philosopher, yes, you. I'll go with Viktor Frankl, who I view as a philosopher. Yeah, interesting, it's a great example. So let's say you ask Marshall Bot, how is your coaching related to the philosophy of Viktor Frankl? If it knows, it should know. What if it knows? Great. But if it doesn't know, I go to Claude. And I say, how is the philosophy of Viktor Frankl related to Marshall Goldsmith's coaching? It'll answer the question. Now, the parts of it that I like, I keep. The parts of it I don't like, I get rid of.

1:03:38I've done this over and over and over again, so that's how I train it. Yeah. And so I see. So not only did you feed in all these words, like let's say you fed in all your books and it learned from that, but you also then kind of did training of what's good and bad and so on. And it remains trained. It doesn't just stay trained for that day. It remains trained. Well, here's another interesting point. Every computer bot is biased. So my computer bot is biased. They're all biased. The Gemini one is the one that had the case study, the Gemini and the pictures and all this stuff, right? Well, that thing just blew up.

1:04:11Every computer bot is biased. If you ask a computer bot a question, what is leadership? There are 100 possible answers. As soon as you pick an answer, it's biased by something. Well, my computer bot is biased by me. I am the bias. I'm not saying my answers are good answers or the right answers. All I'm saying is these are my answers. But at least you know whose answers they are. They're my answers. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, ignore it. It's okay. It's free anyway. I'm definitely going to play around with it and learn from it. How did you go from urban planning and mathematics to executive coaching?

1:04:54Well, my PhD is actually in organizational behavior. And I met a famous guy named Dr. Paul Hersey. Now, Dr. Paul Hersey is a big deal in our field of time, highest paid consultant in the world doing what we do. And he let me sit in the back of his class. I watched him. I said, man, that guy's good. I want to be him when I grow up. I want to be like him. So I said, look, I'll serve the coffee, you know, do anything. Just let me sit in the back and watch. I did. One day he got double booked. He said, can you do what I do? I said, I don't know. He said, I'll pay$1 ,000 for a day. I was doing$15 ,000 for a year.

1:05:29I'm from Valley Station, Kentucky. We had an outhouse the first four years I was in school. I was brought up at Harvard Prep here. I said,$1 ,000 a day. That was a long time ago, 47 years ago,$1 ,000 a day. You know what I said? Sign me up, coach. I did a program for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They are phenomenally pissed off when I show up because I'm not him. But they love me. I'm telling jokes, having fun. The other people are stiff finance people, boring. I said, send him again. We love him. We love him. So he calls me up and says, you want to do this again? You know, I said, there's a bear shit in the woods.

1:06:00I'll do this again. That's how I got into leadership development and coaching. I met a guy who was at the time CEO of a company called Warner Lambert. He said, I got this kid working for us, young, smart, dedicated, hardworking, driven to achieve, arrogant, stubborn, know-it-all jerk. He said, be worth a fortune to me that kid would change his behavior. I said, I like fortunes. Maybe I can help him. I doubt it. Came up with an idea. I'll work with a kid for a year. He gets better to pay me. Don't get better, it's free. You know what he said? Sold. It was nothing called coaching. I just made it up.

1:06:33Well, you've done very good at it. Your books have inspired millions. I love the titles of your books, by the way. Like I think the earned life is a great title. What got you here won't get you there, which is how successful people become even more successful. Mojo, how to get it, how to keep it, how to get it back if you lose it. That's one that I honestly haven't read, but I didn't realize that one existed, but that's the first one I have to buy right now about Mojo. That's good. It's all good. Well, Marshall Goldsmith, I hope people try out marshallgoldsmith.ai. I am going to try it out. I'm going to use it.

1:07:14I'm going to ask myself these questions every morning as well. So you've already... This is why I do a podcast, by the way, is to have people like you on and then get free coaching. This is the entire reason I do a podcast. So thank you so much for participating in my giant experiment. Oh, that's great. So thank you very much for inviting me. It's been wonderful to talk to you. Thanks.