257. "Get Your Shit Together": Rob Kalwarowsky on How to Capitalise on 2025's Chaos (Before It's Too Late)

0:00So I'm Rob Kalwarowsky. I'm an executive coach, author, and speaker. I'm most famous for my book, Capitalizing on Chaos. One of the most pivotal moments in my life actually was the beginning of 2020. And my wife and I, we traveled to Hawaii for a best friend's wedding. And at the time, I was depressed, suicidal. I was having panic attacks. Just the inner chaos was crazy. But everything in my life looked great. Like I was making mid-six figures. I had a stable, successful engineering career. And it didn't matter. We were walking on this beach and people were surfing. We came across this Volkswagen bus.

0:45And at the back of the bus, there was a box of fruit and this cardboard sign that said, leave a dollar and take a fruit. And in that moment, it hit me was the people who were living in that van, they were the ones who were out surfing and they were free to live their lives one wave at a time. Part of me said, hey, Rob, I would love to do this. And then I had the inner critical voice say, I will never let you do this. And that was the moment where I realized that if I don't change, I will always be controlled by fear. And so this is the one most critical time for you to learn how to capitalize on chaos, because you will set yourself apart from your competitors.

1:35And if you don't, you'll miss out. That was Rob Kavarowski, a successful engineer making mid six figures, standing on a Hawaiian beach looking at a beat-up Volkswagen van with a cardboard sign selling fruit for a dollar. And he had a terrifying realisation. The people living in that van were far freer than he would ever be. Rob's story isn't about quitting your job to live in a van, although he did end up moving from northern Canada to Costa Rica. It's about something more fundamental. The chaos isn't just happening to you. The chaos is in you. And until you deal with that internal battle, no amount of external success is going to fix it.

2:15Today we're joined by Rob Kalvaroski, executive coach, TEDx speaker and author of Capitalising on Chaos. And here's what Rob discovered through his own breakdown and breakthrough. When you're stuck in stress, your brain literally shuts down your executive functioning. You lose decision making, logic, emotional capability. You're left with just four stress responses, fight, flight, freeze or fawn. And none of those make you a good leader. And his message for leaders right now is brutally simple. If you don't have your shit together, your team won't either. These are Rob's own words, by the way.

2:53And that's not an opinion, that's neuroscience. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Today we're asking what if 2025's chaos isn't something we need to survive? What if it's the biggest opportunity you're ever going to seek in your career or your business? While everyone else is paralysed by uncertainty, they're stressed about tariffs and elections and economic forecasts, this is your moment to capitalise.

3:33But here's the catch, you can't seize it if you're stuck in your own internal chaos. You can either be a victim to the chaos like the majority will be. We can capitalize on it. This episode comes with a huge opportunity, a prize draw, six weeks of free coaching to get you ready to control the chaos and seize the opportunities. Our expert guest, Rob Kowarowski, is giving away six weeks of coaching plus his book to one lucky listener and 10 more will get the book plus one session with him. Stay tuned to find out how to enter. After this quick break, we'll join Leanne as she interviews Rob and discover what it really means to capitalize on chaos, starting with the chaos inside your own head.

4:11See you in a second. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. Mm-hmm, but do you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

4:50So I'm Rob Kowarowski. I am an executive coach, author, and speaker. I'm most famous for my book, Capitalizing on Chaos, which is the crucial time right now and one of the most critical times in history, at least since we've been alive, Leanne, for leaders to capitalize on this moment because as everyone who's reading headlines, articles, and news right now, almost every title says chaos. And so if you're a leader and you're listening to this, if you're stuck in stress and frustration and with the lack of clarity, this is the one most critical time for you to learn how to capitalize on chaos because you will set yourself apart from your competitors.

5:44And if you don't, you'll miss out. We're all experiencing chaos, but I'm interested to know, how do you define it? Chaos for me is uncertainty. And so as you know, Leanne, as a psychologist, our brains are designed to keep us safe and alive. And that's why we like habits. We like things we've done before. We like patterns. We like things that our brain can predict. and I do that with the quotes because we can't actually predict what's going to happen, but we can somewhat predict that we're going to end this action or this behavior with a good result. Right? And so even I was at a conference last week and I was like, this is the first time you've sat in this room.

6:32And yet if you come back later in the day or tomorrow, you're going to pick the same chair. Right? And our brains love that. And when we have that habit, it keeps us feeling good and safe and secure. When we're in uncertainty or chaos, we cannot predict the outcome. And that's what puts us into that stress response. Also, folks call it like the fight or flight response. But it puts us into that space of our brain literally shuts down our executive functioning. And so we lose out on decision-making, on logic, on emotional capability, and we're left with the four stress responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, fawn being a version of people-pleasing.

7:28But those four responses do not allow us to be good leaders. They do not allow us to make innovative and smart decisions based on what's going on in the world. and so if we are stuck in those we're not going to win so you talk so much in your book about how chaos is much or dealing with chaos as much the mental state as it is what is happening externally how do we approach that in a way that feels manageable the first step for folks is to just take a deep breath and just say to yourself, I'm human. And just acknowledging that. And we're all feeling it. We're feeling the stress. We're feeling the frustration.

8:16We're, you know, I'm traveling to the United States in a month and who knows if my flights will work, right? Like we're all dealing with that. And it's totally normal. And you feel like everybody else. And so even just acknowledging how you feel is going to help you take a step forward. The other part of it, Leanne, is what you've been mentioning about the internal chaos. And what I've been working on with leaders consistently, especially in the last two months, has been the competing parts of us that are in an internal battle. So even this morning, I was talking to a leader, and it looks like his company may not be continuing to receive the funding that they were thinking they were going to.

9:12and so basically their board has told them only to give goals for q1 and so the writing may be on the wall there if we've gone from annual planning or even beyond that because they're manufacturing they're building facilities and all these things to okay the next basically three months, right? Now he's competing with the parts of him, one going, hey, you should start looking for another job and hammer your outreach and applications and talking to people and doing that with the other part that goes, this was, you joined this company for the opportunity to implement AI, to implement robotics, to implement cutting-edge technology, and you should go in and be motivated to do that.

10:05And so even just those two single parts of us or being that inner chaos and that decision, it's exhausting. And it's really like what I work on with folks is how do we get both of those parts to the table with us and really just come to an agreement on how we're going to go forward. And that's the deeper work, but it all starts with just noticing and just letting yourself know that it's totally normal to feel this way. And I'm human. It resonates with me what you said in terms of those conflicting priorities, those decisions that seem at odds that we feel like we need to make one whilst balancing everything else when you recognize that that chaos part of that case is coming from within is that internal conflict what's the first step in starting to do some of that hard work that you mentioned it starts with the self-awareness so actually like one is we have to overcome our status quo in order to take action.

11:17So the first step really is once you feel that, you know, those two, that inner conflict of like, what should I do this or should I do this? Or, you know, should I try to grow my business or should I pull back and save all my money? Or whatever that is. then it's a matter of okay how do i start to overcome my status quo bias and it's natural the status quo bias is natural because of the same reason is if we stay in status quo our brain can predict an outcome and that makes us feel good even if that outcome is terrible like i've been suicidal and my brain goes, just stay where you are, which is like the antithesis of safe.

12:10But your brain goes, I know tomorrow you'll wake up and yes, you'll feel terrible, but you'll still wake up. Right. And so we have to leverage that. And so that's where I have the find your reason tool, which everyone can get a copy of. And really what it's doing is it's allowing people to, one is look at their goals. What do they want to achieve and how will they feel when they achieve it? And then the opposite, which is what is the pain and suffering of status quo and leveraging those two against each other and like adding the most amount and the biggest feelings you can to both sides will make you go okay i can't miss out on not on not changing and and that's the first step and with all the external chaos that is going on and the uncertainty economically politically everything is it also a moment using your tool to reassess our goals do we need to consider if our goals have changed or they or they need to change absolutely yes i mean we've seen it in COVID where folks started to reevaluate why they go to work.

13:24And it's changed from I'm here to get money, I'm here to get status, I'm here to get, you know, to punch the clock and do what I was taught as a kid to I want to work in something purposeful, meaningful, or even where my, you know, my manager affirms me as a person and grows me. And this is again, another one of those moments, right, is like the tech sector is going through hundreds of thousands of people getting laid off. You know, people are getting replaced with AI. You know, the earlier this year was the largest time in history where CEOs were not providing future guidance for their companies to shareholders on annual reports.

14:13And so this is a moment to go, who am I? And how can I cultivate inner peace and safety in order for me to trust myself, regardless of what happens outside of me, that I can figure it out and I can lean into who I am to create what I need to create so I can have the life I want to live. and that's what I help folks do but it's also it's the moment in time where it's like if you don't shed your fear you're going to be stuck and you don't want to get left behind because this is this is really a crucial moment in all of our lifetimes you mentioned AI there and I think it is definitely a source a big source of pressure and uncertainty from your view how is AI changing the landscape of leadership?

15:11MIT did a study and they said that 95 % of AI projects didn't add any value. So in the current state of AI, it's great for writing emails. It's great for, you know, content generation. It's great for like a lot of the work that we do as podcast hosts, like it can clip up the show, you know, it can clean out the words. It can do some stuff like that, right? Also, what it is doing is when people are using it to write emails or memos or procedures or policies is basically it's writing stuff and then other people are writing with AI back to it. And it's creating its own friction within a business.

15:56It's not making you more productive. it's actually increasing just nonsense because you have you know two people using ai back and forth so as a leader you have to really get clear on what is your guidance to your company about how are we going to use it and where is it going to add value and where is it not going to add value. And even things like, you know, if you're in a sector where data privacy is important, or, you know, you're doing, you know, technological work that like maybe patents are part of what you do, or you have a process that you don't want other folks to know about, you have to be very conscious about are you uploading data into a software that's going to release it into the cloud, right and so even that from a privacy perspective is really important as well with your coaching work when you're talking to to leaders what's the thing that they're most fearful of when it comes to this disruption when it comes to ai automation what are they talking to you about what i've helped leaders the most with in the last few months has just been these decision points and it's been things like tariffs are impacting their business and they don't know what to do.

17:22It's been things like, you know, they're wondering about, should I go and spend money on AI or should I not? They're wondering about 2026 and beyond. Is my business going to exist or am I going to, like, should I replace my people with AI? Like a bunch of questions like that. And ultimately, for most of them, it's an internal debate. And that's turning into internal chaos, which is keeping them in the state of stress and burnout. And it doesn't take very long. In general, we can get pretty far on a decision in 45 minutes. And it just gives you that inner clarity. And it's not that you have all the answers, but you know how you're going to address the current situation in this moment.

18:18And so an example of this is I had a Canadian CEO and the tariffs in the United States impacted his business. Like they added a bunch of basically expenditure to his business where it would be no longer profitable to sell to the United States. and so he was very yeah like there was a lot of chaos about that internally like he was upset he was wondering like should i open a u.s branch like how do i do this canada is not supporting entrepreneurs like all these things and then we sat down and we worked on it and he came out and he's like it's clear that my market and where i have to go in 2026 is europe and the united emirates and so that's where his focus is going to go and is that's what is that what's causing the strain well because these are i mean they're complete 180s aren't they in terms of where you think you're going to take the business in a very short time you're completely pivoting is that a lot of the the source of the stress as well these are such huge decisions and big changes that that we're under pressure to make to at this point even just try and survive into 2026 It feels like that, right?

19:36And even small things. Like I talked to a leader a couple days ago. He's a CTO at a company and he was just not sure what to do with one of his people. Like what project should he put him on or how does he make them more effective? And there was like multiple parts of him that were thinking about different things. And so it's not a huge decision. It was just like the internal clarity wasn't there. but you're right. You're totally right. Leanne is like a lot of us are under a tremendous amount of pressure, whether that's our internal parts of us that are like, you need to win. You need to succeed.

20:15I have that. And I'm sure a lot of folks listening, you have that too. Right. And, and so it's like, that is a thing where if you were raised to do well in school, get a good job make a lot of money be quote-unquote successful and then you'll be happy it's a really hard time to fit that and so you will feel the stress and the uncertainty of how am I going to grow my business how am I going to keep winning how am I going to get promoted all these changes what are they going to do for to me am I going to get laid off for AI and that creates a lot of stress and And is this where we're losing ourselves?

20:58You said with your drive and your tool to help people reconnect with their reason, is that what we've lost? What we're losing in the chaos? What we're losing is ourselves. And the fear and the stress and the chaos creates us into bad leaders. Like if we're fighting or flighting or freezing or fawning, we aren't good leaders. We're not connected to people. We're not making strategic decisions. We're not able to even access innovation. And that ripples into our businesses, our families, and the community in the world. Right? And we can say that because basically one man's inner chaos has completely changed the world uncertainty in the last whatever year.

21:50And I can say that because the World Uncertainty Index has increased. And this is a metric that's tracked. And since the fall of 2024 to today, it's gone up by 330%. And it's 87 % higher than the peak of the pandemic. That is unprecedented chaos. And it's driven by basically one person. the leaders i know you kind of alluded to some of the the qualities there but the leaders that are going to succeed in this climate that are going to capitalize on the chaos what differentiates them from those who won't succeed it's the people who have unshakable confidence in who they are and how they can trust themselves and how their their parts can trust them to navigate whatever the world throws at them.

22:49And those are the people who are going to make the innovations and they're going to capture the market share and they're going to do the things that in 2026 and 2027 and beyond are going to completely revolutionize their businesses, their families, and the world. And even it's like a company, there was like a famous story during the pandemic where a vodka company started making hand sanitizer. You don't make that decision when you're in fear. You need innovation, which you need to be outside of that stress cycle to make that. And what did it do for their business model? They went from not selling much to blowing up.

23:37And that opportunity is here today for folks out there is you can learn to create that inner clarity and then you'll be able to do things like that. So it sounds like chaos can actually be a source of creativity if we know how to leverage it. It's opportunity. There's a famous saying in investing, which is like when there's blood in the streets, and buy. And that's this moment. And just based on the numbers, there's never been this much chaos in the world. And so for folks who are able to step out of the stress and step out of the fear and to really find that clarity, that's when you can find these opportunities, just like one of my clients did, where he's pivoting to Europe and he's pivoting to the UAE.

24:30And he even said, he was like, in the Emirates, I can charge a premium on my product because it's the best in the world and my margin is far bigger than it is in Canada or the United States. So Rob's told us about this massive opportunity. Chaos creates openings that simply don't exist in stable times. One of his clients is pivoting to Europe and UAE, charging premium prices, while competitors are paralyzed by fear. But here is the tension. You're hearing this and thinking, well, that sounds great, Rob, but I'm still feeling the fear. I'm still reactive, not proactive. So how do you actually shake that off?

25:05How do you debug your own stress response when you're literally your own brain is screaming at you to freeze? We're going to hear all about that after this short break. And I know there's going to be people listening who will want to talk about the opportunity and want to grasp that opportunity whilst equally feeling that internal chaos that you've talked about in terms of I'm still feeling fearful, I'm still feeling more reactive than proactive in the environment that they're in, that I'm in. how do you shake that off how do you debug that how do you start to find that inner clarity and peace in a way that is is step by step is actionable is tangible absolutely so the first right is that i'm human just connecting to yourself then you can go to rob kalvarsky.com slash find reason and get the find your reason tool which will help you start to clarify what your goals are, what you can do today and this week to move towards those goals.

26:07And then it's about really just developing that self-awareness, like what's going on up here that is keeping you stuck? What is the conversation that is the inner chaos? And starting to just lean into those aspects of yourselves and then being the leader. And so those are parts of you, they're not you. there's a part of you that goes Rob you got to work harder and so you win there's also a part of you that goes Rob you're exhausted you need to take a break only Rob knows the truth and only Rob can have the balance between both of these polar opposites and you need to learn how to become the self leader for those parts in front of you.

26:57And I always talk about this as being like a coach. I put in my high achiever part when I need him. And then when I don't need him, I put him on the bench. And so you have, once you can learn to cultivate that inner system, it's literally like you're like a leader at work or you're a coach on a team. You're just putting players in when you need them and you're taking them out when you don't and when they're starting to cause some ruckus on the bench you're like it's all good i got it i'm the i'm in charge you can sit on the bench what will that mean for people around leaders that are able to cultivate this this mindset and this discipline what does that mean for their for their team the flat-out facts are this leanne engagement according to gallup is roughly 21 and so if you have 10 people on your team, that means two people are actually working hard, six people are kind of mailing it in, and then there's another two people who are actively working against your team's goals, right?

28:05And Gallup reports the top behaviors that drive employee engagement. One is being a caring manager. Another one is focusing on people's strengths, giving them regular feedback conversations, you know growing them in their careers basically it's you being some version of a coach for them if you're in fight flight freezer fawn you're not connected to your employees you're not caring about them you cannot do empathy you cannot do you cannot do any of those behaviors where you're actually trying to help somebody get better because you're fighting your internal system Once you get to that calmness and that inner confidence, then you can care about somebody else.

28:53Then you can develop them. You can engage them. And literally, you can double or triple your workforce without hiring a single person. So what you're saying is it doesn't require doing any more, it just requires doing things a bit better? 100%. And it's so easy. Employee engagement, like those behaviors, yes, of course, it takes the inner work. But when you start doing that, everything gets better. Productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, you make your team makes less mistakes, they're happier, they're healthier, it goes into their families. Happy employees are 300 % more innovative.

29:37Like it's the greatest thing ever for everybody. like and so it's like there's literally no reason to not do this work and is that the great irony of this time as you say a very a very important and defining time in our lives and probably in our our history as humans on this planet is the great irony that with all this technology innovation artificial intelligence it's more important than ever to just lean in to what it means to be human. Yeah, you're completely right. I was reading an article last week and it was talking about how kids at school, they are spending 50 % less of their time after school with friends.

30:24And it's really what we've noticed over a long time is people are starting to lean more into technology and less into the human interaction. And it's something that is irreplaceable as two people in the same room or community or friends. And we need that as people. And of course, Zoom and the, you know, Teams and all these products are really nice and we can have interactions and build relationships in ways that we've never done before. Like, I've never met Lee and Al in person right and yet we know each other you know we've done these things right but it's like the other side of it is that especially when people are in this time of fear a lot of it is actually how you as a leader show up in your energy and you can do this of course virtually but it is far more powerful in person i've also read a lot about how we've had this loneliness epidemic happening for years now it started before cove and it's got steadily worse and and continues to how do we take practical steps to reconnect because i think intuitively we know that this human connection is really important it's spending time with people face-to-face is really important but there's still so much of a part of us that that wants to stay more guarded wants to set firmer boundaries how do we practically speaking in these times of chaos lean into to these types of relationships that are going to fuel us in the way that we really need it's both it doesn't have to be all at work that's the first thing right is you don't have to make work the only people you meet.

32:18You can build community outside of work. You can join groups. You can, you know, sign up for your local pickleball league, right? Like there are ways for you to meet folks now that are far easier than when we were kids, right? Like you can go online and find a group for anything in your town, likely, and sign up for it, right? That's an opportunity. There's also opportunities, like if you are at work, right, is, I'm not saying you have to make everyone your best friend and obviously don't tell them literally everything because that never ends well, but it's even just talking about like your kid going to soccer practice the night before or like, you know, your favorite TV show.

33:08It's like opening up the door for small connections and small moments like that is a way to build that trust and that relationship and asking about the other folks, right? You can do that in a way that will build connection, but that doesn't reveal, you know, like things that you want to keep private. and turning back in terms of organizational life what i'm wondering is if there is a business owner listening that goes you know what rob i have done the work i do know my reason i feel very confident connected with what i'm trying to do and where i'm going to take my business but my people are feeling disconnected my people are feeling chaotic maybe they're yeah whatever economically politically financially i can see there's some instability there or it's impacting performance in some way what can leaders do to open up this conversation with their employees to try and find this clarity and this confidence or create the environment where these conversations can happen you can hire me um but no but seriously right is you need to lean into that right and i'm not saying you go and ask everybody like you don't you don't walk in the room go leanne you know you look very unconfident lately.

34:29Like what's going on with you? Like, don't do that. Right. But it's, it's about one is, is showing up as you showing up as the leader and showing the clarity and confidence that you have in your direction. And it's like helping people connect to the values of your organization, which hopefully is beyond, I want to make more money so I can buy another yacht, right? And it's about resetting the vision and the values and having people connect to those. And then really making people feel like they matter and they're valued and that you want to develop them. And it doesn't mean you have to hire someone like me or Leanne to come in and do group programming or coaching or whatever, right?

35:19It can be that, but it also could be something like, you know, you do a book club where you buy a bunch of books and people just read it once a week and they meet at lunchtime to talk about it. Or it could be just like putting them on a new project and learn like, hey, they want to develop the skill of project management. Great. You can lead this project that we're working on. Right. It's stuff like that, that moves the needle for people and you can literally spend zero dollars on it to you know tens or hundreds of thousands of it what are your non-negotiable skills for leaders in this chaos the non-negotiable skill is you have to have your own shit together but that's the flat out facts because if you're in that place of uncertainty and that's driving that fight or flight response or you're feeling the fear and you're displaying that to your people, it literally, and science proves this, will disrupt them.