Rebecca Macieira-Kaufmann is a versatile, seasoned CEO with broad leadership experience as a Financial Services Leader in sales & marketing, risk management, and international business operations. Her expertise in the financial services industry and outstanding record of leading business turnarounds has resulted in effective scaling of new businesses and expansion of existing operations globally for Fortune-50 FS organizations.
Rebecca’s transformational leadership style has provided avenues for success in all economic cycles, in both large and small companies during all stages of growth. Her vast experience leading international operations, digital technology implementation, wealth management, partnership & business development, strategy, regulatory compliance, process improvement, and aligning executive leadership with organizational goals has resulted in exponential growth.
Rebecca’s extensive career history has taken her through senior leadership positions at Wells Fargo and Citi among others. In 2020, Rebecca founded RMK Group, a CEO advisory and strategic consulting firm. Rebecca is also the author of FitCEO, a book that advises readers on how be the leader of their life: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. The book provides a framework for staying healthy while leading a busy life at work, home, and play.
Transcript
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[Music]
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welcome to the one away show presented by b debbie missions i am brian wish and
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i am your host and thanks so much for being here on this show i sit down with compelling
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entrepreneurs authors and rising leaders to talk through their most transformative relationships experiences
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and epiphanies curated with entrepreneurial leaders in mind we’ll dig into these finite moments
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in people’s lives and understand how they helped set their path forward rebecca kaufman is a versatile seasoned
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ceo with broad leadership experience as a financial services leader in sales and marketing risk management and
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international business operations her expertise in the financial services industry and outstanding record of
0:48
leading business turnarounds has resulted in effective scaling of new businesses and expansion of existing
0:54
operations globally for fortune 50 organizations rebecca’s transformational leadership style has provided avenues
1:01
for success in all economic cycles in both large and small companies during all stages of growth her vast experience
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leading international operations digital technology implementation wealth management partnership and business
1:13
development strategy regulatory compliance process improvement and aligning executive leadership with
1:19
organizational goals has resulted in exponential growth rebecca’s extensive career history has
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taken her through senior leadership positions at wells fargo and city among others in 2020 rebecca founded rmk group
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a ceo advisory and strategic consulting firm rebecca is also the author of fit ceo a book that advises readers on how
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to be the leader of their life physically emotionally spiritually and mentally the book provides a framework
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for staying healthy while leading a busy life at work home and play
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[Music] rebecca welcome to the one away show
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thank you great to be here brian yeah absolutely well for those that have
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never heard of rebecca or don’t know her i i saw a post pop up and her message strongly resonated with me and we’re
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going to get into it today we can throw the ballot but rebecca why don’t you start us off
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and tell us about your one-way moment i was thinking about that i’ve had many
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one away moments or seminal moments have changed my life um
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not related to the book but just that changes your trajectory is is having children wow okay
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the first question is did you always expect you know
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having kids is that something you’d always wanted yeah i think somehow families just
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always assumed in my mind that i would always have family so just like i always knew i’d go into
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business i always knew i’d have a family so yeah always something i thought i would do someday
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okay and what how are your kids my kids are 22 and 24.
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all right that that that age and what about having kids was
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uh such a seminal moment for you a life is no longer about you
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now you’re responsible for others and i think at work i was always responsible for others but at a very different level
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than when you’re a parent okay so maybe describe that level of
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difference responsibility or emotional work that’s required in that well i
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think anyone who’s a parent which is you know over half the world i’m sure um
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you’re taking care of someone’s physical needs when they’re young and then you’re taking care of mental
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spiritual needs as they age education i mean it’s a full-time 360 24 7 job
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yeah and were you i mean you think you’d always wanted right to have a family they catch you by surprise like the
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level of effort and the kind of full-time job nature of maybe what it took to kind of develop uh two humans in
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the world yes and no you know i think everyone who had kids would say things
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to me like oh you haven’t lived until you’ve had children which means nothing to you when you
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don’t have children because you know you’re living and then when you have children you understand what they’re trying to say which is it’s a whole
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other kind of life so so yes and no i think you can get ready and you can read and you can talk but
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you can never really know the personal connection to another human being yeah and for you you know and
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what has been the greatest joy it sounds like you know kids came into your life you could have
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only prepared so much but you know here they are you know two beings that you’ve birthed into the world uh
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as a mother you know what is your greatest joy in raising kids
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well the greatest joy now that they’re adults is it’s so much fun they’re my friends they’re not just my kids but they’re
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cool human beings who i love but i really like them so that’s really fun again all when you say seminal moments
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are just so many and you can go down a path of any one but that one is one that’s with you the rest of your life
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you know that’s not when you change yeah absolutely and um you know rebecca
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you you know just from what i know about you you’ve been very career driven and done some you
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know really incredible work i mean how was balancing uh raising a family with
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you know a career which it seems like you’ve put a lot of time into throughout your whole life yeah yeah and that’s that’s the fun part
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is uh i used to answer that question of how do you balance and my first answer was always there is no balance in a day
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and the reason why i say that and i still say that there is no perfect balance but there is what i call
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a whole life so depending on the age of my kids and what my job was doing at the time
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um you know when they’re little i would try to get home so i could put them to bed or have dinner with them or
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read them bedtime stories and do some really key things at night and then i might go back to work
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you know remotely if you will on do emails and catch up later so i would leave the
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office early enough to be able to make sure i was having dinner and read stories and do that
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whereas i don’t think i felt balance as much as just really scheduled on the weekend it
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was more about um probably more just family time and then during the week
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it was much more about work i was getting all the work done work work you’re at work more hours really awake
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than you are at home and so i think that’s why i the idea of balance is somehow
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harmony and i think more of complete i always had a complete life i did all the elements i wanted family work but
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definitely my weekends were more family and my weeks were more work even though of course it was integrated every day
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yeah no it seems like you uh had a nice way of going about it and you
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know just making sure it sounds like when you were at home on the weekends you know very present and very there for your kids and yep
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found what would work for you so uh you know along
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the journey of let’s just say raising kids and being full-time at a
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job and demanding jobs you know sometimes your health and your
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things that those come those come second or third um on the
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priority ladder which long term it comes out of detriment uh to you um
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i would love for you to share giving your what you’ve recently published what was your health you were a teen then
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what what were your health practices and disciplines you know the heat of your career with
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sure go ahead sure so health practices you know one of the
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things that’s so interesting about the book is there’s a section of the book that we call self-care and there’s another
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section called boundaries and they have very interesting um interrelationship so if you think about
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i was talking about i left work to make sure i could have dinner with my kids and read them a bedtime story and put
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them to bed during the week and then sort of my boundary on the weekend about making it much more about home those
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setting boundaries allowed me to do a lot more self-care and it’s true of um
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health as well and so i had different goals at different times you
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know i think early on it was like could i work out three times a week that was always my goal and how would i make time
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for that so if i did two on the weekend i had to make one during the week and making time for that so again setting
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boundaries committing to it if you think about the book and all the sections of the book
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talk about intention and commitment and boundary setting that then enables the self-care and i i i really tried to make
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self-care um or my health as important as my work in my family and
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the reason is i can’t show up for my team and i had often thousands of employees i can’t show up
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for my team if i’m exhausted and drained and not don’t have the stamina or high energy just like i can’t show up for my
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family if i don’t have the energy to lift a child and play i mean children like to play which is often rolling on
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the floor you know you gotta have energy so so i think and you have to have honestly
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arm energy to carry these babies they always want to be picked up so their arm strength so i
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i really did think about it intentionally about how am i going to
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make room for these things and you can’t do everything at once but that’s why i got back to it’s not all in
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one day it’s if you think about your life in weeks or months or years but so i try to in a week get enough physical
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exercise to stay healthy right and um as i grew in my career and as i
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as the same thing as a family evolves you know they start having their own hobbies and
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their soccer games or their sports or running around chasing a ball and then how much you do of that with them or
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they’re doing their hobbies i can do my hobbies right my hobbies dance so finding a dance class that would work i think you keep
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integrating it you know it never can stay constant that’s the other thing it’s like what their needs are what my needs are what my jobs needs are
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often morph and change over time and so i shifted so i’d say if i move way
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forward in my career you know i was often traveling later in my career um sometimes two three work weeks a month
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sometimes every week and so then i would incorporate walking meetings with my team or you know exercising before a
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business dinner in between the meetings and the dinner so finding pockets in a day to take care of my health but having
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it be a priority as much as work yeah no it seems like from everything
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you’re saying is you know you you took a very conscious effort you know and i think at a
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time right right now there’s so much self-care and this and that and what you
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what i’m hearing you say is no like this has been intentional from from the beginning
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yeah and decades prior to all the media kind of hoopla around why you need to to
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do this and i love how you thought of it you’re like i gotta carry these things and play i need to show for my team and
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i you know bringing that energy in your full self to different all aspects of your life
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and that in a whole way is i mean a hard thing to do but you know
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it’s fun it’s more fun i mean that’s the great part yeah absolutely um
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and you know you said something i just kind of want to continue to pry into is uh boundaries you know you
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you said the only way the relationship between boundaries and self-care and
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what were if you can kind of think through even today versus then you know what what what were some of those
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boundaries that you’ve always held or follow that have been constants or things that have
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changed that have enabled you to fully show up for yourself first
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yeah oh so many i mean early in my career let’s say there would be times that my kids were young that i
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would have be even like the year they were born i remember my boss at the time wanted to do an off-site and i was like oh my goodness
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it was my first week back at work and i had a newborn baby and they wanted us to go to a hotel for
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a week so my husband took the week off and stayed in hotel with the baby because there was no way i could figure out how to go from
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not seeing the baby for a whole week that would just be crazy as a new mother so we figured things out i would say my
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boundaries are often sort of thinking about time so for instance if i would be asked to sp i would speak a lot and if i’d be
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asked to speak at a conference let’s say in washington dc one week and then new york the next week and then another week in la that would
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have been three weeks in a row being away and i tried not to do when my kids were young trips back to back like that and so then
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i would offer to a colleague of mine hey can you take the trip to new york or can you take the
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trip to dc or can you speak at this so i would look at and say look i can say yes to one or two of them not all
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three how can i share the wealth so often i could delegate or partner with a colleague
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and they could take the talk it depended what the the audience or the group inviting me wanted so i’d say i i
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thought of things in sort of um i guess a balance again you know how do
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i want how many things can i do away from home that’s fair to my job and my team and
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what my company needed and fair to my family other things i’ll do is um as my career
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progressed i was often working in many many time zones from you know latin america to singapore to europe and so it
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would be very easy to be on calls 24 7. and i would try to have really good boundaries about not doing
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5 a.m calls and 10 p.m calls right so i would find a time zone that would work
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that wouldn’t interfere with a family dinner or you know yeah let’s say my dance class
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if i needed to do a dance class so it’s a balancing act you can’t always do it but you try and so as i had the
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intention to to make it work and so therefore i was the only one that could break
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those boundaries yeah well i mean the way to take ownership uh
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from a leadership perspective of your own life which i know is also big to you we’ll get there for sure you know
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something i want to just uh ask you even deeper on that is there’s a way to have the boundaries and
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kind of functionally schedule from these times from these times
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and then there’s also from maybe speaking from personal experience or other conversations with
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people um in an intentional way there’s like a way your body can kind of feel into
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kind of what you think you know you can do just based on past experience and data so how much
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for you and in those listening or ceos or you know leaders at their businesses
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um how much of it was you just saying these are my boundaries versus hey
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i know internally what i’m capable of and then therefore it enabled you to maybe set stronger boundaries
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does that make sense yeah i think i think the question is around do i set my
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boundaries intentionally or is my body setting them and i think both is going on i think more so that i could be i
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mean i know it about myself i could be a workaholic i mean i just know that i’m so driven and i can just get in my zone
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and go so for me i schedule things so i used to schedule dance class pre-having kids
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so that i did leave work because it would be very easy to just stay in a project and keep working
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and then all of a sudden it’d be late and then i’d get exhausted so then i’d hit the physical boundary but i tried
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not to hit the physical boundary i wanted to make sure i was doing those good things for me like a dance class is
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my example um so i’d say pre having kids that have another boundary which is dinner time when i could be really
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flexible and i was single i would schedule myself things with myself so i had to leave work because otherwise it’d
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be so easy to just say oh yeah i’ll work another hour and get it done before tomorrow but that’s infinite right there’s always
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more work the next day and you could always work an extra hour that night right but you don’t get that hour back
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to have gone for a walk while the light is still out or to have gone to a dance class or to have just
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taken a break from work so i think i i think i built them in by scheduling time
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with myself mm-hmm and these are all the tips i put in the book with my co-author right we put that in
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there like schedule it is the only way to make it happen yeah well no it’s uh in time as well you know where
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everyone’s talking about valuing yourself and putting you know loving who you are it’s like you were
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saying earlier on i was thinking about my own needs first so i could show up
17:19
and it’s been just so consistent throughout the conversation um i want to kind of give you an open
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floor as well um from from the book and what you wrote about with your co-author
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you know when you look back on the author journey and obviously the authentic journey never ends but maybe
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the writing part of the marathon where did you find the most reward
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in the writing or part sections that just really stimulated you that you’re just so
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excited to share the whole book so let’s see i had this idea
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i want to say at least 10 years ago to write this book fit ceo and i was ceo of a subsidiary company at
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the time um and it was a cross-border bank and i was traveling
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three to four weeks a month literally every week commuting and i met lillian my co-author at the
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club i was at because i wanted a personal trainer i was i was afraid i would just not have a way to work out
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and so i wanted someone that would work with me twice a month for half an hour which is kind of unheard of and she was
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willing to do it and then i worked with her for let’s say about a year and i just felt we had mind melded and had such similar
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uh philosophies about life and fitness and health that i told her about this book and i
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said hey would you want to write it with me and she said yes and i showed her my outline and she
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liked it and so then i said look i’m going to do it whenever i leave corporate america i’ll give you a call and i did not leave corporate america
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until about nine years later and i gave her a call i said okay i’m gonna write the book now you’re still in she said
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yes and we realized we lived a few blocks from each other so what was really fun about writing the
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book was that we got together every monday and every friday and just designed the structure
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of the book into those five sections around commitment boundaries intention
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self-care and heart and then took all the outline of the chapters i had already done
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and um i had already submitted it to a publisher who accepted it and so we sat
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down they liked it they agreed to the name that was my big thing i did not want to change the name i wanted to be called fit ceo be the leader of your
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life well be the leader of your life came later but fit ceo was a title i always wanted and then it was great because we agreed
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in my garden because it was coveted and we’d sit there and we were like what are our goals writing this together and we
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wanted to have it be really simple really fun and easy and so we had this dream of
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almost a reference book that you could read through one time which you can you can read the book through in like less
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than three hours but it’s in 30 chapters so you could read it one chapter a day you could read
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it with a buddy you could do the exercises together the idea being or you could just open up to any chapter almost as a reference
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book and say hey i need to i’m totally stressed out i want to go read self-care i want to go read about
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getting enough sleep so go to that chapter so we the idea that this is something that would live with you like
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um not a book that you read once and sort of put on your bookshelf and never look at again but that sits either in
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your your travel bag your briefcase or your bedside table or your desk and is um
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something that you reference a lot and so what was so fun was kind of the brainstorming together about
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how to make this happen and then making it happen it was fun and easy to write and we did live our book we scheduled it
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we met every week we wrote it we uh enjoyed the process
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you know sometimes i i would say like through these few little things like the publisher said we really
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because when they interviewed us our idea was for a much broader audience and ceos they kept asking me like rebecca is
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this really only for ceos i said no it’s for everybody then they said okay we gotta work on another subtitle that
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gives that message which is how we came up with be the leader of your life because everyone’s a ceo of their own
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life right yeah absolutely well i i love the the message right and but i do
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believe maybe it seems like you’re into tension right when you’re you’re in a positional
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leadership and being a parent is a positional leadership but you mix that with maybe business and you you’re
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overseeing a lot the the the responsibility to take that
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much more personal ownership over your life and the key decisions around it
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uh i think becomes of even greater importance so and i also think you got to kind of
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start out with a nation that niche can carry into different sub-niches so uh i i love the you know
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it seems extremely intentional and just with like the way you designed it and i’m just curious because like a decent
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idea of how publishing works when you when you went to the publisher and you said hey this is the structure we wanted
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to do is there much pushback or were they were they pretty okay with kind of how you had thought through the
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whole process they really added value so for instance my original idea which they got me off
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of is that it would be one page kind of leadership lesson from me as the former ceo and then kind of
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one page subject matter expert fitness professional life coach lillian
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ideas sort of like this visual i had of kind of page page page
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basic two voices and they loved the idea of the two voices they said but what a nightmare for layout if you have to do
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that because in your page rebecca your story has to fit to a certain word count and lillian’s stuff would have to fit to
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a certain word count and that’s a nightmare to manage and so thank gosh because i have no publishing experience
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they told us that because then it completely freed us up because then the chapters became natural they were a
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leadership story that could be three pages from me or could be two or it could be one it was it was never long
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right i didn’t want a long thing and then lillian’s if you will riff off of that leadership
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story into getting into your body and immediate and imperfect action and
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mantras and other ways to practice it could be one page or half a page or two
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page so neither of us were constrained in our sharing our ideas life hacks you know
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and that was a really helpful and so i wouldn’t say they you know they just they came back with strong like we
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strongly advise against doing anything that requires precise word count you’ll hate it and so once they told us that we
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were like okay we just pivoted you know that sounds awful let’s not do that you know so i think
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i had some fixed ideas that they were very helpful with their experience to say and do that and then their treatment
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their ideas were really helpful they put our voices in different fonts sometimes we would like put gray behind
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lillian’s voice screen it but so you could hear two voices which is so nice right right which is always hard to do
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co-authored books but it seems like they were really able to expound upon your initial kind of framework and idea set
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and say how’s this going to be the most impactful for the reader the audience at hand which is awesome um
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now you mentioned how the book’s broken out into the five sections you know i really want to uh
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talk to you like how did you come up with those five sections right what what do you
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say you know these need to be the five sections to think about full book you know full care for your own life
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right so we had like in 2013 14 when i first talked to lillian
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about it had outlined all the chapters so we already and over the years i had written a lot of the chapter parts my my lessons
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from um so when we when we came together i probably had half of the stuff i wrote
25:06
already written and the 30 chapter titles so we sat down and lillian’s like there’s no way people
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can just read 30 chapters we need sections i agree so then we just brainstormed the sections because the chapters
25:20
were already titled you could get a grouping you know it’s like there is definitely intentionality
25:27
commitment self-care heart and boundaries but what what was interesting is like where were we going to put
25:32
energy management or where were we going to put our chapter on sleep and you know where were we going to what was interesting was our dialogue with each
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other about what category does it fit in but we felt
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that these five pillars were the core of what we were trying to get across which is commit to it
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have intentionality i always describe my life as being very intentionally orchestrated that’s why i have a whole
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life i don’t i don’t roll out of bed and just my life unfolds i mean of course
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life unfolds but i have a lot of intentionality to my day and i think if you part of my week or to my year or my life
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and so i think with that things come my way because i’m messaging that i’m open to that right
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absolutely and i think intentionality is key here and i i
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will say that as someone maybe a fellow uh intentional
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person from my own life that it seems quite rare to apply a level of
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rigor to what you want and then go making a plan
26:37
to make it happen and then do that not actually maybe in your health but then all areas of your life
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you mentioned that um maybe 10 minutes ago you see you you’ve always been extremely driven
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and so where you know where does that maybe drive come from and i’m sure that you
26:55
know if you pinpointed the route or maybe you’re just born that way or a mix of childhood experiences but
27:01
that drive has probably enabled some of that tensionality to come to life but i’m just curious like when you look at the root of that or certain experiences
27:08
from your own life can you apply any relationship between what’s made you
27:13
intentional or giving you such a sense of deep drive i think i’m born that way my mother
27:19
would say she put me to sleep and she could never stay up as late as i was so she just put me in my crib and i just
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stayed up for the wee hours of the morning like i said i can just go i have a lot of drive and energy so um i think
27:31
i’m born that way but i think i also had parents that cultivated self-confidence right then
27:37
sense of i they didn’t say you can’t do stuff they’re always like you can do it you know i didn’t get a lot of no
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you’re not this you’re not that right i got a lot of yes you could do a lot of things so i
27:50
think you have a family that can support you in it right you know you can choose who you call for
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advice right i call the people that support me in my thinking not the people that are going to say no and when i meet
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the no or naysayers i usually don’t hang with them i like to be with the yay sayers right so you you
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start to filter out in your life i think people that support at least for me i i think i
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do it i consciously find people who will support me i’ll give you an example
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i’m super happy if i make it to a class any amount of a class if the teacher when i walk in late it’s like you’re
28:29
late and tries to shame me i won’t go to that class again because i have no interest if the teacher’s out he’s like
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yeah you’re here another student fantastic and i get 40 minutes in out of an hour
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i’m gonna keep going to that class right i do not go back to the classes where there’s a shaming if you’re five minutes
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late and they start lecturing you on being on time because you know i’m just so happy i showed up right they’re not
28:51
then i’m not going to go to their class and get shamed right yeah say surrounding yourself with people
28:57
with optimism and not inducing that negativity into or half full right right half
29:04
yeah i mean i remember i had a piano teacher who constantly hacked on how i never
29:09
practiced enough and i remember talking to my parents like i want a different piano teacher and then we got this really wonderful
29:16
person that was just so happy that i was an interested student who asked for piano lessons instead of a parent
29:21
forcing someone to take piano lessons and so she never harped on me on how much i practiced and guess what
29:27
i practiced a lot more for her than i did the person i constantly harped on it so you know i
29:33
think it’s choosing um supportive of my interests versus
29:40
knots i think that helps the drive continue sure absolutely and and i took an improv
29:46
class a couple years ago and it was i always found the interesting the yes and you know i always wanted to be in the yeah stand camp versus the yes but camp
29:54
and i think similar to what you’re saying is put yourself with the people who acknowledge and validate you and maybe
30:00
add involve you in a way that you know involves your spirit and your your sense of being and it seems like
30:07
that you know growing up in the nurturing environment enabled
30:12
um maybe to see that earlier than most and um now you can help other people do the
30:17
same yeah so i know when i had kids i wrote my mother a thank you note like wow
30:22
thank you for being you know you only really understand it all once you or at least i did once i had kids like wow that’s hard to be
30:29
yes and all the time uh totally what what a neat thing you
30:35
did i mean to write your obama thank you and say that i’m just curious you know i know we’re off topic how was that
30:40
received when you when you started or no i i think she loved it you know how nice
30:46
for sure um you know you mentioned you know part of this book
30:51
is is not just about health um and maybe the five pillars but i think
30:57
taking that personal ownership and sense of leaders and kind of leading your own life
31:03
if you were to define it um on this show what do you how would you define
31:10
being the leader of your own life you’re the boss of you how do you as that leader of your life
31:17
or the boss of your own life create the opportunity to set the intentions the right way to create the
31:23
right plan to live the life on your terms what does that take beyond just
31:29
creating a health plan you know like what are the components of that it starts with giving yourself
31:34
permission to be the leader of your own life so i think a lot of people are still
31:40
somehow seeking permission from someone else either they’re still seeking it from a parent
31:45
or a teacher or a boss but guess what it’s your life it’s not there so you really don’t want them
31:51
being the one that decides so giving yourself permission
31:58
be deciding that you’re the boss of you so it doesn’t matter if you’re
32:03
uh any role you’re in you’re your own boss in that role of course we all have bosses right we all have people we
32:11
have to inside companies you know even if you’re the ceo you have a board of directors and if you have a board of directors you have shareholders or right
32:17
so everybody has somebody you know so you either are working for your clients or you’re working for your shareholders
32:22
or you’re working for your employees like you you have to report to people but you’re still in charge of your own
32:29
how you show up every day and what you do with your time and that’s what i mean by being the leader of your own life
32:36
you asked about the how like to have a plan i i i write a lot of things down i find i’ve
32:43
these notes i write i look at years later it’s like i did it all i don’t think i ever looked at that note again
32:48
but i think writing down is a really great practice of it could be in a journal it could just be a notepad saying these are my
32:55
intentions you know i my intention you know one of my dreams for 2022 is to
33:01
get on a curriculum and like a leadership class in the business school so i’m just telling the world that so maybe one of
33:07
your lead one one of your listeners maybe a professor at a business school um teaching a class on leadership and
33:14
may now put this book on their curriculum like if you don’t tell the universe it doesn’t happen right and
33:19
those are the kinds of things i do well i know a few of those professors at business schools told to be sure to tell
33:24
them about it they need the book they need to get the book on the curriculum or a graduation gift
33:31
that’s right i’m more than happy to share um something i want to dive into and this is a question was rooted in
33:38
personal experience but you know you say you need to oh you know in your life you know you
33:44
need to give yourself the permission to take take a role or let’s just say get in the driver’s seat
33:51
and i’m going more subconscious or psychological here um because i think it’s all interconnected i’m going to
33:57
follow up with a question so just roll with me on this i think a lot of people want to take ownership of their own life
34:02
they want to have like a really strong sense of independence and become a fit ceo and you’re in the
34:09
way you’ve outlined in the book at the same time right i think
34:14
we grow up with a lot of blockers or baggage or certain things that we haven’t let go of or we don’t have
34:20
context understanding of around the patterns of what allowed us to show up in the
34:26
present moment the way we are and sometimes until that work is done
34:32
we cannot maybe fully take ownership of
34:37
our life i think in the way you’re describing and so my question to you is for maybe for
34:43
those people out there who say you know what this book this message really
34:48
speaks to me but for some reason as hard as i try as much as i want to
34:54
embody these five pillars there’s something that’s in the way what would you say to those people
35:02
well first of all you can’t be all these things all the time so be really patient and nice to yourself because i’m not no
35:08
one’s perfect i’m not i’m these are all my lessons do i live them all perfectly no there is no such thing
35:14
and i need to remind myself oh yeah i got to recharge my batteries i just i’m too tired you know like listening um is
35:21
really important to but be kind to yourself so i’d say the first thing is
35:26
small steps can lead to big leaps so i don’t even when we talk about exercise
35:32
we talk about start with 10 minutes walking if you’ve never exercised don’t try to go to the gym buy a new outfit
35:38
sign up for two months pay a huge amount of money and go go for a walk for 10 minutes and then
35:43
extend it to 15 20 and so on same thing at the gym so if you are not sure how to start on owning your own
35:50
actions and being responsible for yourself then start small and say i’m going to own the next hour or i’m going
35:56
to own this one decision i’m gonna work on living with it even if i have anxiety
36:01
about it i’m gonna i’m gonna do the behavior because the behavior can then maybe lead
36:08
to the feeling and you know that from acting classes or improv classes that
36:15
saying yes changes the way your brain works than saying no so saying yes and
36:20
forces a openness to see what comes then
36:26
yes but which closes it down so changing slight things in language changing
36:32
i’m gonna take this step small steps of changes in
36:37
behavior we’ll start the confidence building feeling of hey i made that decision and the world
36:43
didn’t end i’m gonna make another one or whatever the baggages each individual has we all have ton of it and there’s
36:49
lots of great books on some of those whatever the issue is parent
36:55
relationship or teacher or you know yeah no it’s uh
37:01
i think we i think you’re absolutely right you hit on anxiety i think when we look at maybe
37:07
the vision of where we want our life to be but to build the wall you have to lay a brick each day and i think there’s a
37:12
lot of anxiety around it’s just laying the bricks and it’s like sometimes actually in those moments of doing where
37:18
you’re just putting a brick down and making small deposits and changes to each day it’s like you do that long enough and the wall shows up and i i so
37:25
understand though i think you hit the nail on the head it’s it is anxiety inducing but you do it enough times over and over again
37:32
in small areas of your life you know you can start to build that confidence and see that maybe morph
37:39
um and so uh yeah beautiful answer and i think you you speak in a way where you
37:45
you say just enough and give us give give me like all i need
37:50
and like without saying more than likes needed and i think that’s a gift i just want to acknowledge that alive while
37:56
we’re here thank you i had a thought when you talked about the will smith wall images
38:01
one of the other things that a lot of my team members would say to me is you know i’m hitting a wall
38:06
i’m hitting a brick wall and i’d say find a window or draw one on that brick wall or get a
38:13
ladder and climb over it because sometimes we hit things head on and we’re just so stuck but if you step back
38:19
and say is there a door or a window or um you know a step ladder that i can crawl
38:25
over it why not yeah well no i that’s a beautiful analogy and we can often see
38:31
so much more when we remove ourselves from the in all all aspects relationships
38:37
fitness all the pieces so i i want to dive deeper on that actually that’s a great point you were able to write this
38:43
book from the lessons that you’ve learned through your life and to write these lessons i’m sure you had to face
38:49
some hardship to learn the hard way and then you have to step back and then you have to come into it to to get the wisdom that you’re able to use to write
38:55
the book did anything call or speak to you in this moment of any of those stories or
39:01
experiences where you maybe weren’t getting it dies dialed in
39:06
where you said i need to maybe rethink this and then come back to it in a different way to maybe create the result
39:12
that the intentional result i’m looking for there’s so many i think it’s always
39:18
iterating let me see which one well i think i’ve hit walls where i i think i know
39:25
what i want but i somehow it doesn’t always match what i think the team is understanding and i remember there was a
39:30
time where i realized oh there’s a big language difference i had to shift to to out of a mode of telling people to
39:38
teaching people so i think i really shifted my management style of getting up and telling people where we’re going
39:45
and telling people the vision versus almost thinking about us teaching like
39:50
here’s the data i have here’s the why here’s where i think the opportunity is
39:56
and so here’s how i got to this conclusion that um growing in this geography or growing in this product set
40:03
is really the most successful way to go in a way i brought all the whole audience with me so i
40:09
i think as a leader i have always i’ve learned when i hit a wall maybe you know at a certain size team when you’re small
40:14
enough you can just sit around the table and tell people your thoughts right but when you get really big teams you can’t
40:20
just tell them that’s great they leave they heard what you say but it didn’t resonate anywhere
40:26
so i had to learn to invest a lot more time in teaching showing how i got to that idea of the direction
40:32
we wanted to go and that took that didn’t happen overnight right that took a lot of feedback a lot of learning about
40:40
how does information get through an organization so i i think that’s one of the walls i hit of you can’t sit around
40:46
say gee i’ve told everybody where we need to go why aren’t they going it doesn’t work that way right right
40:52
i had to reflect on why is it if i’m so clear is it not clear when you go three levels down in the organization
41:01
um i think for you know to your point
41:08
when you’re the leader of your own life or you have a leader of a vision that you need other people to come along for
41:13
the ride for you’re you’re already so far out in front of them and you’re thinking
41:18
and versus just telling them yeah here’s this if they don’t have that context or the building blocks i think what you’re
41:24
saying is it’s like how do i not only show them the building blocks but how do those building blocks maybe
41:30
stack up to educate them so that they can see what you can see and
41:35
of course that’s the incredibly hard adjustment but for you um it seems like some really painful and
41:42
also necessary growth lessons that made you a better leader and all all your and fun because when it works it’s so
41:48
much fun like when it’s successful it’s such a joy right right yeah no okay
41:55
uh well thank you for sharing uh the the wisdom um i wanted to ask you you know
42:00
since you launched the book and since you’ve had reader reviews and shared it with i’m
42:06
sure your closest friends you know what what has been the feedback that you’ve locked into
42:12
where you have felt the most impact or you have seen the most difference
42:18
wow i have i’ve had some people send me emails and they have said it has changed their
42:24
life which shocks me you know i mean i’ve known the people who send me an email like that know me right and so
42:29
it’s like how can my you’ve talked to me my whole life how could my book change your life so that was interesting i mean
42:34
change that they felt much more in control of taking the small steps to build up the
42:39
big steps to um one woman said you’ve totally inspired me to do some of the dreams i’ve had that i think
42:47
about but i haven’t started so that was exciting and i i’d say i’ve had some
42:52
young people um i got to speak in person about the book in san francisco and some younger
42:57
generation people in their 20s came up to me and said this is so helpful for them especially working on
43:04
zoom all day long to think about their own boundaries and scheduling time with themselves and
43:09
giving themselves permission to schedule time with themselves to get off zoom and leave their house and go for a walk and
43:15
so i think this range of reaction has been super exciting and i
43:21
love reading the reviews in amazon or what people send me they’re very inspirational and i feel like i’m so
43:27
grateful for it you know it’s really a nice nice feedback
43:33
of course and you i mean you put your heart and soul into a body of work that’s representative of your whole career and so you know you realize that
43:39
you can help people make small changes from taking 10 minute daily walks to taking
43:44
on their most daring dreams right in fact it has range and depth and that’s just so
43:52
cool let me ask you a question and maybe kind of vision with me 10 or 15 years out here
43:59
uh as you look at your own life maybe in the next decade or two decades or four
44:05
decades where do you see it going and what are some of the intentional
44:11
components that you know you’re going to really look at and
44:17
take the framework and take the all the learnings from the books and continue to apply that in these next chapters of
44:22
your life sure so i just started my own new journey uh in
44:30
2020 midway through 2020. i started my own business rmk group llc
44:35
and my prediction of the future is what i’ve just started the journey i’ve just started so i started a journey of what i
44:41
call a portfolio career around three areas the first area serving on some
44:47
boards i’m serving on startup boards which i i love love working with that innovative cycle
44:53
of ceo and company and my second pillar is advising ceos or
44:59
leaders which i really enjoy that one-on-one work and then
45:04
my third pillar i’m going to call mentoring at scale and it’s much more about sharing some of my thoughts in the book fit ceo in
45:11
writings in speaking but this mentoring at scale has been really um it’s inspirational
45:18
and i love the the cycle of work because i get to see more inside companies through my client work one-on-one with
45:24
the ceos i work with or through the boards or hear the issues facing the current workforce
45:30
and um then put it back through my thinking of leadership and management so i’d say if
45:36
i project that out 10 15 years i would be doing more of this i i like it
45:41
but in in a equilibrium that’s not traveling all the time so i get to be home more
45:47
and um but travel being more about the fun part of travel the journey the fun parts
45:53
of the journey and then i hope i’m not working all the time in 40 years i hope i’m chilling
46:01
[Laughter] well rebecca this has been enjoy uh you’ve
46:07
just been it’s been intrigued to kind of hear about your journey the book the inspiration the lessons the impact
46:14
you’re having where can people uh receive this gift of yours that you’ve put into the world where can they
46:19
find you reach out and uh listen great yes um so fit ceo be the leader of
46:25
your life there’s a website fitceobook.com and then there you can see all the
46:31
retailers of course amazon and porchlight and booktopia there’s many many retailers
46:38
that sell it great awesome thank you yeah well thank you thanks for
46:43
the great interview my pleasure this was fun i enjoyed it absolutely thank you
46:51
if you enjoyed this episode as much as i did i hope you leave a review on the platform of your choice and share it
46:57
with a friend who you think would find it valuable if you’d like to receive a written newsletter and thought
47:02
leadership head on over to bw missions.com backslash newsletter and
47:08
subscribe see you on the next show [Music]
—
This post was previously published on Arcbound.
***
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