Dr. Mark Goulston - Dying Expert, International Keynote Speaker & Author | Live Well, Die Well

Today, my guest is Dr. Mark Gulson. He is a unique background that combines psychiatry, neuroscience, and business. He was a professor of psychiatry at UCLA where he taught and trained medical students and residents for over 25 years. He also served as a hostage negotiation trainer for the FBI where he learned to diffuse high-stake situations and influence people in crisis. He is the author of several best-selling books, including Just Listen, which has been translated into 28 languages and is widely regarded as the ultimate guide to effective communication. He is also the creator of surgical empathy, a breakthrough technique that he used to prevent hundreds of suicides during his psychiatric career. He is passionate about sharing his wisdom and experience with others. He has delivered keynote speeches and workshops for leading organizations, such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Harvard Business School. He has also been featured in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and Oprah. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. A quick nod to HubSpots, new tools at the rolling out for your business before we get started. You know that this year is almost done, and if you want to win next year in your business in 2024, you need tech that puts you in the pilot seat that gives you the unfair advantage. This is what the new HubSpot sales hub is all about. It's going to help you close a year strong. This tool does everything. Sales hub allows you to collaborate on every single step of the customer journey. That means when a customer interacts with any part of your business, they have a comprehensive prospecting workspace, they have powerful analytics, data, tools, all to help your team, close more sales, don't let leads slip through the crack. HubSpot sales hub lets you accelerate every single part of your sales operation with precision and they have over 1400 integrations, a ton of ways to mix in new features. Finish out your Q4 strong and gear for an incredible 2024 with HubSpot sales hub. Learn more at HubSpot.com slash sales. Well, I have a terminal illness and a few months ago I didn't think I had that long to live and my prognosis seems to be more positive. It looks like I'm going to have something called the bone marrow transplant, which is like an organ transplant. So they take out all my bone marrow and they insert stem cells from a donor and unfortunate because my three children qualified as donors and then you're isolated for a month in a hospital because those stem cells you're starting from scratch. I have to get all my childhood vaccines again and there's a 20% mortality rate from the procedure because you can get an infection and you're gone, a bad one. And then after that I'll be kind of semi-isolated with 24-7 care for probably about five-six months. And I was in a somewhat pessimistic state about six months ago because the three-year survival for someone my age was 48%. So that was less than half but progress has been made since those numbers and my doctor, best doctor I've ever had in my life. And that is key to my peace of mind. He said if it goes well it could be 75% and it can even be considered a cure because you know they're just remaking your bone marrow. But what's happened is since I've been confronting this and since I was a death and dying specialist, specializing in suicide prevention and doing house calls to dying patients during my career. I know what a good death is, I know what a bad death is and for me a good death and I meet all the criteria from a mentor of mine who is a death and dying specialist and he used to refer me all these people. I meet all his criteria except living till 90. There's no chance I'll make 90, I'm 75. And to give you some of them, for me a good death is I don't pain and suffering. I mean I'm pretty stoic but you know I'm not I'm not into pain and suffering and having a great team is important. My hematologist has 265 five star reviews from patients, nobody has that. And I can see why it's well earned. And so what I'd say to you and your listeners and viewers, a good team is important. It's critical and I'm not just talking and work. You need to have a spouse who's a good team. You know you need to basically have friends who are a good team. Meaning you have each other's back, you dare to be straight and direct to help each other and even tell speak truth to each other. And so I have that in this hematologist and he doesn't he doesn't smooth over what I'll be facing. So I have that also I hate to be a burden. I mean I hate it. And one of the last things I've wanted to be was a burden to anyone. I'm a caretaker. I'm a doctor. I'm also someone who had parents who towards the end they were really a burden. You know it was a labor of love. They both had Alzheimer's and it was a burden. And I think I internalize. Never do this to another human being. And the other thing is I'm kind of a serial visionary, but I can't implement anything. So I'm involved with about six projects. Some which could be game changers. And I don't want to leave the teams hanging if I die. So it's really important to focus on what does this become if I'm not here. I also mentor about 40 to 45 people. And I have had eight mentors. They've all died. Interesting people. Larry King from CNN was my last mentor and there was a fellow named Warren, Ben as a big leadership guy. He was a mentor. And of the 45 I think there are 10 certifiable geniuses. And I want them to land in their future. I want them to gain the traction that their genius deserves instead of spinning their wheels. Like one of them is a genius in helping Ukraine win the war and then post Ukraine rebuilding. So I've made introductions for her to ran corporation and people in the Ukrainian government. And we'll see where that goes. And so that's that's really important to me. Also I have a YouTube channel and a TikTok channel called I'm dying to tell you because for 50 years I listened to people. I have a book called Just Listen. But I didn't necessarily share what I heard because patients who are suicidal. They're not into insight. They're into give me something to hold on to so I don't kill myself between now and the next session. And so I stockpiled all these things. And now the universe has given me a green light and is telling me start sharing the mark. And I'm kind of in a rush because if I have the transplant there's a slight chance that I will have some cognitive impairment long term. And I think what would be the first to go is my creativity. So I'm a and plus I enjoy pushing stuff out onto YouTube and TikTok. Let me give you an example and then I mean Scott you can go take a cup of coffee and I just keep talking until I until I bore the audience or you but you're not going to bore the audience. I find this fascinating. All of this is fascinating. So here are a couple of the episodes of I'm dying to tell you. The first episode is called Michelangelo dying. And Michelangelo saw the angel in the marble and carved till he said it free. What I realized is I saw what's important in life inside everything that's not important. And there was a lot of stuff that wasn't important and I just carved all that off. And now what's really important is just glowing and shining and I'm following that. There's another episode called Visionary dying because for a year and a half I did a one man show that I wrote, directed and starred in. It was all me called Steve Jobs returned. And I played Steve Jobs coming back from the dead from 76 when he came back to Apple to 2007 when he introduced the iPhone. And I had the turtle neck, the 501 genes. In fact, I'm wearing the 501 genes right now. And I kind of liked it because I could I could free my inner a hole. I had a lot of fun playing him. But what I also discovered is I'm able to see the world through other people's eyes. I'll share this anecdote and I'll tell you how I'm seeing the world through your eyes and I want to check something to see if I got it right. But what I realized is Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. And this is if you're listening to this, watching this, write this time, it's the 3D's of visionary thinking, which I've applied to dying. The first D is define reality, not only beyond what's possible, but beyond what's imaginable. So it's impossible and unimaginable. And Steve Jobs also, what Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are, is they are first class notices. They just notice deeply. And also what separates visionaries from the other people is visionaries see the unknown as an adventure to dive into. Whereas the majority of people see the unknown as a danger to be avoided. And so Jobs and Musk and Bezos, they just jump into the unknown because they have a track record of it revealing things to them that they notice. So define reality, what happened is Steve Jobs went to Xerox Park, saw the graphical user interface and the mouse. And he saw what it could be, where Xerox Park didn't. And Elon Musk did the same thing with batteries and computers and said, you know, they're getting pretty good. I think we could fit one into a car. And so define reality beyond what anyone else can see or imagine. The second D is declare your intention to make it so. So Steve Jobs had this famous technique called the reality distortion field, meaning when he saw something and he locked on to it, he became a believer, cost him his death because he tried to approach his pancreatic cancer in a more holistic way and there might have been a treatment that worked. And you can convince other people that's what Steve Jobs was able to do. So you declare your intention, I'm going to make it so. And then the third D is you decide strategy. So what are the steps to making it so. And so define reality, declare your intention to make it so and decide strategy on how you're going to do it. And when you get to be a little bit bigger, you need to pull in a partner or COO to deal with people's stuff because visionaries generally stink with people because they see things so clearly and people are just functions that help them to achieve that or accomplish that that impossible reality that they see. So I apply this to dying. So I'm defining reality as for me is that not just what a good death looks like, but what a great death looks like. And for me, and I'm getting a lot of interviews, is I've achieved total peace of mind. I've been chasing peace of mind for 70 years. And I've achieved total peace of mind. And people say, you got to be positive. I say, look, I'm not fighting treatment. I've got the best doctors. And when they say, jump, I say, how high? I said, but I would trade you peace of mind for you, you got to have a positive attitude any day of the week. And so I define that reality. It's possible to go out of life totally peaceful. I've declared my intention to do it. And I've decided strategy. And the key is to make sure I'm not a burden. My wife told me that if I die, she'd be okay financially. My kids are launched. I do have these loose ends with projects, you know, and let these are growing ups and they're creatives and they have other businesses going on. So I hope to be able to help them as long as I can. And so that's my strategy. So does any of that make any sense? Because I know that was a lot for you to take in. No, it makes a lot of sense. I'm very, I was actually, you know, you probably, you've done a couple interviews. So you understand the natural progression of a curious person's mind when trying to wrap their head around something that's so foreign to them like death. And I think that the way that you applied the framework and the mindset of an entrepreneur, of a visionary, and you walk through that three step process. Because my follow-up question when we were speaking about a good death was going to be, how do you, when you have this prognosis or this diagnosis, how do you continue through life? How do you achieve that calm, that piece of mind? Because I think that so many people struggle with this. And I'm, I would even take it a step further. So now that that makes sense. How you continue to operate and how you continue to achieve, I mean, we're jumping on this podcast because you still have goals that you need to and want to achieve regardless of where you're going to be in, you know, one year, two year, whatever it is, five years, ten years, I don't know. But I think there's also an interesting perspective that you probably notice in somebody that has a diagnosis like yours and how they approach and understand death versus somebody who is suicidal, who it almost now seems like a suicidal individual is like a manic, like knee jerk response as opposed to your thoughtful, very, very, very, very intentional reaction to this potential outcome. But before we go down that path, I'm, I wanted to know what, what you said you had at like a question or, or an analysis of me. So I'm very curious. What, what is this analysis? So my analysis of you, and here's another talking point that I hope is helpful to your listeners and viewers. I wrote a book called Justless and it became the top book on listing in the world. I've spoken around the world. I was a main speaker in Moscow along with Daniel Kahneman. He wrote thinking fast and slow. Five of my ten books or bestsellers in Russia. And something I tried to teach the audience is that underneath people listening to you, which is transactional listening, people are always listening for something, which is transformational listening. And if you can know it's always going on and you tune into that level, you can transform them. So let me see if this is what you're listening for. I think what you're listening for is the fact that you honor the trust and confidence of your listeners. The last thing you want to do is waste your listeners time. And you're listening for from your guests, information that is insightful, but also practical and tactical so that when your listeners listen, they say, wow, that was worth my time. And you're possibly listening for the guest who might be a bestselling author, but he or she is a stiff. And you're thinking, I can't post this one. I got to protect my audience. And how am I going to go back and say, you know, we couldn't use it because it was just so awful. So it doesn't happen often, but you're 110% correct. Yes, that is very much that is very much what I try and achieve when we do these podcasts. And I think that I mean, you understand that well, because you understand again, you understand the listening and you understand communication exceptionally well. And everything that you've done, if you go back and you, I think you were at one point a hostage negotiation trainer. So I mean, listening communication is paramount. And if you don't have a message that resonates with the audience, keep in mind my audience is significantly lower risk in terms of disappointing than somebody who's holding a hostage. I think that's a stakes game than that podcast. Listen to driving on their way to work. But the point is you still have to communicate in a way that it resonates with them or they don't tune you out. And they don't say, oh, this is a waste of my time. So you've nailed it. 100% you've nailed it. So let's, so where do we go? So let's build on what you just said. Something I do with accelerators and their cohorts is I will often do a presentation on how to pitch to investors after you run out of friends and family money. And and something that the CEO of some of these accelerators say, my people love this when you bring it up. And again, when I'm there speaking to these startups, I'll say, how many of you have ever pitched to an investor? And you smile and you think it's a yes. And you think, oh, good. They're going to give me money. They're going to invest. And it's not a yes. And what I say is investors don't smile. It's about money. They're smiling to be polite because in the first five or ten minutes of what you've said, they already know it's a no, but they don't want to insult you because you put so much effort into that deck of yours. You know, they don't want to have to four slides and you got 40 to say, I think I've seen enough goodbye. So they smile. And when I, when I've done this with their groups, you know, three of the people say, that happened to me yesterday. I said, well, don't count on the money happening. And I say, this is what they're listening for because one of the most compelling things you can do. And I have another saying, you want to be compelling to open people's minds to earn the right to be convincing about what you're trying to sell them. And too often people are so passionate about what they're trying to sell that they are convincing too soon. And what's on your investor's mind, and this is what I tell them, is I say, if you've had enough of those smiles, which turned out to be nose, here's a suggestion, modify it to fit your language. And when they smile like that, and you know, it's a no, you stop all the slides. And you say, oh, can we pause for a moment? And they're going to get nervous because you caught them not wanting to be rude to you. The go, huh? You caught that. But just a quick point before you go, just a quick look, how do you know? Just you're saying that when they're actually smiling on the zoom call, that is a very significant indicator that they're not going to proceed. So the smile is them tuning out and saying no, as opposed to if they're focused and concentrated and like kind of like what I do when I'm trying to pay attention, you frown and you focus, that's more of an indicator. So you're saying the smile is the red flag. I think it's a red flag. I'll tell you what would make them smile. And this is one of the ways you're going to address it is, yeah, is you, and even if they're smiling and it's a good smile, leading to a yes, you pause and you say, when we, when I started this presentation, we were like this, I need money, you have money, you know, and you came here because I'm possibly a company that you're going to give money to. And now we're like this, where this is you with money that I'm never going to see. And here is me. And hopefully that's intriguing because it shows so much self-awareness. And you could say, let me see if I get what you were listening for. That you didn't hear or you didn't hear yet. And maybe you don't think you'll ever hear. It's kind of like what I said about you in your audiences. Now chances are you're not pitching to the head of an investment company. You know, you're pitching to someone who's lower down. You know, maybe probably not even a partner. And you're, and what you say is, I think you're listening for a unicorn. Because there's a good chance that you may have brought in some non-unicorns. And there may even be a chance that you've brought in some businesses that really made people question your judgment like, what were you thinking? And is it possible that you're listening for a unicorn? For that grand slam home run, when you bring it back, they say, how much can we put in? You know, when can you secure this? So, am I reading you right or wrong that you're listening for something that'll be that special? And given what I've already told you, it doesn't seem like this is that special. So do you follow me? You're tracking with something. And here are the two things also, because I talked about be compelling to open and convincing to close. I was an advisor on the OJ Simpson trial to the prosecution. And one of the ways to be compelling is for the other person to think of the state of themselves, I never would have thought of that ever. And that is relevant to our problem. So I shared something with the district attorney in LA. And I said, you know, when you're picking a jury, this might go, this might be one of the things you should look for. And he went back to Marsha Clark. And then he came back and he said, we never, ever would have thought of that. And it's the elephant in the room. And I don't talk much about it because they lost. And again, I'm not an opportunist. I sent them 150 pages of faxes. And they said, you know, 80% of your stuff is really off the wall crazy. But 20% of it is just it's startling. And they wouldn't tell me what, which of my input they use, although occasionally one of the prosecutors would say, watch the trial tomorrow. You might notice something. And so, so what's compelling is that I just named drop the OJ Simpson trial. That wasn't bad. And, but also people thinking, I never would have thought of that ever. And that's relevant. And the other thing is what I did with you about your audience when people say, how did you know that about me when I didn't tell you anything? Geez, I wonder what other things you know about me. I wonder what other insights you have into me. So I think those are the two best first impressions if you want to engage someone. If that's what triggers what they're thinking. And so again, talking, circling back to investors, you know, there is a good chance that they're listening for a unicorn. And by the way, if they say, you know, they may not be forthcoming, they might say, well, that makes sense because they don't want to give up, you know, because there are control freaks. Well, that makes sense. And then you can say, look, if you can tell me what a unicorn would look like so that you could recognize it. And it doesn't have to be something you brought into your investment firm. It could be any unicorn that someone brought in and when they were celebrating it, you know, what were some of the things that made it such a unicorn? And here's the other thing that I did with these cohorts. They said, and if you can get them to describe what a unicorn looks like because they're licking their lips to find it, you can say, oh, we actually have that, but that would have been slides 30 to 35 and you would have been asleep by then. Or I love this. Or you say, you know, that is so specific. I don't have it. We don't have it. But there's three companies in my cohort that do. And I'm happy to make an introduction. And I'm not looking for a referral fee. I'm looking for you to be successful. And I'm looking for them to be successful. And then you make the introduction and, uh, and you're generous with no strings attached because that will enable you to go back to that investor and to go back to those members of your cohort because you focused on their success other than your own. Can I tell you a funny anecdote? Please. Yeah. So I'm going to speak in Moscow. And again, my books have done pretty well. And one of their biggest business publications, it's called RBC. I think it's like fortune or Forbes. And because I'm coming there, my books are so well-known, I get a call from Ilia. And Ilia says to me, I'm Dr. Gustin. I know you're coming to Moscow and I'm assigned to do an interview with you. And I said, Ilia, it's good to meet you. Can I tell you the one and only thing that I'm concerned about? What is that, Dr. Gustin? The only thing I'm concerned about is that you write an article that gets you a big raise of promotion. It's the only thing I care about. That's the good news. The bad news is as my good friend Scott knows, I kind of talk in tangents. I throw in this story. I throw in this insight. So it's going to be up to you to somehow pull it all together to write such an article. And here's the proof of method of building that kind of generosity. I go to Moscow. And the person planning the event said, Dr. Gustin, do you remember that interview you did with for RBC? I said, yes. They said, it's been viewed 465,000 times and it's in the top 10 number of views of any article in the history of the publication. So there was something about that. I should reach out to Ilia and say, how are you doing? But we're in kind of a war zone. But can you see how that could work? Yeah, it's very much so. So tell me about the psychological principle that I think you're bringing up. I mean, there's generosity and there's and there's reciprocity. There's also a significant amount of pattern interruption that you use when you're communicating with someone. So I want to also just understand where this process comes from because I'm assuming this is something that has been built over your career versus the hostage negotiator. And then as you're helping people navigate life and death, is this something that applies to people that have terminal illnesses, suicide victim, suicide victims, my god, not and people that are considering suicide, excuse me, hostage, hostage, the people to take hostages and kidnap people. Is this pattern interruption? Is it all these different frameworks that you're bringing up? Is this applicable in communication universally to achieve the desired result? It's whatever that result is applicable everywhere. So it's not anything I learned from my training. It's something I learned from life experience. I've accomplished a lot. And I can see that. I know you have a very multifaceted career. It's fascinating. Well, thank you. I think my greatest personal accomplishment is I dropped out of medical school twice and graduated. I don't know anyone who dropped out twice, non sequentially. And I dropped out because I had untreated depression. And the first time I dropped out, you know, you're allowed to drop out. I'll give you a leave of absence if you're not failing and go find yourself. So I was depressed and confused the first time. I took a year off and worked in blue collar jobs, which I loved. I romanticized them because they were so stress-free. You know, and I met salt of the earth people. I love them. One of my jobs was putting up displays in bars and liquor stores of, you know, Heineken windmills. I designed their window. And it was in some of the the dumpiest bars in Boston, Massachusetts. And I got to know the bar keeps. I got to know the delivery man. I loved it. I'd climb up these rickety ladders. I'd see rat skeletons way up above there. And where I'd be putting the clock, I'd say, this is, this is wonderful. I love this. And I think part of it is that my mind started functioning at that level. So I did that for a year. It came back. And then in six months, it came back, the depression came back fully. And med schools lose money, lose matching funds when someone takes a leave of absence. Because the tuition isn't enough to pay for your space. And so they lose out of the matching funds. So I met with the head of the school, the dean of students who cares about funds. And because I put the request in for another leave of absence. And I don't really remember the conversation. And then he referred me to the dean of students because the head of the school cares about money. And the dean of students cares about students. And I think he referred me to him because he knew he was going to advise the school to kick me out the head dean. He didn't tell me that. And he didn't want me to go off the deep end. And so I was at pretty much a low point. And I met with the dean of students, my first mentor and life savior. And he said, you better come in. I got a letter from the main dean. And I go in there. I'm pretty low. And he said, read the letter. And the letter said, I've met with Mr. Gulston. We talked about alternate careers. I'm asking the promotions committee that he be asked to withdraw. And I'm just down. And I said to Dean William McNary, the dean of students, what does this mean? And in that thick Irish Catholic Boston accent, he said, Mark, you've been kicked out. And I think a miracle happened because when he said that, and I'm not religious, I think I must be spiritual because I don't understand the word, but people say, Oh, your spiritual mark. Okay. Explain it to me. Just like you're asking me to explain these things to you. And when he said that to me, I caved over. And it was like a gunshot wound. And I know what that feels like. I had a perforated colon 15 years ago. I almost died. And so I doubled over. And I felt something wet on my cheeks. And I thought it was blood. And I kept touching them and looking at my hands like this. Then it was tears. And then he hit me with the trifecta of hope, which I then paid forward when I finally came back to med school, became a psychiatrist and saw suicidal patients. I just paid it forward. And the trifecta of hope is so imagine you're low and you feel alone, you feel broken, you feel useless. And he said to me, Mark, you didn't screw up because you're passing, but you are screwed up. But if you got unscrewed up, I think the school would be glad they gave you a second chance. And suddenly my tears go to what? And here's the trifecta of hope. The first one was I think unconditional love and valuing me. And he said, Mark, even if you don't get unscrewed up, even if you don't become a doctor, even if you don't do anything the rest of your life, I'd be proud to know you. What? I don't have to do anything to be worth anything. So he saw goodness in me that I didn't have to perform to deliver on because I was pretty broken. Second thing he says is I'd be proud to know you because you have something in you that's very special. And the world needs it more than you can ever imagine. And you won't know that until you're 35. So he saw a future for me. I didn't see a future. I was going down for the second time. It's like Rocky Balboa going down for the second time. And then I think the third thing he said is he said, look at me. He pointed at me with his finger and he said, look at me. You deserve to be on this planet because you have to make it to your 35. And you're going to let me help you. If he had said, uh, call me if I can help you, you know, I probably would have had stupid pride gone back to my apartment. Might not be here today. But he grabbed me by the nape of the neck and said, you're not going anywhere. You're going to let me help you. And he arranged an appeal with the promotions committee. And I had to meet with them and they saw something in me. He made a good case of what he saw in me. And I guess they saw that in me. So I got the second leave of absence. But that trifect of hope, unwavering positive regard, seeing a future for people that they don't see and going to bat for them. So they get to live long enough to realize it. That was my simple formula that I used for 35 years. And, and I think what it taught me, and I've given it a name and I've spoken on its surgical empathy. So everything I'm talking about, whether it's the investor, whether it was you as a host, is surgical empathy is going deep underneath what people say to what they might be feeling unconsciously. And when people get a sense of, well, look, you gave me 110%. That's better than 100%. And that's actually led to something, one of the projects that I hope will live on beyond me. I'm the co-founder of the Deeper Coaching Institute, a company called on global leadership. So I'm partners with some great people and one of them is was going to be the China scholar of his generation. So we work with multinational companies on leadership, but it was mainly doing advising and consulting. And so I co-founded the Deeper Coaching Institute. And I'm probably not going to be around long enough to, unless someone says, like Scott says, Mark, I'll help you pull that out, or I know someone. So we were going to create Deeper Coaching Certification. And what Deeper Coaching? Based on surgical empathy is based on the surgical empathy approach. Well, it's based on going deeper. And see to me, I just see it naturally because that's all I've ever done. So I go deeper into my audiences in Moscow that they're listening for something deeper into my podcast hosts when I'm on their show. I try to go deeper in my family, but you know, and I adore my family. But you know, a lot of times when you're a dad or a husband, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's what everyone's sort of facing. And so the Deeper Coaching Institute is a lot of people go to coaching. And if they're signed to have coaching, where the corporation, you know, pays, the corporation owns the result. They're sending you there for non technical skills. And most people need coaching could benefit from coaching, but they don't want it because it feels like a personal insult. You know, what do I need coaching for? These, you know, these people are just too lazy. These millennials, you can't get a day's work out of them. It's not my problem. It's their problem. Yeah, and we're going to get sued. You better have coaching. And so, uh, but what will happen is sometimes when you go have coaching, you'll, you'll come up with strategies and whatnot. And most coaches aren't therapists. There are some that are therapists who became coaches, but the non therapist people, you know, will go as far as sounds like you have limiting beliefs. Or, you know, you, you would do well to increase your emotional intelligence. And, and not infrequently, people will discover something. And instead of resisting it, they'll try it and it will change their life. So, here's something for you, entrepreneurs. If any of you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and you're the entrepreneur or husband or wife, this is a potential game changer, but it's going to take a lot of courage. Some of you listening and watching are saying, I don't have the courage to do that. And you take your partner aside. And, uh, say, I need to ask you something. And they'll say, what? And you say, have I ever made you feel that you weren't worth my undivided attention and interest? And if you're a petal to the metal entrepreneur, you've done it because you're preoccupied with your baby and your baby ain't your marriage or your kids, it's trying to get that next funding before you shutter your business. And when you say that to them, they're going to look suspicious because you're inviting them to some intimacy and they didn't think you did intimacy. And they're going to say, yeah, well, what's this about? Answer the question. Have I ever made you feel that you weren't worth my undivided attention and interest? And they'll say, yeah. And then you say, at its worst, how much has that hurt you? And again, they may hesitate because you're inviting them into an intimate conversation that you've never had. And look, uh, it's hurt pretty bad. Here's a little surgical empathy. Pretty bad or really bad? Okay, okay, really bad. Next step is take me to the last or worst time when I did that. And something interesting happens is when they share with you that last time, which you may not remember because you weren't listening is let them finish and they're going to be shy. They're going to look down because this is too intimate. And you say, look at me. And you look in their eyes and you look at them in the eyes of some when you first fell in love with them and you adored them and they adored you and look what you've done to that partner of yours. And so you look into their eyes with shame. What have I done to her? What have I done to him? And then you say, uh, I did that. That was wrong. That was bad. I'm going to fix this. And I'm sorry. You might get lucky that night. So can you follow that? I mean, it's, but you can apply, you can apply versions of that to any relationship. Just going to take a quick break. Thank the long time friend and sponsor the show, the HubSpot podcast network. They have incredible podcasts. One of my favorites, one you have to check out this month is nudge hosted by Phil Agnew. Now, if you've ever noticed, the smallest changes always seem to have the biggest impact on nudge. You learn simple evidence back tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, grow a business. The point is every bite-sized 20-minute show comes packed with practical advice from these incredible entrepreneurs, behavioral scientists, and everybody in between nudges fast paced, but very insightful. And a must listen if you're a podcast fan. Make sure you listen to nudge wherever you love to get your podcasts. It's amazing. That's something that entrepreneurs always struggle with. Most many high performing people that I know, they're on their second, third wife, they can't hold down a relationship. It's very difficult. It's very, very difficult. Well, here's everything. Here's a difficulty. Okay, because you seem to be a willing audience, and you haven't fallen asleep yet, Scott. So I'm trying to keep you awake. No, I find this fascinating. And by proxy, the audience finds this fascinating. This is, you know, this is why that I do what I do. I'm selfishly able to speak to you firsthand, but the things that we speak about, these are things that I need to figure out and I need to discover myself. And if I figured that's the premise of the show, then everyone else by proxy likes the same type of content. So I appreciate this because this is all very, very important for an entrepreneur audience. I thought we were actually going to speak more about death and dying to a degree, but I think that there's these universal lessons that I wasn't even thinking in that vein that are very, very applicable to somebody who's a high performance individual trying to build something. Well, part of it is, look, I appreciate that, you know, you followed up and say, well, I'm on the show and we sent you a press release about what death and dying has taught me. But I am, I am a died in the wool empath, because of that dean of students who use surgical empathy with me and saved my life. And so as we got talking, I started thinking about you. I was grateful to you having me on, but I thought about your audience and wanting to give them something that was relevant and applicable to them that they could take home and use. And maybe offline you and I can discuss the, so what is death and dying teaching you? And I'll share, you know, so I have these videos up on YouTube and TikTok. And I think this is timely, but unfortunately, it's going to be around for a while. And so my latest video was, feeling stressed out about the Hamas-Israel war. Of course. Yeah. And here is something I've done with company, I did with companies during the pandemic, you know, when they were laying off people. Dopamine is pleasure. So we chase after dopamine. The way the tech world, the way the internet world works, the way the CEOs on the spectrum from most tech companies work is they're driven by excitement to have dopamine. They're driven by their momentum junkies, because all that increases adrenaline and excitement. They also know that if you can addict people to adrenaline and excitement is the way to dopamine, that people go into an adrenaline crash and they need more. So you, you'll sell them more video games. You'll sell them more things because, you know, once you addict people to adrenaline and excitement being the only way to dopamine, you got them hooked. But what I also know is you can find dopamine in the last thing way through oxytocin. For instance, if you're listening to this, you try it with a partner what I just said and you break through and you see them tearing up and you look at them through the eyes of when you fell in love with them and you're able to take responsibility and have that matter to you. She, what have I done with this person? What have I put them through just so I could be a successful entrepreneur? And that can be painful, but that can lead to a more lasting dopamine. I'm fighting an uphill battle. So what I talk about in that video, here's something you can do in your organization. You can do this on a Zoom call or you can do it in person. And basically what you say to everybody is I want you to think of the the absolute worst moment you've experienced since the Hamas-Israel war, because it's all around us. What was the worst moment? I want you now, and I used to do this in the pandemic and it would just flip the whole company. I want you to write down next to your name in the chat room, or if you're doing this in person, you have them write it down on a posted note or index card. I want you to write down the feeling that most correspond to that worst moment. And the feelings can be anxious, afraid, panicky, overwhelmed, can't sleep, exhausted, stuck, or add other words. And when I used to do this in the pandemic, I did this with a company in England, and the CEO said, you know, I try to bring in people like you to help my people. And this was a sales company. I can share it because I'm become close friends with the CEO who's moved on now. It's called Incloble, an Incloble published the Inflite magazines for 80% of the airlines. And those went away because people didn't want to touch the magazines. So it became digital. It's on your screen. And so a lot of the people, you know, they couldn't sell advertising. They couldn't do whatever. And so I did this with them. And the co-founder, Simon Leslie, he just trust me. He says, Mark, I trust you can do anything with my people because you won't hurt them. And when I said that to them, there's 150 people on the Zoom call. You know, of course people are like, they stall like this. And then you look in the chat room. And little by little people were putting next to their name, afraid, overwhelmed, angry, numb. Sad, irritable. And it started like a trickle. And then it flooded. And as people were expressing those feelings, they started to cry. And they started to cry because they felt relief. Because they didn't feel alone. And what happened is we bathe them in oxytocin. That was a complete oxytocin experience. And you can do this, actually, if you have people are in person, you have them right down, they're feeling on a post-it note. And you put them all in the middle of the room. And then you have people go back and pick up one of the post-it notes, you know, someone else's so they don't have to feel so revealed. And people go back and one by one. They pick up one of the post-it notes and read what it says. So that'll have the same effect. And just like if you had that conversation with your partner, you know, and you had that breakthrough, that oxytocin would lead to pleasure in a way that's more satisfying than, hey, let's go on to a movie. Let's go have a look. I'm not against going out, having dinners and all those things. But a lot of these are real breakthrough moments. These are real breakthrough moments, not like band-aid solutions. Right, yeah. So are you tracking with any of this stuff? It all tracks. It all very much tracks. I want to talk about one, I want to just ask about one particular thing that's sort of top of mind since we're on this strain of entrepreneurship, I mean, we've gone in a couple different directions. But one thing that I just want your opinion on is depression and anxiety in entrepreneurs. So I feel that high performing individuals are always working myself included. I don't even know what burnout feels like anymore because I'm always on, some days are good, some days are bad. You think that you're enjoying what you're doing. And I do, but then obviously some days it's difficult and it's tough and things don't work out. And I think that, and correct me if I'm wrong, because you're the expert. But I think that entrepreneurs, a lot of the successful ones, they seem to suppress a lot. They suppress a lot. And there are people that just seem to be able to go in this quasi-constant, depressed, burnt out state for years without succumbing to it. So they're strong individuals because they can still show up work, whatever. But I think that they're not optimized so to speak because I don't think that working from that place is a healthy thing. So the range of depression obviously varies and to the point of suicide got forbid. But let's assume that the majority of the people here not that far down the path of being depressed. And they're just almost like the best term I can think of is like a functioning alcoholic, but like a functioning depressed person. They're just going through life depressed and burnt out. I think this is an entrepreneurial issue that I don't know how to solve for. I co-authored two books during the pandemic. And they're available through HarperCollins. One of them is called Why Cope When You Can Heal. And I screwed up the marketing because the subtitle is how healthcare heroes of COVID-19 can recover from PTSD. That's screwed the whole thing because my co-author, a wonderful woman who was a CEO of a hospital and led it through a double murder suicide by an employee of the month. So she just terrific. So it was aimed at healthcare heroes. But they're not going to read a book like that because they push away. They don't want to, they need help but they refuse it and they're afraid of what it will mean. And so the subtitle, if the subtitle was, recovery from trauma is possible. Then the floodgates would have opened. And so this is a lesson in titling and marketing. Why do you should re-release it, by the way? Why Cope When You Can Heal. You should re-release it. It is a killer title. And when I've said it to people, been traumatized, I said, what do you think of this title? The women would especially start crying. And I say, what are you crying about? They say, if only. And I'd say, what do you mean? They'd say, I cope, but I haven't healed. And if you look at them and you know they've been through trauma, you could say, well, you're so courageous. You got over that. They'll smile at you and say, I never got over it. I got past it, but I'm not the same. I'm tentative. My guard's up. And yeah, we could re-release it, but you know, this stage of my life and you know, dealing with mortality. If someone wants to run with it, you know, they can, but you know, everybody, everybody is just living in fear, trying to just make sure they don't get fired or run out of money in the next quarter. That sort of thing. But what we talk about and why cope when you can heal is and think of entrepreneurs and first responders and healthcare heroes run on adrenaline. Because when you run on adrenaline and you're in the middle of an adrenaline rush, which danger can do when you're a healthcare hero or a veteran because your partners are doing it, you may not do it for yourself, but you don't want to let your fellow nurse, your fellow doctors down so you just keep pushing. And you have, like you say, this is brittle, superficial thing. I'm superhuman, but inside you know you're paying a big cost. And so the whole approach and you can use this book as an entrepreneur is that as you're going through these challenges and the danger also triggers adrenaline, what happens is adrenaline insulates you from paying psychological and physical. You can play a quarter of an NBA game running on adrenaline with a broken leg. And when the game's over, you discover, oh my God, I've been playing with a broken leg because that's the power of adrenaline to insulate you. So a lot of entrepreneurs run on adrenaline. And what happens is you push down and push away the pain because you're running on adrenaline and you're pushing forward. But in the case of healthcare heroes, when you take the danger away, instead of feeling relieved after the pandemic, they're actually feeling worse. Same thing for veterans is instead of feeling relieved, they feel worse. It's because the adrenaline insulation from the danger is gone. So you take away that insulation from all those thoughts and feelings that you push away to function and they threaten to push back. As one of my clients said, you know every time I face something really challenging, it's like a feral alley cat and I lock it up in the cellar because I got a function. And then I lock up a second and then a tenth and then a 50th and they're all screaming down there. But in the surface, I'm feeling pretty superhuman. But what I'm afraid of is if I, when the danger passes, if I want to feel whole instead of something's not right, I'm afraid to open the cellar door. I'll share an incident and here's how I made connections with people. On my podcast, so I have a podcast called My Wake Up Call, we're up to about 560 episodes. It's, I don't have a team. It's in the top 1% of all podcastes in 32 countries. I do no social media because I don't have a team. It's all word of mouth when I have people on my podcast and I get 40 requests a week to be on it. I tell the PR company to, it needs to be supported by the guest because I, you know, I'll post it on the platforms, but you know, with a little description about what it is. I just don't have a team and I don't have the budget for it. So it's done pretty well given it's all word of mouth. Yeah. And I get, you know, I get, you know, Jordan Peterson, Larry King, Norman Lear, Ken Blanchard, Susan Kane, you know, and also people that really interest me. They don't have to be a-listers. So I had Chip Conley on. Chip Conley found a juada v-hotels. He pivoted to Airbnb. And I can sell this because it was on the podcast. And he reached the point where he had all the success and money that he needed, but five of his friends died by suicide. He was depressed and suicidal. And he realized that he was addicted to achievement. So he pivoted to something called the Modern Elder Academy, MEA. And they have retreats, I think in Baja, Mexico, for people who are also high achievers and have done okay, but something's missing. And as we talked, he said, I'm addicted to achievement, but it's empty. It doesn't take away the pain. And there was a point in the podcast where he got very enthusiastic about the Modern Elder Academy. And I said, Chip, Chip, you're doing it again. You're pitching me. Here comes the high achiever. You're doing it. And then he stopped. I said, Chip, and I'll say this to a number of entrepreneurs. You may have the syndrome of disavowed yearning. And he said, what the heck is that? I said, we're all born into the world whole. And we were peace in our mother's womb. And one of the reasons we cry like bloody murder when we're born is we go from omnipotent with a remote control inside her womb to being utterly powerless, not being able to communicate what we really need. The world not really being able to tune into us the way a uterus and placenta could. No, don't change my diaper. I'm hungry. No, don't feed me, change my diaper. And I said, there's an ache inside to find peace. But what happens is we convince ourselves we don't need to. And so we disavow the yearning to feel whole and peaceful again. We pivot to achievement. And that feels pretty good for 40 or 50 years until it doesn't. And you reach a point in which I'm still achieving something else I did is I did house calls to dying patients to try to help them find peace of mind at the end. And I remember one who was very wealthy, powerful, and at the end was miserable. And I think people appreciate, and this is why I can go deeper with them, I'm pretty direct. And I said to him, you look like crap, but I don't think it's because you're dying. You've been dying as long as I've known you. What's going on? And nobody would talk to him that way. And he said, I don't think I've ever done anything important in my life. I said, what? You got thousands of fans. You've got hospital wings named after you. You're beloved in public. I mean, he had several marriages, you know, kids on drugs and whatnot. And he had a very rye smile and he looked at me and he said, don't con a con man, especially when he's dying. I have all the love that money can buy. And everything I thought was important isn't. And everything I thought wasn't important is, and I've run out of time to fix it. And what was really important to him at the end he discovered is, I'm not emotionally close to anyone. Nobody's emotionally close to me. I'm not emotionally close to myself. Yeah, I'll take the family on big vacations and I'll pick up the bill and, you know, have them go off to activities and, you know, and we love each other and whatever. But I don't think they know me. I don't think I know them. And I will tell you because I do presentations when I used to do presentations. I'll do Zoom calls now to the entrepreneur community. When I've asked entrepreneur raise your hand. If you can only remember five or fewer times when you and your dad totally emotionally connected, totally vulnerable him, totally vulnerable you, uh, moms have a better way of connecting. And I would say 75% of the room raised their hand. And I said, raise your hand if you've never connected that way. 50% of the people raised their hands. And I've had that connection five times in my life and they were the most phenomenal connections ever. So can I share something more that you're such a good listener, by the way? I just take it in. I take all this and there's so much wisdom. I appreciate you a lot. Oh, yes, please. Well, thank you. Thank you. Something else I write about and I'm dying to tell you is the power of true vulnerability without helplessness. Because helplessness is, so vulnerability is you're emotional, but you're not intruding like, what am I going to do? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And something happened about five months ago. Because normally I don't let people care about me. I care about them. I don't ask for help. It's probably limited a lot of things in my life, but I'm helping all the time. And it's interesting. I live most of my life. I used to live to give. And one thing that's switched is I now give to live. When I feel I'm in a state of giving, I feel alive. So I do it every day. And so several months ago, you know, apparently people care about me. I don't let them care about me, but apparently that's a secret that I keep from myself. So I'm speaking to someone. And he says, how's it going? Normally I would say, I'm fine. I'm fine. What are you working on? How's that going? And I'm very good at helping people come up with a new brand for themselves. In fact, after we finish this thing, I figured out a brand for you, but we'll talk about that if you have a few minutes after this interview. Yeah, I'm excited to hear it. Yeah, definitely. You know, I love this one. And it's perfect for you. This will be your Simon Sinek Y. If you're interested in it. But I am. That wet your appetite. And so what happened is he said, how are you doing? And instead of saying I'm fine, I said, well, I've got a couple of issues. And he said, really, you know, he's a little bit distracted. He's not as riveted as you appear to be. I have mesmerized you a little bit. And he's like, yeah, so what's going on? And I said, I think I'm dying. And I got emotional. And I got embarrassed. And I apologize profusely. And I said, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that to happen. Let's just talk about you. I'm just too embarrassed. I'm sorry. I don't want to be a burden to you. And he said, don't apologize. And I said, well, I just, he said don't apologize. And I've added 25 more people with the exact same conversation. Because then I feel people care about me. I'm just open. I mean, I can feel it right at the, it's happening a little bit with you. But I'm too busy teaching you to let you see how I'm feeling. Listen, we have to at least give the audience a little bit. And so I said, why? Why don't I have to apologize? And here are some of the responses I've received. And I will say it's so far. It's mainly from men. I mean, women will say the same thing. But the men, it hit a nerve. So one man said, this is a gift mark what you're doing. Because this is the most emotionally intimate conversation I have ever had in my life. And you might think, well, that's crazy. It's not so crazy. People don't open up. And then another man said, I'm envious of you. And I said, what? And he said, no, no, you can have your illness. I don't want your illness. He said, but the fact that you're just being the way you are with me means you feel safe. You're trusting me. And you think you're being emotional. And he said, I see you as being free. And I've never been any of those. And then the final thing, it's my version of the 700 club, is most of these people have said, Mark 24 seven. What do you mean 24 seven? You can call me 24 seven. And these are people if I tried to pitch them on some business idea, they would ghost me. Oh, that's really interesting, Mark. I got to go now. And I've been trying to figure out why the 24 seven. And it's evolving, but I think the explanation is not that I don't think I'll be dying soon, just sooner than I would have liked to have died. And I don't think that I and people are telling me, again, I'm just being me. People see me as courageous. I have no idea what I'm not being courageous. I'm just being honest. I guess that's courageous. That is courageous. For a lot of people, that's very courageous. I think a lot of people live with the mask on their whole life. So I think they're saying 24 seven because they want more of the real conversation. I think from their end, it was so, it was like Michael Jackson's 25th anniversary Moton Moon Dance. Moonwalk. Because you are in a place where you are free of most of the things that would inhibit somebody to to do what they want to do, right? A lot of people are driven by so many external factors that you want you personally are not worried about anymore. The path is clear for you. So it's easy when the path is clear, but a lot of people, their path is not clear. So they get distracted, they get stressed out, they get sidetracked, whatever, from a variety of money, family, spouse, or it could just be even less significant. It could be shiny objects syndrome and their own business. They just get distracted all the time because the path is not clear. Your path is clear. So it's easy to stay focused. Another recent episode of the I'm dying to tell you is it's called Dust to Dust, ashes to ashes, whole to whole. Because as I mentioned, I have a sense that we felt whole and complete inside our mother's womb. You know, and you know, whatever we needed, we were totally vulnerable. And whatever we needed, she was there 24-7. And so where I'm going with this is when I am vulnerable, without being helpless, but when I'm just vulnerable with someone and they say 24-7. And I can't do anything other than receive it as opposed to fight it. I'm whole again. Can you see the analogy? It's fascinating to me. Yeah, it is fascinating. That's going very deep. That's going very, very deep. You're going into these subconscious that we had as pre-born children, basically as babies. And that's what we're seeking in life. Essentially, this wholeness that we're chasing. So we're always chasing where we came from. So let me ask you, you've given me a very long leash. You've entrusted your audience to me. I hope this makes the cutting room floor as opposed to Mark, we couldn't use it. No, it will be used to trust me. I really appreciate it. I like this episode a lot. I like this talk a lot. So it's amazing. It's very, very good. So what can I help you with? Can you help me with? Well, you've already helped me think through a few different things that are going on in my own personal life. So that's good. I mean, some of the tools that you taught over, I think, are applicable in my relationship and anybody's relationship. What can you help me with? I think the goal that I set out to accomplish with this, there's very transactional asks always. You have a great person that should be on the podcast or a different piece of content. But that's a very transactional ask. But I think that more applicable to your skill set is to teach me how to ask the questions that pull out the information that you structure when you teach over things to an audience. I think that's probably the most useful skill. And it's not like, I've done a significant amount of these interviews. I've done probably about 400 at this point. So it's not like, I can't pull out information. But I think the way, I think you probably would have insight into the best way to interview somebody and to get them to say what you eventually would want to hear to be that's putting in very, a very crass manner of speaking as just how do you get the right information out of people? That's probably a useful skill set for me personally. Maybe not so much for the audience, but I would say even for the audience, if they're interviewing people, if they're trying to always spoke about communication, but how do you get the information you need out of them? So can I offer you a suggestion? I have times that come to my hand. That's what I'm asking for. That's what I'm asking for. I think when if you interact or have someone reach out on your behalf to guess, because when I will reach out to people for my podcast, which, you know, because I don't promote it in particular ways, I'll have you on. I'd love to have you on. My wake up call is, I will reach out to, I will reach out, I'll respond to these PR companies and say, my listeners and I are hungry for guests who we can believe, believe in, and want to find out more about, you know, in addition to whatever, you know, we'll talk about the book they're selling and whatever, but my, my listeners and I are hungry for people that we can trust, have confidence in, respect and admire, because there's such a shortage of that. And then when I get the person on, I'll say, I'll tell you how this is going to go. It'll be conversational. Yes, we'll get to your book and whatever. And, but the way I see it is we're having a conversation in a bar. And the people next to us are overhearing us and they're thinking, that's a much better conversation than we're having. You know, they can't help but listen in because we peak their interest, which means they're hearing something. It's kind of like what we talked about earlier. They're hearing things like, geez, I never would have thought of what they're talking about. Yeah. And that's relevant to me or they're listening in because, uh, boy, uh, how did they know that that relates to me? Like I could see that exercise I gave about the undivided attention, especially for a lot of entrepreneurs that don't want to get divorced again. Hopefully, you know, those who are willing will say, that, that, that takes more courage than I have, but boy, is that relevant to, to my, uh, relationship? Because I think that one thing that I have, is a compliment to you. Also, rightly or wrongly, people tell me that I appear very present. I don't know if I appear that way to you. Um, you do. Yeah. And you do seem very focused and very in the moment. Very present. I'd be happy. It would be, you know, you know, whatever time I have left and the life of energy because you have all the makings of someone who could be really, really present and to be present at whatever generation you're in, it would really be, uh, magnetic because you're decent, you're earnest, you're respectful, uh, you're eager to learn, you're curious, um, uh, you're able to feed back what you're learning. So it's not, it's not just a bunch of questions where you change the subject quickly. You'll, who give people a long leash, you've given me, you know, a leash that goes around the block. And, and I wouldn't say it's a unicorn, the kind of presence I'm talking about, but it's not that far away from it as a host. You don't seem to have an agenda other than, you know, I'd like to grow this, you know, but I really want to serve the people that are listening. I want them to walk away and think, wow, that was, uh, that taught me a lot. I just thought on that. So everything you've mentioned is stuff is are things that I've learned over the course of podcasting for X many years. When you first start and I let me just mention there is a caveat. I've never really had an agenda with this show, but the other pieces that you did mention, um, like the active listening and, you know, listening, not just to respond, but they're listening to understand where the where the person is coming from, the fact that, um, I'm not just, uh, like a, a, a regret, uh, but what's the, what's the best way to put it? I'm not like a Wikipedia page for the guest. So I don't need to, uh, immediately list out the next accomplishment or the next bullet point in their resume and have to dive into that and diverge from the thought that we're currently on. The best way to describe it, and this is not my words. I've heard this from another podcaster that I really, uh, respect, but we are basically just having to your point of conversation. And it's my, my job to create the atmosphere and the psychological safety in this environment, in this interaction, which is difficult virtually. However, it can be done easier in person. I find that allows you to teach over your knowledge and your wisdom to the audience. And that's important to me, because even though it's frustrating, because what's frustrating about a podcast like this is this is a, it's a, it's a highly intellectual endeavor to build something like this and to have this conversation. And even for me, to jump into these topics that I'm not a domain expert in, and to try and keep up with all these incredible individuals is difficult. And also the audience is intelligent, but the audience, the intelligent audience is a fraction of the population versus a, like a random entertaining sports podcast or something like that. Like the podcast that can really cater to the masses. So for me, my goal is to constantly make it smarter, more useful, more valuable and, and continually push the, you know, push the bar on the conversations that we have because if you're going to do anything, if you're going to try and improve somebody's life, there's so much garbage out there. So you have to separate yourself from the garbage. And this is where we can have conversations like this. And this is where I sort of understood the, the goal of my role in all this is to create that psychological, safe environment so that you go deeper than just surface level. And you're aware of this because you do this professionally, but this is something that I have to architect in many people that do not do this professionally. And it's difficult. It's very difficult, but for me, it's very fulfilling. And selfishly, then I can also become a better person, learn more, absorb more through that incredible conversation, whatever hour to hour conversation with the guest. So that's how I look at these sessions, but I appreciate what you're saying. And thank you for noticing a lot of those things because there are things that some of them come more naturally than others, but I think that some of them are, are learned skills. And I think that some of them are just being aware of what you're trying to accomplish and building up the skill set that allows for that and facilitates that. So I want to give you an insight about something that you do. And I think this will hopefully be relevant to listeners and viewers and entrepreneurs. In my book, just listen. I talk about the difference between talking over at two or with. And again, one of my, I'm dying to tell you little videos is do an over at two with audit. And what that means is you go to people who care about you, who can be candid with you. And I just, I'm going to tell you what you want to hear. And you say, I'm working towards being someone who toggles between two and with when I speak to people. And I'm wanting to develop the ability to talk with them. Because I think it's more satisfying to them. And I'm trying to be sensitive to when I'm talking over and at people. Because I can pump them up. But when you talk over and at people, you can pump people up because they're impressed with you. They're energized. But they don't implement anything. And that's because when you talk over and at people, you take away their free will to choose to engage with you. They may be like this. Oh, this is great. And again, if you're into short term stuff, you can get them to buy product. You can get them in that adrenaline rush to go to the back of the room and sign on by product and the special discount this week. And if you take the course, it's only, you know, $99 and it's usually $95, $100. And but it's going away today. And so when you get them pumped up, you sell product. And you know, most people don't even follow through with the product. But I think what the world is hungry for is for people who talk to and with people. And you toggle very well between two and with. And it's very unusual. And it's very positive. And so if you're listening to this or viewing this and I'll ask you to reach out to people and say, you know, I had this interesting guy. Hopefully I'm interesting on the show. And he mentioned that that I either practice or aspire to talk to and with people. And that it's my credit that I don't come off as an over at type of person. First of all, do you agree with his description of the value of two and with versus over and at? Hopefully they'll, they will, especially intimate relationships. And then you can, then you can say, on a scale of one to 10 in the two and with category, especially the with category, if 10 as I always do it. And one is I never do it. Where am I? And then you can do the same thing with the over at. If a 10 as I'm always speaking over and at people. And one is I never do it. Where am I? And then say to them, going forward. I want to grow into a person who talks to and especially with people. Going forward, what are some observable things that you've noticed or that I could do better at? You know, that have caused you to feel you really talk with me. Maybe you could actually bring up some events. You know, remember when I was having that trouble? You really gave me my, you're undivided attention, Scott. And you know, whatever it was on your mind, you just dropped it and you were totally there for me and with me. So if you're listening in, by the way, this is not just personal relationships. If you're a founder or CEO and you talk to a board, you might want to reach out to them and do an over at to with audit. And if you're courageous enough to grow, you might want to say, if I'm talking mainly over and at people, how detrimental is that? And what would be the positive impact if I became someone who talked to and with people? The layman who the layman the layman that you're asking this of, how do they identify the over at versus the two and with? It's pretty easy after I give you how to identify it. You can identify it in the body language of the other person. When you talk over someone, it's really insulting. If you were talking over me and I was going to your presentation, unless I was a martyr, if there was a break, I wouldn't come back. I would just say, you know, arrogance so full of himself. Now there are some people who seek out abuse and they'd come back and even buy product. When someone's when you're talking at someone, if you intimidate them, they'll tuck their chin under like, don't hurt me, don't hurt me. Or they'll lift the plane of their face and stick their chin out at you like, who do you think you're talking at? Don't you point your finger at me because that's what the words seem like. Talking to, you can identify because that's business as usual. That is 90% of the podcasts. That was information. I learned a few things. I jotted on a few notes. Am I going to take action because of it? Well, I'd like to, but probably not. When you talk with someone, it's as if you've gone over to them metaphorically, put your arm around their shoulder and said, you're going to get through this. It's going to be okay. Even if you don't believe you can get through this, you are. One of the things that I do, and this might be helpful for people when they do presentations. And this is how you engage an audience right out of the gate. So if I'm doing a presentation, and look at the title of your presentation, so if my presentation was unjustly listened because that's the name of this book I wrote, I might go up, you know, when everybody's fiddling around, tap on the mic, and then I'll lean and I'll go, huh. And then I walk away and people will look at, like, what was that? So I do that for about three, four seconds, come back. And I can do that on a Zoom call like, huh. And then I come back to the mic. And by that time I got their undivided attention and I go, huh. And they're curious. And I say, uh, and so that seems intimidating. And then I do an oxytocin flip. And I said, uh, would you agree that one of the best ways to start this off is if I completely get where you're coming from and what you want to get from this talk, you know, you can nod because many people hate to have to raise their hand. Most people would not. And I'd say, as I look at the title of the talk, just listen, I'm guessing you're here because some or most of you have blown a big deal by not listening. You've blown a business partnership by not listening. You've blown a company by not listening. You've blown a marriage by not listening. And worst of all, you got a teenager who turned to drugs because you weren't listening. And you're here because you don't want those to happen again. Can any of you relate to that? Now the challenge to me is to give you something not to buy books, not to buy a course because I don't have a course is to give you something that is immediately doable by you that you can take from this talk. And it's immediately doable by you. You don't have to be a psychologist. You don't even have to like psychologists. But if I could give you something that was immediately doable by you and it could help you begin to prevent any of those, you know, would that be worth your time and the money you spent to come here? So could you track with that kind of? Yes, definitely. I love this. If you were going to, if you were going to teach over or describe the framework, so again, just very briefly, how you started to catch their attention. How could you take that particular, the way that you started your speech? What is the concept of the framework that somebody could apply to a different topic or a different, a different, you know, key note that they're doing? Is it pretty simple? No, it's pretty simple because I, I also like to simplify things. Like I think one of the reasons I was successful with suicidal patient is when I would be with them using surgical empathy, what I was thinking is they have a deep psychological mental emotional hurt that is so awful that death is compassionate. The hurt is so deep and so unrelenting. And if I can some way lessen that hurt that they're relieving only by death, maybe they might let go of death and grab on to feeling felt by me as opposed to feeling felt by death saying, I'll take it all away. I'll take your pain away. And so that informs me. So what I would say is the framework is realize that whoever you're with, even a casual conversation, they're always listening for something that may not be apparent to them. And if you can know that they're always listening for something, it's not that difficult to figure out what it is. So I do a presentation. I think this is also one of the videos because I'm just putting all this stuff out in the world for people to find. And I think I think that video was about a detransactionalizing B2B and B2C selling. And one of the ways you do that, and again, you have to modify it so that it's comfortable. And also what I'm suggesting to you, be sincere about it. If it's just a technique, like I didn't give talks and just listen to business groups that only wanted to use my book to manipulate people to close more deals. I'd say, look, I use this to save lives. I'm glad you like the book. You want to do a book club? Go do a book club. But it goes against my values. If all your, if you don't care about listening, if all you care about there's some neat techniques in there, we'll go do a book club. I'm not against that. And figure out what those techniques are to get you more sales, but I'm not going to train you because it goes against my values. It's like the NLP originators, Grinder and Bernui, they said we don't want people to use NLP to manipulate people. And the masses used NLP to manipulate people. So what I would say to you, here's to make it more simple, is if you can know that people are always curious about something that they're not consciously aware of, and just bring it into the conversation, kind of like I did when I was telling you about coaching these startups. When you get a sense that something's not going right, you can always stop yourself and say, I have a feeling you were listening for something, and I just didn't cover it. So I got a feeling that I got further away from what you were listening for. Can you tell me what you were listening for? Because I might have it or I might know people that have it. And so realize that everyone even a spouse is listening for something. And by the way, if you're an entrepreneur and you're in a marriage, unless the people in your personal life ask for advice, they are not listening for it. What they think, I think that's a good lesson for everyone. I know because you give advice because their emotions are making you nervous, they're making you anxious, and so you deal with anxiety by defaulting to your strong suit, which is unimpathic, which is to give them unsolicited advice. And what happens is that makes them angry. What that person's listening for is for you to be able to totally enable them to get off their chest, whatever is on their chest. And then when they get what's on their chest, off their chest, it changes the conversation. They'll come up with their own advice. Here's a good thing. You can try with your partner. It's in, I think it's in just listen. It might be I have another book called Talking to Crazy. It's called The Fud Crud Technique. And I believe it's one of the videos also. So the Fud Crud Technique is basically Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fight. So someone is venting at you or they're selling. Now they're expecting you to say, now calm down, which makes it worse. And you're thinking, I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't, let them finish venting. Or if they're selling, you know, they're not saying anything. And here's the Fud Crud Technique. We added crud because it was more memorable. And you say to them, honey, you seem frustrated and I think you're holding back. What? Yeah, you seem frustrated and I think you're holding back because I think you're really upset with me and disappointed in me. Can you fill in those for me? And so what you do is, with each of them, so what is it that's frustrating you? You give me an example of when I did that. And you don't get defensive. Oh, I did that. Wow. And give me an example of what you're upset about and you pull that out of them. And by the time you get to, what are you disappointed about? It's a much softer conversation. You've helped them to get things off their chests. You know, that was the joy, you know, gosh, Muhammad Ali just let George Foreman punch himself out. And by the time you get to disappointment, and again, you're not there to be defensive. What you can, here's the real gold metal. You could say, well, I'm so glad you got all that stuff out. Going forward, what do I need to consistently do? And what are some things that I must never do so that you don't have to go back there to frustrate it upset and disappointed and make it observable because every month, I want to check in with you and say, how am I doing in the flood cred department? And whatever they say, you could say, thank you. From your point of view, how could I, how could I be even better? And by the way, here's something you can use with your business partners or your new board of directors. You say to them, we're at the beginning of a honeymoon period, and I don't want the honeymoon to go away. And by honeymoon period, I'm looking forward to seeing you greeting all of you and hopefully you're looking forward to seeing me because we're just starting. I want to proactively and schedule it monthly because we can't afford this to go sideways. I want to meet with you if it's a business partner or if it's a long-term consulting client with, you know, one of the big consulting firms and Jesus, it seemed great to begin with and now it's somewhere else. And you say, when we meet, I want you to bring up any and everything that gets in the way of you're looking forward to seeing me. Because if I know what it is, and it might out, you know, but I commit, I won't get defensive. I might feel the out because I'm embarrassed, but I want us to proactively meet because it's inevitable that differences of opinion can become disagreements, which I think is the manageable side, but when the disagreements become arguments and fights and ultimatums, we don't have a luxury of that and I don't have a luxury of it and I don't want to be a cause of it and I don't want to and I want to make sure we do whatever we can to fix it. So you're preempting. You know the situation that's going to manifest before you in all these scenarios and you're preempting. You set up these systems. They set you up for success, set you up for radical candor communication. People know that these are important, but they all address them retroactively really and then it's too late or it's much harder to fix the relationship, whatever. Well, that's because the majority of the world is reactive and not proactive. You know, they wait for things to happen and they react. I used to be the chief mentor at a company called China Foundations. It was in Shanghai, Hong Kong and California and what it focused on and it since come down because of all the China, you know, stuff that's going on, but the whole focus of China Foundations was to train Fortune 500 American managers to work efficiently with Chinese workers. And that's a big, that's a big come. So one of the things we came up with and by the way, you can use this cross culture, you can use it cross generation, you can use it cross gender, you can use it cross race. It's a what here again, I like to simplify things. This is a one size fits all. And what you say, you know, as you begin, this works a consultant client is what you say to the other person is as we go forward, we're going to develop a working relationship. And I know there are some things that my culture, race, generation, et cetera, do or fail to do that create awkwardness for you and then awkwardness for your people when you have to explain who's the jerk from America. So going forward, can you tell me what I must always do and what I must never do so that I don't put you into that position. And then you can say, by the way, you don't have to, but I can tell you what for my end, you know, your generation, your gender, your race, whatever, I can tell you some of the things that you all do or don't do, you know, that tends to rub people of my race, my generation. Like if I'm a baby boomer, this is interesting. See this will tell you Scott why you're doing so well because if I'm a baby boomer speaking to most people, you're age. And I said, going forward, what must I not do or what must I always do. And most people, your generation would say, stop with the war stories. Stop pontificating. Yeah. Stop taking it out. Stop taking it out on me just because nobody listens to you in your family. That's true. That's true. And that's what we call anticipatory preemptive humility. anticipatory preemptive humility. So you're anticipating that the best laid plans for collaboration of mice and man always go astray. And the more you can be proactive, that's why I think if we're talking about an intimate relationship and you do some of the breakthroughs, the fud cry to whatever, proactively you say, look, I don't want to put you in a position where you're frustrated upset and disappointed me. And then holding it inside. So what does that do to the counterpart? What does that do to the counterpart? Does that? Does that help? Does that help you actually achieve your goals? Is there a higher likelihood of them reciprocating that mentality? Depends what people's values are. So circling back to, yeah, why are you at peacemark if you're dying? I've been true to my values. And my values have always been kindness. There's not even a distant second, but kindness, generosity, service, and curiosity. Totally. I've never chased money. And money has never chased me. But I can now approach the end saying, you know, you've lived your life according to those values. And you don't have that much to be embarrassed about. Whereas that person I did the house calls to, he thought his, the example he thought his values were as be powerful, have money, do such and such, which shouldn't do many good at the end. And what he discovered because it is core, he was a, he could be narcissistic, but he wasn't a dyed in the world, narcissist. And it is core. What he realized is, I'm really an idiot. I mean, nobody knows me. I'm not close to anyone. It probably contributed to some of my kids taking drugs. And all those marriages, where I thought I outsmarted them, I really outsmarted myself. And it would be my challenge to help them have peace of mind. Like what I said to that person is I say, look, you're not evil, you're not awful. You know, you're learning these things a little bit too late, but you've done a lot of good in the world. And here's the good in the world. And, and this is not a good time for you to be asking these other questions. Let's do pain control, morphine drip, and then get out of Dodge, doctor's orders, and he smiled. I said, do I have to write it on a prescription? What else, what else do we want to go into? We've gone into so much. I feel like this is, this is, this is my fault. Now I feel like I can ask you any question. And we can just have this really intimate, smart conversation about anything this top of mind. But I feel like that's not, I feel like we should do a follow up or we should do something in the future because I want to, I want, I want to just tie people back to, you know, do what you're trying to achieve. I mean, you're trying to, I mean, you are, look, so here's an idea. Look, yeah, you know, this could be that I've gotten an incredible audience of one you. But if, if you tend to get some responses, hey, he's interesting. You could reach out to your audience and say, Dr. Gulson, Mark, he's learned a lot. And I felt like I could ask him almost any question, you know, except something technical. Yeah. Yeah. But I felt like I could ask him any question about interpersonal, anything, how to engage your customers, how to build trust. Here's, and also people say, well, are you still working with people? And I say, well, you know, I am on medications and I have to pick and choose. But for many years, if I was coaching people, I would say, here's the only coaching I do. That's what I call TCRA coaching. And the only coaching I do is if you want to grow into a person, a leader in which your people trust you, have confidence in you, respect you and admire you, it's the only coaching I do. And if it doesn't matter to you whether people distrust you have no confidence, don't respect and don't admire you, we're just not a good fit. You're not the values are aligned. And if you want to grow into those, I know actually the tactics, which if you follow the behavioral tactics, I'll give you a taste of that. So if someone says, well, what do those look like? Where you want to reach out to people stakeholders and be aspirational as opposed to some personality deficit and say, I'm committing myself to being a leader in which everybody trusts me, has confidence, respects me, it amires me. And you ask them, I think I can achieve that if especially in crises, I'm unflappable, but I'm present, I'm not a robot, but I'm unflappable, I'm present. I stand for safety in the organization. And at the first sign that there's not safety and bullying going on, they get one strike and then they're out. I don't care what they're caught, what it cost us because I don't want anyone to be afraid to come to work because of someone's personality. So that's that'd be the respect. Confidence is, people are looking at you, do you have a track record of actually doing what you'll say you're doing? And it actually works. What's your track record of following through and did it work out? Also one of my favorite books is Judgment by Warren Bennes and Noel Tishi. And it was how great leaders made great judgment calls. And they basically said, and this is where you develop, I think, yeah, maybe it may be confidence and respect. They said the top places where your judgment calls need to be successful. So that's the track record is in strategy, the people, the people you hire and interact with and in crisis. So a good leader has a good track record of making decisions regarding strategy, people, and crisis. And they've worked out. So confidence is, what have you already done that actually worked? And then respect is, you stand for things and you stand up against things that violate certain things. Like if you're a bully, we'll give you one strike, once we've helped you rehabilitate, which includes an apology to the people you bullied and your commitment to them that you're going to make it right. And you're actually saying to them, I'm going to check in with you if you think I'm improving as a bully. I mean, that's pretty, a lot of people say, well, you can't work with us. And I say, I'm happy to not work with you. And then we admire people for how they stand up. You know, when someone shows class in facing a crisis or conflict and everyone is tense, we admire them. One of my, one of my, I wouldn't say major sources of disappointment or sadness, but at least significant. I thought Andrew Cuomo, when he did the debriefs on the pandemic in New York, was masterful. He exhibited all those things. Here's where we are. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what I need from you. This is what you can get from me. And then he followed through with that. And again, you know, these people appear to be flawed in terms of scandals and sexual misconduct and all that. And I was really saddened by that because at least the way he conducted himself during the crisis, I thought, this is great. I mean, he's, if you can remember that, he was great. And he pulsed out. Yeah, I do. Yeah, sense of humor. And he felt, he felt from grace after that scandal. You could be a TCRA host. I would love to. I would love to. I would absolutely love to reach out to your people and say, you know, would you like Dr. Gulston to come back on? And he said, he said, given his, you know, his illness, he's having kind of a going out of business sale in terms of being on podcast. Let's, let me ask. I always, I always, I always sort of wrap up with two questions. And then I want to, before I do those, I also want to make sure you're sending people to the right spot. So you have YouTube, you have a TikTok channel. We've spoken about several of your books. Is there one spot where people can go to find everything? Would it be your website? Is that the easiest or? Do the website because I have a lot of people, apparently, who are very grateful to me from saving their lives, their marriages. And so, but a number of people that are creating a legacy for me, you know, Mark Gulston bought. So far, so far, it sounds too generic. I said, you know, there's got to be a little bit of my mushy pear empathy, you know, tone. And they're redoing my website, Mark Gulston.com. Because it's okay, but it's outdated. So, so I'm giving them all that and the, and the Mark Gulston bought will be there. And so, so you can leave that. My guess is it will be ready in a couple months. And, and I'll be enjoying it from my hospital bed. And it's beautiful. You have people that care about you to that degree. Yeah. Here's something else that I sometimes forget to push. So again, one of my projects that I want to go on without me on LinkedIn, we have something called 90 second mentor. And you can look up 90 second mentor, LinkedIn. And we take excerpts from interviews that I've done or one of my partners, Miri Olsen, Menzel. And we take their best nuggets. And they're about a minute and a quarter. And there's about a hundred words of text. And we're finding it changes cultures. Either, and we drop when every Wednesday morning. So either companies do a Zoom call every Wednesday for lunch or asynchronously. Because what they say, you know, creates better conversations in the company. So for instance, and we've had people like Ken Blanchard, Susan Kane, Daniel Goldman, Daniel Pink, a whole bunch of big names. Yeah. And one of my personal favorites, because he just has the best personality is Gary Ridge. He was the CEO of WD 40. And he has this just, we had a Dory Clark on. And so one of his things, but this is sort of a taste of it. Gary's, he says, he says in Australian accent, he says, don't be a manager. Manage inventory. Don't manage people. People don't like to be a manager. Be a coach. And if you're going to be a coach, sit, don't be a star. Be on the sidelines. You're there to help them perform better and get out of their way. And yes, focus it on the results. You got a company around, but don't be a manager. Nobody wants to be managed. That's an interesting conversation they have in a company. It is because it's so against the grain of how people actually think about leadership and management, but he's not wrong. Yeah. So people can check that out. So a 90-second mentor, LinkedIn, markgolston.com, and probably the most current thing is, you don't know it. You've triggered at least three videos I'm going to do today and put up I'm dying to tell you from our conversation. I'm glad. I'm grateful. And that's at YouTube or on TikTok. And their first take, I'm edited because I don't have a team. I don't even know how to get rid of the fathom notes on YouTube. I just leave them up there. And they're clumsy, but I hope that there is something of value in each of them. Amazing. Okay. Let me ask two last questions. And then I'll send you, you know, you'll have lots of clips from this too. This is great. There's a lot of pieces that we can use. So I like to ask these two questions. They're simple compared to what we've been speaking about, but I think they're meaningful. So the first question I like to ask is if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would that one thing be? Your 20-year-old self out of all the wisdom that you've gained over your years? You're worth caring about. I love that. I think a lot of the younger people should hear that more from anybody in their life. You've had an incredible career. You've had so many facets to the things that you've done, different jobs, different work. It's been a range to say the least. You are at an interesting point in your life right now, where you're so clear on what you're going to be doing for the last sort of mile of your life, so to speak. At this point in your life, what is success mean to you? Make sure the people that you love know how much they matter to you. you