Lessons - Why Most People Fail at Life Management | Robert Barber - Author of CEO for Life (Fortune 150 Executive)

In this lessons episode, explore how lessons from real estate and coaching reveal the importance of focus and discipline in both business and life. Discover why consistent, small wins outweigh chasing shortcuts, understand how adopting a CEO mindset creates alignment between personal and professional growth, and uncover how accountability and self-awareness unlock the actions that drive lasting success. How do you deal with that? What's the lesson that you learned in real estate on how to find where to spend your time and is it something that we could easily take into other environments so that people can figure out where to not waste time? Yeah, that's super good because I do, you know, because now I'm in coaching, right? So I'm doing the same thing. I'm selling my time, but with that being said is I got to, like you said, qualify what those opportunities are like. So anyone that is in a sales role or growing a business and trying to figure out how to pick up clients and customers those kind of things, the first thing you have to ask or you have to do is you have to be a really good listener. You have to listen for the cues of what people are telling you. If it, first thing you need to know if it sounds too good to be true and you don't have to really work hard to make it happen, guess what? Let's do good to be true. There's no there. Yeah, there isn't. And, you know, that's the first thing, that's the first thing you qualify. If it really, if it sounds too good and it's too easy, it's not, those things don't happen. You're going to hit singles a lot more than you're going to hit those home runs. So, you know, look for the singles always. You know, what are the deals that I can get done that I know that are real that can make happen and get rid of that swinging for the fences mentality? Yeah. No, it's very good advice. Now I'm curious. I'm curious what you're working with now. So let's keep going down the career path. So that will dovetail in some great questions as to what you're helping people with out right now after your career. So what's next after after you exit real estate and you're done that? What are you doing now? What's what's the book? What's coaching? What's your academy? All that stuff and why are you doing that? Yeah, so I was I was in my last two years as a partner and I found myself coaching more than I was really doing the sales anymore and I was finding my joy in there. I found a new joy, right? The deal making was fun, but I was really enjoying was watching other people be successful and working through them and I was finding my joy through that process. And so I decided that I wanted to get coaching. I talked to my partner, partners, I talked me out of it twice, but I finally made that happen. And so so I did so I jumped in and I created a coaching company called the Return on You Investment Academy because I wanted to tie back to money because everything does come back to money in terms of you know a basis of successful measure. But really there's another piece too which is how are you investing in you, right? If you investing in you then the money will come. So it's the Return on You Investment Academy. So I started a coaching academy. I went and got certified. I'm a certified high performance coach. So I carry some credentials with me and I started this company and along those lines, I started to reflect a little bit especially when COVID happened is this mindset that came to me about a CEO, right? I'm coaching executives. I'm coaching you know CEOs and entrepreneurs enough for their own company. And I'm really thinking about what it is that makes them successful. And what I began to realize is that there this concept of work, life balance and all this other stuff is really flawed because what I see in the most successful people and I also see it in my own life is that I'm no different at home than I am in my job. I'm the same person, right? And so why do we break apart the workplace and the life place? Really, let's bring those two things together. And if you can bring those two things together, you will be successfully rounded. And so I started thinking about the CEO job description. And if you go through a CEO's job description, you'll see it's a lot like how you should leave your life. You should have a vision. You should have mission. You should have goals. You should know who the people are that are around you as your shareholders. You should be able to say no. You should have values. You should set boundaries. You should know how to deal with a lot of shit every day because it's going to come. And so all of those things. And so I wrote this book CEO for life for that purpose is to try and bring the concept together for people that you really should be the same person in the workplace and life place. So I think a lot of fun. And I've really enjoyed it. No, I appreciate the the transitioning. I think that actually you probably your love for coaching probably comes from your your love for helping people and that's actually probably why you transitioned from electrical engineering to HR in the first place. I'm just reading along your career. It makes like it makes a lot of sense. You keep defaulting too. And what you sort of excel at. But I guess I guess my question, you know, the CEO for life, I love the I love the analogy that you have to run your life like a CEO. So how do we solve how do we solve for that how do we remove the work life and the and the personal life because there's things that I'm sure like this is ingrained in people like they have to act one way at work and they and act differently at home. So what are like the actionable steps that you can start doing or it's just a matter of finding the right organization that also recognizes that they want a certain authenticity and who they hire. How do you fix that great great that's a great conversation. It's a super conversation. So the first thing is you have to work your roadmap to make sure that your your life and your work who you are maps to what a CEO is right. Do you have a okay first thing you got to know is do you have some level of self awareness listen if you're a dick it ain't got to work no matter what you do right. I mean you know or if you're a bad person or you know whatever whatever label you want to call it in terms of being a jerk or have working difficult with people you have to some have some level of self awareness. Once you have some self awareness from there you can decide okay well what is the vision for my life and what I tell people is their vision is never big enough when I sit down with clients and I talk to them tell me about your vision for your life it's never big enough it's never big enough it's always it's always well this year I want to do this or you know we're looking to buy this house or you know we're you know I want my kids kids to college well what I talk about in the book is dream generationally you know a CEO doesn't a CEO measures in a year or a quarter but when they look at casting vision for the company they're thinking five years ten years thirty years where where are we going to turn the ship and take it to you know Elon Musk is looking at Mars he's not he's not just thinking about trying to get this thing to go up and then come back down right I mean he's so dreaming generationally is super important so self awareness and making sure you have a big dream and then from there you can the begin to put your roadmap together okay so what are the goals that are going to get you there what values are going to keep you in line right so you're not going to cross any ethical barriers those kind of things then what are the people that you're surrounding yourself with who are your shareholders listen it's it's cliche but it's truth I guarantee if you look at the people you spend the most time with the five people you spend the most time with you eat where they eat you listen to the same music they do you dress like them you talk like them you drink the same beers or wine I mean that's just what we do right it's funny because I have a six-year-old daughter and it's so apparent in in her boyfriend all the boys in high school they dress the same they have the same beaver haircut they all listen to the same music they all drive the same trucks they all you know it's it's all the same things right and it's so apparent in in high schoolers that but it never leaves us we're always there so who are you leveling up in your sphere and then from there you can then begin to say okay now that I have all these pieces in place how am I how am I learning to to work with in that and that comes with having this firefighter mindset is I was told a long time ago you live your life in three states you're either in a storm coming out of a storm or going into a storm that is life period and so you better be preparing today for that storm that you're either in going into or coming out of and every day be a be a good firefighter so those are the things that are that are wrapped up in the book and they all have practical exercises around it and that's that's what I'm trying to help people find is that direction for their CEO and do you find those are good lessons and so the context of the books book makes sense excuse me do you find that that's similar to what people reach out to you for when they look for business advice or coaching advice are those is that the core problem that they're trying to solve or what other types of coaching do you actually work with people on outside of this CEO work life balance sure and so it's you know coaching is so interesting to me is because it um I guess the easiest way to say it is everybody that I coach already knows what they need to do we all do we all know we need to lose weight or we need to exercise or we need to do this or I need to pick up the phone and make those phone calls or you know I need to get my accounting and what everybody knows what they need to do but what they need is someone to speak that truth into them so they can they can then release themselves to go do it and that's really what coaching does it allows a person to release themselves into what they know they need to do because what happens often is um we get caught up in this mental chatter right we talk to ourselves in our head four times more than we talk to a person verbally so you're having a conversation your head four times more than you're having a conversation with someone else and so we get lost in that but sometimes you need that person to have that verbal conversation with make some accountability good that so that's what I spent a lot of time with people is we first start at what is it that you're not doing that you know you should do and from there everything else unravels we put a plan in place we execute it on that plan and my normal coaching time is 12 weeks at the end of 12 weeks I mean they've they've gone way beyond they ever thought they would have been from the beginning thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one