You Can Do More Than You Think w/ Robert Lee Barber & CEO For Life Podcast #scottsthoughts

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott and today you are going to hear me on the CEO for life podcast with Robert Lee Barber. We spoke about doing more with your time developing processes for your life because you can do more than you think you can. If you actually break down the steps that it takes to get to whatever finish line or whatever milestone you want to accomplish and I spoke about my process for doing that in my life. I hope you can learn a little bit and apply some things to accomplishing more in your week than you thought possible. Definitely stay tuned. This is a good one. Enjoy. Well, thanks everybody for coming back to the CEO for life experience podcast and I'm here with Scott Larry and I hope I pronounced that right Scott. Yeah, you nailed it. It's not. Awesome. Yeah. And so I'm going to start every pot. I'm going to start this podcast like every podcast. I am so excited about my guest today. But seriously, I'm super super pumped about sharing Scott with you because I've actually stopped him through LinkedIn and several other places learned a lot about his story through digital and social those kind of things and now I've had some time to spend with him. He's got a really great background and the fact that he is he's blending a lot of things at once, but really what I want to get into him in with him about is talking about his ability to unpack playbooks and how to juggle a lot of fires and things at the same time. And I think that's super critical right now we haven't really hit that in the CEO for life experience is how do you manage so many parallel paths at the same time without going off the edge right Scott. Yeah, and then we're going to get a Scott story and then we'll go through we'll go through some of our more esoteric philosophical questions. You know, I want to start with just who you are, man. So yeah, yeah, all right. So we think, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm excited about about doing this and and one of you know you first reached out. You shared a few a few points you like touched on. I was excited because you spoke about or the questions sort of reflected the theme of the podcast and the show, which was not just focused on what have you done in your career, how have you done it. And I think that's a lot of things that sometimes you don't think about in in life and career. I think it's very important because something that I I work through and I deal with and sometimes struggle with every single day. Like you mentioned managing multiple things and I'll talk about what I'm doing and what that actually looks like, but so long story short. My entire career has been predominantly in sales. So as an individual contributor in tech sales and hardware sales all the way through to director sales, VP sales leading teams. I'm based in Toronto, Canada, you know, before the pandemic, I was down in the States, probably in New York or LA once or twice a month, but now that's that's kind of changed. So I'm I'm headquartered in Toronto right now currently. This will plan to the theme, but I do quite a bit. So right now I head up sales and marketing for a company called Excitem. We build out SaaS products and software products. We are an OEM and a partner company of a lunch log company called Grass Valley. So we so basically I manage our internal sales team, which is a small team as well as bringing our software products across Grass Valley sales team exclusively, which is roughly about 100 sales individuals and 400 channel partners globally. I run my own podcast and you know, maybe we'll do like a back and forth and I'll get you on the show as well, but my podcast is about to be a success story podcast. And really what that podcast is meant to do is to speak to individuals who have accomplished things in their career. And the name of the podcast is almost a misnomer. It's it's meant to highlight people success story, but the conversations that I have are really unpacking the highs and the lows and the wins and the losses that people have dealt with on their way to where they are today. The result that we all see and we see success and what success really means of trying to unpack those playbooks. I also run a publication. So it's an medium publication called ROI overload, which is sort of something that I'm very, you know, in love with the sales and marketing strategy insights, the latest and greatest in tech. And tools and technologies and what's working today because I still live it. I still breathe it. I still actually build out these types of strategies for my own team and for Grass Valley sales team. So that's a publication where people contribute different articles and I manage that. I also read a newsletter again, same name ROI overload focus on the same stuff sales and marketing strategies. And outside of that, those are sort of like my core things. I've tried to build a brand online across all social. That's pretty strong focus again on a lot of sales marketing, some entrepreneurship topic startup topics, just things that I like things that I've lived through. I was trying to teach over things that I've learned over my career. So that hopefully, you know, somebody else can learn from my experience as well as, you know, the theme of the podcast and a lot of the stuff that I put out is just other people's experiences as well. So that's kind of like my 360 of where I'm at today in my life. Do you want me to go through like my I go through my backstory too, but I'll pass it over to you for. Oh, yes. So what I'd like to, you know, unpack is, you know, because I want to leave a little bit of your backstory out right now because I want to encourage people to connect with you. I think that is what's important beyond these podcasts. Don't just let it live in your ears. Or when your eyes when you're watching it reach out for the people that are that are in the podcast that that catch your attention because the universe is brought this person to use for some reason. So, you know, I'm going to link all the information up on how to get in touch with Scott either above or below where you're watching this or listening to it. But, you know, so I'll let people get in touch with you about more of those details to that process because again, reach out and connect with the folks. So what I'd like to do in before we jump into some of these questions is so one of the things that I thought was important that we hadn't touched on was how do you, how do you begin to prioritize and manage what you're doing because you are, you're, you're corporately bound to your responsibilities on delivering and what you're doing in sales, but you're also building a brand in giving yourself away to people and investing in them. So, how do you prioritize that time? Are they the same? Do you see them differently? Walk through that because I think that's an important thing people are having an obstacle right now and stay think, oh, I guess you've got to do this nine to five. No, you don't, right? So maybe walk through that a little bit. So I think the most important thing that I've learned over my career is to develop systems and processes for absolutely everything that I do so that I can maintain success in my corporate obligations, which obviously, you know, you never never bite the hand that feeds you. So you want to exceed like I have revenue numbers that I have to exceed I have my own cake guys that I'm held accountable to so I have to I have to fill those and to build out the other things so to do the podcast to edit the video to edit the audio to pull a clip and post it on social. I have a process and a system for absolutely everything that I do so that I do it in the most efficiently possible and I try and no one's perfect, but I try and make it so that I actually time blocks set time aside so that I can forecast when I'm going to actually commit to recording a podcast, editing a podcast, posting a podcast, setting it up in perhaps some, you know, like a buffer or a Hootsuite or a hotspot whatever so that those posts will go over the course of the week. And I've actually set up these processes so that I can do it all and I know what to expect in terms of what my week's going to give me my corporate jobs going to give me how much time I want to spend with like my family. We can't really see a lot of friends right now, but if we could see friends how much time I could spend with them and then also how much time I'm going to commit to actually blogging recording editing posting and whatnot so just processes and I've made sure that i've sort of. If you know, I think that processes are the first step, but if you if you miss if you miss you know a session or if you miss doing a thing you don't fall off the bandwagon you don't you know if you an analogy a better analogy for people that perhaps aren't building a brand is to be a fair amount of people on on this podcast i'm not sure. If you you know you're on a diet and you eat a cookie it's not like your diets over if you want to build a brand and you forget to post something it's not like your brand is over so. You just have to set up the processes but you also have to realize that nobody's perfect and if you do miss something it's not the end of the world it's the it's the it's continuing it's the it's the commitment over time. That will make you successful in in a side hustle or a side endeavor right so that's really that's that would be my best advice. That's awesome yeah so you know one of the one one of my cornerstones and I preach this so much because you know doing you know and this is probably from your sales background and doing sales for myself 13 years time blocking was like. Like a like I open her for me right I mean you know and then making that time sacred and then you know owning in that such way because when I did that man my revenues and my increase and my probability my my balance my life everything just totally changed and you know but that came with systems too so I love that that's awesome. Alright so that's the takeaway once let's jump into some of these so what I love is so let's talk a little bit about because I know your sales guy and I know you're doing a bunch of stuff so what's your purpose man so you know how did you find your why because a lot of the lot of what I run into with people you know even with my kids and other people talk to they don't know do you have to know right now I mean so let's talk about purpose and why. You definitely don't have to know right now and I would say that at any point you can challenge your why change your why a reposition refocus and it's entirely okay and I think that that's one of the biggest impediments of what you would consider to be success right like what is success in life well I think success is. is freedom doing things that you like to to do having freedom over your time having freedom over what you contribute to and what you don't want to contribute to that and that in my opinion is true success just freedom so what sauce you're from having freedom well perhaps you've done a job for 20 years and you feel like you can't pivot you you can't. you can't find a new why or a new purpose I think that that's incredibly inaccurate and incredibly incorrect and I think that that mindset is the number one reason why people that are perhaps later on in their career feel trapped in a certain job or a certain career and I would say if you feel that way you're wrong and start like like full stop you're wrong because you can start anything at any point in your life so. and even yeah we'll talk about your story on my show but I know that as you were unpacking what you were doing you've gone through several different pivots so to speak and you've you've reached success and and failure across different things you've done and now look at what you're doing now so feel free to pivot anytime and know that that's okay now what's my what's my purpose I think I think my purpose or passion comes from seeing seeing my incremental success in the right direction. So what I mean by that is if I'm taking something on I don't need it to be an overnight success because overnight successes don't exist but I do like to see it moving in the right direction because I think that if you commit to anything and you are making incremental steps in the right direction. over a period of five or 10 years you will be considered to the outside world a massive success in that thing I think that people just give up too soon so sometimes when I speak about whether or not the thing the thing that you're trying is working for you. Just note that if you're making moves in the right direction and you're making incremental moves as long as they're in the right direction then keep going in that direction and you will eventually be successful if you feel like you're back pedaling or you're stalled that's another conversation but for me my passion and purpose is moving incrementally in the right direction towards something that I love doing even if it's not paying all the bills yet I have a podcast it's not paying all the bills it's still work right I run a newsletter I have a kind of subscribers but it's not paying all the bills but it's moving in the right direction. I see more subscribers I see more downloads I see more followers whatever my metric is and I'm not saying those are all the best metrics to follow but it is moving in the right direction and that's that's what gets me excited about what I'm doing. I love that I love the fact that you know a lot of times you know even when I talk about relationships you know at any point in time if you look at it everything is out of balance your work your life everything but if you look over it a long enough period of time then it looks a whole lot different right and so that's that's how success is too. Let's have this conversation the other day with with a friend and she was just getting ready to jump into the real estate business and I said I said you know it's seven to ten years. I mean you know and that's any business I mean you know if you're if you see anyone successful they've been doing it for longer than seven to ten years. Just do something for ten years and tell me you're not really really it's you know you can you can look at it different ways like the ten thousand hours or whatever it is doing it for ten years. I see people that start the most boring mundane businesses like you know like I don't mean to hate on people that replace doors or do glass or you know like start a start an auto body shop but like these are not considered like sexy industries to go into but you do it for ten years and they're multi millionaires. And everybody's looking at them like my goodness like that's the person to go to in Toronto for glass for condos or for new home builds or something like that and I've just been doing it for ten years and they just not all these people learn this from somebody like it's not like it was like a something they picked it from their their their parents or whatnot they just started something they knew they did it for ten years. They probably at one point were working for somebody and potentially saw issues in the industry they're working in and they tried to fix those issues and start their own thing and they just kept doing it and then ten years later they're you know compared to compared to somebody who's just been working in a job or somebody who has never tried to do their own thing somebody would look at that person and be like wow they're incredibly successful at whatever it is they're doing just because they've stuck with it. So you know I don't mean to be doing online classes because I do online classes too is you know people come out of an online class or a master class or whatever and they just expect that they're just going to be successful and that's that's a good start to great start but you still got to work. I think yes so I have a love hate with online education because I think that it's positioned the wrong way I think that it's targeted at the wrong it's targeted the wrong way so people that jump on to online education they think that this is an escape from a nine to five. That's a horrible way to look at you know online education pivoting careers going into to anything really because it's never an escape from a nine to five and I would say that it shouldn't be looked at as such what if you're taking a class or and this is not a conversation on online education but you're taking a class or if you're just starting a side hustle if you're starting a podcast or if you're posting on a social platform look at it as you expanding your you're expanding into side hustles into I hate the word multiple income streams but technically multiple income streams all those cliche buzzwords but you you aren't quitting your job you're just finding new ways to to build out another type of business it could be for people that you know don't want to sell a product it could be it could be a knowledge business or it could be you know you can build out an audience and then you can go sell ad revenue or you know you can also just start like a merch store sell them clothes drop ships and close through Shopify and and start building that out and learn how to do that and that could be your revenue maker on the side but you're not using it to replace your nine to five you're just learning something on the side that could eventually become your full time whatever it is there's a million and one different ways to do that but know that you're probably going to have to first of all when you start a business always use opm other people's money so you know if you're going to start that business your nine to five is opm commits your nine to five don't don't use your nine to five and not fulfill your duties or your goals with your nine to five but definitely when you shut up at five o'clock or whatever work on something else that could potentially make you money in the long term whatever that is and I think that's where people you know there's a couple other things here that will probably touch on a little go into this but I think that last year has shown us that that's a smart path to take getting started down that that road yep no I agree I agree last last year you can look at you know you can currently right now you can look at it for for many different you know facets obviously you know one facet though that you know obviously I think people are beginning to pick up on as people were able to do some things differently and try some new things and actually we're maybe forced to be a little bit uncomfortable and try some new stuff so yeah yeah I definitely I love that so talk to me a little bit about so when you know so you know you've been out of your backstory and everything else so you're you're doing your regular job so what caused you to say man I got I got more bandwidth I want to do more and so when did that journey start to you that journey started so we have to sort of go back a little bit so I was working just so I was actually working for a company called bell canada which is basically the Verizon of eight or AT&T of Canada is like a huge telco so very traditional I had that job I had that job in high school and moved through different markets so started in like you know B2C and then B2S and B and then you know B2Mid market and then eventually like you know B2B enterprise and I was selling and I was doing quite well and I've never I never ever ever thought that I could do you know build a brand for myself I never even crossed my mind I don't even think at the time I had social media or I had it and I was using it you know for like for bullshit and then I just and then I and then I like I killed on my accounts anyway after bell I worked for company called did you come which is also a telecom company and there again I was doing like enterprise sales when I started but actually what it happened was the the director who hired me left almost immediately there was a gap to fill I actually I actually put together a presentation presented to the CEO it was like a private company to basically lead some of lead their sales team in the interim and then actually ended up working out quite well I did quite well in that role and I put together presentation put it in front of him and he moved me into like an actual sales leadership role and I just realized if I could do that if I could create something out of nothing basically take take my own fate take my own destiny get my own career into my own hands and and force that and that was successful well technically I could do anything so so so that's not you know it's not it's not entirely you know it's not entirely young and and full of ambition and you think like you know you can do anything in the world so Neil to say left that company started trying to do my own consulting because I thought I was like gods if you have to business right which you know everything yeah so didn't quite work out lost a lot of money you know probably lost a lot of hair to just trying to trying to be a consultant trying to build my own but I tried a couple different things some of them worked out just the various degrees but nothing really nothing really you know to write home books now I'm working for a company yeah but I did realize I did realize that if I wanted to do something I I just had to take it you know by the by the handle and just go do it so with that mentality plus after a few I guess humbling failures on my own what I what I really decided was I want to build something but I don't need to kill myself to do it I don't need to go 100% in day one so let me build something that has some longevity let me build something that I enjoy so I'm not stressed about it but let me do it on the side while I'm still making money while I still have something that's you know secure and safe so I started building out a podcast that I've seen do well I watched Tim Ferris I watched Tom Bill you actually I watched London real when he was still doing podcasts now he's doing some other stuff but and I was like well I could I could do that and I get to speak to both sales and marketing which I love I get to speak all these really cool people so let me do that on the side and that's when I realize well if I'm going to do that then I should build a brand for myself and the topics that I'm speaking about in the podcast when I first started we're very heavily focused on sales and marketing which are already things that I was doing in my job anyways so it was just sort of this organic realization that I didn't have to go 100% into building something but I could do it on the side I had to develop systems so that I could do it successfully on the side so I wasn't stressed out and you know working till three in the morning every single day but I just took it on I just took it on and then I ended up going back to work so actually now I'm working for a company I'm building out the podcast and and that's sort of that that was the genesis of understanding that I could do whatever I wanted but I didn't have to I didn't have to stress about doing it I didn't have to kill myself over it and if I guess the define the band with what is really well I wanted it to be successful and I'm so damn stubborn that I wouldn't let it not be successful so I had to find the systems for it to be successful because I've already started it I've already committed to it and now I still have this nine to five commitment so it was sort of like the band with was I had to find the band with because of my personality and I didn't want to quit it so I forced myself to learn how to do it more efficiently more effectively and that's sort of that path that I took and now it's sort of growing well I'm still doing something. So yeah I think that was you know again you know one of my selfish reasons for wanting to have you on this is is to talk about that band with you know one is the purpose you know because then when you have the purpose and you have the direction set and forth but yeah and the next limiting thing that people put in their way there's an obstacle is right okay well I don't have enough time or enough resources for those kind of things so you hit on everything you hit on you know how to come up the finances how to come over the time how to become efficient how not to make yourself crazy you know you know all of those things and so I love you have to want it too. Yeah no absolutely you have to want it you have to want it so give me some give me just a quick fire around here give me your top two your top two tips for life and top two tips for work and I know I spent a lot of time talking about workplace and life place and there are some differences and so we should keep them but they're also the same so talk to me because let's see if you're going to blend it together honestly so I'm setting it up a little bit. Oh no that's fair that's yeah so I would say top top tips for top tips for work okay these are going to be so vanilla but they're so important and like I so the first one is is find somebody who's done it before learn from people who have done it before. And that doesn't always manifest in the same way for everybody so for me I did have in person mentors but I also went on you to me I went on YouTube I just read I listened to podcasts I actually preferred podcasts over audio books just because I found they were more succinct to the point. But learn from people because you don't have to you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And don't just think that there's one mentor for everything because there's not there's somebody who's better at posting on Twitter and how to how to write the best week there's somebody who's better at how to find out which interview questions get the most out of you know your guest there's some people who are better at optimizing your energy throughout the day like you look at Tim Ferriss for that you look at Matthew Kobach for for Twitter you look at well I would say I actually do like like Brian roast for you. Like Brian roast from London real for for his interview questions even though he's now a little bit controversial but you look at all these different individuals and you learn something from each one of them right and then you you in you incorporate that into your life. And I think that's my here's my family and my million here's my million dollar a million dollar idea I'm going to give away so I've been thinking about this for a while. I've been thinking about coming up with an app or some sort of some algorithm where you can take all of the people that poured their life into you that have some sort of impact on you get a picture of them and you have to do those mosaics right yeah and then it's. But then it's all of those people's pictures with inside you because so many people afford into us and I don't think we realize that right as I love your idea of finding the people that have come before you that's awesome. Yeah yeah that's that would be the number one and then I think I think the second life work hack it's definitely is a work hack is to is to ever think that you've gone too far to reposition or to go back. I know a lot of people that go to a point their career and don't want to pivot into another type of career don't want to learn something new for me it was hard to go work for somebody after I've already taken the step towards like entrepreneurship right that's not easy. But I think that you just got to humble yourself and you got to do what's do what's best for you and and and just know where you want to have like have that you know three five ten year planner one three five year plan whatever it is have that plan but be be flexible with the way you get there. And I think that's very important and I think the people's ego gets gets in the way of their happiness more often than not because yeah I could have just kept struggling in in an environment that wasn't conducive to you know my happiness my my growth my success working as a consultant you know you're doing 40 hours of client work during the week and then you're finding new clients after those 40 hours of client work. And like you know at the time I wasn't with the best partners either so I could have just stayed in that and I could have probably drawn that out another year and a half two years but like I didn't want to I didn't have to so I see people that even have an issue moving jobs. If they're not going to get the same title as the job they had previous I guarantee you a VP at a startup is not the same as a director or even a sales manager like a fortune 100 so right you're laughing because it's true but people have this so just so but you know how you know how if you could go work for a fortune 100 you say you work for a fan company you work for Apple or Google or and Netflix whatever would you tell me that if you're a VP at some no name shit startup that nobody's ever heard. That you your bootstrapped or nobody wants to invest with you and you got like you got like a say like an associate director role at Google that you wouldn't you wouldn't take that jump because on your LinkedIn you'd have to go from VP to associate director and now you're worried about your friends and family and your LinkedIn. You need that nobody really cares about you nobody cares about you know but it's just you just have to put your ego aside and and people who are like it's okay to feel like all the all the cliches are so true it's okay to fail it's okay to try something else it's okay to pivot it's okay like these are all okay yeah I would say I would say that probably hold the like the the ego and and what you think people think of you holds holds you back more than anything else you just get in your own head and you kill your own career that way or you kill your own happiness that way so the trick question coming around at you now those apply to life as well right oh yeah 100% how many times you've been stuck in unhealthy or toxic relationship you're just like we're already here parents already know her it's easy you know there's definitely some it's a little more complicated at some points when you may have kids or whatnot but you know I think at some point all these things do apply in life as well so if you have a toxic friend group if you have you know people that don't don't do anything need to track their negative whatever yeah a lot of a lot of you know see you see a lot of people that say like you know if you're going to be successful like you know you only want to be around individuals that are smarter than you better than you or whatever and that's true you do want to be in a group of people that you don't want to feel like the smartest person in the room but you don't you don't have to necessarily get rid of everybody in your circle or your friend group except if they're really detracting but if they are detracting from you they're really bringing you down if they're if they're negative if they're if they're hurting you in any way then don't don't feel obliged to keep those people in your life not everybody not everybody has to not everybody has to add incredible value to your life but if they do detract from your life then definitely try and move away and I think that yeah it definitely applies to the person of life for sure awesome so you know we're coming up we're just over our you know 30 minutes time I try to keep these 30 minutes Scott you know because I know people I was trying to try to pack as much as I can and so you know as we round out you know I hope I hope what people are hearing is they're hearing from Scott is you can run parallel pass you can do it your obstacles are most likely you you know the things you're doing in work in life they're probably the same puts systems and process to it you know your purpose can change which I love you know so many people get wrapped up you know they got to be whatever it is and I you know there's I guess there's a lyric in the song some of the most interesting people I've ever met didn't know what they wanted to do until they were 50 right so it's like yeah you know it's a you know so those kind of things so if you had to on your what's on your heart right now you know someone listening to this not yesterday not tomorrow but on your heart right now what's one thing you want to leave someone that may hear this that you may be able to help you know maybe give them a cushioning universe what would you leave somebody with yeah I loved I love this this this thought there's there's actually a book about this called the extreme ownership if you're into leadership books you'll you'll recognize the title but it's about taking responsibility for for where you're at and just knowing that everything that's happened is a result of your choices your decisions so if you take responsibility for everything in your life I truly do believe that you'll look at life differently and and sometimes that can be construed as negative but it doesn't have to be so for example if you this is going to this is going to be potentially controversial but I hope it I hope it resonates the right way if you were laid off in COVID that's outside of that's outside of your you know you can't do anything about that that's that's horrible it happened but there are people who were laid off and who are living off unemployment or in Canada there's CERB or in the states or stimulus checks and they're you know they're really not doing well and they don't have any money and they're just very depressed but there's also people like you mentioned that have been laid off or have had their businesses go under and are probably now making more money or doing something different than what they were doing a year and a half ago so I'm not saying it's easy but if you do take responsibility for your actions and you take steps it's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of work but I can guarantee you taking some steps will move you in the right direction versus doing nothing at all and just assuming that your life's over the world's over and waiting for a handout from people because the handout doesn't usually come so I would say take responsibility regardless and that that mindset will hopefully push you in the right direction and the set of better man that's awesome see this is why I told I told y'all this is why we had Scott on day so I would I love these are awesome what's not gonna add value so man so thank you so much hey everybody thank you for listening today for the CEO for life experience podcast again I'm gonna link all the information up how to get in touch with Scott either above or below but you know do reach out for him go deeper like I said you know the guests that we have on I really try to to have people that you really should take the time to connect with because you know that's that's the purpose of this is get connected and intake like like Scott just said take responsibility so thanks Scott for the time really appreciate it man no it's my pleasure thanks for having me all right we'll see everybody on the next episode you