Marshall Goldsmith: #1 Leadership Thinker & Executive Coach in the World

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(interview blurb)

Marshall: There’s one problem with the marshmallow research. They didn’t take the kid that ate two marshmallows, say, wait a minute, kid. Wait a little longer, three. Wait some more, four. Keep waiting, five, ten, a hundred, and where do you end up? An old man waiting to die sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of uneaten marshmallows. Sometimes you gotta eat the marshmallow.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Our guest today has been ranked as the number one executive coach in the world and he’s the only two-time winner of the Thinkers50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World award. He is the author or editor of 36 books, including three New York Times bestsellers, that have sold over 2.5 million copies. His books, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers, have been recognized by Amazon as two of the top 100 leadership books ever written. He’s also just released a new book, The Earned Life, which is cited as his most personal and powerful work to date. Please welcome Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. 

(interview)

Alex: Hi, Marshall.

Marshall: Hello. It’s great to see you. How you doing?

Alex: It’s so great to see you as always. Doing great. I’m very excited. This is our first episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee and couldn’t be more excited to have you as our first guest, Marshall.

Marshall: Oh, very happy to be here. I love working with you guys.

Alex: Yeah, same. So, one of the things that we do in this podcast is we ask our guests to choose any drink, doesn’t have to be coffee, any drink they want to share while we have a great conversation. So what did you choose, Marshall? 

Marshall: I am drinking a Diet Coke. 

Alex: Cool, and I’m matching you. 

Marshall: Very good. 

Alex: Awesome. So, thank you for being with us today. So, there’s so many questions I have for you so let’s start at the beginning, like I’ve always been curious about when was the first time that Marshall Goldsmith heard about coaching in the corporate setting? Do you remember that moment?

Marshall: Well, I’ll have to give you the history that led up to the moment for it to make sense as I was a college professor, very young, and 28 years old, I met a very famous man named Dr. Paul Hersey of Hersey and Blanchard situational leadership, and I was wise enough to carry — I literally carried the bags, served the coffee, followed him around, did whatever I could do, because I loved listening to him speak because he’s such a good teacher. And I tried to do what he did. Then one day, he got double booked. He said, “Can you do what I do?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I need help. Can you do it?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I’ll pay you $1,000 for one day.” I was making $15,000 for one year. Now, I was 28 years old. That was a long, long time ago. That was 45 years ago. $1,000 a day to a kid with no — you know, my entire business experience was pumping gas in Valley Station, Kentucky. You know, $1000 a day, I’m going, “Sign me up, coach.”

So I go to do this program for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They were totally angry when I showed up because I wasn’t him. But I ended up, they had 10 speakers, I got ranked first place of all the speakers. So they loved me. So they called him back and said, “Look, we were angry but this kid came in first place. Send him again.” Paul said, “Do you want to do this again?” I said, “Yeah, I’m making 15,000 bucks a year, you’re paying me 1,000 bucks a day. Do I wanna do it again? Oh, yeah, I’ll do it again. Thank you, sir. My calendar just cleared.”

That’s how I got into leadership development and then coaching was also somewhat accidental. I’m a pioneer — now pioneer is the name they give you when you get old. So, I’m a pioneer in something called customized 360-degree feedback. So we developed this feedback form, I’m talking to a guy who’s a CEO of a big company. He said, “I got this young kid working for us, young, smart, dedicated, hardworking, driven to achieve, arrogant jerk.” He said, “We were the fortune to me if I could turn that kid around.” I hear the term “fortune,” I said, “I like fortunes, maybe I could help him.” He said, “I doubt it.” I said, “Maybe I could help,” and he said, “I don’t think so.” Then I came up with an idea. I said I’ll work with him for a year. If he gets better, pay me. If he doesn’t get better, it’s all free. You know what he said? “Sold.” There was nothing called coaching. There was no executive coaching. I just made that up —

Alex: Do you remember what year that was?

Marshall: Oh, I was 30 years old so it was probably 43 years ago. 

Alex: Wow. 

Marshall: That’s a long time ago.

Alex: You generally are one of the people that really started this industry that now it’s like a full-fledged industry, a profession with I think over 100,000 people around the world that practice it. So it’s incredible.

Marshall: I’m very — let me tell you I think my contribution to the larger industry and it’s not really my contribution, it belongs to my friend, Alan Mulally. Because I got into this pay only for results thing. So, of all the people I coached, I noticed he improved the most and I spent the least amount of time with him. So I’ve made a chart, and one dimension is called time spent by the executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, the other is called improvement. So there was a clear negative correlation between spending time with me and getting better. So I said that’s troubling. So I go talk to my friend Alan, and I said, “Alan, of all people I coached, I spent the least amount of time coaching you, you improved the most, and I made this chart, according to this chart, the way it looks, if you never met me, you’d be even better, which I learned about coaching from you.” He said, “Well, there’s two lessons.” It’s a great lesson for every coach on the call.

He said, “Lesson one, your biggest challenge as a coach is called customer selection.” If you pick the right customer, your coaching process will always work. If you pick the wrong customer, it’ll never work. Two, never make coaching about yourself or your own ego and how smart you think you are. Make it about the wonderful people you work with and how proud you are of them. These are such great lessons for coaches and, you know, that totally changed my life and changed the field of coaching because coaching, when it did start, was about fixing problems. It wasn’t about helping great people get better. Well, I really focused on helping great people get better. If you do a Google search, “helping successful leaders,” first 500 hits, 450 are me. That’s my brand. Alan Mulally changed my life. And, you know, I always get ranked top coach. Why? Nobody knows I’m a good coach. Nobody watches me coach anybody. What do I have? I have great clients. I have fantastic clients. I may not be the best coach, I’m probably not, but I do think I’ve got the best clients.

Alex: So you went from making $15,000 a year to suddenly making $1,000 a day so you knew what it was, you know, to start from nothing in this industry, right? So when you think about the coaches that don’t necessarily feel like they can choose their clients today, you know, they want to make ends meet or they want to grow their business, how can coaches balance finding the right clients and also focusing on growth?

Marshall: Well, I’m a realist. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Now, I did not start at the bottom. I mean, I worked with Paul Hersey, my clients were, like I said, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, McKinsey, IBM, these were the top companies in the world at the time so as an executive educator, I started at the top. Makes life a little easier. Let me give you my advice to people listening. One, work with other great coaches or leaders. Work with people in the field. That’s what I did.

Two, don’t be too proud to carry the bags around. 

Alex: Right. 

Marshall: That’s what I did. I served the coffee. I carried the bags around. I did whatever I could do because I knew I could learn from him. Well, the advice I have is find great people and work with great people. Who have I worked with? Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Paul Hersey, Frances Hesselbein, Alan Mulally. I got a laundry list. These people helped me. They helped me. Well, you know, how to get to where I am? Paul Hersey had a good saying: “Easy to look tall if you stand on the shoulders of a giant.” Find the giant. And I think most people are happy to give away what they know. I give away everything I know all the time.

Alex: Yeah, that’s something I really admire about you and I admire it because you’re so giving but also it’s a smart business decision to really open up that library. You have so much content and, like you say, people Google something related to coaching and you’re everywhere, right? So that’s pretty smart diffusion strategy for all of your content.

Marshall: Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you have to do, for the coaches listening in, you got to do what you got to do. On the other hand, to the degree you can avoid bad business, you’re better off. Because if you coach someone, they have a bad attitude, they don’t try, they’re not gonna get better anyway, it can ultimately reflect on you. You could be seen as a bad coach. Well, it’s not you’re a bad coach, you may be the best coach in the world, they just don’t care and you’re just wasting your time. 

So, again, you have to do what you have to do. My advice to all the coaches though is to the degree you can, leverage up. Work with better and better people. Work with greater and greater clients. Get to know right people in the field. Do whatever you can do to leverage up.

Alex: That’s fantastic advice, because it just makes me think of scale. You can go and serve someone coffee and carry their bags around but if you’re carrying and serving the right people the coffee, then you’re really positioning yourself for success. 

Marshall: Exactly. 

Alex: Yeah, I remember starting at CCL, Center for Creative Leadership, as an intern, and I only had to work about 20 hours a week there but I just installed myself there, right? I was doing all my homework and everything just sitting there and then people would come and ask you for something, right? And you start meeting people doing things. It’s harder to do that today, I think, in this kind of post-pandemic world, right? Everyone working from Zoom, but people have to find new innovative ways to put themselves in those positions, right? 

So, along those lines, in terms of scale and this new post-pandemic world that we’re living in and the capabilities of technology to scale, I want to hear your thoughts around what’s happening to coaching over the last 5, 10 years, like this idea of coaching for everyone is new. We’d love to hear your thoughts on it. 

Marshall: Well, number one, I’m a big fan of coaching. Why? All the research I’ve done shows, if people don’t do follow-up, the improvement is sometimes just random chance. So, I think coaching is a much more positive way to get leaders to follow up, to stick with it, to do something, so I’m very positive about coaching in general. Two, the field is booming. As you say, there are more and more coaches than ever before. So I think that’s all very, very good news. 

And, let me see, I’ll tell you something else I think has been incredibly positive for coaching is Zoom calls. I mean, over the COVID period, Mark Thompson and I spent 400 hours every weekend we would spend with 50 amazing leaders and I can mention their names. These are people like the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, the head of the World Bank, you know, the CEO of Cardinal Health, the pro Curtis Martin, you know, NFL Hall of Fame, Pau Gasol, basketball star, Telly Leung, Broadway star. These are amazing people. Head of Russell Investments. You know, head of eventshistory.com. Just amazing people. And, every week, we talked about life and you couldn’t do it without Zoom calls. We had people from Indonesia, we have people from Australia, we had people from India, we had people from all around the world, from Sweden, and every weekend, we’d work together and it’s just something I could not have done without this new technology and probably would not have done without COVID. I would have never thought of it.

Alex: It wasn’t that long ago that we were asking in the coaching industry in a profession like really, from a research perspective, is coaching as effective through the phone, we were asking, right? Maybe 10 years ago, as it is in person. And not only is that as effective, according to research, now with Zoom, I mean, you can just expand the capabilities of coaches, work with people around the world. I mean, it’s really an exciting time. Do you combine that with this idea that everyone should have a coach and the ability of technology to scale that in the next 10 years looks very promising for coaching and I’d say humanity because coaching serves such a powerful purpose. I’d like to hear from you around what do you think is the impact of coaching when you think about society at large? So, how is coaching making the world better? 

Marshall: Well, one thing I’m very proud of is I was the first winner of the WBEX Ethical Coach Award. 

Alex: Yes, you were.

Marshall: I’m very proud of that. I think you guys are doing a great job of making coaching something that is there to help people. And, to me, you can look at coaching in two ways. One, I think the for-profit part of coaching is helping make the world better. Why? It’s making leaders better, and as the leader gets better, everyone around the leader gets better. And the nonprofit side of coaching, which is amazing, is, I mean, probably half all my coaching is for free. I’ve been a coach for free on the head of the World Bank and the Mayo Clinic and the Rockefeller Foundation and the Girl Scouts and the Red Cross and New York Public Library and, you know, on and on and on. Well, it’s great because I feel like I can make a positive difference in the world. I mean, I worked with the Red Cross, I’m not serving the world’s most vulnerable people but I’m helping them. I’m helping them. And when I work with these people, I’m helping them get better. Look at Pfizer. I didn’t come up with the cure for COVID, I’m the coach of the CEO of Pfizer, he did. So, if I helped him just a little bit, that to me makes the world better.

Alex: Absolutely. I mean, in this world where everything is connected, there’s this systemic impact from just one coaching conversation with the right people can really have this cascading effect, right? So it’s very on point when we think about this network age that we’re living through. So, before we explore a little bit more of the network age and we also talk about your books, I’m a big fan of your work and I love reading your books. You’re always so creative, the way you kind of — the angle you take to address certain problems is it’s both very marketable and very powerful. And that’s a very interesting combination. 

But before we talk about that, I want you to tell us a little bit more about your Buddhist philosophy, because I know you’ve been a Buddhist for a long time so we’d love to learn more about what drove you to Buddhism and what does that approach look like in your daily life?

Marshall: I started studying Buddhism when I was 18 or 19 years old. So I probably read 400 books on Buddhism or Buddhist-related books. So I’ve studied it more than that what I have a PhD in. And when I talk about Buddhism, there are many schools of Buddhist thought. So, when someone says they’re a Buddhist, they can say almost the opposite of someone else who says they’re a Buddhist and they’re not lying or misunderstanding. Buddha said, “Only do what I teach if it works for you.” Well, given that, the interpretations of Buddhism are very, very different. 

My school of Buddhism was a very simple school. Buddha was brought up very rich and he lived in a palace and his father thought Buddha will be fine when he gets more. He tried to keep giving him more and more and more. And then he was living in a bubble. He manages to escape that little bubble three times. The first time he learns people get old. Second time he learns you get sick. Third time he learns you die. He says, “You get old, you get sick and you die.” Not so good. 

He looks at all his more and more stuff and he says, “More and more stuff is not working for me. I can’t be happy with more,” Than he leaves. He starves himself, basically, and tries to live like a hermit.  Guess what? Didn’t work either. You know what he learned? Can’t be happy with less. 

Than one night, he kind of figured it out. He said you can never find peace with more. You can never find peace with less. There’s only one thing you can ever make peace with — what you have. There’s only one time you can ever make peace — now. There’s only one place you can ever make peace — here. This is it. 

For all of your listeners, you know where nirvana is? Listening to the Zoom call with two old guys talking. This is it. It’s not out there someplace. No, no, no, no. Here it is. It’s here. This is it. And this is hell, this is heaven, this is it. And so my school of Buddhism is basically a Zen school. This is it. This is it. A lot of my coaching revolves around a concept called feed forward, which is also a Buddhist concept. 

Again, Buddha said only do what I teach if it works for you. Well, in feed forward, you ask for ideas and you thank people. You don’t put them down, you don’t insult them, you don’t argue with them. You say thank you. Now, you don’t have to do it. In feed forward, it doesn’t say you have to do it. You just listen and you say thank you and you do what you can. 

Well, that’s a lot of my coaching. My clients get advice from everyone around them and they say thank you. Over COVID, these 50 great leaders, every week they came with a problem, a challenge. “Here’s my challenge.” They got ideas. They listen, they say thank you. And a lot of times they learn not from someone giving them ideas about their issues but listening to somebody give ideas to somebody else’s problems, which are probably their problems anyway. 

So, anyway, a lot of my stuff is Buddhist stuff. Historically, my coaching has been largely just one thing — helping successful leaders achieve positive long-term change in behavior. So my coaching was pretty much strictly that for many years. Today, it’s different. Today, a lot of my coaching is trying to help people have a better life. Why? Half the people I coach are billionaires. What am I supposed to do? Help them make some more money? I told one guy, “You’re worth $4 billion. What am I supposed to do? Let’s get you up to $4.1 billion.” Who cares? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He said, “No, I just want to be happier.” And what’s more important to him? Being happier or 100 million bucks? Being happier is a whole lot more important than 100 million bucks. 100 million bucks isn’t going to change his life one iota. Being happy is his life. So, now, a lot more of my coaching is really about Buddhism and finding peace with life and being happy.

Alex: So much to unpack always with you, Marshall, and when I’m thinking about like your approach to coaching was very structured, measurement driven, and now it sounds like some of the clients that you’re working with today, it’s a little bit more open ended and it’s really a little bit more holistic.

Marshall: Way, way more open ended. Way, way more open ended. I still do the other though. I still do the other coaching with the same clients. It’s still a good thing, it’s just now that’s not all I do. 

Alex: How do you balance both? 

Marshall: To me they’re not competing with each other. 

Alex: But in terms of structure, since we have so many coaches that listen in, in terms — how do you balance that structure, like that feed forward but stakeholder center approach with also combining that holistic? And I know a lot of coaches do that, but since I know you for being very measurement oriented, how do you equate those two together?

Marshall: Well, I just talk about it and I say I’m going to do a couple things. One is I’m going to try to help you achieve positive long-term change in your leadership behavior or personal behavior. Two is I just want to help you try to have a better life. And I always say, did anybody object to this better life thing so far? You might be shocked to learn no one’s ever objected. That better life idea, they’re happy with that. How about being a little happier, a little bit alive? Fine, help other people have a better life, that’s all good. It’s all good. So I don’t see those as competing at all. They’re both to me complimentary.

Alex: Absolutely. So let’s talk about your latest book, The Earned Life. I think it’s about to come out, correct?

Marshall: May 3rd in the US, May 12 in the UK and India.

Alex: That’s so exciting. So, I always get excited with there’s a new Marshall Goldsmith book out. So I got an email the other day, I’m part of 100 coaches that if I wanted to receive my physical copy, I said yes so I’m hoping it will arrive soon. Tell us about the book, Marshall.

Marshall: Well, this book is really more a book about life. It’s also more of a Buddhist philosophy book. In the book, some people say, “Is Buddhism about reincarnation?” Buddhism is about nothing but reincarnation. The essence of Buddhism is every time I take a breath, it’s a new me. Our entire life is a series of reincarnation. The you that exists after our little call is not the same as you that was there before the call. I will change, you will change, we all change. We’re all constantly changing as we go through life. 

And the new book is based on this concept of impermanence and the concept of constant reincarnation and constant change. And as we go through life, you know, what I talked about is basically our constantly re-earning of things that matter in life, such as happiness, such as meaning, such as relationships. This is not some place you get there. Now, this is very non-Western in its approach. Let me explain why. The Great Western ethos is you will be happy when. When you get the money, status, BMW, condominium, promotion, you will be happy when. The Great Western art form, you may have seen it once or twice, it sounds like this. There is a person, the person is sad, they spend money, they buy a product, and they become happy. This is called a commercial. Have you ever seen one of those before?

Alex: I have and I think it’s the main driver for a lot of people, right? In terms of seeking happiness somewhere else. “Only if I can buy that, I’ll be happy so I’m gonna work hard to buy it,” then you buy it, you realize you’re not happy because you bought it.

Marshall: Well, the other thing I talked about is the importance of aligning three different variables for a great life. One is called our aspiration. Our aspiration is kind of the big picture, what am I here for, the big purpose of life that doesn’t have a finish line. Two is our ambition. Our ambition revolves around our achievement of goals. And then, three, that would be our day-to-day actions, our actions. Action, ambition, aspiration, three things. And if we look at this, historically, in the history of the world, most people have been focused on the action phase. They just live day to day lives, they do what they’re told, they go places, they watch a movie, they live, they die. Not bad or good, just is. 

Some people are kind of lost in their head. They’re lost in that aspiration phase. Dreamers coming up with big ideas. They never accomplish much but they’re living a lot up in their minds. The people I work with and most of the people on this call, they’re focused on ambition and achievement. They achieve goals. The people I coach are chronic goal achievers. Many could say they’re achievaholics. And if they’re not careful, they fall into the problem of overweighting ambition and achievement. 

Now, you might say what’s wrong with that? Well, a couple things. One, when you overweight achievement, you can forget why am I doing this? Why am I working 80 hours a week? What does this mean? Or, two, you can also forget to enjoy life. Why? You’re so busy achieving crap, you forget to enjoy life. So what I talked about are classic challenges with people who achieve a lot. 

The book is very different, by the way, than many other books. Almost all self-help books are how to achieve more. This book is not how to achieve more. This book talks about things that might help you achieve more, but that’s not the reason. This book is talking about making peaceful life more than how to achieve something else. I find the people I coached, they’ve already achieved 99.9. The one thing that I talked about a lot in the book is really more Hindu than Buddhist philosophy and that it’s never become attached to the results of what you’re doing. Never become attached to the results of what you’re doing. It’s a fool’s game, for two reasons. One, you don’t have total control over the results. You don’t have total control over the results. There’s a million variables impacting results. And, two, as you just said, after you achieve the results, what then? How long does that last? A week? Two weeks?

Alex: 100 percent. I mean —

Marshall: Think you got to do more.

Alex: A lot of the Eastern traditions really I love the way that they define wisdom, which is really your capacity for understanding emptiness. That is so interesting in our — combined with like in contrast to our Western world, right? Where like emptiness doesn’t have much value. 

Marshall: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Marshall: Yeah, and, you know, it’s interesting because a couple of comments. One, Safi Bahcall was in my group over the COVID. Now, Safi, I don’t know if you’ve met Safi before but he’s a really — his IQ is probably equal to mine and yours put together so he’s this brilliant guy, he has a PhD in physics from Stanford. He, you know, started companies. He wrote a book called Loonshots, he’s worth tens of millions of dollars, and he’s consulted with presidents, blah, blah, blah. On and on. He talks like a scientist. Safi one day said, “I finally realized something. I used to think happiness was the dependent variable based on achievement. I finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables. You can achieve a lot and be happy. You can achieve a lot and be miserable. You can achieve nothing and be happy and you can achieve nothing and be miserable.” He said, “Happiness and achievement are independent variables.” Achieve to achieve, be happy to be happy, but don’t make happiness dependent upon achievement because it doesn’t work. 

And, by the way, Safi — look, I said to Safi, “You got to achieve more to be happy? This is insane.” Well, what do you got to do? Write another best-selling book, make a few 100 million more, meet a few more presidents? How much do you have to achieve? You’re already 99.999 on achievement. You think getting to 99.9999 is going to make any difference? No. If you haven’t achieved enough to be happy, nobody is. You’ve already achieved more than 99.9 percent of all humans.

Alex: What can coaches do to work with clients? You know, let’s say the clients that are not billionaires, the clients that are, let’s say, a director at a fast growing company. How can coaches address both the needs from the business and address and basically harness that achievement that drive towards achievement that drives people, but also, at the same time, create a foundation for them to live a more sustainable, happy life?

Marshall: Very important point. I did not say you shouldn’t try to achieve. I didn’t say you shouldn’t strive to achieve. I just said do not place your value as a human being based on achievement and do not think that achievement is going to make you happy or find peace in life. No. In fact, I think if you practice the stuff I’m talking about, and that’s not the reason for doing it, I think you’ll probably achieve more. 

Let me give you an example. The golfer. The golfer hits a bad shot. Okay. Now, what happens if the golfer thinks about the shot, the score, the results? Is he going to hit a better shot or a worse shot? Worse. The golfer needs to hit the shot in front of you. Don’t be thinking about the score. Don’t be thinking about the results. Hit the shot in front of you. Coach K, the great coach at Duke, what did he say when somebody does something great? “Next play.” Next play, now, now. Focus on now. Don’t focus on what you did. Don’t focus on what you’re going to do. Play the shot in front of you. 

So I don’t think you’ll achieve less, you could achieve more. That’s not the point though. One woman I talked to recently said, “I like this because if I’m happy, I’ll achieve more.” You know what I said? Wrong. Wrong. In the same way that achievement, happiness shouldn’t be based on achievement. Achievement is not based on happiness either. All that stuff, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” complete nonsense. “Do what you love and the money will follow.” That is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. Every waitress in Hollywood is doing what they love and guess what? They make no money.

Alex: I lived in LA so I know what you’re talking about. 

Marshall: Oh, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. 

Alex: So where did the idea of this book just first come about?

Marshall: You know, all my four biggest books, this is the number four with my friend Mark Reiter. These books are phenomenally well written. Why can I say that without bragging? He writes the books, not me. He’s my agent and my co-author. So we came up with this together and we started focusing on what leads to a great life and really looking at the concept of impermanence. 

And another thing we talked about is the every breath paradigm. Now, every time I take a breath, it’s a new me, and how that can help you do two things. One, forgive the previous versions of yourself for being human, and, two, don’t get lost in the future. It really helps people be present and mindful in where they are, you know, because you’re here now. This is the you that’s here now, the guy that’s talking to me. We’re here. So, he and I just started talking like we always do and we spent about a year hammering things out and came up with the idea for the book.

Alex: One of the things that I really love about your work is that it’s always very practical, right? So you bring these powerful concepts and, I mean, the way Mark writes and the way you guys both tell the story is both engaging but it has a lot of layers and depth, but you put it together in a very practical package. And that is way easier said than done. So that’s something really I appreciate about your work.

Marshall: Well, that’s one thing I do love about this book. A common criticism of books is it’s one chapter repeated 15 times. This is not the way in this book. There’s a lot here. This is what you might call — it’s got, at the end of it, exercises, very specific things like you say, how do you apply this? What does it mean in your day to day life? So, you know, I really liked the book in that sense because it gets you to focus on your day to day life. Simple things. Carry a card around saying, “Am I being the person I want to be right now?” I got that from Carol Kauffman. That’s pretty practical, right? Am I being the person I want to be right now?

So many people in our 100 Coaches now do that but some of the best leaders I know carry a card around. Why? They need to be reminded to be who they are now, not to be lost in what happened last week or the previous call or the next call. Where am I now? You know, I talk about empathy in the book. I like that chapter too, the empathy chapter, because everybody thinks empathy is good. Oh, the reality is empathy can be good or it can be awful, you know? For example, caring about people. That sounds good. Caring is good. Sometimes. Sometimes not. 

I use an example in the book, which I love of all people, a hedge fund manager. Now, you think if somebody doesn’t care about anybody, it would be a hedge fund manager, right? And he was one of the most famous hedge fund managers in the world. So he’s interviewed by another guy and the question is, “Why don’t you have your own fund?” You know what he said? “Because I’m not as good.” “Why aren’t you as good?” “I started caring.” He said, “When I was young, I didn’t care. Now I’ve made —” He’s worth about 3 or 4 billion at the time, “I’m worth 3 or 4 billion, I made tens of billions for people, but I’ve lost tens of billions. I won 52 percent, lost 48 percent. That’s why I’m famous.” He said, “You know what, though, when I was a kid, I didn’t mind losing money. But I grew older, I started caring. I thought this is someone’s retirement account. This is healthcare.” And you know what he said? “I became much less effective.” 

That’s why you don’t have the doctor operate on their kids. That’s why you have burnout of people in the healthcare system. They can’t let go of it. I worked with Dr. Jim Downey, head of St. Jude Children’s Hospital, he can’t carry that stuff home with him. He cannot do it. He sees kids die every day of cancer. You’ve got to learn when is empathy appropriate and when do you have to let it go.

So, I liked that chapter. It’s very counterintuitive, because rather than just saying it’s good to care all the time, it’s good to be empathetic, it says not necessarily. You go home, maybe you got — he’s got a wife and kids. It’s not fair to them for him to bring all that home night after night after night. He’s got a family. They need him. So, you kind of need to be what you need to be when you’re there. 

So I talk a lot about that in the book. As you say, a huge problem. One of the guys in our group in 100 Coaches is the head of Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, Dr. Patrick Frias. I said, “Well —” Telly, the Broadway guy, is also in our group so he comes and gives a talk about empathy to people in the hospital. I said to Dr. Patrick, “I guess you guys have spent a lot of training on this in a hospital, kids’ hospital.” You know what he said? “Zero. Never been trained at all. Zero.” You’re in a children’s hospital and you’re a surgeon, you’ve never been trained how to deal with emotions and empathy. It’s amazing —

Alex: It is amazing.

Marshall: It’s mind blowing.

Alex: It is amazing. I can’t even imagine like working in that setting, being able to compartmentalize, you know, going back home not taking that with you, being there, being present. And a lot of what I’m hearing you say about your book is it is really a reminder for people to be present and it sounds like it’s very practical. And, if you start by being present, then there’s so many things that can unfold and you see things differently, but it is so simple yet so difficult to actually be in the moment, right?

Marshall: Very difficult. Every day, one of my daily questions is what percent of the time was I present? I probably average 30 percent and I’m probably lying at that. I’m not even sure I deserve 30 percent. I probably don’t deserve the 30. It’s hard. Every day, the phone rings, email, distraction, something. Something happens and our minds are gone. It’s very difficult to remain present.

Alex: Do you meditate?

Marshall: I do. It’s very difficult to do that.

Alex: What does your meditation practice look like? 

Marshall: Well, to me, my meditation practice is right now. Life is meditation. The whole thing, the whole show is just nothing but a practice. That’s all it is. 

Alex: Do you hold the meditation practice where you sit and you listen to — you focus on your breathing or do you have a mantra or something like that?

Marshall: To me, that’s not the point of meditation. Buddha said don’t worry about the canoe after you cross the river. Yeah.

Alex: I like that. 

Marshall: Yeah. Don’t worry about the canoe after you cross the river. So the point of meditation is to try to help you get across the river. Yeah.

Alex: So I want to talk about some of your other books. I know one of the crowd favorites always, like What Got You Here Won’t Take You There. How did that book originate? Where did the idea come from?

Marshall: You know, working with successful people, as was inspired by my friend, Alan Mulally, I began to realize successful people had classic problems, such as winning too much, such as proving they’re right, such as being stubborn, such as no, but, however. And so the book was really written by — that, and then Peter Drucker inspired the book too. He said we spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do, we do not spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Well, that book was really a breakthrough book when it came out. Very few people had ever written of the problems that come with success and the challenges faced by successful people. People I coach are successful people, they’re not losers, and they have their own unique set of problems. Well, the book talks about the problems that come with success. And then it talks about how to address these issues from a behavioral perspective. 

The other thing is that book has the best title in history. Yeah, that title is a killer. I get Google search on the title. Every day, somebody quotes that book. Every day, they quote the title. 

Alex: It’s fantastic. I remember when — I don’t have time to do too much coaching these days but, you know, for the last 10 years, I did a lot of coaching before I got way too busy with coaching.com. But I cannot tell you how many times I brought that book up with a client. It’s just so powerful. And I think you mentioned that a lot of people don’t — there was not really that much that many books or information around what do successful people do, you know? I think it’s like success is almost a mirage in our society. It’s like the destination, right? And, once you get there, there’s really not a lot of support. It’s like it’s lonely at the top. It’s kind of like that same concept, right? 

Marshall: Oh, and the book talks about something called the superstition trap. Endemic problem. I behave this way, I am successful, therefore, I am successful because I behave this way. Wrong. You behave this way, you’re successful because you do many things right and in spite doing a few things that are idiotic. And I’ve never met anyone who’s so wonderful they had nothing on the in spite of list, number one. And, number two, all right, you are successful at this point. What led to your success here will not necessarily lead to your success there. And we just tend to repeat what worked in situations where it doesn’t work anymore. 

I’ll tell you a funny story about where the title came from though. I’m at the publishers. Publisher says, “What is this book about?” I said it’s kind of what got you here won’t get you here. My friend Mark said, “You know, that sounds really stupid. It should say What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” That book has sold a million and a half copies. 

Alex: That’s amazing. 

Marshall: We got $150,000 royalty check from that book last year, 15 years after the book came out.

Alex: That’s amazing. 

Marshall: That book just keeps going.

Alex: And thinking about how like success almost like warps like reality in some way. I was just looking at the show, WeCrashed, so kind of like looking at like the WeWork story and Apple just came up with this TV show, it was really good, and I just watched the last episode the other day. And it was very interesting to me that there’s this story that I heard when the whole WeWork thing was happening that Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork, have latte and cappuccino confused. So, at WeWork, the corporate offices, if you ask for a latte, they would give you a cappuccino. If you ask for a cappuccino, they will give you a latte because no one dared to tell Adam that he had it wrong. So, if you ordered one there, you’d get the wrong thing because they didn’t want to tell him. It’s almost like the success warps reality in a way, right? So, just, you know, our conversation about success just made me think about that. I think it’s hilarious.

Marshall: You know, another thing, one of my favorite parts of the book is a story about the marshmallows. Now, you know the marshmallow research, had this research on marshmallows. So, you take a kid, you give a kid a marshmallow. You tell the kid you eat the marshmallow, you get one, but if you wait, oh, you get two. Now, allegedly, they had this longitudinal study which it sort of made it sounds like the kid that eats one marshmallow becomes a drug addict and the kid that eats two gets a PhD from Harvard. It seemed a little exaggerated but, anyway, according to this “research,” you to achieve more if you wait. 

So the message of the entire book and that’s a message of almost all self-help books is delayed gratification is good. Delayed gratification — go on the diet, work out, delayed gratification is good, over and over. Delayed gratification is good. You will achieve more if you delay gratification. There’s one problem with the marshmallow research. They didn’t take the kid that ate two marshmallows, say, wait a minute, kid. Wait a little longer, three. Wait some more, four. Keep waiting, five, ten, a hundred. And where do you end up? An old man waiting to die sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of uneaten marshmallows. Sometimes you got to eat the marshmallow. 

And a story I love about Jack Welch, because my friend Mark knows Jack Welch, Jack Welch almost died. He had a triple bypass, almost died. So my friend asked Jack, “What did you learn about life when you almost died?” You know what Jack Welch said? “Why am I drinking the damn cheap wine every night?” That is a great story. Jack Welch has this incredible wine collection and a library, right? All this great wine. He’s drinking cheap wine at night. You know what he was doing? He was waiting for his fancy wine to appreciate in value. And he finally goes, “Wait a minute. I’m Jack Welch. I’m rich. This wine appreciation, what does it matter to me anyway, to my net worth? Nothing. I’m sitting here drinking cheap wine every night waiting for the wine to appreciate in value and, by the way, I almost just died yesterday.” How dumb is that? And, you know, he made one commitment when he almost died. You know what he said? “No more cheap wine.”

Alex: Love that.

Marshall: “No more cheap wine for me. I’m Jack Welch. I busted my ass. Guess what? No more cheap wine.”

Alex: You know what’s funny? A lot of those marshmallows, you know, they’re probably expired by the time you eat so maybe some of those wines had already peaked, you know, and like —

Marshall: Oh, yeah.

Alex: We both have — you and I have a good friend that we share in common, David Peterson, and David’s appreciation for good wine is just incredible, like his knowledge on wine is like the vintage and the produce, like I love people that know all that about wine, you know? It’s like, oh, this winemaker and this vintage would — I mean, it’s just the combination of — it’s infinite, right? And enjoying that is powerful. I think wine — there’s a lot of analogies to wine in life that I think are powerful. 

One thing I know about you is you serve good alcohol, because we’ve hung out in New York and we were at your apartment and you had some great champagne out for people. I was actually — I was like, “That’s very generous.” So you’re a very generous guy. I appreciate that about you, Marshall. 

Marshall: You know, somebody made a documentary movie about me called The Earned Life and they interviewed a lot of people, they said give one word to describe me, and I’m proud of this, the number one word was generous.

Alex: You should be proud — you’re generous with your time, you’re generous with the way you structure your work. I mean, you really are a fantastic, very giving person so we’re all very — I mean, all of us in the coaching industry are extra appreciative of you because you’re here to share and expand the impact of coaching, work with people that are following your footsteps in this industry and that’s not usually the case. I think a lot of people that are in your position, you know, sometimes the ego takes over, right? And I don’t know what you do, maybe that’s a question for you. Let’s make it a question. How do you keep your ego in check? Because you really — I met you in many different situations and you’re consistently very present and not ego-driven at all, which honestly is surprising almost.

Marshall: Well, let’s talk about credit where credit is due. I went to a program called Design the Life You Love with Ayse Birsel who you may have met. I love her, by the way. World’s expert on design, and she asked me who were my heroes. My heroes were very kind and generous people who taught me all they knew and never charged me any money. Alan Mulally has spent hours helping me. Frances Hesselbein has spent hours. Peter Drucker spent hours. Warren Bennis. These people all went out of their way to help me and they never charged me a cent. She said you should be more like them. 

That’s when I decided to give away all I know for free. I started this idea of the 100 Coaches, well, they’re going to be 15 coaches and I made a little video and put it on LinkedIn, said I want to give away everything I know for free to 15 people and if you’re interested, please apply. I made this video, I think 100 people are going to apply. 18,000 people applied. Now there are 370 people in the 100 Coaches, I didn’t change the name after a while. And I love it. I did just give everything away. I mean, you’re one of the people. How do you — What’s your reaction to the group?

Alex: I love it. I mean, I think that — my favorite part is being part of those smaller groups when you get to hear everyone’s story and understand where they come from, what drives them, how they’re working on enhancing their impact today. It’s just a fantastic group of people. And you set a very powerful foundation by basically saying this is — no selling, let’s just focus on getting to know each other and you’ll find ways of creating value together. I mean, you just don’t find that a lot in the world today, because the people that are really good at selling, sometimes they just hide the fact that they’re selling and it’s too late. By the time you realize, you want to buy it, you know? And with you, it really is just like let’s just put great people together, create value, and see what happens. That doesn’t happen as much in the world, I feel like.

Marshall: Well, you know, look, I’m 73 too. Well, what am I hoarding all this stuff for? Right? I mean, what am I saving this for? What am I saving — to me, all my material, you may copy, share, download, change, modify, put your name on it, I don’t care. Like Nankhonde in our group is doing a program, she builds on some of the stuff I do with high-potential leaders in Africa. I’m not going to help high-potential leaders in Africa so if she can use my stuff to help high-potential leaders in Africa, God bless her. By the way, when she does that, I’m helping them a little bit. When she uses my stuff to help them indirectly, I’m helping them. 

Sally Helgesen wrote a book with me, How Women Rise. I’m very proud of that book. It’s already sold 150,000 copies in the US. Mega success, right? Mega success. I’m not an expert on helping women leaders, she is. So, to me, to the degree I can give people something and they can use it to help others, that’s my legacy in life.

Alex: Love that.

Marshall: I am indirectly helping other people.

Alex: Now that we’re talking about your legacy, you’re 73 years old, you’ve seen, I mean, really a transformation in the world. We came into the digital age. There are so many exciting things about the world today but there are also some almost seemingly unsurmountable challenges, like the world stage, a lot of polarization in society. So, when you look at the world today, like what are you concerned about and what are you optimistic about?

Marshall: Well, I just wrote an article vaguely related to this topic for Chief Executive Magazine. So people send me an email, if I can find it, I’ll send them a copy of it. And the article, it says leaders today get worse feedback than ever before, yet they’re probably better than ever before. People ask me, “Are leaders more bullies than ever?” That is the most ridiculous comment I’ve ever heard. Did you read a history book in the past? They had whips. They cut your head off. I mean, you know, you were excommunicated. Leaders were hideously terrible compared to today, yet today leaders actually get worse feedback. Why? That’s what the article is about. 

Because the standards have gone up. People’s expectations have changed. They don’t have to work there. They can leave, Glassdoor. So it’s a very different world today so I actually think leaders, from my perspective, leaders are far better than they used to be. Yet the expectations are far higher and the expectations — although leaders have improved, the expectations have gone up even faster than the leaders have improved. So it’s challenging to be a leader today.

In my program that I did over COVID with the 50 great leaders, they’re afraid. They’re afraid to say anything. Anything they say can go on social media, be taken out of context, people can make fools out of them. One guy said, “You know, it’s really nice to be here an hour a week and act like a human.” He was happy to be able to act like a human for an hour. Why? They’re afraid. 

There’s an old saying, it’s lonely at the top. It used to be lonely at the top. Today, it is lonelier at the top. It is really lonely today. And just having a sense of community, that’s one thing I love about the 100 Coaches. You know, I don’t live where I was brought up. You probably don’t live where you were brought up. And we don’t have the sense of community. It’s nice to be a member of a community where everybody isn’t judging you all the time.

Alex: Yeah, I agree 100 percent. What are you excited about today, Marshall?

Marshall: Well, my problem in life has never been excitement. I always get excited all the time. I mean, I could do five more books right now. So, you know, my only problem is curtailing my excitement, not having the excitement so I’m always excited about a lot of stuff. I’m excited about my new book. I’m excited — I got a new program, I just told you about that. I want to do a one-week program, a whole week, and I have to figure out where to put it and everything but I’ll invite you guys. I’m going to do a one-week program and it’s all free and my goal is to teach everything I know to everybody in this one week for free in person. So, you know, that’s a nice idea. And then payment will be you have to do something nice for somebody else sometime. I like that.

Alex: That’s awesome. I love it. You always come up with some great ideas and then you go and execute and you bring a lot of people together. It’s like super fun. And that part is always fun so, you know, you can —

Marshall: Yeah, well, also, what do you got to lose? Live in Nashville, we go out, sing karaoke, have fun —

Alex: That sounds awesome.

Marshall: — whatever.

Alex: I’m so in need to see people in person, you know? Years of working through Zoom, you know, it takes a toll, don’t you think?

Marshall: I know.

Alex: Yeah, I just signed up for — so our office is in San Diego but very few people go and we have a global team, I just signed up for this like shared office space just to go once or twice a week for a couple hours so you can just see — even if you don’t talk to other people, just to see them right there is like kind of powerful, you know? Yeah, like, hey.

Marshall: That’s great. So, anyway, I think that I am basically a pretty positive person. You know, there are a lot of challenges in life. There have always been a lot of challenges in life. I mean, look, you know, people say it’s the worst time in history of America. Well, hello, there was something called the Civil War, we had the Vietnam War. That’s not the first time ever people have had disagreements. You know, this is part of life, part of life, and, yeah. I would just say make the best of it.

Alex: Yeah, I’m sure we’ll go through these. It’s a difficult period, so many things happening. Also the acceleration of time, right? Things used to take longer. Now, things happen so quickly. I mean, that is this compression in terms of time that we’re learning to deal with.

Marshall: One of the guys in our 100 Coach group is Rob Nail and Rob was the CEO of Singularity University. He had a good saying, he said the pace of change you’re experiencing today is the slowest pace of change we’ll ever experience for the rest of your life. So you think that pace of change is fast now? Compared to what? Not compared to tomorrow, it’s not. Compared to tomorrow, it is slow. So the trend line here is pretty obvious. The pace of change is not slowing down.

Alex: And also kind of connecting it to what we’re talking about earlier about being present, as things in the outside world accelerate, it becomes harder to really just recognize that you’re in the moment, be present, be thoughtful about it and that’s I think one of the pressures that this accelerating world is putting on people. And also decision making. I mean, at the end of the day, as coaches, you know, we work with people that are decision makers. Decision making on an environment that’s accelerating becomes more complex and nuanced and I think coaches need to be equipped to work with clients that are working increasingly complex, fast-paced environments.

Marshall: And I think really important in the new world is three things. One, you have a higher aspiration. We all need some reason to do this. Two, you’re achieving and your achievement is connected to the higher aspiration. And then, three, you enjoy the process, you’re present and enjoy what you’re doing at the time. To the degree these three are aligned and you’re simultaneously doing all three, you just won. Assuming, by the way, we’ve done some research on this, assuming you have a middle-class income, assuming you’re healthy, and assuming you have good relationships with people you love, these three things are all there is. Basically, I have a higher purpose, my achievements are connected to this higher purpose, and I love what I’m doing. If the answer is yes, yes, yes, that’s it. 

Now, there may be more out there. I have not found it. That’s it. That’s all there is. And, you know, again, assuming you’re healthy, you got nice relationships, you got middle-class money. I mean, more money — like money doesn’t make you happy, people I coach are billionaires, you know, I can tell you, money in and of itself is not going to make you happy. 

Alex: What did they say that research suggests, yeah, if you make at least $75,000 a year, I think that is the cutoff, right, for like, yeah, if you’re over that, then, you know, that’s not going to make a difference in terms of your happiness. Well, maybe we should adjust that for inflation, maybe make it $100,000, but, like, you know? 

Marshall: Yeah, it is a number, whatever — it depends on the city. The reality is there is a number. Once you get past that number, then — the people I coach, that number is long gone. They’re way beyond that number. And, you know, if making you happy, if making money would make you happy, all the billionaires I met would be ecstatic. Well, some are and some are not, right?

Alex: Yeah.

Marshall: So, you know, there’s an old saying, can’t buy me love. Well, that’s true. And the other thing, football players, one of the reasons they tank, the ex-football star, their numbers are awful. Their numbers are just awful. 80 percent divorce, 70 percent bankrupt, depressed, hideous numbers. Curtis Martin is my friend, I talked about Curtis in the book, he’s one of our 100 Coaches, he’s just a wonderful human being, and then, you know, Curtis said one of the reasons they lose money, they give it away. They just give it away. They try to buy love. So when they’re not getting love on the football field and that’s over, well, they have this money so they have a little entourage and hangers on and they give them money. That doesn’t work. You know why? There’s a song about that. “Money you got a lot of friends hanging around your door, when it’s gone and spending ends, they don’t come around no more.”

Alex: Well, there is a whole HBO show on like ballers of like, you know, like the Rock is like a financial advisor for like athletes and it’s a very interesting world. I mean, people mismanage their money and they make millions of dollars and then they retired at 32 and like, you know, like they run out of money. 

Marshall: Of course. Yeah. Michael Phelps thought of killing himself after he won the 25th gold medal. Why? Look, if your happiness in life is based on achievement, you’re not going to get there.

Alex: 100 percent. And then Michael Phelps, I see him on Instagram all the time in the ads that pop up, he’s doing a lot of work for Talkspace so really selling like virtual kind of therapy services, or advertising those. Yeah, there’s so many layers. Life is nuanced, it’s complex. I actually wanted to ask you, I’ve always wondered what is your favorite book or maybe a few of the books that have inspired you the most.

Marshall: My favorite book is called Old Path White Clouds. Old Path White Clouds. It’s by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh died recently. Just spectacular guy so I love his books in general. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk.

Alex: We’ll put it in the notes. 

Marshall: Yeah, he’s just an amazing guy. So his favorite — the favorite book he wrote for me is Old Path White Clouds and I love that book. Another Buddhist book I love is called the Wizard of Oz. A lot of people don’t know that’s a Buddhist book.

Alex: I didn’t know that was a Buddhist book. 

Marshall: The whole thing is a metaphor for Buddhist philosophy. Yeah, the Wizard of Oz.

Alex: You know, I don’t think I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz in a long time but a thing that comes out a lot I think in conversations a lot of coaches is Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, right? And so much mythology is based on like that specific structure. 

Marshall: Yeah. Well, the Wizard of Oz, what do you got? You got the lion who really was brave and you had the scarecrow who always had wisdom. You had the tinman who already had a heart, he was crying during the show. He already had a heart. They’re all looking for what they already have. And then you have Dorothy. She could go home any time. What has she learned at the end? It’s not out there. That’s the whole point. It’s not out there. No place but home. If it’s not here, it’s not any place. That’s the whole movie. 

It’s a brilliant, brilliant book and an even better movie. The movie is just spectacular — one of the best movies ever made. Just a spectacular movie, The Wizard of Oz. I just love that.

Alex: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing, Marshall. Well, you know, as always, it is really an absolute pleasure to have a conversation with you. I always enjoy it. Anything you’d like to share, say before we close out today our first episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee?

Marshall: Well, a couple of things. One, my new book, The Earned Life, is out soon. Buy this book. Buy it for your friends. I’m in the book sales mode. I give everything away. They gave me a million dollars to do this book so I have to actually sell the books.

Alex: No, we like people that come to the podcast to promote what’s going on in their life and you’re selling a beautiful book and that sounds, to me — I think it’s going to be another one of your best sellers because just the theme is just like on point with I think a lot of what people are looking for today. 

Marshall: Let me finish with my favorite coaching advice, which I always finish with, you’ve heard before. And that is this — take a deep breath. Ah, imagine you’re 95 years old and you’re just getting ready to die. You’re on your deathbed. Here comes your last breath. Right before you take the last breath, you’re given a beautiful gift, a wonderful gift, the ability to go back in time and talk to the person who’s listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better coach. More important, the ability to help that person have a better life. What advice would the wise 95-year-old you who knows what mattered in life and what did not matter and what was important and what wasn’t have for the you that’s listening to me right now? 

Well, you don’t have to say anything or do anything or write anything. Answer that question in your mind. What advice for that old person looking at death have for you? Whatever you’re thinking now, do that. In terms of performance appraisal, that’s the only one that matters. If the old person says you did the right thing, you did the right thing. If the old person says you made a mistake, you made a mistake. You do not have to impress anybody else. 

Some friends of mine, we interviewed old people who were dying and common comment, “I got so busy chasing what I didn’t have, I couldn’t see what I did have.” So three themes come up from all people facing death. One is be happy now. Don’t get so busy chasing what you don’t have that you can’t see what you do have. Number two is friends and family. Don’t get so busy with your career you forget the people who love you. That happens too much. And then if you have a dream, go for it. 

The business side is much different. Number one, life is short, have fun. If you cannot have fun as a coach, to quote David Aldridge, you will not have fun in finance. If you cannot have fun as a coach, you will not have fun in finance. So if you can’t have fun doing this, you’re in trouble. It’s a fun field. 

Alex: It is.

Marshall: So, number one, enjoy it. You want your clients to be happy? You be happy. You want your kids to be happy? You be happy. You want people who love you to be happy? Lead by example. You go happy first, right? Number two is people. Do whatever we can do to help people. The main reason to help people has nothing to do with money or status or getting ahead. The main reason to help people is much deeper. The 95-year-old you will be proud of you because you did and disappointed if you don’t. If you don’t believe this is true, interview any CEO who has retired, I’ve interviewed very many and asked them a question, “What are you proud of?” None ever told me how big their office was. All they ever talked about was all the people they helped.

And the final advice, go for it. Coaching is changing, the world is changing, your life is changing. You do what you think is right. You may not win, at least you tried. Old people, we don’t regret the risks we take and fail, we regret the risk we failed to take. And, finally, as I’ve grown older, my level of aspiration in life in some ways has gone down and down and down. My level of impact, up and up and up. Why? Quit worrying about what I’m not going to change. So I’m going to have a real clear goal for our time together. What’s this clear goal? Let’s imagine that a couple of coaches out there have a little bit better life based on this conversation. Maybe they help a couple other people have a little better life. You know what, this is a good use of our time. This is a good use of our time. 

As I’ve grown older, I just want to help people have a little better life and then, as a coach, just maybe help other people have a little better life. That’s good enough

Alex: Love that, Marshall. You know, it’s so interesting just to think about how fun it is to be a coach, right? I mean, I think sometimes there’s so many other things going on in people’s lives and, you know, running a coaching business might not be the easiest thing in the world but it’s fun, you know? It’s like what — if you can be successful being a coach, what a wonderful way to make a living, right? 

Marshall: It’s great. 

Alex: Yeah, thank you so much. What a treat to have you as our first guest. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Marshall.

Marshall: My honor. I love what you guys are doing. So, congratulations to you. Thank you.

Alex: Thank you, and we’re going to be doing a special giveaway with like three-hour program that we put together together so we’ll — we put together together. So, we’ll — people will find out about that pretty soon. So thank you, Marshall. Pleasure. 

Marshall: Thank you.