I recently interviewed Marshall Goldsmith on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and for years has been named the world's number one executive coach. Marshall Goldsmith has worked with more than 200 major CEOs and has written or edited 43 books, including his newest book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. Marshall, thank you for joining us.

Marshall: Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I loved meeting you beforehand and talking with you.

Adam: This has been great. You grew up in rural Kentucky before moving to Indiana for college and for grad school and then coming to L.A. to get your Ph.D. from my alma mater, the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Marshall: Well, when I was a child my mother went to college for two years, which was very unusual in the neighborhood. And she was a first-grade school teacher. But my father had some idiot idea that women shouldn't work. Now the bad news, we got to be poor. And we were in a very poor neighborhood without a house the first four years I was in school. So, I wasn't brought up in Harvard prep. On the other hand, my mother's entire energy was devoted to one student, me. I was the only student so I knew how to add, subtract, multiply and divide before going to school. So, I just had a huge head start in life. And again, the odds on me coming from there, which my high school came in next to last in Kentucky and academic achievement. So the odds of going from there to getting a Ph.D. at UCLA were reasonably slim. So, I just had a lot of lucky breaks. Just a fortuitous set of circumstances occurred. And that's what got me started. And then I've been very blessed. I've got to meet these wonderful people that changed my life.

Adam: One of those people who changed your life and a key relationship early on in your career, a renowned professor and leader in the world of management education, a man named Paul Hersey. And Paul took you under his wing and served as a mentor to you. And over the years, you've served as a mentor to so many. Right now you're running a great mentorship program. Can you talk about the role mentorship has played in your life? And how can anyone find a great mentor? 

Marshall: Well, the star has played a huge role in my life. Just to go back to a little background on the program. First, I went to a program called Design the Life You Love and a woman asked me, “Who are your heroes?”. My heroes were my mentors and teachers, Paul Hersey, Ken Blanchard, Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker, Francis Hexamine, and Alan Mullaly, all just amazing people. And they helped me and they didn't charge me money. She said, “You should be more like them”. So, that's what inspired me to say, “I'm gonna adopt 15 people and teach them all I know, for free”. And when they get old, they’ll do the same thing. And as it turned out, I made a little thing to put on video. I thought 100 people would apply and it turned out 18,000 applied. So now there are 350. So, to me, mentorship is a huge deal. And to me, it's a blessing. And what I would say is, who are your heroes? Who do you want to be like in life? That's what I did, basically, and I'm pretty happy with this. I became a lot like the people who are my heroes. That wasn't an accident. And I told them, “You're my hero, please help me”. I would give them an exercise for the people in the room, Bobby Goodman. Okay, ready? Think about who's your hero? Then write down why this person is your hero. And if they're alive, send them a note and say I just listened to a podcast. And in this podcast, I was challenged to name one person who is a hero to me, and you know what? It was you. And here's why you're a hero to me. How would you feel if you got such a letter? Would you feel good? Well, to me, that's the way you get a mentor is you come up to him, you tell the truth and say, look, I'm not you. I wasn't Paul Hersey. I said, “I want to be like you when I grow up”.

Adam: I love it. And something that I've heard from so many of the great guests who I've interviewed on this podcast, who I've spoken to over the years, has really aligned with that theme, which is don't be afraid to reach out. The first step is figuring out who it is that you want to connect with and the second step is going out and trying to connect with them. Something that you and I were chatting about off the air. What's the worst thing that happens? Someone says no and you don't hear back from them. But, if someone says yes, it could be a life-changing relationship.

Marshall: I totally agree. And the other thing is being a mentor. Ask yourself who would I like to be a mentor to? And I'm blessed because there's so many people that I can, kind of, choose who I would want to be a mentor to and really feel like I'm making a contribution to life by mentoring these people. My blessing in life is, I didn't come up with a cure for colon cancer, buddy, go to the CEO of Pfizer. I didn't save 20 million lives. But I coach Jim Campbell, who did. If you look at my clients’ achievements, they are huge. I'm not them. Nor do I try to pretend to be them. On the other hand, if I can help them as a coach or mentor or advisor, and a little bit when they do that stuff, it's a little bit me.

Adam: At the heart of mentorship, at the heart of your work, really at the heart of everything is being able to build successful relationships. What advice do you have for anyone listening on relationship building?

Marshall:  Well, Adam, same advice. I have a process called stakeholder-centered coaching, which they all do. Everyone I work with gets confidential feedback from everyone around them. They all pick important behaviors to improve; they talk to people publicly about what they've learned. And they follow up on a regular basis and get better before they preach to anybody else. I mean, a great role model is Hubert Joly, who bears a leave publicly in front of everyone at BestBuy when he went there, which by the way, was considered a very low probability bet on his success. And he did a spectacular job. He said, “I have a coach, I get feedback. Here's what I learned. I'm trying to improve, please help me. I'm going to ask you for advice. Please help me”. He's the CEO of the company, he did not have to do that daily. And everyone else is doing the same thing. So, an article about this helps others develop. Start with yourself, who you want to be as a great leader. You want other people trying to get better and learn what you're trying to get better at. Don't preach it to them. They'll preach about getting better and live getting better. So, the thing about Hubert is that he not only preached something anybody can preach, he lived it.

Adam: It's all about leading by example. And before you can effectively lead others you need to be able to lead your own life. And what a great example by bringing up Hubert Joly, who brought you up in the podcast. Hubert spoke about the difference that you made in terms of his mindset. And in terms of the way he approached leadership while he was leading BestBuy. It was instrumental in his ability to turn BestBuy around. And I wanted to know if you could dive a little bit deeper in terms of what you do once you start working with a CEO like Hubert? You mentioned the CEO of Pfizer or the former CEO of Ford. What do you do? And what can anyone listening do to take their leadership skills to the next level?

Marshall: Well, what I do is, let's take my friend Alan Mulally. Alan was a Boeing Commercial Airplane engineer. Spectacular guy, great leader, great engineer. And Alan will tell you he changed a lot. Alan was spectacular to start with but he got incredibly better. So he went from spectacular to better. He wasn't bad to start with, he was fantastic. And I said to Alan, “Here's what I do. I'm going to interview everyone around you. You're going to develop a fear. You're gonna get feedback. You're gonna feel good about ‘x’. You want to get better at ‘y’. You're going to talk to people, you're gonna follow up, and then you're going to do that”. And his area for improvement was building relationships across Boeing. Well, after about three months, I didn't get paid if he didn't get better. It's pretty obvious I was gonna get paid. I mean, the guy, he said, “I built a 4777. I think I can do this right?”. Well, he totally figured it out. So, I said, “Oh, let's do something that kind of made me earn my money here”. So, he said, “Why don't we help everybody get better”. And then he just instituted the same process for everyone around him. They all asked for feedback. They all followed up. They all got better. And then I asked Alan what I learned about coaching from him. I said, “Number one, you're fantastic to start with and had huge improvement. I spent less time coaching you than we've ever coached. What I learned about coaching from you”. He taught me two great lessons. He said, “Your whole job as a coach is customer selection. You pick the right customers and your coaching process will always work. You pick the wrong customer and your coach process will never work”. He said “Never make the coaching process about yourself and your own ego and how great you think you are. Make it about the great people you work with”. Look, I got ranked number one coach forever. Why? Nobody knows if I’m a good coach or not. Then watch me coach anybody. Okay, great. Now the clients. I may not be the best coach, but I can tell you that I have the best clients. I love my clients. They are dedicated, hard-working people and care. Anybody that coaches the people I coach is gonna look like a good coach. So, what's the secret of him being a great coach to them?

Adam: And that advice is applicable, really, to any business. It's all about the customer. And it's all about having a customer-centric mindset.

Marshall:  Well, and by the way, it's about people who care. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to change the behavior of a wife or partner that had no interest in changing how that worked out for you?

Adam: You're asking someone who's single and has never been married. So, it's a very theoretical question.

Marshall: Let’s change it to mommy and daddy.

Adam: Absolutely not. 

Marshall: How'd that go? 

Adam: I know better than that.

Marshall: I teach a class for Dartmouth. And it's as if every time mommy and daddy didn't want to change. This woman said, “Yeah”. I asked, “You try to change mommy or daddy?”. And she said, “Daddy”.  As if it was daddy's problem. She said, “He didn't have a healthy lifestyle”. And I asked, “How old is Daddy?''. She said, “94”. Leave your boy alone. What I've learned about coaching is, if they don't care, don't waste your time. I don't work with people who don't care. I work with dedicated, great people who want to get better.

Adam: So true. So, following up a little bit, what can anyone do to become a better leader? And I want to bifurcate this question. You work with leaders, like Alan Mulally, who are already great leaders. Who you're helping accelerate their leadership skills, taking their leadership skills just to another level. You're also working with leaders who, in your view, have potential, but are really mediocre leaders, and you need to do a lot of work with them. So, what advice do you have for listeners? And listeners can hopefully be honest with themselves and say I'm in category one, which is, I am someone who is not a great leader, but I want to become a better leader, or category two is, I'm a really good leader. But I want to get better. What advice do you have for each of those kinds of people?

Marshall: I have exactly the same process. My process is always the same. By the way, marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com. Send me an email and I'll send you an article called “Leadership Has a Context”. For 86,000 people in my study, my process is always the same. Everyone I coach gets confidential feedback from everyone around them. Everyone I coach picks important behavior to improve and everyone I coach apologizes for what they do wrong. Everyone I coached asks for what's called feedforward, over and over and over again. They follow up with them over and over. They follow up with me over and over. And then they get better. Now, I do one thing also with my clients, it's a little unusual. My clients all help each other. So, I have meetings with my clients. It has been to zillion of these meetings, where they sit around and talk about their problems and try to help each other get better. So, I don't make this about me knowing everything. I'm a facilitator. My job is to help people learn from everyone around them. And the more people and smarter people, the better.

Adam: It's such a key theme of your work. And such a key theme of your message is the importance of feedback. And you were a pioneer in the use of 360-degree feedback. And something that's evident in the message that you're sharing. And something that should be evident, really to anyone, is the importance of feedback and the effectiveness of feedback really drills down to the messenger. You're going to listen to feedback if you believe in the person who's sharing the feedback with you. But if you don't believe in the person giving the feedback, you're not necessarily going to take it as seriously or you're not necessarily going to take it as well. And to that end, I wanted to know if you could share some advice around how to best give feedback and how to best receive feedback?

Marshall: Well, there's two different issues that I work with. One is feedback and the other is feedforward. So, I'm going to distinguish the two. Feedback is great for helping you know where you are. And all the feedback I do is confidential. I never assume. I never tell leaders to ask for personal face-to-face feedback. Why? In the history of the human species, we have not been rewarded for telling the truth. The people in power have been killed. Our whole history, our whole ethos is opposed to that. So, I tell people to get feedback for your direct reports, make it confidential, and it's much more likely to be true. Feedforward though is you ask for ideas. So, the feedforward works. You can do that. I've done this for 1000s of people. That was the stand up. I said we're going to practice feedforward and everybody's going to pick one thing to improve. You're going to talk to people. You're not going to ask for feedback from the past. You're gonna ask for ideas for the future. No matter what people tell you, you're gonna sit there, shut up, listen, take notes and say thank you. All you can do is say thank you and promise to do everything you can, to promise to listen and do what you can. I do this over and over and over. You mentioned Mulally. He has probably been through this hundreds of maybe 1000 times over. Oh, feedforward is asking how can I?  You already know what you want to change. Feedback helps you figure out what from the past and feedforward is now. Now, what do you do? And then over and over and over, you follow up. Nobody gets better because they go to a class or they listen to the teacher. They read a book and they have to work. Clients get better because they work. They do the hard work required to get better.

Adam: What have you found are the greatest inhibitors to meaningful change into real transformation? And how can they be overcome?

Marshall: Well, number one, I'm not a motivational speaker, and I don't motivate people. I work with the motivated. I don't create the motivated. So, I'm not an expert on how to motivate someone who is not motivated. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm just not an expert on that topic. Everyone I work with has to be motivated. If they have an attitude problem about this. You want to tell them goodbye. I just don't work with them. I don't have to. I don't want to and I don't. I only work with those who care. Why is it hard? Three things. One, it takes courage. It takes courage to do this kind of stuff. It takes humility. You know what? I can't help perfect people get better. If somebody's perfect then why do they need me? You have to be humble. You have to admit you can improve. And it takes discipline to do the day-to-day work to do this stuff. So, one of the things I teach people is a daily question process. I do it myself. I've been doing it for 25 years. I had to call someone if someone's gonna call me on the phone every day to help me be quiet. My name is Marshall Goldsmith. I'm too cowardly and undisciplined to do any of this stuff by myself. I need help. And it's okay. It's okay to need help. I need help. My clients need help. They didn't need help when they hired me? You know? Or its that macho stupid willpower. I can do everything on my own nonsense. And life is better for everybody. It takes courage to do this. It's hard. It's hard to do any of the stuff I pick. Anybody can say the stuff I teach is easy to do. He's never done it before. It's very hard to do. It takes humility. And everybody I coach stands up and apologizes for their mistakes. They don't want to apologize, fine, don't work with me. It's okay. But, if you're going to work with me, you're going to have enough dignity to stand up. And when you make a mistake, just apologize. Don't blame anybody. And it takes this day-to-day discipline. And a lot of people like OSHA, Chris, it was here in L.A. He was the CEO of Northrop company years ago. He totally turned the company around and he led. A lot of my research was inspired by him. And he's a really good guy. He turned the company around. And he just said, “We're going to measure people getting better”. The thing though, is human first. That's it. You want anybody else to do anything, as a leader, you go for it, you don't want to do it, don't ask somebody else to do it.

Adam: One of the things you highlighted, which I think is really important, is the ability to be able to say I make mistakes. These are the mistakes that I've made, owning up to them, learning from them, and using mistakes as an opportunity to grow. And I want to know if you could share with listeners, whether they’re mistakes that you've made in your own personal journey or whether mistakes that you've helped others overcome, that might serve as learning experiences that we can take away from?

Marshall:  Well, you're near UCLA. I'll give you a UCLA story. And then I'll talk about other people's issues. I'm a PhD student there. I'm self-righteous and think I know everything. For three weeks I was in an encounter group with old Dr. Tannenbaum who's, kind of, the Guru figure there. And we're encouraged to talk about what everyone's talking about. So, I'm talking about people in Los Angeles. They're screwed up. They wear these $85 blue jeans, they drive $200,000 cars, they're plastic. They're materialistic. And the class is about three weeks. I'm from Valley Station, Kentucky, which makes me, of course, the world's authority on everyone in Los Angeles. Please have me babble on about this crap. Finally, when Dr. Tannenbaum looks at my scripts. He is like, Marshall, who are you talking to? Let's say you get some thoughts about what everybody is. I don't know if you notice every time you've spoken, you've looked at only one person. You've addressed comments toward only one person. Who is that person? I thought the lesson was a very interesting question that would be used. Why me? There's 10 other people here. We know Dr. Tannenbaum. I think a person who has a deep background and published experience in his field can really understand the true significance of what I'm saying about how screwed up it is just to impress people. Scratches, bare knuckles, Marshall, is there a chance for us? Three weeks and all you've been doing is trying to impress me. You will know that I'm very disappointed. I think you miss the significance of everything I said. I don't think you understand at all. I look around and see these 10 heads. I hated his guts for six months. Thank you, sir. He taught me a great lesson in life, which I've used all the time. It's really easy to see our problems when out there. It's really hard to see these problems when in here. And so, that's been a lot of my life is just telling people things that they see and everyone else that will look in the mirror and see themselves. 

Adam: So true. To that end, once someone realizes and acknowledges that they've made a mistake, and they want to go in that next direction, what do you do next? What tips do you have?

Marshall: Well, the first thing is just understanding how hard this stuff is. So, you have an example. In the book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There? the number-one success with your work, with the answer that winning too much is worthwhile. We want to win and it's stupid. We want to win. Winners love winning. It's hard not to win and prove they are smart over and over and over again. So, you want to go to dinner at a restaurant and an extra friend wants to go too. Why do you go when the food tastes like crap and the service is awful? Option A:  Critique the food and point it out that they’re wrong. This mistake could have been avoided if you listened to me. Option B: Shut up, eat the stupid food. Try to enjoy and have a nice evening. What would I do? What should I do? Almost all my clients try to choose what. Do I critique the food? What should I do, shut up? What is very hard. Smart people love to prove they're smart. It's very hard for smart people not to win. You've taken test after test after test in your life, 1000s of tests, and to prove how smart you are 1000s of times. It's hard to stop. It's not that you don't understand how stupid this is. It's just hard to quit doing it. Why? Any human or animal will replicate behavior that's followed by positive reinforcement. The more successful you become in life, the more positive reinforcement you get. Nobody gets their butt kissed more than a CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. So, everything you do, you get positive reinforcement. So, you fall into a trap. I behave this way, I am successful. Therefore, I must be successful because I behaved this way. Wrong. You behave this way, you are successful because you're doing many things right. And in spite of doing a few things that are stupid. And I've never met anyone who so wonderfully had nothing in the stupid category

Adam: It's so true. And so illustrative of what we see when we see leaders who have enjoyed so much success, ultimately enjoy a catastrophic failure. Whether it's a world leader, whether it's a CEO of a huge company, whether it's a leader of a sports team. And it comes down to being in this cocoon, where you shut out dissenting voices, you shut out those around you who could actually give you constructive feedback, and who can help steer you in the right direction. And when you drink too much of your own Kool-Aid, you drink it to your peril.

Marshall: Well, I had a great example of this one leader that I met and a wonderful man, by the way, one of the highest IQ people I've ever met in my life. I mean, he's a genius. He was in medical research and knew more about people's subspecialties than they did. And he had high integrity and would never do anything to sacrifice the customer. You know, it's really about loving patients and wanting to do what was right. A company had his new product and he said, “This is going to pass the FDA”. And nobody challenged him. What? He had high integrity. They believed in him. He was always right. He was incredibly genius. So, they assumed he must be right. But he was normally right, like you said, until he was wrong. He was wrong in one case because the company lost 50% of their market cap in one day. And then the interview people, just like you, said, “Why didn't you say anything?”. And they said, “Well, you know, he's a good guy and has integrity. And he's always right. So I assumed I must be wrong”. No, he was wrong. He was wrong. Yet, people didn't challenge him.

Adam: Marshall, you've worked closely with so many of the most successful leaders across industries. What do you believe are the key qualities of a great leader?

Marshall: Well, again, I'm not an expert on all elements of leadership. I'm only an expert at leading people. And the key qualities of great leaders of people are they want to be great leaders of people. This is not an add-on. This is their mission in life. They want to be great leaders. They try to be great leaders, they care about being great leaders. This is not a, I make numbers. But then on the side, I'm nice to people. No, this is who they are. And to the degree or importance of who bears the case, who they become, this is who they are, who they want to become. And the great ones will become this.

Adam: If there's a will, there's a way. And to your point, so much of it comes down to focus. So much of it comes down to mindset. So much of it comes down to having a goal and being laser-focused on that goal. And, exactly to your point, if your goal is to become a great leader, you're gonna figure out how to become a great leader. You're going to consume whatever resources there are, whether it's working with a great coach, whether it's listening to podcasts, whether it's reading books, talking to people, all people learn in different ways. But however you learn best, you're going to become a better leader.

Marshall: Let me give you a challenge for people on your podcast, okay? And this is related to my new book, or life, because I'm going to tell you what, I think, the huge group of them, what their challenge is. In my book, I talk about aspiration. Aspiration has a higher purpose. Who I want to be in life, it doesn't have a finish line. It's larger, just vision and goal. But, it's not like a goal of the finish line. This is the larger vision of who I want to become. Then you have your ambition related to your achievement. What do I want to achieve? And then whatever the action is in our day-to-day life. The being present and enjoying the moment that you're in now. Well, most humans are stuck in the action phase. Yeah, they just live day-to-day, they show up, they do things that whatever's in front of them and they do their job. They're not bad. They're good people. That's just the way they live. And that's the history of the world for 99% of people. That's not the people listening to your podcast. It's not the people I coach. The people I coach, their challenges, their achievements, and they are, in many cases, addicted to the results of what they're doing. And one of the things I teach people is never become addicted to the results of what you're doing. And never make the results a symbol of your value as a human being. When you do that you're screwed for two reasons. One, you don't control the results. There are many things out there that you don't control. And the results may or may not work, no matter what you do. And in number two, let's say you achieve the results. So how long are you going to be happy? Two weeks? And what are you going to do next year or more? And if you're not careful, one, you forget why you're achieving all this stuff, your higher purpose. And two, you're not enjoying your life. See, one thing you did, I think it was very wise, we talked about it earlier, is you realized what I'm doing is not my higher purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I heard you say. You realized what I'm doing is not what I'm enjoying doing. Now, you were achieving things. That's nice. You're achieving things. And societally you had a lot of achievement and money and blah blah. But it wasn't who you were as a higher purpose number one, but number two, you really weren't enjoying the process of doing it. And so, I think, you know, using yourself as a case study is a good example. You need to do something where, look, this is my higher purpose. That's what I'm here for. There's a reason why I'm doing this stuff, too. I am achieving something. It's not just some theory up in the sky. And then three, I enjoy doing it. Oh, well, assuming you have a middle-class income. And you have good relationships and you're healthy. That's about it. You just won the game of life.

Adam: Marshall, I love it. And to fill listeners in, Marshall and I were chatting off the air about my journey. And so much of it has centered around a concept, which I've talked a lot about in previous podcasts episodes, about my belief that when you want to try to figure out what you want to do in life, you want to check three boxes. You want to find something that you're really good at, you want to find something that you love doing and you want to find something that allows you to make a positive impact in the lives of others. And it took me some time in my own professional journey to get there. I was working jobs that paid well. I was working for companies that were prestigious. But I was not checking those three boxes. I was not applying my gift, my superpower in a way that allowed me to do what I did best and allowed me to make a positive impact on others. By being able to align all those things, that's what it's all about.

Marshall: I agree. 

Adam: Marshall, you brought up your book and I wanted to ask you about your book, The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment. And in it you explore a topic that is so relevant, really, to every single person on this planet. Whether you're a fortune 500 CEO, whether you're just graduating from college, whether you're a high school student, and that's how to live a happier life. And a key theme that you explore is regret as a root cause of unhappiness. Right? How can anyone, to the title of your book, lose regret and choose fulfillment?

Marshall: Well, a lot of the book is based on Buddhist philosophy. So, I'm a Buddhist. I'm not a religious Buddhist, I'm a philosophical Buddhist. The book is largely based on Buddhist philosophy. One philosophy that's throughout the book is, “Every time I take a breath, it's a new me”. So, Buddhism is kind of a series of constant reincarnations in life. The you that's at the end of this podcast and the me that's at the end of this podcast is not the me or you that started this podcast. We're going to be different people. It's not bad or good, we're just different. We've changed, we've learned something, we've changed in some ways. So, as you go through life, looking at life is just a series of restarts. And a couple of things you get out of that. One is the ability to think back on your past and forgive yourself for being human. Don't go through life beating yourself over the head. You know, one way you have regret, as you know, you made mistakes. Of course, we've all made mistakes. So, learn to forgive the previous versions of you for being human. And then number two, as I said, you're not fixated on some outcome. You go through life, you're enjoying the process of life, you're doing what's meaningful for you, you do your best and you make peace. Just make peace with what is. You don't go through life beating yourself over the head. The good exercise I tell people is to just take a deep breath. And think of all the previous versions of you. Think of all the gifts they've given to you that's listening to me right now. Think about how hard it was. People tried. If any group of people did that many nice things, what should you say? Did they make mistakes? Of course it did. Let it go, forgive yourself. Let it go, forgive yourself, start over.

Adam: What can anyone do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Marshall:  I'm going to give you my favorite coaching exercise in the world. Are you ready? I am me. That successful definition can only come from one place in your heart. I cannot tell you what's going to be successful for you or anyone else. What's going to be successful for them has to come from their heart, not mine. This is a good exercise to help you do it. I say take a deep breath, imagine you're 95 years old, you're just getting ready to die. Before you take that last breath, you're given a beautiful gift. The ability to go back in time and talk to the person who is listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better leader is much more important than the ability to help the person have a better life. What advice with a wise 95-year-old, you know, is what mattered in life and what didn't and what was important and what wasn't covered. The you that's listening to me right now. Whatever you're thinking now, do that. Terms of performance appraisal is the only one that matters. That person says you did the right thing and one person said you made a mistake. You don't have to impress anyone else. So, friends of mine interviewed all folks who are dying to get this question. What advice would you have on the personal side? Three themes. Number one is three words, be happy now. Not next week, not next month, not next year. You have a great western disease, I'll be happy when I get the money status, BMW, condominium, when I do this, I'll be happy. When is that old person facing death? Be happy. Number two is people, friends, family, people. Do whatever you can to build relationships with people. And then number three, if you have a dream, go for it. Don't go for it when you're 35 years old, when you're 85. Life is short. Have fun. Do whatever you can do to help people and just go for it. Old people, we never regret the risks we take and fail. We regret the risk when we fail to think I'm a, you know, as I've grown older, my aspiration in life is that trilogy has gone down and down. But my impact is going up and up and up. If one person out there listening to me today has a better life, I'm declaring victory.

Adam: Marshall, I love it. Thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Marshall: Thank you for inviting me.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.