IAM1376 – Author Inspires individuals to Create a Greater Resilience

Bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher Adam Markel inspires leaders to master the challenges of massive disruption in his new book, “Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience” (McGraw-Hill, Feb. 22, 2022).

Adam is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller, “Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life.”

Adam is also the CEO of More Love Media.

• CEO Story: Adam spent 18 yrs as a lawyer, then wrote a book Pivot when he made a pivot in his career. The book’s main body is about resilience which all can relate to when the pandemic hit us. No wonder the book was so successful that it became a bestseller. Recently he released a new book which was incubated for a couple of years.
• Business Service: Helping organizations and individuals understand the word resilience – how to handle the tough periods in life.
• Secret Sauce: Resilience software that will help leaders and individuals build their resilience.
• CEO Hack: Toggle principle – consciously unplug from the day-to-day operations (schedule-wise) to recharge.
• CEO Nugget: Resilience breathes resilience. Leaders should model it. You operate resilience and it becomes a culture, you have each other’s back.
• CEO Defined: Like a parent. A leader. It’s not just about you, it is servant leadership.

Website: www.adammarkel.com, www.changeproof.com

Instagram: @AdamDMarkel

Facebook: @AdamMarkelFanPage

Twitter: @AdamMarkel

LinkedIn: AdamMarkel, Ilovemylifecommunity

Podcast: change proof podcast

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Transcription

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00:21 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Adam Markell of MoreLove Media. Adam, super excited to have you on the show.

01:00 – Adam Markel

It's a blast. I'm thrilled that you invited me to be here.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I excited myself. And I was just fanboying over your business name and all the awesome things that you're doing. So before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Adam so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher, Adam inspires leaders to better the challenges of massive disruption in his new book, Change Proof, leveraging the power of uncertainty to build long-term resilience.

Adam is also the author of the No.1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and publisher of the weekly bestseller, Pivot, the Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life. He is the CEO and co-founder of More Love Media. Adam, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:49 – Adam Markel

Yeah, Gresh, let's do it.

01:50 – Gresham Harkless

All right, awesome, let's make it happen. So it sounds like you have all the keys that we need for the pandemic and everything from pivoting to being resilient and all those things. So before we jump into what you're doing, how you're doing it. Take us back, let us hear a little bit more about your story, what I like to call your CEO story.

02:07 – Adam Markel

My CEO story. All right, I'm gonna give you the real abbreviated version here. I was a lawyer for 18 years, and that was sort of my first sort of professional endeavor out of school. I spent a little time as a teacher before that, but really this was my career choice. And 18 years into that career path, I decided to pivot. I wrote that book called Pivot, which is all about the crazy reinvention of your life and your career at a point in time when a lot of people just would think it's too risky. I ultimately had that book, I think, reach a good audience at the time.

I think in 2016, when it first came out, people were a little uncertain about that concept of a pivot, felt like a mistake, it felt like an error and failed business, failed attempts, et cetera, at creating something that was scalable, a model that went bad. And so people weren't totally embracing the term at the time, even though it became a big bestseller. It started me on this path of not only authorship but also being able to speak to business audiences primarily and others about how it is that they pivot in a variety of different ways.

And then as the pandemic was approaching, I was already incubating a book on a chapter that was within that larger body of work that we now refer to as pivot. And that chapter was about being resilient. And then as the pandemic got going, it became so readily obvious to me in my own professional life, my own personal life, that the bigger topic, the bigger body of work was actually the work on resilience and pivoting was a sub-chapter or a chapter within that bigger body of work.

And so ultimately, we incubated over the course of a couple of years, a book that just was released in February from McGraw-Hill called Change Proof, leveraging the power of uncertainty to build long-term resilience. And that's really the that's the stuff that our company is so focused on these days. We help people, individuals, and organizations create greater resilience. And that's how it is that we are, I think creating a pretty positive ripple effect in the market and in the world.

04:35 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would definitely say for lack of a better term, timely indeed, to have all those things kind of in place and start to build them like during the pandemic and even before the pandemic, there's the idea of the word pivot, but I really wanted to 0 in on a word that you said that really kind of resonated with me was the word incubating. You said you were kind of incubating the books. Can you take us through, why did you use that word? What does that kind of mean to you? Cause I feel like there's a reason behind you using that word.

04:59 – Adam Markel

Yeah, I mean, I think incubation is a really interesting word too. I just like saying it actually.

05:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that is.

05:06 – Adam Markel

But the truth is, it's the process of things growing. You think about an incubator, and I've never really talked about it in this context before, but my first experience was when I was in grade school. I'm not sure if that was the case for you too, but they had the eggs and the chickens would hatch from the eggs, but they put it in an incubator in this little ecosystem that was all warm and cozy and was allowing this growth cycle to evolve and for us as little kids to see it. I think that's very much the case when it comes to anything that we want to create.

It's that same cycle of growth and nurturing. You have to nurture things. You have to create that correct,, that best possible ecosystem, that best environment for things to grow. I'm really blessed that I'm married. My college sweetheart like back in the day is really back in the day. We're married. We'll be married 33 years this summer. We have 4 kids. And anybody who's, you know, a parent out there can appreciate the concept of how you incubate an environment for your kids to be nurtured, for them to grow. And a business is like a baby.

06:22 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I truly appreciate you drilling down on that. We touched on a little bit about your book and your company, your organization. Could you take us through a little bit more about that, how you're serving clients, and how you're making that impact?

06:33 – Adam Markel

Sure. I would say that basic starting point, people have a specific way they look at resilience, they define it in a particular way. There's a certain paradigm that we've been living in when it comes to that, that word. And I'll just quickly say the old paradigm is that resilience is how we bounce back, how we absorb the blow and keep going in the midst of whatever is showing up. Our definition of resilience is based on almost 4, 000 assessment results. Resilience is not about endurance at all.

It's about recovery. It's about the way in which we ritualize our resets in the day, the amount of time that we are devoting, committing, intending for our recovery, for the way that we were able to regenerate our energy and restore ourselves. It's those individuals who have restoration practices and rituals that are already established during a typical day that are able to not only produce more creatively, and think more critically, but can go the distance long, then actually have greater capacity to handle more because they're not actually teetering on burnout. They're not exhausted.

07:51 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I appreciate you, you know, obviously with all the work that you did.

07:56 – Adam Markel

You know, people are living in that state of a fight or flight all the time. It's like this constant cortisol cocktail that's coursing through their veins. And that ultimately only leads to a depletion, a state of depletion, which in its most extreme state or form looks like burnout. So in that assessment, this resilient leader assessment that people literally, even your audience can just go to resiliencerank.com and get their own assessment.

It's free, it's 3 minutes long. But in that state of depletion, we are more susceptible to acute stress. So when things do change, when there is a disruption and one sometimes that we can't necessarily see coming or predict, the person who's depleted is far more likely to fold under that situation than the one that's, as you said, built up themselves, built their resilience up ahead of the time when it might be called for.

08:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. And I appreciate you for having, I'll call it the secret sauce, the thing that that proprietary software and make it available for people to kind of go and check out as the thing that kind of sets you apart. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be something you already touched on, but it could be like an app, a book, something from your book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:22 – Adam Markel: The toggle paradigm or the toggle principle is simply about how we in a typical day do the same thing that we go back and forth between our on and our off switch. So as a CEO with so much that's always riding on what we're up to, what's going on. And a lot of it's sitting on our shoulders to make decisions and we get decision fatigue and it's like everything fatigues, Zoom fatigue. We have to create this contrast between our ons and our offs and consciously unplug not just theoretically, but scheduling-wise. My wife again and

10:00 – Adam Markel

I, we talk about this because if it doesn't go into my schedule, it doesn't happen typically. But when it's in my schedule, there's a good chance, like a 99% chance this thing is going to happen. So when it comes to our rest, our recovery, those moments when we do sort of recharge, if it's scheduled, it's likely to happen. And the thing that, again, people don't realize about how you ritualize resilience, and that's what's part of this book is to show you how to do it. This can be everything from 10 seconds to one minute. That's like on the low, the short, quick side, almost like a Formula One race car coming into the pits. And 2 seconds later, it's leaving the pit with 4 new tires and a fresh get, you know, a tank of gas. It can be that short.

10:45 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And I want to ask you now for what I call CEO nugget. So there's a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. You might already session on this, but this could be something you would tell your favorite client. Or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business.

11:00 – Adam Markel

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I would say that resilience grows resilience, resilience begets resilience, and resilience breeds resilience. And more than ever before, I think it's so important that leaders, whether you're a CEO, or you're another senior-level leadership role, that are modeling this. Because when you're modeling it, then you're also giving people permission. So you have to model it for yourself for one thing, because it's going to keep you going longer and you're going to be able to perform at higher and higher levels and longer periods of time.

So that's a basic reason to do it. But secondarily, and I think more importantly actually, is that it will give permission to the people around you to do the same thing, take care of themselves. And that's when what happens becomes cultural. That's when there's a shift where it's you've operationalized resilience in the workplace. And now that workplace feels like a place where everybody has each other's back. And in a time like the great resignation, if you want to know how to keep people, how to attract people to your place.

But I think more important is when people recognize that the culture is one where It's a got your back culture versus a watch your back culture. That's a special sort of you use the word secret sauce. You know, that's a special ingredient that is a competitive edge, an unsung hero in whatever success you can imagine because people are gonna be there, committed at a level that at other, in other work environments that just won't be because they understand that ultimately, you know, they're in it, they're kind of in it on their own.

12:46 – Gresham Harkless

So let me ask you this for the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. And just as you talked about resilience can have a new and different and unique perspective. We hope to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So what does being a CEO mean to you, Adam?

13:02 – Adam Markel

I think it's like being a parent. And again, not everybody's a parent, but a CEO is, you're a leader, obviously. It means that what you do matters beyond just yourself. This is not just about you. In fact, it's one of the things that I say to myself. I remind myself about this before I do a podcast like the one we're doing now, or I'm speaking on a stage to 3 people or 3000 people. It's that it's not about me. I think that's what a CEO has to remind themselves of because ego is a big part of what is in the way of us being at our best.

I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning. The worst CEOs don't wake up in the morning put their feet on the floor and go, I want to be an egotistical SOB today. It's just that the self-awareness piece is sometimes missing. And when you recognize or when you remind yourself as I am apt to do, to remind myself it's not about me, that we're servants in this case, a servant leader, which I think is a good term, then there's a humility that comes with that because there's tremendous privilege and there's also tremendous responsibility that harmonizes that.

14:26 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that, Adam, and I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people get a hold of you, get a copy of your books, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:40 – Adam Markel

You know, you can go to changeproof.com is the way to get the book changeproof.com. You'll get not only access there to the assessment if you'd like, but you'll also get what's called a walk with Adam Which is a gift to to folks that go there Which is an opportunity for us to take a walk together because I one of my big rituals is walking And I love to listen to things, whether it's music or I listen to an audible. So it's me reading about 30 pages of the book, but it's less about the reading and more about what am I thinking about.

What's my pregame? How do I prepare for that walk? What am I doing on the alk? When do I stop and pause and look and ask and then make decisions or think about my choices and things, which is a theme throughout the book, this pause, ask, choose a theme. So changeproof.com can get all the access to the book, the assessment, the walk, etc. I think that's a great place to begin. And if your audience includes companies that are looking for speakers, they can find out more about, my own public speaking there as well. There's a link to my Adam Markel site from changeproof.com.

15:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Adam truly appreciate you for taking time out today and obviously for the work that you do as well too. We're gonna have links and information to show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:54 – Adam Markel 

Awesome, Gresh, thanks so much.

15:56 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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