IAM1899 – Author Inspires individuals to Create a Greater Resilience

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Adam Markel Teaser 00:00

But I think more importantly, is that 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 ingredient that is a competitive edge. People are going to be there committed at a level that at other work environments that just won't be.

Intro 00:19

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've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the IAMCEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:47

Hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on operations. The systems we'll set you free. So think about systems, think about flow, sustainability, potentially working out in your morning routine, waking up early, e-commerce, and different business models. Think of the operations in the models that basically set up the foundation to allow the creativity within organizations, but also to make sure the trains are running on time and things are going as they should. Now, this is extremely important because we often can turn to the sexy parts of business and forget about the operations and how important that is.

So I really want to focus this month on this specific topic. Sit back and enjoy this special episode at the IAMCEO podcast. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is from the IAMCEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Adam Markel of More Love Media. Adam, super excited to have you on the show.

Adam Markel 02:07

Oh, it's a blast. I'm thrilled that you invited me to be here.

Gresham Harkless 02:10

Yes. Excited myself. And I was just fanboying over your business name and all the awesome things that you're doing. So, before we jumped into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Adam so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

Bestselling author, keynote speaker and workplace expert and resilience researcher, Adam inspires leaders to best of 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 number one Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Publisher Weekly's 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 IAMCEO community?

Adam Markel 02:54

Yeah, Gresh, let's do it.

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Gresham Harkless 02:56

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. 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.

Adam Markel 03:12

Oh 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 my first professional endeavor out of school. I would spend 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 mistake. It felt error and failed business, failed attempts, et cetera, creating something it was scalable, a model that went bad.

So people weren't totally embracing the term at the time, even though it became a big bestseller and it started me on this path of not only authorship, but being able to speak to business audiences primarily and others about how it is that they pivot in a variety of different ways. Then as the pandemic was approaching, it 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. 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 chapter within that bigger a body 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 really 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.

Gresham Harkless 05:28

Yeah. You said you were incubating the book. So take us to why. Why do you use that word? What does that kind of mean to you? Because I feel like there's a reason behind you using that word.

Adam Markel 05:36

Yeah, I think incubation is a really interesting word too, just saying it actually, but the truth is, it's the process of things growing. Like you think about an incubator. I've never really talked about it in this context before, but my first experience was when I was in grade school, and 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 and 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 married my college sweetheart back in the day. Is really back in the day. We'll be married 33 years this summer. We have four kids and anybody who's 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.

Gresham Harkless 06:51

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

Adam Markel 07:02

Sure. I would say it is a 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 word. And I'll just quickly say the old paradigm is 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 based on almost 4000 assessment results. Resilience is not about endurance at all. It's about recovery. It's about the way in which we ritualize our resets and in the day, our 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.

Because it's those individuals that have restoration practices and rituals that are already established during a typical day that are able to not only produce more creatively, think more critically, but can go the distance, actually have greater capacity to handle more because they're not actually teetering on burnout. They're not exhausted.

Gresham Harkless 08:17

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

Adam Markel 08:22

You know, people are living on in that state of a fire 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 is 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.

Gresham Harkless 09:18

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. And I appreciate you for having, I'll call it the secret sauce, that proprietary software and making it available for people to go and check out as the thing that kind of sets you apart.

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and 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?

Adam Markel 09:42

The Toggle paradigm or the Tackle 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. It's everything fatigue, zoom fatigue, we have to create this contrast between our on and our offs and consciously unplug and not just theoretically.

But scheduling wise, my wife again, and I, we talk about this, because if it doesn't go in my schedule, it doesn't happen typically. But when it's in my schedule, it'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 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 a 10 second to 1 minute. That's on the low, the short, quick side, almost like a formula 1 race car coming into the pits and 2 seconds later, it's leaving the pit with 4 new tires and fresh get, take a guess. It could be that short.

Gresham Harkless 11:02

Truly appreciate that. I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. It'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 you younger business self.

Adam Markel 11:17

Yeah, I love that. I would say that resilience grows resilience. Resilience begets resilience, 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 roles that you 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 it'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. 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 at 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 importantly is that 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. That's a special ingredient. That is a competitive edge, an unsung hero in whatever success you can imagine because people are going to be there committed at a level that at other in other work environments, it just won't be because they understand that ultimately they're in it. They're in it on their own.

Gresham Harkless 12:57

So, let me ask you this for the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show. Just as you talked about resilience can have a new and different and unique perspective, we hope to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show.

So, what does being a CEO mean to you, Adam?

Adam Markel 13:12

I think it's like being a parent. And again, not everybody's a parent, but a CEO is you are 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. And I think that's what a CEO has to remind themselves because ego is a big part of what is in the way of us being in our best. The worst CEOs don't wake up in the morning and put their feet on the floor and go, I want to be an egotistical, S. O. B. today. it's just that the self-awareness piece is sometimes missing and, when you recognize, when you remind yourself I am apt 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 a tremendous responsibility that harmonizes that.

Gresham Harkless 14:26

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 ahold of you, get a copy of your books and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Adam Markel 14:41

You can go to changeproof.com is the way to get the book. 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 folks that go there, which is an opportunity for us to take a walk together. Because 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 walk? When do I stop and pause and look and ask and then make decisions or think about my choices and things? It's a theme throughout the book. This pause as choose theme.

So, changeproof.com. They can get all the access to the book, the assessment, the walk, et cetera. 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.

Gresham Harkless 15:42

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Adam truly appreciate you obviously for taking time out today and obviously for the work that you do as well too. We're going to 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.

Adam Markel 15:53

Awesome, Gresh. Thanks so much.

Outro 15:55

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by CB Nation in Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. IAMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating.

This has been the IAMCEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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