Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I'm super excited today because we have a guest speaker, guest interview. I don't do this very often, but I'm really excited to have Rob here today. Rob Kowarowski, did I pronounce that right? That's pretty good. Awesome. Rob, I'm super excited to have you here. I want to tell everybody just a little bit of your background because with my busy schedule, it's rare that I take time, but I really dug into some of the stuff that you've got and just at a high level, and we'll get into some of the details. You're a TEDx speaker and co-host of the Leadership Launchpad Project. It's one of Canada's number three leadership podcasts. You transitioned actually into this whole leadership coaching speaking arena after being an engineer graduating from MIT. So 10 years as an engineer, got some great experience and stuff we'll talk about there that kind of pushed you into this leadership role, but you're also a three-time academic All-American in NCAA water polo, as well as Canadian national water polo team. So I know you have leadership in you regardless of the current focus and emphasis, but I've listened to some stuff you've had. I felt it was important to get you in here to talk to our audience. So thanks for being here, man. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, George. I'm pumped to talk anything, anything leadership mindset with you. That's awesome. I know that some people have picked topics that they're passionate about, but this is one that you grew into and found out of necessity because it seems that you have your own story. And I think it would be helpful for the audience to maybe take five minutes or so and just give us your background. Talk to us about what led you from going from being a MIT grad engineer into leadership in the first place. There was obviously people either find motivation or they have some kind of problem they're trying to overcome. So give us just a little taste of your background and what led you into this whole leadership arena. Totally. And like when I graduated MIT for four years, they're telling you the smartest person in the world, you're going to be a leader. You're the amazing, blah, blah, blah. And then I went into mining. So coal mining, moved out west in Canada and I started delivering value. And I think the first year I worked at this company. I saved them like $30 million. And basically my boss was like, we don't want you to do anything. It was like, we don't want to change. We've always done it this way. And he had a lot of mindset stuff that I see now that I didn't see at the time, but basically he rejected everything that I did. And constantly he was passive aggressive. He micromanaged me a lot. there was a lot of elements there that I found were starting to eat away at my self-concept. And from a young age, right? Like you do well in the classroom, your teachers tell you you're wonderful. Then in the pool, it's the same thing. Your parents are like, Hey, you're doing well. And then now it's, I'm delivering, but they don't want it. Yeah. Where's the recognition? Yeah. and yeah and like ultimately it led me down this path of what's my purpose in life who am i and then does my life even have any meaning at all and not long after that maybe a year later i tried to kill myself and it was just slippery slope and george this is the part that i want to emphasize for folks is not that element. It's a lot of, we learn in movies like, Hey, you hit rock bottom and you're going to, Oh, I'm going to move to the beach and change my life and do all these things. I didn't do any of that. I woke up. I went to work. I didn't change at home. I didn't know how to change. And so I continued to work at this place, which logically I knew was killing me. Yeah. But I couldn't get out. And this is where a lot of the work that I do now with mindset is so important. And that's why I want to empower folks to become their own leader for themselves, regardless if you're hierarchical control or not, right? Yeah. I didn't have the ability to choose because of all the stuff that was going on in my head. And let's unpack that for a second, because I think what people can relate to, whether they're a business owner or they've got a job or they've got a career they love, because there's a lot of people have careers they love, especially even in our audience. But I think what happens is you grow up, get in condition a certain way, and you feel like you're now in a situation. It sounds like this is the crux of that turning point where slowly, without knowing it, your self-worth, your confidence, everything is getting eroded. And you don't realize it first, but then you don't understand why. It doesn't make any sense. And so that's the cause of all this depression, anxiety, people don't understand that their internal world is being eroded because of, and you made that subtle point, not because you're a victim of bad circumstances, but because you're allowing all of that, not consciously, to create your world. So it seems, so was there a point in time where you recognized that? Did you do something? Did you hear something? What made you finally realize that was happening and decide, okay, I got to do something about it. Was there a pivotal point there? Not there. Or was it when you were feeling suicidal? What was it that made you decide, okay, I got to change? That was actually in 2019. So that was about eight years later. So I never had that realization moment there. I worked there another year and then I found another job and I left and I worked in another company and then ultimately I found, and then I started listening to Gary Vee and Andy Frisella and Brandon Burchard and like these guys. And I, like Gary Vee at the time, he was like, start a podcast. And so I started a podcast and I started doing things. And then about a year or two later, I hired my own coach. That is, that's critical, man. I got to, I'm going to just stop you for a second. I hate to ever interrupt, but I think the point that people need to understand, and I want to really draw this to you, for whatever reason you did it, people are surrounded by just their environment. So their environment's the only thing they're affected by. The minute you decided to start surrounding yourself with other people, and right now today, people could do that online. You're listening to podcasts, you're listening to Gary Vee. Those things start to slowly open your mind up, right? And then at some point you decided to do something and it was start a podcast. So now the shift is happening. So people have got to realize that what you're surrounding yourself with in an environment, it's like what I love, you put on your site, your website, gain the confidence to address your mindset, but choose how you deal with your boss and take control of your work environment. That's what you did by basically surrounding yourself with all this positive stuff, right? Totally. And here's the thing, right? Is 95 to 97% of the decisions we make every day are governed by our subconscious mind and the beliefs that we have. And those beliefs are typically formed from when we're born to about seven years old. And so all those things, and think about it, child version of you is telling you how to operate a multimillion dollar business or to live your life as a, for me, I was 35, I was an engineer. And the beliefs that I had around, if I get an A in school and my mom will love me or my dad will accept me. And this is for folks out there. It's not just you. Like my clients all have similar ideas, right? You mean, you mean it's not, they're not the only ones. Is that what you mean by that is they're not the only ones dealing with it. A lot of people are dealing with that, right? That's right. That's got it. It's basically almost everybody. The beliefs and the mindset have different beliefs, but everyone's dealing with their mindset and how they were conditioned as a child and what they learned and how to now, as an adult, they start to choose an architect or a mindset so we can get those outcomes and live that life that we want to live Yeah Yeah It funny you say that because a lot of the common message that I talk about is that your beliefs are going to determine your actions and the steps you take to change your life. Right. And people say, I want to change my life. I want to make changes. But if your actions don't reflect what you're saying, then it's doubtful you really believe it. So that's why we call them limiting beliefs. Right. Because these beliefs you have, you don't look at them as limited or not. But when you start to realize they are that you can do more then that's when you become really empowered. So you decided to start a podcast. I just want to hit on that for a second. Did you have experience with that? Did you have somebody that said, let me show you exactly what to do? You were an engineer, probably a pretty sharp guy graduating MIT. How did you just, you just, cause that's not a simple thing. Most people think, what did you do? Like, how did you just say, I'm just going to figure this out? Yeah. This was what, this would have been 2017 or 2018. Yeah. I just basically, I bought a mic off Amazon and then I just figured it out. And Gary V was like, oh, anchor is good. And I was like, oh, so I signed up for anchor. I had a mic and then I just started call, like emailing people I knew. And we started recording. Like I found Zencaster when it was early and I just started doing it. And like, it was an engineering podcast. It wasn't like leadership or anything like that, but it was so core to what I knew. and like the folks in the network I had that it like got really popular. And the goal- It's so funny. Bro, we did the same thing. Like I downloaded the Anchor app. I heard of Gary V. Here's the thing, guys. If you want the secret to how to do anything, it's this crazy thing. You've probably never heard of it. It's called Google, right? So Google it. That's how I started my podcast. But download Anchor, listen to people that do podcasts. You said something that was interesting. I want to make a note for people because look, guys, listen to me. Success leaves clues. sometimes if you don't listen close enough, you miss the clues. One is he started an engineering podcast. First of all, that's gotta be the most boring topic I could think of. No offense, but it didn't matter. You were doing something, right? So the point is you started. And if you hadn't started that journey, do you think it would have led you to doing now all this stuff on leadership and maybe outside that, but I'm assuming you're not still doing an engineering podcast. No, and it wouldn't have. but starting is what led you there right that's right yeah totally so I started that podcast because I was like I need to build a brand as Gary V was saying yeah so then I could get out of corporate and sell my goal was to like do engineering consulting instead of working for bad bosses which I had my basically my entire career and so I built that show up and I built my audience. And then I was like, that was why I hired my coach, Susan Hobson. And I hired her because I was like, I have this audience. I want to monetize them. So I need help because I don't know how to do that. I need help doing. I love it. Bro, you got, yeah, we were like on similar paths. I love it because I'm going to double down and stick a pin in this thing you said. And that is the way you're saying is start with something. Guys, listen, whether you're in a current business, you're not happy with, whether you're active at your job, whether you're doing well or you're struggling, start with something. But then you notice he also said he hired a coach. And at the end of the day, you start with what you know, and then you go to somebody that can help you to take it past that. So how did you choose a coach? I just did a podcast recently on coaches, mentors, the need for that in your life. How did you find someone? What was your way of finding? And did you look for a coach related to engineering podcast? Or did you look for a personal development? Like, how did you find a coach? Yeah, I went to the source you were just mentioning. Yeah, I just went to Google and I Googled like performance coaches, business coaches. I talked to a few of them and it was really when I talked to Susan the first time was I felt like she saw me in ways that the other ones didn't. Got it. And that felt, I didn't know what that feeling was because I was so dissociated from all the stuff I was still dealing with. Yeah. It felt different. Yeah. And when I've coached folks now, often the first session I have with folks, people say to me what basically I said to Susan was like, nobody's ever listened to me the way you have. Wow. Isn't that crazy? People just want to be listened to. You just want to be heard. And the challenge a lot of people have is they're frustrated because they don't feel heard, but they don't do anything about it. They just stay frustrated. And guys, I'm going to give you like a little bit of a jump to the case here. Fast forward, this guy's now in business with his original coach. So talk about going from starting something, hiring a coach, now being in business, doing a TED talk. We'll get there in a second. but that's an amazing transformation. And yet you didn't have any special leadership, knowledge, training, tons of money set aside, like all this kind of stuff to do it. You just started doing it. That's crazy. How soon after you did your podcast, got your coach, did you do a Ted talk? And I wanted to ask you why you chose to do a Ted talk. What was the point of that? And then let's walk through the experience of planning and prepping for it. Because I don't know if you're just a naturally gifted speaker and you just love to speak in front of people, but 99% of people don't. So tell us about the TED Talk and why and how it went. Yeah. So this is the part, George, where I really want to inspire folks is I walked into, I didn't walk, we Zoomed, but I proverbially walked into Susan's office and it was October of 2019 and I did a TED talk in a completely in a topic that when I walked into her office I was this was my thought I was I'm not a leader and leadership is basically crap because every leader that I've ever had was garbage a problem yeah I had a negative I didn't even know like of course like when I was playing polo I had a couple great coaches but like I my association was leadership and business, they're all terrible. And actually the data backs that up is basically 65% of the workforce experiences what the research calls destructive leader, which means they destroy the goals and the aspirations of the business as well as the wellbeing of the people. Yeah, most leaders are not leaders. Yeah, yeah. In fact, they're worse. They're not even managers, but okay. So keep going. It was October, 2019. you got your coach and then fast forward to the TED talk or how far after that did you decide to do that yeah so with our process at elite we do a lot of mindset work and so we started working on some of the belief limiting beliefs and that kind of stuff and then we started looking at emotions and we started doing some future visualization stuff and I kept coming back to I was really bad it because also I was like incredibly depressed at the time, but I kept seeing myself on a stage doing a talk and I kept thinking it was like a mental health talk. And so that sort of stuck into my head. And then I went on this incredible transformation where I hired a therapist to do a lot of the deep trauma work people who suffer from mental health problems have to do. I got a psychiatrist where we finally figured out the medications. It took, for folks out there, if you suffer, it took me about 25 different medications to fall on the right one. And then I also started doing ketamine treatment, which is a psychedelic for folks out there. And these can be, if you use them in the right way, they can be incredibly transformative, as well as they can help you change your mindset very quickly. Got it. And I've heard, I have a bunch of buddies of mine, a lot of people have brought up the topic of ketamine and stuff. It'll be a whole nother podcast for us. But so you, when did you do your TED Talk? How many months after you started doing coaching and started doing the visualization and stuff And what was the topic of your TED Talk Leadership right Yeah So we went after the a little bit the other angle but yeah the talk called how to deal with an asshole boss. It should be out sometime like October, probably. They didn't say when, just said in a few months. And I just did it July 2nd. And so it was about three and a half to four years since I started coaching. Did you, so were you just like completely nervous, like not knowing where it was a nerve wracking deal. In other words, it was obviously way outside your comfort zone, which is where most greatness lies, right? So here's the thing, George, when you work on your mindset, you can transform all those fears. And we had a morning rehearsal at the TED Talk and I did it. It was weird because you're speaking to an empty room basically. and then they asked me a few questions as part of the q a and i didn't feel good about my answers but what i do is i do a lot of self work we use internal family systems yeah and so i went and i did a meditation with my parts during in that break and where i landed actually i mean i've I had the belief that I was going to make it happen anyways. And I landed actually for the Q&A on doing a guided meditation for folks. Now, this is in Japan. Wow. I'm speaking English, and I have someone who's translating for me. Nice. And so for the Q&A, instead of answering questions, we did a guided meditation for folks to get them to connect with the true self in order for them to make decisions in a better way. And it was just an incredible experience. Wow, it is crazy. In fact, I replayed a podcast I did that I had done a couple of years ago about how to prepare for a presentation. And a couple of the most important strategies is number one, be prepared, right? When preparation meets that event, the fears are less, the confidence is higher. And it's all about that. But I think the mindset piece is something that I don't talk a lot about. with regards to doing some type of a presentation or delivering a powerful message. And so I really like that. But I do think for most people, I believe that getting outside your comfort zone, whether you fumble it all up or not, you're going to come out of it on the other side, just feeling like a million bucks. It's going to take you to a new level, a new plateau that you can bust through. And I know from listening to you, that's definitely the case. I want to highlight on something else because leadership is a very general statement out there. I love that you talked about your topic being how to deal with an asshole boss or how someone can deal with their current deal. But I really want to draw this analogy of, and you put it on your website, I mentioned it before, gain confidence to address your mindset gaps and set boundaries and choose how you deal. So talk about those things, because I think it applies to more than just a boss. You might be dealing in a toxic relationship. You might be dealing in a bad partnership in a business. You might be dealing in all kinds of things. And typically, we talk about strategies on how to deal with that. But you bring it back inside. And I'm a big advocate of inner game, create your outer world, right? Inner world, outer world. But you talk about gaining confidence by addressing your mindset gaps, setting boundaries and choosing how you deal with. And so just give us a little bit of taste of that, because I know you've got a book and some other things, but how do you deal with mindset gaps when it comes to having a bad situation you're dealing with? Totally. And so this comes back to the mindset and the limiting beliefs that folks have. And so I'll use me as a playbook for folks because I think it'll help. I learned that I never accepted myself. I had a belief that I am not accepted. This came from my dad. It doesn't really matter. Typically, folks out there, the big core beliefs that you have will come from your parents or a teacher or some authority figure when you were a child. That's typically how it works. Now, by starting to see that I never accepted myself, I had to go outside myself to get the narrative that I'm accepted. So this started, right? It was like in school, like, Hey, if I can get an A, my teacher will accept me and my parents will accept me as doing an A is reaffirmed. Right. And then it went into the pool. If I'm good at water polo, my coaches will say, Hey, you're great. My teammates say, Hey, they'll accept me for who I am. And then this continues until I was 25. And then I was doing the same strategy. I'm going to perform, but then my boss didn't accept me. And then who am I? So mental note for the audience. We, most people look for validation externally to increase their self-worth and self-confidence. What they don't identify is the core fire. They deal with the smoke, not the flame, the fire. Of why you're even doing that in the first place. They just hear doing that will never solve the issue. You came to the awareness because you did that most of your life and excelled. And then all of a sudden you weren't getting that, but you're really identifying, I want people to understand this, that you do have to do the inner work. Like you have to do, people hear that a lot. I know it's a little bit of a foo-foo type deal, but inner work meaning there's a core reason that you have problems in your life. It's a real responsibility thing because what you're saying is that your external world was affecting you, but you recognize it was your internal world that was causing it. Not just causing it, but not validating it. So you did this work and you found that there was some healing you had to do. There was some things you had to identify. And then how did that lead you into, I guess you call it setting boundaries and stuff. Once you recognize that, isn't it a work in progress? That wasn't something that you just one day was like, all right, I figured it out. So the deep inner work, I still do it, but it took me, I probably did around 200 deep therapy sessions. I did 100 coaching sessions. I did 40 ketamine sessions. Like I've, I do a lot of deep inner work still. Now, the big thing is if we get back to this thing about the 95 to 97%, and I want to pull in George, what you mentioned about, Hey, go outside of your comfort zone and do a talk. Let's take that as an example. You're out there, you're listening. George says, Hey, go do a talk. You feel something. I don't want that stresses me out or I don't want to do that. And maybe you're the type who's, I'm just going to push through that discomfort. Right. Yeah. I'm that. A lot of high achievers say that they just, I'm going to push through anyway. Right. Yeah. And so a lot of us do that. Right. And we get good at doing that because we've learned that the, on the other side, we get recognition, but here's the difference is when you're doing a talk, if you come up, we'll come across with this energy. If I would have done it prior to me trying to heal, I would have came across as accept me. It would have been about me. doing it now, I am accepted because I accept myself. So the talk is about the audience and impacting them to go out and make changes in their lives to either leave the bosses that are abusing them or to manage the bosses that are like that can be managed better. And this is the same thing, right? And so once we heal what's going on between our two ears, If we heal that I'm not good enough, or I'm unlovable, or I'm not accepted, or I'm powerless, or I don't belong, or those type of things, it changes the 95 to 97% of the decisions that you don't even realize you're making. Yeah, that subconscious autopilot of life, which most people are just drifting, right? I love that. I got to tell you, I really like the fact that what you're saying, and I realize, listen, And everybody listening to this, they're on a continuum. Some people push through, some people don't do anything. So but the common denominator here is awareness And if you can become aware that your inner world and that your self and things like that isn gonna come from external and you can only deal with it internally then once you aware of that you on the journey And I think you're right because I know a lot of big best-selling authors, celebrities, experts that deal with it their whole lives. That's the point, right? It is your whole life, but that doesn't mean you can't create your best life now and live your best life now. Now you have- True, just one point. Yeah, go ahead. And so the folks that aren't doing anything, the reason they're not doing anything is you have a belief. Your mind has already decided that you're going to fail and it's trying to protect you from taking a risk and failing. Yeah. That's the reason you don't do anything. Yeah. And even if you do something, your mind has still decided you're going to fail. So it's going to set you to fail. If you do the inner work and you can change your mind, which you can absolutely do. because I've done it. You can change your mind and then you can believe I actually can do it. It's going to change the outcome because your brain's not going to sabotage you. Should I call this person to make a sale or not? If you believe you're going to fail, you're not going to call that person. These small decisions you make every day will be aligned towards this is the outcome I know I'm going to get because it's who I am versus not. That's a huge difference. Yeah, I think you hit it. And I don't think people really realize the depth of how powerful that is. The bottom line is, regardless of your core beliefs, your beliefs are going to drive your actions, which create a result. And unfortunately, some people are, they try to validate the beliefs they already have unconsciously. And so they put in a little effort and then they don't get a result. And they say, see, and they validate their bad belief rather than pushing yourself and putting more action in. because sometimes the faith and belief, a whole other conversation we can have, but sometimes you have to just trust in your ability. And I think having a coach or a mentor is what sometimes allows you to have confidence or faith in yourself to put more effort in so that you can get a better result so your beliefs can then raise. And I think that's an important distinction. But you have some great programs and things like that. I know we're gonna be short on time here. Help us to understand what you do now with this new knowledge and leadership and training things you have like that. You do have some programs and things like that, right? Do you typically take individuals, clients, groups? What do you do with this knowledge that you have for people that you're trying to help? Yeah, totally. So for folks out there, I offer one-on-one leadership mindset coaching so we can start to change your mind to become who you want to become. We also do group leadership development. So if you have a company and you want to train your leaders, which here's a good stat for you. the average person becomes a leader at 29 years old and they only get leadership development training at 42. So there's a 13 year gap between when you do and when you actually get trained. So we don't even let like people who cut hair for a living do it without training. And we're saying, oh, you're promoted. You manage these people, figure it out. Yeah. No, that's huge because I tell people, look, I've scaled businesses from small nutrition, fitness, education, finance type businesses to a hundred million dollars, a billion dollars in sales. And the quickest way to scale a company is through your leadership. It's investing in your leadership. Most people bump up against, okay, I'm doing everything. And then I, but if you will invest in your leaders, B2B type stuff here, if you invest in your line level leaders and managers to develop them. Number one, you leverage and your life is much easier. And number two, you grow as well because learning to lead leaders is a growth of its own. Trust me, man, I've had, if you listen to this, like I've been there, done that. It is a challenge, but that's good that you do that. Now you have a book or an ebook that you said that you would be able to offer the audience here. Tell me about that real quick because I'm going to put the show notes, in the show notes, I'm going to put a link to that. But what is that all about? What's inside it? Yeah, totally. So if you're interested, if you have a bad boss or an asshole boss, or if you've ever had one, which almost guaranteed you had, I have a free ebook for folks. So if you go to howtodealboss.com, you'll be able to sign up and get the free ebook about how to deal with your asshole boss. And then also, if you're on that website as well, we have a how to deal with an asshole boss program. And for folks out there, I'm going to give you $50 off that program. if you use the promo code mastermind, all capital letters. And so you'll be able to get that program for $2.97 instead of $3.47 in that. Love it. It's going to help you with a lot of the mindset tools and there's also some practical tips about what kind of boss you have and strategies you can use with those. Yeah, I'm going to recommend that you guys go check this out. I'll put the link in the show notes, but keep in mind here, like I said before, I know the topics in this book because I talked with Rob quite a bit about this before this episode. And whether it's mindset, boundaries, communication, leadership development. Remember, you may not be leading people or dealing with a bad boss, but these concepts and these principles are things you can use in a lot of areas of your life. So I highly recommend you go check it out, get the book. Where's the best place for them to follow you, Rob? Give us where's the best places, the website or where are you online? What's the best place for them to do to follow you? Oh, totally. Yeah. So the best place to follow me is on LinkedIn. I do have Instagram and TikTok, but those are actually, if you like comedic attempts at leadership, follow me on Instagram and TikTok, boss coach Rob K. But otherwise, it's just my name on Instagram. And then we also have a podcast. So leadership launchpad project anywhere. This one's available. So Spotify, Apple, YouTube, it's out there. and we'll definitely get George on to chop it up. So it'll be fun. Absolutely, man. I got some great stories for you over the years. Jeez, I'm getting to the point where I got more stories than I do actual real life. Jeez. No, this is good, guys. Listen, I'll put all the links in the show notes and we'll get this pushed out on social media so that you can share it with individuals as well. But Rob, super excited to have had you here. I'm glad you joined us. I know we're going to be doing a lot more together. We'll be talking more often as well. I love this concept of tying the mindset with leadership and also dealing with your current environment. So once again, thanks for being here, man. Is there any last minute advice, tip, or anything you'd like to leave people with before we go? Totally, yeah. Thanks for having me, George. And this is the tip that I have for folks is you mentioned it, is the emotions drive the behavior. And so where we always start with folks is start to notice those feelings. We call them red flag feelings, but feelings like frustration, anger, sadness, these are the feelings that are going to give you a window into what beliefs you have. And that will ultimately help you start to identify where are the areas where you can change these beliefs to get those results that you want. So if you feel that reticence about applying to go speak somewhere, George was saying, or you feel fear about making a sales call or you don't want to send a connection request or these kinds of things, that's the opportunity to find what that belief is so you can ultimately get the result you want. So your emotions and feelings are going to be your window and the awareness window for you to create the change. I love that. That's great. And it's funny that you say that where the topic is leadership, but emotions and feelings. I love that. Thank you again, guys. Listen, do me a favor. Do me a solid. Share this episode. with anybody that you know, it'd mean the world to us. We look forward to helping you. Obviously the whole goal here is to help you to create your best life. That's why we bring you these topics on mind, money, body, business, and lifestyle. And you've been spending time with us here today. We appreciate it. Look forward to talking with you more. Once again, this has been the Daily Mastermind. Have a great day. Oh, God is so ridiculous.
