Emotions Drive Your Behavior with Rob Kalwarowsky

Mastering Emotions to Drive Behavior – Rob K

‍

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here 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 Kalwarowsky. Did I pronounce that right?

It's pretty good. Calver.

All right. Awesome. Rob, I'm super excited to have you here.

‍

Rob Kalwarowsky's Background and Achievements

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. 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’ve transitioned into this whole leadership coaching and speaking arena after being an engineer, graduating from MIT. Ten years as an engineer, you’ve 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 a member of the Canadian National Water Polo Team. So I know you have leadership in you regardless of the current focus and emphasis. I've listened to some of the stuff you've done, and 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 about anything leadership or 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. 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 being an MIT grad engineer into leadership in the first place. 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.

‍

Struggles in the Engineering Career

And like when I graduated from MIT, for four years they’re telling you, "You’re the smartest person in the world. You’re gonna be a leader. You’re amazing," blah, blah, blah. Then I went into mining—coal mining. I moved out west in Canada, and I started delivering value. 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. We don’t want to change. We’ve always done it this way." 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. Constantly, he was passive-aggressive. He micromanaged me a lot. There were a lot of elements there that I found were starting to eat away at my self-concept. From a young age, 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 now it’s like, "I’m delivering, but they don’t want it."

Yeah. Where’s the recognition?

Yeah. Ultimately, it led me down this path of, "What’s my purpose in life? Who am I? Does my life even have any meaning at all?"

‍

The Turning Point and Mindset Shift

And not long after that, maybe a year later, I tried to kill myself. It was just a slippery slope.

And George, this is the part that I want to emphasize for folks—it’s not just that element. A lot of what we learn in movies is, "Hey, you hit rock bottom, and you’re gonna move to the beach and change your 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 all. I didn’t know how to change.

And so I continued to work at this place, which logically I knew was killing me. But I couldn’t get out. This is where a lot of the work I do now with mindset is so important, and that’s why I want to empower folks to become their own leaders—for themselves—regardless of hierarchical control or not, right? But it’s like 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, they’ve got a job, or they’ve got a career they love—because there are a lot of people that have careers they love, especially in our audience.

But I think what happens is you grow up getting conditioned 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 at 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 are a victim of bad circumstances, but because you’re allowing all of that—not consciously—to create your world.

So it seems...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 gotta do something about it"? Was there a pivotal point there—or not? Or was it when you were feeling suicidal? What was it that made you decide, "Okay, I gotta change"?

That was actually in 2019. So that was about eight years later. I never had that realization there. I worked there another year, and then I found another job. I left, and then I worked in another company. And then I ultimately found...I started listening to Gary V, Andy Frisella, and Brendon Burchard, and these guys. I liked Gary V at the time. He was like, "Start a podcast."

So I started a podcast. I started doing things. And then, about a year or two later, I hired my own coach.

Okay. That is...that’s critical, man. I gotta stop you for a second. I hate to ever interrupt, but I think the point that people need to understand—and I wanna really draw this to them—is, for whatever reason you did it, people are surrounded by just their environment. Their environment’s the only thing they’re affected by.

The minute you decide to start surrounding yourself with other people—and right now, today, people can do that online—you’re listening to podcasts, you’re listening to Gary V. Those things start to slowly open your mind up, right? And then, at some point, you decided to do something, and it was to start a podcast. So now the shift is happening. So people gotta realize that.

What you’re surrounding yourself with in your environment...it’s like what I love—you put on your site, your website: gain the confidence to address your mindset, 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?

‍

The Importance of Environment and Beliefs

Totally. And here’s the thing, right? Ninety-five to ninety-seven percent of the decisions we make every day are governed by our subconscious mind and the beliefs that we have. Those beliefs are typically formed from when we’re born to about seven years old.

And so, all those things—and yeah, think about it—a child version of you is telling you how to operate a multimillion-dollar business or to live your life. For me, I was 35. I was an engineer. And the beliefs that I had were around: if I get an A in school, my mom will love me, or my dad will accept me. And this is for folks out there. It’s not just you. My clients all have similar ideas.

It’s basically almost everybody. The beliefs and the mindset might be different, but everyone’s dealing with their mindset and how they were conditioned as a child and what they learned. And now, as adults, we have to start to choose and architect our mindset so we can get those outcomes and live the life we want to live.

It’s funny you say that because a lot of the common message that I talk about is that your beliefs are gonna determine your actions and the steps you take to change your life, right? And people say, "Oh, I want to change my life. I want to make changes." 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, that’s when you become really empowered. So you decided to start a podcast. I just wanna 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 from MIT. How did you...that’s not a simple thing. Most people think...what did you do? How did you just say, "I’m just gonna figure this out"?

I just basically bought a mic off of Amazon, and then I just figured it out. Gary V was like, "Oh, Anchor’s good." And I was like, "All right." So I signed up for Anchor. I had a mic, and then I just started emailing people I knew, and we started recording. I found Zencastr when it was early, and I just started doing it.

It was an engineering podcast. It wasn’t like leadership or anything like that, but it was so core to what I knew and the folks in the network I had that it got really popular.

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’s called Google, right? So you 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?

‍

From Podcasting to TED Talks

So the point is, you started. And if you hadn’t started that journey, do you think it would’ve led you to doing all this stuff on leadership?

No.

I’m assuming you’re not still doing an engineering podcast.

No.

And it wouldn’t have.

It wouldn’t have.

But starting is what led you there, right?

That’s right.

Yeah. Doing something.

Totally. So I started that podcast because I needed to build a brand, as Gary V was saying, so I could get out of corporate and sell. My goal was to do engineering consulting instead of working for bad bosses, which I had my entire career.

And so I built that show up, and I built my audience. That was why I hired my coach, Susan Hobson.

Okay.

I hired her because I was like, "I have this audience. I want to monetize them. I need help because I don’t know how to do that. I need help doing that."

I love it, bro. We are on similar paths. I love it because I’m gonna double down and stick a pin in this thing you said. And that is, what 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 struggling, start with something. But then you noticed he also said he hired a coach.

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, and the need for that in your life. How did you find someone? What was your way of finding them? Did you look for a related engineering podcast coach, or did you just look for a personal development coach? Like, how did you find a coach?

Yeah, I went to the source you were just mentioning. I just went to Google and Googled performance coaches, business coaches. I talked to a few of them.

And it was really when I talked to Susan for the first time that I felt like she saw me in ways the other ones didn’t. I didn’t know what that feeling was because I was so dissociated from all the stuff I was still dealing with. It just felt different. And when I’ve coached folks now, often the first session I have with them, people say to me what I basically said to Susan: "Nobody’s ever listened to me the way you have."

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 gonna give you like a little 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, or any of that 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 love speaking 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.

I walked into Susan’s office in October of 2019, and I did a TED Talk on a completely different topic than I imagined. When I walked into her office, my thought was, "I’m not a leader. Leadership is basically crap because every leader I’ve ever had was garbage." So I had a negative mindset. Of course, when I was playing polo, I had a couple of great coaches, but my association with leadership in business was: they’re all terrible.

And actually, the data backs that up. Basically, 65% of the workforce experiences what research calls a destructive leader, which means they destroy the goals and aspirations of the business as well as the well-being of the people.

‍

Overcoming Nerves and Embracing Meditation

Were you just completely nervous, not knowing where it was going? Was it 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.

But 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. 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 a lot of self-work. We use Internal Family Systems.

So I went and did a meditation with my parts during the break. And where I landed—actually, I’ve always had the belief that I was going to make it happen anyway. And I landed on doing a guided meditation for folks during the Q&A instead of answering their questions.

So I’m speaking English, and I have someone translating for me into Cantonese. And for the Q&A, instead of answering questions, we did a guided meditation to help people connect with their true selves so they could make better decisions. And it was just an incredible experience.

In fact, I just replayed a podcast I did a couple of years ago about how to prepare for a presentation. One of the most important strategies is, number one, be prepared. When preparation meets that event, the fears are less, and the confidence is higher—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 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.

‍

Addressing Mindset Gaps and Setting Boundaries

And I know from listening to you, that’s definitely the case. I want to highlight something else because leadership is a very general statement out there. I love that your topic was how to deal with an asshole boss or how someone can deal with their current situation. But I really want to draw this analogy—you put it on your website, I mentioned it before—gain confidence to address your mindset gaps, set boundaries, and choose how you deal.

Talk about those things because I think it applies to more than just a boss. You might be dealing with a toxic relationship, a bad partnership in a business, or all kinds of things. 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 creating 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 things. So just give us a little bit of a taste of that because I know you’ve got a book and some other things. How do you deal with mindset gaps when it comes to having a bad situation you’re dealing with?

And so this comes back to the mindset and the limiting beliefs that folks have. I’ll use myself as a playbook for folks because I think it’ll help. I learned that I never accepted myself. I had a belief that I was not accepted. This came from my dad—it doesn’t really matter where it comes from. Typically, your big core beliefs come from your parents, a teacher, or some authority figure when you’re a child. Now, by starting to see that I never accepted myself, I had to go outside myself to get the narrative that I was accepted. This started in school: "Hey, if I get an A, my teacher will accept me, and my parents will accept me because getting an A is reaffirmed." Then it went into the pool. If I’m good at water polo, my coaches will say, "Hey, you’re great," and my teammates will accept me for who I am. And this continued until I was 25. Then I was doing the same strategy: "I’m going to perform," but then my boss didn’t accept me.

So, mental note for the audience: 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 they’re even doing that in the first place. 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 it.

People hear that a lot. I know it’s a little bit of a ‘fufu’ type deal, but inner work means 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 recognized 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 there was some healing you had to do. There were some things you had to identify. Then how did that lead you into, I guess—you call it setting boundaries and stuff? Once you recognized that, isn’t it a work in progress? That wasn’t something that you just figured out one day, right?

Totally. The deep inner work—I still do it. But it took me—I’ll make this point—it probably took me around 200 deep therapy sessions. I did 100 coaching sessions. I did 40 ketamine sessions. Like, I still do a lot of deep inner work.

‍

Leadership Development and Coaching

Now, the big thing is, if we get back to this thing about the 95 to 97%. I want to pull in, George, what you mentioned about going outside your comfort zone and doing a talk. Let’s take that as an example. You’re out there, you’re listening, and George says, “Hey, go do a talk.” You feel something—“Eh, I don’t want to, that stresses me out,” or, “I don’t want to do that.” And maybe you’re the type who says, “I’m just going to push through that discomfort,” right?

A lot of high achievers say that. They say, “I’m going to push through anyway.”

Yeah. A lot of us do that, right? And we get good at doing that because we’ve learned that on the other side, we get recognition, right?

But here’s the difference. When you’re doing a talk, if you come across with this energy—if I had done it prior to me trying to heal—I would’ve come across as “accept me.” It would’ve been about me. Doing it now, I’m 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 manage the bosses that can be managed better. It’s the same thing, right?

So it is, 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 types 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 through, right? I love that. I’ve got to tell you, I really like the fact that what you’re saying—and I realize this: listen, everybody listening to this, they’re on a continuum. Some people push through, some people don’t do anything, but the common denominator here is awareness.

And if you can become aware that your inner world and your self-worth and things like that aren’t going to come from external validation, and you can only deal with it internally—then, once you’re aware of that, you’re on the journey. I think you’re right because I know a lot of big bestselling authors, celebrities, and 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.

For the folks who aren’t doing anything—the reason they’re not doing anything is that 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.

And even if you do something, your mind has still decided you’re going to fail. So it’s going to set you up 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. Then you can believe, “I actually can do it.”

It’s going to change the outcome.

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.

Yeah. 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.”

Yeah, that’s a huge difference. 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 try to validate the beliefs they already have unconsciously. So they put in little effort, and then they don’t get a result, and they say, “See?” They validate their bad belief rather than pushing yourself and putting more action in. Because sometimes, 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 and your beliefs can then raise. I think that’s an important distinction. You have some great programs and things like that. I know we’re going to be short on time here. Help us understand what you do now with this new knowledge in leadership and training. You do have some programs and things like that, right? Do you typically take individuals, clients, or groups? What do you do with this knowledge that you have to help people?

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. They only get leadership development training at 42.

Yeah. So there’s a 13-year gap between when you become a leader and when you actually get trained.

We don’t even let people who cut hair for a living do it without training, and yet we’re saying, “Oh, you’re promoted. You manage these people. Figure it out.”

Yeah, that’s why. No, that’s huge because I tell people, look—I’ve scaled businesses from small nutrition, fitness, education, and finance-type businesses to a hundred million dollars, done a billion dollars in sales. 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.” 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. Number two, you grow as well because learning to lead leaders is a growth of its own. Trust me, man. I’ve been there, done that. It is a challenge. But that’s good that you do that.

‍

Programs and Resources for Dealing with Difficult Bosses

Now, you have a book or an eBook that you said 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. What is that all about, and what’s inside it?

If you’re interested—if you have a bad boss or an asshole boss, or if you’ve ever had one, which almost guarantees you have—I have a free eBook for folks.

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.

Also, if you’re on that website as well, we have a “How to Deal with an Asshole Boss” program. For folks out there, I’m going to give you $50 off that program if you use the promo code MASTERMIND, all capital letters.

So you’ll be able to get that program for $297 instead of $347. It’s going to help you with a lot of the mindset tools. There are 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. Whether it’s mindset, boundaries, communication, or leadership development, remember: you may not be leading people or dealing with a bad boss, but these concepts and 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 place? Is it the website, or where are you online? What’s the best place for them to follow you?

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 at BossCoachRobK. Otherwise, it’s just my name on LinkedIn.

We also have a podcast, “Leadership Launchpad Project,” anywhere podcasts are available—Spotify, Apple, YouTube.

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’ll mean the world to us. We look forward to helping you. Obviously, the whole goal here is to help you create your best life. That’s why we bring you these topics on mind, money, body, business, and lifestyle. You’ve been spending time with us here today. We appreciate it and look forward to talking with you more. Once again, this has been The Daily Mastermind. Have a great day.

‍

‍

About Rob Kalwarowsky

Transform Your Leadership & Achieve Extraordinary Results | World-Renowned Executive Coach | TEDx Speaker | Author | Top 100 Most Dynamic Leader | Former College Athlete

With a client roster including Fortune 500 executives, C-suite leaders, visionary entrepreneurs, and Olympic Gold Medalists, Rob only works with top performers who want to dig into the work so they can achieve huge results. He’s the right coach for you if you’re driven to hit your pinnacle goals.

Rob has foundations of high-performance as he graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Management, was a 3-time Academic All-American in NCAA Water Polo and played on the U18 Canadian National Water Polo team.

‍

Guest Resources:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rob-kalwarowsky

YouTube: @bosscoachrobk

Website: https://www.robkalwarowsky.com/

‍

About George Wright III:

George Wright is a Proven, Successful Entrepreneur- and he knows how to inspire entrepreneurs, companies, and individuals to achieve Massive Results. With more than 20 years of Executive Management experience and 25 years of Direct Marketing and Sales experience, George is responsible for starting and building several successful multimillion-dollar companies. He started at a very young age to network and build his experience and knowledge of what it takes to become a driven and well-known entrepreneur. George built a multi-million-dollar seminar business, promoting some of the biggest stars and brands in the world. He has accelerated the success and cash flow in each of his ventures through his network of resources and results driven strategies. George is now dedicated to teaching and sharing his Prosperity Principles and Strategies to every Driven and Passionate Entrepreneur he meets. His mission is to Empower Entrepreneurs Globally to create Massive Change and LIVE their Ultimate Destiny.

‍

Get to know me:

1.  Subscribe to The Daily Mastermind Podcast- daily inspiration, motivation, education

2.  Follow me on social media Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube

3. Get the Prosperity Pillars Poster I Developed over 20 years from my Mentors.