[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and insights you need to turn your dreams into your destiny. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer interviews, leadership, and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now here's your host, a professional speaker, coach, and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:29] Nicole: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the Vibrant Coach and I have another amazing guest on our show today. And his name is Mitch Russo. Let me tell you all about Mitch. Mitch Russo started a software company in his garage-- him and Bill Gates hanging out in the same kind of locales-- sold it for eight figures and then went on to build a company worth over $25 million with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. He has been nominated twice for Inc Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year. Mitch's books include _Power Tribes: How Certification Can Explode Your Business_, which helps readers create new business divisions using high performance certification programs, and _Coach Elevation_, which outlines his process for helping clients discover their true purpose and connect that to their true mission, accelerating progress in both business and life. His software for coaches called _Client Folio_ aids coaches in making their clients more productive through goal tracking, accountability, and comprehensive coaching company management. His latest book, _Sacred Profits: From Meditation to Domination_, is his fourth book and addresses the need to integrate mindfulness into management. Welcome to the show, Mitch! I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:47] Mitch Russo: My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. And I'm excited to talk about the book.
[00:01:51] Nicole: Yeah. Look what I've got everybody, if you're on the YouTube, I've got it in my hot little hands and so does Mitch, we're like twinning over here! Yeah.
[00:01:58] So I really loved your story in the beginning of it, the prologue. You said before writing this book, my life as an entrepreneur brought me to enjoy a successful business life, raise my family and find a beautiful place to live, yet something was missing. Will you tell us your story? I think it's so fantastic.
[00:02:18] Mitch Russo: Sure. Sure. So I think like many people who have this goal of achieving success, they define success without ever having experienced it before. So, in a way, you might say you should like success. After all, it's success, right? But, but you've never experienced it before. You're not quite sure what that looks like.
[00:02:41] So, for me, when I started Timeslips Corporation, I defined success to become financially independent. To become wealthy, if you will. You know, to, to my level. At the time, I had nothing. So, anything over nothing would have been better. But at the same time, I had an idea of the type of financial success I was looking for.
[00:03:02] And that actually came pretty quickly. Meaning, by 18 months, we knew we had a successful company. We knew we had a great product and a lot of people loved the product and were fans of the company. But then something changed in me because now I know that I was, this company was now going to be successful, but it was no longer the goal for me to have financial success because I already had it. So what was I going to do?
[00:03:30] Nicole: Yeah. What's next?
[00:03:31] Mitch Russo: And what I discovered was that helping others, developing my team, and creating a place where people love to work was really my goal now. And I spent probably as much time studying that as I did business and marketing and sales and software and everything else I had to go through in order to be that success.
[00:03:54] And I discovered many little things along the way. Things that many people might have considered, like, naturally obvious, but to me were not. So, I had to make all my own mistakes and discover those little secrets, if you will --secrets to me-- on my own and that's kind of what happened.
[00:04:14] So, as you probably read in the book, my personal path took me down a journey in a completely different direction than business, down a spiritual path. I had a spiritual experience, had a kind of a waking up experience and realized, wait a minute. I love business. I love entrepreneurship. I love helping others, but there's a whole lot more. And then I look back and realized I had been applying these same ideas to all of the companies I've ever worked with. And that idea was both mindfulness and meditation. And so even when I was working with Tony and as we were building sales teams, and I think I tell the story in the book, I had noticed that my sales people were burning out. We'd get some great new people in, they'd sell like crazy and about six weeks later, they were at the bottom 10 percent of the entire company. And I've tried to figure out why. And I realized what it was. I realized that these people were burning out. They were on the phones constantly being told, no, no, no, hung up on, all this other stuff... So I said, well, what is that? Well, that is basically, it's causing pain in people and it's causing them to maybe even, challenge their self esteem. So I figured, what would happen if I created a way to rebuild that every week? And we introduced a company that I had a history with called the Sedona Method and I started coaching my own sales teams using the Sedona method. Now, full disclosure, I had been the vice president of sales and marketing for the Sedona company years prior so I knew the product really well. I knew the process really well and was very competent at taking people through the meditations. And it worked like a charm. And that's when I realized, if you could integrate mindfulness and meditation into a company that could turn directly into profits.
[00:06:11] Nicole: Yeah. That's awesome. And you mentioned Tony so casually, you're like, "Me and Tony were hanging out." So will you let everybody know when you say me and Tony, what you're talking about right there?
[00:06:23] Mitch Russo: Yeah, yeah, so, I'll give you a little bit of the back story. So when I was building Timeslips Corporation, which was my software company from the 1980s, I had a very pesky, persistent salesman call on me, trying to sell me advertising space and that was Chet Holmes. So, Chet was relentless. He would never give up. And first it was like a caricature of the pushy sales guy. And over time I developed a lot of respect for the guy. I mean, this guy was really trying hard and he was doing whatever he could and eventually, 18 months later, not very quickly, but eventually, we ended up doing business together. And working with Chet was a turning point for the company as well because we had never spent so much before on print advertising and when we did, it basically bought us market share in our target market, which were lawyers.
[00:07:16] So, we became friends, and over time, you know, he and I did trips together, we just had fun, we became buds, and we hung out, and we just went to Las Vegas and hung out, we did all kinds of fun things. Eventually, I brought Chet in to train the Sage sales force. He did an amazing job as he always does. And then later, after I sold my company and after Sage paid me out and all that other stuff, I got a phone call from Chet and we would talk all the time, but in this case he was upset. He asked for my advice, asked for my help, and I said I would. Well, I signed on to work with Chet and his little, tiny little consulting coaching company. I think they were less than a million dollars or two million dollars a year at the most. And I took on a very menial role. I was basically recruiting salespeople for him, just because he had no one else to do it. But later, six months went by, I tripled the sales force, we had perfected the hiring process, systematized it, mechanized it, and then he asked me to be president of the company.
[00:08:18] I'm compressing the story a lot, but bottom line is, he mentioned that he's been trying to get a meeting with Tony Robbins, he said he finally did. He had one meeting with Tony and said, look, Mitch is my partner. So if we're going to do anything together, it's going to be with Mitch. So Tony, Chet and I started meeting on Thursday nights. Every Thursday night at about 10 PM Eastern time and sometimes later Tony would join us on a call and we would talk through how to create a business out of what the three of us knew really well. My skill in building, scaling companies. Tony certainly had that skill in spades, but he didn't want to do that. He wanted a separate division that was going to be focused on this particular content, which was business content.
[00:09:05] And so, after five or six months of this back and forth, we finally figured it out and we made it happen. And we started Business Breakthroughs International with a 500 person event in Las Vegas, and it was off to a great start. So, that's the Tony I'm referring to.
[00:09:24] Nicole: Okay, and so we all know Tony Robbins. And if you're sitting there going I don't know Tony Robbins, you need to Google that immediately following this podcast. You need to get the books from the way back and, watch a couple videos and then just say yes! Right? Because that's his thing, say yes!
[00:09:41] Mitch Russo: Yeah, yeah,
[00:09:41] Nicole: All right, fantastic. So, you are noticing that your salespeople are burning out and that you can use this Sedona method with them. Will you share with us maybe about the Sedona method or how you helped your salespeople reinvigorate after listening to "no" so many times and burning out? What was your method?
[00:10:03] Mitch Russo: Well, first of all, there were approximately 50 salespeople, and I knew them all pretty well. And I also knew, not everyone, but I knew most of their hopes and dreams. So, I mean, the new ones coming in, it took me a while, but most of the people that were there for a bit, I knew what they wanted, I knew who they were. I identified the problem pretty early and I taught them how to meditate. And I have a very simple process. I teach people, it takes five minutes to learn and five minutes to do, but once you learn it, you can sit and meditate for 10, 20, 30 minutes and get a lot out of it. And it's a very simple watch your breath type of meditation. Since then I've gone much further. I now, after attending Joe Dispenza's amazing events, I,
[00:10:48] Nicole: Oh my gosh, I love Joe Dispenza.
[00:10:51] Mitch Russo: Yeah, now I work with Joe's meditations every single day now because they're life changing. But back then it was really very simple, you know, just breathe and listen, watch your breath and pay attention to the temperature in your nostrils as you breathe in and out.
[00:11:06] And then later, I realized that, you know, what is the Sedona method? If you look up Sedona training Institute or Sedona. com what it is, it's just simple process of letting go. And it basically consists of three questions. Could you, would you, when? And what we would do is we would run these little sessions where I would say, Could you let go of that feeling that you feel when you are rejected? And the answer would be yes. Well, would you let go of that feeling that you're feeling when you're being rejected? And the answer is yes. And then I would say, And when? And they would say now. Take a deep breath. Do this three or four times. What's happening is you are training your mind to release the emotion.
[00:11:53] Now, is it permanent? I don't think it's permanent, but it's helpful because it gets you out of that moment. And then what we want to do is replace it with something positive. So, what I also did-- and these are some things that I just figured would help-- is I had people take sticky notes and put them around their monitor with the names of the people they love. Every week we had to move the sticky note, otherwise it would become fixed in your mind and you wouldn't see it anymore. So every week we'd move it to a different part of the monitor. And I said, before you get on a phone call, just look at that sticky note and remind yourself why you're doing this.
[00:12:32] And so what we ended up doing is we completely changed the way Sales worked. And now we were not only seeing people stay longer, we're seeing even our better performers really, really excel. And that was a big part of the process.
[00:12:48] Now, at this point, we started to integrate this deeper into the company as well. And then later, when I started working with clients, teaching clients and companies to do the same thing, it was a beautiful, dramatic result. So I can get all kinds of complicated and teach you sales processes and show you funnels and AI and all this other stuff. But if you want quick results, you got to change your mindset. And there's no easier way to do it than with a couple of simple questions and a little bit of, breathing.
[00:13:19] Nicole: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I have practiced a Christian meditation called Centering Prayer.
[00:13:25] Mitch Russo: Mm hmm.
[00:13:26] Nicole: Made popular by Thomas Keating. I'm sure you're familiar with that. It's kind of the same thing. And then I got certified in yoga last year, Mitch! And so this breathing thing, it is a thing, so I couldn't agree with you more, and I love your message! I want to talk about in the book, in chapter one, you discovered your path, and you shared that with us a little bit, but then in chapter two, you talk about the power of purpose. And one of the main things I do as a coach is I'm always trying to get to the core, help people self assess, who are you at the core? What are your core values? What's your purpose? And this is not a normal thing, it doesn't seem like, for people to do, but so powerful.
[00:14:06] Mitch Russo: Yeah, it is. And when I build certification programs, I built something called the culture Parthenon. And the culture Parthenon, consists of a floor, columns and a roof. So the way I like to define this is that the floor of the structure is the CEO's values. What does the CEO really, really, really value more than anything else?
[00:14:34] Later, that becomes the key to almost everything. Secondarily, the pillars are what we basically call the code of ethics. So, what are the rules to this culture? Am I allowed to come in late every day? Is that part of the culture? Or, am I allowed to use curse words in public? Is that part of the culture?
[00:14:55] And the simplicity of this is almost hard to overstate. I come into companies that say they have a culture, and I say, then show me your ethics. Show me your code of ethics. And they say, what do you mean? What's that? I say, well, what are people allowed to do? Well, they're allowed to do whatever they want. Really? Well, how do you, how do know
[00:15:14] Nicole: Oh no!
[00:15:15] Mitch Russo: How do you know if they're doing the right thing or the wrong thing? He goes, well, people should know that. I mean, that's something they should know.
[00:15:21] Nicole: Oh... No, they don't.
[00:15:21] Mitch Russo: Okay. No, they don't. So those are the pillars. And then finally, the roof of the Parthenon is the why. It's the CEOs "why?" So what you've noticed is I've mentioned the CEO twice in this process. CEO is is both the roof and the foundation. And that is because the CEO dictates everything about direction, everything about values, and frankly, everything about the energy of the company. And you know, I talk about that in the book a lot. Manipulating energy in an organization is... if you're not purposely doing it, then you're doing it anyway. And you don't want to be in a place where it's happening somewhat randomly that way. I'll give you a simple example.
[00:16:08] Nicole: Yeah.
[00:16:08] Mitch Russo: Many, many years ago, our company was growing so fast that we moved three times in 18 months to bigger and bigger and bigger quarters. And back then there was no virtual, everything was live and in person. So I remember it was one of those days I got up on the wrong side of the bed. My wife was picking on me and I was picking on her back and we were not in a good mood. And I show up at work and I park in front of the building and I walk up the stairs. I walk into the lobby and I say, Hey, how's it going? And all of a sudden as I'm passing by, I hear her click the microphone, and she goes, Mitch is in a bad mood, look out. And I think to myself, Holy smokes! Am I that transparent?
[00:16:55] Nicole: Yeah. We're all a little emotionally unintelligent at moments. We think we're so sly.
[00:17:01] Mitch Russo: Right. And the truth is that it's so obvious, and if you're not taking care of your own emotional stability, then you're going to like throw up all over everybody around you. And, I don't have to tell you.
[00:17:15] Nicole: It's contagious. I mean, it's a virus is how I always think about it. It's, notice these are both bodily functions. Throwing up on people and a virus. Don't miss that.
[00:17:23] Mitch Russo: Right. Right. So we don't like to throw up on people. I don't want to do that. But what I will tell you is that if you pay attention to the little things, the big things tend to really become even more powerful. And I like to focus on the big things. But the little things are so important, you've got to get them out of the way and really got to stay focused on those first.
[00:17:47] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And you talk in chapter two about the difference between purpose and mission. You know, purpose is a journey and mission is different. It can change.
[00:17:57] Mitch Russo: That's right. This week's mission is X. This year's mission is Y. But our purpose stays the same. So, one of the exercises I, again, I take my clients through, is a exploratory session of really who you are, and it goes back to your why. And I'll tell you, I'll give you the punchline-- and before I do this, I don't give my clients the punchline-- but here's what the bottom line is. The bottom line is that everyone's true purpose, everyone is to help others. That's it. Now, that's your purpose. How you help others is your mission.
[00:18:38] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. He's got a section here on servant leadership, but I couldn't agree more. You know, figure out your things. It's in the book, it's in the book, people. So that is chapter two. Now, chapter three, you talk about the secret of resilience. And if you listen to the news, if you listen to the ads from the medical pharmaceutical companies that are coming through, there's a lot of people that are sad. We've got depression at every corner and a lot of people who are unhappy with the way things are working out for their life. So tell us about resilience. This is, I underlined it and put a star. I think this is absolutely true. Resilience is a decision. You have to choose it. It's so imperative.
[00:19:21] Mitch Russo: True. So here's the thing. And there's an important difference I want to make before we get into really what resilience is. Resilience is not stubbornness. You could be stubborn and think you're being resilient. Let me give you a quick example. I had a close friend who invented a new way for bicycles to turn gears. He called it wire drive instead of a gear drive. Anyway, it got featured on CNBC and CBS, and the guy was flying high with publicity. He raised two million dollars. He built a factory in Massachusetts, and couldn't sell a single bicycle.
[00:20:05] And, I mean, look, the bottom line is that it worked, but there was no blood spurting problem that he was solving. Who cares how the gears work in the back? Is it cheaper? No. Is it faster? No. Is it easier? No. It's just kind of cool. But here's the problem. You might say he was resilient because he didn't give up. In fact, he was so resilient or in this case stubborn that he literally took his entire family into bankruptcy to make this work. Back then, he asked me what I thought he should do. And I said, number one, cut your losses. Number two, license it. Make some money, let someone else use it, and let them pay you five cents for every bicycle that they ship with it. And that's how you can recoup your investment. Nope. He just plowed more and more money. He mortgaged his house to the hilt, finally lost his wife and family over this. That's not resilience. Resilience has a new word we're going to introduce here. It's called pivoting.
[00:21:07] Nicole: Ah, love it.
[00:21:09] Mitch Russo: So, if you are not able to see a way out, then you should quit. I had a software company 10 years ago that I started. I had a lot of hope for it. It was fantastic. I loved it. No one bought it. Well, I couldn't figure out a pivot to this until later. So I shut it down. Why? Because I'm not going to invest my entire life into something that's just not going to appeal to clients. Later, I figured out a way to use a part of it to build something that is now very successful, which is Client Folio. So if you don't have that ability to sort of see the future and pivot, get some friends to help you. Get a coach, let them help you,
[00:21:48] Nicole: Amen. That's good preaching, Mitch. I like it. Yeah, and I think that the faster you can pivot, the better, too. You do need to be thoughtful, you need to be discerning, you need to sit still a hot minute and think about what you're doing. Take a step in a different direction just to see what's out there. I'm a big believer in taking the next right step, you don't have to figure the whole thing out.
[00:22:10] Mitch Russo: Right.
[00:22:11] Nicole: Just one little step. Yeah. And you say in the book, resilience and flexibility are the keys to thriving in the face of challenges. You can create a resilient organization and resilience in yourself by embracing change, staying positive, learning from failures, building strong relationships, and practicing self care. So we just came full circle to the meditation, right? So I absolutely love that. Okay. So chapter four, you talk about embracing our uniqueness.
[00:22:40] I'm a big fan of Dan Sullivan. You seem to know a lot of cool people. That's the only really cool person I know other than you. And Dan has this thing, this book called Unique Ability. And so I've been a follower of his work and a part of his coaching program for a bazillion years. So what, yeah, what do you think about embracing uniqueness? Tell us about that.
[00:23:01] Mitch Russo: Well, I'll tell you a story about not embracing my uniqueness and how I kind of found that as almost a superpower. So I grew up and I had a drug problem in my high school days. And I had to go through a lot to fix that problem. I basically went through rehab and then I faced rejection by family and friends. Eventually I moved out of my entire neighborhood because I didn't want to be labeled like a junkie, 'cause that's what I was at the time. But I had grown past that. I had recovered. I had done work on myself and restarted in a different state. And that's where I ended up in Massachusetts for a long time.
[00:23:39] But what it really comes down to is it comes down to your own self talk. It comes down to what do you say to yourself? And your uniqueness is the key. So, I was afraid to tell Tony Robbins my drug history. I was terrified, in fact, that he would find out. And by the way,
[00:23:59] Nicole: Why? I'm curious why! He's all about the big changes.
[00:24:04] Mitch Russo: I know, but I felt ashamed about my past. I felt like, having done that, I was a failure. And then one day, Chet blurted it out to Tony.
[00:24:15] Nicole: Ha, ha, ha.
[00:24:17] Mitch Russo: Yeah, I love to blame Chet. He just said it, and Tony turned around to me, and he stared at me. He's like staring at me. And I said, oh yeah, that was a long time ago. And he goes, and he takes his hands, he puts them, pats me on the back, his hands are like the size of my entire body, pats me on the back. And he says, "Man, that's amazing. You got to tell your story. Mitch, that's incredible."
[00:24:40] Nicole: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Mitch Russo: And all of a sudden I realized, well, that's really where I came from. I mean, overcoming addiction in many ways was the key to who I am. It's the key to my success.
[00:24:53] The other thing was that I grew up forced into a box, like a lot of us. We go to school, we're forced into a box. I am a very creative person. But my folks wanted me to go into non creative areas. Because they said, well, how are you going to make a living when you grow up, you know?
[00:25:10] Nicole: Right. You're gonna be a starving artist or something.
[00:25:12] Mitch Russo: Exactly. But I wanted to play my guitar. I wanted to take pictures. I wanted to write. I wanted to do all these things, but they...
[00:25:19] Nicole: to an accountant.
[00:25:20] Mitch Russo: Oh God.
[00:25:22] A lawyer, a doctor, right?
[00:25:24] Exactly! But I did have one love that did align with all of this, and that was my love of engineering, my love of electronics. And so I did follow that passion and became an electrical engineer. Back then, computers were kind of new. So, I was sort of on the cutting edge of that. That's how I started my software company. But my point is very straightforward. If you don't embrace your uniqueness, truthfully, you're not going to be happy. You'll go through the motions. You'll end up like I did at some level, where you might even have the financial success, but you're drinking, or you're miserable, or you're on antidepressants, or you're not spending time with your kids and family and beautiful wife and husband. Come on. You gotta be real. You gotta be who you are. And that's so important.
[00:26:10] Nicole: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, one of the exercises I have people do when I coach with them is this thing called points of light. Like what were the little moments where the light bulb went off, or like you felt like God was sending a light beam towards you or struck you with lightning or whatever the case may be. If you examine all of those little things I think they definitely illustrate your purpose, right? And maybe even help you determine your next mission.
[00:26:38] Mitch Russo: Right. And the excuse that I hear sometimes is, Ah, you can't make money with that. You can't make money with that. And I would always beg to differ. Because I've seen people make money in art. I've seen people make
[00:26:51] Nicole: Of course!
[00:26:52] Mitch Russo: Music and photography, of course, is right. Now, does it mean that you have to be at the top of the entire industry to make money? No, no. I remember once, I was in high school, I played guitar, I had a rock band, but I also had a realization around the age of 17. As much as I love music, as much as I love playing the guitar, I had the realization I actually have no talent at all.
[00:27:18] Nicole: Talent. We haven't talked about that yet.
[00:27:20] Mitch Russo: Right. So I said, no point in me trying to become a rock star. I know I'd love to be, and that's kind of my vibe in a way, but I'm not a rock star. I don't have talent.
[00:27:31] Nicole: Yeah. But see, this is what makes the world go around. Cause I love nothing more than live music, Mitch. Like I live for the next live music event I'm going to go to.. And, see, somebody has to be the fan.
[00:27:43] Mitch Russo: That's right.
[00:27:44] Nicole: And I am an epic fan. So, that's my purpose right there. I'm supposed to go and sing every word and jump up and down and clap.
[00:27:51] All right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you're talking about being an artist. I just want to put a plug in. You probably know about this too, but there's a woman named Julia Cameron on the planet, everybody, and she wrote a book called _The Artist's Way_. And so I just want to say to everybody, if you're sitting there listening to Mitch going, I'm an artist too. And she has a book called _The Artist's Way at Work_, which is her second kind of installment around how to be an artist at work, no matter what you're doing. And she's fantastic. So check that out. All right. Chapter five, ethical decision making. Now I'm all about building a vibrant culture, and kind of embedded in that idea is that people are lit from within, meaning that they're turned on, they're on mission, they're on purpose. They're using their strengths, their unique ability, their uniqueness. But you're talking about here, like building a culture of integrity and I can totally get behind that. Talk a little bit how we might do that.
[00:28:44] Mitch Russo: It's so amazingly simple. It's much harder to build a culture of non integrity than one of integrity. Because if you are willing to be honest, if you are willing to speak frankly but sensitively, if you understand some basic rules-- simple rule is is praise in public, criticize in private. Those are simple rules that will get you to the point where you could be loved and admired by the people who are your employees or in your company. But without ethics, you stand on a very shaky foundation. Look, we've been through situations, with clients and on my own, where we've had a CFO who is embezzling money.
[00:29:26] Nicole: Hmm.
[00:29:26] Mitch Russo: That destroys the foundation of a company. I don't have to, that's goes without saying, of course, that's
[00:29:33] Nicole: Yeah without We're all having an Enron moment right now listening.
[00:29:37] Mitch Russo: You just gotta be careful. I mean, look, ethics is really all about being honest, being upfront and admitting when either you're wrong or that you don't know. When I was selling semiconductors many years ago, we had a CEO. He was brilliant. He was the inventor of our technology. But sales were terrible and we'd hired the best sales people and he wouldn't follow advice and all this. Finally, the board said, look, we love you, but we need to change CEOs. And he said, I don't understand. I'm the founder. What do you mean? He goes, yeah, but you're a technology CEO. We need a sales CEO. And you keep telling us that you can do that, but you can't. Know that you can't. We love you for what you did. Now let's get a sales oriented CEO, which again goes back to values and purpose too.
[00:30:31] But once we did this, the ethics of the company snapped into place because now everybody was on the same page. Everybody was on mission. Now we knew. In fact, this guy's name was Vinnie, the CEO, and in a down market, we were supposed to get $5 per chip for our DRAMs. And so he came up with a phrase that said, "a fin for Vin." So he wanted get five bucks per chip. They get a fin for vin. And it was a silly little thing, but it just,
[00:31:01] Nicole: It's a rally cry. Yeah. The mantra. That's good.
[00:31:04] Mitch Russo: It was, yeah, it magnetized everything.
[00:31:07] Nicole: That's fantastic.
[00:31:08] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference, or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results, your organization will get lit from within email her at Nicole at vibrant culture. com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrant culture. com.
[00:31:34] Nicole: Yeah. And he's got in here, from Mitch Russo, who's on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. We're talking about _Sacred Prophets: from Meditation to Domination_. He says, "Integrity is always doing the right thing, even when it's difficult. Don't overthink it, trust your gut and you know what's right." And I couldn't agree more. If your conscience is bothering you, it's probably not the right thing. All right. Chapter six, work life balance. Is it a myth? And this is what Mitch says, "Achieving a healthy balance between work and personal life can be challenging. And everyone says that we should do that, right? It's not always possible." What do you think about work life balance? How do I do that so that I can serve and I don't have the secretary telling everybody I'm in a bad mood over the intercom.
[00:32:19] Mitch Russo: So if you were to turn to your husband and say, you know what, I know we're both crazy, but what I love is that we're not both crazy at the same time. So, all right, so that's kind of a work life balance, right? So here's what it comes down to. If you just had this insanely amazing idea and you immerse yourself into a startup, we're not looking for work life balance here. That's what I mean by it's not always appropriate. We're looking for, seven days a week, 16 hours a day for the next six months. If you're not willing to do that, well, okay, it'll take longer if you could still do it. But I'm just telling you what I did. When I started Time Slips Corporation, that's I was dating this girl at the time.
[00:32:58] Nicole: Live, eat and breathe.
[00:33:00] Mitch Russo: Exactly. So she said to me, when am I going to see you again? I said Hmm, maybe next January. I'm kind of tied up for the rest of the year. And that was the end, I never saw her again. But the point I'm making is that, I had to immerse myself completely. Later, I was able to create work life balance because I had a foundation for it. That's what I mean by that.
[00:33:25] Nicole: Yeah. And I think, too, there are people that are not entrepreneurial that listen to this podcast and those that are, but it's like, you have a self managing company if you're the CEO, the owner, and then if you are running your department, you've got your people cross trained and you've given them the help and you've done the Sedona method with them and you have helped them and you've gotten the Mitch Russo's book, and they are able to run the department without you. Mitch, you probably know that many people, they don't even take a decent vacation because people are texting them the whole time they're in Hawaii or whatever. And it's like, you gotta get this thing under control. So it takes a while, but the investment. Oh my gosh, it's priceless. You can't even put a price on It Yeah. All right. So chapter seven's all about mindfulness and meditation. And we did talk about that already, but I'm curious, did you want to add something about the meditation and the mindfulness? You know, I think when you meditate, you're working on what Shirzad Chamine calls the sage brain versus the saboteur brain. I don't know if you're familiar with his stuff, positive intelligence, but he's all about, you've got to work the sage muscles of the brain in order to use them in times where you want to like, let somebody have it or tell somebody off or yell and scream or whatever. So another thought on mindfulness and meditation.
[00:34:46] Mitch Russo: Sure. You mentioned the different parts of the brain. I'm going to use a few different words, but it's sort of the same idea. So the cerebral cortex is where all of our thinking takes place. And, that's the blessing of being a human being, is we have one. But at the same time, it's a little overworked these days, for all of us. And when you move it out of the way, and you allow the limbic brain to take over and then you go deeper and allow the pineal gland to start transmitting and receiving into the void-- which is where everything is. That's where all your creativity is, that's where all your joy, that's where your future is, it's in the void. Well, you're not going to get there with the front of your brain, the thinking part of your brain. You're going to get there with the limbic side and with the pineal gland.
[00:35:34] So the only way to do that is through meditation. You have to move the entire thinking brain out of the way. And I like to call that old mind because, you know, you read in the book, I've had this experience where I was able to shed the old mind and that came through an awakening kind of a process. And when you shed the old mind, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden you have no ego. That would be ridiculous. What it means is that you've now separated from what you think is you. That's what it really means. So, I don't think it's me anymore when the thought comes in, Oh, you should beep your horn and give that guy the finger because he cut you off. I laugh. I said, yeah, that's kind of what I used to do. And, and so if you can make that separation and realize who you really are-- and by the way, and this is, you might say, my opinion, but from what I have observed is that we are really part of all. We are all
[00:36:34] Nicole: Mm hmm.
[00:36:35] Mitch Russo: connected in ways that are kind of hard to imagine, but true. And that connection starts to pay off dividends, when you start bonding with the people in a group like a company. Once you realize that you are all one and you start to connect with people on that level, everything changes for all of you and them too. And I want to be clear here. This is not okay, you're all now my friends, you're not my employees anymore. That's not it.
[00:37:03] Nicole: No, no, no. Don't do that.
[00:37:04] Mitch Russo: Right. Well, what, because they're not going to respect you if that's the way you act. What I'm trying to say is I, the most powerful words that you could ever say to another human being and mean them is, I see you. You say those words, and if you mean them, and they feel them, there's nothing more powerful that you could say to another human being.
[00:37:30] Nicole: Yeah. That's fantastic. And you know that he's connected us right to chapter eight, which is we are all connected, right? And I do want to say the thing where you say, you can separate from your old mind. Like sometimes I'll tell people it's kind of like an out of body experience, your head, your brain is over here looking down on what you're doing or what you would have done in the past, and so I like to call that this funny thing called like self awareness.
[00:37:55] Mitch Russo: Yeah, Yeah.
[00:37:59] Nicole: And so I think mindfulness helps you have this self awareness. And I use this phrase all the time and in the book you say, it's not all woo woo. So those of you who are listening going, what kind of woo woo are they talking about today on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast? It's not woo woo. Will you tell us why what you're talking about is not woo woo?
[00:38:19] Mitch Russo: Well because I think woo woo's now a dirty word. I mean
[00:38:22] Nicole: It is!
[00:38:23] Mitch Russo: And yeah, it's calling people a name. Look as soon as you categorize me, you have minimized me. So I don't want to be categorized by anybody and I don't want. I would never categorize another person. I'm not gonna say, oh they're German, so they like Wienerschnitzel or something. I mean, that's, it's such a stupid thing, but yet we do it all the time.
[00:38:45] And frankly, we rely on it to make quick judgments sometimes. And look, I'll tell you this because we've all felt it. You're walking down the street. You may be alone. It's dark. You see a group of young men, rowdy across the street, walking towards you on the other side of the street.
[00:39:06] You're going to say to yourself, that could be trouble, I better get out of the way, okay? That could save your life in certain circumstances. So, woo woo is a dirty word, and the reason I say that simply is because you are missing out if you automatically discount something as woo woo because you never know if it would apply to you.
[00:39:29] Nicole: So good. And let me just tell you the quote he ripped off so easily just a minute ago. The minute you have categorized me, you have minimized me. I love that. That's totally is it, do we say X able now? Is that what it is?
[00:39:41] Mitch Russo: Ha.
[00:39:41] Nicole: I don't know why we switched from the tweet. Anyway so here's what you say in chapter nine is that heart based decisions change everything. And let's use this as the last chapter. You've got more in the book. We need like two hours together. That's what I know. But I really believe that's true. You know, you can make decisions with three parts of your body. I think one is your mind, one is your heart. And dare I say it. My, maybe you think it's woo woo your soul. So tell me about heart based decisions, changing everything. Maybe people will go out and make one today if you'll tell them how to do it.
[00:40:13] Mitch Russo: Right. I'm not sure heart and soul are that different at all. I, so for me, it would be being able to see someone through my heart or through my soul, as opposed to just through my eyes.
[00:40:26] You know, I'm gonna divert a bit here, but you probably realize that everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell are electrical signals interpreted by the brain. So, when you taste something, your tongue is converting that to an electrical signal, goes to the brain. The brain then says, Okay, what does this electrical signal mean? It means curry, you know, or something.
[00:40:50] Nicole: Oh, I love a good green curry, don't you?
[00:40:52] Mitch Russo: Me too. But
[00:40:54] Nicole: Haha ha
[00:40:55] Mitch Russo: But the bottom line is that you can hijack those senses very easily. All you got to do is put on a set of 3D goggles and before you know it, 10 minutes later, you're fully immersed. What would happen if it turns out the whole world is an immersion? It's not that far fetched and it's been proposed before.
[00:41:13] So what would happen if the only way to truly know anything is to know through your heart? And that's also the only way to know anyone is through your heart. Now their heart may not be fully accessible to you but it doesn't have to be at first. You just have to find your way in. And it could be from a smile, it could be from a couple of kind words, but as soon as you have found that little crack that just allows the other person to relax and be who they are, then you can open up a dialogue that will go beyond anything you've ever had before.
[00:41:48] So, I like to make decisions from the heart because I can trust the heart more than I can the brain. The brain is trickable. You can trick the brain, just as I was describing.
[00:41:57] Nicole: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
[00:41:58] Mitch Russo: Can't trick the heart.
[00:41:59] Nicole: Yeah. It's been so good to have Mitch Russo on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. He's got another book-- he was so generous as to send me two! Look at this one, Power Tribes. Maybe you'll come back around and we'll chat another time. I don't know if you had a good time or not, Mitch, but
[00:42:16] Mitch Russo: I loved this, of course. Yeah so I will say though that, my journey as a writer has been so much fun. I didn't realize how much I love writing, so right now I'm about to publish a transformational fiction book that is a follow up to the book you already have and it's called Sacred Crossroads. That's coming out probably by the fourth quarter. And then I have a science fiction spiritual trilogy that is probably coming out, yeah, it's 275, 000 words, already done. It's being edited right now by the editing team, and that should come out next year.
[00:42:51] Nicole: Oh, congratulations. Yeah, it's like birthing a baby. I bet. Oh,
[00:42:55] Mitch Russo: Oh my goodness, yeah, it sure is.
[00:42:59] Nicole: That's fantastic. All right. Well, everybody we have had Mitch Russo on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast, and we've been talking about _Sacred Prophets: From Meditation to Domination_, and then he's also the author of this one, _Power Tribes_, and apparently four more books on the horizon. Lots of things going on with Mitch. So Mitch, if people wanted to find out about you and they wanted to get a hold of you, where would they go?
[00:43:22] Mitch Russo: MitchRusso.com, easiest place of all. Yeah, and I'm on regular social media and stuff, but I don't, I guess, I don't really respond to tweets and stuff. I'm not a big social media fan, but if you go to my website, there's a contact me form. You fill that out. You'll hear directly back from me for sure.
[00:43:40] Nicole: Oh, that's fantastic. All right. He's on the Twitter, the X, whatever, Instagram, the LinkedIn, all the stuff. So check him out there. We'll have it in the show notes as we always do. Well, Mitch let's do this. Maybe there's one more nugget that you want to share with everybody. What would you leave us with? What would be the final nugget?
[00:43:59] Mitch Russo: Yeah. So, it's easy to look at someone successful and think that they know something you don't. And my estimation is that it's not that they know something you don't, it's that they've tried more times than you have. And so, don't think of somebody that, oh, they have some sort of gift. Let's go back to being able to pivot and be persistent. Because, you know what, I could tell you just as easily about all my failures. And I've had some doozies, but the bottom line is that I take a licking and keep on ticking and that's kind of what you got to do too. If you really want to be successful you only fail when you give up. And so don't give up.
[00:44:42] Nicole: there's that resilience again. I love it. All right, everybody. It's been another fantastic episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. Would you please go down below and click the like button and then leave a little comment for Mitch. Leave us some love. We'd appreciate it. And next time we'll have another great author on the show and I'm looking forward to that. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Thank you, Mitch.
[00:45:05] Mitch Russo: Thank you.
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