Sabino  00:00
I remember the second year of college where I got my first taste of humble pie. I ended up not passing core courses in engineering. I got a D, and it broke me. I couldn't fathom the concept. And I remember walking into the teacher's office, sitting down across the table from him. And this gentleman at the time was the foremost authority globally in his field and integrated circuits, and he just saw the look on my face, and he said, "Look, I want to set your mind at ease. I can't set your mind at ease about this grade. We can talk as much as we would like about it. Nothing's going to change. But one thing I will set your mind at ease is about 30 years ago, I was in the exact same seat that you are, and I had my first failure, and I never thought that it would happen. And I want you to have the context of, hey, it's going to happen again. It's never easy. It's never fun. It's how you rebound from here that matters. But look where I am in the very field that I failed my first course, and know that this is a blip in the radar, and frankly, you'll look back at it as a blessing in disguise.

Steven Evans  01:23
Thank you, Sabino, for being here. This means so much, and I'm so excited to be speaking with you this morning. And if you wouldn't mind, before we dive in, it would be great if you take 10 seconds just to introduce yourself.

Sabino  01:33
Awesome! Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. Folks, my name is Sabino Dissemini, and I'm calling in here from lovely Boston, Massachusetts, this morning.

Steven Evans  01:41
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you. I think the best place always to sort of kick things off is at the beginning, and I find it's awesome to set the stage for sort of everything that follows. I think really around the ages of 1617, when you're you're focused on leaving home, take us back to the moment when you left home. What were some of the values that you had then, and who gave them to you before you really had a chance to test them?

Sabino  02:06
Yeah, no, that's a it's a great question. I would say, you know, taking it back just a little further and quickly coming back to it, you know, I was born in Montreal from a family of immigrants. My parents were both born in Italy. They made their way to this country at a very young age, thrown into the madness of North American lifestyle, and so you know, if I look at who I was and who I had evolved to at 16 years old, a lot of that comes from the values that I received from an immigrant family that had to fight for everything. You know, my grandfather came here with $8 to his name, my father brought us from Canada to the states at a very young age, and and so we were always a very tight knit family. We were always very much very resourceful family, kind of all for one, one for all. And so, you know, come 16 years old, I took 1,000,001 lessons from my father and from my from my parents and I was excited about the journey. I was excited about the change. I saw myself following a similar career path to my father. He had had a technical background as a chemist and then evolved into a sales career and led a sales organization. And I saw him through the various parts of that journey, and I just found connectivity to my skills, my experiences, where I derived my passion from, and I and I saw a similar career journey for myself. And it was around that time where I started thinking, "Hey, well, when I go to college, I'm I'm going to jump into a business career, and that was one of the nudges my father gave me early is look. You're passionate about math and science. You love the problem-solving dynamics of everything you do. Why not start with something like engineering, where you have interest, where you have excitement, and you can develop a skill set that kind of differentiates you as you enter the the business world? And you know, to me, I think I was working towards that path and exploring lots of different options, and excited to get away from home and kind of craft the journey on my own.

Steven Evans  04:07
Excellent. I mean, there's so much there as well. Like thinking through, you know, your history, right? Your family of origin and the lessons that you perhaps gleaned from being resourceful. I mean, can you speak a bit about that, and also about just the lesson of your father, who also came from very little.

Sabino  04:24
I thought of that word "resourceful" as we were kicking off the conversation, and I say that because I never felt that there was something put in front of my parents that they couldn't tackle. And you know, when we moved here, we had a really close extended family when we were in in Montreal in Canada, and when we came here, it was just us. My father bought a slightly older home at the top of a cul-de-sac, and so there we were in that cul-de-sac. In that home, there was 1,000,001 things that my dad wanted to tweak along the way, and so from a young age, I think I. Five years old, just before five, my fifth birthday. When we got there, every weekend was a next little project. All right, we're gonna rip out the floor and we're tiling the floor. All right, we're working outside tomorrow. We're taking down trees, and so as much as there was a focus on education, I learned piano at a young age, and there was various things that you know, hobbies and interests, but a lot of it was that journey of kind of building our home, both physically and and and and emotionally and spiritually. I would say beyond that, and so seeing my father travel all week long, come back to the family, be fully present, fully involved, and for him to have the energy to tackle more with us, I think that was just something that I saw in week in and week out, and I think that was a huge part of the work ethic that developed. And I go back to that immigrant work ethic, and that's something to me that you can't replace. Right, that idea of having nothing handed to you and really needing to make it happen-it can be overwhelming if that gets put on you later on in life. But when that's just the hand you were dealt from the very beginning, that's just a part of your DNA. And I saw that from my mother as well. I mean, my father was on the road and he was traveling, and she was the just her with the three kids, right? Throughout the course of the week, and she made everything happen, managing the home, you know, keeping us straight through that journey. And so, to me, because we almost lived on that island for that period of time until we created our network and we built our family here in the states, but I would say at the outset it was all in our court. And I think that idea of if it's in front of you, you can do it. Others have done it before you, and just put your mind to it, put your head down, and go. I think that was just such a big part of what created the momentum and the drive that springboarded me into lots of things growing up.

Steven Evans  07:03
Interesting, and and it sounds like you all were very very close as you're speaking about it. You can feel the the love and the care. And you have siblings. It sounds like

Sabino  07:13
yeah yeah. I have an older sister Laura, who's a couple years older than me, and a younger sister Nikki, who was just around six years younger, and it's two very different dynamics growing up. Where you have the sibling close in age, and you're growing together, and then you have that sibling that's so much younger that I remember. You know, she'd be three years old, and we were the babysitters, right? And so, you know, at that time, I think there was the closeness with the two sisters in a very different relationship from the outset, where it's almost like you have a mentorship role for one, and you know you aspire to follow the other one. It was definitely a great relationship with both sisters.

Steven Evans  07:54
Wow! And like when it comes to the time when you're sort of beginning to step out on your own, what are some of the tenets or some of the things you felt like you needed to do or to be to matter?

Sabino  08:04
Yeah, I felt like I needed to prove it all on my own, and I would say that from the lens of you know I was a great helper in the journey up until 1617, 18, and then I said, well, I want to prove to myself that I can do this too, and I would say part of that obviously is going out on your own off to university and making that happen. That was something that in my family hadn't been done. When my father went to college, he went to college in the city that he grew up in, lived at home, and that was a very common thing for Italian immigrants: just stay together as a family until you're often married, right? And so for me, it was okay. I'm ready to do this earlier, right? I want to show that I can be on my own, I can be self-sufficient, I I can spread my wings. And I think having seen just a very strong paternal figure in front of me, I just had that desire to go do and make happen. And so that was I'd say part one. I mean, fast forward to you know when I purchased my first home, the first thought that came into my mind is like I can do this too, right? I can rip out these floors and tile. I can change these bathrooms. I can you know, and it was just like all those little things of having seen it done. The confidence to say, yeah, I can remodel my home. Yeah, I can I can tackle these little things that might be overwhelming at the outset, but at the end of the day, I know I can get through it. So I'd say yeah, that's popped up in lots of different ways, even to the very end here as I find myself in this journey of my career.

Steven Evans  09:36
Yeah, and I mean, take us through then the first few years away. You went to school and then afterwards, did you choose a profession or did you jump right into working?

Sabino  09:45
Yeah, so I went actually back home, if you will. I went to university in Montreal, which you know I did have some family that was there. Both sides of grandparents were in Montreal, so I would stop in and spend some time with my family. But I'd always had. Great connection with the city. Even though we moved at a young age, we'd go back several times a year to visit friends and family. So it was that cool balance of being off of my own downtown Montreal, an amazing city with a great energy to it. I'm a huge hockey fan, so being right next to my home team was an added benefit as well. When I went there, I had made the decision to move into electrical engineering, and that was based on my passion for physics, my interest in complex problem solving, and it was intense. It was humbling at times. You know, I had gone through high school. I was at the top of my class. You know, great SAT scores in the first year of college actually went quite well, and I remember the second year of college where I got my first taste of humble pie. You know, as we were diving into the complexities of electrical engineering, and I thought that the work effort I had put in in the past would be sufficient for the where I was going for the rest of this college journey, and and I quickly found out that wasn't going to be the case. I ended up not passing core courses in in engineering. I got a D, and it broke me. I couldn't fathom the concept of oh my gosh, forget not an A. Like you like you're taking this course again. And I remember walking into the teacher's office, and I remember sitting down across the table from him, and this gentleman at the time was the foremost authority globally in his field in integrated circuits. And he just saw the look on my face. He just saw how I was walking into his room, and he said, "Look, I want to set your mind at ease. He says, "I can't set your mind at ease about this grade. We can talk as much as we would like about it. Nothing's going to change, right? You're taking this course against again with me next year. He says, but one thing I will set your mind at ease is about 30 years ago I was in the exact same seat that you are, and I had my first failure, and I never thought that it would happen. And I want you to have the context of, hey, it's going to happen again. It's never easy. It's never fun. It's how you rebound from here that matters. But look where I am in the very field that I failed my first course, and know that this is a blip in the radar. And frankly, you'll look back at it as a blessing in disguise. And I can't tell you that I had all connected with that sentence or that sentiment when he had it, but I will tell you that looking back, that first of many failures to come, I thought the message that he gave me and looking at me in that moment, not as a student teacher relationship, but as a human that just didn't feel like he was getting Back up to me. That was one of the best experiences from my time at the university itself. You know, not thinking about all the great stuff that happens from a personal standpoint. But I, I always reflect on that, and I was thinking about that this morning as a great little anecdote that always sticks with me.

Steven Evans  12:57
Absolutely, I can't imagine. I mean, just experiencing that from the professor and the warmth and humanity, as you describe it, I mean that's pretty amazing. And it sounds like it has had a tremendous impact, right? The description of resilience, really, of being able to bounce back quickly, being able to take a couple of hits, but then keep moving forward. I mean, how has that served you in, I guess, later in that college career, and then into you know working.

Sabino  13:25
Yeah, I would say that it was a gut check and a reality check that made me realize I was going to have to work harder than I ever had before to stay at the level that I wanted to be. And so I would say, you know, the rest of the university experience from educational standpoint was really great, and I took a different approach, and I took a different mindset, and frankly, it was an inflection point there. And I would say, through my life and my career moving forward, when you're stuck in the muck of it, when things are happening, when things are down, when you feel that down and out, like a lot of times, myself personally, I'm sure there's others which much much better interpersonal awareness and and ability to kind of pull themselves out of it. But you don't you don't feel it in that moment. Like you just feel the overwhelming intensity of how hard it is and what's going wrong and how could this happen. But it's that once you get yourself over that hump, and once you get yourself outside of that, just the immediacy of the problem and the immediacy of the issue, just being able to pause and realize this too shall pass. You know that's something that you'll hear often. I think is just so so so important. And you think back to all of those blips in the radar when they happened in your life, when you were in sixth grade and the girl you loved didn't want to go out with you, or when you were in high school and that one college you really wanted to go to didn't want you there, and you go through all these things, and in that moment it seems like the worst thing that could happen, and how am I. Ever gonna get over this? And you always reflect once you have that time to come up prayer and breathe. Of like, okay, that most critical and most important failure that took place for me five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I don't even think about it today. Right. But if I do, I usually think about it from the lens of it made me tougher. It made me stronger. It made me who I am today. And I think you know those that can really lift themselves above the challenges of the moment to realize the importance of that moment in their life journey. I mean, that's a really powerful skill. Not easy to do, but it's a really, really powerful skill.

Steven Evans  15:39
Agree, agree, and just being able to know when you're approaching sort of that limit, I suppose, and and being able to know, okay, like it's sort of a I need to either slow down or readdress or make a change. That's sort of the introspection that I hope that listeners of the show sort of take away is that it's not always about just white knuckling your way through. It's also about the revaluation and making sure that you're in touch with yourself. And I think that's where the strength comes from. It's not about not failing; it's about learning how to stand back up after you do and knowing the right steps to take afterwards. And so, I guess in this that time, you know, as you're transitioning from college to worker, was there anything perhaps that was like building underneath that you weren't aware of at the time? Something that maybe you had to contend with later on that maybe popped up in a surprising way.

Sabino  16:31
It's a tough one. I'd probably have to give a ton more thought to that. But I would say the college experience, the stepping away from home. I think the narrowness of your worldview becomes apparent. You know, I would say to me, as I reflect on my college journey and the relationships I made with the people that grew up in different ways, with different experiences, with different backgrounds, that were also coming to grips with different changes in their life as well. I just think that it's amazing how, as you grow up and you live in your bubble and you transition into these new experiences and you broaden your horizons, the worldview that you have and how much it changes and how much it broadens, and I don't think that is a journey that ever ends. But I always chuckle, thinking, imagine that worldview that you have when your journey is all said and done. You know, imagine if you could start one day with that, right? You know, like how much less important the problems would be, how much more willing you would be to take risks, and how much more you'd be willing to look at life through the lens of others. You know that there's a book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and it's one of several books that I read early in life that I don't think I genuinely understood until I read it that second, that third time at different phases, and that concept of you know most people that you interact with they're they're actually good at heart. They're trying. They're struggling through their journey. They're making way their way through the complexities of life, but no two people that see something ever see it through the same lens. They see it through their their biases, their experiences, their worldview. You know, in the lens that they can comprehend it. And I I think that as time went by, I did a much better job, and I wished I could have started at a much younger age, of looking at problems, conflicts, opportunities, and even just interactions with folks through a very different lens, and asking the probing questions to begin to even scratch the surface of what lens could this person be looking at this through?

Steven Evans  19:04
Definitely, and I think it's not always easy. I think at first because you have to really take a step back. It begins to challenge you in a way. Some of your beliefs, the way you see things, to be able to see it from another perspective. So it does take practice, but I do agree 100% And like when I think about those first years of working, can you walk us through perhaps like the psychological terrain of those first years, where you know you kind of are coming out from college, you have all this confidence, you know, in your chosen craft, and now you're working.

Sabino  19:37
Yeah, so it was the the summer before my first job, a buddy of mine said, "Hey, you know, there's an opportunity for us to do some painting here in the city. It's great pay. It's like 40 bucks an hour. We'll be hanging off at tall buildings. It'll be a ton of fun. And I'm afraid of hikes, so that hanging off at tall buildings wasn't the best thing. But I called, I called home, and I let my folks know, "Yeah, you know what? Instead of coming home for the summer, I'm gonna I'm gonna do some paint." In the city, it'll be some good money. And I, and my dad nudged me, and he said, "Listen, you're going to start working in a year. He says, "Why don't you try and get some kind of research opportunity, or you know, see if you can connect with a professor and the part of your field that you're most interested in? And I said, "Yeah, you know, I'd reached out for some internships, but I didn't get them. And he said, "Well, did you ever think of just reaching out to a bunch of professors and offering to do free work. I said, "No, I guess not. I said, "So I might as well give it a shot. And so I reached out to 10 or so professors here in the Boston area, and one of them immediately replied to me. And I mean, he's like, "Wait a sec. So you're an electrical engineer and you want to do research work and you're willing to do it for free? Like, how fast do you? I'm going to say yes. And so, so. an awesome professor WPI had me come and and they were doing some interesting research experience around sensors, epiglottal sensors that you'd put around the neck to measure the capacitance as you're opening and closing your vocal cords, and it was for high noise environments. Some of that could be in the military. Some of that could be in construction. But how do you capture the voice? Well, you know, from an auditory standpoint, you don't have the best signal. But if I can get a little bit around the neck to understand how your vocal cords are vibrating, and I can marry that data together, maybe that maybe there's a something there. And so that was the research he was doing. And I was like, okay, well, sounds super cool. Let me come in and do that. And had a great summer, learned a ton, and at the end of that, had a little something to put on my resume. And when I submitted resumes for jobs, a company by the name of Nortel Networks, which is now bankrupt and actually went bankrupt while I was working there, that's a story unto itself. But that company had some connections at WPI and had a great interview. And I find myself at Nortel Networks as my first job as a systems engineer, and that systems engineer role was actually the bridge between the engineering and the sales to help customers understand the complexity of the technology, bring it to life, bring it all together, and so it was a perfect first opportunity that came from a little nudge of like, hey, maybe do something a little bit different and take a risk and reach out to some professors and maybe see if you can crack crack a nut that you hadn't before. And the opportunity was just such a sweet spot for me in a couple of different ways. It was that marriage between technology and sales? But when I say sweet spot, I was surrounded by a bunch of 40-year-old individuals who had been in the field for 20 years. So as I walked into it, I was completely-you know-I mean, like this wasn't like okay, let's come into like some some entry-level college position. This is like no, no, walk into a team of seasoned vets and figure it out on the fly, really, really, really quick. And it was the first year in many years they did a college new hire program. So there was 50 of us that came in on this program.

Sabino  22:51
And the amazing part about it was the willingness of all of the folks in the organization who were just thrust with this 20-something that doesn't really have the skills, the knowledge, the capabilities to be valuable in any way, but to really just mentor me along in a journey. And so this was before the days of Teams and all of the other various video technologies. And so we were always in the office, and we were always hitting the road. Someone be going out to a meeting. They'd say, "All right, Sabino, ride along. You can ask me all the questions. They call me the human question mark, so that you can ask us all the silly questions you have, all the questions you should have known 10 years ago, and and and all the questions we wish you already knew. But you get that hour in the car on the way to the meeting, and then you listen in that meeting, as intently as you possibly can, and you got the hour on the drive back to ask us anything you want, so you can figure this out. And you know, it was fun that we there was 50 of us scattered throughout the country, and we were all going through this journey. And all of us went went through it so differently, but the consistent thread was just the excitement and willingness of the field to take these these young guns into their team, surround them, learn them up, and make them fully functional systems engineers in six months. And that was one of those overwhelming tasks. Like you can't get 20 years of experience in six months, right? And you can't even fake it till you make it. You really have to figure out like what's my sweet spot going to be? And my sweet spot ended up being a sweet spot that I replicated several times throughout my career. At the time, Nortel Networks was bringing together data and voice, right? So you had the old landlines, you had the voice over IP and the video calls that we're doing today, and they were trying to marry those two technologies together, and what I quickly realized in that business was half of the folks were data folks, and half of the folks were voice folks, and I can never know data better than the data folks, and I can never know voice better than the voice folks. But as they were all trying to come together with this unified knowledge and skill. I could learn voice faster than the data folks. I could learn data faster than voice folks, and then I could teach them how to connect the dots.

Steven Evans  25:08
Right.

Sabino  25:09
And so we went from me being a spudge from both sides of the business to then creating a curriculum of teaching voice to data folks and teaching data to voice folks because that was from a business standpoint. I had really lived life through each of their lenses and can see the struggles of how they were not bringing the two businesses together. And so I created that curriculum. I brought proposed it to my boss at the time, who was an amazing mentor for me throughout my career, and I still think fondly of. And I proposed it to him. He said that'd be spectacular, and it was an opportunity just two years into this job to be giving back so much to the folks that had given so much to me and created so much opportunity, and then also gives me an opportunity to then move to this tip of the spear, right? Because there's the where we were in these two business models and the where we were going, and I was able to focus on the where we were going. And that concept, when I say replicated many times throughout my career, and I think is relevant to anyone as they're navigating a corporate career, is figure out where this company is going, figure where the momentum is. Right when I went to Microsoft, this was pre-cloud, but quickly you could see where we were going. Find yourself in that tip of the spear. Find your way through the place that others are nervous, anxious, or frankly so locked into the ways of the past that they're not ready to go, and make your mark there because it's one thing to be impactful in your role; it's another thing to then go to where the you know I'm a hockey guy, right? So skate to where the puck is going to then really create an opportunity to differentiate yourself. So I kind of rambled there, but I'd say it was all set in motion from that first opportunity, and I and again, I couldn't be more thankful for the folks that took us under our wings and helped, you know, pave the way for us there.

Steven Evans  27:05
Definitely, I mean, it sounds like it's perfect mix of challenging work, inspiring work, but also it's the people that were there alongside you. I mean, that's such a virtue, I think, of folks who have come on the show. That's come up a number of times is just the mentorship and the people who have come alongside them along the way to help them achieve their success, or to then later push them toward a goal or advise them in a specific way. I mean, do you have a story you can share about something maybe you were struggling with or working through that a mentor or a person at work came alongside and helped you through?

Sabino  27:40
Yeah, I mean, there's there's many of those situations. I'd say one of my first ones was as I transitioned to Microsoft, and so the company that I was working with, Nortel, who went bankrupt, and so you're dealing with a change of like, oh my gosh, these five years of time and life that I've invested here, I got to start over now. I've got to go build this relationship, rapport, this credibility in a whole new company. And so, found myself at Microsoft through all the innovative work that we were doing at Nortel at the time, and eventually started my first job as a manager. And I remember when I was interviewing for that job, the hiring manager who again became a really great mentor of mine, and who still stay in touch with to this day. He was interviewing me, and he says, "So tell me about what your leadership strategy will be. Tell me about like what your management strategy will be. And having gone through my career journey, and when I say career journey through school, through the initial work as an individual contributor, you know, for me, the concept was always lead by example, right? I had seen others before me. I had seen others be successful. I followed that path. I put all the passion, energy, and and and gusto that I had into what I believed to be that path forward, and was able to be really successful as an individual contributor, and I remember his smile when I said that my leadership approach was going to be to lead by example. And he smiled, and he says, "You know, I think you're going to find a few other, maybe a few better ways along the way, but let's table that conversation and come back to it. And I would say, you know, one of the best things that prepared me for fatherhood and prepared me to be a better partner in life was to become a manager, because it changed my worldview. That concept of hard charging, hardworking me, and what I could accomplish versus how did I get into the minds of those on my team? How did I understand what actually drove them, and how did I inspire them to achieve greatness versus telling them how to do it? And that was probably a decade's worth of learning for me, and I think that's still something that I. Could improve and evolve, but I just remember the many conversations that I had with that manager in the years ahead, talking through the challenges of growing a team and managing a team, inspiring a team, but also delivering really audacious business results. Like it's really easy to manage and inspire and generate energy for employees when times are good and you're hitting your numbers and you're being successful. It is a daunting task to maintain that level of composure and to find the right balance between achieving great business results, maintaining team morale, and inspiring others. And I would say that's something that, as I looked through the trials, tribulations, and failures along that journey, every time I learned something managing people, I made me realize that was going to change how I was a father, right? I think if you would have asked me how would I be a father when I first started, it was that concept of like lead by example, and there's still plenty of that, right? I mean, little ones have to see, but this concept of asking questions and probing and helping your children get there on their own without you spelling out every step along the way, I think a big part in allowing me and helping me find acceptance in that came from the work of managing people and the idea of moving off of this leading the way mentality,

Steven Evans  31:41
right? Wow, that's such an incredible story. I mean, connecting the management sort of philosophies to the personal realm of fathering. I think that's something definitely want to dive into. But before hitting on that, I was curious. Sometimes along the way, folks talk about how sort of their identities begins to separate from you know the performance element of work, which becomes sort of repetitive or something that's more you know kind of a this is what I do between nine and five. It starts to separate from who they feel they actually are, perhaps underneath. Did you experience that, or have you struggled with that in any way?

Sabino  32:17
I couldn't connect more with a question than what you just said there, so there was a duality in how I approached my career, and it was a big part actually in how I eventually stepped away from corporate life. When I was in electrical engineering, electrical and computer engineers end up working together. And close friend of mine was an amazing gentleman on on the computer. I was pretty strong in the electrical, and so I was like, "All right, I got your back on one side; you got my back on the other. We'd always help each other out along the way. And I remember when we graduated, I looked at him and I said to him, "I can't wait to have nothing to do with computers for the rest of my life. And you are laughing as our paths crossed at Microsoft, and pretty much the entirety of my corporate career had everything to do with computers and technology, and honestly, I wouldn't give that for anything. But I had that mindset of like, there's what I'm good at and where I can really create a path for myself from a corporate standpoint. But then there's also where my heart is and where I want to be. And so there was always this vision that I had. This is a means to an end. You know, the first day that I started working at Microsoft, actually the weekend before, I was flying back from Miami. We had just gone out as young kids do to have a fun weekend in another city, and we went for the Fourth of July. And as I was in the airport, there was a book that I walked by, and I had to buy it because it just seemed so apropos. The title of the book was "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Wow! And I'm like, okay, I haven't even got there yet, but this book's already talking about leaving. And I just saw it, and I said, "All right, I got. I've got to buy this. I read it on the plane. I don't usually rush through the entirety of a book, but I remember getting through that book so quickly, and I connected with the book on so many levels. It talked about a gentleman that had been working through that high, high, fast-paced life at Microsoft, and you're running and you're gunning and you're running and gunning. And there was a pause that took place when he was traveling into a into a third world country, and he saw the disparity and he saw the missed opportunity for these young children that were growing up without an education like he had, without all the amazing opportunities that had been provided to himself. And it just struck him of like, I got to do something for these Nepalese children, and I need to find a way to help them learn and help them grow and foster this passion for education that I had, and so it goes through this story arc of like, all right, one day he's working with Steve Ballmer, and then fast forward a year or two, and he's like, I'm walking away from all this because I have to have a bigger impact. And so I read that book, and I always said to myself, okay, like there's got to be a point. Your life, where it goes from being the provider and focusing on you and your family to something bigger, to something broader, and so from the day I read that book, from the day I started at Microsoft, my vision was one day I'm going to do something very different, and so Steve, that made the journey and the struggles more palatable because I saw them as a means to an end versus my end.

Sabino  35:30
And you know, you can talk to lots of mentors, and there's different paths you can take in life, and even from a financial standpoint, to say, "All right, well, am I putting in the work up front and having fun later on, or am I having the fun now and working later on? Like you can't have your cake and eat it too, or you're one of those amazing people that can find the right balance their whole life. Wow, you love the job you have, you love the career you have, you're inspired by that. Well, then you don't have to worry about the two sides,

Steven Evans  35:59
right?

Sabino  36:00
And so for me, it was you know what I'm going to work at this pace, at this level, and I'm going to work in this challenging field because one day I will move into something different. And that duality then really helped me when I said duality. The mindset as I was going through it made the struggles, the challenges, and the overwhelming nature of the career more palatable because I saw it as a means to an end.

Steven Evans  36:25
Right, man, that that's really powerful. And like, what helped you realize that that was sort of the thread for you that this was going to help motivate you until you know a specific point? You mentioned the book, but I'm trying to think through you know, underneath what was that thing you were looking for?

Sabino  36:43
Yeah, so I think for me, you know, giving back means lots of different things to lots of different people. And one thing I always loved was teaching. Actually, that friend that I mentioned at the outset of the story was you know when when I'd walk him through the physics stuff that we were dealing with that maybe wasn't actually the perfect fit for him. I always took the time to kind of really make sure that what I was walking him through, he was deeply understanding. And I he would always comment to me at the end of it. I'd be like, "If when this is all said and done, in some capacity or another, you don't become a teacher, you have done such a disservice to the entirety of the folks that you interact with, and so that always stuck with me because it was obviously extremely nice thing for him to say. I don't think I'm the greatest teacher, and I think I lack the patience and and many things that would make you a great teacher. But I know that it sparks me. I know that it excites me. I know that aha moment you get when somebody is staring at a problem and they can't see it and they can't see it and they can't see it, and you just having the slightest role in helping them capture that aha moment and that glimmer in their eye. Like there's nothing better, and so for me, I always saw teaching as one of the most noble professions, right? Medicine and teaching to me in my mind, like you couldn't be helping others more than those two professions. Didn't have it in me to have anything to do with blood. Unfortunately, God didn't bless me with that skill set. But when it came to teaching, I was like, "There's got to be a role. There's got to be something I come back to here. And so, physics has always been a passion of mine. I've always loved it. And since retiring from corporate life, you know, I spent a lot of time going through that and thinking, all right, how would I teach this to someone learning it for the first time? And going through different books and courses and reading different articles, and so that's been a place that I put some energy. But financial literacy is the one that I feel like is something that our children and children growing up today, I think they're robbed of the opportunity to control their own destiny and to control their lifestyle and to frankly put themselves in a position where they have options much later on if they do the right things up front. And so, as I read that book, for me, the passion wasn't around getting books out to Nepalese children and other parts of the world. I think that's an amazing thing that he did, but for me, it was how do I bring literacy in things like science that folks struggle through? That once they have that connected dot, they're like, "Wow, not only can I do this, but this is an amazing journey that I could go in, or financial literacy, which is I was blessed. You know, I had a father who taught me from a young age, who pointed me to books that inspired me, that put me down a certain path. And there's so many kids today that not only don't have the parent to nudge them in that direction, but never get the visibility into what are the things that they can do to set them up, set set set themselves up for life at such a very young age. And so, in my mind, those are the two areas where I see myself going in the future. Since I've stepped away from corporate life, I've been coaching. I've been in. Involved in some food pantries.

Sabino  40:02
To me, that's the other give back mechanism where we've got a lot of people struggling with food insecurity, and anything we can do to help put a meal on someone's plate is an amazing thing. And so, I've been working in those arenas. But that concept of bringing financial literacy to children is probably the one that inspires me, excites me, and one that, from the day I read that book, that was kind of the click of where can I have an impact in this big broad world of ours?

Steven Evans  40:27
Wow, and and I mean, I'm thinking through just that that journey of self, right, coming to these realizations and protecting them over the years. I mean, I feel like one is how do you find your balance to maintain that you know vision of what you're aiming toward, especially when things get crazy at work or at home.

Sabino  40:48
I would say balance has never been my strong suit, Steve. There's the what I'm grounded in and the non-negotiables, right? For me, you know, my family and my children. There's always time in the day there, and so when I think of balance, every person has a different perspective of what that means. You know, some folks that's time to breathe and reset. Others take, you know, like myself. In the busiest of times, I was okay running and gunning 1000 miles a minute all the time, knowing that my family was protected, that my children were cared for, and knowing that one day this would settle down. Now that didn't make that easy for those around me, and I would say I am blessed with a extraordinarily patient wife that has been able to handle all of those ups and downs. We definitely are a good ying to each other's yang, but I would say balance for me has been more grounding in. All right, at this moment, this is going to be hard, and this is going to be hard for a really long time. But I'm going to get through this, and I'm going to recharge. I'm going to tackle the things that are critical, and I'm going to find balance and recharge soon enough. Sometimes that soon enough wasn't really that soon, but I haven't been great at compartmentalizing the hours in a day to make sure that there's always me time. That's not something that's been huge for myself. It's not saying that that's not something that it's extraordinarily important, but I would say balance has been found in bursts both through the career journey as well as even as I look at any given day in the week.

Steven Evans  42:34
Yeah, and are there a couple of things like that you found you've returned to that kind of set up a framework for productivity, or just something close to that balance. Couple of tenets, maybe, or for some people, it's um, you know, it could be faith, it could be exercise and health, it could be finding good books, remaining inspired. What is it for you?

Sabino  42:55
So I would say for the first 15 or so years of my career, I always found that peace in the run. So I would go for a jog, and I would never do it in the morning. I would always do it after work because I found you know the day would get started fast and quick, and I just needed to be going, and I needed to be going. and And by the way, I thought I needed to get going early, and I thought I needed to be going early, and we could come back to that. But at the end of the day, as all the stresses and the strains built up, that 7o'clock run was the most mind clearing and spiritual moment that I would have in that given day, and it was the core to bringing me back. You know, I'd come back from that run, and I would run the stress away. I would run the anxiety, the fears, all of those negative things. They would be gone by the end of the run, not because I thought through about them throughout the run, but it was the breathing, it was the break from the stresses and strains, and obviously the physical exertion that I'd get back from that run, and I was okay. I was back to me. I was back to center from a spirituality standpoint. I was raised Catholic. You know, I have a lot of respect for each of the religions. I think they share a lot of the same penance and the same core. When I do go to church, it's probably the only other time similar to the end of that run, where I feel the calm, I feel the quiet, I feel the peace, and whether my spirituality and my belief is the same now as when I was as a child, it's evolved, it's very different, but there's that peace in that meditation, in that breathing, in that taking yourself outside from the daily stresses and strains that comes in sitting in that church for that period of time. I can't find that other places. And as I've gotten older and my knees are less forgiving to those long runs, it's shifted from runs at night to walks in the morning. And when COVID hit, for those of us. That we're not impacted with loss of lives through COVID, I can't even imagine. You know, there could be anything worse than that. But for those that of us that weren't, we found the world slow down. We saw the world slow down, and it was this surprise that all of a sudden we had time to be present with our families, and we had time to be present and mindful about our own lives and our own journeys, and so I started walking in the morning, and I maintained that ever since the beginning of COVID. And I find that the difference when I was working and running and gunning hard, where I needed to de stress at the end of the day, that walk in the morning does a very different job of centering me and balancing me for the day. Probably wished I'd have gotten into that habit many, many years ago. I think it would have started me off in a much calmer, more relaxed state and place. But I think there is something about that peaceful walk in the places that you love, with that fresh air, that just gets you ready for a tough day ahead, and frankly, gets you recovered from a tough day before.

Steven Evans  46:04
Definitely, and it sounds like you mentioned your family as well being part of the picture. And was there anything that you know when you first maybe it was when they were first born or along the journey that genuinely sort of blindsided you?

Sabino  46:18
Blindside, yeah. I mean, I think as a first-time parent, lots of things blindside you. You know, I remember holding my son for the first time, and I know there's lots of different folks that have lots of different reactions to their firstborn. And I remember holding my son for the first time, and I didn't have in that moment a fear and anxiety. I had a feeling of like, we got this. You know, like we're ready for this, and this is going to be amazing. And my son was super healthy when he was first born, but you know, as he was approaching two years old, he started to to get pretty sick. You know, like 105 degree fever kind of stuff. And first time it happens, and you get to the emergency room, you're like, "All right, something's going on here. But then, when it's like trip number two, and you're and he's in there in the ICU for like four or five days, and you're spending overnights and you're panicking, it was the first time that you can got this as much as you want, Sabino. But there's another game that's being played here, and you can't control the uncontrollables. And I think that was the scariest that I've ever been. Over a period of probably six months to a year, we spent 2025, nights overnight in the hospital, trying to get things under control, and he's super healthy and and fully recovered from that. But the moments where it was touch and go, and you're like, wow, like I could lose my child and my world and everything that matters to me will be turned upside down. Yeah,

Sabino  47:46
that was a real gut check. It was really hard for my wife and I as we were going through it. And you know, the family rallied around, and everyone was great. But then you start to see what matters. Then you start to see like, like you know, for all the stresses and strains and all the things that I was worrying day to day. Like this is the only thing that matters, right? And if you lose this, this is a reset point that you can't even fathom. And I can't fathom folks that have lost children, and my heart goes out to anyone who has. But I would say that journey was something that really got me grounded and helped me understand what mattered. Helped me understand the stresses and strains, what it was all about. And think any family that's going through that, I wish them a great journey through the end and speedy recovery for all that they run into.

Steven Evans  48:36
Yes, 100% And like with all of that ongoing, I'm imagining, you know, you're in a, you know, working at the same time, still managing a home, right? All the above. How do you stay present, you know, during those times when the, you know, pressure is just at a 10 and a 10 in a number of different arenas across your life?

Sabino  48:55
Yeah. When you say how do you stay present, it's almost as if in those moments, all that exists is the present, right? You know, when it gets so intense, you're not worried about what are we doing six months from now, what are we doing a year from now. It's how intense the present becomes, and how you manage that. You know, because I remember being on a conference call when I was in the hospital, right? And and I knew I knew that like in the grand scheme of everything that's going on right now, this conference call is the least critical important thing. But it was something in that moment to take my mind off of the reality of what was happening,

Steven Evans  49:36
right?

Sabino  49:36
And it was amazing that as you're going through that, you know, there's a heightened sense of awareness of like this is the situation and this is what's happening, and at the same time, there's part of your brain that's saying like, how can I escape this reality? You know, just for a moment, right? Just for a second, how can I battle through and figure it out? And so there's that juxtaposition that. Takes place, and again, I was blessed to have a great family that was there, and I was grounded with the hope that hey, all will be better. But I think it's how you manage the intensity of the present, and how you can take those deep breaths along the way that get you through those challenging moments.

Steven Evans  50:19
Definitely, and I mean, if you're to bring us to today, you know, looking back on a lot of this, I'm sure you've been taking the time to just really think through what matters in this new stage. I guess what are some of the pieces that you have brought with you, and what are you thinking about now?

Sabino  50:36
You know, the interesting transition. So when I stepped away from Microsoft, Ria, you know, a couple years ago, it was funny because several of my closest friends, I'd always told them, right, you know, hey, I'm retiring early. I was doing fire before fire was a thing, right? And they always looked at me, and they knew so much of my DNA had been evolved into the work, the intensity, and the passion with my career that they always looked at me like you're nuts. I don't believe you for one second. You're not stepping away from any of it, and even if you step away, you're coming back to it faster than you left it. And I'll tell you, when you transition out of a career of such high intensity, where everything was about what's next, right? I was talking about the present before, but as you're navigating a career journey, you're like, okay, what am I doing here to position me for the next thing, and what am I doing here to position me for the next thing? What am I doing to position me, and how can I grow, and how can I evolve, and how can I expand my network, and how can I, and how can I, and so you consume so much of your cycles and your days with the what's next, that when you stop and you remove that hustle and bustle and that busyness that was operating and frankly taking up so much of your mind space, now you've got this paradigm shift where what do you do now and what's next? You know, at first you think to yourself when you go on vacation for a week, you say, you know, you have your bucket list of all the things that you didn't have time for, and maybe if you're blessed enough to have the opportunity to take a sabbatical and you have a couple months off, and you say these are all the things that if I had time, I'd do it, and then you get to that sabbatical and you're you have a bucket list that's like this, and you realize you get through this much of it, right? And when you get there, you say to yourself, "Oh, it's amazing when you have the time, right? That it still takes that focused mindset and energy to get through all the things you thought you'd accomplish. And so, when you step away from the career, and now you've got the time, and it seems so simple. Oh, I'm going to start chipping off one after the other, after the other, after the other. You find yourself navigating the goals, the next steps, and the process that you have to create for yourself versus the ones that are systemically created for you. And so, you know, part of it is how do you go from the 100 miles an hour busyness and running and gunning to the all of a sudden you've got all the time in the world and you create your schedule and you create your goals and you create your objectives and you don't have a what's next and how do you feel that uneasiness or that anxiety or that emptiness that says I should be doing something at this very moment I should be productive every second of every day, right? And so I think part of the transition out of the corporate environment was getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, right? Okay, now the what's next is yours. Now you have your opportunity to create that journey. Oh, and by the way, you don't have to do it all right away because I think the initial trap is jumping into that next thing, you know, full gusto and diving into that right out of the gate, and not realizing, hey, there's been things you've neglected over this period of time. Why don't you make sure you have all the time and energy into the things that mattered most to you that you didn't have when you were running and gunning, and so you know, part of this has been that reset. Part of this has been the slowing down, the mind, the body, the soul. Part of this has been being open to opportunities that just present themselves in the community versus going out of your way to build this exact perfect blueprint that looks in this exact way,

Steven Evans  54:23
right?

Sabino  54:24
And I think that's a lot of what I've been working on in the past couple of years: is bringing my energy to places that I hadn't had the time in the past. You know, rekindling passions for whether it was a sport, whether it was a book, whether it was a musical endeavor that meant a ton to me growing up. That I just frankly wasn't able to nurture, and then being open to the community to find opportunities that are needed of you versus those you wanted to necessarily bring to the table.

Steven Evans  54:56
Wow! Thank you for bringing such an incredible story. I mean, if. There's one thing that sticks out to me across the arc has been really just tenacity and your ability to consistently learn and be open to learning. I think that's something that not everybody it comes naturally, right? Something new can be scary. It can be something that could be should be avoided. But I think that for every new season, every new sort of crucible that you've come across, it sounds like that you have been able to learn and adapt, and then adjust in a positive way through it. And it's something that I definitely would compliment you on. You know, in closing, I usually ask you know just this one question: Is looking back across the the full arc of your life, sort of not the one that you you know intentionally designed, but the way that it sort of fell into place. What are some of the things that matter the most?

Sabino  55:46
I think there's two. I don't know if you've ever seen the the movie City Slickers, but at the end of City Slickers, you know, Curly talks about that one thing and figuring out what that one thing is. For me, I got it down to two, and I genuinely, when I look back on my life, and I'm still in the middle of it, right? So I don't want to be writing the end of the story just now. I'm hoping I'm not even halfway through the script, right? But when I look back and I ask myself, you know, did I devote myself to my family and bring the energy to give them all the love and support to make them successful, to bring the next generation, who can then bring the next generation, like an impact, and I can have on the world is bringing two amazing young adults that can have a broader impact than I ever would have been able to have on my own. And so that's to me, our family, my wife, my children, to be able to really have an impact through them is one critical component, and then what is the broader impact I'm having to support others that are less fortunate? I have been absolutely blessed by having two great parents, by having two great sisters, by having a family that was always there for me, and I know that's such a small part of the population. You know, there's so few people that have the blessing of the family dynamic that I had growing up, and so when I look at things like coaching, when I look at things at mentoring, when I look at things like you know bringing financial literacy to younger folks, it's how can I pay it back so that they can then pay it forward. And to me, you know, if I have an impact broadly in those two arenas, that's all I need to be at.

Steven Evans  57:26
Yeah, amazing, amazing. Well, thank you so much, Sabino, for your time and for bringing the story and for really being open and transparent with us. It really means a lot. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. This has been the missing conversation. I'm Steve Evans. Thanks for listening. If something in there found you, if a moment hit somewhere you weren't expecting, just let it be there for a while. You don't have to sort it out right now. That's what this is for. Take care of yourself out there. And if you know a guy who needs to hear this one, you probably already know who he is. Send it to him.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai