Rick Eigenbrod – What Happens When You Get What You Want? (434)

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Episode transcript below:

0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta

Hi everyone, mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how to Happen podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. On today’s episode, I’m talking with a clinical psychologist, a Vistage International Chair and the author of an amazing book called what Happens when you Get what you Want. Rick Eigenbrode is an expert on success and we focus our conversation on how an entrepreneur creates meaning and success in their lives after they’ve sold their business. We talk about the root of the word success. Spoiler alert it will surprise you the concept of a focusing illusion, tiger Woods and the rainbow we call happily ever after. 

0:00:54 – Rick Eigenbrod

We are really unprepared for the challenge that comes after we get what we want and in a sense, it’s not. You know, we are not invited, encouraged, educated, informed to understand that the journey doesn’t end when you walk into Santiago and stand in front of the cathedral that you will take. The last step you take will put you in front of Santiago, in front of the cathedral, and the next step will take you on, and the person who arrives at the cathedral isn’t the person who started the journey. 

0:01:30 – Mike Malatesta

This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. And now here’s Rick Eigenbroth. Hi, rick, welcome to the podcast. 

0:02:43 – Rick Eigenbrod

Hi Mike, Thank you for having me. What an intriguing invitation. 

0:02:49 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, so I gave you a little bit about Rick in the intro, but here’s a little backstory to this. So a friend of mine, matt Bartell. I was talking to Matt Bartell, who is an entrepreneur who sold his business a couple of years ago and I was talking to him about what’s he feeling like, what’s going on, because it’s one of the questions that I often get asked myself, because everyone thinks you retire after you sell a business or something. It’s just the way the world’s been created. So I was talking to him and he referenced this paper the Yale School of Management, I think it was came out with, and he sent it to me, this PDF, and I was reading it and I was like, wow, this is really good. 

And then, well, it turns out that a lot of what was in there was either written or influenced by my guest today, rick Eigenbroth’s book, which is what Happens when you Get what you Want. So I went out and I picked up this book and I read it. And don’t, you should read this book. It’s thin but thin. But what I love about thin books is that when they’re the exact length, they’re perfect, and there’s too many books that are thick and they’re not the exact right length, in my humble opinion. But anyway, that’s how I became aware of Rick. And then, boy, I emailed him, and because I was so intrigued by his work, and anyway, that’s a long way of saying here we are today to have Rick on the podcast. 

Let me tell you a little bit more about Rick so that you can get as excited as I am. Rick is an experienced executive coach and organizational development consultant whose expertise centers on client growth and performance through innovative approaches to leadership development, change management and team effectiveness. Some of his projects include the co-design and facilitation of a year-long leadership development program for the top 250 leaders of an American-owned European energy company and also for the executive team and 150 senior managers of a USA Multimedia Communications Corporation. He has extensive background in organizational development PhD. And what is your PhD, rick? 

0:05:00 – Rick Eigenbrod

Clinical psychology. 

0:05:01 – Mike Malatesta

Clinical psychology okay, and he’s worked in leadership, effectiveness, executive team development and facilitation organizational culture. He’s managed change and performance enhancements for companies like Google, at&t, life Technologies, altera Corporation, unitedhealthcare, hewlett Foundation and many, many more. Interestingly, rick has also served as chairman of three groups of CEOs for Vistage International, a group that I have been affiliated with for 17 years something like that, which I didn’t know when I first met him for over 20 years been a resource speaker for more than 500 Vistage groups nationwide and the USA Speaker of the Year for Vistage Canada. That’s a real feat, because Vistage has some amazing speakers, rick, so congratulations on that, Thank you. Rick is also Arthur. 

The book that I showed at the beginning, what Happens when you Get what you Want, subtitles Success and the Challenge of Choice, and, as I also mentioned, he’s the co-author of Yale University School of Management case study called what’s Next, the Entrepreneur’s Epilogue and the Paradox of Success how Entrepreneurs Can Move Forward After an Exit. So, rick boy, I start every podcast with the same simple question, that is, how did it happen for you? 

0:06:29 – Rick Eigenbrod

Well, it turns out your question is so rich, my initial reaction is, honestly, I have no idea. It just unfolded. It certainly wasn’t part of a plan like the work that I’m doing now in our area which you share. You’re sort of working upstream and I’m working downstream, if you will, from the sale. In a million years I wouldn’t have guessed that that would be anything I’d be involved with, and lately I’ve been having this one liner. 

My life wasn’t in my plan and I guess the most honest answer in some way a little bit cryptic but most honest is so much of what I have done and how it happened for me. The answer to that question is I got a call, and I mean that literally and figuratively. There have been so many times when I’ve literally got a phone call that would have some important impact in my life. Or the call, if you will, came from inside, something just in a sort of classic sense like a calling. So that answer, at that level I think is really the most honest answer is I got a call and certainly the work that ended up being a book and ended up being this conversation came with a call. 

We both have a background with this right and I got a call from a VISTA chair that someone who’s learning a group of CEOs and said I have a member he just sold this company. He’s having a terrible time of it. Would you be willing to speak to him? And of course I had two reactions. One is you just don’t say no to somebody you know when I knew him and that was a VISTA chair because we had that in common and secondly, you don’t say no if someone he says can you help? I had lots of other reactions when I talked to this gentleman, but here was the example very specifically about this work that came with the call. 

0:08:50 – Mike Malatesta

So okay. So let’s before we get to the call, or what happened after the call? What happened before the call. Who were you, rick, before the call? 

0:08:58 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, well, certainly you can see from that resume that in a sense my work has been emergent. I started out going to grad school getting my PhD in clinical psychology. It was hard as a staff psychologist at University of California Davis and that’s kind of what I’d set out to do. 

0:09:21 – Mike Malatesta

Like a professor. 

0:09:23 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, I taught abnormal psychology to 200 kids in a chemistry lecture hall who, if they got bored, would pick up their dog and their bike and leave. 

0:09:34 – Mike Malatesta

That’s audience feedback Direct, that’s how I do it right. 

0:09:40 – Rick Eigenbrod

And then, yeah, I was a staff psychologist at the counseling center, basically the mental health center for students. Eventually, sort of, if you will, was offered the opportunity to become the co-director, and that you know. Again, that’s a bit of a call, but while I was there I would get these calls. Here’s an example Peace Corps Nepal had a training site outside of Davis because the Peace Corps program in Nepal was ag and Davis is historically UC Davis, historically. 

I got a call that said, hey, you know, would you be interested in maybe being on the training staff? Because every staff has what they call the training development officer and what the Peace Corps trainees called the shrink. And I said, gee, I’m sorry, you know, I just got here to take a better part of the year off. I’m sorry, I can’t do that and I don’t know why, but that’s not the kind of thing I ever imagined. And I, just for another year, I had this sense inside God, do I want to go do that? And that’s not like me. I’m not the guy who wants to go off and do Peace Corps training, which I know nothing about in Nepal. 

And that was that, you know, when I said I get a call that either comes from the outside or from the inside. I didn’t understand that tug I literally would say for a year God, I hope the phone rings. And it did. And when the phone rang and they said, hey, you know, you said come back to you. I immediately said yes, went to my boss bless this already said sure, and UC Davis was staffing in different, from different areas. So off I went and that was life changing, absolutely life changing way, very, very difficult, challenging in so many ways. And you know I joked, I had the luxury or the privilege of speaking recently and being introduced to someone who is had a Peace Corps, and I was joking about, you know, my experience with Peace Corps is Peace Corps may change the world, but Peace Corps is going to change Peace Corps, volunteers, and that was a real turning point. That was a real turning point. 

And you were how old at this time I at that point I was probably 30. Okay, and I could feel I was different. I could feel it. I remember coming back and this is a Peace Corps experience and this is a Peace Corps volunteers have and this relates to our work with people who sell and leave their companies. They would come back from Peace Corps and have a hell of a time with reentry and it was really tough on them. And I experienced the same thing Because I remember sitting in the meeting and all my colleagues were there and they went oh, it’s great to have you back. That was all they were, that’s all they were interested in. And some part of me wanted to screen the guy you, the guy who left here, is that the guy sitting in front of you now? And that was really seminal. And then I got a call not too long afterwards from someone who said gee, I’m running this program for the Air Force all over the world. Would you be interested in being a part of it and running these workshops? And now I was the guy who had been out there in the world, who had been all over the world, and so I said yeah, and that work had a big impact on me. 

And so those early two experiences, I think, were in some way shaping who I was becoming, and this I got a call from one of our interns who said I’ve been more Waiting for you to get really bored, you are. I’ve arranged for dinner with a gentleman who was the president of Vistage down in San Diego. Would you go down and talk to him? I had dinner with him. He talked to me about becoming a chair and I said yes, and that really was a change because it took me out of academia as my identity, as my identification, as the nature of the work that I was doing, and put me into a situation where I once again was on this incredibly steep learning curve. And I think back, thanks to your question what is it in me that I didn’t know was there that would incline me to say yes? And it was a sense of excitement that was so strong. Whatever fear was there, it just overran it. 

And then, when I would get into it, it’s like what have I done to myself, oh my God. And then you do what you need to do. Right, it’s nothing I control, it’s nothing I would have known about myself. People will say to me now wow, you’re pretty adventurous. It’s not a sense I have of myself, but I can understand in looking at the bio and things I’ve done and the changes I’ve made. 

And then this really introduced me to the world of business and from there I went on to be a chair, I started doing consulting, became a speaker and I was thinking about this, mike, in terms of this work. I realized again, thanks to your question, that what I bring to this work is a summation of all of those experiences, that what I really offer is a bundle. It’s not expertise in business. I purposely don’t. The work doesn’t involve being a shrink per se, but it’s what allows me to be useful and to be legitimate in the eyes of the people I work with, because you can imagine who are you, what did you do? They really check you out. I realize what really helps me do the work is the bundling. So bits and pieces in the work get called on and I have that kind of background. 

0:16:37 – Mike Malatesta

So I have to ask about the bundling, because State Farm is running a bundling commercial on the NFL games. I don’t know if you’ve seen that commercial, but it’s kind of funny how they take the concept of bundling insurance products and they kind of make it into a whole mindset of bundle. So it’s an interesting word that you’re using right now. It’s being used a lot. Let’s put it that way. 

0:17:06 – Rick Eigenbrod

People are aware of it in a different way. I hadn’t thought of that. But if you think about it, think about in your own life what gives you legitimacy, expertise to do what you do. It’s not just one thing probably. Right. 

Right, and so I think that when I do this work, it’s not just the work is, how did I think about what I was seeing? Because when that gentleman called me on the phone, he called on the phone and said here’s what’s going on and basically laid out how difficult things were for him. My initial reaction, of course, was not terribly sympathetic. Now I am a trained compassionate person, but I could hear my. If you were going to bend in my head, he would have said I’m really struggling, blah, blah, blah. And if you had been in my head, you’d have heard this. Really. 

0:18:06 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, it’s kind of like that violin thing. People are like I really feel sorry for you. 

0:18:15 – Rick Eigenbrod

It’s like, yeah, I remember thinking things like, man, if I had your problems, I’d have no problems. And then I would think things like if I was the recipient of the Lord just you have I’d be a much more worthy recipient. 

0:18:30 – Mike Malatesta

Oh nice. So you were like yeah. 

0:18:33 – Rick Eigenbrod

I was dismissive, condescending in my head, right. I was dismissive, condescending, imperious, all kinds of things, and that was great data. Because one of the things you learn when you have clinical training, when you’re doing clinical training, is to use your reactions. It’s not to not have reactions, it’s to understand your reactions and to use them in the service of the work that you’re doing as insights. So you don’t want to. You learn not to cut off your own reaction, but to use it. So it took me some time to think about where in the world did that come from? What did this man do that you think would deserve this kind of dismissiveness and condescension? And that was really informative. Because, of course, now when I talk to people that I work with who have sold their companies, one of the things they talk about is how isolated they feel. Because who are you going to talk to about? You sold your company for $90 million and you just haven’t a really tough go of it, right? 

0:19:45 – Mike Malatesta

No one. No one wants to talk, no one. 

0:19:47 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, have you had that experience like when you? 

0:19:51 – Mike Malatesta

sold. Yeah. So it’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about and working on for a long time, which is so there’s this money to make you happy, right, Money buys happiness. That’s the sort of thing that’s out there and sure it makes life easy and stuff, but I think one of the things easier, but I think one of the things that’s missed so often is and you mentioned it this bundling. 

So all of these are people who don’t bundle. They don’t understand the concept of bundling. What they understand is this is what I’ve done my whole life. I’ve just exchanged that for money that’s supposed to make me feel like I’ve done something great. And they have not put any thought into how does all the experience that I’ve bundled all my life take me forward into life with meaning and purpose and all of these things? Instead, they stop and meet. 

So I’ve been exploring this for myself because I never wanted to be that person that stopped. But it’s one thing to not want to be that and it’s a whole other thing to actually understand what you actually want to do. And it takes courage to do something new, just like anything in life, and it doesn’t matter that you’ve had this past success. So I guess that’s how I’ve been exploring it myself is, because I can’t very well teach people how to go through it if I’m not a person who’s gone through it myself. That’s how I feel, at least, and so ultimately and I think your book gets into this, Rick, and this is ultimately a change like that for a business owner and entrepreneur to sell their business is not a change that it should be the byproduct of a call. It should be something that you prepare long and hard for, because it’s going to be so different that you can’t possibly imagine it if you haven’t explored it. I don’t know, Is that anything? Does that? 

0:22:05 – Rick Eigenbrod

close to you. No, it’s really. It sure is. I mean, I think you’re getting to the heart of it. People who run build businesses are so focused on what they need to do to grow the business, to build the business, and sometimes they have an idea in mind like, well, I want to grow and build this business because, like, if I talk to a group of CEOs, I say, how many of you have written ownership objectives? Very few. It’s like the business is an instrument. It’s just an instrument to get you something. You need to be clear about what that is financially and non-financially. But you’re right, it takes so much of them that when all of that disappears and it will disappear if you sell your business, it will disappear in a moment. They give you a check, they give you the glass thing or whatever it is, and they say congratulations, you did it, what a success you are. And at one point I looked up the root of the word success and the oldest meaning in Latin is what comes after. 

The meaning of the word success is what comes behind, in other words what follows. And so people, you and I, essentially our work meets at that juncture and I think that I hope the book, I hope the Yale article invites people to say think beyond that event, think in much broader terms. Your life doesn’t stop. That life, as you know, it stops Right. And you end up many of them because they haven’t thought much about it oh, I’m going to travel, I’m going to do this, I’m going to play some golf, whatever, whatever they haven’t thought about that and they end up and here’s the imagery I use they end up with a blank sheet of paper. 

And Hemingway said it takes more courage to face a blank sheet of paper than it does to face the bull in the ring. And they hadn’t counted on that. What they have and what they’ve thought about, when they have time to think beyond, they’re going to give me the chat. What they think about and the way they think about it is what I’ve come to see and understand is called a focusing illusion. A focusing illusion is a picture, an image could be a story. We tell ourselves about how it’s going to be, and that picture really has a draw and what gives it the draw is what’s in the picture, but what really gives it the draw is what’s left out. There are no grotty bits. 

Right, and so this focusing illusion draws us on and then we realize this is way more complicated. Lost comes with gain. I counted on my life changing this way, but not this way. So we’re really not prepared. And one of the things that I would let’s play a little bit One of the things I came to see, and how did it happen that I came to see this as a bit of a story, but after I was working with this population for quite a while and I started to form some ideas about why is this happening, what’s going on, a kind of conceptual framework, a way to understand. That’s why I wrote the book. I wrote the book not for an audience. I wrote the book to see what I thought. 

Right, I just sat down. I wanted to know what I thought, and so that’s how the book came about. So this notion about the focusing illusion is really powerful. So I’m working with a pretty narrow population, people who have sold their businesses and starting to understand and see a set of dynamics about what happened and it moved from. By the way, the early title of the book was I Did it, now what? And it changed, and there’s a story behind how it changed. Susan Scott actually gave me the titles. She said what’s the book about? I told her she was dead silent. Who is she? Susan Scott is with a message chair. Her work is called Crucial Conversations. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. 

And somebody referred me, another chair, another friend referred me to her because I was at the point to you know, now I got to get the turn thing published, maybe, and she was dead silent. She said, no, come on, rick, what’s the book really about? And I blurted out the title. So here’s a set of dynamics when you get what you want, it is disruptive in ways you wanted and ways you don’t want. The bigger the goal, the bigger the hole. Generally the formula right. Can you think of other places that you see in life, in other people’s lives, where that same dynamic holds true? You get what you want and it is really disruptive. 

0:28:01 – Mike Malatesta

Sure, yeah, athletes come to mind. Someone who goes from being a supporting cast member to that no one’s ever heard of, to someone who is in a blockbuster movie and now can’t go anywhere without being recognized let’s say royalty. So those are three examples that come to mind. Am I close with any of those? 

0:28:34 – Rick Eigenbrod

No, exactly. And what’s going to happen? I think I would hope what’s going to happen for you is what happened for me. I started seeing variants of this in many different places and here’s a really quick story. I was invited to do this talk for a group of CEOs and their spouses near where my daughter went to college, and the chair said oh, why don’t you invite your daughter? And she was about to graduate. And so she sat there and somebody said at some point gosh, her name is Megan. Gosh, megan, is this? Surprise you to hear this? She says, and it changed how I thought about them. How did it happen? It happened because Megan said this Surprise me, I’m in it. I’ve just spent the best four years of my life. I gave them everything they wanted, I worked hard to get the degree and now they’re going to throw me out of the best four years of my life. 

And all of a sudden I thought this is not about a bunch of what somebody so charitable called not me, a bunch of rich winers. And so I started seeing it, for example, in athletes, these young, the young tennis young woman who’s a tennis athlete, the young woman who was the gymnast who’s gone back at it Examples of what you said. I just started seeing it in so many places. I read a book by the gentleman who was the CEO at Pixar. I had a friend who was got invited over there. What a spot. But anyway, he wrote a book called Creativity, yeah. And he said you know, we made this movie I think it was maybe Toy Story, whatever and we proved that you can make a full-length computer animated film. Our financial future is set. Am I going to make cartoons for the rest of my life? Right? And so there was another example for me, and so I think that in some way I’d like to offer people a sense about have a broader view of this journey. 

Here’s a personal example. You know, I, like God knows how many other hundreds of thousands of people, walk the Camino Santiago in Spain, and I had imagined what it would be like. It was a tug, it was a call. I’m not that religious, but I just know when to do that. I was trained up, whatever, and from the minute I thought about going, I had a picture of myself walking into Santiago. Right, and it was something like this a slight exaggeration I would be walking into Santiago. People would stop in their tracks and look at me in awe and wonder that I had walked 500 miles, that I would turn that corner, go underneath and stand in front of the cathedral. Oh, and, by the way, a array of sunlight would follow me, of course. Yeah, and I would stand in front of the cathedral and I would be as have. This clarity of view as St James did from his perch atop the cathedral right called the focusing illusion. 

It rained for four days before we got that. We walked in the rain for four days. There were no people on the street and, by the way, they had seen millions of people, peregrinos, come by. I got in front of the cathedral and it was so much more complicated. It was gain, it was loss. It was raining, I was cold and wet and I wanted to get the hell into the hotel and warm up, and yet I had walked 500 miles to get here. It didn’t at all. It was reality. 

And if I didn’t know then what I know now out of said, yeah, I wouldn’t have not wanted to have the experience, but I wouldn’t have sort of gotten on myself. And one of the things I hoped at the book and I hope that the work provides people is to normalize their experience. There’s nothing to matter with you. And I will tell you when people, when I talk with folks it’s one of the contributions I can make early on and it’s huge they breathe, they go, they feel like they’ve failed its success. I must have done something wrong. Right, Because, one, I didn’t account for this experience and, two, there’s nobody out there saying to me yeah, that’s really tough, you just sold your business and you got a bazillion dollars. That’s hard. 

0:33:39 – Mike Malatesta

Right, because they have this fantasy of how it should be, this focusing illusion, oh, plus they’re looking at, plus they’re looking at everyone else who’s similarly situated, or they think is similarly situated, and thinking look how much better they’re dealing with this than I am. 

0:33:55 – Rick Eigenbrod

Exactly, Exactly. Listen to listen very carefully. Sometimes go get a copy of Kermit the Frog singing the rainbow connection why there’s so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side. Hmm rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and Rainbows have nothing to hide the reality, right? Somebody made it up and someone believed it. Look what it’s done so far. Mm-hmm. And he’s telling us it’s not a kids song. 

0:34:32 – Mike Malatesta

Let me, so I want to dig in a little bit more on this. Yeah, focusing illusion like what, why, why, why does it? Why do people do it? Where does it come from? And Because, when you first started talking about it, my immediate Sort of thought was it okay, so the program, I call it programming of yeah retirement like retirement. 

Messaging is saying, hey, when you retire, regardless of how you retire, if you retire from a job you’ve worked at, for whatever, or you sell your business and retire, here’s what life is going to look like. You and your spouse are Together all the time and you’re happy, and you’re going to these places. The cruise line is calling. You know you’re doing all of these things. 

0:35:22 – Rick Eigenbrod

Is that where these this yeah, I think that’s certainly a part of it. It’s our version and certainly, if Watch any, I mean, if here’s where it starts and what happens when in the fairy tales. Where does every fairy tale and? 

0:35:41 – Mike Malatesta

what’s the last one? I guess, and she and he got though, yeah, the promised land right the. Yes and they live happily ever ever after. 

0:35:52 – Rick Eigenbrod

that’s where you got me, so when we are little kids, we are told that it’ll all be great. You marry the princess, you get the boy, you get the girl, you get the gold, you get the fleece, you get the whatever, mm-hmm. And so it starts really early. Every ad you see on television is a miniature version of happily ever after. And and so Do you have kids, mike. 

0:36:18 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, with two girls. 

0:36:20 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, when they were little and you read a fairy tale, either one of them ever, when you finish the fairy tale and said, and Cinderella married your prince and they live happily ever after, did either one of them ever say, like really doing what? Yeah? 

0:36:34 – Mike Malatesta

Give me some detail? What? 

0:36:35 – Rick Eigenbrod

yeah, you don’t have to ask what, because it’s all great. 

Yes and and and our At a larger level, our grand narrative of success, the big story, grand narratives or stories that Societies tell themselves about what’s important and what, what are legitimate modes of living right. So In the book you know this notion I hit upon this notion of grand narratives and and I realized that in the United States we have this grand narrative of success and the gentleman who helped me write the book, bless him. It would have never happened without him. I Notice, when I read the first, you know the draves coming back, he had taken success and put that made it into the essence of dollars on, because that’s if I say to you what is what constitutes success in the United States, you would tell me what money like stuff and stuff. 

0:37:45 – Mike Malatesta

It’s a success. 

0:37:46 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yes, that up and status right. So, and what happens when you get stuff and stuff? 

0:37:53 – Mike Malatesta

Nothing. 

0:37:54 – Rick Eigenbrod

It’s great, it’s all good. 

0:37:56 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, for a little bit, and then it’s, and then it’s like oh, this is old stuff, and and exactly, exactly. 

0:38:03 – Rick Eigenbrod

So I think it comes up. I want to in the presentation I do. I have a picture, banana and and no, I didn’t ask you for permission to use, don’t tell them. It’s a picture of Tiger Wood leaning on his golf club and it basically says winning takes care of everything. It must be true because Tiger, with his talents, the most extraordinary athlete in this field ever. Think about that. Winning takes care of everything. It’s some close, mainly exactly, but nobody goes. Wait, that’s Tiger Woods telling us that. Say, tiger, is that been true for you? 

0:38:46 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, no of course, I’m glad you brought him up, actually, because the story of what he, how he was raised and what he went through is, well, I don’t know if it’s horrific, but it’s Damaging, let’s put it that way very damn and I’m glad you raised that what happens when you get what you want, if it is stuff and status? 

0:39:10 – Rick Eigenbrod

Here’s the thing that’s not in our focusing illusion and this is statistically true. Someone introduced me this wonderful woman, the Madeline Levine, who wrote a book called the price of privilege, and If you have kids, I really recommend this book. It is sobering. The essence of Madeline’s work she’s a child psychologist, open Marin, I’m in a Bay Area and so somebody invited us to have lunch with each other and we had some conversations after that. Her work said, says to us and and this is statistically true, the most at risk subpopulation At risk for eating disorders, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, depression acting out, the most at risk Subpopulation of pre-adolescent, adolescent children in this company are the children of the privileged. Hmm. 

Statistically, it’s true. 

0:40:17 – Mike Malatesta

And how come. 

0:40:18 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, read the book, but it’s a version of. You triggered that thought for me. It’s a version of Tiger Woods dad. Right, I got a call from a friend saying she one of my, one of my colleague good friends runs the Montessori school In a bit in a Bay Area, I won’t say where, and she’s having a meeting with all the parents. And she said would you come? And my friend Teaches that Wuhan University and he said I’m seeing this in China. You know it’s like go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go right. And he literally was walking down the street and a body fell in front of him and it was a Some young person who had not done well on the exams to move on to latest thing in the family and Sacrifice okay. So you starting to get the idea? Tell me you finished the story. Is it just Tiger Woods dad? 

0:41:21 – Mike Malatesta

No, I mean to have an ad that says winning takes care of everything. Tells you it’s a lot more than just just his dad. 

0:41:28 – Rick Eigenbrod

What’s the variant of our, our contemporaries, our peers, tiger moms, tiger dads. So my colleague said my friend would like us to come and talk to the parents because she is being bombarded by Can she get? And this is preschool, pre kindergarten. But I’m bored about parents who want their help and getting their kid into the right kindergarten. So play along with. If you can get your kid into the right kindergarten, then you can. Then what? 

0:42:11 – Mike Malatesta

Well then they can get into the right Lower senior primary school and they can grammar school and then, then they can get in the right high school, and then they can get in the right college, and then they can get the right job, and then they can. 

0:42:26 – Mike Malatesta

Make a ton of money, yeah, and when they do Cinderella. 

0:42:31 – Mike Malatesta

Oh yeah, how live happily ever after, exactly yeah. 

0:42:38 – Rick Eigenbrod

I mean, we could, we could talk about why that happens, but I think that you know what what we’re talking about is. You know what what we saw is. We are, we are really unprepared for the challenge that comes after we get what we want and, in a sense, it’s not. You know, we are not invited, encouraged, educated, informed to understand that the journey doesn’t end when you walk into Santiago and stand in front of the cathedral that you will take. The last step you take will put you in front of Santiago, in front of the cathedral, and the next step will take you off. And the person who arrives at the cathedral is not the person and takes that next step, isn’t the person who started the journey. 

0:43:34 – Mike Malatesta

So what’s the lesson from that, rick? So you do this. Using your example, you could do this 500 mile walk. You get to the end and you have this illusion of what the end will be like. But the end is just the end. It’s just a rainy place where you’re tired and beat down and all you want to do is take a shower and like, have some food and rest in a comfortable bed and whatever. And then the next day there’s other people coming to that finish line and you’re no longer on that finish line. You’re going home or you’re whatever you’re doing. So what’s? What is the? How do you? How do you? How do you get how? 

do you? Yeah. So how do you prepare people to for what happens when they get what they want? Because that can’t be the end, that can’t be. Like is the end just like hey man, deal with it. The end? It’s success is the beginning or, I’m sorry, success is the what comes after. Yeah, it’s the beginning. What comes after, right? 

0:44:38 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, it’s the beginning, Let me. Let me try and tidy up. By the way, it’s interesting. You said the book is thin. I remember when I first wrote the book I was really embarrassed that it was so thin, because my colleagues were all writing 300 page books. 

0:44:53 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah. 

0:44:55 – Rick Eigenbrod

And I would call it. I call it a little book. And my wife said wait, wait, don’t say that you know. And then one day she said no, no, I got it. I listened to a guy and he said he wrote this thin volume, thin volume, yes, okay, and the truth is nowadays nobody wants to write it. As you said, let’s try and break it down. What really is the essence of the disruption? Let me use Santiago. Right. 

First off, that’s an interesting phenomenon when people, if you’ve walked the Camino and people asked you about your experience, they are they. What they don’t understand is you don’t know where to start and you won’t know how to end, and they’ll say did it change you? And you’ll say, absolutely, can you tell me how it changed you? Absolutely not, I don’t have words for it. Right, but let’s use Santiago because it’s different, right? Okay, so you take that step and with this step in front of the cathedral and the step off, you lose structure, meaning and identity. Specifically, every day. I knew what the day was about. There was a rhythm to it, there was a routine to it, there was a I knew. I knew what it was about. 

0:46:25 – Mike Malatesta

Even if it frustrated you or it wasn’t always what you wanted it to be you know, and some days were really hard and whatever, whatever. 

0:46:32 – Rick Eigenbrod

But you get up and you, you know, you wake up and you pack your pack and you walk out of the hostel and you walk. God knows what’s going to happen. And one of the things you learn to do is not worry about what happened, what’s going to happen. It’s like cliches become profundities. It is what it is, it’s going to be what it’s going to be. It’s a cliche, not if you walk it in the middle of nowhere and in the Satan. All of a sudden, here comes the weather, right. So you lose structure, the rhythm and routine. That’s gone. What time are you going to wake up the next morning? Blah, blah, blah. Same with the person who sells their business. They lose all the structures that go along, the striving structures, structures among structures, among structures, visible and invisible, the invisible structures of roles and relationships, etc. What time you get up in the morning is determined by that job, right? So you lose structure. 

For most of us, that structure provides meaning. I’m in pursuit of that goal. It’s meaningful. So I had a meaning, which was to walk to Santiago to stand in front of the people. I’m here. As somebody said, satisfaction is a death of desire. You’ve lost that longing feeling. Right, you can’t have it. As soon as you have something, the appetite goes Right. So I’m in front of cathedral, I’ve got what I wanted. So the meaning of that, of that, whatever I put in 35, I don’t know how many days, 35 and change, it’s gone. It’s gone with the structure, and then identity changes. 

With this step I’m a Paragrino, a pilgrim. With the next step, I’m not. What am I Is? Who arrived? The same person as who started. So there, when you meet people on the Camino, they ask and I will invite people to work with the answer these questions when did you start? Where are you going? I can only go as far as Borgo, so, whatever, I’m going all the way to Finistin. How’s it going and why did you come? I think everybody who is getting ready to sell their business might engage those four questions as a way to transition, right. 

0:49:26 – Mike Malatesta

And is that a way to so? As I was listening to you, I kept thinking to myself how do I transform an illusion into a reality? 

0:49:35 – Rick Eigenbrod

Well, first off, it’s knowledge To understand, to check in with my fantasy about what’s going to happen when I get what I want To check in with my fantasy about. Let’s stay with the sale, with the sale, people in the sale. To check in with your fantasy. Does it have the kind of fairytale quality to it? Are there any grotty bits? If they’re not, then ask yourself okay, what am I leaving out here? That’s scary. And people who do not sell their businesses, who get up to the altar and get cold feet and if you talk to any investment banker they will tell you stories about it makes them crazy. They think they’re going to get this. You know you’re shaking it. 

Oh, yeah, oh yeah, you’re going to get there, you get there, you get there, and all of a sudden they start quarreling about terms, condition, money, all that stuff they’re putting the brakes on why? Because some part of them is resisting what’s going to come after it, beyond, After you step away from, you know, after you’ve done the cartoon, after you’ve graduated, after you’ve got the boy, after you’ve got the girl, after you get the degree, after you win the championship. Some part of them is aware of that and I think, could be much more aware. So I think, for example, if I was to sit with the investment bankers, I said look, when they start all of a sudden quarreling about money, quarreling about terms, back up, don’t sell, sell, sell, sell Back up. Talk to me about what’s going on, because this isn’t about money, is it? You know? Talk to me about what’s going on. No one asked them that. Right. 

Right. Do you have some concerns and worries about after the sale? What are they? 

0:51:53 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, yeah. I can just imagine that the investment banker, for example, is saying or your lawyer hey, you know, Rick, these are industry norms here, these are industry standards, this language that they’re asking for. They’re not addressing the right problem. They’re addressing something like red herring. 

0:52:19 – Rick Eigenbrod

Exactly because they are there to get the sale done. They’re there to sell. They’re not there to help you understand why you’re not. Let me be a very quick example I got a call from a gentleman. He said I got your name blah, blah blah, and that’s how things happen. How do things happen? I get a call. 

0:52:37 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah. 

0:52:38 – Rick Eigenbrod

It’s internal or external. 

It’s an external, internal, and I love that, you know. It’s just I don’t you know. And if you ask me, why do I get a call, why did I get a call, the answer is I don’t know. I think it has to do to some extent. There are people in my life all along who have seen something either in me or for me. And I would say do you have people who see something in you and think about things for you? Do you have those people in your life? You have lots of people in your life and any one of them be the person who, as they move through the world, sees something for you or in you particularly, something you don’t even see. And secondly, people say, yeah, you just got lucky, you know, out of the blue, the universe sent, you know, these invitations. And that’s not true for me. And I want to say you sure, because I’ll bet you can think back on invitations that were there that you might have ignored Right For good reason For good reason. 

So I think that. Oh so the gentleman, sorry, things are spinning in my head. Sorry, this happens to me all the time. 

Yeah, this is my wife. It’s like Rick, finish your sentence, finish your poet. So I get a call and he said, yes, I’m going to and I’m thinking about telling my business. Really tell me about your business. Well, it’s really thriving. It’s been there for a long time but it’s really struggling. And my wife and I bought this place down in South Carolina and I want to spend more time down there but the team’s not working well. So I got to jump in and do more and more and more and blah, blah, blah, blah and. But you know I’m getting some offers on the business. I said that’s great. Are they good offers? He’s market kind of market rate offers. He goes, yeah, but it’s not enough to make up for the blutch, wet and tears I put into this business. And you know you smile over there. They don’t pay you for blood, sweat and tears, right, and you could feel his tension rising and I said how old are you? 83. 83. There’s a part of him that is really terrified. So he has all these excuses to hang on. 

And I think what we can do if we’re the let’s just take the population of sellers I think what you and I can do is to broaden their horizon, broaden their view of the totality of the experience. You will walk off the plaza in front of Santiago and if you feel like you have lost the source of structure, meaning and identity, there’s nothing to matter with you. It’s totally natural, normal, predictable and a different set of challenges Right, which the skill set, attitudes, outlooks, strategies, tactics that you use to get here will not only be not helpful, but they can be counterproductive in tackling this next challenge. Impatience will not help you, critical will not help you. Brute force will not help you. They got you here, right. I mean, there’s not enough conversation about a grown-up picture of what happens when we get what we want, and you and I can contribute to that conversation. 

0:56:57 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, that’s, you know, as you’re saying it’s so. Thank you for saying that, because it’s making me feel like the my commitment, the work that I’m committed to do, which is to help people. I don’t want, I don’t want to see people get to that point and then they think, oh, I need help. I want them to understand that they need help. 

They need someone who can teach them or guide them or question them or whatever the right word is, before they get there before they, before they have this focusing illusion and because, man, oh man, it’s like the most consequential thing that you’re probably ever going to do in your whole life, from a financial standpoint, probably certainly, and from a personal standpoint, almost certainly. And it just drives me nuts, Rick, that we get there and then we’re like unhappy. I mean, that’s the last possible thing that you would want that outcome to be is unhappiness, loss, disenchanted, you know, living in the past, all of these things. 

0:58:14 – Rick Eigenbrod

Self-critical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what’s the matter with me. Wait, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve failed at success. I’m doing something wrong. Go back to the bundling for a second. You ever bundling, in other words, the combination of how we how did happen? The combination of all of that together is different than the sum of its parts, right, okay, and we pull on that bundling for expertise. So, for example, one of the things that you can guarantee that people who sold their business and are struggling is they are going to be thrown up against their developmental flat side. What does that? 

0:58:59 – Mike Malatesta

mean. 

0:59:00 – Rick Eigenbrod

Well, it means that you’ve developed some part of yourself, right yeah, and but you’ve, you know, you’ve over, you’ve developed strength, developed strength, developed parts of you, excuse me. And then you run into things like this Resentment, or because you did all of this and you’re owed, because you, you have to have certainty, your need for certainty, your insecurity about not being in control, your sense of not being able to hold complexity, those kind of things. Here’s a great example, and I have permission to tell a story. One of the guys I know talked about for so often you know all his life, literally. And recently, whenever they would, the family would gather and they’d go, they’d go out for pizza, they’d order pizza out. He always ordered an eight, the pizza that they ordered. I said what kind of pizza do you like? He said I don’t know. 

I’ve never looked at what matters to me, what do I care about? That then makes that matter because I’ve chosen to care about it. I’ve always cared about what I was told matters. It’s called internal, external locus of control. It’s a kind of thing so can do in the bundle. I bring that clinical psychologist who understands human development and I can, I can call on it. I can talk now about business. I now have the legitimacy of someone who really is an expert in what you’re going through. Put those all together and we really offer people something unique. There’s not many people outside of them that can bring them all of that or call on those pieces as needed. 

1:01:05 – Mike Malatesta

Right, you give me a lot to think about. I really appreciate this opportunity to have you on the show and talk about this really important subject, rick, and what’s been great about it is that I think I know a lot about this, and when I hear you talk, it makes me think okay, I don’t know as much as I need to know to be as helpful as I can be. That’s number one. And then number two, I think to myself my goodness, there are people like you out there, people like me out there, that can help people with this, really, you know, meaningful change in their lives, and I just wish, and I hope, that we can continue to. Well, let’s say so. 

This stats in my head. I read this UBS survey after I read your book and I read the Yale study that you contributed to or was based on your work, and it was this was recent. It was 81% of people who sold their businesses wish they had prepared more for the sale and for themselves, and I thought to myself 81% are you? Wow? So, and these are people who don’t have to report that. These are people that you don’t have to say that this is something you would have done, and it’s just amazing to me, and then having this discussion with you and reading your book just reinforced that there’s a lot of power in teaching and helping people understand how to move past success what comes after. 

1:03:01 – Rick Eigenbrod

Yeah, overcome getting, you know, overcome getting. Think about it, mike, I listened to you and I listened to your podcast and some others just to get a flavor for what your guests etc. And you, yeah, and you gave a statistic 81% don’t prepare for the sale. What percent prepare for after the sale? 

Yeah, good point, yeah, if 80% don’t prepare for the sale, because there’s a sense. You know, we want to broaden the horizon, we want people to see that the journey I don’t want to beat Santiago to death, but the journey continues after you walk off the plaza Right. And so this you and I are having a conversation, the conversation not had. You’re right, yeah, we’re making the invisible visible and when you make the invisible visible, you can change the conversation and change it. And a friend of mine, brilliant guy, speaker of the year for this, as you may know, his name is Pat Murray. He was from Wisconsin, he was a chair in Wisconsin. He was a brilliant guy, yeah, and you know that his notion was our lives and our companies are the consequence of conversation, the ones we’re having and, most importantly, the ones we’re not. 

1:04:37 – Mike Malatesta

That brilliant, that’s brilliant. Yeah, that is brilliant, that was. 

1:04:40 – Rick Eigenbrod

Pat unfortunately was. So I think what we do, what I want to do, I want to make the invisible visible one. I want to change the conversation and, because of the people we run with, so to speak, my, my kind of purpose, what matters to me, how I, everything that goes with that bundle, can help me make a difference with people who are going to make a difference. Yes, so you and I, because of however it is we got here and however it is that happened, and looking back to how it happened, I think makes us appreciate ourselves and the generosity of the universe or others. You know, we really are uniquely positioned to make a difference with people who are really going to make a difference out there. 

1:05:48 – Mike Malatesta

I like that. Make a difference with people are going to make a difference. That’s, that’s yeah, because, yeah, well, that’s a great place to leave it. Rick, thank you so much for for being on the show. Thank you for writing this amazing book. What happens when you get what you want, which is a very insightful question I’m glad that Susan helped you with. Is it Susan Susan Scott? Susan Scott? Yes, that Susan Scott helped you with that, because I think that’s a fantastic question and a fantastic book title. Thank you for writing it and thank you for making time to be on the show today. 

1:06:27 – Rick Eigenbrod

It was a pleasure and it was great fun, great fun, thank you. 

1:06:33 – Mike Malatesta

I agree, and everyone listening. Until next time. Please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you and really focus on making your future, your property, something that you can own and something that you can be very proud to own. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. 

Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy. And if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast, the guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name, mikemalatesta.com. You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.