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[Encore] 10 Disciplines for Maximizing Your Energy, Impact, and Inner Peace with Rob Dube · The Missing Secret Podcast

• 0:00
  John Mitchell: Welcome to the Missing Secret podcast. So today, hey, we've got a special guest, Rob Dubay. He wrote an amazing book called Shine, and he co-authored this book with Geno Whitman, the founder of the wildly popular EOS operating system for businesses. In this book, Rob talks about how looking inward, looking inward, is the key to unlocking true entrepreneurial freedom. Boy, does that sound familiar? And he discusses the 10 disciplines for maximizing your energy, impact, and inner peace, and as you will see in our conversation, Rob is just an enlightened, cool guy. So, Rob, welcome to the Missing Secret Podcast.
• 0:53
  Rob Dube: Thank you, John, for having me. It's it's such an honor, and I'm humbled to spend time with you. You and I had a chance to speak not too long ago, and I so enjoyed our conversation. So, when I saw that we were doing this, I was excited. I knew this was going to be a fun morning. Okay,
• 1:12
  John Mitchell: we will not disappoint you. So, I think the easiest way is is just tell your story.
• 1:18
  Rob Dube: Okay, well, you know the biography goes back to when I was in high school. I'll start there. So this is the what I like to call the outer world story.
• 1:30
  John Mitchell: Yeah, and
• 1:30
  Rob Dube: the outer world story is that I was an entrepreneur from the age of 14, selling blow pop lollipops out of my locker with my best friend,
• 1:39
  John Mitchell: selling what?
• 1:40
  Rob Dube: Blow pop lollipops.
• 1:42
  John Mitchell: Okay, okay. You know
• 1:44
  Rob Dube: the ones with the gum in the middle.
• 1:46
  John Mitchell: Oh, okay. Remember
• 1:47
  Rob Dube: those?
• 1:48
  John Mitchell: No, we didn't.
• 1:49
  Rob Dube: Oh,
• 1:49
  John Mitchell: that was you. That was after my time, probably
• 1:52
  Rob Dube: after your time. Okay, I love it. So it was quite popular, and we had all kinds of entrepreneurial ventures in high school and in college, so would you know it? We started a company called Image One after we graduated college. That was back in 1991.
• 2:09
  John Mitchell: When you say you talking about high school buddies of yours?
• 2:12
  Rob Dube: Yeah, this is my high school best friend who whom I was selling the blow pop lollipops. Right. Yeah, and so we started the company $5,000 each loans from our parents. We were very fortunate to be able to have that kind of support, and you know jumped in and grew the company over a period of about eight years, slowly but surely. But it was a mess. We didn't know what we were doing. We had the good fortune, whom I think we'll speak a little bit, maybe more about this later. But we had the good fortune of meeting a friend now and a mentor by the name of Geno Wickman. At that time, he had just started a consulting business where he was teaching entrepreneurs, you know, how to better operate their companies, which is now very well known. It's called EOS, and he wrote a very well-known book called Traction. So we were one of his first clients. We embraced the system. It was we were very successful with it. And a couple years later, we actually, through growth and through really getting control of the business, we sold the business to a public company. And about 18 months later, they sold it back to us, and so we kind of had a short exit and then a return. And at that time, you know, we really were a bit more thoughtful about how we wanted to operate the business moving forward, inspired by a book by Bo Burlingham, who is was also the editor of Inc. magazine for many years. The book is called Small Giants, and these are this is a book about founders and entrepreneurs who are very much driven by the totality, caring for the totality of their team members' lives, their employees' lives, and so we sort of took that as inspiration moving forward, and really honed in on our culture. Became very well known for you know what we were doing at the company,
• 4:12
  John Mitchell: and what what business was it?
• 4:15
  Rob Dube: We were in the managed print services business and still are. So we sold and maintained copiers and printers for organizations around country. Yep. So I grew that company up until about 2000, at which time I handed over the reins, and we did a succession plan. And we have a CEO, my business partner, and I have a CEO who now runs the company much more successfully than we were, and hopefully taking it to you know new heights. So that's the goal, and he's doing a great job getting it there. So one more piece to it, and that is around 2001, I started a company with Geno Web. Who I mentioned earlier called the 10 Disciplines, and that's a coaching business where we teach driven people 10 key disciplines to help them manage their energy, impact, and inner peace. These are tried and true disciplines, which really help you clear your mind, give you space, so you make better decisions, and when you make better decisions, you get wherever you're going a lot faster, and so that's been very successful and a lot of fun. And we also wrote a book called Shine, and so that's what I've been up to most recently.
• 5:34
  John Mitchell: So when you sold your company back, you say in 2001. So how old were you at that point?
• 5:42
  Rob Dube: I was in my early 30s. I think I was about 32 or 33 years old.
• 5:46
  John Mitchell: And so, did you decide, okay, I'm going to go into essentially coaching?
• 5:51
  Rob Dube: No, at that time we had a three-year contract with the company, so we were running the company as a wholly owned subsidiary. So I wasn't sure, you know, but like I mentioned, 18 months later, they kind of have a management shakeup, and the new CEO said, "Not part of my vision. We want it off the balance sheet. You know, would you be interested in taking it back? And so, after some thinking, we decided to do that.
• 6:17
  John Mitchell: Right. So I'm interested in that that evolution to entrepreneur, more to leadership coach, sort of the mental side of of entrepreneurship. How did that happen and evolve?
• 6:32
  Rob Dube: Yeah, you know that's a great question because it certainly wasn't intentional. I had mentored people over the years, but I don't know that that qualified me in my mind to be a leadership coach
• 6:45
  John Mitchell: in
• 6:45
  Rob Dube: any way, shape, or form. But I did, upon reflection. So let me just put it that way. How I sit today, I realized that the culmination of both my outer world journey and my inner world journey, which we haven't spoken about, and we can created a set of principles and wisdom. I guess you could say where I am able to work with people and really get to the root of what the problem is that they're facing, and really help them go more deeply inside if they're open to doing that, not everybody is. But if you're working with me, you have to be, because we're going to go 10 layers deep, and because the the root of the issue is not the the real issue that you're presenting to me. And so, you know, I take my clients on a 12 month journey, and you know, we really help them free their true selves. So that's what I'd been able to do with people, and realize that that was sort of something that maybe I have some qualifications around. I humbly say that. So,
• 7:55
  John Mitchell: Rob, I love how you phrased it: the outer journey and the inner journey. I am totally interested, as I know our audience is, about the inner journey, because, and I know you agree with me on this. Everybody is just winging life. There, it's on everybody to figure out how they're going to navigate this thing called life, and very few of them have ever been taught actually a way of doing life or a framework. So talk about now that inner journey from like when you were high school and how that evolved to where you are today.
• 8:34
  Rob Dube: Okay, so I actually go back to my early childhood where I experienced a great deal of trauma, physical, mental, and sexual abuse. So some of it was actually repressed and came out later when I was an adult, which was quite an experience. And so obviously, you know, at a young age when these things happen, of course, mine, you know, may have been a capital T trauma. Some of us have lower T trauma. We could talk more about that, but we often have things that you might call imprints, or you know, just different things that have happened that we've experienced in our life that were beyond our control, that you know created part of who we are, and it manifests into how we show up in the world. When I work with driven people, you know, one of the things I often find out is they've had some impactful things happen to them in their lives, and as a result, coming back to my story, you look for ways to control it, and that's why you're so driven. You want to prove to the world that you're worthy, that you're something. You want to prove to yourself that you're worthy and that you're something. You want people to love you. We all want people to love us, but we're searching for it, and oftentimes that drive is one of the things. That shows up. So as I are,
• 10:02
  John Mitchell: you saying that the the drive is created by the adversity that you experience?
• 10:09
  Rob Dube: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you don't realize it, you know. For the most part, it's oftentimes it's suppressed. You don't even know what's going on. So, like in my case, when I was in my 20s. I got married early in my 20s. I had kids early in my 20s, and I realized about mid 20s, I was not a great husband, and I wasn't on the track to be a great father. I just there was something intuitively where I was saying something isn't right here, and I shared this with my best friend, who I was in business with, and he said to me, "Have you ever thought of speaking with a therapist? So, John, you and I know, though many years ago that wasn't as common as it is today. So, I felt like I I must be broken if I have to go to a therapist, but I felt like I was broken, and I needed help, and I was willing to open myself up to doing that. So I went to therapy, and that was the first thing of many, many, many things that I've done and continue to do to free my true self to allow these suppressed emotions, feelings, and thoughts to come to the surface and to release themselves, so I can have a peaceful, more loving life, and I can show up and vibrate at a high level for all those that I come into contact with, and even those that I don't. And so it's a journey that we talk about and shine, that we write about because we encourage our readers to you know not feel shame and guilt and to open themselves up to what might be happening in their lives and really take a close look at how they're showing up because I know they're showing up in a lot of wonderful ways. They're driven people. They're making a great impact a lot, but they're also sometimes leaving a black trail behind themselves, and they don't even realize it. Sometimes they're workaholics. They have different types of addictions. They don't even realize some of these things are addictions. I mean, you and I know, John. When you're a workaholic, people are impressed by that. Right? Wow, that guy
• 12:22
  will work till midnight to make the deal happen. They'll do anything. Meanwhile, the people closest to them are suffering.
• 12:30
  John Mitchell: Right. Right. At what cost? Right.
• 12:34
  Rob Dube: Yeah. At what cost? So you have to ask yourself, like, why am I doing this? What's this all about? What's the backstory? And once you get real about that, maybe you make some changes in your life. And one of the hardest things is making changes, you know. And the further you keep going from your 20s to your 30s, 30s to your 40s, 40s to your 50s, etc. change gets harder. You know, and you you create a lifestyle for yourself, you create an identity for yourself, and it's hard to unwind those things. And I could tell oftentimes when I do talks, I could I can see it in people's eyes, and I could feel it in their energy where they're just not going there. They're good with their life, and they're not they're not taking a step. It's too scary, and that's fear. And we don't want to make decisions from fear in our life, we have to take it on, take it head on, because we want to make all of our decisions from love. Right. Sometimes that means going against conventional thinking.
• 13:31
  John Mitchell: I tell you, my my takeaway from hearing that is that so you go into therapy, and and probably the takeaway is that you realize life is a state of mind. Largely, would you say that's fair?
• 13:47
  Rob Dube: I think so, but you could even take it deeper. I will. I take it out of my mind. You know, our mind is a very powerful thing. I think the work that you're doing exemplifies that. Certainly, Napoleon Hill exemplifies that, and then I take it from the mind, and then I go into the body, and you know, really paying attention to the signs that your body is sending you. So you start with your mind. You have an input. Maybe there's something that you see for your future, something that maybe you you are passionate about, and you want to make an impact in the world in a particular kind of way, and now is a great time to get quiet and sit with that and notice what your body's messaging to you, messaging to your brain, right? And because it might be different than what your mind is telling you, you might be going after something because of some of these suppressed emotions that you and I were speaking about just a few minutes ago. Maybe you're trying to please somebody. Maybe you're trying to show the world that you're something. If those are the reasons, those are those are coming from fear. Those are those are what your true self really want for you.
• 15:05
  John Mitchell: Well, what what do you mean when you say pay attention to your what your body is is telling you in that in that regard? What do you mean by well?
• 15:13
  Rob Dube: Let me turn the tables for a minute, if you don't mind. You know, have you ever had some physical pain, for example, when you were going through a stressful time, or have you ever noticed something when you've had a stressful time, like tension in your neck, or you know your stomach kind of pain in your stomach, or maybe you haven't, and that's okay. I'm just curious.
• 15:37
  John Mitchell: I I really haven't. Yeah,
• 15:39
  Rob Dube: no, or at
• 15:39
  John Mitchell: least at least I don't. I'm not consciously aware of it.
• 15:43
  Rob Dube: Yeah, there you go. So you know, and that's very possible. You may not have. I always encourage people that haven't to start paying a closer attention to their bodies because it's it's about awareness, and some of us have essentially gone through our lives without bringing awareness to our body. There's there's a really great book called The Body Keeps the Score. It's a best-selling book, and it teaches all about the body. And you you get it from the title. It's kind of sending you all the messages in in keeping score. So maybe John, maybe you've been familiar with somebody who's you know had the unfortunate situation where they've had a heart attack, or maybe darn near close to a heart attack. You know, that could be attributed to you know diet, oftentimes, but other times it's attributed to stress. Now think about that. How can stress manifest into some sort of physical issue with our hearts-that's a real thing. Oh, yeah, and cause a heart attack.
• 16:48
  John Mitchell: Absolutely. Well, I think back when I was 19 years old, I read psychocybernetics. Do you ever read psychocybernetics?
• 16:56
  Rob Dube: Haven't. No.
• 16:58
  John Mitchell: Well, have you heard of it?
• 17:00
  Rob Dube: No.
• 17:01
  John Mitchell: Really, it's it is one of the classics, and it's all about self-image. And what's cool about it is it was written by a plastic surgeon who noticed that people would come to him and go, "Doc, you got to fix my nose. He go, "Well, what's what's wrong with your notes? Well, they perceived that it there was a problem with their notes, and so he wrote. And truly, it's one of the legendary books. And I read that when I was 19 years old, and it totally impacted my self image. It eliminated the inclination to worry, which was huge at that at any really any age, particularly that age, and and so not that I didn't have stress by any means, but but to learn that and not worry because worry is is is what causes stress. That's why I maybe did suffer to the degree that that some people do, where where that stress manifests itself in the in the body, but
• 18:07
  Rob Dube: yeah, and so you very well may have learned in what a gift that book was, and and then your mind to be able to take the input and be able to understand it well enough to allow it to settle into your body, into your energy, so it became a way of being. Okay, so so you were exuding an energy. Maybe at 19, maybe you knew it, maybe you didn't. But what a gift that book! No coincidence that somehow it came into your life, and at such a young age, it's really remarkable, right? And so, yeah. So you may have learned, and your body may have learned through your mind to manage the things that were coming at you. Because such a great point about worry. I mean, you know, highly driven people are oftentimes one of their main traits is anxiety, stress, and what do they do as they're going through these daily bouts of things that are coming at them and creating stress? Is they're just doing, doing, going, going. That's how we. That's how we have learned to manage our stress: is to not be with it, not sit with it. We're trying to solve everything at light speed pace, so we don't feel the pain of that anxiety and stress anymore. That's that's at the end of the day. That's what we're trying to do.
• 19:32
  John Mitchell: That's a great explanation. That that you're trying to solve the stress by by an outcome, not deal with the stress.
• 19:40
  Rob Dube: Right, and you know one of the things we write about we in in our disciplines portion of the book, discipline number four is be still, and this is where we encourage you to take at least 30 minutes a day and just sit in silence. You can meditate, you could pray, you can journal, you can contemplate, or whatever. Is the right thing for you. Some people go on quiet walks. We encourage stillness, but you know, if somebody can't do that, then you can go on quiet walks. But find a way to just allow yourself to be with the energy that's that you're carrying around all day. Be with the stress. Be in the discomfort, letting go talks about that in a book, letting go by David Hawkins. It's it's being with the discomfort because by allowing it to arise, it's it begins to sort of dissipate. It comes out of you. You're giving it space to do that. I always like to share the example of imagine a jar filled with sand and water, and the cap is on tight, and you shake up that jar and you try to look through it, but but it's not clear. All the sand is floating around. It's mucky. You can't. It's not clear. You set it down for 30 minutes, and then you pick it up, and you can see right through it. That's your mind. That's your energy. Settle it down. Let your body catch up. Let your nervous system reset. It's different than sleep because you're conscious. You are fully in a conscious state, being with the discomfort. Now, a lot of people have trouble sitting in silence. There's a great quote from Anne Lamott. She says, "My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try to never go there alone. And when we sit in silence, what happens is all the stressors come to the forefront. All the things we have to do come to the forefront, and it's hard to sit there. What do we want to do? We want to get up and go do things. We want to get up and solve it and take action. But that isn't always the right thing to do. We're not in danger. Hopefully, that's not the case. If you are,
• 21:59
  obviously, you need to take action. But you're, you know not in danger. So you sit with these emotions, these feelings, these thoughts. You allow them to arise. You notice them as just mental constructs. They're just things, and you let them go by like clouds in the sky. You gently welcome them and have appreciation for these these emotions that we term as stress. So we say to ourselves, "I appreciate that stress and anxiety is here to try to help me. Actually, because that's what it's for. It's here to try to help us. And now I will manage this in a way that brings me peace, not more anxiety, not more stress. That isn't the point of it all. And so, after 30 minutes, hopefully, things in what what what I see on a regular basis in the retreats that I hold, and in the clients that I work with, and just in people that reach out and say, "I started doing this, and I've noticed a measured difference. I can think more clearly. I'm calmer. People are telling me I'm. They notice a change in me, but they're not really quite sure how to describe it. The reason they can't describe it is because you're showing up with a different energy, your energy is vibrating higher. You're coming from a place of clarity, and when you come from a place of clarity, people recognize that in you. And so, this is what we want for ourselves. Why? Yes, we want to be successful. I know that's important for all of us. We want to have purpose, of course. We want to make an impact. Yes, of course, but ultimately, the end game is showing up for each and every human being on this planet-eight to eight, eight to eight and a half billion of them-with compassion and love. That's what we're here for. I know we have our things. We're in our little bubble of the thing that we do, and you know our crafts, make the greatest impact you can.
• 24:05
  There, go ahead and do it, and do it for the right new reasons-not to feed your ego, but because if you're if you're leading a sports organization or team, because I know you do a lot of work with people in that regard. Right, you're making an impact, obviously, on a young a lot of young people. What a gift! What an honor to be able to be placed in a position like that, and you know it. All those listen, you know it. You know, and so yeah, like show up with the greatest energy for them. Why? Because they're gonna remember that, and that kind of energy is going to carry over to all the people that they're going to make an impact. I mean, if they're in student athletics, these are future leaders of the world. Let's face it; we all know that they're not all going to carry that on in a professional manner. Sports wise, they're going to go lead organizations in this world. They're going to create things, and this is. Where we start spreading love and compassion to all the human beings on this earth-that's what it's all about. Let's face it,
• 25:10
  John Mitchell: man. I there's so much of what you said I resonates with with me, and and I think you just gave us a pearl of wisdom that that analogy of shaking up a glass full of sand and letting it settle is a fabulous analogy for the idea of setting aside time to to think. What what in our nomenclature we call deep thinking, but that's at the heart of really all this, if if life is a state of mind, you gotta stop a couple of times a week and just see what, sit back and see what see what comes to you and and sort it out. And that's truly the best analogy I've ever heard, way better than any analogy I've ever had. So thank you for that that pearl of wisdom. So tell us about the book Shine and the 10 Disciplines, how they come about, and just explain the book to us, if you will.
• 26:15
  Rob Dube: Yeah. So my business partner in this venture is Geno Wickman, who I mentioned a couple of times, and he was kind of living his life in a very unique way. I I would notice this over the 20 plus years that I have been close with him. And ultimately, one day he sat down because he was getting ready to do a keynote talk, and he was trying to think of some content. And he started to write down all these things he he was doing over the 20 years. And he came up with I don't know 1015, of them, but narrowed it down to 10, and and you know really articulated them well. And when he shared them with me, I said, "Huh, you know, I've been sort of gleaning these 10 disciplines off of you from all these years, but they weren't defined, and so I was sort of mirroring mirroring the way he was living his life.
• 27:04
  John Mitchell: Why was you created
• 27:06
  Rob Dube: the 10 disciplines and gave it him? No, Gino created them. Okay, and he was teaching them to me over the years. Oh, they were they weren't defined as the 10 disciplines. They were just things he was doing.
• 27:19
  John Mitchell: Yeah.
• 27:19
  Rob Dube: So then he organized them, and ultimately I said these are valuable. I've been living by them. They were undefined at the time. Now they're defined really clear. What if we taught these to driven people? And that was the starting point to teaching these very practical tools, which we call the foundation in your life, so you can build upon it to do the real work, which we've been talking a lot about, which is more of that inner work, which helps you free your true self.
• 27:55
  John Mitchell: Yeah, that is fabulous. So interesting. So tell us what the 10 disciplines are, if you don't mind.
• 28:02
  Rob Dube: Okay, I'll go through them sort of rapid fire. So, discipline number one is 10 year thinking, and this is where we encourage you to shift your mind from short term thinking to thinking in at least 10 year timeframes. Okay, so I'll start. I'll I'll just do the quick go through, and then you can ask me any questions about it. Okay. Discipline number two is take time off, and that's we encourage you to take at least 130 days off per year, and not think about or do work during those days, completely free of work. Discipline number three is know thyself, and that is be yourself 100% of the time, 24/7, 365. Number four, which we already spoke about, is be still. Discipline number five is know your 100% and that is where we encourage you to decide on and commit to the perfect number of hours per week and weeks per year where you will deliver your craft to this world. Number six is say no often, and that's where we encourage you to say no to everything that doesn't fit into the first five disciplines. Number seven is never do $25 an hour work. There's nothing wrong with $25 an hour work, but if you're a driven person, it's likely that that's your pay rate is higher than that. So never do anything that you could pay someone $25 an hour to do. Delegate number eight is prepare every night, and so simply before your head hits the pillow, plan out the next day. Number nine is put everything in one place, and we encourage you to pick the one place where you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item that comes up during your day. And number 10 is be humble and simply view yourself as equal to every person on this planet.
• 29:57
  John Mitchell: Wow!
• 29:57
  Rob Dube: Those are the 10 disciplines.
• 29:59
  John Mitchell: That's. That's like the 2025 version of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
• 30:05
  Rob Dube: That's great. I've heard of it described that way, but I take that as a compliment. So,
• 30:10
  John Mitchell: so let's let's dig into that a little. In fact, let me let me grab the the book. Talk about that first one for for a little bit.
• 30:22
  Rob Dube: So you know, with 10-year thinking, when you take the time to slow down and really think about what do, what would I, how do I want my life to look like in 10 years? Once you get really clear about that, that informs your decisions in the present moment, because once this is embedded in your mind, and then you embody it, meaning it goes from your mind just naturally into your body. As a driven person, you're getting all kinds of inputs coming at you. You have all kinds of decisions that you need to make all kinds of opportunities coming your way, all kinds of you know just different things because of what you're doing in life. And when you have clarity in your tenure thinking, you can easily discern whether this is something you would like to move forward with, whether this should be part of your life or not. And that's what it's all about. It's all about alignment. So you simply ask yourself, does this align with how I see myself in 10 years? A simple example that goes beyond your professional-driven side is: Let's say there's somebody who's really important to you in your life. Could be a parent, could be a a spouse or or a significant other could be a child, and let's just say that sometimes they they say or do things that sort of get under your skin. In sometimes you might react adversely to those things. Now, if in your tenure thinking you want to be a loving and caring and non-judgmental person towards those people in your life, you will pause in that moment of stimulus and response, and it's a millisecond where you get to choose. It's a very famous saying by Viktor Frankl, and you in that moment you get to choose what's your response going to be? Are you going to not be thoughtful and just lash out at your child, at your at your parent, spouse, or are you going to pause, take a breath, and not say anything?
• 32:35
  John Mitchell: Right.
• 32:35
  Rob Dube: That is so much more powerful because your tenure thinking is you want to have a loving relationship with them, and it starts today, my friend. Yeah.
• 32:45
  John Mitchell: So tell us about number three: know thyself.
• 32:48
  Rob Dube: Know thyself is that inner journey. So you know we always say if you just want to dip your toe in the water, you can start doing things like take some personality profiles, start really digging into who you are. What are your gifts in this world? You know what. What has something greater than you blessed you with in this life? You know. There's all kinds of wonderful profiling tools out there as a way to dip your toe, and you can. You don't even have to share it with anybody. You just get a greater sense of yourself. You can read these and see what resonates, and then you can start to also notice what sort of feels like ah, I'm like that. No, this this profiling tool must be wrong, you know, because you have a certain self sense of your, you know, you have an identity that you've created. But these profiles help sort of, you know, sort of start to take that apart and let you look a little bit deeper. And as you go deeper, you can start to do other things. Maybe you need to go to therapy. There's nothing wrong with talk therapy, and there's all kinds of therapy. And you can even go further with all kinds of other modalities to help get to know yourself even better. Because once you're clear about yourself and you show up with love and compassion, but you're also mindful in your speech, you know, mindful in your thoughts, you know, your energy exudes in a different way. And you know, I always like to use the example people like to share with me people they know in their lives where when those people enter in a room, everybody sort of just looks, and and the heads turn. And why? What? Why just some person just walked in a room? Why does that happen? Because they have an energy that they exude, and it's something that not all of us have. And that energy is they are fully themselves, and that exudes as even just as they walk around, you don't even have to talk to them. You just can feel it.
• 34:45
  John Mitchell: Well, and I think all that that resonates with with our audience because my methodology is built around the idea of creating immense clarity, exactly the person you want to be, exactly what you want to. Accomplish and precisely how you're going to achieve your clearly defined goals, and so I, our nomenclature is you feed the succinct articulation of your desired life to yourself every day, and and you recondition and rewire the autopilot so that that's who you become. But it's it's seriously exactly what you're talking about. It sounds like to me,
• 35:25
  Rob Dube: yeah.
• 35:26
  John Mitchell: So so also talk about this discipline of know your 100%
• 35:31
  Rob Dube: Yeah. So you know we're driven people. We're going 1000 miles an hour all the time. We work harder than any other person, and people will look at us and say, "Like, how do you do it? Like, I don't understand. Like, they most mortal human beings look at driven people and say, "I don't get it. I don't get how hard they go. But here's the reality: we all have a breaking point, and we need to get really clear about when we need to stop and allow ourselves to reset, to re-energize, and so for some people that might be 10 hours a day is their maximum time that they can deliver their impact to this world. So if you work five days a week, that's 50 hours. If you work seven days a week, that's 70 hours. Right. You know, for some people, it's six hours a day. So it could be 30 hours a week. You choose for some people, it's four hours a week.
• 36:34
  John Mitchell: Yeah. Right. Right. Here is a famous
• 36:37
  Rob Dube: book. Yeah. Exactly. Down in your in your world world in your community, so you just have to find your perfect number of hours, so you are always clear and you are always showing up with the best energy. You know the greatest leaders in this world, when they go beyond that and they have decisions to make, they make bad decisions. It's pretty well documented that there's a certain point where you just are capable of making as good of decisions, and you see it all the time. You see horrible decisions, and a lot of times that's because people are working in a state of burnout.
• 37:13
  John Mitchell: Right.
• 37:14
  Rob Dube: Just you know, when you're burnt out, you don't even realize it. You're you're just going on fumes.
• 37:20
  John Mitchell: Right.
• 37:20
  Rob Dube: You're just your mind is not clear, and you don't realize it. So you have to be disciplined around that.
• 37:26
  John Mitchell: So, so talk about discipline number 10. Be humble.
• 37:30
  Rob Dube: Be humble. So you know, I I imagine most of your listeners, especially if they're listening to you, they're humble people. They want to learn. They want to grow. They want. Well, let me let me
• 37:39
  John Mitchell: put it into perspective as you answer. Question, so I'm going to give this interview to both the 18 head coaches at the University of Texas, plus the athletic department, plus we're going to do it on my own podcast, the Missing Secret podcast, and who are are a wide range of adults, but that's so. Talk from that standpoint, and keep in mind the little bragging, if you don't mind. University of Texas is the top brand in college sports, and we have just won the Directors Cup four of the last five years, which is awarded to the top athletic program in the country based on wins and losses, so being humble is probably a good lesson for us.
• 38:27
  Rob Dube: Yeah, right, right. I mean, how many times have we seen great organizations fall apart within a decade? Right. So yeah, humility. First of all, congratulations. Celebrate by all means. You know, take that in and look at all the wonderful things that you've done to get there. And now, moving forward, how can we maintain it? How can we continue to grow and expand? So don't get too full of yourselves. That's where humility comes in. Every day is a new day. Approach every day with a beginner's mind. We're not the most successful, you know. We've set a bar. Now, how do we raise the bar here? What are some of the things that we can can can continue to do repeatedly the good things, and how can we build on those things to make an even greater impact in the work that we're doing, and then take a personal check because it comes down to the individuals. Oftentimes, you know, it starts it it starts with the individuals, and then you bring it into it as a team. So individually, how are you showing up? How are you treating people? You know, I always like to say, you know, I like to use a silly example: is you know sometimes we go out to a restaurant and we're really hungry. We're a little agitated. We're tired, and we just want to get served our food, and it's not going well. Yeah, right. And so we start to have these stories. The server isn't on top of things. This place runs like horrible, et cetera, et cetera. So now, here are are you saying you could run the restaurant better? Are you looking at yourself as better than those that are servicing you at this moment? These are in life where we get tested on our humility, and so just notice these little things every single day when you're stuck in traffic and the guy behind you or in front of you is a jerk. Check your humility. They're not a jerk. They're a human just like you, and they may not be just. They're just not operating in the same wavelength right now. It's okay, you know. Right. These are the little
• 40:32
  things in life that we ignore, and we want to be at ultimate humility, which means every single person on this earth is equal to us, even our enemies, even our enemies, and so we we have great compassion for all of them. And when you can operate on that, and you you come from that kind of energy, it exudes from you. People feel it. You don't have to say a word, and they feel it from you. You could challenge them in sports. You, of course you're going to challenge the athletes. I'm just using that as an example, right? Because you want them to be their best. You see something in them that they may not see in themselves, and it takes a great person, a great coach, a great leader to challenge those people to bring out their toughness or their ultimate, you know, skills or gifts, and that's a gift to be able to do that. And there's all kinds of ways, and I don't know what all the ways are, but do it at this with all your skills. Bring humility into it every step of the way. Bring that humility into it.
• 41:36
  John Mitchell: Well, I was just talking to the athletic director just last few days. This idea that we're blessed to be at the top of the mountain, and I've been thinking about his that that comment, and as it relates to humility, I and I'd be curious to see what you think about this. My my initial take about it is, boy, life is an inside job, and maybe we shouldn't necessarily be competing against the outside world. Is competing within ourselves, addressing just some of the things you've talked about. Would you agree with that?
• 42:14
  Rob Dube: I do because you know I think use your mind, understand the landscape of which you're working within. You have to understand, you know what are some of the best practices. Even when you're at the top of the mountain, you can find little nuggets from the quote-unquote competitors that are doing. You know, there's things they're doing well too, and maybe you're not doing those things well. Well, you certainly can, you know, continue to raise your game while at the same time not getting too caught up in trying to be like them, be not doing things because they're doing it. That's where you know thyself. Even as an organization, you know your values. You're very clear about your principles. You're very clear about your vision and where you want things to go, you know. There's no mountain. You mentioned you're at the top of the mountain. There's no mountain to climb, my friends. You can think of that, but there's no mountain. Okay, because ultimately, what you're here is to just be your best. Yeah, whatever that is at this moment, and so just be very clear about that and stay true to everything you've stayed true to-it's to the organization or the the institution's been around a long time. So be true to its core, and continue to do what you're doing, and continue to build on things that will make you special. And in these new, you know, as the world evolves, you must evolve, always growing, expanding, and learning.
• 43:42
  John Mitchell: Wow, you know I love that. There is no mountain. See, yeah, there
• 43:46
  Rob Dube: is no mountain.
• 43:47
  John Mitchell: Just do your best. I tell you. So play therapist with me on this humility. I I tell you that I thought about this recently. I look back on my life and I'm like, man, it looks like there was a lot of luck in there. And I, I remember back when I was 30 years old, I decided to become a entrepreneur, and I put together this deal, and we did all sort of works. And then, then the partners that were supplying the money kicked me out of it, and boy, I was pissed. I mean, I was friggin' pissed, and and against logic, I was able to put the deal together again and and made more money than I would before. But I see that that my anger and being pissed at him clouded my judgment as to whether that was really the right thing to do, you know, it just is probably too big a hill to climb. So I'm like, wow, luck really sort of made that happen more so than than me. And then when I was 50, I discovered the reverse mortgage. Business, which was Texas, was the last state in the union to get reverse mortgages, and I discovered the the opportunity from going to lunch one day, sitting at the bar at Houston's restaurant in Dallas, and this guy says to me, "I'm in the greatest business ever, and so I I bite on it, and he says he's in the reverse mortgage business, and I'm like, "What the heck's a reverse mortgage? And he says, "Well, they're brand new to Texas. Texas, last state in the union to get them. And to make a long story short, I was blessed to build my company to be the biggest in Texas and the fourth biggest in the country. But I'm like, I think God's looking down on me and going, you know, the poor slug can't figure out what business get into. I've just got to give him a gimme here. I mean, and I really, I look at those things. I'm like, I've been so blessed with with luck. I have no reason to be braggadocious. I I have a lot of reason to be grateful. Well, what's your take on all that?
• 46:07
  Rob Dube: I'm in complete alignment with you. Like I would say to any of the listeners, do what John just did. Go back on your life and think about how all the dots connect. And was it this linear path where this and this and this and happened just exactly the way you planned it, or did you start here and then you met somebody and they introduced you to this person and then you had coffee with them and then you they ended up introducing you to that person that led to a head coaching job at the University of Texas, which is like the biggest dream in the world that you could be at that kind of institution and be leading whatever it is in athletics. And had it not been for that, this, this, and all these circumstances, you wouldn't be sitting there, right? You know, just having such deep gratitude and appreciation, and like, like awe about it. Like, wow, my skills came together at just the right time that I was introduced to people, or got connected, or however it happened, and we're oversimplifying it right now, but we have really no control over any of it. And I love your story because that's what it exemplifies. Let go of control. You can't control things. You think you can, and the reason you want to control it is because you're anxious and stressed, and you want to find calm, and you think your way of doing it is going to be by controlling outcomes. You can't control outcomes. All you could do is do the right thing in every moment, and then let the the rest play out. I mean, listen, I love college football, so that's an easy one. You drop the play; it's perfect. You practice it; it's perfect. Everyone's doing all their jobs, and then you get into the game, and the whole darn thing falls apart. Right. What happened? Right. You tried to control the outcome; it didn't work. You did everything right leading up to it, and it didn't work. You know. So, and you know that happens. That's life. That's how life is. So let go. Don't try to control everything. Be in
• 48:07
  awe and just know that the next person you meet or the next thing that you run into might you might be circling back to that chance situation five years from now, 10 years from now, as a major thing that happened in your life,
• 48:23
  John Mitchell: well, as I was telling you, reading the the book you've referred to it a couple times, letting go has been one of those epiphany moments in my life in so many so many ways. But one of the things it talks about is the belief that things work out like they're supposed to, and and that becomes the basis for letting go, and I tell you that you and I notice I'm doing this all the time. Here's an example: We're at at our second home here this past weekend, and I'm I'm start to drive away, and I'm listening to this new book on health, and I really want to listen to it, and I'm taking notes on it. So I, I start to go, and I see that my handheld recorder doesn't work anymore, and I got to get batteries. And I'm like, okay, do I do I take another 10 minutes and go get batteries here? And I'm like, wait a minute, maybe maybe there's a reason that those batteries don't work, and maybe I need to let go of listening to the book because maybe I need to think a little more about something that was already in my my head. There's, and so I did it, and I'm like, wow, that is that is interesting. And of course, I feel blessed that I'm in this phase of my life, where it's not life or death about things in terms of creating a nest egg and and success and all that, but I see that it doesn't matter whether you're at that stage or you're building that nest egg and in the middle of your career, Joe. Let go. Things work out for the best. If it doesn't work out like you wanted, there's a reason. Roll to the next thing, right?
• 50:07
  Rob Dube: First of all, I love that example. And with a clear mind in a calm body, you can actually think for what was that three seconds? Right. I went through this idea of like, should I get batteries? Should I stop? Maybe I should just stop listening and let this sort of all settle. That you know, whatever the span of time, it wasn't that long because you were clear. You your mind and body were clear. That can happen when you're working your way through your early driven years, and you're going harder, and you're trying to build a nest egg. Imagine, John, if you or I had a clearer mind at that age. Yeah, I'm in a similar situation as you. Yeah, so easy for us to say now. Our minds are clear. We don't have the same pressures and stresses that we had before, but I truly believe if I had those kind of belief systems when I was younger, I would be a a lot more in a much greater place than I am already, which is really beautiful. The place I'm in already, right? So I truly believe that that you can come from that place no matter what stage you're in, so to speak, just let go, pay attention, be clear, and you know, if if you're 30 years old and you're listening to a health book and you're trying to get every last ounce of juice out of it, when really what you need is to slow down and just take in a chapter and see if you can implement it or just embody it, then by all means, if you're clearer and you do that, that's going to work in your favor. Exactly. Versus, yeah,
• 51:49
  John Mitchell: exactly. Well, so let's get back to the 10 disciplines. I want to, well, I want to share an idea with you. I love the book. I like I said, I listened to the book, I read. The book I took notes on it, and but here's the thing: I see I see a merging of of the book with our methodology, and I would like to take the 10 disciplines and apply them to my template, and and he but argue this point with me, so people pick up the book. They read it. They read the 10 disciplines. They're reading it with their conscious mind. It makes sense. The foundation of of our methodology is is based on how the human mind works. Conscious mind sets the intentions based on logic. Subconscious mind controls your daily actions, or 95 percent of them, and it's influenced only by repetition. And the classic example is people that want to lose weight. Well, the intention to lose weight is made with the conscious mind based on the logic of the health benefits. But the reason people fail to lose weight is not from lack of intention, but lack of influencing their actions, which are 95% of them are controlled by the subconscious mind, and that's the power of when you feed the succinct articulation of your desired life to yourself each day. That makes that that rewires your autopilot, so the right actions happen automatically, and that's essentially the central concept of the legendary book Thinking Grow Rich. So, with that as a foundation, the way I see it is, as people read the book and they read those 10 disciplines, I know their conscious mind is going to go. Wow, every one of these is good, and then off they go. But they can't do them because the doing is done by the subconscious mind. Unless they feed that to themselves every day, it's going to stay an intention. Do you argue with that?
• 53:59
  Rob Dube: No, I have no argument. I mean, you said a word. Some in in your explanation, the one of the words popped in my mind, and a second later you said it, and that's called rep. You said repetitions, and I think about that in sports. You know, people talk about muscle memory, or if you're running plays, or right. You know, I'm imagining swimming. You have a certain you have a certain you know way you have to move your arms and you know all that kind of stuff whatever it is tennis you know there's a certain way you do all that those things in sports is reps you're just taking reps you're hitting ball after ball after ball after ball 1000s of them right so when it's in the when it's in real life the game it's like nothing it's no big deal you don't even have to think about it. There's your subconscious mind. So anything in life, you want to build a foundation in your life that can provide you with greater energy, impact, inner peace. You take the disciplines, and you have to work the muscles. It's uncomfortable. You know, it's like going in the weight room. You're pushing yourself. You don't want to do it anymore. You're exhausted. You don't know what your 100% is. You don't want to stop working. You're used to working 12 hours, but you're exhausted, and now you're trying to do 10, and you feel like you're not even working. You feel like you're a lazy bum all of a sudden. Right? No, you have to you have to work it. You have to do the reps and get really clear about it, and then all of a sudden you start to notice your energy rise, right? And you you notice the difference. It's just like in sports. All of a sudden it's not hard anymore. It's like second nature. And then when somebody comes to you and they push one of these 10 discipline buttons, you don't like that because your subconscious is like, wait a second! I need to stop working after 10 hours. I need to take at least this many number of weeks off per year to reach. I need to do my 30-minute be
• 55:50
  still time. I need to keep working on understanding myself. When anybody, if if somebody come, it intrudes on your tenure thinking, you have a visceral reaction to it. No, I do not do that. That does not fit in with how I see things in 10 years. So it just the reps get you there. It just and everything you said.
• 56:12
  John Mitchell: But how does the person who buys your book do that unless they feed that to themselves every day to their subconscious mind.
• 56:22
  Rob Dube: Yeah, well, you can do it through the book and start feeding it. Like you said, you have to make it a daily practice, and you have to be disciplined about the disciplines. We teach it, so you could take one of our courses, and one day you'll you'll get it all pounded into you, and you'll be off to the races with it. But isn't other?
• 56:40
  John Mitchell: But isn't that all conscious mind?
• 56:43
  Rob Dube: Yeah, it starts with conscious mind,
• 56:45
  John Mitchell: right? Right.
• 56:46
  Rob Dube: Just everything you said, conscious mind. Then you have to do the work, right? You have to start implementing it with discipline in your life. All those things.
• 56:56
  John Mitchell: But isn't that conscious mind like you say as an example? Say no as an example. Well, you tell them say no, conscious mind say no, but then and they read it and they go okay, I'm going to do it. But unless it's fed to them every day to say no, I'm thinking it stays more of an intention than a reality.
• 57:18
  Unknown: Would you
• 57:19
  Rob Dube: at a certain point when you're really clear in your life, you have a you have a physical reaction when there's something presented to you that doesn't fit into what your tenure thinking is or what your how you deliver your impact, and so you have a physical reaction to it. And through the subconscious, you just automatically say no. I can't. I can't do that. Sometimes we need time to think about bigger things, which is okay. But your body knows you have a reaction to it. Intuit's called intuition, right? You just know. But sometimes we get these shiny opportunities. We can't help ourselves. Driven people can't help themselves. Shiny opportunities, right? So we tend to say yes, and then we get ourselves down the line six months, and we wish we didn't say yes to that. It got us in a whole situation that didn't align with our true selves. This is all about aligning things with your true self. Right, what you want from deep down, what you really want. Hey, sometimes we get into positions that are really sought after. We have amazing success, but our true self actually doesn't want that.
• 58:32
  John Mitchell: Well, and I, I think I see what you're saying that when their conscious mind so firmly sees that saying no is is contrary to their well-being, then they will stop. They will start saying no, or when they when they're always saying yes, they because their conscious mind is so clear about the adverse effects of that. Then they start saying no, but it still seems like it's all conscious mind, but maybe that's okay. You, you see what?
• 59:04
  Rob Dube: I mean, it's. I think at first when you're doing the reps, maybe it is conscious mind. You're analyzing the situation. You're referring back to some of the core principles, and you're making an analytical conscious mind decision. Right. But ultimately, I think I'll give you an example that came to mind. Maybe it's a good one, maybe not. You're the head coach of a big football team, or excuse me, you're the offensive coordinator of a big football team. Right. Where you go from here, I guess the next great thing is head coach. Shouldn't you be climbing the ladder, climbing the mountain as we spoke before, the mountain that doesn't exist?
• 59:40
  John Mitchell: Right.
• 59:40
  Rob Dube: Maybe you just love being an offensive coordinator, and you you don't love all the things that come along with running the entire organization. But because you're so great at what you do, you start getting offers to be a head coach. Now, what's your true self saying versus what is the conscious mind? The conscious mind saying I should. A head coach. Everyone's telling me I should do it. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. How could I ever pass that up when your true self is telling you, "I just love being an offensive coordinator. I'm really happy and really satisfied. I don't want all those hassles. But because you're outer world focused, conscious mind, you go get the head coach job and you're miserable and guess what you're not even that good at it and what happens you get fired and then you end up being an offensive coordinator for some other some other organization later right you know and and you just you're slough yeah right right right
• 1:00:35
  John Mitchell: that's a great analogy and you know but put a cap on on this part of the discussion I see how amazingly simple it is to manipulate the subconscious mind. You know the beauty of the
• 1:00:50
  Rob Dube: social
• 1:00:50
  John Mitchell: mind is that it doesn't have the power of logic. So when you feed it something, it's just gonna. When the conscious mind feeds it something, it's gonna do exactly what the conscious mind says to do. It's not going to go well. Wait a minute, I don't know about that. It's going to do it, and so that's why I'm enthused to take the 10 disciplines and customize it to my template, and I want to show it to you and see what you think and see the power to to take what the brilliance of what you've already done and take it maybe to the next level. You open for that?
• 1:01:30
  Rob Dube: I'd absolutely. I look forward to it. And just staying in touch with you is is a an honor and it's humbling. Honestly, it. I want to just build on what you said because there's one word we haven't said this whole time, and that's ego, and so you have to watch your ego because you know you're talking about the really positive attributes that you want to feed consciously on a regular basis into your subconscious and just becomes regular, but you're also doing that with things that aren't desirable, so you have to be very aware. And your ego is always trying to protect you, and so you have to watch out for your ego because your ego's after things that your true self isn't always after. It's tried to protect you, and so be aware. What am I inputting right now, and how is that going to end up manifesting into my subconscious? And then it's going to become a way of being, and that's not healthy, right? You don't. And of
• 1:02:30
  John Mitchell: course, in our methodology, we they define exactly the person they want to be and and deal with ego. And when you feed that every day, the ego goes away. And and so well. This this has been great. This is so powerful. This is even better than I thought it would have been. So, Rob, thank you for joining us. And I know
• 1:02:52
  Rob Dube: your
• 1:02:53
  John Mitchell: audience is going to get so much out of this. So,
• 1:02:55
  Rob Dube: okay, I hope they do. I hope they do. Thank you, John. I'm grateful for your time and your
• 1:03:00
  Unknown: thoughtful questions.