Episode 18: Breaking the Code and Leading Meaningful Conversations with Rusty Gaillard
Join your host Betsy Bush as she speaks with Rusty Gaillard, leadership coach and ex-Apple Worldwide Director of Finance. They discuss why Rusty decided to leave Apple after 13 years, how he discovered his passion for leadership, and what it means to "break the code."
Resources:
Breaking the Code: Stop looking for answers and start enjoying life (2021)
Transcript:
Betsy Bush (00:59):
What if you had the job and the life that everyone around you thought was the ultimate sign of success? What if you walked away from that life because you realized deep down it wasn't what you wanted after all, what would that mean for yourself and for everyone around you? My guest today is Rusty Gaillard. Rusty is the former worldwide director of finance for Apple. He is now a certified life coach and the founder of Silicon valley dream builders and the author of the newly published book, Breaking the Code. Stop looking for answers and start enjoying life. Rusty, thank you so much for being here with me on the latest version.
Rusty Gaillard (01:46):
Thanks Betsy. Nice to be here.
Betsy Bush (01:48):
I know you are so Used to answering this question because a lot of people would be scratching their heads and can't believe that you walked away from the job you had at apple, which would seem to be the pinnacle for so many people. Tell us about that. What prompted you to do that?
Rusty Gaillard (02:07):
You know, Betsy, I was listening to some of your other guests or other versions, and there was this theme about a connection between your early part of your life. And coming back to that later in life, it reminds me of a story of when I was a child and very young, I was a baby sleeping in the crib. And when I would wake up, my dad would say I would sing and be happy and laughing and just lie there in my crib. And he thought that I was going to be a ditch digger. He thought that meant I wasn't very smart. I was just going to dig ditches, but I was going to be happy doing it. But, you know, as I got into school and academics and all of that, I became the, A student. I did well in school. I was at the top of my class. I, you know, my, probably the highlight of my academic career. I skipped kindergarten because I was smart. But you know, I started to fall into this of getting the good grades, being the smart person, working hard, progressing. And that carried all the way through, into my career. And I kept doing the same thing, but I call it the curse of the A-player or the success trap, or really it's like, you get trapped in this mentality of being the smart person, doing the best, working hard, having all of the answers, but that joy and the happiness of lying there, singing and smiling and being happy that kind of fell back.
Betsy Bush (03:26):
Yeah, you can't monetize that. Right? You can't turn that into something.
Rusty Gaillard (03:31):
That's right. But it was the, so the, my decision, ultimately to leave apple, it was loosely connected to this, but it was like in a way I was stepping back into that way of, I don't want to put on my corporate game face every day. I don't want to be the person who's stuck in this rat race of never enough, always trying to progress, working harder, working longer hours, being the smart person, having the right answers, all of that. I wanted to get out of that, but I had no idea how to do it. And I finally heard somebody speaking, which and this one speaker, her name was Felicia Circe. And she helped me to break through all of that in a very short amount of time. And that's what pretty quickly led me to become a coach.
Betsy Bush (04:11):
What was it she said that clicked with you?
Rusty Gaillard (04:13):
Really, she helped me to, and this is really also feeds into my book, which is breaking the code. So I'll use my language around it. That's not the language she used, but to break the code of the A-player, which is to say, well, what if it didn't, what if you didn't have to worry about how much money you made? What if you didn't have to worry about what other people would think of you? What if you didn't have to worry about what you've done in the past? What if you didn't have to worry about who you know, and who you don't know, or whether you think you actually could achieve this thing, that's important to you, have you put aside all of those constraints and just allow yourself to very freely and openly say, what would you love to be spending your time doing? In that question is what came to me is this idea that I want to talk to people about things that matter in life. And that's ultimately what led me down the path to becoming a coach, was having meaningful conversations.
Betsy Bush (04:59):
You talk in your book about, you start off saying that you're an, a student, which became apparent very early on that you were very intelligent, probably very good at doing school, which not everybody is. We have intelligent people who are not good at doing school, but how competitive education gets at a certain point. We certainly see that in high school. And then you see it in college. And I'm wondering, should we be changing things somewhat at, at an, at that earlier age so that we're not kind of forcing people into this, you know, into this little tube that they're, that they're kind of sent down with no other options. It's almost as though the, you know, maybe as a kid, you're encouraged to be creative and whatever, but at a certain point you're sent down the tube because there's only one place you can land, which is this the kind of job that kind of Silicon valley job or the kind of financial job or whatever. And that that's really not great for a lot of people.
Rusty Gaillard (06:02):
I, yeah, I think, I think that's a great description. And I would say even more than a tube, it's a funnel because it keeps getting narrower and narrower and narrower. The further down you go, and that's true for education, right? There's only one valedictorian and it's true in a company there's only one CEO most of the time, it creates an inherent competitive nature because there's fewer and fewer opportunities. So I have to compete more and more in order to get them, which means I have to be smarter. I have to work harder. I have to go work longer hours. All of those things. I think that the piece that for me is so missing. If you go back to education and really in how many of us live our lives today, whether we're students or adults in the working world, many people live from this place of scarcity and competition. There's not enough. I've got to work hard to get my share and get my part. And I have to compete with other people in order to do that. And it's really a fallacy. There is abundant opportunity. It may not be down that narrowing, narrowing tube that you just described, but there's abundant opportunity all over the place. You don't have to be in that too. And that's the piece that's such a different way of thinking is that, you know, and one of the things I write about in the book is the career advice that I got when I was young, that just did not work for me, which was do what you're passionate about. And it didn't work with me because I didn't know what I was passionate about. So when every time I heard that, I thought I was doing something wrong. It's like, well, how could I do what I'm passionate about when I don't even know what the answer is?
Betsy Bush (07:27):
Do you not have something you were passionate about? Did you feel like even at that point you had been constrained and were discouraged against kind of doing exploring?
Rusty Gaillard (07:37):
Well I think there's two pieces. One is I assumed that there was only one, right? Answer to that question. Because again, back to this academic model, a student model that I was wandering from, this was my code. There's a right answer. And I don't know what the right answer is. So that was very paralyzing for me. But the second thing is A students also tend to overuse their brain. They tend to think too much. And knowing what you're passionate about or finding something you're excited about or energized about, it's not a mental activity. The example I like to use is going to a restaurant. You don't look at the menu and analyze calories and fat content and all those kinds of stuff. In order to pick something you're going to eat, it's not an analytical exercise. It's what am I hungry for? And asking that question and trusting the answer when it comes to your career is a huge challenge for many people. And especially the students who have been trained, that what differentiates them is their intellectual abilities. So to deviate from that and trust your heart to trust your gut, to guide you towards something, feels like a huge risk.
Betsy Bush (08:40):
You talk a lot about intuition, right? The heart versus the head. Why do you think so many people dismiss the intuitive aspects of their psychological makeup? When in fact, it's only the heart that's going to make you happy in, whatever it is you do, right? Whoever your partner is, or whatever job or whatever, it's only your heart. That's going to ensure that you're happy.
Rusty Gaillard (09:04):
I think there's a couple of pieces. One is the training that I've talked about a few times, but then the second is embedded. In that little story I told about my dad, assuming that I was going to be a ditch digger, you know that like I could have been very happy, perhaps digging ditches and could have lived a great life doing that. But there's some discord. There's some disconnect that a lot of people have. They assume, well, if you follow your heart, you must not be very smart. Or maybe you won't be happy. You know, there's, there's some prejudices and beliefs against that, that we, as a society hold, and especially among a players and people who are driven to be successful, it's this, it's in the water if you will. So we don't even, we don't even recognize it, but it becomes part of our belief system, which then drives how we operate in the world.
Betsy Bush (09:52):
Tell me about the code as you describe it in your book, you know, it's interesting to me, you, you use a lot of these kind of high tech ideas, your inner tech versus, you know, whatever. Anyway, take us through the code as you, as you line it out, as you outline it.
Rusty Gaillard (10:09):
Yeah, I get, so I start with this multiple examples, but your code is really your set of beliefs about what, what is true in the world and how the world works. And one of the easiest examples I like to give is when I was leaving my job at Apple, I've been there for 13 years. I was successful. I had a stable job. I was expert at what I did. I was seen around the company as an expert at what I did, many people would say, man, you are in a great position. You have arrived. And I left. When I told people I left, some people thought that was exciting. Oh my gosh, how cool you're going to go do something new. That's great. But a lot of people were intimidated. Some people so much so that they didn't even want to talk about it. We had strictly a conversation about our work. And we didn't talk about the fact that I was leaving because it was intimidating to them. A lot of other people were intimidated, but more like this guy's crazy. I can't really relate. It doesn't make sense. Why would he do something like this? It's just, it doesn't make any sense. So think about for a moment, your reaction for everyone listening. Think about your reaction. When you see somebody doing something like leaving a stable job. I had been in the professional corporate world for 25 years at this point and I was walking away. What do you think about that? Where do you fall on that spectrum? From excited to intimidated. And that is a reflection of your code.
Betsy Bush (11:24):
When, when you say some people are intimidated, do you think, do you mean like maybe people are jealous that you could take this step that maybe they would like to do, but are not comfortable breaking that code and walking away? Is that what you mean by intimidated?
Rusty Gaillard (11:40):
I, it is something like that, but I wouldn't even say that it's for some of these people, they, I don't think they would have even been able to articulate that they were jealous. I just think it was like, that is so far away from the path that I'm on. I can't even contemplate it. It's it's too threatening or scary, or it would, you know, just not even rocking the boat, it's like tipping the boat over.
Betsy Bush (12:01):
So, so yeah. I'm sorry. Continue with your, the, I mean, you have a very interesting, you know, analogy for each of the letters in the word code, and I think it's interesting to go over them.
Rusty Gaillard (12:11):
Yeah. Well, yeah. So, absolutely. So I'm happy to do that. And the, I use code as an acronym and C being confront, and you have to confront both the parts of your life that are not fully satisfying to you, as well as some of the beliefs that you have that may be holding you back. So that's what C is O is optimized. Once you see those things, you would make a choice to optimize them. Well, if I've got this belief that I'm too old to change career, what if I just changed my belief about that? It's just something I'm thinking. What if I start thinking something different? There's never too late to change. There's always opportunity to do something new then D is design. So once you've got a more expansive set of beliefs that embrace possibility. Now you get to design. What do you do with that? Wow. Okay. If I'm going to start a new career, what kind of new career do I want to start? How would I design that? How, how many hours would I be working? What kind of people will I work with? How will I feel at the end of the day? Is this something that's personally meaningful to me, those are all at questions around design and then E is execute, which is great. So now you've optimized your beliefs. What you've come started with the confrontation of what's not working, you've optimized your beliefs, you've designed a new picture of success. And then you execute, you start taking the steps to make it happen.
Betsy Bush (13:26):
So how did you do that in your own life? Well, the
Rusty Gaillard (13:29):
Optimize started with that talk that I mentioned earlier, which is, well, what if these things weren't holding me back? What if I actually could change career and make a living doing something that's meaningful to me? And I didn't have to worry about what other people thought. All of those things were optimizations for me because I wasn't consciously aware of them, but they were in my code. They were driving my thought process. The next step was design, which was, you know, I, I considered a couple of different options, but pretty quickly settled on. I would love to be a coach and help other people navigate these kinds of transitions in their life, but also help them elevate their leadership because leadership is with yourself. How am I leader in my own life? How am I crafting the kind of life that I want, but then it's also with others, with your family and perhaps in your work, it's about being a strong leader everywhere. So that was the design that I came and then execute. I think that the big mistake most people make is when it comes to execute. You think, well, gosh, on that day after I heard the talk, I'm not ready to walk into my boss and tell them I'm quitting. Which of course you're not, that's not the first step, right? There's so many steps that happen before that one. And so when we talk about execute is like, don't get paralyzed because you're intimidated by this ultimate final step of quitting your job and becoming a coach in my case, but take the, take the small steps that are that right in front of you, that you can take, which is learning about coaching programs, signing up, getting trained and certified meeting other people, starting a business, getting your first client. All of these things happened before I left my job.
Betsy Bush (15:04):
Do you think in what you describe as the code and you describe yourself in others in Silicon valley, which is where you're living and working. It strikes me as a very macho existence where you have, you know, this code that cannot be in many ways, unspoken, but assumed. And I think a lot of people elsewhere are becoming more aware of kind of some of the issues involved in technology and you know, where it seems to be, how can I describe it? It's inflexible or it, it seems to be promoting a very particular type of interaction among people. Do you think that is because there are so many of these, A grade code and you know, maybe too many people who are part of this who inhabit this code, who are in the technology field.
Rusty Gaillard (16:00):
Yeah, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I mean, one is certainly, there's a decent amount of homogeneity among the people who are developing the code, literally the code that drives the technology that we all use every day. But the other thing I think that's interesting is all of those companies were building products and building software. They have a particular objective in mind when they get started. And then they build the technology to support that objective. I think that's such a fascinating analogy to think about in our own lives. And this is something I also write about as you think about the code is kind of like the operating system. And then you think about your phone, I'm holding up my phone here, right? You put apps on your phone and that's the whole reason you have a phone is for the apps. You don't really care about the rest of it. You want the functionality and our life is kind of the same way. And the apps in your life are your job and your family and your hobbies, where you live, how you're taking vacations, spending your free time. All those are apps. But the question is, does your operating system support the apps? So if you think about it in the technology world, they build the operating system to expand capability with a particular objective. They do the build the code to achieve an objective. And sometimes that objective may be great for the company, but may not be great for the user or may not be great for us in society. You know, there's been a lot of studies about social media, which is they want you to keep watching. And one of the ways you get people to keep watching social media is to kind of keep pushing the boundary of, you know, be right on the edge of what's acceptable and what's tolerable. And you keep pushing that further and further. And all of a sudden these things that seemed outrageous two years ago now seem mainstream, right?
Betsy Bush (17:34):
Heighten the emotions and trigger that emotional response.
Rusty Gaillard (17:41):
Right. And so, you know, but that code is written with a very specific intention, which is to get people to continue to be engaged. And you just pause for a moment and you say, where did my programming come from? How deliberate was it? Right. But you know, obviously our family had the best intentions for us as we were being raised. But our code doesn't just come from our family. It comes from society and from teachers and coworkers and every place. And so you ask yourself the operating system that I live from, my beliefs, what I think is possible and not possible how I spend my time, all of that is that it's all focused to what objective, right? Social media, that the tech companies, they've got a particular objective. What is the goal of your operating system? And it's an interesting question. I think for most of us, the answer is, well, it's a bit of a hodgepodge. It's kind of like a big pot of soup that everything got dumped in.
Betsy Bush (18:29):
Oh exactly. And, and why do we let other people write our code? Why do we let other people have that, that deep down influence over what I think and feel and do.
Rusty Gaillard (18:40):
And so that's what breaking the code is really about. It's saying, Hey, we all have a code that we operate by that's biological, because you can't think through every decision, we just don't have the mental processing capacity, just like you can't consciously drive your car, right? Yes. Part of you is conscious, but so much of what happens is unconscious. And that's the same with life. 95% of our life happens on autopilot through this unconscious brain mechanism. And that's driven by your code by your beliefs and your habits and your patterns. And that was programmed by this hodgepodge way. Right. It's just like, you know, it just comes. However, it comes to the idea of breaking that and having the opportunity to rewrite it and be deliberate about where do I want to go with my life and be focused is so powerful.
Betsy Bush (19:23):
Maybe we have, we all have expectations placed on us through our code and you know, women as well have a lot of expectations placed on them. And I'm wondering how we separate what we really want from what other people think we should want or the other, what other people think we should do. And, and the lives we should live.
Rusty Gaillard (19:45):
That is such a great question. And I think that applies to men and to women is, you know, we all have these often they're hidden to us. They're invisible, which is the way our code works. We don't even see it. It's just operating there in the background. And how do you step out of it? So I, in the book, I give this comedy, the intersection of three different things, which I call it the zone of possibility. And it's that intersection where I think you can find these, that find that inner voice that helps guide you towards what you really want. And the three critical ingredients to that. Number one is quiet. You've got to have some space where you can tune into yourself rather than responding to what comes at you. You can find quiet in any way that is suitable to you. It could be meditating. It could be going outside. It could be doing the dishes when no one else was around. It doesn't matter what the way it is, but just finding a place of quiet is so important. The second piece is to listen to your heart. Again, this is not a head question. You can't figure it out. You can't think your way there. You can't get there with pros and cons. All of these things that we'd love to do as smart, successful people. You've got to listen to your heart and hear what comes from your heart. The third piece is courage because sometimes what we hear in our heart is different from the life that we've been living. You know, when I heard this idea of becoming a coach that has felt like a left turn from being a finance professional, left-brained analytical numbers oriented in a corporation for 25 years of my life. And to go be transformational leadership coach working with people it's much more intuitive. It's more, more right-brained that felt like a dramatic change takes courage to even listen to those ideas. So you need quiet, heart and courage.
Betsy Bush (21:20):
Wow. In your book, you talk a lot about how your divorce prompted a lot of soul searching for you. It was very moving to read about your, your, your struggle to keep things together. And, and we were kind of left not knowing what happened next. And I'm wondering if, if there something that came after that, you know, you might want to share with us as well.
Rusty Gaillard (21:45):
The divorce was so meaningful to me because it was the crash that was required to break the code. For me. I had tried everything I knew to try to keep my marriage alive and to try to make it work. And that was work harder, be committed, you know, stay focused, all of those things, but they were very much head activities. They weren't very much heart activities, which we all know is at least I know now it's a critical part of having making relationship work. But I had lost track of my ability of how to do that. So getting a broken heart, having to walk through that process, having to pick myself back up, being alone, sitting in my, my new apartment by myself on the weekends, just coming face to face with that whole experience. And to me, it was the biggest failure that I had experienced in my life. I had to walk through all of that to really get reconnected with my heart with myself. And it was, I really, I talk about it in the book, because for me it was, it was a personal experience, but it gave me the, some of the skills that I needed when I decided to go become a coach, because now I knew how to connect with my heart. I had learned how to talk to people about what was going on in my life. So I learned some of these skills, which I now apply as a coach and also ended up meeting a beautiful, amazing woman who's in my life now. And I'm just so grateful that we're together and we share our life together.
Betsy Bush (23:08):
That's wonderful. What are you learning from your clients that you did not think you, that you didn't know before? I'm wondering if, if your clients are teaching you more about coaching, you know, now that you're now that you're in that, that field.
Rusty Gaillard (23:25):
I think that's such a fun question because it's always a two way street, right? We all, we always learn from each other. The thing that comes to mind to be Betsy is when I think about my clients, that what I see the pattern I see over and over again, is when they get clear on what it is that they want. And they start to take some steps towards it. They start to execute--start taking steps towards having that in their life. That oftentimes these interesting coincidences happen that make it easy for them. And if this happened once or twice, I might chalk it up as a coincidence, but it happens very consistently. And I start to see it more and more as a pattern. And I just am so intrigued by this idea and enthralled by it because it means when we get in the flow of life, that things can actually get easier. So, you know, oftentimes we think it's going to take so much work. I gotta, you know, I gotta grind. I gotta put in the effort, I'm gonna sacrifice, which is very much that old code. But when people break that code and they say, well, this is what I want. I'm going to take the steps that I can. I'm going to be open to whatever opportunities show up in my life that make it easier for me. And so often those opportunities show up and do make it easier. And so I just, I love seeing that. And it's something that I think I knew in concept, but I really appreciated that it gets cemented into me seeing it over and over again, as it happens.
Betsy Bush (24:46):
You know, that's something that one of my guests said the other day and she quoted a Brazilian writer and I, I wish the quotation came to mind, but it was very similar. She started a nonprofit after a career in marketing, a nonprofit that was helping first-generation Latino high school kids go off to college. And it, things just came together for her so well that the, the quote was something like when you decide what you want, the world kind of comes together to help make it happen, something to that effect. And it sounds like you're very much seeing this happen with your clients. And it sounds like with your own life as well.
Rusty Gaillard (25:28):
I do, I see it in my own life. I see it with my clients. And it's, you know, if you told that to the, a student me of 10 years ago, I would've said that doesn't work, but I see it now. And it's, you know, it's, it's, again, it's another way of breaking the code and just understanding that the world does work that way. If we're, if you allow it to.
Betsy Bush (25:50):
That's, that's really amazing. Do you have any more advice for some of our listeners who really need help maybe getting off the merry-go-round those, those, those first steps of, I want to do something different, I need to, but I don't know where to begin two things.
Rusty Gaillard (26:08):
Number one is the, you know, if we go back to the acronym, I talked about the C O D E the C the very first step is to confront what's going on. And then that's so important. Most of us like to look away from what's uncomfortable, but in this case, you really have to look at it. You have to look at what's not working in your life. Is it your work? Is that your hours? Is it your relationship? Is it your health be clear eyed about what's not working with you? So that's the first place to start. Then the second place to start is I really believe is to get into that zone of possibility. Once again, that's the quiet connecting with your heart and having courage. Get into that place and just allow yourself to be creative. We are all endowed with this beautiful imagination. Most of us use it to imagine the worst. So it's just a matter of saying no, and your mind may go there, but just stop it and say, no, I'm not gonna imagine the worst. I haven't imagined the best. What if I loved what I was doing? What if I was happy and energized every day? What if I was in a great relationship? What if I had the perfect balance of challenge and engagement in my work and free time and satisfaction and all of these things, what would that look like for me? And there's no one answer you have to just say, is this a direction that I would love to go in? And if the answer is yes, now you've got a direction.
Betsy Bush (27:25):
You know, it makes me think that the A level, the grade A student, who might think, oh, the worst will happen. If, if I don't achieve this, you know, I'll be homeless. I'll be impoverished. I'll be, you know, abs absolutely able to imagine the worst outcome instead of the best outcome, or even a pretty good out that, that sometimes there is a mindset that says if I don't shoot for the moon, that any other outcome would be disastrous. And I think that's a very hard habit to break.
Rusty Gaillard (28:03):
I think, you know, trained all the way back from the education system, which is to some extent, don't take a risk because if you take a risk, you may not get the A, and we're all aiming to get the A, now not everybody, of course, there's different style of people, but a lot of the people that I'm surrounded with, a lot of people in Silicon valley, I'm sure a lot of your listeners, there are these students, this is the, this is the way we've been taught. So it's, don't take a risk, play it safe, deliver. What's expected of you, and you'll get the A, but at some point that's just not fulfilling anymore. And so it's, it does require this. And that's where courage comes in. You know, I talk about quiet, heart and courage. It does take some courage because you say, well, gosh, I'm considering doing something different here and just hold your mind open to that possibility because that's the, your old code is what's going to slam the door shut and say, you can't do that. And you've got to, you know, don't take a risk follow the tried and true path. So you have to be willing to push pause on that for a little while, because otherwise it'll, it'll shut down the opportunities.
Betsy Bush (29:02):
Well, you know, I, I went back to get a second undergraduate degree at Columbia graduated just last year. And it was interesting to see other students, you know, my peers, but who were 40 years younger than me make decisions about what classes they would take and how there could be a real hesitation to take a class that sounded interesting, but might be a class they couldn't get an a in or, you know, and it's like, well, you're, you're missing an opportunity to maybe find a class or go down a path where you might be, oh, wow. I love this anthropology class. Maybe I want to be an anthropologist when, you know, you were in a computer science field, you know, and, and this was one of your, your electives that you could take, but I don't know if I'll get an a in it, and if I can't get an a in it, I won't take a chance.
Rusty Gaillard (29:59):
Yeah. And so it's, you know, you can observe that in the college students, and it's no wonder that it persists all the way through our career. And you know, when, when you talk about that, I hear echoes of my own former self in that. So it's, it's this, this, and so when I talk about this, A player in this mentality and the code and the programming, it's like, it's just, it's this way of thinking about the way the world works and the way you work in the world. And it's, so you saw, it sounds like you saw it so clearly in the people that your, your, your classmates 40 years younger than you, and as you're going through the program, that your second undergrad degree,
Betsy Bush (30:42):
Well, You know, what I, what I liked about taking those classes is I, you know, the pressure was off. Any pressure came from, you know, my, my desire to do as well as possible, but the exploration that I could do as someone who could bring context to a lot of the classes, it was in some places, case it's just mind blowing. It's like, wow, this is incredibly interesting and so important. And please, would you pay attention looking around me when you, this is important and, you know, so you never start stopped learning, or, you know, that that ability is always there to continue learning and to continue growing. And, and I think of your description of leadership as a quiet kind of leadership, not someone who's up there in the front giving orders, but someone who is presenting an example for how to conduct oneself and how to live one's life in a way that's true to yourself. And I look at people in my own life, the ones I really respect, and it's like, that's true leadership. The people who can maybe go against the tide of the opinion around them and say, no, that's really not what we should be doing. We should be doing something else or the way, just the way they live their life and conduct themselves.
Rusty Gaillard (32:00):
Yeah. I agree completely, you know, people often confuse leadership with management. You know, management is much more of the standing up in front telling people what to do, making sure they did it. And that's not leadership. Leadership is, as you said, it's about how you conduct yourself. It's about being authentic to how you relate to other people, how you make decisions all of these things and how you prioritize your life and how you focus your time and energy. That all is, those are all aspects of leadership, which you apply in your own life. And if you were a leader of an organization, either formally or informally, that's something you help other people do as well. So one thing I just wanted to in here is what you to reflect back on your experience there when you were in the classroom. And, you know, you, you have, you have this life experience in this context that someone who's 20 years old does not have. And there's a great little tool I want to share with the listeners here, which is taking advantage of that same concept. If you're facing a decision, or if you were curious about something one way to explore that is to imagine your future self imagining yourself, 20 years down the road, looking back at this point in your life, and what would that future self 20 years with more experience and more wisdom, what would that person have to say about the situation you're in now? And oftentimes when we put ourselves in that mindset of our future self who's more wise, who's got more experience that person knows immediately what this, your current version should be doing, what choice or direction to make. So I think I just, I wanted to share that because you, you described a very tangible, real experience of that sitting in the classroom, but as something that we can also tap into in ourselves, we don't have to go find someone who's had this experience who is 20 years old or whatever. We don't need that we have it internally, if we can imagine ourselves in that position and just reflecting on life and what matters to life and what matters to you when you do that from that older, wiser place, it's, it's oftentimes very quick that you can come up with a clear answer.
Betsy Bush (34:04):
Wonderful vision of how we can, you know, make those important decisions in our lives. If you want to look back 20 years from now, what would you tell yourself way back then? You know, you know, don't do that. That's the mistake, or, you know, that that's the way to go. It looks, it looks maybe clouded and unclear now, but in your heart, you know, you need to go off in that direction. And I think if we can, that's a wonderful tool to employ. And I love that.
Betsy Bush:
You know, I usually ask my guests for three pieces of advice at the end, but this has been just a very, very rich and important conversation. I cannot thank you enough for sharing this time with us. And I want to let everybody know that Rusty Gaillard has been talking about his new book — Breaking the Code: Stop looking for answers and start enjoying life. Thank you so much, Rusty. I really Appreciate your spending some time with us at The Latest Version.