Tales of Leadership
Tales of Leadership is a veteran-owned podcast designed to equip leaders with the knowledge required to inspire others through transformational leadership. If you want to grow your influence and become a purposeful leader, you have found your tribe. Become the leader your team deserves!
Tales of Leadership
Ep 76 Rob Cressy
Rob Cressy is a world class growth coach committed to helping leaders create powerfully in business & life for the long haul. With expertise in self-mastery, brand building, and leadership development, he helps you build better mindsets, habits, and routines to keep winning. Rob lives by eight core values that are foundational to who he is. These core values include radiate positivity, always learning, extreme ownership, yes and, live in action, be relentless, do what’s right, and talk with candor.
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-LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cressy/
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Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership. Welcome back to the Tells the Leadership podcast. I am your host, josh McMillian, an active duty army officer and the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching, and I am on a mission to create a better leader what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader, or a pal and my vision is to positively affect one million lives in the next 10 years by promoting transformational stories and skills.
Speaker 1:And before I get into introducing today's guests, I have to apologize. When you listen to this episode, my audio quality is going to be degraded through the majority of this because I totally forgot to plug in my headphones. I forgot to plug in my mic, so food borrow my part, but this is part of the journey and I'm not going to go back and I'm not going to recreate this episode with Rob, because it was just an amazing episode of very powerful content and this is life in a nutshell it's chaos, but we continue to move forward and you're going to get that theme in this episode with Rob is never quitting and always moving forward. But genuinely, I want to apologize because my audio quality is a little bit degraded compared to what it normally is, but, as always, I'm going to be bringing you a transformational leader in the form of Rob Cressy.
Speaker 1:Rob is a world class growth coach committed to helping leaders create powerfully in business and life for the long haul. With expertise in self mastery, brand building and leadership development, he helps you build better mindsets, habits and routines that allow you to win. Rob lives by eight core values that are fundamental to who he is as an individual, and those core values are radical positivity, always learning, extreme ownership, yes, and live in action, be relentless, do what's right and talk with candor, and I mean this and I say this to Rob. But he is a purposeful, accountable leader, someone that you can learn something from. Let's go ahead and bring him on, rob. Welcome to the tells the leadership podcast, brother. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Joshua, thank you so very much for having me. I'm super excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited to have you and I know when we had our conversation before actually getting the film, this episode, I could just tell that you had that enthusiastic care, energy about you and I was like, yep, he's going to be a great person to bring on this episode and kind of get to the core of what I think leadership is inspire others to go, take action.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we all have the opportunity to create our own energy, and like attracts like. So, as leaders, it is very advantageous to create a type of energy that is magnetic, radiating or will draw positivity towards you.
Speaker 1:Yep, you already dropped the nugget right there starting off, so I can't wait. I think a great place to start because I have a lot of guests and they range from military to entrepreneurs you know four star generals. It ranges everywhere and I always would love setting the stage, or prepping the battlefield, of providing an overview to the listeners of who is Rob.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Rob Cressy and I am a father, I'm a husband, I've been a full time entrepreneur for the last 13 years. I'm a creators coach where I specialize in personal growth and self mastery, podcast and content creation, as well as chat, gpt in AI and for me, leadership, or the number one thing that I bring to the table with leadership, is self leadership, my ability to lead myself. I believe in leading by example and for me, that is foundational to everything that I do and really sets the standard, because no one's going to create a higher standard for myself than me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I wholeheartedly agree with that and we can probably just jump into that right now is self leadership. Why is that so important? And with me I've kind of come up with six phases of leadership. At least what I've determined throughout the military that the reason that I've been successful in every position in the first phase is self leadership being able to lead yourself well before you lead others. Well, what have you learned about self leadership?
Speaker 2:Well, what I've learned about it is I didn't used to have it and it's why I am who I am today, because I have lived multiple lives, let's put it that way and really I would say pre full time entrepreneur Rob, working in the corporate America for a decade, versus Rob, the full time entrepreneur burns the boats, goes to zero, all in on himself and his dreams. And two things happened. Number one I became self aware. I woke up on the very first day, having just quit my job. No one to tell me what to do, when to wake up, when to work out what to eat, what to do. For a lot of people that's a very heavy thing. It's like, oh my God, everything's on me. But for me I was like Holy smokes, batman, everything's on me. So that was a great realization and in the process, no one had ever told me the term self awareness, which blows my mind. K through 12, four years of college in a decade of corporate America, and at no point did anybody teach me the term self awareness. And to me, when we're looking at self leadership, self awareness is number one in all this your ability to be aware of every single decision that you make in your life. So when I went to zero, all of a sudden the light bulb went off and I became self aware and the number two thing happened. I quickly realized how much I didn't know. I was like, all right, this is amazing. And then I was like, well, I'm sitting here with no clients, no website, no relationships in this industry. Right, ro, I better figure something out. So what I did is I audited the success habits of the most successful people in the world, the people I aspire to do things like, in be like, and I'm like, all right, what are their habits, their routines, their mindsets, their ways of being? What are the things that they're doing that got them to where they are? And one of the things and this changed my life forever, one of the things that kept coming up over and over again and remember, success leaves breadcrumbs was the average CEO read 60 books a year. Now, I'd hear it over and over and over again and eventually I was like Listen, dude, you're currently reading zero. You think you want to get on this, like everybody that you're admiring? This is the theme that they keep talking about. So I was like, all right, I saw my dreams on the other side of me, learning how to read, and, of course, I know how to read, but I did not read books like CEOs did.
Speaker 2:So if something is important enough, you will always find time to make it happen. Because a lot of people, hey, I want to create a reading routine. You know what, robin Joshua? I just don't have enough time. I have so much fun in my life, I'll get to it someday, I'll get to it later, and it never ends up happening. I knew that I'd been living that way for more than a decade. So I was like right, if something's important enough, you will always find time to make it happen. I was like my dreams are attached to this. I'm doing this. When is there always time to make something happen?
Speaker 2:First, thing morning when you wake up. So for the last more than a decade, the first thing that I've done every single day, weekends included, is read a personal growth book for 30 minutes every single day, because it guaranteed that I made myself better today than I was yesterday, because I learned something. And no matter what happened in my business, if I sat there and I made $0 today and tomorrow and this month and this year, I know by design, if I read something and I get better every single day, that's going to start stacking like building a house, and this created my growth mindset and completely changed my life in the best way possible.
Speaker 1:I think self awareness is one of the most critical things of a leader, and especially like learning to lead yourself, because it's all on you, and that's one reason I love wrestling, and wrestling is one of those fundamental sports of where it's you and the other component. And if you did not do the preparation, if you did not put in the work, then it's going to show when it's time to actually execute. But the same is true, I think, with within leadership or in life, is that you have to have that self awareness and then when you realize, hey, I don't know what I need to know to be successful, I need to go out there and chase it. And then you identified that that top trait of all these successful leaders is reading, which, by the way, rob, I love because I follow the Sabres morning routine. I don't know if you've ever heard that or not. So it's by hell, I'll write a miracle morning and it's called good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, I love it. And Sabres is silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. And I read 30 minutes of a professional help or professional develop book every single morning and, to your point, and anyone listening, if I can do it and I have a full time active duty, military job and Rob can do it, running multiple companies you can find the time to grow yourself in the morning. It's all comes down to that self awareness and I think also that you talked about before that burning desire. Do you have that passion to actually chase this and grow and incrementally become better? Because it's not going to be just success right, immediate. It's going to take time to see the results that you want and I think that's one of the nuggets that you just shared is that incrementally it's going to take time. How long have you been an entrepreneur before you even started to see results?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a long time, let's put it that way. And as an entrepreneur, you learn something the hard way or at least I did for the longest time and for me, my dream was to wake up every single day and get paid to talk about sports for a living. I would sit there. In my old life I was selling digital advertising Now. I was very good at it and I made very good money, but I did not wake up every single day looking forward to slinging banner ads and text links in a cube form. It just wasn't the life for me, and I would sit there and I would just dream of the day where I could wake up every single day and this is more than a decade ago where I would create blog posts or just talk about sports for a living.
Speaker 2:And there's a quote that a mentor of mine said to me that changed my life forever. He said, rob, if you ever hope to get paid to do something, you better be doing it already. And I was like great, how do you get paid to talk about sports for a living? Well, you should probably have a sports blog. You should create a podcast. Before they were a thing, I should be on camera. I should learn hosting social media, marketing, brand building, throwing events, creating apparel, building a community and essentially, my dreams became building a sports media company. And I did that day after day after day after day, getting my reps for years, years before anyone even sniffed anything from me, and essentially what we ended up doing was we turned ourself the name of my company was bacon sports into our first client and eventually we evolved that to help brands market the sports fans via content. Well, why? Because we're the target demographic and we've been living and breathing this forever.
Speaker 1:I think that's. There's a quote by Jason van camp and I had him on the podcast probably several months ago. But the purpose in life is to find your gift. The meaning of life is kind of to give it away, and I think that that's one of the hardest things to do as a leader is what are you successful at and then how can you pursue that? It to me at least you know I to leadership is one of the things that is is a deep passion, because it's connects to a pain point in my life and that's soldier suicide and I believe it comes down to a fundamental issue of poor leaders kind of lead to that chain of reaction. Those poor decisions that kind of get down there and and my pain point is, hey, this is an area that I can fix and I want to give my gift away.
Speaker 1:But I also understand on the entrepreneur side. You know you have to make a profit, but you also have to chase your passion and your purpose and you're still creating powerful content. I really wanted to start digging into where. Where did your leadership journey start? Because I think around 2009 is where you left the your job and started chasing the entrepreneur space almost full-time. What, what drove you? Where was your mindset when you made that decision?
Speaker 2:my mindset was one of not being willing to live a life of regret. So I sat there and I said I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't give it a shot at making my dreams happen. And for me the bigger risk was not taking the risk, because I looked at the industry. I looked at the sports media industry at the time and I was like I am as good or better than everything that I see out there. I was like I know I belong. And I was sitting there and I was like there is no way I could go the rest of my life without knowing, knowing that I belong in that industry and I'm as good or better than everyone. No way that I could do that.
Speaker 2:So for me it was actually a very simple decision and oftentimes I'm asked it's like well, rob, what was it like when you actually decided to do this? And and for me the phrase is burn the boats or burn the ships where I did it and I never looked back. There was no plan being my mom still to this day, all this time later oh honey, you're making such good money. Would you ever go back to that? And I'm just like mom that life is done, that life is over. I'm never going back that way. And this is what creates the DNA of an entrepreneur because, yeah, you've got your dream. And for so many people they think that taking the leap is the hard part. No, now you're in the game. Now that you're in the game and you're at zero, you're like, oh crap, this is way harder than I thought it was. And that's actually probably the biggest challenge in struggle that I've had for more than a decade that you can be prolific at something, you can love something, you can be all in, you can work hard, you can treat people right, you can be the best in class. But that does not mean that you're going to get the results in entrepreneurship, and every day is an opportunity for you to get better. But, man, I can tell you it's.
Speaker 2:It's been very hard and anxiety-ridden, because it's very much a paradox or a dichotomy, where you're like you're so all in and because you haven't seen the success air quotes, success that you would want yet and your, your dream, is attached to this, you're just like yearning for it. You're like when is this going to happen? What is going to? What's the breakthrough? When is it happening? And it took me several years to learn this lesson and still, on a daily basis, I've been reminded of it. It doesn't make it any easier.
Speaker 2:But a dream is not getting to the proverbial top of the mountain in planting your flag, because when you climb the mountain and you get to the top and you plant that flag and you're like yes, you look up and you're like, wait a second, there's two more mountains over there, there's a brand-new mountain for you to climb.
Speaker 2:So if your entire life or dream is only about getting to a specific moment or point in time, that is not the recipe for success. What you learn the hard way in entrepreneurship is that a dream is the day-to-day journey of getting to the top of that mountain. So your ability to actually anchor in the present. And for me, this completely changed my life and is the foundation for everything that I coach upon as a creator's coach and a personal growth and development coach. Because how do you create your best year ever? Well, your best year ever is actually your best month ever, your best week ever, your best day ever, your best hour ever and your best moment ever, because really, we can't do anything about the past and we can't control the future, therefore creating a lens in a perspective of the world where you live on a moment-to-moment basis and you make the decisions the best way you can there. That is how you live and create your dream.
Speaker 1:Alright, team, let's take a quick break from this podcast and I want to personally invite you to our private Facebook community that I call Purposeful Accountable Leaders, or PALS, and PALS is a community dedicated to inspiring and developing servant leaders by sharing transformational stories and skills exactly what tells the leadership is all about. My goal is to build a community of like-minded leaders that can share lessons, learn, ask questions and celebrate wins when it happens. And my mission in life is clear I will end toxic leadership by sharing transformational stories and skills, and you will find countless transformational leaders in this group, many of them I have had the honor to serve with in the military. If you want to find a community that can help you grow both personally and professionally, we would love to have you. You can simply search Purposeful Accountable Leaders on Facebook or click the leadership resources tab in the show notes to join. I am looking forward to seeing you guys and continuing to grow together on our leadership journey.
Speaker 1:Back to the podcast. So many things that you just said I absolutely love, and start off with burn the ships. So, hernan Cortez right, and I remember always the burn the ships moment, but I like to think of it in a more modern term, it's an aerosol, and I go back to my time when I was in Afghanistan. When the birds touches the ground and it's just a swirl of brown dust everywhere. You can't see anything, or you just hear this overwhelming sound from the rotors. They take off the and it's just you and your men and women that you trained and led to go do a mission. There's no retreat. You have to continue to move forward and if you fail, well, that means someone dies. So there, there is no failure. That is a modern day kind of like burning the ships, but in an aerosols type mindset. But I love that because the core is no retreat when you are so passionate about something, and that this is why I love having entrepreneurs until the leadership, because some of the greatest mentorship that I was able to provide to lieutenants when I was a company commander was from entrepreneurial mindset books, because they don't teach those in the military. They teach a very rigid process of when it comes to leadership.
Speaker 1:This is where the true magic I believe in leadership comes from, and just your inspiration that you have and you talked about too a long-term perspective, and this is one thing that people need to understand when you're thinking, when you're encountering a problem is transitional thinking. What is the vision? What are you trying to chase? You got to get that right and then what are the processes to get to that, and then the outcomes will just naturally come. But if you chase the outcomes without understanding the processes to get there, then you're always going to be in this cycle of just spinning your tires, gaining no traction and moving.
Speaker 1:But when you do get to those goals, you have to understand that that's just a peak on the mountain top and as you're continuing to go, you're going to climb that mountain. And guess what? That's life. The day that you die is probably the day that you should stop growing, at least that. That's that my goal, that's my aim, and there's just so many powerful things in there. I wonder if you could walk me through some of the challenges that you faced when you exited out of your job, going into entrepreneurship, and then how did you overcome them and face adversity? And how did you get and I know this is a low question, right, but how did you have adversity serve you on your journey as you continue to rose?
Speaker 2:My entire journey for the last 13 plus years has been filled with adversity, nonstop. It is literally I am a specialist in overcoming adversity, so much so that on my necklace right here is a quote from the obstacle is the way. The book from Ryan Holiday. What stands in the way becomes the way. And for me, I love how circular this is gonna become, because in the process of reading books, I've learned a lot of things that I both learned as well as experienced.
Speaker 2:And early on in your entrepreneurial journey, your very eyes wide open, you're very excited, you're consuming a lot of things and you hear the statistics about how often small businesses fail. And it's like an insane number. Like in the first three years, 90% of businesses fail. And remember, I'm all in on my dreams. So there's a difference between I'm opening up a small business and you're all in on your dreams. And in my case at the time, it was working in sports. So it was very hot for me, wasn't like I was just opening up a dry cleaning business down the street because I saw the opportunity or need for one? No, like this, I'm all in on this. And I sat there and I was like, all right, well, I'm not going to be one of those statistics. So now let's start to work backwards and create a process around this. So for me to not be one of those statistics, what do I need to do? And there was only one thing that I needed to do, and that was not quit. If I don't quit, I am not a statistic. Therefore, I am someone who will specialize in not quitting, so much so that I'm not someone who's heavily tattooed, but I have the word believe tattooed on my forearm. Why? As a constant reminder to always believe in myself and my dreams and my vision that I can do anything that I set my mind to. It was so serious for me that I wanted a constant reminder of that word to believe in myself, for whenever the instances inevitably come in which I have low moments.
Speaker 2:Well then I read Ryan Holiday's book the Obstacle is the Way, and it changed my life forever. And the book is all around stoke philosophy for how you frame adversity and what stands in the way becomes the way. So if there's a wall, are we going over under? Through inside? We're doing anything In so many people, and certainly in the world of entrepreneurship, everybody's good when it's good, but when times are the toughest. That's when you're gonna see what you're really made of.
Speaker 2:Well, with all of this together, I was like, oh well, it makes complete sense for me to be someone who specializes in overcoming obstacles and adversity, because by design, that is the journey that I signed up for. So I then went out there and started to do hard things in the name of discomfort. So get comfortable being uncomfortable. And one of my favorite quotes is prepare for what's difficult when it's easy. And obviously, as I matured as an entrepreneur over the last decade plus, I got wiser and stronger in this mental toughness and resolve. Like, for example, I just completed 75 hard Andy Fercel as mental toughness program for a second time 10 days ago.
Speaker 2:And that's something where I noticed myself a few months ago my short was getting a little weak. I started to notice the slopes getting a little slippery on myself. All right, cool, let's sit there and let's get that sword sharpened again. So for me it was very much trial by fire, because one of the things they say in the book don't focus on the monsters that may or may not lie ahead, focus on the moment. And for me it's like all right, I'm anchoring in the present, even when there's adversity all around me. All right, what is the thing that I can do right now?
Speaker 2:As I adopted growth mindset, carol Dweck's book mindset says all right, I'm not attached to this position, I can grow and I can make things better. So, with this being the DNA of who I am, this is entirely self-created, which will take us back to self leadership, because I didn't pop out this way. I was not this way when I was in corporate America. I was a work hard, play hard, add sales party bro. I went out Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, monday, went to work Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, princeton repeat all over again for a decade straight.
Speaker 2:I did not live a holistic life and because of this, the reason I'm so passionate about this and the reason why I evolved my career into becoming a coach which is not something that I did by design I lived like a coach for more than a decade until people started to ask me to start coaching them because of the way that I lived my life, from my energy to my routines and my systems and my way of being and my way of thinking, and a lot of people want to be a coach.
Speaker 2:But you gotta live like a coach first, because for me this is effortless because I've done it for so long, because I know what it's like to not live like this, because I'm really running away from the guy who was just out of college working in a fifth third bank call center making $10 an hour selling home equity loans in a cube farm with a computer, with no internet and no email access. It is the furthest away from my dreams that I could conceivably be. So when you've lived that life for long enough, you are literally willing to do whatever it takes to not live that way again. And because of that, motivation is not a word for me. The word for me is inspiration. I'm inspired to live every day.
Speaker 1:I love that. So inspired is my definition of leadership, and it kind of goes to John Quincy Adams quote if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader, and to inspire is to be a leader. But I love how you define overcoming obstacles. I have a mindset of a sledgehammer. So in the military there's four basic effects that an obstacle can have on a battlefield it can block you or it can turn, fix or disrupt you, but at the end of the day, all it's trying to do is it's trying to manipulate your movement to continue to move forward. But if you adopt a sledgehammer mindset, it doesn't matter if you chip, it doesn't matter if it's rusted, it doesn't matter if it's outside. What is the primary purpose of a sledgehammer? It is to continue to strike an obstacle over and over, with consistency until it starts to crack. And then light comes in. And there's a quote by the general patent that I love and I always find myself going back to. This is a good plan finally executed now is better than the perfect plan executed in some indefinite time in the future.
Speaker 1:And I think people get wrapped around the axle and I could put myself in your shoes of where you left your civilian job to chase your dream. That would give me anxiety. It would but like kudos to you, the man in the arena that is willing to go and make that dream possible every single day, day after day, finding ways to continuously improve and then evolve. That takes a bold leader to chase their passion and be unreasonable and not to fail and I define not failing is exactly how you do is just not quitting. If I do not quit, I cannot fail. I can only improve and I can continue to improve. But that kind of brings me to the next question and you're just spitting fire. This is already one of my favorite episodes, brother is what kind of drove you to be a personal growth coach? So I know that you said people wanted to hire you as a coach because they saw how you were modeling your own life. Was that what drove you into that career field?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. There's two things that became a catalyst for this. One of them was COVID, because guess what? They don't teach in the entrepreneurship handbook that you can wake up one day and March Madness is canceled and then, in the blink of an eye, the sports marketing content studio that you've created for the last decade goes like this, because all of the people that you would market to, brands that are marketing to sports fans, companies that are hiring people like me as hosts what are you doing? Sports doesn't exist. So I sat there and I was like wow, didn't see this one coming. I didn't know. It was a possibility that you could wake up one day and the entire sports industry in the entire world is gone.
Speaker 2:So, with that in mind and the good news for me is I've always been very forward thinking I'm not like everybody else by design. I'm not someone who just tried to get a job as a reporter or a writer somewhere, because those jobs come and go and, as COVID happened, not only did those people lose their jobs, but the jobs that they were trying to get no longer existed either. So the path that I had created for myself, albeit significantly more challenging, was actually the safer path than the people who took what was supposed to be the safer path. So I sat there and I was like all right, I can either die like everybody else is in these industries or I can do something about this.
Speaker 2:And I was hired as a personal growth coach with no website, just from people who had followed me on my social media, and I was always known as Rob the sports guy. The company, once again Rob, with Bacon Sports. So boom, those two things were synonymous and at the time I was also helping brands launch podcasts. So for me my identity was very much podcasting and sports. But I realized something man, I've never had a brand or a persona that is not Rob the sports guy Is.
Speaker 1:Rob under.
Speaker 2:Bacon Sports umbrella. So when everybody else is running for the hills and cowering and you know what I did I doubled down.
Speaker 2:I said all right, this is exactly how I expected things to go. Chips are back, all in on the table again and we're building the brand of Rob Cressy and, of course, everything you do is a reflection of your brand at all times. So I've been building my own brand intentionally for more than a decade, but I had not built Rob Cressycom. I had not built Rob Cressy, the creator's coach. Rob Cressy, the personal growth coach, rob Cressy, the coach who helps thought leaders launch podcasts and turn their ideas and knowledge into success. That did not exist. So, once again, what happened? Rob went back down to zero, where, all right, we're building this back up again.
Speaker 2:And this is from the brand side of things and one of the most challenging things for me and I said the word identity. My identity was around the world of sports, because that was my dream. I did it for a decade and I was all in and I loved it. I can still talk about sports with my eyes closed with anybody, no matter where they are. But you know what? There was something inside of me, in people I trusted around me, encouraged me to do this because, probably similar to what you're experiencing or somebody listening or watching right now, there's an energy and a magnetism that I bring to things that can become contagious, because I am truly a champion for everyone. Because if I can do it, anybody can do it. Because I started at zero multiple times and it's been filled with adversity and I truly see everybody as the best version of themselves.
Speaker 2:So when it came to me and my identity, I had never called myself a coach Like I had to step into it and I'm not gonna say it felt icky, it just felt not unnatural, but different, right. So I'm like I'm learning into the term coach, even though when it comes to being a coach because being is different it's who you are the inside, how I show up every single day. I can do that with my eyes closed, no matter who I talk to, I can coach them because this is the way that I've lived for the last 13 years. So the actual coach inside of this is a piece of cake for me and I love it because I can draw on my experience, because I'm not a coach who read a few books and I'm just gonna slap something on the internet and say this is who I am.
Speaker 2:I've legitimately lived this trial by fire for the last 13 years because, once again, you ever hope to get paid to do what you love, you better be doing it already. And for me, I got the opportunity to build myself every single day with personal growth and development. And once again you're gonna hear me say some terms over and over again. I've been all in on my personal growth for 13 years. For the reason why I started reading because nobody can ever take this away from me.
Speaker 2:And this is such a binary thinking thing that is so easy for me that I guess I don't understand how everybody doesn't get it. But I don't understand how everybody doesn't get it, because why would you by design not put into your life the thing that makes you better guaranteed? And then, if you just do that into perpetuity with consistency, you will become the best version of yourself. And there's another book that changed my life called the Power of Consistency by Weldon Long, and there's a passage in there and Weldon's got a very challenging story. He was in jail, just lots of bad things completely turned his life around Very inspiring. And one of the things he says in there, joshua, is you know, why most people don't make their dreams happen is because they don't spend enough time thinking about them.
Speaker 2:Think about this. On average, the majority of the world thinks about their goals or their dreams once a year on January 1st, and we all know, typically within about two weeks, they've never seen them again. The best in the world, man, if you are on point, you're auditing your goals and dreams once a month. Boom, once a month. Man, I'm doing amazing. Look at this once a month, checking in on this stuff.
Speaker 2:But the power of consistency says the more you spend time going over your dreams, the greater the chance of it happening. Similar to what you said with Hal Aldrodd and the morning routine. Therefore, one of the things that has been part of my morning routine every single day is attached to my dreams. So I live by the power of consistency because, once again, this is binary for me, a one or a zero. Of course, it makes complete sense If I spend time visualizing, meditating, thinking about my dreams, journaling my dreams, anything in between, and I do that every single day. Oh well, now I'm going to create and attract those sort of things into my life. And when you understand philosophically the power of consistency and then you combine it with the power of intention, aka, all right, I'm going to play at these seeds of the things that I want. So now we've got, I'm planting the seeds of intention. I'm doing it consistently. And then the last one, the power of awareness.
Speaker 2:All right now, how aware am I? On a daily or regular basis, whether it's a post-it note, somewhere, a little alert pops up on your watch For me. Right here, I've got most important things in my life. It's on my desk right there what you're going to hear from me, joshua. This is formulaic in the best way possible. This is high performance 101, because this is duplicatable and it's why I am so confident as a coach. Because if somebody's feeling resistance or fear or judgment, great, let's look at the process, and most people don't have the process, so they don't have the consistency, they don't have the intention and they don't have the awareness. Therefore, we can strip that back down and say congratulations. We can literally create anything we want for you and you can be anything that you want Formulatively by designing the habits, routines, mindsets and ways of being to create the best version of yourself every single day. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:No, that's amazing. So I'm starting to notice a theme Everything that you've discovered and been living in the past 13 years. I discovered and started living two years ago, kind of intention, with COVID. Covid kind of forced me out of my shell of where I had some more free time getting my master's degree and I felt kind of like in a rut. So I started chasing hey, how can I work to be the best version of myself?
Speaker 1:And to me it comes down to three things that I'm seeing consistently in this episode. Number one is risk. Everything is risky. Waking up and going to work is risky because you could get killed on your way to work. Everything is inherently risky. The challenge to be successful in life is to manage that risk to a point that you can live with it. And no truer sense in the word of being in the military, because I can tell you some crazy stories about managing risk to the edge.
Speaker 1:The second one consistency of what you're saying, and one of the things that I love is I call it T-Ball thinking. Beliefs, actions define our legacy. Thinking is one of the most critical things. That has really exponentially grown my ability to have self-awareness. But too many people nowadays skip that step and they wanna go straight to results. And I can tell you this is when I was starting to build a brand.
Speaker 1:What was I focusing on? I was focusing on the website, all the busy work. I wasn't focusing on who am I and who do I want to portray to this world and coming up with that kind of. And then it dawned on me I'm just gonna be myself. That's who I am, that's what's made me successful my entire life, and if I don't get results out of it, that's okay. I'm gonna be my authentic, true self. And the last thing is being unreasonable. When you had those obstacles and you consistently have those obstacles throughout your life the hallmark of a purposeful, accountable leader is having that unreasonableness to where, I don't care what obstacles in front of me, I'm going to find a way to overcome it. So all of that is just absolute fire. And you say one of the words that I absolutely love and I would like for you to potentially define that of what is a transformational leader, cause I was going through your website and I saw you using that word several times and that is one of the words that I absolutely love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I think about transformational leadership, it's essentially the journey that I've been on you were this and you're now this. Your ability to transform anything from your identity to your mindset, to the story that you tell yourself, to your habits, to your routines, to your physical body, and it is not surface level. And when I look at why I'm a world-class coach, is because I go deep and we get to the root of things. Because, once again, this is formulaic, because why would we put a band-aid on something when the true power is our ability to excavate, intern the pain, the judgment, the fear, the self living, the beliefs into power. And that's where this truly becomes transformational. What stands in the way becomes the way, becomes the way, and you become the best version of yourself, one because you're not the thing that is limiting you but, more importantly, you're stepping into your power and your truth. So there's so many different deep layers on this that, when it comes to me learning how to be a coach so back to the identity of things. So I was great. Now I was showing up as the best version of myself, but we both know there's levels to this game. So, once again, I then started working with the best coaches in the world.
Speaker 2:And for me, I remember when I hired my first coach ever and it's an experience that I hope everybody gets the opportunity to do because it changed my life and for me it was a branding coach Shout out to my coach, gil Neveau and I was so all in on my dreams of making feel like such an isolating journey, certainly when you're a little bit green in entrepreneurship. And I hired my coach and I want to say it was I don't know $2,000 or $3,000, which damn near felt like a million dollars at the time as an entrepreneur who has never paid this sort of money for a coach before. And one of the first exercises that we did is just sort of I wrote down my dream and my vision and I told it to him and by the end of it he's like great, this is amazing, we're going to go make it happen. And for what felt like the first time in my life it wasn't, but what felt like it I felt heard for the first time there was somebody there who was a champion for me on my journey. That was like yeah, man, let's make these dreams happen. And it was like the lifeboat or the life preserver was thrown to me where I felt heard, and then, once that happened, I was like wait a second, you're telling me.
Speaker 2:By me working with more and better coaches, I can accelerate the speed in which I grow, I can get to new levels of things. And with all of this is where transformational leadership came from for me, because each day I'm transforming myself because of the way that I show up. I'm so intentional about the way that I read or take notes or do anything, so I read on a Kindle so that I can highlight my book notes and then I can go back and I can reread them whenever I want. It's a life hack because it's one of the greatest ROI's you will ever get on your time, Because why would you read a book once and assume that you've got it under mastery level? No, just like riding a bike the more you do something, the better you get, therefore, the best books that you have. Go back and reread those book notes. Boom, you reactivate that stuff. So you take things like that. So, once again, transformation becomes a process for me and it's like light bulb, light bulb, light bulb.
Speaker 2:And when I'm showing up as the best version of myself, I also know that there's selfless leadership. I'm not as good as I think I am, because I know there's so much more that I can do and know and grow. So, at the same way that we're self driven, we're also selfless and humble in knowing that, as a leader, you don't know everything and we're doing the best that we can. So all of this gets thrown into a pot of leadership for me, and leadership and coaching and my identity of who I am. They're one and the same. This is the DNA of who I am. I don't see any difference in any of this, because this is my state of being and how I show up every single day, and my goal is to be a champion for you and help you create anything you want in your life. And it just so happens, in the process, we transform your life.
Speaker 1:All right team. Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share a leadership resource with you, and that is the resiliency based leadership program. Rblp's vision is to create a worldwide community of practice committed to building and leading resilient teams. So why do you need to build and lead a resilient team? Resilient teams are the key to individual and organizational growth, regardless of being in the military or in the civilian workforce. Building collective teams allows for exponential growth and the team's ability to overcome adversity, adapt and, most importantly, grow. And in bottom line, up front, resilient teams are just stronger together.
Speaker 1:And here's the fact 99% of the people who take that course recommended to others, and I'm one of them. I just completed my certification and I highly recommend this, and the great news is it's most likely free to you, and if you're in the military, it is 100% free to you. And if you want to learn more, you can look in the show notes for this episode and find the link and use the discount code J-M-C-M-I-L-L-I-O-N, and that is also in the show notes. Back to the episode. I love that, brother. I kind of want to shift to what you're currently working on right now, and could you walk me through the new company that you just founded and why it is so important, especially right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I started a company called GPT Leaders with my co-founder, zach Hughes, who was a Green Beret. Zach is an amazing human and we are a Chad GBT and AI consulting and strategy company. So I started using Chad GBT the first week. It came out back in November and within the first minute of using it, I felt like I'd just used the internet for the first time. I was like holy smokes, this is going to change the world. I'm immediately all in, like I'm forward thinking by design, like I'm not like everybody else. So when I saw this, I was like I can't believe this is free, like this is freaking, mind blowing. And when the rest of the world is sitting there being like, oh my god, I can write a blog post that sounds like Daffy Duck me. The entrepreneur and creator is like how do I turn a dollar into a dollar 50? I legitimately see millions and billions of dollars at my ability to ask it the right questions. So I immediately went down the rabbit hole all in nonstop and I started a Facebook group called Chad GBT for Entrepreneurs and Creators where I was just sharing my tips, my lessons learned, because I'm a creator and creative, I think differently, which is a superpower when it comes to Chad GBT. So I'm unlocking new things nonstop for myself and I would just share them with the Facebook group.
Speaker 2:In January, I was in a entrepreneurship meetup in Dallas where Zach, my now business partner, was, and I'm buzzing about Chad GBT. He was buzzing about Chad GBT. He hits me up and he's like, hey, man, before we leave and he was actually my group leader, which is the best part of this. I was already looking up to this guy, so we weren't even on equal footing. I'm like this dude's a superhero, so I'm vibing with him. He's like, yeah, let's make sure we talk about something before we leave. He's like, yeah, I want to start a Chad GBT company. What do you think? And I was like let's go all in again, throw all my chips on the table and get this.
Speaker 2:So it's middle of January and we Google Chad GBT coach, Chad GBT mastermind, chad GBT course, chad GBT program. You know what? We found? Nothing. Nothing on the entire internet currently existed to help people leverage chat GPT in an education format.
Speaker 2:Well, good news for me is I'm a master creator and I had already created several courses my personal growth course, my podcasting course and the first thing that we did is we went and built our first product, a four week chat GPT growth program called hyper productivity revolution, and what it does is it helps business leaders and entrepreneurs learn how to leverage chat GPT like a pro for hyper productivity and business growth, because what we learned is that people just are stuck at zero, between zero and one. They don't have a champion for them in how we leverage the most powerful tool that has ever existed right now. Well, the good news is we're experts at it and we've been all in on it since November. So once again, joshua, you're gonna hear the same thing Reverse engineered everything that we learned.
Speaker 2:Put it into an easily digestible format to say anybody can learn. This will show you the blueprint for prompt engineering systems, processes, workflows, maximizing your marketing, hiring virtual assistants, and then we layered on weekly group calls because most people don't have an AI champion for them. So jump on with us and we will talk to you about what's going on in your business, because we are business owners and business leaders who are leveraging this every single day. Once again, another theme we use this. We can help you leverage it, because we are experts in the space.
Speaker 1:There's a there's a quote I found on on your website from Bill Gates and just the first sentence is so true is the development. Ai is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the internet or your mobile phone. And, and I will tell you, not, not just in entrepreneurship and creation and creator space, but in the in the realm that I am right now of warfare, the buzzword is AI, machine learning, artificial intelligence. China is fully embraced this, fully embraced this, and they have no ethical boundary. If that makes sense, us and that's why we are so great of an army is that we have that ethical boundary. Now we're trying to define. You know what is that AI space going to be for? You know, modern warfare in, in robotic warfare, how, how is AI going to be leveraged on the battlefield? And those ethical dilemmas and situations of do I shoot? Do I not shoot? Is this person armed or not armed?
Speaker 1:But for the creator space, for you to be forward leaning and use that word several times, it's such a superpower man it truly is of. Like you identified that this is going to be an area that is going to grow. People are going to need to solve this or use this to grow their business or grow personally in their life is a superpower, and I think that that's one of the reasons that you've been so successful with all the different endeavors that you have is that you identify a problem and then you create a solution. And, at the end of the day, that's what being a successful entrepreneur of where you're at right now is that you identify a problem and you you create a solution for people that to that problem. I think you also to walk me through your podcast that you have is it called built for the game?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called built for the game and it helps people when in business and in life for the long haul, so you can thrive in any situation. So if you were to think about our conversation right here business and life and entrepreneurship, the game of all right. Well, if we are going to break that down and for me this is a lot of what my coaching is built on I have four pillars to the way that I see being built for the game. So, number one self creation your ability to control and design your self talk and the identity that you tell yourself every single day. Your truth, your power that you step into. Number two lifestyle design. A quote that changed my life and it's from my brain and coach Gil live by design, not by default.
Speaker 2:So many people show up every single day on the hamster wheel of life, do the same thing over and over and over again. When I learned about lifestyle by design, I started to design my life before my business, which is completely contrarian to the way the rest of the world operates. So you say, all right, what is my perfect day look like? What would I love my life to look like from when I wake up? Or my habits, my teens, my mind sets, my ways of being. Number three becomes about self mastery. So, now that you've got those first two down, you're creating yourself and your identity. You know how you're living, you've designed your life. Now we've got self mastery and a lot of what we've talked about, joshua, is we're fighting for the inches right here, where now we're talking about the levels to this game your ability to create and transfer energy and be intentional and design growth in all areas of your life. What is that mindset? What is that way of being? What does that process look like?
Speaker 2:Because number four level of built for the game is holistic success, because success to me is not just filling up one bucket. I know what that is like because I lived that for more than a decade in corporate America, where I filled up the money and business bucket and nothing else in my life. It was fun, I made good money, but I was not working out, I didn't have the best relationships and I was not filling up all of the buckets. And here is a crazy thing you can have all of these things. You can have self talk that you love and you can radiate love. You can wake up in the morning excited for your day, because you're designing your day. You can look at the day and say you know what I've got blissful dissatisfaction. I love where I am right now, but I'm still hungry. Because there's so much growth inside of me, because I know that I can master things, because I believe in filling up all the buckets of my life.
Speaker 2:We're talking health, wealth, love, happiness, friends, family you name it fitness and for me, we reverse engineer this and say all right, how can you create this sort of framework in your life? So I just share this step by step and anybody who is about this life and likes the build for the game podcast. Well, rob, how do I go deeper? Congratulations. That's why my coaching exists.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love that, and I know we're kind of running short on time. I try to keep these episodes to an hour, but I have so many questions that we haven't even really gotten to. But this one is tailored towards your future. So where do you want to take this? We could talk about everything that you're doing right now and be successful and spend a whole episode on that by itself, but what's the instinct? Where do you want to go long term? And what continues to drive you each day? Your passion, your purpose, because I know that's probably evolved over time when you started being a personal development coach but what drives you still? Where do you want to go?
Speaker 2:My purpose in life is to be a positive force for good that leads my son to what is possible. So I have an 18 month old son. It's our only child and he's my everything. And the good news is I've been working on myself for the last 13 years, so I'm showing up as the best version of myself. But here's what you quickly realized you are a mirror for others and certainly you're a mirror for your children.
Speaker 2:Therefore, when I inevitably feel fear, judgment, self living and believe adversity and obstacles which is part of all of our lives every single day, it doesn't mean that I don't feel them. I just have the processes for how I shrink the dispersion. So that is not the truth of who I am and that story doesn't stay with me. But guess what? It pops back open every single day and it comes back, which is why we do the work. So for me, when I look at my son in one of the declarations I speak out loud every single day is I am fearless. And I think about Michael Jordan saying I know the work that I've put in. And last year I was in an event where David Goggins was and he's like why would you waste a single day on fear and I was like, oh baby, that is so resonating with me. And then I look at my son and I'm like I'm a mirror for him. Why in the world would I ever create a state of being for myself where I'm living in fear and he is picking up on that? No way. And then I rinse and repeat this in a ton of different levels. So for me, number one, I'm doing it for him. Number two I'm doing it for my wife.
Speaker 2:One of my goals is to retire my wife so that she can choose to do whatever that, whatever she wants. And for me, the majority of what I do is bigger than me. By design. I do hard things so I can be better for my family. So when the day comes, when I do retire my wife, all of the work that I put in over the last 13 years is worth it. Most people aren't willing to have such a long term design and mindset to what they do. I'm showing up every single day with a power of consistency and they keep doing this until it happens. So for me that is my why what are you going to see over that time? Well, one, I have a goal of helping 10 million people. I'm going to be doing that from a variety of ways, from my coaching programs to my podcast to speaking on stage, and one thing I'm speaking into existence, which is a new creation with GPT leaders. We are so excited about how many business owners and entrepreneurs and business leaders we get to help. We currently have them in our coaching programs and we're seeing the light bulbs and the transformation and the positive impact that they're creating for themselves. But there's something new that's going to get happening is the seed we're planting.
Speaker 2:We have a goal of eventually selling that company. We didn't start it to sell it, but when talking to my business partner, one of the things we talked about with vision is like, yeah, man, what do I do with this? Are we just like are we just trading our time for money, or is there an end game with this? He's like, oh, no, man, you build this to sell it. And I was like, yeah, you know I'm going to sell this to sell it. And I was like I'm going to sell it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I never actually consider that possibility because of the journey that I've been on, like I'm not trying to sell my personal growth coach in business. So I say this in a good way. We're not waking up every single day being like, all right, how many days until we sell this, but it's a seed that's been planted and it just so happens we're building a rocket ship in the greatest industry of growth that there is. So when we look at where we're gonna be in the next decade, all aboard the GPT Leaders Rocket Ship- it's time for our final show segment that I like to call the Killer Bs.
Speaker 1:These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tell Us of Leadership podcast Be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone. Question one so what do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader?
Speaker 2:The way that they self-lead. Every aspect that we've talked about right now is your ability to show up every single day, be the example, set the standard. No one's standard is higher than your standard.
Speaker 1:Question two what is one resource you could recommend to our listeners?
Speaker 2:You can go to robcressycom backslash resources. I have, literally by design, over the last decade, documented every single thing that I've ever done in the name of helping everybody else. So, whether it's podcasting, mindset and personal growth, you wanna do 75 hard? You wanna get into chat, gpt and AI? Literally go to robcressycom backslash resources. I will give you as much as I can for free. If you want anything more, just hit me up.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Question three if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Ooh, this is a good question. I would have started my personal growth journey sooner. I wouldn't change anything, so different answers to the question. But it's like no, you can do it and we're not gonna change anything. It would be starting my personal growth journey because I didn't start this until I was 30. And I think about what my 20s looked like and, of course, I had a blast. I don't regret a single thing. But I look now and I'd be like man where the current state of the world is, where the access to chat, gpt, or the way that internet and social media has evolved, but more specifically, the way that coaching and influencers in a positive space, or who you can learn from, has evolved. Like I didn't have the ability to learn from at my letter, andy for Sella or Jesse Itzler or some of these people back in the day, like I read their books, but now you can sign up for their programs. Man, that could have been so much faster. I could have been such a better person. I just put it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing, man. Last question, and there's probably gonna be multiple ways, but what is the best way that our listeners can find you and then add value to your missions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way that you can hit me up at Rob Cressy on Instagram, linkedin, facebook. You can go to robcressycom. If you're interested in chat. Gpt, you can go to our website, gpt leaders or pretty much any social media platform. My podcast built for the games on all platforms. Really, you can't go anywhere that I am not. I search Rob Cressy on YouTube and, by design, I create a lot because I've got big vision and I really wanna help a lot of people and if anything I said today resonated with you hit me up. A crazy thing happened, joshua. If you hit me up, I respond back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this episode is a living testimony of that, because I wanted you on this podcast episode and we were able to make it happen. And, rob, I'll tell you this and I generally mean it. Thank you for the time of walking me through, being authentic, sharing your leadership story of what you've done and what you continue to do and add value to this world. And I always talk about there's two types of leaders there's toxic leaders and there's transformational leaders. You are a transformational leader and, more specifically, you're a purposeful, accountable leader. Thank you for all that you do.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. It's received on my end.
Speaker 1:Thank you yeah brother, have a great day.
Speaker 2:You too.
Speaker 1:All right, team, it's time for our after action review. First, again, I wanna apologize. I totally did not have my mic hooked in that entire recording and I looked down at my computer and my USB port and I'm like, yep, my microphone was not plugged in, so the audio quality for this episode is not the best. But the content that Rob brings is and I genuinely apologize, but it goes back to the whole concept of life is messy and I'm not going to go back and fix it, because I wanna be authentic to the whole process of having a podcast and running into issues and obstacles and how we continue to overcome them, because, again, my whole goal with this podcast is to arm you, equip you with the knowledge and the skills to go confront your obstacles and overcome them. So what are the top three takeaways you should have? And there's a lot, but I'm gonna go back to the themes that I've heard from Rob throughout this entire episode.
Speaker 1:The first one is risk. As a leader, we have to be forward moving and in order to move forward, risk is part of the equation. It doesn't matter if risk is something that you can mitigate to the lowest possible level, to where there's zero risk, or if there's a high level of risk, what does matter is your tolerance to it, and then how you are tolerant to that risk. Then you can dial it down or dial it up. But there is a certain point in time where you just have to act. And if you wanna continue to move forward, you have to be able to manage risk.
Speaker 1:Number two consistency. The key to growing in life is consistently doing the same actions. If you wanna be a better reader, read every single day. If you wanna be a better leader, learn to lead every single day. Learn something new, read about leadership every single day. Just like myself, I spend one hour each day 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the evening when I'm not creating podcasts or content on leadership, because I've committed myself to becoming an expert in leadership so I can help others avoid the lessons that I had to go through. But it's consistency incrementally improving over time and building up and building up, and building up and building up. But you need to know what you need to be consistent at. If you just go out and do without having a clear plan or a clear vision of what you're trying to grow into, then it doesn't matter. So spend time thinking, be consistent and then go, pursue with purpose. And the final one, number three, is being unreasonable. And that's part of my house of leadership, one of the core principles in who I am as a leader when you have a purpose and a passion that burns so bright, it does not matter what obstacle is in your way, you will overcome. Just like Rob said how he ever overcome obstacles and how he avoids failure. It's pretty simple you don't quit. The moment you quit is the moment you fail. But if you continue to try and you never quit, you can never fail. So go out into this world and be the leader that this world needs, that the team needs, that your family needs, that you need.
Speaker 1:This was a phenomenal episode and that genuinely mean that and there's a lot of powerful content that Rob was able to bring to this table and I really hope that you guys got something out of this episode and I'm humbled to have him on. If you guys got anything out of this, do me a favor make sure that you subscribe, make sure you share, make sure you write a review, go to McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom, go to Tales of Leadership and support this podcast. I do all of it for free because I wanna bring you guys the most powerful content that I can when it comes to leadership, so you can become a more purposeful, accountable leader. Go to McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom. Check out some of the blogs and the resources I have, and follow me on social media. As always, I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift, don't waste yours. I'll see you next time, reichrycom.
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