Shivani Gupta

Good morning everybody, this is AskShivani podcast, I am so excited to have Jeffrey Klubeck. He has been recommended to me by many people to be on this podcast. And we're pretty excited to have him as a guest today. Let me tell you a little bit about it. And then we'll dive deep into the questions that we've got. And to gain some wisdom from Jeffrey. He's an upbeat and charismatic coach and consultant. And he focuses on how to make businesses and entrepreneurs thrive, while not losing a sense of what makes a company outstanding. And that is leadership. Absolutely key for the audience that we've got here. Jeffrey is also a successful author, he works with small, medium and large sized businesses. Jeffrey, welcome.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Shivani Gupta

Yeah look, it's so great. And so, we want to know a little bit about you a little bit about your context, these are all the things you've achieved. But tell us a bit about the challenges you face. Tell us a bit about adversity you've had to give us a little bit of an insight into the journey that you've had.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Yeah, I mean, just growing. I have to start off with a joke, although my children are doing a really good job, it's hard to raise your parents. And, you know, a challenge that I've been through recently is I lost my parents three weeks apart in September 2020. What a beautiful story they were in love they had 54 years together, they couldn't imagine a life without each other. So that romantic part where they you know, they were there together. And it's really cool. And that's like, the greatest thing. But that's all they had, they didn't have the ambition that I had, they didn't have the drive didn't have the motivation. They that, you know, I don't say this is a judgment, but it's something that I had to overcome. Right? I remember almost, well, first of all, before I almost dropped out of college, I remember when I was going in college to use my meal card in the dormitory, and I swiped my card, and it didn't work. And they told me I'm standing there. And there's the line and all of my peers and I'm 18 years old. And the person says to me, oh, your card doesn't work, you didn't make the payment. And somebody's like, well, I'll pay for you. And just I'll never forget that feeling.

And you know, and it's tough because as a youngster, you want to be like, what's going on? Why didn't you pay and everything and I was, for some reason I had to, overcome that and be compassionate and just constantly just work to be a person my parents can be proud of. Right, rather than anything else. My brother, he's got the biggest heart in the world. But he's not that ambitious either. Right? So, I'm the only one to go to college, I'm the only one you have to do certain things. And so, I'm still you know, overcoming that challenge everyday trying to make mom and dad like really super proud.

And then, you know, the next year after I figured out how to eat, there was no money for tuition. And I remember I had a job on campus. I was doing video production on campus, I was an audio video technician, which was a really cool position, by the way, because I got to see all these other classes. I was doing video for psychology and information decision systems and bargaining and negotiations, they were coming to the studio and getting live shots done or I was wheeling the car across campus to shoot courses or participating in the editing of programs for what was going to be the future in the information age, that really cool job. But I remember that there was no money for tuition, I didn't have the money. My parents didn't have the money for school tuition. I remember telling my boss, hey, you want to start looking for a replacement for me because I can't afford to register for school. I'm gonna go home and deliver pizzas. And be patient with me. As I tell, it's hard to tell the story without choking up. Look the next day. My boss took me to lunch like he normally does but instead of going this way, we went the other way went by his boss's office. And they both took me to lunch they sat down and I'll never forget - Jeff, what will it take to register? Do you know that you can still work for us? If you're part time what's the fee for part time instead of full time? If we lent you the money to stay part-time to keep working for us? Would you, do it? If you drop out, you may never get back in and plus we believe in you we want to keep you we see a future for you.

And that chokes me upright because I was 19 years old and I had to go home and call mom and hear her voice and she was so sad that she didn't have the money for me and I remember telling her as a 19 year old. Listen, don't be sad that you can't do it. Be proud that you raised somebody that other people want to invest in. Like there's people that want to invest in me and I want to say - yes, I want to do this, I have your blessing, very heavy thing and it's still chokes me up today. So, I want to make mom and anybody that's invested in me ever like really proud.

Shivani Gupta

That is beautiful. Jeffrey, I love the fact that you said to your mom, you raise somebody at once that somebody else just wants to invest. And that is just, that is beautiful, beautifully thought. And so, when you've had all these, you know, challenges coming your way, different people deal with it differently. Some people have a process, and some people journal, what is your process, like when you come across these challenges not only in university but now running your own business and being a parent. Tell us more about how do you go about dealing with challenges? Because I'm always interested in that process.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Yeah, me too. I'm interested in that process. And I consider it like an evolution. I know that the question comes out, how do you do it if there's one way, but I think we have to look at all 360 degrees to find solutions to challenges. And I'll just share a couple that come to mind. Number one, well, there's four things that come to mind. One is like the look for the bottom of the pool, like, remember, swimming as a kid was so fun to swim down to the bottom of the pool, like, the cool thing about it was is how fast you could get back up to the top when you have the bottom to push off of. You know, like, if somebody's sitting in the middle, you know, at 10 feet of a 20-foot pool, and they try to get to the top, they're gonna have to generate all their energy and flail and find at the bottom, I just push off the bottom. And so there I go. So when I'm challenged, the very first thing that I do is where's bottom? Where's rock bottom? What's the worst case scenario? What is? What is the thing that I can't go any further than that? And that I just kind of tell myself that. If I get there, that's what I'll push off. Right? But I also, have to understand that we have to like a concept that I call to feed the kids equally. If you had three children in three sandwiches, I'm sure you would give one sandwich. You wouldn't give all three sandwiches to one kid, would you? Okay, so the names of the children our worst-case scenario, which is this bottom of the pool that was talking about, we definitely need to think about that. Consider that and imagine that. Embrace that, as a reality play chess with that couple moves ahead if that's the case, right? But if we give all of our thoughts to that, then that's all we're gonna get for sure. So there's two other sandwiches to other kids. And one is best case scenario, right? What's the best thing that can happen here? Is this really a challenge? Or is this an opportunity? And then what's the best thing that could possibly come of this difficult as it may seem? A fool deceiving is the packaging maybe what's really going on here? And so, I try that best case scenario on for size and see if that digests, and then of course, we got to feed most likely what's most likely to happen here? What's the validity? What are the chant? What are the probabilities?

And so, if I've considered all three of those, it's not so much a challenge anymore. It's as much as it's just turned it into a game for me. So that helps, right? And look for helpers, we hadn't been famous. I know I'm going into Australia right now. We had a famous TV show - Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Mr. Robinson was the takeoff that Eddie Murphy did on Saturday Night Live. Anyway, Mr. Rogers - take children's television. And he used to say, look for helpers, look for helpers, right? So, it's important to realize that any challenge that comes my way, it's not just my challenge, you know, I'm never alone. Like, there are always people that are ready to help and willing to help. Right? Yeah, all of my successes I share with others and share the challenges, too, let's be mutual about the whole thing. A lot of people take things on themselves. And there's so autobiographical about it. But we have to understand there's community, there's people that are ready to help prepare to help willing to help, and we got to look for them, and they'll be there. And so, we're never alone.

You know, another thing comes to mind is just very simply the book, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I remind myself that this is only a challenge because I said it was and now I really, what I could really do is call this whatever I want it to be opportunity or otherwise, right, as I've mentioned, so when I think about that, I'm really not. I don't think I've ever been as challenged as Viktor Frankl was, I don't think I don't ever expect to be as challenged, as Viktor Frankl was. And his book wasn't about the horrors of the Holocaust, it was about the fact that not even the Holocaust can take away our ability to decide what things mean. It's always up to me to decide what something means. And so, I always got to hang on to that. And then finally, you know, just shamelessly as I'll do from time to time, you know, pre-plug my book, The Integrity Game, but retrofit myself and what I mean by that is, you know, a building has structural integrity, if it keeps standing despite the outside forces, if it keeps doing what it's supposed to do keeps doing what it's made to do keep doing what it's built to do despite pressure tests, outside forces, other people's agendas or any form of challenge. So, the more retrofit I am, the more clear I am about what my purpose is, what my gifts are, what my vision mission objectives are my quarterly goals, the strategies that are aligned with my instinct, my relationship to my word, what I've committed to, the actions I'm taking, what I'm proactively learning, accomplishing, and whom I'm serving. If I have answers to all 10 of those questions sets, then challenges are going to blow off me like a 10-mile-an-hour wind, you know, a wood of building, you know, challenges are gonna bounce off me, like I don't know, bouncy ball. I mean, the more retrofit I am, either in anything that integrates with what I'm doing, or it bounces off it goes, yeah. So, that's a mouthful. But that's a challenges.

Shivani Gupta

And that's great. I can almost like when you were speaking, I could like visualize it right. When you're at the bottom of the pool, I can visualize and I can see that and retrofitting, I can see this thing bouncing off. So that was a very visual exercise for me. So, yeah, and such every way we sit today and all the things that you might have for the future that you want to do or not to and achieve and not achieve. Tell us a bit about your future aspirations. Where do you see the business like going and in the future? What are the things that you aspire to?

Jeffrey Klubeck

Yeah, thank you. Here's the thing, this book that I'm holding in my hands, The Integrity Game, it is a parable that introduces the 10-point model that I just summarized. There's 10, I think integrity people, most people think integrity is doing what you say you're gonna do, or doing the right thing, when, regardless of who's watching or do the same thing when nobody's watching when somebody's watching, right? And in my book, I say, okay, we like those answers for a couple of reasons. But here's what's wrong with that, or here's where it falls short. So, let's expand our understanding of integrity. And I entered the notion of integration integrate, right? When we do what we say we're going to do, we're integrating word with behavior. And when we do the same thing, regardless of who's watching, we're integrating behavior with values morals or ethics. So, in both cases, there's a coming together of one thing with another. And in both cases, behavior is evidence of our integrity. Not I would I was gonna, I meant to, I didn't mean to I was sort I was just trying that none of that. Behavior is the evidence of our integrity in both cases, and there's an integration in both cases. So, I liked those two answers. I've done this all around the world. When I ask people, what is integrity? How many of you believe you have integrity; everybody raises their hand. Hang on, keep your hand up and repeat after me, I swear not to shoot the messenger after, right? And then hang on before I insult you and suggest you have no integrity. What is it and people always give me those two answers. But the thing is, when I want to point out people, and this is where I've the aspirations, this concept that I'm talking to you about right now, I've written the book, I'm in the middle of finishing the first group coaching program. I see future I want to read a textbook version of this, I'm on my way back to San Diego State University. I just got the email today from the scheduler that's inviting me to teach a class and get back on campus in the spring of 23. Like this is all happening right now. So, I've written the book around the 10 point model. But back to what I was saying, those two answers fall short of describing integrity.

What's good about them, is that we get to see integration, but what's embarrassing is that nobody will use the word integration and their answer. If I ask what is integrity, they say either be your word or do the right thing. Nobody says integrate bring two or more things together. They start with the same six letters I-N-T-E-G-R-I-T-Y is written for integration. So, integrity is a coming together of at least two things, two or more things. So, in evidence is behavior, so we'd like that okay, but here's where they fall short. What if I said that I was gonna drink eighteen Foster's laggers before the podcast interview? And then I drink eight team Foster's laggers before our interview today, I will have done what I said what I was going to do, but would I be able to claim integrity? And you know, the answer is no. Okay. Do you follow? If I said I was going to get into my car and go hit the first pedestrian I saw it and I did that you follow? So beat words and behavior isn't enough. Yeah, that's alright. Pin that on the board. Okay, now over here on the other side. Do you believe - Time is money? Sure. Do you believe patience is a virtue? Yeah. Well, do you believe that if you never quit, you'll never lose? Well, yeah, never give up. Sure. Well, do you believe you better know when to cut your losses? Oh, So what's right or wrong or good or bad? It changes from context, there's conflicting success principles. Sometimes this is the right way to go. And sometimes that's the right way to go. And by the way, who decides what's right and wrong? Who's the opinion leader, the thought leader, I'm living in a country where we got red and blue, two wings of the same bird. And they both live in two different realities. So how would we ever account for that version of integrity? And by the way, most people are just using integrity as something that you accuse somebody else of not having. So what are my future aspirations? I want to actualize the integrity game. What I'm here to say is there are more things than just those two, that we need to integrate.

I have a 10-point model, and it turns out to be questions, 10 questions sets. And if we have answers to those questions, now we'll work with Retrofit ourselves. So we could retrofit ourselves or teams or products or services or businesses, if we run them through these questions sets, and we have answers to 10 sets of questions around any noun or any object you want to retrofit. Right. So that's what the integrity game is now the book, it has a parable, it's a made-up story, I wrote it when my when I was coping with my parents loss while I was grieving Mom and Dad, this was during COVID. This was therapeutic for me to work on the book, there are characters in here that are named after and have qualities of my children. So, there's some memoir in here, there's some therapy in here. And then there's a professional Trojan horse, you know, I'm using a story a made up easy to read story to get to Trojan horse, this 10-point model into the world.

So future aspirations, I want this to be practiced as a comprehensive soft skills system, in conscious organizations. And I also want there to be a textbook version of this. And I want to incubate the concept further in the university environment with students, then you get the research and the projects, and the presentations and the assignments, and really just generate and actualize optimized, there's someone that we're all familiar with, I believe Simon Sinek, who says start with why. And if you look at his bio, and his media kit, it says Simon popularized Start with Why, right now, knowing your purpose has been around a long time. But Simon, he did the TEDx and he wrote the book, and he popularized it, he took it to another level, I want to do that with integrity. I want to make it easy and fun to look within. I want to encourage the world to play the integrity game and retrofit themselves. I want people to use the integrity game to problem solve, I want people to use the integrity game to make tough decisions. I want people to use the integrity game to have structural integrity in their lives, careers, and businesses.

So I'm going to keep doing this in in organizations, I just got done earlier today, giving a presentation to a physical therapy office, a collection of physical therapists, and having them want to go to five offices, right two to five offices, so they got to retrofit and grow. And then so businesses and academically and I want to you know, actualize the integrity game in the business and the academic environments.

Shivani Gupta

That’s fabulous. Now the next question, Jeffrey, literally, we could speak about it for four hours, right? Your philosophies, but there's a couple of other deeper questions I want to get into, are they also phase that you live by? And you know, when you're talking about the integrity game, I'm kind of assuming that integrity might be one of them, right? You do what you say you're going to do, and you retrofit and you do the bits that you need to do for your clients and your family. But tell us about a couple of other philosophies that you live by that are really important for you.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Yeah, thank you. Work hard, play hard. Right? I mean, once you integrate the two, well, it's not worth it without the other. Right. We got to see the rewards. We got to earn the rewards and just work hard play hard. I mean, I don't know if I need to elaborate on that. Right. Although you talked about if you're referring to a book, I love what I learned from Scott Peck in the road less traveled. And that discipline is the ability to delay gratification. Right, delay gratification, work hard, play hard. Is it just a saying to excuse you to make it okay to play hard? Work hard play hard is you have to work hard part comes first for a reason. Right is I want to earn my celebrations. I don't want to celebrate before I work. Because I might not work as hard might not work as much. So that you know, it's about delaying gratification, but making sure that we smell roses and that we celebrate our accomplishments and recharge and refuel and have a balance around that.

Another one, you could probably tell from my behavioral style, joviality and levity and, you know, one of my mentors Brian Tracy taught me that weeds grow on their own. You know, the weeds need no help from us. You know, but if we want to grow good stuff to grow, we need nutrients and the right water and talk to your plants and sunlight. So, what I mean by that is humor. I love pointing out all the humor I see in things and sometimes, you know, it doesn't always land. Sometimes people aren't always laughing with me, but being who I am, I'm a jovial kind of kid. I just see the humor in everything, and I'll let it fly. A lot of people I admire that they keep their jokes to themselves, but I don't do that, I'm a jokester. And then, you know, I think I've been gifted with some wordsmithing you know, so I enjoy phraseology around platitudes. So, I have a thing called my last name is Klubeck. So, my wife's homemade cookies or Klube snacks I called them. And then as I've grown in my career, and I see people writing down things that I say, hey, can you write - hey, can you say that again? Ooh, that was good. And I started like, branding quotes that I would come up with, like, you know, how you're saying what you're saying is, in fact, what you're really saying. So that's beware of your nonverbal communication minds, your nonverbal, right? Every job is an inside job. Right? Look within, you know, everything that goes with that, right. So, it's like self-responsibility, you know, holding yourself accountable. One of my favorites is when there are two alphas in the room, the smarter alpha will usually defer to the dumber alpha. And I just think, I'm making myself laugh. Thank you for laughing with me. But it's like, hey, you go ahead and ship all over yourself, you go ahead and fall on your face, like the energy would take to beat you right now is going to take me further away from what my goal is. So, you go ahead and have it young man or whoever you are, right. Anyway. You understand? So that's the wisdom thing. And pick your battles wisely. And so, but what I'm really enjoying right is that I feel like, I'm like connected to source on a lot of these universal truths. And then I'm gifted with words smithy phraseology like, a musical rhythmic vocabulary to like you said, before I help people visualize now people feel what I'm supposed to be messaging.

Shivani Gupta

Yeah beautiful, I love that. I know, like I said, this is a big question. We could spend hours just talking about that. Now, one of the things you spoke about years, and you help leaders and when you work with entrepreneurs, and so what do you do for your own wellness? Like, how do you keep your cup full, so that you've got the energy to be able to do the work and the presentations? And, you know, go and speak at colleges, etc? So, what do you do for your wellness? Share that with that.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Yeah, first, I don't always keep the cup full. I'm a human being. And sometimes I burn it at both ends. And you're right. There's a good friend of mine who once said, balance is BS. Right, like, and I think it's important to understand balance is good if we can get there, balance is power, if we can get there, on and on. But you have to recognize that we're human beings. And then the other thing too, is we want to be great at anything, there's gonna be some sacrifices. So don't expect to be great at any by definition, great is out of balance. Great is heavier than average. So, by definition, so if you want to be great, you have to accept the times where you're out of balance, but it's important, your questions critical, because we do need to have places that we can go rather quickly when we recognize the burnout or the fatigue or that need to recharge. So, one thing I do kind of regularly, especially since COVID started is play golf, I get out and I play golf. I know that I'm out of the house, no dogs barking, no phone ringing, no nothing for hours I breathe in, I breathe out there's movement. I can feed two birds with one grain. If I go with a client of mine, or make it a networking thing, and I'm no good at it. Do you understand? I'm no good at it.

But in the past, I used to let the fact that I wasn't good. prevent me from going out. I used to be worried what I looked like or what if I'm not good enough? What if we could keep up? What if embarrassing, now you want to get all of that it's better than staying at home during COVID. Anyway, I digress. So now I'm into it. I'm hooked. I keep a gratitude journal. I think it's important to regularly ask myself, what am I grateful for? Let the answers flow and put pen to paper. So, I'm in gratitude a lot of the time. Physically, I think I've got really great insights into the sleep cycle, mastering the math of sleep like sleep cycles, 90 minutes. So, if I'm going to take a nap, I can't say I'll take an hour nap because then I'd be waking up in the middle of REM. So, I don't want to wake up during rapid eye movement because I feel twice as tired as I did. Right. So, I either want to nap for 20 minutes or less or a full 90. Moreover, if I'm working, you know getting something done and I'm more until one o'clock in the morning, say, oh, if I got to be up at six, and it's one, that's five hours, I know, I'll work for another 15 minutes and then go to bed in 15 minutes. So, that’s four and a half. So, I'm doing the math of hour and a half, three hours, four and a half, six, seven and a half, nine, rather than eight hours of sleep or an hour nap, which would have been waking up in funky times, we can be very alert and productive and snapped into action with some clarity on a 90 minute nap more so than we could like a three hour and 45 minute nap. Yeah, do you understand? So understanding that so very calculated about my naps in my sleep. And I think that helps a lot.

And then finally, as you saw earlier in the session, it's so great. Like, I didn't expect this but proof in the pudding, right? I allow myself to feel, I allow myself to cry. I was used to be afraid of what people would think and I don't care anymore. I feel this I'm gonna cry. I just, you know, it's fun. The fun part of it is when I'm watching the movie with the kids and the family. And the kids right there, you know, we got a 10 and a 15 and a 17. So maybe a couple years ago, and then like 7, 12 and 14 years before they're driving in their home with us before they're off doing whatever anyway, and there's an emotional scene happening in the movie. And I might, and I feel all of their heads look to me to see if I'm crying yet. So, those are some things you know, those are some of the things that keep me and by the way, who knows if I'm mentally well, I don't even know if I'm mentally well, I just know that those are things that I do, right? Because I'll admit that I'm crazy if the definition is big enough and appropriate. Like who knows.

Shivani Gupta

That's great. And you know, the people that are into the rituals and do things like around their mental wellness like gratitude journals, sleep, you know, there's some of the key things around that. Jeffrey, we could keep talking forever. But there are some people listening today that will go - this kind of sounds fascinating. I want to get these you know, what did you call them?

Jeffrey Klubeck

Klubie snacks?

Shivani Gupta

Yeah, like I'm gonna check out The Integrity Game. Tell us what's the best way to find you? What are the platforms you're on? What's the best way for people to connect with you?

Jeffrey Klubeck

Well, you’re so funny when you say Jeff, what's your favorite ice cream? I'll say whichever one I'm eating. So, the best way for people to find me as the way that's most convenient for them. So,  can I offer a couple of suggestions? Number one, you just send an email to [email protected], send that to me. I'm evolving, but I still check my own email. And I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. So, my LinkedIn profile I will commit if I can, can I give a shout out to a friend of mine, Brian Traichel who is a master LinkedIn trainer. So, he trains organizations and dials in and he loves me, he still does mine himself. You know what I mean? So, LinkedIn profile, if you want to optimize your LinkedIn profile be found and get the right things go in, and whoever has the most words wins and on and on and on. So LinkedIn, I love for people to check out my link, check out my LinkedIn profile, because it was in good hands with my good friend, Brian Traichel. I mentioned “The Integrity Game”. And people can get the integrity game on Amazon right now. It's only $9.80. If people email me, I'd be happy to you know, if they mentioned your show, and they email me I'll be happy to email them for free a PDF version of the integrity game. So, before shipping, it's a $9.80 cent value. Thank you for laughing. And if people want to check me out on live every Tuesday night, I read one tip from a book of mine, it might get a clue and 52 series. So, I write these books called Get a clue and 52 where I come up with 52 tips. So, I have a reason to be online once a week. And so, on Facebook, if people like Facebook, you can type Get a Clue in 52, find that group, join the group and then you might be able to interact with me live for free once a week and we'll have a lot of fun.

Shivani Gupta

That's awesome. And we're also going to put that some of those details at the bottom of the podcast, so you'll be able to find it, I'm going to keep talking to you in a minute. Jeffrey, thank you, delightful to have you on today.

Jeffrey Klubeck

Oh, thank you I had a blast.