EP 207 – Rob Dube – The 10 Disciplines
The following interview has been transcribed for our readers from rev.com. Please excuse any discrepancies in the transcription.
Eric Bersano:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast. Today we have with us Rob Dube, who is the visionary at the 10 Disciplines. Welcome, Rob.
Rob Dube:
Thanks for having me. You are too. I am so excited to chat. I can’t imagine what we’re going to accomplish today. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I just got a feeling about it.
Eric Bersano:
Yeah. I’m very interested in talking with you. I went through your website and read up on you on LinkedIn. But for the audience members who may not be familiar with you, can you kind of explain what it is that you do?
Rob Dube:
Sure. You would like me to answer what I’m doing now? That’s what you’re asking, right?
Eric Bersano:
Yes, that’s correct.
Rob Dube:
Okay.
Eric Bersano:
And we can dig into your background.
Rob Dube:
Yeah. Okay. So, we’ll start where we’re today and that is that I’m the visionary, as you mentioned, for the 10 Disciplines, which is a set of disciplines to help you manage and maximize your energy. So, we have a self-study course and a group coaching course that we take people through to really help them build a strong foundation in their life to create space, freedom, which brings greater creativity. So, your creativity sparks when you have that space, when you have that freedom. And when your creativity is sparking, this is where you start to see how you’re going to make the true impact that you’re here for in this life. So essentially, it’s a coaching program and that’s what it does for our clients.
Eric Bersano:
That’s great. So, there’s 10 disciplines, right?
Rob Dube:
Yes.
Eric Bersano:
I’d have to ask you, how did you come about these disciplines? Was it one night epiphany or is this something that you built up over the last decade?
Rob Dube:
Well, I wish I could take credit for them, but my business partner and my dear, dear friend named Gino Wickman, who is very well-known for a book called Traction in the Entrepreneurial World and the EOS process, Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS Worldwide. These are actually disciplines that he was incorporating into his life around 20 years ago or a little bit more than that. And through our friendship and our business relationship, he taught them to me over the years and I incorporated them into my life. And here we are as old geezers deciding that maybe others might find it valuable for them.
Chase Williams:
I love how you opened it up, Rob, with having that space. One of the podcasts I listen to all the time is I think it was Rick [inaudible 00:03:33] podcast. He was saying how “you need space in order to create movement, so you can have that miracle. You can have that epiphany; you can have that creativity to spark.” Because you kind of get dragged into the day to day and you’re like, “Hey, I got to pay my bills. I have to go into my meetings. I have to grow the company.” And you’re worried about all these things, and I think everybody’s on the same page as, “Hey, that space would be awesome.” What’s the first step to create that space? Is it walking off your calendar? I know there’s so many different tactics.
Rob Dube:
Yeah. Yeah, well, we encourage people to actually start with ten-year thinking. So, we encourage them to shift their mindset from short-term thinking to thinking in 10-year timeframes. And so, for some people it’s hard. So, if it is for you, the listener, maybe you’ll use it for three or five years. For others, they might go out 25, 50 years. And once you do that and you have sort of an idea, it could be a sentence, it could be some bullet points, it could be a vivid story of what life looks like for you in 10 years, 20 years, et cetera. Then you have clarity on how you show up today, because that informs your actions today. And so, time slows down because hey, it’s 10 years from now. You don’t have to accomplish it at this moment. We all have our short-term goals. That’s great. Keep those. I’m not suggesting you change that process. We need to show up and do good work and move forward each and every day, each and every quarter, each and every year, et cetera. But this really helps us find that time and slow things down a little.
Eric Bersano:
So, you basically tell yourself who you want to be in the future and then work backwards from there?
Rob Dube:
Yeah. Imagine what your life looks like. So, it could be part of who you want to be, although I’m hopeful that you are who you want to be now, and I encourage you to do that. But it could be things that are more outside oriented. So, some people choose income goals or net worth goals, things like that. It could be inside oriented. We always encourage that. Maybe your journey is from the inside out versus the outside in or some combination. And that’s usually the case. So could be something like I mentioned before, an income goal. Then it could be a deep relationship with somebody very close to you and what that might look like.
Chase Williams:
So, it looks like you do a bunch of different things. You have programs, events, and a bunch of really great resources on your website. So, does this kind of all go along with the book or does it go along with a coaching program? Definitely want to kind of start there and then dive in.
Rob Dube:
There are four things that I have going on, so let me just outline them very quickly. I have a core business that I started out of college in my basement with my best friend. And that business provides multi-function printers and copiers for medium to enterprise size organizations. And so, like Eric, I see you have a printer. So, most people probably would never notice that. That’s the first thing I saw. Now, I’m not running that business anymore, but my business partner, my best friend and I are still the equity partners in that business 50/50.
And so that’s one thing. The next thing is the 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy, the group coaching program that we were just talking about. The third thing is the entrepreneurial Leap, E-Leap Academy. This is where we take young entrepreneurs, startup companies with employees nine or under, and we help increase their odds of success. Also partnered with Gino Wickman on that business. And the last thing is what I like to call to give back, and that’s where I host a leadership retreat once per year. It’s a five-day retreat of which three days are in complete silence.
Eric Bersano:
That’s interesting. Yeah.
Chase had asked earlier about creating space, and then you just mentioned the silence. I think one thing that I’ve personally noticed with myself is I don’t really have any just downtime where I think. If I’m on the way to the car, I put my Air Pods in to listen to a podcast. If I’m at the gym, I’m listening to music or a podcast. So, when you talk about creating space, is it space with just nothing around or are you just talking about time away from work to create that space? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Rob Dube:
So just a clarifying question, when you say space with nothing around, do you mean nothing physical around?
Eric Bersano:
Meaning no other inputs. You’re not watching TV, you’re not reading a book, you’re not listening to a podcast.
Rob Dube:
Yeah. So, in our regular everyday lives, one of our disciplines is to be still. And I always like to use this simple idea, and I’m the two of you who may have even heard of this, where you take a jar and there’s some sand and water in it and you shake it up and it’s all mucky and you can’t see through it when it’s all shaken up. And when you set it down and let it settle, there’s clarity. And so, if we take 30 minutes every day to just sit in silence, all that sand swirling around, that’s our thoughts. It settles and then we have more clarity. Now, this is hard for many people because it’s hard to be sitting there with all of our thoughts going on. It doesn’t feel productive. We have lots to do. We want to learn, we want to take the world in. But when we do settle down, kind of let the sand settle, we do get clarity in our lives, and it’s something that our minds need. It needs a little bit of a break.
Chase Williams:
I’ve never heard of that analogy or that exercise. I went on a three-day retreat recently, one of those resets, ice bath, all that, cut a hole in the ice, and we had an hour where we sat in silence, and it was hard. Just an hour. You say 30 minutes. It’s hard just to sit there, and then to not think is even the harder part. They told us at least try to meditate. And I’m not a person to meditate. So, it was like if you could focus on one word and just keep repeating the word, but everybody had different experiences.
Some people started crying. Some people were like, “Hey, this was silly.” I thought it was pretty good for me though. It just kind of put things in perspective and one of the things that sort of resonated with me when I did it was, they’re like, “Hey, have a conversation with your younger self, whether it’s a year ago, whether it’s the five-year-old.” And it’s interesting. It’s like, “Hey, what are you up to now? What are your priorities? Where do you spend your time? Where do you not want to spend your time?” Do you, Rob, do that every day, 30 minutes just in silence?
Rob Dube:
Well, I actually do more than that, and I could talk more about that if you’d like me to, and if you do, just prompt me. But there’s a great quote that I always like to share, it’s from Annie Lamott. She’s a bestselling author, and it goes like this, “My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try to never go there alone.” So, I always like to share that with people when they think about this idea of sitting in silence for 30 minutes or an hour like you had to, like they encouraged you to do, Chase. And it’s interesting to hear you share how some people were brought to tears because this clearing idea with the jar with sand and the water, see, there’s a lot of stuff deep inside of us. And because we keep ourselves so busy and our minds are so busy, we don’t give it the opportunity to surface and release.
And when people are crying, when they sit for a half hour or an hour in silence, that’s what’s happening. It’s releasing. And as our days go by, it just builds and builds and builds and builds. And so, you can imagine it’s like it wants to explode. So, if you can use that as sort of some perspective for why this could be so valuable for us as human beings, for our bodies and for our minds, you understand a little bit better. And it may connect for some that this is a valuable use of time and it’s an excellent tool to help settle our minds. The other thing I wanted to mention, Chase was that, and I’m sure they shared this with you, clearing our mind is not going to happen. Okay? The three of us live busy lives, and I go on these retreats each year and you can get to certain points of the retreat where you feel what I like to call peace, where your mind doesn’t feel quite as busy, but it’s not void of thought.
And so, we have 10,000 things going on through our minds if you’re normal like me, and what you’re doing is through the word or through a breath, you’re just trying to bring it down to one. And by doing that, you then bring yourself to the present moment. So even during this conversation, you probably went somewhere else, which is normal. Now if I bring you to the present moment, and then you feel your body on the chair and you’re like, “Oh, wait a second, I’m in my office at my house and this desk is in front of me and I’m on a computer screen looking at a couple of people I just met.” And you realize this is actually where I am. I’m not over there in the future. And I’m not over here in the past. I’m actually right here. And it’s all I actually have. I don’t have anything else to do. This is all I have is this moment. And I love this moment because it’s all I got. So, I hope I love it.
Eric Bersano:
Yeah, I’m sure I heard this on a podcast somewhere, but I’ve been told that the brain is just a problem-solving machine, and all it’s trying to do is solve problems all day. And if you think about it, I can take it back to when I heard the problems with AI, talking about self-driving cars. And one of the problems was a car doesn’t know the difference between a tumbleweed and a baby stroller with a baby in it. Now as a human, you know in under a second exactly what that is. So, you’re always, always, always trying to solve problems. So, I guess my question with that is, is that what you’re trying to do? You’re trying to just distill it down to just focus on one problem so that your brain doesn’t get this override, and then after that 30 minute or an hour, now you’re refreshed and able to look and focus on other problems?
Rob Dube:
That’s such a great question, Eric. Actually, the idea is that you don’t focus on any problems. You can do that for the rest of your day. You have 23 and a half hours to do that. So just take a half an hour to not focus on any problem, but problems will come up. And what you can practice, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’m still a beginner. So, it’s just practice, practice, practice. When the thought comes up, the problem comes up and you notice you’re going into how to fix it mode.
Just imagine for some these works, clouds in the sky and there goes that problem. It floats away. Just for now, I’ll come back to it in about 20 minutes, but right now I’m just letting it go by. Or waves in the ocean. Just let it go by just for now. I’ll come back to it. It’s okay. I don’t need to solve it now. And just being okay with letting go, just let go. We’re so busy, we’re always doing stuff. We can’t even sleep some of us, because our minds are so busy, it keeps us awake. We need some time to settle, let our bodies, our nervous system settle down a little, you’ll get more clarity. You’ll be a better problem solver actually.
Chase Williams:
Most of the people you work with are busy entrepreneurs. And I guess we classify this as mental health/wellness. How do you make this a priority besides having an episode where you’re like, “Hey, I’m making myself sick, or I’m having a mental breakdown, or I’m having my a midlife crisis.” How do we avoid that?
Rob Dube:
Well, if you consciously know that that could be around the corner, how do you not make these kinds of things priorities? And it kind of goes for any sort of health and wellness, any sort of thing that we sometimes put to the side. And that’s not a criticism. We’re not perfect. We want to enjoy our lives in different ways. So, if you want to go indulge in a certain type of food or something, I wouldn’t say feel bad about that. And I use that just as an example because you know that if you want to maintain good health, that you have to have a certain kind of diet usually, that is a healthy diet, whatever that means to whoever’s listening, it’s different for all people, but you have to have a focus on it. So, this is very similar. And what we teach in the group coaching program with these disciplines is, again, I like to use the visual of a skyscraper, and the skyscraper’s so high in the sky.
That’s the impact that you are here to make in this world. I mean, think about it it’s true. You have so much that you’re capable of. And before you begin building the skyscraper on that empty land, you have to survey it and make sure you’re building one heck of a foundation, because that thing’s got to stay up there for 100s of years, and that’s going to have thousands of people coming in and out of it every day. So, what we want to do in our life is build that foundation. And it can be complicated sometimes. It takes time and patience and discipline to get it all put together so it will hold up. And that leads to, again, freedom of mind, time, which is so valuable, sparks creativity. And then you make an impact because you’re so clear about what impact means to you in your life. And by the way, it doesn’t need to be grandiose. And if it is fantastic, change the world. Go for it. But if it’s as simple as how you show up for the people closest to you in your life, that’s impact too.
Eric Bersano:
That’s a great analogy. And I think analogies are great when you’re talking about complex subjects like this.
So, I have a question. So, with the template disciplines, so people will sign up for this course, do you find that there’s a common thread with people who sign up? So, if someone’s listening to this who’s an entrepreneur and they feel like they’re stuck or they’re just getting started, is there a common thread of the people that show up, they’re at a certain point? Is it all over the map? And for those who are on the fence, what would you say that the course would do for them? As I look through that, you’ve got a lot of great points in there, but as a struggling entrepreneur or new one, what would you say that the 10 disciplines would do for them?
Rob Dube:
I’ll answer that in a couple of different ways. First, most of the people that come through the program, the entrepreneurs, they’re driven, visionary entrepreneurs. They are just hard charging and they’ve been climbing a mountain or they’re still climbing it. And for those that have sort of reached a certain level on the mountain, they’re looking around and they’re going, “Oh, this is it? Why do I still feel like I’m unfulfilled? Big surprise, you got all your outer world success. Congratulations. It’s awesome by the way. That’s not easy to do, but it isn’t going to fulfill you. And for most people it takes to getting to that point to realize it or getting close to it. Cause for some people they’re going through the grind and they’re starting to taste some of that outside world success and they’re like, “I don’t know, this actually isn’t all that fulfilling.”
For those getting started, and I remember that all too well all those years ago. You’re slogging through the mud, staying focused, you have to hustle, do what you need to do to build your business. It could be a grind for a few years. For those in that position, I’m not really sure this is the right program for them, although that’s for them to decide, because they’re going to have to take some time and make an investment into building that foundation. And that’s hard when you’re trying to wear 17 hats building a business. And I have such great empathy for people who are building businesses because it is hard. It is so hard. So, for that side of things, the startup entrepreneur or kind of getting out of that first stage, just stay focused. Build your business. If you feel like you’re ready to really start creating that foundation in your life, then check it out. But really for that later stage, this is where we get them understanding and come maybe to the realization that there is no mountain. There’s no mountain.
Eric Bersano:
So, what do you think it is? Because we’re talking about that tipping point, and what you said makes perfect sense. So, someone’s struggling with running their business, and business owners have to struggle with doing the things they love, but more the things that they don’t love because maybe they’re not good at them. So that’s where all their time is spent. Is there kind of a tipping point or is there something that you would say to that person where, “Look, it’s worth it for you to carve this time out.” Whether it’s starting a diet or whether it’s getting on an exercise program, there’s always something that triggers it. And so, before somebody hits rock bottom as an entrepreneur and they get to a point where they just have to, what would you say to encourage that person to go through this program?
Rob Dube:
I mean, in our entrepreneurial Leap Academy, we teach these disciplines as well at a higher level because they are quite simple to incorporate. As you move on through your journey, we go much deeper into the inner journey as it relates to these 10 disciplines. But to your point, it’s kind of like, where’s your sweet spot? What’s your unique ability? As an early-stage entrepreneur, your kind of is figuring out what you’re really good at. You’re starting to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. That’s where you begin to get to know thyself. That’s our discipline number three. And we encourage you to be you 100% of the time, 24/7, 365, and doing that. And so, the more you have a great understanding and confidence around that, maybe just maybe, and we would always encourage this, but it’s difficult. You need to really invest in surrounding yourself with people that allow you to stay in your sweet spot.
Can be quite challenging at the early stages, because a lot of times that investment is partially time and then there’s partially a financial investment. And in the early stage, every penny counts usually. But the sooner you can do that, the sooner you can be in your sweet spot and you’re going to raise everybody up and your business is going to grow accordingly, because you’re going to feel so free and you’re going to have so much more energy. And I’m not talking about physical energy, although you will have that as well, it’s just going to be the energy that’s exuding from you. Creativity will be sparking, and then you’re going to start seeing your business and how to really grow it in such new and unique ways that you hadn’t thought about before. I mean, we’ve all been in that where we felt so worn down. It’s so dark you can’t even think of what you need to do to get out of that. And so, I think by bringing these in at a high level, that could be quite valuable for an early-stage entrepreneur.
