 All right, great. Well, welcome to the show, Keith. It's a joy to have you on. Johnny and I have been big fans of your books, especially this new one that you're releasing. And our audience may not be fully aware of your background, which I find so fascinating. I don't know too many Yale graduates that go into manufacturing right out of school. So can you share with our audience a bit of your journey and then we'll dig into the new book? That's nice of you to ask. Thank you. So I grew up in the 70s in Pittsburgh. Now, most of your audience probably won't remember this, or even be aware of it. But in the 70s, the steel industry in the United States was crashing. So imagine the last financial crash in the financial industry. The steel industry was just crumbling. And America was main on the backbone of the steel industry. And Pittsburgh was the center. Pittsburgh Steelers. So my old man came over from his family, came over from Italy. And all we wanted was the best thing for their kids. All we wanted was to be able to have a good life in a new country. And it was tough because my dad was unemployed for years at a time. A proud man, not able to find work easily. He did everything, you know, dug ditches, anything he could possibly do. And I remembered at times as a kid, and maybe eight years old, my dad, when he was still working, would come home and talk about how the managers, the foreman they called him, weren't listening to recommendations and suggestions that the guys were making. In fact, sometimes the managers would call out specific guys like my dad and say, hey, slow down. You're throwing off the piece rate. Meaning, by you working harder, it makes everybody look batting, then they're for the manager. And so what was happening at the time was the Japanese steel industry was rising. Quality was rising. They were adopting new philosophies of process improvement teams, total quality management, etc. We didn't know that in the United States. All we knew is that they were kicking our butts and we were just complaining about foreign imports. And so at the end of the day, I made a commitment. I was going to make sure I grew up and did something about this. I was not going to let other families suffer. I thought it meant that I was going to be in politics. I said, I'm going to go up and I'm going to become the governor of Pennsylvania. Well, what I realized along the way was politics wasn't my path, but what was going to be my path was commerce. And I did go to Yale was the first of my family to even go to college. And there's a wonderful story about all of that. But I was going to go back to Pennsylvania. I was going to work in manufacturing. I was going to make a difference in manufacturing. And then someday perhaps I was going to run for governor of Pennsylvania. So that was my objective. And I found a congressional district in near on the other side of the state that I think that I thought I could win. And it happened to be next to a British chemical company that had a number of plants there. And I started by being down at the plant floor. And what I really noticed was that, and I just knew from what my father said that the workers had a lot to share. And we started reinventing quality by organizing small peer to peer groups among the frontline workers. And I became ultimately the head of quality for North America or this British chemical company before I left and went to Harvard Business School. But that became very important to me. So to this very day, what it even became more important to me is we were at the front lines of General Motors coming out of bankruptcy. My organization, Frazi Greenlight, empty dump years later, through a career of Deloitte Consulting became the chief marketing officer there, which we can talk about. Chief marketing officer at Starwood. Then I started my own firm 20 years ago. And we were at the front line of GM coming out of bankruptcy. And the CFO, which is always the most cynical, said that the work we did around peer to peer coaching and transforming the culture toward what we call co elevation, which we can talk more about. But that was one of the main reasons they didn't go back into bankruptcy. When I heard that, I cried. My old man wasn't alive at that time. But he was a UAW, United Auto Workers, Steelworker. So what I made a commitment to do at eight, I've been able to make a dent in. Keith, I just want to let you know I resonate with that very well being 46 years old and from Pittsburgh. No. Yes. Green. Green. First of all, you look 12. That's a zoom filter. Can I get that zoom filter with the help? That's number one. Number two, where in Pittsburgh? That's crazy. I had no idea. So I'm from Greensburg. Am I dead? Are you serious? Yes. My dad, my dad grew up in carbon right next to Greensburg. What? I played, I played little league for carbon and my dad worked for PPG. Pittsburgh played Pittsburgh played glass. And what's interesting about that is for a lot of people who are, who grew up many decades after, they grew up in Pittsburgh's rebirth in the tech industry. And granted Pittsburgh had a makeover, but all the little towns outside. All those little towns, those little shanty towns along the Monogahela, they're still that way. And all of those four old people, their pensions got destroyed. They're still living on welfare. I mean, if it wasn't for my wealth, my mother would be one of those, those women struggling to get by. And now I feel it. I mean, because CMU grew and all the folks from, you know, Amazon and Google came in for self-driving cars, that didn't mean that there was a transition from the people that we knew. And that still breaks my heart. Absolutely. Well, it is, it is something to be able to see a rehabilitation, a rebirth of a city. And that, that can happen. But that gets centralized. And as we were saying, those little towns, even Greensburg, had a little bit of a recovery. And it has certainly changed from how I had grown up and what it looked like. But I had grown up and we would walk through town. And in Greensburg, there was a mall on the one side, Greengate mall, and then a mall on the other side of town called Les Molymol. And when both of those malls were built, the, the town of Greensburg itself got boarded up. And as a child, I would be walking around the town with my parents and they would tell me, oh, that used to be Sears. That used to be whatever, whatever the store, I can't remember what it was. And I would hear about what Greensburg was like back when Pittsburgh had its industrial boom, and it was a very buzzing little town. But growing up and realizing that I was, what I was growing up in was the remnants of what was a proud culture and a proud town. Amen. Wow, how funny. I didn't know that, Johnny. I didn't know that. And what I think is so, we'll talk about this concept of co elevation, I think so many of us have either experienced our parents going through that struggle or now even in our own career, we're going through that struggle where we have no authority, we know there are problems, we know there are issues that we want to help fix. But these large companies that we work for with their hierarchical structure don't allow for us to have the voice that we need. Yeah, so here was the thing. I came from nothing, right, literally nothing. I mean, I don't know, you're that old, that's crazy. But back in the day, when you ran out of money, you got, and the government gave you welfare chiefs. That's what the protein substitute was. It was these big blocks of Velveeta. It was crazy. So that's where I came from. But along the way, I had to open doors. And I've had to find ways to create value. And in the very first, you know, and I've been very lucky, I think I have been lucky at being able to discern shortcuts and hacks to create value and open doors that were not available to me. The first one was the key that unlocked self-created nepotism. And I'll explain what I mean by that. The first one was the key to unlock self-created nepotism. I grew up, because my parents wanted to get me a great education, they got me on a full scholarship into some of the rich schools. So you probably remember Valley School of Ligonier. Some of your friends probably went there. There was basically homeschooling for the Mellon kids on the Rolling Rock Mellon estate. It's crazy. I learned steeple chase racing as a sport when I was a kid. I mean, lots of steelworkers, kids go steeple chase racing. But the point behind that was, I sat there and I watched all these incredibly wealthy people and their children. And I saw how their children got the good jobs. And they were all just swapping jobs for their kids. And I could be resentful, and I got to say I was at times, and I could be crushed and despondent, which sometimes I felt in my heart. But I realized something as a caddy at the local country club, the La Trobe Country Club. I realized something. And what I realized was that if I built authentic relationships with these golfers and I cared for them and their success as golfers, if I busted my ass to work extra hard, and I was authentic as a good kid, I could open up a similar degree of relationship. And nepotism is nothing more than having a relationship with somebody that wants to help you. That's what happens with children. That's what happens with parents and grandparents and all the nepotism stuff. But you can create your own nepotism through the relationships. Once I realized that and discovered that, an entire world opened up for me. An entire world of prep schools, of Ivy League, of all of these things that would have never had available to me, never had available to me if it wasn't for the relationships that I built. So that was the first key. And we could spend an entire chunk of time talking about that. But that's why you first fell in love with my brand with Never Eat Alone. That was all what I learned from the brand of Never Eat Alone. And then there was that second golden key. That second golden key for me was what I learned, as I mentioned earlier from my father, where I knew that there was value pent up, locked in organizations and the world around me through the wisdom of my peers, through the wisdom of other individuals, through the wisdom of the team that I led, through the wisdom of the people that sat around the work. So here I was a young kid. Actually, this even started earlier. When I was at Yale, what I saw in my fraternity, so there were no fraternities at Yale, and I started a fraternity called Sigma Chi at Yale University. Didn't exist otherwise. And what I realized was unleashing the value of this bonding of peer to peer was extraordinary. And I saw the value and I saw that what a, in that case, a brotherhood could create for itself, right? And then as I went on, I got involved even more deeply in another similar fraternity, they're called Secret Societies at Yale. And the vulnerability and the intimacy of a small group of people truly committing to opening up. We used to do these very, very deep, evisceratingly vulnerable and honest shares that the whole point of the Secret Society was your share. You tell your life story. And there were people's stories that would just make you cry. And these are very affluent, successful kids, but what they had gone through in one reason or another, and that trust in a small group of people, and that group of individuals in that bonding, right? So when having experienced that, then going into the manufacturing plant right out of Yale and seeing, remembering what my dad said, and remembering the bonding that I saw in some of these fraternal and teen groups that I was experiencing at Yale, and I put those two things together. And it started blossoming value creation, quality creation, breaking through value. I have carried that through my entire career. That's not the essence of what I'm doing today. I am helping the most prominent organizations in the world become co-elevating, unlocking value of peer-to-peer coaching, unlocking value of innovation, unlocking value of a butt kicking accountability that doesn't come hierarchically, but is fed from the fabric of the peer group. And that's not something that typically is unleashed. Well, we seem to be missing a lot of that now with the technology that's supposed to be bringing us together has also done its job in keeping us apart on so many levels where we don't have to figure out how to get along with people or accept other ideas. We're now so quick to throw away friendships because we have an infinite amount of people to connect with where when you're working with somebody from a different culture, a different place, different ideas, you're going to come together with better 360 views of how you can help your community, yourselves and your neighborhood. Like a technology is just a tool. It depends on how it's used. A gun can be used for horrific violence. It can be used to get your food for you, for your family. So the tools that I see, you can take a look at, you can vilify groups like Facebook, etc. You can also use them very powerfully to bond a community by opening a Facebook page of like-minded individuals committed to supporting each other. But the tools I've started to use are things like Asana, and which really helped me in a remote working world help me and my team keep track of things, Microsoft Teams, look at what Zoom's doing, 15.5, a buddy of mine runs that company, what it's doing, you take a look at the learning and development systems. It's amazing and Slack is a great system. Here's the thing. I did some research about five years ago. I was working with a company called Cisco. The CEO is a guy named John Chambers. It's about to become a guy named Chuck who's running it now, but John was running at the time. I was coaching senior team. What I said was you got these tools, WebEx, Telepresence, but what are the real uses of these tools? And are we using them as thoroughly? And I got them to invest a bunch of money along with Accenture and Siemens Communications, $2 million. And we went on a three to five-year research project. It's like five years. What are the new people rules in a virtual world? What are new people rules in a virtual world? And we published 20 studies in Harvard Business Review. Today, we've aggregated all of that in a new website called virtualteenswin.com. Virtualteenswin.com. And the reality is that when you go remote, you've got to use tools differently. Like we used to have physical meetings where you'd all sit in a room. I see that dining table behind you, AJ. We'd sit around that table and we'd conduct a meeting. But the tools now allow us the facility of doing things like having... In one-hour session, we can go in and out of breakout sessions where every single person in the room gets a buddy and a partner to have a deeper dialogue on a topic and then report back, increasing the courage, increasing psychological safety, increasing innovative thinking, right? We weren't able to do that in a physical room. So simple tools that we have now use different ways actually improve collaboration in a remote environment. So we've been really studying this and my commitment, my whole passion in life is I am going to lead the biggest footprint I can on the planet in changing the way the world works through work. And changing humanity through work. And that's my mission and that's what I've been doing. And understanding the tools, I've just started a new foundation. It was an extension of the original project of the new people rules in a virtual world. By the time this airs, we're going to have a website out called Go Forward to Work. I was... We're right now in the middle of the tail end, we hope, or the beginning of the first tail end of the pandemic in retrospect, who knows where we'll be. But I've been hearing people talk about going back to work and I want to go back to work. I've been fighting for 20 years to change work. Work sucked in the past. It needs to get better. We need to have new work rules. So I said, let's not go back to work. Let's go forward to work. And I've got hundreds of very senior executives partnering with me on this. And hopefully by the time this airs, it'll be some amazing content published there. Now, I think for a lot of us, especially being forced now to be more virtual and remote, vulnerability, you touched on that earlier. It's so key to building these relationships. But I feel technology creates less vulnerability in these group environments. And well, I'd love to hear how we as leaders and we as team members can create that space for vulnerability because I know a lot of us are struggling in this area. Let's model it. Let's model it. This literally is so funny. This happened yesterday. I was on a call with... I was asked recently to give a talk to a global YPO, Young Presidents Organization speech. And I was speaking to the gentleman who was preparing it. He basically said the same thing you said. He said, look, the problem is authenticity, vulnerability gets squeezed out of these remote forums. Everything's so transactional. Let's dive in, dive out. I said, well, I get it. I get it. But you're a leader. You've got to lead. So pause for a second. Vulnerability has nothing to do with the medium. You know, okay, I didn't get a chance to shake your hands or hug you. Like Johnny, dude, it's like, I were there. I'd be like, dude, like give me a Pittsburgh hug, right? I would have done that. And that's certainly a show of intimacy. But you really want to go intimate? Then let's go there. What's going on? What are you struggling with right now? Personally or professionally? And if I ask that question, I can't ask that question without leading with an answer. And I would say to you that on a personal basis, I have two foster sons. I got one at 12 and 16. And they're now 21 and 25. When the 25 year old has made a bunch of choices, I don't appreciate. And I, at different times, I had cut him off financially and asked him to leave the house to draw a line of accountability. And that killed me because I felt like I was being a poor father. And at a time like this, when he continues to make choices, I don't appreciate he's making better ones. I have to appreciate. But when he doesn't, how much do I continue to enable those by financially supporting him? And yet I don't financial support him. This is not a good time to have your safety net taken off from underneath you. So it's, it's struggled for me. I don't know how to be an, I don't know how to be the accountable parent that I want to be. I also don't want to enable. And I'm struggling with this on a professional basis. And I've reinvented my, my business. I've got this business of Keith Farazzi who walks the corridors of the Fortune 10, right? And I'm the go-to person for coaching executive teams at the biggest companies. We're doing companies like Delta Airlines, General Motors, Verizon, et cetera, right now. And World Bank. And yet I just now started, what I want to start bringing is a business for consumers, for individual people. All I've ever had is my books. And I am struggling to figure out how to be, how do I build a brand for your followers that will have them want to engage with me beyond my books and products without feeling schlocky? How do I retain my, my position in the world without stepping off of that in order to be a consumer marketer? I have, you know, because I want to, I want to expand the footprint. So anyway, that's, I'm struggling with that, trying to figure that out. So that's me. That's what I'm struggling with personally, professionally. Anybody want to go? Yeah, I'll go. I think for me, in this exercise, I've actually experienced events at your house doing this exact exercise. And I know the power of, I think many of us don't create this space in our meetings. We come in with an agenda and we're just like, all right, let's check these boxes. But getting to the personal is the space that connection really happens. And right now for me, where I'm struggling is around the uncertainty, both personally and professionally. And I feel that I'm a very fax and data driven person. And I like having plans to work towards. And with the situation here in California and all of the news swirling, it's been very hard for me to find firm footing to make personal and professional decisions around the future. And I don't like that. It creates a lot of tension in my life. And it's carrying over into my relationship. And I've always been incredibly optimistic. It's part of being an entrepreneur and being in business for 15 years. It's carried us so far. And this has been the really the first phase in my life professionally that's been so trying on my optimism around what is that next move? And how do we create space like this to do what we love, which is teach social skills in an environment where many of us are stuck at home. We can't be social and getting on another zoom meeting is not very interesting when we're stuck on them eight hours a day at work. And by the way, I love the white little fluffy dog running around the background. It's fantastic. What I want to give to you is that how you curate your time is your leadership. And there's no difference between zoom and physical. I swear to God, the only difference between zoom and physical choices you make, they're really just choices you make. And you can either be deeply intimate and loving and caring and vulnerable. You know, the way I think about vulnerability is what you're looking for is a productive relationship. And we have studied this for sometimes, you know, we believe that there are eight attributes of a high performing relationship. And some of those attributes of high performing relationships are tough, like butt kicking accountability. Somebody who tell you you're out of hand or who you got your head up your back end or whatever, right? That's an attribute. And in order to have that kind of accountability, you need psychological safety underneath. Give a damn, care, all of those things have to be underneath that. And we know that intimacy, intimacy and empathy is critical. And what's the key that opens that up? It's vulnerability because like, no, I don't know that how many other people on this call have a struggle with a foster child or a son, but independent of that, you grew empathetic with me as I shared the one commonality I have with you, which is that I struggle, right? My vulnerability is our shared experience. And so your ability to put that out, so very simple. At the beginning of a meeting, you do a quick personal professional check-in like we just did. At the beginning of a meeting, you make it shorter called sweet and sour. What's, you know, you get 15 seconds, what's going on in your life right now sweet, what's going on in your life right now that's sour, right? I think many of us in a work environment, vulnerability, especially with those who are in a position of authority is seen as weakness and could hold us back in our career. So how vulnerable is too vulnerable for those of us who see the hierarchy and see what it takes to get ahead, to get promoted, and especially in jobs and roles where performance reviews are all around results and then the way you interact with your team and their trust in you. And I want you to help us flip that on its head so we could see vulnerability as a strength, because Johnny and I believe that, but that is certainly a question we get all the time. It's disproportionate to the level of respect that you've gained. I mean, it's like, it's got to be proportionate to the level of respect you've gained. Nobody ever met me. You didn't know that I had New York Times, then we're in best-selling book, whatever, right? I walk into the room. It's like, and I start to cry and say, let me tell you how upset I am, whatever. That may be an imbalance, right? But if you're a hard worker and the people have, you know, a relational quality of on the scale of zero to five, the RQ score is three. They're strong acquaintance. Anyway, we can get into the system that I use to think about relationships and RQ scores, et cetera. If you're a three, it's what's going to, the only thing that's going to get you to a five is vulnerability and opening up. I could go one step further. I mean, I've been single for, for six years now, almost, now almost six, six years now. And I made a commitment after my last relationship that I would not get married again until I was in a co-elevating partnership, right? And I am, and I've been able to hold steady, right? But I have to say that the, you know, distractions and Tinder and all of these things, right, that are now available to us in the dating world is very different. And also how busy I am, et cetera. And I struggle and I worry. I'm 53, you know, I'm 53 years old. I want to have my life partner. And, you know, I just, the formula to get there is, is not always easy for me. You're like, where do you want to keep going? I'll go there. And, you know, and just ask yourself, what do you think when you hear that from me? I'm just, I'm speaking to your listeners. You know, what do you think when you hear that from me? Do you think pathetic? No, you don't. You think real. And I've learned this, the kid that wrote Never Eat Alone was more insecure than the man who's speaking to you now. I've grown in my capacity to give you my struggles and my vulnerability. And look, here's the thing. This is not something, AJ or Johnny, you're going to just tell your people, as you know. You don't think your way into a new way of acting. You act your way into a new way of thinking. So the reason they're here with you is you're giving them practice. And you give them not just inspiration and motivation, you give them practice. So what I would say to all of you is pick a relationship in your life that's an acquaintance today. Okay, an acquaintance, a level three, you know, good, solid acquaintance. And I want you to reach out to them and say, hey, I've always respected you. I've, I was wondering if you just want to drop in on Zoom sometime. And I'd love to share what I'm thinking about and up to. And you can share what you're thinking about and up to. And, you know, let's see if there's any way we can, you know, help each other out. I just read this book, Leading Without Authority. And, you know, it talks about peer to peer relationships and co elevation. You know, there might be some fun opportunity for us to be of service to each other. Now, you could find somebody at work you want to do that with. And so the intention is let's, let's find ways to make work better. You could just do it in life and call, you know, somebody you've met recently and think is awesome, you just want to get to know them better. Practice. And then when you're there, open your heart a little bit more, be a little more vulnerable. You, what you're going to find is that it's well rewarded. And then you'll take another step. So, you know, like most people are afraid of taking that first step thinking they're going to fall off the cliff. That cliff is a mile away. Damn it. One step is only going to give you courage to start running a half a mile. You know, and then you'll, you're not going to get that close. You're too much of a coward to step off the cliff. You won't do it. You'll be fine. You'll protect yourself, I promise. I certainly know in the times where that reciprocity has come my way and how great I have felt about it. It has only fueled me to want to do it more. And I know for a lot of people, they see it as well, if I'm going to stick my neck out, if I'm going to go for this and I don't get the return back, then I'm going to shut down. And if, but if you also, if you don't put yourself out there, you're not going to understand what those returns look like. And AJ and I have been talking about this for quite a long time that the returns come in many different forms and you can't look at other people expecting the exact same thing back because they have a different comfortability. They're getting used to giving value. You've talked about this a little bit. I mean, pull it out for a second, leading without authority. Chapter two, I think, is a chapter called It's All on You. And I use a good example again with my younger foster son. He was a really angry kid. He had been in 12 homes before he got into our home. It was a real mess for him. And he was the kid that was spit on me, literally spit on me like, you will never be my effing father. And he was, he was wounded and he didn't want to get hurt again. So that, if I looked at that, and there were, there were times my partner and I went to bed and we were like, some chance we will die at this young man's hands. I mean, that's how bad it was. And what we had to come to the conclusion of is I had never had a chance to say, when you meet me halfway young man, when you start acting like my son, I will be your father. I made a commitment to God, my family, that boy, and I made a commitment to be that boy's father. And I had to go 99.9% of the way until, well, until I, until I couldn't anymore, until I decided not to, but I had to do it. It's all on me. And in that relationship, required that. Now your question needs to be, how far out on the limb are you going to be for the relationship? I don't know how much do you want it? How much, how important is that person to what you're trying to achieve in this world, the indent that you're trying to make? How important is your boss to your future? And what I can tell you is if you cross your arms and wait for them to come to you, you're going to be mediocre. So you got to take the risk and you got to put yourself out there. And sometimes you don't get reciprocity. Sometimes you get exactly what you're afraid of, but you got to forgive that and know that you've done the right thing and continue or leave the company or leave the initiative. That's fine. But too many people give up too early and they live mediocre lives. And I know that's why all of you are here. I mean, there's, there's probably a sad sadness in you because your, your fear is that you will get in your own way and you will be the reason you don't achieve what you want to achieve. And I'm here to give you the tools as are these gentlemen to give you the tools to make sure you do achieve greatness. Leading without authority teaches you to be a transformational agent in the world. Period. And anybody can be. I was the chief marketing officer of Deloitte before I was 30. That's crazy. I led without authority. I enlisted a co-creative team. And you guys don't realize this and nobody would believe it. I'm an introvert. I've been so good at dissecting these things and putting them on paper because I have to consciously engineer them myself. I'm not naturally a relationship person. And by being in it, and by the way, I've seen that I've been thriving in social isolation, social distancing. I cannot tell you how joyful the last three months has been for me personally. And it doesn't mean that I don't actively have a system to keep my relationship strong during this period of time. I do. And I utilize it. And I teach it in the book. But I, I've thrived. I've thrived. And a lot of other people I know who are much more extroverted and really suffered. So I get you. I get you. I don't want you to be mediocre. I want you to learn to use these tools that these gentlemen are teaching you and the ones I want to teach you. And in that chapter in the book, there's an example of the young lady that you're mentoring who is trying to work in an initiative that impacts the sales department, a department that she doesn't work in. And she has to get some buy-in from someone that has been confrontational and pushed back on her. And many of us, when we think about our team, we think about just our department. And we think about who's on our team. And I want to unpack co-elevation a little bit more for the audience, because it was a term that was new to me as well. And I think this example was really remarkable to really start to think about the team, not in the traditional sense and the org chart that teams are oriented in most of our careers, but really the team that you need to build your career, that's the important way to look at it. And your advice for her mirrored what you were struggling with with your foster son of you have to give, not expecting that it's going to just be returned magically back to you because you put in the effort. Yeah. No, let me tell you the bridge story or just give it a punchline. Let's get the punchline. Let's leave the audience salivating to read this book. Okay, great. The punchline is that your team doesn't know they're your team yet. Your team is a set of individual. So if I said to you, how's your team? You'd be, you have a sense of warmth associated. You know what that means. But if I said to you, you know, how's Jane, who you've got to get buy in from? She's an other. She's not an us. You have to create us around those who you need to be successful. Your leadership, the superpower of leadership today is your capacity to co elevate with a group of individuals. You have a vision for your career. You have a vision for the company. You have a vision for your job. Your ability to achieve those visions and land them in outcomes has to do with your capacity to co elevate with a group of people who will become your team to co create that. So I don't even believe in the word buy-in. I think buy-in is bullshit. Buy-in means you've got an idea and you're going to go sell it to somebody who needs to buy into it. And we use that so normally is like, yeah, we got to get buy-in. We got to get buy-in. No, you got to go co-create. The first person you invite into your team, you're inviting them into their team. Remember I said earlier, go find somebody at a level three of relationship and start to go deeper, be a little bit more vulnerable. You're inviting them into a co-creation of each other's success, right? Co elevation is when you're committed to a mission, but you're committed to each other, where you're going higher together. That's what a team is and it's much broader, much broader than you'd have ever thought before. You know, to go along with this, and this is something that AJ and I talk a lot about on the show, is the language you use and how it forms some of the beliefs and ideas that you have about how you're going to go into the world. And as we evolve as a society, so should our lexicon how the words that we're using to go into the world. And what I'm hearing from you here is just that. And looking at some of the words that we've been using for so long, buy-in has been around for a very long time and it's still used plenty. And it's limiting. I said it's limiting. I had to create the word co elevation. It didn't exist. It was a word I created. It's great. It was a word I created. I'll get the Wikipedia credit for it because if I'm the first person ever to use it. But it needed to be created. So I'll tell you why. You had Adam Grant here all along the way. Adam has been a friend, a protégé and a mentor of mine. I mean, he's been both. He read Never Eat Alone years ago. And when he was a PhD student, read it and got excited about this idea of generosity through Never Eat Alone and started writing his dissertation on it. And so that ovation toward generosity. By the way, Adam's just extraordinary. He said of this book, we have been documented now with studies. We've been living in networks, working in networks for a very long time. The orange structure doesn't look anything to do like your work structure. Trying to get work done, it has nothing to do with your structure. You're working across silos, across divisions, etc. Poorly. And so I needed to write a book that gave you the navigation system of how to get work done when you don't have all of the people you need reporting to you. By the way, the book was very timely. It came out right in the middle of all of the protests associated with racism in the United States and corporate America and systemic racism. And there were a lot of people who were very upset and needing to, and you know, my younger son is African-American. There's a lot of people in the country that wanted to make a difference. And I'm so happy because so many of them used Leading Without Authority as a guidebook for how to make a greater movement, a dent, and a social cause. So the principle of Leading Without Authority isn't just getting your job agenda done. It's how do you enlist a movement of people, whether it's in your company or outside your company or anywhere. How do you enlist people to become transformative? And I have to say, I used, this is, I keep bringing my sons up in the book because I needed to find a way to parent, not like my old man, parented me. You know, I don't know, Johnny, what your dad was like, but a grizzled Italian immigrant steelworker doesn't co-elevate with his son. He's pretty damn directive. And I needed a parent differently. And I can't wait. I'm looking forward to, you know, being the kind of spouse that's a co-elevating spouse. I'm very excited about that. I think a struggle that I know I've had myself and a number of our listeners had responded to the Adam Graham episode with as well is drawing boundaries around giving if you're introverted and you have a tendency to give everything of yourself and run out of the energy and the drive and the power that you have internally. And I know hearing your story and now learning that you're an introvert, we do need to have a barometer for those boundaries. Generosity is key in building these relationships, but we also need to know ourselves at a greater level. How do we build that if we're starting out in our career and we're not sure what value we have to give and how to be generous? When I was a very young man, I was struggling mightily, mightily. I came from Pittsburgh. You know, my mom happened to be Methodist. My dad's family was Catholic, but very Roman Catholic sort of upbringing. And, you know, I started to struggle at a very early age with my sexuality. And that wasn't something that I was prepared for. I mean, all my parents wanted was me to be an extraordinary success. I was looking at government and being a governor of the Pennsylvania, etc. And I got to tell you, nowhere in my path was being gay a part of the formula. And there were no role models. We didn't even have Barney Frank back then. You guys didn't know who Barney Frank is, but he was the first openly gay politician. We didn't have the CEO of Apple. We just didn't have anything. And, you know, I sought my priest, right, like my religious counsel. You know, I was at Yale and I was going to an Anglican church at the time and I talked to my priest about it. Then after that, it was therapy. Therapy wasn't something ever was very approachable. Listen, if you want to be the best coach, I'm sorry, if you want to be the best worker, if you want to be the best spouse, if you want to be the best father, if you want to be the best athlete, every athlete has multiple coaches. How could you possibly be the best without a coach? Now, when I wrote my second book, Who's Got Your Back, I said that there's a lot of coaches sitting around you in the relationships that you have if you knew how to extract, extract elite from those, right? But I've always had a coach, whether a therapist or coach or whatever, and I've always found that important. Then I started like where it's next. And I heard about this thing called meditation. And this way to learn it through is the thing called Vipassana, the I-P-A-S-S-A-N-A, a 10-day meditation set, non-secular, non-denominational. You sit there and you learn how to meditate. And you can learn about it at dhamma, d-h-a-m-m-a dot org. I don't know if they're, I'm sure they're still doing them, maybe in a virtual way. I don't know exactly, but meditation then became a real breakthrough for me. Tony Robbins, landmark forum. There have been so many, and then today, plant medicine, going down to Costa Rica and finding ayahuasca. And I still am grounded in my spirituality. So listen, I was an incredibly insecure kid because I was poor and went to rich schools, and I never felt I fit in. And in the back of my head, there was always a tape playing. What are they thinking of me? And you add to that the additional burden of coming out in Pittsburgh, which wasn't a particularly phillic place for that. And then you add to that just the burden of continuing to struggle economically as a kid with all that debt, school debt. I needed to work on myself. And by the way, I'm glad I did. I met the current president, Donald Trump, when he was a real estate guy. And I was a chief marketing officer. He and I had dinner together at the Forbes mansion in New York. And I'll never forget what he told me. He said, you can't be successful unless you're insecure, which I found incredibly revealing. He said, you can't be successful unless you're insecure. And I'm glad I had that wind at my back, that level of fear and insecurity, which drove me to be a seeker. Now, I imagine some people's fear and insecurity shuts them down, makes them makes them hide, or makes them, go into a hole, or makes them be jackasses, or makes them be mean. I just hope that because you're here with AJ and Johnny, you're a seeker. And that's your path. And that's beautiful. And just stay on that path and be earnest to it through spirituality, through all of these things. Just keep being a seeker. And over time, you'll be a light attractor. People will be attracted to you, not because of your bravado charisma. They'll be attracted to you because of how you make them feel, right? And creating an environment around yourself that invites people in. That's the seeker's path. And I think you really, yeah, I think that's going to be your opportunity. You know, there's so much in just that one sense. And I don't think there's a lot of people today who could see Donald Trump saying something like that for how he is portrayed in the media. But there is accomplishments in the road that he traveled. There was certainly a lot that he has went through, a lot that he's tried, a lot that he's filled with, a lot that he had succeeded with. And that one line alone shows a vulnerability and a struggle to become something and to the will and the want to transform. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the man today. I can't say I really know the man ever. I also remember another politician that I did know quite well and helped a lot at the time, was Hillary Clinton. And I helped Hillary great deal when she was first lady, when she was going through her struggles with Bill that were very public and embarrassing and very difficult. And I was helping her advice her when she was running for the presidency. And to me, that's a perfect example of someone who lost the presidency because she couldn't open up her vulnerability. I would agree with that. And I remember there was a time in New England, I think it was New Hampshire, when she broke down and cried at a diner. And everybody was all in half about this, that she was in tears. And I think that at that time she was probably most intimately connected with the voter and her entire political life. But unfortunately, I think her advisors suggested she buck up and not show that side of herself because she was a woman running for a position of power and she wouldn't be respected. And I remember a letter. I just found it. A letter I wrote her. I handed it to her in Beverly Hills. We were at a party together. I handed it to her. And it was my strong advice and desire for her that she would show that vulnerability to the American population. And of course, she didn't. And an interesting line to that of vulnerability and how it allows others to fill around you. I mean, some could make the argument that Donald had won because, warts and all, he was completely vulnerable and himself through all of that. And people were able to connect with him. And we've heard him many times, despite everything, at least he's being, I feel that he's being real up there. And that's a lot of people felt that way. Yeah, I think like a lot of people are just fed up. And I could give you, if I were a little bit more thoughtful, I didn't think we'd get into this conversation. But if we're a little bit more thoughtful, my analysis of the psychology of the individual and how the populace responded to it. But it's not, the relationship with people in Donald Trump is not about the relationship with people Donald Trump. It's a relationship about people to the world right now. But they're experiencing as individuals my where I come from, as you know, Johnny, everybody on my mom's street, those men on my mom's street, they voted for Donald Trump, because, because the Democratic establishment had been promising for a very long time to give them something, which is to save, by the way, it's very interesting because I had the same desire that steel-crushing industry were those people who were crushed by that steel industry that never recovered fully, they were just looking for hope anywhere, sequentially and consistently. And in the absence of being given it by what's present, and somebody else promising it, the likelihood of it being irrelevant, right? Somebody else promising it, they would vilify those who didn't give it to them, understandably, and look for it from those who are promising it, not necessarily interpreting rationally, whether this one will get it and whether this one tried, etc. So, you know, I think from my vision, I'm kind of glad I didn't get into the politics side, and I'm glad I'm working at being of service to those individuals in the way that I am, you know, and trying to make sure that we save those 250,000 jobs at General Motors and grow them and make sure that you know, those earnestly working people who are climbing poles of Verizon, right, have a future. That's where I thrive. And here's the thing, and this is a movement for me, I know we're getting closer to the end, but I have been on a mission since that young boy in Pittsburgh, and I want you to join my movement, and I know AJ and Johnny, you already have, you didn't even know it, but we're all in the same movement, which is the movement of transformation, both from a personal perspective and a soul, but economically, the things you're teaching create economic value. And what I want from all of you listening is I want you to be the greatest leader you can be in the world around you. I want you to be that leader, and I don't need you to have a title. I don't need you to be given a job. I don't need you to have authority or resources. I need you to have a vision, and I want to give you the roadmap in leading without authority. I want to give you the roadmap to achieve that vision through co-creation with others. And I know some of those others have been fearful to you, right, because you may not be naturally inclined, but I promise you, there's something that I call relaxing the gravity. The things I'm asking you to do are what you want to do anyway. I know you do. You claim you don't want to do them because you're afraid, but you do. You want to be comforted. You want to be a along. You want to be a member of a tribe, and instead of looking for one you can join, instead of looking for somebody else to invite you in, you can create it. I had to create my tribe because it didn't feel like I was accepted. So I started creating my tribe, and I've achieved extraordinary success in my life by creating that tribe, and you can do that. So it is a movement to me, and I know that these folks all follow you. I would love for them to join the movement with me too. You can find me at KeepFarazi.com. And by the way, one of the things we've just started offering is I went and shot a six. This is part of what I'm trying to do here. I shot a six-part video series that accompanies the book, and I was giving it away for free for anybody who would pre-buy the book before it was released, but I decided to just keep giving it away for free because I really want you to have that tool. So if you go to KeepFarazi.com, you'll find our free course, and maybe you all can help me figure out how to expand my ability to touch individuals on a one-to-one basis beyond books, but this is my first attempt. It's a great start, and I think many of us feel that we want to create this tribe, that we want to identify people who would be in our tribe. And because we're so stuck in the top-down narrow thinking of authority and how it is distributed in our lives and around us, and we see these power structures and everything we're talking about here from politics to career, people are craving change. They know that the world is changed, but our leadership has not caught up to that change. And they're tired of the game that's being played, and they want to start creating and co-elevating. And a concept you introduced in the book that I would love to end with is the blue flame, and understanding and identifying that in others so that we can actually work to elevate together. And I think that's where a lot of people, when they think about networking, they think it's transactional, and it's a what's in it for me mindset, and it's it, especially for those of us who may be a little introverted or don't have necessarily the experience to build from, to be vulnerable, to be comfortable in that space. They're like, it's not in my nature to do that. I'm just going to stay in my lane. And what we're talking about here is creating massive change, not only in organizations, but at the political level and beyond. What is the blue flame and how do we see it in others and allow it to bloom and blossom? As you begin to enlist your team, you have to open people to your words, your vision, etc. So, you know, normally we used to think of it as, are they inviting us in? Are they resistant to us? The work starts with opening people. How do you open someone? Once you open someone, then you can convince someone, then you can argue with somebody, you can debate with someone, you can in whatever, but you got to open first. And so I created a word for that called porosity, making people open, porous, absorptive of you. And the formula is serve, share and care. Serve, share and care. I think it's chapter three. Serve, share and care. Serve, lead with generosity. The way you do that is when I look at somebody, I look at, you know, UAJ and Johnny, I want to co-create with the two of you. I would say, hey, let's get a call after this. And let's figure out how we can create a bigger movement if we work together. Because I know you want to make that impact. Right? And I know that you're already making that impact. And I believe that if I talked about this movement, that's something I've identified as a shared blue flame. But if I go to, you know, Mary Barr at General Motors, her blue flame is that company, that extraordinary company. So what can I do to contribute to her blue flame? You're always having to navigate the discussion. If you can start with, and by the way, the easy thing for me is I can adopt her blue flame very easily for me. Because that was a company that cascades, you know, into my soul. General Motors, UAW Steelworkers, et cetera. Getting the blue flame aligned is so important. And there's a whole chapter around that. Serve, share and care. And then the sharing care is about that vulnerability, that openness, that sharing, that authenticity that we already talked about. So we've covered a lot of it. Yeah. And I think when we start to take that lens and really look at, you know, what is motivating? What lights up these people that we're trying to bring on to our team instead of looking at it? Well, how do we get our blue flame to grow? How can we light up others blue flame? We're actually starting to lead without even realizing it. And I think that's really the power of the book because most of us want to lead. We don't necessarily know where to start and we're waiting for the go ahead with a title and authority and a platform. And let's be honest, the change that we want to happen is going to start with people stepping up and leading. And leadership has failed us. You look around and there's no doubt about it. And you look at our generation and what we want to accomplish. We have to seek out others blue flame, light them up and create the teams that may not be in front of you with the org chart and the onboarding that you went through in that organization. You got it. I mean, listen, you've read the book. You live the principles in your soul. Hopefully what I've given you is a roadmap and a set of language and tools and a system to be transformational. And that's what we're all here for. And that's why I was so excited about being on being on your show. And I love that the book is full of things for you to try. It's not a one size fits all. It's try these tools and find the ones that work for you and everyone's going to build their own team slightly differently. We love to end with a challenge in every episode. Do you have a challenge that you would like our audience to participate in to light up others blue flame or identify their own? I think we started it. I really want every person to go move somebody from an acquaintance to a relationship. Just one. That's your challenge. And I didn't say go get some jackass that you don't like and move them over. I said, just take a level, a middle of the road relationship that's like an acquaintance and move it to something that's more authentic. If you want to read the book first, then you'll have a different language for it, right? But I think either way, I think this is giving you perhaps enough motivation to pick up the, pick up the phone and send a text and see where it goes from there. Thank you for joining us Keith. Really appreciate it. It's really my pleasure AJ. And by the way, I meant it. Let's spend some time together. We're all out here in LA. Yes. Yeah. Would love to.