E42: Robert Barber says, You are the CEO of Your Life, For Life!

Robert Barber is the author of CEO for Life: Gain Full Control of Your Life and Your Business Forever. He realized he had to walk the walk of the CEO in his everyday life and take responsibility for everything. He had to become the CEO of his life, for life. And today, he shares his journey. He talks about where he gets his optimism from and his fuel.

Robert is the founder and lead coach of Return On You Investment Academy, a learning academy around the concept of investing in yourself, creating a culture, and having a company around that culture.

Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation:

What is the CEO for life?

Your job description as a CEO

His mom as the most powerful influence in his entire life

The best relationship you can have

How to create a culture of trust in a remote environment

Leading with your heart

Robert’s thoughts on emotional optimism

Episode Highlights:

Becoming a CEO for Life

Start seeing yourself as a CEO of your life. You may not have a huge company with thousands of people working for you. But you do have an impact on people. You impact your family, your colleagues, your clients, etc. So start acting like a CEO, and a CEO for life! We've all been forced into a situation that we didn't plan for, but we still can be the CEO for our life. We still can be accountable, make the decisions we need, and take care of the people around us.

The Best Relationship You Can Have

The best relationship you can have is somebody who doesn't need you but needs you. Your partner doesn't need you but they need you to be their partner because you both have equal footing. Translating this into the workplace setting, treating each other as equal creates so much more empathy within the workplace.

How to Create a Culture of Trust in a Remote Environment

You can still hold space for someone on screen and show up. You can still create safety together. That could be in the form of eye contact, validating someone, or listening. These are skills you would do whether in-person or not. But in order to reach across a screen and make people feel seen and safe, you have to show up with more emotional courage. Make sure you're using the word "trust" more. It's just another word for having your back and that you're in this together.

Leading with Your Heart

You can love people without having to like their behavior. This means that whatever you do, you can always come from a place of love. If you start there as a person, the rest of it is going to work itself out. If you lead with love, and you may have an adverse agreement, then love is still going to win. Even though you disagree or you may not like each other, love will always win.

The individual has the ability to have an impact that will ripple forever if we just care for each other. And even if you believe in nothing, if at least you went through the intellectual process of discovery, and trying to figure out what you believe in, that's awesome.

On Emotional Optimism

Not much grows on the mountaintop while everything that grows is in the valley. And so, the valley is where our growth happens. Now, we are going to have valleys and mountain tops, and knowing that life is going to go through that is an optimistic way to look at life. It may suck right now but there's growth happening.