Aaron Marcum - Positive psychology for entrepreneurs

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[00:01:11] Hi and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. It's been a long, long day, we're deep into the middle of the night in the UK.

[00:01:20] But sitting in front of me all sprightly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is my next guest, Aaron Markham.

[00:01:26] So I'm guessing you're in the States, Aaron, is that right?

[00:01:29] I am. I am the state of Idaho, more rural.

[00:01:33] Right. So where's that in the country?

[00:01:36] That is on the western side of the country, not too right next to borders Nevada, California, Utah, I mean those are all in the general area.

[00:01:49] Idaho is Yellowstone National Park.

[00:01:52] Oh right, the Super Bowl.

[00:01:54] Right about an hour north of me just on the border of Montana and Idaho.

[00:01:59] That sounds absolutely fantastic.

[00:02:01] It sounds idyllic the way you describe it and not far to go for a bit of gambling.

[00:02:06] Just dropping down into the water.

[00:02:08] That's true. I grew up Las Vegas.

[00:02:12] Well, it's a place that's enjoyable once isn't it Las Vegas?

[00:02:15] Yeah, once.

[00:02:17] Well look, it's great to talk to you. Let's kick off just introduce yourself a bit to us. What is it that you do?

[00:02:25] Yeah, so I'm an entrepreneur in mostly in the home care elderly care space. So I've been 22 years in the health care home care space.

[00:02:38] And I've had several, you know, a few businesses had a couple of successful exits but I've always been fascinated with the concept of how do why do some entrepreneurs thrive personally and professionally and why do some don't.

[00:02:52] So and I even experienced those ups and downs obviously with the entrepreneurial journey.

[00:02:58] And that led me to the field of positive psychology. I, at age 49 went back to school never thought as an entrepreneur I would go back and get a master's degree but I have a master's degree now from the University of Pennsylvania you pin there in Philadelphia,

[00:03:18] the oldest school in the States.

[00:03:22] So it was an amazing journey I don't know how familiar with you are with Martin Seligman's work, but he was my professor.

[00:03:31] And so I learned from amazing people like that with always the mindset of how does this apply to entrepreneurs and their journey.

[00:03:40] And that's where I am today after 22 years I coach and help entrepreneurs along that journey and really just fascinated with the whole positive psychology movement, where it's at.

[00:03:52] So, so unpack for me would you give them the sort of Venn diagram which is positive psychology and entrepreneur entrepreneurship and where they come together.

[00:04:04] And I suppose the point of putting those two things together in the first place.

[00:04:10] Yeah, that's a great great question. So positive psychology you take it by itself. It's really the science behind well being and it's the proactive side of psychology when for so many years psychology was more reactive to behaviors like how do we fix this behavior what's the psychology behind it.

[00:04:31] Where, where positive psychology is like the science of well being and why do some people thrive, why do some people don't and, and really focusing on the holistic side of well being.

[00:04:44] And that's where Martin Seligman the father of positive psychology my former professor and a couple other key people me hi to accept me hi.

[00:04:53] Chris Peterson those were kind of the founders of the movement. It's about 25 to 30 years old.

[00:05:00] And so on that proactive side. So if you take that with the entrepreneur side of things entrepreneurs deal with a lot of uncertainties, a lot of burnout.

[00:05:11] I think entrepreneurship gets oversold is some like this like you have that background with the palm tree and everything right and it's beautiful.

[00:05:18] So picture, that's the entrepreneurial life at all times well that's certainly not the case like entrepreneurs deal with a lot of stress, because they're taking care of families there's just a lot of stress involved.

[00:05:32] And so using that the principles and concepts and there's people realize how much research has gone into positive psychology like real science about well being and using that science to help.

[00:05:47] Entrepreneurs find flourishing and thriving in their life. What Aristotle calls the good life I talked about it and you know, we can talk about more what what that means later but the complete life.

[00:06:00] I mean he talked about this 2000 years ago and living this life of virtue and well being, regardless of what's going on in our lives circumstantially.

[00:06:11] Right. So that an entrepreneur can deal with the ups and downs through real with intention, frankly, so.

[00:06:22] Okay, good to give you tons to go out there. So that's great. So it's a common perception that being an entrepreneur is about rich resilience, thriving, pushing through hunger drive.

[00:06:41] In a sense, sort of sometimes sort of narrowness of focus especially early stage entrepreneurs, where to the to the detriment of all else they get them their organization to a state where usually they've got rid of fired to allow the organization to be acquired and then scaled up.

[00:07:01] So would you say there is a and of course you also get entrepreneurs and large companies who are often entrepreneurs because they're operating as a.

[00:07:10] Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:11] Do you think there's a different type of entrepreneur for different sizes types of organizational do you think there are facets in common to all.

[00:07:22] There's there's there's commonalities with an entrepreneur's journey regardless of size of company but there are different, like, like a new entrepreneur who's a who's in a startup.

[00:07:34] What they had done certain is they're dealing with financially and other things are different than someone who has no financial issues they're doing really well but they may not be thriving either or they may be struggling personally in their own personal lives

[00:07:51] So that entrepreneurs deal with a lot of it like people issues in their organization all these things you talk about the grind or dealing there's this perception out there that as an entrepreneur you need to be grinding it out at any level of the company, even

[00:08:11] And that can be to an unhealthy obsessive level in psychology we call that obsessive passion is where it can be very unhealthy where they obsess about their venture and the impact and what they want to do with this venture.

[00:08:27] And therefore that obsession leads to their own personal lives struggling their relationships are struggling their, their connections with others, especially relationship suffer when when they're obsessed.

[00:08:41] The flip side of that is the harmonious passion. And so at any level entrepreneurs, it applies no matter how big your company is or what point in the journey you are is that to be constantly checking yourself against those two different levels of passion is you can be passionate

[00:09:00] The harmonious passion gives you time and permission to pursue other passions, hobbies, things outside of work that adds your well being. I call it the lie of the either or a lot of entrepreneurs live where they think, Well as long as I focus on my business and grind it out and the professional side of things eventually the personal side of my life

[00:09:28] And we'll catch up with that, like it'll come along. And that's the lie is that they believe they either have to thrive professionally or personally and entrepreneurs typically choose the professional side and focus on that.

[00:09:41] While all the time their personal side is struggling I in 2015 I hit that kind of wall where financially my business was going really well but I had put so much into the business and I had a data analytics company in the home care space.

[00:09:57] And I was so obsessive about that, that I was 20 plus pounds overweight I was really really struggling with my well being and was suffering.

[00:10:08] And then in 2016 I changed all that and went on a totally different trajectory personally. And when you look at the growth of my company, my company grew in the process because I finally figured out that I if I focused on my personal well being the professional side would actually grow.

[00:10:28] Did you also step back at that point as well?

[00:10:32] Yeah, yes.

[00:10:33] I often wonder whether it's interesting if you talk about obsessive passion I like that phrase and you're sort of talking about and Marty talks a lot about this idea that it's about goal orientation, future orientation, thriving a well being and filling that space.

[00:10:50] But lots of entrepreneurs are motivated really as much by fear aren't they? They find meaning in their work but actually it's all about sitting there worrying and agonising about what they're going to lose rather than what they're going to win games.

[00:11:02] So everything's a net zero or suboptimal game.

[00:11:05] And the secret that I've seen for most organisations, especially assessing them for PE houses is the quicker you get leaders to stand back usually the quicker you get the organisation to scale.

[00:11:16] So it's not necessarily the thriving bit. It's the fact that you get the obsessive person out of the way and the net result is the same and everyone's happier.

[00:11:24] But sometimes the leadership problem is actually how organisations become simply the scope of the entrepreneur to be able to let it go.

[00:11:38] I think that's what thriving really is isn't it? It's having the confidence to stand back really isn't it anyway.

[00:11:43] Stand back, trust your people. Calling it there's this level of faith and it's the faith in others or trusting others and rather than waiting for that to give that trust it's giving it right.

[00:11:59] It's giving it knowing that you hired the right people to do the job and to let go of that control is something that gets in the way of everyone's well being when an entrepreneur is unwilling to do that.

[00:12:13] But how many entrepreneurs don't have faith in themselves or trust themselves so it's very hard to trust others.

[00:12:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah there's three levels of faith I think in a business and in an entrepreneur's life is faith in themselves first.

[00:12:27] And in positive psychology we call it self efficacy Albandura calling that term but self efficacy is just believing that you can figure it out.

[00:12:37] You know that you have the ability to solve some of your biggest problems as an entrepreneur.

[00:12:43] A second level is faith in others.

[00:12:47] Is that letting go like once you know that you can figure it out also having faith that you can't do it on your own typically and that you need others to help you get to where you want to go.

[00:12:58] And it's that letting go I love the book who not how by Dan Sullivan.

[00:13:03] He's my coach and Dan Dan Ben Hardy wrote it as well organizational psychologist but you know don't worry about how you're going to get there just focus on who can help you get there and who are the right who's in your in your life in your business and then giving them that opportunity helps their own well being as well letting go.

[00:13:25] The third and I don't you know I this is probably not a popular third for some people depending on your faith but faith in higher power.

[00:13:35] The science shows that that does enhance our well being that if we can let go and give and and give into some of the higher power and say okay this is this isn't doesn't seem possible with me and my team but it could be possible with God and just trying to lean into that.

[00:13:55] And the research frankly backs it up so.

[00:13:59] I mean and it's it could be spiritualism or environmental yeah spiritualism different from religion right.

[00:14:05] We're talking about spirituality here.

[00:14:07] Yeah, I think it's the idea I think that's the point you were saying which is something bigger than yourself it's that idea that you situated somewhere for a point.

[00:14:14] Yeah, and that's a healthy thing you you you you've always sort of established it laws which help entrepreneurs work and rather than going through all of them.

[00:14:26] I was quite interested in your your the couple of them which is ultimate performance flows from your unconscious choices now I like this but I wouldn't I'd like you to unpack that little bit if you wouldn't mind.

[00:14:38] Yeah, that's the lie I call it on true habits are entrepreneurial habits and so unconscious choices Wendy would she's a great psychologist as well and and I like to cite some of the research to back up some of these thoughts but her and her team and she wrote that book Good Habits Bad Habits but her and her team did research and they found that everything we do in our lives about 43% of our of our habits of our

[00:15:08] daily routines are unconscious.

[00:15:11] Right and so what if and there's a there's a term called character strengths and positive psychology and there's a whole assessment.

[00:15:20] The believe the websites bia character.org I'm not affiliated with it but it's a great little assessment on what's called the 24 character strengths and they're things like leadership spirituality creativity lovies is one of the 24.

[00:15:37] But what if you could first conscience consciously are in your in your in your conscious, make those habits unconscious like, like the habit of love for example, or the character strength of love.

[00:15:54] What if you could have that run in the background like the 43% that Wendy would and their team identified.

[00:16:01] And so it just happens automatically.

[00:16:04] And so let me just give you an example of that with my have six children and three boys three girls and and I want one of my.

[00:16:15] So that assessment gives you your top five character strengths and love is not one of my top five so I want to, I want to create that character strength more into my life.

[00:16:27] And so what I've done is I've taken a habit, what I call dynamic positive habits, and it's the habit of texting one of my children every day, talking about something but that's not a habit I it's not running in the background yet.

[00:16:43] So I've created a little alarm on my watch to remind me to send a text to one of my children with the hope that over time, as that habit, as I this is my trigger right.

[00:16:55] And as that habit grows that I can turn it into an unconscious habit where I just automatically text my kids every day as a form of love to help create that character strength more in my life and so that's just an example of the ultimate performance.

[00:17:13] And so that's just an example of the ultimate performance comes from your unconscious choices that the more you can have those things running in the background unconsciously.

[00:17:24] Your performance in life will just excel.

[00:17:26] That's that's that's interesting. That's, that's, I think it's James K who talked about those approaches.

[00:17:34] Yeah, I don't get into the philosophy of that because we really could and it's you probably got things to do today so let's not but um.

[00:17:44] Another time right yeah yeah why not but you've created these are you've identified or categorized or whatever the word is laws of entrepreneurial clarity called them on track clarity so and then obviously written a book called on to thrive so let

[00:17:59] talk to me a little bit about this piece of work that you've done and how this has turned into a book.

[00:18:05] Yeah, so this came from my my work in my master's program at UPAN as I did my capstone thesis on entrepreneurial flourishing and why you know what are the elements what are the components to that and so this after I graduated I continued that work and that research which ultimately ended up

[00:18:29] in writing this book on to thrive and the first law which I call the cornerstone law there's a keystone in a cornerstone the first law in the eighth law.

[00:18:39] And the first law is that on to clarity the entrepreneur clarity, because I strongly believe in the research shows that entrepreneurs who have a deep purpose and are clear on that purpose, their ability to endure through the challenges just elevates.

[00:18:59] And that's that's a lot of people know that but but I go in the book a little bit more into what I call my guiding truths.

[00:19:08] And these are not your core values in your company, these are you as an individual what's true what do you want to be true about yourself at almost all times for example my first guiding truth is my mind is at peace.

[00:19:21] And another one is called my life is filled with abundance.

[00:19:25] I just, my family receives them my time.

[00:19:28] I have another one that's have nine of them, my ventures create freedoms and freedom of time relations this money and purpose is kind of what I look at the freedoms those are Dan Sullivan's for what he calls the four freedoms.

[00:19:43] But but those are all what guides me to what I do in my business what I do in my personal life to make sure I'm constantly filtering my decisions based upon that and so I just creates clarity for me as an entrepreneur on my decisions.

[00:19:58] And so that's that, that that laws that I think cornerstone to all the other laws is we got to get clear on that.

[00:20:08] And I, I think it's also important as entrepreneurs and really is anybody is that not to apologize for what you want in life.

[00:20:18] Yeah, get clear on what you want.

[00:20:21] I think that if you want more money in your life, or you want better relationships, or even fit even temporal or physical items that that are that are important to you to lean into those things.

[00:20:35] And I mean always question why do I want this or what's what's it, what's what's a driving or what's my reasons behind it.

[00:20:43] But again getting clear on what is it you want out of this life.

[00:20:48] And again going back to Aristotle's turn the good life you know yeah that's very interesting thing that you need to know why you want something sometimes the wanting is that.

[00:20:57] Yeah, that's true but I remember a famous story but someone I know very well who wrote down 73 reasons why they shouldn't do something.

[00:21:06] And then at the top of the reason it says why I should do is it was the words because I want to and they did it.

[00:21:14] Yeah, there was sometimes no cognition sometimes it's just intuition or whatever you might want to call it just just just for my own personal curiosity.

[00:21:21] Why did the court why did you call them laws.

[00:21:25] My guiding truths.

[00:21:27] Yeah you've got nine eight laws the law of entrepreneur and agency the law.

[00:21:31] Those are the eight laws in the book my guiding truths are more personal those are my nine hiding truth.

[00:21:36] But why did you call them laws. Why did you decide to call them laws.

[00:21:40] Oh, the eight laws.

[00:21:42] Yeah, so Lars I'll come to you American accent there so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

[00:21:47] Yeah, so so the reason for that is is these are timeless concepts.

[00:21:56] I see laws as being somewhat timeless.

[00:21:59] I say that these are not things that are trendy or just kind of there they're good for the next couple years but then they won't be relevant that's not these laws are timeless and immovable in the sense that they will always contribute in my humble expert opinion in that sense is that

[00:22:22] they contribute a well being.

[00:22:26] Yeah, in these laws because they're timeless. They also apply to the entrepreneurs and even my wife who's not an entrepreneur can apply a lot of these laws in your own life.

[00:22:37] Yes, because they're timeless.

[00:22:39] I know you've written the book, and it's on Amazon, Scott. And it's a special offer on Amazon just for everybody who's listening now we're doing this when we're doing it.

[00:22:48] But there's a, for those of you in the UK there was a superb special offer. So, I don't know if this is something you know about but there's, you do know about that.

[00:22:58] So I'm just about to click it because I can't resist the bulging like that. So that's one sale in the UK.

[00:23:04] Yeah, I appreciate that.

[00:23:07] So tell us exactly what the book's called, where do we find it? How can we find out about you all the usuals.

[00:23:14] Yeah, so we have our website, enthrathrive.com, E-N-T-R-E-T-H-R-I-V-E.com.

[00:23:24] And you can, there's a link to order the book there or you can go to Amazon and order the book on Amazon. Just type in Entrathrive Book or frankly Entrathrive pulls it right up.

[00:23:36] It does.

[00:23:37] Yeah, and we released it last, you know, in later February.

[00:23:43] So it's a brand new, right out. It hit Amazon's hot list right out of the gate. And so it's, I think it's getting quite a bit of traction right now.

[00:23:53] Because I just think it resonates. So the subtitle is Entrathrive, The Entrepreneur's Eight Laws to Accelerate Financial Freedom While Creating the Good Life.

[00:24:03] And that's key. Is that financial freedom isn't enough to enhance our well-being?

[00:24:09] It's hitting all of the Amazon algorithms and what once happens out here, that's absolutely fantastic.

[00:24:14] Well, look, I wish you so much luck with the book. And for those of you who are hopping on this quite quickly, certainly in the UK, there's a deal.

[00:24:21] And that's going to boost sales and that's going to push you to the top of the charts because we know how the algorithm works.

[00:24:26] I love your marketing concept there. That's a very good sign of a very savvy person.

[00:24:31] Oh, thank you.

[00:24:32] I'll come as being a joy to talk to you there. I really enjoyed it.

[00:24:36] And my best to Marty the next time you see him is still around actually thinking about it.

[00:24:40] Yeah, he is. I just talked to him a few weeks ago. Have you met Marty before?

[00:24:46] I did a bit of work around his work before positive psychology, which is all about attribution styles.

[00:24:52] So that was in the good old days. So many, many, many years ago.

[00:24:57] I know when you said Marty, I knew you must have some connection there.

[00:25:01] Long time ago. Anyway, look, it's been an absolute joy and good luck with the book.

[00:25:06] Thank you so much for your time. And all I can do is wish you the rest of British.

[00:25:12] Well, thank you so much. Appreciate the opportunity. Take care.

[00:25:19] Hi everybody. I hope you found that episode useful and interesting.

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