Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where
we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five
Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders
and experts who will share not just their expertise,
but the milestone moments that have reshaped
their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in
the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome
to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick, your host.
And today, my special guest is Andrew Brummer,
known as the business. polygraph. He helped CEOs
reclaim their time through authentic leadership.
At 53, he pivoted from corporate life to coaching
startups globally. He authored two books and
built a 7 ,000 or more person network. He is
a solutionist and a multiplier with decades of
experience in operations, and he excels at bringing
out people's best while refusing to conform.
Welcome to the show, Andrew. Thank you so much,
Sheila. Thank you for having me. So let's get
started. What was that specific moment that told
you it was time to pivot away from corporate
life at the age of 53? And what made you or your
transition successful rather than just survivable?
Tell us what that story was. That's a great,
great follow -on question. So my CEO and good
friend and I met in March of 24. It was a Friday
evening. And he said to me, Andrew, if we don't
get investor funding, we're probably going to
have to shut the company down. And it was quite
a dire situation. So it was same as most people
face in their lives where, you know, change comes
only when your hand is forced. We get very comfortable.
We get complacent. I won't use the word lazy.
We just get complacent. We get comfortable and
life is easy. So we don't take on things that
we don't have to take on. Um, so that evening
was a really stressful evening for me. I played
every worst case scenario through my head, woke
up the next morning, did the budgets. And I looked
at the family and said, guys, we're in trouble.
53 year old male. I am a servant pleaser. I have
been behind a lot of other successful people,
but I've, I had to that date not owned my brand.
I've not looked after myself, not their perceptions.
I've not, not been out there. I just, I was very
happy doing what I was doing. I was very good
at doing what I was doing. I was very good. I'm
very good at supporting people that like being
on the stage and driving things and moving things
forward. So very, very, very, very humbling moments.
So that day, redid the budget, said to the family,
look, guys, we're in trouble. This is what's
happening. By midday that day, I was moving on
and planning. By Monday, I was already doing
outreach and I was going. For me, it's about
mindset. We are all, at many points of our lives,
faced with difficult scenarios and situations
and things that we wish we were not dealing with.
Um, but the reality of life is life is difficult
and we are all throwing curve balls at the best
of times and at the worst of times. Um, the curve
ball is not the problem. The difficult challenges
are not the problem. Doesn't matter whether it's
psychological, physical abuse, financial, the
situation is not the problem. Our mindsets of
how we decide to deal with that and how we allow
that moment to override who we're at and how
we deal with the situation is where the fail
point comes. The fact that I'm having a bad experience
or difficult. part in time in life doesn't change
the fact that when I wake up tomorrow morning,
I give that scenario permission to influence
my life tomorrow. I give it permission to, I
wake up and I allow today's events to influence
my behavior and how I show up tomorrow. I allow
what I'm experiencing today to influence, inform,
manipulate, just change. just drive define so
i become a casualty of today my tomorrow is a
casualty and a consequence of today i just i
i'm a firm believer of just waking up and tomorrow
morning just put your foot down on the floor
and say what am i going to do to make today better
how do i live today to make it a different day
in comparison to what yesterday was and what
today could be if i don't get in front of this
and then figure out how you get in front of it
And some days you win, some days you lose. But
it's all mindsets of how you get started and
how you then get out there. And that mindset
is what has propelled a phenomenal 20, 21 months
of growth, of meeting people, getting exposed
to forums by these people that I should have
had no access to. It's been a fantastic pod,
but fantastic 20 months. That's almost two years,
20 months. Right. So you're known as the business
polygraph. I want to learn a little bit more
about that. And also, what do you think is the
biggest lie that people, that leaders tell themselves?
And how can they break free from that? What could
be one life lesson for us today? So business
polygraph. I'm a solutionist. I'm a multiplier.
My Colby score is 3 ,395, which means I am intuition
bound. I am not rule bound. I've got a really
good intuitive sense of things. I've worked in
a lot of industries, in a lot of areas in the
business, everything from development to operations,
to sales, to investors, to coding. I mean, I've
done an awful lot in a lot of different verticals
in a lot of places. Africa, Europe, UK, Canada,
US, Central America. That experience has put
me in a position where in dialogue with a business
owner or an executive, I can quickly discern
what the business is about. I can't be a... a
specialist in that business, but I can quickly
discern the problem, the approach, some of the
challenges. I can hear the dialogue and I can
very quickly start touching what's working and
not working, be it organizational, be it leadership,
be it finance, be it revenue, be it go to market
and quickly touch things. And with AI being what
AI does, it supercharges my capabilities because
I'm not rule bound. I'm not vertical bound. I'm
not capability or skill bound. I can just, I
can. I have an ability to dive into next to anything
and just very quickly assimilate and dive into
that, whether that's the individual and the human
I'm busy learning to understand, or it is a business
problem that we're trying to figure out what's
gone wrong with the business problem. I'm operationally
sales focused and I'm very human focused and
I have a really beautiful way of bringing those
together. A lie. We live our lives, most of us
live our lives, if we're given 10 scenarios that
we need to work through, 10 problems we need
to solve or 10 things we need to do. Eight out
of those 10, most of society, most of humanity
will have a good sense, six, seven, eight out
of 10 of those times, we have a good sense of
what needs to be done. And we'll probably be
right in what we're thinking. One or two out
of those 10. We're guessing. We're kind of taking
our intuition. We're kind of, I don't know, maybe
this is right, maybe it's wrong. Yeah, we got
a 50 -50 chance. One out of 10, we're out in
the left field. We're playing the wrong football
game. We're playing the wrong bat and ball game.
We are so far out in the fields, we're wrong.
We are wrong. The challenge is society has taught
us. Because of the consequence of that one time
we are wrong, we live our lives both personally
and professionally based on the potential consequence
of the one out of 10 that I'm wrong. So we as
humans tend towards being overly cautious, overly
constrained, overly conservative, overly, because
we know society, family. profession, social media,
politics has taught us when you get it wrong,
the consequences are enormous. So we live our
lives in more of a restrained fashion. And I,
everyone I coach and I work with, I press them
to live their life. If you're right, six, seven,
eight out of 10 times. Living your life around
the rule of one you're going to get wrong to
be careful around what you do and what you say
and where you go and how you look, you're actually
leaving a lot on the table. You're leaving a
lot of, just think of all the lives you could
be affecting, the problems you could be solving,
the skills you could be growing, the people you
could be affecting. Just think of what you could
be doing if you were taking more of a chance
on what you intuitively knew to be right versus
living. to avoid the consequence of that one
time you're wrong. And people say, Andrew, but
surely when you're wrong, that can go quite bad.
Yes, it can. But I look at the number of times
I've been wrong and it's gone bad and how bad
it's gone in opposition to the number of lives
that I've affected and the people and the worlds
that I've changed. There's no comparison. There's
absolutely no comparison. So you think it's...
Perhaps fear that keeps them stuck? The fear
of something going wrong. I think fear of consequence.
Fear of consequence. Okay. Well, as a mom, I'm
always telling the kids all actions have consequences.
And I get it. I get the fact that we want to
keep people safe. I get it. But when we do that,
we lose the ability to learn the muscles. to
find where is that envelope of stretch how far
when is it that i am completely or out of line
and where is the world that i can affect positively
and when we get our children to think in that
extreme conservative way, what we do is we make
them scared to do the really cool things. We
make them scared to take the chance. And they
don't know why. None of us really know why we
got there. It's just society teaches us. And
we eventually just get there and we're living
that life. And there's no one thing we can touch
and say, that's what caused it. That's how we
got there. So do you have a way to measure or
to think through the risk versus the reward?
Because sometimes I think that... By thinking
about that, it can help you take that chance
because it helps you question what would be the
worst case scenario and perhaps help you overcome
that. I always, when I'm in situations like that,
I always and very quickly figure out what is
the worst case scenario. What is the absolute
worst case scenario? And what's the probability
of me hitting that in what I'm about to say or
do? And if I don't believe I can manage or cater
for that worst case scenario, then I'll stop
and I'll go to you and say, Sheila, this is the
thing we're trying to solve. This is the problem
we're trying to resolve. These are the options
that are available. This is what I think the
answer is, but I think this is the consequence.
And this is why I'm not comfortable making that
decision. So I will go through that every time.
But if I feel that that. worst case scenario
is manageable or mitigatable in other I can I
can mitigate away from it then I will rather
err on the side of taking a chance to help press
people in a direction to find a new novel tomorrow
as long as I believe that I'm going to be able
to manage the situation but I'm very cautious
if I feel yeah this is I'm not I'm not comfortable
um I will seek counsel. I will seek a coach,
an advisor, a manager, a leader, an owner. I'll
have the dialogue and I'll explain why I'm at
where I'm at. And I may still go with my recommendation,
but it then becomes a shared kind of, this is
the fear, this is what could possibly go wrong.
So today you specialize in coaching and you also
have authored two books. Are you... One -on -one
with the leaders or at the organizational level?
So I do public speaking around a number of topics.
One around leadership and how to have your team
go to bed on a Sunday night wanting to go to
work on a Monday morning. Another one is around
practical AI and another one is around life pivots.
How do you pivot yourself and move yourself forward?
Why you should not be comfortable? Those I do
as general topics in larger rooms. My speciality
coaching is with the individuals, with the business
owner and the CEO or the executive. I'm really
good at helping understand that one person, help
that one person understand what they need to
do to make themselves dispensable. What are they
doing that they should not be doing? Why are
they running the company by themselves? Why are
they alone at the top? Why have they not coached
the team around them to echo and then help them
find how do you bring that leader? and the team
closer to one another so that there isn't that
chasm between that leader, be it the business
owner or the executive. Because if you can bring
those people together and you can still have
the leader running the company or the team with
the team or with the company, that is a heck
of a lot easier than the leader trying to be
the chief investment officer, chief product officer,
chief sales officer, chief. So my focus is around
the individual and then I'll work with that executive
or that. their business owner to help them build
a leadership team around them that will help
them run that function or that company. Got it.
So back to the pivot, what key lesson or piece
of advice can you leave us today for anyone that
perhaps is in their fifties or any age and is
looking to pivot? What I'd say is. I've had the
privilege of mentoring and coaching from Iraq
to India, Botswana, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Venezuela,
US, India. I mean, all over the place. Everybody
wants the same thing. Everybody wants purpose,
passion, recognition, to be appreciated, to have
a chance, a fair chance at success. That fair
chance of success doesn't come by itself. You
yourself have to look in the mirror and decide
what does my version of success look like? And
what you define as success today doesn't mean
it's what you define tomorrow, but define your
version of what does success mean today and start
working towards that version of success. Whether
that version of success means it's a 10 -year
plan, five -year plan, one -year plan, define
it and take a decision to act into it. If you
do not define it, you are living somebody else's
version of that. So you're living in somebody
else's version of their desired outcome. If you
have defined it, but you're not acting against
it you have a vision of where you want to go
and you will be aligning yourself to other people
that are doing something similar to what you're
doing and you are kind of in their shadow of
what they're trying to do or define it and take
ownership of of it and set your plan to get going
but you know if you're comfortable in your job
hit the pause button the world is changing very
fast right now If you're comfortable in a job,
whether you are 35 years old or 55 years old,
if you're comfortable in a job, ask yourself
the question, if I have that dear Johnny discussion
tomorrow, have I created the framework, the structure
of people, network relationships around me that
are going to help me survive the dear Johnny
discussion? And by dear Johnny, I mean, when
you get told, thank you very much. Here's your
gold watch. Thank you for everything you've done
for the company. Goodbye. What are you doing
to make sure you are ready? Because if you leave
it till the last minute, when that happens, you're
going to scramble. I've met a lot of people that
are scrambling, a lot, a lot of people. And it's
hard. It's really hard because you can't rush.
You can't rush networking. I encourage you, even
when you don't need it, when you're not in the
rush and the pressure's not there, start networking,
start getting out there, start building relationships,
start getting face -to -face with people, start
developing relationships, rebuild what you had
before COVID, rebuild the structure, make friends
so that When, not if, when you get to that point,
you have a circle of people to call on to help
you to keep your energy up, your motivation up,
your mind focused and help you get yourself moving
forward. So where can we find you online? andrewbrummer
.com. That'll redirect you to my book site. There's
a contact page there. And you can also find me
on LinkedIn, Andrew Brummer. Well, thank you
so much for joining me today, Andrew. Thank you,
Sheila. I really appreciate the time and invitation.
And thank you all for tuning in to another episode
of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.
Until next time.