Dr Glenn Livingston Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing Dr Glenn Livingston
Dr Glenn Livingston is today’s guest joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired top rated podcast Join Up Dots.
He is a man who not only has been on an amazing professional journey over the last 25 years, but also a personal journey equally as inspirational too.
For many years our guest worked for the big food companies and was obese, struggling with binge eating and over eating.
And of course as you can imagine this was not good for his well being, so he knew that he had to do something about it, and so he did.
He conducted research, found the motivation to self-fund a study with over 40,000 participants and made an astonishing transition from obesity and food obsession into a more light hearted relationship with food.
But believe me this isn’t a guy with just one success story that we could tap into, as he has had such an eclectic background, and tackled many different businesses and become a success in them all that we could start anywhere to make a great career show.
How The Dots Joined Up For Dr Glenn
As he says “At the risk of being immodest, I probably have more experience in both coaching and business development than the founders of virtually any other coach certification program on the market.
Through the International Coach Certification Academy, I would like to pass on my knowledge, experience, teaching and mentoring to you.
Together with my wife and academy co-founder Dr Sharon Livingston, we have sold over $30,000,000 in consulting services to major brands like AT&T, American Express and L’Oreal. I have personally worked with over 1,000 coaching clients and directly supervised many coaches and psychotherapists to”
So where do we start on the joining up of his dots?
What stage of his career is the most inspirational?
With the amazing physical transformation that he went through, losing many many pounds of unneeded weight?
Or right at the beginning, when he was a child and couldn’t have believed where he was going to end up?
Who knows, but let’s start like we always do, by bringing onto the show to start joining up dots, with the one and only Dr Glenn Livingston
Show Highlights
During the show we discussed such weighty subjects with Dr Glenn Livingston such as:
Why so many people start a business with the concept of “if you build it they will come”….but that is so wrong on so many levels.
How he remembers losing $2,000,000 on a market research business, by failing to do enough research on what he needed to do to build a research business.
Why people need to slow down and be quiet to think about what the next step is. Ignore the outside world and simply listen to what’s in their heart.
How he always knew in his heart of hearts that he was put on this planet to do more than he was expected to do….a legacy has to be left somehow
And lastly……..
Why he believes that he is a much better business man because of his failures than the successes that came easily to him.
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Full Transcription Of Dr Glenn Livingston
Intro [0:00]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph.
David Ralph [0:26]
Yes, hello there. Hello, everybody. Hello listeners for Join Up Dots. Can I just start before we actually really get into the show thanking so many of you who have been listening, leaving ratings and reviews on iTunes it does make such a difference to the show. So I won’t give you name checks to all of you but I do read them all. Okay. Today’s guest who is joining us on the show has been on an amazing professional journey over the last 25 years and also a personal journey equally as inspirational to for many years our guest work for the big food companies and was obese strong I came with binge eating and over eating, when i should have been focusing in on clean eating. And of course, as you can imagine, this was not good for us well being. So he knew that he had to do something about it. And so he did. He conducted research found the motivation to self fund a study with over 40,000 participants, and made an astonishing transition from obesity and food obsession into a more lighthearted relationship with food. But believe me, this isn’t a guy with just one success story that we could tap into, as he’s had such an eclectic background and tackled many different businesses and become a success in them all. But we could start anywhere to make a great career show. As he says at the risk of being immodest. I probably have more experience in both coaching and business development. When the founders have virtually any other coach certification programme on the market for the International coach certification Academy. I would like to pass on my knowledge, experience teaching and mentoring to you and together with my wife and Academy co founder, Dr. Sharon Livingston. We have sold over 30 million in consulting services to major brands like at&t, American Express and L’Oreal and I’ve personally worked with over 1000 coaching clients and directly supervised many coaches and psychotherapists. So, so where do we start and the joining up of these dots, what stage of his career was the most inspirational with the amazing physical transformation that he went through losing many, many pounds of unneeded weight? Or right at the beginning when he was a child and couldn’t have believed where he was going to end up? Well, who knows? But let’s start like we always do by bringing onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Dr. Glenn Livingston. How are you Dr. Glenn?
Dr Glenn Livingston [2:35]
Oh, I’m just fabulous. And I’ve been looking forward to talking to you. I’m back. I’m a fan of the show, actually. So I’m looking forward to it.
David Ralph [2:42]
It’s lovely to hear that and it’s lovely to hear as a guest actually, and I’m gonna say this right from the offset. You do your research, because I know that not only did you listen to one of the recent episodes you listen to like the very first episode to get a flavour of how the show is progressing. progressing, which doesn’t happen very often. Are you bat farmer with most of the things you do?
Dr Glenn Livingston [3:06]
Um, well, I like to know who I’m talking to, and get a sense of how we might be able to make a connection with them. I, you know, it’s possible to do too much research. I think sometimes research can interfere with an ad. But I, you know, I have run a large marketing research company for many years and made a lot of money doing that. And so I guess I’ve always been a researcher, researcher at heart. You know, I so yes, I probably am that for with most things that I do. But I really just wanted to get a sense of who you were. And you have a kind of a different style than a lot of podcast hosts that I’ve, that I’ve heard before and just wants to make sure that I can connect with you so
David Ralph [3:48]
that you can connect with me easily. So is it about the sort of the information is it about the research that you like? Or is it about making money as a businessman as an entrepreneur who’s done very well for themselves? What actually So what lights you up? Most people will doubt when it’s going to be earning money. But more often than not, it’s not.
Dr Glenn Livingston [4:06]
Honestly, it’s it has more to do with helping people like I’m a psychologist from a family of 17 psychologists and psychotherapists and social workers and counsellors and what happened was, as I was growing up, I wanted to be a psychologist, but I didn’t want to be just another country doctor, right? I always felt like it was so valuable, what my you know, what my dad did and what my mom did and the way they helped. When I, when I was five years old, I I would tell my friends that what my parents do is they make people happy when they’re sad. And I just thought we thought that was such a valuable thing. It’s really simplistic way to look at it, that I wanted to do it on a grander level. I wanted to go on a grander scheme. And so I was very intrigued with marketing as I was growing up, and you know, one of my best friends who turned into my wife was as a marketer, and so I kind of gravitate, gravitated in that direction. Because I wanted to get involved with psychoeducation I wanted to really bring the psychological insights that I felt that I developed growing up my family and studying in school and, you know, working in my own dreams and doing a lot of introspection and really wants you to bring that to the masses. And that lights me up more than making money and sometimes as a business person, that can be a real hindrance. Because I, you know, I’m not really a shark, I don’t swim well with the sharks. And I’ve been eaten alive on occasion because of that, but it’s really, there’s nothing that makes me happier than knowing that I’ve done something that’s helping thousands 10s of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. And I like the money too. I won’t I won’t say I don’t like the money, but I don’t think anything wrong with that. But it’s if I had to choose between You know, helping a lot of people and making a lot of money, I generally will choose the helping a lot of people. Oh, well, you wouldn’t want to help
David Ralph [6:07]
a lot of people and end up in a cardboard box. So surely.
Dr Glenn Livingston [6:12]
Well, no, I mean, right. And I, one of the things that we teach our, our coaches is that you really do have to charge for what you do because you we don’t live in a society where someone shows up with a chicken on your doorstep, in exchange for you know, you haven’t given them a session and you can’t go to the bank and say, I really helped a lot of people this month and so do I have to pay money? Do I really have to pay my mortgage? Can you let me skip my mind? We just don’t live in a society like that. And so if you don’t attend to the financial aspect of business, then you really, you can’t help as many people as you’d like to help.
David Ralph [6:49]
So Sam’s What do you think comes first vein with the people that you coach and obviously there’s so much to your story? We’re going to sort of jump around a bit. But do you think it’s the idea? It’s the value, or is it the business acumen? Where do people come to you? what direction do they come on a visionaries and then they’ve got to learn the business or a businessman, but men need to learn the vision.
Dr Glenn Livingston [7:16]
Product depends upon whether they are looking to become a personal coach or a business coach because we offer both trainings. For the most part, the personal coaches that we talked to there have the mindset that if if I build it, they will come, but it’s just not true. They have tremendously wonderful hearts and they usually have a story and they want to help people who’ve been through what they’ve been through, you know, people who’ve been through post traumatic stress, we have quadriplegics, who coach either quadriplegics so usually they are the visionaries who need to be taught the business elements of coaching and not the other way around. But If they, if they come to the business programme, they’re more, they’re more of the business, people only need to understand that you you don’t really coach businesses, you coach business owners. So no matter how left brained spreadsheet, phenomenal you are at figuring out where to find the hidden profits in business and what the next strategy should be, you really do need to understand, you know how to how to help people get out of their own way, because a lot of times business owners, it’s not a matter of seeing what to do, it’s getting out of their own way so they can actually do it. So you know, it’s kind of the classic story, you need both your head and your heart, we have a brain and we have a heart and they have to function together. And you make an assessment of every one that you work with and figure out where they’re lacking and you kind of push them in that direction.
David Ralph [8:50]
So um, why so if we take you back in time, then away from what you’re doing now. And as we’re going to do at the end of the show with we send you back in Tom then but if we took you back in time now, would you be surprised at where you’ve ended up? Was it part of a master plan was he just stumbles and falls.
Dr Glenn Livingston [9:09]
Um, I wouldn’t be surprised at where he ended up. I was not strategic enough in the way that I set out when I was 25 years old. And I, I had a certain grandiosity about me at that time, or I thought I could run a large practice and have a psychoeducation business at the same time. And I really didn’t think anything. I didn’t really think I would ever fail at anything. Because I, you know, I got into the best schools and I got some of the highest grades on the licencing exam. And you know, and then I kind of immediately I stepped into this consulting business and it was like a perfect match with what my wife was doing and we kind of just about doubled the business fairly quickly because I could take people from Where she left off and, you know, drive them forward in a more quantitative way. And and, and so I kind of developed this idea that I had the Midas touch, and that led me to make Well, one gigantic mistake, but a whole bunch of media mistakes along the way. As a bad
David Ralph [10:20]
before you move on, sir, it’s about tennis about a gigantic mistake before you move on.
Dr Glenn Livingston [10:26]
Well, okay, so, um, so I did have a practice. I had a I had a very substantial couples and family practice. And I really enjoyed that. It’s a lot of hours, but I really enjoyed it. And at the same time, I was doing this corporate consulting so you know, we didn’t have kids and we didn’t commute and we both worked like 70 hours a week and we, and we loved it. We really loved it. That was our that was our career. And if you think about it, what my core competencies were was I was really sharing Information and helping people eliminate risk. And when I was sharing information about how to communicate with my personal clients, and you know, my psychotherapy patients, and I was sharing psychological information about how to communicate to the consumer, with these big corporations, so I was selling intellectual capital, it’s kind of a funny way to look at it. But I was in the realm of being an answer guide, based upon careful research and empathy into what I found that people were telling me. And the big mistake was, what we didn’t like about the corporate consulting, private corporate consulting, paid an awful lot of money a lot more than being a country doctor. We like that. But we didn’t like that it required so much travel. I mean, there was one time when I had to fly to Tokyo in the spur of the moment for a one hour meeting and then fly back. And it was the That kind of thing really got old. And we felt like we were never going to be able to have kids. And we didn’t really like the life that we’re leaving no matter how much money they were giving us. And so we decided we would just jump into the other side of the industry. And as a, as a corporate consultant, we would subcontract to these recruiting houses, who would you give them a set of specifications, and they would make a lot of phone calls and put together a focus group or a survey. And, you know, we would do all the intellectual work of designing it and interfacing with the corporate clients and advising them on what it all meant. But they would do all the executional work of getting the prospects and the consumers to come in, you know, say like package a package B and show up at a focus group facility and they would maintain the focus group facility with a one way marriage and everything like that. And we said, well, we know that side of the industry two, we know it better than anybody else, because we’re the ones that are hiring them all the time. So why don’t we just don’t went up a focus group facility. And rather than do any research, we just we kind of let her grandiosity get to us. We said this, this has to be successful. And we signed a 10 year lease on I think it was 13,000 square feet. And this was in New York, just before 911. And at the time, video streaming was not quite in vogons, we invested a lot of money into building what was going to be the most technologically advanced video streaming focus group facility because we figured that would provide an efficiency to the corporations who wouldn’t want to spend all this money on sending their people out to focus group facilities all over the country. So we were just video streaming back to them. And we were doing, okay, we were losing a lot of money, but it was getting better over time. But we really didn’t research where the facility should be. And we didn’t really do the math well enough in terms of occupancy rates and what the rent was going to be and how many expenses and how many people were going to have to pay. And we just wind up in a really bad situation that got made a lot worse by 911. And we, we lost about $2 million. And I always tell people, it’s not like losing your car keys you to lose your car keys, you have to have your car keys first, but to lose $2 million. You don’t really have to have $2 million. Yeah, we didn’t. We just went up so deeply in debt. And I got extraordinarily stressed. And I like I couldn’t practice for a little while. And I got this was when I was having a tremendous amount of trouble with my eating. And so I got kind of obese and it was a really miserable time of my life. And to top it all off when we did this before we did it. I decided I decided I would take a sabbatical from my practice. So I told people I really couldn’t see clients for a year. And Sharon told all of her clients that she wouldn’t do corporate consulting and We’re just going to do this one thing so we we took the burn the ships at the shore a strategy but that’s supposed to motivate you to fight hard and win but we we actually
didn’t quite direct drive where we got ourselves in a lot of trouble and took a bunch of years to get over that. So that was a very quick listen it lesson in humility and the necessity of listening to your own advice and doing your research before you, you know, put together a business particularly your business, it’s so capital intensive and it’s really so outside of my core competency and everything is and I got jump in
David Ralph [15:37]
there the weird thing that I wanted to get you by the shoulders and shake you with that to say, You’re so far that you listen to my show twice so far in everything but you invest all this money and you don’t do any research when it’s a research company anyway, did you look back on the irony and go, What the hell was I doing?
Dr Glenn Livingston [15:56]
I mean, I still I still want to slap myself in the head with this bad Ask yourself what the hell was I?
Unknown Speaker [16:03]
Yeah, what the hell was I doing David? What the hell was I doing?
David Ralph [16:05]
Well, I don’t know, when you look back on it, what do you think you were doing? Because what was it just? I don’t know. overconfidence was it? Why would you do anything different other than obviously, not going to it because of 911 and research, but certain parts of that you couldn’t know. But certain parts of it, you could know. And you could have known a lot.
Dr Glenn Livingston [16:27]
There’s a lot I would do differently. Oh, my God. I mean, first of all, I wouldn’t have put it on Long Island. Because Long Island has a kind of every demographic, which is not super attractive to large corporations to research. They’re interested in selling in mass to the population as a whole. So it’s harder to get people to come to Long Island. I would have taken out a bunch of ads in trade journals about an impending new focus group facility and figured out the advertising. It’s Who was calling? Before I invested all the money in building the facility? I, you know, if you can’t, if I can’t get the phone to ring with some inquiries about where the fifth facility is going to be, and what’s going to be so special about it, why would I ever think that I could actually get people to, you know, spend $20,000 on a study there. So, you know, I would have been a tremendous amount of additional research, I would have flown around to a dozen facilities and paid the owners to interview them, ask them if they could, you know, advise me about how to, you know, how to set up payroll, how many people that I need, what roles and responsibilities would they have? I mean, my only excuses. I was kind of young, and they would say youth is wasted on the young, but I was young and I hadn’t failed. And, you know, I just, I got I got a big head and I got carried away. And well,
David Ralph [17:54]
well think about that story, though, is obviously it was terrible. And I can see it was so stressful. Blah, blah, blah. But it has given you a big springboard for where you are now, isn’t it a out of all those big failures, you ultimately gain the most learnings?
Dr Glenn Livingston [18:12]
Well, yeah, I mean, it really drove home that you need to do your frickin research, especially if you’re a professional researcher. And, and, you know, actually walked around that was my slogan for a while. And I, I applied necessarily know that we wanted to go in this direction today. But I wound up applying all of the research expertise, I kind of went in the other direction, I said, whatever I’m going to do next. I am just going to research the heck out of it to such a degree that, you know, I’m going to pound every last bit of risk out of this and since I didn’t have any money, I really had to pound every last bit of risk. I didn’t have any money to lose. And I didn’t want to go get investors at that point. And so I you know, I applied my research methodology to figuring out what people Were looking for when they were searching on Google at the time. And, you know, then I figured out how to build a little publishing business from that. And then, before you knew it, I had a whole string of successes, which was part of how we fought our way back. actually give my wife credit because she went out and started selling marketing research projects again, and we did find a way back over a couple of years. But I got a real reputation for succeeding with Project after project in my publishing business. And people started asking me to come speak about it. So I started to do this little seminar circuit. And then, you know, that that led to me developing an educational product. And then I had this whole income stream where I was teaching, which I loved, really loved to teach research. And then I developed an advertising agency and it was kind of a research based advertising agency, and that was the value enhancement that we added to people and I I really, I really dug deep into the other direction, I said, I don’t really, I don’t really think that you should ever go into business without an exhaustive amount of research. And now I’m kind of swinging back a little towards the middle because I, I think that, you know, it’s one thing to have to pound every last bit of risk out of a business. You know, if you’re 40 years old and $700,000 in debt, and you know, you can’t afford to spend more than a couple hundred dollars to get this thing started. And there are other situations where your time is more valuable than money and it would be better to take a little more risk and be able to move at the speed of business. So I, I think I’ve become a little bit more seasoned in the way that I look at business now. But I certainly wouldn’t do anything major without a significant amount of research.
David Ralph [20:50]
So when you were in bed, and believe me, I’m not gonna go anywhere untoward on this but you’re in bed at night with your wife. Don’t ever Have you look at each other and go, you’re to blame, you’re to blame, or did you both look at each other and go, what the hell were we doing?
Unknown Speaker [21:07]
Well,
Dr Glenn Livingston [21:09]
wait, you know, we’re both psychologists. And so we’ve got communication skills. But under stress, even the best people regress. And we disagreed about how and when to exit that situation. On September 12 2011. I felt like I saw the writing on the wall. And I said, Sharon, we’ve got $150,000 dot, we’re making about 70. We’ve got maybe $200,000 in the bank, and then we’re going to start digging really deep into debt. And I just don’t see how this is ever going to work people. No one’s going to fly to New York after 911 to do focus groups. I just don’t see how there’s going to work and she said, No, this is our baby. We can’t give up on it. We got to see it through. This is the worst thing that could have happened, but we were doing okay, and, and so, it wasn’t so much that we blamed each other for how we got there because we we both kind of said, Well, look, we really should have researched this, but we disagreed about how how to go forward and that that has to be the most stressful time of our relationship. You know, and I, I think both of us at some point considered splitting at that point because we were, you know, we’re really not of the same mind, but we we stuck it out because we really loved each other. And
you know, about two years later, we
I think that Necessity is the mother of invention, and we wind up inventing a very special research protocol, which we sold for an awful lot of money and we built it online and yes, we started making an awful lot of money which really just went to fund the the losses in the in the focus group facility. But you know, we were still pretty impressed with ourselves and thought, you know, okay, we’re more capable than we thought that we were and, and we made it, we made it. We didn’t, we didn’t succeed with that facility, we that whole business collapsed. But we managed to pay back the debt, and you know, and shine in other direction. So
David Ralph [23:18]
let’s play some words now and then move the conversation slightly in a different direction. These are the words that were said quite recently by Oprah Winfrey,
Oprah Winfrey [23:27]
the way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself, what is the next right move? not think about, Oh, I got all of this too. But what is the next right move? And then from that space, make the next right move and the next right move and not to be overwhelmed by it because, you know, your life is bigger than that one moment. You know, you’re not defined by what somebody says is a failure for you. Because failure is just there to point you in a different direction.
David Ralph [23:59]
So if somebody is listening to this podcast and I hope somebody is listening to this podcast or we’re doing something wrong. And they are in a situation like yourself where their business isn’t going as well as they, they hoped or they planned for. Are those words that Oprah said or they kind of spot on about how you assess and you find a solution?
Dr Glenn Livingston [24:22]
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker [24:27]
You know,
Dr Glenn Livingston [24:29]
panic doesn’t do you any good no matter what, the more the more you get involved with catastrophizing and thinking, oh my god, this is going to leave me bankrupt. And, you know, and, and by the way, I could never be bankrupt because that would be the worst thing ever. And, you know, they’re gonna that’s going to be torture for the rest of my life. And the more you get carried away with that, the more you’re feeding your autonomic nervous system and driving up the impulses and that adds to more anxiety and then it’s pretty Comes difficult to make good decisions and then things get worse and you just kind of wind up in a, in a panic. Maybe the best way that I could describe this would be you know, I, at the time I did panic. At the time I did panic and I got very involved with overeating and binge eating. And I wound up being about 6065 pounds overweight and sick. I was really sick and, and broke. And so I was overweight, sick and broke. But I could have just been broke. Yeah, I could have just been broken. I always remember that. Like, if you have if you have six problems and you overeat then you end up having seven problems. It really just doesn’t do any good. And and I think that that whole panic and then self gratification cycle. You know, yeah, like what’s, what’s the next right thing? What’s the next right thing? That’s a good way to look at Because what what else can you do? Well,
David Ralph [26:03]
I always think, is it what’s the next right thing? Or is it anything, you know that there’s certain times in those situations, but you must basically be frozen to the spot. You’ve been battered around so much that you just think I don’t know what I’ve got to do next. So do you think he’s just to do something? Or is it as she says that you really have to just not do anything keep you unsure until you make sure that is the right thing?
Unknown Speaker [26:29]
Well,
Dr Glenn Livingston [26:31]
I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a general statement for everyone and in every situation, because I, I think that it’s possible to run around like a chicken with your head cut off and you know, and just kind of impulsively do this and do that and not really have any kind of a strategy for where you want to go. So I I think that pausing is definitely necessary, but there’s a difference between pausing and free
And I think that, um,
Unknown Speaker [27:05]
I think that
Dr Glenn Livingston [27:08]
I think people need to, you know, take a day or two in the woods or, you know, go someplace quiet and get away from all the electronic input and get away from all the people or bill collectors or whatever it is that’s making impossible for you to think. And I do think that we need to just kind of sit and be with ourselves and think about what the next right thing might be. And if it’s not really clear what the next right thing might be, I think we need to have a list of alternatives and you know, probably go into massive action with them until one of them starts to one of them starts to stick.
David Ralph [27:46]
Because what is me is we’ve you you’ve lost 2 million, and a lot of people would have gone into survival mode. But once you got to a certain point when when I was looking at this, this You conducted research and you found the motivation to self fund the study with over 40,000 participants, that’s not gonna be cheap. So, what I didn’t use or stay small, why did you keep on sort of fighting back? What made you do that? Um,
Dr Glenn Livingston [28:17]
well, you know, it’s funny, you’re saying that because that study actually took place. during the same time period, I, I was aware that I was killing myself with food, and I had to figure it out. And it wasn’t extraordinarily expensive, by the way, because I bought the participants online via pay per click, and at that time, pay per click was not that expensive, and it wasn’t cheap. You know, maybe it was $10,000 or something like that. But compared to what we were spending, it was. It was nothing compared to where we’re spending was nothing. And compared to my motivation, it was nothing because I really, I really had to figure it out. that study was really interesting, by the way, but it it didn’t provide the answer that study got I got a lot of publicity for it. And you know, we find that really interesting things like chocolate. People that crave chocolate tend to do so because they’re feeling unloved and lonely and people that crave. Carbohydrates tend to be feeling really stressed out at work or stressed out at home and people who crave salty snacks tend to be more anxious than other people. And I really thought at the time that that was going to lead to a solution. But what I found when I went to work with clients about it, what I found was that the kind of it’s almost like there’s a little voice inside of them that say, well Oh good. That means until we can feel a love we can just keep eating chocolate or that means whenever I feel stressed, I’m just going to have work or buy. And so it it was a pointer to an interesting relationship between binge foods and The Psychology inside of us but it didn’t really point to the solution and it was something much simpler that really selfish for me. But yeah, so I was just I’ve never been a guy that lets the grass grow under my feet and you know I’m always thinking about what problem I want to solve and taking action to solve it and jack I couldn’t couldn’t stay stuck forever so and I wasn’t gonna live a life of obesity.
So I had to figure it out. I’ll
David Ralph [30:30]
find you a fascinating character in many different ways because you obviously very intelligent and the most intelligent people that I’ve met aren’t big action takers they they like to study but you kind of balance it out on both sides. You you like to have the books but you also like to take the action what was the bigger part of you, the the expert or the action taker
Dr Glenn Livingston [31:01]
Sometimes they think I might have had a nicer life if I was a university professor. But sometimes I think that I might have had a nicer life if I did that. But there was just something in me that wouldn’t rest. Because like I said, because I didn’t want to just be another country doctor, like, all the people in my family. I just I felt like we were onto something, we really had something that could help people and I wanted to share it. And I wanted a big I wanted a bigger microphone. Because you know, country doctor may be going to help a few thousand people over the course of their career 10,000 if you’re lucky, and I really wanted to help millions, I really I just felt like I was meant for something more important, but not that it’s not isn’t really important to be a country doctor, but I wanted to do more.
David Ralph [31:52]
Yeah, but what you’re saying is what so many people have in their lives that feeling that feeling now. They’re going to work. They’re doing something they’re being paid well It just invert them. And it’s quite difficult, isn’t it when you’ve got that feeling bubbling up all the time, and you can’t pinpoint why you feel this way, everybody else was a country doctor, why am I feeling this way? Is there something wrong with me? It’s very strange how your body operates, isn’t it?
Dr Glenn Livingston [32:18]
I just always felt like I was meant for something more. And I never really even questioned it. I never really even questioned it because I, it doesn’t seem possible for me to be happy with something less. And so I’m always striving. And I think, you know, people that accomplished great things. In in our world, they’re there, they’ve got that little piece of them that’s just never really content with because the more than I read, the more that I study, the more that I kind of intellectualise the more that I feel like the world just isn’t great. Like, you know what, why, why is the world behaving the way that it’s behaving and You know, if people only do X, Y or Z, then they would behave differently and we wouldn’t have so much trouble. And, you know, like, you know, like in the food industry like I don’t, I don’t feel like it’s I don’t know if people understand how much economic forces against them in the food industry where we’re, you know, billions are spent to engineer foods that push our evolutionary buttons and cram the greatest amount of calories in the smallest space and you know, the amount of packaging research that goes into making foods look healthy, healthy, not just so that they are healthy but look healthy and you know, and how, how addictive a lot of these foods are, I just I feel like people don’t really understand that. They don’t really understand the difference between what is is a healthy food and what not a healthy food and, you know, and then on the other side, the standard treatments for food addiction are telling people that they really Can’t, they really can’t hope to quit this or quit that they can only abstain one day at a time. And there’s just all of this all of this mythology, which doesn’t really have a basis in science, and it’s giving people the wrong message and just catching everybody up in this really unhealthy downward cycle and, and so and so that that’s a result of all the studying that I’ve done. The more that you study, the more that you see that things aren’t right in life and you want to do something about it. That’s, that’s my, my take on it. Like, did you did you ever see, you know, there is this twilight zone where this guy that just loved to read there been a nuclear war and he was just gonna sit in the library and read all by himself all the time. And at the end of The Twilight Zone, eternity broke his glasses and you could read but, but I think the moral of the story was, there really was no use for knowledge. Without action and I, I really feel like that. What does it matter how much I know if I’m not sharing it with people, and I can’t share it with people, I can’t share it with millions of people. Let’s go out and develop that microphone for myself. And
yeah, that’s why I do what I do.
David Ralph [35:17]
He’s an interesting journey, but you are the sum of the parts on you you are, every experience you’ve had has built up to where you are. Now the reason that you are so successful as a business coach is that you’ve had these failures, you’ve had these stumbles, you wouldn’t be able to, to expand people’s awareness of what is possible without them would you
Dr Glenn Livingston [35:40]
write? Right and I was forced to develop. I was forced to develop systems that eliminate risk because of the risk that I encountered. I was forced to develop systems that teach humility in business because of the grandiosity that I had earlier in my life and Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s why they say youth is wasted on the young, you, you come to this vantage point when you get older and I wouldn’t trade those experiences, even though they were really painful like, I wouldn’t have the wisdom that I think I have now,
David Ralph [36:17]
when it’s probably the words of Steve Jobs who created the whole theme of the show, but Join Up Dots speech to connect the dots speech. Let’s hear it again.
Steve Jobs [36:26]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all different
David Ralph [37:01]
Now your heart has been off the path for your whole life hasn’t really, why do you feel that is a case?
Dr Glenn Livingston [37:14]
Maybe it’s a little bit because I was raised by hippies in the 1960s. Right? My, my father’s a PhD from Columbia. But really, he was a hippie. And, you know, I had, he encouraged me to have long hair and a beard and wear tie dye shirts and book the establishment and, you know, follow your own heart. And I think in part, they really instilled a rebellious spirit in me. And, you know, they told me that I don’t have to do everything that they tell me in school, and I could really, um, craft my own career, and I would give credit to my parents for that.
David Ralph [37:50]
And so the million dollar question I asked most guests is if you look back over your whole life, and you could look for the big.as we called it on the Join Up Dots time. Line, Matt, lead lead you to where you are today. Can you see that? Clearly?
Dr Glenn Livingston [38:07]
I would, I would tell myself to stay humble. I would tell myself to accept my role as an educator and a coach. And I don’t know if I would have done as much corporate consulting. I think that I think that I might have stayed on the entrepreneurial path. Marketing my own stuff more than the corporate consulting that I did, because well, I just feel like I’ve affected more people in a positive way. doing that. So I think I can join the dots like that kid. Well, let me ask you a question. Do you see anything having interviewed me like this, that you think I should tell myself?
David Ralph [38:54]
Yeah, I do. I think that you are at heart, a maverick. I think but you like that. To create new paths, I think ultimately you’re never satisfied with what you’ve produced, even though it’s done very well. I think there’s always that extra thing. I think on your deathbed. Dr. Glenn, I think you will go out Just give me one more day. Give me one more day because I haven’t quite finished
Unknown Speaker [39:17]
it. You know, you’d be a good psychologist. That’s really good.
David Ralph [39:22]
Well, this is the part of the show that we called a sermon or might when we send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could go back in time and speak to the young Dr. Glenn, what advice would you give them what age would you choose what we’re going to find out because I’m going to play the theme tune and when it fades you up. This is the Sermon on the mic
Unknown Speaker [39:47]
with the best bit of the show
Dr Glenn Livingston [40:03]
Okay, look, Glen, I think that you need to thoroughly accept that you are a maverick at heart. I think that you need to see life as a grand adventure. And it’s okay if you’re going from project to project as long as you stay within your core competencies, which are teaching and educating and coaching and, you know, be careful to do your research as you go through and be kind to yourself. If you fall down, just get back up again and keep going.
David Ralph [40:36]
And be good. You’ll have a good life. Don’t take Glenn, what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you?
Dr Glenn Livingston [40:45]
Oh, yeah, I think we talked about coaching today more than more than the binge eating. So have them go to the coaching test, calm the coaching test, calm and take little two minute test. Look at a whole bunch of audios and there Little bit more about, you know, what am I like to be to be a coach or consultant and what we have to teach there. And if they’re, if they’re interested in the book, there’s a book that never binge again, calm, it’s free.
David Ralph [41:11]
That’s it. We’ll have all the links in the show notes. Dr. Glenn, thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots. Please come back again, when you have more dots to join up, because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our past is the best way to build our futures. Dr. Glenn Livingston, thank you so much.
Dr Glenn Livingston [41:28]
Thanks, David. I enjoyed it.
David Ralph [41:32]
When after that show, Dr. Glenn said to us I didn’t expect it to go that way in the conversation and to be honest, I didn’t either and that’s the beauty of doing a show like Join Up Dots. You start off with an idea of what you want to create. More often than not you find the gold But you only find the gold by actually doing it and taking action. Little bit of advice for you at the end of the show. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Join Up Dots. We’re moving forward. We’re moving forward constantly. We’ve got big things planned. For 550 600 700 and hopefully you’ll be telling all your friends about the show because really, we’re trying our hardest to make it the biggest show out there. I believe it’s got value. Hopefully you do too. Thanks very much. Cheers. Bye bye.
Outro [42:15]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant sell fewer wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.
