0:06 good afternoon and welcome to the way to wow show i am your host kevin bemel it's good to see you all today and i'm going to be talking with my guest very soon robin robinson and this is robin's second appearance on the show so um i know we're going to have a great time before i introduce robin i want to mention my guest from last week suzanne woods fisher suzanne is a very successful author of both fiction and non-fiction award-winning best-selling and uh you know she had a very very interesting story to
0:41 tell about becoming a professional writer and this was something she had always wanted to do um but you know she contended that it was hard work and learning the craft that really brought her success uh rather than some sort of you know inspiration or connection with the muse or i think what many times we think is what's involved in writing so i invite you to go to our youtube channel the way to wow show and check out the episode with suzanne from last week and i hope you will enjoy it and if there's if you have questions uh about
1:17 becoming a writer or or any of this sort of um writing or business of writing then uh suzanne's contact information is there and i know she'll be glad to to respond as will i now i turn to uh someone that i i don't remember if i mentioned this the first time you were on the show but uh it was it was such a treat to have you on the show because i'm such a huge fan of your book um on on on whiskey which is i see it's there in in the background um yeah exactly and maybe maybe you'll uh you'll touch it a little bit later on
1:52 but um robin robinson i knew him as the guru of whiskey um but then when we we met on my on on the show last time i realized this is a man with an enormously eclectic background and although last last show was really focused more on the kind of whiskey side of his uh career we're going to look more broadly today at many of the things that that robin has done and how that that eclecticism really has driven the success that he's had so so robin thank you for for this
2:30 return engagement on the way to wow show people making money well thanks kevin it's a real pleasure to be here and an honor as well so thanks for having me yeah absolutely you're welcome so i want to start out by taking you as far back as you care to go maybe even as a kid you know i know when i was a kid i went through the phase i wanted to be a fireman i wanted to be an astronaut right all those things that kids want to be none of which i became by the way so would you share with us what were sort of the early thoughts you had about what you wanted
3:07 to do you know professionally in a career or for a job um wow i can remember the first uh the first profession that i wanted to go into was being a sociologist and this was like in sixth grade i had found out what a sociologist was and what they did and i said that's what i want to do because it seemed to me that sociologists explore the past in order to get to the present and that's how i think i understood it and i loved that concept
3:44 of kind of getting back to the genesis of something getting back to the gist of something and then using that as of an explanation of how the path went going forward and then you know you know in sixth grade or whatever you're you're not thinking about the future too much so it's kind of like how did i get here right right yeah so how and then as far as i know you didn't become a sociologist although i really did like my sociology classes in college um yeah but uh no um i i i will tell you that um
4:21 that something happened to me later on in a career where i rediscovered who i really was when i was six years old you know and it was a it was a discovery point um that i was taken on um during uh an acting uh workshop uh of all things and um it led me back to being six years old and i i said oh yeah that was me and that's what i did and that's what i do right now so to take us from you know
4:58 11 12 years old wanted to be a sociologist and i believe your first professional endeavor was as an actor right so how did tell us about how you got from point a to you know point b or maybe it was point x at that point well i tell you what i mean i'm literally all over the uh uh i guess that's really the gist of this conversation is i'm really all over um the map on this um uh what i knew that i was was a class clown and i was a very uh facile with words i loved words i loved vocabulary i loved the use of them i loved listening
5:34 to them i was very much in love with every comic that i had ever seen on ed sullivan's show and all of the the variety shows and and that to me was like you know that seemed natural you know it just seemed like a natural thing to do get up and make fun of or or make fun of myself and and make people laugh and you know and like i got picked on a lot as a kid i was named robin robinson with red hair in a steel town um i i suffered a fair share of abuse
6:11 um and but you know you learn um uh you learn the mechanisms of how to avoid that um and and then how to cope and manage that as well and it and and humor um was uh it was an effective tool uh and then sometimes it was an effective weapon as well um so i found out that i was actually really quite good at that um i was too nice of a guy to really do cutting really um you know i'm gonna destroy you with my words type of thing um that was
6:46 pretty much against what you know what what my growing ethos was but um i learned to use vocabulary and sentences and thoughts um as a way to to cope with those things and then they started to take me into other places um you know when you start when you start thinking you know and becoming your own person and understanding basic philosophical concepts um you're able you know and i was brought up in a in a religious household as well um
7:23 uh i was a we were active members of our church i grew up in the eastern orthodox religion so it's a very very ritual based um uh religion uh you know it was an altar boy and all you know stuff like that um so um so so i had that kind of grounding you know i had a big family a big immigrant family uh um background uh my uh grandparents uh my maternal grandparents were were immigrants from syria um and all of their children of which my mother was
7:58 the fifth out of 12. um yeah were all born in america they were arranged marriage in the united states and everything um so i had this big rambling you know middle eastern you know the the more i yell at you the more i love you type of a family you know it was in my family i think it was so funny i remember watching um i think it was annie hall when when woody allen's kind of going back into into it and and and you know you know to
8:33 scream at you is to love you and uh yeah i get that that's exactly who i or who the family was you know um but uh but what was interesting was this uh i was very very good in school i was very very smart and i got tested iq and it turned out you know very very you know very high but i was in a blue-collar town a a very working-class mill town uh in pittsburgh and um uh i had an incident in the mill i i worked there um in the
9:09 summer and um i was i worked in the worst job in the mill and what they did they rotated you like every four or five weeks they you you the the summer guys went on uh on different jobs and i ended up in something called the flumes so these were these big massive um uh blast furnaces that cooked the steel at u.s steel and they were fed by these um long long uh big wide corridors of air that were deep under the ground and there was a crew down there that had to
9:44 keep those things clean so they're down under the ground and the union says you have to you know have to come up every you know every 40 minutes for air you know you can't stay down there all the time but you're down there with like shovels and air hammers and and it's a man's world this is where men work you know and and i'm just skinny i'm i'm a skinny goofy kid in uh uh on my college uh uh my college freshman uh vacation right and and i want to fit in with these guys because i grew up in that type of
10:20 environment and i want to be one of those guys and and uh and so i'm getting along with them and i'm like smoking cigarettes with everybody and and doing all this you know and um i went up for a cigarette break uh at one point and my my uh my foreman um followed me out now most of the most of the people who worked down in there were black men and and it'll kind of give you an idea of how jobs were structured you know even in in what is semi-integrated town you can see like not the greatest jobs you know uh you know
10:55 so so this was a really burly black guy and and he was a fabulous guy he was had a great sense of humor and he used that to kind of motivate um the uh the workers down there as well you know kind of keep them you know and um laughing and everything like that i just thought he was a great guy and um and so he comes up and he and i'm smoking a cigarette and he bums a cigarette from me and so we're smoking a cigarette together i'm thinking oh my god i'm like smoking a cigarette with my man with my foreman right here this is like so cool and uh he's going uh so yeah man so you're getting along pretty well with
11:31 the guys down there i'm going yeah yeah yeah freddie's gonna get a new car i'm gonna go see his new car and um uh and uh you know of course you know the pay here is great it's all union wages and you're getting shift differential and cost of living raise and you know i said yeah man it's great and he goes yeah money's good i said yeah and then he stubs out his cigarette and he gets right in my face and he says who in the do you think you are you want to be another mill hunky just like everybody else down here you're
12:06 going to school right i said yeah he said well yeah god damn it if you're here in september i will personally kick your ass and he threatens me and i'm just like like freaked out right and so my obviously my work attitude changed because now i was really i felt that i had offended him i offended everybody i i felt i wasn't one of them and that's
12:42 exactly what he was trying to do that man is my guardian angel he sits right here right there he right in that one minute told me how the world works i was told as a kid you're going to be something you're going to be something you're going to be something you need to study you're going to go here and you know and and your family tells you that's kind of yeah yeah yeah right you know and then you know i i was kind of iffy about going to
13:18 college i didn't know what it really what i wanted to do i think i'm going to be a lawyer you know from study law or something like that and everybody wants it's what everybody else wanted me to be um this guy clarified me immediately right and so i went back completely different um uh when i went back into my sophomore year and and interestingly enough i had you know revelations inside my head that i didn't know that i was having and i ended up becoming the thing that i wanted to be which was an actor right so i abandoned that's like this
13:54 pre-law you know things like no man i stepped on stage for my first time i absolutely fell in love with the idea of inhabiting a character and and and wouldn't you know it the play that i was in was inherit the wind about a lawyer you know right it was about it was about one of the great you know legal uh things of the 20th century and um so yeah so that really was a really clarifying moment and the next clarifying moment i had was later on in my senior year and um i was a now a um a theater major
14:33 and i uh i had to take a whole bunch of other classes besides acting i had to take lighting i had to take stage design i had to take constant and i was kind of like why do i want to do it why am i doing this i want to be an actor i want to be an actor and i was bending the ear of one of my acting professors who i thought was actually sympathetic to me and would you know it he throws me up against the wall i've got this thing about guys who just like want to like threaten me he throws me up against the wall and he goes quit your whining he says quit whining if you want to go act leave right now and go out there
15:09 nick nolte lived in his car outside of louisville actors theater while until they employed him go out and live in your car and this was another one of these clarifying moments where i said yeah you know um and so in a way i kind of did i actually for about four years after college um i sort of just skipped all over the country um and i picked up um i picked up uh um acting gigs and bartending gigs and waiting gigs and i you know stand-up comedy improvisational
15:46 comedy um dinner theater children's theater regional theater i mean anybody who would let me up on stage and until i finally got to the point says okay i have to make a decision about a career and it was kind of like you know i'm not really handsome enough for los angeles chicago's too damn cold but you know new york [Music] new york new york is where like joe papp was at shakespeare in the park and and lee strasberg was still teaching um at the actors studio and that's where i want to
16:21 go so that's kind of how i ended you know that's how i kind of like ended up in in in show business was uh was through that just kind of what was the time period when you were this sort of vagabond actor was this the early 70s or it was uh it was i graduated college in 77 so it was um from 77 and i got to new york in 1981. okay so i was in i lived in austin i lived in houston and i lived in new orleans um in in those intervening years and just again just being kind of like a vagabond um the vagabond was kind of like a
16:56 purpose you know the purpose was like you know you know get on stage and and and and work as much of the craft as you can um and and with whoever who would give you the opportunity to do that you know yeah you know it's interesting because i have a friend who's around our age and um he always all his life wanted to be a magician and finally one day he just said i'm going to be a magician and you know he he bounced around and anywhere they would let him do magic he would do it finally went to branson and he was there for quite some time now oh yeah austin austin texas i think yeah peter
17:32 the adequate just i think it's like the greatest thing you're the adequate oh that is the best title i've ever heard that is fantastic it's like i'm gonna set your expectation right now and then i'm gonna actually i'm gonna best it and he would do this card trick for me where he would i would i would hold the deck and i would do the trick and he would he would correct me because i was doing it wrong and he was he always was able to grow and i mean he was done that trick for me a hundred times i could never figure out how he did it right absolutely yeah that's great it's kind
18:08 of like you remember um um oh who was the big guy in the little guy um the magic trick penny teller right yeah they would show you the trick this is how the trick is done and you still couldn't figure out how the trick got done so so now you're in new york i mean you know late 70s early 80s this was really uh i know because i was um i was just i'm just a few years younger than you so we're talking about you know a chorus line had had come out around that time annie came out around this is really a very very um productive time in new york
18:44 theater so what was it like to be in new york you know as an actor at that time oh my god i mean there was there was nothing like it and and it's really where i sort of like codified all my life lessons this right was right there first of all you know it was a battle zone it was a war zone in new york city um you know uh we had you know new york had actually just declared bankruptcy a few years ago the rockefeller laws had released all of these mentally unstable people from the upstate um uh sanitariums and they were all over new york it was it was rough um but it was fantastic you know like you know like henry v at agincourt you know
19:20 we lift up our sleeves to show our scars from that and and we show them with pride you know um and um so i took uh my first real shakespeare classes there um it so it new york was really all about study and try to get work study and try to get work study and try to get work studying and try to work and and and then work your other menial jobs you know and and and and i was now a pretty uh sophisticated waiter uh and uh and and dining room uh uh uh captain you know so
19:55 i i knew my way around like a flaming pan of something and how to make a caesar salad and you know all the theatrical stuff that you do that um so that's what i was doing was kind of bouncing around doing that um uh um it was uh it was very difficult it was uh um i actually went into therapy for the first time um because i realized um that something was really something was really off i was incredibly unhappy and and through therapy she got me to start
20:31 writing you know i would come in and i would tell her this story she goes that's a very interesting story could you write that down for me and just bring it in next time and i said yeah sure so i would like to have this little typewriter and i just and and then next so this was her this was brilliant you know she just got me to write these things and so i started to develop this love of language right which i always had but now but now i'm kind of putting it down on a piece of paper and it's therapeutic for me it's helping me excise these demons that were inside
21:06 of my inside of me and it was really wonderful you know until she retired it was fantastic but um it got me to do something which was really important uh in new york at that time i was not a chorus line and new york at that time was um oh what was the name of the very famous british composer with the three names that did evita um yeah you know what i'm talking about right yeah yeah but but so so if
21:41 broadway was all about those big massive musicals and so andrew lloyd webber yeah thank you and um and you know and um and uh and all those guys and um i was on a musical guy i could move i could dance a bit i you know i had a pretty good voice i could sing but i was not a musical uh performer um i was an offbeat kind of a weird guy and so i ended up doing a lot of um downtown performance pieces i did a lot of crazy um off off broadway stuff i i
22:16 was very character driven and and uh typically on a satirical or weird dark edge um that was my forte and i was pursuing a stand-up comedy for a little bit and then i sort of abandoned that and went full-time into dramatic and um and then i got an opportunity to actually study because prior to this you're taking classes so it's classes everything is piecemeal you're putting it all together you're trying to put some form without any understanding of what form
22:52 is you know uh i'm gonna take this voice lesson that person said i should work with that person so and then i actually submitted myself i got an opportunity i got a scholarship to study um something called the meisner technique and the meisner technique is a very very very solid um acting methodology that was developed by sandy meisner and it was him and lee strasberg and a few others that had studied with the russians and brought that back to the united states and kind of formed what we know as the dramatic uh persona of the ninth of the post-war
23:28 period and all the famous people that you've ever heard of that came out of new york and went to l.a all you know studied in one of these methodologies but it was two years and two years of dedicated uh academy type study so i wasn't allowed to pursue any acting jobs during that time and between that and the shakespeare study that i had just gotten out of which is if shakespeare's very very technically precise um you know you spend you know three hours a day just going with la la la la la la you know moving your tongue and not moving your lips and you know
24:03 and then going into this where there's no script for the first year there's no scripts the first year you are actually working improvisation in order to get to the heart of what you are about as a person and what are the things that move you as a person and what's your truth so that you can then in turn bring truth to whatever character that you're playing in in any any specific situation and it was grueling it was grueling and was very difficult uh to get through the entire thing um i loved it but it challenged me
24:40 to the here's here's what we had in the class this will give you an idea of a meissner class on one wall was a mattress hanging on the wall okay that mattress was there because you were about to unlock something that was so ugly and so horrible inside of you that you needed to punch somebody and the teacher would go go to the mattress and you would take it out on this mattress and then bring yourself back out into the scene that's how that's how deep this thing went that's how deep this and and when you come out
25:16 of there you know who you are as an actor now there's no about this you know who you are there you you discover or you or you don't get through the two years because i saw a couple people drop out it just wasn't for them and they but when you get through the two years you know who you are as an actor and that was one of the most incredible revelations that i have had you know as as an adult human being at the end i knew who i was i knew exactly where my strengths were at i knew exactly where my weaknesses are at
25:52 um i what they do is they strip they literally strip you down to nothing that's what the whole first year is get rid of every trick every actor's trick every one of these things that you you you piled on uh your entire career that stuff does not work that's getting stripped away and that's why you end up going to the mattress because it's like you're taking away all my shields and now i'm left vulnerable and skinless and and helpless here in front of all these people and now you're an actor now you're an actor now you understand
26:27 what it is so when i came out of there it was um and what you know it i actually had a career i got an agent right after that um and i did very well in like i did a lot of look television commercials uh in the 80s um and uh and and and i was now making a living the other thing that i yeah i was just going to observe it you know it's it's an interesting process of the sort of breaking down of the self yeah in order to rebuild a more authentic self absolutely the reason i
27:04 breathe that is um you know in the military that's essentially what boot camp is that right exactly right you know and and and you're going through this this experience with you know all of your colleagues and it's hard i mean it's it's really hard now i didn't as an officer i didn't have to go through boot camp but i went through you know officer training and interestingly enough you know i mean we had we actually had one um young nurse she was in her mid-20s she just she couldn't take it and she you know it was just too
27:40 raw for her it's that's exactly right when you come face to face with who you are there's no going on right there and and you're right you have to actually strip away all of this immaterial um fluff that you've accumulated because again why did we do that because sophistication is all about protecting the child within right it's all about you know putting layers of onion skin on top of it until now i'm this thing right here right but down here i'm still like this little thing right and and
28:15 and you know this is actually sometimes called boot camp you know and this was sometimes like called an acting boot camp it it used the same metaphor um strip away all the this is who you are once you know who you are then we can depend on you and that's the same exact philosophy in the military right because we not only can we depend on you but we can also rebuild you into the person you need to be so that you're the you know the service member next to you can depend on you and know that there's a likelihood you know you're gonna come through right well there's gonna be there's a
28:50 spiritual question at that point 100 and there's a feeling of a of a spree decor in both of these scenarios you know when i'm on stage i really need to trust my fellow performers i have to trust them with my with my performance and they in turn have to trust me one of the best ways i've ever seen this actually demonstrated was a friend of mine who was a director and he was very avant-garde director and uh he was putting on a play in the woods so we all drove to the woods and we're walking down this path and we encounter
29:26 uh this wonderful french surreal play uh surrealist play um but all of these performers are just kind of like out in the woods and they're performing as we as we encounter them and then it started getting dark and he did something that was brilliant now this was back in the 80s when these things were brand new but he had flashlights mounted on each one of their heads that was the only light which means when you're speaking i have to look directly at you with my light so that everyone can see you and in turn when i'm speaking you're doing the same
30:02 thing for me and that's called giving focus and when you give focus to other people you're taking it off of you you're giving it to them and then they in turn get that's the ultimate level of trust right there it was one of the most beautiful demonstrations of that that i had ever seen you know without me focusing on you literally focusing on you then there was no way that i was going to be able or that you were going to be able to um to perform so um yeah that whole sense of you know this is two buddies in a foxhole you know this is the exact same thing you know only you know one where the stakes
30:38 are actually you know you know much more you know much higher and that ability to focus on the other person obviously crucial in acting because that's what brings authenticity to to the scene in our day-to-day lives though the ability to really focus on another human being listen to them connect with them right it's it's it's perhaps the most important skill that we can develop and yet there's so many things to distract us from it especially these days it's it's it's just astonishing that
31:14 anyone can focus on anybody for more than you know the the length of the life of the tsitifly as they say well yeah and and quite honestly because of today uh because of the fact that we are literally carrying a distraction in our pocket at every given moment um that um we will we are now losing the cultural imperative of doing that because i know that everybody during some part in their life walked away with an interaction with one other person and came away feeling i felt as if i was the only person in the room
31:49 when when i was speaking with that person and that is essentially that sense that sense of someone giving you actively listening this is one of the things that that actors work on active listening so that you understand that i am trying to pull this in and either my my lack of doing that is going to cause a reaction on your side or my intensity of doing that and then you know that's actually how how these how the scene progresses for example um but yeah that sense of being there and being present
32:26 and being in the moment uh these are all the things that you know what the two years of training was really all about was was doing that and it can't not spill over into the rest of your life it can't not do that because then you start to see the effects of that the cause and effect of now you know my girlfriend and my family and and all of the other people that i'm interacting with um are reacting to me differently now
33:01 because i'm actively listening to what they're saying and it becomes much more of a satisfying um uh uh interaction that you have with people when you notice someone is actually listening to you and not you know thumbing through their their texts or you know wandering off somewhere else you know um so yeah so it has i it had a net positive effect in just about everything i did um and then you know when i went into sales so i know at one point it was time for me to leave show business and um uh i kind of saw the writing on the wall
33:37 um i was now getting too old to be hamlet you know like you know you know you know baby king lear but leer yeah right i i i what i still have i can still do lear right i've got 20 more years to do lyr you know um but um you know i i i you know we picked up from uh my i had my daughter my daughter was born now um we picked up a move to los angeles and and uh for me to pursue my acting career one of the things that
34:12 happened back in new york is um at one point i couldn't um the reason i actually started a reason i went into therapy was because um uh i was working in a very famous restaurant new york city and at the end of my shift i couldn't balance out all my checks and i like freaked out and i started throwing chairs around in the employee lunch room and i was summarily fired after that and that's when i said okay maybe i should probably talk to somebody um yes got into there yeah a little bit yeah right and yeah uh but i realized i couldn't uh what was happening as i came to realization i can't go back i you
34:48 know i heard my foreman in my face you can't go back there again you can't go back there again so what i had learned in between i mean in the interim was i was picking up the first indica i was actually doing the first dedicated word processing i learned how to type on a wang dedicated word processor which were like the early before the pcs um and uh i was getting temp jobs and i was getting paid incredible amount of money to uh to type documents on this brand new screen with
35:24 this you know strange uh keyboard and and then i learned uh ibm pcs after that and boy i'm thinking wow this stuff is really cool and when i left techno when i left acting i eventually found my way into the tech field first um you know teaching with things like you know like dos and teaching windows and teaching word and excel and things like that in classes um and then working for a company where i had a lot of kind of computer responsibilities and then it was eventually hired by um skadon arts the third largest law
36:00 firm in the world to be on their network support team and then from there i ended up being an i.t director for a mid-sized uh ad agency out in los angeles and then i got hired by a silicon valley uh software company you know so i had this really strange progression but what was going on was i really fell in love with this technology and i was very good at explaining it to someone else i was very good at taking very complex ideas and and and things and breaking
36:37 them down to to its simplest without insulting anybody and uh and so that they can actually you know enjoy it as well um because i saw them as like wow this is gonna make our lives so much better um so that's what i really got good at was was um you know understanding and here i'm getting a chance to use that you know famed intellect that i was measured at you know back when i was a kid now um but i was really good at actually just using the right words um to bring this technology into your hands and make you comfortable with it so that you can
37:12 go off and do whatever it is that you wanted to do and um and that's sort of like what led me into into sales so not meaning to contradict you but yeah into your story it's see it seems to me that your success in that field while it may have been you know partly due to your intellect i suspect you know as someone who in the in the beginning kind of struggled to understand how all the technology works having the kind of attention that you could give them that you that you developed as an actor with your love of language and finding
37:48 the right words to really communicate with someone those two skills i suspect were a large part of your success in that endeavor right because people are afraid and they carry all kinds of baggage and it sounds to me like you were able to either cut through that or find a way around it or help them find a way around it i was i was i i was synthesizing all this information and i and and i was actually activating something that i had no idea that i had i didn't even know the word for it but i was actually activating my natural sense of empathy
38:24 which is one of the things that i think that i you know is one of my strong points i have a really good healthy sense of empathy i can put myself in your place you know i can understand the struggles that you're going through and if i have an opportunity to help you in somewhere where i'm going to bring some value then here's how i can do it i started out working for the all of the old new york city banks like uh you know um the manufacturers hand over and i was like i'd be put in their back offices and right at about the time when
38:59 somebody in the executive department decided we're getting rid of all of your ibm's electrics and we're going to put in all these brand new computers and these poor secretaries are out there going ah you know what what's going on you know and they're hitting the the they're hitting the the enter key at the other end of every line and it's kind of like the whole thing's a mess you know and i was in that environment and i happened to actually be quite facile at it so i end up going from secretary desk to secretary that's the secretary that's and say okay try this and think about it in this way and i like to use metaphors
39:34 and things like that to help people do that and um at one point the manager calls me into his office he goes okay what's going on with you and all the secretaries out there you know i was thinking you were gonna say your wife was gonna i know it's the manager right me and all of the 55 year old secretaries that are out there right so what's going on here right and i explained i said you know the guys down in the the tech department they just kind of flopped these things on their destiny and they gave them maybe
40:09 two hours of training they're lost out there so i they've been asking me to help them and once everyone knows oh that guy robin he knows how to do this and all of a sudden i'm pulled over here and he goes oh yeah so tell me more about this i'm telling more about this he goes all right here's what we're going to do you're going to actually run a training class on saturday afternoon for me okay what do you want for it i'm going uh 25 dollars he got me he got me for a song because i again it's my first consulting game yeah it's just a song
40:44 i just i didn't want to get fired you know so i you know so i said oh 25 so i charged him 25 he paid me 25 cash and we brought in about seven or eight secretaries from like you know 10 until 2 p.m on a saturday and i kind of took them all through the basics of understanding how this thing works it was my first consulting gig and you know the first thing a consultant learns is don't underprice yourself you know so i start i start out my career at 25 bucks and i'm working for citibank you know they could have at least afforded
41:19 50. so that be kind of became this thing that i really got really good at doing and that just you know that became my um when i wasn't acting that became uh sort of my lifeblood uh work that was my my my day job you know so to speak and uh until eventually when i realized i you know it show business now no really not for me anymore emotionally it's not for me i
41:54 didn't i didn't really like myself in the industry anymore and and i was i was i was lucky enough to to understand that to acknowledge that that i i i was out of place um so i started doing these gigs and then i ended up in the tech industry like i said you know through these uh and then that ended up moving me back here into the new york city area you know um and i stayed in the tech industry for about eight years um
42:29 and essentially we're selling you know now i'm working for like the silicon valley startups and i'm uh and i'm selling essentially software but we're not selling software we're selling business transformation we're in there you know learning how to understand what your business is about understanding what the pain points are at and then coming up with a solution which is a combination of software and services that is going to get you to the next level and so what now is going on is now i'm learning this other type of
43:04 methodology i had first learned shakespearean methodology which when you learn how to scan um a a a a parcel of shakespeare and understand exactly how the rhythm and all of the sounds work and then you get into acting and you break down the entire dramaturgy uh and character down to what these these very simple essences um so that you can rebuild them on a systematized uh approach and now i'm entering in this other phase where um where i'm breaking down communications
43:40 and i'm you know that you're communicating technology to executives and that's the last thing they want to listen to they don't want to sit there for some tech lecture because they're turned off and then they're going to down river you to some guy in the i.t department so you have to find a way in order to make this real for them to make it a little bit painful for them to understand and to empathize here's what you're dealing with you know we've been now working with your company for let's say three or four weeks and i've had my team in and we've done all these investigations and all these interviews and here's what we've come up with and
44:16 do you agree with that is this what you're facing yeah yeah we are okay well this is essentially how we're going to approach it so now i'm just reformulating all of this stuff in order to bring a business solution a satisfying business solution because one of the things that that when you're working for a software company during those days and most they were mostly nasdaq um nasdaq listed um and and you know everyone was flying high it was during the big tech bubble all the eyes are on every pipeline and every monday morning
44:51 i have a pipeline call with the rest of my team and my manager where i am being taken through every um deal in my pipeline and i'm forced to justify why i'm in there why i'm using the company's resources when he needs the same resources in order to pursue that deal and when you learn that when you learn that you learn the essence of really what it is to use your time well to understand to empathize and yet move towards a specific goal and i became known as
45:28 pretty a pretty good qualifier you know a pretty good qualifier so that i'm not spending any time on the phone or in someone's office with someone who i have a very very small chance of closing that deal with so you learn how to actually ask all these questions and set things up to have them qualify themselves out of the deal you know so at the end of the conversation they're going you know what maybe you're right maybe we're maybe we're not ready for this yet and make us this was going to be a big
46:03 undertaking and it's going to be painful it's going to be painful you know because we're going to come in there we're going to change your business around and you have to be you know you have to be set for that and part of my job was to kind of set the stage for that and that becomes now i'm taking all of these words and emotions and empathetic things and i'm now codifying them into a sales methodology and one of the things about the tech industry is that you are it's very process oriented i mean if you listen to any of these tech guys today
46:39 they talk in nothing but terms of process process process process on all of the vocabulary around that and it's a very true thing and then i get into the liquor industry and these sons of are living out in like 1935 okay i mean there is some old school thinking here some gangster stuff going on in the liquor industry i came into the liquor industry but like i'm all processed and everything like this and i'm going dude it's like the only reason you're you're here is because your relationship with this guy are you kidding me you know that's gonna fall apart in a minute so it was uh you know and so you have to
47:16 readjust again how to readjust again um and we're we're um we just have about 10 minutes left and i wanted to make sure so one of the um uh points that that you uh that we you know uh uh i'm losing my vocabulary uh that we we wrote back and forth about um was this idea that everybody should learn to sell something right so i i sense that that philosophy has come out of what we've been talking about you know all along here but if you would
47:51 kind of flesh that out for us what does that mean from your perspective how do you see that benefiting us professionally well you as you can see i've been sort of like taking you down the path of that process right and uh and at the very end of this one of the things that i learned that you know what i've been doing all through this was selling and what i've been doing was actually living a purpose and this gets back to our first question i took an acting i took a marketing workshop for actors um when i was uh was an actor and one of the things that he
48:28 taught us to do is find out what is your purpose in life and it gave us four signifiers one was that it was uh it was made of simple words so no overblown philosophy very simple words that you can speak to anyone should you choose to share it number two it should be larger than your grasp it should be one step past your grasp because when you think about if i've achieved my purpose then what's after that right so it should be something that you're not really going to be able to accomplish in this lifetime
49:05 number three you should be able to activate it with every decision that you make and number four when you look back you've been doing it since you were six years old and my purpose in life is i bring change by getting the word out it's that simple and when i looked throughout my entire life i make change by getting the word out and that brings me to sales it's invoking change in someone by getting whatever that word is that story that narrative you know the back end
49:40 processes whatever that thing is in the process of doing that in the process of selling to somebody there's no in selling there is no just like there was no back in my uh my uh my meisner class you get to the heart of who you are when you are forced to sell something for a living you get to know who you are you get to know who you are better than any other indicator because it is going to tell you whether or not i'm the guy that can get up early in the morning and do this i can actually kind of keep a focused concentration over time i like
50:17 working with people i want to bring value to people i'm happy when other people succeed i'm motivated to be able to do this um all of these things that a good salesperson is i'm you know i've learned to be good with my time i still struggle with it um uh all of these things that is what sales is that's what good sales is good sales is bringing value to someone else so in my sales seminars that i do i ask people what is sales and people talk about well you know it's convincing somebody or bringing the happiness i said no sales is a set of
50:53 methodologies and practices that ensures a predictable outcome in which there is an exchange of value between human beings and therefore it's the oldest profession in the world and i'll make the i'll make the argument that we develop language in order to sell to each other and so that makes it the noblest profession in the world and when you engage yourself at some time in your life and selling a product now you got to get a product that you feel good about you can't be selling
51:28 crap out there right you know um you got to have something that you can really emotionally get behind and then your job is to get other people to adopt that you learn about yourself you learn about them you learn about what no really means you know what learn about what yes really means you under you get to understand your here's limits example i was selling software i was actually doing pretty good at it i went to the dentist the dentist says so you're not really interested in chewing your food when you're 70. echo what are you talking about he goes you're grinding your teeth i go i am not he goes yeah here are the
52:04 x-rays and he's showing me i'm grinding down my mower so i was unable to shift that away from me i couldn't get rid of it and it was causing disruption in my personal life as well i had come to understand the limit of what i can do i get into the whiskey industry i got rid of the mouth thing because now everybody wants to see the whiskey guy you know so it's different but what what i learned was i was not right i was not set up to sell that really complex business transformational software that was causing too much
52:39 stress on me i learned something about myself and i never make that mistake again i'm selling a product that you know i'm a whiskey salesman i'm a merchant of happiness you know so i'm bringing it but i'm bringing happiness in a completely different way and i'm selling a tangible product now instead of a of a concept or an idea but that whole idea brought me again closer to who i was and to and to what i am and what where my edges are at and and and what's soft inside of me and what's hard inside of me and what needs to change and what need and sales focuses you sales focuses you like nothing else
53:16 nothing else and i i i i you know i'm a sales guy that wrote a whiskey book that's all i am i'm not a whiskey writer i'm a guy who can put sentences together i know how to tell a story but essentially um i wrote that book from the perspective of a guy who has been on the street you know i was on the street i'm in the bars i'm in the retail shops i'm with the distributors and everything like that i wrote it from that perspective that was a perspective that i knew and that's why people are engaging with the book so well because it has that empathetic tone to it but i'm selling the book you know it's
53:51 again it's a it's you know it's a it's a book filled in a world of books just like it that no one needs and so you have to find a way to bring value to people you have to no one cares that's the number one thing i do in my seminars nobody cares about you nobody cares until you make them care and that's the job of the salesman the job of the salesman what do you say to someone who says i can't sell i don't like to sell i'm not a salesman you know all those all those things because i i have those you know i think we've had somewhat similar
54:26 lives i know when i started my first business now it's you know going back to the mid 80s you know and and i thought hey i got a college degree i'm a smart guy right start my business and i'll become successful it's like wow i had no idea what i didn't know right and i really stumbled along until i learned how to do things like sell and and really be able to understand you know i look at sales as how do i solve a problem that somebody can i solve a problem that somebody else has if i can't do i know someone who can
55:01 that that's really what it is and you're you nailed it right there it's not me making sure that you get this in your hand and you give me some money for it it has nothing to do with that it's about me can i bring value to your life can what i have in my hand bring value to your life right you know in the liquor industry we're in the three-tier system so um you can't sell directly to consumers we have to sell through the the tiers and in every case you have to help them understand that they're going to make money off of this so everybody has to make money so you're constantly selling value and that's what
55:38 i tell people first of all you've got the wrong idea this is not always be closing always be closing this is not alec baldwin in the first you know 30 minutes of glengarry glen ross coffees for closers and third prizes you're fired you know right it's not that it's actually it's actually not it's not abc it's abv always bring value always bring value and a b fee abv actually works as a pun in the liquor industry because that's you know alcohol by volume um i always tell people wealth comes from value delivered
56:13 yeah it's there you go that's exactly what it's wealth comes from value delivered and i can tell you that my life i don't make an enormous amount of money i don't need to make enormous amount of money i never set out to make an enormous amount of money what i found out that i was really good at was bringing value into the world in which i can immediately have some effect on and then basking in the reflected glow of other people's value you know um if i can make people happy
56:49 around me um they're i'm going to actually be able to bask in that glow i'm going to get something back from that you know you can talk about the universe giving things back to you and all that stuff but you know that's really what that's to me that's sales that that's how you get to know who you are that's how you get to know whether you're cut out for this or not not everyone's cut out for it and um a lot of people have you know the the wrong attitude going in that i have to you know pressure somebody and convince them it's you know everyone's dawn draper suddenly out of mad men you know um you know um but it's not it's really you know let
57:25 me let me let me listen to you let me hear you talk about the things where you want to go and let me see if i can match up what i have in order to get you there and if it works out then we'll have an exchange of value that's right for you and it's right for me and we're going to both walk out of here with something you know stephen covey used to call it you know you know the win-win-win right you know so um so yeah so that's that's kind of like where i think the philosophy is that that's the uh that's why everyone should learn how to sell one thing uh at some time in their life because then you figure out who you are
58:01 i'm i'm curious your response to this thought and this we'll kind of have to wrap it up on this um someone who tries or someone who you know works on learning to sell and in the end just bombs out is that still a worthwhile um 100 oh my god are you kidding me we cannot get on the freeway unless we understand exactly where the coolest acts are you know we we have to know what our limitations are at i've failed miserably i've been fired from jobs i've actually some of the most best
58:36 interactions i've had was when i got fired from a software job it was like it was like this guy did this so well he's absolutely right i don't belong here he he's sitting on my other shoulder but yeah failing is part of it i mean that's exactly you live to fail right i mean no you live to succeed and you accept the failures right and then that actually just brings you to the next chapter yeah you know i we we could talk for another i think two or three hours there's
59:11 there's so much that we we didn't have a chance to unpack here so i'll definitely have to have you back again and you and i are going to have to sit down and meet for a drink sometime absolutely absolutely i would love that i you know i just want to see if i can kind of recap some of the ideas that you brought up here right here at the end so uh one is is to um you know the the the um the the incident with your foreman really brings to mind this idea that you know we get advice and sometimes we really have to listen to the advice and really take it in
59:46 right now you i think you were fortunate that it was put put in a way that you couldn't not listen to it right and and and you know frankly people probably couldn't get away with that in the workplace these days right right but sometimes it's really worth listening to that advice even if it goes against what we really think of ourselves it's worth considering and and maybe we'll reject it but maybe we should accept this i think that's one lesson that i would i would draw from from you know your your professional um experience another is the importance of really understanding who we are
60:21 yeah right because in the end our professional if we're going to have professional success it's going to be an expression of really what is inside of us you know a lot of people talk about well you got to do something you're passionate about and and you know i'm not sure and this is a question for the next time we meet maybe i'm not sure that you were necessarily passionate about everything that you did but it was certainly an expression of who robin robinson is and perhaps it's more important that we be authentic to what we do i think that's
60:56 that's more of the word i think that's more i think it's the authentic authenticity uh look you know passion i don't give i don't put a lot of stake in and the great uh visual our visual artist chuck close once said that uh inspiration is for amateurs the rest of us just got up and went to work in the morning you know right right i tell so many people in many ways life is an iterative process yeah that's that's the thing and i and i think too that's another that maybe that will make that the third lesson because much of your life was with just it was trying these things trying them until they worked figuring out what can i do
61:32 what's really not within you know my can and and and taking those those next steps a lot of the steps were they were really small steps along the way but they took you you know very very far and that can sometimes be frustrating we want that success right away and yet if it's going to be authentically ours i you know we're going to have to be patient with ourselves and our development so there's i i don't believe that anymore that there's uh you know uh you know and i've got this thing written on my wall here i clipped this out of the newspaper back in the 1990s written by robert reich who was then uh
62:07 clinton's uh labor secretary and he was giving a um a commencement address and he talked about reich's new rules of order and one of the things that he talked about this is the mid 90s now he said forget the ladder the ladder is gone we're talking about the succession ladder inside of any company right the ladder is gone think about the web think about 360 degree spider web like this right and what you're doing is you're picking up skills and then you're taking them over here and you're going to use them again and you're going to develop them you're going to use them again
62:42 your next job probably hasn't been created yet and that when when you can get your arms around that and and and bring that into you and get comfortable with the fact that there's no straight paths anymore you know that i think is you know that that is you get closer to a sense of personal fulfillment on that i you know what i that's a great way to sort of wrap this episode up because uh unfortunately we have to robin thank you so much for i mean not just a a wonderfully instructive story but also
63:19 just a lot of laughs maybe you're not doing stand-up anymore but you certainly have not let lost your gift to i'm doing sit down now i'm doing sit down now i'm getting older i'm getting older kevin i gotta sit down now [Laughter] don't talk about getting older because i'm too close behind you [Laughter] so thank you all very much for joining us thank you to my guest robin robinson and thank you all for coming and watching the way to wow show people making money we will be back again next wednesday 12 30 pacific time
63:55 3 30 p.m eastern time and the other two time zones one hour each way um and join us again we'll have another great guest to to talk with you and i'm gonna sign off the way i always do which is um to remind her marie darling you are still my bell thank you all so much that's great