Returning Guest, Roderick Jefferson - Stroke of Success: Why Being Irreplaceable at Work is a Myth

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

Today we are joined by a returning guest who has reached the literal summits of the corporate world.

He's been a senior leader at Salesforce, PayPal, and Oracle, and he literally wrote the book on sales enablement.

But today, we're talking about a different kind of mastery.

Imagine reaching the peak of your career, only to wake up surviving a stroke with a 2% chance of survival.

Roderick Jefferson is back with us to discuss his powerful new book and movement, Stroke of Success.

This isn't just a survival story.

It's a strategic roadmap for every entrepreneur and executive who has ever traded their health for a headline or their peace for a paycheck.

We're going to talk about how to redefine resilience while wholeness is the ultimate KPI and how to build a life that is successful on the inside.

Inside as it looks on the outside.

Join me now for my conversation with Roderick Jefferson.

Hey, Roderick.

Welcome back to the program.

We're delighted to have you back again, my man.

It has been ages since we got together.

I am so happy to finally catch up with you.

You're a busy man.

You're a busy man, too.

And lots going on, for sure.

You know, our last conversation that we had was around one of your areas of expertise, which was Sales Enablement 3.0 in your book and which you know is a must read.

And I know it is a good read because it's in most of the business schools in America.

And so where you've migrated and you've kind of made a little bit of a 360 turn here, and you've got a new book called Stroke of Success.

And I'm excited to talk about that one because it's.

I mean, it's good and it's bad.

It's something that's occurred and happened to you.

But I'm going to let you set the stage.

So let's go back to your work in sales enablement.

You're focused on that, and then something happens.

And that something that happened was a major pivotal point for you, and it changed the direction of your life.

So let's start there.

Absolutely.

So let's go back to the future.

So I've gotten to the level of VP, SVP.

I've been in corporate for 30 years.

Right.

Oracle, Salesforce, Marketo, ebay bomb.

Yep.

Yeah.

And it got really well.

But a couple of things happened.

One, I got to that VP level And a really bad change happened, and that was I created this character that I called rj.

RJ was the quintessential vp.

I had the right car, the right look, the right shoes, lived in the right neighborhood kids, went to the right school.

But it was me trying to fit in or overcompensate for things that were missing in me personally.

And so I was doing this as a mask and even got worse when I moved up to svp.

Because svp, I really became a leader of leaders, right?

I wasn't a practitioner anymore in enablement.

I was just moving things around and playing demon chess, if you will.

And so it was almost sales kickoff time.

We were doing a visit and a walkthrough at the hotel we're gonna do in LA for our skl.

And we were at dinner, I had my most of my team with me, and I woke up looking at everyone, and they were looking really terrified and scared.

And I go, what happened here?

What's going on?

They're like, boss, you fell asleep in the middle of a sentence on the head, hit the table hard.

I looked up, I'm like, you know, it's been a long day, maybe eight.

We've been walking hills up and down stairs.

Maybe I got narcolepsy trying to play it off.

But I said, you know what?

In all xy, I'm going to go get some rest because I am a little tired.

I wasn't very far, my room being from the restaurant, but it felt like I was walking in quicksand.

I had to remind myself, lift your right leg, lift your left leg, lift your right leg.

And I got back to my room and I was sweating.

I was so tired.

And I'm like, I know I'm not that far out of shape.

And so I did a little work, prepared for the next day, which was the big day to do all of our details.

And then I was supposed to fly home.

I get up the next morning, and I felt even more tired than I was when I fell asleep.

Now, thankfully, my wife and I, every time I'm on the road, we jump on a call, hey, what's going on at home?

How are your kids?

What's going on with you?

What's your day look like?

What's happening with me?

And when I heard, my head sounded exactly like what you're hearing right now.

What she heard was.

And she said, this doesn't sound like that.

Now, thankfully, she had just had a friend who had recently had a stroke.

And so she walked me through protocol.

Say your name what's your middle name?

I don't know.

Roderick's my middle name.

I should probably know that.

Count to 10.

I was like, really?

1, 7, 52, 95, 16, 43.

Say your ABC.

A, B, L, Q, X, W, Y, H, B, U.

She said, if I need you to jump on FaceTime with me, I want to see if your face is rude.

And it wasn't.

But you could tell that I was just out of it.

So she called my director.

And I say this every time I tell the story.

Tim Carlson, thank you for saving my life that day.

And I mean that from the bottom of my heart, because he called 911, he got emergency out.

They took me in an ambulance into the emergency room.

Here's where things get really crazy.

They only kept me for 90 minutes and released me.

Now I'm stuttering so hard I can't even talk.

I can't count, I can't say my edc.

Not only did they release me, but it was the day I was supposed to fly home.

So they take me to the airport, I'm literally dropped, passed out.

They put me into a wheelchair, rolled me onto the plane.

I land.

In the midst of this, he has talked to my wife and she's already making preparations to meet me at the airport because we live in San Francisco Bay Area and I've got to fly back up from la.

It's only an hour and a half.

Yeah.

But here's where it got really interesting.

I get there, she takes me and rushes me to the emergency room.

They've got a neurologist, they've got a cardiologist on site.

They take me in right away, put me in a stroke protocol.

First thing they say to my wife is, your husband is a miracle because he's mid stroke.

Cabin pressure, altitude, there's no reason this guy should be alive.

Right?

But that was the best that was going to happen in this story, by the way.

So I'll warn people.

They take me, they do all kinds of scans.

And so the normal heart squeezes at about 55 to 65% on average.

Right.

When it gets down to 20%, cardiac arrest hits.

Either you fall, you die in your sleep, or you get a massive heart attack and you're still dead.

Yeah, well, I was at 22% heart function.

That gave me two chances.

So they admitted me and we move forward.

Let's fast forward 10, 12 days, two weeks out.

I'm having a really hard time breathing.

Now, bear in mind, this is during COVID and this was only four years ago.

Right.

20, 21, October 28th were the day.

And it's getting worse now.

I can't talk.

My entire left side is paralyzed.

I can't use my arms or my legs.

And at night, I hear code blue.

Lights are flashing, machines are beeping.

And it's my room now.

I go from beep, beep to be.

I'm flatlined.

I don't leave the room.

I float up to the corner of the room.

I'm looking down on the doctors and nurses sucking fluids out of me.

They're doing chest compression.

And I am flatlined now.

It sounded a lot like Charlie Brown's teacher.

And I couldn't tell what they were saying.

But what happened now is.

And I wear these glasses because old man stuff comes with the territory.

Yeah, it does.

I didn't have my glasses on.

I saw the most vibrant blues, yellows and oranges and purple I've ever seen in my life.

And I look to my left and I'm floating in the room up in the corner.

And it's my mom.

My mom died in 1999.

This was only four years ago.

And I say, okay, mom been faithful servant.

I've done everything that I can here.

I'm ready to go home.

Let's go.

She says, no, baby, I was sent to tell you that they're going to figure out what's going on with you.

But I have to tell you now you have a new purpose in life.

She told me my marching orders, if you will.

And I'm sucked back into my body.

She's gone.

I'm looking around for her.

She is gone.

And it wasn't a mirage because I know my mom.

Yeah.

And she had the same purple mumu.

She always wore the same look.

She looked younger than I remembered her.

But now I get sucked back into my body.

And now I'm still flatlined.

And I hear the one word that nobody ever wants to hear.

Clear.

Yeah.

He starts rubbing the pad.

He's coming down to zap me, to try and bring me back and restart my heart.

As he's coming down, I go from beep to beep.

And I grab his hand.

Thank God he's on my right side because remember, my entire left side is paralyzed now.

I grab his hand.

He stops.

He's yelling out, ert.

And I find out later it's the emergency response team now.

They all come in and they take over.

So fast forward.

I have to go to physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, learn how to tie shoes, do a knot, just bone all this all over Again.

And they finally released me and I still can't talk now.

I lost 40 pounds because the muscles in my throat were so weak and I couldn't swallow anything I was eating insure.

I went from not being able to walk to being on a walker, to crutches, to a cane, and then being able to walk again, learning how to talk all over it.

I had so many different things that I had to work on speech wise.

And I realized two things, right?

One is the space between your brain and your mouth is a lot wider than it looks like.

And secondly, I realized how far my couch was from my bathroom because couldn't walk.

But it made me appreciate all.

And I was telling you before we started that the one thing I say all the time about this is I am so thankful I had that stroke now, by the way, this was my second stroke.

I had one before I didn't even know it.

I realize now from the American Stroke association that one out of every four people, not just Americans, but people over the age of 25 in the world, will incur a stroke.

You may not even know it.

That's why it's called the silent killer.

Yeah.

What's interesting to me is you've spent, as you said, 25, 30 years at the top of the corporate ladder at some of the giants, and you've always lived the always on executive lifestyle.

So your definition of success has changed the morning, you know, when you woke up in recovery versus going into it.

And, and I share that.

I share that.

You know, in our 20s and 30s and 40s, where it's all about accumulation, status, image, all that's why we choose the job in the first place.

We write books, we love speaking in front of audiences.

It's, it's great, it's an awesome job and it is a great role and it's a privilege to be able to do what we're doing.

And now you measure success by wholeness.

And it's that realization that if you're not healthy enough to enjoy the fruit of your labor, then the labor itself is a failure.

And, and it's changed the way you've looked at it.

Let's talk about the, the 2% perspective.

So you faced a 2% survival rate.

So when the odds are that slim, the noise of business, the emails, the quotas, the politics, it disappears.

What was the none of that matter?

Yeah, exactly.

What was the first corporate habit you realized you had to permanently delete to protect your, your new life?

Great question.

I had to put me and my health first.

It Wasn't about my team.

It wasn't about the quotas, it wasn't about the jets and helicopters and all the people that I had dinners with and all of that and President Obama and blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

What it was about is every day I woke up now, I had the same prayer right now that I had when I was in hospital.

And that was not make me whole, not get me wrong.

God, just let me wake up to see another day and allow me to be able to help someone else, not necessarily with a stroke, just in general to give.

And that's why my new hashtag is give to give.

It is.

What can I do?

Remember I said earlier my mom gave me where marching orders were different one she said I need to start taking care of myself better and putting myself first and being focused on self care.

And it's not selfishness.

The second one, that every day it's my job to give at least one person a smile that they would not have gotten had I not come in contact with and or make them just be seen.

And my mom called them the invisible.

The people that you check in the hotels, the valet, the waiters or some kind.

That's just the first at the supermarket.

Yeah, it could be somebody at the supermarket that looks down.

I always carry a couple of extra smiles in my back pocket now so I can hand them out.

And it's amazing what happens when you make someone feel seen and worth.

Not just worthy, but worth.

So the first thing I did was it's interesting because I actually put this up as a post on LinkedIn today.

And it is every morning after I do my morning routine, I come into my office before I look at my email.

Because if you do that now you're firefighter, I want to stay in fire prevention.

And you're also reactive.

I've got a whiteboard right up here in front of me.

And every day I write three things.

Those are three things professionally that I'm going to do today before I walk away from my laptop.

The fourth one is something just for me.

And it's not like a cheat day when you're on a diet, right?

This is literally something that's ingrained.

Certain days I sit in my backyard and just watch the hummingbirds and put some sun on my face.

Other times it's taking the dog for a long walk.

Sometimes, honestly, it's barbecue and Baskin Robbins.

But it's just for me and I don't feel bad about it.

I don't feel selfish.

It literally is.

I'm recharging my batteries every day rather than waiting till the weekend to recharge.

And the other thing is something you and I talked about.

I used to block out Wednesdays.

No meetings, just admin or whatever I want.

Yeah.

Now I block out Fridays because it gives me a three day weekend.

And I have a small two year old granddaughter.

We get her for a few hours every Friday.

If the stroke didn't change your behaviors, the two year old certainly will.

Well, because now I'm focused more on legacy.

What am I leaving?

And I don't mean material things, but memories, engagement and interaction.

Experiences.

Yeah.

And experiences.

Absolutely.

No, I get it.

100.

It's funny how you.

It's older and I want to talk about this ambition versus well, being.

Right.

And you address this because we start off focus, you know, we're in our teens.

We want, we want, we want.

We want things.

We want the car, we want the woman, the girl, the partner.

We want the job.

We want the.

We want the logo.

We want the salary, we want the products.

Big tattoo on my arm.

It says ego is the enemy.

Right.

Well, I woke up one morning and it was on my arm.

And I think my wife roofied me and had me tattooed.

I say, hey honey, what are you about getting this.

And she goes, I think you should just read your right arm.

And that's Marcus Aurelius, one of the Stoics from 2,000 years ago.

Right.

And so it was.

And it still rings true.

Completely true.

And what's interesting is I've had to evolve.

And it wasn't probably till I was about 50 and I started realizing, I'm going, you know what?

None of this matters.

I'm all of time.

And the family and my children were sacrificed, my older ones particularly, because I was building a career on the road.

But when the grandbaby started coming, it's like it changed the game.

It was no longer about you anymore.

No.

And it's such a joy.

And so Friday morning we get two.

And Friday afternoon I get one.

And sometimes Friday evening get another two.

Loved.

And so they'll.

And it's.

They're full days.

And yeah, they're tiring too, but in a good way.

And you're not just feeding your family now, you're also feeding your soul.

Oh, 100%.

And the other ones are soul sucking.

Like your job.

It can be soul sucking because none of that is going with us and at all.

My uncle used to say something that.

That rings like.

Or he says, have nephew, have you ever seen a U haul behind A hearse?

Yeah.

Never know because you can't take it with you.

None of that really matters.

No, I was actually at a panel where they had, you know, T. Boom Pickens, Warren Buffett, all these great billionaires, and they're all in older suits talking about their old suits, but every single one of them, there was about seven of them, all said they would give up everything they've ever done to maintain their health.

And that's why you see them 80 and 90 years old, still working and still functioning all right.

They just work on their own schedules, they do their own things, but health was the number one.

People would pay any price.

And it's like when you have a granddaughter, you know, if that granddaughter needed some financial support for a medical procedure, but you consider it done in a sec.

Yeah.

It's where.

Where do I send the check?

Because that's the value.

We use the money, but we want.

To, I think money, for me, money just buys independence.

To your point, you now own your own challenge.

Freedom.

Yeah, freedom.

Buy freedom.

That's what it means to me too.

So entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, executives are often told that balance is a lie, that obsession is the only way to win.

So in stroke of success, you challenge that.

How can a high performer stay competitive without sacrificing their physical survival?

It starts with never forget your why what we were just talking about.

Right.

Because it's why we do all of this family, is it?

Your significant other.

But you've got again, take care of you health as well.

And the second piece is, and I wish I would have learned that earlier than my 50s.

What I'm about to say, whether you're an entrepreneur or in corporate, that job is here to make a profit, not friends.

If you're gone, it doesn't really care.

No.

Someone else will step into the gap.

So stop thinking that you're irreplaceable at work because you're not, and start acting like you're irreplaceable at home.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And I think you talk about it as you basically are this corporate athlete.

So.

No.

Professional athletes train 247 without recovery.

They break.

Yeah.

You can only have so many game days.

And I see professionals, myself included, where I have a couple of days a week that are game days.

If we have a game.

If we have a game day every day, and I'm talking full throttle.

Yeah, we're gone.

Right.

You can't have those every day.

You will burn out on those things.

And we need, in my mind, we need recovery days.

Rejuvenation days equal to the amount of game days.

And so in professional sports, and these are the most finely tuned athletes, it's one or two game days a week, maybe three.

And I think people were so driven by, by the things we want or we think that we need.

And you know, my dad always said it best, he goes, you spend the first half of your life accumulating.

You want this, you want that, and then you spend the last half getting rid of it all.

Absolutely.

You just realize it's just a, it's just a game.

Just the older we get, we realize there are less physical things we actually need.

And to go back to something you were just saying, as a former high level athlete myself, you learned early on that when you're working hard in your training, it builds up lactic acid in your muscle.

So you need those off days, those massages, those rest days to break up that lactic acid.

The same thing happens with your brain and your soul.

If you don't take time off to recharge your batteries, you can look at how you want to.

I'm charging my batteries.

I can't pour from an empty cup.

All of it is true.

If I am in poor health, I am good to no one and for nothing.

So take some time and stop feeling bad about being selfish.

It's okay.

Because literally, I believe selfishness, if you do it right, it becomes self care.

Yeah.

And you don't need permission from anyone for you to do self care.

There's an interesting correlation.

You know, you're the master when it comes to Sales Enablement 3.0 and Sales Enablement in general.

We built a whole career on that.

Thank you.

I see a nice correlation to how did you apply your own enablement frameworks, breaking down silos, creating bridges to your own physical and mental recovery.

So let's call it life enablement.

All right.

Yeah, that's a great statement.

Oh, of life enablement, I think what I did was, first of all, I did an analysis.

Whatever does not serve me needed to go.

Whether it was friendships, associations, subscription, whatever it was, I had to clean house first.

Right.

And I had to do it on my own terms.

And secondly, I looked at where are things that are literally making me better in life and what is just an echo chamber because it made me feel good.

I had to look at the difference between ego and ambition.

Right.

Is this serving me and others or is this just placating my ego?

Then I looked at it pretty and go, the five piece that's people, processes, platforms, programs, et cetera and so I started building those out in a way that was scalable and repeatable and AI was a big piece of it because now I can work smarter, not harder, and I can build multiplicity.

And the last piece was I had to limit access to me.

Now I don't think I'm some big celebrity, maybe in the enablement world, but I was allowing too many different people too close to me, if that makes sense.

So I had to make myself a bit more untouchable for my own well being.

Yeah, I hear you.

And so I don't do as many.

Want space for yourself?

Yeah, I don't do as many maintainees as I used to have online courses.

Now rather than speaking live, I don't speak more than X number of times.

And like we're doing now, I'm not going to do three, four podcasts a week.

I'll do one, maybe two in a week, but that's it.

And I also had to once I got my business coach, he taught me something, a valuable lesson I want to share with him.

If it's not something that you're putting out that's going to help others, then it's just marketing.

If you're putting something out that's going to drive business and going to help others and it's business development.

So whatever was marketing, I just put it aside.

Then I also realized when I did that inventory, Michael, that I could literally go two plus years without creating.

I love canva, don't get me wrong.

But I could go two plus years without creating another single asset because that was my happy place.

It was what made me feel good.

It was a great dopamine and it worked out because now I've got all these things to be able to put out.

Now it's about how do you message and position it differently for others rather than marketing.

That's a great insight.

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And now back to my conversation with Roderick Jefferson.

It's interesting how we get here in the journey in life because I've talked to other people in our age group because you and I are very similar.

You're catching up to me anyway, but.

I hope I don't ever catch up with you.

That means you're not here.

I don't know.

I'm going to try and stall it.

I'm trying to stall my time and bite.

And what's interesting is I actually figured it because it's going fast and the older you get.

Oh yeah, ramps up.

It accelerates thinking, oh, I got lots of time to do this as you get a little older.

Trust me, it moves quickly for me.

What's interesting, the way to slow it down that I've discovered slow down is you have to unplug.

Unplug.

Don't check your emails, don't look on the computer, get off your phone.

Just try.

And you'll be sitting there and it goes, this is uncore and it's lunchtime.

Right.

And you've spent it seems like a long, long day, but the time can just disappear and none of this is going to, you know, we're not saving dolphins or we're not solving world peace.

No, let's talk about the hidden costs of the climb because you've held roles.

Oracle, NetApp, LinkedIn.

Looking back, what were the early warning signs of burnout or health neglect that you ignored in favor of maybe the next promotion, the next level up?

And what should our listeners be looking for in themselves?

Yeah, that's a great question.

When you get comfortable with doing email at 8, 9, 10, 11 o' clock at night, you've got a problem.

Right?

Because the purpose of especially corporate America is there should always be more in your inbox than you can actually do.

When you've got a dry inbox.

That's when you start worrying.

The other thing is putting parameters around time.

Like you were saying seven o' clock every night.

Turn your phone, turn the noisemakers off of your phone so that you don't have this Pavlovs dollar mentality.

Yeah.

And then the other piece is figure out how.

And I had to learn this.

And I know it sounds crazy, I had to learn how to be present.

I'm the guy that would be watching TV while I'm scrolling on my phone on social media.

Now, there's no such thing as multitasking.

What you're doing literally is stretching your brain to the nth degree.

It's not just burning the candle, it built in.

Eventually it's going to meet in the middle.

That story I told you earlier, that was me meeting in the middle.

You may say, oh, I'm not worried about a stroke.

Oh, but wait, let's go back to what I said about mental health.

I had the first stroke and it could have just felt like it was a little dizziness, I was tired, I was a little off balance.

But if you don't listen to your body, then you don't know the differences.

The other piece is about being present, Remember in an 18 month period.

London, Paris, Geneva, Sao Paulo, Rio, Toronto, Beijing, Hong Kong City in 18 months.

I was never home.

Remember I said my why is to provide and protect for my family.

But I had gotten into this eagle thing where I'm flying in corporate jets, corporate helicopters, high end hotels, celebrity filled events.

And I got comfortable with that.

Yeah, I had to get comfortable being uncomfortable with that because I remember coming home one time from a two week trip I never learned.

Usually I'd come home, see the kids, see my wife a little bit and then hit the dry cleaners and I'm back out.

This time I was home for a little bit and I said, babe, I've been on the road for two weeks.

I am sick of hotel food.

I just won greasy taco.

My little son happened to be staying there, he looked at me and he goes, dad, Thursday shake and bake.

Yeah.

The light went off and it said to me, they have a whole life that I'm not included in.

All I do is blending it.

Yeah.

And that I missed birthday parties.

I miss my daughter's 8th grade graduation.

I miss football games, basketball games, dance recital.

And at some point after the stroke I went, that's not going to happen again because you can't get that back.

You cannot buy memories.

No, no, that's right, you missed out on.

Sure, it could be recorded, but it's not the same.

And I talked to my kids earlier and they're much older, they're, you know, in their 30s and late 20s now.

And I said, did I provide a good life?

And they said, absolutely, that.

An amazing life.

I said, what would you have changed?

And he said to a team, both of them, we wish you would have been home.

Yeah.

We would have given up the vacation, the cars, the clothes.

All that I wanted.

My dad sitting out watching my recital, my dad watching my cheerleading competition, just like the other parents were there.

One, I was gone so much.

One of my daughter's friends actually thought I worked in the CIA because I was never home and my daughter couldn't.

She was yelling, serious job.

Yeah.

And she didn't know how to explain what I did.

So her friend thought, oh, sure, you don't know what your dad does.

He's not allowed to tell you he's in CIA.

Yeah, yeah.

And I can laugh at that now, but in hindsight, that's funny.

It's scary how comfortable we get with that.

So ask one question and I'll stop talking for a moment.

And I want to challenge the folks watching this and listening in your audience.

When you're honest with yourself.

You may love yourself, but can you look in the mirror and say you like yourself?

The person that's looking back at you?

No.

Well said.

Like, I think the point is, listen to the whispers before they come.

Screams and chronic fatigue, irritability.

Missing the milestones of life.

Yeah.

They're not badges of honor.

And some.

No, they're the check engine lights of your life.

And look at it.

So, no, I think it makes sense.

Let's talk about setbacks as stepping stones.

So you describe stroke of success as a personal success accelerator.

How can a professional who has just experienced a major career setback, maybe a failed business or a layoff in particular, in the age of AI, people are losing their jobs.

Use your recovery roadmap to bounce back faster.

Yeah.

I think the first thing is to be able to look yourself in the face and be completely honest with yourself.

Why did this not work?

Was I not prepared?

Right?

Did I not do everything I wanted to?

Was I all in?

Or did I focus on things that really weren't important?

And so let's say the business failed.

Is it because I didn't have a strong enough business plan?

Did I not follow the business plan?

Did I, like I was saying with Canva earlier, did I focus on things that made me feel good versus things that were actually making me revenue?

And you've got all of these available tools.

Are you using it for marketing or for business development?

It's time for a complete overall and reevaluation.

Yeah.

What does success look like?

That's the first question, right?

Truly, what does success mean for You.

How are we going to define it?

Yeah.

Independently.

Yeah.

How you define then and only then can you reverse engineer and work towards that.

It could be like us Fridays are off.

Okay, that's a great start.

But then what's the next step after that?

Right, good point.

I'm going to start doing some homework.

Well, and I know you talk about resilience and I believe it's not about getting back to normal.

It's about incorporating the change used to set back to audit what wasn't working and build more stable, purposeful foundation for the next chapter, whatever that's going to be.

So no, it's interesting.

Let's talk about ape wholeness and protecting wholeness in a remote AI world.

As we move further into the age of AI and 247 connectivity, that bridge between work and home has vanished for many.

They're working out whenever leaving the job.

Right.

And we deal with that as entrepreneurs, you and I.

Absolutely.

I have a hard time shut it off.

My studio is in my home.

I work.

I have to actually shut it off.

Yeah.

And I call it, I schedule it.

I schedule wind down.

My job's to get dinner, grocery shopping and dinner.

So that's one of my roles.

And 4 o', clock, 4:30.

I'm a 4:35am Guy.

So I'm at it earlier and I call it the daily wind up.

And so the first part of that day is for me, I don't not to your point.

I'm not checking emails, I'm not looking at that part at all till the work hours.

Right.

And then I don't actually check emails all day.

I process emails.

So I have a couple of times where I process them so I'm not touching them again just like I'm processing anything.

And I work on that time to my own personal development.

First part of the day, first few hours are all about me.

So as we work out of home, between work and home, it's kind of vanished for many of us.

What is the practical boundary that you've set for yourself that every entrepreneur could or business professional could adopt today?

Yeah, I'll give you a couple of those.

The first is on Sunday.

I take a little time and I stage all of my social media for the week.

That way it's not hanging over me and it's not on my shoulders.

It's done that day and then I schedule and it just rolls out.

The next is on my calendar because I use calendly.

Like a lot of us, I block out times for mental recharge.

So I don't do two, three back to back back meetings.

And here's the thing, even if you work in corporate or an entrepreneur, especially if you're entrepreneur, let's not forget, if it's not on your calendar, it doesn't exist.

But I'll say the end because of that too.

You own your calendar, so you determine what's blocked out.

Right.

Because we all know if you got a calendar like how many times can have people schedule the next available job.

That's how it works most of the time.

So block that out.

Right.

And then the third piece, which is extremely important.

Every Friday I take time to now take stock of what did I actually get done this week versus where did I move forward?

Was I productive or was I just busy?

Yeah.

And the final piece.

And I just started doing this the other day and learned from my friend Cheryl Parks.

She gave me a prompt whereby I told Claude all the different things I have going on from a project perspective.

And I said, build out a 30 day sequencing process.

Here's what I should be working on, here's what I can kind of wait later to do, and here's what you shouldn't even be looking at in the next 30 days.

And it's amazing how much more time I got back because I didn't feel like I was a pinball trying to do everything.

My old adage has always been I can do anything.

I can't do everything.

I was trying to do everything.

But with that sequencing piece, I'm constantly reminded I don't have to do everything all at once.

Space it out and.

Because most of the time.

Would you agree, Michael, that our deadlines are mostly self imposed?

100%.

Yeah.

The work always expands to the time we allow for it.

And like sometimes, you know, we create tasks and projects.

Yeah.

But one thing I've noticed that we think are important because we like to look busy and productive.

But I find if I leave them alone long enough, they disappear all on their own.

All right?

And everything can't be a P0 or a P1 or not the years.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Let's talk about the role of relationships.

You mentioned playing bot.

I think it's botchy.

And with your family in your book, you talk about relationships as being critical, as achievement is how do you respond to professionals who say, well, I'm going to focus on my family.

Once I hit my goal, once I hit my exit strategy, once I'm going, then I'll have time for the family.

And I know you believe you can't buy that Time back with your loved ones.

And if you wait to the end of the race to check on the cheering section, you might just find the stands empty.

Right, Unpack that for us a little bit.

Let's start with nobody's promise tomorrow.

And I know it better than most because that night when I flatline and died, I didn't have it tomorrow.

So act like tomorrow is not promise.

That's a good insight.

Right.

And I know it better than most.

The other thing is, if you wait until something happens, you don't have control of the peaks and valleys of actually happening.

What if that exit never happened?

Then what?

You've wasted so much time and you've taken time away from your family.

Yeah.

So go back to what's your why?

Whatever your why is that has to be your North Star.

Yeah.

And for me, it was family.

Always been family.

And so back to reevaluating at what I call this age and stage of life.

I would love for these folks to go back and reevaluate what family.

What's your real definition right now?

Fail.

Yeah.

And that is the driver.

Yeah.

I think you're bang on.

If you knew tomorrow, you were a goner.

You know, the.

The Stoics have a saying, death will come for us all.

And it's coming.

And you never know when that number's up.

We don't get a boat, you're going.

No.

And so it's.

If you lived each day like this was your last day, who are the people you're hanging out with?

Is this what I really want to be doing today?

Is this serving me?

And you've addressed that?

Well, I think it.

You start looking at a lot of activities.

You know, it's like I see people complaining about their jobs or work, and they spend hours a day just on scrolling or television not making their lives better.

They're just.

They're captured by the trappings of society, if you will, instead of focus on what really matters.

Because, you know, I work with some pretty interesting companies and successful individuals as you do, and it never lasts more than two or three generations.

So you work your butt off, hand off your kids a bunch of money, and if it lasts one more generation, you'll be lucky if you're building generational wealth.

So I think the real wealth comes.

Relationships are the real wealth, and that doesn't.

When the market crashes 100%.

Yeah.

Michael, you just said something really interesting.

Two generations, and you were talking financially.

Let's talk about memories now.

How well do you really.

How well can you say you really knew the hopes, dreams and experiences of your grandparents.

That's two generations.

Not very well for most of us.

Right?

So imagine two generations from now, those grandkids that you and I have, how well are they going to know us?

Especially if they're young.

Mine is two.

I'm taking as much footage, as much pictures, as much memory building as possible.

Here's a quick story for you.

I am not a big Disney fan.

My family are Disney fanatics.

Like, yeah, annual pass kind of people, right?

But something flipped a switch this year.

I'm going to be 60 in a couple of weeks.

And my wife said, it's a big one.

What do you want to do?

And I shocked my whole family.

I said, I want to take the family to Disneyland first.

They almost fell off their chairs.

They're like, you sure, dad?

Are you off on your meds?

Right?

And my wife said, why?

And I said, well, my.

My father in law has passed now, but my favorite picture of all times is a back shot that I took of my son holding his grandpa's hand and walking into because he became a different person there.

He was a somewhat of a curmudgeon.

I love him, but he was curmudgeon, right?

Yeah.

My mom that kind of guy.

But when he got there, he became grandpa.

And so I'm going to actually recreate that picture with my granddaughter in the very same spot as that picture.

Because when I'm gone, I'm hoping that will be one of her favorite pictures.

Make a nice memory.

Well, time goes fast, Roderick, for sure.

So I do have one last question for you.

And let's talk about the legacy of the Voice of Rod.

So you've received lifetime achievement awards and have been named the top black executive leader.

So when people hear the voice of Rod now, what is the one message you want to be the lead note of your legacy?

Oh, love that question.

I had this conversation with my wife just over the weekend.

And that is whenever I do die, whether it's two weeks, 200 weeks, 400 years, whatever it is, there are two roles.

One, I want no sad, sappy funeral.

I want it to be a celebration.

And secondly, people, they can't talk about any of my awards.

They can't talk about any of the companies I work for, none of the keynote speeches I gave.

They're only allowed to talk about one thing.

How did he make me feel when he was around me?

And how did I feel better after he left him?

That's what I want my legacy to be, how I made people feel.

And you show that you can be a world class professional and a whole human being simultaneously.

You don't have to choose between a stroke of luck and a stroke of success.

You can choose to thrive by design, not by chance.

It's an and it's not an or.

Yeah, exactly.

No.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

Love what you're doing my friend and always great to see you.

Thank you.

Always good to see you.

Thank you for sharing your insights.

I'm glad to see you're healthy and on the right track and sharing your stories and your insights.

The book Stroke of Success and even sales enable 3.0 wherever you get your favorite books.

I would send folks to roderickjefferson.com because then you'll get a signed book and I can get that out to you.

And I think you have extra little resources that can go along to it.

I've got some free things in the.

Show notes as well and that's awesome.

Roderick, thank you for being our guest today.

Thank you my friend.

Anytime.

I'm honored to be here.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that has caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you.

Can share that with, either sharing this.

Episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is understanding how important it is to prioritize being irreplaceable at home over being irreplaceable at work because the corporate world will quickly fill your gap.

While your family never can.

Or maybe it is that true professional success is a failure if you aren't healthy enough to enjoy the fruit of your labor.

So listen to the whispers of burnout before they become screams.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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