TrueLife - Norman Bacal - Take Charge

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://normanbacal.com/Welcome to my journey. At one point in my career I had it all. I had built and led one of Canada’s prestigious law firms. I was one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. I sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate. Then in 2014 the bottom fell out. The law firm collapsed. It was devastating to watch what I spent twenty-five years building disappear – just like that. They say overcoming adversity builds character. I was about to find out.With the help of family, I picked myself up and began my redefinition. I call it rewiring. It began with a suggestion from my wife: to capture my life experience. She handed me a blank notebook and a pen. That was the first step.Two years later I retired from practice. Three years later, I published that memoir, Breakdown, a Globe and Mail bestseller. I tried my hand at fiction. There was so much to learn, calling on a whole new set of skills that I had to master in my sixties. In October 2019 I published Odell’s Fall, my first novel. My second novel, Ophelia, followed in 2021 as well as my second non-fiction, a teaching manual for young professionals. My rewiring led me to understand that it was time to give back to the profession that so generously rewarded me, to the community in which I flourished. I have always felt a deep commitment to community.For these reasons I continue to lecture on the university circuit, to consult with firm and professionals seeking career advice. To answer calls and emails from students and young professionals on how to manage their careers. I have never forgotten that I used to be young and inexperienced. That without the helping hands from more senior people along the way, I might never have become me.Whether through my instructional books or my fiction, let me help you to become a better you. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter below; browse through excerpts of my books; get in touch with me – do me the honour of helping you with your own career and life decisions. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to the True Life podcast. It's a beautiful morning. The birds are singing the sun is shining. We are here with the one and only Norman Bacall, who's written a fantastic book called Take Charge.

I think it's important to point out some things about Norman. Not only is he a great man, but he's an author, a speaker, a consultant, an entertainment attorney, and much more. I was thinking, Norman, because this is The Interview, and you have a chapter in your book called The Interview, might it be okay for you to do both the before and after interviews that you do in your book? First of all, thanks for having me, George. And the book, well, you know, from an interview perspective, I'm used to being on both sides of the table, but mostly I was the interviewer. So it's, I would like to, I'd like to say it's strange for me to be on the other side of the table, but I've been doing enough podcasts to get the hang of it. And ultimately, and this is the point I make in the book is it's all about storytelling.

It is. It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating way to get to learn about people. And I like the point that you make in the book about storytelling. It's something that's been in our history forever. If you look at the Homeric verses or if your parents read to you when you were little,

this idea of the story is something that really makes people attach to you and really gets people to understand who you are. So is there a story about how you began to write this book or what inspired this book? Well, what inspired this book was actually it was the aftermath of a complete business collapse. In fact, a complete collapse of my life. I began my career as a young lawyer in Montreal. I moved to Toronto in 1989. And I spent my professional career doing all kinds of things I never could have imagined.

So I thought I was going to be a tax lawyer, but I never thought I'd end up. working on the creative side of the film industry, although I was the sane advisor to all these crazy people, because I think you have to be out of your mind to be a film producer in the first place, because it's such a crazy business, and the chances that what you're going to produce is actually going to be seen by anyone is pretty small.

But that's where my lot landed, and one thing grew to another. So I started in a very small Canadian industry. And then slowly after a period of time, I moved to Toronto and got new clients there. And then lo and behold, 25 years later, I was representing major Hollywood studios for a lot of their production work in Canada and even found my way onto the board of Lionsgate. And was sitting in the boardroom on the day that the decision was made to produce the Hunger Games. Wow. And we weren't, you know, we weren't sure whether it was going to be hit or not, like, because nobody knows.

So, so it's, in fact, I was telling the story last night. I mentor a group of young professionals in Toronto, and I was telling the story last night how, who could have imagined that I would be standing on the red carpet at the premiere of the Hunger Games, like not this far, like inches away from Jennifer Lawrence. And she turns around, she's wearing this red dress, and she turns around. around she says, Norm, what are you doing here? And then I looked at the, I looked at the lawyers and the professionals in the room, I said, no, that never happened. Yes, we were this far apart, but she had no idea who I was. I was just like one of the suits. So, but it was close. It was close. Yeah. So, so I've done a whole bunch of things in my career. I never could have imagined. And I don't even remember how we, how I got on this route in the first place, but I'm,

but I'm having such a good time telling the stories. I ended up, oh, that's right. How did I come to write the book? So I ran a law firm for 25 years. I built it. Again, something I would have told you, even in my late 30s, I'm never going to do this. But when I turned 40, my predecessor who was running at the law firm where I was working,

discovered he had terminal cancer. And they kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, would you do it? And I said to myself, I don't know how, but I learned. So we built this fantastic organization. We had two prime ministers working for us. It was, as I said, I felt like somebody was smiling down on me. A year after I left my leadership position, my term was up, I went back to being sort of an ordinary partner in the law firm. And within 14 months, the law firm collapsed. it was the Canadian press reported it as the greatest failure in Canadian law firm history. And we even became a business case model for Harvard Business School.

That's how famous it was. And I was crushed. And it was my wife who came up to me about five months later and she said, listen, you're a very angry person. And I suppose that made some sense because what I'd spent 25 years in building was gone. And she said, she handed me one of these kind of notebooks. This one was a gift from my grandchildren. This one says my first draft of my amazing novel.

But that one said nothing. And she said, why don't you just start processing? So I just began writing. And again, writing a book was something I swore I was never going to do in my life. And I didn't sit down to write a book. I actually was just kind of figured, you know, I'll just start writing my stories. I wrote, I started with what the last night at the law firm felt like, like the hollowness. And I felt like the captain going down with the ship.

So I was the last one there. It was empty. It was a dark night. It happened to be Valentine's Day. And I was looking out over Lake Ontario, but the place was completely bleak. So I wrote what that felt like. And then I said, okay, now what? So I decided, you know what, I'm just going to start writing down my stories from as far back as I can remember them.

And by the time I was finished, I had 750 pages written longhand. I had an abscess on my writing finger on my left hand. And I knew it was time to stop. So I did an edit. I sent it. And I sent a couple of sample chapters down to one of my clients who was a film producer in L.A. And he actually sent back some script notes. And then I sent a few sample pages to an agent, a book agent who I knew in Toronto.

And he said, how long is it? He said, because it's a story that from a Canadian perspective, everybody wants to know about. So I said, well, it's 750 pages. He said, Norm, nobody is that interested in your life. Call me back when it's under 300 pages, which eventually I did. But what happened was slowly but surely, you know, I transformed. So it became a book about, you know, part one was a case study on how I went from being a student to a successful attorney. And part two of the book was, at least from my perspective, how you build an organization and not just a law firm, but any organization.

What goes into it and what are the things you need to think about. And part three was intended to show just how fragile most organizations are and the things that can drive. them apart so easily. And it was published and became a Canadian bestseller very quickly. And then I spent five years lecturing, a lot of it on university campuses. And I'd go to the, I'd show up at the universities in front of the, at the auditorium in the front. And I'd see all these, and I'll help put them kids because I'm going to be an old guy now. But I'm seeing all these kids and and I get up there and my gut instinct reaction was and this is how I started every speech I used to be you how did I get to be me and that would be the theme of my my campus speeches

and after I've given that speech for about four years I said you know what I think there's a book in this so I decided to pretty much write down you know some of the key lessons I learned that took me from university to to partnership in a professional firm. And it was, and they were only the lessons that nobody teaches. So you come out of university, of course,

you don't know anything about what's going on in the world. Get into the world. Unless you're lucky, there's nobody to show you the ropes. So I said, okay, here's a, this is going to be a show you the ropes book

of how you go from, no nothing student to successful professional. That's what got me going. And that I felt was part of my give back to profession in a business world that were so gracious to me. So a very long answer to a pretty short question, actually. Well, it's a great answer. And there's a lot in there that I think is worthy of talking about just to begin us off. I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell in myths.

And it seems to me like you were presented with your own hero's journey. And, you know, when you look at great movies, whether it's The Hunger Games or whether it's Avatar or, you know, Ben Hur, whatever movie you want to look at that follows this idea of the hero's journey, they all start off with this massive tragedy. And in some ways, in some cultures, you don't get to become a leader or you don't even get to become a man until you've gone through a tragedy and figured out why this happened to you. But more than that, what are you going to do about it? I really admire that the frankness and the ability to share what happened with you because it does seem devastating. When you lose everything around you, you really begin to understand what you're made of. And not until then can you come out the other side. And so on top of that, I think it's fascinating that in the world of academics today, there's a whole lot of teaching,

but there's not a whole lot of experience. And it seems that this tragedy gave you the experience to become a teacher or mentor to other people like that. So I'm thankful for that. Thank you for doing that. Well, you're very welcome. But it's funny, when you're going through it, the last thing you want is when people patch you on the back and give you those what I call funeral eyes. Or we know you're in mourning.

So we're going to go easy on you and say, you know, you'll come out stronger as a result. Now, all you're thinking is, you know, go saw it off. You go through this. It takes a few years to get your perspective and to learn to learn the lessons that you're going to learn. But I think the other thing that I felt really helpful in terms of the mentoring I'm doing now is that I'm able to look at these young people from the perspective of what I call not retirement, but actually rewirements. And I tell them, listen, I was a very successful lawyer. I gave it all up. Like I completely walked away from it because it wasn't fun anymore.

And I decided to try something completely different. So in a lot of respect, I'm going through right now in my next career, what you're going through the first time. So don't think this is me talking down to you as somebody who's been there who's done that and has this wonderful wisdom to share with you. Instead, look at me as somebody who's going through the exact same things you're going through. Like I face rejection every, you know, pretty much once a day. Like I went so far as, you know, for fun, I wrote a screenplay. I've now published four books. My fifth one is just about to come up.

I decided, you know what? I am going to write a screenplay. And I sent it down to some of my contacts in Hollywood and got some very polite rejections. And polite because, you know, they had to be nice to be. Right. They actually didn't have to, but they know me enough to be nice to be. But I was thinking for all the book rejections I've had over the last five or six years, you, I mean, one of the things, like the key lesson you have to learn is you're going to face,

you know, if you want to be successful, you're going to face an awful lot of rejection along the way. You never know when it's going to come. But if you don't go through it, you can't get better and you're not going to learn. And I'm not telling them this from the perspective of somebody who had this great run and made a few mistakes along the, way but on balance succeeded far more often that I failed. I'm I'm I'm now talking as somebody who's going through it again and is living through it every single day and recognizing you know when I post something up on social media nobody looks at it and I want to go cry in the corner. You know, it's a good. It's it's a good humbling reminder, you know, that you're not as good as your

press clippings. Thank God. Thank God. You know, there's somebody there to remind you. You know, it's, it's somebody there to remind you that every day. But it also, you know, that's what inspires me to make me better. And I think when you look at people who really achieve success, it's not because they're smarter. It's simply because they wouldn't give up. Yeah, tenacity, the ability to hear no, but in your mind, realize they really mean yes. You just have to help them figure it out. Or they mean, or they do mean no, but, you know, you just need to find somebody else who will say it. Yeah. So I'm curious. I really love understanding how people's minds work. And when you went through a period where your wife had said you were an angry guy, sometimes I use anger to fuel my day. And I find it's difficult because it becomes destructive in the end. But it's a heck of a fuel sometimes. And it can really get you going in a direction to push through your comfort zone, to push through areas. When you were an attorney, did you use some of these similar emotions that you felt after the crash? Did you, have you used those to success prior to the crash?

I'd say, I rarely feel anger. Rarely. For me, it's, I mean, the other thing I know about me is I can be fairly stubborn if I have an idea in my head. And I translate stubborn really nicely and take charge. I call it single-minded determination, something I learned actually practicing karate. And it's about being determined to accomplish something. and not giving up till you do it. And if you can do that,

which in the end is how I built an organization. I can tell you there were a lot of days building that law firm when I, there was a little voice in the back of my head saying, there's no way this is going to succeed. In fact, when I opened the doors in Toronto, we had a few consultants who came to us and said, this is this, they didn't say, they didn't use these words,

but this is what they meant. This is the stupidest idea to anybody else's, has anybody's come up. think you're going to open a storefront of four lawyers in Toronto as an out shoot of a Montreal law firm and turn it and think you're going to compete with the major law firms in the country? The only thing that we're missing were you've got to be out of your mind. Those were implying, right? And my philosophy was, I don't care what you think.

I'm just doing this. And there were a lot of days and a lot of nights and a number of partners who came to me and said, ready to give up yet. I mean, they didn't use those words. But that's kind of what they were saying. Like, you know, this experiment just is, you know, there were lots of days. This experiment is just not succeeding. And I said to myself, this is my experiment. We're building, I had an image. When I, when I arrived to Toronto, I had this image of the kind of workplace I wanted to create. And it was a workplace where everybody felt the way I felt, which was very excited to come to work in the morning. And that was really the only thing I asked people for.

I need you to be excited. I'm going to push you to your limits. I'm going to ask you to do things you've never done or that you don't think you can do, but I think you can do them. And we'll meet and we'll talk about it. But absolute prime requirement is you've got to be excited to come into work. And if you're not, stop coming, go somewhere else. And in fact, even when I was doing recruiting, I would tell people,

listen, understand one thing. If you want to earn the most possible money on the street, don't come here. I said, go to a firm that pays the most amount of money. What you'll see, though, is everybody around there is unhappy. But they're earning the maximum possible art. That's what you want. This is not the place for you. I'm imposing kind of what I call my tax.

It was, we called it the Heenan Tax, because that was the name of the firm. But the reality was it was a happiness tax. So we're all going to take a little less. We're going to be a little less greedy because what we're after is a quality of experience you're never going to see anywhere else. And that's my promise. A, that's my promise to you. And my second promise to you is you had this image or illusion of what your business life

was going to be when you left school. And I'm going to let you do it however you see fit. Like whatever it is that's going to make you happy, go do it. You have complete, I'll give you all the rope you need and all the support you need to build it out that way. And that's the kind of firm we built. So it's unique. And it's funny because, and you may ask, well, why would a firm like that collapsed? But we can get that later.

But so obviously those are all the lessons I try to build in to take charge. And I'm writing the sequel. I've just finished the sequel right now. it's called Never Stop, how to advance your career. And it's sort of a more, it's take charge on steroids, I'd say, just in terms of the advanced skills you need to just ratchet it up one more level. But it starts with, and I talk about it and take charge, it starts with finding your fit.

you know with the person you are and the place you're working need to be compatible and so many people are so unhappy out there and the root of their unhappiness is they're working at the wrong place they know intrinsically they don't fit and that's not to say that my philosophy of had her in a business is right or wrong it was just mine and it attracted people who believe the same way but every every once in a while we'd hire someone who didn't believe it. They thought they did, but that's not the people they were. They were these unhappy, miserable people, or they felt they were being undervalued,

or for a whole host of reasons, they realized, like within a few months of arriving, that they didn't fit in our firm. And, you know, those are the people, you know, that nobody wants to go to lunch with, nobody pays much attention to, they become more unhappy, and they leave. And that's actually a good thing.

So that's why the best workplace environments are ones where not where everybody is the same, but where people are different, they bring different talents, but their core values are all the same. So you see a lot of that in my first book is called Breakdown. And in Breakdown, I really focus on cultural values. And you talked about myths before. storytelling and I learned from Yuval Uval Harari who's the Israeli historian who writes a lot about this. He wrote a lot of people don't know his name but they all know his book Homo Sapiens. Yeah. So I read Sapiens and I said, oh my God. Like this is like this is like prehistoric.

The tribe needs the mythology and our mythology was you can be really happy by earning a little less money. Like if I went out on the street and said that, you know, people would look at me like I was insane. But everybody that came to work with me believed it, like believed it to the death. And so it was, you know, it was just one of those. It's kind of like, and I love, again, it's, this isn't my idea. It was Harare's who said, you go right to the American constitution, you know, that all men are created equal, which is patently false. It's a noble lie. Yeah, it's a all men are created.

All men are not created equal. We're all created different. Yes. Some are smarter, some are to smart, some are more beautifuls. Right. It gets right across. But for constitutional purposes, all men are created equal. And presumably that includes women and everybody else these days.

But those are those are the mythologies that everybody in the society, whether it's an office or an entire country, need to buy into to achieve your balance and your harmony. You know, I wonder if maybe this idea of all men are created equal is the very foundation on which we have so much pain in our lives. Everybody thinks they should make the same amount of money. Everybody thinks they should be the best. It's because they're supposed to be equal. If the foundation was, hey, we're not equal, some are bigger, some are smaller, some are smarter, some are dumber. Now, I would make things a little bit, you would think that if people were grown up on that myth,

you know, that they would begin to understand where they fit in. But I love the idea that you have found a way to bring people into an environment in which they fit. Because you're right. I work in an institution. And I'm willing to bet everybody has spent some time in a place with someone that didn't want to be there. And that person's miserable and they make everyone miserable and their liability to the company.

How did you get there? Is that something as coming up as a young man that you found working in different places or did you learn that from your family? Where did that come from? I actually learned it when I joined a very small law firm. They were, I think, 20 lawyers in Montreal. It was a small regional office.

And it's funny because in Take Charge, I write all about interview skills. And one of the reasons I write about interview skills was because I was the guy nobody wanted to hire after the interview process. I interviewed so badly. It was, and I told this story last night to my mentor group, I said, you know when you're sitting at an event, at a dinner table, and it's like there are eight people, and there's a person sitting on your left, and there's a person sitting on your right,

and one of those people, you strike up a conversation with, and you know 90 seconds in, you need to escape this conversation. as you turn the other way and you never turn back. All right. Well, I was that guy. All right. At the beginning of my career, I was that guy you didn't want to be sitting beside because like 60 seconds into it, like I had nothing left to say. And I'd be thinking to myself, okay, like, what do I do next?

And I just sit there quietly until the person's like oriented the other direction. And, you know, I'd get up and walk around the room so that I would, you know, to avoid the embarrassment. And again, it was my wife who taught me. because she was the best interviewer all time. So she taught me the tricks about interviewing. She taught me the tricks about surviving those kind of awkward situations. Of course, I put them all in to take charge in terms of like, and they're pretty simple secrets like, you know, be George, be the interview.

Like when you're sitting down with someone and you're in one of these awkward situations, forget about you. And this gets back to our hero stuff. You know, you may be the hero of your life, but you're not the hero of anybody else's life. They couldn't care less about you. So what you need to tap into is the fact that the most important people in their life is them. And so if you spend half an hour, not half an hour,

but if you take the first two minutes and ask them questions about themselves, listen to the answers. And every answer will feed you another question. you can keep them going all night because there's nothing anybody likes talking about more than themselves other than the few exceptions like me. But the other thing you discover at the end of this

and this is also really important for interviewing for jobs. But the thing you discover is that person after you leave them is going to say, you know, Norm, they know nothing about me. They've been spending half an hour talking about themselves, but they walk away thinking, You know, Norma's like one of the most interested people I've ever needed.

Yeah. Why? Because I care about you. So you think I'm interested. So and I think in part that's human nature. But you need to, if you can tap into that, you know, and it's helped me survive all those situations. It's just, you know, just become a good interviewer. And your interview, you'll sail through the interview.

It's so true. You know, there's something to be said about being a good listener. And that comes from you ask somebody a question. whether you use the Socratic method or not, but people love to tell you about themselves. And I have found a lot of people in higher positions that are, whether it's an interview or whether it's a meeting in the office, the person on the top usually likes a soundboard to bounce their stuff off of them. They really like it when you agree with them all the time, even though that's probably the

worst thing you can do. But yeah, that is a, you know, in the book, you gave an interesting idea about learning how to communicate from waiters. Would you mind maybe share, maybe touch around the edges there about what you've learned from waiters without giving up too much? Sure. Well, you know, and one of those lessons I learned from my own son who spent half of his gap year servicing in a restaurant.

And it's about a few things, like great waiters. Like when you leave a restaurant, really you want really good food, but you also want really good service. And if your waiter makes you feel important, you'll never forget her or him. So part of it is communication. Part of it is there's some things the waiter does control, and that's their relationship with you. And then there are the things that the waiter doesn't control, which is whether the food is coming out of the kitchen on time. And what we tend to do when things are going badly in our lives, put the restaurant aside, is we tend to clam up, and say, okay, I, you know, okay, so it'll be five minutes late.

I'll come back in five minutes and deliver it. Like bad waiters will disappear because they know the food's not coming. You can't find them. You know that feeling when you're looking around like, where's my waiter, where's my food? And they're not showing up. And why? Because they're hiding out in the back because the food's not ready. Whereas the great waiters will come out to you and say, you know what?

There's been a delay in the kitchen. I'm really sorry. It's going to be another 10 minutes. let me bring you something, you know, on the house. It doesn't matter how small it is. And you're thinking, wow, that's on the house, fantastic. This is a great waiter. And instead of your food coming in 10 minutes and comes in six minutes,

and you think, wow, even better. Like, I don't know what my waiter did to make that come out faster. But so it's about, it's about beating the expectations. And, you know, and this, this ties into, and what my son, the lesson I learned from my son was he's serving, he's serving in this restaurant. And there are four people at the table. And he knows none of them are going to order dessert. So he goes to the kitchen and they have a house special dessert. He brings it out with four spoons in the pre-co, well before COVID days when people weren't worried about.

sharing a dessert in the middle of the table. And, and they all, the four diners look at him and say, we didn't order this. He said, it's on me. He said, you have, you can't leave this restaurant without trying this dessert. He said, even if you just take a bite, you'll appreciate it. So, of course, they finished it off. The dessert cost him $7.50 out of his own pocket.

but it generated for him about $30 extra in tips. Like they were tipping him 25, 30%. And why? Because they were just so thrilled that he'd done this for them. Forget about whether they wanted it, forget about whether they liked it, but that their waiter brought them a free dessert. He was their hero and they rewarded him. And it hadn't clicked in my brain until that moment.

So when I was sitting down to write the book, I was doing a lot of research on perception and reality. And I love to make up words. I said, okay, there's this beast that it's called Peralty. And it could have us for lunch. It can eat us, the Perality Beast. Why? Because we all live in our own little realities that are created by our perception. But that's our world.

My world's got nothing to do with your world except when we cross. So I have this reality. You have your reality. And just getting back to the, you know, promise it in 10 minutes and deliver it in 6, you're a hero. Why? Because you've created the perception that you've worked this magic to get them their food early. But promise it to them in 10 and deliver it in 15.

And they're looking at their watches or they left the restaurant or they're never coming back, even though you couldn't do anything about it, or even if the food when it comes out in 15 minutes is the best food in the city, you've ruined it for them. So what's happened is your perception is like you've been standing at that, you know, you've been standing screaming in the kitchen, doing everything for your table. Like you've been advocating for them. They don't know that. That's your reality. So your perception is how hard am I working for my customer and their perception is, you're an idiot waiter and I'm never coming back. So you have to get your head into the other person's morality.

Your reality is irrelevant. Your perception is irrelevant. All that matters is creating a perception for your client that you really care about them. You'll do anything for them. And whatever promise you make, you'll not only keep it, you'll exceed it. And it can be as simple as, and I put this in the professional sphere, You know, you promised something for tomorrow at 5 p.m. And you deliver it the following morning in 9 a.m.

And you spent all night working to get it done. In your book, you're a hero. I worked all night to get that done for them. In their book is, you told me 5 o'clock yesterday, you've delivered at 9 this morning. You've failed. Don't tell me about how hard you work. I don't care.

I sat up all night stewing over this. So you can see how my perception doesn't matter. all that matters is your reality and I have to get my communication and my actions have to all dovetail that's why the greatest successes in business are people who set the bar at whatever level they set it at and always exceed it even though it's the same level you know but you know if I'd set it up here and delivered here same level but you're expecting it higher I fail you're expecting it lower, I'm a hero. Yeah, you share some great stories in the book that really underscore the idea of under promise and over-deliver. And I really, I think a lot of people can read

that and understand it, but it seems to me the people that can implement it, it may have to happen to them once or twice before they thoroughly understand how powerful it is, before they, they need to have that sacrifice of, man, I stayed up all night, aren't I a hero? And the people's like, no, you're not a hero. But the book is chocked full of great stories like this. You know, when I originally picked up the book, I was a little intimidated that you were this lawyer and you had all this lions getting, you know, all these movies and stuff, because I'm not an attorney. But in the beginning of the book, you start off with like, these are universal keys. And they are universal keys. They are applicable to your life regardless of which field you work in. I believe there's

knowledge in there that can help people, you know, change a little bit here, change a little bit over here, and end up changing a lot about themselves by taking time to think about it. And the fact that you've created mythical beasts that are, I think, are an amazing way to underscore different parts of that book. Did you find that while working in your law firm that you had to use the Perality beast

to deal with other people's egos? It seems like there's a lot of egos in that industry. How did you work around that? It's all about ego. Let's face it. Lawyers, are you kidding? But the one thing you don't know about lawyers is how brittle they are. And I've interviewed some clinical psychologists,

one in particular who's done tests on thousands and thousands and thousands of lawyers. And what you find is that these gladiators who you have this view of them going into the courtroom and fighting for you and pretty much getting ready to brass knuckle people if they need to, need to, to get whatever they need for their client. But in their personal lives, they're complete pussycats. Like they fall apart. You know, you go in and tell a lawyer, give a lawyer criticism and they shatter. And but the way they show you how they're shattering is they come back and attack you.

Their defense mechanism. Right. But they've stopped listening and you've lost your credibility. So, you know, there, and for those of your listeners out there who are in a sort of review position, when you, normally when you give a review, there's this theory that you have to give a criticism sandwich. So you wrap whatever the criticism is around two pieces of bread, each of which you've done this really well, you've done that really well.

Oh, and by the way, this is what you need to work on in the middle. Well, for lawyers, it's like a triple club sandwich. All right. So your layer of criticism has to be surrounded with four pieces of bread. It's like four or five to one. And if you don't, if you don't make it four or five to one, they're not listening. Like they've turned off. Why?

Because you've rejected them. All they hear is the rejection and they can't take it. So they're actually very much less resilient than the average population. So just remember that next time you go see your lawyer. Be careful about criticizing. start by telling them what a great job even if even if you think they're idiots tell them what a great job they're doing and uh you know four times before you say and have you thought of doing this i've never heard of put like a sandwich before that's so beautiful that's a perfect visual

and a great way to remember and a great way to even implement it i i really enjoy that thank you you know and it brings about the idea of there was an amazing stat that you had you had referenced about the amount of lawyers that go to law school who find the fact that they went to law school is not really a benefit for their life. That's interesting to think about, isn't it? Well, it's like, you know, it's like other people who pursue things in their lives and discover it's not for them when they get there. So, and it's interesting because one of the things that I've always wondered about is, does law school do that to you? you. We tend to be way, lawyers tend to be way more analytical than the average population,

way more cynical than the average. Like, we're trained not to believe anything. So, but the question comes up is, is law school doing that to you? Or is law school naturally selecting people who fit that criteria and then just make them a little worse? Nobody knows the answer. But if you're not like that, you're going to have trouble you know, once you get out there, you're going to have trouble functioning in a world where, you know, we're trained not to believe anybody about anything. Yeah, it's, in some ways, prove it. Prove it. Let's see if you can prove it.

Yeah, it reminds me of, you know, you talk about communication and it's a two-way street. I think the breakdown, not only in courtrooms, but also in relationships, all kinds of relationships, is this idea of communication. And sometimes one person is really strong and they just beat on the other person. Sometimes one person may be sarcastic or cynical so they're not getting their message across to the other person. That seems like it happens all the time in relationships,

be it loving relationships or professional relationships. What's your take on how to be a great communicator? We all think, not actually all is a bit extreme, but we have this tendency to think that the power, power of our ideas will convince people. And what we're seeing, particularly, you don't have to look further than open your television and watch the news.

What we're seeing in the world of global affairs in American politics is nobody's listening. Like they're just talking past each other. And I think that's a sign, and I don't know whether any of that's fixable, but I know in our personal relationships, what is fixable is, is that if you spend more time really listening

and less time convincing, you're much more likely to be listened to. So I think the most important communication skill is actually listening, not how well you speak, not what kind of great orator you become. Those days are, A, they're fictional, and B, they're over. It's like the days of Barack Obama getting up, and making a speech and turning an entire crowd,

or at least we're on hiatus from that right now. But I think you're far better off listening carefully to what you're hearing and then trying to get behind the words to what the feelings are. If you can actually tap into what somebody's feeling, you have a shot at dealing with them. And it's not a guarantee, but particularly in our close relationships

and our intimate relationships, you know, if you can just keep your mouth shut and listen and, you know, then ask the probing questions that come out of what you're hearing, or sometimes what you're not hearing, what you'll find is you can break down the walls. And it's only when you've broken down those walls of defense

that somebody will be ready to listen to you. So it's, you know, and it sounds really difficult because, you know, most of us aren't wired to listen. We're wired to talk. Yeah, it's, you can't thoroughly understand what someone's saying unless you can see what they're feeling and you can't understand what they're feeling unless you thoroughly listen

to them. And, you know, as something I have learned doing the podcast and in trying to learn about the people I talk to is that in the beginning, we're wired to almost side monologue. Like, people talk to. each other so much. And it's fascinating to do a thought experiment where you just, just listen. And it's amazing what people will tell you. People will tell you some pretty crazy things if you're willing to listen to them. They'll give you the keys to the kingdom if you just take the time to listen to them. That's it. That's it. And they appreciate it. So, you know, I learned my greatest

lesson from one of my partners. I was in the managing partner job. I was in my first year. and he walked into my office. He was from a different city. He came into my office. He was on a business trip. And he came down and he sat down and started telling me the story about how this other partner in his office, who was more senior to him, was harassing him. I'm not harassing, harassing, but doing things that were making him insane.

And he went. And as I was listening to him, all I was thinking to myself is, I'm going to fail in this job. I have no advice to offer this person. And so I sat there and I nodded and I felt I showed sympathy for his situation. I did not offer any advice. He left my office and I said, maybe I should be resigning because I can't do this job. He calls me a week later and he said, Norm, I'm just calling to thank you. And I'm thinking to myself for what?

He said, I realized as I was talking to you that the only person who could solve this problem was me. He said, but you were so expert at getting me to see that. He said, and you were so smart to just let me go. He said that, you know, it didn't happen that day, but the next day I woke up and I, and I knew exactly what I had to do to solve my problem. You couldn't solve my problem. Only I could. And I hung up the phone, shrug my shoulder, scratched my head, and said, maybe this job is easier than I thought. it's classic it uh it it's weird how communication even even that particular situation is almost contagious like even though you didn't say anything now you come to the realization of like wow

maybe only i can solve my problem or maybe it just gets back to listening like that but there i'm wondering what you what are your thoughts on other kinds of communication like that whether it's just being an active listener or whether it's body language what those are pretty impressive ways of communicating as well would you say that those play a big part in in relationships as well well certainly in your listening if you're only listening for words then you're you're you're behind the eight ball so yeah you have to be watching eye movement you have to be washing facial ticks aren't you know you're paying attention to to body language you know is is the person speaking in an intone a voice, you know, is the person speaking in an aggressive voice or in a

passive voice or, you know, are they slouched and looking depressed or are they, you know, up firm and looking like they're ready to fight, you know, which is half of it. The other part, particularly when you're looking at disputes between people, you know, the most important lesson I learned is, you know, don't hear the story, walk out of the room and decide you're going to solve the problem. you know, that's the worst thing you can do. You know, I tried that once. I walked into the other person's office, said, this person just told me this.

And, you know, and, and, and, and, and what I was rushed, you know, what, what, what I was met with was this wall of anger saying, well, did you know this, this, this and this? And I think to myself, well, actually, no, I didn't know anything. So, you know, it was also a reminder that, you know, the way to approach a second person is to say, listen, I hear something happen between you and X. Why don't you tell me about it? So you get, you know, you get the unvarnished other side of the story.

Because, you know, as we all know, there's A's version, there's B's version, and then there's what's actually happened. Again, we're back to corality again. What actually happened very often has nothing to do with either version. It's all about, you know, perception. So, so these are skills. Unfortunately, they can't be taught so much as you can be reminded of it. And the only way to do it is to practice. You know, I had one partner who was so skillful in these contentious situations.

He'd come in with a notepad and you just take notes while the other person was speaking. And I looked at it and I said, I could see where they're going. Apart from anything else, it allowed him to remember everything they said, A, but B, more important when he started responding and then the other person, taking notes also kept him from interrupting. So when he finished, the other person, you know, would do what you normally do, which is, hey, I didn't say that.

I said, you know, and you'd say, listen, I let you speak. I didn't interrupt you. You spoke for 20 minutes. I didn't interrupt once. Please show me the same. same courtesy. How do you respond to that? You shut up. Yeah, without a doubt. You know, it reminds me when we talk about experiences and having to go through certain experiences multiple times, it reminds me of your background in martial arts. You know, when you're going to do a new

belt or when you're preparing to move up in rank, sometimes you've got to do the same kick a hundred times or a thousand times. And every time you do the kick, even though it's, it looks like the same kick, it's the next move. It's a different kick. So every time you repeat something, it's the next move. And even when you're repeating situations in life, it's the next one, even if it seems the same, you have to repeat it so many times before you finally get to master it, before you finally understand that the next move, even though it seems the same as a different move. And I get a lot of that when I When I read Take Charge, I can see the experience that's hot in there. And I think that's the point I'm driving at is the experience leads one to a better life.

We can be taught. We can listen to so many people. But until we have our own experience, we can't make it our own. What do you, what are your thoughts on that? Well, going back to the karate analogy, just going back to the first cut that they teach, like that they teach you when you're a weight belt. And it's funny because my grandson is there learning it right now. And you watch them do it and they're, you know, they're, they're stumbling through it the same way I stumbled through it.

But even when I got my first degree black belt, I was able to do that. They make you perform that first cut out. Like you're not getting your black belt until you can perform that first cut up to a different level than someone who started. And what I did was at one point in time, I went online and I watched. these videos of like six or seventh degree black belts doing that same cut up and i watched them do and i was already like a second degree black belt and i looked at them and i said oh my goodness like there's a whole new level of performance of this really these really simple steps by someone who's a master which and the theory being uh doesn't matter how basic the task is if you perform it over and over and over and

you keep learning every time you perform it, you're going to see new things and you're going to incorporate it into your performance. And what will happen is the way you do it suddenly becomes unique and your own. And in life, I think it's the same thing. We're not always going to do the same thing in the same way. And what makes us interesting people is that we will perform the exact same task, but do it in a slightly different way so that somebody looking And I'll say, I just learn something. That's really well put. I like that.

That applies to so many relationships and it applies to life in so many ways. If you're willing to just learn from the person next to you, regardless of who they are, like there's so much we can learn from each other. In fact, I kind of go with a youngian view sometimes of like we're a mirror to everybody. And I think you can learn a lot about your life by understanding the anger in other people or understanding the frustration in other people or understanding the frustration in other people or understanding the love and other people that way. I think that that is a good way to take charge.

It is a good way to, you know, understand that there's more to solving problems than meets the eye. Yeah. And one of the things, whereas in my first book was all the entire world from Norm's perspective. And I figured when I sat down to write take charge, I figured, you know, people are going to get tired of me. So I went out and I interviewed countless number of professionals and entrepreneurs at various ages and stages with all kinds of different backgrounds, just to see, are there some, what are the commonalities in terms of our success?

And one of the people I interviewed, he'd gotten off the boat from Jamaica. He was 16 years old when he arrived in Canada, a teenager. He was raised by his grandparents in Jamaica. And I don't know if you or any of your listeners have flown into one of these Caribbean islands. But as you get close to the airport, You see all these tin shanties and you wonder, how can anybody live in this heat in a building like that, a tiny little shack like that with a tin roof? And that's where he grew up.

And today he is one of Canada's leading African-American entrepreneurs. And he even leads a black, what he calls the Black North Initiative, which is to get more people of color in Canadian boardrooms. and and most recently he's on the he's one of the hosts on on the Canadian version of Shark Tank if you can believe it so so it was funny because I was talking about him last night and a few of the young people in the room say you know him wow he's a shark but I look at what he's able been able to accomplish from the start that he had in life and realize that it's about what's motivating you up here. It's not about how much money you started with.

It's not about how much education you were able to accumulate. But there's an inner drive that in some respects can't be taught. But if you want to succeed, you can't. I think that's the point. There's a way to do it. Yeah. You know, on a related side note, I was talking to a child psychologist, and they were mentioning to me how pivotal the younger years are in formation.

And as we get back to the Constitution, all men are created equal. Not really, but I'm curious to get your opinion. How much do you think someone's future success ends on the foundation on which they were given as a kid? It's funny you should say that because I was just writing about that the other day. And it was a little humor column that I write. And it's about how I'm not a snob, but everybody else is. That's funny. And I start with these parents who insist that the children have to attend the exact right preschool

so that they can get to Harvard for Yale. Because if they miss that train at age four, that's it. their career, their lives are over. And you know, you kind of wonder about, well, you know, how does everybody else manage to succeed or, you know, how did I manage to succeed with that Harvard or Yale education? What a shock. So I think what's what's way more important is, and none of people do it, is to figure out what your gifts are. And they're not. not going to automatically reveal themselves to you. Like you need to do all kinds of experimentation, and it may not be formal education that does it. So yeah, you know, you can go to a,

you can go to a public school. You can, you know, float through it, you know, until high school. You can even not, you know, not even qualify for college. Doesn't mean you're not going to be successful at something in your life. But if you don't continue to test yourself, that's a real issue. Do you have the determination in the drive to keep trying things until you wake up one day and you find out, wow, I had no idea I was going to be good at this. You know, I am never going to run an organization. Well, I did. I am never going to write a book. You know, I've written five, including a couple of murder mysteries. I certainly don't have a creative bone in my body.

These are all things I used to say about myself. And the point is we're all walking around that with that, that little voice in the back of my head saying, you're not good enough, you can't do it, you'll never learn, you're stupid. And if you listen to that voice, you're going to fail. And it doesn't matter how much education you have. You're going to fail. And maybe in your business, it may be in your relationships.

There are all different ways you can fail. but I firmly believe if you leave open the possibility of, you know what, I'm going to keep trying. And as I continue to try, I'm going to find out if I'm having fun doing it. As long as I'm having fun doing it, I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to do it more and more and more.

Like that cut, like that white belt cut, and the more you do it, and the more experience you have to supplement it, the better you're going to get it. Man, that's great advice, Norman. Thank you. That's so true. She was. I hope I'm right. Well, I think people should pick up the book, take charge, and decide for themselves.

And I think they'll come across understanding not only what we talked a little bit about today, but I know a couple times it caused me to think about parts of my life that may not be the same, but we're analogous to it. And I was able to apply a lot of the stuff to it. And I want everyone to know that sometimes that voice never goes. away, but it's the ability to silence that voice and maybe replace it with the voice of reason that like, yeah, you can. Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't, either way you're right. It may not be what you thought, but you can get close to it.

But I, we're coming up on the hour mark here, Norman. I wanted to say thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. The book is called Take Charge, the skills that drive a professional success. You have multiple other books. You've even written some fiction books, murder mysteries, Ophelia? Was that one of them as well? I wrote Ophelia, which is a modern-day hamlet, set in Manhattan and Amsterdam and even canon. I've written Odell's Fall, which is a modernized, Othello.

Othello, the successful New York lawyer, and how far can you fall when someone is out to get you? And again, these are things I never could have imagined. But if you're interested in checking out those or anything else, you can go to my website, Norman B-A-C-A-L. The hardest part about finding me is spelling my name, right? So like the actress, Lauren Bacall. So norman-bacall.com or you can find any, you can find take charge on Amazon, probably the

easiest way to look at. But start with my website and you'll learn all about me. I've even done a TED talk. And the theme of the TED Talk is become the person you can't imagine. I like it. And again, all based on the principles in take charge and how you use them to go places in your life, not just your career, but in your life, that you can't possibly imagine today. And I've been blessed. Well, it's nice to see people give back.

And again, I just want to talk about the experience. I really think that that's kind of what lacking, not only in law school maybe, but in all of our education is there's a lot of people who care and teach. But I think that the real juice comes from someone that's done. And now is their vehicle, their container has been filled up and now they can give back a little bit. And I think that's what you've done, Norm. I'm really thankful for your time and getting to speak with you. And I think that it's a fantastic book. I'm going to, now I want to check out Ophila.

That was Hamlet's girlfriend, wasn't it? That's right. That's right. Did you write it from her perspective? I'm not going to say anymore. Now I got to read it. Not going to say anymore. A lot of people complain about the title after they finish the book.

But the thought I want to plant in your head is why did I choose that title when you're going. Now it's in here. Great, Norm. Thank you. Now I have to read it. It's really been my honor to be. I really appreciate your time. And I'm going to, I'll finish this off.

But if you can hang out for one more second before we. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you had a great time. More is because I Don't know It's because I