Does the Corona Virus Cause You to Consider :"Changing the WAY You Work?"

Many years ago, I encountered two men who ended up being two of the most important mentors in my life of everything I've done. And I've never told you about them, Jon.

I was sworn to secrecy. But these guys have been behind the scenes with me, working with me, and they became just great friends over the years. And they are just brilliant men. And I wanted to have them on the show because right now everybody's having to work differently right now. We're working from home, people are losing their jobs, and our workforce workplace destiny has changed dramatically. Oh, and then some, yeah. And we can see the fragility of the work environment. And these guys helped shape a lot of what I do and the way I think about productivity, the way I think about work and building something, and so forth.

So I wanted to have them on. David Asarnow and Bob Sears, and they're both here with us today. Guys, how are you feeling? I'm feeling great. Awesome.

Awesome. Listen, I'm finally, after all these years, giving you due credit because you have had such a profound impact on me, and I'm very grateful for that. And I wanted just to take a moment. You guys have created something for people, particularly caregivers, because caregivers, our work environment, it becomes incredibly stressful for us as caregivers. And to pay somebody to do what we do requires oftentimes big checks or hiring a service or getting somebody, there's just a lot of moving parts involved with that. And you guys have helped me structure a lot of things in my life, and you've created a webinar, a free webinar, for folks who are right now stuck at home and they're having to rethink a lot of things just to kind of help you either go one of two directions, either to start something for yourself or to better negotiate your situation with your employer and carve out a new path for you so that you can be freer and not be tied to a brick and mortar building. But David, I'm going to start with you on that. Sure.

Tell me what's going on in the workforce now and what are the questions people are asking as they're wanting to take back control of their own employment destiny, if you will? Well, first of all, before I even do that, I have to give you all the credit because we've coached a lot of people over the years and became friends with a lot of people and you've done all the work. So I want to put the credit right back to you, Peter.

Well, thank you. Here's the thing. Right now, everyone's sitting at home. Everyone's trying to figure this out. Everyone's trying to balance what's going on. And I believe for the person who's a caregiver, this gives them a very unique opportunity to be able to shine because I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but the playing field is level because everyone's at home. And the boss before used to say, well, the people who are home, are they really working? Are they doing laundry? What are they really doing?

Well, guess what? Everyone's in that situation. And one of the things that I recommend, I mean, as you know, I'm a professional social distancer.

I've worked from home for 20 years. And it's all about communication. It really is. It's communicating at an entirely higher level. And the caregiver has an opportunity, really today, to stand out and show how good of a worker they are.

And if they're looking at building a business on the side or creating that second stream of income, I believe that now is a perfect opportunity to do it. Well, Bob, I went to a podiatrist a while back and I had a really difficult pain in the left part of my left foot. And I wanted him to address that. And he looked at me, he said, here's your problem. And he pointed out my bunion. I have a bunion on my left foot.

I named it Paul. And he said, he said, this is your problem. I said, well, that doesn't hurt. This is where it hurts. He said, the area of your pain is not the cause of your pain.

And it really was a profound teaching moment for me to realize that sometimes the things that are causing us discomfort and pain are not what we think they are. And I think people are in that work now place of their life where they are saying, this is uncomfortable. I don't like this.

I don't like this. But that's not really the core problem. There's a different core problem of stepping out, taking some risks, renegotiating a work environment, all those kinds of things. Talk about that a little bit. Does that resonate with you? I mean, it does. I mean, first of all, they've given you way too much credit, but we've been working with you. They're working with you. So no, you do implement, you said some of your success.

I mean, you know, we, we get to get a little bit more credit, but anyway, no, I, I agree with you. I mean, here's, here's the reality. It's, it's perception is reality. And the challenge is, you know, one of the things I always go by is, if anybody out in the audience has listened to Think and Grow Rich, it says in every adversity, there's a seed of equivalent or greater value. So what's happening right now is there's perceptions that obviously we have a lot of challenges that we're facing. And I always look at, and Dave and I think, and you look at, well, what are the opportunities?

You're, you're at home, you're challenged with being at home right now. And you've got to look at that as an opportunity, even in the case of, you know, you talk to caregivers in such a passionate way, and we've always loved that about you. And we find that when people are in the situations that they they're in, it's so hard at that moment in time to really find the gifts that are being given to them. So when you have a podiatrist telling you one thing, and you're looking at them like, seriously, like, what is, what is the end result? The end result is this. Everybody has an opportunity to really reach the goals that they want when they really look at really what do they want to accomplish in life? How is this an opportunity?

How is this able to give me some time that I may not have had prior and really figure out the things that I've wanted to do in my life and not be, you know, held to a desk and a cubicle? I mean, how many people in this, in this world work daily at a job that they dislike, that are in a situation that they're not excited about? And even in this, this world that we're living in right now, there is joys happening. There's, I mean, you look at Gracie with all the challenges she had. I mean, does she ever seem like she's, you know, in a situation where she doesn't see the light at the end of the tunnel or the fun in what she's doing or the grace of what's been given to her and really work with that work with that in the future? I mean, it never happens, right? And it's the same situation with you.

She lives life pretty large. Yeah. And, and what, what happens is if people could even look at that example, that's the same example they're facing now in their lives. Well, David, let me ask you this. When you spend time with people, just as this, I'm not going to hold you to this stat, but just as a general observation, how many people are aware of what they actually bring to the table as far as skill sets and abilities to their work environment? It's a great question. And I think that most people, I mean, present company included, when we look at ourselves, it's very hard, very hard to be able to say, hey, we're really good at this and we're crushing this. And, and this is, this is where we shine.

What happens is other people can see it. However, there's something that I've been asking people to do recently. And, and something that Bob said really makes you think about it. You know, when we're doing, when we're looking at our business, we, when we bring on a new client, we do something which is called a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And one of the things I recommend that everyone who's in the working world do right now is a personal SWOT analysis.

What are you absolutely amazing at? I want you to think back over the past six months, year, five years, 10 years, and start writing down all the accomplishments you've had, all the accolades you've gotten from other people and start seeing where you shine. And then, yes, we do need to understand our weaknesses. And right now the threats, we've got a lot of threats going on.

It's one of them is called Corona. But the unique opportunity we have today is that, oh, the opportunities. And we start really looking at where do we have opportunities? How can we shine?

How can we add value to someone else's life? And when we look at that, we can utilize that to, A, shine better in the workplace if we're an employee. And if we're an employer, it's how do we capitalize on those opportunities and be able to be able to be better at communicating and working with our staff in this new, I'll call it America 2.0 that we live in, because we don't know what it's going to become.

We don't know what it's going to look like. Well, we don't. And I'm glad you brought up employers. And Bob, I want to ask you about this. As you deal with employers who are now seeing that the job has to continue, but we have to rethink the way we work. I remember when I left the corporate workforce and I went home and I didn't know how to work very well from home. And this has been 17 years that I've been doing this. And I remember Gracie asked me, she said, would it be helpful if I put a cubicle in the living room?

Would you feel more comfortable with that? And I realized that I was thinking about work in one way and a lot of employers think that way too. I have maintained for years, I wrote an article about this, about caregivers and why they are an employer's dream, because we are constantly dealing with things that we don't categorize as skills in the workforce, like conflict resolution, flexibility, adaptability, personal responsibility.

These are things that employers want. How do you see this now with employers seeing this decimated workforce that we have now in this country of maybe rethinking working from home and so forth and building those kind of mechanisms for people to do that? Or do you see that from now on? Is this going to be a national dialogue that we have from now on, do you think?

Well, first of all, yes. I do see that now employees and employers are realizing that working from home, I mean, people have been working from home and actually I believe, this is my belief and I think David would agree, we do more at home than we actually do at the office. I mean, you and I, when we first met, I talked about got a minute meetings.

When you're in an office, you'll have a got a minute meeting and all of a sudden you're talking to people, you're getting interrupted, that could be three, four hours throughout the day where you're interrupted and not literally doing the things you need to do in a work environment, right? So all of a sudden now you have the ability where when we're at home, I mean, there are some times that I actually, you know, work on Sundays, I work on Saturdays, I check my email, I make sure that I'm getting the things done and it really needs to be, and one of the things that Dave and I preach is results-based, right? Things need to be results-based because here's the thing, the whole, I've been saying this since this happened, the whole world has changed and nothing has changed. A lot of people haven't really, really felt the ramifications is what's about to take place in the world.

We are going to be working from home. We are going to be social distancing. You know, it's funny, Dave, like Dave said, we've been social distancing now for a long time. We're professionals.

The reality, well, where I am in Montana, Montana has been social distancing since 1889. And we've got the technology now that we can actually do this and it's been around for a long enough time and we just simply haven't noticed that this is something that's available. And now that, you know, necessity being the mother of invention comes around and says, by the way, guys, you know, do this.

Well, yeah. And it's forced us to rethink these things. You guys have created a free webinar for anybody that wants to come and talk about these things and learn about it from you guys.

You guys are brilliant at what you do and I'm eternally grateful. Tell us about this webinar. What can people expect?

What's going to happen in it and how can they go? Well, there's a couple of things. One, the URL is changethewayiwork.com. That is changethewayiwork.com, picked out by Peter Rosenberger himself. And some of the things we're going to talk about is the TAP framework, the trust, acknowledge, appreciate, purpose, and passion that you can put behind your workplace and your personal life, as well as systems and processes you can put in place right away today.

And it's free. This is a free webinar. This is why I had these guys come on. I really want you to take advantage of this. I'm going to put out the podcast.

I put it on our website, on social media, changethewayiwork.com. These are guys that helped me do it. I love these guys and I'm going to have them back on.

We're going to talk about this some more. David DeSarno, Bob Sears, thank you for taking the time to call into the show today. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thanks, David. All righty. This is Hope for the Caregiver. I'm Peter Rosenberger.

We'll be right back. Hey, this is Larry the Cable Guy. You are listening to Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberg. And if you're not listening to it, you're a communist, Peter Dunn.