In this global episode, Rick Tamlyn, Co-Founder & Owner of Its All Made Up, Inc., shares how he became a trusted advisor for Fortune 100 companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and churches.
You will discover:
– Why our problem as a society isn’t working too much (and what it is instead)
– How success differs in the first half of life from the second
– Why most successful founders find themselves asking, “Now what?”
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is the one, the only Rick Tamlyn who inspires people to be their best in 2001 Rick co created the bigger game, a tool that encourages people from all walks of life to leave their comfort zones and invent the lives they want. Rick is a certified professional co active coach CPCC and a master certified coach MCC, as designated by the international coaching Federation ICF, and is a senior trainer for the coaches training institute. He’s a world renowned coach training and leadership development organization worldwide. He has a Bachelor’s of Arts in communications from Hope College in Michigan, and a master’s in, I believe it’s financial accounting MFA, from the University of Connecticut, the great University of Connecticut. And he’s here with us today, Rick, I think you win the award for the most acronyms. And as I was getting ready for the show, it was just like, you know your stuff. So I’m really excited about about our show today. I’d love to just kind of dive right in and you talk about the bigger game. There’s some tooling there that we’ll kind of talk through. But one of the things I know from working with lots of founders is the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of them are working so hard to win. Yeah, but I think the question that we all need to ask is, are we even playing the right game? How do we even begin to answer that?
Rick Tamlyn
You know, it’s a great Well, first of all, thanks for having me. And just to clean up MFA, it’s actually a Master’s in Fine Arts. I got my masters in acting. There we go. Even better. Yeah, well, there’s whole different trajectory that that, ironically, I’ll answer your question in a second. I promise that trajectory of acting took me into the leadership development space more than any other thing, right? Because, of course, you know, there’s an improvisational ability to leadership, right? The ability to improv quickly and pivot and all that good stuff. So to answer your question around the Are we even playing the right game? You know, the win word. I don’t know what that means. Does that mean so in my, in my, my philosophical context, for a second, you know, win implies lose. I don’t know why we need to have that model anymore. Can we just the game I like to play or the lay the way I like to talk about it? What’s the impact you want to have? It’s the impact game. It’s the impact game. And impact leads to more income. That’s how it works, right? In terms of, you know, organizationally, leadership wise, what’s the impact you’re having on a room, on people. Are you inspiring? Are you taking them in a direction that matters? Are you selling something that matters to them? We all know this. It’s not new news, but if we can keep that conversation going, what’s the impact you want to have with your leadership, rather than the success of I’ve tripled the profits of a company. I do a lot of organizational work, and I do bring the bigger game in a little plug for the book. You know, the bigger game workshop is an intentional conversation around, what are we doing that’s not just profit based, yeah. Now people are going to listen and go, yeah. Well, Wall Street and the and, you know, all my all the people I need to report to, money, money, money, money, money. We in the Western culture, we’re getting exhausted by that. I’m not saying money is a bad thing, but we’re burning ourselves out trying to do what? Where does this go? Yeah, right. Where does this end? And because this is, this is a very hard phrase to hear, and I learned this from one of my most incredible mentors. Her name is Lynn twist, one of the most brilliant leadership development people I’ve ever been around. She wrote a book called Living a committed life, and wanted to just offer these three assumptions that most humans are living by. The first one, more is better, or is better, right? More profits. Just, just think about it. A bigger car, bigger, more coffee, more, more, more, more, sort of we swim in. More is better. The second assumption, which is the the one that kind of makes the problem, there’s not enough. And the third assumption, which is really hard to hear is, oh, well, that’s just the way it is. I’ll get on board that train. Wow. But that way of being and thinking is causing the burnout. It’s not because we’re doing too much. We’re actually we’re in a paradigm that’s exhausting. We’re in a paradigm that’s an exhausting word. It’s not a doing exhaustion. I think it’s actually a mindset exhaustion.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. So with the bigger game philosophy, a question that jumped out to me is, and this goes perfectly into what you’re saying, what is bigger? What do I mean about bigger?
Rick Tamlyn
I know that’s the. And people always go, Well, okay, wait a minute, more is better. More, it’s not good. And now you have a you know, now you have a book called bigger is better. You know, aren’t you sort of counterintuitive with your own training. For me, the the word bigger means, um, this is going to get a little philosophical, and, dare I say, even a little bit spiritual, if I can go there for a second, I believe the human condition, the human spirit always wants to go to the next level of creativity. Yeah, Steve Jobs is the greatest example of that philosophy. I want to create something and then next, and then next, and then next. So he was a creative genius. So the level of creativity is the context of bigger what’s the next level of the expression of my work in the world? What does that look like? What does that feel like for some of us, it’s entrepreneurial. I’m gonna go open a bake shop. I want people to eat healthier bread. I mean, it all comes down to impact. What’s the impact you wanna have while you’re here on this planet? Pretty straightforward question. It’s a big existential question, right? That’s the question I’m always asking people, What is the impact you want to have while you’re here that will design your life? Very different question than you know, how do I make a living so I can finally retire? We all know. I mean, it’s my age group. I’m 65 I talk to people all the time in my age group who have more money that, and they’re bored out of their minds. My dad died early because he didn’t have a bigger consciousness. He didn’t know where to put his attention, right. He literally didn’t I would talk to him. Go, Okay, well, dad, you know, go volunteer like I was helping the he needed a place to show up to have positive impact, and he didn’t know where to go because he didn’t have a job to go to classic classics, existential crisis of that third act, because I get a lot of third act people that I work with, right? You know, what’s my third act? Act One, act two, I got the golden ring or I didn’t, and I’m disappointed.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that you brought that up, because a lot of the work that I do with founders is helping them navigate the various stages of their journey. And one of those found those stages is they’ve done the CEO thing. They’ve built a successful business, and they they retire, they sell, they replace themselves with another CEO. And the biggest question that they ask is, now, what? Why? Now? What? Now, what? Exactly, right. Yeah, right, and, and, so I love this idea. So in that context, yeah, how do you help folks to answer that question? Now, what? And do we have to wait until then to ask it?
Rick Tamlyn
No, I love that you’re asking that because, well, I do a lot of been a lot of personal growth and a lot of deep work around the leadership context. And some of you probably know about the hero’s journey, or the heroine’s journey, right? That’s a metaphor for, you know, going out into the world. But to give it context, the first half of life is called building the Tower. You build the tower. The tower is the metaphor for the house, the company, the family, the kids, the corporate, the the entrepreneur. Like I, I opened up McDonald’s. I build the tower. And the second half of life, most of us don’t know what to do with it to your point, right? I, because I have been my my neural pathways, by the way, the brain is constantly looking to build the tower, right? And so the second half is not, metaphorically, to undo the tower. The second half is to actually help the first half people build their tower. Yes, and what we’ve done in our culture, I’m being very, um, across the board. I’m not saying this is true for everybody, but we, in the Western culture, you know, saging and aging is, is like, you know, we you’re, no, you’re not. You’re not relevant, right? We’re sort of right instead of, and I’ve worked with a company around this. How do you mind the wisdom of your elders, not elders, your elders to mentor, coach. Come back in. So I train a lot of you know, 50 and above people to be more coach, like in their leadership development. Yes, because that’s mentorship, right? That’s the and I need to talk to somebody who’s been there done that, right? And so there’s this, you get it.
Scott Ritzheimer
I couldn’t agree more, because it’s what separates kind of my, my stage six true owners, from my stage seven visionary founders, right? It’s that. It’s that getting back into the game, not so that you can build your I love that. It’s not about building your tower. It’s about helping those that are building their tower, and their built there exactly. So there’s, you probably know it, but one of my favorite proverbs around this is a Greek proverb, and it says a society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they’ll never sit.
Rick Tamlyn
I mean, God, yay. Right, brilliant. See. Like, this is that the coolest thing that we I mean this in the most positive way, but we in the western culture have separated ourselves from the wisdom and the traditions of the Greeks and the Romans and the philosophers and the Socrates and the like. We need to train people in that stuff instead of like, you know, okay, how do I write seven emails that people will buy my product? I mean, God bless us. But that’s just becoming, like, that’s the tiny, little particlely, detaily thing, but we got to go wider in the meta view and go, Okay, wait a minute, this is a philosophical problem. It’s not just a It’s not just a sales problem,
Scott Ritzheimer
Right? Right? And so true, right? So I’m curious what inspired you to find and pursue your bigger game?
Rick Tamlyn
Yeah, well, I get to get a little personal. So I’m a gay man, and no big deal about that in my life whatsoever, but it was a big deal, right? And I lived through aids and the whole deal that didn’t have it, but that whole and the threat of dying and the threat of being told you’re not allowed to be on the planet, which I was told that won’t go into the details, didn’t go so well with the family in the beginning. It didn’t go so well with my religious organization, which I loved as a child. Like it really turned on me. And it, it forced me to, first of all, I left, I went west, I went to California. I started to do some inner work. I started to do leadership development stuff. I started to do personal growth. I had to look at this thing, you know, because otherwise I’m just going to lash out and, you know, act out and all that immature stuff, so that that that quote, unquote, way I came into this world was the trajectory of I need to help other people figure out who they really are and what matters to them, and what are their value systems that they want to bring into the world. And by the way, do it in a way that’s inclusive, not exclusive. We know we’re going through interesting times. You know? How do we be inclusive rather than the whole othering each other? Thing that we’re doing really challenging times. And I think leaders, we’re all leaders of among your podcasts, are listening to this, we need to take some responsibility for how this is going, yeah, yeah, I agree more, right? It’s a really challenging time, but we need to be the voice of this. And, you know, not to tell people how to do it, because that’s not the point, but to take responsibility for somehow I’m a part of this problem. Yeah, because I am, and that’s the ultimate, I think, the leader does, is to take responsibility for what’s my part in this situation.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And I think that brings us to one of the temptations, is to, you know, to see the challenges that we’re going through as a society and talk about it, right, as opposed to modeling what it’s really meant to look like.
Rick Tamlyn
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, go ahead.
Scott Ritzheimer
There’s a there’s a question I have for you. I want to make sure we leave some time for it. And that is, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everyone, every founder, every entrepreneur, every leader listening today knew?
Rick Tamlyn
That this is a being thing. This is an internal mindset that every human being has the ability to create anything they want, not instantaneously, except when you do, but every bill, every human being is born with the capacity to create. That’s why we’re on the planet, to create stuff, and the ability to create is the concept. I wish I knew at 27 instead of I was just reacting to my life, instead of creating my life. Now it was a paradigm shift, because most of us are just reacting to life. This happened and this happened and this happened and this happened, and then, you know, oh, I got through the day said, Wait a minute, I’m, I’m the designer of this.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, that’s so good. So Rick, there’s some folks listening to this. They’re, they’re feeling, you know, there’s maybe some of the unsteadiness of that shift to their third act. They’re, they’re wanting to fully embrace the second half of their life. They’re wanting to help others build their tower, but they just don’t know how to do it. Where can they find more out about the work that they do? How can they get in contact with you?
Rick Tamlyn
Ricktamlyn.com, just my name.com, first of all, is the website, but let me just do a bigger commercial for a mentor or a coach. I don’t know how any of us does this alone. None of us do right? I just, you know, I come out of the quote, unquote, life coaching business. I was an early adopter 35 years ago when people were laughing at us. Why do you need a life coach? What’s wrong with you now? It’s a multi trillion dollar industry. We need people to talk to. Let me give you the reasons why two conversations are designing your. Life. And I mean this literally, the conversation in your brain that you talk to yourself with every day is designing your life. The other conversation that’s designing your life is the ones you’re having with other people, and to be more conscious and directive and awake to those conversations is what’s needed, and that’s why I work with a coach to make sure this thing my brain, if you’re listening in the car, I’m pointing to my head, that this conversation between my two ears is somewhat in a positive tone and supportive, and not all worried and anxious all the time. My mom lived in fear in this head all the time, and what did she create more of more fear? Yeah, it’s classic, right? So, so I have a coach, because I need this to be retuned weekly, because left to my own devices, I will spiral into a lower state of being that I know does not serve me, my marriage, my friends, my family. Nobody wants to be around this crazy, worried, anxious person.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, well, Rick, I feel like we could have this conversation for about six hours, but I want to be we value our listeners time, and so this is just the beginning of a conversation for so many people. I would highly encourage you, if you’re listening today, check out Rick’s website. We’ll put the link in the show notes below. Get a copy of his book. Had a chance to take a quick look at it, and what I read was fantastic. So definitely, definitely, check it out, Rick. Thank you so much for being here. Just a privilege and honor having you on the show. I really appreciate it. And for those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Rick Tamlyn
Rick Tamlyn inspires people to be their best. In 2001, Rick co-created The Bigger Game, a tool that encourages people from all walks of life to leave their comfort zones and invent the lives they want. Rick is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) and a Master Certified Coach (MCC) as designated by the International Coach Federation (ICF) and is a senior trainer for The Coaches Training Institute, a world-renowned coach training and leadership development organization. He has a B.A. in Communications from Hope College in Michigan and an MFA from the University of Connecticut.
Want to learn more about Rick Tamlyn’s work at Its All Made Up, Inc.? Check out his website at https://www.ricktamlyn.com/ and get a copy of his book Play Your Bigger Game from your favorite bookseller.
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