Why Your Sales Leads "Disappear" (And Why It's Your Fault)

Sean Weisbrot: Jeffrey Klubeck is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and the author of The Integrity Game, and Jeffrey seeks to help people to live with integrity and to be accountable for what they wish to be accountable for. I. In this conversation we talked about my parents, his parents, the things that we are accountable for, the things that we try to be accountable for and how they relate to other people in our lives. And I touched upon some aspects of his 10 point framework and how he seeks to help people to be. Accountable and to have integrity in what they do. And this was very much a, uh, an emotional episode, getting deep into our relationships with our families. So if you like the psychology of entrepreneurship and the Founders' journey, you're gonna love this episode. Let's get to it. You spend so much of your time talking about accountability. Why is that the thing that you've latched onto in life? Why is that your mission?

Jeffrey Klubeck: Um, you know, that's a great question and it is funny too 'cause I'm thinking about accountability a lot. I. And I, I'm trying not to talk about it, which is funny. I'm trying to talk about integrity. 'cause people want to talk about integrity. People don't want to talk about accountability or when they want to talk about accountability, they're accusing other people of not needing it, right? So I wanna make it easy and fun to look within when it comes to accountability. Uh, a lot of times people equate. Accountability with punishment. You know, accountability always feels like an attack if we're not ready to be 100% responsible for our own behavior. So like why is this submission? Well, I wanna be more responsible for my own behavior. I mean, let's make, you know, no confusion about this, right? I'm not some guru on integrity or accountability. You know, I'm, you know, I'm on this path, but I believe most of the really passionate work that we do in this world. Even if and as it helps so many others, it's really starts with what we want for ourselves.

Sean Weisbrot: What is it that you want for yourself?

Jeffrey Klubeck: I wanna be a better dad. I wanna be a better husband. I wanna be a better business owner. I want to feel better about myself on a day-to-day basis. I want to feel resilient, so I want to feel stability. I want to feel, uh, that I'm on my way towards a potential, even if it's eternally evasive. I want to feel like I'm evolving, progressing. I want these things in my life on a day-to-day basis. Haven't we all been. In situations where we've experienced otherwise, or I feel unstable, I feel out of balance. I feel overwhelmed. I feel pressure tested. I feel like I'm people pleasing. I feel like I'm doing everything for everybody else except for myself. I feel like I'm underachieving. Why do they have more? All that stuff, right? So I think that we've all had tastes of that and, uh, I prefer the, I prefer the former to the latter.

Sean Weisbrot: Let's assume the average person listening is probably feeling that way right now. I. That in some way, there's something that they, they want to improve or they, they feel stuck on. How can they trigger something in their own psyche that would enable them to feel like they've accomplished something in. The realm of moving towards solving that mindset issue or that physical problem in their life. Because it's one thing to say, I feel like it's another to say, I want to, right? You said I wanna be a better husband, et cetera. But how do people get to the point where they actually start feeling that? 'cause it's easy to make strides and then actually not feel like you've made any. Progress at all?

Jeffrey Klubeck: Well, I think it was a famous basketball coach, John Wooden, who said, let's not mistake activity for achievement. So many people are staying busy, busy, busy all the time. Right. And it's very easy. I need to, I need to, I have to. I have to. I have to. I need to. And they justify what they have to do and in fact, they don't have to do it. Right. Um, and, and really what it comes down to, it's kind of simple, and I think it's equally simple as it is complex. We have to decide, we have to declare what we want. I. Most people, the average person out there, like you said, the average person listening to this is probably right. It's easy to, to imagine what we don't want. Oh, I don't want this. Oh, I don't want that. I didn't want you to think this. I didn't want you to think that. Well, I was just trying to, all of this, we judge ourselves by intent. Right? And so what I say when I'm talking about the integrity game, I say that it's as easy to understand as it is difficult to play because at the top it's a 10 point motto, right? And at the top we're talking about purpose. What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of your life? Most people don't have a ready answer to that. Right. And go ahead,

Sean Weisbrot: would you? So, uh, I, I've had people kind of pose this question to me, what do you think the purpose of life is? And I go, I don't think there's a purpose to life. I think we just got lucky slash unlucky, whatever you would call it, depending on how intelligent you are. I think the more intelligent you are, the more depressed you could be about the reality of the universe, but. I, I think a lot of people aren't capable of understanding, or at least maybe you disagree. I think there's no purpose and you have to figure out what it is you wanna do and how you wanna spend your time, but that really what you do doesn't really matter.

Jeffrey Klubeck: No, that's my point. We're all dust in the wind, et cetera. The, the relativity of it. Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that. But at the same time, if we don't ever decide. And it's not decide for the rest of the world, and it's not decide for your world, right? Mm-hmm. But like, uh, you, I don't know if you've read the book, uh, man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and he points out, no points out that, that nobody can ever take away from us. Our ability to decide what things mean, right? And so if we never decide what something means. Or if we have default decision making mechanisms as to what things mean. Some people always arrive at, oh, this means I'm a victim. Oh, this means that I'm underfilled. This means that I'm worried. This means that I'm obsessed. This means that I'm regretful, or I've got dread, or I've got shame, or I've got whatever the, the end game emotion is that, that people gravitate towards. They'll make meaning in order to get there. Right? But, um. What, what, what, yeah. I'm not telling people to decide for the, the entirety of the world, but personally, what do you believe the meaning of life is? And here's the other thing I'll tell you, Sean. I don't care in, in the context of playing the integrity game. I don't care if your purpose changes tomorrow. I don't care if it changes three times in the next three days. What I care about is any single day without purpose. Because how can we optimize life? How can we cherish life? How can we give it our all? How can we have, um, excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, um, show up early, stay late, all of the things, right? Without purpose. It's like trying to build a mansion on top of quicksand if I don't have purpose, right? So if somebody says to me, Jeff, what's your purpose in life right now? It's to popularize the integrity game. But that may change two years from now. Jeff, what do you think the meaning of life is overall? Well, reproduction and evolution. I haven't gotten further than that. Reproduce and evolve. Reproduce and evolve. How's that? So now what does that mean for me? That means am I reproducing? Am I evolving? I have three kids. What am I reproducing in them? And you know, they in fact are reproduction. But what else in my life Lessons, in my maturity and my. Soft skill development. My lessons that I learned from my clients, books I've read, how much more knowledge can I reproduce inside of my kids and help them evolve to be better human beings on this planet than I've been, right? So for me, reproduction and evolution is an overarching purpose. And then now my personal purpose is to popularize the integrity game. So I've got answers to questions of purpose, and now I move on and I've got 10 more question sets in the integrity game to answer. Um, but it went back to your original question. Most people would rather stand at the water cooler, pointing a finger at somebody else. They believe to be out of integrity than to do the work and look within and declare their own purpose and make sure everything that aligns with their purposes. Yes. And everything that does not is no empowered. Yes. Empowered. No.

Sean Weisbrot: I've been watching other content recently about Gen Z. Mm-hmm. And I'm, and it seems like. A lot of people of my generation and Gen Z have felt after COVID that the careers we had don't really matter and that the jobs don't matter and. That none of it is worth the stress and the anxiety and, and all of that. And I feel like there's a huge shift coming in the American, I think, global. Global from these generations in which people just don't wanna work. And this isn't to say they're lazy, it's to say they're not happy with what they've been given and they're protesting that. How do you establish. Integrity, accountability for younger people in a way that enables them instead of disables them, because obviously we don't wanna go, Hey, shut up. You're wrong. Keep doing this thing that you know is wrong, but how do you give them that, and how do you empower them to then go on and create what the future of work is supposed to be so that their kids and their kids and their kids want to work, want to do something for value?

Jeffrey Klubeck: It comes back to the same question. I don't think it's work that people are afraid of. I think it's working for somebody else that people are afraid of. I think it's working without purpose that people are afraid of or working with limited, shallow, materialistic purpose, like feeling trapped in work because I have to work. I. Right. I, to me, the integrity game is what would you be willing to work for? Because human beings are not afraid of work. We hunt, we gather, right? Work has been part of our jam for a long time, right. It's not work in and of itself that we're afraid of, right? But to survive, to thrive, to enjoy. I'll work a little hard, you know? Right? Do I just want to get enough food to eat for today, or do I wanna gather a month's worth of food so that I can kick back a little bit underneath the shade tree? Right. I'm, how hard am I willing to work, right? And so I don't think fundamentally, people don't wanna work. What I think people are upset with is feeling trapped by work as a pawn in somebody else's game that isn't transparent, isn't digestible, isn't accessible. You know how much you know here, I'm, I'm in America, right? So how much. News do we get? But you follow it up. That and all those, you get enough news to be freaked out, but not enough news to understand what really went on, classified, redacted, this, that. So people are, that's what people are turned off by. Trans lack of transparency, lack of ability to trust, being blown around like a feather in the wind. By somebody else's intentions, right? Being manipulated, being the means of production for somebody with the big bucks up top right? Whatever, you know, to use capitalistic terms or con, you know, whatever, you know. The point is, I don't think we're afraid of work. Uh, you know, I'll work all day and night if I'm excited about the outcome, if I'm engaged, if I'm. If I, if I know what my purpose is, then I'm willing to work to know that I'm achieving my purpose. That's what the other thing too, if people are afraid of work, 'cause you know, yeah, human beings can be lazy. Expedient factor. I've read about that. Brian Tracy talks about the expedient factor, path of least resistance, et cetera. There's that too. But, um, without purpose, without knowing what my purpose is, everything's gonna feel like a burden. Everything could potentially be a waste of time. If I don't, if I haven't owned my own purpose, and like I said, I don't care if my purpose next month is different than my purpose today. I care about every day without purpose, because then I don't wanna work. But knowing my purpose, I I, I'll get up, I'll get up at five 30 in the morning to be on a 7:00 AM podcast to popularize the integrity game. I'll do that. Does that work? See, I wouldn't,

Sean Weisbrot: I believe integrity is important, but I wouldn't be on a podcast at seven in the morning to do it. Mm-hmm. It's not worth it for you, for

Jeffrey Klubeck: me. At least. It's not your purpose. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that, and that's, that's an important thing, Sean, people, when I say, what's your purpose? I'm not telling us to decide for others. I'm asking us to decide for ourselves and don't project. Right. That's why I wanna make accountability non-threatening. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna hold you accountable to what I want. I'm just a coach. I'm just a speaker. I'm just a trainer. I'm just a messenger. I wanna hold you accountable to what you want, but guess what? You have to tell me what you want First. What do you want? No. What do you want? No. What do you really want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you, you know,

Sean Weisbrot: I, I wanna retire. Okay. I'm tired. I don't wanna work anymore.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. Well, but see, that's the thing. How hard are you willing to work in order to retire? You can't, can you, can you snap your fingers and retire? Maybe you can. Right on. I'm

Sean Weisbrot: trying,

Jeffrey Klubeck: working on it. Good work. See you. There. Are things you are willing to work for?

Sean Weisbrot: Yes. I've, I have this, uh, agency, well, it's not my agency. I work with an agency and that's one of the main things I focus on now. And we provide ad accounts to people that, you know, their ad accounts don't work for them on Meadow. They've been banned, limited, hacked. You know, their spend limit daily is too low for them to be able to scale, et cetera. And we have white hat side and we have black hat side, white hat side being they're doing jewelry, clothing, something that's legit, you know, 'cause you got like a white hat product or service. And then the advertisement could be white hat or black hat. So we have a mix of these different clients and. We find that they can sometimes be really easy to work with and sometimes it can be really difficult to work with. A churn could be quite high or it could be very low, and it's so random that it's like constantly trying to find new leads and bring them on, and then people are constantly churning at the same time, and so it's. It. There's days where it can be very rewarding and days where it can be very frustrating and stretches of time where there's no new clients and that also becomes very frustrating. And so, you know, the whole goal for me has been I don't wanna provide the service, I just wanna do the marketing and sales and then sit back and collect the passive recurring monthly commissions and. It can be great and it can suck. And so there's days where I hate it and there's days where I love it. And so I'm kind of like, that's my frustration right now is trying to build up this like, passive income that's great enough that like, I don't really have to think about anything else. Um,

Jeffrey Klubeck: so your frustration, what, you know, like you, you've got a goal in mind. You're willing to be frustrated in order to work, right? The only way out is through. So imagine if you stopped at the first sign of frustration. That means that whatever you're pursuing, you don't want bad enough.

Sean Weisbrot: True. Yeah. I, I want more than anything to be able to have enough money coming in each month. 'cause it's, it's, it's different to have assets, liquidity, net worth, and to have income. And many years ago I built net worth. I. But I never figured out how to build passive income. And so I have to keep working in order to make sure that I don't burn the money that I've already saved. 'cause I was very fortunate at a very young age to make a lot of money. Mm-hmm. And that's been my frustration, is making sure I don't burn through what I have while also now being able to create, I. Active income so that then I can have enough coming in that I can afford to give my parents so that, that it doesn't affect me. So, so that I can live on it. They can live on it, and my dad can retire because he's tired and he doesn't wanna work anymore because he's a dentist. Imagine 45 years of your back like this, and your hands like this in people's mouths, and he's just in so much pain. So I want him to be able to retire, but he can't afford to retire.

Jeffrey Klubeck: I smell purpose. You know, like honor your, you wanna honor your parents, you wanna retire your parents. That's a really strong purpose.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and I, my brother's like, you don't need to worry about them. They've made bad fi financial decisions. I go, I know they did, but like, I also lived in Asia for 14 years and were very close with a lot of Chinese and Vietnamese families that I, I know, and all of them younger than me. They're. For their focuses. My parents put everything they had into me and my siblings, and it's our responsibility to make sure that they're okay in their old age. And that kind of rubbed off on me. He didn't spend that time in Asia, so it didn't rub off on him. So we, we clash in a way because my purpose is, I wanna make sure they're okay because they didn't really have the kind of life that I would like to them to have until now. And I want them to be able to have a good retirement. So, yeah, that's, that's been something that's been really important to me. Because my parents gave my brother and I, everything, and I think most parents exist for the purpose of their kids. And I think especially in America, they sacrificed their own future in their retirement in order to make sure that their kids have, you know, college and all of that. And yeah, in Asia, they, as soon as they finish their school and they get a job, they start to pay back. Many parents do. Many parents do, but not all. Of course, I, I learned that after I finished college and got into the real world, and that was eyeopening in itself because I thought that everyone had the kind of life that I did growing up, which obviously was extremely wrong.

Jeffrey Klubeck: This is the point. When it comes to accountability, most people when they're talking about accountability, they know how they feel about things and they just thematically assume and project that onto others, and then they want to criticize other people for not living up to, you know, I don't want to criticize person A for not living up to person B standards, right? So the, the idea is non-threatening accountability is like if you, you, between you and your brother, you've got a value that developed and your brother doesn't share that value. So now if you're arguing. It's because you see each other doing things that neither of you would do. Hey, you're doing something I wouldn't do. Oh yeah, you're doing something I wouldn't do. But what you're not doing is saying, hang on a second. Right? And, and, and rolling it back and having that conversation about the values. What's your purpose? You know, if you told your brother, Hey, guess what my purpose is to honor my parents. I. Now knowing that, would your brother ever criticize your behaviors or would he understand your behaviors and say, all right, how can I support you in your purpose without sacrificing or compromising my own? Right? So your, your brother might have a different purpose. I.

Sean Weisbrot: So his purpose has been, so his background is in finance, that's his degree and all that. So he can look at their finances and go, look, based on what I see here, you're screwed. You're not gonna be able to afford to retire unless you do A, B, and C. Here's how you do it. And he is done that a few times over the last 15, 20 years, and they haven't really made those adjustments. And so his. Philosophy now is, well, I told them what to do. Many times they didn't do it. That's their problem. I'm done. It's their retirement, it's their, you know, if he can't afford to retire, that's his problem. It's his fault. Right. And I, I can't, I mean, I could kind of look at their finances bureau, but it's easier for me to go, Hey, I'm going to actually cut your, your expenses. And I've done this. I like went and I found like they were paying $50 a month for, they, uh, my mom, my dad and my grandma each had a cell phone and they were on a family plan with at and t. They were paying $50 a month for each of their phones, and I switched them to T-Mobile and I got, I cut their phone bill by $1,100 a year between the three of them. Just because I spent like an hour looking into it, my brother would never do that, and that's fine. I'm not criticizing for that. But they wouldn't do it either.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. It's not the hour that you spent looking into it. I mean, you're talking about a very, very, very personable topic for me too, right? Um, it's not the hour that you spent looking into it as much as it is the permission that you got to spend an hour looking into it and the permission that you got to make a change, right? So for some reason, your, your parents let you help them with this change, but they wouldn't listen to your brother for 15 years.

Sean Weisbrot: It is different. They're happy to take the advice, but they won't do it like most people. And so I was, I was at their house. I stayed with them for like a month or so, and my brother had finalized like the newest round of, of all of that. And I. I was like, okay, well based on these categories, based on these exact bills, he basically, he took all of their bills from the previous 12 months and then he categorized them. And then we were able to think about, you know, what can we cut, what, what do we need to cut? What, you know, maybe we could get a, a way to lower it. Maybe we changed another provider. Maybe we Right. Kind of, uh, cost cutting measures.

Jeffrey Klubeck: So you, you don't have children yet yourself, do you?

Sean Weisbrot: No.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Okay. Right. So then we have another dilemma right now. Let me imagine being your brother for a second. If I'm talking to my parents and I know a thing or two about finances, right? And especially if I'm in a profession where people pay me to help them with their retirement and figure that out. So I'm a professional, I know what I'm doing, people pay me for this, and then the people that I love the most aren't listening to me and taking my advice because there's a difference between pride and foolish pride. Right? Okay. Now, does your brother have kids?

Sean Weisbrot: No, he's

Jeffrey Klubeck: not married either. Okay. All right. So now sandwich generation where you're responsible for both your children and your parents.

Sean Weisbrot: Yep.

Jeffrey Klubeck: How do you balance that? So, hang on a second. So if, if I'm going to my mom and dad and I have, Hey, mom and dad, the way things are going doesn't look like you're gonna have many resources when, right. I had a similar situation of your brother. 15, 20 years. I'm asking my parents about their situation. Are you trying to run our life, Jeffrey? And it's because they weren't proud of their answers that then I got demonized for even asking. Accountability will always feel like a threat. I. When we're not ready to be responsible for our own behavior. So now if my parents aren't ready to be responsible for their own behavior, they won't take advice. They won't educate, they won't get off the couch and stop watching tv. They won't take care of their health. They won't listen to counsel, informed, educated counsel from loved ones, right then they do, right? Do they or do they not? Right? So now how do I steal from my college fund for my kids in order to pay for my. Parents bad decisions. Now you haven't thought about that one yet, have you?

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I don't have a fund for my kids 'cause I don't have guess what?

Jeffrey Klubeck: Neither do I anymore. No, I'm joking. The point is, it's not simple, right? It's not simple. It's like, you know, like, hey, you know, it's, it's a very emotional situation when you're trying to honor your parents. You're trying to do what you can. You're watching them. Make bad decisions. You're watching them make mistakes and you know what you know, and you follow the logical conclusion, you know there's gonna be struggle. So in my personal experience, I would go and try to help and I got damned for it. So, all right, call me at the end when it's all done. And then I finally got the call and it was during Prefax, COD, and my, I lost my parents three weeks apart. Damn. It's a trauma that Right. But, so I, I left my wife, I left my kids to go to Las Vegas to take care of my parents during Preva COVID because at the end of the day, we do honor our parents. Right. But at the end of the day, I had to, I couldn't hold them accountable to what I wanted. Hmm. I had to hold them accountable to what they wanted. Does that make sense? Sure. Yeah. And make it, we try to make it, yeah. Yeah. It's a heavy conversation.

Sean Weisbrot: I know that my parents aren't aligned either in this regard because my dad, my dad thinks my mom spends too much. My mom doesn't think she spends too much, and they just, they, they spend too much to be able to retire for, for their age. They spend too much. It's, it's point, very clear when you look at the numbers. I want my dad to be able to travel. He wants to travel, but they can't afford to travel. The only way they can afford to travel is if they leave for you, make a lifestyle change. I give them money to travel. Like there, there's just no other way if, if they want to be responsible with the money that they're going to have, um, from, you know, retirement to make it last. So, but yeah, they, they never demonized my brother for wanting to help. They've, they've embraced me, putting the energy into trying to help. Um, you know, they never asked me for money. But they would appreciate it. Right? They're, they're not like I, I do have friends where the parents like, demand money and I'm like, that's shitty that you're in that situation where like you're probably not able to help them like they need and they're demanding it from you. That sucks, especially in Asia. I know people like that and it's like, here I am trying to make enough so that I can give them money and they don't even really want it. Of course they'll take it, but they're not gonna be like, oh, we, you know, give us money. Um, because they, they raise, you know, they're, they're, they're American, right? They're used to being responsible for themselves. I think there's this, this old, like I said back

Jeffrey Klubeck: again, there's pride and there's foolish pride if they were responsible for themselves. So here's the deal. What ability under the son does your hu your dad have to hold your mom accountable? Right. Oh, we've had those conversations after a while. So like, again, there was things that my mom wanted to do, my things my dad wanted to do, but after a while it was like, talking to them was like trying to like, I don't know, get into the White House, but the snipers on the roof. You know, like they, they each had snipers on each top of each other's roof, shooting, anything that got near the lifestyle choices. So they would say things to themselves. I would hear them at the end saying, till the wheels fall off till, and they go, yeah, till the wheels fall off. So they had a, they had a deal. They weren't gonna change anything. They were gonna be together until they one or both died. And that would, that was their deal. And, and that's not the choice I would make for myself, but it became clear to me that that's what they wanted. They didn't want to be healthier. They didn't want to change their diet. They didn't want to. Do you, they didn't want to make frugal decisions. They didn't want to live within their means. They didn't want to think about investing or wealth building, or they didn't want to be educated. They didn't wanna work. They, my mom didn't want to have any scrutiny. She just wanted my dad and to protect her comfort zone, that's all she wanted. So now it sucks that I wanted more for her, that I thought she was more brilliant than that. It sucks that I wanted more for my dad than to just be a, you know, a lapdog for my mom or whatever, you know, in, in, in non diplomatic terms. But, but I get to decide what that means. So I could say, Hey, my dad was one of the most loyal, my dad was one of the most dedicated. My dad was always there. And so I get to focus on those things, right? Those qualities that I want to take, right? And then I get to evolve. Right. And, and institute some the risk of independence in my own marriage. Right. The, the, the, the difficult things about love that it's, it's courage and it's, it's risky and it's confrontational and it's all these things, but some people, they have a comfort zone. Love. Right? So I. It, it's, you know, when back to the, the topic of integrity and accountability, like integrity. I want to take the judgment out of it. I don't wanna judge people for being out of integrity. I want to know what they want to be held accountable to and help them get into greater integrity. So when you bring up the parents thing, it's interesting. And then we have conflicting success principles, don't we? Right, right. So like, oh, you should honor their parents. And they sacrificed their. They sacrificed their retirement for, they, my parents didn't sacrifice their retirement for me. They wanted me to sacrifice mine and my kids' college fund for them. Right. And, um, you know, they did, obviously they, they had kids. Did they tell you that

Sean Weisbrot: or did they act in that way? Yeah.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Was it clear?

Sean Weisbrot: Okay.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. You know, like you have a conversation in your thirties like, Hey, how do I be a responsible son? Hey, guess what? I love my brother, but he's not getting educated either. He's not gonna be able to help out. He is not making enough money to take care of you guys. I don't know if I'm making enough money to take care of you guys, and you guys aren't making enough money to take care of you guys. So the logical conclusion is things are gonna be rough at the end. Can we talk about this? Can we, and it's, it was triggered when my dad had his heart attack. My dad had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery. My mom freaked out and within six months she contracted Parkinson's, which I believe is, you know, I don't have any proof of this, but I think psychosomatic all the stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, and not knowing what she would do with her life if we lost the dad. I'm like, Hey, this is a pretty good idea to like, sit down as a family and talk about her plans. Don't you think, oh, are you trying to run our life, Jeffrey? Oh, oh, shit. Hmm. Right. And so, uh, it, it, it's a big wound when you try to have a conversation. You want to put yourself in a position to help out. But there's pride and there's foolish pride. My mom was so embarrassed that she didn't have answers, that it was a struggle for 20 years. We were at arms length. I'm like, Hey, guess what? I've got a life to live. I've got a wife that I'm committed to and I've got kids that I'm raising. So guess what? They're number one my, my own family that I'm building. How can we argue that our parents sacrifice everything for us and then me not do that for my children and put my parents above my own children?

Sean Weisbrot: I think a lot of parents struggle with that idea.

Jeffrey Klubeck: No clean answer to it. There's no right or wrong. Yeah. And, but that's, you know, you bring up an interesting anecdote. And, and I'm trying to root it back into integrity and accountability. Accountability will always feel like an attack when we're not ready to be responsible for our behavior. Me, I'm motivated by wanting to help out and be a good son, but my mom wasn't ready to be responsible for her behavior. Never took responsibility for her behavior, ever. Right? 'cause my dad was there as a sniper on top of the White House protecting her comfort zone. So they had this nice little romantic 54 year marriage bubble. And that's what they wanted. So that's what I, that's what I supported for them.

Sean Weisbrot: My parents have never defended one another against my brother and mys comments. And we only give them those comments out of love because we wanna see them have a better life like. I don't want my parents to struggle. I want them to have, like when I was a kid, I had this idea that like, you know, people retire and when they retire they have a good life and they do hobbies and travel and all this stuff, and they have friends that do those things and they can't afford to do that. Mostly because, and I've said this many times, my mother's deal with my dad was. Well, um, so my dad went to dental school. My mom got her, uh, associate's degree, she said, and my dad's two years older than her. She said, I will work for the four years that you're in dental school. I'll pay help. You pay for school, you know, we'll do whatever we need to do, but when you finish that, I'm gonna get pregnant. I'm going to raise our family, you're gonna go to work and I'm never gonna work again. And my dad said, fine. And I, and all of their friends are in a good enough position that they could travel the world and do whatever they want because both of the people had jobs for those 40, 50 years. And I tell them, I go, you guys made a bad decision. I understand that. When you made that decision, the world was very different. And you, the people that you knew that was the next generation up, they could afford to have one person only work. But it doesn't work like that anymore. And you guys made a bad decision because you had bad information. You didn't know what the future was gonna look like.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. Th this is when I hear what you're saying and there's probably more for you to share here, but this, so the, when we're playing the integrity game, right, you gotta take the word bad out of it, right? So you say, instead of saying you made a bad decision, say, Hey, you made the best decision that you possibly could make at the time. Right. You made a decision that you have to live with. If you don't wanna live with the consequences of that decision, now's the time to start changing behavior. So here was the decision before. Here's the CI circumstances that that bred. That was a decision. Good or bad, right or wrong, cleaner, dirty, civil, savage. We don't need to put that on it. 'cause instead you say bad decision. Now the defenses are up. You've triggered ego defense, and they're gonna have a hard time hearing the rest of what comes outta your mouth. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Like the same way if I heard a buzz by my ear right now, right? I would. Right. I wouldn't think, Hmm. I hear a buzz by my ear, and that could be a threat to my safety and what's the best way to respond to this. It seems to me that I could swat at the noise and try to hit it before it gets me, or I can move really fast and get outta the way. I don't think about it. I just immediately swat and duck. It's instinctual the desire to defend ourselves, right? The, the, the, the fight or flight response. It is instinctual. It's not logical. It's instinctual. Well, the same thing. And by the way, we, we swat and we duck and I might even hit my head on the desk because I've flinched so much because of this buzz and I look and it's a fly instead of a bead. So guess what? I'm swatting at and ducking from a non threat because of how spring loaded I am to defend myself. I. So you come along and you say, you know, you made a bad decision. Oh, oh, Mr. Do it all. Sean. Oh, Mr. Educated Sean, Mr. Made a bunch of money when he was younger. Sean, thanks for judging your parents. Thanks for telling me. What's right or wrong. I used to wipe your butt. Sean, you gonna tell me what a bad decision was? No. They say you can't even see the love that you're approaching that conversation with the intent through it because you immediately trigger. So if we can't get zen, we can't take the judgment out of accountability and integrity. All we're gonna do is just have pissing contests with people and shouting matches and trigger ego defense, and equal and opposite reactions. Anything that feels pressed upon is automatically gonna press back. Right? And so that you may not realize consciously that you're pressing on your parents, but subconsciously this, that happened to me, Hey mom, dad, can we sit? And I wouldn't even use words like bad or, you know, Hey, can we sit down and talk? Just the idea of sitting down and talk means they're gonna have to answer questions about their decisions. They, my mom didn't even want that. She would rather be estranged from me in arm's length than actually tell the truth. Right. There's, it's, it's, it was, it's frustrating for me, right? But at the end, you know, they got what they wanted, right? They got to, they passed away three weeks apart. It's kind of romantic. And who am I to judge? You know? It's like, oh, they, they passed so young and it's like, well, guess what? They weren't really doing much with their lives. So another 10 years of that wouldn't have done anybody any good. You know, like I just make the meaning I choose to decide what it means. Nobody can take away from me. My. I've had to work on this because it was frustrating before. When you love people and you see that they're not helping themselves, and the only reason it's frustrating is 'cause we're projecting onto them what we want. But I wasn't able to make peace when I said my mom didn't want the wealth. My mom didn't want to work hard for, my mom didn't want to be judged or scrutinized or evaluated, or a 2.0, 3.0. She didn't want constructive criticism. She didn't want to compete with others. That might've been better. She just wanted her, she wanted what she wanted. Which is, you know, to, to, and then she found the perfect partner that would defend her at all costs to keep, protect her comfort. That's what, it's not what I wanted for her, but I wasn't able to make peace with the tension in my relationship with my parents until I surrendered from what I wanted for them and leaned into what they wanted for themselves. You were able to do that before they passed? God knows if I, who knows? I don't know if I'm, I still, maybe I'm still working on it. Does that make sense? Because the, the emotion of abandonment, the emotion of obsessed and worried and the gratitude I do have for everything. My parents did give me, you know, forget what they didn't. You know, I'm so grateful for what they did. I'm no different than you. I wish I had enough money in the world to take care, but guess what? There isn't enough money in the world to take care of their decisions.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Do you follow? Because if, even if I paid for this or paid for that, they would still have the same mindset and the same decision making, the same behaviors that created that situation. So at some point it's like, look, I'm not taking away from my, my, you know, my wife's, I'm not selling my wife's stock to pay for that decision.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah,

Jeffrey Klubeck: right. I'm not, I'm not going to take away from my kids' college funds, quote unquote. To pay for, you know, stubborn, old dying people that won't change their ways. Right. And I don't mean to be judgmental, but that's, you know, it's, I can't even call it stubborn. And they, I, I want to believe that they look, they chose the life that they wanted and despite what anybody else wanted for them, they were hell bent on their comfort zones. And that was that. And so it was a journey, and maybe even still is a journey to make peace with that.

Sean Weisbrot: That's why my plan for them has been. I want to be able to earn money that I can then turn into an asset, and then the asset generates the income that gives them the money. That way that's all they get. If the, the asset generates a little bit of money, that's what they get. And at the end of the day, I still have the asset.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. When I was, when I was 27 years old, I think 28 years old, I finished my master's degrees 25 years ago. I finished my master's degree. I drove around the country, saw a baseball game in every major league stadium. This is the 25th anniversary of that. I came back home and I started being a headhunter, a recruiter, right? But a commission-based headhunter where I convinced companies to pay me money if I find the people they can't hire on their own or can't find on their own. Started making good money really quickly. Uh, first couple of, um, and I don't know if it was when 99 turned to 2000 or when 2000 turned to 2001, but you know, I knew my parents didn't have any future. No savings. No retirement. No insurance, no nothing. So I remember when I was 27 or 28 years old. For their anniversaries or whatever it was. Um, I got them an ira. I started an ira, $2,000. I put it into an ira. I'm like, here you go. We set it up with the financial advisor. I'm like, here, you guys now just find a way to put two grand into this every year. Right. It, it wasn't even 12 months before they sold it and used it for something else without telling me. So that was, that was that. Right. And they had already, and they'd already asked me to borrow money, cash. Oh, hey Jeff, your dad is having a hard time. And my dad had to call me and ask me to borrow money. So I give the money. So he makes the mortgage payment that month. And now it's like, what? Well, is it borrow or am I giving, well, what are, where are your parents? It's like, well, I'm your son. And so now it gets all confusing. It gets all weird, doesn't it? Right. Yeah. And so, so who has integrity? Who's accountable, who's willing to be counted? Right? It's like, what do you say to your parents? Like, yeah, you can borrow money, but I need to know by when you're gonna pay back and, uh, what's your collateral? You know, you can't do that, can you? Or can you? I don't know. It's, it's, right. It's to each his own. I think you can,

Sean Weisbrot: it depends on the situation. And

Jeffrey Klubeck: and then, and then what if I had a bad month recruiting like, Hey dad, remember that a thousand dollars I lent you and a thousand dollars was a lot of money, you know, 25 years ago.

Sean Weisbrot: Sure.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Remember that a thousand dollars in let you, right? And now you're, you feel like an, you know, if they don't have it to pay you back or if they're not making an effort to pay you back. Wait, was this a loan? Am I gonna get paid back? Should I release my expectation around this? Can we update our word on what's going on here? Is this really a loan or is this a give? If it's a loan can, but now, and then Sniper on top of the White House. Oh, Jeffrey. Oh, Jeffrey. We used to. Oh, Jeffrey, we used to. You know what I mean? And so now you ask for what they promised, and then you get damned for that too. So I got out of the lending, my money, my, I got out of the lending my parents' money business in my late twenties. Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: I've, I've never been asked for money. I gave them money once, but it was only to buy a fence because the dog is a very, like, he needs to run and they didn't have a fence in the backyard, but the backyard was big enough for him to run and they didn't have the kind of cash flow to, to pay $5,000 for a fence. I said, I'm gonna buy the fence and I'm buying it for the dog. It adds value to your home. But for me, this is about giving the dog a place to, not because he was destroying their furniture, 'cause he was nervous. So for me it was about saving their furniture and giving the dog a better quality of life.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Well, the question is, could your parents afford a dog? I.

Sean Weisbrot: Oh yeah, they can. I mean, I wish my mom wouldn't spend so much money on treats for the damn dog.

Jeffrey Klubeck: The afford is the totality of a Ford. That means I can afford to replace chewed up furniture. Yeah. I can re afford to replace chewed up shoes. I can afford the food and the vets and the vil and the fence and the afford. Right.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. They, they can. But you know, if they got rid of some other expenses, it would be less of a, it's, it's not a concern. I mean, the dog gives them quality of life

Jeffrey Klubeck: as well. Well, you know, we talked about purpose earlier as the first point on the integrity game model. There's 10 other points, and somewhere in there is our word, our relationship to our word. What do we commit to? What are the power of words in and of themselves? Like removing bad from the, you made the. You made a decision. Instead of saying bad, the words vibrate and on and on and on. So there, there's other parts of the model and, and, um, the idea is if we can, we, I say we, I'm me. This is what I'm working on, why I'm going out on podcast. I wanna get the word out, the integrity game right. If we can create a space where people have fun looking within, they feel that as hard as it is, the ecosystem makes it easier. To answer these 10 question sets. Now what somebody will have in front of them is what they want to be held accountable to, right? If I know my purpose, if I know my gifts, if I know my potential, I know what goals I've set, then I want to be held accountable to those things. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? And so that's what we're trying to do with the Integrity game, is make it easy and fun to look within. Take judgment out of the integrity. Conceptualizations in the way, the usage of the word integrity. People judge themselves to have it. People judge others not to have it and Right. And what we want to do is encourage people to answer their own questions and then share that with their coach or their peer groups or their coworkers or what have you say, Hey, here's the integrity game I'm playing. This is what I wanna achieve now hold me accountable to this. Support me getting this help find, help me find a path to these things that I want. But people, yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I, I wish there was a post-it note on people's heads that said that, that show their, their strengths, their weaknesses, and what they want people to be, to hold them accountable for. Because in, in my business, I deal with all sorts of crap kind of people. Sad, unfortunately. Seriously. Well, depending on the meaning you make of it. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. There's so many people that come to me and they say, I'm interested in this service. I want to talk with you about this. I, I want more, you know, tell me more. How can I get involved with you, et cetera. And then they'll say, okay, I'm ready to go. And then they disappear for a week, two weeks, three weeks. And then I have to like try to chase after them sometimes because they said they wanted to do it, but why aren't they doing it? They don't like, they just, they forget. They have other priorities. They're not ready, but they don't tell you. And it's just like, I feel like a lot of time wasted. I. Just answering questions and then people just disappearing. And it sucks because if you're ready, tell me you're ready. If you're not ready, tell me you're not ready. But don't spend hours of my time telling me you're ready, you're gonna do this. And then making me wait weeks to, you know, chasing after you're trying to figure out when you're actually ready or why you're not actually moving forward. And it's, it's quite frustrating that people aren't more honest with the reality that they're facing.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Yeah. Well, can I put on my coaching ad here? 'cause I hear a bunch of stuff in there that I'd like to respond to. Right. Nobody spends your time. Right. So we gotta get out of victim. They're using my time. Well, you're allowing, you follow, you gotta take a hundred percent responsibility of what happens there, right? So instead of being victimized by these people that. They don't know what they dah, dah, dah, dah, right? You gotta look within on your own prequalification process, right? Am I pre-qualifying people? What are the questions that I'm asking people? How do I filter people into, and then what's the follow up and what's the, there's a lot of communication strategy that you can employ to reduce the amount of frustration that you have there. Another way to reduce the frustration is to keep track of your pipeline so much that you're not frustrated by anyone that doesn't come through. Make sense. So I'm not worried about the person that I talked about three weeks ago that isn't getting back to me because my pipeline is, I gotta focus on this conversation right now for the person that is in front of me. And the more that I do to build up more opportunity for myself, I won't overreact to any one thing that falls out or through the pipeline, right? 'cause the pipeline's big enough where I gotta focus on the people that, right? It's like in it's same thing in class. Right. Teaching class. I teach at San Diego State University and I'm teaching right now, coming up this fall, I'm gonna be teaching freshmen, public speaking, so they're 18 and they're on their own for the first time. They have no idea what they're doing, right? They think they're big man, big women on campus. Hey, hey, hey. Right. They're, it's very fun. It's a fun group and it's an important phase, right? But it's like how I ask how many, raise your hand if I enrolled you in this class and nobody raises their hand. Okay? Raise your hand if you enrolled yourself in this class. So they all decided they want to take a class. Raise your hands if you want to fail or get a D in this class. 'cause if you want a D or you want to fail, you can leave now. I'll just give you the D and the fail if you want to fail or a D, like save the time I. Like that's three hours of class time per week, and however, three hours of homework and all the emails and all the stories and all the BS and all the excuses that you're gonna try to sell me. When you went out to, you know, party with your 18-year-old friends and you'd realize there wasn't enough time left to do the assignment that you didn't budget enough time for, I already know what's gonna happen to you. 18 year olds, you don't know yet and you're gonna, Hey, if you want the D or the fit, no. Okay. You all want to see her better, right? Okay. That's what they declare they want. Makes sense. But how many of them worked that right? They're. You, you just so the idea to complete the analogies, I tell them, Hey, I'm standing at this hurdle call. You know, I'm standing at the hurdle. And for those of you that run and jump, I promise you'll get over. For those of you that are willing to run and jump, I promise you will pass this class. I. Okay, but for those of you that expect me to leave the hurdle and go to the starting line and push you, drag, you, lift you, and throw you over this hurdle, you're going to fail. Does that make sense? I can't. I can't leave the hurdle. There's too many people running and jumping for me to help over, for me to leave the hurdle and go to the person that's not willing to run and jump. Okay. Now this person that's not signing up for your services, despite the fact that they said that they want it, you were right. There's all kinds of con convoluting factors that get in the way, but their, your job isn't necessarily to sell them or not sell them. Your job is to not be frustrated regardless of what they do. And one of the ways that you can eliminate the frustration, right? They spent my time, who are you really mad at there? Not them. You, you're mad at yourself. Right, so it's from a coaching perspective, I want better pre-qualifying. I want to ask questions like by when would you like me to follow up with you? If I heard and heard from you? I've got one of those this week, right? I had a conversation on Friday about doing a keynote. They said they, Hey, by when will I hear from you? And they said We should be able to get back to you by Wednesday. Okay. I'm gonna set a note to follow up with you Friday if I don't hear from you sooner. Is that good? Yes. Okay. And if you're not ready to go on Friday, you may have to come back to larger rates, or I may not be available, or I may have to release the dates in my calendar, but we are understanding each other here. Correct. Okay. Right. So there's things that you can do to preempt the ghosting to ask better pre-qualifying questions when I'm networking with people. When I'm networking and I find out what somebody does, hey, you know, it's always like, Hey, what do you do for a living? Right? Oh, I'm a financial advisor. Okay, I'm a coach, or I'm a real estate broker. Good. Oh, I'm a investment banker. I'm a commercial insurance broker. I'm a, right, right? What I'll ask is, Hey, what are the questions that I would need to ask somebody in order to know if they're a good referral for you? I do that when I'm networking. So with my own bus. So with my own business, I need to know what questions I need to ask my prospects to know if they're a right client customer for me, which includes the readiness, the urgency, budget. By when do you need to make a decision? What? What's at stake? If you don't do anything about this, are you talking to other people? If you don't go with me, are you interviewing person, BC or D? Like, I don't care if you hire me, but based on what you told me, you better hire somebody. What's at stake if this goes untreated? What happens if three months from now you haven't done anything about this? You, does this make sense? So if the, the better job I can do, asking those questions, the less frustrated I am. Like, all right. They didn't follow up with them. They, they know. And then you said, I'll have to chase after them. No, you don't, you don't have to chase after them and you wouldn't feel the need to. If you had a big enough pipeline, enough people running and jumping to get over the hurdle, you'd stay at the hurdle and help the people that want the help.

Sean Weisbrot: My specific pipeline is a little bit, uh, complicated. Like I understand those things you're saying. I do them as well. Yeah. Um, the thing is like I work with people that are refers. So sometimes people will message me on Discord. They'll message me on Telegram, they'll message me on Twitter, they'll message me on WhatsApp. And so, for example, someone came to me a few hours ago and he said, Hey, I was referred by this person. You know, I heard that you can provide me with an ad account, tell me the details. And I say, all right, sure. Please tell me your situation and I can better advise you. And then. He signed off of Telegram and it's been like five or six hours since he sent that message, and he may not come back on for another week to then tell me a situation. So I've been trying to get these kinds of people to book calls with me. One of them literally said, I don't have time for a call. And seriously, I said back to him, if you don't have time for a call, then I don't have the time to serve you, because if you're not gonna take the time to get to know me as a person, then I can't work with you because I need to know that you're serious about this. And he didn't respond. It's like, alright, delete. So I'm, I'm trying to be more vigilant because I don't wanna waste my time with peoples. Because a lot of people come to me and they talk to me like this. It's the, the, the number of people that actually book calls as the first interaction is extremely low. And I've tried to force people into calls because I know that I'm not gonna have those problems where they disappear for weeks at a time because we actually have a conversation. We see each other face to face. We get to know each other over that half an hour or whatever. Uh, where when they just message me randomly, I don't have control

Jeffrey Klubeck: in that situation. I don't mean to cut you off Sean, but like to me. They can only disappear if they have appeared. And to me, I would change, shift that designation of appeared, and I wouldn't allow that to be placed onto somebody until appointment. So kicking tires is not appeared. They can't disappear until they've appeared and just kicking tires in a, in a thumbed message that's not appeared. They're not a, they're not a qualified lead at that point. Does that make sense? They may be a lead, but not a qualified lead in any way, shape or form. So they haven't really disappeared because they haven't really appeared yet. Do you understand what I'm getting at? Like I don't have to say to myself they've disappeared. 'cause what I wanna do is take time to say they haven't appeared. What counts as appear. That means they've made an appointment, they've answered my six questions that I need answered before I know if I can help anybody. So until they've made an appointment or filled up my form, they haven't appeared. So when they disappear, they haven't really disappeared 'cause they didn't appear in the first place.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Klubeck: What counts as appeared before? We just decide somebody's disappeared.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. So what's the most important thing that you've learned in everything you've done so far in life?

Jeffrey Klubeck: Hmm. Uh, there's, so, um, can you ask something a little more broad? Uh, yeah. I mean, I, I wanna start with love, love conquers all. Love is the adhesive. You know, when I talk about the integrity game, it's a 10 point model, and I use the shoelaces metaphor, you know, where. Do you know what I'm saying? Like I don't know if, I don't know if this is gonna transfer in your, your podcast, but, um. I'm gonna try, if you don't mind, and you can see the integrity game is born in the land of accountability, right? There's other things that we do, but when I get to like, this is from the keynote, but here's the, what I was talking about, the imagery, right? Mm-hmm. Do you see the laces? So the lac, and these are the 10 points on the model. So the laces don't tie the shoe. We tie the laces. What the laces do is they integrate, they bring the left side and the right side closer together. So in this, what I, you know, what have you learned, right? To me, the laces are love, right? The love. Love is the willingness to be vulnerable so that either you or your beloved may grow. Love is the adhesive that holds our 10 points together. Love is, love is the, the ties that bind. Love is the, you know what I mean? Like mm-hmm. How do yin and yang keep spinning, right? So. Um, love, love as much as, as much attention as love gets. It's underestimated, right? And I'm talking about the real deal. Love, not possession. Love, not like I love these shoes, or I'll love you if you take out the trash. Or, I love you if you love me, or I love you if you take that picture off your social because we're together now, not that stuff.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Klubeck: Right? I'm saying, Hey, I'm willing to be vulnerable so that either you or your beloved may grow. Right? Uh, that I willingness to be vulnerable. Okay. And so that's the adhesive and, and you know, if that's what we can put in the world, hey, would you be willing, I know you'll be vulnerable, but would you be willing to answer these 10 question sets for yourself? Okay. Would you be willing to make sure that your answers go together rather than dilute each other? Okay. Would you be willing to share your answers with an Integrity Game certified coach? Oh, would you be willing to make commitments to getting into action to. Actualize your answers. Mm-hmm. Would you be willing to meet with somebody every so often to check in on progress that you're making towards actualizing these things? Are these hopes, wishes, or dreams are these actionable results that you want in your life? Right? Um, and all of that's vulnerability. Some, one of the reasons people are afraid of declaring what they want is because they're too afraid of not getting it, which is exactly what they get if they never declare what they want. Right? So let's make it easy and fun to look within and let's play the integrity game and. Let's laugh our way to the learning and you know, we, you and I are having a pretty serious conversation here when we talk about family and parenting and all of this stuff, but normally I'm a jovial dad, joke telling, you know, silly kind of guy because personal professional growth is hard enough. I.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm.

Jeffrey Klubeck: So let's create some jokes. Let's create some analogy. Let's create some metaphor. Let's create some storytelling. And next thing you know, people are playing the integrity game without realizing it. Um, let, let's, let's, let's make it easy. Let's reduce the friction. Let's reduce the tension. Let's take the judgment out of it and just create a safe place where people can answer questions for themselves and know what they want to be held accountable for.