We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Gottlieb recently and have shared our conversation below.
Andrew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
“I have no desire to be a leader.”
These were the thoughts that circulated in my head during the winter of 2019 as I reflected upon going on 7+ years of running an organization. As I looked upon the team that I had built, I faced the tough reality that if I had to rebuild the company, I wouldn’t hire back 50% of the people on the current roster. Through my own mismanagement, I had built a culture that lacked accountability, spread gossip amongst one another and couldn’t handle feedback from one another and clients.
This may sound like a harsh reflection for a first time CEO at age 29, but it’s the truth. I got myself into that situation because leadership is something that I’ve shied away for the entirety of my life.
During my senior year of high school, I was the only senior who started to not be elected as a Captain. The coach very well could have put me into this position of leadership, however, he didn’t because he believed I didn’t care about the honor and some of the other seniors would destroy the team if he didn’t put them in charge.
While this event happened over a decade ago, it still echoes my thoughts on the topic. I work my ass off, I don’t care about being recognized publicly, and I resist my own power. I care about solutions and results which allows me to create my own reality distortion field (to use a Steve Jobs reference) of where I put my focus. These may sound like admirable characteristics of a man who puts his ego to the side for the betterment of the collective, but this mindset will only take you to a certain level of success in your professional career.
This mindset allowed me to grow my company to a level of operations in which my leadership consciousness had not caught up to just yet. It’s as if I blinked my eyes (after spending 7 years with my head down) and I suddenly went from operating a company out of my childhood bedroom to having a dozen people depending upon me to pay rent each month.
While this was all going on within my company, I just so happened to sign up for a leadership development program in San Diego called Ascension Leadership Academy (ALA). The funny thing is that I didn’t join a leadership training program to become a better leader. I joined the program because I wanted to be in a romantic relationship and I thought that this training would give me the tools I desired. Even though I did end up getting a girlfriend as a result of my new found confidence, the true essence of the program was centered around becoming a leader of the 21st Century. This type of leader integrates elements of masculine and feminine leadership to become an embodied leader to create positive change in society.
As I dove deeper and broke through my mental barriers on why I didn’t want to be a leader for so long, it was clear to the people in my life that a new version of Andrew was emerging. However, it wasn’t as rosy as I wished as things at my company kept on getting worse and worse internally even as my leadership style was drastically improving from my vantage point.
Have you ever heard the saying that things get worse before they get better? That’s exactly what happened to me…..
Tensions continued to rise within my team. Whenever I received a daily call from someone, I could feel my blood boiling. I thought to myself, “Why can’t these people just be happy making good money working with NY Times Best Sellers?! What do they have to complain about?”
As I reflected back upon it last spring, I realized that through my own lack of assertiveness, I had created a culture of entitled millennials. I hated to take responsibility for my results. I know though, that the only way to right this ship would be if I decided to stand in 100% responsibility for my creation.
In an attempt to right my wrong, I brought everyone together for an all hands on meeting to take ownership for my results and solidify what I was committed to moving forward to be an authentic leader that the firm deserved. Through my training at ALA, my coach supported me in crafting this speech and ensuring that it came from my heart. I stood in 100% ownership and attempted to enroll everyone with the new direction the company would be taking to ensure that it would be around for the next 7 years.
At the same time, we both agreed that this speech could potentially be polarizing to certain individuals at the company who had been undermining my leadership for months on end. There was the very real scenario that they would now subconsciously feel threatened by my reassertion of the leader of the organization and decide to part ways.
Fortunately (in hindsight now that I’ve had a year to process the event) that’s exactly what happened. It unfolded in a manner that pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone and forced me to assert myself in a way that felt like my final exam while in my leadership training course.
Two individuals at the organization decided to join up in a negotiation against me to force my hand in a negotiation in which they believed they had enormous leverage over me. They believed that I didn’t know anyone else that could fulfill their duties if they weren’t at the firm. As a result of the enormous leverage they believed they possessed, they decided to come to the table with a list of one sided items they desired to be fixed. If they weren’t fixed to their liking, they would stop working at the firm and from their perspective, the company would be unable to fulfill its contractual obligations to its clients and would cease to operate.
From my perspective, this didn’t feel like a negotiation. It felt like I was being blackmailed to either hand over my company to them in the next 30 days or face a potential bankruptcy.
As I hung up from that call, I felt more anger rush through my veins than I had ever experienced in my life before. I felt betrayed. I felt vengeful. I felt embarrassed. And lastly, I felt the most destructive emotion possible: shame.
In elementary school, I was known as the ‘smart kid’.
In middle school, I was known as the ‘straight A student’.
In high school, I was known as the ‘overachiever’.
In college, I was known as the guy who always ‘had a clear direction for his career’.
And here was now….29 years old and potentially facing bankruptcy unless I fully stepped into my leadership power.
I thought to myself…
“You really F’d it up now Andrew. Way to go.”
“You should have just kept your mouth shut. This is what you get for asserting yourself.”
“It’s time to move back in with mommy and daddy. You were never meant to be an entrepreneur.”
“You’re not worthy of having this company. You deserve to let it be taken over.”
I allowed myself to wallow in these emotions of being a complete failure and letting down everyone in my life who once believed in. I let myself go all the way in my feelings of shame.
After I calmed down and stopped beating myself up, I decided to analyze my options with as little emotional reaction as possible to the chess game that I was in.
As I analyzed the situation and mapped out on paper what my options were, I had my ‘ah ha’. We had been recruiting for the last handful of months for our scaling efforts and I had a half dozen vetted individuals ready to go on projects if need be. I didn’t need to cave in to their demands. I had a path forward! As I looked deeper into the pros and cons of the scenario, I realized that my biggest risk would be if any of our clients felt more trust with them than with my organization. If that was the case, they would most likely end our contract and hire them directly in the near future.
This was a big risk though because I had been playing backseat driver for so long in my leadership. As a logical next step, I did what millennials do best…I scanned through YouTube attempting to find an inspirational video to give me the motivation I needed.
I stumbled upon a Gary V interview in which he talks about eating s&*^ to build a company and the importance of always playing for the long-term. It dawned upon me that this was the insight I needed most as I represented my options perfectly. With my new found desire to step into leadership for the first time in my life, I gotta do what was necessary to save my company and commit fully to building an organization like I had always dreamed of as a naive college student. I was fully prepared to ‘eat s*(%’ for however long it took to rebuild my company under my terms. I was prepared to live in 100% responsibility for fulfilling my original vision of using business as a positive force for good no matter how challenging the ensuing 6+ months would be. I was prepared for no days off, credit card debt, terrible cash flow, clients leaving, etc. Whatever the world was prepared to throw my way, I was ready to face the challenge head on and do whatever it took to stay true to my vision.
With this relentless commitment to leadership, our new team, and clients, we embarked upon a new journey as an organization.
The last year of our new company direction has come with some of the highest highs and lowest lows as a business owner. We’ve onboarded some amazing new talent, we’ve lost some big clients that clearly didn’t trust me and we’ve created a unified vision together of the world that we’re aspiring to create.
Leadership is not about your title, it’s not about the power you have over others, and it’s not about the increased earnings. Leadership is about creating a powerful vision and enrolling other people into creating a better world with you. Along the way, these individuals step into their own power and confidence as well, thus creating a ripple effect of leadership. Leadership isn’t about you. It was, and always will be, about service to other people.
However, before you’re ready to step into being of service to others and true leadership, it’s imperative to reflect on your own relationship to power. Are you doing this to stroke your own ego? Are you doing this out of fear and scarcity? Are you doing this to control others?
It’s so much better when it’s coming from service to a vision bigger than yourself.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m the Founder & CEO at No Typical Moments, a highly specialized digital marketing agency that works exclusively with purpose-driven and social impact focused businesses to collectively advance humanity. I’m also the co-author of ‘The Two-Week Notice: How to Discover Your Passion, Quit Your Job & Impact Our World’ published in May 2015. Written alongside two other young entrepreneurs like myself, the book shares our entrepreneurial journey on how to awaken one’s innate passion, committing to the process and finding a tribe that both supports and challenges one to become their greatest version.
We clocked profits within our first full year of operation and in 2014 took the decision to align with GameChangers 500, a database of the top 500 purpose-driven organizations in the world. Within a few years, we grew our revenues to over 7-figures through bootstrapping and reinvesting our profits back into the business. Some of the clients we’ve had the honor of working with include the likes of Lisa Nichols, best selling author and mentor and Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts. We executed Mama Gena’s Facebook ad-campaign for her new book that went on to become a New York Times bestseller.
What distinguishes us from a typical, high end Madison Avenue ad agency is in how we are set up within our virtual office environment. Our team members are sprinkled throughout the United States, working remotely across multiple time zones in over 6 different state. This gives our team not only the flexibility to live and work in a setting where their passion and creativity can really thrive but also remain agile when it comes extending impeccable support to our clients in real time.
A California Benefit Corporation and a proud member of the 1% For the Planet, at No Typical Moments, we constantly evaluate and measure our revenue contribution to a global network of nonprofits engaged in solving some of the most important environmental challenges of our time. It’s no surprise that our team members are passionate about issues like climate change, personal development, gender equality and animal welfare among others.
Giving back to the community and supporting local causes has always been a big passion of mine. Today NTM as an organization and I personally, donate time, resources and expertise to several local and national nonprofits. Some of them are Outdoor Outreach, The Greatness Foundation, Haitian Families First and The Ecology Centre.
When I’m not working, I enjoy hiking, running, playing soccer and tennis, practicing Muay-Thai and watching the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
2015 was a wild ride for No Typical Moments.
This was our third year of our operations. While most businesses have failed by this point of time we’ve been wealin and dealin for 1095 days.
Things have grown to a level I never could have envisioned a few years back when I quit my job with a few thousand dollars saved up and moved back home with my parents.
We’ve been collaborating with brands we could only have dreamed of like Lisa Nichols, we were brought onto a project with the American Heart Association (thanks to Matthew Manos), Anthony Trucks, Nisha Moodley, Neeta Bhushan, and Peter Scott IV to name a few. We’ve been in a year of R&D of our first mobile app we’ve worked on, Kindworks, that’s in the process of being approved by the Android and iOS store. Our plan moving forward is to introduce this to some of the top for-benefit organizations in the world as an employee engagement tool. Also, I co-authored an Amazon best-seller called The Two-Week Notice.
But through all of these highs, there have been some equally tremendous lows that could have pushed me to the brink of going crazy. Whether it’s a client cancelling a contract out of seemingly nowhere, deals not going through that were verbally agreed upon, hurting somebody’s feeling by not leading from my heart, taking on unaligned ventures, friendships lost, self-doubt of whether I have more ideas coming out of my ass, and the all too common entrepreneurial loneliness of feeling trapped in your mind of what is and what could be in the future.
However, what keeps me going during these hard times is a belief that No Typical Moments represents an idea. An idea of the possibilities of what can happen in our world if business is used as a force for good.
If you and your team work on projects that not only light you up, but make a positive difference to our planet. If working for a company actually leads to a healthy, happy and fulfilled lifestyle instead of one that leads to depression, obesity and substances. If your team isn’t composed of people you hate, but people you consider family. If you use profits of your company to donate to local non-profits. If you allocate pro-bono hours to humanitarian projects not because you’re looking for PR, but because it’s the right thing to do.
This is the vision I hold onto. It’s a possibility of playing a role in the oneness of us all.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
The internet can be the most powerful tool of your lifetime or the death of you.
At the individual level, the internet is full of endless podcasts, documentaries, inspiring content and infographics to educate you on anything from business to spirituality to fitness to health to real estate to name a few. As the leader of a business, you are that content creator who has more data at your fingertips that US Presidents a few decades ago to instantaneously connect with your ideal audience. You have the power to educate, entertain and empower your audience in transformational ways that were impossible years ago.
On the other hand, it’s a tool that is proven to be messing with our mental health, causing political divide and spreading hate speech. Once again, as the business leader, you face a moral responsibility to your stakeholders to use this power with morality.
I live in this duality every morning as I begin my workday as an individual and a business owner who works in digital marketing. I think to myself, “Am I entering Utopia where all dreams are possible or am I entering Westerosi after Daenerys destroyed the city?”
Let’s examine these worlds that I live in on any given morning.
After my morning workout, I gather all of my computer belongings, head to my living room and open up my MacBook Air. Somedays, I feel a rush of stress, panic, and fear as I type in my password to log into my device. I’m dripping sweat not because I just finished a kettlebell workout in the garage, but because I have worries such as ‘How many emails am I going to walk into today?’, ‘I really hope that our new marketing campaign is performing after our last edit’ to perhaps the more narcissistic thoughts such as ‘Did anyone like my Facebook post from last night?’.
On another day, when I open up my MacBook Air in the morning after my morning workout, I feel a rush of optimism, hope and childlike wonder. I have thoughts such as ‘I can’t wait to see if that new lead said yes to hiring us’, ‘I wonder what interview Joe Rogan is dropping today’ to ‘I hope that a new YouTube video on real estate investing from BiggerPockets is coming out’.
The internet is a literal web of endless possibilities and endless stress. It’s a tool that can further our education and feed our never ending curiosity or it can be a tool that spirals our mental state out of control.
I’m obsessed with discovering the truth of the latter and it’s the reason why my company, No Typical Moments, exists. How can the internet be a tool to share educational content with people from around the globe who are looking to improve their lives?
At No Typical Moments, we support e-learning businesses to market and sell their books, courses, events, docu-series, masterminds, and pretty much anything else you can think of that support their customers continual education on a niche area of expertise. We handle everything from advertising on all major social media platforms, creative development, tech stack integration and email automation. As a result of hiring us, our clients generate profitable leads and sales to scale their mission and pump revenue into their bottom line.
We’re very invested in the moral direction of the internet and we have been since the organization’s inception in January 2013.
Contact Info:
- Website: notypicalmoments.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NTMoments
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlgottlieb/