This Was An Interview With Robin Sharma
It took me 6 months of going backward and forward and many hours of work to finally get to interview Robin Sharma.
Initially his PA sent me a form with some questions and I presumed this was to get a feel for my audience size and whether the site was relevant to Robins work.
Apparently I passed the criteria and was asked to submit my questions.
I did so and then I waited.
And then I waited some more.
Every now and then I’d send an e-mail and be told it would be soon.
Sometime in April I e-mailed yet again and was told by a new VA to resubmit the questions, so I did.
And then I waited some more.
In May I e-mailed again and was told to send the questions for a third time because they’d lost them, so I did.
And then I waited again.
Then on July 9th at which point I’d pretty much given up on it I was out walking the dogs and reading Twitter when I came across the following tweet from Robin.
“No ask=no get” by Robin Sharma
I literally laughed out loud when I read it and immediately responded, without much thought it has to be said, by tweeting:
“I have been asking for an interview for 6 months and have sent the questions in on 3 separate occasions! Kinda ironic ;-)”
That didn’t go down well with Robin and he DM’ed me to say it wasn’t right to say that in public.
He had a (small) point, so I apologized and said I was joking and not to worry about it.
In retrospect he was obviously way more pissed off than I realized, but even so he asked me to send him the questions and he’d take a look.
A few days later I got his responses, except there were only 6 answers and I sent him 14 questions.
So I wrote back and after apologizing because I asked about his daughters and he actually has one son and one daughter said this:
Robin,
Thanks for your answers but I have to be honest and say I’m struggling with this. At the moment it runs at under 900 words half of which are the questions and you have left out a load of, what I think were the more interesting questions.
My blog readers expect something a bit different from me and I like to inject some humor too because whereas I take my job with clients very seriously, I am more tongue in cheek with my blog. That’s why I was interested in asking some less than stock questions. My gut tells me that if I run this as is, there’ll be very few if any comments and it wont really help either of us.
Is there any way you could add some of the others back in, or are they simply the kind of things you don’t like talking about?
Sorry for any inconvenience because I really want to help promote your book as the message is important.
I don’t want to print Robins reply because that wouldn’t be fair, but he made a couple of inaccurate presumptions and said he’s rather pass on the interview. That was cool, but I wanted to assure him I didn’t have a bad opinion of him and followed up with this.
Robin,
I don’t expect you to answer this e-mail, but I think it would be remiss of me not to send it.
Firstly, in no way shape or form did I have a negative impression of you prior to now. In fact nothing could be further from the truth, which is why I wanted to interview you and why I have been raving about your books to anybody prepared to listen.
I also appreciate stuff goes wrong inside any business and my tweet was a joke and not intended to embarrass you. I am pretty thick skinned to that kind of stuff and maybe I think other people are too. My bad.
There were actually 14 questions on the document and you answered 6, so I don’t think that was unreasonable to say you missed a load. They were (on the whole) the more searching questions too and the ones that I know my readers would have got the most from. And that’s the key to this as far as I’m concerned. It’s not about me, I have a duty of care to the 4,500 people that read my stuff that I deliver quality content. An interview that can be read in 3 minutes doesn’t really fit that criteria to my mind.
I have invested at least 6 or 7 hours of my time on this with e-mails stretching back 6 months, reading up on you and watching/reading other interviews you have done. And that’s without taking into account the time needed to read The Leader again, which was a pleasure anyway.
But if I’m being honest I do feel let down now. I’d have had no issue whatsoever if you’d said ‘n’o from day 1, but all of the problems have been at your end and I have kept plugging away in spite of that, and simply to bail because I ask you to expand on your answers doesn’t really demonstrate the kindness you spoke about in the interview. At least not in my humble opinion.
Even that didn’t go down too well as he now thought I was accusing him of being thin-skinned. I get how it would be easy to think that, but me saying I’m thick skinned doesn’t mean by default other people are thin-skinned.
He also said that he didn’t believe my tweet was a joke and that it came from frustration and being upset.
Whatever!
Even so he said he’d now answer the other questions and the missing questions must have been a problem with his Blackberry.
Soon after that I got the answers back and published them. I then followed up with the following e-mail to Robin
Brilliant stuff, thanks Robin!
The post is now live. If you want me to make any changes please let me know and IF you are able to tweet it that would be cool, but no worries if not.
Thanks again and really glad we got this sorted out.
Only it appears we didn’t get it sorted out because that was it. No word of thanks for publishing the post, or response to either my tweets or those of other people promoting the post. And this from the man that writes about kindness being so crucial.
I decided to drop him a DM and ask if everything was ok and he was happy with the interview, but alas I couldn’t because he’d unfollowed me on Twitter. Very mature!
You can make your own mind up on this one, but personally I really don’t want to promote the books of a guy that acts in such a manner and that is the reason I have removed the original post.
Which is a shame, because his books are excellent.
Hey, Ok enough said. I think we all have learned our lesson. Now we will give the monk, and all the erring guys a break and let them be. We will try to become better. Remember when your index finger points to the other guy all the other fingers point to your heart. You need 3 times more cleansing than the other guy. Let Sharma be. Let us get on, guys.
Ok if you still want to go ahead with this, pl send me details of how to get out of this thread.
Thanks
Ravi
Agreed, well said Ravi, I’m going to close comments down.
Thanks for everybody’s support, I appreciate it.
Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I had read the initial interview when you first posted it, which I thought was cool since I recently read his book The Monk.
FYI, I got more out of a certain book often spoken about here ;), then I did out of The Monk, mainly because HTBRAH was more real, at least to me.
Thanks M!
Maybe in a few weeks/months/years he’ll look back on this and think he could have handled it differently.
Also, doing a Tim-style “reframe the shit out of it”, maybe it’s a good thing that Tim’s revealed Robin’s true colours. It’s good to be reminded that every single one of us is only human and we never grow out of making mistakes.
LMAO, I suspect he’ll not remember it next week never mind in a few years.
In fact I doubt he’s even read it. I didn’t tell him I changed the content and somehow I don’t think he subscribes to my blog ;-)
Let’s face it Tim, NO ONE could be as perfect as he comes over in his books!!!! ;o)
To be honest I’ve only read his novels which he’s not in and not his leadership stuff or other books, so it would be unfair of me to comment. Although maybe it was unrealistic for me to expect him to live up to his public persona.
Dear Sir,
It only shows that people never practice what they preach to others. This is true with preachers and recently self help gurus. The modern self help guru is the old priest- swamiji, mullah and etc in disguise.
You are therefore advised to preach only what you practice, and therefore take care that your clients and well wishers don’t get pissed off by your attitude.
Any way I enjoyed your book ‘goal setting’ and liked the way you write. The goal to reach the stuff to so many people is also laudable.
Hmmm so know that not to be the one who deliberately avoids questions , ask the same questions your self. If you advise people to ‘follow through with a goal’ for example first find if you can do that with a goal like ‘hitting 20 balls without missing’ each day or similar and how long you ‘carry through’ without getting pissed off and seek doing something like loo9king for other things. Because guys who try out your ideas are going to come back (especially if they have shelled out cash for the crap) and ask questions.
Hope you will be around then and not do another ‘Robin Sharma’ on your readers and us f****g well wishers.
Having made your day great,
I remain
Yours truly
Ravi
( I am a subscriber to the blog)
I think some do Ravi, although to be honest my sense is not that many. And I agree about being careful what you preach which is why I try and be honest as possible with my blog. I can guarantee that if any of my readers m,et me for a beer they wouldn’t be shocked, I am what you see on this blog for better AND worse ;-)
Thanks for the book feedback, I appreciate it.
I’m dissapointed too Tim. I always write to authors, and gurus, people who I would love to respond back, and people who are not to famous enough not to respond back.
I get direct responses from some people who are genuinely nice, and are the same people they appear to be on their book covers.
Even, Po Bronson, Author of ‘What Should I do with my life’, had his PA, respond to my letter of kudos on his behalf.
I have ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’, and have liked and followed Robin Sharma from the beginning of his career, since he is a fellow Canadian.
He even responded to a few emails from me inquiring how to get into motivational speaking, but that was early in his career.
After reading something like this, I’m turned off…I think I will take his books to my local salvation army and donate them.
Thanks Tim!
To be fair Zac, this *could* be an aberration. Although as I have reflected on it all, I realized I had a sense prior that he wasn’t quite who I thought he was.
He went to great pains to justify the fact that Tommy one of the mentors to Blake in TLWHNT drove a Porsche. It almost felt like he was covering his arse because he has a huge house, his own plane and a fleet of cars.
OTOH, that could be nonsense, he may have no car, live in a 2 bedroom apartment and fly everywhere economy class for all I know.
I’m sure if you do donate TMWSHF somebody will get something out of it.
Interestingly, after you ran the first post, I plucked out this quote from the interview and used it as my Facebook status:
“Many among us – in business and society – don’t live our values. Our video doesn’t match with our audio.”
I guess that’s true of all of us, sometimes. Even the people who say it!
I agree that written communication is super-easy to misconstrue. It sounds like most of this was just a big huge miscommunication. Without knowing what his responses were, it just sounds like he was being (yes) kinda thin-skinned and a bit reactive and defensive. If I had to guess, I’d say it sounds like he was embarrased about dropping the ball.
To me, this is a great example of something I’ve noticed a lot of — personal development “gurus” whose video don’t necessarily match their audio at times. I have seen it over and over and it had me really disillusioned and even jaded for a while, to the point of being tempted to throw out the baby with the bathwater and not giving credence to anything they had to say. There are some people whose work I highly respect (and that changed my life!) who went on to show their human frailties in a way that really disappointed me. So I just decided to reframe it all, drop my expectatons about how they “should” behave, and simply take the wisdom they have to offer that makes sense to me and use it. That way I don’t have to feel disappointed in anyone, which is much more peaceful. And it’s great insurance against being tempted to “guru-fy” anyone. (Except you, of course — where shall I send all my money? :))
Seriously Lynn, that’s part of the reason why I am so transparent on this blog. I just don’t want people to think I am any different, or my life any more perfect, just because I’m a Life Coach.
If you don’t raise yourself up on a pedestal nobody can try and knock you off it.
As for the money, can you pay it straight into my offshore prostitute and drug fund please?
Curious, why you took the interview down even though you clearly agree that we can learn even from those who are less than perfect.
Especially since you’ve already written and published it. And a few of the comments above clearly relate to it and not your follow-up / replacement post.
Oh don’t get me wrong. Obviously as Lynn said and as you’ve said, something is out of sync and we don’t have the whole story.
Plus, seriously, I’m too lazy on a late Saturday evening to bother googling Mr. Sharma and this “missing” interview might have been a good introduction for me to someone I have no bias towards, even after your obvious disappointment.
That’s a fair question Lashae and I’ll answer it honestly.
Sheer bloody mindedness!
In my defense I’m not sure that there was much to learn from the interview, but having said that, it was definitely a case of thinking “If that’s your attitude screw you and I’m certainly not justifying it by sending you a load of traffic.”
I guess that’s the reason I’m not a guru ;-)
“Sheer bloody mindedness”. You created a burst of laughter that shook my belly. Thank you non-guru Tim. thank you.
Very eloquently put, and maturely explained.
I probably would have gone with the headline “Robin = Wanker Who Is The Opposite To Who He Says He Is”
But your approach is probably (slightly) better :)
Real shame as like you I LOVE his “Monk / Ferrari” book. And naturally I figured the guy who wrote it would be holier than thou. Or at least not a TOTAL ****.
Oh well… another dude in this industry who doesn’t “walk the walk”… But saying that, at least the good ones do. So I shall stick to them in future….
You, Jamie Smart, Adam Eason, Richard Wilkins, Barefoot Doctor spring to mind (all I have met personally or spoken 1-2-1 in detail – and all make me VERY happy for choosing to work in this “world”)
Others… not so much :)
Anyway, very interesting and tactful post dude. Nice.
It’s just shit that Sharma writes awesome books. Bastard!
I did toy with that headline, but really didn’t want a lawsuit on my hands ;-)
Actually, I really have no way of knowing what was going on. I *think* he acted like a ass, but otoh, I don’t have all the information to hand and maybe he was being help at gun point ;-)
I must admit that when I was scrolling back through his twitter stream and was just seeing tweet after tweet that was just about him and his material I felt more comfortable with what I was doing was ok and that he wasn’t the person I thought he was.
An interesting learning experience when I compare him with Peter Buffett who I also interviewed recently. Peter is an absolute superstar in my opinion and a really great guy too boot.
Hi Tim,
Loved this post and your transparency. Sounds like you got the raw Robin instead of the artificially flavored, ultrapasturized version they sell at the store.
With love,
Tara
Yeh maybe, but I still feel more disappointed than anything else. Especially in his insistence on telling me what I meant.
Such is life.
Tim , you’re awesome dude! You don’t need Robin Sharma – write your own book – like a BIG thick juicy one and it WILL SELL 10,000,000. Just don’t become a wanker!
Thanks mate and I will do my best not to become a wanker!
Crikey, how thin-skinned does one have to be to interpret a comment about your thick skin as an attack on his?
I don’t know whether I got this idea from you or someone else, Tim, but I started trying to interpret every comment in the best possible light – if someone tells me I’ve made a mistake (for instance), they’re probably trying to do me a favour rather than put me down. It’s made a huge difference to my outlook and freed up a lot of mental space that I’d once have used on ‘what did they mean by THAT?’
That’s great advice mate and we could all do with more mental space ;-)
Whatever you do, don’t hold a grudge!
Egos, they seem to be the downfall of many otherwise brilliant men.
LMAO – there is no grudge mate. I’m just a tad sad that somebody who I genuinely admired reacted in such a manner by jumping to erroneous conclusions about me and my motives.
Something else Rob. When I went to look for exactly what it was he tweeted I had to scroll through his stream. Every tweet was either a quote (usually his own), a link to his material or a retweet of something nice that had been said about him or his books.
I thought that was somewhat enlightening.
LOL! Quite revealing!
t
How odd! I wonder if he’s usually such a dick, or if this is just some unfortunate combination of him mis-interpreting stuff and having a few days where he got out of bed on the wrong side.
It does sound like he’s been repeatedly unreasonable, but OTOH, written communication is renowned for it’s ability to be taken the wrong way. I’ve been caught out by this numerous times.
In a parallel universe in which you and Robin had met each other in person a few times first and got to know each other, I wonder if this would have turned out differently. He’s obviously a busy man but I wonder if some good old verbal communication on the phone would have helped you both pick up on each other’s intentions a bit better.
Or maybe he’s just being a dick.
That’s funny Rob, because when he told me for thethird time my tweet was wrong, I said the very same thing to my wife. If the guy spoke to me or we had a drink together he would ‘get’ it or rather me, immediately.
I can say with my hand on hart I never meant to embarrass him. Speaking of which I did think it was ironic that he thought I was having a dig at him being thin skinned (which I wasn’t btw, I was merely pointing out that I’m oblivious to that kind of stuff), because would you do that if you were thick skinned? I mean would you even notice it ffs?
Here’s a link to the article. I thought there would be a link via the html I added, but it didn’t work: Interview with Don Fagenson
Dang computers ;-)
Sadly I’m not surprised. The interview was great while it lasted, but it’s really REALLY hard to accept something from someone who so obviously doesn’t “walk the walk.”
It reminded me exactly of this quote I read a day or two ago by Don Fagenson (aka Don Was, who’s produced for the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson to name a few). Personally, I’d much rather listen to Was (not Was) where he contributes to the music… Oh, here’s the quote, and set-up:
I saw him with Was (not Was) on tour a couple of years ago, and he was as nice as can be. Even with a rather small crowd, he gave of himself for those that were there–it was clearly about the music. I think he even sold me the band t-shirt and was 100% open to talking with anyone who was up for it.
On the bright side, there’s a good chance that Robin, as a clearly intelligent person, will understand this at some point. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.
Thanks for walking the walk, and sharing your journey with all of us. More importantly, it’s wonderful having you as a friend!
Yeh he’s definitely highly intelligent and I hope this is a one-off because I really admired the guy prior to a week or so ago. Now, not so much.
Maybe it’s a case of fame doing this to people – they get too big – have too many personal assistants and virtual assistants doing things for them plus agents, managers, publicists, hair stylists or head waxers (whatever). You’re better off answering the questions yourself the way you think he’d answer them – I think Napoleon Hill would recommend that!
I have no idea what it is, but the lack of congruence between his visible pesona and how he reacted (at least on this one occasions) bummed me out.
I really liked Robin’s point on being true to your values.
Before I worked at my current place “Balanced WorkLife Company” I had no idea how important that point was.
Now I get to work in the consulting field where we help employees discover their values through special assessments and consultations.
Often a large business comes to us wanting to improve their employee engagement. When we talk and review the employee profiles we see a strong correlation between values and engagement.
It’s sad when we see people who value aesthetics get stuck in a dull cubicle, or people oriented individuals forced to work without any interaction.
It’s no wonder productivity is low when we forget the very values that encourage us to work our best.
I liked that too Bryce, although in the light of recent developments it seems a tad anomalous now.
Good job guys. I had heard of Robin before today, but have not read any of his books. I have two sons one 18 and one 22 and I am going to get them copies of both books. The younger one is really struggling with a direction in his life so hopefully this will help.
Thank you.
Peter – great decision! I was 43 when I read The monk, and got a lot out of it, but if I’d read it 20 years ago that would have been a whole different ball game!
Tim, I think many many people are empty like Robin was because they are living for the trappings of life outside and not the gold of the inside. Answering to conformity and the ‘look-what’I’ve-got-so-I’m-a-success’ ideology instead of responding to the personal senses and essence within. We need to put who we are all over our world and not have the world push itself upon us. Hence his books became best sellers. We have forgotten how to live for ourself!!
Agreed John, in fact that is exactly how I was when I worked in sales. Cash rich but empty and stressed as hell.
Wow-what i would like to know Tim-is how you got to interview him? It fascinates me how people “get to” and interact with each other.
I asked!
Initially via Twitter. We had a few logistical problems to begin with, but once I got the questions to him he kindly obliged.
People can only say no Susie.
I am a big fan of ask cause you’ll be no worse off. Cool and good going.
So am I which is why there’s a chapter about it in HTBRAH ;-)
Damn good interview Tim. So much wisdom packed in it. I see you got the interview post thing down ;-)
I really dig Robins message of inspiration, impact, and the calm cool manner of which he delivers it. Again, the importance of values are brought up and how they can dictate the quality of our lives.
“Installing” new values as he mentions is the real work. People have to become conscious of them first and then become willing to do such a thing as replacing them. Damn fine odds we’re up against with as much advertising out there that claims you can drink, eat, wear, smoke or spray on you everything you need in order to be ‘enough’. (Everything except for the internal work!)
For some reason, after reading this, I became more clear on your intentions to break that cycle around raising our children with the message of “more (stuff) makes you happier”.
By the way I just got “Your Brain At Work” and will start reading it today. Looks to be as awesome as you stated!
yeh it can be kind of depressing when you see what kids are exposed to, but otoh, at least there are some people doing the work to redress the balance and that is key.
You’ll enjoy the book, I guarantee it!