Ep 022: The Importance of Serving Others w/ Robin Zander

Robin is an author, educator, and strategist, with a background
ranging from management consulting to circus performance. He has
a desire to help people and companies keep pace with rapid
change. If you can’t find him in a dance studio, he is directing
the Stanford-founded Design for Dance Conference, and also runs
his own podcast, The Robin Zander Show.
STRATEGIES USED TO FUND BUSINESS

My main gig right now is the educational startup called SOCOS.
SOCOS is 3 years old right now; I joined a year and a half ago.
But we’re bootstrapped. SOCOS had started with a small scale
consultancy for online universities. Only in the last 6 months
was where we’ve taken decades of research into learning and
turning it into a product that people can use. The product is
called MUSE. It’s for parents of kids 0-12 years old, where it’s
that one thing that parents can do every single day to maximize
the life of their child.


 
WHEN DID YOU FEEL YOU’VE GAINED ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE FOR
CONSULTING?

Every consulting opportunity is different from the one before.
When I started consulting as a special needs consultant to
families, I didn’t evolve yet like I was the expert. But I
realized that by having that outside perspective, and having the
story of one other family of whom I can share with the person in
front of me right now, was incredibly useful. We often overlook
our strengths because we assume that other people have them too.
DESCRIBE A MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT LIKE GIVING UP

One moment was with my old consulting business, Move Autism. I
had a couple clients and decided to give it my all. I was getting
great feedback from my initial clients, but when I decided to
expand my business, it was very difficult since I was relatively
new to social media marketing. There was a point when I
questioned if I should join my friends and enter into the tech
industry or get my Ph D. The thing that saw me through was that
desire to be of service.
HUGE SUCCESS

From consulting, success at that time was seeing the changes in
the little girl and her family. I asked myself, have I to the
best of my ability in this setting been of service to that
person. If the answer is yes, then that’s success.
SUPERPOWER

One is the ability to ask questions and helping people reach
their conclusions.
KRYPTONITE

It’s setting a high expectation for someone else and not having
those expectations delivered and getting upset about that is my
kryptonite.
IF YOU CAN HAVE ANY SUPERPOWER

I would love to have a “Narnia” closet where time is paused and
you can do whatever you want to feel refreshed.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE OR APP

Evernote: The workspace for you life’s work


Slack: Be less busy


 
RECOMMENDED BOOKS