Parallel Entrepreneur with Mark Cleveland

Mark Cleveland (00:00)
Today I'm joined by Robert Hartline, a parallel entrepreneur whose energy for scaling business is matched only by his passion for helping others do the same. Robert started his first cell phone store in 1998, where he grew his Sprint wireless business to $10 million by 2017. And then through organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, he scaled to nearly $100 million in the next three years.

This growth was fueled by the discipline of the entrepreneurial operating system (EOS). And Robert is today a professional EOS implementer, coaching fellow entrepreneurs to create a thriving, chaos-free team environment and carve out the life of clarity and intention and balance that they deserve. We're going to get personal today as Robert is also my co-founder in Hytch Rewards, a mobility incentive management technology, trying to help fight traffic and get you to work in a Zen headspace. We brought that to life in 2014 and I've grown to love this man. He's also the creator of The Decision Experience. And I can say from experience, it's a powerful integration of various modalities of mind, body and spirit with entrepreneurial wisdom for deep personal and professional growth. So let's dive right into what makes this parallel entrepreneur tick.

Robert, welcome to the Parallel Entrepreneur.

Robert Hartline (01:20)
Thank you, Mark. Good to get on your podcast. I've been enjoying your podcast. I've been enjoying the conversation as I'm in your community, we've met a couple of times now talking about parallel entrepreneurship. And what does it mean? What does it mean to, you know, do many different things and people kind of judge you on the fact that you do many things?

Mark Cleveland (01:43)
The world just wants you to narrow and focus so that it can understand you.

Robert Hartline (01:46)
Yeah, everybody wants to put you in a box. And and I noticed that, you know, I sold my business in 2020 and, you know, people still in the community will hand me a phone and be like, hey, how do I sync up my email? And I'm like, I don't do that anymore. And I'm not Geek Squad and I wasn't Geek Squad then. And I'm not going to do it now.

Mark Cleveland (02:13)
So as a parallel entrepreneur, what did you find didn't work when you were trying to make it work? How did it work later? You know, what are some of the struggles that caused you to get to where you are today? And what can we learn from that?

Robert Hartline (02:26)
Yeah. 2016. I, I, you know, I get sober and I start learning breathwork practices and, my breathwork coach, uh, Monica, I was talking to her about my business and how this, I had created this essentially a prison.

And it was a prison of my own making. I literally built the walls around me and I'm sitting behind the bars and talking to Monica figuratively that I don't like what I'm doing. I sell cell phones and I said it's so and ugly, when you really stop and think about how I said it. You know, our words really matter how we talk about things and the head trash that I had about my she goes, what do you do? And I go.

Mark Cleveland (03:03)
Yeah.

Robert Hartline (03:09)
I sell cell phones and she goes, Robert, you don't. connect people. When people use your product, they're connecting. They talked to long lost loved ones that connect with new opportunities. They listen to music. They use it to work out. They use it for education. And she went off and off and off on all these ways the phone actually provided a better life for people. And the light bulb was like, Ding, I got it. Then it's like, all right, well, how how do I be better at being a leader.

And she didn't use the words back then. It was really interesting now that I look back at it. But she was she was navigating me to discover my why and how do I do my why in the work that I did? And so as soon as I got home, I was building out EOS. And one of the things is core values. And we we created this core value and a core value of any business is already there.

We don't make core values for any business. They exist and you just become that. And I have always, always had this feeling that I've tried to create in my store. And that is "I cur." It's a country way of saying "I care" because we're from Nashville. We say things funny. But the, the is a feeling when someone walks in my store, they're coming with a

Mark Cleveland (04:23)
Hahaha

Robert Hartline (04:30)
with a problem they need to, they need to solve. They're looking for someone to solve their problem. And I, with my body language, my energy, and just the way I look at someone in the eye can show them that I care. And so that, that feeling and emotion meant we had a five step greeting process. Hi, welcome to Sprint. My name is Robert. How can I help you today? And someone would say, yeah, I'm here to pick up a phone for my daughter and I would go, okay, this is great. You came to the right spot. My name is Robert. What was your name? Mark. Mark. Good to meet you. Mark. What kind of phone does your daughter have today? Mark. What, what carrier does she have? Mark, you live in the neighborhood name exchange, just saying their name is a way to give that person a hug. It's a way to say, I care about you. I see you. And so we had these, these, these processes. And so what I discovered is my, why was walking my employees through a 90 minute about what does it mean to show someone you care? You may have the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University walking in my West End store or you have a homeless person, right? And you got to work with all these kind of people that come from all kind of places in their life. Just imagine for a moment, if your phone stopped working, what does it feel like when your phone doesn't work? Hell, when your phone has got a low battery, you flip out like you literally like.

Mark Cleveland (06:03)
haha

Robert Hartline (06:06)
You know, literally drive across town just to go charge your phone. You know, I had you hooked up to a heart monitor and I grabbed your phone and I put it in my pocket and I was standing right in front of you, your heart rate would start to increase. I mean, your phone is so much. And so what we what I did was I basically taught people how to live a life by creating value, how to connect with people.

Mark Cleveland (06:19)
So that's

Robert Hartline (06:30)
And that became my why. And once I uncovered the why, man, our sales radically changed. Most of all, I had energy to do the work now because before I wasn't. And because I wasn't connected to my why, alcohol became my that became the thing to help me cope.

Mark Cleveland (06:36)
Yeah.

We'd call that an escape.

Robert Hartline (06:53)
It was like it was, it was, it was.

Back in the early 80s, Atari was big and you play a video game, you got three lives, right? And the first life is the life of, know, you're almighty and all powerful. And something happens to you around seven or eight that shifts you into being small again. That's life number two.

And life number three is when you kind of wake up and you realize that you are powerful, right? But along the way you get extra lives. If you do certain things and the extra lives could be ending an addiction, it could be a death. A death is a powerful shift for a lot of people. And then losing a business or profession or job could be an extra life. Cause you're going to go through this, uh, this moment. And this for me was back in 2020. I had grown this business.

2019 was our best year. We're just growing and we find out that T-Mobile is acquiring Sprint. You know, initially I got super excited. Then we start to move into the pandemic and early on they forced us to close 12 locations. And, you know, it's no easy task to just shut down a store.

I mean, it's not just about letting people go. You have a landlord, you have a lease, you have commitments, you have contracts you've signed to support a location. It's not an easy endeavor. So quickly I had to shut down 12 locations. And as we go into the year and dealing with the pandemic was another nightmare for anybody that was in retail.

You know, forcing people to do things they did not want to do, and that included customers who were ticked off having to do something that they were forced to do. Fast forward October of that year, the, the merger happens, they took down all of our signage and they put up banners that said T-Mobile on them.

And about 12 days into the month - I mean, I had I had more metrics in a business than you have ever seen in your entire life. I'm talking how many customers come in the store, how long they were there, what products do they buy?

And I remember to this, you know, I'll never forget this looking at my trend. And I was trending to lose a half a million dollars for that month. And it almost took my breath away and really put me in this scary place. I had a team that were taking care of things, but I literally got in my car and I was like, I just got to go to a store and be there. And I remember driving to one of my locations in, in Lebanon, Tennessee. And I, and I said, please navigate to the T mobile store on da da da. And it couldn't find it. And then I Googled it. It couldn't find it. And then I was like, that's weird. Am I not on the internet? And here's, and here's the funny thing. Funny, not funny. Like,

Mark Cleveland (09:22)
Hmm.

Hahaha.

Robert Hartline (09:43)
three years before, I had noticed that I was really a good keeper of our Google business pages. When a customer was upset, I would deal with it. You know, I really want to take care of my customers. And I noticed that I was looking at my stores and I found a store and I found a phone number on our Google places listing. That was not my phone number, but it was tied to my store.

I called the number ring ring and it went to telesales for Sprint, not my store. And that's when I discovered they had access to our Google business pages and switched our phone numbers to their numbers. Literally stealing our customers. Right. And I lost my living mind over that. And I literally got all

Mark Cleveland (10:17)
Man.

Robert Hartline (10:26)
the sprint retailers together. I was pissed. Like, why would you do that to a partner of yours? Like who would do this? And so I made a huge stink. I barely got a I'm sorry, an apology. So fast forward. I get the numbers fixed. Fast forward. This T-Mobile mergers happening beginning of the year.

They, they reach out to me and say, Robert, we can't give you this contract. You have to give us access to your Google business pages. And I said, you can no, no, I've been down this road. I'm not doing this again. And, they said, well, you're not going to get a contract What am going to do? At the time at 58 locations. and,

Mark Cleveland (11:00)
and salt.

Robert Hartline (11:10)
And they're like, no, you're not going to get the contract. You got to, you got to do this. You know, you got to do what you're told. So I relented and I'll never forget. Here I am trying to find my location. I'm losing half a million dollars in my car looking for my store. I know where my store is, but I always you get the turn by turn directions, because that's when I can find out if anything's wrong with any listings. And then it hit me and I was like, yeah, we're not on Google. They took us off Google.

And overnight, that took 30 something percent of all of our store traffic and our phone calls. Poof gone. And again, I called the alarm, screamed and hollered, got everybody and their brother on calls.

And we went through about 60 days. I was fighting, trying to get our listings back and they wouldn't, they wouldn't, no one was held accountable. And they would never give it back. They were getting all the traffic. They were basically taking the traffic from our stores to their corporate locations.

Mark Cleveland (12:05)
And there was no

commission paid to you, the dealer, even though that was your client.

Robert Hartline (12:09)
Right.

And and you know, and this is a lot of lessons here because it was not a franchise, but we were treated like a franchisee, but we had no protections of a franchise. And to make a just a super long story short, next month, same thing, losing $400,000. I get reached out to by another T-Mobile retailer. We have a conversation. He wants to buy. I have to sell, dude, like.

I can't survive. I'm going to go bankrupt. I owed the bank five million dollars. I had PPP money. And then I had a loan because I had acquired some businesses, some some other locations with the bank. And And in fact, I was like, am I going to lose my house? I mean, this is the fear that I was at at that moment. And so we made a deal to sell the locations.

And it wasn't the F money, F you money that you would really want at all. Right. But it was like, okay, I get the bank paid. I don't lose my house. Right. That was the frame of mind that I was going into this agreement.

And, anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, so I agreed to sign the, the agreement and a week later, T-Mobile was like, you need to close down another 12 locations.

Mark Cleveland (13:14)
Well, you were held hostage. You were held hostage, frankly, at that moment. I remember it on fire.

Robert Hartline (13:29)
And my offer went down another $4 million.

And that was a really low, low moment. I was in business for 22 years, you know, you have a certain level of, you know, we all want an exit. Now we're not doing this for the, the, the income. We are doing this for the outcome, you know, and

Mark Cleveland (13:55)
And you're part of so many communities, right? I mean, think about the anchor store in this mall, the employment, the importance of that store in a particular part of a community. And then all of a sudden you're just gone, just poof.

Robert Hartline (14:10)
Yeah.

And so, you know, I'll never forget, I signed the deal. I kept it hush hush until the last possible minute. I'm sitting on a zoom call. It's the last day of the year. It's my goodbye. And I'm crying like a little baby. I am sad. I'm defeated.

And then, you know, my team was angry with me, in their mind, they thought I had sold out and I made all this money and, and it wasn't like that.

I remember going into the new year, I had $500,000 in product that I couldn't sell. I tried to sell on Amazon, Amazon literally took all my, took my Amazon account, all the product, put us in purgatory. I couldn't sell it.

I had all these old phones I couldn't push and sell. I was literally trying to sell products out of this white van on your property. trying to get rid of all my stuff. Finally, I gave up and I just drove it to somewhere and just gave it to this person. And then I'm trying to empty all these stores. So the next year - it was dark. It was so dark.

It was like, was in this graveyard of Absolute Wireless, you know, all my relationships that I had flourished, that I loved, people that I was working with. They were mad at me.

What was really odd and strange had gotten a divorce in 2001. And the feeling of the divorce in 2001 and then a feeling of losing the business in 2021 was the same. I was pissed. I was angry. I was sad.

Mark Cleveland (15:44)
Mm.

Robert Hartline (15:50)
I felt less than it was just - and I read this book called The Three Marriages, and it talks about the relationship with Self, your spouse and your purpose, your work, and I had lost the purpose. It was the same feeling. And so I went through a lot of darkness with with losing that.

And it was so perfect to happen to me.

Yeah.

Mark Cleveland (16:11)
It's the hero's journey. You go through the darkness. I remember these moments, and at the same time, Hytch Rewards had its best year ever.

2019 and then in the first quarter of 2020, we sold more subscriptions for companies that want to motivate their employees to share rides on the way to work. And we won this big GNRC contract. And then all of a sudden, the pandemic bang. And you and I are both in this business with this perfect possible storm, like the worst business to be in on the planet at that moment was a shared ride mobility incentive platform doing the right thing for the environment. And wow, you know, just poof overnight. Someday we'll tell the story about how we survived for the next five years and how we - you know, perseverance and and really a lot of lessons in that. But now you've got one business on fire. You have another business on fire. And then the two of us, what did we do? We started a mask business, which is even crazier because at that point in time, you know, I understood how to get into the textile production space pretty well. And we had I had a friend who had a factory that had all the raw materials but couldn't get a status, you know, a critical service status definition on that facility and was going to have to shut down. But we could pivot the entire manufacturing capabilities of this entire business into mask production literally overnight, pull together some investors. I think we lost money on that deal, too.

But we did do something really special. We started a company, we produced masks at a moment in time in which we thought that was important and delivered a resource because we were capable of it. Think about that. Those are three amazing simultaneous parallel moments, drawing our energy, taxing our creativity.

Now we've gone through the valley of darkness. You come out the other side. What are you holding on to that's a

Robert Hartline (18:18)
know, during COVID, I was like, we have to have a backup plan because I don't know how long this pandemic is going to happen. What else could we do? And, you know, the masks came up. That was, that was awesome. But it was like we did not have the capacity to make it a viable business because they can only make so many. And and I think our lesson in that whole experience, we priced too low. We should have been triple the price.

And we could have got away with it. It could have been it could have been a viable business. I mean.

Mark Cleveland (18:49)
But actually, we made a choice. If you'll remember, we made a choice to price those masks at a cost plus instead of a retail down. You're right. We could have priced high, but we chose from a business ethics perspective to try to try to - I mean - another difficult choice, because, of course, that did not work out for us.

Robert Hartline (18:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think the other lessons too, it is really difficult to get a team to shift gears. Do something different. And as much as It was really fun doing the mask thing, because it was a great distraction for a minute. But once you sold your your stock, there was, you know, there's nothing else to,

Mark Cleveland (19:15)
Yeah.

Robert Hartline (19:28)
You know, nothing to sell, you know? Navigating, getting a team to shift gears is a very nuanced thing. It's not easy. And, you know, some people, just don't have that capability to be as adaptable as you'd think they would, would recognize they have to be in certain scenarios.

So, you know, that is that is really hard for a lot of people to navigate getting an entire team to pivot when you need them to pivot.

Mark Cleveland (19:57)
So how do you identify opportunities and decide which ideas are worth pursuing? Is there a secret sauce? Is it how you feel?

Robert Hartline (20:05)
You know, this is new to me. I'll put it out there. This is a new thing for me to evolve. I've been reading Big Magic. It is really a story about how our ideas are not ours. And it's a really great story. The woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, she had this book idea about the Amazon, this business owner in the Amazon. She had a book publisher ready to write the book during the process of writing the book, she gets distracted because her fiance loses his visa. Fast forward. She ends up going to this speaking gig and meets this other author and builds this relationship with this woman.

And come to find out over their relationship, discover that she was writing the exact same book. And it's just really this really interesting story. Harry Potter came to J.K. Rollins through through a train ride. And, you know, it's starting to make me think that, these ideas that kind of come to us maybe are from another source.

And maybe we should be more open to like really building a relationship with that idea in such a way to ask for more signs that this is the right idea. You know what I'm saying?

Mark Cleveland (21:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Ideas are entities that move from... That's why I think the same idea occurs to so many people at the same time, and some execute on it, and some just host it for a moment and then pass for whatever reason. I wonder if the idea isn't alive and it's just looking for its fertile environment to be fully expressed.

Robert Hartline (21:48)
Yeah, you know, I'm starting to believe that AI is an example of that. You know, so much of humanity is in a distraction state where they're using social media so much. They're not creating like they used to. And what I've noticed is If you start to use AI to be your, your idea manager, you know, the manager of all the thoughts that we have and to really organize them. I've noticed it is a very powerful tool to help organize those files up there, you know, make them make sense to me, my own thoughts, because it's chaos up there. If you walked into my office in my mind, you'd be like, dude, how do you get anything done in here? Well, now, I have tools with AI to really help me organize that and then help me take action on those things and make important decisions on those ideas. I think it's really fascinating.

I feel that we're moving in a whole new paradigm that we are just not ready for. And there's the, the people that are going to help reorganize this is parallel entrepreneurs. They're the ones that are going to go, all right.

Okay. I can see the different layers here, and position yourself to be in those right spots. I think the people who are going to get do very well: people that are going to adopt AI.

And we can do that today, but it's going to take a lot of letting go of the old paradigm. If you're sitting there going, you know, I don't need no AI, you can say that all you want. Good luck with that.

Mark Cleveland (23:17)
Well, you talked

How do you develop brands in these multiple companies that you've been been pursuing?

Robert Hartline (23:27)
I'm still kind of figuring that out. I'm trying to navigate what that is. The Decision Experience for me right now is a place every Monday at 9 a.m. I lead breathwork. We have another one at five for entrepreneurs. And so it's 20 minutes of breath and 40 minutes of conversation. Eventually, you know, I hope to take it as a show, a 90 minute talk that I would do in front of entrepreneurial groups and actually show them the benefits of breathwork, but more importantly, help them help their employees with the struggles of mental health and anxiety and stress and how they have a tool, your own internal medicine that you can activate through the power of the breath.

And how that matters in leadership teams. And so this brand that we have is The Decision Experience. We all are navigating some level of experience of a decision. And what happens when you have many decisions running in the background? We never will have true peace because it's like your computer is on and you have 45 windows opened.

You just energetically can't focus because you got too many processes doing.

That decision is still there. Hey, Mark, what are you going to decide? You know, this is this idea. Yeah, but yeah. And man, the fear of loss and all the things that goes with letting go of big decisions, you know. So I feel like there is a story to be told. I'm working on a

Mark Cleveland (24:46)
Make me a mission!

Robert Hartline (25:00)
that give you different modalities of decision-making, tools that you can use, to help you and your team, ultimately make the most important decision. And that is who are you going to be on this earth? And that's a big decision for a lot of people like to, lean into Superman, to, be Superman. Like if that's what you're wanting to do.

Mark Cleveland (25:08)
you

Robert Hartline (25:23)
And it's my belief Superman is just another word for you. Your true self. That's the decision that I want to navigate people to because when you do that, you have everything. It's not crafting another version of you that is fake it til you make it kind of guy. No, I'm talking about the real you, the truth. When you do that, everything is given to you and the opportunities just come to you.

We don't have to live in a hustle culture to get what we want. We just have to be who we're meant to be. And then what we want comes to us.

Mark Cleveland (26:01)
In a state of flow.

If you could talk to your younger self, what's the first thing you might say?

Robert Hartline (26:07)
Lean into just being yourself. You don't have to be anybody else.

Mark Cleveland (26:11)
Is there a question that you thought I might ask you that I have not? And what's the answer?

Robert Hartline (26:16)
You know, what would you be most excited about? Maybe it would be a question. I think I'm most excited about integrating AI into leadership decision-making. I really feel called to bring AI to leadership teams and helping people, connect their data with AI and helping them navigate important decisions faster. Because a lot of decisions not made are costing companies a lot of money in the delay.

Mark Cleveland (26:46)
I'm excited to hear about that. I think I'm going to import that into my own practices.

What is it that gives you energy?

Robert Hartline (26:53)
Yeah, that's a really good question. Absolutely. It's a it's an easy answer. That is connection with people and ideas and talking about ideas, being in the act of creation gives me energy. I've started a new rhythm and tempo. I'm producing these breathwork tracks specifically for entrepreneurs, to get out of the thinking mind, get into the creative heart space mode that we don't spend enough time in. And so I believe we do a lot more suffering than we we should be. And so, yeah, that that gives me energy, you know, connecting with others is probably the number one for me.

Mark Cleveland (27:37)
Well, and as a thought leader, as a business leader, a leader of a family, as a parallel entrepreneur, you are setting so much in motion in community with other people as well as with your teams. This motion, how does it start with the breath and turn into manifestation?

Robert Hartline (27:55)
Well, first off, I'm a soma breathwork facilitator and that involves movement, rhythmic breathing, and meditation and kind of combining those tools. A lot of people heard Wim Hof and these other modalities. The reality is when we begin to breathe in a rhythm, you can calm your nervous system down.

Before you even do breathwork, if you can move your body through dance and crossing motions, crossing your arms across your body, across the plane, so it activates your left and right hemisphere to work together, before you do the breathwork, you can accelerate an experience where you can get in a Zen space, a meditative space where you're not thinking about what do you have to do this afternoon?

You're not thinking about the calls you have to make. You're not thinking about the fear, you know, 80% of our world is living in a state of scarcity, fear-based modes. And the survival state, in which entrepreneurs find themselves a good majority of the time is a mode that you can consciously decide to switch modes.

And you don't have to switch that mode through drugs and alcohol. You can do it through the power of breath. It's simple as five to 10 minutes of conscious can get into a new level. In fact, if you do it with teams and I do this often with my clients, five minutes of breath before we get into the meeting, you're going to find that you're going to collaborate better. You're going to be better at dealing with conflict.

But most of all, get in that mode of creating and solving problems from a different space, because, you know, if I'm solving it through fear, it's a different angle than solving it through a creation space.

Mark Cleveland (29:47)
Mindset.

So the entrepreneur that's operating in scarcity or in fear, trying to make payroll, these are the stories that we hear and have actually experienced the grind when in fact we can experience the flow even through the challenges that we have to address every day. And you're talking about getting in flow. What happens to you when you get in flow?

Robert Hartline (30:10)
Wow. You know, I'm a I'm a Dan Sullivan disciple. I'm in his strategic coaching program. Strategic Coach was started in 1977. And in fact, Gino Wickman, who wrote the book Traction EOS, which I'm a implementer for is all about your unique ability is the frame that he calls it. Unique ability is is flow and unique ability is that thing that you love to do, and when you are doing it, you can feel like you're floating. You can feel like you're not thinking of the words that come in that are coming out of your mouth. They just come out of your mouth. it is in some regard, a little bit of an out of body experience. You may even feel emotion, emotional when you are doing your flow, you move out of Chronos time, which is the time that we're looking at our watch and seeing time, to Kairos time, which is time does not exist. And, you'll find yourself that, know, you're in flow when you're in deep work and time and space disappears and you just, you're going. And lots of things could get in the way of that. I mean, a simple phone call, a disruption, a sound, a noise, especially entrepreneurs. Distractions have a really powerful effect on us and our ability to stay in a state of flow. You know, we're like these like China dolls, man. We have to really be careful with our energy because we are, you know, very powerful. In this book named Driven, he talks about this question and this question is really simple. When Superman came to earth, was he Clark Kent or was he Superman?

For a lot of people that go, well, he was, you know, he's Clark Kent. And the reality is, you know, even as a fictional story, it's, it's a true story about all of us. Cause we were born Superman. We were almighty powerful can do anything. Although we were a little baby, right. But we lived in magic, right? We lived in fantasy.

And what happened for Superman, he entered this world and realized that, oh my gosh, in order for me to fit in, I got to be small and insignificant. So he created Clark Kent. He's a nerdy journalist, right? And when he needs to be powerful, he can step into a phone booth and he can save lives and he can solve big problems. And my version of the phone booth is breath.

We can go back to our superpower, step away, change, embody the superpower that's within all of us. And I use that character for me - I was born Bobby. When I turned 19, I started selling cell phones door to door and I wanted to be professional. And I thought Robert sounded professional. Right? So I created this, this other person.

I pretended to be this version of me, that wasn't me. I still, use those skills all the time, but now I'm realizing, you know what? I don't need to tell you what, what you want to hear from me. I need to be honest about who I am and be me. And that's the magic of, what this work that I try to do is, that unique ability, you being you is a magnetic force. The, the, the sad thing about this whole experience for most entrepreneurs that we're only about 20% of our day in our unique ability.

You know, Dan Sullivan's 10X Is Easier Than 2X book is all about shifting from 20% of our day being in the unique ability to 80%. What does that mean? That means what he also teaches is you hire "who not how" -- you focus on hiring someone that is taking all the things that pull you out of your unique ability and focusing on what you are destined to do, what gives you flow and that takes a lot of belief and faith.

Mark Cleveland (34:11)
So what you get, I think, into a flow state around is in community. So let's tie this back to parallel entrepreneurship. You are a partner and a force in Hytch Rewards. You are creating and driving a new community called The Decision Experience. You continue to build community. is that your superpower being expressed in multiple businesses?

Robert Hartline (34:37)
Hmm.

My first real company was a promotional products company, and I did that for about a year until, I had a customer that ordered $60,000 of bookmarks and slow paid me.

But I did that in parallel with my wireless business. I was selling promotional products, I was selling copiers, was selling, I was literally selling anything a business would freaking need. I would figure out a way to sell it to them. And that became my thing. Um, cause I love the relationships. I love connecting with entrepreneurs. That was, that was always my thing.

And my next business was in communication, what was communication? You know, I struggled, from 98 to 2010, I think 10, I joined the CEO roundtable. When I joined the CEO roundtable, it was the first time I was in community with people that were like me, a bunch of business weirdos, you know, entrepreneurs doing just cool things.

Mark Cleveland (35:24)
Mm-hmm.

Robert Hartline (35:30)
And I was like, Whoa, this is this is my tribe. You know, they're doing cool businesses and I really enjoyed that. And I realized that I had been working so blooming hard in my business. I did all the things, man. I was doing the payroll. I was hiring the people. I was not using who, not how. I had no systems, no structure.

Mark Cleveland (35:52)
So you talked about sobriety. That's a big change. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs, parallel entrepreneurs who have multiple companies that have moved beyond substances in order to get into their why and really get in touch with it. You as a member of the Parallel Entrepreneur Network, we have conversations about our why.

What was powerful and obviously we don't talk about what someone said, but what was powerful that you took away from sitting in a room with a bunch of other parallel entrepreneurs talking about things that we talk about?

Robert Hartline (36:28)
We all have a why. I mean, that's the given. Especially in your community so far, I have not seen the overwhelming desire that the why is the money. I don't feel that.

I have been in communities where that is like the driving force. I'm not saying it's a young man's game, that desire to earn lots of money. But it seems like more prevalent in the beginning because you're trying to survive. Right. And once you get to a certain level of wealth capture and, for a lot of people, that's their why for a bit of time until the why does not work anymore. Because the reality is there is no ultimate satisfaction about money. You know, you think if I get to this level, I'm to be happy. And that just doesn't work for most people.

You do what you love with people you love. That's going to work. I mean, that is almost like a guarantee.

Mark Cleveland (37:21)
You do what you love right there.

Robert Hartline (37:23)
Let's say I was a janitorial service and and I had to sit in front of a bunch of janitors and uncover their why. Well, how would I do that? Well, it's really simple. Do you know the power in a clean space? In an organized, clean space.

I would take a little few moments to really think about what does this space do for increasing creativity and collaboration, getting good work done, knowing that by me cleaning this space, I am just as important of a part of a team in that place where this this wonderful work is done, then the CEO of the company. Because I know what it's like to walk into a clean, orderly space. I do better work. I do much better work. And so if I was, if I was leading a group of janitors, I would really try to find heart based janitors who saw that in their why.

And they're cleaning the space thinking all the good work that they are doing and they are a part of, and they can put love into that space by cleaning it and blessing the space. And I don't care what business you have ability to put love in any kind of position or work. And it's our jobs as know our why, and then help employees uncover the why too. That's ultimately what I'm trying to do. I'm just using, I use EOS structure and all these tools to help the business grow and scale. But at the end of the day, I'm hoping to get the entrepreneur to be a real leader-mentor and helping people uncover their why. You get their get them in love with that, they end the addictions.

They start to bring that into their families. They start to elevate their family tree. And then they start to really care about, other people in their lives. And we are here to help other people at the end of the day, we're supposed to help our fellow man.

Mark Cleveland (39:29)
Well, you talk about putting love into a space physically. We could also talk about putting love into our space, which is our body, our body, mind and spirit. So you created I went through that process with you as you were developing it. To describe it, the first quarter was a focus on physical fitness because you've got to get your temple in order.

Robert Hartline (39:39)
Mmm.

Mark Cleveland (39:54)
The second quarter was a focus on love. Third quarter, focus on spirit, right? So you were basically teaching and practicing a method of getting the house in order, pouring love into yourself so that you have something more to give the rest of your universe.

How did I frame that? And can I tell you just from personal experience, the tribe, the quarterly meetings that we have helped hold me accountable to my own goals and my own objectives. And you are getting to see this explode in one creative, one commitment, one accomplishment after another in this tribe. I respect it.

I appreciate it and I love how you've invested in starting and creating that business too.

Robert Hartline (40:46)
You know, one thing I, I talk about love one on one really, really well. Sometimes I get resistant talking about love on this but the source of all energy is love. You know, I ask these questions of people all the time. What gives you energy and go, well, food. OK. We could fast for seven days and you could be in love in your heart and not even think about food. And in fact, you could work out and you could do all the things you normally could without having eaten for seven days.

One of the things that, I did to kind of start to learn the practice of love is thinking about, time and place where you're with someone where you had love or joy in your heart and you can play a movie back of this time in your past. And with the practice of 10 minutes a day for about 30 days, you can build onto this practice.

And this whole idea of like being Superman walking into a phone booth, you can capture that energy right away. That super heroic version of you is in love. And if you struggle to get there, you can use breathwork to also get you there. But so anyway, yeah, I could talk all day about that.

Mark Cleveland (41:51)
Yeah, well, these are. You're good and we would love to hear it. I mean, and at the same time, I think a lot of us face

Robert Hartline (41:58)
Well, you know, I had this decision about this, this thing that I was struggling with and I was talking to my coach and he walked me through this, this process that Tony Robbins teaches about: you start with the outcome in mind when you're making an important decision. I recorded my coaching call. I made that a transcript. I fed it to ChatGPT and ask me all the questions and follow the process. I answered all the questions in ChatGPT. It had me download a spreadsheet and I gave some emotional weight to the different options that I had. I re uploaded to ChatGPT. I had it write a complete detailed analysis of it. I dumped it into Google notebook and I had it create a podcast with two people that are business coaches talking about a decision that I had to make.

Mark Cleveland (42:31)
You're sporing it.

Robert Hartline (42:46)
And I listened as a third party, someone talking about me, which is a different way to like conceptualize a problem. Like if you were sitting in a room and you sat next to a wall and someone was talking about you, you'd lean in because, because it hurt a little bit to know the truth. Right?

But also we need to be told the truth. And unfortunately, our friends don't necessarily tell us the full truth, you know, because, because we want to be likable and all those things. But anyway, I'm walking, walking on the beach, listening to two people talk about my decision. And at the very end, it goes. Well, why did Robert decide?

And then the podcaster was like told the decision that I had not yet made, but I had to feel the feeling of feeling like I had made the decision. It was really trippy. A but B, I had this emotional reaction. It gave me some peace in the right decision. Now, now is someone going to listen to this and go, I'm not going to let AI make these decisions. I mean, AI is going to make these logical decisions based on pluses and minuses.

Mark Cleveland (44:00)
It's going to analyze the inputs that you give it. And you also take it another step forward, which I don't think many people fully appreciate. You actually train AI on your voice. You upload a significant amount of your creative original source material and offer AI the insight into how you think. So then it's going to surface in the way that you can hear something that you think and give you a chance to matrix that and make better decisions.

Robert Hartline (44:32)
Yes, yeah.

Mark Cleveland (44:33)
I mean, I think that's genius.

Robert Hartline (44:34)
Yeah. I've started this habit where I, instead of use social, I'll, I'll write notes my random thoughts, my thoughts that don't matter, not important, but it just put them out there - journaling. Yeah. And, it's really been helpful with, you know,

Mark Cleveland (44:43)
It's like journaling.

Robert Hartline (44:48)
clarification of the way we're thinking and in the speed that it's going, I see the day where you're going to go to log into Netflix and you're going to fill out a little survey about how you're feeling and you got an important thing you're struggling with and da da da. And you're going to watch a movie with all your favorite actors doing a movie to help you suss out a problem that you need to solve in your life because it's through storytelling that decisions are actually made. When you get in a circle with people that get really vulnerable and they open up and they tell stories and you are deeply connected to that story. We all have done it. Someone sits down and they start to tear up, our body language all of the sudden shifts. We get super focused. We listen intently when you feel the presence of an emotion that's strong, we listen. And as we're listening, humans have this beautiful ability to place themselves with empathy in that story. And yeah, you're listening to, let's say your story, Mark's story, but what we're really doing, we're going, how is that my story? And that's the power of vulnerability is uncovering your own story.

And, and when you do that, then you start making new connections. You start to realize that all these little lessons that were been given were uniquely given to us on purpose to help us on our path. And we were meant to receive these lessons and it's beautiful. And it's my belief that we don't make bad decisions, you know, because all decisions gets us where we need to be.

And if you if you want to label it bad, you said something to your boss and you got fired. Beautiful.

Mark Cleveland (46:37)
Yeah, that needed to happen.

Robert Hartline (46:39)
It needed to happen and what's next? And, it doesn't feel that way in the beginning, you know, it may feel like you made a huge mistake and maybe you were influenced by alcohol when you made that decision and yeah, you made a bad decision. You got on the interstate and you did something terrible, which could happen. Right. But it's part of that path.

It's wild what you can do with storytelling.

Mark Cleveland (47:03)
So the bravery that I rooted in when I'm hearing your story is that you are not outsourcing your leadership to AI. You're not outsourcing your decision making to AI. You are challenging yourself with your voice, with your best thought process, and looking for AI to assist you in a sense like a coach, in a sense like an assistant, but absolutely like a tool.

Robert Hartline (47:30)
Yeah, and here's the other thing. The practice of an AI prompt.

We get to practice this. This is a Dan Sullivan tool that he teaches before you go to bed. You know that moment when you're like, I feel sleepy. Maybe you're reading in bed and you have that little moment like sleepy. Grab a notebook, get your pen out and use the AI prompt on paper. Write down the thing that you want to solve. Help me answer this riddle about this decision I need to make. Show me the way, give me a sign. Tomorrow, I'd like to see some sign that this is the right decision I'm making, right?

Mark Cleveland (48:14)
Some

clarity on this point.

Robert Hartline (48:16)
Yeah, it's an AI prompt for your brain, right? Put the pen down. Don't think about the idea. Don't ruminate on it. Just go to sleep. I cannot tell you how many times that either I have a dream with a story that perfectly illustrates a decision I need to make or something happens in the next day that is absolutely God level, spiritual, divine, I can't explain, kind of make your hair stand up on your arm kind of stuff happens! And so The practice of communicating with your AI is no different than the practice of communicating with your subconscious before you go to bed. So it's making me learn how to program this thing that's up here. That's what it's doing. Yeah.

Mark Cleveland (49:07)
the Robert AI, The AI in your brain, the actual intelligence.

Instead of artificial intelligence, it's our actual intelligence and you're just asking better questions.

Robert Hartline (49:11)
Yeah, it definitely is.

Mark Cleveland (49:20)
So this is about energy, right? At some level, we're just energy, water energy bags running around in a vibrating universe. You have to balance your time and your energy between EO client implementations, between CallProof, another SaaS platform company you own that helps companies deploy smarter and more organized field sales activities.

You are still an assistant in this journey at Hytch. You you have other business ventures. You and I spent a week in Denver at the Ethereum Denver Conference in a fire hose, wild, wild west of blockchain and Ethereum and Web 3 environment and one of the things that I just treasure was, man, when you got to a point where you were needing a recharge, we went back to the hotel and laid down and did a breathwork session. I'm like, OK, thanks for that leadership, Robert. I want for the listeners to hear how effective these disciplines in managing your energy can be for you to spring back after that and then dive right straight into 80,000 people at the downtown Denver Convention Center with energy.

Robert Hartline (50:43)
Yeah, yeah. I'm a regular practicer of yoga nidra, which is sleep, non-sleep, which is basically, getting in a place where you turn off the mind for a little while. Anyone can do this. There's great YouTube videos. I mean, you breathe in deeply, squeeze all your muscles, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, do that about three rounds. And then you start to just imagine your big toe, your next toe, and you just put your awareness in every part of your body and you'll find yourself in this state where you are aware, but you're not thinking.

And it feels incredible, your body starts to vibrate and it's really a meditative practice.

Mark Cleveland (51:29)
So what's the best gift you've ever received?

Robert Hartline (51:31)
My two boys. Absolutely! That's the best gift. Best gift in so many ways. They are two professors at my home. They teach me more about being a father, about leadership, about life, about evolution of us, just watching them grow and prosper has been really rewarding.

That's my biggest gift for sure.

Mark Cleveland (51:59)
What's your North Star, Robert Hartline?

Robert Hartline (52:01)
Now it's been God. Understanding that I'm here for deeper work, that me showing up for myself, don't have to prove myself to anyone. I just have to do me. And that's an inspiration for other people. Like when we are being ourselves and people witness that, whether our kids or our family or our friends or coworkers or teammates, when people see you showing up, it gives them permission to be themselves. how magic works. It's so simple when you stop to think about it, life is not that complicated. Just be yourself. But yet that is complicated, right?

Mark Cleveland (52:36)
Well, I think we do the complicating to ourselves and to each other and culturally. I think there are other places around the world where we can all go experience people having a much more calm, integrated, closer to their environment life. And we seem to be chasing some things that our culture is defining and that we buy into. So at least in my experience, I think the art of slowing down has been helpful. How has slowing down helped you?

Robert Hartline (53:09)
I do more work being with people than I ever have before. I used to be on my computer all the time, and slowing down to me is taking time to walk. Slowing down is hanging out with people.

That to me is slowing down. Everything doesn't have to be a work chore anymore.

Mark Cleveland (53:32)
So I have personal experience with that. We go into nature and we experience that together. And we go to the sauna cold plunge place and spend an hour in shocking our systems out of wherever we were into where we could actually talk about something that might require our greatest talent and skill. Those are just two examples, but you do a lot of this kind of stuff, Robert. Share with us what are the secrets of hacking meetings and business to shape it like the life you want to lead?

Robert Hartline (54:08)
I'm huge in ecstatic dance.

It is a little bit of a spiritual practice, but it's also a mental health practice because when you're moving your body through rhythmic movement, you can process emotions. You can think about things maybe it's anger and you want to dance angry. You know, that's actually a really good way to express it. You know, what we often do as people is that we enter some emotional energy and we just store it, we store in the body and the body is just walking around with all these unprocessed emotions. Well, move your body out of those emotions and be free, let it go. You can let those things go through movement and dance, whether it's sadness or whatever emotion you want to do.

And then I also use it for idea generation. So if I'm feeling creative and I got music playing, I will play out the future state of the idea, taking hold, like being successful, doing the thing and move your body as if it's already here. And that in and of itself is so energetic and so powerful. And, I think it's my way to build the relationship to help manifest what it is that is going to be, by putting things into motion, right? By expressing how important this thing is. I think when you think about ideas at the end of the day, they're solving problems. You know, the ideas are meant to make us have a better life. How do we put ideas into motion? And I think a lot of it is building a relationship, moving your body to music, really embodying the idea and energetically loving the idea, putting love in your heart while you're doing this relationship with the idea. And it sounds wild, but it's not wild. know, all a thought is is a seed unplanted. EOS is this little seed.

The pot is your accountability chart, is the structure of the organization. And inside the pot, the soil is the core values, right? You've got to put the seed in the pot. You've got to water it, which is water is with EOS is simply the VTO, the Vision Traction Organizer. It's a strategic document, two-page document, what we're doing. And then the sun, the plant needs the sun, the energy is the meeting pulse. When you're meeting, you have to talk about the vision constantly. Where are we going? The visionary's job is to point the finger. This is where we're going guys. We're going here and here's why these are our rocks, our key priorities every quarter, three to seven key priorities. So you got the sun, you got the soil, you got the seed, you got the water, you got all the nutrients. The last thing you need is love. Love

Mark Cleveland (56:34)
Yeah.

Robert Hartline (57:00)
with the vision, that love is the universe bringing to life the thing. And so many entrepreneurs, they're working so hard to have their baby come alive.

Our role as entrepreneurs is that business to thrive without us because we have bigger ideas to bring to the world.

Mark Cleveland (57:27)
That is the parallel entrepreneur mantra so perfectly described. Thank you so much for your time, Robert. It is a joy and a pleasure to have you anywhere near my parallel universe.

Robert Hartline (57:41)
And Mark, I got to say thank you for inviting me to your your gatherings because I'm I'm having conversations and thoughts about the topic that I have always kind of hidden - there's almost a little bit of shame with having multiple ideas.

So it's given me permission to be just me.

Mark Cleveland (57:59)
Yeah.

Thank you. I received that. I want to reflect back to you the magic that you have been able to import into my life just with your existence.

Robert Hartline (58:10)
Thanks, Mark.