Create a Work Culture by Design

Rob Levin, CEO & Co-Founder of WorkBetterNow, shares his insights on putting talent first, building a positive workplace culture and being successful at it, and understanding that it all starts with your organization's core values. He also discusses how meditation makes him a better leader and how he found the right group of people to be around and be inspired by. 

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📌TALKING POINTS

1:50 - Finding diverse talent

4:14 - What it means to put talent first

11:54 - Rob’s entrepreneurial journey

19:50 - Managing pressure with a partner 

23:16 - Picking the right people to be around

🔗CONNECT WITH ROB

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertslevin 
• Website: https://www.workbetternow.com/ 

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Tom Finn (00:01.293)

Welcome, welcome in my friends. Today we are learning from Rob Levin. Rob, welcome to the show, my friend.

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Rob Levin (00:07.377)

Thanks for having me, Tom. I'm really pumped about having this conversation with you.

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Tom Finn (00:11.269)

Well, we are pumped to have you on the show. And let me just take a moment to introduce you to Rob. He is the co-founder of Work Better Now. He is dedicated to supporting and empowering small businesses. He has deep expertise in closely held businesses, combined with his experience in fast-growing companies as well. That's positioned him as a sought-after leader in the small business and mid-size community space. Now, under Rob's visionary leadership, he has pioneered an innovative approach US-based businesses with top talent from Latin America. It couldn't be any more on point at this point in history, Rob, that you are working with folks around the globe to deliver talent solutions. So let's just start there, because I think most entrepreneurs and business leaders are really thinking about this. How do I develop more talent? How do I find folks? How do I increase my diversity? All of those things are going through people's minds. So what did you guys build?

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Rob Levin (01:09.177)

Well, I'm going to approach the answer in a slightly different way. So if you think about it, and a lot of people don't realize it, but if you're a small and mid-sized business owner, you've been in a talent crisis for a few years now, certainly at least since the pandemic, it's not going anywhere, going away anywhere soon. What am I talking about? Let's look at some of the data, right? So you have more job openings than there are people looking for jobs in this country. Okay. The time it takes to hire somebody, according to LinkedIn, is about six to seven weeks. Now, in the small business world, it probably took you two months to finally pull the trigger to say we're ready to hire. So you needed somebody four months ago, right? You have that productivity of the U.S. worker has been going down, despite the fact that we have all of this amazing technology. And there's this lazy girl, lazy guy phenomenon that's going on in TikTok about how people are bragging about how they want to do the least amount of work possible, which as a business owner is not what you want to hear. A big company might be okay with that, but when you're running a small or mid-sized business, every single person counts. We have a company at Work Better Now where we provide amazing talent from Latin America for US-based small and mid-sized businesses. We won't work with large companies. We want to put our people where there's smaller and mid-sized businesses where the culture is great. That's really important to us. Because, and I think one of the reasons we've been so successful is from day one, we said we're gonna put our talent first. A company that I used to work with when I hired from Latin America, clearly put their clients first. And you would think, oh, isn't that what you want as a client? No, it's not what you want. What you want as a client is you want, you wanna put talent first, because if you put talent first, they're gonna put the company first, right?

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I learned that from Danny Meyer, the noted restaurateur, when he said, we put our staff first in front of our customers. And it was a foreign concept to me when I interviewed him back in 2006. And then I grew to understand it. And that's a lot of what our company was based on. And because of that, we've been incredibly successful to date.

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Tom Finn (03:23.629)

Yeah, well look, there's a lot of details underpinning putting talent first. So let's, let's check in on that. What does that actually mean to you putting talent first?

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Rob Levin (03:33.577)

It means it means a number of things. So I'll give you an example of how we put talent first. So we had You know, we provide talent in about 40 to 50 different roles from executive assistants marketing coordinators project managers So on and so on we had one client that had about Four or five of our professionals. We call our people remote professionals. They work out of their homes in Latin America and This woman's company was somewhat successful, but the culture wasn't good culture was so bad that our people kept quitting, which isn't good for anybody. And it's not good for us because we want to have a great employer brand in the 19 countries that we recruit from, and we do. And something like that can impair the brand. So we ended up telling the client, we can't replace these people anymore. We're not going to pull our people out, because you would never do that to a company. They're dependent on them. But we said, we can't replace these people anymore, which is basically saying, we can't there's going to be an end to us working together. That's an example of putting our people first. Now, how do we do that? I think it starts with building a company where you're designing the culture. The culture is not something that just happens, but you figure out what's the culture we want to have. In our case, it's work hard, it's play hard. We have six core values. This is the first company I've had where we've had core values that actually mean something.

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And when it works like that, it's really magical. And we remember some of the basics, which is, if you think about it, somebody working for you is spending a third of their weekday with you, half of the time that they're awake, right? And they're dependent on you, obviously, for their income. And if you kind of don't… If you don't look at it as like a top-down relationship, but in a relationship where, hey, we want to make this fun for you, we want to make this rewarding for you, we want to help you grow, then you're building a culture by design that is a positive culture that people want to be a part of.

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Tom Finn (05:41.653)

I love the way you said that. Look, culture by design is something that people talk about, but it's actually really, really hard to do. So here's, here's where my brain is sort of, you know, uh, we've got springs popping off and that things are breaking back there. So how do you build a culture with virtual folks in a different country where you're also trying to design it from the U S and then design it into a third-party company. Right. Cause that's really what you're doing is you're lending these great people. How do you put all of that together? It's really difficult.

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Rob Levin (06:14.621)

So it's a great question. You got me thinking here. So I think it starts with the core values that we have. And when I say, so we have core values, I have them over here to the side. Put our professionals first, have a growth mindset, work with an excellent attitude, work with integrity and transparency, work with an ownership mentality, and pursue excellence. And everything we do in the company is held against that. When we do reviews, we're looking at that.

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We have this program called the W awards, where we recognize our people, really inexpensive, very compelling way to recognize people, which people wanna be recognized. Those W awards are based on how somebody has met or lived up to the core values, right? So it's coming up with core values that mean something and then we integrate them into everything we do. We run on something called EOS, entrepreneurial operating system. Our core values are baked into that. So it's… It's coming up with those core values and then really making sure that we're living them in everything that we do in the company. So, hey, should we decide on A or B? Well, which one's more consistent with our core values? Oh, it's B, even though that's not the easy way. Well, then we're going to go with B. And anybody in the company can raise up, you know, either saying, hey, this is consistent with our core values or this is not consistent with our core values. The second part of your question, which is now we have this third party called the client.

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Well, I just had a call with a guy. He's got an IT company out on the East Coast. Decent-sized company, growing. And he met me at an event and he said, look, I wanna learn more about you because I heard about what you do and I wanna see if we can work together. And one of the things I said to him, and I forgot the exact context in which it came up is, I asked him a little bit about his company culture.

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And, uh, and he told me about it and it sounded amazing. I said, well, it looks like we, we can work together. You know, I took this concept from Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, which is even when you're the seller, you want to be the buyer, you want to choose who you work with and wheat, we have told our salespeople, we call them client consultants, if, if it seems like somebody is not going to be a good client, they're not going to be good to our people. Tell them we can't help them. We have other companies we can refer them to. So. There's only, look, we can't control the entire client experience, nor do we try to, but we can try to be selective in terms of who our clients are.

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Tom Finn (08:46.457)

Yeah, look, and that's music to the ears of anybody that wants to work with you, right? Because they want to be in the right fit. It's almost like taking the market and saying, we're not all things to all people. We want small and mid-sized companies. We're going to exclude the big dogs. We want people that are a cultural fit. We want certain industries where we can really support it, right? That all narrows the focus, but then creates the expertise. And that's where the magic is, right? You've created expertise. You got it. You got it. And that's-

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Rob Levin (09:09.349)

And then you get a reputation on that. Yeah.

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Tom Finn (09:13.753)

That's the takeaway, right? It's not just your business doing that. You're doing it very well, but it's other businesses that can learn from that model, which is people, culture, and then get skinny on your focus and hold true to your values. That's, I mean, that is the epicenter of what we should all be doing.

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Rob Levin (09:32.005)

Yeah, and the holding true on your values, you really find out if you're willing to do that when a big client comes along with a big check that's a little outside of your focus and you go, do we take that big check or do we stick to our guns? Then you find out.

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Tom Finn (09:49.753)

You really do find out. So have you been faced with that? What'd you do?

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Rob Levin (09:53.155)

Yeah, there are a couple of big companies or I've met people who work at big companies and said, wow, I've heard from three different people who are your clients that bragged about you. I would love to put your people in my department in the big company I work for. We say, hey, I'd love to be able to help you. We just don't do that.

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Tom Finn (10:11.489)

Yeah. Look, and that's a lesson to all of us, right? Stick to the values, stick to the culture, stick to your core principles. And, and you probably feel better about it just as a human being, um, that you're sticking to it.

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Rob Levin (10:23.226)

Absolutely. And if you've picked the right places, and you might have to evolve, you might have to pivot a little bit, but if you've picked the right places, you should see the long-term benefit from a financial perspective, if you've picked the right paths. But it's not always easy to do. It's not an easy thing to turn down those big opportunities where they're not a fit. But you'll be glad you did later.

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Tom Finn (10:47.425)

Yeah. When you're, yeah, you look at a six or seven-figure check, uh, and, and you're going, this is, this is real money and you've got to turn it down. That's a, that's a big testament to your character. Um, but I'm sure it didn't always start like this. You didn't start with a big company and folks all over the world and trying to integrate culture. I mean, none of us really did. Um, what was your entrepreneurial journey? Like, where did this all start for you, Rob?

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Rob Levin (11:12.605)

Okay, so I guess we'll start, we'll leave my childhood out of it, but we'll start with, I started my career actually as an accountant with one of the big firms right out of college, which was an amazing experience because they taught you how to be a professional. About two-thirds of the work I did was with closely held companies. They weren't all tiny, but I was working many times with business owners and that was kind of cool. And to me, that was fun, whereas a lot of my colleagues were so excited to be in capital markets. That just never did it for me. I loved working with business owners. I always had an appreciation for entrepreneurs. In fact, I was reading my dad's ink magazine when I was a teenager. Didn't always make me the most fun at some parties, but that's just me. So I did that. I then went, came out to the West Coast, went to business school for a couple of years. And then I worked as a CFO, COO, and a CEO for some fast growing businesses in the late 90s. And there I learned a lot of things that I still use today, but I also learned a lot of what not to do. And the last company I worked for, there was some fraud going on and I was the CEO of the company and I went to the board and I said, hey guys, we gotta fix this. And they said, no, we don't have to fix it. We're gonna keep doing what we're doing.

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So it was at that moment I said, that's it. I'm never working for anybody ever again. I'm gonna start my own business. And right as my first kid was on the way, I started a media company called the New York Enterprise Report, having very little experience in the media business, which was a media company that served business owners in the New York area. So I didn't really know how to grow circulation. I didn't know how to do this, didn't know how to do that. I was just gonna do everything the way I thought was best.

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So it was a cool company. I had it for 10 years. I'm still benefiting from it because I got to know entrepreneurs around the country, particularly in the New York area. I mean, thousands of entrepreneurs. And I also got to learn from the best. We were talking before the show started how when you're doing what you're doing and when you do what I did, having the media company, interviewing top entrepreneurs, many of which are my friends today and being friends with, I just had lunch today with an entrepreneur I met on this journey maybe 15 years ago. He sold his business for, I think, high figures. I just had lunch with him today and we talked about how we can work together and stuff. Built up an amazing network, but I didn't really understand core values. It was my first company. I had a lot on the line. First kid happened when I started the company, second kid a few years later. You're hustling. Plus, I'm living in New York City you're hustling and you're, you know, I took whatever checks came along and I, even if I had to put a square peg in a round hole and stuff like that. So, um, you know, I learned, I think a lot of lessons there. Um, after I, I sold that company, um, I then I kept a part of it, which helped large companies work, uh, market to small and mid-sized businesses. Um, and that was interesting because towards the end of that experience, going to like 2018, 2019, I just started winding down the company earlier this year, I learned that I really didn't like working with large businesses. I wanted to stay working with small and mid-sized businesses. And if we go back five and a half years ago, I was out on a business trip on the West Coast and one of my friends from college and first roommate in New York who now lives in LA met me and I told him I had this idea of, at the time it was just providing virtual assistance for business owners. Cause we believed every business owner should have an assistant. I told him I was going to start this company and he said, I'm in. I go, what do you mean you're in? He goes, I'm doing it with you. I said, all right, cool. You're going to do all the work and we'll split it 50 50. And we shook on it. We literally, we wrote down and I don't have it, but we literally wrote down in a bar on an app. We wrote a few things down. So we came up with the company name work better now. And we wrote down talent's gonna come first. And I don't remember what else we wrote down. And then it just kind of grew very organically from there. In fact, it was just him and my former assistant, who's now the general manager of the company. They did everything themselves. And then over time we expanded and hired people and we now have, I think, close to 30 people throughout Latin America, three people in the US, 30 people throughout Latin America that are running the business supporting about 335 or so professionals that are working for our clients.

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Tom Finn (16:07.501)

What an amazing story, man. That is awesome. And I imagine along the way, I know you're sort of putting Cinderella's slipper on here as you're telling us the story, but there's probably a few bumps and bruises along the way. I can't imagine it was all that smooth, although you do make it sound very eloquent as you go through the story making. Was there a point in there, especially when you were with your marketing company, you hit the trifecta there, starting a business.

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Rob Levin (16:09.949)

Thanks.

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Tom Finn (16:33.569)

In New York, which is a very expensive city. So pick New York, Chicago, San Fran, whatever, in one of those big cities and having young kids at home. I mean, that is the pressure and stress of doing that in that type of market is, I can't even imagine it. What was, what was that like?

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Rob Levin (16:49.785)

You nailed it. It was a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. You know, living in New York City, you're sending kids to private schools. I'm not going to even share with you what the tuitions of those are. You know, we were up until 2013, we were living in a three-bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center. We eventually moved to an area called Riverdale, still in New York City, into a house because we needed a little bit more space. But there was a lot of pressure. It's, you know, it's an expensive lifestyle and there are plenty of times when my wife was like, I'm sure you can get a job paying a lot of money. Maybe you want to be doing that. And she had the confidence that I was going to make the right decision, which ultimately I did. And yeah, a lot of pressure, a lot of stress. I used to have hair. So that's all gone. But I've got to tell you, the past five years with Work Better Now and just watching it grow and getting the positive feedback from our clients, many of which are friends, as well as from our talent saying, I now have the best job I ever did. I'm making more money than I ever did. I was able to buy a car, buy a house. It's the coolest thing I've ever done are being lived and everybody's working together. Believe me, it's not perfect, but all of that stuff is really going in the right direction. It's just, it's amazing. And I'm both Andrew, who's my partner, and myself feel extremely fortunate.

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Tom Finn (18:32.013)

Yeah, that's amazing story. I got a double-click here on something. You talked about spouse and partner, you know, for entrepreneurs or hard chargers, you don't have to have started a business. You could be a corporate guy or gal too. Sometimes the stress can be, can filter into them as well. Right. I can sort of like a waterfall. It kind of flows onto your family members. Do you remember that period in time? And was, was there something that you did to try to try to keep some of that pressure off of your partner? Or was she just in it with you and we live it together? We ride and die together kind of moment.

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Rob Levin (19:10.097)

Yeah, well, my wife's an executive as well. So she has her, you know, that comes with a fair amount of stress. And then I think when you're a mom, you just have more stress. So there's always that. I think one of the things that really helped me kind of compartmentalize is I started meditating maybe seven years ago, eight years ago. That has helped me a lot. That's helped me kind of slow things down, look at the bigger picture. It's been a huge, huge help for me. I would say that and on and off over the years being in CEO peer groups, formerly Vistage, I'm now in an EO-like forum. It's not part of EO, but it used to be and I joined it after they spun off from EO. Just being with other business owners and having an ability to speak with fellow business owners, not only about business issues, personal issues, where we can share experiences is very, very powerful. In fact, over this lunch that I had with my friend who sold his business for a fair chunk of change a few years ago, I was telling him the story of when I was sitting down with a bunch of people from a client at one of these large companies, and they were like, tell us more about business owners. Because we think we understand. And I go, well, the best way for me to explain this is if you guys were sitting here, you with me and another one of my friends who's a business owner, and we were speaking and you were just listening, it sounds like English and it is English, but you're actually not gonna be following what we're talking about because it's just such a unique experience of building a business. And being in a peer group with other business owners is a very, very powerful thing that's also helped me.

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Tom Finn (21:00.657)

So Rob, you mentioned what you do in the morning in terms of meditation. Do you do anything in the afternoon at all?

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Rob Levin (23:28.769)

I try to sneak in at least a five-minute meditation. I can't do it every day. Today I can't do it. I'm just, I'm back to back calls. Although what I might do is on the train ride home, I might sneak in at five or on the train, even maybe 10 minutes on the way home. And that just kind of gets me out of the business mindset. And again, I'm just able to slow everything down. It's been a very powerful.

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Tom Finn (23:52.673)

You know, I am NOT a meditator. I just haven't figured it out yet But a lot of people use it as a great tool to decrease stress pressure Kind of have a little alone time and clear the mind Is there is there anything else that you're thinking about when you're doing your meditation practice?

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Rob Levin (24:08.897)

Um, it's not what I'm thinking about. I think what it also enables me to do is it, it slows down my reaction. Right. So I might, I might, without the meditation, I might overreact to something. Whereas with the, with meditation, I can kind of go, Oh, wait a second. You know what? I'm feeling a little anger right now. Let's I'm noticing it. Let's kind of calm that down and let's go about this situation in a, in a more thoughtful manner.

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Tom Finn (24:38.757)

Yeah, well, yeah, I think a lot of us can use that. Well, well done, man. That's a great tool to have in the toolbox. All right, so now I wanna go to this idea of being in a CEO group or a group of other professionals, leaders, whatever it might be. How do you go about picking the right group of people to be around?

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Rob Levin (24:59.481)

That's a good question. So I guess the best way for me to answer that is, first of all, you can do it casually. You can just literally get together with a bunch of business owners. But I could talk about personal experience, right? I was in Vistage many years ago where there's a chairperson, and then your group is maybe eight to 10 or 12 people. And that's one option where you can there are Vistage chairs all over the world, and you can reach out to one, or maybe you know somebody who's in a group, meet them, try out their group, go and visit and be a guest. Every chair, I think, will have their own way of letting guests in, and see if it's something that you like, and obviously speak to the other people there. There's other groups like EO and YPO. YPO's for slightly larger companies, where the groups are kind of, they just kind of run on their own.

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And there's other programming beyond what they call the forum, which is your group, where you might be getting together with the other 50 or 100 people that are in your region's chapter. And the beauty of either of those organizations, and they're very different, is there's a framework. There's a framework for how you talk about issues. And a lot of it, depending on the group, usually centers around not so much sharing opinions, but sharing experiences.

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And when you're in a group with seven or other business owners, chances are they've seen something similar. They've gone through something similar to what you may be going through. And it's a very powerful thing. There's other groups too. I'm involved in something called Gathering of Giants. In fact, you had Daniel Todd on your show. And Daniel and I met at what was then Birthing of Giants. And we're still in a group together. So that's another group. And then something a little different which I'm rejoining is something called Success Coach, Dan Sullivan's program. And I just signed up to be in their 10X program, which I'm very excited about. That's slightly different than a CEO peer group, but it has some of those elements. So you can start out at Google or better yet, just ask your friends that are business owners. One of them is going to be in something and just ask them about their experience.

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Tom Finn (27:21.145)

Yeah, look, I think one of the key takeaways from your comments are not necessarily to do it exactly like Rob does it because Rob has figured out what works for Rob, which is what you should do, but to take on this idea of what am I doing for my mental health? That's simple, efficient, uh, and can keep me grounded. Right. And your choice, Rob is meditation. Uh, and then what can I do for my growth mindset to help my, help my education, my personal training and my in my business tactics, my relationship building, those types of things, what can I do to really surround myself with like-minded people? And we always hear this old adage that, you're the average income of the top five people you hang out with, right? And I'm sure there's some truth to that. The reality is, it's not really about economics. Those people have a mindset and a humility and a kindness about them that made them successful, most of them. You can get away… Right? I mean, you can get away with being a jerk for a short period of time, and you can, you can probably do it, but over the horizon of a career or a couple of decades, that falls flat.

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Rob Levin (28:30.293)

Yeah, I think you nailed it with the mindset. It's being, you surrounding yourself with people, like in my, for me, I'm constantly thinking of, how do I do this better? How do we grow? How do we grow as people, right? And then I think you also, it's, you know, do you share core values in common? That one of the reasons that Andrew and I have this amazing partnership is we have the same core values.

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Tom Finn (28:56.729)

Yeah, look, I'm the same with my business partner at LeggUP. We met in grad school. He looks different than me. He talks different than me. We couldn't be any more opposite in looks and personality. However, we have the same high level of integrity, the same high level of caring for others. We both have a growth. We just match up in so many other areas. But if you saw us together, you go, you guys have been business partners for six years, really? It's not quite as bad as the movie twins. I'm obviously Danny Devito in that in that example. But but it's important that you align core values for sure. No, we said it a couple times on this show, but I think that's critical. So what's next for you, man, you feel like one of those entrepreneurs to me that's got it figured out, figured out the right type of people to work with, really growing your business. What's next for you?

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Rob Levin (29:56.537)

So our business, I think, has a lot of runway, a lot of runway. And we're very excited about it. So we just made the decision to, we just hired a recruiting firm to hire a CMO. Right now, I'm kind of in that VP of marketing seat. And while I'm the visionary of the company, that's an EOS term, my partner is the integrator. I'm the visionary.

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And I'm really, but I'm not a CMO, I'm not a VP of marketing. I have a lot of ideas around messaging because I know the space very well, but I don't know a lot of the tactics. So we're really excited that this is going to help us further propel our growth. I think next year we should be making the ING 500 in our first year, or 500, or 5,000 our first year of eligibility. And bringing the CMO on to me is one way that we're going to continue to make the list because we're going to continue with that explosive growth and that will allow me to really be more aggressive in terms of being the visionary of the company. And one of the things that we talk about in the company is we want to have wow experiences for everybody, for our clients, for our talent, for our team, even the vendors that we work with. And working with the different departments in the team to creating those wow experiences, doing more speaking engagements.

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I've been speaking a lot about the talent crisis and how to deal with it. Overseas talent is just one way to do it. There's AI, which is a huge tool, how companies can do a better job of retaining top talent. So that's been a very popular topic and I want to do more of that. So that's kind of what the future of the company is enormous. And I got to really focus on my unique ability as the visionary of the company understand the market, to get ahead of the market. You know, and a good example of that is, I came up with this idea earlier this year and we're right about to roll it out, which is the WBN Academy. It's gonna be continuous learning for our professionals so that they can continue to expand the capabilities of our clients. Really excited about that. And what's great now is I'm in a position as the visionary where I can come up with the idea and then I have this amazing team that can actually make it happen and that's a cool feeling. When I go back to when I had the media company, I had a really good team there too, but for a long time I felt like I had to do everything. And now I'm learning that as you let go and you have the right people in place and you have the right direction set, as you let go, that's where the magic and the growth happens.

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Tom Finn (32:37.241)

Yeah, the term that I think we use in business is delegation. Um, but the actual term is letting go a little bit. I always feel about like, you got to get them to about 80% Rob. You got to get that person that you're working with to about an 80% productivity of what you can perform on your own. And then they're ready to really take the whole job. Right. Do you have a metric that you use when you think about, Hey, I've got to develop people to really let go and how do I, how do I do that?

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Rob Levin (33:06.893)

I don't have a metric, but what I've learned is, don't... What I'm trying to avoid now is dictating to people how to do things. I'm just trying to let them know, hey, this is what success would look like with this project, okay? If you have any questions, come to me. You know, now, we hired you because you're really smart. Go figure it out. If you need some help along the way, I'm there, but rather than telling somebody, do this, do this, do this, do this, hey, here's what we need, right? We need this WBAN Academy, right? We wanna build this. Here's a little bit, here's kind of what it looks like when it's working well. Now go build it and we're about to launch the pilot.

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Tom Finn (33:49.221)

That's awesome, man. Look, and for those of you listening, these are the type of leaders you want to work for, because that's the type of environment you want to be in. Here's the vision. Let me get out of your way. If you need something, my door is always open. You can call me, text me, you know, jump on Slack, whatever it is, and I'll help you out and get through the problem. But then it's back on your plate to go, you know, figure it out, which is what I think most knowledge workers want, right? Most intellectual people want to be able to do some of this stuff within some level of boundary. But, uh, but for sure have the support of their leader. So kudos to you, man, for really adjusting that sort of hard-charging entrepreneur into a modern-day executive that really just exudes core values, which you can kind of feel through the screen here as well, man, so great job. Well, you know, the best thing about people is when you compliment them and they're like, I know what's going on the back of your mind, Rob, right now you're thinking, I can do more. I can do this better. I can improve it.

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Rob Levin (34:35.44)

Thanks, we're trying, we're trying.

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Tom Finn (34:48.129)

I can scale, right? And that's the essence of what a growth mindset is and something that I hope many can figure out and find along their journey. So I see if.

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Rob Levin (34:59.63)

We're constantly trying to be better leaders, right? We're trying to figure it out too, right? We don't have all the answers.

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Tom Finn (35:05.797)

Yeah. So is there a passion for music in your past or your future? Because I'm looking at you and I'm seeing all these, uh, these bands behind you. So, so give us a little insight into, into Rob's inner, inner thoughts in music.

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Rob Levin (35:18.561)

Yeah, I'm a big music guy. It's a few things. I started playing guitar at 13. I played in clubs over the years in New York. I've been going to concerts ever since I was 13. Eric Clapton first concert in 1983. And I've probably seen, if you consider each show at a festival as an individual one, I've probably seen over 1,000 concerts over the years. I saw a Dead in Company nine times this year, so yeah, I'm a big music guy. And in college, I ran the concert board and I got to promote bands like Cheap Trick and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Meat Loaf and Elvis Costello, which was a really cool experience. You know, it was all run by volunteers. So that was a really experience, how to get volunteers to do stuff. So yeah, music's a big part of my life.

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Tom Finn (36:11.449)

Now that's awesome, man. Well, thanks. Thanks for sharing a little bit about who you are personally, you are clearly taking talent and empowerment to another level. I can't thank you enough for the work that you and your partners are doing and how you're sort of integrating work into Latin America and the US with your organization work better now, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, Rob, what's the best place for them to connect with you and have a chat?

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Rob Levin (36:37.785)

So if you want to get more information on Work Better Now, it's workbetternow.com. And the best way to find me and to reach out to me is through LinkedIn, just Robert Levin, Work Better Now.

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Tom Finn (36:50.669)

Yeah. And if you are a fantastic, uh, chief marketing officer and you want to work with a great team, reach out to Rob right away. Uh, the position is closing soon. Uh, I imagine it'll go fast and you'll find somebody really, really exceptional. Yeah. With any luck, man. All right, Rob, we'll look, man. Thank you for coming on the show. We appreciate your brother.

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Rob Levin (37:05.753)

Master now. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Tom. It's a lot of fun. And let me know when you're ready to do this again.

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Tom Finn (37:17.978)

I appreciate it. We'll have you back anytime. All right, my friends, thanks for joining the Talent Empowerment Podcast. We'll see you next time.

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