Adam Torres and Robin Daniels discuss human empowerment.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
Zensai, the leading Human Success Platform, seamlessly integrates into Microsoft 365 and Teams and is powered by AI. In this episode, Adam Torres and Robin Daniels, Chief Business Officer at Zensai, explore what it takes to build successful teams.
About Robin Daniels
An experienced executive focused on growth, marketing, GTM, product innovation, and leadership development to deliver epic results through ground-breaking, fun, and highly differentiated activities, while empowering people and teams to do the best work of their lives.
About Zensai
The leading Human Success Platform, seamlessly integrates into Microsoft 365 and Teams and is powered by AI. Our mission? To unlock human potential worldwide. With a global presence spanning 60+ countries and millions of users, Zensai revolutionizes employee development, engagement, and performance management. As a Microsoft Preferred Solution, we redefine success metrics, offering a best-practice framework and solution for learning, engagement, and performance that is delivered in the Microsoft 365 environment. Driven by AI, designed for productivity, and aligned with your unique workflow.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Robin Daniels and he’s the chief business officer over at Zensai.
Robin, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam, good to be here, man. All right, man. So great to have you on the show today. We got lots to talk about. So we’ll talk about leadership, culture, human empowerment, and much more. But just to get us kicked off here, I’ll start this episode the way I like to start them all with our mission matters minute.
So Robin at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Robin, what mission matters to you? Well, at this point in my life, I would say there’s one mission that matters more than anything else, and that is to inspire a next generation of people to be the best that they can be, to live fulfilling lives, happy lives, successful lives by, really doing things that they love and having massive success as an outcome of that.
I firmly believe that this applies to all 8 billion people on the planet. When you look at all the data, it’s not great when you see how many people are not living up to their full potential. And I want to unlock and unleash that full potential. That is my mission. Awesome. Love bringing mission based individuals on the show.
You know why they do what they do, how they do it and what we can all learn from that. So we all grow together. So great stuff there. I guess just to get us kicked off here, maybe tell us a little bit more about Zensai and what you do. Yeah, well, it’s very aligned with my personal missions. One of the reasons why I ended up joining the company about a year and a half ago.
You know, I have a, I spent over 20 years of my career in Silicon Valley working at companies such as Salesforce, LinkedIn, WeWork, Box, Matterport. I’ve taken two companies public and I have come to this realization that I am 100 percent where I am in my life because so many people along the way have invested in me, believed in me, given me the opportunity to be the best that I could be.
And I want to pay that forward. I want to do that for everybody else. And of course I have always had good skills in some areas and some where I could be developed and that’s true of all of us, but I can guarantee that we all are where we are because so many people have taken the time to miss. I’m sure if it’s same for you, Adam, it’s probably a teacher, a parent, a coach, a mentor, whatever it is.
And I think everybody who has that on their side becomes better for it. So what we do at CENSAI is. We are basically a platform that’s focused on empowering people to be the best that they can be every single day. So you learn the right skills at the right time, connect with the right people, get the right knowledge.
So you can become the best that you can be. And we do that through three different ways, through deep learning of the knowledge that you need to do your job well today and in the future, getting the skills that you need. That’s number one. Number two is giving you the clarity of the goals that you need to have in order to, to be successful.
Have excellence in your career, because, of course, how do you get promoted? How do you get to next level? You crush your goals consistently over and over again. But that requires you to have clarity on what your goals are in the 1st place. So, goal management goal setting is very important tie to a learning opportunity.
And then finally engagement, making sure that people are deeply engaged in the mission of what they’re working on the work. They’re doing the team. They’re working with and the company’s mission as well. Because we know from all the data out there that says that if you believe in. . The team, if you believe in the work you’re doing, if you believe in the mission of the company, you do a much better job every single day.
When I see Adam, that two out of three people want to quit their job. This data just came out in July of this year from Gallup. Two out of three people want to quit their job. And when you dig deep into the data, why do you want to quit your job? It says, well, cause they’re not learning. They’re not growing.
They’re not motivated. Nobody’s investing in them. They’re going to give them the skills or opportunities they need. That’s, that’s the tide I’m trying to turn is that I want everybody To be motivated, to grow, to learn, to succeed. Cause I can tell you one thing, those people who feel that way, the two out of three people who want to quit their jobs, do you think they’re showing up every day, doing the best work, the most meaningful work of their life?
They’re not, of course they’re not. And I want to be the platform that helps unlock that for the first human beings. When did you first kind of come towards that concept of like paying it forward? Like one of the, one of your driving, your driving factors, , when that hit you.
It’s it really came into stark clarity for me. I would say in the last probably five to ten years because of the the ride I’ve had you know I flew from I’m born and raised in Copenhagen Denmark and when I was 21 I bought a one way ticket from Copenhagen to California. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a place to stay I’d never been I didn’t know a single person, but I always had this feeling that I wanted to be brave and go take a chance on something that could be magical in my life.
Fast forward, and again, like I just said, I’ve fully gotten to where I am because so many people along the way have taken the time to take a shot at this young guy who may be a little inexperienced and so on and giving me the right skills and opportunities and so on. And I want to pay that forward, you know, so I think it really started coming into clarity for me when I became a leader myself, that’s probably maybe just over 15, 20 years ago when I first became a manager.
And then now, of course, I’ve been a C level leader. I’ve been a chief marketing officer, chief business officer for many companies at the highest levels, managing hundreds of people. And I can see a hundred percent. It’s not about me having the best skills or being the best. It’s about me assembling a great team around me.
But if you want to assemble a great team around you to ultimately reach success, it’s about unlocking the skills that each of those people, because everybody has great skills. It’s about just a matter of have they been unlocked? If somebody believed in them, push them in the right direction, give them the right, like, nudge that you should go learn this, connect with this person, get this skill to be the best that they can be every day.
Yeah. It’s interesting. That whole pay it forward model. I was in a, in and out burger. I don’t know. Have you ever had an out burger? I just had it last week cause I was in California. Yeah. So I was that in and out burger. Whenever I can do it in an out burger plug on the show and no, they don’t pay me. It’s fine.
But and , that concept that we talk about paying it forward or even paying it backwards. So I don’t know, this has only happened to me maybe a couple of times in my life. And it just happened to recently happen. And I go to pay and they’re like, Oh, the car in front of you paid for you already.
Then I’m like, all right, let’s, let’s keep the line going and come on. I’ll pay for the, they did get me though. I had like one burger, just me there. And I’m like, it’s kind of my little, the guy behind me, of course he had a 40. I’m like, what? Of course, I still paid it backwards. All right, I wasn’t, I wasn’t a cheapskate Robin.
I was, I was spreading the energy, but I love it. It was thinking about, but that one little action creates such a ripple effect of the world that we want to live in. Isn’t that the world you want to live in where we’re looking out for each other, taking care of each other, investing in each other for no reason other than just, it feels good.
It’s the right thing to do, not because I’m expecting a return on that, but it’ll come, you know, at some point, but do the right thing. And oftentimes amazing things will happen. That’s at least my experience. Yeah. , I mean, a lot of big companies that you work for and otherwise culture.
I mean, we hear about this word a lot, culture, like what, what have you seen in successful cultures? Yeah. I mean, I’m so passionate about it. I write about this a lot, you know, on my LinkedIn, you know Decent following there. And I write a lot about culture because culture is like the game changer. If you want to create a great company, you have to figure out this equation.
And the equation in modern companies is that you need the person to be successful and the company to be successful in equal measure. And I think so often we swing the pendulum too far in one direction or another where we go, it’s growth or profit at all costs. And then the people are suffering when you dig deep into that, that’s not success.
And then the vice versa is also not true either where you go. People having a great time. They’ve got all this great pay free foosball, , free lunch and all that stuff, but the company’s not doing that well, is that success? No. So, , in a modern culture. You need both to be successful. How do you then do it?
Well, how do you create an environment where people are expired and motivated? Well, you give them freedom to do the best job they can do. . You hold them accountable to a higher standard, but you also give them opportunities to develop themselves. The reason, again, coming back to why two out of three people want to quit their jobs is because again, nobody takes the time to invest in people, give them feedback, you know, and if you just show up, . Your job is just kind of a A job where you show up and nobody’s kind of looking out for you.
You don’t feel like you belong. There’s not a really sense of engagement. You don’t feel like you’re learning any new skills. I can nearly guarantee 100 percent that you’re going to quit your job as soon as something better comes along. And of course, not everybody has that opportunity. I mean, sometimes you’re stuck in a job because you just need to get paid and so on.
Right. But if you do have the opportunity to pick and choose. Then, of course, the cultures where they have figured out and take the time to invest in people and their skills and their growth, those are the companies that usually thrive. That’s why I think, you know, it’s so tied to leadership. It frustrates me to no end when I see leaders who finally have gotten to that hallowed ground of leadership.
And so many people want to be a leader one day. They want to be a vice president or a C level executive. And then they just think that their life is going to be easy and they don’t really invest the time in their people. I’ll tell you from my experience, the more you rise in the ranks, your life never gets easier.
You might get paid more, it might get more fulfilling because you can impact more lives, but it never gets easier because the job of a leader is to inspire the people around you, give them clarity and certainty on the goals that they need to have and the skills they can need to acquire to get there.
That’s the job of a leader. It’s relentless. It’s fun. It’s exciting, but it’s not easy in any way, shape, or form. Talk, let’s talk a little bit more about that concept or motivation that you mentioned. Like, what, what does it take to motivate a team you know, to deliver, to perform? Yeah, I think , there’s so many books have written, been written about motivation and, . Many of them are really inspiring, but I think honestly, it comes down to two things.
Well, number one is you need to have clarity. Excitement around the mission that you’re on, and that can be a small thing. Just like, what is my team goal? What is my personal goal? What’s my team goal? What’s my company mission? You need to honestly have excitement and clarity on that. It’s very hard to, I think, be motivated if you don’t have, like, think about it.
I oftentimes think that uncertainty is the killer of all motivation. When you don’t really know why you’re doing what you’re doing, what’s the purpose of it? So number one is clarity . , . And excitement. . Number two. Do you feel like you have a job? Where you’re making a difference towards that goal and think about it.
Like. If you show up every week and you’re like, you know, . , it’s not always easy, but I feel like I’m making a difference towards the goal that we have set that brings a deep level of personal satisfaction and reward, right? The worst is when you’re like, God, I’m working my ass off, but I don’t really know if I’m making any difference.
I don’t really know what it’s for. You know, we’ve all had those weeks. I’ve had those weeks many times in my career. I’m like, God, I’m so busy working like crazy, but I’m not really sure it’s making a difference. You know what happens? You lose motivation very quickly. Right? So again, there’s lots of things that go into motivation.
It can be very individual. Sometimes you want to get paid more. You want to get promoted. You want more responsibility. Maybe you want to do jobs. There’s a lot to it, but the two core core elements is clarity of goals and excitement around the goals and a feeling that you’re making a difference towards that every single day that will keep you motivated.
And I feel like it’s easy, not easy. I wish I didn’t say, but it’s one thing to keep, to initiate motivation with something new, but sustaining it, I mean, what’s been your ingredients to sustaining it over time, like in reinventing yourself and reinventing, not, changing the mission, but, you know, sustaining it over, especially periods of growth.
Like you’ve been at some big companies, like talking to me about how do you sustain that motivation? Yeah it’s a constant battle because it’s not something that’s one and done. I’ve certainly learned so many times in my career that it requires a constant sharpening and repetition of that mission, both to yourself, honestly, as much as to the people around you.
Right. You know, it’s like keeping yourself motivated. So it’s, it’s not something that’s ever done, but that’s why you have to set the ambition so high to begin with that you’re never quite there. Right. I think about the companies I’ve worked for, the lives we’ve wanted to impact with the categories we’ve wanted to create, the movements we’ve wanted to create, the ambition has been so high that we didn’t ever quite reach them.
And that’s okay. But if even if we get halfway there or a quarter way there, you’ve made a big difference in the world. So our mission, for example, at CENSAI is that we’re only happy when every single HR department on the planet. Has changed their name to human success and their focus, not on human administration, but on human empowerment.
Now, are we going to do that for every single company in the world? No, of course not. . But that is the ambition level that we’ve set ourselves. And we need to remind ourselves why we’re doing when I’m sitting there dealing with spreadsheets all day, or trying to fix a bug in the product. Bring it back.
Like, why are we doing what we’re doing? We’re here because we want to change the way human beings are empowered on a day to day basis. So it requires, you kind of hit the head. It’s not easy. It’s simple, but not easy. It requires this constant sharpening, repetition, reminder of yourself. You know, I oftentimes go out there, I’m speaking at a lot of events.
And my sister, I get to motivate myself around this of course, right? , I get it. So you gotta, brainwash yourself too, especially for the leaders, depending on how high level you are or how high up on the, . Org chart you are, I mean, you, you’re giving up a lot too, possibly more or the most. So to keep yourself motivated in your own head in the game and to remember like, why am I doing what I’m doing?
Like why does this matter? It’s important. Completely. Like when I came into this company, you know, they’d hired a new C CEO. He’s amazing. And this is one of the reasons I took the job. He’s a big thinker like me. The company had kind of, I think had small ambition and then he changed the ambitions that we want to be a unicorn one day.
We want to be worth, you know, it’s not that many companies out of Denmark that become unicorns. And, and so he had set that ambition and I, then I come in, you know, about a year after he joined and I said, okay, that’s a great ambition, but it’s also long term. That’s the financial outcome. You know, in some ways I want to change the world.
I want to like change lives. I want to change the way that society thinks about human empowerment. And he’s like, yes, that is the mission. It’s not just about us becoming a unicorn, which will help investors and executives and so on. But it’s like, how do we create something and movement that inspires first of all, our team, but then also the world outside of our company to participate in this.
And so that’s why we kind of, we morph that into like, well, This is our mission is we’re only satisfied when human success becomes something that everyone can relate to and understand and be a part of it’s not like something that’s unique or special for us. We want everybody to be a part of this. It’s great.
Well, Robin, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and getting to know more about you. What makes you tick? What keeps you motivated? And also just success. So appreciate you coming on. And last. thing here. How do people learn more about Zensai? How do they follow up and learn from you or connect on social media or otherwise?
Whatever you’d like to leave. Well, Adam, first of all, thank you so much for hosting me. I think it’s been super fun to like, just chat with you. You can find us at CENSAI. com. That’s a C or said E N S A I. com or just go to LinkedIn and look for Robin Daniels. I’ll probably come up first because I post the most following.
So just Robin Daniels chief business officer at CENSAI. So that’s where you can find me as well. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know we’ll put the links in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over. Check out Zen Sai and check out Robin. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content. New ideas and hopefully new inspiration. That’s going to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow and Robin. Thanks again for coming on the show, man. And, and I get to talk about it and now today, I know what I’m doing for lunch, man.
Appreciate you. All right. Take care, Adam. Bye.