Episode #10: Leading Through Loss with Keith Mercurio

Change Your Filter with Tall Paul

Key Insights: 

• Don’t compartmentalize, instead integrate the various unique parts of yourself.
• Be “in the moment” with interviews & conversations.
• Embrace the unknown.

Big life events can often be painful, yet there’s always an opportunity to learn and grow via hardship. In Episode 10 of the Change Your Filter Podcast, we are joined by the Senior Director of Executive Success at Service Titan, who is also the Founder & CEO at Ethical Influence Global, Keith Mercurio.

Who is Keith Mercurio

Keith Mercurio is a licensed plumber, corporate leadership trainer, and consultant. He runs on the belief that he is “uniquely unqualified, stunningly effective, deeply impactful, and totally entertaining!” 

He currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina as Director of Executive Success at Service Titan & the Founder and CEO at Ethical Influence. Before that, Keith was the Director of Training for Nexstar Network for more than 7 years. While at Nexstar, he built and refined over 20 transformational training programs spanning from sales and leadership to personal growth and communication. Keith oversaw the development of a 15-person training staff, conducted over 120 annual events, and trained more than 7,000 people.  Needless to say, this wide array of experience has helped Keith grow his following as a sought-after professional coach.

In addition, Keith is an accomplished speaker, having shared the stage with John Maxwell, Les Brown, Patrick Lencioni, John Taffer, Joe Navarro, Robert Cialdini, Gino Wickman, David Rendall, Emmit Smith, Rod Hairston, Vinh Giang, and many others!

Hardship

Keith has recently finished a very difficult period in his life. In a 2-month stretch, his mom went into the hospital and passed away and then his dad developed Alzheimer’s disease. Keith was forced to deal with some upsetting personal issues in a very compressed period of time. Regardless, Keith was able to grow and become stronger through the process! Drawing from personal lessons learned, he is now able to share with the world that although he went through much heartache and turmoil, the end product (his now beautiful life) is better than ever.

This rough period of time in Keith’s life completely changed his perspective. He now understands that we should all focus only on the things over which we have immediate control. 

Keith admits he is still at a crossroads due to his recent experiences. His dad was very healthy and did everything right in life, yet still came down with a very unfortunate disease. Because of this, Keith is not yet sure of whether to 1) enjoy his life and do all the things he wants, or 2) make some necessary changes that will allow him to live a longer, fuller, and healthier life.

A Few Weeks Prior

A few weeks prior to his tragic circumstance, Keith was given the opportunity to interview Simon Sinek. Unfortunately, he then received a troubling call that his parents had contracted covid on the plane to watch their son! Keith was required to make a choice, not simply compartmentalize. Instead of compartmentalizing, Keith recommends integrating the various “parts of ourselves”. In this process, he recommends “not asking for things to be different” but instead asking for “things to be one.” Keith states: “You must learn to be the best version of yourself in all circumstances regardless of what’s going on.” To compartmentalize is merely to pretend the “occurrence” didn’t happen.

Keith notes that we should all take the time to actually process our fears, concerns, and anxiety. Then we need to be “present” regarding what we can (and can’t) control via an honest dialogue with ourselves.  

There’s this moment when we all must call the right version of ourselves to the table for the task at hand. Recognizing who you need to be to execute this is critical. 

It’s not thinking about what you need to do, that’s the stuff that overwhelms us all. Instead, it’s about “who you need to be” to handle “what needs to be done!”

Preparation for Simon

Keith had the pleasure of conducting this interview for his company, ServiceTitan. ServiceTitan asked Keith to be the keynote speaker at Pantheon, one of the largest conventions in the home services industry. They also asked for one more favor of Keith: they wanted Keith to interview Simon Sinek! ServiceTitan had no idea how much Keith loves Simon. Luckily, his colleague Tom Howard recommended Keith as he knew about Keith’s passion for Simon’s work. Keith has read all of Simon’s books and has prescriptively given them to his clients.  

Keith notes he had to battle his ego a little bit in order to effectively conduct the interview. His job was to interview Simon in front of 4,000 people. Every fiber in Keith’s body wanted to impress Simon and then impress the audience (in that order). He knew he needed to get over his internal ego and his self-interest to be effective. He needed to truly be “in service of the audience” without trying to appear impressive.

Keith made plenty of notes prior to his interview but kept them in his pocket. Keith lives and preaches to all of his clients: “You’ve studied it!  Now trust it will be there when you need it.”  If you simply focus on what you’re going to say next, the conversation quickly loses depth. Questions based on effective listening are always best.  

Coaching

Keith notes that there are two similarities among his high-performing clients. First, they all have a coach. All of them are constantly in pursuit of getting better. They are so hungry for personal development that they often have several coaches. They’re hungry to find out what they don’t know and to understand things about which they may be wrong. Many of these high-level clients state that “their personal growth accomplished along the way” is their real success.

Keith also notes that his top performers are all exceptionally good people. They are all very nice, good, family people, who generously give back to their communities. Not only that, but they trust people, they see the best in people, and they want the best for other people. These individuals do not look at the world in a finite way from a scarcity mindset, they look at the world from the perspective of abundance – they want to give!

Keith defines his coaching as confrontational, counterintuitive, and somehow completely conforming. He notes that much of his coaching is operational and focused on business tactics & strategy. He even reviews the proper reading of financial statements. Coaching overcomes individual paradigms that often hold individuals back from being the dynamic leaders they absolutely know they can be.

Realizations

Via his education and life experience, Keith has come to a couple of big realizations about himself.   

1. Keith no longer cares what people think of him, especially those who think poorly of him.
2. Keith no longer desires to control what will happen to him. He now realizes that we can’t control everything, and that regardless of what happens to us, we’ll be okay!

The need to have a plan, the need to be in control, and the need to know what to do all seemed really important to Keith in the past. Now Keith has more comfort and balance knowing that whatever needs to be done, will be done. He always rises to the occasion and takes care of what needs to be done.

He used to think certainty was really important.  Now Keith understands the importance of embracing the unknown.

The Future

The idea of transformation is different from change. Change is a comparison against the way that you were. Transformation is the concept of something completely new. 

There are 3 ways people can transform

1. Conditioning: repeated patterns over and over until a set of pathways is laid out until it sticks. 
2. Change in the environment: new place, new school, new job, opportunity to be transformed by the environment.
3. Significant emotional event; birth, death, accident, something joyful. 

His mother’s passing and his father’s Alzheimer’s are the most significant situations Keith has gone through in his life. The emotional lift that went with that was powerful. He didn’t get help where he expected it, and he was challenged the whole way. 

Keith never thought of himself as having grit. He thought he was the product of luck, talent, and intelligence. He felt he had never been tested much in his life. Yet Keith can say now with confidence that he is gritty.  That’s not something he saw in himself before.

Keith’s ability to do the heavy lifting and hard work beyond what anyone else would – in order to ensure it got done (and done right) on behalf of something else – is something he is very proud of.

You see – life happens FOR us – not TO us!

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