When 'Success' Is Slowly Killing Your Career ft. Paul Comfort

In this insightful interview, Paul Comfort shares his journey of discovering his X factor, where his interests and abilities intersect, and how this has transformed his career. He offers practical advice on finding your purpose, overcoming misalignment, and leveraging your unique strengths to achieve fulfillment and success.

Guest Links
https://findyourxfactor.ai/

Transcript

1:45

For comfort, welcome to Productivity. I'm excited to be here, Santi. Who is Paul? And what is the X factor? Well, I'm Paul. I live here in the United States near Washington, D.C., near Baltimore in that area where I've lived and worked most of my career. Santi, along my career, I've worked in three basic industries. I've worked in public transportation where I've managed small, medium and large transit systems. was CEO of the Baltimore City Transit System. uh I've also worked in local government. Here in America, we have 3000 counties. It's the jurisdictions of how our nation is structured. And I've been a county administrator, which is like the CEO of the county government in two of those. And I also spent a little bit of time practicing law, which I hated. We could talk about that time too when you have these shiny jobs that sound good but aren't that great. then also the third career is this new media career that I've had for the last eight years where I'm writing books. including the one we're going to talk about today, Find Your X Factor. uh But also I have my own podcast and TV show through my company. do live events and host and moderate things. so it's kind of been a third uh act to my career. And I hope to and I'm also a university lecturer here at Villanova University in Philadelphia. along that line, I have seen. the advice that is often given to graduates of colleges and high schools. And the advice is, Auntie, follow your dreams. Follow your dreams to great fulfillment. And you know what? I like that. I think we should follow our dreams, but I think that's only one half of the equation. If you want to be successful, and you're not a great singer and you go to Nashville and try to become a singer, you're probably going to fail. If you want to be a professional sports player, but you're four foot eight and you weigh a hundred pounds, you're not going to make it in football and basketball and any. So all these dreams that people have at various phases of their life, even middle of their career, where they go into, you know, what some people are calling your midlife crisis. You have these passions you've tried to follow. And if you don't have the ability to do it well, you're going to fail most likely. So the X factor is just that it's that spot where your interest and abilities intersect. Like it shows on the cover of my book, Find Your X Factor. So this book is about how to navigate what already is in your life to find the sweet spot where you can be self actualized. You can get paid to do something you love and you're good at it. So you get recognized at it. There's a lot of examples in the book of people that have done that, including me. I've been able to follow that trail. I haven't always been successful. And we tell some of the The failures in the story too, but that's what the book is about. That's what your X factor is. Let's go there Paul. You've been in radio law and so many other things. How did you figure out that you had all these factors and how did you decide now? Now is the time to pivot and do media or do a podcast. Right. So I remember back in college, I went to University of Maryland and I loved radio. I've loved radio since I was a kid. I remember being 10 years old, recording on the old cassette player and practicing. talking on the radio. got a job in radio as soon as I could at the end of high school and at a local radio station doing a DJ on the weekends. I just loved it for some reason. I loved that communication medium being in people's homes and their cars. And I remember at University of Maryland, I became a DJ there as well and news director of the station. But the way the station was set up was uh you walk into the student union, the student center, and the radio station was just to the right, and the DJ booth had a glass back to it so that it looked out into the opening of the student union. So on Mondays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Santee, it became my favorite time of the week. And I started looking forward to Mondays because that's when I was DJing and I got to play my own records, you know, that I wanted to play. I remember debuting in, you know, U2's Joshua Tree album there and being able to look out the window and see the students behind me react to the music and to what I was saying. It just it made me look forward to Mondays for like the next 20 years of my life because it just kind of like Pavlov's dogs, you know, I started being trained to love that. So from an early age, I realized my passion. is engaging with people. It's communicating with them one-on-one, but also in larger groups, standing on a stage and singing, which I did a lot of. I had a band in college and we toured, made a record and all that, or speaking to them. My dad was a preacher, a pastor, and so I learned it probably from him, right? Being up on the podium, talking out to the audience, you know, the congregation. So that became kind of like the thin line through all of my career. And I always found myself in whatever job I've had, and I've had a lot of them. uh leaning into that part of the job. And so I knew that was my passion all along. And what made me feel good and warm inside and had that fire in the belly when I woke up was looking forward to that part of the job. So I wasn't always able to do it full time, like most people aren't, but I was able to lean into the core tenets of it. In one job where there really wasn't any opportunity to do much of it, I just volunteered to do the new employee orientation so I could meet the new employees, get to know them, talk to them in front of them. Later on, I started a radio station when I was head of the MTA in Baltimore, America's only FM radio station run by a transit agency. I started two TV stations in local governments like the local cable access channels while I was there. I always leaned into that. And so when I retired as CEO of the Maryland Transit Administration, I was offered a bunch of jobs and I knew I wanted to keep working. I'm too young to, you know, really retire. I was only 52 at the time. And I took the job that would let me lean fully, more fully into this. I remember I gave a speech to this big organization called Trapeze, which is a software company. And um I wasn't working at the time I'd retired. So I said everything I really wanted to say, which I've never really done in a public speech before in front of, you know, 200 leaders of the software company and, you know, religion, politics and the great pumpkin, like they talk about here in America and. um When I was done, the guy said, I've never heard any speech like that, the president of the company. Would you be willing to stay the night and come stay with us tomorrow and see what you think of our company? So I did. And the next day, the president came up and said, look, we weren't planning on this, but we love you and we want you to come work for us. What would you want to do? Boom, baby. And so I said, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to write. I want to speak. I want to travel. And I want to help my fellow public transit CEOs improve their transit systems. So now here I am eight years later. And they've allowed me to start a podcast, a TV show, travel. I'm kind of like their, it's the world's largest transit technology company, but it actually is. And I'm the senior vice president. And so they've allowed me to kind of be the public face of the organization. uh And, and I'm able to live fully now in my X factor. My abilities are in transportation. You know, I know how to run transit systems. I could do it with one eye closed. You know, I've run small, medium and large ones. I know the levers to push to make things happen. I've written about it, talked about it. know, hundreds and hundreds of times at speeches across the world. And now I'm able to cross-reference that ability with my interest, which is engaging people and communicating. Was there a time, Paul, where you realized that your successful career was misaligned? And if so, what did you do to change it? Yeah, yeah, it's the time when I mentioned um I've had one or two, one job I hated and one job that I didn't enjoy. And there's a difference, right? So the job I didn't really enjoy was practicing law. When I went to law school at night, I went while I was working full time, I was married, had a couple of kids, and I knew I always wanted to be a lawyer. You know, I'd taken all these um appraisals of, you know, when you're young, you take these skill set tests, you know, and see what you're going to be. And it always said lawyer, judge, you that was what it always leaned towards. So and I had friends who were lawyers and they said, you got to do it. So I said, all right, I'm finally going to do it. So I went to University of Maryland school, night school, four years. It was miserable, you know, very hard to have a family drive an hour and a half into the city and go to law school at night. But I did it, got it accomplished. And uh I just wanted to use it in my career. I knew a law background in government transportation would be important. So then it came a point, where I actually fell back on it full time and became an attorney for about a year. And, you know, it was business law. was helping a couple of large stores. Sears is a store here in America that were local. was kind of like their outside counsel. I did some land use law. And then I worked for a big company that owned apartment complexes. And it was during a downturn in the economy here in the United States around 2008. So I was having to, you know. renegotiate leases for stores and work with apartment renters who weren't paying their rent. And I was like, this is not what I want to do. This is awful. You know, I just this is not interesting or exciting to me. I don't want to be on the wrong side. I even ran for state's attorney to be a prosecutor in my own county uh when the job went full time. I didn't win that, but I learned a lot and made friends with the guy and later on got my first job as county administrator overseeing the prosecutor's budget. So that worked out good. And we became buddies. So In that job, I realized what I had thought. I do not want to practice law as a primary profession. I need the legal skills I learned to do my job better. It's a tool, right, to be a more successful government and transportation executive. But I don't want to practice it. The other job, I actually wrote a chapter in this book, Find Your X Factor, and it's called When You Hate Your Job. And this was a job I had for five years, Santi, that was miserable. They did not I did not have any respect at the job. uh The boss, know, there's old, there's studies that have shown, we talk about it in the book, about how 70 % of job satisfaction really has to do with your relationship with your boss. And if you don't have a good relationship, it's hard to have good job satisfaction. I felt like I was underutilized. I was micromanaged, which I hate. mean, get this, they literally, I was managing a big operation, but we were a contractor to a government agency. And they literally would not let me put memos on the wall to my employees without them approving it and without them approving where on the bulletin board I could put it. That's the level of micromanage we had. And I was very much disrespected by the people that were there. And it's so funny because afterwards I got a big job and I was still working there for a little while in between when I got that. And suddenly all the people that were disrespectful to me came in. Oh, Paul, know, so excited about you. I thought to myself, I'm the same person I was a week ago, and these people treated me like trash. And now I'm the next best thing to slice bread. And I don't want to tell you the thoughts I thought in my head, but they weren't good. And so I hated that job, but I learned five great things that I'm not going to tell you today, but it's in the book. Five things that I learned from that job that prepared me for my next job. One of which was I learned to steel wool for breakfast. you That's a saying here in the country. What is one sign that someone is crushing it at work, but it's quietly betraying themselves? yeah, that's a great question, Santi. I've never had anybody ask me that before. uh Yeah, well, I think it is, you know, we all have skill sets that we're good at, right? And so that's the half of the equation. You can be in an area where uh you're crushing. I'll give you an example. It's the very first story I tell in the book. So uh a good friend of mine, she retired from the state of Delaware and uh I went to her retirement party. My wife and I went to her retirement party. She's good friends with my wife too. We grew up together and at her party, I talked to her daughter, Jessica. Jessica grew up with my son, Joseph. They're both in their mid thirties. They're good friends. And, but I haven't talked to Jessica in years. I saw her there and we started talking. She said, Mr. Paul, I got to tell you, I just got the perfect job for me. said, you did? Well, tell me about it. She said, you know, I had this job in his company where I was several companies where I was basically administrative. was doing, um, spreadsheets and, um, for people and analyzing things. And I was really good at it and they loved me and they said I was great. But I wasn't happy. I wasn't fulfilled because I didn't want to be pigeonholed into just an administrative job. I wanted a management job where I could lead people as well. And now I've got a job, a project management, where I use those skills, my spreadsheet skills, but I'm assigning people out into the field to do various repair work around for this company. so I'm helping them, know, I'm leading them, giving them what they should do with their, but I'm also through a spreadsheet, you know, marking out what they're doing, their accomplishments, where they're staying, all that stuff. So I'm able to mix what I'm good at, the spreadsheets, and what I love, management, and put them together in a project management job. So people that are unfulfilled but are excelling are oftentimes operating on only one leg of their X factor, their abilities, but they haven't been able to cross reference their interests yet. So the goal would be, and that's what this book says, it says on the very back of it, This book is not about starting over. It's about uncovering what's been there all along, not blowing up your life, just starting to lean into in your current job, things that enliven you that are you're passionate about. You can do that. And that's the message of the book. Eventually, you might get a job like I do where you can mix them both. But along the way, you can lean into things you can volunteer for duties at your job that are more interest, more of what you're interested in. And so the book takes you through the process. And even my website, findyourxfactor.ai has a free self assessment where you can lean into that and you can, you know, take some time, sit down and analyze what am I super interested in? Go back and think about all your hobbies, what you would do for free, what you're doing when time seems to fly by, right? You're out in your garage. If you're a guy working on your motor for three hours and you look up and your wife says it's dinner, you're like, holy cow, I can't believe I was here for three hours. Well, that's something you like doing. You're mechanical, right? And so. figuring out those things and writing them down and unplugging from all your media so you can think for a few minutes and think about your life and then think about what am I good at? Not what your mom thinks you're good at, by the Your mom thinks you're good at everything. So if you ever watch Jerry Seinfeld, his mom says, Jerry, how could no one love Jerry? Right. So moms are always defending their children and think we have six kids, my wife and I do. You know, don't ever talk down about one of her kids to my wife, right? She's going to defend them to the Hill. So your mom's not a good barometer of what you're good at. But your friends might be or your work might be. Where did you get your certificates? Right. At work, you got to acknowledge for something, right? Or what do people come to you for help on? That's your skill sets. Right. And so do an honest assessment of your skills and your interests and then try to circle where they might intersect. and you can start leaning into, ah, and then you know what? You'll wake up like I do and probably you do every day, say, after you're thinking, oh yeah, I can't wait. Today's gonna be fun. I woke up this morning, I said to my wife, today's gonna be a fun day. I've got a bunch of fun things I'm doing. I'm editing a video, which I love doing. One of our videos for Transit Unplugged TV we just filmed in Florida, in St. Petersburg, Florida, America's number one beach town. I get to edit that, I get to talk to a new guy on a podcast about the book. I've got a call with my book agent later this morning or later this afternoon. And I've got some fun emails I'm going to do. So you can lean into that and think, yeah, I love this. What I'm doing. That's what that's what it's like to see a great job that you're good at, but you're not enjoying and how to kind of bring that other factor in so you can enjoy it to tie that question in a bow. Five minute answer. Sorry. Link to that poll is do what you love and the money will follow dangerous advice. I think it is. Yeah. I mentioned I had a band, Sons of Thunder, when I was in college. It was a good band. We were pretty good. We spent a lot of time in it. I played keyboard and sang. I wrote a lot of the original songs. We had two guitars, bass. We had some girls as backup singers, lights and can, you know, the sound guy and all that. We had a group of, you know, kind of fans who followed us everywhere, probably 40 or 50 people that we would do shows around the Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, D.C. area and made an album. And I had a good friend, Don, who uh was one of the friends who would hang out with us. He's a little older than me. And I remember him coming to me one day, Santhi, and he said, Paul, I want to sing. I want to sing. And he's like, uh. He showing me how he could sing the scales, you know. And he was awful, Santhi. I mean, just awful. You know, he's a friend of mine, so I'm not going to say you're awful, right? But I was like, Don, how about you try to pick up guitar if you want to be in music? Maybe that'd be good for you. I don't want to learn an instrument. I just want to sing. Well, how about you try sound or light just trying to guide him to something where he could actually be a little more successful at because, you know, you could sing for fun, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. Singing in the shower, whatever. But it's a job that requires some skill sets. And if you don't have those skills, you're going to embarrass yourself and you're going to be disappointed. Disappointment, I read recently, is the gap between your desires, your expectations and your reality. That's disappointment. So if you've got these desires, And you've got these expectations. I want to sing. I want to be a singer. And then you get up in front of people and you sing and you're awful. You're not going to get a good response. People may be kind, but you're not going to get. So that advice, follow your dreams and the money will follow is only true in my opinion. If it's also intersected, the X and the Y factors are intersected so that you get to the X factor. let's flip it around where do you draw the line between using money as a wise constraint and using it as an excuse to stay stuck? That's good, man. Dude, your questions are great on point, Yeah, uh you know, I always said I would never stay anywhere. I never want to take a job just for the money. So I never have taken a job for the money, but I did stay in that job that I hated because of the money. I was offered uh jobs as CEO of other companies while I was there, but I was making great money, know, multiples of six figures. And I just couldn't get out. I was like, you know, this is even though it's a CEO job, it's still X amount less than what I'm making. And I've got my kids in college and all this stuff and I can't afford to leave this job even though I hate it. What the heck, man? You got to figure out a way out. so so, yeah, so the other people decide, well, look, you know, yeah, I'm miserable at work, but you know what? I have a great weekend. I have great nights. I'm able to have life balance and I'm able to do the things I love on the weekends. You know, maybe it's motorsport racing, right? Maybe you like going out and you were able to make so much money. You could buy your own race car. You go race on the tracks in the weekends and you have enough time off because you've been there 10, 20 years where you can take time off for the races you want to go to and you're fulfilled. You've to balance life that way. Yeah, I don't really like my job, but I'm able to do all this stuff on the side. Maybe that's the compromise you've made for me. That's not enough. uh I don't want to spend the bulk of my waking hours doing something that I don't really enjoy. Life's too short. We only get one time around this planet. And so my theory is, you know, like Neil Young said, the famous rocker, it's better to burn out than to fade away. I want to lay it all on the field. I want to figure out how to do what I love, at least some of it, where I work. And if it's still miserable, I want to look inside, outside, all around. I've got lots of chapters in the book about that. One chapter called I Met a Guy, which is how you meet people in your life that aren't really good friends, but they become associates and they open up doors for you. You just have to not be so risk averse that you're not willing to look at that. Man, I remember one time, Santi, I wanted a job and I was at a big conference with thousands of people in this room. And the guy I needed to talk to, Roy, who had the job, but was in an acting capacity. And it told me, I think you'd be great for my job. County Administrator of Charles County, Maryland. which is a big county near Washington, D.C. Three times as big as the county I was in. I could never get him on the phone. He was so busy. So I had to meet him at that conference, the Maryland Association of Counties Conference in Cambridge, Maryland. And it was the last night and I had not seen him yet. We were leaving the big conference ballroom where the governor had just spoke and there were two doors going out of the conference room in the back. And it was it. Everybody was leaving after that speech. And I just felt led. Go right. So I went right. And I'm not kidding. I literally bumped right into him. They were all flooding out, you know. He said, Paul, I'm glad I got you. Here's all the information I needed. I got the information I needed. I applied for the job. I met the right people that fill me in to make me a really strong candidate with local information knowledge, and I was able to get it. So you're guided, I think, if you open your eyes and you're not blinded by the money, but you're focused on You know, the universe, I think, conspires with you if you're focused on what you really want in your life, because I think we are hardwired. We each have a destiny. I've always believed that. It doesn't mean that everything you do is planned out for you. We obviously have free will, but I believe you have a destiny. Every individual listening to this, you have a destiny. It's already hardwired inside of you. You already know what you're interested in and you already know what you're good at. You just got to sit down. figure it out, write it down and start moving in that direction. You can steer a moving car much better than you can one standing still. So don't let yourself be subject to paralysis by analysis. You do not want to climb the ladder of success your entire life only to find out at the end it was leaning against the wrong wall. Paul, when someone finds the intersection of their X factor where I'm taking for granted productivity increases, where do you see people filling it first? Is it in the output? Is it in the outcome? Is it in their mood? Is it in their energy? Yeah. Great questions, Auntie. And it ties right in, know, to your podcast theme of productivity. Yeah. So do you think you're going to be more productive if you're unhappy and you hate and every day it feels like you're somebody scratching their fingers on the blackboard? You think you're going to be very productive there? No. You know what you're to be like? You're going to be like the people I saw when I walked into government office several years ago and I walked in the back door because I was invited in the back and there was all these customer service agents sitting there. And you know what every single one of their computer screens was on? Facebook, Instagram. They were strolling social media because they hated what they did probably and they were looking for an outlet, which is what we all end up doing. We end up numbing ourselves, doom scrolling, when we're not feeling successful and fulfilled and productive doing something we want to do. So I think you'll be much more productive. If you're enthused about work, if you're excited about it and studies show it, we talk about it in the book. I point out the studies that show that if you're operating kind of in your sweet spot, the zone of your life where you're self-actualized, you are going to be so much more effective because not only will your abilities be there, but also your interests will be there. And you won't be like looking out the window during long boring meetings, which you've all been in, you know, in our offices, you know, and somebody up there, some ego head bosses up there going on and on about how great he is. or whatever they want you to do and you're like, my God, help me. So yeah, I think your productivity will soar when you're able to operate in your X Factor. Do you think that in the pursuit of the X factor people need more discipline? They need more clarity or they need to be more effective or they need simply more time for themselves? Where would you start if someone is finding their X factor? All right. I'm going to give you clear advice. It's a great question. uh Go to my website, find your X Factor dot A.I. and there is a free assessment. It's a tool. The book isn't out yet, by the way. The book will come out in August. You can preorder it now on Barnes and Noble. But if you want to get started this weekend and you want a tool to help you. Sit down on Saturday or whenever you're not working, give yourself an hour or two. First off, I would encourage you to just calm your spirit. A lot of times when people are in their... uh You know, they're thinking, I got to make a change. They're stirred up. Their spirit is stirred up, right? They got they got, you know, um gird, you know, you've got the in acids in your throat, you know, and you're upset and you're tense and, know, your face is breaking out or whatever, because because you're not your your body is reacting to the level of the stress and the anxiety that you're feeling inside. Right. You're 45 years old and you're like, what the heck? How did I get here? This is not what I want to be doing for those people. Sit down and take 10, 15 minutes and just meditate. Right. Tell your head, be relaxed, your face, relax your arms, your shoulders, relax all the way down and then just sit there quietly with no one around and let your body breathe in and breathe out and let your body relax and let your subconscious take charge and let all those thoughts come through. Let your conscious mind flush out and then be in tune with your inner self. We all have this inner self and listen. Listen to what your mind is telling you. It will tell you. Your subconscious, that's what your dreams are. Your dreams are your mind reshuffling things that have happened in the day, putting things in file cabinets and guiding you if you'll listen to your dreams. I haven't really talked about this on any other podcast, but I think it's important. You already are hardwired for these things. Listen to yourself. You don't need the tool I put out. You can just listen and feel where the pain points are. I gave a speech on a stage in Los Angeles about 10 years ago to thousands of people. I was the last speaker of this conference. And that's what I did. I sat right in the middle of the stage and I practiced and showed them, this is how you meditate. This is how you quiet yourself as CEOs and executives. find what's really troubling you. Most of us are walking around with a knot in our stomach, Santi. I get it sometimes too, because of all the stress and the anxiety we've got going on. We have these what I call ankle biters, things that are biting their ankles that are hurting us, you know. So you got to identify what they are and you got to address them. It may be your health, it may be your in-laws, it may be people at work, it may be your car, your dog, whatever. Figure out what the hell it is that's making you so anxious and uptight and release it. and then look to your inner self, no one else, to identify. I'm going to follow my personal treasure map to purpose. I want to live my life on purpose, not just for money, not just for fame, not just for success. I want to find out what my inner purpose is. And I'm going to tell you, Santi, when you live in your inner purpose, you get access to what I call, what the Greek call the dunamos power, dynamite. you are self-actualized and operating, you are fully alive, integrated, where your inner self is no longer compromised. where you're doing things that you weren't built to do, where you're living a life you weren't supposed to live, where you're compromising with substance abuse or with illicit relationships or with numbing yourself through entertainment or drugs or alcohol, whatever else. That's all a symptom, man, that you're not living on purpose. You pull all that together, quiet yourself and find the clarity you need. I'm not talking transcendental meditation or anything freaky. I'm just talking about Finding out who you are on the inside, quieting all those inner voices and stopping all the numbing stuff. And then you will find your personal treasure map to purpose. You will find out this is my purpose. And I believe our purposes are defined inside of us, right? The nature nurture thing and all that jazz I know. But we have. inner strengths and inner abilities. And sometimes they're far apart. I'm just talking about writing them down, putting them together. And you will find if you do this, I believe you will find your purpose in life and you will be good at it. You'll be productive because you're doing what you're supposed to do. It'll be your skills and your abilities, not one or the other. And you'll be happy. You'll be fulfilled. You'll feel like I used to feel every day when I came home from my very first job. 22 years old. the first transportation coordinator of the Queen Anne's County Department of Aging, where I was able to be with elderly folks at the senior centers, getting them transportation, van service to doctors, to senior centers and all that. got a commercial driver's license so I could drive as well as manage the 15 drivers I had. And I was able to sense because I was right with our customers, right? Begin with the end in mind. The end is always the people that we're serving. I was going to be right with them. And they would tell me, Paul, this, you know, if it wasn't for your service, I wouldn't be able to get to the doctor today. My daughter would have had to take off work and stay home and that meant I mean you know she had to take a vacation day and I got to feel and sense the satisfaction that comes from serving others and it came from living in my X-Factor. Paul, you have something called the three C's. Character, competence, and communication. When you look at leaders, what fails first when they are misaligned? Is it the character, the confidence of the communication? Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't know the answer. I think it could be all three. But I think those three are required for you to be successful in a management job, especially. But in most jobs where you are in the where you have responsibilities, right? Character, meanings, integrity, right? Doing what's right when no one's looking. If you're not living in your X factor. You probably are going to be doing what's right when no one's looking. You're going to be more like those people that were sitting at the computer screens looking at Facebook when they should have been working, right? Because you're not satisfied, you're not fulfilled. So you're not going to be living in a life of character. You're not going to be willing to kind of, you know, put, put on the harness and pull all pull in the same direction, because this isn't what you want to be doing anyway. You want to be doing something else. I had a guy come to me, Santi, six months ago. And he said, Paul, I feel like I'm only living like giving like 60 % at work. That's all I can do. All I can do is 60%. That's not good enough in my mind. You got to at least be 80%. It's good enough for government work, right? So uh the character, not being able to fully harness up. The competence, obviously, you can be competent at what you're doing, but if you're not enjoying it, what's the purpose, right? We only have one life. So I think that competence... uh is had, but full competence is there when you're fully engaged in it. And normally you're just going through the motions if you're not, if it's not what you really want to do. And then communication for a leader today, Santi, I think communication abilities are the number one skill set in the time when we're all being outsourced by AI and it's happening right now before our very eyes every week. Another major company does a major layoff because artificial intelligence is replacing humans. The one thing that they won't be able to replace is the engagement you're able to get with solid communication. with other people. And that's why I feel secure. They're not going to be able to outsource my job because I'm engaging with actual people, talking to them about what's interesting to them and showcasing them in a way that AI I don't think can yet. And so the communication is upward to the people that are above you. It's outward to the clients you're serving and it's inward to the staff you have. You have to have all three layers of communication to be successful. Paul, let's give some advice to the newer generations. You just touched upon a very hot topic. AI is taking over many jobs and early careers. um Work at corporations, it sounds like something from the 80s. In many cases, Paul, it's... It's broken, let's face it, okay? So you have all these people, and I see many of them, in meeting rooms staring at the sun as you mentioned before, or doomscrolling in their phones, well, doomscrolling, or simply scrolling their phones. How can they find their X factor knowing that the skills that were usable skills in the last 50 years, they kind of don't work anymore, Yeah. Good question. mean, here in America, there's a big push toward the trades, right? Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, things that AI is not going to replace anytime soon. They'll soon have robots that can do all that probably, where plumbers will have a robot plumber come. But hopefully that's at least 10 years from now. So that's one. The president of Ford just came out, Ford Motor Company, and said, you know, I've got 100,000 six-figure jobs that are manual in nature, know, trades jobs. people to fill those. So that's something that's happening here where college necessarily it may not be necessary but a trade school or something like that might be. If that's not your bet, know, if you're not like that's not me, you know, I'm not that guy who will go out, you know, I know a little bit but I'm an amateur at all those things. So I think then you have to, you know, there's compromises that have to be made right along the way. So um I remember when I was young right out of college I got offered three jobs. I wanted uh to be a reporter at a local news station. So I wasn't able to get a full-time TV job. mean, know, when you're young, you're an idiot. You think, yeah, I could start at the top. So I was working in radio. So I had that fill. was working as a newspaper reporter uh and a columnist for a local newspaper. But I got offered the job as a speechwriter for the governor through a friend of mine that was Speaker of the House of Representatives here in Maryland. And I turned it down. I don't know what I was thinking, you know, but I said, no, no, I don't want to be behind the computer typing. I want to be out doing stuff, you know. So I turned down being a speechwriter to the governor, the very popular governor of our state of Maryland. William Donald Schaeffer was his name. And and then I got off of the job as a lobbyist. But it felt like that woman wanted my soul and I didn't want to give her my soul, you know. So I wanted to be my own guy. So you have all these things when you're younger that you don't have the perspective. And I don't even know if my frontal lobe was fully formed at that time, as they say, you know. uh So if you're a young person, here's what I would suggest you do. I would suggest you do everything I've already said. You're not midlife crisis. You're just starting out. Take an evaluation, take those assessments they give you in school, figure out where your interests and abilities are. mean, there's plenty of tests that will do that. Not just personality profiles, but actually, you know, an appraisal of what my skill sets are and then figure out what your interests are, figure out where they intersect. And then you could probably enter that information into AI and ask Claude, hey, Claude, here's my interests and here's my abilities. What are some good jobs that have a decent frequency or decent possibility that they're going to be around for 10 or 20 years where I could put my Interest and abilities to use. There you go. Use AI against itself. I love that both. You completely flip it around. Can we do five quick fire, rapid fire questions? Okay. First one. What is one question to ask yourself after a draining year at work? What's the real problem? Number two, one habit you tell every listener to stop this week in order to hear their own misalignment signals. To stop or to start? I have it. doing something to stop doing. yeah, yeah. Look at your phone and see how many hours you spent on average per day. A lot of people turn that off on their phone. Look at it. You'll be embarrassed. It's six hours, I bet you, at least. Come on, man. Number 3, one tiny experiment anyone can run in the next 7 days to test a possible X factor. Ask your friends and people you know, what do think I'm good at? You're trying to figure out your skill set. Number four, what would you delete first? 20 % of tasks, 20 % of meetings or 20 % of goals? Meetings. Meetings are... ah I've got two chapters in the book about making meetings more effective, right? I think I have it in there. I'm pretty sure I left it in there. Yeah. But uh most meetings I've been to are mostly useless. If it's just a cesspool of information being dumped into the middle of the room, you could do that by email. If you're actually engaging and having people learn to help each other, then that's a purpose for a meeting. And you need to come out with a rapid set of responsibilities and reports back on what people are going to do so the meeting has moments. But 80 % of the meetings I've been in and still am in are just a bunch of people dumping information into the middle of the room, so to speak. That's a wasted meeting. You don't need to have a meeting for that. Just send out an email. And number five, one sentence you'd like people to write at the top of their resume from now on. My interest is this, X, and my abilities are Y. And this job is a match for both of them. Paul, let's wrap this up. For listeners who knows that they are misaligned in whatever form, they don't like their jobs as you described happened to you in the past, but they are scared. They need to pay bills. They have a family. Paul, they need to continue. What is the next step they should take next week to get out of these, find their other leg of their ex? But yet, provide for the families, provide for their own lives. Yeah, don't quit your job. uh Don't jump out of the fire into the frying pan. uh Just get information. Take this time to gather information about yourself. What I've been saying this whole half hour, right? Just figure yourself out and believe me, once you figure it all out, your subconscious and your conscious mind will work together to tell you what to do next. It might be to volunteer for that assignment at work that uh you think would put you more there, or it may be There's nothing at work you can do. So for instance, I broke up our band, Sons of Thunder, right when I started college, right when I started real work, because I'm like, we're not going to be able to do this. We're not going to be able to be professional musicians like we all want it to be. We've got to start real life. I've got to get a job in the next three months. I'm getting married. got to, I have to, this music isn't going to do it. We're not there yet. We don't have the opportunity. So we're dropping the band and we're going to now that doesn't mean that music became less important to me. It just meant I was realistic about the fact that I knew I couldn't make a living doing it. But did I give up on music? No. I still pay music at church. I play music at the senior centers for the folks there. I've done lots of musical stuff. I perform with my son's band and all that kind of stuff. So it could be that what you need is a creative outlet and it may not be at work right now. It may be in your personal life. So find something creatively to have an outlet for what your interests are. But start looking. Start looking for jobs that meet that. Start looking for things you can do inside your job that will fulfill you more. That's what I would do. Paul, where can people follow you? You said you have a podcast. I know you have a very interesting transportation channel in YouTube. Where can they get your book? You said Barnes and Noble is coming out in, you said August this year? Yeah, August 11th. Yeah, you can preorder it now. You can see excerpts and blog posts and this test, this assessment I mentioned on my book website, which is findyourxfactor.ai. I've also got a personal website, paulcomfort.org. Where I'm most active, Santi, is on LinkedIn. I post almost every day, just find Paul Comfort. I've got about 27,000 people I'm connected with. And you can see my stuff there. If you want to see the fun TV show that we do, it's called Transit Unplugged TV. on YouTube. have our own channel. We have millions of views. And it is uh Anthony Bor, I describe it as Anthony Bourdain meets public transit. Food, and culture in cities all over Italy and Australia and America and Canada and then and even Singapore and then a little bit of the public transit system. I just did a show in Italy that's fantastic. It's riding all the high speed rail. We take you right up front in the train and show you what it's like to be up front. All that cool stuff. That's Transit Unplugged TV. But I encourage you to pre-order the book. If 300 people pre-order this book on Barnes and Noble, they said that there's a high likelihood it'll get in their bricks and mortar bookstores, which is what I want. This is my seventh book, but the first six have all been on public transportation. All my books are on Amazon. You can find them there. Welcome Ford! was a discharge of energy, was tremendous to have your insight today. I think our audience will be inspired to find their X factor. whatever it is, I love some of your advice, right? Sometimes it doesn't come so quickly, so naturally. sometimes you also have other commitments in life, like paying your bills, we said, right? So don't go crazy to follow your passion and the money will follow. And my main takeaway is that when you find, when you get closer to your intersection, there is where the magic happens. Paul Comfort, thank you so much. Continue inspiring us for many, many years with many, many more books and you have a big fan here. Thank you, brother.