Episode 156 - Dr. Eric Luster - Leaders on Leadership
We can be so hard on ourselves that we forget how we’ve achieved some of our goals, even with limited resources. Our guest in this episode says that you just need to get over yourself! All that self-doubt is just an excuse. Whatever you want to be, go for it. Don't let what people say stop you from achieving your goal. Because only when you do something you truly love will you find true happiness. Join Dr. Tracey Jones as she talks to the CEO of Movement Interactive, Dr. Eric Luster, about his journey from being in the military to becoming a doctor. He also talks about his new book, Get Over Yourself: How To Move Without The Ball. Learn why you need to find little visions in your life so that you have something to work towards. Start getting over yourself today!
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Dr. Eric Luster - Leaders on Leadership
I am tremendously excited to introduce you to the one and only Dr. Eric Luster. Dr. Luster is the CEO and Founder of Movement Interactive Incorporated, an author, and a portfolio entrepreneur. After several years in senior roles at the Department of Defense as a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Specialist, and a Research Scientist and Engineer, he began his work in the design of person-centered healthcare technologies.
Thank you for your service, Eric. I love having other veterans on here, but also, he is the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Waymark Gardens Senior Living Community, where he spearheads the renovation and development of a smart facility designed to improve the safety, communication, and experience of valued residents. He is phenomenal. He has innovative technologies. Most of all, he released an incredible book, Get Over Yourself and we're going to hear from that at the end. Eric, thank you so much for honoring our guests with your time and wisdom.
Thank you and thank you so much for your service, Tracey.
It's a pleasure. Let's get right into it. I called you and we connected. I got to work with you on your book and you have the heart of a leader. As my father would say, "You have earned your stripes." One of my father's most renowned speeches was called The Price of Leadership. In that speech, he says that there are four things that you are going to have to be serving up or dealing with in order to truly be called a leader and not a leader in name only.
The first of those is loneliness. We all hear, "It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown," but can you unpack what loneliness means for you throughout the different stages of your career and maybe some tips or techniques or tools for our readers about how you combated and deal with it?
That story for me starts off early on in my career. I was nineteen when I joined the United States Army. I enlisted as a Nuclear Biological Chemical Specialist and I was excited. I knew nothing about the Army and I arrived at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. I started to learn my job pretty quickly, but I was stationed in a tactical satellite battalion. I became interested in satellite communications.
I rose through the rank. I made Staff Sergeant in a few years. I started to experience that loneliness because I had built connections with other soldiers that were my age. I ranked up and I couldn't hang out with my friends. I was now in charge. That set me up for a lonely situation because now my peers were in their 30s and 40s. I had to dig deep and try to figure out how to overcome this feeling I had inside.
I turned to the community college where I started. I took a class and I wanted to figure out how was I going to lead the soldiers. Growing up early on, I'm a twin. I have a twin brother, Edward Luster, and he was always the twin that was charismatic and everyone wanted to be around him. He was a natural-born leader. When I started to look at leadership theory, I was trying to figure out how was I going to lead all of these soldiers without being a born leader. That led me to get inspired and continue training on how to be an effective leader and it came in handy. I had to get over a lot of self-doubts in order to get there.
In that course, do you remember anything in particular that taught you to ready you for that?
The key to becoming a great leader is to start giving.
It taught me the eight different types of leadership. I was interested in the Great Man Theory.
That's one of my favorites.
I taught everyone, “It's either you were born a leader or you weren't.” I got over the loneliness by looking at the different types of leadership. The key that I found was to start giving. That's what got me through. That's what helped me excel in the military. It transitioned right into my professional career.
I love the fact that when you dealt with this, you went to knowledge to solve the problem. For those of you that have been in the military, you understand what he is talking about. There's a term called fraternization where it's the separation of hierarchy. Sometimes it’s offices enlisted but there’s that distance, even in Corporate America, because you spent many years outside of the military or in the civilian workforce too, you have to watch that space and keep it professional. I think of the one term familiarity breeds contempt. Keep it open and accessible, but clearly defined boundaries. That's fascinating that you saw that at such a young age.
It was a real eye-opening task because a lot of the soldiers were younger, so we would go out on the weekends. I found myself being the person getting the call at 3:00 and 4:00 to pick someone up that got in trouble. Here I am, now a 20-year-old giving a 40-year-old lecture. It prepared me for a bigger role.
Do you deal with loneliness now in this stage of life?
Yes, in particular, going through the doctoral journey. It was almost like the military all over again. I had to learn to say no. That was tough for me because the key to my success was giving. I always say yes, but when you are tackling such a large task, you have to organize your time and make sure that you're working on the right things at the right time. When you start saying no, a lot of people start to turn away from you because they feel like they're not able to get what they need out of you.
Get Over Yourself: Being tasked to lead soldiers without being a born leader can give you the drive to be an effective leader. You need to get through a lot of self-doubts to get there.
You're in a different position, but also sometimes we need to sequester ourselves off. Having been on the doctoral journey, you have to say no to an awful lot and then people are like, "You're gone." I'm like, "I'm gone for a minimum of four years and then I'll reconvene." You have a valid point. I think of Jesus having to go off alone. Whether you meditate or you're mindful, loneliness is not always a bad thing because a lot of times we have to get ourselves alone to be intensely focused or to listen for what's next.
It comes from all angles. You may reference Jesus. His family didn't even accept Him and that's the toughest pill to swallow when you try to sit down with your closest relatives and explain the journey. I'm the first doctor in the family so it was something that we had not experienced before.
You talk about that in your book and we're going to talk about it at the end. I love how you said to explain the journey and not everybody's going to get it. They're not even going to be able to process it. It's going to bring up all kinds of emotions. You would think one would be happy, but everybody is in different spaces. For our leaders reading, even sometimes your closest family and friends don't always get it. That also gives a certain sense of loneliness, but we know what we got to do. Congratulations, Dr. Luster.
No bash on the family because through the Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, and Master's Degree, they all understood that and were supportive, but tackling a doctoral degree was out of the wheelhouse of everyone, including myself. I had to get new mentors that explained to me what the process was like.
I have friends that now are starting up. I'm like, "You need to find other people that have already been through this journey to walk you through it, somebody that was there at that different level." I love new mentors. Eric expresses loneliness as a young enlisted man. You're going to always feel it. I love that you said that you have to pick up Sherpas like if you're hiking, different mountaineers, and experts that are like, "Now you're breathing this level of air so you need to wear these clothes and eat this food. You're on a whole different level."
That's important for a lot of our leaders reading that are in advanced degrees or higher certifications when you said, "Get those people at different levels to support you," because it is lonely. You got to find people that get that. We unpacked loneliness. The next thing that my father talked about was weariness. I always tell people, “Sometimes I go to bed at night. I worked so hard.” I feel like it's one of those nights where I'm like, "I went to bed more tired," but it was good because I knew what we were doing. There are other times when you're weary and it's debilitating.
My dad would always say, "Tracey, anytime you're leading, you're going to be around some people that do way more than the others and some that don't pull their weight.” It’s the 80/20 principle. How do you stay in top mental, physical, and financial form so you can continue leading all these organizations that you're involved in?
When all you think about is increasing your salary, you won't be able to find happiness.
I stay steadfast in my faith. When we talk about weariness, this was a thing that I had to address as I moved up the corporate ladder. After the military service, I was recruited out of the Army by Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. I got a lot of certifications and moved at the same rate when I got into corporate. In a few years, I was a Senior Systems Engineer for NETCOM, the inner pride of the Army network.
I set small goals to achieve. I thought the goal was to increase my salary because that's what you think about when you're in the military. What does an actual salary look like? There are so many benefits built into the military and you don't think about that. I rose up and made it to $52,000 a year, $87,000 a year, and then $137,000 a year. I thought I made it. I was happy, but I started to realize that I was not happy.
I started to feel this weirdness as I made my next choice because I almost wanted to make the choice that everyone else wanted for me. That was to keep making the most money my family had ever seen, but it was challenging. It wasn't exciting and I wasn't motivated anymore. The money was good. Everyone else affords to do things that they wanted to do, but it was no vision there. It lacked any goal and any ambition. I was stuck.
I love that you talked about weariness and equated that with not being happy. When I look at a lot of people, I'm like, "Is it a physical awareness or a psychological thing? You know that this isn't the best use of yourself." I know when I'm not dialed into that, I almost get fatigued. I'm like, "Something's out of whack. You're not being true to yourself." I worked for Northrop Grumman, too, in the Space Technology Division. I can remember getting job offers and being like, "I've never seen an offer like this before," but then you got to look at it and say, "Is this what gets me excited and vitalized to go to work?
The way you explained weariness came to me through my mentors. I would try to talk this thing through and say, "I'm going to leave this $137,000 on the table and pursue this graduate degree." They felt weary. Their feedback was, "You probably shouldn't do this. People aren't going to respect you the same. They're not going to treat you like you're the hero anymore." They passed that weariness onto me because that was something that they would never do. That made me a little curious. "Let's see if I could turn this around and prove I'm wrong."
I love that you said to pass on the weariness. We hear about that. Somebody would say, "Don't do that. Don't take that risk." They're projecting their risk aversion onto you, but I never thought about it like that. It's almost like they wanted to do it, but they wouldn't do it for whatever reason.
They pass it to you with a warning. "If you do this, you know what's going to happen."
Get Over Yourself: When tackling a large task, you must organize your time. You've got to make sure you're working on the right things at the right time. And that means learning how to say no.
When I got out of the military, like you, I went to high tech and went to Northop, the NSA, and a lot of different places. I had to finally look at it, too, because I would be like you. I'm working but I don't feel alive. Somebody said to me, "You're patting your resume and avoiding doing what you want to do by working in these sexy fields, making more money, but you're not doing what you want to do." I'm hiding behind my resume.
As that person said, "They're not going to respect you as much." I started thinking, "Look at all the things I've done. I've lived all over the world. I'm going to go back and run a small little family-run publishing company. How's that going to equate? We believe these things until we finally say, "Yes, but the discomfort is so much that we have to make the move." Tell me about that when you did that move and told them. Did you go back and discuss that with your wife or did you look at them and say, "Thank you, but I got my mind made up."
My wife has been along for the entire journey. We grew up in a small town in the Midwest. She went to a Catholic school and I went to a public school. I was homecoming king and she was my date. She's seen it all. She's seen the desires. I started to pursue a Doctoral Degree. When I got to Northrop Grumman, I thought I knew everything about the field of nuclear, biological, and chemical.
I got on a teleconference one day and the PhDs from George Mason University came on and let me know that I didn't know anything. That was the fuel to my fire. Those little things that you could feel in your stomach when it comes, I let those drive my decision. That's how I was able to overcome that weariness that others place on me because my fire burns larger than the weariness type of comment.
Loneliness, weariness, and the next thing my father talked about was abandonment. Typically, abandonment has this negative connotation, but in the price of leadership, you alluded to it with the PhD program. “Stop doing the things that are holding you back,” Dad told me one day. I'm like, "How did you get so successful?" He said, "Tracey, I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Every day you have to die to self.” It's biblical. How do you stay abandoned to all the other things? You are quite eclectic, the homecoming king, multitasked, and you're truly gifted. How do you stay hyper-focused on what's next at this time?
It's a lot of self-realization. One of the comments you made to me was, "I'm excited about your book. I can't believe you set it this real." What I'm going to tell you is something that I had to deal with as far as abandoning. I'm a twin so from day one, I've always had someone to play with and talk to. Fast forward to nineteen years old and getting married. My twin brother felt abandoned and we grew up in a very rough neighborhood and so we developed a code. My mother would always instill in us, "You both leave the house. You both come home."
When we had my oldest son, I had the mentality of, "In this world, it’s me and my twin brother." He was back at home while I was in the Army and he had gotten into some altercation. I was describing to my wife what I was going to do to protect my brother. She looked at me with lonely eyes and said, "What are we going to do when you go and do that?" That's when I came face to face with abandonment.
People are always brought up one way and get locked into that way of living. You have to prepare for change.
I had to bottle that emotion of feeling like I abandoned my brother, but then I had to know that I had to be a father and a husband because I wasn't going to abandon my wife and my son. It's been a lot to deal with emotionally and to understand how it works. We're always brought up one way and we get locked in. What happens when you have to change?
I love that you brought up the emotional component of abandonment because it is tough. In Jim Collins’ Good to Great, sometimes we even have to abandon good things because now we have something great. You have the covenant of marriage and the blessing of a child. It doesn't get much better than that, yet you had the familial bonds and the safety issues. Abandonment in people is so hard. If it were easy, we'd be able to cross these thresholds so much easier, but I love that she said that to you in that simple way. I love it when people ask questions, instead of giving a response. She did that and your response to that was beautiful.
I always have a response, but that day I did not have a response. I was puzzled. I said, "I didn't think that far yet."
I'm so thankful you did and were authentic about that. We covered loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. The last one my dad talked about was a vision. You and I grew up in areas where stuff wasn't handed to us so we had to earn our way through. I consider myself very scrappy and pragmatic, with a blessing of a family and a faith.
When I hear of vision, I always thought, "That's not me. I'm a doer, but I'm not a visionary." My dad was like, "Tracey, vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it." It had this big esoteric thing, but also this practicality. Can you tell me how do you continue to hone your vision? You have lots of beautiful chapters in your life and you're in the 2nd quarter, maybe in the 3rd quarter, or right in between. Tell me how you keep crafting your vision moving forward.
It's always a work in progress. When I reflect, that's when I started to realize I'm a portfolio entrepreneur. I start with a small vision and piece it together. For example, during my freshman year in high school, I made the varsity football team. The marching band that year was scheduled to march at the Citrus Bowl. I saw myself marching at the Citrus Bowl, but I and my twin brother had to show up for football. I became the first player to play varsity football and switch to a uniform at halftime and do the halftime show.
I don't know how I was able to pull that off, but I did. It was through the little visions that I saw myself at the Citrus Bowl. Nothing was going to stop me. These visions turned into goals so I started to accomplish those goals. I can recall when I completed my Master's Degree and as I was sitting there and the workout harder. I said, "What's going on? I completed my Master's Degree. The work was supposed to get easier." I had realized that I stopped looking forward and had no more goals. I had to go back, meditate, and start to develop that vision for those goals would start to fall out.
Get Over Yourself: You need to have little visions in life because these visions will turn into goals. These goals will make you start to take action so you can accomplish them.
I love that you called it little visions. You said, "A vision is progressive." It's like decision-making. You make it, but you may need to tweak it or scrap it. Little visions, how perfect is that? It's not so intimidating as, "What is that BHAG, the Big Hair Audacious Goal?" I love those little visions concept.
I put a lot of thought into those little visions. When I started the doctoral journey, I prayed. I didn't pray that I finish my Doctorate Degree. That was not the vision. My vision was to start this process, keep the process going, and keep my family intact because the people that I surrounded myself with had horror stories. I was able to detect what the actual goal was. The goal was not to walk and ruin it. They say, "Dr. Luster, you can pray for that and will get that. You'll look around and your family's gone." I break those little visions down and tried to execute them. It took me almost eight years to finish that Doctorate Degree because of the journey that I was on, but I stood fast and prayed about it.
You have the most beautiful family to show it. I can't wait until people check out your book and your website. We talked about the price of leadership and you have paid it, and continue to pay it. You can look at it and say, "It was a sacrifice," but you're infinitely richer for it and we are, too. Is there anything else as far as leadership lessons you would like to share with our audience?
Yes. I have a term, "Don't forget your forklift." This was my big moment in the military. Here, I'm in my early twenties and the Operation Enduring Freedom is about to happen. My unit selects me as the Operations Sergeant. I have the honor of working with the Air Force and figuring out a plan to get $20 million worth of equipment and 40 personnel from Southern Arizona to Northern Africa.
I thought of everything and worked all of the hours. I had plans and everything figured out. We were successful. We were able to get to Africa. We took one aircraft, a C-5, which is unbelievable. It was a great experience, but when we got through the desert, we were able to drive the vehicles off the C-5. We had eleven pallets and I did not pack a forklift. Everyone looked at me and this is the most important part, I had to take responsibility right then and there. There was no one else and you couldn't point the finger.
Needless to say, I found an Air Force Airman and he was driving a forklift. He gave me an hour-long class driving a forklift and he said, "Here, you can use it as long as you want." I was able to complete the mission. Stories like that sit with me and it has driven me in leadership as I take on more challenges. I've created a culture within my companies where no one points a finger and everyone takes responsibility. Everything's going to go wrong. You're going to get the forklift, but what happens next? That's the key.
You talked about the military, too, with the learning. Do you go back then and do an after actions or a hotwash and say, "How do we make sure it doesn't happen again?"
Think of your life as a basketball game with the ultimate goal being to get to overtime.
We wanted an after-action review. That's something that I constantly do to this day. We continue to build and learn from experiences.
Don't forget your forklift. That's a good title for your next book. That's a great concept. I'm glad the Air Force was there to help you out.
They were excellent. That gentleman was complaining about them being deployed. I said, "How long have you been here?" He said, "Three months." I said, "You just got here." He said, "No."
Tell me about the technology that you have created. Tell our readers a little bit about that. They'd be fascinated by how you're employing that. I talked a little bit about your position. They'd love to know what you're doing in Phoenix.
As I started transitioning from the government contracting role, I found a problem and it was the burning thing in my stomach again. My oldest son was playing football. I had started to develop a sensor for detecting and reporting concussions. We developed a small compact sensor that detects up to 200 Gs of force.
It uses the same technology that we all use every day and we don't even know it. It's the same algorithm that deploys your Air-Vac. We were able to leverage that existing technology, put it in a small wearable device, and able to identify when someone had a head impact, and let them know the severity of that head impact. We were concerned about concussions and that's what I built a company around.
Get Over Yourself: How To Move Without The Ball
Tell people you are a newly published author. I love this book, Get Over Yourself. Can you tell our readers a little bit about that?
All the stories that I've shared have been sprinkled throughout the book. I developed a construct and I paralleled life with a basketball game. When Tracey mentions getting new mentors and things of that nature, I look at life as if you're the point guard of your basketball team. You have four other players at any given time. You have two coaches and a trainer on the sideline. That describes most people's lives as far as having those four people that they talk to and having some older adults mentor them.
When we look at it this way, I break life down into quarters. From 0 to 20 years old, that's the 1st quarter. From 20 to 40, that's the 2nd quarter, and then we have that half-time. When we get to the 40s, we start wondering if we're up by 20 or if we're down by 12. This is when you need to start taking an assessment and identify whether you're winning because the ultimate goal is to get to overtime.
This is where the next phase of what I've been doing as far as senior living communities. This has given me the most insight because when we go to overtime, we're talking about our 80s. We start to look at things in our 40s that will impact if we make it to overtime or not. For example, we can look at existing data or a ZIP code and I can tell you the median age of death in your ZIP code.
If you have a goal to make it to 80, but in your ZIP code, the average age of death is 65 then we have to make some changes. It's a lot of environmental factors that we're not thinking about. A lot of people are staying where they are because it's home and they have an attachment. Again, that goes to the vision. You have to create that vision. When you get that vision and that goal comes out that says, "I'm going to be comfortable when I'm 80, that's when we start to make better decisions."
Eric takes you through his life journey, but most of all, I love your book because you talk about, "If you don't have the resources, you can still move the ball." A lot of people think, "I don't have the right team, talent, or the ball's deflated or whatever," but you're very much in the book like, "Those are excuses. You can still find a way. You can figure it out." I can't say enough about the book. I love the book and I learned so much from the book. I hope all our readers out there get a copy of the book.
Throughout the journey, the original title of the book was, "How to Move Without the Ball?" I was sharing my journey on how to get there with limited resources and thinking outside of the box. As I went on and started to confront all of these situations, the term, "Get Over Yourself," slowly start to emerge. In one piece in the book, I talk about one of my early mentors. She met me in the fifth grade and had the courage of a tiger. She came in through all-Black very rundown neighborhood. She was my tutor. She was a 6-foot-tall White lady that came into this rough area and would come get us and take us to the university. That was a huge inspiration.
In fact, she attended my high school graduation, my Associate's Degree graduation, Bachelor's Degree, Master's Degree, and ultimately was there for my Doctor's Degree. Going through life, I told myself that Becky had the courage to come meet me where I'm at and that there is no way I don't have the courage to stand up and change careers because I wanted to make an impact. That was very inspirational. You'll get that piece in the book.
You get to see Becky in the book and all that stuff. Some of the dearest words that we can tell ourselves other than self-affirmation is, “Get over yourself.” I love where you landed on that. Eric, I want to thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom with our readers and your last story about what somebody did for you and how you in life are now serving. I'm sure you have inspired all readers to have the courage and the fortitude to move forward.
Excellent. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Tracey. I appreciate it. Thank you for all the mentorship in the second quarter. Meeting you, I already knew that you were part of the team.
Eric and I met through somebody that I had met a few years ago. It's so beautiful when these networks come together. I got your back, brother. I'm on the tail end of the third quarter. I'll lead you little brother up until the next quarter, but I love what you're doing, Doctor, and you're speaking, teaching, and preaching. You and your family are a real blessing to me and to everybody else. Thank you again.
Thank you and thank you to your readers as well.
You're welcome. To our fans, we are so thankful that you tuned in for this. We hope you got a lot of great insights. Please reach out to Dr. Eric Luster, get a copy of his book, check out his website, and get connected with him. He's an incredible resource and he speaks too. He would be a wonderful asset to any speech that you have coming up. If you like what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button and we would be honored if you would give us a five-star review as well, wherever you tune in to this episode, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, Anchor, you name it. With that, we encourage you to keep on playing the price of leadership and thank you for being a part of our Tremendous Tribe. Have a beautiful rest of the day.
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About Dr. Eric luster
Dr. Eric luster is the ceo & founder of movement interactive inc. , an author, and a portfolio entrepreneur. After 14 years in senior roles at the department of defense as a nuclear, biological, and chemical specialist and a research scientist and engineer, eric began his work in the design of person-centered healthcare technologies. In 2012, he invented hijiband, a device created to detect and report traumatic brain injury in athletics. His book, get over yourself, is out now.
Eric is the current president & chairman of the board of directors at waymark gardens senior living community where he spearheads the renovation and development of a smart facility designed to improve the safety, communication, and experience of valued residents. He also sits on the community advisory board for the center of innovation in healthy and resilient aging (cihra) at arizona state university, which focuses on advancing ttechnologies that combat disease and providing innovative and technology-driven solutions for seniors.
Erics innovative technology has been selected for showcase in the clinton global initiative for its social impact. In 2020, he was selected by the arizona republic as one of the top 40 entrepreneurs under 40.