Latest / Coaches Rising / 289 - Geoff Graber: AI, Coaching & Evolutionary Business

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289 - Geoff Graber: AI, Coaching & Evolutionary Business · Coaches Rising

• 0:01
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, welcome back.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the Coaches Rising podcast.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm delighted to be joined today by Jeff Graber, a beautiful soul and we are going to be talking today about Jeff's work, coaching, high-level CEOs, executives and leaders.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jeff is the co-founder of Evolution,
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is a very successful coaching firm working around the world and heavily in Silicon Valley.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jeff has also the creator of Evolutionary Business, which is a framework around conscious business and leadership that he uses with his clients.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll talk today about why do his clients come to him?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is the nature of the work that he's doing?
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why does he combine
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: business being able to play, to transform our world in these times.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So just a few more words about Jeff, he spent 15 years as an operator and investor.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: He launched the first video game company in China with EA.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was leading year-hook games and then founded three companies starting his career in venture capital.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is working with leaders, founders, executives at companies
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can find his work on evolutionary business, it's a sub-stack.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that will be said, let's dive in here's the podcast with Jeff Greber.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Jeff, yeah, great to be with you today.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've had the delight of getting to know you more over the recent months.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that makes me even more excited to have you as a guest on our podcast today.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: How you doing?
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right now.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel honored to be here with you, your
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: doing amazing work in the world and I'm, you know, grateful and honored and I think it's very important that I have this opportunity to share, you know, not just with you personally which is so valuable but also hopefully with some other people that might hear this who don't know me and don't know, I don't know them and expand our relationships.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's, that's wonderful.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing well today.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, cool, because we've had very expensive conversations about evolutionary business and coaching.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think we'll go to quite a few places today.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You found it one of the most well-known or primary coaching firms.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the US evolution, I deeply respected and we've had the maths as a guest as well on the podcast.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe actually maybe that's a good question.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you just share a little bit about what you do as a coach and with evolution?
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I personally work primarily with founders and CEOs and other leaders as well of technology startups that are growing fast scale-ups as folks call them here in Europe that are
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Typically, I've raised a lot of capital and a found product market fit and are really growing.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rapidly, they've raised a lot of capital.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're wanting to continue to create what they started with in terms of the vision for their business, of being impactful and they're starting to normally feel a little bit shaky about that because they're
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: team is growing and the opportunity they can see is very large but they realize it's a difficult thing to do and so that's often the time I come in to work with companies and support the individuals and mostly that's what I do today though I also do work sometimes with teams and the organization more broadly and my work as a coach is
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a little unusual compared to many other coaches in that.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's as much advisory as it is introspective support for leaders.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's bringing my own experience as a founder as an exec.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: into the work I do and but I do it from the coaches perspective.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: The coaches kind of mindset of I'm being of service.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm supporting them to come up with the best decisions they can.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I do believe in bringing my own viewpoints from my own personal experience.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: individually as a leader as well as as a coach with many other founders over the last 20 years.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, and in that way I'd say, you know, strategy and structure and governance, these things all play a key role.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a little bit more like a board member than I am, a typical coach, but with much better closer relationship than is often the case from board members and founders.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can talk about evolution as well, which is that it's similar, but I'd say the real key thing is the breadth of the work and then as well as the depth of that we bring into our clients is really the unique factor and probably Matt talked about that.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know he's on here a few years ago and explaining about that and I think that's really what's needed for companies these days and leaders and teams.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We will go much deeper into the things you're sharing.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But just one question I want to ask is, do you think that that's something when you're coaching the founders and CEOs of these fast-grown companies that actually they really need?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the introspective work, but it is the advisory support, the strategic support, as well, that combination is a real must at that level.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: 100 percent.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some are much more experienced than others, so some founders who are maybe in their very first working experience, they've come up with an idea when they were young and maybe in school and they're building their business and have never had another kind of job before have
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: really limited understanding of what I would consider to be basics of conventional business around how to run a meeting or how to hire somebody, et cetera, et cetera, and others have done it many times where there are much more experienced, and so they need different kinds of advisory support, perhaps around.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: organizational design or fundraising or about taking a company public and how what they might do and all that.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd say, you know, whether it's me or somebody else or both really is, but I would suggest getting that kind of guidance is really important.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly as important as the deep work.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're both important.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can't do one or the other in my experience.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to really support people in both of those areas And whether it's a coach doing it all or a coach and a mentor and an advisor or some other groups of people That's what I think leaders need Yeah, yeah, I think
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the story you shared with me that you thought would be good to bring in as a kind of like inquiry, you know.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we've had this kind of reflection a little bit in the past in different ways, but it's could you share the story you shared with me with coaches coming in at Facebook and your sense of that?
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we can connect that to evolutionary business and then the things you just shared about the work you do.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, perfect.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe just a little background anecdote.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had my first coach when I was working at Yahoo.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was actually had sat in a leadership development program and Fred Kaufman came in today, two-day workshop with us on what he called then courageous leadership.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was really amazing for me because I had no experience with the type of thing before.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had done therapy, I had done men's work, and then to be exposed to this type of type of introspective programming in a business setting was really unusual for me and I was quite
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know blown away by it.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had never connected the dots.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I had a coach then, great guy named Albert for the first time after that at Yahoo and it really woke me up.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was the person who needed coaching more than anybody else I've ever met.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was just absolutely clueless about leadership and about how to work with other people.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: My viewpoint was it was all about just ideas and like being resilient and working through adversity and making those things happen pure will and very individualized and hopeful that other people would just kind of come along and do what they needed to do and I even said to somebody once.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: When am I ever going to get any work done?
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: All I do is spend my time managing up, down, and across.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, of course, that was my job.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was running Yahoo Games at the time, and anyways, I was clueless.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I needed coaching very badly.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It really woke me up and kind of drove me in this direction.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was more than 20 years ago now.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was sitting in this Fred Kaufman workshop and I'm next to Dave Goldberg, who is the head of Yahoo Music, and fortunately passed away in a number of years ago.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I asked him at the end.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said, ha, so excited.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was not amazing.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, hmm, not really for me, but my wife, Cheryl Sandberg, who was at Google at the time.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, she would love it.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he went and told Cheryl and Cheryl reached out to Fred and Fred and Axel and went into Google and did a lot of work with Cheryl's team there right after that.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when Cheryl went to Facebook,
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember exactly what year maybe a 2008 or 9 or somewhere in that range.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the idea was she was going to be the adult in the room with Zuckerberg and the rest of his kind of younger, hacking kind of move fast and break things guys.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: She brought as far as I know Fred, but certainly axial into Facebook at the time and
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Facebook, beyond that, started doing a lot of coaching.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They brought in an internal group and hired many coaches to come and work there.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think many great ones.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, of course, all of them.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I know a number who worked there and they were, they're wonderful coaches, excellent, deep and powerful coaches.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it was great that Facebook did this, of course.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the question though I ask is let's take a look at the company today and I'll call it meta and certainly they've been incredibly successful from a conventional perspective, right?
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're one of the most valuable companies in terms of the value of their stock price and how much revenue and profit they make.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, perhaps we can attribute part of that to the success of the coaching they did around helping leaders be more effective in their leading of teams and people and help people be better at making decisions.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And many other things that we do is coaches.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's possible that the coaching work very well.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then let's look at the other aspects of the company and the knowing
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: that that company has caused, the algorithm that, you know, it decks people and especially children and has caused really clear, you know, harm to many people and maybe societies, a whole many people would say, or the election interference, or what they did in Myanmar, with the elections and the, you know, mass murders.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There, and it's really a pretty different terrible situation.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: doing really what it needs to do.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it doing enough?
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a very basic question.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We should ask ourselves, as coaches, I ask myself regularly and frankly, I'm not very satisfied yet with the answers.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can give, which is, I love helping individuals.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love helping them help their teams.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love helping them make their companies feel more human and humane inside and them feel more effective in what they're doing.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, most founders bring
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: like very high lofty intentions to their work in the world and I like helping them to achieve those.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day,
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Met is not the only example of a company that's gone right that route.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a big one.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And coaching has been a part of many technology companies over the last 20 years.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet, you know, there's a lot of people who think that the tech companies are evil or certainly aren't doing good a lot of good in the world.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can argue both sides of this.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's important to, but I certainly,
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: think we as coaches need to really deeply consider this and ask ourselves, are we doing all we can?
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there something else we could do?
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: What else do we need in our society and in business to change things to improve them?
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, at least for me, I'm not at all satisfied.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: What comes up for you when you ask those questions?
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, our coach is doing enough.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could we be doing more?
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: What more do you think coaches could be doing?
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'm not satisfied with my answers personally yet because I feel like it's a very difficult situation and there's a lot of reasons for that that are, you know, personal, for me, but I think, you know, would be relatable to others that I can get into.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But just to answer your question is directly as possible, I think the biggest issues around the systems and structures of business.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: really moving more and more into it over the last 50 years roughly and it's really almost at its apex now.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can see how fast why hope it's the apex because it's the apex of conventional business like success and speed and impact and influence and it's also the needy of our society perhaps.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope it is.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope we're going to you know find a shift here soon but it's the time when business is very clearly about one thing and it's about
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Growth, no matter what, it's about profits because that's what the investors need to Give it to feel like they're getting over turn.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really about those investors returns and we can talk about that too because I don't blame them necessarily For what their part is in this, but the point is is business as we know it and see it today is broken and especially at scale
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet that's where we do most of our work is in businesses at scale.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so can we play a role in supporting a change and how could we do that?
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the part that personally I've trouble with on mic.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing this, but I don't feel like enough of a change yet.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I'm really at the point of wanting to explore that and push on that more.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Personally with my clients, but also with other, you know, coaches, with their inside evolution or out.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: and with other leaders, business leaders who are feeling similarly and want to do something more.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not just make money over here and then be a good charitable donor over there.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to find ways of integrating all this.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a very complex topic, isn't it?
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's so systemic.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And where do you start, where's the accurate pressure point that could actually enact this kind of real change that feels like, I think everybody listening would feel like, yeah, it's obvious we need new ways of new values
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, inside of our businesses and societies that create a sense of sustainability and good for all.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I, you know, I've kind of thought about this myself just for a couple of reflections like, you know, this sense of
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The times we find ourselves in being, I think, important because it feels like, as you've said, like, we're at the apex, it's like, if you look at systemic change, this isn't a good news about today, I think, when systems get perturbed.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: there, as Marvin Ochko was talking about in the podcast, it, you know, it feels disturbing.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's what we're in right now.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's uncomfortable.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's uncertain.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of scary, as well, because everything whittles for a million is up.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's, you could kind of relate to a personal change.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But those very conditions are what make it change more possible in a second
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's like no coincidence that you're asking these questions right now because I think you know it's it's kind of loud isn't it that we need something new and so I wonder about the role of a coach because it on one hand it could seem like well coach is just like one person you know an individual in this huge systemic kind of sea of different competing values and
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, like I do think a role of a coach or at least I've reflected on like being a more of a provocateur or at least having one foot in the system and one foot, you know, in what is emerging next and being able to offer deeper reflections to clients.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: these kind of deeper considerations, but I don't know that for sure it's difficult to say anything with certainty to you.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean maybe you could just riff on what I shared and we could start to talk about defying that you're meeting more clients who are considering these deeper.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: questions and values inside of what they create.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it kind of like business as usual and things are just still going really fast and will it take something breaking in order to kind of bring that change?
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope it doesn't take the kind of break society that it often takes individually, personally, for somebody to change.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really hope it does that.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's my great hope, is that the change can be more gentle, right?
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I pray for help, I always pray for it to be subtle, so it's not too disruptive to my life, because I know what that feels like and many of us do, and that's partly that's how I got here and I think many others, and the thing about the people I work with is of course, the first of all, I find universally
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Almost universally, I guess I should say, they're a wonderful, lovely people, humans, brilliant, doing incredible things that really, they really care about other people, they care about the work they're doing, the businesses doing, the ones who are most successful, I find have the hardest time connecting the pieces between their humanity and the success of their business.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the ones who are most connected have the least success with their businesses.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So just, if I get that, so the ones that are most connected to their, in their part, sense of meaning in their hearts.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's basically six of the meaning.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say their sense of humanity and caring about people and society at a deeper level and concerned about the potential negative impacts of their actions.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: are unfortunately, they're lovely people, but they're also unfortunately the least successful of the types of people I've worked with because they aren't ruthless when they need to be.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are caring about how their people feel.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the point where sometimes creates a decision or a lack of leadership, a sense of leadership amongst the team or in the market.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even the ones who are pretty strong and clear, there's often another leader and company out there that's even stronger and more ruthless that can beat them in the market.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen that happen.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's been interesting,
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: but who are still caring people, and I like that.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I personally think I've moved actually in that way.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: My daughter is what certainly say so, having teenage daughters, and I think that's what it takes.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need a meat business where it is a little bit more than often we do as coaches.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's where I'm trying to go is to meet them where they are and bring them along in a pathway that I think can be better than,
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: then if they were doing it alone and what I mean by that is to push back pretty hard when I start noticing in their interactions a lack of attention to things other than the what would be successful conventionally in a company.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Meaning growth
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: say profits, say people following directions, all the things that we, you know, would normally say, well, that's fine, right?
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Businesses, that's normal, you know, and investor certainly want those things.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But to me, that's usually the beginning of a pathway that's not going to be the ideal.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not usually who they are when they start at their business, actually, is what I found.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you find there's a, like, this is where it gets tricky.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is there an ethical piece to this where, because you just said, you know, like, the people who are, like, least connected to their heart, sort of, however we want to phrase that, you know, themselves, they're more ruthless.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones who have the most success, and the people, you know, vice versa.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm hearing you say, like, you're pushing back hard on people who maybe are going down that route of ruthlessness, and, you know, do you need to put a disclaimer on that, basically, saying like, hey, you know, these guys, the ruthless guys and, you know, girls, that the people, they're the ones who are succeeding the most.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or is there a case here for, no actually, there's a third way.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a third way and there are people out there who are blending or maybe transcending and including there's a way of leadership which brings success and care and meaning.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope I believe that's what I'm looking for and trying to support and
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: do myself for that matter right this is one of the hardest things is the integration of those two parts it's much easier to go one and go back and forth between them and that's why find myself and others doing and companies themselves where where there's a leader who has both but hasn't integrated that the company it's chuckle and hide in some ways
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it doesn't usually work very well.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, there's limits to how well that works.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the ones that are purely kind of orange and spiral dynamics are modern kind of conventional businesses.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's much easier for them to be successful than the ones that have a lot of the post-modern kind of green energy to them.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the ones that are very green really struggle, you know, they end up looking like,
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: poorly run parent teacher organizations at the public school or on profit.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is where we start seeing the failures in these companies.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even when there's a great idea, great product market fit, brilliant, you know, vision in the founders, those that's where I see them struggling over the longer term with success.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yes, when I when I do my work,
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I like to say is you know them they can't just be conscious and we can't just be conscious That's just the starting point.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Consciousness is the starting point.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is not the end point.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is my
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: believe it's conscientiousness as well.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to have consciousness and conscientiousness or care or some moral beliefs and standing for what we think.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, it really goes to, what is the purpose of business or at least your business?
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the purpose of your business?
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I work with founders with great purpose, great missions, as much as possible.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And certainly individually and for their business and as much as possible, all of those things integrated.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: when they're trying to make something of massive scale, of large impact and influence, there's a real tension there, because of what the business world and how it structured looks like and works like, especially when there's investors involved who have only one goal, which is to get a return on their investment.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I don't care how nice the people are or the pension fund or whatever it is that's backing them cares about.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: purpose of that money is only to make more money.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so once you have that involved it's extremely difficult then to thread this needle.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe it is entirely possible what you set to integrate these pieces.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do think it can take longer, it's going to look different, and we're
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We haven't seen many examples of that.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can tell you of a company here where I live in the bus country called Mondragon, which is a cooperative.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has about 70,000 employees.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a six-largest company in Spain.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was not a company.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was started by a Jesuit priest in the post-war years to help out a small industrial town here.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now it's a broad company with banking and groceries and other things.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's not perfect, of course, but it's a company that looks very different from others, first of all, it's a cooperative, which is not a typical structure that's easy to fund and to scale, but it's owned and led by all of its workers as they call themselves, everybody involved through democracy.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: and representative democracy elections, ownership, everybody has ownership.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think these kinds of things are what we need to have built into companies.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just God and more.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it really starts with this fundamental question of what's the purpose.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: If the purpose is simply to make a return for your shareholders and there's only one direction for the company to go.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, they might do something to help a particular group, like the, that helps that end goal.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like Starbucks really giving a lot in the early days to their baristas to help them feel like part of the company called them partners, etc.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: but that's really the main focus that they had there and eventually of course even that started fading as they hit scale because it wasn't enough by itself when we're working in a conventional landscape.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So to your question, what can we do as coaches should I make a disclaimer?
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: probably even more so than I do.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I try to do it a little more subtly because I want to meet them where they are.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I meet with I work with people who are aligned with my world views.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they have some idea of what they're getting into and they start working with me.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to just go out there and give them a playbook.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: for how to destroy the planet and, you know, run over anybody that gets in their way.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the kind of coach I am.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope there's not many coaches like that out there.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, ID2.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, in a sense, like there's this issue of the, the, the, the wider systemic influences on, you know, particularly businesses that want to scale quickly and
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: rapidly, a lot of huge scale.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm thinking of, then you mentioned this example in Spain.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking of, you know, Patagonia is an example that's often given which, you know, has been around for a long time and you could probably say grew more slowly than it could have, but then, you know, it's kind of commitment to its principles as now become like one of its defining features.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, exactly.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe we can kind of let Zoom in a little bit on the work you do with the people you coach.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: What, you know, you've talked about purposes being key to a key principle or aspect of, you know, an evolutionary business and we could maybe use that to an evolutionary leader.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you find yourself?
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is a very big question.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll let you take us where you feel it's like most important to go first, because I'm sure we could actually do five podcasts on everything you do, but...
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's important with what you do with these businesses and leaders to help them, you know, have this kind of performance, which is, yeah, they're performing as a business, but they're also they've got a soul or they've got this sense of purpose.
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's it.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I just want to start off by saying, I wish I could have done more already.
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is one of the things that when you ask me to come on this podcast, I thought, oh, this is an opportunity to really, I don't want to just say, recommit.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've had not lost a commitment.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Double down, go stronger into my commitment to this work.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: as something that's, you know, my purpose for life and that I, you know, discovered 20 years ago sitting on a rock on an island in Croatia and, you know, had this awareness, not the first person to have this awareness.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just happened to hit me then and I decided to make this my life's work and I found my way into coaching as a related way in to supporting the work
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and finding a way to have enough for myself and my family has always been a big challenge as part of this.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that question for all of us, I think, is a very important question.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for business is what is enough because I think that's something that is very slippery.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know it's always just a little more would be better and just a little more and it's like a gas that just takes up whatever space it's in it will just keep expanding and it's very hard to say no no no this is really enough and some of us are better at it than others it's hard for me as especially as a seven on the any agreement there's always something else
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so living, you know, kind of getting into this work and helping others as part of the work is to think about something as fundamental as that to me as a key thing.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other side is really being courageous and taking bold steps and putting myself or putting yourself out there to do something different.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's against the norms that might not be appreciated and certainly not by the mainstream.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: is another thing and how to do this, effectively.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where I say, gosh, I wish I have done better.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd say evolution as a firm has been relatively interesting as a kind of some examples of steps in this direction, but it's very small compared to other companies.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Patagonia, we put it as the beacon on the hill, or whatever the North Star, but it's a pretty small company.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have nearly the impact
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: influence that I wish it did.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wish it I kind of think I would push them if I worked with them to figure out how to have more.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a fair amount, but they could have much more in my opinion.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: They stop letting the VC's and other companies use their gear to put their logos on as gifts.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: because they didn't want to have the association with, you know, those industries or those people, that would have been a great opportunity for them to say, oh, you can keep doing this, but you have to come to our headquarters for a day, and we're going to do a workshop with you on what makes Patagonia special.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, something like this, right?
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are the kind of things that if you're, to pens on what kind of business you are, right?
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: If your business isn't just about whatever the main product is or services, but it's about fundamentally being of service as broadly
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: is possible, which is really what evolutionary business is about, and it starts with the individual.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So me individually, my personal responsibility, I think, is to be a maximal service to other people.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Starts with myself.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have to do it for myself, which is one of the reasons I love coaching, because coaching really helps me do that.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: While I'm working, I can also
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have to be grounded, I have to take care of myself to do a good job, and then my work is being of service to these other individuals or teens or companies I work with, and then hopefully all the people they touch.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: As a leader of a business that's at scale, they're impacting many, many people's lives.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: and so to think about that when you're building and running a business is to me an important thing to hold as a part of us and that is not the typical way we think of business, right?
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is along the lines of stakeholder capitalism, which I think is the right one of the right directions to look.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: or B-Corps, another great example of one of the right directions to look or examples, I think you mentioned, Holocrosy or Jack, the founder of Twitter just wrote about what he's doing at his company's square with using AI to help change how the company can be run in a different way.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's movements and directions around how businesses operate, but they're often disconnected from this individual
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: personal kind of sense of like what's the most important thing I can do?
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are my values?
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I in integrity with those values?
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I allowing people to hold me accountable to those?
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is my company hold accountable?
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does that look like?
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do we build in that kind of a way?
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think I'm going off topic from your main question itself, Paul.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it doesn't, there's many things you just shared, but one of, I mean,
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, we don't ask that enough, do we?
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Never.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not with it.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think one of the things I'm hearing you talk about is kind of conscientiousness as well.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like so...
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That it's not enough just to, although it's important to think about what's the impact we want to have.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's like a living question, really, to keep considering am I in alignment with that sense?
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in a way, that's what I hear you modeling as you talk about.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, did I live into my, my love of, and my commitment to evolution, we business, you know.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, so it's like you're modeling that inquiry and I hear you saying that's important.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The leaders stay in that inquiry, you know, because we can slip, can't we?
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I found that as coaches rising grew, you know, the pressures start to become different, payroll grows.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: and suddenly, you know, it's easy for different values to come to the foreground and you slip from first principles.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm hearing, I'm hearing that like, and then what I find beautiful is that it's not.
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, you need to really be considering, or there's an invitation to consider much more deeply the systemic kind of stakeholder impact.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking of people like Peter Hawkins who even has questions like, you know, like, what are the, I, I grant children.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, or I grant children's children who haven't been born yet, what topic do they need as to focus on right now that's related to this business, you know?
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And those kinds of perspectives I think are starting to come in more into business which
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: feels like part of this.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a different view, isn't it?
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: That will become much more prolific.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do you, so let's go deeper into it.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're doing this with leaders, you know, it sounds like you said I'm challenging leaders.
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've given them the kind of caveat.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, kind of landscape, but you're working with purpose and conscientiousness and what else do you find yourself really commonly doing that you think is in this realm of evolution or business or helping organizations to scale
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I said, I feel like we're in the early days.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do believe there's a broader movement that's been happening for a while and it's gaining steam.
• 37:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe and partly because of the suffering that people are more aware of now than they were in the past.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: any time in the past.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we're always, it seems like we're in a number of people are increasingly more aware, not everybody, but they're certainly an increasing number of people more aware of all the suffering and all the possibility and the tools that it could take at least individually, which is really the key thing.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You asked where to start.
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to start with ourselves individually, each of us and kind of decide what it is, what we can do, and you know, I'm in a privileged spot where I can spend a lot of time doing that.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: for a variety of reasons, and so then the question is, okay, so now I've done that, what else can I do with it?
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: What would be the most impactful thing?
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so coaching is certainly one of those things, but I think there's other things for me, at least I'm interested in, so one of those things is evolution as a company and how we operate.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, it really hasn't been always the best example.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly not been a straight line.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been quite experimental and
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: quite unconscious at times and I would also see even unconscious, not just conscientious as it should have been at times.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the great thing about it though is there's been awareness brought.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's openness to to getting feedback and giving feedback, which is another hallmark to me of an evolutionary business.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And frankly, it could even be more broadly, you know, requested and received from other stakeholders besides internal folks, coaches and others inside of evolution.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we could do even more.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure, then we do.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure if we had this conversation internally.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: People say, well, it's pretty good, but we could do more.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's always the case, right?
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: With us individually, as we do our work,
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true collectively, even in an organization and a company and, you know, it's been very hard to build and run evolution because it's not a typical business because it wasn't set out to maximize or optimize around profit or growth that was set out to be sustainable from the beginning, which is not easy to do.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably you having some more experiences at Coach's Rising.
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not an easy way to do it.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're really thinking about all the different parts and the different people, it's tough.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's much easier just to think about, how do I make as much as possible?
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not always easy either, right?
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most businesses that start fail, even without being more conscious about their impact.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then when you're conscientious, it's really kind of difficult to add that in.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I, you know, I do try to bring that into my coaching work, but I'm, I'm at the point where I feel like I need to go beyond that because I don't know if I'm going to have, I'm not going to be able to touch as many people as I would like to just from that.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I cannot coach more than a handful of people at a time.
• 39:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's deep intense work.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't work just individually.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I work in their systems.
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I sit in my clients' slack work spaces.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I communicate with many team members at a time.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm more like in a board member as I said, where I'm really quite involved in their business and close and trying to support them.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Usually through the founder CEO or or or or another kind of key exact, but that's my my role.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't have many clients.
• 40:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd evolution.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have some influence, especially, you know, I'd say, systemically on thinking about how we operate and some of the models we use that are unusual for, you know, our business like we have an allocation model that we use to share revenues, more transparently, more based on value versus on hierarchy of any kind.
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're moving in even a less hierarchical kind of state of the company going forward
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've experimented with various forms of this over the years as we scale that what's the right size for evolution and the right ways of kind of being in relationship with each other and working together with our clients and individually and so there's a lot there but again it's small and so my interest now is really trying to expand this by trying to put more of these ideas out into the world so that others who share these interests want to come together and
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: of everything like shadow and really personal responsibility and accountability and being on a personal journey to organizations and especially large systems and technology including things like AI, blockchain, you know, terms that a lot of folks are uncomfortable with or find evil.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think these things are very important that we need to embrace and figure out how we can best integrate.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: and do it at massive scale, and so whether that's writing about it like I am no in Substack on evolutionary business blog or a book that I'm hoping to put together or speaking with you here, or hopefully others who want to be in touch, or even starting another business perhaps someday or helping other start a business that that could be maybe a, you know, imagine a very positive enriching version of Meta.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's an un... it's possible to do something like that.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've had the belief that we could do something that's social, that's positive without the types of algorithms that they use.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It won't be very profitable probably, but what does that matter if you have the right people involved with it and how you structure it?
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: and maybe we'll take a lot longer, too.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's possible.
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's the point.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how do we do things that are really going to be enriching for the world?
• 42:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I want to see happen.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can do some through coaching, but I probably will do some through other avenues as well.
• 42:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, beautiful.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I see with coaches rising that we've walked this path of
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: being led by a sense of purpose and impact.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I see how that slow down are growth at times.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are focused on that over growth itself.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We grew much more slowly, but I think there was more sustainability to it and not just in terms of the performance of the business, but
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: also how enjoyable it was, you know, that we didn't want to create something that just felt super stressful, you know, or kind of reached beyond where we were at.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, yeah, and I think this conversation from these kind of one idea that comes is like, could we do a live call where we invited,
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: other coaches to join and have this be a kind of live conversation and hear what other voices are.
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are in the field of people who are living the same question, the same tension, because it's a very generative tension isn't it?
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a pun intended, it's an evolution retention.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And could you, could you, like you just named a few things, I'd love to go in the direction of, you know, you mentioned AI and evolution, your company as well?
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you say what,
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: How has the kinds of offerings the evolution creates evolved over time?
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you find that the clients, you know, you work personally and the evolution works with really need.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: in these times.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how is AI impacting the work that you do, the coaching that you do?
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great question.
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's impacting it a lot.
• 44:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that all coaches really need to find their place, their connection to it as much as possible if they want to do the most impactful work and be in the world.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, not everybody is going to, but that's just my personal view of it.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: what's needed and and how does AI fit?
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: All dimensions, all levels really, you know, as we say, with the one version we use of that as I we in it, the individual intrapersonal that we, the relational intrapersonal and the it, the impersonal, the technical, functional structural.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: All three of these are important in our work and
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what clients need help with.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can't just have one of those things in my experience.
• 45:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe to start with one, but it really has to cover all three eventually.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: As coaches, most of us spend most of our time, I think, in the I and we dimensions, because those are the parts that the businesses do less of typically on their own.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the it's at least having the context for the if not impacting or working on the it also are important and so that means individual work team, you know, or group work.
• 46:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: and organizational, whether it's in design or in culture or in systems and structures or in, you know, maybe something even broader, getting into governance or strategy or things like pricing, whatever it might be.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think all these things are really valuable and that's what companies need.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: possible and to do as coaches, and also necessary as coaches to be working at, and I'll explain why.
• 46:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: AI allows us to scale ourselves and be involved with things that we normally wouldn't be nearly as easily as coaches.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It helps us to much more rapidly get information and use it to help us in our work.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: where we can be more human.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can use our intuition, our heart connection, all this, but without having to worry about taking notes or asking all the questions because I can gather everything.
• 47:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm in my slides.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Client Slack.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know what's going on in the company.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can use AI to help me get that information quickly.
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can get a transcript of my coaching calls or meetings that I'm not a part of.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: and use those in my understanding of what's happening in the company.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can have much better sense of what's happening inside of the company than I could ever by doing surveys, even though just doing a 360 and doing interviews is so much easier in better these days because of AI as a coach.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So on the side of coaching it really can help us a lot and it can allow us to scale ourselves and collectively together in our client work.
• 47:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the other side, on the client side, they are now
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: they should be thinking about how they're going to reorganize their companies because AI is going to make a tremendous difference in what's needed in terms of people.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very big change is happening and or starting to happen and I don't know if people realize how disruptive it's going to be to in the short term and I think again if you think about the purpose of business conventionally about profits primarily in growth we're going to see massive profit and growth happen I think in
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then followed by hopefully not massive upheaval because the people will not many people probably will not have worked for a while, or will need to be looking for a new way of working.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll hopefully find a balance.
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in this time, again, just doing it from a conventional viewpoint, how we normally work as coaches, thinking about how they operate their business.
• 48:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: how they can leverage, how they are leveraging AI, but thinking about then, therefore, what does it mean for how they work as teams and their organizations designed and how they are managing agents, as much as they're managing people in a lot of the companies I work with.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very different landscape that we're entering.
• 49:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is more different than when the internet became a part of many companies' businesses.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we know what that did.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is much more and much faster happening as we see than it ever was.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I said, I think, maybe we're at the apex of what's happening in conventional business to speed.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you mean, I mean,
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because there's a whole question here of what will AI and the change you just described, what impact will that have on this apex and the need for evolution of business.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because in one way it seems like AI is just like amping off.
• 49:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even more, you know, this kind of like Silicon Valley, kind of like let's just take over the world and do it as fast as possible, kind of.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, some of the voices there, I've seen them say things like, hey, you know,
• 49:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, one guy, you know, I felt kind of hurt by his like I he was speaking for humanity.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the other thing that I was like, that's kind of bold.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like he said, I know humans.
• 50:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Humans don't care about listening to real music.
• 50:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most, it said, people will just listen to any generated music.
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They already are.
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They won't care about it.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that's a, that's a very particular view of the world, but I don't agree with it.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: there's that whole conversation what I mean obviously this question comes up and it's not the right question but I still want to ask it because do you
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: What impact do you think it will have on the field of coaching?
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because there seems to be a consensus that it won't replace coaching.
• 50:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It will support it.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think, obviously, as you've described, the economic system that we've had for the last however many decades is going to be disrupted and therefore paying coaches is going to be disrupted.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's your view on that?
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's multiple paths that will be taken in parallel or generally over the next period of time.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's already started.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a divergence from equality or experience or value perceived that there is going to be an increase in
• 51:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Coaches who are perceived in this way are present that type of value to their clients as being more valuable and likely to make potentially more income than they did for variety of reasons and then Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of people probably are newer coaches who are haven't
• 51:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: found a way to build a practice, maybe they were working through one of the bigger firms like better up and have them been paid up probably that well anyway.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those people I think are going to really have trouble continuing unless they do something different because I think AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI,
• 52:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: can do a lot of what I would call kind of more straightforward coaching quite effectively, directly.
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think the thing that those people know and now let me switch gears and say however, I think at the same time I think more people will come into coaching because of the disruption that's going to happen in a lot of jobs.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's these are people who have a lot to offer in terms of experience that is not the same that AI can offer a human and an AI cannot offer another human the same thing.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there will be an increase in the number of people at higher levels of broader levels of companies getting coaching and wanting better coaching and wanting that human connection not just being happy with the check the box.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, they HR department bought us some coaching and so I'm just going to talk to whoever's available.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: My coach, that relationship, we know as coaches who've been doing this for us incredibly important and I think those people can move into coaching and do okay Because again, I think the companies will become very profitable.
• 53:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they'll have fewer employees and I think Hopefully, I'm maybe I'm being optimistic that more of those people will have more good high-level coaching and so there's a potential in the industry for folks like that and that means experienced
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's as a coach or as an, you know, operator depth of, you know, kind of connection to themselves that they can then bring to somebody else so that that feels that that relationship is very valuable and that
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They help the folks who are still in the business navigate this very dynamic environment that we're going to be entering, which as you said, is just going to go It is going extremely fast, and I think it's going to go even faster than we're seeing it yet.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We barely started this process thus far.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's far.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like AI is like, you know, a better Google or something.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that's not where AI is going.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: AI is going to do a lot of our work for us.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so instead of hiring humans,
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: to do it, we will be working with agents to do it.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, despite there will be a lot of churn, you know, people like Jan Lacone who's kind of a contrarian voice on LLM, she's, you know, one of the, he said, like, yeah, they'll be churn, but then there'll be a kind of period of coming back into a new level of a very stability around a new realms of work, you know, and I think we can't imagine yet what.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: know what will emerge in our culture and I think this is one of the things that I sit with is like you know and it's you know this has been said many times already but the deeper questions of what it needs to be human are so loud right now because of all the uncertainties we face and then AI coming in and replacing work I think it's going it's just
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: potentially moving and I'm cautious here because could go in many directions, but potentially a world where we've come back to, we've reclaimed some important
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: values, which are not like a growth or cost.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to know, et cetera, exactly.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're now like, well, what's really meaningful, like contribution, service, artistic expression.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a relationship.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm hoping, and if people let Nate Higgins with his great simplification view, which is a very sobering, but he's also
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people will feel relief about that.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do too.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want to add anything?
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just let me add.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very optimistic about that.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think we have to end and realistic.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's going to be tough for some time for many people.
• 55:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe that's an understatement, by the way, to say tough.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think very, very disruptive in challenging to many people's lives for a period of time.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm optimistic that we will, as a species, come out of this in a better place, as a result of this.
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's necessary.
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of our evolution.
• 56:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you think of, we'll be Darwinism and kind of the survival, the fittest, the physical aspects of humans and our brains being able to essentially go from,
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Apex species to the use of our intellects to create things like AI.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That to me is a perfect example.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We went from this this so-ful creature that we are to being fully in our minds creating something that's essentially a mind without a soul.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's AI technologies always felt to me like we're trying to replicate.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, what we think of as God.
• 56:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think of it as God, but the idea of the Superman, right?
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we'll just keep getting more and more on that way.
• 57:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's faster and faster and everything related to technology, the funding of it and the businesses built around an open AI is like the perfect example of like a company that lost its way.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a non-profit and now look at it.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here yet, you know, but it's doing things that people are finding helpful.
• 57:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Be whether we agree with how they're doing it and whether they're ultimately going to be successful But this is like that's why I said feels like the end of a period where we have to have like almost like a as a society break down And I really hope it doesn't feel too painful for for too many people
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: that will then allow us because of the technology.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to go through it.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can't just try to deny it.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can't stop data centers or things like this that people say they want to do.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to go through it to then find a better piece because I do think it will allow us to not care nearly as much about things like
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: optimization of everything and growth for growth's sake, but the economy will have to change, how people have enough to live, what a living looks like.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where the U.S.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think is going to be especially challenging because there's just no safety net in the United States, like there is say in Europe, for example, in many other countries.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so,
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm optimistic that we'll come through and do a place where because of AI, we'll be able to live and operate and work in very different ways.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Much more solely, much more creative, creatively, the things that make us more human will be able to really lean into.
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think part of why I want to,
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: bring out the conversation about evolutionary business and what it means to get there is because it's a human thing.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a structural thing and it's not just an individual, you know, exercise or a collective exercise and while being it's putting the organization and the human together in a different way of doing business and AI can very much help that happen.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It can make it way more the parts that we we've had to have human drudgery a part of.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: can be automated and help us to be more human along kind of at the end of this process.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we can start doing that now, but it's going to be, you know, for existing companies and existing industries, this is going to be very, very tough time in between.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But my hope is have hope.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: lean into it.
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't try to stop it.
• 59:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to stop and find the path through.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's going to be most meaningful for you personally and for whatever organization you can be a part of or to touch and help that path happen.
• 59:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's that's kind of that's at least my hope.
• 59:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I did a podcast with two coaches in the Ukraine, and they spoke about, of course, they, you know, tremendous challenge of living there, and the...
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the unforeseen bent, you know, I have to call it benefits or growth.
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And ways that society and community came together, the sense of agency and innovation and creativity, and the community that came online, and adaption, the adaptability, and one of the guests even kind of off camera, and kind of alluded to like, well,
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he didn't quite say it like this, but he's like, kind of saying, like, I'm happy and now since, you know, like, because it broke through the habituation and it is level of gratitude for small things.
• 1:00:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the sense of connection and vitality and a liveness that came through through that.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it, you know, of course, I wouldn't wish that and anyone, but
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It did give me a powerful sense of inspiration about you know that through adversity we know this individually through adversity we often grow the most and we look back on those moments and we say like the time I hated it but now I'm glad I went through that and I wonder
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I could ask you about the other side, which is how do you use AI with your clients?
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You set like transcribing conversations and being, I imagine that enables you to do all kinds of things from having it reflect on the patterns to suggest things areas of exploration.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how do you use AI to be a better cope specific ways you do that?
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so that you've mentioned a couple of the what I would call basic ways of using it that I think are, you know, more and more common these days of having, you know, transcribing sessions and I do that with a many of my clients on all of them.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: The ones in the AI industry or the ones who at least want me to do that, which is pretty interesting, and the, and, you know, very carefully by the way, you can't just do it without being thoughtful about where that information is going and how it's being stored and who's doing it.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'd say, you know, thoughtfully capture how do you, which platform to how do you, what do you use to do that in a way where it doesn't get kind of stored and, you know,
• 1:02:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to name a name here for a reason just because I don't want to choose a side.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think being careful about there's, I think more than one tool, that's good, that can be set up for users to gather confidential information, but then not have it stored
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: server access basically and then even individually beyond mine so that it's confidential.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like I'm basically taking notes and I think you know that's important to kind of structure it that way and but it's very valuable.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a coach who takes notes by hand, normally during sessions and normally if I can do it the way I like I think I told you this I prefer to be on my my phone walking around and and not
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thinking and having to look at a screen just being able to think and not look at a screen and so great You know, it's also will take me out of what I feel like as my my greatest gift is a coach Which is the sense of what you know to ask next or what I might say and so having a transcribe though I'll house me to stay there without having to but also capture the notes that I can share back with my client or have for myself and
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And also having AI, I can ask questions as things come up that might be helpful to me when I can't think of an idea book or an article or something else.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can ask it in, you know, kind of live.
• 1:03:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can also capture, as I think I told you, I'm in a lot of my client's Slack workspace as I can use AI, whether it's in Slack or outside, to gather a lot of what's happening in the company and use that as context for my coaching.
• 1:03:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which, again, I don't think most coaches do this, but it's something I always do, which is I'm very involved with my cook come the companies I work with in terms of their businesses and understanding their strategies and what's happening inside the companies and all that and I prefer to know that before I go into a session, then have to find out about it or ask about it during a session.
• 1:04:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's much more efficient to do this.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I use it for that as well.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you use a special, again, you don't have to name it, but do you have AI plug-in to Slack or to Slack have that kind of feedback?
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Slack has it.
• 1:04:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the past, I've been before Slack had it, and we just used, you know, kind of what we're using, either cloud or open AI for this, chat to BT.
• 1:04:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, gathering the information from a company and having it, you know,
• 1:04:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: in a system that can then be queried, that's smart, is very valuable.
• 1:04:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you do that?
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone who we have, so I'm self-interest here.
• 1:04:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, we use Slack.
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is one of the things I've found incredibly useful inside coaches rising is transcribing our team meetings, strategic meetings.
• 1:05:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know over 10 meetings it gets really over 20 then you start to the kind of meta patterns and strategic scaffolding and you know of course you have to be careful not to get overwhelmed but how do you use how do you do that with slack?
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Slack has its own AI tool built in that a lot of companies use that allows you to get summaries of what you missed.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the simplest way.
• 1:05:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't have that, you can literally copy and paste into a folder or into a project in Cloud or chat to PTA, we use Cloud that can do the same thing for you.
• 1:05:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so early days, that's what I was doing.
• 1:05:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I just use the Slack AI.
• 1:05:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's nice, you know, I just want to say when I first started using AI with coaching in the ways we're talking, but it was like game changing for me, and now it's just normal, and you know, I used to send notes to my clients, but they all get their own notes now that are pretty good.
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my notes are different from theirs because I prompt my AI differently than they do probably, and so I share them, but I don't think they care as much because now they're getting good notes themselves.
• 1:06:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're all recording everything.
• 1:06:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even have to share it because they're all getting into plans.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we just become the norm.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think where we're going is more interesting.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: At evolution, we focus primarily so far on how the operation of the business works to support all of us, all of our partners, all of our coaches with operating, doing their work in the world.
• 1:06:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they don't have to be thinking about it as much.
• 1:06:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it makes our internal systems way better, way more efficient.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have much greater insight into what's happening with our clients and with our contracts and these types of things.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: and we're moving into using that to have more collective intelligence without sharing any of the individual content that we coaches have with our clients, but gathering insights that we can then share with each other and use over time.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, it's early days for some of this still, but I certainly see it in the operations of our business as far more efficient than, you know,
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's that's most amazing thing and that allows us as coaches again to just focus on really the connection we have with our our clients with them as whether it's a team or the whole organization and so far that's the most valuable use.
• 1:07:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think going forward what I'm really interested in kind of we're talking about is like
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: how is AI going to make a big difference in how those businesses are operating?
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And understanding that as a coach is more important than the other thing of that told you.
• 1:07:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So meaning using AI to think about how you operate as an entity, whether you're individual or part of an organization and thinking about how that organization's changing or could change as a result of AI.
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So personally getting very deep into how AI works
• 1:08:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And especially where it's going is I think valuable for coaches because that's going to be the world where it is the world we're moving into now and so understanding where the future is is at least as important as where the current status.
• 1:08:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you, what sources do you use?
• 1:08:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's obviously, you know, keeping up with the changes are challenging.
• 1:08:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, I think it up like the moon shots podcast with Peter D. Amanda is an, you know, often has like quite vocal prime players in the AI industry on there.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like what places do you go to?
• 1:08:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm in the tech world, so it's pretty easy for me whether it's from, you know, podcasts like Jason Calcana says like this we can start up so our ball-in, which of course people have various viewpoints on because of the folks on that or, you know, reading
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: different sub-stacks about it.
• 1:09:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It kind of fills my inbox and I kind of can't get away from it to be honest.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so, you know, the last two months open claw and kind of the movement towards, you know, open source agents has been all the rage and then what Anthropics doing with Cloud Code and Cluwork.
• 1:09:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really important.
• 1:09:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the main thing is using it.
• 1:09:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: make yourself use it and then learn from others how to use it even better and ask and get feedback.
• 1:09:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're lucky again because Dan RCO is a technologist and he was very early into using AI as a former company and we've had we have a team of experts working inside of evolution who are leading us in this direction and building our infrastructure and our
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: our services and our products around it.
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're doing that now for clients as well.
• 1:09:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're now working in client systems, helping them using AI to integrate the work we're doing with those clients with their internal experiences of the work.
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like how teams are performing, how organizations are performing, how leadership programs are moving, what topics should
• 1:10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're moving into an age where it's going to be as coaches much more closely connected to the inner workings of a business and again, primarily initially it's going to be about efficiency and effectiveness, this kind of common modern orange meme kind of frames that make companies more
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: productive, more efficient, more profitable, and, you know, therefore probably have more value.
• 1:10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's primarily where it's going to go first, but, you know, I think as we do it, we're going to see opportunities to help the human parts of businesses get more out.
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And at some point, hopefully the what's enough question will be strong enough for people say, hey, we're doing so well.
• 1:10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can do any better.
• 1:10:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't need so much.
• 1:10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: What can we do else?
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's going to be meaningful to society, and I think that possibility is right on the horizon, and then as coaches, if we're not just thinking about, okay, doing what my client needs, I'm making enough for my family, you know, and my being a good coach, like, I get my certification or whatever else that people care about, it's like, what more of an impact I can have on the world.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the question I think we need to be talking about and asking, and what else do we need to do to help set that up?
• 1:11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: What else?
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we need to be talking about the nature of business and how companies are structured and what systems they use and how they govern themselves, all these things, because that's the world we're going to move into or we should move into.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going to move into, but we need to be talking about that thing about that moving into that now, so it's not as disruptive as we shift.
• 1:11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I could see if there is this abundance and nothingness, then a focus on what else could I give what could I do for the world?
• 1:12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And another reflection is at some point if the AI gets smart enough that
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's immediate, the impact of how it can help your business.
• 1:12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because right now it's like the technologists, the people who know how it works have got the cutting edge.
• 1:12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at some point it could be, you're talking to this AI that's so user-friendly.
• 1:12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now you don't need that.
• 1:12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: technological know-how.
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you're at the same level playing field as the other guys, you know, so then the question for me becomes, well, what's the differentiating factor in something, you know, is it the level of consciousness, the level of inspiration inside the human beings that create the thing?
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you know, otherwise we could end up with, you know, like millions
• 1:13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, people are just building like replica businesses of others and it's just kind of a deluge of dirge, you know, of like, kind of flop, same, sameness and yeah, and I think there will be right.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen that with the writing of AI generated writing and content, it's like, oh, and yet we're people going.
• 1:13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, back towards the more human version of it, right?
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just not good enough to express ourselves our uniqueness and your point is well taken.
• 1:13:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I do think I hope there are millions of businesses that come out of this, but they're not going to be all the same, I believe.
• 1:13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: At least the ones that will be interesting, they'll be more bespoke, more personal.
• 1:13:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, more humans.
• 1:13:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's plenty of things.
• 1:13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: They won't be machines.
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: They will be really crafts.
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's really cool.
• 1:13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I could have a craft, it doesn't cost me too much to start and run.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
• 1:14:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what a lot of people want to have.
• 1:14:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly, exactly, and all the things that people used to have to do to make a living that with a barriers to scaling a company that are done, so now it comes back more and more to like, well, you have to give your gifts, because AI is doing everything else, you know.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great, this is turning into an AI optimist.
• 1:14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it's good.
• 1:14:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do find there's a number of coaches.
• 1:14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, I think because of their very human, you know, depth of relationship and connection, find it to be very, very worrisome and evil even as a technology.
• 1:14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We hear that not just coaches, but a lot of people.
• 1:14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know,
• 1:14:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand what people see feel that way and I think it's very important for them to first of what we heard, but second to also be shown that there's other possibilities and hopefully they'll hear that, they'll see that there are and it's not either bad or good, it's a tool and it's how we're going to use it and it's going to be used for bad and good and that's just that's how everything has been with us humans.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, we have both of those parts in us, right?
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so everything we do and create has those parts.
• 1:15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have to be aware of those.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's where the depth really comes in and the awareness of self at a deep, deep level of understanding shadow, the parts we hide, repress and deny and putting those out in front of us.
• 1:15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then working towards them and having support around being accountable to these things and then being out in the world with that, right?
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not being monks, but, you know,
• 1:15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: No pun intended with your name, perfect name, but as you are bringing the work to the world in a way that it can touch as many people as possible that want to be touched and hopefully are, you know, going to be open to having that.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why there is a possibility with this.
• 1:16:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's also a similarly exciting possibility with blockchain, which is even crypto as seen as even I think maybe equally evil to AI and again it's just a tool.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's a technology and it has been used for bad and it has been used for good and I also think it can be used extremely well for how to create evolutionary businesses with different types of more flexible structures and more democracy and sharing and transparency.
• 1:16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: All things we need and that
• 1:16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a whole other kind of conversation we could have that also to me is exciting and hasn't yet been realized.
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And AI is similar and we're at an earlier stage with AI's involvement in society, then we we already went through a with crypto and it's not done.
• 1:16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's continuing.
• 1:16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just less known, I think, at this point are seen where AI is really front and center.
• 1:16:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it's impacting way more people than crypto has or blockchain has so far, but these technologies are all part of evolution and evolutionary business as humans and as a species and as a society.
• 1:17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so embracing them, working with them, finding where they're good, finding where the shadow exists and why deeply understand it.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't like Sam Altman's way of
• 1:17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: then you can choose another one and luckily there's more, right?
• 1:17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Andthropy, because a public benefit court will see how they are able to maintain that stance as they go public, probably later this year, whether they can.
• 1:17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not been done effectively in the past, in my experience.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's usually shareholder lawsuits happen shortly after any time a stock price drops in those kinds of companies.
• 1:17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: because the structure is a bit limiting and you know it's not the ideal by itself it's it's shows though the kind of company at least it seems the leaders of that company want to create whereas open AIS you know far from that at this point clearly full profit company if they can make it after spending as much as they are and so
• 1:18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: you can choose a better path or you can choose an open source model and you know it's work.
• 1:18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It takes time.
• 1:18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're still not there where it is super user friendly and you do need to have some technological at least openness.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can ask the AI to tell it teach you which is pretty nice.
• 1:18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do I do this?
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it will give you good instructions on how to do things.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I set up CloudCow work by asking, how do I set up CloudCow work?
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty easy to do.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, this should be a positive kind of energizing view, and yet, you know, at the same time for me, it's easy to get excited and positive about the future.
• 1:18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's hard for me is to look at what I've done with the same kind of op positivity.
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, it's easier for me to say, gosh, I really haven't done what I wanted to.
• 1:18:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been 20 years since I had this
• 1:19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: a vision of this evolutionary business construct, framing, philosophy, movement really.
• 1:19:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, it's not about me, it's just many others.
• 1:19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just named it that because it needed a name.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a whole other story we could talk about some time about how it got that name, which is pretty funny.
• 1:19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But,
• 1:19:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: we have to do more.
• 1:19:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't we?
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to.
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't talk about a moral imperative.
• 1:19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to do more here.
• 1:19:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not just talk about it, go eat that we should.
• 1:19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not just write about it, though we should.
• 1:19:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And please come to my, you know, substock and give me feedback and engage and tell me where I'm wrong or dumb or where I'm in shadow because that's what we all need.
• 1:19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But building
• 1:19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: things together, building business, building structures and systems and, you know, better ways of working and organizing and all those things because we need all of it.
• 1:19:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the depth and all the breath.
• 1:20:01
  [UNKNOWN]: Beautiful.
• 1:20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it feels like a good place to bring it to a close.
• 1:20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's so much richness in what we've shared today.
• 1:20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything you want to share?
• 1:20:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I want to invite you to then just sub-stack, and we can point people to your work.
• 1:20:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's so anything you would like to share, just as a close.
• 1:20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: What comes to mind is, I'm not sure it's the best close, but I'll do it anyway, because it comes to mind.
• 1:20:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is that,
• 1:20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm, you know, privileged enough to be somebody who has strong views and can speak them relatively well sometimes with, you know, going around it around a bit, but, uh, confidence, right?
• 1:20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm, I'm lucky and, you know, it's part of just how I was raised and who I am.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time, I am, you know,
• 1:20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm here in large part because of the flaws that I recognize in myself and then also the ones that I don't.
• 1:20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so my limitations are at least as great as my positive offerings.
• 1:21:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that this isn't about me in any way shape or form.
• 1:21:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really think it's about all of us working.
• 1:21:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: in a different better way together and you know I'm not super comfortable being out in front and that's not the best version of me that's my much better coach than I ever was a CEO and I'm grateful that I've found that path and I think
• 1:21:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the point.
• 1:21:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a place for all of us in this and I don't know what that all is.
• 1:21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I certainly don't have the answer.
• 1:21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I seem like I think I have all the answers.
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I sometimes part of me thinks they I do, but I definitely don't.
• 1:21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely don't.
• 1:21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know I don't.
• 1:21:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to say that with humility of like this is not.
• 1:21:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no blueprint, there's no playbook, even the name of a loser business is just a name.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can call it the various other things.
• 1:21:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm pedantic about why that's at the right name or a good name.
• 1:21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me say that.
• 1:21:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's my own issues.
• 1:22:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the point is is we're working to on something together that's meaningful that we can talk about and actually make
• 1:22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, specific, you know, steps towards achieving a better thing and it's not that there's some, once we get there, it'll be perfect.
• 1:22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's just a continuous evolution, improvement, growth towards something that is better and I'm glad to have the chance to be of service hopefully that's my, that would be my last piece as I really hope this is of service.
• 1:22:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: For me it's more exciting
• 1:22:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: having the chance to put myself out there and I'll be nervous when I have to listen to it and
• 1:22:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad I have the chance, Joel.
• 1:22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
• 1:22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, let's go.
• 1:22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Jeff.
• 1:22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:22:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned your sub stack.
• 1:22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's that called on sub stack?
• 1:22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's called evolutionary business.
• 1:22:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've only just started it.
• 1:22:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so there's just a handful of posts so far on there.
• 1:22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm going to continue to do so.
• 1:23:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I really welcome, obviously, people who are listening who want to engage to engage to subscribe to
• 1:23:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: to comment, to give feedback, to give your thoughts, to add them.
• 1:23:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's make this a dialogue.
• 1:23:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Community is where the real power is, to do that.
• 1:23:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Check out Evolution.team, our website for the company, and reach out, whether it's to me or to others there.
• 1:23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have amazing partners, and we're always interested in clients and coaches who want to be partnered with us, and
• 1:23:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: in our work and in the world, and working together more fully.
• 1:23:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and anybody else who's interested, I love talking to people, and so I'm always open and interested to hear from folks.
• 1:23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
• 1:23:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks.
• 1:23:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here we are.
• 1:23:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're at the end of the podcast.
• 1:23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just a heads up again.
• 1:23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising dot com put your name in the sign up box there.
• 1:23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll also find some of our other offerings online trainings for coaches there and just want to end by wishing you well and I'll see you again next time.