Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / STOP Spiraling After Mistakes: The Brain Rewire Founders Need (Neuro-Linguistic Programming with Barbara Wichman)

Transcript

STOP Spiraling After Mistakes: The Brain Rewire Founders Need (Neuro-Linguistic Programming with Barbara Wichman) · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  Well, Barbara Whichman, welcome back to the show.
• 0:02
  Yeah. Thanks for having me back, Alex,
• 0:04
  It's been a long year. For sure.
• 0:06
  It's been one year. You're founder of CKC
• 0:09
  Consulting. For those that don't know what
• 0:11
  you nobody would really know this actually, because the
• 0:13
  episode never aired. I had you back and I felt I felt
• 0:16
  so terrible because I had I had Barbara out here about a year
• 0:20
  ago in the old office. We didn't have the cool
• 0:22
  equipment we have now, but we had the podcast going to maybe,
• 0:25
  I don't know, maybe we're like 10 episodes in or something like
• 0:26
  that. And you were one of like the
• 0:29
  best guests that I had. I had no shit.
• 0:31
  I'm not just saying that either. I'm not pulling smoke.
• 0:33
  I left there and I was like, man, that was such a good
• 0:37
  episode. You share so many good stories
• 0:39
  and insights. And I was like, people are going
• 0:41
  to learn so much. We're going to get great content
• 0:42
  from this. And I just thought it was such a
• 0:43
  good. I was so excited to give it back
• 0:45
  to you. And then once you left and I
• 0:47
  started going to the files, I realized something happened.
• 0:49
  I think it was with the audio or something.
• 0:50
  I was able to say your side, thankfully, so you could take
• 0:53
  your content, do something with it, but but my side was not
• 0:56
  there and we weren't able to publish an episode.
• 0:59
  And I just remember having to e-mail you like, oh man, this
• 1:01
  sucks. I got to e-mail.
• 1:02
  Her and tell her that we. Can't even post a damn episode
• 1:04
  but it's OK. But it's it's part of the the
• 1:07
  process of going through things and trying new things and you're
• 1:10
  going to fail. And and you know what?
• 1:12
  There's a times when you succeed too, right?
• 1:14
  So, and now I'm back and you have your new equipment in your
• 1:16
  new studio and it's amazing. So maybe that was meant to be,
• 1:20
  right? That's right, you know.
• 1:21
  Hey, they're gonna get to see you for for an even better
• 1:23
  edition here today. So I'm really pumped for this.
• 1:25
  This would be a good episode. Where would you?
• 1:28
  How would you just to set the context for the audience who
• 1:30
  doesn't know you? How would you describe what you
• 1:32
  do in a sentence or two? There's no way in a sentence or
• 1:35
  two, but here's what I'll tell you what I do.
• 1:38
  I'm the person that businesses call when the leader is feeling
• 1:46
  his nervous system, his or her nervous system activate.
• 1:50
  And they don't know why because the nervous system activates
• 1:53
  when something's going on, something's not right, and they
• 1:56
  can't put their finger on it. So they start feeling the
• 1:59
  agitation, the apprehension. So they call me and say, hey,
• 2:02
  can you come help us figure this out?
• 2:05
  So I come in and basically do an entire diagnostics and then I
• 2:10
  provide my findings, my suggestions.
• 2:14
  And the one thing that's really different, I'll share that, you
• 2:17
  know, because people say, oh, consultant, so you're going to
• 2:19
  tell us what we need to do and walk out the door.
• 2:20
  I don't do that at all. When I provide the suggestions,
• 2:24
  I sit down with the leader, the leadership team and we work it
• 2:27
  out together and then we walk arm in arm together.
• 2:30
  So I basically have a stake in the game.
• 2:32
  Like I don't walk away and say good luck and then it doesn't
• 2:35
  happen. They say, you know, I can't come
• 2:38
  back and say, well, you didn't do it because I'm their arm in
• 2:41
  arm. And that's one of the reasons
• 2:43
  why I have clients from 2018 till today.
• 2:47
  That's why I have clients that I started working with in
• 2:49
  corporate America who called me. I had a client that called me
• 2:53
  back about six months ago and said, you know, you've helped me
• 2:57
  become a vice president and now I want to run my own business,
• 3:00
  help me put my business together.
• 3:01
  So now we're working on that. So you develop these
• 3:04
  relationships from this ability to step in and work hand in hand
• 3:08
  with people. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 3:10
  We operate in very similar ways and I think that's sometimes the
• 3:13
  consultant trap is they come in and tell you all the problems
• 3:16
  and they show you the blind spots and they just like roll
• 3:18
  out and it's like, all right, cool, it's good to know and
• 3:20
  maybe we got a little bit of a game plan moving forward, but
• 3:22
  the execution is the tough part. It is that is the hardest part.
• 3:25
  You got to go have the conversations, you got to make
• 3:27
  the changes, you got to take the action.
• 3:29
  You're going to fail. What do you do when you fail?
• 3:31
  How do you bounce back? How do you adjust, you know?
• 3:33
  Yeah. And you know, and that's a good
• 3:35
  point. That's really true.
• 3:36
  The thing that makes it I really enjoy about being a consultant
• 3:39
  is I come in, which I call clean.
• 3:42
  I don't have any political alliances.
• 3:44
  I don't. If I do have history, that
• 3:46
  history is either within the business or with a person, but I
• 3:50
  can put that aside. So I come and clean and I'm not
• 3:53
  trying to protect anything and I'm not trying to have any
• 3:57
  specific outcome other than the outcome that I've been hired
• 4:00
  for. And because of that, I come in
• 4:03
  with a lot of truth bombs, right?
• 4:05
  I, I don't have to, I don't sugarcoat anything.
• 4:08
  I say it in a way they can hear it, but I don't have to mess
• 4:10
  around with all that because that's not what you hire me for.
• 4:13
  But then, because I stay right there and stand along with it, I
• 4:16
  also have no excuses for myself either.
• 4:19
  Now, do people really want to hear the truth?
• 4:21
  Yes, especially founders and entrepreneurs.
• 4:22
  Absolutely. Yeah, even if it hurts
• 4:24
  sometimes. Sometimes it hurts.
• 4:28
  However, again, that's how you present it, right?
• 4:31
  If you put it in the context of here's what's happening, he went
• 4:35
  if then, and you do a lot of if then scenarios.
• 4:38
  If this happens, then this is happening.
• 4:40
  This is happening because of this.
• 4:42
  When you set it up for them like that, it's hard for them to deny
• 4:45
  it, right? So they don't have to become
• 4:47
  defensive about it because it's typically, sometimes it's about
• 4:50
  them, but last times it's not about them.
• 4:52
  It's about the situation, the process, the culture, those
• 4:55
  things can all be addressed. Yeah, and I guess if you're
• 4:58
  bringing someone in, you do have to kind of have an open mind to
• 5:00
  saying, all right, you're gonna outside perspective, you're
• 5:03
  coming in fresh eyes. I got to be open to what they
• 5:05
  might find, you know, and I think that's a, it's a big step
• 5:07
  to bring someone in to be able to, you know, have those
• 5:10
  conversations and have them do a deep dive to begin with.
• 5:12
  Because I mean, you're open and vulnerable to someone saying,
• 5:14
  hey, this is. Absolutely, Yeah, yes.
• 5:17
  And that really coming in, we're changing organizational
• 5:21
  structure, flow, outcomes. Sometimes we go after strategy,
• 5:24
  sometimes we'll go after operations.
• 5:27
  I will tell you, I will not call it unfortunate.
• 5:32
  However, many times I come in and will discover that there's
• 5:36
  wrong leadership in place or there's wrong key people in
• 5:40
  place. And we work very diligently to
• 5:44
  ensure either that they have what they need to move forward,
• 5:47
  or if not, to be very respectful and helping them move on and
• 5:53
  then help them bring in the right people to fill that role.
• 5:56
  So a lot of times we're doing restructuring.
• 5:59
  You know, back in the Sunbeam days when the, when I remember,
• 6:02
  can't remember his name, but there was a CEO that came into
• 6:04
  Sunbeam. They called him the Hatchet man
• 6:06
  because he just cut everyone. I'm not like that.
• 6:10
  I'll tell you what's really interesting, Alex, is often
• 6:12
  times when I'm in the situation and we recommend people have to
• 6:18
  exit the organization because it's not a good fit.
• 6:20
  Many times those people hire me to be the career coach to help
• 6:22
  them find their next job. And that always tells me that it
• 6:25
  was done very respectfully and with a lot of care.
• 6:30
  You mentioned that these entrepreneurs, leaders,
• 6:33
  executives, they start feeling something inside.
• 6:35
  It's not right. Maybe some anxiety.
• 6:37
  What does that look like for them?
• 6:38
  Like what? What are they going through when
• 6:40
  that's happening? Yeah, well, let's talk about,
• 6:42
  first of all, what it is. So typically you, I, anyone,
• 6:47
  just the very nature of our makeup is when something is not
• 6:52
  right, you feel it lots of times before you can put your finger
• 6:55
  on it. It's kind of like when you're
• 6:57
  walking down a street and you get a feeling that something's
• 6:59
  not right, You start paying more attention to it.
• 7:01
  That's your nervous system activating.
• 7:03
  The same thing happens when you're in a a meeting room or a
• 7:07
  classroom or wherever it is, but that's those things happen all
• 7:10
  the time. You start feeling things and but
• 7:12
  you can't place it. So that that's very detrimental
• 7:17
  because now the leader starts pulling back going what do I
• 7:22
  need to do differently or what are my people doing or why isn't
• 7:25
  this happening? I don't know what to do.
• 7:27
  Then they start getting pounding on the table or they start being
• 7:31
  you guys aren't doing your job. So all these things start
• 7:34
  exploding. I remember there was one leader
• 7:37
  that supported very, very closely, and one of the folks on
• 7:41
  the team would say, well, he's just very agitated.
• 7:44
  He's very upset today. OK, why?
• 7:47
  Right. You have to understand why.
• 7:49
  Like what's happening that's causing that agitation?
• 7:51
  Well, we don't know why he's just in his mood today.
• 7:54
  Well, now that you don't just go into a mood, something's
• 7:57
  happened. It could be something from home.
• 7:58
  Yes, it could be something that has actually happened or they
• 8:01
  could just be feeling something that's not right.
• 8:05
  And because of that, they start having an outburst or saying
• 8:10
  mean things or you know, then you start impacting the culture
• 8:13
  and you start pointing fingers. Those things are very
• 8:16
  detrimental to an organization and not intentional, right?
• 8:20
  And sometimes leaders will come back and say things that they
• 8:22
  think are very helpful when really the whole table walks
• 8:26
  away going, whoa, that was a horrible thing to say to us.
• 8:29
  And the leader doesn't see it because they're trying to fix
• 8:31
  the situation. So many of these different
• 8:33
  things happen. It shows up in many different
• 8:35
  ways. The bottom line is it shows up
• 8:38
  in the outcomes which the organization's trying to
• 8:41
  achieve. And that's the problem because
• 8:44
  everyone starts pulling back. When the leader starts getting
• 8:46
  agitated, everyone pulls back, everyone slows down, everyone
• 8:51
  starts hiding. Right?
• 8:53
  Yeah. Let me give you a couple of
• 8:54
  examples. You like stories?
• 8:55
  I got some great stories. From you told some great stories
• 8:57
  in the last one too, about your your, you know, sitting in the
• 9:00
  boardroom since some of these 1050 and Fortune 50 companies.
• 9:03
  Yeah, we get into some of that, maybe later, but yeah, yeah,
• 9:05
  please go away. Yeah, I think a couple of
• 9:07
  things. I'll say I've been in the
• 9:08
  Fortune 50, you know, these executive teams and boardrooms
• 9:11
  and sitting in the meetings, which has been fantastic.
• 9:14
  But I've also been in startups and I've been in growth
• 9:18
  companies and I've been in nonprofits.
• 9:21
  So I've got the gamut from I've seen it all.
• 9:24
  So there's nothing that you can't.
• 9:28
  I haven't. Nothing surprises me anymore.
• 9:30
  So there was one time I don't want any in the company, but it
• 9:35
  was a start up within a Fortune 50.
• 9:37
  So I was brought in to help this organization.
• 9:39
  They wanted to grow from zero to 3 billion in three years with a
• 9:42
  target of 5 billion in five years.
• 9:43
  That's very significant growth. Would we know this company if
• 9:46
  you did drop and? You would know the company at
• 9:51
  the time, it was on the Fortune 50.
• 9:53
  It's not any longer. However, they had brought in
• 9:58
  this very incredible leader. He was fantastic and he was just
• 10:05
  such an amazing sales guy and they brought him in because he
• 10:08
  had the mindset of sales and go get him and they wanted him, him
• 10:12
  to just really get the start up off and moving.
• 10:15
  Because then after a couple years you take him off that and
• 10:17
  you put him on something else and you bring in an operations
• 10:19
  guy, right? But he was it.
• 10:22
  So what I noticed in the meetings was we go into the
• 10:26
  meetings, we talk about what we're going to do, what
• 10:30
  everyone's working on, and then we disperse.
• 10:33
  And then because I was engaged with everyone, I'd hear the
• 10:38
  water cooler conversations of we're not going to do that.
• 10:40
  Like, doesn't he know what's going to happen if we do that?
• 10:41
  We can't do that. Just don't do what?
• 10:43
  He'll never ask about it anyways.
• 10:44
  Well, that was his MO. He never asked about it.
• 10:47
  And then all of a sudden. They trusted you to say that
• 10:50
  too. Well, they trusted me to say it
• 10:52
  around me. Right.
• 10:54
  Right. So they trusted me enough to say
• 10:56
  it around me. The challenge was I had a
• 11:00
  particular purpose there, right? I had a particular role there
• 11:03
  which was to look at the culture, look at the operations,
• 11:09
  look at leadership and find out what's working well and support
• 11:13
  it and what's not working well and how do we fix it.
• 11:15
  So you're a consultant for that company?
• 11:16
  That I was an internal consultant.
• 11:17
  So a lot of my roles I was an employee, but I was considered
• 11:20
  an internal consultant. Got it.
• 11:23
  So I went up to this leader one time.
• 11:28
  I sat down. I said, hey, we need to have a
• 11:30
  heart to heart. Can I just share some truths
• 11:32
  with you? And he said, absolutely, let me
• 11:36
  hear what you got to say. I said, OK, Do you realize that
• 11:38
  when they walk out the door or your team's not doing what you
• 11:41
  ask them to do, what do you mean they're not doing what I asked
• 11:46
  them to do? They do it.
• 11:47
  Of course they do it. And I said, you never ask them.
• 11:50
  You never ask them for the outcomes.
• 11:52
  You never ask them for progress. You don't ask anything.
• 11:55
  You're assuming that they do this.
• 11:58
  By the way, Alex is one of the number one problems of leaders.
• 12:01
  They just assume things are going to be done.
• 12:03
  They just assume it's done and it's not.
• 12:06
  Well, we were getting really stuck in a lot of our sales.
• 12:09
  We were getting stuck because we were new and it was a new
• 12:11
  technology. By the way, the technology was
• 12:13
  Bluetooth before everyone had it on everything and no one could
• 12:16
  explain what Bluetooth was, but we were trying to bring it into
• 12:20
  the automobile before you even had Bluetooth in your car,
• 12:24
  right. So he came to the next meeting
• 12:28
  and I, so I gave him some questions like what are the
• 12:30
  outcomes of the last things I said?
• 12:32
  Here's all the things we talked about.
• 12:33
  Here's all the things that they said they were going to do.
• 12:35
  Here's all the questions I want you to ask them.
• 12:36
  Did you complete this? What was the outcome of that?
• 12:38
  Who did you talk to? Well, he gets into the meeting
• 12:40
  and he's like giving it all out and asking the questions.
• 12:44
  Dead silence. Did you finish this?
• 12:48
  Who did you talk to? I didn't get with him yet.
• 12:55
  What do you mean you didn't get with him yet?
• 12:56
  You said you were going to get with him this week, so he lost
• 13:00
  it. Pound on the table.
• 13:01
  From now on you can do exactly what I told you to do.
• 13:04
  So I went up to him later and I said that was a great
• 13:06
  performance. I know you were mad, but the
• 13:09
  only thing you can do is now when they come back every
• 13:13
  meeting, which was weekly, and say what did you do?
• 13:16
  What did you accomplish? Who did you talk to what?
• 13:18
  What problems are you having that kind of stopped that whole
• 13:22
  problem that we had in the organization of assumptions that
• 13:25
  things are getting done when things were not getting done and
• 13:28
  then wondering why things are not being accomplished and why
• 13:31
  we're not meeting goals on the other hand.
• 13:34
  So I'll tell you another story So.
• 13:36
  I got a question on. That yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 13:38
  Why? Why were they not following that
• 13:40
  leader? Because one of the things you'll
• 13:42
  find in many organizations is the middle management is the
• 13:50
  stopgap for most strategy. It's the stopgap for most change
• 13:56
  because the middle management has the most to lose.
• 14:01
  They will lose their power. They have an opportunity to have
• 14:07
  their teams not have the right competencies anymore.
• 14:11
  They have the most to lose. This also was something that
• 14:15
  happened, I'll say, at Sears. So when Sears was still Sears
• 14:19
  Roebuck and company, I used to work in Sears.
• 14:21
  Me too. I was back in college, I.
• 14:23
  Said appliances 100% Commission. And you were probably great at
• 14:26
  that too. I.
• 14:27
  Literally left, you know and graduated college and my last
• 14:30
  year there you could see this this lump you could see that
• 14:32
  they. Just weren't.
• 14:34
  Sales were going down. It was the company was going.
• 14:36
  They were reducing firing management.
• 14:38
  It was like, wow, this is not good.
• 14:40
  Yeah, it wasn't good. So when I was there.
• 14:45
  Are you going to a new story though?
• 14:46
  So I got a follow. Up.
• 14:47
  Well, I just want to, yeah, I just want to share on this.
• 14:48
  This was another example of where they were at that time.
• 14:52
  When I was there, Sears was pushing $60 billion.
• 14:55
  Jeez, that's huge amount, right? Back then that was.
• 14:57
  Now, it's not as much today, but it's still a lot.
• 15:00
  Of money. Still a lot of money.
• 15:01
  Only like trillion dollars, you know?
• 15:02
  We had the largest computer system in the world.
• 15:04
  We had the largest cafeteria in the world.
• 15:05
  Sears Tower. I mean, you know.
• 15:07
  Well, we were at Hoffman Estates where they had or almost 7000
• 15:10
  people working out there because.
• 15:12
  This is what, Nineties? 80s.
• 15:13
  Was late 90s, early 2000s. So the reason the execution
• 15:18
  never went through was because the middle management said and
• 15:21
  we're not going to do that because they've been there so
• 15:22
  long, they had the power. So the CEO would tell them to do
• 15:26
  something and they wouldn't execute it.
• 15:29
  And you couldn't figure out why things were sliding down 50
• 15:32
  billion, Forty billion, 30 billion.
• 15:35
  And then Alan Lacy came in and took over and sold it to Kmart,
• 15:39
  right? So these are the things that
• 15:40
  happened. That's just another example,
• 15:41
  right? Well, what would that leader
• 15:43
  have done in that first example, you know, talking to the
• 15:46
  salespeople and things like that with the Bluetooth?
• 15:48
  What would you have wanted that leader to?
• 15:49
  What would a great leader have done in that scenario?
• 15:52
  The A great leader sets expectations.
• 15:55
  They talk about what they're going to do.
• 15:57
  They take the strategy, they take it into the planning.
• 16:01
  They look at the planning day by day.
• 16:02
  They look at the activities. And when you're in these
• 16:05
  meetings, when you meet with your leadership team, you say
• 16:09
  what got done this week, what didn't get done, what happened,
• 16:14
  why didn't it happened? How did we advance this?
• 16:16
  What are the metrics on it? How close are we to getting to
• 16:20
  our strategic outcome and our goals?
• 16:22
  That's all you need to do, but most leaders don't want to do
• 16:25
  that. What about on the front end?
• 16:27
  Was was there a miss of did the team really come up with the
• 16:30
  goals and expectations or or was it him just saying, this is what
• 16:33
  I need you to do this one? And everyone walked out like,
• 16:35
  well, I didn't really have any say in that.
• 16:37
  No, I would, I would disagree with that.
• 16:38
  I'd say everyone was included in those goals.
• 16:41
  I would say even in the Fortune 50 companies and we used to take
• 16:44
  the top 230 people for Sears off site.
• 16:46
  I was part of that small team. There were seven office that
• 16:48
  took him off site and developed strategy for the year.
• 16:51
  And we'd we'd get everyone's input and they'd be in teams and
• 16:54
  they do presentations and we'd talk about it and then we'd
• 16:57
  streamline it. And that was the strategy, that
• 16:59
  was the operational strategy for that coming year.
• 17:02
  So yes, there are times when the leader's not clear, but lots of
• 17:07
  times there's just that next layer down.
• 17:12
  Either doesn't believe, doesn't want to believe, doesn't want to
• 17:15
  do the extra work, doesn't want to learn what they need to learn
• 17:18
  to make it happen, or they don't have the skills.
• 17:22
  Or they don't have the team and they're trying to protect their
• 17:25
  little Kingdom. So if I'm the employee and I
• 17:28
  didn't do my job, I missed my goal, I didn't come through on
• 17:31
  the thing I was supposed to do, you're the leader.
• 17:34
  What's that conversation look like?
• 17:35
  I say, hey, Barbara. Yeah, I know I was supposed to
• 17:37
  do this, but I didn't get it done.
• 17:39
  Yeah, help me understand why. I just kind of ran out of time,
• 17:42
  you know? That's an excuse running out of
• 17:44
  time of excuses. What do you do everyday?
• 17:45
  Tell me what you do on a daily basis.
• 17:47
  Would you be that strict with? Somebody.
• 17:48
  Oh, absolutely. Really.
• 17:49
  Absolutely. If they said Barbara something,
• 17:51
  she's AB word. Well, I'm sure they have.
• 17:54
  I'm sure they have, but I'll tell you what, I'm not there to
• 17:59
  be liked. I'm there to be respected.
• 18:01
  And with every interaction I build respect, right?
• 18:07
  I build respect. People say one of the company
• 18:10
  was I was in most recently, they had a unionized team on the
• 18:15
  floor and the unionized team was so strong that when the CEO
• 18:24
  would bring them together in the plant, in the middle of what he
• 18:29
  was speaking to them about, one of the union guys raised his
• 18:33
  hand. He said can I go out and have a
• 18:36
  smoke? And this he was like, sure,
• 18:42
  because he didn't know what to do.
• 18:43
  So the guy left and went out for a smoke.
• 18:45
  People on. After the meeting again, yeah.
• 18:47
  No, he didn't, because he was just stunned, right?
• 18:49
  He was just stunned. So the guy left and went for a
• 18:53
  smoke and people are on their phones.
• 18:55
  So again, no matter what he said, they weren't listening,
• 19:00
  right? It was just talk.
• 19:01
  It was just words because you're speaking and CEO speak, talking
• 19:05
  about EBITDA, talking about sales, they don't care about
• 19:08
  that. They care about if they have the
• 19:09
  tool to work on the product. So what happened was this was, I
• 19:16
  would say one of my biggest wins because I didn't know anything
• 19:20
  about this manufacturing, right? I didn't.
• 19:23
  I just walked in and I said, can I just go on the floor and walk
• 19:26
  around a little bit and see what's going on?
• 19:27
  Like because it just doesn't make sense why it's so messy out
• 19:31
  there and there's stuff all over the place.
• 19:33
  And so I walked around for a couple days and I came back, the
• 19:35
  CEO and I said, you got to clean it up because all your exits are
• 19:39
  blocked. And if this is not clean up at
• 19:41
  24 hours, I have to call OSHA that that's part of my ethics.
• 19:46
  I can't let it happen. I can't.
• 19:49
  So within 24 hours, the exits were cleared.
• 19:54
  And then I came back and I said the setup is just a disaster out
• 19:57
  there. I don't know what happened, but
• 19:59
  the setup, just the way product is moving through does not make
• 20:03
  sense at all. So I drew it on a piece of
• 20:06
  paper. This, this is a good one.
• 20:07
  You're going to love this. Let me tell you how I did this.
• 20:09
  And this is very different than what a lot of people do.
• 20:11
  And this is what I always look at.
• 20:13
  How do I get the attention of the leader, right?
• 20:16
  So I asked the leader for a late afternoon meeting, for a 4:00 PM
• 20:21
  meeting because I didn't want to be interrupted.
• 20:23
  And I didn't want him to have to walk out to another meeting.
• 20:28
  I knew he liked whiskey. So I went to the local store and
• 20:33
  I got the one of the top brands of whiskey and I brought in two
• 20:38
  glasses. He didn't know it.
• 20:39
  I had it in my a little bag, had it in the room.
• 20:41
  And when he sat down, I pulled a bottle of whiskey out and I
• 20:44
  pulled the 2 glasses out and I said ice or no ice.
• 20:48
  And he looked at me and he said, oh, this is a serious
• 20:51
  discussion. I said yes, it is.
• 20:54
  And he said no ice. Clicked it open, pour.
• 20:57
  Just a little bit, right? Just just a little bit.
• 20:59
  We weren't drinking a lot. And then I took the glass and I
• 21:02
  slid it down the table to him at the end of the conference table.
• 21:05
  So I was over here, he was down there.
• 21:06
  I just slid it down and he caught it.
• 21:08
  This is something out of a movie.
• 21:09
  Barbara it was great. It was great.
• 21:11
  I love this. I these are, This is why, I
• 21:14
  mean, I know how to adjust for people, right?
• 21:16
  So he sits and he does this and he turns and he looks at the
• 21:18
  screen. I'm like, what are you looking
• 21:20
  at? He goes to the screen.
• 21:21
  I said, I'm not doing a PowerPoint presentation.
• 21:24
  He goes, oh, OK. I said, here's what I want you
• 21:28
  to don't just stand up. And I want to push all the
• 21:29
  chairs away from the table. And he just looks at me.
• 21:32
  I'm like, please, I'll help. So we pulled all the chairs away
• 21:35
  from the table. I said, OK, why don't you come
• 21:38
  over here, Come stand by me. And I had, I kid you not, in a
• 21:42
  folder. I pulled my folder out.
• 21:43
  I had a stack, about 75, just pieces of 8 1/2 by 11.
• 21:48
  And what I'd done, I take markers and I drew the story
• 21:51
  out. I wrote the story out, I drew
• 21:52
  the story out with markers. And I started to tell the story
• 21:56
  on this end of the table. Let me tell you this.
• 21:58
  And then I went to this one and I just did it across the table.
• 22:01
  And then I came back and can you read the story this way?
• 22:04
  And then as I laid out the entire story of what I saw in
• 22:07
  the organization, one of the messages, I said, look, you have
• 22:11
  pieces over here that they need and you have pieces over here
• 22:14
  that they need. And the people are working on
• 22:16
  their product here. So then I took my marker and
• 22:20
  I'm, I'm putting little dots. So now they're walking down
• 22:22
  here. Oh, they're going to stop and
• 22:23
  talk a little bit here to their buddy about the football game.
• 22:26
  And then they keep walking down here and then they're talking.
• 22:29
  So I did that very methodically and I said, as we know.
• 22:33
  So I went through the whole thing back over here.
• 22:36
  And then I said, so now you've lost how many minutes?
• 22:41
  Probably 25 minutes maybe. I said maybe 303540 if you're
• 22:45
  lucky because every time they stop and have a conversation
• 22:50
  it's like more than 5 minutes. It's 10.
• 22:52
  It just throws you off from what you're doing.
• 22:54
  You're focused and recalibrate. Not only that, the the shelves
• 22:59
  were so disorganized, they'd spend another 15 minutes over
• 23:01
  there. They couldn't find something,
• 23:02
  They'd go to someone else and you'd have four people over
• 23:04
  there looking for an item that's this big because no one could
• 23:07
  find it. Now how did you see all this?
• 23:08
  Because I just, I just observed you.
• 23:10
  Just watched people go. I just sat out there one day and
• 23:12
  I said, hey, one of the guys, I said, hey, can I sit here and
• 23:14
  and just watch from here? He's like, sure, I'm just
• 23:17
  watching. That's all I do is observe.
• 23:19
  If you get away, if you get the lens out and you get the filters
• 23:22
  clear and you just watch people, you see things.
• 23:25
  So through that whole conversation I got through and I
• 23:28
  said I would like to, I've never done it before.
• 23:33
  I'd like to rearrange the floor and here's my proposal.
• 23:37
  This is the money I think I need.
• 23:40
  I asked for $78,000 and I was spending $125,000.
• 23:43
  I asked for two months took me two weeks.
• 23:47
  Now we had to do some other things had a hotshot in some
• 23:49
  lights from California. So that took like another week.
• 23:52
  We rewired everything we put in new air.
• 23:54
  We we moved everything around would they went from shipping
• 23:58
  $1.8 million to shipping $4.2 million in three weeks.
• 24:04
  By the end of the next month, they were shipping $5.2 million.
• 24:08
  And how that happened was because I ordered the right
• 24:11
  tools. I, I laid out the floor
• 24:14
  differently. I rearranged the the work areas
• 24:16
  for the folks. I put people and teams to work
• 24:18
  together. That right there got the respect
• 24:23
  of the guys on the floor. They would do anything for me.
• 24:28
  They would do anything when they wanted something.
• 24:30
  They didn't go to the operations manager, they came to me.
• 24:34
  Can you help us with this? That wasn't the intention
• 24:37
  starting out, but you realize once you look at the situation
• 24:39
  people are in and you don't do it to be grandiose, you do it to
• 24:43
  help out, right? We got, we had people putting
• 24:49
  items on their shoulders that were £300 or and they're like
• 24:53
  walking up a step ladder to put it into a cabinet.
• 24:57
  That's insane. The liability that the lack of
• 25:01
  care, that's all that is. It's observation.
• 25:04
  Yeah, was there a method to your madness of sliding that cup of
• 25:09
  whiskey over? It was very intentional.
• 25:11
  Well, how so it? Was very dramatic because
• 25:16
  because it took him out of his zone because he was sitting
• 25:18
  there looking at it up here. And I said no, here you go.
• 25:20
  And he's like, wait, wait, oh, this is serious it.
• 25:24
  Almost seems like a little bit of a power move too slightly.
• 25:27
  It wasn't intentionally be a power move.
• 25:28
  It was meant to get him out of his state because people get
• 25:31
  into states. So when you sit down and you
• 25:33
  work with a client, they're in a state with an expectation of
• 25:38
  working with you. My, what I like to do is get
• 25:41
  people out of that state so that we get them off their grounded
• 25:46
  beliefs of what I'm going to share, what they think.
• 25:49
  I'm going to share what they think I'm going to say.
• 25:51
  They've heard it all before. They don't know.
• 25:53
  They haven't been in my business before.
• 25:55
  I want to get them out of that state because that neurological
• 26:00
  state and this was where that like the neuro linguistics
• 26:03
  programming training, this, I'm a master practitioner.
• 26:05
  Why I told you about is so important because you have to
• 26:09
  understand the state that people are in to be able to communicate
• 26:12
  with them, right? And once you understand that,
• 26:15
  you understand that they're in a state, like when a a manager is
• 26:18
  slamming his fists down and yelling, that's a state.
• 26:22
  You don't have to have a reaction to it.
• 26:23
  I don't have reactions to it. I just go, huh, You know what's
• 26:26
  going on there, huh? Something really triggered that
• 26:28
  person. I remember even when I had a
• 26:31
  man, a leader that got just angry at me and he was like
• 26:34
  taking me out publicly and I'm just sitting there going, huh,
• 26:37
  curious. I don't take it personally.
• 26:40
  It's like, huh, what's behind that?
• 26:42
  Did you always have? That, or is it something you had
• 26:44
  to build? I had to build it.
• 26:45
  Because that I respect that. I think that's something you
• 26:47
  know, and the same, I imagine if you're driving on the road and
• 26:50
  someone pisses you off, I imagine that that same skill
• 26:53
  kind of translates over to where you say.
• 26:54
  Most times, yeah. Other times you just you just
• 26:59
  clueses or shit. Well, I don't.
• 27:01
  I don't only lose my shit anymore.
• 27:02
  I'll tell you what's happened is I haven't always been like that,
• 27:08
  right, because everyone has their negative emotions and
• 27:11
  experiences that we carry with us.
• 27:13
  And if we want, we always want to say, Oh, that happened a long
• 27:16
  time ago. It doesn't impact me.
• 27:17
  Oh, that's such a lie. It does, you know, and, and even
• 27:20
  with the leader sitting in the room, right, even they are
• 27:23
  having, they're bringing their stuff too.
• 27:25
  And it took me a a long time and very dedicated work, not
• 27:31
  therapy. I don't do therapy like I don't
• 27:34
  therapy. Therapy where's a camera?
• 27:36
  Therapy is good for people that want therapy.
• 27:40
  I don't do therapy. I think there's other ways to
• 27:43
  kind of help you shift your mind into a more positive state
• 27:47
  without sitting down talking what happened to you 20-30 years
• 27:49
  ago? That's just my belief.
• 27:51
  And that's why NLP as a master practitioner, that's what we do,
• 27:55
  right? We look at the present in the
• 27:56
  future, not the past. So and that understanding of
• 28:00
  state becomes very important to me.
• 28:02
  It becomes very important to the relationship and it becomes very
• 28:06
  important in the discovery process.
• 28:09
  And when I'm asking questions, because as I'm asking questions
• 28:12
  and I'm trying to find things out, I'm also observing people
• 28:15
  to say, look at, oh, they just shifted right there.
• 28:17
  That made them uncomfortable. Oh, did you see the eyebrow Kind
• 28:19
  of went, oh, something happened right there.
• 28:21
  So tell me so like you did right now to be like, oh, you just had
• 28:24
  a reaction to something I said, tell me about that.
• 28:26
  They'll be like, oh, I didn't really said, well you did, but
• 28:30
  I'd like to explore that. We're good so all those things
• 28:33
  come into play. Not to be invasive or to have a
• 28:37
  power move. It's just to understand.
• 28:39
  That's all I want us to understand.
• 28:41
  And then people just end up sharing things with me.
• 28:45
  Right. So Neuro linguistic programming.
• 28:47
  Yep, I've heard that before. Maybe some people listening have
• 28:50
  heard that before, but I don't know if you really understand
• 28:52
  what it is. Can you explain what it is?
• 28:54
  And then maybe it is some of the.
• 28:55
  Lord, thank you. So think about this, right?
• 29:00
  So the neurons when they come together, just like a synapsis,
• 29:04
  right? And what NLP takes a look at is
• 29:08
  this, it says when this happens, this right here.
• 29:13
  So I'm going to give you the story of this, right?
• 29:15
  So when this happens the first time, let's say we have to pick
• 29:20
  out something maybe a little negative, right?
• 29:22
  So maybe your your brother came up and slapped you when you're a
• 29:25
  kid. He did.
• 29:27
  Do that. Pretty common with brothers,
• 29:30
  right? Your brother came out and
• 29:31
  slapped you across the head and it really made you angry.
• 29:35
  So when you think about that, imagine if you will, when you're
• 29:39
  outside in a summer day and you're washing your car in your
• 29:42
  driveway and you get that water comes down the driveway and it
• 29:46
  gets into the gutters and just a little trickle, right?
• 29:48
  That that's the first element of that NLP connection.
• 29:52
  It's just a trickle. It's just, it's just a like
• 29:55
  that, right? It's connected, but it's like
• 29:58
  not so tight. The next time you and your
• 30:00
  brother get into it, you're anticipating it.
• 30:03
  As soon as you start anticipating, you're getting hit
• 30:05
  in the head. You're now strengthening in it,
• 30:07
  right? You're you're, you're bracing
• 30:08
  for it. You're getting ready for it.
• 30:10
  I know he's I know he's going to do it.
• 30:11
  I know he is. And if he does it again, you're
• 30:14
  like, oh, Yep, absolutely. So now imagine you have a nice
• 30:18
  summer rain and it just whooshed down, but you have this, this,
• 30:24
  this water going down the gutter that you can put those little
• 30:27
  plastic boats in used to chase them down as a kid, like or you
• 30:30
  like that, or you put something there, you chase them down.
• 30:32
  So now it's bigger. So now every time you see your
• 30:36
  brother start and you start having some agitation and you're
• 30:39
  getting into an argument, you're bracing here.
• 30:42
  It's going to happen because this foundation's already
• 30:45
  started that that connection's already there.
• 30:48
  Programming programmed. Yep, the neuro linguist, it said
• 30:51
  the neuro programming eventually over time if not disrupted.
• 30:57
  But the problem with disruption is even when things don't
• 31:02
  happen, the mind says what didn't happen this time, it'll
• 31:05
  happen next time. So now again, you're tightening
• 31:08
  it. So after a while it becomes a
• 31:11
  stream, then it becomes the river, then eventually becomes a
• 31:16
  Mississippi River because it gets stronger and bigger.
• 31:19
  And eventually your mind, just by the way, it works, not
• 31:24
  intentionally even, it's just how your mind works because your
• 31:26
  mind gets ready for all the bad stuff.
• 31:29
  It it embraces its anticipates and now you are wired for if you
• 31:34
  get into argument with a guy, another man, you're going to
• 31:37
  start, you're going, you're going to start bracing, you're
• 31:39
  getting ready, you're going to, is he going to hit me?
• 31:42
  You're not always consciously thinking this, but you are
• 31:44
  unconsciously. So eventually you end up with
• 31:47
  this connection that looks like the Grand Canyon, and you're in
• 31:51
  the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It's cut all the way down.
• 31:53
  It's so deep, it's so strong. And you can see the top, you can
• 31:57
  see the cliffs on the top, but you can't see the sun over here
• 32:00
  coming up, and you can't see the sun over here going down.
• 32:02
  All you can see is this little part right here.
• 32:05
  That's the problem. We become so narrow in our focus
• 32:09
  that we're not able to look at. Well, there's a possibility
• 32:12
  something else might happen. There's a possibility that
• 32:15
  things may end up differently, but you're so wired to that your
• 32:20
  brain's just going to do exactly what your brain does, which is
• 32:22
  protect you. It's going to help you survive.
• 32:25
  I, I'm in an argument, It's, it's, it's, I got to get ready
• 32:27
  for this, right? It happens in relationships, in,
• 32:31
  in marriage and with children, with friends, with coworkers.
• 32:35
  It happens all the time. And what neuro linguistics
• 32:39
  programming as a master practitioner, let me explain it
• 32:43
  this way. What it does is saying we don't
• 32:45
  try and resolve this. That's what therapy does.
• 32:49
  Therapy says, let me understand why you're at the bottom of the
• 32:52
  Grand Canyon and looking up. Let's talk about it.
• 32:54
  Let's talk about the feelings and emotions.
• 32:56
  We're saying, look, when you come to this, is it serving you?
• 33:02
  How, how are you reacting, responding when someone comes to
• 33:05
  you and they're agitated? Do you get in defense move or
• 33:08
  are you curious and can you defuse it?
• 33:11
  Like how are you approaching it? So we say is look, when you
• 33:14
  start coming this way, we work with you to diffuse it and go
• 33:17
  this way. Let's do something else.
• 33:19
  Oh, I haven't. Let's go this way over here.
• 33:20
  Let's do something else. So rather than just staying with
• 33:24
  it, we can create a new pathway that just diverts like a
• 33:27
  diversion somebody it doesn't. Matter why it's happening, it
• 33:30
  matters just what you're doing about it, which goes into why
• 33:32
  you said it's not the past, it's the present in the.
• 33:34
  The present in the future. And the question always is, is
• 33:37
  that behavior serving you? And that's one of the questions
• 33:40
  I always ask leaders when I'm working with them is what you're
• 33:43
  doing serving you and the organization, your team?
• 33:46
  If it's not, then we have to do something different.
• 33:50
  That now comes back to what you are doing first, then we'll look
• 33:54
  at the rest of the team. But that whole, so I I apply
• 33:59
  something called the axis of discovery.
• 34:01
  That's one of my trademark processes.
• 34:03
  I've done it for years. I learned it in corporate
• 34:05
  America and I still use a day and I've actually refined it
• 34:07
  over time. It looks at three things,
• 34:10
  competence, competency, capability, and capacity.
• 34:12
  Those three things. If you look at those things,
• 34:15
  three things at individuals, at teams and organizations, you'll
• 34:19
  learn a lot. You'll learn a lot.
• 34:22
  Competencies are the skills, what they can do right now.
• 34:24
  Capability is can they take those skills and apply it to
• 34:27
  something else, something new? Can that organization grow into
• 34:31
  a new product line? Can they use the skills they
• 34:34
  have? Will that be enough or do they
• 34:36
  need to know something else? We have to go back and look at
• 34:38
  different competencies. And then from a capacity
• 34:41
  standpoint, how big can they grow?
• 34:44
  So this is one of the assessments that I use when I'm
• 34:46
  looking at leaders because it's not just about today, because I
• 34:50
  work a lot with strategy. So where do you want to be a
• 34:53
  year from now, three years from now?
• 34:55
  And now the question is, is when you look at the competency and
• 34:58
  capabilities of this current leader, they can help today, can
• 35:02
  they help one year from now? And can they help three years
• 35:05
  from now? And if not, the question is, can
• 35:08
  they build the skills? Can they develop the skills?
• 35:11
  And in the time we need them to, that becomes the assessment of
• 35:15
  leadership in an organization. That's what I do.
• 35:17
  That's my skill, that's my gift. In addition to that, because I
• 35:21
  have such a lively sign right here, be curious that that's my
• 35:24
  life. Like, I'm just super curious,
• 35:26
  right? Because if you're curious, then
• 35:28
  you're not judging, right? And so I go, and I'm just really
• 35:31
  curious. I'm like, help me understand,
• 35:32
  like, oh, that's interesting. Tell me about that and then.
• 35:36
  Such a helpful lens too, that I think it's a personal life,
• 35:39
  professional relationships. If you just go into a situation
• 35:42
  and say, let me not judge, I see something, although this way
• 35:46
  they're probably doing that because they can't do this or
• 35:47
  this or this. Yeah, instead just say.
• 35:49
  I wonder why they're doing that. Yeah.
• 35:50
  Or wonder why they're not doing that.
• 35:52
  Yeah, or I wonder. I wonder why they get agitated
• 35:54
  when that happens. I wonder why they say that same
• 35:56
  thing every time we have a conversation.
• 35:59
  I wonder why they pause right there.
• 36:01
  Right. I wonder why when we talk about
• 36:03
  this, they get agitated. Like people move in their seat a
• 36:05
  little bit. That's a sign that something's
• 36:06
  not sitting later. They're uncomfortable.
• 36:09
  Let's explore that, man. You could.
• 36:10
  Study people, just every little study people.
• 36:13
  Is it? Do you do that?
• 36:14
  Do you find yourself doing that in relationships outside of
• 36:16
  business and stuff just. You're.
• 36:18
  Studying me right now I'm not going to move I'm going to
• 36:20
  freeze the rest of you so just. I am when I'm telling a story, I
• 36:26
  can watch your eyes like zone right in like I can tell when
• 36:29
  you're like, oh, I want I want to know this.
• 36:31
  And the question I'm thinking is like, oh, I wonder if he wants
• 36:32
  to know this because he wants to use this now too.
• 36:35
  He wants to learn about this. This will help him too.
• 36:36
  Like those those are things that go through my mind, right?
• 36:39
  Not judging, but saying, Oh, that's curious, right.
• 36:42
  And like even when I said at one time I said, you know, if you
• 36:44
  watch them, their eyebrow goes up.
• 36:46
  Your eyebrow when immediately up.
• 36:47
  I'm like, yeah, that's he does that too, right.
• 36:49
  So I do watch people. I'm.
• 36:53
  Are you conscious of yourself when you.
• 36:54
  Do it. Very much so, yeah.
• 36:56
  And I've gotten to the point where people are like, I can't
• 36:59
  read you at all. I'm like, OK, thank you.
• 37:02
  I don't want you to read me. I want to be neutral.
• 37:05
  I'm Switzerland. I'm as neutral as I can be.
• 37:06
  So you purposely try to. Do that absolutely.
• 37:09
  Now. Why?
• 37:10
  Why? Because it doesn't allow anyone
• 37:14
  to tap into or build on any emotion that they're seeing for
• 37:17
  me because I don't want that. I want because if I'm having a
• 37:20
  conversation with you and I say something and you're like, oh, I
• 37:25
  want to be in agreement with that.
• 37:26
  So I'm going to be in agreement with that.
• 37:27
  So I'm going to start saying things so she knows I'm in
• 37:29
  agreement with her because that's what we do in
• 37:30
  conversations all the time. You know, we're trying to create
• 37:33
  that alignment. I'm there to discover.
• 37:35
  Not when I'm making friends, meeting new people.
• 37:38
  It's something different, right? But when in this business kind
• 37:40
  of conversation, that's what I watch for.
• 37:43
  I watch for patterns, watch for patterns and people, and it has
• 37:47
  come into my personal life and my family life where I see my
• 37:50
  family structure very different today than I did 20 years ago or
• 37:52
  10 years ago, and I behave differently now.
• 37:56
  Yeah, I'll say one thing from a podcast standpoint, as a host, I
• 38:00
  found myself early on and this is still something I'm working
• 38:02
  on today. A couple of things.
• 38:04
  One is not saying yes, yes, all the time, right.
• 38:07
  Yeah, Because then it just like it cuts that person off, not
• 38:10
  intentionally, but I'm just trying to agree or I'm nodding
• 38:12
  my head all the time and I'm like, I don't need to tell the
• 38:16
  signal to the person every second.
• 38:18
  You don't know. You know, I mean, it's good.
• 38:20
  OK, sometimes say yeah, like that.
• 38:21
  I try to nod my head now or not do nonverbals versus saying
• 38:24
  yeah, yeah, because it picks it up on the audio and we can take
• 38:26
  that out. But and then interrupting
• 38:29
  people, you know, try to let them speak and get a full
• 38:31
  complete thought out before you say something else.
• 38:33
  But I also just like there's this bigger.
• 38:37
  Sometimes I come into these conversations, it's like I feel
• 38:39
  like I need to be something I need to like really, you know,
• 38:42
  like be make, you know, I'm trying to make people feel
• 38:44
  comfortable and I've gotten good feedback that I do that.
• 38:47
  But I also just want to be calm in myself and listen and be
• 38:50
  curious. I don't need to necessarily
• 38:52
  every step of the way, you know, queuing them up and having them
• 38:55
  out of my head or doing this. I can just kind of be, like you
• 38:57
  said, Switzerland and just just take it in.
• 38:59
  I don't have to necessarily react one way or the other, be
• 39:02
  extra this way or that way. I can just sit here and be
• 39:04
  myself. That's a really good point.
• 39:06
  And then I think part of when you look at podcasting, because
• 39:09
  I, I podcast also and I know you gave me some really tough
• 39:12
  feedback on my podcast and I appreciate that made some
• 39:15
  changes. But there is, you know, there's
• 39:20
  a desire, the human basic human need is to belong and whether
• 39:24
  it's having this conversation between you and I, there's still
• 39:27
  this basic need to belong. That's how we're wired.
• 39:31
  That's survival. That's thousands and thousands
• 39:35
  of years of evolution. You can't change it.
• 39:37
  What happens when you become aware of these things and you
• 39:42
  don't react and you don't have that immediate response?
• 39:46
  You can at times become, people may say like, oh, she's kind of
• 39:50
  cold. She has no emotion.
• 39:52
  I do have emotion, however, I don't have the emotion you
• 39:56
  expect anymore. That's the difference.
• 39:59
  I don't feed into your view of how I should be anymore.
• 40:04
  And that's confusing for other people.
• 40:07
  And because they don't understand it, they have to name
• 40:10
  it. She's cold.
• 40:12
  She's she's got no emotion. I do have emotion.
• 40:15
  I'm just not responding when you say that you used to agitate me
• 40:18
  and now I just kind of go or I don't respond to you at all.
• 40:22
  That's me because I've come to a place where those past
• 40:29
  experiences I've diverted, I've diverted the synapses because
• 40:35
  they don't serve me. And I love being in a state of
• 40:39
  joy. I love being in a state of
• 40:41
  curiosity. I wake up and like, I woke up at
• 40:44
  4:00 this morning. You know what I did at 4:00 in
• 40:46
  this morning when I woke up? What'd you do, Barbara?
• 40:48
  I went outside and looked for the Aurora borealis.
• 40:51
  What is that? They'll door their lights
• 40:53
  because there was a huge magnetic storm, right?
• 40:56
  So I went outside at 4:00 in the morning.
• 40:57
  It was like -4° outside, put my jacket on.
• 41:01
  We live in Antarctica, basically here.
• 41:02
  I mean, just, you know, we're in Illinois, but it's in Wisconsin
• 41:05
  for you. But it feels like Antarctica.
• 41:06
  Today, that's joy for me. Yeah.
• 41:09
  So I could have said, oh, I have to make sure I shouldn't get up.
• 41:12
  I shouldn't go take. I should just stay in bed and
• 41:14
  get a good night's sleep because I'm talking to Alex today.
• 41:15
  I need to be like right after. I don't have to do that anymore
• 41:18
  because I know that if I come in here and I just am me, you know,
• 41:23
  because people say, well, I'm just going to be authentic me.
• 41:24
  Well, as soon as you put authentic in front of it, then
• 41:26
  you're not really being you because now you've got some.
• 41:28
  What is authentic to you? What is it all like to you?
• 41:30
  Does that mean because you're being truthful or honest or
• 41:32
  you're being agitated, or you're going to tell stories that make
• 41:35
  other people look good or look bad?
• 41:36
  What does that mean? I don't put those labels on
• 41:39
  myself anymore. I just do.
• 41:41
  I am as I am, and I love who I am and I'm love who I'm becoming
• 41:47
  and I don't let all the other things get in the way anymore.
• 41:51
  That's so good. There's so much help.
• 41:52
  People are taken from this conversation because I feel like
• 41:55
  there's just so much good stuff. And it all comes whether you
• 41:57
  want to be a better entrepreneur, a business owner,
• 41:58
  a leader, or executive sales, marketing person.
• 42:02
  It all just comes back to the inner work and understanding how
• 42:04
  people behave, why they make decisions, how you behave and
• 42:08
  make decisions. It's all of that linguistic.
• 42:10
  You know what the. NLP Neuro Linguistics department
• 42:13
  it is. Yeah, I mean, it's just all of
• 42:14
  that stuff. It's exactly what is, and that's
• 42:16
  where it starts. And I was going to say too, I
• 42:18
  had a guest on here a few podcasts go Donna Marie Post and
• 42:22
  she does TE DX events and things like that.
• 42:25
  And she's a speaker, she's a curator and things like that.
• 42:28
  She helps other people on stage. And we talked about the, the
• 42:30
  need to feel liked. And that's such a big one.
• 42:34
  Like I think of people, most people are doing things because
• 42:37
  they want to say, OK, is this person going to like me if I do
• 42:42
  this? How are they going to perceive
• 42:43
  me if I have a tough conversation?
• 42:45
  What if they don't like me after that?
• 42:47
  Or even just the small stuff like feeling like you have to
• 42:49
  say something after every single time we're talking about on a
• 42:52
  date, it's like that I got to say something every second of
• 42:54
  the time, but they're going to think I have to say.
• 42:56
  They're going to think that I can't communicate.
• 42:58
  And it's like, no, there's no that once you remove all of that
• 43:01
  pressure and nonsense, you can just be yourself.
• 43:04
  And at times I'm quiet and peaceful and I don't say shit.
• 43:06
  And then there's other times I'm fucking wild.
• 43:09
  And you're like, this dude is energy.
• 43:11
  What is he doing? You know, and I think there's a,
• 43:14
  there's a wide variety of ranges in between those.
• 43:17
  Absolutely. And that's just like how I'm
• 43:19
  going to show up. It's just how I want, how I feel
• 43:21
  like showing up that day, not because of somebody else.
• 43:23
  Well, and that need for being liked, it goes directly to that
• 43:26
  sense of belonging, which is a basic fundamental human need and
• 43:30
  in today's environment. So, you know, these are things
• 43:32
  that I work through with leaders, right?
• 43:34
  So these, I don't say we don't go through the whole NLP thing,
• 43:37
  but we do talk about that, you know, why did this happen?
• 43:39
  When did you start thinking this like, how is that serving you?
• 43:42
  That's always a conversation. Is it serving you?
• 43:44
  Such a good question. Right.
• 43:45
  And lots of times you're like, yeah, it's serving me.
• 43:47
  I'm like, OK, so you say it's serving you, but you haven't met
• 43:50
  your goals in the last six months, so tell me how it's
• 43:53
  serving you. That's dead silence.
• 43:57
  Exactly what you get. Dead silence.
• 43:59
  Then at that moment, I know I have the hook.
• 44:04
  I know I can now help them. So silence actually is a really
• 44:09
  good thing in my mind. It's not argument's, just the
• 44:11
  dead silence when they just look at you and kind of go, huh, I
• 44:15
  don't have an answer for that. Good.
• 44:17
  I'm glad you don't have an answer for that because now we
• 44:19
  can work together. Now we can work on it.
• 44:22
  So all those things are true and it all comes back to people and
• 44:25
  the same thing when you have people reporting into you now
• 44:27
  you're not going to go through their history and their NLP
• 44:29
  stuff and have all these conversations, but to understand
• 44:33
  that they're not doing things to irritate you.
• 44:35
  They're not doing things because of you.
• 44:38
  They're typically doing things because they're in self
• 44:40
  protection mode. There's a reason they're in
• 44:42
  protection mode. I mean, things are crazy out
• 44:45
  there these days, right? People are worried about losing
• 44:47
  their jobs. They're worried about finding
• 44:48
  another job. They're finding worried about
• 44:50
  finding a job that's going to pay them what they're what
• 44:52
  they're making right now. It's crazy.
• 44:56
  And all of that puts additional pressure on people.
• 44:59
  And then you pick up your phone and you read the stories.
• 45:01
  I'll tell you, I got rid of cable.
• 45:03
  I didn't, I stopped watching the news.
• 45:04
  I stopped watching everything. I'm like, I know things are
• 45:06
  going on out there, but I don't want to be in the middle of it.
• 45:09
  I know things are happening in Minneapolis, but I don't want
• 45:11
  that to be in the middle of my day.
• 45:12
  This, this is what I do. I help people.
• 45:15
  I was on the phone coming here. I'll be on the phone going home.
• 45:18
  I'm going to a client's after this.
• 45:20
  This is what I love to do because our worlds exist around
• 45:23
  where we are right now. I did a post today and I said I
• 45:27
  think too many founders and CE OS are consuming more than
• 45:30
  they're creating. And whether it's creating,
• 45:33
  whether it's just taking a walk in the park and letting your
• 45:35
  mind go free or listening to a song or whatever it might be,
• 45:39
  too many people are listening to this, watching this, checking
• 45:42
  the news, looking at articles. And it's so easy to get in that
• 45:45
  trap because you pull out your phone and there's a million
• 45:47
  different places that are high dopamine hit type things you can
• 45:49
  go to. And I even had to tell myself
• 45:52
  this recently. I'm like, you know, next time
• 45:53
  you're cooking or something, you don't always have to have a
• 45:55
  podcast or YouTube educational video to learn something.
• 45:57
  You could just think and think about what's a, what's a good
• 46:00
  message that I want to deliver? Or what, what, what happened
• 46:02
  last that meeting that I could learn from or what's going on in
• 46:05
  my head right now or what is this serving me right now?
• 46:07
  You know, and I think just some of that quiet time to yourself
• 46:10
  and, and whether it's creating or just thinking out loud or
• 46:12
  whatever it is that's so important.
• 46:15
  It is anyway I do, I sing. So I started taking voice
• 46:17
  lessons last year. That was one of the things that
• 46:19
  I wanted to do so break. Some down right here.
• 46:22
  No pressure. No, no.
• 46:24
  But it's but I did because that's cool.
• 46:26
  I wanted to improve my speaking voice because I am a speaker
• 46:28
  also and I wanted to improve my podcasting voice and I wanted to
• 46:32
  articulate better because I realized that I was slurring
• 46:35
  some words, not intentionally just got lazy, right?
• 46:37
  Yeah, we do it. So.
• 46:40
  So he's kind of got me at the end of every session, he has me
• 46:44
  singing. So I sing songs just to kind of
• 46:47
  put everything into practice. So now I find myself dropping
• 46:49
  down here. Today I was doing a lot of
• 46:50
  singing, right. I put on my favorite songs and
• 46:52
  just sing all the way down here. Again, that's warming up my
• 46:55
  voice, too. Yeah, that's great.
• 46:57
  So. But it's joy.
• 46:58
  Those are things that I find joy in.
• 47:00
  And as you said, they're, you know, going for a walk.
• 47:03
  So in I'm trying to think how long ago?
• 47:07
  Maybe 3 weekends ago. When was the last full moon?
• 47:09
  Three weekends ago. Maybe they had a hike.
• 47:12
  They had a torch light hike started at 6:30 PM at night and
• 47:17
  it's mile and 1/2. So I did a hike and it was super
• 47:21
  cold outside. The moon was covered by clouds,
• 47:25
  but the torch lights are out. And I just walked in this
• 47:28
  beautiful silence with a there's some other people there.
• 47:31
  We just did this walk in the winter time.
• 47:34
  And there's something about being in that moment and
• 47:36
  connecting to nature and connecting to self, as you said,
• 47:39
  of just like, let me just look at this and just take it all in.
• 47:43
  That clears your lens. It clears your mind, right?
• 47:48
  You know, I'll tell you another thing.
• 47:50
  It's been interesting because I'm an author also, right?
• 47:54
  You know, I've got a couple books out there and I've got a
• 47:55
  couple more that I'm working on. And I've had this leadership
• 47:58
  book and I started I, it's almost, I used to be more
• 48:01
  embarrassed to say this, but I started interviewing in 2018
• 48:04
  CEOs and I continued. And then when COVID hit, I was
• 48:09
  going to continue to write. I was going to write during
• 48:10
  COVID. And I thought, are you kidding
• 48:12
  me? Let's keep interviewing through
• 48:14
  COVID and I get out and then I'm like, I was going to write right
• 48:18
  after COVID and I'm like, are you kidding me?
• 48:20
  Let's and let's keep integrating after COVID.
• 48:23
  So now I have this contact pre, during and after COVID and I
• 48:26
  stopped integrating and there's only about 48 CEOs.
• 48:29
  But these are significant CEOs, right?
• 48:32
  These aren't small. These are, these aren't
• 48:36
  startups. These aren't entrepreneurs.
• 48:38
  These are Jim Kelts, right? Jim Kiltz ran Gillette.
• 48:43
  He was in charge of PNG. Wow, He was in charge by he was
• 48:46
  identified by Warren Buffett to bring Gillette out of, you know,
• 48:49
  the dumps kind of thing. So these are some really
• 48:51
  important conversations and really honest conversations.
• 48:56
  And I was delighted at how much they shared and how really
• 49:00
  honest and truthful they were about how they felt about
• 49:04
  things. And I started writing the book
• 49:08
  and all of a sudden I felt exactly what you talked about
• 49:10
  before. I feel like I'm performing, like
• 49:14
  I'm writing stuff I think people want to hear, and I had to stop.
• 49:18
  So now I actually changed the title of the book to Get Me Out
• 49:21
  of that headset and I'm coming back in with a total different
• 49:25
  mindset, going OK, how did they serve them?
• 49:28
  How did they not serve them? What did they do to what?
• 49:32
  How did they see? What did they see?
• 49:35
  What did they respond that worked?
• 49:36
  What didn't work, but from a very different viewpoint, not
• 49:40
  from oh, I'm going to send this message so leaders can take this
• 49:43
  and apply it to their own life. I don't care about that.
• 49:45
  I'm going to tell the story and then give the depth of the
• 49:48
  messages in a very different way.
• 49:49
  So I believe now the content that I have and have some
• 49:52
  amazing content I have, I bet amazing.
• 49:58
  I asked for 45 minutes often time I was entering for two
• 50:00
  hours. They just wanted to share
• 50:01
  stories. Wow.
• 50:03
  And I will take that and I will put that in the book.
• 50:05
  So that's something I'm working on for 2026 and I'm really
• 50:07
  excited about that. That's awesome.
• 50:09
  Yeah, I I feel the same exact way.
• 50:12
  I had the same kind of revelation, whatever you want to
• 50:15
  call it recently about LinkedIn and I stopped posting content on
• 50:18
  LinkedIn, the kind that I thought would perform.
• 50:24
  Like I stopped thinking about my content on LinkedIn and in the
• 50:26
  way of is this going to perform? Is this hook the right way?
• 50:30
  Is it is people going to take this and think this is good and
• 50:33
  they're going to want to sell, you know, and instead now I'm
• 50:36
  just like, what is truly just serving my audience and what is
• 50:39
  truly helpful and I'm going to say it, however I want to say
• 50:42
  it. And of course, I'm a marketer.
• 50:43
  So like, am I naturally thinks like, how would I say this in a
• 50:46
  way that would be, you know, people would actually want to
• 50:47
  read and or listen to. So I always have that little bit
• 50:50
  of that lens. And I think that's that's fine
• 50:51
  to have to understand your audience and how they consume.
• 50:54
  But I think I just let I just, I'm being more free with my
• 50:57
  content in 2026 and it feels really good.
• 51:00
  It started to feel really constrained towards the end of
• 51:02
  2025. Like it was like a machine and
• 51:04
  there was this and the frameworks and that and, and I
• 51:07
  was just like, man, I just want to.
• 51:09
  And I always admired people that feel like just got on platforms
• 51:11
  just yo, what's up today? I'm talking, you know, it's
• 51:13
  like, or they're just writing because they're having their
• 51:15
  coffee and they got something to say and it's they're thinking
• 51:17
  about their audience. And so to me, it's like coming
• 51:19
  from place of I just want to really serve people, whether
• 51:22
  it's in my business or just to do good outside of my business.
• 51:25
  Stuff that doesn't have anything to do with helping my business
• 51:27
  grow, but just good stuff that I want to put out in the world.
• 51:30
  That's my lens this year. That's a great lens to.
• 51:32
  Having and being myself and just doing what I feel is right.
• 51:36
  I'm excited for you because that's going to be a great lens
• 51:37
  to have and that's why I'm approaching it too.
• 51:40
  So I don't know if you've ever heard of the name of Arthur's
• 51:44
  arts. So he, he was, he's from
• 51:48
  Naperville and he used to run Naperville TEDx.
• 51:51
  So he had it for years, right? So very, very successful TEDx.
• 51:55
  And he does a lot of AI stuff right now, but he had a post
• 51:59
  yesterday which I thought was fascinating.
• 52:01
  And this supports what we're talking about, talking about
• 52:04
  Martin Luther King and that famous speech.
• 52:06
  I have a dream, remember? Well, what he shared was up
• 52:13
  until there was a moment in that speech and he said if you listen
• 52:17
  to it, you can hear the shift where he was up there presenting
• 52:22
  almost like corporate speak, right?
• 52:25
  Speaking from Mama's slides, they didn't really have slides
• 52:28
  back then, but it was prepared and it was very staged and
• 52:32
  practiced, right? And it was performing for the
• 52:38
  audience and behind him was a woman who was a very
• 52:44
  high-ranking like pastor in one of the churches.
• 52:48
  And she said to him, and it was confirmed you can't hear it on
• 52:52
  the the video or the audio, but it was confirmed that she said
• 52:58
  tell him your dream. Tell him your dream.
• 53:02
  And all of a sudden you see a shift.
• 53:05
  And he said I have a dream and you can see the entire
• 53:11
  presentation change. It went from him saying
• 53:15
  something and people doing this to people going this.
• 53:20
  I got to watch it now. Watch it.
• 53:22
  It's fascinating, interesting. And that I think when you go
• 53:27
  back, that wasn't intentional on his part.
• 53:30
  That was him coming to the table.
• 53:33
  And I don't want to use the term authentic, but that was him
• 53:36
  telling his story, his dream, and it just came from the inside
• 53:45
  of him. This is not a head speak.
• 53:47
  This is your heart and gut speak because the gut, what we know
• 53:52
  now is the gut drives the brain. The brain doesn't drive the gut,
• 53:54
  right? So we know that.
• 53:55
  So this is coming from deep within him.
• 53:58
  It's fascinating. Watch it when you'll just see
• 54:00
  right before he says I had I have a dream.
• 54:04
  Just watch it like 5 minutes before up to that point and
• 54:06
  afterwards and you'll see the shift.
• 54:07
  It's fascinating. I would definitely going to
• 54:09
  watch it. There's there's like TV shows
• 54:12
  and movies that you see where there's something similar to
• 54:14
  that happens where they're reading up a speech and then
• 54:17
  they look at someone in the crowd.
• 54:17
  They know and they kind of give them a look and they lock eyes
• 54:19
  and then they go fuck the script.
• 54:22
  You know, this is I'm just going to talk.
• 54:24
  And then that's and that's why I encourage everyone listening
• 54:26
  here. I know a lot of people are
• 54:27
  struggling with trying to get their thoughts out there, be
• 54:29
  themselves on social or, and they're, you know, on stage or
• 54:32
  whatever it is. And I think you do, it's a
• 54:34
  balance of, of definitely thinking about your audience,
• 54:37
  trying to provide real value and be helpful.
• 54:39
  But on the other perspective, it's like you got to let those
• 54:42
  fake walls down and those just guard rails and those things
• 54:45
  that you're trying to perform for somebody.
• 54:49
  And, and it's, it takes work. It takes a lot of work to get to
• 54:52
  get to a point where you feel comfortable with that.
• 54:53
  Well, and it takes honesty and it takes being willing to ask,
• 54:57
  right? So when I asked you and you said
• 54:59
  you really want me to tell you the truth and I said, yes, I do.
• 55:02
  And you said it sounds like polished AI and it was because I
• 55:05
  kept putting it through and putting it through.
• 55:07
  So I still tell the stories because what happens for the
• 55:11
  stories? It's it's for my podcast, the
• 55:13
  Golden Waters edge. It's the spiritual side of me
• 55:15
  that's been sitting inside of me for many, many years that's been
• 55:18
  waiting to come out. So that's separate work.
• 55:23
  What I looked at and I listened to, I'm like, Oh my gosh, Alex
• 55:25
  is completely right. This is it's too polished.
• 55:28
  I went on to I wanted to perform.
• 55:29
  I wanted to be perfect. So how I come up with these
• 55:33
  stories actually is with all the work I've been doing on myself
• 55:37
  and introspection and situations and now seeing things with such
• 55:40
  clarity. I wake up in the middle of the
• 55:42
  night and I have a story. So I go to my phone and pick up
• 55:44
  my phone and I'm like, chat to BT you listen to my story, I'm
• 55:46
  going to read it into you. So I just read like whatever
• 55:48
  time I had, I read it and now I come back and say, OK, just
• 55:52
  let's put this into a format into my voice.
• 55:55
  So then we do just some general, but now I read the story, but
• 55:58
  now the motion behind it is there.
• 56:00
  And I don't just read it. I tell a story with it.
• 56:03
  And I'm, I'm doing these now I'm recording a bunch of these
• 56:06
  recorded like 40 of them last week.
• 56:08
  And I'm like, I just can't wait to share these because they're
• 56:12
  just so deep and warm. And what's the hook?
• 56:19
  The hook is these are just real stories that people can grab
• 56:23
  onto. Like how long have we dumped our
• 56:25
  light for and how do we let our light shine and how do we fall
• 56:29
  in rhythm with nature around us? How do we how do we let the
• 56:32
  moonlight inspire us? How do we watch the sun come up?
• 56:38
  I wanted to share this because. This was a LinkedIn post you did
• 56:41
  a little while back. I'm just going to read part of
• 56:43
  it. I'm not going to read all of it.
• 56:44
  Your thoughts because you've been on a bit of a spiritual
• 56:46
  journey. Very much so.
• 56:48
  Last maybe a few years. Couple.
• 56:49
  Years. Oh no, for since I was a child.
• 56:53
  OK, so it's an ongoing journey. Yeah.
• 56:55
  And you wrote this is the moment of integration at the golden
• 56:59
  water's edge. You finally see yourself not
• 57:02
  through mirrors, not through others expectations, but through
• 57:06
  your own eyes. The child, the girl, the woman,
• 57:08
  the soul, all of you. This isn't rising from the
• 57:11
  ashes, this is remembering the light that never went out.
• 57:15
  You never needed saving, you needed seen.
• 57:18
  Today you reclaim your power. Your family and friends may try
• 57:21
  to pull you back into old, the old operating system, but with
• 57:24
  your light, your remembrance and you attract those who resonate
• 57:29
  with your true vibration. You stand at the edge of
• 57:31
  remembrance and you are whole. Yeah.
• 57:34
  That's beautiful. You wrote that?
• 57:36
  Yeah. I did.
• 57:36
  Wow, that's how I operate. What, what has been the last
• 57:39
  couple years? Have you had some some major
• 57:41
  breakthroughs? Has it been what is that
• 57:43
  spiritual journey like been for you?
• 57:44
  Because I feel like the last couple years have been there's
• 57:47
  been some new stuff that's come out for you.
• 57:49
  Right. What's what has come out because
• 57:51
  I've always had the spiritual edge to me.
• 57:54
  I'm, I'm, I'm deep into prayer. People call it meditation,
• 57:58
  prayer, what you call it. I'm deep into prayer.
• 58:02
  I wake up and I tell you, I wake up in the middle of the night
• 58:03
  and I walk outside and see the Northern Lights and I just have
• 58:05
  nothing but gratitude, right? My heart just fills with
• 58:08
  gratitude. So to me, that's also being very
• 58:10
  spiritual and being aware. And part of this also has been
• 58:15
  on seeking out like I didn't like who I had become.
• 58:24
  I love myself, but there are things about me the way I
• 58:27
  responded to some things like I don't like this and I don't
• 58:29
  understand it. And then I realized it's because
• 58:34
  of things that happened when I was 3 or 10 or 15 or 25 or even
• 58:38
  2 years ago that I let those things come into my lens of what
• 58:45
  I see. And it filtered everything about
• 58:48
  me. And I know that's not me.
• 58:49
  That is their was that situation what they needed something that
• 58:55
  time imposed upon me. And I don't have to carry that
• 58:58
  any longer. One of the prayers I say at
• 59:00
  night is that burden is no longer for me to carry and I
• 59:05
  release it. I said that's every night.
• 59:07
  That's my prayer before I go to bed to remind myself that
• 59:09
  whatever happened, whatever happened with other people, I
• 59:13
  empathize. I feel sad, but I don't have to
• 59:18
  carry it. I don't have to carry it any
• 59:20
  longer. I don't have to carry family
• 59:22
  dynamics anymore. I don't have to perform for
• 59:25
  anyone anymore. I love me.
• 59:31
  I love who I am. And so that journey has come
• 59:35
  from being thrown into situations where I got forced to
• 59:40
  look at myself. I couldn't look away any longer.
• 59:43
  I got, I was beaten down in some cases, not physically beaten,
• 59:47
  but mentally, emotionally, just beaten down to the pulp.
• 59:50
  And I'm like, why? Why is why am I letting this
• 59:53
  happen? Because I don't have to let this
• 59:55
  happen. Why, Why am I not doing
• 59:58
  something? Why am I not?
• 59:59
  Why am I feeling bad? Why am I holding this?
• 1:00:02
  It's like I wake up and I think about, I go to bed, think about
• 1:00:04
  like, that's not life that is being held in a prison.
• 1:00:07
  The problem is when you have those experiences and you keep
• 1:00:10
  those filters, you create your own prison.
• 1:00:12
  And you know what you do? You take it and you lock it and
• 1:00:14
  you take it and you throw that damn key away and you're like,
• 1:00:16
  then you start pointing to other people and this was wrong and
• 1:00:18
  that's wrong and you never come back and look at your own damn
• 1:00:21
  self to say, what have I done to allow this to enter into my
• 1:00:25
  life? And I said no fucking moment.
• 1:00:29
  I'm done and it took a lot of introspection.
• 1:00:35
  Of course I'm looking at books. I'm like, it's not the books are
• 1:00:38
  all the same. Just stop doing it.
• 1:00:40
  Think this way manifestation. It's all bullshit.
• 1:00:46
  It's all bullshit. My opinion and it it went
• 1:00:54
  through the process of going through neuro linguistics
• 1:00:58
  programming as part of the training.
• 1:01:01
  You have to go through it from timeline therapy.
• 1:01:03
  It's not therapy. It's a way of adjusting your
• 1:01:07
  neurological connections and learning hypnotherapy and
• 1:01:13
  learning how to speak to myself in a way that I love myself and
• 1:01:16
  speaking to myself that is positive, right?
• 1:01:20
  And that is loving and caring. And then really seeing, I mean,
• 1:01:25
  I've always seen patterns and gaps.
• 1:01:28
  I've never, I've always seen them in organizations and people
• 1:01:30
  and teams. I've never seen them close to
• 1:01:32
  me. I've never seen them within my
• 1:01:35
  family. I've never seen them within my
• 1:01:39
  interactions with people per SE. I know I responded away.
• 1:01:43
  And that's where as us as human beings, we begin to struggle.
• 1:01:50
  I don't want to say fail, but we get to struggle because we don't
• 1:01:52
  recognize it. And once you recognize that, you
• 1:01:58
  have to do something about it. But most of us don't know what
• 1:02:00
  to do about it. And for some people, it's
• 1:02:05
  church. Church will give you very
• 1:02:09
  inspirational words. You know, I love Bible quotes.
• 1:02:12
  They're beautiful, beautiful prayers that our Father is one
• 1:02:16
  of the most beautiful prayers there is out there.
• 1:02:20
  But that doesn't mean that that foundation of religion is
• 1:02:25
  allowing you to see what you truly need to see, to create
• 1:02:33
  your own life, to create your own love, to create your own
• 1:02:37
  joy. I've got 3.
• 1:02:40
  I actually have. I came up with three goals that
• 1:02:43
  I have for myself. The first one, and I worked a
• 1:02:48
  long time on this. I, I have an accountability team
• 1:02:50
  and we worked through this. We had all of ours together.
• 1:02:52
  We worked through them. The first one is peace.
• 1:02:56
  That that's my #1 personal value is peace.
• 1:03:01
  How do I bring peace into my life?
• 1:03:02
  Well, peace into my life means I have to understand why I am the
• 1:03:05
  way I am. I have to understand how to
• 1:03:08
  divert it because it's not serving me.
• 1:03:10
  And who and how do I want to truly be?
• 1:03:14
  And I don't have to perform and I have to determine what that
• 1:03:16
  is. And I have to have a script for
• 1:03:17
  it. I can just wake up in the
• 1:03:19
  morning and do what I do right and be who I am and love what I
• 1:03:24
  love. Now I have to do laundry and I
• 1:03:27
  have to follow kind of the speed limit.
• 1:03:30
  And I have to wash the dishes. I have to do those things.
• 1:03:32
  But those are just living things.
• 1:03:35
  Those aren't my soul, my spirit, my heart.
• 1:03:40
  And so once I got to the point where I started going through
• 1:03:45
  the work and doing the work and realizing and understanding it
• 1:03:48
  and seeing it and knowing how to respond differently, everything
• 1:03:53
  changed. Now it was painful at times
• 1:03:58
  because what happens when you start rewiring your brain?
• 1:04:01
  And so NLP is rewiring your brain.
• 1:04:04
  Timeline therapy is not therapy, it's rewiring your brain.
• 1:04:09
  So once you work on getting rid of called negative emotions,
• 1:04:15
  fear, hurt, anger, sadness, humiliation, shame, guilt, once
• 1:04:19
  you get rid of those and there's ways to get rid of them or
• 1:04:22
  divert from them, right? There's ways to really do that
• 1:04:25
  really quickly, not years of therapy.
• 1:04:28
  I was going to ask you on this point.
• 1:04:30
  I will let you finish your thought.
• 1:04:32
  How do you rewire your brain? What are some of these ways you.
• 1:04:35
  Talked about gosh, I'm so glad you asked because I'm doing a
• 1:04:38
  presentation in a month and let me tell you the story and you
• 1:04:40
  have to remind me where I am right now because I'm going to
• 1:04:42
  lose my thought, my train of thought.
• 1:04:47
  I have a client. So one of the things that's
• 1:04:49
  really common in people is they make a mistake and they say to
• 1:04:51
  themselves, I'm so stupid. I can't believe I did that.
• 1:04:52
  That was ridiculous. Very common.
• 1:04:55
  Very common in kids. Teenagers.
• 1:04:58
  Very common. Why would we do that?
• 1:05:02
  Because that's how we're trying to think you made a mistake.
• 1:05:05
  And it's like, that's so stupid. You know better than that.
• 1:05:08
  It's like how many times do you see your parents hear a parent
• 1:05:10
  say to a kid, you know better than that?
• 1:05:12
  Why do you do that? You know better than that why
• 1:05:15
  you've negative, negatively rewired that child's brain,
• 1:05:18
  right? We do that because we're humans
• 1:05:21
  and we always go to what's wrong first, right?
• 1:05:24
  Survival, survival, right? The look for the danger dangers
• 1:05:29
  being stupid, right? So we were talking about some
• 1:05:34
  other things and she made a comment.
• 1:05:37
  She goes, well, you know, I just it's just so stupid.
• 1:05:39
  I do I'm like stop, like this is I hear things like what did you
• 1:05:42
  just say? She goes, I just it's so stupid.
• 1:05:44
  I'm just so stupid. I'm like, no, we're going to nip
• 1:05:48
  that in the bud right now. So I said, look, every time that
• 1:05:54
  you tell yourself in your brain, I'm so stupid, we want to come
• 1:06:00
  up with something to replace it with that's neutral, that won't
• 1:06:04
  bring a negative emotion to you, won't harm you.
• 1:06:07
  So we came up with, oops, I made a mistake.
• 1:06:10
  So what we agreed upon before we met the next time, anytime
• 1:06:16
  something came into her head where she told herself I'm
• 1:06:19
  stupid and I can't believe I did that.
• 1:06:20
  That was dumb. She had to say, oops, I made a
• 1:06:23
  mistake. And I said, great, let's
• 1:06:26
  practice. So say I'm so stupid and then
• 1:06:31
  say oops, I made a mistake. She goes, that's easy.
• 1:06:33
  I'll just say it in my head all the time.
• 1:06:34
  I said, no, you have to say it out loud.
• 1:06:37
  Out loud. She's like, really?
• 1:06:41
  And I said, yeah, walking down the street, I'm in church and
• 1:06:43
  restaurant. I don't care where you, I have
• 1:06:44
  to say it out loud. She kind of looked at me and I
• 1:06:48
  said, I want you to do it. Try, Just try.
• 1:06:51
  So we're meeting like 10 days later.
• 1:06:55
  She got the call. It was great.
• 1:06:58
  And I said, so how'd it go? She said, well, I got off our
• 1:07:02
  call and my husband and I went for a walk and said, I'm walking
• 1:07:06
  down the street. And I just said out loud, oops,
• 1:07:09
  I made a mistake. And she said he looked at me
• 1:07:11
  like, what you doing? She goes, well, because Barbara
• 1:07:14
  told me whenever I said anything negative to myself and my face,
• 1:07:17
  I had to say out loud, oops, I made a mistake.
• 1:07:19
  That's the rewiring. That's the diversion, right?
• 1:07:22
  So she said. They're walking down the street
• 1:07:24
  and all of a sudden he goes, oops, I made a mistake.
• 1:07:27
  He did. He did.
• 1:07:28
  That's funny. She looked at him and he goes.
• 1:07:30
  Well, I'm going to try it too. You might as well, right?
• 1:07:32
  So she said what was really amazing, right, This is amazing.
• 1:07:35
  She goes for like all day when that like I'm singing out loud,
• 1:07:39
  I'm at work, I'm saying oops, I made a mistake.
• 1:07:41
  People are looking at me like I made a mistake.
• 1:07:46
  There's no negative emotion attached to that.
• 1:07:49
  They're saying I made a mistake. Big deal.
• 1:07:51
  We move on from that right. So she said she hurt her husband
• 1:07:55
  in the chat were one morning, oops, I made a mistake like
• 1:07:59
  singing in the shower, right? And she's like, I imagine him
• 1:08:01
  sitting here like this singing oops, I made a mistake.
• 1:08:03
  But she said he's doing it because something's going
• 1:08:05
  through his head that's negative.
• 1:08:07
  And she said after about 8 days, it was complete silence, nothing
• 1:08:13
  from either of us. And I said really what happened?
• 1:08:17
  She said I wasn't saying anything negative to myself
• 1:08:21
  anymore. I just kept saying oops, I made
• 1:08:22
  a mistake and I could just fix a mistake.
• 1:08:26
  That's rewiring. That's how fast it can happen.
• 1:08:29
  Do you think the same is true when people say I'm not an early
• 1:08:32
  morning person? It's just them rewiring or
• 1:08:34
  rewiring their brain to say that every single day?
• 1:08:37
  Yes, yeah, I can't remember names.
• 1:08:39
  I'm not going to remember names. People say it all the time.
• 1:08:41
  Well, you're reinforcing the pattern.
• 1:08:42
  If you can't remember names, so then you're not going to
• 1:08:44
  remember names, right? So all these things that we do,
• 1:08:47
  we wire ourselves based on something that someone said to
• 1:08:52
  us or told us or made a comment and we made a determination
• 1:08:57
  about what they were saying. And the question is, how is that
• 1:09:00
  serving you? That's a good question.
• 1:09:03
  It is. If not remembering names is not
• 1:09:06
  serving you, then stop using the excuse because it's bullshit
• 1:09:11
  excuse to remember names. And then the question becomes,
• 1:09:16
  what's your technique for remembering them?
• 1:09:18
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:09:19
  So we can work on that, but you have to stop with the excuses,
• 1:09:25
  right? It's, it's so that's a great
• 1:09:26
  example. Something really simple like
• 1:09:27
  that. You know, I, I was, I'm working
• 1:09:30
  with someone and they said I, I have like 0 joy in my life.
• 1:09:33
  I'm like really, well, let's talk about what brings you joy.
• 1:09:37
  Like what are the things feeding my cat really.
• 1:09:42
  So feeding her, she goes well, you know, what's really fun
• 1:09:44
  about it is I like to want my cat just loves like morning
• 1:09:46
  breakfast. I love to watch.
• 1:09:47
  He looks so happy, cool. Something else, What else?
• 1:09:51
  Well, she goes well, nothing big though.
• 1:09:53
  Nothing. Nothing else brings you joy.
• 1:09:56
  She goes, well, I really enjoy getting up in the morning,
• 1:09:59
  looking out the window to see what the weather is and show up.
• 1:10:01
  Sometimes it's raining or sun. She goes, I really enjoy that.
• 1:10:03
  I said, oh, so that brings you joy.
• 1:10:06
  Yeah. But that's not really like joy.
• 1:10:07
  Joy. I'm like, but it's joy.
• 1:10:09
  So we went through all the little things that made joy for
• 1:10:15
  this person. So I said OK, so in the
• 1:10:19
  beginning of a conversation, you told me you have no joy in your
• 1:10:22
  life. Curious.
• 1:10:25
  So when you get up the morning, you look out the window.
• 1:10:27
  You're telling me that's joy? Yeah.
• 1:10:30
  And then you get and you go make a cup of tea because you'll love
• 1:10:33
  your first cup of tea in the morning.
• 1:10:34
  And she don't. It's kind of tea they like.
• 1:10:37
  That's joy for you. Like for me with my first sip of
• 1:10:40
  coffee in the morning. I love my first I.
• 1:10:41
  Love, that is the best part of the day.
• 1:10:42
  I don't. Care, fave and finish it it it's
• 1:10:43
  like. 6:00 in the morning you got a fresh cup of coffee.
• 1:10:47
  Just in the first sip from anything.
• 1:10:49
  Beat that. I mean, honestly.
• 1:10:51
  And then it was like beating my cat.
• 1:10:54
  And then it's reading a book. And I said, so in the beginning
• 1:10:59
  of the conversation, you told me you have no joy.
• 1:11:03
  I want you to walk through your entire morning with me, what you
• 1:11:05
  do every morning. And I want you to stop at the
• 1:11:08
  points that bring you joy and say, this brings me joy, right?
• 1:11:12
  So when we got all done spiling right, I said so how you used to
• 1:11:20
  define joy with something really irrelevant to your life.
• 1:11:26
  You're placing something upon your belief of what joy should
• 1:11:30
  be based on what you see. People hear people telling you
• 1:11:33
  what you're seeing on TikTok or what you're what you have been
• 1:11:37
  programmed over time to believe is joy.
• 1:11:40
  But of the 15 things you're telling me that bring you joy,
• 1:11:44
  you do 13 of them in the morning and you're not experiencing joy.
• 1:11:49
  I notice even her wording wasn't I don't experience as much joy.
• 1:11:52
  It's I have no joy. I have no joy.
• 1:11:55
  So it's those things, these the people that are sending these
• 1:12:00
  situations are not bad people, They're not mentally unhealthy,
• 1:12:06
  they're not thinking wrong. They are conditioned, they have
• 1:12:13
  been programmed, and the program that they've been going through
• 1:12:19
  has made them come to this point in their lives where they
• 1:12:23
  believe certain things and those beliefs are limiting.
• 1:12:30
  So what my role is, so I work with corporations.
• 1:12:34
  I also work with individuals, right?
• 1:12:35
  I also do a lot of individual work to say, OK, let's break
• 1:12:40
  those limiting beliefs. Now, what's really interesting
• 1:12:45
  when you do this, when you get rid of the negative emotions and
• 1:12:47
  you break limiting beliefs. The thing that's really
• 1:12:50
  interesting, and I do this with leaders also, I don't
• 1:12:53
  necessarily use these terms because I keep it more into a
• 1:12:58
  corporate professional speak of things they can hear, right?
• 1:13:01
  Because if I start talking about some of these things, it, it
• 1:13:03
  might not sit right. So I, I use whatever terms they
• 1:13:06
  use, I will reflect to them. But we go through a lot of these
• 1:13:08
  conversations together and it is amazing.
• 1:13:17
  I forgot my I forgot my train of thought right now.
• 1:13:19
  But I'll just say it's amazing what kind of impact you can have
• 1:13:23
  with people and move them forward if you get rid of those
• 1:13:27
  limiting beliefs and you get rid of those negative emotions that
• 1:13:30
  sit with them every day, right? It's like if your brother hits
• 1:13:34
  you upside the head and you're, you've never resolved that.
• 1:13:36
  And you kind of think about it and you see something happening
• 1:13:40
  and you're like, oh, they're going to like hit like you.
• 1:13:42
  That that's that nervous system goes into immediate action.
• 1:13:46
  You can't stop it because your mind is wired that way.
• 1:13:50
  But when you get rid of that, you know what happens?
• 1:13:54
  Space. Because that emotion and those
• 1:13:59
  limited beliefs have taken up so much space in your head and your
• 1:14:03
  heart and your gut. They've rested there for so long
• 1:14:09
  and you have become dependent upon them.
• 1:14:11
  You know who you are. You know how you're you know
• 1:14:14
  what you want. You know how you're going to
• 1:14:16
  respond. You know who's going to piss you
• 1:14:17
  off. You know who's going to make you
• 1:14:19
  happy. You know all these things ahead
• 1:14:21
  of time because you're wired. But once you get rid of them,
• 1:14:26
  it's empty space. And what do you fill it with?
• 1:14:31
  What brings you joy? What are you grateful for?
• 1:14:35
  What do you want? What do you like to do right?
• 1:14:40
  For me, I like to go out walking in the snow, so I go out walking
• 1:14:48
  in the snow at night. I like to take photographs, so
• 1:14:52
  on the way here I showed you pictures.
• 1:14:54
  I stopped at the river and took pictures of the lone eagle
• 1:14:57
  sitting in on the island and the tree on the island with the the
• 1:15:01
  mist of the river coming up and surrounding was just stunning,
• 1:15:04
  right? It's just a stunning thing.
• 1:15:05
  Those are things that bring me joy.
• 1:15:07
  So I don't need to sit and wonder whether or people can not
• 1:15:13
  like think I'm crazy because I'm standing out here taking
• 1:15:15
  pictures. I could careless what you think.
• 1:15:18
  I want to come in and work with you and help your organization
• 1:15:22
  and help you as a leader and help your leaders be better so
• 1:15:25
  that you can be your best self. So we can help you see what's
• 1:15:30
  holding you back and what's not serving you and find out what
• 1:15:33
  serves you. And if it's not something that's
• 1:15:36
  good, then something needs to change.
• 1:15:38
  Excuse me, Excuse me. And that's where I come in with
• 1:15:43
  as a consultant to say, OK, what are we going to do differently
• 1:15:46
  here? Like what kind of operations
• 1:15:49
  need to change? What leadership needs to change
• 1:15:52
  is there are you having regular meetings?
• 1:15:54
  Well, let's have regular meetings.
• 1:15:56
  Are you tracking performance or are you taking notes?
• 1:15:59
  All these things that come along with making your life better as
• 1:16:03
  a leader to make you a better leader.
• 1:16:05
  But I also have this other side where now I say I I don't have
• 1:16:09
  those filters. So I see things so much more
• 1:16:12
  clearly, like it comes to me like this.
• 1:16:15
  And then I wait and I watch some more to and what I'm seeing,
• 1:16:19
  actually what I'm seeing that I come to a conclusion too soon
• 1:16:23
  and like, no, I'm pretty clear. And it served me.
• 1:16:27
  It has served me. It serves me well now it will
• 1:16:29
  continue to serve me. And yeah, because of that, 2026
• 1:16:34
  is really different because I'm very different.
• 1:16:37
  Wow I love that this has been a great conference.
• 1:16:40
  This is better than the first conversation.
• 1:16:41
  Honestly I had high hopes for this.
• 1:16:43
  I was like man the first one was so good.
• 1:16:44
  We didn't capture it. We lost some footage, but this
• 1:16:47
  one was even better. Barbara, I really appreciate you
• 1:16:49
  coming on the show and driving down here.
• 1:16:50
  And of course, I know you're in the area, but still means a lot
• 1:16:53
  that you're able to stop by here and do this today.
• 1:16:55
  For you I will do that. Thank you.
• 1:16:57
  I appreciate that. Yeah.
• 1:16:58
  Where can people connect with you, find you, learn more about
• 1:17:01
  what you do? The best thing is to go to so my
• 1:17:04
  company, as you said, a CKC consulting, but it was
• 1:17:07
  interesting when I started my business and it was CKC
• 1:17:10
  consulting when I was, I was spent a lot of time in the
• 1:17:13
  Chicagoland area and I let people know I started my
• 1:17:15
  business and they're like, can't you just call it your name
• 1:17:16
  because we know you by your name.
• 1:17:18
  So it's www.barbarawickman.com and you'll find everything that
• 1:17:24
  I do there and you'll see my prepare, my proprietary
• 1:17:27
  programs. Eventually you'll see
• 1:17:30
  connections to my podcast there. Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  And you know, we talked a lot about leadership and
• 1:17:37
  organizations. So I've got a second kind of
• 1:17:39
  stream of podcasting. I'm not going to look up.
• 1:17:42
  It's going to be more on YouTube actually, where I have a lot of
• 1:17:44
  things I like we've talked about today to share about leadership
• 1:17:47
  in a very non filtered way. So that's all coming up now too.
• 1:17:52
  So yeah, look for me, there's I, I have different brands out
• 1:17:57
  there, but if you look for like Barbara inspires, I think that
• 1:18:01
  might be on YouTube and on Instagram too.
• 1:18:04
  So yeah, but I'm, I thank you for having me.
• 1:18:07
  Like I said, I'm thank you for having me back.
• 1:18:10
  It's always a joy. And hopefully we can do it again
• 1:18:12
  sometime because this is really fun to to speak with you, share
• 1:18:15
  with you. We'll definitely do it again and
• 1:18:17
  I appreciate it. Definitely give Barbara a follow
• 1:18:19
  and make sure you like subscribe to follow in this show because
• 1:18:21
  if you're not, I would ask you, I would ask you one question.
• 1:18:25
  Was it serving you? It's not.
• 1:18:27
  Thank you all for being here. Appreciate you guys listening,
• 1:18:29
  watching. Thank you, Barbara.
• 1:18:30
  For being here, thank you. Thanks, Alex.