277: Your Leadership Operating System Needs an Update | Townsend Wardlaw

Every knows when iPhone is and that's the physical piece of hardware. Between all the apps and the hardware sits something incredibly important and it's the operating system, iOS. Everything that occurs on the phone, everything that I interface with in terms of the applications, is ultimately governed by and must adhere to the rules of the operating system. So every now and again, you know, you get your apps updated, but then Apple will do an operating system update. I believe that there's an analogy here for us as human beings that was installed a long time ago and the easiest way to think about a human operating system are the rules or the code that we were given and accepted about how the world occurs about how things are. I'm Damon Lemby and this is the Learned at All podcast. The show for leaders who know that lifelong learning can be your ultimate advantage. Joining me in a moment is Townsend Wardlaw. He's currently working with a select group of founders and leadership team and he's also a trusted advisor to some of the world's top coaches because Townsend and I will unpack what most leaders never stop to question which is the way they're wired to see everything as a problem. He's going to explain how when you look at things that way, it's going to shape the way you lead and it's also going to have a big impact on your energy. He's also going to be very direct on why trying harder isn't going to create a shift you're actually looking for. And finally, what's going to change for the better for both you and your team when you start seeing things from a different place? So Townsend, you've told me before that you think a lot of leaders are running on an outdated operating system. What is it that you see in their behaviors and especially their results that tell you it's time for them to update their code? Yeah, it's a great question. I think it bears just taking a minute to talk about even what I mean by operating system. I always use a prop, I say, every nose when iPhone is and that's the hardware, right? That's the physical piece of hardware. And what we interface with, what we use are the apps. Right, I got my calorie tracking app, I got my mail app, I got my calendar app, I got all my apps in there. But between all the apps and the hardware sits something incredibly important and it's the operating system, iOS. And everything that occurs on the phone, everything that I interface with in terms of the applications, is ultimately governed by and must adhere to the rules of the operating system. So every now and again, you know, you get your apps updated, but then Apple will do an operating system update, which can even add entirely new features that didn't exist. One of the examples I like to share is I'm not going to do it today, but when they updated the operating system a little back on my MacBook Pro, it allowed me to create reactions through any video program. In fact, I think I could probably do one of these, you see these hearts right there, right? Those hearts, they don't exist in Chrome, which is the browser I'm using, they don't exist in Riverside and they don't exist about, they exist at literally the level of the operating system. So they apply everywhere. There's something that propagates throughout every other application. Now, I believe that there's an analogy here for us as human beings. I have hardware. I've been given this body and with some decent care and feeding and a little luck. I'm hoping it'll last me 80 and 90 years, right? That'll be the life cycle. And throughout my life, I've acquired applications, right? I have my fitness application. I have my father application. I have my marriage application. I have my, how do I eat? How do I sleep? My time. All the things that I do. But all of those, and by the way, those have modified, right? How I manage time as an adult, how I think about it is very different. I go take a class on, I don't know, you know, Karabi or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I'm adding an application layer. But all of that still sits on top of what I think of as the human operating system, our human operating system that was installed a long time ago. An easiest way to think about a human operating system are the rules or the code that we were given and accepted about how the world occurs, about how things are. Oftentimes, people don't even think about, well, the world occurs from me a certain way versus another way. A simple example is, for some, the world can occur as life is hard. Somebody else could occur, you know, life is effortless and fun. Well, usually those operating system commands were for lack of a better term programmed into us very early by our mothers, our fathers, our teachers, our preachers. And then we wake up one day and in my case, I'll be 57 here in a month. And for a lot of folks, they've never looked at or even thought of, what does my operating system code say? How does the world occur to me that I put things like time management or food or eating or or relationships on top of. And without access to that layer of the code, we're sort of doomed to always looking for a better app, for a better widget, for a better how to. One of the reasons I think that people people spend so much energy, you know, reading self-help books or going to conferences or you know, hiring consultants to tell them how to do things is they think there's a how to that's going to fix or an app that's going to, you know, change their life without really looking at, well, what's going on underneath that governs how you even perceive and I would even say create reality that you think you're dealing with. So I'll pause there and we can dig more into that, it makes sense. You know, it makes me kind of think too a little bit, I just got done reading who, not how, you know, by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. And Benjamin Hardy. And they also talk about how your perception of the world changes throughout different phases of your life. How does that impact what you talk about when it comes to your perception of the world? Well, I'll reference that book specifically because the things are very powerful book and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, for my mind, speaks very much to this paradigm of, you know, he talks about it differently, but he definitely understands this paradigm of, you know, it's not just the things you do, but it's how you see yourself, who you think you are, right? And even the question, how versus who? Somebody who walks into a circumstance, well, I see a circumstance, I mean, anything external, a house on fire, a business, a client conversation will have you. Somebody that walks into a circumstance is one person's going to ask the question, now, how would I solve that? How would I fix this? All right. Well, that's a perfectly logical question, but only from an operating system that says, you're going to need to solve this. When you see problems, they're up to you to solve. So you need to ask, and it's doing the reaction thing, you need to ask how? Well, somebody else who doesn't have the operating system code, it's up to me, I've got to figure it out, we'll come up with an entirely different question. Who would I need to assist me? I've got a client who is a very successful, he runs a business, he is a globally recognized thought leader in the world of UI/UX design and implementation, really, really successful. And about a year ago, we were working together, everybody still worked together. And we were creating, well, what do you want life to be about? What do you want to, how do you want to express yourself? How do you want to create the world in the next five years? Well, he had a passion for music, specifically electronic music. And the vision we put together was that this was last March, March of 2004, that he would produce an album, electronic music album, actually produce it, create it, and perform on stage at EDC Electric Daisy Carnival, which is one of the top festivals in the world, truly an absurd goal. Sounds like an absurd goal, right? Almost. Complete. There is no how you can get there from here, it like it can't be done. And like a lot of founders, like a lot of really powerful creators, what he started out with was all the things that he would need to do and blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, through our work together, we spent more time shifting his operating system and his being such that he stopped asking, how do I do it? And who needs to show up and occur in my life and appear that this could be possible, that this could be done. And it didn't take that long for him to come to the realization, why I need a really good producer, I need a really good manager, I need a really good coach to help me with the DJing aspect of it. Well, two weeks later, he had all those people in his life. Now you could say, oh, it's man of, I don't think this is all that woo-woo, right? These are brilliant people. We always, they always, and everybody I've ever met that's got a brain, is always able to solve for the problem they're seeking to solve for. They always come up with the answer to the question that they're asking. The questions are asking the right question. You ask the question, how do I do this? You'll come up with answers. You ask the question, who do I need and you come up with an answer, well, you'll find those people or they'll be right in front of your face. I'm happy to report that just this last thing, it was June, he was on stage at EDC. He performed. It was incredible. And what I'll tell you is none of that would have been possible from the operating system, or sometimes they call it the state of being, of the guy that started out saying, "I want to do this," because that guy would have made it about him doing it, all the things he needed to do, he would have learned, and he would have done it, but it would have taken a lot longer. So that's just a simple example of how a very, I think of it as minor shift in operating system can have profound results. So, say a founder of books and meeting with you on Calamity or something, and they're like, "Calonson, I've been stuck at four million a year in sales for eight years, and I know there's more that we need to do. What would be your first step with an individual like that?" Well, I don't know if I can give like a first step, because it's not quite that prescriptive. What I can tell you, I know about that human, without ever having to even have a long conversation with them, is they have an operating system that thrives on self-aliance. They have an operating system that thrives on this, it's up to me, right? They have an operating system that thrives on, "I need to work hard to get what I want." Now, none of those things are problems. In fact, they're very powerful ways to create the world, they're very powerful aspects of an operating system. They're so powerful, they'll get you to quit your job, put your family and your mortgage or risk to start a company. Thumbs up, that works. They'll get you to a certain point. They'll get you to two, three, maybe four million revenue. What they will also do is create all the mechanisms that will undermine yourself getting further. I'll give you a simple example. To grow past three or four million and get to the Mythical 8 or 10 where you can sell for a strategic multiple and actually your company's worth something, well, you need to get yourself out of the business so that you're not the one doing anything and you need to hire people that are, frankly, more competent than you. Now, imagine this idea of an operating system or a way of being is something simple like a pair of glasses, right? They determine what you see. That's easiest metaphor I got. Now, glasses that are programmed for, "It's up to me. I'm on my own. Nobody's coming." Cavalry ain't coming. We'll walk into a circumstance and that could be a job, a leadership on what have you. It will actually filter out all the evidence of anything in that circumstance that there's something that could help me. That means it either won't see anybody or, and I've seen this happen many, many times, it will actually select for and cause me to hire incompetent people because nobody's there for me. I'll hire them and that'll prove it, right? Reality is a projection of the truth that starts up here. Now, if I take those glasses off, if I'm able to learn to switch those glasses and the new glasses I'm wearing, our universe has my back. There are people smarter than me. It's not all up to me. It's not as simple as just a phraseology, but a different thing. What will be revealed are an entirely different set of potential resources they could hire. They're a higher different people. Fundamentally, it's not such a matter of, well, let me give you this little advice. It's a matter of, I'll say, exploring with the founder, what do they really care about? What are they really playing for? Somebody who truly wants to grow and sell their company and exit is going to have to go through this transformation. It won't work otherwise. But the other is also possible, right? If somebody wants a perfectly wonderful lifestyle business that they can take a much cash header, well, they don't need to grow. Maybe the problem isn't, I'm not growing. Maybe the problem is you're not enjoying the kind of business you want to create. I don't want to jump too quickly ever to a conclusion that what they need to grow and then you change their operating system. It really is a dialogue about what you really want your life to be like. It sounds like a little bit like confirmation bias even when it comes to the hiring. This is the way I think I have these blinders on. I might as well just hire people who fit that for me. What I hear you saying is, if they really want to grow and evolve, maybe it's even letting go of that control, putting aside that ego and trusting that there are other ways to doing it than what you've done in the past or what got you to where you're at. Yeah, that's a fine way of characterizing, at least to get started. I think the ego gets a bad rap. All the ego is the part of our programming that is responsible for there's a self here. There's a town's in. I'm not Damon. The thing that as a function of that goes through life accruing credit and assigning blame. It's not inherently a bad thing. In fact, an ego is necessary for how all this functions. It can cause problems though. I want to be careful how they say this. My belief is there are no bad ways of being. Somebody who is what we would call an egotistical, megalomaniacal CEO, right? Well, they're not a bad person. They're simply expressing life and creating life based on the programming that got them there, right? This, this, this operating system program. Now what, what my greatest hope for folks is people that I serve is that they can have an awareness to this is your operating system. And in having an awareness to it and how it's creating life, make a choice is that what you want to keep doing. Or would you like to create differently, right? So many times I meet people and they had this idea, life has to be this way. I have to be ruthless or I have to work myself now or I have to say, you're not wrong that that's a possibility, but you are wrong that it has to be that way. You can create very powerfully with what I call kind of fear based operating systems. Not enoughness, need to do moreness. I'll show themness, right? Kind of ways of being. And they work really well. In fact, you look at most successful humans and that's what's running in the background and that's what's creating. Now, that can cause problems because it doesn't turn off and I'll give myself as an example. The business that I built that I ultimately shut down in 2009, you know, closed it down, I would say I exited, which is mean I got out of the plane before it blew up. I went through bankruptcy, had a divorce, all that. Well, that company was a function of the way of being the operating system that created most of my life. This idea that it's all on me, it's all up to me. If I don't do it, it's not going to happen. Well, that creates incredible thrust and drive and power and it builds to a certain point. Well, the dark side of that though is it's very lonely. It is probably de-energizing. The bigger the company build, the more it's up to me is required. Well, there's also a spouse I had who got to live with a guy who thought everything was up to him. Right? There were children I was raising. You know, it was all to me. So I never allowed any reciprocity. I never allowed any support. I built all this resentment. I mean, it ends up being this like, you know, this cauldron. So my whole thing is there is no right way to go through life. There is no right way of being. There is no perfect operating system. There is choice. There is looking out of life and saying, okay, I'm taking credit for all the stuff that's working. Am I also taking credit for the stuff that I say that's a problem? And do I know it doesn't have to be that way? That's what the power of this work is, right? You can have the best of both worlds. Do you think you would have ever come to realization if your business didn't stutter out? Not a chance. I just came back from India. We were gone for the month and we spent a week in India. One of the questions I love asking, you know, my clients, people that I serve or just anybody is, what percent of how things work out like the end result? Do you think is really up to you? Like what percent do you think is really up to you? And I'll let you think about it because I love your answer. But I'll tell you that if you would walk up to me in 2008 and ask me that question, my answer would have been 95% or higher. 95% of how it works out, that's me. A great and powerful town and in fact, pretty sure the sun got up this morning because I did. Right? It was like that. And I wasn't a jerk. I wasn't a bad person, but I did have this incredible belief that it's all on me. Having a business go down, having everything in your life, let it get scraped to the ground, does kind of cause you to stop and ponder, you know, maybe there's other ways to do this, right? Because that's really painful. It humbled you. Yeah, squashes your flat is what it does. And it breaks some people. In fact, you know, there's people who choose to end it all from that stuff. Over the, you know, whatever it is past 15 years, what I would say, the greatest shift for me has been that number has gone from 95 to about somewhere in the three to five percent range. If you would ask me on September 30th, I would have said, yeah, consistently three to five percent is up to me. Spending a week in India, my answer is now zero. Really? Flat zero. How could it be flat zero? You got to have some input in what happens? Well, notice the question isn't how much input the question is actually how it turns out, right? So a lot of people mistake zero for like this, you know, nihilism. Oh, nothing. matter. Well, it's not that nothing matters. I still show up. I still take the actions that that that make sense to take. But how it actually turns out like the actual result. My experience is when I look at anything incredibly significant, powerful, beautiful in my life. And I think, man, that's really cool. I'm so excited that I did that. If I if I spend a little bit of time going back in history from that moment and ask, did anything happen, you know, that sort of seems random or miraculous or heavy that if that hadn't happened, this would never happen. And I can always find one. And I'll tell you, being in India with with incredible wealth, right, incredible prosperity and absolute, incredible, you know, deep poverty. What I walked away with is somebody born 50 feet that way. It has an entirely different life. Somebody born 50 feet that way is, you know, sitting there making their dinner on a stove that they heat with with with would they gather. So what do I really get to take credit for? What do I get to say? I did that. Now, did I show up? Yes, did I do the best I could with what I've been given? And the sort, yes, I have. But I don't believe that entitles me to credit. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. Right. In fact, I think it gives me a lot more freedom. It gives me the freedom to enjoy and experience everything that's incredible in my life. The the what someone calls success, what someone called, you know, the incredible experiences. We're happy. And it allows me to also be graceful with all the things that don't go my way. Right. One of the expressions that that I create one of the ways that I kind of speak about this is that I say I strive to be grateful for my highs and graceful with my lows. When I'm, you know, we were at this lavish and credible Indian wedding and I was fully in the experience and enjoying it and just it was incredible. And then in the transit from the from the facility back to our resort, you know, we're passing through his abject property. And I could experience and and excuse me, I could be with what was flowing, you know, sadness flowing through me that these people, this is their life. Not not pity. But, you know, sadness that yeah, that's how the world is. The world has wealth. The world has poverty. The world has strength. That has weakness. That has health. That has disease. It has good. It has evil. Right. That is the nature of this physical human experience. So when you're working with a founder and you help them go from believing that maybe they're at 90% of what's going to happen to them to down to five or 10%. What is that unlock for them that they didn't really have before? Energy and peace and freedom. There is power in an operating system that creates responsible and responsible for how it works out and responsible for the world. Right. There's this power in that. Now, the opposite is also true. I'm responsible for me and the world takes care of itself. There's also a lot of powerful creation. Contrary to popular belief, when I absolve myself of responsibility, when I let go of creditor blame, I don't sit here, turn on the TV and eat candy. I am a creator by design. We are all creators by design. Right. I think that this entire human experience is about creation and what we can do. We're not wired to sit around and simply, you know, vegetate or turn into jello. So when you learn to, as I say, create with a different fuel, right, rather than scarcity, lack, want, responsibility, fear and you create with, well, I put it all in the umbrella of create with love, loving what is accepting what is. There's actually a lot more energy. I've got a client right now. All goes well in two days. He will consummate the purchase of 51% of his company by a very, very large PE firm. Three or four years ago, when I met him, he was wired for. It's all on me. And it was killing him and he was ready to walk away from the business. They read seven or eight million. He's done an incredible amount of inner work and he's really, really committed to this whole process. Over the course of the past three, four years, he's rewired himself. He's rewired in the entire company. They've grown for eight to, I think it's 14 or 15 million something around there, such that they're about to exit at a very strategic valuation. When we woke up on January 1st and we knew the process was coming, we created some very powerful intentions. And it was obviously about selling the company and valuation, et cetera, but it was about how he was going to go through this with so much ease and peace and joy people would wonder what the hell was wrong with them. I've worked with 350 founders in my career. I've helped roughly three dozen get through all the way to exit. And it's always been a gut wrenching soul sucking process, but it doesn't need to be. We spoke last week and we were really excited about what was coming this week and it was so cool to see him because we were reflecting on the journey of the year and everything that got him here. And what I saw as a man who was tired, he's been putting in 16, 17, 18 hour days. But man was he having fun. Like this is for so many founders, the most stressful period of their lives. And it has the potential to be something that is incredibly fun and joyful, right? You're getting the pot of gold even chasing for more than a decade. So to see that validation of it is possible to grow and hit your numbers and expand and do all these things, but from an entirely different way of being that creates an entirely different energetic experience for him, for his wife, for his children, for his company. Like that's the game worth playing. I went through a bunch of your sub stack and one of the articles that really kind of, you know, stuck with me was, are you playing the game to win or are you playing not to lose? So it sounds like if you're playing not to lose, that probably takes a lot of energy and has a lot of fear in it versus playing to win where you can kind of give that release. Yes. There's something else that's going on here though as well, right? And that definitely applies. But founders, one of the reasons that they tend to be successful is because they have a very powerful and committed capacity to solve problems. Right? That's beautiful. What's interesting though when you unpack that statement is you can only solve a problem once you call it a problem. And that's not always and only what it could be. Right? So if if somebody's operating system is I solve problems, well, what they will tend to do is come across something in their in their path, identify that as a problem and get to work solving it. Now, as soon as I call something a problem, the verbs that I are at my disposal to address the problem have been limited. There are certain things I do with a problem that I don't do with things that aren't problems. I solve problems, I fix problems, I kill problems, I eliminate problems, I don't hug problems, I don't love problems. I don't embrace them. I don't amplify them. One of the very simple ways that I'm able to be of service to my clients is helping them not just reframe what they're going to do in a circumstance, but go upstream to how they created what they even think it is. I'll give you a very simple example. I was working with a gentleman a couple of years ago. He was a very senior leader in a large PE-backed. It would call it a medical roll-up kind of thing. He was a regional manager. He'd given him a second region because he'd been performing so well, not in a small part to the work he'd been doing. He called me up one day and he goes, "I got a problem." I said, "Waterful, please call me back and don't use that word and I hung up on him." He called me back and he goes, "Okay, there's something I want to talk to you about." I'm like, "Great, that's a good start." He proceeded to describe what was going on. The essence was, "They want to give me three more regions." I've done so well, but the words he was using and how he was talking about it. Imagine you're describing something and you're only using words that are like, "It's bad, it's this and it's scary." Now, that's not true that this thing is scary, but that's not the only possibility. From where he was looking at this thing, what he saw were all the ways, the glasses again, where all the ways this could bite him in the ass. You could be a problem. Go along. Go along. Metaphorically speaking, here's the thing in the middle. He's over here. I'm over here. Now, I got a different view, right? Just like if you and I were looking at anything, we have a different view. Well, from where I'm looking, I'm like, "That's a million dollars in additional cash and equity form. Hold it. This is great." Now if I had simply said 8 You got it wrong. Here's what it is. I'm trying to convince them about what I see, but from what he sees from the glasses He's wearing it doesn't exist. So there is no explaining convincing guiding teaching What there is is let's reexamine how the world is occurring for you how your operating system is producing an idea of even what this is So we do the work that I do and it's not too simple to describe so I'll just say metaphorically I acknowledged how the world occurred for him and what he saw I didn't try to make him wrong I didn't try to make this like you're thinking about it wrong because from where he's looking that's right and Then we kind of guided we went on a little walk to look at this thing from other viewpoints Simple question if this was the best thing that ever happened to you just didn't know it yet What would you see that wasn't they something like a prescription? It's not like Ashka, but it's an idea long story short Is he began to to shift what he was seeing? All of a sudden like on the zoom his eyes get really wide he goes holy shit That's another million in cash and equity formula. I didn't tell him that's what it was he saw it So when there's a disagreement about what is and then what we should do with it What explanation is well, they're just dumb. They don't they don't they don't know what to do. That's rarely the case What if everything that occurs in the world is simply a function of no two people are in the movie theater watching the same movie They're watching a different movie based on what up here is projecting on the screen So when you could work with people at that level or work with life at that level Sometimes it gives you a different set of to-do's or different process or different you know thing to take action on Sometimes you don't have to do anything Sometimes just looking at it differently produces a different reality of what it is and you'll leave it alone Because it's actually gonna work Your metaphor you use about being in a glass elevator and it sounds like it's exactly what you talked about with this guy Right, I mean, yeah, if you're looking at it to ground floor you just maybe see problems But the higher you go up and you're able to look at things differently that's what seems like to really open his eyes So like shit, this is this could be an extra million bucks for me. Yeah, one of the ways I love to share about that is I asked somebody to think about you know some of the most painful or disruptive or problematic events of their life That at the time they occurred they were convinced this was gonna be the ruling of them, right? This is gonna end it all And then ask how do you see that now and inevitably Certainly for the majority of things that people experience they go. Yeah, I see why it had to happen Right almost everything in life makes sense in the rearview mirror Now when we're driving looking out the front a lot of times what we see is scary and we got a swirve to avoid it Well, I'm not saying that's not the case, but it's not always the case What if rather than simply understanding Well after the fact how this served us What if we were able in the present moment when dealing with something experiencing something scary painful say we could create the idea This is actually for me. I don't know why yet. That's hard to do in the moment though, right? I mean, it's really hard to do in a moment. Let's be careful with the word hard what I would say is okay We don't practice it. Right. I trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a lot of years So one of the questions always ask people is do you think Brazilian Jitsu is hard? They're like well, no, I've never done it. I'm like exactly I practice it for a decade and and it ain't hard so so people like to say that's hard I'm like no, it's the easy in fact. It's easier But it does require practice and it requires some thought so rather than that's hard How about just you know, I'm working on it. I'm practicing. I don't have a lot of experience with it yet because what I'll tell you is it ain't hard It's a lot easier Universally that people I work with the people I serve report Life after working together is ten times easier Their marriage raising their kids for other like like like how is this so simple? I'm like, it isn't it Now it still takes some work to understand the principles and practice it and and and Unwined a lot of the programming and and and put new programming in but but from an effort standpoint Life on the other side of working with me is Effortless and fun in those moments you got to just kind of slow down a little bit when things are very very You find maybe challenging or really bad if you could just slow down and see what's going on And so the jumping to some kind of crazy conclusion and also kind of think back of hey I've made it through all my toughest challenges and they have kind of worked out I mean that's what's kind of helped me a little bit. I love that you know and even the thing about slowing down right I would say slowing down is a function of our operating system I Know growing up One of the things that was really programmed into me is get into action Right that was what it was all about. It wasn't stop and think it was something happens you move Right that was like a truth of how the world works and I Was rewarded for that right for most of my life the operating system code get into action get moving Was rewarded with you know promotions and expansions of responsibility etc because Other people valued it and it looked like it worked and it did However as as the stakes got higher and and and the game got bigger well that Way of being that operating system. No it doesn't work as well. In fact, let me flip on it Right, but that wasn't simply something I could do differently It's something I had to re program recode into how the world occurs for me like literally at the level I think about this as our name Right like I am Townsend Wardlaw you are Damon Lemby if You decided to change your name to David or Bob You would start to speak it to people you would share it you would correct people etc Ten years from now if I saw you sitting across I don't know the rumor in a park and I yelled hey Damon you probably still turned your head right there's some Vestage of you that still Damon even though you've been creating is and this is very much the same way This this work is an ongoing practice. It's not as simple as well I'm gonna get these three principles or this these I'm just gonna do it differently because just like my name is Townsend I Am moving action quickly so it is about consciousness and awareness Of how the world occurs and and what I'm apt to do if I'm not paying attention and Then asking myself is that really how I want to create the circumstance do I want to create this as Circumstance where I need to move quickly or do I want to slow down and go actually I can take my time It's about unlearning certain things and maybe relearning a different way Are you seeing the best way to do that is through Consciousness and awareness Absolutely right out to me own awareness is is the key to everything right We play for results we want outcomes all Outcomes are a function of action Right so a lot of people mistakenly think well if I just change my actions I'll get a better outcome Well some challenges with that go to any Library or going Amazon and there's you know tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of book that tell you the right actions to take To make a billion dollars to get fit whatever this do the yeah If it was as simple as do different things Well the whole world would be full of fit rich people So then you guys slow down and say well if it's not just the actions what what's upstream from now what I say is Every action is produced from a thought I don't say a word. I didn't have the thought say that word I don't you know put a chocolate chip cookie in my mouth without the thought I really want that so Thinking is is one layer up from acting and it's a layer that doesn't get enough attention We don't think enough about what we think Right now the world of thinking is really important and that's where I say mindset work occurs And that's where you'll hear people talk about turn negative thinking in a positive thinking or you know work with your thoughts The challenge with that is that this thing appears incredibly prolific and powerful On average the human mind produces 50,000 thoughts a day we have a thought we have another thought about that thought We have a thought we shouldn't think that thought we have a thought about what's I mean I was gonna think about that thought We've thought about what those people over there are thinking about what we might think So it's it's really really noisy so so mindset work is powerful meditation Affirmations things like that the problem is it does nothing to change The source of the thinking so you wake up every day right if somebody teaches you to turn your negative thinking into positive thinking as an example Or instead of seeing yourself as as poor tell you just you know use affirmations to tell yourself you're wealthy That's wonderful But you wake up every day to the same thoughts you've all been thinking and you got to work with those so it never ends This work this approach it goes upstream to what I call consciousness or being around operating system and begins to create a relationship between the thoughts that I think and how the world occurs for me such that I think that thought. Two guys walk into a room, one says, "How do I fix that?" One says, "Who do I need to show up? That'll take care of this for me." Well, those questions come from a way of the world occurring. And it's not as simple as saying, "Well, you should ask who not how. You actually have to start to notice your thinking and trace it back up to why do I think that way? Why do I walk into a room? What is it about me, my programming, that has me ask how? And when I can see that, well, then I'm able to start reprogramming. I'm not trying to reprogram the thoughts. That's mindset work and it's valuable, but it's exhausting. You have to remind yourself every day for the rest you're like, "Oh, don't ask. Don't ask how. Ask who? Well, what I want is who to be the native question, to be the native thought, the original thought. I want everyone in my life to begin with the thought, who's going to show up to help me? And to do that, I got to look at, "Well, why have I spent a life asking how? How was that programmed and how would I shift that?" Now, do you think that's going to change all when it comes to all that thinking around AI? Are you going to be sharing with your clients to be saying, the native thought should be, "Who can help me with this and be curious not to say who can help me with this or should I leverage AI for it?" AI is a fascinating topic. I think there's so much utility there and also so much limitation. I'm really interested to see to what degree I'll just say it lonely. People get dumber. That's my point about those thinking. I didn't mean to cut you off, but that's why I was trying to see if you were going to go there. Yeah. You know, what do I want to ask AI about versus what do I want to sit with? And here's another simple example that maybe tangentially answers the AI question. I have a question that shows up in my mind when level of consciousness says, "I need an answer." So I find an answer. Now, it doesn't mean it's the right answer or a good answer, but I'll choose an answer and I'll run with it because at the level of consciousness it is uncomfortable for me to not have an answer. One of the things that founders derive a lot of personal worth out of is having an answer. Well, that's great for some things, but for the really, really big, you know, monumental decisions or transformational moments in life, answers don't come quickly. So there's another level of consciousness that says an answer will arrive when it's supposed to. There are questions that I sit with for days. Some questions I've sat with for a year without the need to answer the question. And at the end of that year or whatever time passed, an answer arrived that was better than any answer I could have thought up. Right? So even how we think about unknown versus known, certain versus uncertain questions and answers, problems and solutions, somebody who is uncomfortable or has an operating system that requires knowing something, well, they're going to go to chat GBT, but thinking out of the realm of a good or bad answer, what they'll get is an answer everybody else has. Innovation, transformation, exponential leaps don't come from that. AI can't do that, AI will never do that. Right? What I would say is the the things that have made me the most money, the ideas, the concepts have come from outside of me. They've come from somewhere I'll call it the universe. They've come as a result of me kind of slowing down my mind and saying, let me get my thinking out of the way because I have a lot of thinking and chat GBT is a lot of thinking, but that's not new, I call that dumpster diving. Let's sit there and instead of using this as a as a processor, let's use it as a container and see what shows up. The term insight literally means to appear within, right, to light up from within. It's something showing up from the outside that wasn't there. It's not me regurgitating on my knowledge and coming up with something new. It's literally something new that you're like, I don't even know that. And that's where all the the gold is. Where do you come up with your best thoughts? Is it out on a walk? Is it in the shower? Is it because and I bring that up because I think you bring up a really good point where some people just get uncomfortable not having an answer or something. And I've been guilty of this before. It's just lack of focus and just being so busy across the board. Whereas if sometimes you can allow yourself that space to be uncomfortable, that's where some of these ideas come from. Yeah. So for me, it's less about locations. I have them on the toilet. I have them in the shower. I'm on a walk. I'm with the gym. I'm sleeping. And it's about shifting the paradigm for how I even explore what's next. So I talk about this as creating from commitment. Benjamin Hardy talks a lot about this in terms of shifting the frame. But the idea is when we have a thought about the future, I want to build a business, I want to get me whatever it is. In almost all cases, we are choosing the future state, the future destination through the lens of how I will get there. So most times, most humans use the idea of a goal as a way to utilize their current inventory of skills, knowledge, relationships, resources and say like, what can I do with this that I got already? Not the wrong with that. You'll see what you got. You'll build a plan. You'll get there and you'll have incremental growth. There's a whole other way of creating, I call it creating from commitment, which involves scrapping everything that I have as a means to figure out where I want to be. And for lack of a better way of talking about it, simply pushing myself further out there. A couple of years ago, I sat down in January and I asked the question, what do I want my life to look like when I've got 10 years left to live? I have a number and a date on which I have the idea I'll be here till it's arbitrary. And I backed that up 10 years and I simply sat with, what do I want to be looking around at? What do I want everything to a bit like it's an unanswerable question? How did you come up with that question? I think that's a cool question. Well, I'm always looking for questions that put where past how. So I always talk about there's a where and there's a how. A year ago, I had the idea we came back from Portugal. I took a two-week vacation and I came back and I said, "Well, we're going to do that again." I said, "I want to go for a month." Now, I run several businesses. I haven't taken a month vacation in 30-something years. What I knew intuitively is, I didn't know how to do that. So one of the shifts I've made at the level of operating system is, I'm not interested in where that I know how to get to. I am interested in where's that will create new house. So everything for me is about where would I want to get to that I don't know how to get to yet? Whereas most people start by, "Where do I want to get to that I could figure out how?" So this was just a question that's a natural expression of, "Where is what's interesting to me? Not how. Powerful where's will create new house." Or have the capacity too. So I'm always looking for a where that will completely blow up my entire concept of how I would do it. So another way to think about this is super simple. When somebody comes out of my mouth like, "Here's what I'm going to do." Somebody says, "How are you going to do that? My favorite answer is I have no idea yet." That's the prize. That means I've won. That means I'm doing it right. Versus for a lot of people, I don't know how is like, "Oh, I got to feel bad about that. So I don't want to do it yet." So there's another example of how rewiring our operating system will produce fundamentally. That question is an obvious question to me, but only from the way of being the consciousness that I've cultivated. Pivoting just a little bit here, it's also one of the ways that really differentiates you from how you work with your clients and truly what you believe as what coaches do. So can you share a little bit about that? It'd be very clear. There is a role in a place for all kinds of coaches and consultants. There's a large addressable market for how-tos and tips and tricks and hacks and systems, etc. It's wonderful. It's not the game I choose to play, but it's not the wrong game. I start with the truth that everybody has the answers to whatever they're looking for inside of them. They don't need me to tell them anything. Right? Clients come to me saying, "Well, I'm looking for a sounding board. I want some advice. Sorry. I want accountability." I'm like, "You have to get the wrong guy." Right? What I am here to do is assist them in up-leveling their consciousness such that literally the world and themselves occur for themselves, they see themselves differently. And when we see ourselves, definitely, when we see the world differently, we have different thoughts about it, we take different actions, et cetera. One of my clients just paid me the biggest compliment. We met last week and he said, I missed you sort of. It was really great having a month off and I hated it both. But what it did was it gave me a real appreciation of how this thing that I call transformational coaching to set it apart, how it's about helping me find my own way. Right? I don't, I don't lead my clients anywhere. I don't tell them what to do. I assist them in what they're seeing so they can find their own way and encouraging to look both inward and outward from a different viewpoint and then they see different things and they walk themselves home. - Let's say that I'm a new manager. After listening to this, you understand that you want to be a transformational coach. What advice would you have for somebody to start testing that out with their team members? Let's say to help them take on more and do all this work without having them overseeing them all the time. - Couple of ways I can answer this. People love the term limiting belief and then they say something stupid like, I want to remove my limiting beliefs. What I would say is all beliefs are limiting. Any belief I have limits other beliefs. So if I can get clear on the beliefs that I have and not judge them as wrong, I can see how any belief I have has served me, has fueled me, has created success and potential shortcomings. I did an exercise a couple of years ago in the older years of my practice as a sales influencer and a sales consultant, I would do these assessments. I would come in and I'd assess the sales organization. I'd do this big read out and recommendations about all the shit they were doing wrong and what they needed to do to fix it. Well, this was a couple of years ago and I sat down with the founder and he asked me to do an assessment. I came back and I sat down with him. I said, "Listen, I'm not gonna tell you what's right or wrong. "What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you what I know "about the guy that built this company." And all I did was look at his organization and rather than this is right, this is wrong, I said, "Here's what's occurring "and here's what that probably means "about how the world occurs this guy." Simple example, one of the things I shared with him was, it's clear to me that whoever built this organization which was him really values technical knowledge and understanding the technology. And I could tell because that's what people in the sales organization cared about. Now in my older practice, I would have said, "And that's wrong." I didn't do that, I said, "So let's slow down." So whoever built this really values this. What's great about that? What's really powerful about valuing technical expertise and making sure your team does? And he listed three or four things, right, they know the technology, they don't look bad, they don't write, like, there's benefits. I said, "Wonderful." I said, "Are there any shortcomings you could see?" And it took him a little bit but he started to identify well, they might overvalue the technology, they might not be as right, he saw the gaps. I said, "Wonderful." Given that, what might we do here? Right, see my thing is the answer's always in you, I could tell you, but if you see it, you can't unsee it and then you'll take action on it. With this very simple example, what he saw was his organization was very heavily weighted, overly so, on the technical and no-in-the-product, et cetera. And as a result, they missed all sorts of things that had nothing to do with technology, discovery, buying problems, they said, "Well, we probably need some training over here on that, we need to value this." And stuff was put in place and it equalized. Easiest thing in the world, they didn't have to push a rock uphill, trying to convince them that this was wrong and you had to fix it. And there were two dozen things like that. There is no, this is working, this is not working. Everything is somewhat working, somewhat not working. There's no human on the world that's completely a jerk. There are probably a jerk in some ways and amazing and others. Somebody you see as a jerk, somebody loves them. It's all in the seeing of it. And everything is, some of this and some of that. So the question is, can I discern, right? So go back to the example of the new manager. What do you think got you hired here? What have you done your whole life that got you promoted? They're smart, they can answer that. Wonderful. Where do you think that's gonna be a real value here? Right? You see any potential shortcomings. You see any ways this could really bite you in the ass or burn you out. They'll see it. And once they see it, they'll start to unconsciously even start to put in place actions and efforts to remediate for it. I don't need to coach them on that stuff. They're brilliant. Right? So back to the simple idea, awareness to anything creates the possibility of shifting it. Particularly if we can get off the idea that you're doing it right or wrong. You're doing it how you've done it to get you here. So it's worked. The question is, what is the future utility of it? Back to the thing of founders. Founders aren't bad people because they're control freaks and won't let it, right? That's what got them there. They wouldn't be there without it. Now, do they need to throw the baby out with a bath water? That's unlikely. But if they can see that this is undermining what they want next, well, they'll start to do something about it. They'll Google or chat GPT. How do I delegate more? They need me to tell them how to delegate stuff. Anytime I'm teaching somebody how I'm wasting my time in their money. Anybody paying for how's wasting their money and their time. That's my soapbox. I really like the help them see it because once they see it, they can't unsee it. And they're going to want to take action about that. How does it? I'm going to use that. I was working with a leadership team. And one of the senior leaders had this really pronounced like habit tick whatever you call it. She would say right a lot, right? Like she sounded like a cheeky. She sounded like a 13 year old schoolgirl, which didn't do well in the leadership team meetings and certainly didn't sound good in the board. I mean, it just didn't. It wasn't matured and everybody's bringing their hands and like, what are we going to do about this? We talked to her and we started the conversation by just talking about and what I call creating her as somebody that I know wants to be professional and just kind of checking in with, hey, here's my sense of who you are and who you want to be in the world is that accurate. Here's how I see you. Here's how I'm showing up today. I'm showing up to somebody who wants, you know, the best for you and wants to be successful. So I'm going to share some with you, but I want you to hear it not as criticism, but as something that, you know, you might want to look at. So there's even creating the container there. And then I said, there's a thing that you do, a habit you have, you may or may not be aware of it that I think, you know, you could look at. And she said, I said, what would you like to hear what it is? And she said, yes. And I explained it to her that she just says, right, a lot. She had no awareness of it. Nothing. Now, I didn't need to make her feel bad about it. I'd need to shame her for it. I needed to teach her any freaking techniques to stop that. All I had to do was lovingly bring her awareness to something that it turns out she had no idea what she was doing. And here is a beautiful brilliant sentient being. They can figure it out. Right? Awareness, particularly with love of another of ourselves, it takes care of almost everything. Just having your own awareness, which is incredibly important. That's a great story to you right there because you're just helping bring awareness to somebody else without criticizing or even attacking, just pointing it out. And trusting that, you know, if I want the best for them and they want the best for them, we'll find a way to do it. So many times we say, oh, we got a problem here. We got to deal with it. So then we go in as a problem. I didn't go in like we got a problem here. I went in with, there's something occurring. Let's just look at what it is. Well, this word comes out a lot extra. Right? Now on top of that, we could tell the story. She's mature, blah, blah, blah. I was like, let's not tell any stories. Let's just deal with what is and see. As it turns out, didn't you know she was doing it? Cool. Now that she knows, like, I think it was two weeks later, we had our ELT. It was gone. Completely gone. Yeah. And maybe it doesn't happen overnight, but the thing is, every time she says the word right, it's going to, can't unsee it anymore. And she's going to continue to work on it as a process. Where can our listeners connect with you at? Great question. I try to make myself as unavailable as possible. I do post a little bit on LinkedIn. I have a substack. I have a one page website where the couple words on it are nothing, but dust. Towns and word laws, not an unforgettable name or not a forgettable name, I should say. So if people Google me, they'll find me and I'm always happy to chat. I have a real passion for serving founders on a mission. Founders you want to grow their company, right? I was a founder and I ran into the limits of my operating system. And as my LinkedIn headline says, my first company cost me my marriage, all my money, my health, my sanity, and I'll spend the rest of my life seeing how many others I can help avoid that step. I literally work with folks just starting out to upwards of 100 million. I love founders in the 2-4 million range because that's really where they start to run into the limits of all this operating system that got them there, they're just so frustrated that they can't unlock the value of this business they pour their life and doing it. It's the funnest thing in the world to get that unlocked and then get them a big giant check and then the real fun starts. And then here, what is one question that you think our listeners should ask themselves when they get to listen to this episode? I ask the same question of everybody, which is, what do you truly desire? And sometimes it's in five or 10 years or when you have 10 years, but we don't spend enough time dreaming. Kids dream naturally. They're going to be a firefighter, go to the moon or whatever they're fantasizing. And very quickly, that's all shut down. The more time we can spend just contemplating what I want to wake up to one day. And I ask people to be specific. The life that I live, which is an incredible life, my relationships, my children, how we travel, my quality of life, my income, everything that exists in my life is here because it started one, three, five, 10 years ago as an idea. Not a concept like I want financial freedom, but no, I want this much money. I want to live six months here, like tangible. You can literally design the day, the week, the month, the year of your dreams. And reality will take a little bit to catch up. But people will see my life or what I mean, oh, that's something we might want to do some day. And I'm like, like, what would you want to do? And they'll say, well, like what you're doing, like, don't don't do what's like, what would you want to do? Do you want to be on a boat for a month? Well, start creating that. So spend more time dreaming. If you're in a relationship, make that part of what you talk about with your spouse. If you got kids, like the more you can fantasize and ideate and dream about what's a future that if you woke up one morning in bed and just thought, this is my life, you just start giggling. Like some mornings I wake up and I just chuckle them like, this is my life. It's hilarious. It's amazing. Right. But that's only because again, one, three, five, 10, 20 years ago, I said, what would I want to wake up in the morning to and just have a chuckle that I get to do this? And this is it. And I keep asking that question. I'm not done. So y'all should ask yourself that question. And it's important for listeners to know you're never too old to start dreaming. Never, never too old to start it. So when Talon says, one, three, five, 10, 20 years ago, just do it now. And you've got to have dreams. Because I feel like, just kind of like you said, I think as a child, you have a bunch of dreams and you get that beaten out of you, which is terrible. Talon's in your awesome. I want to thank my friend Meredith Bell for introducing us. Grow strong leaders. Great show. I loved you up so with her. Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate it. And listeners, until next time, stay curious. Keep learning and have a great day. Thank you.