So how does artificial intelligence fit into your
philosophy of destruction now? Is it a tool?
Is it a threat? Is it a mirror?
Is it an amplifier? And what brilliant strategies
can leaders for leadership in this age and time, you know,
adopt using artificial intelligence to achieve progress
for their teams, the organizations, and of course, in
their personal life? Before we dive back into today's
conversation, I want to share something important this
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Your next breakthrough starts here.
Music licensing reimagined. Your live, ladies and gentlemen,
you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast and diagram
for CFO and today Champions. Welcome back.
If you caught our first conversation with Ted Santos,
you know he is not your typical strategist.
He's a leadership disruptor who believes the key to growth lies
in creating problems intentionally.
Today, we dive even deeper into the disruptive leadership model,
how it transforms CEOs, Rishabh's company culture and
specs, exponential breakthroughs.
Buckle up, this episode will challenge how you think about
leadership forever. Let's get right in a rumble.
Introduce them first. Fight out of the blue corner.
A leadership coach with multiple years of experience.
His name is the one, the only Ted, Teddy, no Pendergrass,
Santos and each DZ out of the red corner.
A cohost, the world's best sales and marketing expert in the
world. Noel, let us go.
I'll give it over to the cohost. Ted, thanks so much for joining
us again on another episode. Your first episode was
incredible, talking about paradigm shifting for entire
businesses. Like I said before, and I'll say
it again, it's just such a monumental skill and such an
essential part of leadership through any type of corporate
business. But even as individuals, it's
something that we all need to take to heart and bring into our
daily practice when it comes to the stories that we're telling
ourselves. So you practice breaking apart
the science of creating problems.
You've said if a CEO isn't creating problems that they
should be retrained, and you specifically talk about the
ability of CEOs to create problems and create chaos in
their businesses in order to move through these paradigms.
That's a very, very bold take when we are so excited to dive
in with you. What kind of problems should
leaders be creating and how? I know you've mentioned in your
last episode that they shouldn't be avoiding chaos and that it's
actually about running straight through it.
Does that involve that chaos turning destructive, or is it
about alchemizing it into another way?
Kind of two questions there for you.
So you said the nice version first.
Thanks for inviting me back. It's my pleasure to be here a
second time. It's an honor.
So thank you. And for two, yes, I said if your
CEO is not creating problems, they should be retrained.
But I also said they should be fired or retrained.
Since most break breakthrough initiatives fail in
organizations. There's a good chance they fail
because they become chaotic and people are not trained to be
able to navigate or manage themselves in the face of chaos.
So the punch line in the last video was chaos is not chaos.
It's how you see yourself and how you see what's occurring.
So something happens and your interpretation is this is chaos,
I need to get away from it. And that's when it becomes
destructive. It becomes something you want to
get away from. So we've talked about Steve Jobs
and how I'll give a different example.
There's a story of Steve Jobs going to Xerox Park and he comes
back to Apple and he goes to his head of product development and
says, look, I want you to make me a device.
And it should have this kind of functionality.
It should be about this size and I need this, you know, done
soon. The guy see.
So he walks into a guy's office and and makes this request.
And I saw the interview, and the guy says the first thing he
thought was, what was Steve smoking today?
He must be high. He's asking me to do something
that makes no sense. And he said after he had that
whole conversation with himself, the next thing he said is, well,
I have a job, I guess I better get to work.
So he went to a drugstore, and he started looking for things
that would help him create what fulfills Steve's request.
Do you guys have any idea what that innovation, what the item
was that Steve Jobs asked him to make?
No, I. Need to maybe to put a phone or
put a computer into a phone possibly.
No, it was this. The wireless mouse.
Not wireless. It was the first mouse.
It was made of wood. So the guy, he had no idea.
So the Xerox, they had a division called Xerox Parc,
which which was responsible for many innovations and they just
didn't know how to market it. So Steve Jobs went there, took a
tour, came back and he had, he couldn't show the guy the mouse.
He had to abstractly describe it and say, I wanted to have this
kind of functionality. And the guy had to take that
abstraction and then turn it into something physical.
And so it was it was that he basically created a problem.
And as and as the guy in the interview is saying, his first
thought was Steve Jobs must be high.
Like, he must have smoked some great stuff.
But so this can happen in your organization when you create
problems that people are like, oh, you're asking me to do
something that makes no sense. Maybe you're high.
This is a stupid idea. No one's ever done it.
And I've even seen it with employees saying, why are you
asking me to do this? This makes no sense.
And then after this guy finishes, he's got the first
mouse for Apple and it was made of wood.
And Steve Jobs didn't want it to do exactly what Xerox did.
So it had no right and left click it.
I think it just had one like we still see today.
So this is one of the challenges that people have to deal with.
So in the case of Apple, the guy was able to, after he finished
criticizing and doubting this being a good idea, he went and
did his job and it was a successful start.
He actually put them on the path of creating a mouse.
So this is what happened so often.
And if you as the leader, if you're having those
conversations with yourself and saying, wow, this is this is a
crazy idea. I don't think I'm ready.
My people are not ready. I don't think it's the right
time. How we're going to do it.
If if you're just stuck with all these questions, then it will
never launch, You know, just like sending a man to the moon.
If we just thought it was a stupid idea, we would have never
launched a rocket into space, nothing.
So that's one of the things. So sometimes these ideas seem
crazy initially, but when they're done and it's like, wow,
computer mouse is just a common, no one even thinks about it
being a big deal, but it was a big deal on that day until it
was done. And so if if you're stuck with
these limiting, limiting beliefs, then it can, it can be
chaos that crashes and burns and nothing comes out of it.
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. It's so funny how many
inventions that we don't think about because they're so common
now in our world right now that we don't understand how big of a
deal it was or what type of crack we think someone was
smoking when they came up with an idea.
And it's wild right now. And I think that's a really
amazing insight for a lot of leaders, entrepreneurs, and a
lot of people that tune into our audience.
Because right now, even moving through generative AI, we're
kind of at the beginning of it being public knowledge and
public information and us really building these systems that can
be world, world impacting and world changing.
A lot of them probably have similar ideas that seem so
insane with something so simple, so I think that's just such a
great insight. Are there any notes you happen
to have on this type of structure that include anything
like strategic tension or this kind of sounds like an oxymoron,
but controlled disruption or growth catalysts kind of through
this process? I know that we're speaking about
chaos, which sounds like something very uncontrolled, but
is there some part of your system when you're working with
these teams that you do it in a controlled manner?
So when you're looking to create breakthroughs, which can a lot
of times be a paradigm shift, using the old paradigm to
understand the new paradigm could create a lot of chaos.
And that's where it sounds crazy and doesn't make sense.
I say control is a myth. It doesn't even make sense to
talk about trying to control anything because people can't
even control what they think. Like if I were to say think
nothing right now, whether it's the two of you or someone
listening, to be able to just think nothing like turning off a
light switch without seeing pictures, without hearing words,
nothing. There are very few people who
will do that very well. Which there there you go that
shows you can't even control what you think.
So why are you trying to control anything else?
So how do you manage yourself in the face of when things are not
going the way you want them to go and not being stuck with, I
think we may have talked about identity.
So people have an identity and that identity really informs you
about what you can and cannot think.
Like. People like me don't think like
that We don't speak that way. We don't do things like that.
And that you end up pigeonholing yourself, which then creates all
these blind spots and limiting beliefs that seem like reality,
except that was an identity that even existed before you were
born. And you're living like it's the
fact of life and you have no way out of it.
So there becomes this automatic. It's, I hate to say this, it's
like human beings respond like robots.
There's a certain thing that occurs like a stimulus and you
have this automatic response. Like there are certain words
that you can say to people depending on what country you're
in, what culture, and they have an automatic response.
Like they don't even really know why they respond that way with
that's what was given to them. You're supposed to respond to
that this way. In my, in my book, even though
my book is, is technically not about business.
I talk about, I give a scenario in the book and I I ask, there
are women who are basically interviewing me.
And I asked if you've been in a relationship for two years and
everything is going well. And the guy comes home and he
has a dozen roses and he opens a little box that has A2 carat
emerald shaped diamond ring in it.
It's flawless. How are you going to feel?
You're going to be upset, you're going to be angry.
Like how would you feel Noella, if the guy you've been seeing
for two years comes home? Dozen roses, little box.
He opens in a nice shiny 2 carat emerald shaped diamond ring.
It's beautiful. And.
It's for you, right? But OK, so now here's the
question. If he comes home with a dozen
dandelions and he gets a rock in a yard about the size of A2
carat ring, and he wraps it in some metal and opens the box and
presents it to you, how you going to feel?
Offended. OK.
Now, which is actually a really good example because that's.
In both cases, he presented flowers in a rock and one you're
happy and the other one you're offended.
Why? Like who told you you should be
offended or happy? Strictly due to the
association's based off of the labeling that we subscribe to
associated with proposals, engagement and romance.
And we build an entire identity around that, and we're locked in
and nothing can exist outside of that, right?
A dozen dandelions, like I don't want that.
A rock in the yard. Go away.
You don't love me. It's almost like it's really
like a machine. It's a automatic response.
Yeah, I think that's really powerful.
We actually had a conversation in AI earlier.
We actually had an extensive conversation about kind of about
identity and kind of about labeling.
But one of the, it reminds me of just when you're speaking about
identities and how we just assume automatic nature or
automatic actions or maybe workflows or schedules or really
anything based off the labels that we put on ourselves.
I'm a mother. So it just reminded me
immediately of even just a term of mother.
And like what we assume that means, you know, which a lot of
times is overworking exhaustion, you know, self neglect, things
like that. And those are natural.
Like women naturally take on those types of trades just based
off of the label and the assumption.
So amazing, amazing insights for sure.
And when it comes to relationships, like we've
mentioned before, even though your book isn't necessarily just
about business, we are the extent of our relationships and
the identities we put on ourself, they go far beyond just
the relationships we hold with each other.
They flood into our work life as well.
And we are essentially made-up of the people we spend the most
time with. So I think it integrates quite
perfectly. I think what we want to talk
about next is the psychology of disruption.
And I think AI is going to go go into that with us.
So I'll address, but I want to address something you said you
you said being a mother and burnout.
It's because the prevailing conversation in society is how
people get they're so burnt out. And that was the word after
COVID, people are burnt out. If you listen to what you said,
there is this conversation that people, both men and women,
women especially, are listening to that says, as a mother, if I
do all these things, I'm going to be burnt out.
And what do you think happens if you keep telling yourself you're
going to be burnt out? And so I'm saying that happens
in the workforce, people, we give people license and
permission to be burnt out even though they're not.
But we keep, it's almost like we're marketing burnout.
We're marketing it to mothers, we're marketing it to people in
in the business world. And now people can justify and
say, well, I'm only human. But see, this is we're going
back to an identity. People don't create their
identity. They're given their identity and
they accept it. So, you know, it's interesting
how I, I've said to you, I lived in the Belize in the jungle with
mine, Indians, no electricity or running water.
And you can see how the conversations in it in the
village with 329 people creates one kind of identity, but it's
those people are not exposed to some of the conversations that
exist in New York City. But if someone from New York
goes there and introduces those conversations.
And I, I saw that happen. One of the daughters with the in
the family I stayed with, she said, oh, I want to live in New
York because everyone in New York is rich.
And she believed that. So she'll go to New York and
expect to be rich. I, I don't know the basis.
You know what, there's this automatic conversation.
And she would have this identity based around New York.
But living where she lived, she thought it was horrible and
terrible. And there are probably lots of
people in New York who would love to live in clean air,
clean, clean water and, you know, all that stuff.
You know they work hard to become really rich so they can
buy a place where she lives, right?
Right. She's trying to go to New York
to become rich. So, so so I'm saying that
burnout is really given to people.
It becomes part of an identity. It's a part of a mother's
identity. If I do all these things, I'm
burnt out. And but then you see people
working on something like look at a professional athlete, you
rarely hear about athletes burning out.
You know, in our last video I talked about you saying Bolt
training so hard he vomited. The same with Arnold
Schwarzenegger. He won Mr. Universe 7 times and
you didn't hear him saying, oh man, I don't think I'm going to
be winning this year because I'm burnt out.
I've been training so hard I vomit.
The guy wins. So people, part of what I I want
people to understand is how you manage yourself in chaos is
correlated with these automatic conversations, these automatic
limiting beliefs of already knowing if something is good or
bad before. Like knowing that the diamond is
better than the rock from the yard, you already know it before
it even is presented. And so people, people know
they're going to be burnt out before they're even burnt out.
And then they can justify why they quit and say, well, I'm
only human. And that's one of the best
justifications. I'm only human.
What do you want from me? And so that's what can happen in
the face of of chaos. So now you're asking me about
AI. That can be a big conversation.
I am AI. I just want to mention one more
thing I actually want to expand a little bit because the
conversation me and Adam Mulla had earlier in private was
primarily around the fact that most people cannot control their
thoughts. And I, when you're speaking
about how we take these assumptions automatically, it's
really interesting just how all day, every day, whether it's in
our culture, at work, at school. On the train, on the bus,
wherever we're at, or on social media.
Especially on social media, we're constantly bombarded with
thousands of pieces of stimuli that we automatically agree to.
So it's almost like every piece of stimuli is an opportunity for
us to agree with something and put it on our identity
subconsciously, even if we don't realize it.
So by the time we get to the point where we're pigeon holder,
pigeon holed ourselves into something like, for example, the
identity of the single mother or example, the identity of the
burnt out CEO, it's almost like tunnel vision.
You know, there's this tunnel vision we can't really see
outside of those identities. So just kind of connecting
something we talked about earlier because I just find it
so relevant in this conversation.
And it's incredibly important because like we're talking about
in paradigms where paradigm shifting, we're basically
talking about not knowing what we don't know.
And when we're constantly making these thousands upon thousands
of subconscious agreements throughout our life, within our
culture, through our family, friends, teachers, anything
about ourselves, about our identity, how are we supposed to
align? Or you know, like you say, we
can't even have a how for this because we've because we've
already pigeonholed ourselves, pigeonholed ourselves into
whatever labels that we want to put on ourselves.
So I think psychology of disruption, I think at a MOLA is
going to take that over and kind of go into the next segment, OK.
Teddy nuts. Teddy Pendergrass.
All right, I have a couple of things to tell you.
I have a surprise for you anyways.
But before I let the cat out of the bag, I need to tell you that
I am actually burnt out. I am burnt out by the story you
told about New York. I don't know.
Who, who, who told that Lady about New York?
Is it the same New York that I know?
The New Yorker, The rats at the train station?
You speak about controlling chaos.
I was doing a very hard job controlling the chaos in my
head. That's.
That's a good way to put it right?
I don't I. Don't know what New York you
guys are talking about. I love America.
Americans, please don't call for me.
But New York is not. Well, there, there are quite a
few wealthy people in New York. There are there are many.
Black we talk about clean environment.
I know, I don't think. I don't think so.
For the common person, maybe,
maybe I need to know about a new New York.
Maybe there's a New York. But the New York that I know is
not what that person was sold. They were sold a dream.
And it's crazy how people have like certain narratives of
certain places in their heads. And yes, same thing as well.
Like I come from Africa and coming to the United Kingdom, I,
I met a lot of people who have a very crazy false narrative about
Africa. And I'm like, what are you
talking about? Like a very big part of
education is travelling. You need to see places for
yourself to know what they really look like.
And yeah, a lot of people just think about the popular places.
For example, I, I traveled to Lithuania and I saw a different
narrative from what is being painted like in, in the Western
world, like really amazing people.
Even cases like Morocco as well. I went immediately after the,
the earthquake, you know, that happened there and there was a
bit of political unrest about the, the image that the press we
have painted to the world was that, oh, it's a very dangerous
place. You can get killed or I did not
get killed. Anyways, moving on from that.
So I was just going to, you know, open that like people
think narratives until you get into that physical zone.
And I think you are a person that can speak more about that.
You've been in Costa Rica, you've been in a lot of these
places, right? But there was something, and I
think I did discuss this in private with Morena.
It's crazy how the people with the least resources monetary
wise tend to have the most what I say value in terms of
happiness, pure happiness, and they tend to have a better
quality of life, right? So I think you are the best
person to speak to that. Why is that?
Less money, more happiness, better quality of life.
But with more money, you're buying less with more with more
in the Western world. I would have to see.
I would have to see statistics on that.
I don't know if that's a fact. Not sure where you found that.
That is for bio personal research, right?
That's what I've been able to observe, right?
And I think you should have been able to observe that, right?
You see these communities, right?
They're able to self, would I say, regulate on like advanced
communities wherein you spend a lot on the police, you spend a
lot on the emphasis, yet you still have cares.
You still have. Yeah.
So, So what? What's happening in the world?
So boy, this may be disruptive what I'm going to say.
I love disruption. Good.
So when I, when I meet people who say they just want to be
happy, I, I see them as people with no ambition.
Why would you would happiness be something you're chasing in
life? Why would you think that
happiness is going to come from your environment, whether it's a
clean environment or it's whether it's a real jungle or a
concrete jungle, Like none of that has anything to do with
happiness. So what I like is the the Greeks
have this word called eudaimonia and it's spelled EUDOMONIA
Eudaimonia. And it seemed the ancient Greeks
had a better handle on life because they didn't see chasing
happiness as being worth anything.
What they thought was eudaimonia was the state to pursue.
And eudaimonia is the result of taking on something that was
difficult, had some obstacles, and it took something to
accomplish it. And when you accomplish it, that
sensation of accomplishment is what they call eudaimonia.
A lot of people, if you Google eudaimonia, you'll think it's
synonymous with happiness and it really isn't.
Because this may be one reason why you have so many people that
turn to alcohol or substance looking for happiness because
you can, you can get a dopamine hit from alcohol or or heroin or
something else to actually accomplish something and have
the sense of accomplishment and all the things that come with
it. It could be new skills.
You maybe you met new people. There are all kinds of things
that benefit you from accomplishing something that was
beyond just tying your shoe. So yeah, eudaimonias is I would
say would be much more valuable, except we do live in a society
where people are measuring quality of life based on
happiness. And you can literally tell your
brain I'm happy by doing the following.
I'm so happy, I'm so happy, I'm so happy, I'm so and you will be
happy. Exactly, Yeah.
You will be just by saying I'm so happy, but you didn't
accomplish anything. You can do that that at any
time. So why would someone be
pursuing? I'm so happy, I'm so heavy, I'm
so happy. I think I think I love your your
what I say the way you explained it.
And one very important thing is happiness is actually free.
You can get it in any way you, you fit, right?
You can be happy by just saying I am happy.
So you see you, you walk into poor communities, for example,
and you see the people celebrating.
They're like really happy. The Turner party, right?
I saw somewhere in Brazil, it was a muddied tool.
And you know, this Brazilians were celebrating, taking alcohol
and playing football in the swamp.
And it clicked in my brain like these people are happy even
though they are in like deteriorated conditions.
So like it's just a function of the mindset, right?
And that that's a great way to segue into what I was going to
ask you. That is the psychology of
disruption. You know, like how does the
mindset condition and play into leaders ability to disrupt their
own systems before external forces do that?
Well, I would. I would actually look at it from
an ontological approach, not a psychological.
Let's have it. Well, ontology is the study of
being, so you can do things and say I'm happy doing that, but
who are you being? So there's a correlation with
your language. If you, you can, you can really
get to know people by listening to their language and people
language happiness. And it's not always based on
they're doing these things and they're so happy, even though
they're they are poor. And if you listen to their
language, you may find that they're not as happy as you, you
think just because they're laughing and and joking with
those things. And then you go and I've dined
with billionaires and I'm not, that's not an exaggeration to
assume that money is some path to unhappiness is is that's more
pop culture. So pop culture promotes a lot
and people buy it. So there's a correlation between
the language, how you language and express yourself in the
world and who you're being. So let's just throw happiness
off the table for a second and look at high performance.
And we spoke about this in the last video.
You can you can distinguish a high performer in any profession
through their language, especially when they are faced
with a breakdown, when things don't go the way they want,
watch them. Watch how they language.
Now, a lot of high performers will not be able to necessarily
tell you how they do that. That's why when someone writes a
book on how to be a high performer and in a sport, the
person reading it never becomes that person because there's a
part of it that they don't really always know how to tell
you and give you access to. So who they are being, they
don't really know how to to give you that.
You can emulate LeBron James and Michael Jordan, but their
mindset in the language that they created to become who they
are, that's the part most people don't have.
They don't have access to that, and the the high performer
doesn't always know how to give you access to that.
I love that. I remember an ex colleague of
mine called me a few months ago and asked me please you need to
give me a master class on how to be consistent by your goals
because they studied my body of work and said, oh, you've been
doing podcasting for two years now and I admire how consistent
you have been. You seem to be so passionate
about this thing and I watched you every week without Phil
release an episode except from two weeks in January when you
went off and I want to reprint. I'm like, oh, wow, interesting.
So the world takes notes. They see the time stamps.
But back to your point. How do you teach being
consistent? I I couldn't do that master
class because how do I teach a person to be consistent at
something they pick to to do It's.
Just so offline, I don't know, the three of us spoke.
Yeah, the three of us spoke about something.
And I'll give, I'll, we'll give a real case study of of a person
and how that happened. So I had a client, a guy was
about 62 years old, EPA by profession.
That's where he started. He worked for a Price
Waterhouse. Y'all is attacking my.
Profession decided to do a yes, yes, he was 62.
So this this is 20 years ago and he decided to make a career
change. He went into the mortgage
industry and he was doing OK and then he hit a slump and he
couldn't get out of it. Everyday he went to work
expecting to be fired and when he came to me he worked with me
and the the outcome was in the first three months of working
with me he doubled his productivity and then in the
subsequent 3 months he doubled that.
So if he came to me doing 2 units of productivity, he was
doing 4 in three months, and then he was doing 8 after six
months. So what?
Why was this guy in a rut and couldn't get out?
What this guy was good at was he was great at breaking the ice so
he could get meetings with people.
He called heavy hitters. They were investors, and he
would make a joke. Everyone would laugh.
They're comfortable. He'd make a second joke and
they'd laugh and they're comfortable.
And then, you know, everyone's sort of ready to do business and
he talks a little business and then he makes another joke and
another joke and everyone really likes him and they're ready to
go out and have a beer with him later on.
They're not doing a deal with him.
He joked his way out of a deal and he couldn't understand why
he wasn't closing deals. So and in my mindset,
technology, there are questions that I asked to uncover saboteur
behavior. And what we discovered was when
he was 13, he was in a car with guys who were like 17 and 18.
And one of the guys turned around, looked at him and said,
what's this little kid doing with us?
And he made a joke. And everyone laughed.
They put their arm around him and said, yo, you're cool.
You can be with us. So when he was, when he failed
to be, you can say in his mind, he failed to be worthy of being
in the company of those young guys.
He overcompensated by making a joke.
The way he survived that situation and not get kicked out
of the car was to make a joke and everyone laughed.
Noun from 13 and here he is, 62, still using the same strategy.
Which you don't. It's not a bad thing, you don't
want to throw it away, but it all at some point it would
sabotage him because that was the only gear he had.
So when he gets into this conversation with self as to
whether he belongs or not, he still use the same system he
used at 13 because it worked, yes proof it worked and he's now
stuck with it once he's so. And he was already aware of that
situation happened. So being aware doesn't help you.
He had to be able to distinguish what he said to himself in that
moment that someone asked why is he with us and his lack of
belonging. That's the conversation.
So now when you put him in front of heavy hitters, he noun is
able to distinguish when that conversation comes back.
So what we did is we worked on him distinguishing that.
So now he's no longer stuck with it because he thought that's
just the guy who I am. Now he can see it's not who he
is. It's just how he dealt with a a
moment in time. And then the other part is we
worked on selling strategies so that he actually knows what
questions to ask to uncover what his prospects need.
So there then he can deliver on what they need.
So he still was an icebreaker, but now he had the whole toolkit
for being able to navigate the conversation.
And whenever he starts thinking I don't belong, he now has a way
of managing himself so that conversation of not belonging
doesn't run the show for him. Before he met me, that was
running the show for him. So that's the you could say that
he had an identity that was, you know, it was it was made at part
of it is at 13, you know, that different things happen at
different times in our lives that will shape and mold and
identity. And it was based on an
assumption that he didn't belong in a whole story that he made-up
about how he doesn't belong around certain people and the
way he survives, and that that conversation is to be the funny
guy. So how do you unlock that beast
inside of you? Yeah, you're aware.
It's not just enough to be aware, but you also need that
mental flexibility, you know, to condition your mind to embrace
change, to embrace uncertainty. How do you unlock that beast
inside of you to become El Matador?
So in in that case, the gentleman had no distinctions
for the conversations he was having with himself that
derailed him. And people have those, look at
the age of three, most children, they say around 3, they will
have the ambition to want to help a parent.
It could be a boy seeing his dad fixing a car and he comes out,
picks up a screwdriver and comes up like I want to help.
And another real story. There was a woman I know, she
was adopted from South America. She was brought up to New York.
She's four years old. And her parents, you know, they,
they are, we have the means to take great care of her.
So she's in this good household and they eat dinner and this
little girl is 4 years old, pulls a chair up to the sink and
starts washing dishes. And her adopted mom said, oh,
honey, you're going to get hurt. Don't do that.
So as a three or four year old, the interpretation, the
conversation that that child could make is I cannot work.
I have nothing to contribute. And they say OK, And then around
8:00 when you ask them to start doing chores, they're now in
conflict with themselves because at 4 she was told she couldn't
help, she couldn't contribute, she cannot work.
That's the four year old interpretation.
Now when she goes off to college and has to get a job, she's in
conflict because since she was 4, she believes she couldn't
work and she just thought that's who she was.
So if her mother would have said instead, oh honey, that's so
good, you want to help, let me help you.
And if they would have done it together, she would have had,
she would have had a very healthy relationship towards
work because she would have seen it.
Or I have something to offer, I can contribute, I can work.
But that's not what happened. So now and she's stuck and she
tries to open businesses. It doesn't work because working
is hard for her because she's in conflict with her self.
So you, you want to release the beast.
Before you can do that, the beast is chained by this entire
network of conversations that tell you what you can and cannot
do. And at a young age you worked
out you you interpreted a situation that like the guy, the
the CPA that told you when you belong and when you don't belong
and how to deal with it because you did something that worked.
And the woman who was 4 was told not to help because in her
interpretation is I have nothing to offer.
So until you address those, those are the blind spots.
All you're going to do is end up putting icing on a mud pie and
you're trying to force it. So the the woman who was told to
not help at 4, she, you know, she worked for some great
companies. She tried to start businesses.
She was trying to force it. And she just couldn't do it
until we were able. Like now she has a successful
retail store doing things that she really likes doing.
But before that she had no distinctions.
That was just an event that happened in her life and she was
aware of it. She had no distinction for how
that event shaped her identity. It's a great way to move to the
next thing we have on the agenda that is for active disruption.
So how do you act effect change before the market forces of
demand and supply force you to change, right?
You talk about how she had to deal with her, what I say, how
limitations, how limiting the limits, right?
And of course, right, it's not just about changing.
You need to sustain that evolution, right?
That is building habits that can help you to be in that perpetual
state of transformation. So how?
How do you get into that high level?
Well, in those two cases, those are examples of people
discharging baggage. Most people are just trying to
run and, and that's how you'll end up with someone saying
burnout because they're in conflict with themselves.
So the first is you want to discharge baggage and then you
start talking about the future that you're committed to
creating. In the last video, we I asked
you about passion and, and commitment.
And when the rubber meets the road, people really do you know
that their power is in commitment, not in passion.
So it's it's becoming, it's committing to something.
But also, so when you are able, when you have distinctions for
those blind spots, it makes it easier to go forward because in
the past, those conversations, limiting beliefs will derail
you. But now that you can distinguish
them, you can own them. The, the way one client put it
to me is that before when he wanted to go down a new street,
he would just turn around and go back.
But now he can hear the conversation that tells him to
turn around and go back. And he can go one block and then
he can explore that new block. And then as he goes further, he
can go down to blocks, three blocks.
And he now can see all these streets that he never knew
existed because before he would start and turn around and go
back immediately because he already knew what he was good at
or or not good at, or he didn't belong or whatever.
Their interpretation is what depends on what happened when
you were young. It's crazy how these
conversations are so and reaching and educating, right?
OK, I'll give an open confession.
So for a person like myself, I feel blessed having access to
the great minds that exist in my time.
Minds like yourself and a minds like my Co host Noela.
We had our first episode. I have gone back to listen to it
a number of times and each time it's not like the previous time
they're like new levels of would I say what's the word now?
Epiphanies a person and you're speaking with a person who's not
right. It's it's always great to
document it and you know I love what we used to say in the big
four, even though you seem to have a thing against us.
Of course, who are ex prize motor housekeepers right.
We see if it was not documented, it was not done.
So I'm really grateful that this will meet you.
And of course, you know, speaking with new Allen's well,
you know, like you speak with wise people like this.
And you know, sometimes they don't even intend to even give
you a nugget when you are a person who is I see myself like
a sponge, right? I absorb data, absorb
information. You know, I'm a lifelong
student. I'm very, very proud to be a
student. And I learned from the people
around me. And it baffles me when people
are given information freely and they don't like take it
hungryly, But that's that's a conversation for another day.
Your your words of wisdom, right?
Even intentionally or unintentionally actually help
unlock setting limiting beliefs, right?
And I don't know if this happens with the two of you.
Sometimes you're listening to something or you're having a
conversation and you feel like you've unlocked another level.
It feels like a game when you move from level E to level 9,
you just you have that feeling like it's unlocked, right?
So right now in this in this conversation, I've I've felt
some unlocking. You've actually unlocked the
level. Thank you very much.
I'll give it back, Cinderella. You're welcome.
Thank you. So I have a couple, I have a
couple questions based off of the stories that you've been
sharing in your experience. My first question is when you're
working with somebody and they're trying to uncover their
childhood memories or whatever, whatever age, you know, they
could be a teenager, could be a toddler.
Is there a specific method you use?
Like I know a lot of people use things like hypnosis or
meditation, or they'll have a certain type of practice to
relax the person they're working with.
Do you use any type of those methods for the teams or the
leaders or the business owners that you're working with to get
into a state where they're able to Remember, Remember?
You have to know what questions to ask.
There's a story of an old guy. He was an engineer in World War
2 and they were running this ship from World War 2.
And the guy, the old, now he's 90 years old.
So back in the day when he was young, he worked on a ship and
today this ship from World War 2 is having a problem.
So there's only one guy in the world knows how to work on these
ships. They call him. 90 year old guy
comes in puts his ear on the engine.
He listens and he said I'll be back and he comes back with his
hammer with the mallet and he bangs on the engine and he says
that will be and he hits the engine, you know and he says
start it up and it starts and they're like wow that's amazing.
He said that would be $10,000 like but took you like less than
a minute to fix it. Why should we pay you 10,000?
He said well, it's 999 for the hammer and the other $9090.00 is
knowing where to hit and that's what you're paying.
You're paying from my experience of knowing exactly where to hit
and it worked. I know exactly what to ask.
So. I've heard that theory before.
You do it so it sounds like you do it more through questions and
knowing the white, the white, the right questions to ask
people, which is amazing. Do you ever come in contact with
people who maybe have suppressed memories or memory loss or
things like that to where they can't really pinpoint it?
Or does your set of questions that you use and the method that
you do, does that ever help uncover repressed memories or
things like that to help them pinpoint those moments?
I think only once someone couldn't answer the question.
I've never seen people not answer it.
I've may, I may, I may have said this to the two of you.
I remember I met with these two CE OS, both in their 50s, both
Ivy League educated. And before we started, I said,
what you're going to find out today is the five year old and
you was still running your life. And they laughed at me and said
you're, you know, you know who I am, blah, blah.
And about 90 minutes in they said, Oh my God, I don't want
the five year old running my life anymore.
So it, it's, it's not that difficult to uncover.
I would say that you could have repressed memories, but it might
be more of someone being more protective and not wanting to
talk about it. But generally people will talk
about it. There have been some sensitive
situations that people have discussed when it's in a group.
It it's interesting how that group dynamic, we'll actually
pull it out and sometimes, well, not sometimes, often people will
give me a situation and then I'll ask more questions only to
discover that what that. So now we have to dig.
Right, right. I think that's so important.
It just made me want to ask because I know for our listeners
for sure, you know, whether they're business owners,
students, whatever walk of life they're at right now, or even
CEO's who haven't been able to go through this process.
Maybe we have CEO's listening who still have the five year old
running their lives. It kind of gives a small insight
on maybe how to help themselves start uncovering those patterns
and maybe connecting those dots. I think we're going to talk a
little bit about culture. Culture has a battlefield.
What other practical steps can the CEO's, these business
owners, even students or does anybody a mom listening, you
never know, can leaders take to build teams or build situation
structures that thrive through uncertainty, through change,
through chaos? Train your people.
People, Our education system is
not designed to train people for uncertainty.
Education system is designed for you to get the right answer from
a book and give the right answer on a test.
That's how we are rewarded and we bring that into the
workplace. So we are trained to deal with
certainty, to be experts in something.
Speaking about Steve Jobs, because he seemed to be more
competent in dealing with uncertainty.
Training people when it comes. To let let me just say this.
So when I we talked about the 2 examples, the in the mortgage
industry and a woman as a child washing dishes, they actually
had to unlearn those conversations they were having
with themselves. So you're dismantling them.
That's why you're discharging baggage, not making it like it
was wrong. It's something that happened and
that's your interpretation as a 13 year old, as a four year old,
that's, that's what you had at 4:00.
So if just telling people to get over it and go through it, like
some of the the worst advice you can tell someone is you're an
adult now and get over it. I agree because a lot of the
things that, well, when we're working with paradigms, the
thing that's blocking the person, they don't know what
they don't know. So to say, just get over it.
They might not even have awareness of what they're
getting over yet. Would they just see maybe a
symptom or they see the aftermath?
Right. They'll they'll be aware that
things certain things happen, but they are, they have no
distinctions for how it impacted them, right and how that has
stuck with them all these years. So how do you train dealing with
uncertainty when you're coming out of a system?
Maybe you've been in a workforce for 10/15/20 years that mirrors
the education system of knowing how to find a specific answer in
order to be correct, to get a Gold Star, right?
How do we retrain ourselves? Or what are practical steps that
leaders can take to retrain themselves, retrain their teams
to face chaos, love chaos, however you want to put it.
Or be even just more familiar with facing uncertainty.
Is it just creating problems or is it kind of a multi layered
thing? Yeah, so, so you can as a leader
help your people, but the, the real big answer is you're,
you're asking how do you become a Navy SEAL?
It's not going to be from reading books and being aware.
You train to become a Navy SEAL and the military invests
$2,000,000 in each person to become a Navy SEAL.
That's a big investment. They don't, they don't.
And these are, these are Navy Seals are smart people that
just, you know, just to start, they are intelligent and they
are physically fit. That's not enough to be a Navy
SEAL. You train and most people who
sign up to become a Navy SEAL do not become Navy Seals.
Most don't make the cut. So that's why I say train your
people to be able Navy SEAL, you're trained to get there.
So one thing that I've seen be very effective, and you as a
leader will need to know how to manage people with what I'm
about to say. Ask your people to do things
they don't know how to do. See, as a leader, you first have
to have kind of an inventory of the person and what they are
capable of, and then look at a world slightly outside of that
and stretch them beyond where they are.
So if you ask someone to do something they don't know how to
do, I've seen it where they say, well, I don't know how to do
that. You're you're overestimating me.
I'm not confident and see, that's when you hear all these
limiting beliefs, They're telling you that they don't know
how to do it. I can't do it.
I've never done this. They're giving you all the
reasons and as a leader, if you stay with them instead of just,
they're selling you, basically, they're selling you on why they
can't do it. But if you provide the kind of
support in the conversations that put them at ease.
I remember asking someone to do something and I said hey take 90
minutes work on this and if you have any questions just come see
me. But you have 90 minutes to work
on this and they spent had already spent 5 minutes.
And 5 minutes is a long time trying to convince someone that
you are incompetent. And the guy goes off and he
comes back in 90 minutes and says, Oh my God, I did it.
I didn't believe I knew how to do this.
And it's like, great, now I just created a whole new
accountability for you now, now that you you built it from
nothing, from the ground up. So asking people to do things
they don't know how to do. And as soon as they say, I can't
do it, if you cop out like they do, then you'll have a team of
people who are not good. So going back to the story of
Steve Jobs and the first computer mouse in Apple, he
asked the guy to do something he didn't know how to do.
And so in in doing it, there are so many other things that you
develop, but there's something called neuroplasticity where,
you know, in our brains we have neural pathways that look almost
like roadways in your brain. And that's where all the, all
the information, all everything you know, you've seen, you've
heard your knowledge, you call experience, all of that are
they're stored in your neural pathways.
And when you're asked to do something that your neural
pathways has no knowledge on how to do, people go to default.
And it's not, it's not as simple as saying it's uncomfortable.
There's an incompetence. They have no competence in their
brain to accomplish it. So it's quick to say, I can't do
it. And once they do do it, they
start growing completely new neural pathways that will now
contain new knowledge in new perspectives.
And if you do that with people enough times they start that's
the brain is plastic, it can grow completely new neural
pathways which then helps the person have a.
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A much broader view on life and and ways to solve problems and
they become much better. They're able to transfer now you
put them in something completely unknown, but you've asked them
to do things they didn't know how to do enough times that they
become comfortable and in developing that neuroplasticity.
So that's a great way to do it. And you don't need any kind of
special training. You don't need my secret sauce
and how I do it and help people uncover blind spots.
It's just a. It's a fairly simple way to do.
It so it sounds like. Doella, if we please allow me
to, to tackle Ted head on on this one.
I'm not talking about actually trying to, to corroborate with
him because he he felt like Ted was actually describing myself,
right? I think about my life because,
you know, sometimes life puts you on that neuroplasticity
journey, right? Maybe I'm a neuroplastic
surgeon. I don't know, like in high
school, I was a science student and you know, I'm also coming
from what I say, a Christian home, a home of faith.
And my mom used to like drum the scriptures in our heads.
And one of the scriptures that was really drummed every day was
Philippians chapter 4, verse 13. I can do all things through
crisis strengthens me. I never tell my parents.
You can't do something like, yeah, I don't know, maybe they
could kill you for for saying that, like just attempted.
I remember like growing up, my dad sort of forced myself or my
younger brothers to work with the levers building our house.
So we were like working with the brick layers, mixing cement and
gravel and we learned all this stuff.
Then he pushed us to work with the carpenters and like the
different handy, you know, workmen.
We had to like learn different crafts, right.
And we're involved in like the family business doing fish
farming, poultry farming. So by the time I was done with
high school, like I could do like different, multiple things.
The, the mentality was always like, if you tell me to do
something new, it will probably relate to something I've done
before. Or I'll just be like, OK, yeah,
it's it's not new being there done that.
So I was a science student being the whole physics, chemistry,
biology, but ended up studying economics, then ended up
becoming a tattered accountant, what you guys call ACPA.
And you know, from there delving into tech, delving into
communication media like my life has just been and who ex
colleague of mine from university was on this podcast
one time he said, I've watched you, I've watched you.
You've always been morphed. And that's why he said you're
always metamorphosis into something else.
Like since when we're in our 20s and I don't know, is that like
life forcing you to be neuroplastic?
Because I don't even know what I became people of doing.
I could maybe next year decide to learn some new skill, but The
thing is, over time I've discovered that I'm never scared
to learn something new because I just feel like my brain has been
there multiple times. So, and I think now it's
becoming the real human AI. You know, learning different AI
tools like life forces you sometimes or I love for you to
speak to that like some people do it deliberately.
For some of us, life actually forced us on that pathway.
No, neuroplasticity is just a normal part of life.
The reason all of us healthy human beings were not able to
walk as as infants because we didn't have neural pathways in
our brain to walk. So we had we need
neuroplasticity to talk, to feed yourself, to put clothes on.
All of those things required neuroplasticity.
And I can, I can help people better understand.
So last year I met a guy and he has a 27 year old daughter.
Who in high school, played sports, went off to college, did
well, and then at 2627 gets into a car accident and her head hits
so hard that her neural pathways that he tells her to walk
disconnected. She's 27 years old and cannot
walk collectually. She knows how to walk.
She cannot because the part of the brain that was connected to
telling the body what to do and walking is so complex.
There's so many feed the back loops, there's this back and
forth with the brain to the muscles to the feet to which
nerve endings in it to so that you don't fall over and that
connection is lost. So now she has to engage in
neuroplasticity to grow new neural pathways to connect to
that so that she can walk again. See, this is how important
neuroplasticity is. So it's a normal part of human
existence. So if if they did a brain scan
when you're first born, you have X amount of neural pathways in
your brain. By the time you're 2, that grows
exponentially. By the time you're 10, it you
have even more pathways. And they used to think you
humans had a limited like by a certain age, that was it.
You wouldn't have more. And then most recently they have
found that you can grow more neural pathways.
The challenge with with that is it's almost like if you've never
gone to the gym and you're build working on a muscle, you you may
feel sores, you may in that uncertainty of growing new
neural pathways. You may even experience a
headache because the brain has that new neural pathway growing
it. So that would be what people
would describe as uncomfortable. When you hear someone say, Oh my
God, you're talking to me about things, that it's giving me a
headache because they have nowhere in their brain to put
that. So they have to grow a new
neural pathway. And it's easier to say stop.
I don't want to hear this anymore instead of working
through it. I was going to touch on that,
that exact thing, right? You, you speaking reminds me of
my colleagues, you know, from the B4 accounting firms.
It's interesting how a lot of smart people work with the BIG4
counseling firms, but we are also like hiring specialist.
I was an auditor, but I was kind of lucky to have moved from PwC
to KPMG then to like a medium sized firm and working like
across different industries. There are people that I've met
that the whole of their career they worked with an industry
specific unit. Now tell these people, OK, and
you ordered another industry, they'll tell you clear cut, I
don't know how to do it and they don't want to attempt it, right?
And it's, it's, it's crazy. Like why can't you apply your
mind to do something else, right?
Some people tell and even recently like working with
somebody who is XD for like they are so used to working with
templates. If you don't give them a
template they like, oh, they can't, you know, come up with
something innovative outside of, you know, yeah.
Would I say their templates or the ways in which they work?
So a lot of them are stuck in their ways, and it's amazing.
Like, why would you be stuck in a particular pathway, right?
So is it that like doing certain jobs that require certain
standards, certain templates, reduces your neuroplasticity?
It's, it's going back to the woman washing dishes and a guy
in the mortgage industry there. There are conversations that
will tell you what you can and cannot do.
People have presuppositions about themselves and what they
can do. I, I think I spoke in the last
video at one of the things people want to avoid is looking
bad. So if I have never done this,
even though I'm a CPAII, have a high IQ, and you're asking me to
work in this completely new industry where I, I don't have
the knowledge I may look incompetent.
So I'd rather work where I'm very competent 'cause I'll look
good here. And, and so it's, it's natural
for human beings to do things they don't know how to do.
And the proof is when every infant first learns to walk,
they do not look good. They look terrible.
They're wobbly, they're falling. And they, they don't have the
language of looking bad and looking good.
They don't have that language. They don't have the language of
being smart and successful. They don't know any about any of
that. I can't.
It's almost like they, they only have a commitment to get from
here to there and they will do what it takes to get and they
don't know that they are engaged in neuroplasticity.
They don't know any of that. They just know I want to get
from here to there. There's this commitment.
They don't have any conversations about how terrible
I look and I'm clumsy and wobbly.
But as as adults we are. That's part of the identity,
which is, hey, you don't want to look bad over there.
You want to always make sure you do your best and give the right
answers. Work with certainty.
We're we're given all kinds of conversation.
You get in in the last video, you gave a great example of how
they, your company experimented with working from home and then
COVID hit and you all had already developed the capacity
to work from home. It was just, it wasn't even a
transition. It was like, OK, it was just
going to another office. Vlogging, please.
It was like just going to a new office.
It was. It didn't matter because you all
had already developed that kind of neuroplasticity of what it's
like to grow up, work from home. Noella, over to you.
See, people, People know what they know, and they know what
they've been given to know. I'll turn this into somewhat
abstract. So when people talk about free
will, people have free will today to the extent they were
given free will. In other words, people do not
have free will, and it's a joke to think that you do because
your free will comes from the choices that you were given,
whether whether it's part of your identity or part of an
identity you don't want it to be part of.
In other words, there's this menu you're given, and this is
what it means to be a human, and you choose from this, and if you
choose outside of that, society will correct you.
So it's better to avoid being corrected and just focus on what
I know how to do. But this is not free will.
But if I start talking to you about how I can walk across the
top of the New York skyline, I will sound ridiculous.
That's not part of free will. And I tell you, hey, look, let
me tell you why that's possible. The human body has frequency in
megahertz of about 76 megahertz. And if your megahertz frequency
drops to like 40, you're susceptible to cancer.
So there is something they've been able to measure.
So if you look across the New York City skyline, there are
lines and they're different colors.
There's a green, there's a yellow and there's a blue and,
and then there's a color that for which we don't have a name.
And each of those colors has a frequency.
If I raise the my frequency, so the green one has a frequency of
1000. If I raise the frequency of my
body to 1000, I can walk right across on that green line and it
looks like I'm walking on Earth. But it's just the it's a
frequency. And so maybe one day we will
discover that that's what gravity is.
We don't know what gravity is. Gravity is just a frequency.
The way we look at it, we only have explanations, but we don't
really understand what gravity. Is I have a quote for.
You so I'm talking about I'm talking about something not on
the menu. Ted, I have a quote for for you
from Idi Amin Dada. That's the former president of
Uganda from 1971 to 1979. And he reportedly said there is
freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech
you. Freedom after speech, yeah,
yeah, that's, that's even in the US they say you have freedom of
speech, but you start talking about something, you know, we
have all this political correctness and and wokeness and
cancel culture. So you don't your freedom of
speech is, is kind of been a lie always.
And even even if it's not something that's offensive.
If I go around talking about walking across the top of the
New York City skyline, people, if I go into a job interview
saying that they may not want to hire me unless it's the
sciences, maybe, maybe you know, they'll, they will consider
that. But if I want to work on Wall
Street, they're like, man, get this guy out of here.
He's been doing drugs with Steve Jobs.
Freedom after speech they cannot guarantee.
Well, since that, once again, Steve Jobs didn't care what
people were saying about him. So it's almost like he had the
capacity to let go of his identity and have no identity,
like a nothing and from nothing. I'll ask the two of you, if you
can get to nothing, what can you create from nothing?
Anything right Because no thing. As opposed to creating on
anything? Go ahead.
Sorry. Go ahead.
And then say no things or nothing if you are no thing.
It's kind of a paradox. Having being no thing attached
to you actually opens you up to everything.
Right. Yeah, instead of trying to build
you on top of what's already there and making it better or
different, you have nothing. So then you can create.
You have the freedom to actually create.
You don't have that menu that they say, hey, you have free
will as long as you choose from this menu right here, anything
on the menu you can choose and that's your free will.
Tabular. That's what the Asian Greek
philosophers call the human mind, a clean slate.
So if you have a clean slate, you can actually build anything
on that clean slate. Noella, what were you going to
say? So when you're transforming
these companies and we're speaking about free will right
now, would you say that when we're measuring breakthroughs
that it's tied to the ability of whichever subject you're working
with, whether it's one person or a team?
Would you say that the breakthrough can be measured by
a person or a team's ability to expand their free will?
Or are we trying to get people to still operate from a certain
list? Because we are talking about
companies. These companies have values,
they have rules, they have laws, they have yadda, yadda, yadda.
Are they when you are pushing them past their paradigms, I
guess it's kind of a stacked question, but how much are they
staying on their menus and how much are they expanding their
free will? And is there kind of a measure
beyond KPI is to measure how expansive someone is moving
through their particular breakthroughs?
So I mentioned this in the last video.
I said there's a distinction between thinking and having
thoughts. So giving people access to
thinking. So what we are taught to do is
have thoughts and we believe it's thinking.
And even psychologists say that for every waking hour, people
only spend 5 minutes actually thinking.
And the other 55 minutes is just having thoughts.
And the thoughts are the things that you know, it's what's in
your neural pathways. You've seen it, you've been
exposed to it, you've done it, you've read it.
These are all the things that you can have thoughts about and
you can put them in different sequences and and make things
better, but those are generally not not breakthroughs.
Thinking is thinking that which is unthought.
So imagine thinking something you've never thought.
So training people to distinguish between thinking and
having thoughts, so that people can freely think without
depending on the thoughts they already have, That's the
training. So depending on how much they
believe, are aware of and exercise their ability to have
their own thoughts is I guess, the measure.
Of the break not to have their own thoughts.
Nope. It's not to have their own
thoughts. It's not to have their own
thoughts. OK, because you already have
those, right? So you're thinking that which is
unthought. OK.
So is that, well, that's different than thinking new
thoughts. Distinctions.
Distinctions are no, it's it has nothing.
Thinking has nothing to do with thoughts.
They're two different worlds. OK, you're trying to.
You're see, you're taking the old paradigm and trying to
improve it and adding something to it.
I'm creating a whole new paradigm that has nothing to do
with it. Well, I understand.
I do understand separating. Using no, I'm not separating
them. The front of the hand is having
thoughts, the back is thinking. They are distinct.
You don't confuse the front of your hand with the back of your
hand. They're not separate, but they
are very distinct. It's having those distinctions.
Amazing. Distinctions are very important.
We did an exercise. We kind of did.
We talked about something the three of us in a pre call.
And unfortunately, if we did it now and the audience wouldn't
get the benefit of of you having to think through it, but it was
the whole thing of walking on a beach and and seeing a sign that
this is a minefield. Let's have another simulation
but. We've already done it.
So the the audience would miss it would miss out there, they
would miss out on when the two of you thinking through how to
navigate that situation. So you already have an answer
now. Let's create another situation.
Create another situation. Yeah, the other situation I
could give to you, but I've already given you the answer to
that. Well, it's interesting because
the beach story becoming a minefield, it definitely
involves these invisible barriers and again, trying to
see something that we don't know that we don't see.
Adamola what type of invisible barriers do we need to.
There are actually ways in which you measure, would I say
results. And again, they're coming from
me that comes from a background that you have known.
Would I say, I don't want to say for the lack of a better word,
would I say issues, but they're not issues basically.
That is from a jerking perspective, right?
So coming from that PwC background, that big flow
background, we'd love to measure things very numerical ways,
right, right. So how do you tend to measure
those breakthroughs or the impact of the breakthroughs on
companies like how you measure the success, right, in terms of
the traditional KPI's And even beyond the traditional metrics
you know like revenue growth, profit margins, market share,
how to issue would I say measure the impact of these
transformations, the breakthroughs on the bottom line
and like very feasible when I say metrics in terms of our
companies growth and development.
Sure. People create projects and that
project will have revenue attached to it or significant
cost savings and that's very measurable.
So if you create a new division that did not exist, that's very
measurable. If you reduce the amount of
steps and getting certain things done, and maybe you can even
reduce the amount of people involved in in certain
activities, you you've saved a lot.
Repurpose people. There was a guy who was in the
military, he's ex military. He, he was on this podcast
recently and he said one thing that the military really helped
him with was reducing the amount of steps and time between idea
and execution. And that actually makes you
successful because when you reduce the time and the steps
between ID and execution and you're able to master
reputation, right? Acquisition, you're looking at
the speed of innovation, right? The cultural resilience, the
leadership depth, the problem solving capacity.
Give me an example. Right cultural resilience, right
speed of innovation, speed of adaptation growth.
So you're asking how do you know if your people are developing?
Yeah. Right.
So when when you have each person create their own
breakthrough initiative, so the CEO creates A breakthrough and
then the people under them will create breakthrough initiatives
in service to the CE OS. And those breakthrough
initiatives, those are not, this is not about evolution.
It's not about doing something that you're already doing and
doing it better. It's some possibility that you
don't know how to accomplish. And by by taking on that
breakthrough project, you are going to encounter disruptions
and breakdowns and problems that you haven't dealt with in the
past and being able to navigate through that.
So a big part of my work is, is ensuring that, as you were
saying about the guy in the military, to be able to close
the gap from idea to completion of the roject, right?
O, while you're executing it. But it's it's the completion.
It's not it's you can execute, not complete it.
O fulfilling the project and and why and and while executing that
project, you are going to encounter things, problems that
perhaps are over your head. So how do you navigate that
without derailing the entire project, right?
So as people take on those projects, you see their capacity
for being able to navigate the breakthroughs that come with the
problem, developing a greater capacity for solving problems.
So it's being able to take the mindset technology I have and be
able to point it like a laser into a specific problem where
you get to exercise. Basically you're exercising
neuroplasticity so that you become more effective.
And when that project's completed, you create a new
project. And what you find is people
become more self-sufficient and require less hand holding and
less involvement from leadership to solve problems because they
are developing the capacity to solve problems by having them
create their own problem, which is a breakthrough project.
So what are the heating blind spots that you know for even
high achieving executives that they often don't believe?
What are those heating blind spots?
Well, part of it could be. I had a client once who went to
an Ivy League ish school and high IQ and and even had
athletic ability and he was so smart that his intelligence was
shooting him in the foot. The curse of the genius, that's
what I call it. The Curse of the Genius I.
Relate to. That, well, like your genius, is
irrelevant. Right.
It's really irrelevant because I've seen people who are not
geniuses be way more successful in terms of starting a company
and being able to run it. But if you want to be a leader,
having to be the smartest one in the room and prove it to
everyone just will have you surrounded by a bunch of yes
men. Yeah.
So you, you end up with, you don't have the most capable
people around you and you have to end up doing so many things
on your own. And if you're not in the office,
people don't do anything. So you you have a company that's
not growing it, it's not as innovative.
You don't have people coming up with these innovative projects
because they're all depending on you.
So you're stunting the growth of the organization.
In fact, you could even invalidate people by showing
them how you are the smartest. And we spoke about Malcolm
Gladwell's book David and Goliath, and he talked about how
people who were dyslexic at a young age in elementary school
figured out that they couldn't keep up with class.
So what they did is they made best friends with the.
Smartest in history and the smartest in math and the
smartest in science and the smartest in English.
And they would delegate homework to those people and they would
have discussion groups with everyone.
Basically they were training to be CE OS and didn't know it.
So they they knew they were not the smartest in the group.
So when they did become CEO, they now were able to hire
people smarter than themselves and know how to delegate and
lead people smarter than themselves.
A lot of people believe that they have to be the smartest and
they don't know how to lead people smarter than themselves
because they may be in competition.
So they are sabotaging. That becomes a blind spot and
then their smartness is irrelevant.
Confession time. Confession time.
You're ready for something. I used I used to do when I was
in high school, right? I was one of the smart kids,
right? But I was a skinny kid and they
used to think they could bully me and that sort of reasons why
I'm going to Taekwondo, karate, you know, they to delve into
mixed martial arts, right? But when I was in high school, I
used to teach like the strong kids, like I, I had my personal
bouncer in second school. So I used to teach these kids,
right? And you know, run the
assignments for them just in exchange for protection.
So if you want, if you want to bully me, you have to go through
those big boys the first, right? So it's all self preservation.
You need to use what you have to get what you want.
So like I think about it now like that skill of having to
pull people together, right, that are strong in areas where
you're weak, right, is actually a leadership skill.
And it's it's always a great thing when you build that
leadership skill from a very young age.
It enables you to be able to communicate and have
negotiations and have mean win situations with people.
Because I realized we, we need the best, you know, formula in
business. So thank you for for reminding
us of the past and, you know, digging into the past.
But when you talk about these, you know, high level individuals
who are very successful and very smart, right?
And I think it's something I call the curse of the genius.
And for a person like myself, I'm like, I try to be very well
aware of the fact that, OK, a high IQ is not necessarily a
ticket to success. You always need to continuously
be a student, you know, in life. And I have once been a teacher
and I've realized that the best teachers are the best students.
Of course, the more you learn, the more you're able to even,
you know, communicate knowledge and information.
But at some point, you know, some people become too
successful for their own good in court.
And I noticed that the more successful the person is, the
more difficult it is for the people around them to tell them
the truth, right? And it creates this success
bias. You know, we have.
Past wings can create like dangerous assumptions about
future strategies. You feel invincible.
You feel because you have been on a winning streak, right you
will continue to be on that winning streak.
In philosophy, I think they call it the fallacy of the slippery
slope, right? So your your thinking becomes
highly fallacious because you are stringing your arguments
based off wrong premises and you will arrive at the wrong
conclusion. So there's this constant need to
keep re engineering your mind, keep getting comfortable being
uncomfortable, keep learning and relearning.
And on learning, you know, the themes of old.
I think about how the things that made me successful five
years ago are no longer relevant today, even two years ago, even
one year ago. Like looking at the algorithms
in podcasting, for example, like the algorithms we were using
last year. You know the titles descriptions
using on YouTube are not relevant right now, right?
So right. I think the tech environment
forces you to keep on learning and relearning, but how do you
help people that have that success bias?
Because you can't teach an old dog, an old dog new tricks,
right? And a lot of people, it's easy
for people to get stuck in their ways real fast, especially when
they become in, quote, successful.
So how do you help clients that fall into this bracket?
I don't talk about bias, not my world.
How do you, how do you help them?
Because for me, I feel like it's like an opening of the mind,
right? I might not have the right words
to explain it, but the truth is you need to be open minded in
order to be able to accept more information.
More like keeping your hands open, because if your hands are
not open, how can you receive the new information?
Yeah, that you need. So, so I don't, I don't look at
as information as being as valuable as most people think.
Just think of it this way. If someone wants to go on a diet
and they get all the information for how to lose weight, what
happens to most people, at least in the US, what happens?
Yeah, no, I like I'm talking about.
I'm not lying. I feel like in the US wants you
start researching one diet, you go down a rabbit hole of all
these other different diets and then you're trying to compare
them all and then you end up buying a ton of different
products that you probably. Need How much does the
information help you lose weight?
All right, this is by now, this is.
Not. Not at all.
Not at all, right? Yeah, information isn't what
giving people information on how to lose weight.
Most people take all the information from the best diet
in the world and they end up gaining weight anyway.
So clearly it's not the information that has you lose
weight. What people had.
What has people lose weight is having some clear distinctions
about the conversations they have about themselves when they
look in the mirror. And until you transform that, I
mean, there, there are literally women out there who have gained
weight because they were shapely at a young age, let's say 14
years old and adult men, 20s, thirties would pursue them.
And the way they, those young girls protected themselves was
to gain weight. And that keeps away those men
who they wanted nothing to do with.
And then now that young girl who was shapely at 1416 or 25, the,
the whole strategy to hide myself by gaining weight is now
she can't stop it it. And it was successful.
It wasn't in her best interest, but at let's say 14 years old,
that's what she knew to do. So that's if you, if she wants
to lose weight, you're going to have to deal with that and the,
the best diet won't, will not help her.
So one of the conversations that's not just with leaders is
change is hard. And people actually believe
change is hard. So you're a CEO of an
organization and you come in with a presupposition that
change is hard. And now, and I'm going to
transform corporate culture and it's hard because people don't
want to change. It's, it's really similar to the
whole burnout thing. So once you say I'm going to
burnout, you're going to find a million reasons to be burnt out.
And because you want to be able to say I'm burnt out, so you say
change is hard, you're going to find a million reasons.
So you as a leader, you will not properly educate yourself to
make the kinds of transformations that are
necessary because you've already presupposed it's hard.
So you're going to go into it knowing it's hard and believing
your people are going to resist you.
And you're ready. You're almost going.
You're really going into a battlefield and you just made it
hard. And so when it's hard, you get
to say, see, I knew it. And you get to be right about
change being hard, but you were really unprepared.
It's like the guy who never played US football who says I'm
going to go be in a backfield and when he gets clobbered he
says this is not for me. But he never trained for the
game. When the rubber hits the road.
Rubber hits the road or more when the helmet hits you.
You, you get to have a new reality, but you know, for, for
change when, when it comes to change, you know, you're talking
about that weights change, for example.
Change is hard. And I think it, it depends on,
on the person. For for a person like me, I have
fast body metabolism so it's easy.
Change is not great change. Change is not.
Change is not hard. Change is not hard.
Yeah, for me, I don't think that kind of change is hard.
Right. No, no, no, listen, listen.
I don't know. No, change is not hard for
anyone. When people say intimate
relationships take hard work, that's another fallacy.
So we have all these conversations and they
completely shape our actions and they restrict us for what we can
and cannot do. Change is not hard for anyone,
period. It's a, it's a mindset thing.
What I just like losing weight information to transform a
culture does not do it, and information to lose weight that
does not do it. But the weird thing I kind of
feel is sort of unfair because some people have fast body
metabolism. If I decide to fast today and
tomorrow, I'm going to lose probably about four or five KG.
Easy peasy. And if I eat pasta for the next
three days, I'm going to get it back.
So I feel like I'm a, I'm a weights cheat, right?
Because of the way my body operates.
For some people, it's difficult. If they eat that same pasta with
me, they're going to probably balloon about 10 KG.
And it's difficult for them to lose it downwards because they
don't have that fast body metabolism that I have.
So it's like a cheap code in my own DNA.
So like the effort I have to put in right into weight gain or
weight loss is different from another person so.
As long as you believe that, you'll be as as long as you
believe that, you'll be right. And there's nothing I can say.
No, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I, I'm right.
I'm just saying that I, I feel like the change is easier for
some people due to maybe certain biological or would I say, yeah,
biological advantages that they have over other people.
But still, it's, it's a mindset thing, right?
But for, for some people, it's easier than the others due to
their, you know, DNA setup or their team.
That's what I was just trying to say.
I'm not trying to demean whether it's hard or not hard.
I'm just saying I I feel like it's easier for some of us than
others. And, and if people go into it
with that conversation, they'll be right and they'll look for
evidence to prove that they're right.
So it reminds me of this rapid transformational therapist, her
name is Marissa Pier. So her focus is on rapid
transformational therapy. I did a, it was like a hypnosis
meditation on accident. The way I found it, I didn't
realize it was that she was going to be teaching meditation,
but ended up doing it. So it was really fun, but I love
listening to her meditations and things like that.
But she has mentioned one of the strategies she uses.
And the reason I'm bringing it up just because we are talking
about bodies right now. Kind of a little bit of a
tangent is, Ted, you mentioned that you mentioned this in our
last conversation that you've had experience and you've put
into practice. I may be saying this the wrong
way, but directing your own thoughts or using your own
thoughts to influence or code, code direct your body to perform
better just by directing your own thought patterns.
And she actually has a very similar type of model to where
she suggests that people can eradicate illness or increase
their metabolic state or like you experienced, do more reps
right or have run longer, run longer, breathe deeper, whatever
it may be. So I think that's really
important to take into consideration as as well when
we're talking about the underlying beliefs that people
have when it comes to whatever type of biological or whatever
people think is wrong with their body.
You know, there are hundreds, thousands of things.
My nose doesn't look right, my hair doesn't look right.
I'm too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat, whatever.
That the underlying belief system can be so complex that
what these practices and what we're seeing when we are
recoding our body through our thoughts, it can actually affect
things like blood pressure, metabolic state, and ultimately
affect weight. So I think that's really
important just to touch on in this situation too as well,
because when it come, when we're thinking about the human mind,
like you mentioned earlier, we also spoke about this in the
last conversation. At one point when we were
building cars, man didn't build them to go past a certain point
because they believed that if a woman was in that car.
Remind me or let me know if this is wrong, but you mentioned that
her insides or her womb or something like that would
explode. Right uterus.
Realize uterus. Yeah, I realized.
The uterus. Would explode that obviously
that was not true. So I think if we operate within
this frame with that being said, I would really love to hear kind
of a case study of kind of an outline of a company that you've
helped personally shift from survival to scaling.
Ted, if you could take us, you know, through the journey from
crisis point to I know you kind of hate the term mindset shift
because it's so much different than that.
But through the strategic problems, maybe it was a
specific problem or maybe it was more broad and through their
cultural transformation they then had to make in that company
and the growth that they experienced.
Could you please give us one of your favorite examples?
Sure, sure. Well I probably gave one
already. So this is 1 where the guy
really smart guy, Wharton, MBA and athletic also and worked in
the big brokerage houses. He worked in mergers and
acquisitions. So he made a lot of money, very
successful. And then he decided to go out on
his own and start his own company and he wanted to do
what's called a roll up. And for those who don't know
what a roll up is like, take for an example, the laundromat
business, it would be fragmented.
There are lots of different owners, mom and pops that own
laundromats around the country. And if, if the three of us
decided we wanted to do a roll up, we'd go out and we'd buy a
whole bunch of laundromats around around the US, roll it up
into one big company and we'd have economies of scale and
being able to buy all kinds of things cheaper, put in better
management systems. But we'd be rolling up a lot of
little small companies into a bigger company.
And so this guy wanted to do a roll up in a specific industry.
And before I met him, he had bought three companies and it
took him three years. He bought one company each year
and one of the challenges when you do a roll up and you're
you're buying companies that already has employees, you're
now integrating this this post they call post integration of
human capital. And that's what kills the
people, kill successful mergers and acquisitions because people
have their own culture, they have their own systems, whether
it's production, finance. So being able to integrate
people is where you have problems.
So he wanted to do a roll up, but he was moving slower than he
he wanted and he had never been a CEO.
So there were a few things that needed to happen.
One is training and develop him, him to be a more effective CEO
and being able to be more aggressive with his roll up.
The other one was as he acquired companies, he's taking a guy, an
entrepreneur who ran a $6 million company and now that
entrepreneur is going to be responsible for $40 million
division and they're, you're going to have to upskill that
person. Often when you do make those
acquisitions, you're, you're buying talent.
A lot of those people that you bring into your company are
giving you lip service. They have their own agenda and
it may be in conflict with yours.
So I had to take this guy and upskill him and then get him
aligned with the CEO of the, let's say the umbrella company.
But then what also happened is instead of taking a year to do 1
acquisition, he was banging out 6-7 acquisitions a year.
And I ported him in, integrating the sales and operations into
one culture, which then allowed that company to grow
exponentially. Exponentially, not just from the
what you call strategic growth from acquisitions, but also
organic. The sales force was not, you had
all these different companies and the salespeople didn't trust
the people from the other companies, even though they were
all selling to the same person. So they wouldn't share leads,
which makes the company grow. It was a roll up, but it was
three different units in the roll up and they, they provided
3 different services and in each division.
So being able to support that CEO to be more aggressive in his
acquisition strategy and successfully bring, bring them
together, integrate the sales force, upskill him as a CEO to
be able to run a larger company, and then also upskill the talent
that he was buying, which allowed them to grow well, Well
beyond what his project, his projections were for year 1-2
and three after I met him. So, and that was it was
transforming culture. And it was very interesting in
that because when I'd go on their premises once a week,
people knew I was coming and they would corner me like they
would be like, hey man, I want to talk to you.
I have this idea. I want, I want you have the
CEO's ear. And So what it did is help me
find other leaders within the organization and help shape them
and, and help them create projects.
So they were actually excited about creating their own
projects that would support the CEO.
And then there were these untapped leaders in the
organization that I was able to, you know, pull from.
It helped them do things. So organizationally, they were
better positioned to to handle exponential growth without
falling apart by just using what he had in the organization.
Anything else you want to say about the case study at all that
you think specifically our audience would really need to
hear? Maybe we have somebody at home
who is ACEO or is leading A-Team or building a team.
Anything else about that case study that you would want to
touch on? Well, his problem he was
creating was was actually bringing all these organizations
together as one one company. And and when you look at just
even large corporations, most mergers and acquisitions never
realized the intended value of the merger or acquisition,
right. When Price Waterhouse merged
with Coopers and Library, they had problems for a long time
with that so. It's, it's not just
acquisitions, buying and, and merging with companies is not a
very easy thing to do. And people always say, should we
build it or buy it? So do we, do we buy a company or
do we just build it organically and inside?
And you know, there, there are pros and cons of, of both, but
one of the biggest challenges is when you buy it, you now have to
fold those people in and hope that they're not in conflict
with what already exists. It's, it's, you know, and I, I
like bringing it to how even in intimate relationships, when you
get married, people tend to think the way we do things is
better than the way you do things.
And even when people are in, in an intimate relationship, you
can, they may never say these words, but they may say the way
your family did. That is ridiculous.
How could you all do that? My family, the way we did it was
much better. And you're now in conflict with
the other person. So imagine that happens in your
personal life, and it happens even in the professional world
when you bring two companies together.
Our way is a better way. Or even if our way isn't better,
we're not going to change because change is hard and we're
going to keep doing it our way. So being able to cut through
that and sort of well to be able to transform mindset so that
people are more more empowered to be able to look at things
objectively and say, well, their way is actually better.
So let's let's take that on. Or I was giving lip service and
I had a guy, he said I was actually giving him lip service.
I have my own ideas now and I really understand.
And it's, it's interesting because when you're working with
the CEO and other leaders, those other leaders need to be
comfortable enough and trust me to say things that perhaps they
don't want me to say back to that person.
So it's very interesting the level of trust that you have
with that. Ted, I'm going to say something
to that effect. Like comic organizational
culture is a very, very big deal.
And I I was laughing because, you know, you again, you're
attacking you attack my alumni. Yeah, right.
You know where, right. Price Waterhouse.
We're merging with Coopers and Lebrand.
It wasn't such an easy emerging and also I've also had the
privilege of working with another account since then who
also experienced an acquisition. It's so crazy that and one thing
that accountants tend to fight over a lot is methodology and
the tool sets. There are ways to audit
particular FSLI that's financial system line items, right?
So they would accountants are very used to being talking in a
particular way. So it's a very serious fight.
Like it's not. I feel like Ted is, he's under
understated that fight. He's been too polite about it.
You're been too polite. I'm going to come by.
You know me. I only see it as a team.
It's it's usually dirty fight. And it's crazy that, you know,
one of those places where I worked, they had to run the two
companies in parallel. Right.
Yeah. And in fact during IT systems.
Yeah, yeah. Who has the better IT system?
Yeah, the IT systems, the tool sets, the methodologies, the
company culture, like even often leave days, you know, the
hierarchy, you know, sometimes you, you know, you have some
other firms structured as associate, you know, semi senior
senior associate, assistant manager, manager.
Some people have manager one manager 2 before senior manager.
Some people have just one level of manager.
It's crazy merging, you know, the hierarchy as well.
It's, it's a lot of, it's a lot of dirty fight.
Absolutely. And even the pay structure as
well, right? I just feel like you ball what I
remember it brings, it brings it brings trauma, you know, because
it's it's a lot of dirty fighting when it comes.
Who gets which resources? Who gets which resources?
Our department is who gets which resources.
Our department's more valuable than your department.
Yeah, that's even another, another, another, you know,
fight. It's not funny.
So that's why for me, I I prefer that organic growth to
acquisitions basically. And, you know, like, I'm not
saying this is right, but this is my preference when I make an
acquisition, I like them to run, you know, parallel instead of
just absorbing them because absorbing them brings too much,
you know, chaos that would disrupt the momentum.
So I believe in keeping the momentum in a particular
organization. But sometimes, like the cost of
expansion can hold your momentum.
But some people don't think or some leaders don't think about
that until, in your words, the rubber hits the road.
So who better to ask the questions on AI than AI?
So Ted, we love to talk about AI on this broadcast and disruption
and AI are like twin sibling would I say.
I don't know whether they're identical or they're fractional,
but I know they're twin. AI has brought a lot of
disruptive technological advancement in this age and
time. And you are a master of the
science of disruption and, you know, progress with chaos,
right? So how does artificial
intelligence fit into your philosophy of destruction?
No. Is it a tool?
Is it a threat? Is it a mirror?
Is it an amplifier? And what brilliant strategies
can leaders or leadership in this age and time, you know,
adopt using artificial intelligence to achieve progress
for their teams, the organizations and of course, in
their personal life? So first tell me, in what ways
has AI been disruptive? The question.
It's disrupted a lot speaking, it's disrupted.
Speaking of disruption. A lot of.
Speaking of disruption, I think my Internet connection was
disrupted. OK, so I I asked.
That's what I thought I asked. I asked a question in in what
way? In what way has AI been
disruptive? OK, in what ways has AI been
disruptive? Right.
Multiple different ways. Because, you know, when you look
at the work first these days, a lot of, you know, large
corporations are laying people are, you know, changing their
systems, changing their processes.
And you know, I believe that when you want to achieve change
in organizations, to change involves 3 things, the people,
the processes and the systems. And AI has been able to change
the people, the processes and the systems, all three.
So yeah. What specifically has AI
disrupted? So argue for example, in
consulting roles, for example, right, I can speak to my own
industry consulting. We need less junior team
members, right, to do a lot of the repetitive work, for
example. And that means there are less
junior roles, right Than. What work available?
Specifically what works well. I'll say menial work and work
that involves a lot of repetitive tasks.
So to be more granular and more specific, for example, in audit,
right, So you need attention to detail as a major soft skill,
right? And there's something we should
do called vouching. So sometimes you have to would I
say, take his pool of transactions, right, and match
those transactions to the support documents for those
transactions. But now you have AI tools that
can do the matching very easily, very fast, right?
So it doesn't intend the need for, you know, the junior team
members to be performing such roles, right?
So it means in the case wherein you had the need for 10 junior
team members, you probably need probably 3-2 now on that same
team, Yeah. OK, so research could be 1 area
because it can do it faster right?
And the matching you still need someone to double check the
work, correct? Yeah, review.
Yeah. So prepare.
Review. Process, but you need less
preparers. Yeah, you need less preparers.
So with more preparers, it is it fair to say that you would have
more steps like each preparer played a role and AI has
compressed that consolidated that, right?
Exactly. Very, very correct.
OK, OK. All right.
Yep, I understand. So I have a concern with AI and
it's more than one concern. One is we live in a society
where we are working hard to make machines more human like
and we want humans to be more machine like.
And I know AI which is artificial intelligence is not
intelligent. I know that artificial
intelligence can only understand, basically artificial
intelligence has thoughts. It doesn't think.
It can only have thoughts about all the information that's
available. And whatever's outside of that,
it can't tell you about it. And so we're we're are creating
this culture of machines being more human and humans being more
machine. And we want innovation, which is
AI doesn't do that. Now AI can make improvements, it
can reconfigure and look at what exists from different
perspectives. I understand it's it's looking
at cancer cures and it sees patterns faster than what a
human does. I got that.
My other concern is that in the US, in the West part, in
California, there was a gold rush.
Bless you. So the California, the
California gold rush, most people who ran out to California
to make money from gold did not succeed.
Do you know who was very successful because of the
California Gold Rush? The transportation industry.
People who made picks and shovels because thousands of
people, right, thousands of people ran out there to find
gold and they needed picks and shovels and they all bought
picks and shovels. So people who started the pick
and shovel company, they became wealthy.
The people, most of the people looking for gold did not become
wealthy. So my concern is that the people
who make picks and shovels for AI will be very successful and
most people will not become wealthy from AI.
It's too much hype and the billions of dollars that are
going into it, I don't know if they are going to get the
returns that that are expected from that.
And the true innovation will come from human beings.
And if you want your humans to be more like computers or
computers don't do things that human beings do.
So you will actually end up diminishing your most valuable
asset by wanting them to be more computer like.
And you're expecting your computers to be more human like.
And they don't have maybe one day we'll have the capacity.
I mean, if you think about it, all the resources that were
needed to make the iPhone existed on planet Earth 2000
years ago. So if we believe AI is that
intelligent, hypothetically artificial intelligence could
have made the iPhone 2000 because all the resources were
there. So whatever doesn't exist 2000
years from now, AI is not creating it.
I think you are very much aligned with our narrative that
we have in house here. There's been a past episode of
this podcast. It's titled first AI next.
And I like to think that myself on behalf of myself and my Co
host, right? We see AI from certain lenses.
We'll see it as an amplifier. That is, it magnifies both the
brilliant strategies and flawed thinking of the users and most
likely, you know, the leaders. And of course, AI as a mirror.
It reflects back the quality of the questions that you ask as a
leader. And of course, AI as a catalyst.
It forces leaders to redefine what makes them irreplaceable.
So we just see AI as a tool, right?
And I love the analogy you gave that is people that make the
pixels and shovels for AI, the ones who are gonna be reached.
So we, for example, are adopting AI in the field of PR
communication media, right? So we, I am, I call myself AI,
but I love the fact that I'm able to use AI, you know, to
serve as a catalyst to would I say, enhance the growth of my
passion. I look at people who have been
in broadcasting for five years before me.
They are lower on the global rankings.
Well, OK, I bust into the scene November 2023.
That's wow. I'll be two years, November 19
this year, right. OK.
And will top 2.5%. I look at the people who are on
that same rankings, most of them started five years at least you
know they had a five years head start before me.
You know that's right. Looking at AI as a catalyst,
right? Because we are able to know the
right mix of AI tools to use and apply on our own mission,
though, I think we sort of align with your narrative.
That is, the people who apply AI to what they want to do or
provide, say, complementary or support services to AI tools or
AI services would be the ones that would enrich themselves in
this AI gold rush. But what do you see it as being?
An amplifier and mural and a catalyst are not your thoughts
on that. I think it's a tool just like
Google was a Yahoo. Search engines have been tools
that so before the search engine was the library and that took
time. You had to go to a different
location. So now you can have it in the
palm of your hand. So that's more efficient.
AI is just more, it has more capacity than Google because you
can ask AI to do a proposal for you.
You can ask AI to do all kinds of things, right?
You can write a book, you can make ATV show.
There's so much more you can do with AI.
In fact, AI will disrupt Google. Google, Google is being
disrupted. I forget what the percentage is.
What? Their volume has already dropped
significantly, like 40%. Wow, now they have Google.
Gemini they. Have adopted AI, They have
adopted AI. They have Gemini, and they have
the Google AI overview. You know what they're doing.
Right. They waited a little late.
Their traffic has already dropped.
It's already a significant drop in their traffic.
So they have been disrupted. It's not 10%.
It's in sizable numbers, noticeable.
That's very true. So they've been disrupted
already, so now they have to pay, play catch up.
So it's a great tool to help you clarify thoughts.
It's a great tool and and doing proposals and cutting down the
amount of steps, getting rid of menial work.
You know, it has its benefits. I mean, it, you can look at AI
and and the fast food industry we have.
I think it's a McDonald's. It's the first McDonald's to
have no human being in the operation at all.
Flipping burgers, everything, it's doing everything.
And that would all be from, you know, large language models.
It's that's a some level of AI and I think that's.
Why? AI is not right, but I think
that's why AI is not intelligent because it's still a large
language model, learning model, large language learning model.
It's not technically intelligent.
Now it's good at pattern recognition for what does exist,
but connecting dots that do not exist.
So when you get a highly intelligent person who can
connect dots that the rest of the world doesn't see.
And I prefer to talk about Nikola Tesla instead of Einstein
because most people don't know Einstein.
Didn't come up with a theory of relativity.
Was a French guy back in the mid 1800s who actually wrote a paper
on that already? What before Einstein?
But Tesla was connecting dots that didn't exist.
He was talking cell phones in the late 1800s.
One thing that. That's what.
Go ahead. One thing I just wanted to kind
of connect with what you're saying is bridging something
that you spoke about earlier in regard to paradigm shifting and
connecting to that story, you know, of the four year old
washing dishes and things like that.
It's crazy that we are in a time where anybody, anybody can pick
up AI and sell it as a shovel or sell it as the pickaxe.
And even though it is this tool, it really can only be used to
the extent of our own belief systems.
So it's just kind of crazy to think about just to me that the
user, the extent of the user is really the most limited part for
sure. So if we don't even understand
our own belief systems or we can't run our own thoughts, we
wouldn't be able to expand AI in any way.
We're just using it as a feedback loop, which almost just
sounds like an extent of the current problem that we were
even speaking about earlier when it comes to people not being in
control of their own thoughts. So like we just mentioned,
people are one of the reasons people have switched over from
Google to, for example, ChatGPT is because of the feedback loops
that it gives an extent to the wide range of information that
it has. Like they'll just the vast
library, if you will. But again, if we're not able to
understand our own minds or push past our own paradigms, we're
only seeking answers to a certain extent to our current
belief. We wouldn't be able to even
reach past a point of paradigm shifting at all because again,
we're just using it as a feedback loop based off of all
the information that we currently have.
But when we're speaking about visionaries move our shakers,
the people that actually are bringing up ideas that were
never being talked about before, they don't get those ideas or
have those thoughts based off of operating against a feedback
loop of information being fed to them back and forth, back and
forth. When it if you as kind of leads
into my next question. So Ted, you work with, you know,
usually an older generation, maybe not always, but a lot of
the CE OS businesses, C-Suite teams and corporations that you
work with. And you kind of have your own
strategy, maybe your own curriculum if you were designing
A curriculum for the next generation.
So if we're speaking just based off of disruptive leadership,
maybe they use AI, maybe they don't.
What would be your first three lessons?
Or can you expand on them when it comes to, you know,
questioning everything, especially when we're talking
about AI? And the answer is AI is?
Giving us in this feedback loop, along with embracing things like
discomfort, AOS and leading with problems, starting problems,
creating problems. Can you kind of explain those
lessons in a way that would be beneficial to this generation
coming up where AI is going to be so normalized?
So being a human hasn't changed. If it has, tell me in what way?
It has changed because humans now use AI.
And yeah, that's just a joke, right?
But one thing that really fascinates me is the fact that
I, I grew up in that age where I had to use the library, the
library coding system. You learn, you know, all of
those manual techniques for searching the books, the
resources, the publications in the library.
But it's crazy that information was difficult to obtain back
then. And information is very easily
accessible and widely applicable.
But now I get the most stupid questions right then back then.
So I feel like it's like we are the age of the height of
artificial intelligence for the age of the height of human
foolishness as well. So I don't know, there's a
mismatch somewhere. But it still doesn't help me
understand whether human beings have changed over the past 2000
years. We have deteriorated.
I feel like we we, we are deteriorating as the on the
average, right, the quality of humans we have today is less
than the quality of humans we have say in our grandparents
generation, the parents before them.
We have people who are weaker physically and I think mentally,
but that's not a scientifically problem part.
That's a conspiracy theory about.
Take that from me. Well, so let let's think back
100 years ago people could have said, hey, we're different in in
1925 because just 30 years ago, most people didn't have
electricity in their home. We didn't have flying machines,
most people didn't have car. Like they can go down a list of
the technology that we can't even imagine that was so life
changing to go from kerosene lit, you know, jar.
I used that in Africa. I used that in Africa.
But to having to having an artificial son in your house
that you can turn on and off anytime you want, right?
So we we can't imagine not flying and now flying.
And those people would have thought that this technology has
changed humans. And here we are 100 years later
saying the same thing they said. So what has changed about human
being? That's what I'm I'm that's what
I'm not hearing from either of you.
What is different about human beings today that wouldn't have
happened 100 or 500 years ago? What's different about the
generation that didn't exist for anyone else?
Because everyone's seen technology go back to the.
I would say you've. Seen that in technology?
I would say more so the differences may rely in cultural
shifts and belief systems that have changed through, you know,
any type of country. They're economically, socially
and things like that. I would say that those make a
decent impact on the way humans evolve.
What's? Different.
What specifically is different? From our perspective, is it from
like a biological perspective, psychological like?
Tell me what's different about human beings today that was that
didn't exist 100 years ago or 500 years ago, or 2000 years
ago. I'll say, I'll say yeah, still
pretty much similar fabric, but a difference is, you know, the
social cultural fabric. So mine is a social animal when
you look at it, you know, from a sociological perspective, to cut
the anthropology of man, right, the social cultural practices
have absolutely changed over time, right?
It's difficult to observe. But you know, when you look at
spans of times like 500 years, 100 years, right?
It's the patterns are easier, but fundamentally nothing has
been changed, you know, about man.
But when you look at the social cultural practices, absolutely
there has been, you know, culture shifts, you know,
mindset shifts over time, especially with technological
advancement, right? We are more reliant, you know,
on technological tools on like, you know, the age of sea, the
haunted gatherers wearing man was a more ferocious animal and
more acclimatized to the natural environment or fundamentally man
is still man. So we just looking at social
cultural shifts over time. That's I don't know what what
social cultural shifts are different now that didn't exist
500 years ago? 500 years ago.
See pop culture. For 100 I mean just.
If 100 years ago, I don't think there, I don't think there's a
year, I don't think there was pop culture, I don't think there
was cancel culture, I don't think there was.
The nuclear No. No, no, no.
So 500 years. So let's let's say 500 years
ago, 500 years ago, you lived in a village, right?
And you were known for being dishonest.
You got cancelled. Yeah.
But not no one in the village would work with you.
No one in the village would cooperate with you.
Nobody but you would. Yes, yes, the media.
Yes, the media was word of mouth globally.
In that village you were cancelled, right?
And then the next village would have heard about you.
So when you arrived they would be ready to cancel you also.
That is why we used to have exiles.
Yeah. Back in the day, yeah.
So some people used to go in exile.
Right. So this is the same thing.
We're doing the same things. It was back to what I said.
I said fundamentally we've not changed as a species, right?
We've only seen social, cultural shifts over time.
But it's not those changes are not, so would I say significant
to say that man has changed significantly as a species,
right. We are seeing woven from the
same fabric, but there are social cultural changes over
time. But the fundamental, the primary
more like the primary colors remain the same.
We're just mixing and matching the primary and session
secondary colors to be from tertiary colors.
So it's differentiated. You're still saying your people
are still saying our generation is different from the last.
That's what each generation says, so we're all saying the
same thing. I'm not.
Still the five years, still the five year, and still the five
year old is running your life just like 500 years ago, or 50
years ago, or 50 years from now. The five year old is running
your life and transformation becomes really valid.
Like the human being. We believe that technology has
changed us and we've been saying that for a very long time and we
keep saying it and still we have, you know, murder and theft
and abuse and all. We didn't take any of that out
of society. Divorce is still there,
infidelity, all these things. Like what has changed?
You still have to learn to walk, talk, feed yourself or learn to
speak a language count like all those, the human experience.
I mean, living in the jungle, I saw that.
I saw people who lived way back, no electricity or running water.
They they had the kerosene jar. I saw that that lived that
right. It's too.
Bad you did that. You're a legend in Agricultural
Society with no machines, just the machete.
Yeah, the, the, the, the, the making hole, we call it the
cutlass, then the hose, right, That bent 1.
You use it to rake. And then there's the rake as
well with steam iron prongs, right?
You use that one to clear the, the, the leaves.
If you've done that, I think the respect I have for you has gone
higher. But you get what I I mean,
everyone believes they're different and it's what it takes
for human beings to come together and work together is
still the same thing. And we're ignoring that.
We're thinking that it's going to be some new IT thing.
This is, this is it. And we're going to be different.
But yet we're still dealing with, I work with people of all
age groups and I, I still see the same thing.
If anything, some of those cultures they call primitive
are, are better at being a community.
We've lost the community. So do people.
And we're, we're attempting to use technology to create
communities. One, one thing that's been
interesting over the past 20 years here in the US is that the
younger people have been hungry for community.
So they create groups of like crocheting, like they still want
that human to human contact where we sit down and we're just
in a room hanging out crocheting or doing we put puzzles together
like they they want, they've gone back to wanting that.
And when you live in villages, you have that.
That's just a normal you take it for granted.
Defaults that's. It you don't want that.
It's like when I lived in the jungle, like the women, most of
the young women took a bath in the river at the same time
together. They wash their clothes in the
river together. The men, we jump down the jungle
with a machete. And we did it as a community.
I saw that. It seems people still do want
community, even the young people, they still want that.
How do you create that if technology is dividing you?
Not just for like political or or other reasons, It's dividing
you because you don't have to leave your house.
You can sit in the house all day and never have any contact with
another human being, but they still crave that other human
being. Noella, can you please send this
man some flowers tomorrow? Because he just need to.
He literally hits the nail on the head.
He hits the nail on the head. And I think you were able to
describe something that I think I was unable to describe
earlier. You know, in this session, you
know, that sense of community, right?
Right. And I feel like maybe I sort of
misconstrued it for happiness. But if you remember, I was
trying to explain that, you know, there's a better sense of
community in less developed, you know, areas of the world.
And, right, for me, I was privileged growing up in Africa,
privileged growing up in, you know, environments where in
there's community. And I think I've had this
conversation with Noela before, like when I came to the United
Kingdom. And I look at certain people who
try to act like, oh, they are gangsters.
I tell them where I come from. We eat.
We eat where I come from, we eat gangsters for breakfast.
Like you don't even try me. Like, you don't want to know
what I've seen in my lifetime, you know, killing animals,
right? Barehanded, right, Machetes,
right, with sticks and stuff like that, right?
Like facing dangerous snakes, right?
So there are certain things you go through in life, right?
When you face dangerous animals, you've killed dangerous animals
need two things that that that would actually less things in
life that would scare you, right?
And then you have to also deal with dangerous human beings as
well. As much as you have dangerous
lower animals, you have dangerous higher animals as
well, right? And you dealt with all of that,
right? And you left that environment to
a more technologically driven environment.
And the people, their thing, because they have more
technology that they are more dangerous.
And then you just look at them like, excuse me, excuse me,
right? But in that less technologically
driven environment, you have a better sense of community,
right? And you have these people who
are trying to use technology to create a false sense of
community, and you just don't know how to explain it to them
that you can never get it. This is not what community
community is about, right? Exactly.
Community is about authenticity, genuine connection, connecting
the dots right by on. A daily basis, every day and.
Not by intentional effort, right, But the cost, yeah.
Like, would I say nature or the universe just put you together,
right. And you, you are forced, sort
of. To cooperate and you know
everyone in your village, I mean, the cooperation is a big
part of your own survival. Yeah.
And not and not cooperating could have you cancelled?
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, did you have the
vigilantes right? The vigilante groups that guard
in the night? OK, No, no, actually no, no.
Let me tell you that. So I I went to two different
villages. I think you are I told you guys
about. The village now.
Now I want to hear your experience in those villages.
No, but I, I think I told you in the last one about the village
that so I, I live most of my time in a village with 329
people. There was another village with
500 something and the 500 something had gotten electricity
30 days before I arrived. So I told you guys this story
already, right? No or yes.
You did, you did, but you did not talk about like the social
fabric in in detail. So for example, no police, no
armed forces, you know, right, exactly this regulation.
So how come, right? So, so because they had
television, the young guys, like older teenagers, early 20s, they
saw the Bloods and Crips on television and they decided they
wanted to be tough guys and be Bloods and Crips.
They were spray painting in different areas and they were
bullying the women, some of the younger women in the village.
So the elders called the town hall meeting and said, Hey, the
parents of the young guys who are bullying people, you know
who your sons are, We're not going to point fingers, but
here's what's going to happen. And they and, and just like you
said, they never called the police for this.
I was self regulated. The elders called a town hall
meeting and said, here's what's going to happen If you don't
stop your sons from bullying people, you will find them in
the jungle with no life. Exactly.
So it's up to you. Either you stop them or we stop
them and the parents stop their sons.
And they never called the police.
They never complained. It was it was how a
self-contained village that keeps its IT had a way of
managing chaos that was about to bring damage to people.
And so the leadership of which are people look to the elders
had a way of managing that chaos that was in the best interest of
the whole. And those guys being bullies was
not in the best interest of the whole.
So that's a community have extremely low divorce rates.
You have you have community where the community has a say in
how things happen there not exactly people on the outside
looking to save you. That's that's a very different
world. And I've had people say, oh, we
have community here. And it's, it's like Adam Mola,
you understand what I'm talking about because you lived.
That was normal life. You know, you literally know
every single person in the village.
And when a new person is born, you know who it is.
And at the end of it, at the end of a day's work, you just kind
of walk and you go to someone's house and you talk.
You don't have a television. You have.
Human. Beings, right?
You have human beings and you know everyone and you, you know
what's going on. So yeah, yeah, that's a self
regulated community where the people in the community care so
much that everything that happens there effects everyone.
Yes, but I don't know. The Western world can never get
it. They can never understand it.
It's also OK. It becomes, it doesn't even
matter what because it the same thing happens in corporations.
It's so in the military, once you get beyond like 225 people,
it come becomes more difficult to manage and they found the
same thing in corporations. Once you get beyond 200
something people, it becomes a different animal for that.
With 200 people, the CEO knows everyone in the company by first
name. They may even know who your
spouse is and your children. But when you get to 500 people,
it's it's a lot of people and it becomes more difficult to
manage. When you look at that in a
society, maybe the benefit is to have villages that only have a
certain amount of people. And once you get to a certain
point, the village splits off and, and that maybe that's what
happened and how we were able to have all these villages all over
the place because it became more difficult.
You start losing a sense of community if you get beyond a
certain number and you break off and go start another new village
in a different location, but it's not far away, but you're
related to everyone in the last village.
And so maybe there's with, we have mega cities with millions
of people. And so it's difficult to have
that. You know, even in New York, you
have sections like Gramercy Park in the Village and, and Hell's
Kitchen, you have these. And maybe those sections had
more value like 70 years ago. Like everyone who lived in a
section called Hell's Kitchen knew like everyone.
But then as the city kept growing, you kind of don't know
people because like my grandfather can say we just
didn't go into other neighborhoods.
We didn't know those people. They didn't know us and we
didn't belong there. So it was almost like villages
within within a city. But we've outgrown that and we
have no way of bringing that. We have no way of creating
structures. At least we haven't maybe we'll
be depending on AI to do that. But so with the the point also
to the original question, which shows that human beings are
still the same. So the younger generation will
still want community and they still have the five year olds
running their life and they're still like the guy who was 62 in
the mortgage industry, who had the 13 year old run in his life.
And, and he's a great example of you were, you were saying at a
MOLA that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Well, how old is too old? This guy was 62 and he was able
to have a breakthrough. And so it's, it doesn't matter
what what your age is like. Transformation is
transformation, transforming the whatever it means to be a human
being and having possibilities beyond the limits of what you
were given to be a human. And that's for any age because
you're still going to have, as I said, the five year old making
decisions in your life. And you, you don't even know
that. You don't know that.
I actually love what you're saying right now, because right
now we're talking about what do we have to say to the next
generation. And like you're saying, each new
generation that comes up, the younger people, they're
constantly told you're different, you're different,
you're different. Well, this is whatever, right?
Culturally, a lot of times, depending on where you're at,
the leading generation or the generation that you know should
be guiding them actually says, oh, these kids are doomed, all
these kids are doomed, or whatever, whatever.
And then the kids themselves, they actually accept that and
they're like, yeah, we're absolutely screwed.
You know what I mean? But The thing is specifically in
AI right now, there's so much on social media and in business
saying if you're a young kid, take advantage of AI and you're
going to become a millionaire, a billionaire, yadda, yadda,
yadda, XYZ. And I actually, I just love what
we're talking about because it really shows.
And bring so much light again to really the belief system.
It doesn't matter what age you are.
So if we have a 21 year old who is on Instagram and all they're
hearing all day is take advantage of AI, pick up a
shovel, sell a shovel, you know, whatever they're like could be
petrified in saying if I don't do something or if I don't do
something right now, I'm screwed for the rest of my life, right?
You know, right? And who even knows the type of
beliefs that the teenagers? Or.
You know, the kids, the teenagers, the young adults, who
knows what paradigms or inner belief systems they even have to
discover, face and put aside to even get to a point where they
could implement any type of business.
So we just love to hear it on this podcast to encourage,
obviously anyone of any age. It doesn't just encourage the
older people as well, but it reminds the younger people that,
you know, things like paradigm shifting and building these
types of successes and going through chaos.
It's not a race, you know, it's not a race.
And I just again, it just reminds me of that story, the
story of running with broken legs that you witnessed in your
childhood, reminding me of that, that that story could really
come about. Like a similar story could come
about when someone's in there when they're 456, like you were
when you're very young. Or it could come when you're 13
or when you're 35 or when you're 70, right?
We don't know when that's going to come in somebody's life.
But no matter when it does, not being scared and, you know,
moving forward, having a massive vision for your life.
And also knowing that even as things change around us, we are
all still connected. We all can still have community
and that we have the ability to move through the paradigms and
move forward with or without AI because we have that intrinsic
ability given to us as humans is really the point of the matter,
right? So just wanted to connect those
points just from hearing your expertise.
Again, I love hearing you guys talk.
It's such a pleasure having you on this podcast right now.
We just have one more small segment or one more question and
then we're going to do a quick fire round.
So I'm going to share the last question for us and then we're
going to have Adamola going to the quick fire round.
Adam Adamola, you know you know about the Tulip Tulip craze in
Holland, right? Yeah, Chili place in Holland,
Netherlands, right? Right, right.
It was, it was just a bubble. You know, we had the.com bubble,
automobiles had a bubble, the telecommunications industry had
a bubble. There have been so many bubbles
and everyone thinks they're different, yet we still have
these bubbles. AI is probably going to be
another bubble. ET is another bubble.
Actually it is another bubble. So that's why on our side, we
just try to take advantage of the tools that we can, right,
While the bubbles still last. But first, really, we are
millennials. Myself and, you know, Wella were
born in the same year. I was just joking with her
saying that she's so passionate about the next generation that
sometimes I forget we were born in the same year, right?
So like, as a millennial, you've seen a lot of technological
sheep, right? I feel like I have seen more
technological sheep than Noella. Why?
Because I was born in, you know, a third world country.
So like the third world countries are sort of behind
technologically, right? So we were using technology that
Nuella was not privileged to have used because we were like,
you know, playing we're would I say we are behind.
If you're born in a third world country, you're not starting
from .0, you're starting from maybe -10 right, right.
So yeah. So we use technology that, you
know, we now had to start up playing catch up and like I've
had to play a lot of catch up in my in my life and now catching
up with AI and you know, all this stuff.
I feel like it's like a crash course.
When you have seen that cycle over and over and over and over
again, you just know this is a repetitive pattern, right?
And you just have to take what you can take, you know, a while
while it lasts because. Oh, sure.
Absolutely not around. It's not around for too long.
It's just another bubble. In the in the early 1920s, in
the US alone, there were more than 100 automobile
manufacturers. Most people can't imagine that
over 100 companies making automobiles.
A lot of them in Detroit. I know Detroit.
Was most likely, Yeah, it was a lot.
We're in Detroit. But when?
But most of them disappeared. And when the dust settled, you
had, you know, maybe 5. And so same with the.com bubble
burst, same thing, you most disappeared and dust settles and
you have just a handful. Sowehad.com we had crypto we
had. Which ones have we had in in
recent times? That's a really interesting
comparison. It's a really interesting
comparison to kind of compare, think about this AI bubble and
compare it to the automobile industry.
And I just say that just because of my personal experience.
So I live in Michigan, and I am from the hub of General Motors.
So for what was General Motors, what used to be General Motors,
right? And so just experiencing,
understanding how it has impacted so many different
cities across the country. And then as soon as the bubble
popped, watching those cities deal with that dust settling,
you know, some struggling still to this day struggling to come.
It's very interesting to kind of take that into consideration.
AI being the same way, noticing possibly trends in certain
cities, certain tech cities, tech centric cities, maybe even,
you know, when we think about cities that run with tech right
now, we think about, you know, Seattle, they think about San
Francisco, you know, they think about cities like that.
It's kind of really, really, that's very interesting to, I
don't know, it just makes me wonder how they will be impacted
if and it does get to a point where bubble burst dust settles
and how the actual cities that are built on AI right now will
be impacted later on. I don't know.
That's just really, really interesting to me.
Hello. Yes.
Are you familiar with the Tulip craze in Holland?
I am not, unfortunately. I'm on.
OK, I don't know what's going on.
It's talking about it, the Tulip craze.
They call it Tulip mania in Netherlands.
Yeah, I'm actually not familiar with that.
I think she knows. Maybe not.
No, you don't know. No.
I. Am closer to Netherlands that
she is. OK so it was a bubble and in
Holland someone grew tulips and they sold them and people really
love the tulips. So the price of tulips went up a
lot. And then when the price went up
people were like oh wow you can get rich selling tulips.
And then someone came up with a great idea of making tulips in
different colors and the price went up even more because they
were rare and you can get rich selling tulips.
At some point the price of 1 Tulip was was equivalent to an
average size house in the Netherlands.
That's how expensive they became.
And so you could become so rich selling tulips that so many
people began selling tulips, there was no one to buy them, so
the bubble burst. So it was a bubble.
It was a Tulip. They call the Tulip craze, but
it was a Tulip, it was a bubble. And so to my knowledge, that's
one of the first documented bubbles.
And so we watch bubbles happen in different industries over and
over, stock market bubbles, we get all kinds of bubbles.
So this has happened. So the future generation that
says, well, we're different because we have a bubble.
It's like, well, no, I can tell you about plenty of bubbles that
have happened. In the late 1800s, there were
thousands of telecommunication companies for cell phone
services. So it was a bubble.
It burst. And who came out, you know, the
Bell companies, AT&T, which was part of the Bell companies
originally. So they've been lots of bubbles.
How about how about betting made off in your neck of the woods?
Betting made-up made off with your money.
Yeah, he did. That's the pyramid scheme.
Yeah. Yeah, the Ponzi scheme.
And actually Ponzi, I forget who it's really named after.
A real person. An Italian guy.
Ponzi, Yeah, yeah, so. So this generation is still
dealing with Ponzi schemes and bubbles. 100.
Percent and one in Community. 100%.
Yeah, the Ponzi schemes are really, really interesting.
It's just crazy. It is crazy like Ponzi schemes.
It's interesting how people keep falling for them all the time.
When there's a document, there's a.
Document. History.
Doesn't that prove that each generation is the same as the
last? Exactly what I what what I said
right all. Right.
So we've got one last question then we're going to do a quick
fire round, OK, to any rising leader.
And they're afraid to run head first into chaos in an
organization, or they are resistant to change, or they're
scared of change, or they think change is too hard and they kind
of put those blind spots on themselves.
What would you say to that person?
Call me and I'll offer you a free 30 minute session and we'll
see if there's any way I can support you in getting there.
Absolutely, absolutely asking. You might as well direct your
problem to the best, to the best in the business on that.
All right, so let's end it with a quick fire round again, Ted,
just want to thank you for being here.
Thank you for your time, your patience, your expertise, your
wisdom, just everything you've given us and our audience and
people who haven't met you yet, people that don't understand
these concepts yet, people that are, you know, looking for
wisdom in a feedback loop. I just thank you again for your
time. So Adam, Ola, go ahead.
OK, I have. I think I've tried so much to
enable the chaos that has been in my head.
Of course, I have been holding the surprise for you, Ted.
I didn't say I had a surprise for I have been keeping the cat
in the bag. It's time to let the cat out of
the bag. So a couple of surprises, yeah,
maybe just one. You are highly, highly
appreciated by and I have made sure that this second episode
with you is actually a milestone episode.
So you have the honor of thank you Episode 100 and the King
James broadcast. Ted Santos makes the noise of
Ted Santos. 100. BC50150 thing that's a, that's a
very, very big milestone. And you know, I'm grateful that
this started, you know, two years ago as a passion project.
And of course we're recording this a day before my mother's
birthday because I remember I started seven days after my
mother's birthday two years ago, November 19, 2023.
And we're grateful with global top 2.5%.
And yeah, the goal is to be in the global top 1%.
So I have just one request from yourself, Anuela, please say a
word of prayer and a birthday wish for my mother because I am
going to publish this episode on my mother's birthday.
So there you go. So.
Who's going to go? Birthday Happy birthday to
Adamola's mother because we he didn't tell us your name so we
can only call you Adamola's mother.
OK, her name is. Her name is Bridget AB.
Yeah. AB the mother of AI.
Happy birthday. Happy birthday Bridget.
Happy and. Many, many more to Bridget on
her birthday. Love and respect.
I assume your mother's mother's not 115 years old.
If she was, I'd say she's still a young woman.
She's left at 70, so yeah. So she's still young, OK?
She's still young enough to have a paradigm shift.
No question. No question about that.
Even if she was 115, she could still have a paradigm shift.
Yeah, yeah, age. Age is just a number.
So yeah, once again, I'm I'm
really grateful to you and yeah, I'll just make sure that every
every episode, every milestone episode has been somebody that I
deeply connect with and deeply appreciate their body of work
and their personality. So I'm somebody who's very good
at separating the arts from the artist or for a massive episode,
I need to appreciate the arts and the artist and who better
there? Ted Santos.
I know, I know this is going as a as a surprise to Noella
because like I deliberately had to publish another episode to
make it 1 for tonight. So that Ted Santos is episode.
It's going to be 150. Very cool.
So now you know the reason why I published an older episode, I've
been able to keep this surprise really, really, you know,
confidential. So thank you very much once
again, we appreciate you very, very much on this platform.
And let's get ready to rumble the quick fire round questions.
It's going to go fast. OK, big fire round.
OK, What's 1 morning hobby that fuels your clarity?
Well, I don't have any habits at least.
Yeah, OK. Habits.
Just no hobbits. I know this is a quick run,
quick fire round, so just think of it this way, If you play a
sport, the team comes together to do what they go to, every day
they go to. Train.
Right. What else?
What's another word? Practice.
Exactly. They don't.
They don't come together to do habits.
They come together to practice. They practice to be powerful and
very effective at what they do. People don't understand the
power of language. When you say I have this habit,
do you smoke? Do you drink?
Do you? Are you, What are you doing?
That's a habit. Habits are generally things
people want to get rid of. Practices are things that make
you powerful and very effective at what you do.
So what's your morning practice that fuels your clarity?
I like that the best in the world are the best in the world
for a reason. To be the best, you have to beat
the best, and the best is blessed, and the best is no
Ella. I have no practice.
I, I eat breakfast every day, but to have clarity that that
really has nothing to do with clarity.
Clarity is, is a bigger commitment that has nothing to
do with each day. It's it's being that person.
And what's one word that defines leadership today?
It. Would have to be a hyphenated
short short term. Interesting.
What's the most disruptive invention of the last decade?
Perhaps. Well, you know what?
I'll say the the web telescope, because it's time that
scientists and astronomers are disrupted in their belief about
how they see the universe. They've been saying, oh, it's
about 13.8 billion years old. And it's, I don't know anyone
who's lived that long to be able to tell me it's that old.
So I don't know. And I've, I've heard all the
scientific reasons and how they extrapolate.
But what the web telescope has allowed them to do is see
universes that are that they've never seen and they're seeing
that they are much older. So it's going to alter the way
they see the universe in the world.
So we we give a number of 13.8 billion based on the known
universe. There's so much that we don't
know, we don't know. So it's difficult for me to see
how they can even see the Earth is 4 billion or 13 or 20 billion
or a trillion years old. We don't even know what's in the
Earth, but the Hubble telescope is helping us better understand
the age and and some of the other dynamics happening in the
universe about things that we just didn't know.
So in the past decade, they put the web telescope up in the up
into space. So who is 1 mentor that has
changed your trajectory? Ted Santos just answered the
question. If you're able to finish it in a
different way than this previous question, ask about leadership.
Finish this sentence. Leadership is.
Blessed future, The future. The future wonderful awesome
love that closes out our quick fire round.
Again, just want to thank you endlessly for your expertise and
your time. We really appreciate it.
No, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
It's been an honor to be invited back a second time, especially
as it hasn't been a long time since the first one.
So thank you. Love and of course, absolute
respect to you. Words are in sufficient or
inadequate to express how much we appreciate you.
And maybe I need a paradigm shift to be able to acquire the
knowledge of the language to express my appreciation for you.
But in the meantime, while I'm still in this lower paradigm, I
see a very, very big thank you and 1st for me to you.
God bless you and to the audience guys, always go for
something in your lives. You know, on seeing believe,
strive to thrive in a first achieve very, very important.
Always believe in yourself and of course, keep working towards
your goals. Never say never, never let
anybody pull you down or talk you down.
Nobody has the right to tell you who you are.
Yeah, always go for what you believe.
And of course, if you, if you, if you're in doubt, if you need
some coaching or training, please learn from the best those
that we've not helped you, it's goodbye.
So how does artificial intelligence fit into your
philosophy of destruction? You know, is it a tool?
Is it a threat? Is it a mirror?
Is it an amplifier? And what's brilliant strategies
can leaders for leadership in this age and time, you know,
adopt using artificial intelligence to achieve progress
for their teams, the organizations and of course, in
their personal lives?