[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're optimizing your decision making because you are taking inventory of all the things that are affecting your decisions anyway. The difference is you're now being considerate of them rather than disregarding them.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Joining us today is Layla Entezon. She is a neuro emotional performance coach for high achievers and the author of a new book, the Heart of Peak Performance. She bridges neuroscience, psychology, and peak performance together to support the people she works with. Welcome to the show, Layla.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Excited about this conversation. And you know, where we begin is talking about, you know, some of our challenges that we've had to overcome in life. And you know, you and I had the pleasure of meeting earlier before getting a chance to jump on this conversation. And so I wanted to walk through one of the major issues that you've had to face in your life on your journey, both of entrepreneurship before you discovered your setup model that you teach people now in relation to developing high performance. So where's a good spot for us to begin?
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Thanks, Richard. You know, once you told me that that's where you wanted to start the conversation when we have this podcast, I was really excited about that because it's a rare platform where you get to tell this.
And I think one of the greatest challenges for me has been, you know, I've been in this space for many years and years ago. When I started in it, it was just this, like, foreign concept talking about soft skills and EQ and neuroscience and emotions. And, you know, every once in a while I would read these books and they would talk about the relevance of emotions in branding or in decisions or, you know, neuroscience. And I would think, oh, my God, like that's thing that I'm saying, that's my message. And someone else wrote a book about it, but so many leaders and people I would talk to, oh, you know, that's intangible, that's immeasurable, and that doesn't really matter. That doesn't have a place in business. And I keep trying to reiterate, I'm telling you this matters and fast forward decades later where the conversation of emotions and EQ and, you know, the psychology and people is. Is everywhere, is all the buzz in every industry. And if you're not talking about it, then you know, it. The there's something to say about your culture and your organization and your leadership. And there's so many books about the backbone of who you are and you being healthy on the inside. This stuff that I was like, you know, yelling about for years is now more mainstream. And so, you know, the. During that journey, questioning my worth, questioning my work, and saying, God, Layla, you know, are you sure this is right? And everything in me knew that. I'm telling you, this is. This is a thing. But constantly having to. To battle. Not just people saying that, yeah, no, it's not. But then my own inner voice of like, okay, there's another person that just said, this doesn't matter, Layla, are you sure?
And so that's probably been one of the biggest hurdles in this journey.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So it's really, you know, battling almost the trends and the naysayers, as it were, for your life's work to a large degree over a long period of time.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Yes. And, you know, it didn't have this traditional path, like, I'm a teacher or an engineer, so I go to this school, get this degree, follow this path, and it's this set, whatever. Yeah, I don't. I don't have that. I have an undergrad degree in neuroscience, and then I have an mba and then I have a master's in psychology. And so when you're trying to pitch to people, you know, and they're saying, well, what's the credential of it? Or what's the path of it? Yeah, sorry, I kind of don't have that, then that made it even harder to. To. To share. I mean, even if it was art and you. You could say, oh, well, you know, it's art, it doesn't necessarily have the same structures and that you. It has more fluidity and more leniency. This wasn't even that to where I could try to, you know, pitch it that way. It was. It's business, it's leadership. It should have a thing. And there's so many books about leadership and business that are numbers focused and strategy focused and, and have that structure. And so you're trying to, you know, come against all of that and saying, yeah, but there's also this thing about people, and people matter. And then today it's, you know, people is one of the main pillars in any organization, in any team. There's endless number of books about it.
And so, yeah, that's definitely been a thing.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Well, and. And from an organization perspective, there's everyone. You know, businesses operate on human potential, but they. They incorporate technological potential as part of that. But they're still, at least today, for the. For the foreseeable near future, still operated primarily by humans with their own thinking in their own hands to some degree. And without that human capital to help build and grow we really do struggle with challenges. And one of the things I think really both through like Covid and in a post Covid environment that's been a real challenge for most organizations is keeping people and attracting the right kind of talent. I know I've interviewed, you know, hundreds of high performing entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, people who are really responsible for leading people in many organizations. And consistently that has been one of their number one challenges to growth and to scale is being able to maintain quality people and be able to attract quality people and, and to, to incentivize them to even, you know, come to work. Because a lot of people have been for the most part sitting at home like there's a, there's a weird almost apathy taking place to some degree in North America at some level. So I'm curious, how have you seen that progress as, you know, your work and the quality and the types of things that you do is becoming, I don't want to say more mainstream, but more commonplace, more acceptable for people to discuss and recognize the value of understanding the human being element in relation to growing an organization.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: The, the, what it's done is create an abundance of research to where there is research now that you can say, that you can point to about leadership, how it Yields results and ROIs, and so it has helped in that regard. But you're still countering human behavior and human mindset and the leaders who held that mindset for so many years and now you're coming along and trying to say, hey, guess what? You know, emotions are a big part of this whole human, human potential, team revenue, numbers, business thing. And I think one of the things I commonly hear from leaders is this idea that they think that they compartmentalize and oh, you know, because I compartmentalize, then emotions really aren't a thing. And you know, these things that were difficult or traumatic or my daily life or whatever, I, I, I put those away, I block those out, I don't pay attention to those, those don't really matter.
And so they believe that. And it becomes hard to, to show otherwise when, you know, I always tell people it's one brain, one database. Everything in your entire life is in that one database. And so you don't have these separate buckets where you can say, oh, you know, I have this personal brain and I have this professional brain and they don't really bleed over.
And so the triggers that exist, the dynamics that exist, the engagements that exist, all happen in that one brain. And when research is telling you on a fundamental level what we care about is social connection, human engagement on multiple fronts. Then the idea of thinking that oh, you compartmentalize doesn't, doesn't vibe with the idea that yeah, you can compartmentalize all you want, but social connection and engagement matter and feeding that is emotions, feeding that is eq.
And so that still comes into a mix. The way you process information is emotionally before it's logically. And so, um, most of what you do is subconscious. You don't even recognize you're doing it anyway. Everything that you take in is hitting an emotional checkpoint before it's getting some logical resolution anyway.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I mean there's the fight or flight type mindset of the world. I mean you're not, when you're in, you know, we were born to run from like saber tooth tigers and recognize that there's danger and to do something about it. I don't think that, you know, people may be associated that well, it's logical to run away from the saber tooth tiger. But before, before it's logical, it's clearly like, oh my God, it's going to eat me, I better run really fast. So I think that the two elements, the, the degree to which someone, and maybe you can speak to this someone can isolate or understand that emotional reaction or proactive action as, as it were before you have, you know, logical decision. Like there's a degree of awareness and then like speed of awareness. And so I feel like to a degree from our past conversation, it seems like that's an area that you probably work with, with your high performing entrepreneurs is how do you, how do you tighten the gap between recognizing the emotional aspect and then being able to logically assess that emotional aspect in a quick time frame. Am I on track there?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: I think there's two critical points here.
One is the idea that your brain's number one job is survival. All day, every day. Your internal systems and your organs and your environment. And so the things that your brain defines as threatening are relative. It's not just about whether the building is burning or there's a gun to my head. You know, I may have had these life experiences that make someone yelling feel threatening to me. And it's such a hypersensitive trigger because your brain thankfully does such a great job of helping you survive that it's doing this database search to say, hey, all day, every day, I'm looking to see is there anything that remotely resembles the things that I've come to define as threatening, whether that's someone yelling or a building on fire.
And so that is, I Think that's one critical point and the other one to also circle back to what you just brought up as Daniel Kahneman, who is a remarkable Nobel laureate, unfortunately passed away recently, has a phenomenal book called Thinking Fast and Slow. And he talks about, your brain has these two pathways, System one and system two. And system one is this automatic fast response.
If you step off a curve and a car is coming, before you're consciously aware and registering that the car is coming, you pull back. And that is system one that doesn't. It's like a micro fraction of a second, but it doesn't wait for you to consciously register a car, and it just knows to pull back.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Are you looking for a great book to read? Turns out I have one for you. It's called Cash Follows the Leader. It's available anywhere books are sold, but.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: If you want to get a free copy and you can download it right to your inbox, you can go to coachcanfield.com cash follows.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Or, you know, I've heard examples of where you're on a hike and. And you're just kind of going about it and suddenly before you consciously recognize there's a snake and you, you register snake and you pull away, something just, you know, got you to pull back and then see the snake. That is that system one is. It's also the automatic. You know, when you, once you learn how to drive a car, you automatically know how to drive the car and you don't have to think about it. And system two is that more intentional, this version of sort of moving through space. And so often your brain looks for efficiency. And so when it can sort of automatically assess something, it defaults to doing that because it's energy preservation. And so, so often you'll be in system one in your reaction to something and your interpretation of something. And that pause that you talked about that you and I touched on in our previous conversation that pauses. What we teach is that awareness to where are the places where ra. And taking that default automatic reaction, it serves you to stop, to insert the pause to be more intentional. And so if as a leader, you know, you. You snap at your. Your team member, the behavior change to insert the pause to stop to understand what triggered you to snap versus then having a more intentional response that allows you to. To show up as your best self. Those are some of the things that we teach.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Fascinating. And when you, when you think about the. Again, working, spending two years working.
Not two years, two decades, I should say, working with high performers and leading, you know, various sizes of teams and challenges. Where do you see that?
You know, you're really starting to get traction with them. What are some of the initial dominoes that begin to fall, as it were, in relation to working and coaching through them on this type of work so they can get start to see a little bit of momentum, build on recognizing these emotional behaviors so that they can start making those habitual changes to start seeing more impact with the teams and the people they serve.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: It goes back to our first conversation about the intangible.
And one of the challenges is that, that this doesn't a lot of times have this measured momentum building. There's. It's sort of like the. I think it's a particular kind of bamboo, and it has all these roots that keep growing, growing, growing, and then you don't see anything. And then suddenly you see, you know, something sprout up. That in this work so often you spend so much time doing these micro behavior shifts, these micro learnings, these micro redefinings, and you think nothing's happening, nothing's happening. You can't speak to or identify a behavior change or feeling change. And then suddenly you wake up one day and you think, oh, my God, how did I get here? How did I change my language, change the way I engage with my team, change the way that I use some of this space.
And you can't point back to any particular time where you saw that change happening. And so to your question about the, you know, what are the things that they start to see or, you know, what's the sort of the progression of that? It doesn't have this, you know, defined structure. It's more those subtle nuances.
And sometimes it. A lot of it is more visceral. A lot of it is more. You can tell you feel different, maybe your team engages different with you differently, but you can't necessarily point to it until then you kind of show up and, you know, I had a client that gave me an example about their team member. They were, you know, running a team meeting. And then afterwards, one of the client's direct reports, who has known them for many years, said, oh, my God, what happened to you? You know, who is this person that. That showed up running this team meeting, this annual meeting, with different language, different agenda, different mindset and heart set, and it was just all the work that they'd been doing.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Wow, fantastic. Well, it's interesting, you know, I can see the subtleties as you describe them, and I would imagine that to a degree, the fact that those subtleties and they're more behavioral Oriented changes that you, again, the impact will be recognizable probably through feedback, almost like a feedback loop of the people that you're working with and surrounding by. And it can take a while to see that kind of bridge, that connection being made.
That, that probably poses a challenge on its own of being able to, you know, really recognize how do we get this message to people. So I would imagine, you know, what you talked about earlier, the struggles of acceptance that, you know, people are important, emotional intelligence is important, that that's taken, you know, a long time to get out into the atmosphere to some degree, also has created a bit of a challenge on just trying to get almost acceptance for, for entrepreneurs to recognize the value of this work. But now you're starting to see it. You're seeing it in the people that you serve.
What would, what do you think? You know, one of the entrepreneurs you serve would indicate if they were talking to, you know, a friend, a colleague, a business person that they work with, or perhaps a vendor that they support, and they were talking through how this work has materialized in their own teams. What are some of the things you think that they would be sharing with that individual?
[00:18:19] Speaker A: I think they can recognize that their language is different, that there's sort of a greater inner calm or inner peace that they feel rather than an anxiousness or a chaos, that they recognize that they engage with their team differently.
And if you have a grand slam, really that they're engaging with the world differently, their families, the way that they view serving other people, greater purpose, things like that.
But I think that's some of the ways that they recognize that shows up.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. And so if you were to point to some of the blind spots that, you know, high performing entrepreneurs tend to face in relation to this, you know, emotional intelligence aspect and then the implementation of the strategies you have, where do you find, what are some of the common areas that seem to have a level of consistency amongst people who are running organizations or like myself, more chaotic of nature entrepreneurs who are easily distracted by, oh my God, look, blue car, you know, and you know, what's the next shiny object over there that we can go solve a problem at? So what are some of the consistencies and blind spots you find exist?
[00:19:37] Speaker A: That's got one answer, Richard. Like it's the glaring number one answer. And it's the idea of this inner child that I swear it's like either their eyes roll back in their head, they look like they're going to vomit, they look like they're about to leave, that the Second, we get to a conversation that says, hey, listen, remember we said that it's one brain in one database. And remember that we said that, you know, what happens in your whole life matters, and that your brain, you know, takes your early years and it. And it uses that to create these definitions about the world. And then you spend that rest of your life sort of, you know, balancing everything against that database and those formed definitions and convincing them or allowing them, having them allow themselves to lean into this idea of inner child early experiences that that stuff is not who. That that stuff matters. It is the number one thing that. That I can easily point to that high performers often feel like that that's ridiculous. You want to tell me that, you know, what happened to me as a kid or so long ago, I don't even think about that stuff, or, you know, that doesn't even matter, or, you know, I put that out of my head, that. And it doesn't matter how much research you have to show that. I promise you, it's a thing. It's the number one barrier.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Interesting. So what strategies do you implement for yourself when you're first connecting with somebody that you're looking to serve or they've reached out to you? How do you help them get through that blind spot, that barrier? What are some of the strategies you implement to help get them to understand the impact of that recognition so that they can actually move forward and move beyond to become a better version of themselves?
[00:21:29] Speaker A: So what I've learned is that the two things, one, I'm very upfront about the process. Hey, listen, one brain, we spend a lot of time initially understanding how'd you get here? Who are you? How did you form your definitions? That requires a deep dive into your early years, et cetera. And so really making sure they get that. This, if. If you want to work together, this is how that goes. So that, you know, so you'll either get the people that are like, that's not for me, or the ones that are like, the most common, that I don't really buy that, or I'm not sure. I'm skeptical, but I'm willing to try, or the very rare occasion that someone says, that makes sense to me and great, you know, let's. Let's dive into my childhood.
And so that one is, I try to be very upfront about all that and to tell them that, you know, like, it's this process that takes a while to build and then to let them know that this is the way that process works. And if that doesn't work for you, then that's okay. And sharing that 100% of the time, what I had seen, even when I tried to tell myself, no, no, Layla, this leader, it's not about childhood. This leader, what's going on doesn't have roots in early years.
In my early years, sometimes I would try to tell myself that, and every time, I was wrong. And so eventually I was like, listen, Layla, I think you have enough evidence that it's a thing.
And so I tell them that, listen, 100% of the time, what I is that it's got some root there. Here's the logic of why, here's the science of why, here's the neuroscience of why, here's the emotion of why. And if you can buy into that enough to be willing to try, then great. And what I'm used to is, in particular with this audience, that a lot of times in the beginning, it's almost like, prove yourself. It's fine, I'm willing to try this, but show me why it's real. And so it is. That part of the gift is being able to share some science, some neuroscience, some psychology, a little bit of business, a little bit of logic, a little bit of emotion, and having all these tools in the toolbox box, rather than just sort of trying to come at it with straight emotion.
And so slowly trying to edge away, chip away at that, but understanding that, listen, this audience is going to present that way, it's like, how many times do you want to engage a client and have to argue with them and sort of prove yourself for so much of it in the beginning of why, hey, you're the one that came to me. But okay, fine, let's deal with your resistance and try to show you how to bring your walls down.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: I like that Makes a lot of sense. And when we come back after these quick messages, we're going to learn more about setting up the appropriate model for your best decision making. We'll be right back.
Okay, Richard. I keep hearing about this thing called the Colby A Index. You talk about it all the time on the show. What is it?
[00:24:54] Speaker C: How do I get information about this.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Thing, and why is it so important?
[00:24:59] Speaker C: When I first got my Colby done, it totally revolutionized everything for me. I finally felt like, oh, man, this is what I was looking for. All the things I've been doing that have been working for me and all the frustrations I'd had, if I just understood this at an earlier age, boy, oh, boy, would my life be different.
You can take that step if you want to Learn and understand how it can change things for you and the way you communicate with others. You can go to coachcanfield.com and download your free report.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: We are back here with Layla discussing the importance of emotional intelligence, utilizing her incredible concepts to be able to increase your performance. And I really wanted to discuss your setup model for optimized decision making. This is something that you've developed to really work specifically with the entrepreneur, the high performer, and help them navigate through some of these decisions and balance the emotional and the logical side to some degree. So walk us through how that process works so that we can have our listeners get a bit of a framework for it.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Absolutely. So what happens is your brain has limited bandwidth. It's not this endless stream of availability. And when you are stressed, when you're in high pressure situations, you're already tapping a bunch of that bandwidth. And so there is our emotion, our decision making is a complex process. And setup allows you a way to take a quick inventory of the complexity of factors that are involved in your decision, decision making. And rather than in that moment having to sort of think about, well, what are the things I should be thinking about here? Being able to jump to that tool and take a quick inventory. So the S is for your somatics, and that is your physical sensations that in this moment, in this decision you're about to make, in this conversation that you're in, you know, is there tension somewhere? Is there pressure somewhere? Is your heart racing? The E is for your emotions. What are the emotions that you're feeling in this moment? The T is for your thoughts. What are the thoughts that are coming up for you? The U is for universe. What else is in your universe? Remember, we said it's one brain. So let's say I'm about to lead a board meeting, but I also had an argument with a loved one. I'm about to leave on vacation and my dog is sick. All of those things are in your brain, eating away at bandwidth, creating emotions, having their own things going on. And that affects the person that shows up to lead that board meeting. So what else is in my universe? And the P is for your physiology. So things like genetic predispositions and so how did you sleep? And so allowing you to do a quick check of those factors in those pressure situations, or maybe before you enter high pressure situations, that allows you to get a better sense of self awareness.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Right. That makes a lot of sense. And I appreciate how you started with the S. And it was almost really looking at a reflection of your physical environment and Maybe even your physical body. So if you're experiencing neck pain or lower back pain or a sports injury or something like that, and that's impacting your decision making, it's not that something that goes away. It's probably a nagging at you to some degree and it's taking up a lot of that mental ram. And you know, as you're speaking, what I'm envisioning is something that I do frequently, which is probably seven or eight different Google Chrome tabs open and inside of each like or individual windows and inside of each window is like nine or 10 different tabs. So there's like 120 tabs going. And I'm like, oh yeah, I've got this one open over here and this one open over here. So eventually you have a slowdown and then you get the spinning hourglass or what have you or the spinning wheel on a Mac computer that says, you know, processing essentially.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I can totally relate. Yes.
And you know, it is your body is this wealth of information and is communicating to you in these sensations all the time. And leaving that data set out is such a detriment in your decision making. It's telling you something all day, every day, constantly with things going on. And so that s allows you to make sure that you are being conscious of.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: That makes sense. And so the, the framework that you've outlaid and you know, kind of the acronym for setup is a great, obviously easy way to remember that. Is there. Could you walk me through and explain a little bit more? Is there additional rationale from your neuroscience background, etc, their psychology background about the, the, the, the order in which they are laid out? I'm curious about that.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: No, no particular order. It just created the right acronym.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Well, there you go. Okay, great. Yeah, so, so it was really a matter of, okay, what's memorable that we can get people to work from that's going to help them get set up for success around decision making.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. What's a word that would be relevant in that arena that my brain can quickly access and then I can try to run through the letters.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Excellent. And you know, can you. Do you give some examples of that in your new book? I would imagine that there's a pretty good, probably a pretty good framework about going through that process and perhaps giving some analogies and some examples of where it's going to come in really handy. And, and I'm also curious about this, if you can speak to it. Layla is, you know, there's a, all of this has a degree of rumination introspection, retrospection taking place.
But, but you're trying to do it in the fly, in the moment. What I'm curious is how much of the work that you're doing, especially with a new client, new entrepreneur, is based on them recognizing an event that took place recently, even though it's now in the past, and, and almost reflecting back on what they might have done differently had they gone through the setup model.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Well, what happens is the.
It's a new behavior, it's a new thought process. And so in the beginning it kind of feels artificial of like, okay, let's go through decisions you've had in the last week or events you've had in the last week and had you run through, set up what was going on, and then you do it enough to where, then it sort of becomes much more automatic to where you know, when you, you. Let's just say, for example, you know, you're engaging with a team member and you start to see yourself get riled up. You're more able to say, okay, I recognize that I'm getting rile dialed up and I can do this quick inventory to see, to give me that pause we talked about to go back and say, how do I want to show up right now? And so it's an artificial until it becomes more automatic. And that's what we run through. Is that it? It's, you know, in coaching you get to slow down the universe so that you can. You take a conversation and break it up into these microscopic pieces. Then what happens? Then would you say, what words did you use? What was going on? If we tuned into this thing, if we tuned into that thing, and then the more you're able to learn these nuances and how they show up, then you are more quickly able to say, okay, I do have greater practice in tuning into my body. I recognize my heart is racing. What I've learned is when my heart is racing, I'm probably about to get angry about something. And so let me stop and check in.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense now. You know, a lot of this really, it's centered around self awareness. We use lots of different terms, of course, and I don't want to over generalize anything by any means, but to me, you know, you, you're identifying that there's a real impact to performance around this. So how, how exactly do you find that this impacts performance directly? Like, you know, a person starts practicing, they start to create that automated degree through habit. Now they're recognizing in the moment, so the ripple effect you Know what are some examples of where you start to see that really impact the team relative to, I'm guessing, obviously, you know, you got board meetings, you got team meetings, you got all these different aspects, but then it begins to follow you over in your family life, probably in your. In your faith life, in different areas, different relationships with your children, etc. So how do you start to see that really impact, I guess, performance? And when we think about performance, I'm curious what metrics you would be looking at or you would be trying to assess relative to performance.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: So first, I want to say this is all day, every day. This is the person at the coffee shop, the way you engaged with them when your significant other gave you a cup of co coffee and made breakfast, when your assistant did a thing. This is all day, every day. When you are making decisions and engaging with the world, your brain is sort of doing this inventory, and that's coming to the table. It is in varying extents, in varying contexts, with varying levels of criticalness. And so first off, it's to notice that this is ever present.
And then in terms of how does it affect performance is that you are optimizing your decision making because you are taking inventory of all the things that are affecting your decisions. Anyway, the difference is you're now being considerate of them rather than disregarding them. So if you had a poor night's sleep last night, that's affecting the decisions you make, that's affecting how you feel about me right now. That's affecting, you know, your. Your mood, your energy, energy, all of that. And so it's the difference between. It's there. You can either bring awareness to it and then optimize your performance, optimize this moment, this conversation, because you're recognizing, hey, I'm feeling kind of short with Layla. How much of that is because of the poor night's sleep I got and how much of it is Layla?
And so being able to optimize, because you are being intentional about the things that are there, whether you recognize them or not, your physical sensations, what else is in your universe, your emotions, all of those are affecting your decisions which affect your performance anyway. If you are a trauma surgeon, if you are a professional athlete, if you are in special forces, these things are there. You can't. You didn't come up with a new brain. It's the same one we all have. It works the same way.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. I get it. I love it. Now I'm curious, you know, kind of taking this on a little bit more of I Guess a macro level. Pulling it into the future a bit. Thinking about what's transpired in the last decade on how people work. I know for myself, I am primarily, I run a virtual business. I mean, I operate with clients all over Canada. I'm on meetings with people all over, you know, the United States every single week. And I do a lot of, obviously recording for this particular show. We have our separate podcast, wealth on Main street. So we produce a lot of content. And I, I basically work in the virtual realm and I have done that actually for the better part of almost 15 years. So I'm pretty accustomed to it. And for me, there's a lot of, you know, check boxes on its advantages. But I. I've seen, of course, you know, through both Covid and just, you know, technological advantage, there's been a higher degree of acceptance to people working and operating in that realm. And there's. There's some risk factors associated with that to, to people, I think. And so I'm curious about the personal human connection and, and what you see taking place as we go into the future and, and what are you hearing from the entrepreneurs you serve as it relates to how they live and work with their teams in a modern world.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: I think this is making the human element ever more critical.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: There's certain moments in our life where we know that things are going to change.
That happened to me in August of 2009.
My life completely and totally changed forever. For the better. I learned about this incredible concept called the infinite banking concept.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: Becoming your own banker.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: It was created by R. Nelson Nash. Nelson became my friend and my mentor. I loved him dearly.
I now have the blessed life of being able to teach his incredible message, his incredible concept to the people I love to serve.
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[00:38:22] Speaker A: I think this is making the human element ever more critical.
Whether it is the human element in being in zoom and requiring the camera to be on versus not because your brain processes that visual stimuli differently, if there's a human versus not whether it is what it takes for us to connect with people, you know how much more important it is that because I don't have the physical aspect of being in a room with you, I leverage the visual aspect to take maybe an extra couple of minutes to connect with you.
You know, sort of human to human before we dive into the meeting, creating these opportunities for engagement, those things being more intentional and aware of our whole selves and you know, like we talked about, for example, with taking the inventory, because I have less factors like being physically present with you, maybe reading, you know, all of your body language, things like that, being able to read more cues for both in you and in myself, increasing my ability to do those things. All of those are more relevant and significant today and will increasingly be so, I believe, than they were in the last 10, 15 years.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. I couldn't agree with you more. And you know, I think about some of the things that I have developed. I guess I don't know if they're new habits or, you know, some of them have been unintentional, but now I'm actually becoming far more intentional on it and I'll give you a couple examples and I'm just curious your thoughts. So naturally, you know, I'm a Colby certified coach, so relative to my Colby A index, I'm a, a fairly high implementer. So that means I, I'm really good with the physical world and tangible things. I would rather demonstrate something with physical things around me. Like as an example, I've explained concepts to people at a dining table using ketchup and mustard and salt and pepper shakers, you know, or knives and forks. So I'll, I'll use what's available to do that. Whereas people who are maybe lower on the implementer side of things, they're much more visually engaged and they'd be more apt to like, like describe it in words, in a word picture so that you can see the picture develop in your own mind through their word choice. Whereas I'm gonna, you know, I'm literally going to use my water jug and the things that I've got available. In fact, I, I've used this one twice today and I probably use it several times this week to explain a concept to people. And so thinking about that, I, I realized, okay, in the, you know, if I was in a physical room with people, I would be using my hands a lot. I would use a lot of physical elements. And so being now, you know, almost 15 years focused on a virtual practice for my main business of teaching people the infinite banking concept, I actually amplify and I overextend to a degree the amount of hand movement and physical elements that I would bring into a virtual conversation. And I'm doing it, you know, again, it was happening naturally, but I realized, oh, wow, I can actually do this more intentionally so that I can create more connection potentially and feeling within the individual. And I think if you can show up almost larger than life inside of a virtual element. It does add a little bit of something to it. And so I know for myself in working with a lot of other, like financial advisors and professionals who are meeting with clients day in and day out in this type of a format, depending on what their, some of their natural skill sets are. So, you know, you might want to try this, you might want to try movement. Movement, coincidentally, you may not be able to see it because I'm not walking on it right now, but I am standing on a walking treadmill. So many times I'll be on with the climbing. I said, hey, guess what, Layla, we're going to have a walking meeting today. It's okay if you don't want to walk, but I'm going to. If it's distracting in any way, just let me know. So I give people a choice in the option, but it adds a little bit of context and something unique and fundamentally, if we were on a phone call, I would go out and go for a walk because I want to get my steps in and get my exercise. And I actually find for me personally, being more of a physically active person from that vantage point, I developed a higher level of mental acuity through movement, muscle movements. So I actually think better when I'm walking or moving. And again, that may not be the case for all people, but just taking some time to do some self assessment and learning, understanding my Colby index has been really beneficial in that for me. So I'm just curious. Again, we're talking about the future of life and work and, and performance and understanding in a world where AI is to some degree maybe going to shift the dynamics of not only where people work, but how people work and also the fundamentals of the work that they do. What's one thing that AI isn't going to replace? It's going to be physical connection and conversation with a real human. The mannerisms, the discussion, the body language, the things that we love so dearly about an interaction with someone.
So I, I really agree with you. I see that there's going to be a drastic increase in, or a resetting back to a higher desire to want to have those great physical conversations with other people.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Yes. And I think tagging, tagging onto that, that leverage what you can. Maybe you play music, you know, the beginning of a meeting. Maybe you have a fountain running, you know, so the sound of water.
Maybe we have a lunch meeting and the idea that we're sharing a meal, even though it's virtually, you know, so I think leveraging these additional opportunities so that you do have these small ways. Oh, what are you eating? Oh, where'd you get that? Oh my God, I love Indian food. Oh, here's what I. And so you were leveraging small opportunities to increase that connection and that engagement because exactly like you were saying, saying that's the piece that at least today, AI can't copy me.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Well. And, you know, and I've, I've spoken with a lot of people, both from our, our own organization and many others. You know, there's some folks that, you know, they, they couldn't wait to get back to being quote unquote, in the office or on site. They, they really needed that, that direct human connection. And, and, and for some people, it was also an aspect of needing to get out of the house or needing to get out of the environment. Like maybe their home or their setup wasn't conducive to good behavioral work with interruptions, whether it's kids or the dog or the mailman or the Amazon guy showing up with a package ringing your doorbell. So all these things, you know, created little habitual layers where people maybe were becoming less affected or effective, I should say. And, and they, they were able to minimize those things by being back in a physical workspace. And then there's a contrast of that, of a bunch of people who say, oh my God, like this, working from home is the best thing since sliced bread. Like, I can't even believe it. I get so much more work done. I feel more productive. Like, I get to see my kids more frequently or my spouse, or I get to make coffee out of my own coffee maker that tastes better. Like, so, so there's, there's an interesting dynamic because I've seen both sides of them somewhat equally amongst the people I've communicated with. And I'm curious, have you seen something similar in your own work or even just in, in your conversations with the entrepreneurs that you're serving?
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Something similar in terms of people having that dichotomy of some seeing benefits from back to the office and some not. Yeah, absolute. Absolutely.
And the flexibilities that it creates. And I think the most important part of that is for the ones where they felt like, hey, I need the options that it gave you a new appreciation for the engagements that that can create and for the ones that got that appreciated staying home because I got more time with the kids and the dog. Then again, the increased opportunities for engagement that, that created, that you really got to savor, hey, I get to go to my kids game. I get to have breakfast with my, my Loved one.
And, and so what it's done to create opportunity to recognize the things that we value.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah, very interesting. I would also say that, you know, to some degree, maybe it's even shifted the entrepreneur, the businesses looking at, you know, KPIs, what are the key performance metrics or indicators that we're looking at from our people. And maybe it's shifted looking at it from, you know, how much time are they spending on work to how much work are they actually getting done. And like, like, you know, because the measuring sticks can shift when you're like, oh well, we can't manage their time because they're not shoving you show up the office and clock in and clock out at the same time. So they had to relook. And I really think that there was an advantage created by having to just assess differently all of the hows that are getting things accomplished in a business endeavor and by doing it differently. And so, you know, very interesting. And I, and I also think to you again, really going back to your work and your core event it in the environment where people had to go to work from home type elements and, or come back, there was a huge aspect I saw shift around entrepreneurs, business owners, managers saying okay, how are we going to engage our people? Like again using your word engagement, so that we can have a great experience, we can incentivize them to come back to the office or we can create an environment where they're happy to stay at home so we can still keep, keep them and retain them as good people. So that whole retention piece and, and you know, the cost of retraining somebody is a drastic burden on the average business. You know, there's a huge vested interest. People really are an investment in relation to productivity in a business structure. So I really feel like there's a fundamental recognition that's taken place and I, I personally think that Covid was a huge element of that. Again, a lot of things that weren't so good, but what are all the good pieces that came out of it? And this idea that we're going to have maybe increased engagement or we're going to look at our people differently and how can we support them more? And through that support we can retain them for five additional years. What's the investment in doing that? So again, are you seeing people start to develop maybe different programs in their business and organizations on how they're looking to actually support people that work with them and their teams?
[00:49:00] Speaker A: I think different programs and more so different metrics which you touched on.
And I think that is creating a greater opportunity more than what are the new programs? Is that what are the metrics we're dividing success by?
[00:49:17] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating. Well, I must say, Layla, I appreciate all the work that you're doing. I think that it is the right time for you. It might have been 20 years ago when you really wanted to get running, but the fact that it's ramping up now, I think is fantastic. And I appreciate all the things you've shared with us, especially the setup model. Great acronym. I, I hope people get a chance to revisit that and start looking at implementing it in their own life and, and adjusting behavior. And if you could leave a final thought for our listeners around something that they can do to get a quick win on their behavior, what would that be?
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Starwood's empathy.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, I, I, I love that, and I think that's a great way for us to, to end this fantastic conversation. For those of you tuning in, make sure you stay tuned for next week's important episode as we continue to unpack both the challenges facing the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and the innovations that are shaping the future.
