CEO Advice: What to Do When Everything Goes Wrong with Ted Santos

Welcome to the Social Chameleon Show where it's our goal to help you learn, grow, and transform the person you wanna become. Today's guest is not here to play it safe. He's here to challenge everything you think you know about leadership, growth, and even love. Ted Santos is a leadership disruptor who flips conventional wisdom on his head. He trains high level CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs to create problems, not avoid them, to spark real breakthroughs. As a creator of the disruptive leadership model, that has helped companies double productivity and breakthrough plateaus that once felt impossible. But he doesn't stop at business. His book, Here's Why We Can't You Can't Find Love, connects the dots between our personalized and professional performance and explains how broken relationships silently drain billions of dollars from businesses every year.

You're ready to rethink leadership, embrace chaos, and unlock chance unlock transformation at every level of life and business. This episode is for you. Let's dive in with the one and only Ted Santos. Ted, welcome to the Social Chameleon Show.

Thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this.

Oh, I am looking forward to this too. So I hear you like making problems.

Professional troublemaker is what I tell you. What do you do for a living? I'm a professional troublemaker. So, I'll say it two ways. One is if you and I were in an elevator, my elevator pitch would be I'm in the business of producing miracles. CEOs hire me when they're looking to create a breakthrough, and they're not sure how to do it with their existing resources. So I work with them to create disruptive strategies, and those disrupt disruptive strategies turn into disruptive technology and or allows them to penetrate an untapped market. And then I work with them to transform corporate culture to to ensure the culture doesn't sabotage that breakthrough initiative.

Is is this like, in, like, maybe sports or the military or something like that where where hard times bring people together and make them tighter and and more niche, or is there something else I'm missing?

I I can see why people would say that. Let me just say the second thing is, if you're the CEO of a company and you are not intentionally creating problems, you should be fired or retrained immediately. So, yeah, I I can see, like, hard times, you know, causes people to galvanize, come together. But I've seen some things even like death in the family that can bring out the extraordinary. Have people do things that they normally wouldn't do. So that could be seen as hard times. Right? Something that disrupts. So you're going along in life and then something completely disrupts.

It's not what you want in it. What it calls for is for you to be someone that you normally wouldn't be. So I live here in New Jersey and I am extremely close to the Hudson River, so I'm very close to Manhattan. When the World Trade Center event happened, you know, I walk one block and I'm looking straight at the World Trade Center. And I worked in the city in New York, so it's interesting to see when something so extreme like that brings a level of peace between people who normally may you know, you might be confrontationally to strangers, but now we're all peaceful. We're willing to cooperate, work together. You know, it's unfortunate that that's what it takes to have cooperation in society. I also lived in Acapulco, Mexico for about two years, and I was there when they had their worst hurricane in history.

And I'm talking little sections or villages were completely washed into the ocean, including the people, houses, everything. To see the resilience so to see resilience, to see to see cooperation, it's unfortunate that it takes hard time. So when you look in a company, a company, people can go to work. It's kinda status quo, and then it's like, look. We're about to go out of business unless we do x y z. And all of a sudden, everyone's sitting up straight. They're willing to cooperate. They're willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the company.

You're keeping jobs, and there's a sense of pride. No one wants to work for the company that failed on my watch. Right? So we're all willing to do what's in the best interest of the future. We're willing to do the right thing where before we were not. So I've I've just even at a young age, I saw, you could say some extreme incidents occur that pulled out things that were inexplicable.

Mhmm. Why why did the companies get to this point? Is this a leadership thing? Is this something that's happening? Why why does it have to get to this point where, listen, guys, we're gonna go out of we we don't make make payroll next week unless we get something going. Why why did we get there?

Right. Right. Did you hear the the company twenty three and me is filing bankruptcy?

Yes. Multibillion dollar evaluations at some point as well. Yeah.

The CEO resigned. Right? So, you know, how do we get there? So, one of the things that I tell people, assign that your company is in trouble, you're successful.

Oh, interesting.

Because everything is going fine. We know what we're doing. We do this well. Don't rock the boat. If anything broke, don't fix it. You know, all these things that if people don't say it explicitly, implicitly, that's that is the way they are operating. Mhmm. And we're good.

We know what we're doing. Why we don't need to do anything different, we'll just keep chugging along. And that complacency sets you up for obsolescence. So, you you know, look at, Sony and their Walkman. They we have a Walkman. Hey. Look. It's not just in one color, black.

We have a yellow one. And now we put a disc we have a disc man, and we're plugging along, and we're successful. We have compact listening devices that the whole world loves. And then someone out of your industry disrupts you, and you didn't see it coming. Why? You should have made that move before Apple before Steve Jobs created a problem for his organization to solve, which was put 1,000 songs on one portable listening device. It should be so small and fits into your pocket, and you don't even know it's there.

So the problem is the innovation?

It's it's complacency. It's you we're successful. We're already good. Mhmm. You you know, there's a guy, Roger Bannister, in 1956. Mhmm. He's the first person to run the mile under four minutes. Now imagine if he would have just said, hey.

I'm running four minutes flat. I'm good, man. Everything is cool. Right now, the world record for the mile is three minutes forty three seconds. How is that it's the same mile. Mhmm. So there's a mindset. So they could have been complacent because they even said it's humanly impossible to run the mile in four minutes, and they could have just stuck with that.

Once he ran it, I think two weeks later, another guy ran under four minutes and and a little bit faster. And then in in a short time, quite a few other guys ran under four minutes. I I read now there's a there is a 15 year old running under four minutes. He's the youngest person to ever run a mile under four minutes. I I think he's from New Zealand, I think. Mhmm. But that this is just amazing. So you could have just stuck there at four minute mile and we're I'm I'm I'm world class.

I'm best in the world. Mhmm. And then someone comes along and just obliterates you and runs a three fifty five, and you never saw them coming.

Is this like a a symptom or or some type of, I don't know, maybe, like, corporate disease where you get to this level? You're you're a Google. You're a Apple. You're a whoever. You're just the the market leader. Your your ship is so your organization is so top heavy. Your it's so hard to move. It's so hard to innovate. There's so many meetings and loopholes and stuff.

Is it something that when you get to this level where you're just like, nobody can dethrone us. We make a trillion dollars. It's just not happening.

Right. So, so we we we have a a lot of conversations. Right? So, social anthropologists say that a culture is a network of conversations. So you go inside of an organization, you go to a a country or in a family, and you're going to hear a network. You're going to hear conversations. And those conversations shape reality. That's what people's beliefs are.

Mhmm.

And there's once you believe this is it, then it becomes very difficult to transform that conversation partly because we have another belief that says change is hard. So whatever we believe, this is the way it is, and change is hard. So we just keep doing the same thing, until someone forces us, until the company is going out of business or your competitors. So Apple makes the iPod, now Sony has to respond. Mhmm. They're they're forced because why would I buy a Walkman? There are children now in high school who've never even heard of a Walkman. So why would you continue making that when, you know, the m p three, m p four player is is made made it obsolete? So, the the you could say the human paradigm has a network of conversations that we believe in. And and if we go throughout history, Louis Pasteur, during his time, women would give birth in a hospital, and over forty percent of those women would, would die.

Mhmm. And what the guys at Harvard and Oxford and Yale and Stanford, they all said it was humor. And Louis Pasteur said, no. No. No. No. It's germs. It's these microscopic and they said to Pasteur so let me get this straight.

These little tiny microscopic organisms that we can't see are killing women. Yes. You're an idiot. They ridiculed him so badly. He had to relocate to another part of the country, and and all he said was wash your hands. If you wash your hands and if you combine that with during that time, they were really exploring the human body. So the hospital will receive a cadaver. They have a dead body.

The doctors will cut it open, and they'd be in there. They didn't have these little latex gloves. So they barehanded pulling out, oh, this is a heart. This, that, doctor. And then someone would say, doctor Jones, missus Smith is giving birth. And he'd go straight from having his hands into a dead body. No washing and delivering. Like, in hindsight, we see that sounds insane.

Right? We would never do it. But the network of conversations at that time supported that behavior, and they didn't think anything was wrong with it. Even though forty percent of women would die when they gave birth in the hospital, they just said it was humorous. And now people are like, well, what's you know, what are humors? Well, that's what they said. So there there are these beliefs, and they're they're shaped by conversations that people have. So if you can get that even when you take it down to the individual, there are conversations you have with yourself and others that create blind spots. They're no different than, believing you don't have to wash your hands before delivering a baby. You just this is the way it is.

This is the way people did it in my environment. This is the way I was raised. I trust the people who taught me this. So people go in and and then so now combine that with the majority of breakthrough initiatives fail in corporate corporations. They fail because you're asking people to do things they've never done, which could leave them with a with a belief that I'm going to be irrelevant. I'm obsolete. I don't have the skills to do this. I he's asking us to do this.

Something we haven't done. So imagine, you know, you have Apple, they make computers, and now he's saying make a listening device. We've never done that. I don't you know, are we even confident to do this? So it's better to kill the initiative than to go down a path which for which you are not very good. People like doing things they know how to do and they're good at. They can be rewarded. So breakthrough initiatives fail, and you asked a great question about, is it leadership? Most people, most leaders are not trained to navigate themselves and others through uncertainty and chaos that comes with breakthrough initiatives. So breakthroughs go will take you down a path of things you didn't know you didn't know.

And so how do you have confidence in this domain of things you didn't know you didn't know? It's better to avoid it and keep doing the things you know because I'm rewarded. I'm paid for this. I get I receive accolades. I don't receive anything for being uncertain and unsure. I don't know what to do in this world.

That's interesting. I I I keep hearing this theme from from just you and others on on this topic. I don't know where, how, why, or what. Somewhere along the lines, it wasn't beaten out of me or or what or I just didn't listen. I don't think like that. And I I really try to teach my kids the same kinda story you're talking about about Pascal. Don't wash your hands. We thought the world the sun revolved around the earth, you know, all these things.

So I teach my kids, like, when they say this stuff to me, I was like, you know, people used to think these things are crazy. We think now are just common knowledge. I was like and and when you get to my age, there's gonna be at least 50% of the things that we know now that people are like, I can't believe you guys believe that stuff. For some reason, I don't have that mental block, and I I love the challenge stuff. I try to challenge my kids. I try to challenge people. It gets me in trouble. I I get that.

And I fail. And I don't know. I have a a good relationship with failure, I guess, or what. With all that long rambling around, where do you think this comes from? Is it a personality thing? Is it some type of people gravitate to these things or not? Or is it something taught or beat out of us in school? Where do you think that kind of aversion to pushing the status quo and those types of things come from? Not sure how we got to Spanish.

Good. Good. So you know it's Spanish. But you didn't

That was a really good guess.

Good. Except you didn't respond to me. I asked you in Spanish if I speak to you in another language, can you speak to me?

Okay. I don't know any other language.

Right. What exactly. And and there's nothing wrong with you not knowing another language. You have the language that was given to you. So people have what was given to them.

Why don't we reject that premise, though? What? I reject the premise. Like, to me personally, and some people's things like that, I'm like, no.

I I understand, but people only have what they were given today. Mhmm. If I say, that's Russian, But you were not given that either. Mhmm. So there are lots of other languages. You know, I could have gotten on this call and said, which is Tibetan for hello, how are you? Right? So there there are many other languages and not knowing another language. So not knowing that there are possibilities beyond where you are, if you're not given that, if you're only given this is this is good, this is right, then you'll be rewarded. So you could say we live in a in a reward and penal system.

Right? So, you know, Johnny colored outside the lines in kindergarten. So, you know, he's penalized. So stay within the lines. Right? So we are taught to accept what we know. You you know, you you mentioned, how does his name they executed him for saying the world was not the Earth was not the center of the universe. Oh,

Isaac Newton, I believe. Or was it was it Newton?

Before Galileo.

Oh, maybe it was Galileo that was executed. Or No. No.

It was it was, god. I can't believe that. So he was born forty years after Galileo was, I'm sorry. He was Galileo was born forty years after he was executed. When he said the Earth was not the center of the universe, he was executed for that, for heresy. So there are so many ways that we build into society that this is the way it is. And if you stray too far from that, I'm I'm not going to like you. I'll feel uncomfortable around you.

And and there's, you could say there's even you could say a science behind it. Are you familiar with neuroplasticity? Yes. Okay.

So For those out there, maybe if you just wanna do a quick little

I I was you're sure. So in in everyone's brain, there are these pathways. They call them neural pathways that that look like roadways, like a map of roads in your brain. Yeah. And that in the past, they would believe and so those pathways carry everything that you know, you've seen, you've heard, and there are neurotransmitters that carry it and can connect them in ways that normally you don't. So they used to believe there you would have a finite number of neural pathways and they discovered you could grow new ones. So, I'm going to assert that when you're growing a new neural pathway, it's almost like developing a muscle that you never use. And so what you may experience is a headache, and for sure you're going to experience uncertainty because you are trying to put something new you've never heard into your old neural path new your old neural pathways, and there's nothing in your brain that can relate.

Like, you're pulling from everywhere. And it's like access denied. That like, there's nothing everything in your brain is saying, I don't know anything about this. So it's easy to push it away because we're we are rewarded for giving the right answer, for knowing things. We are not rewarded for not knowing. So as soon as I put you into a situation of not knowing, your brain can't do anything with it. It may try and say, oh, that's like this. And you say, no.

It's it's not like that. Well, it must be like this. And now you're in a state of confusion. And so because we are rewarded for for knowing the right answer, you have a test. Is it a, b, c, or d? And you answered right. Yay. You get a star and all that stuff. So there were no stars for, uncertainty and confusion.

We should. That's a superpower, I think, saying I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. And and most people think they are smart. So, we seem to think everyone has a brain, so I'm just as capable as you are. Some reason we don't do that when it comes to running 100 meters. We we all hail to Usain Bolt, and know we don't run as fast as him. And we look at guys like Einstein as, you know, some ano anomaly, but there are lots of Einsteins in the world. They are just, kind of shunned because they are going to say things that you've never thought.

And so if you're uncomfortable in uncertainty, then you may have met an Einstein in your life and didn't have much of an affinity for that person. Some people joke and say, Einstein probably couldn't get a job in today's market because he would be questioning things.

Right. Are you are you familiar with, sorry to cut you off there.

No. I'm saying that the neuroplasticity is why you would get pushback because you have nowhere in your brain to understand what the person is saying to make sense of it. And and you may literally get a headache because now your brain is attempting to grow a new neural pathway, and that may be like you're, you know, developing a muscle and you get the soreness in the brain could be a headache so that you may become annoyed with that person. You give me a headache. You're making me think and you're giving me a headache.

I I I like this phrase I I learned from, Tim Ferris, being comfortable being uncomfortable. Yes. And I resonate with that. And when I heard that, I'm like, yes. Of course. Yes. I I lived that way before I learned what that was.

Right. And I

like that. And I try to keep, like, my kids, and I try to help other people get into that thing. But I know what you're saying there. It's tough. It's without the certainty. I mean, we have so much of our our self worth or our self image built up uncertainty. Right? I am this thing. I am these things.

Right.

Yeah. I see how that's tough.

Right. And and so, you know, as as a leader, you're still a human. You're still, you know, you're this very smart person running a a large company or even a small one, and your job is to move the needle beyond where it is now. So, and you as a leader may have some thoughts about it, about what this new possibility is, except when you speak to your people, you see they're kinda not there. They're going to have a difficult time getting it. So instead of disrupting your people, you just let them keep doing what they do well, and we'll have incremental improvements because it's tangential to what we're already doing. So people are often not trained to navigate themselves and others through chaos and disruption.

That could be powerful as a leader. If you're telling your workers, like, listen. We have a problem. I don't know the answer. I don't know the solution. I'm here to talk to you guys. You guys go out there. I want you guys to brainstorm.

Maybe you guys are on the front line. Maybe you guys have an answer or something I'm not seeing. I think that's powerful as a leader.

Oh, absolutely. But as a leader, your job really if you're a leader, you're in the business of inventing new possibilities. Mhmm. New possibilities are these abstractions. They're these things that you can't see. They're just in your head, and you want to have conversations about people, about new possibilities. And perhaps they've never thought of it. And perhaps your customers don't they haven't thought of it, and it would be valuable except they don't know how to ask for it because they don't have your expertise.

So as a leader, your job is not to stand on the edge of things. It's to walk off the edge into nothingness. And so now you're out in this nothingness, and you need to hire managers who can build a bridge to get your people out there so that now your people can go and sell this to your customers and be able to intelligently understand this possibility so that they can also service the the customer.

It's a great metaphor. What type of problems do you do you like to implement? Is there is there, like, a category, or is there, like, a a few that you seem to work all the time? How do you think about that? How do you implement some of these things?

So, you know, if if I'm hired by a a CEO, often they may think, oh, Ted's a consultant. Actually, I can tell you a real story. I had a client. You know, I was introduced to him through someone I knew, and and he took that as so he trusted me, and he and I talked, and he hired me. He hired me in the month of February. And fast forward, we are now at the end of that year in December, and he's telling me this story. He said, when I hired you in February, my assumption was you were going to be a really smart consultant. That's why I hired you.

And you were going to confirm the things that I already knew. And he said, I had already scripted my speech to you for December for how we're going to sever ties. And that, you know, I was gonna say, thanks, Ted. You confirmed all the things I I knew. Great working with you. Good luck. Goodbye. And he said, now here we are in December, and you didn't tell me the things that I knew.

You exposed me to things that I didn't even know I didn't know. And now I'm taking actions and doing things that I didn't, anticipate I would do or could do. So I'm not severing ties. You and I are going to make a lot of money in the future. So, that's what people kind of anticipate that I'm coming in to solve problems, and they don't know that I'm coming in to create problems for them, not to solve them. So in in that in the same conversation with the same client, he also said, every month, I give you a check. I'm coming to meet you at your office, and I give you a monthly retainer. And he said, I was becoming angry, really angry with you because I come I meet with you every two weeks, and my assumption was we're meeting for me to tell you my problems and you to solve them for me.

And what you did was instead of you solving, you just started asking me questions and forced me to solve it myself. And I was angry because why am I paying a guy who's not solving my problems? He's making me solve my own problems. This is nonsense. He's a he's he said he just couldn't understand why he was still meeting with me and why am I about to hand a guy a check who won't solve my problems. And then he said it hit me. You're asking questions that I never ask myself, and no one in my company is asking these questions. So what you're doing is you're helping me see from a perspective I would have never seen, which allows me to solve a problem in a way that I never would have solved it, or maybe I would have never solved the problem at all. He said, so today, I have a problem.

I'm gonna tell you what it is, and I'm ready for your questions.

What, what kind of questions do you typically try to ask? Like, was there, you know, a couple general things or some themes or topics?

No. So, you know, you and I were talking earlier and saying, you know, you pull a thread, and it's I'm dancing with the person. So it's I don't have a scripted amount of questions. In fact, I'm the guy who says, because I've even been in, meetings with clients, whether it's with their client or vendor. And I'm like, hey. You know, you guys know I'm not a master in your industry, so I I ask the dumb question if it's okay if I can ask the dumb question. And usually, they say, well, that's not a dumb question. None of us have thought of that.

That's a really good question, and we need to address it. So I'm I'm I'm really listening to people without preconceived notions. And not being an expert in their industry can be beneficial because, like I said earlier, it usually, someone outside your industry is the one that created the disruptive technology. It's why Apple created the m p three player with a thousand songs on it instead of Sony. Sony was already the master of that universe, and Apple was outside of it. They had a perspective that Sony didn't have, or Sony didn't think anyone would buy it. You know? Look. I don't know what Sony was thinking, but they didn't do it.

We do know that. And and Apple just had a very different perspective about that. So so, asking questions from a perspective that's not the so called expert. And the guy who said the Earth wasn't the center was Copernicus. That was the guy. There we go. So Copernicus had a perspective that they didn't have. And so he asked questions and and formulated calculations and said, hey.

Okay. You guys have taught me the Earth is the center of the universe. I asked some questions, and then I did calculations, and I see it's actually we're going around the sun. We're not the center of the universe.

I guess it's the beauty of the beginner's mind, right, when you don't know these things.

Right. Right. Well, yeah, the beginner's mind, but, Einstein said, I I'm not smarter than anyone else. I'm just infinitely more curious.

Right. What are, like, the mental barriers or blind spots that you commonly see kinda going on in these scenarios?

Sure. Now that's a really good question because, that will take people into a domain of things they didn't know they didn't know. So, I had a guy mid early sixties, smart guy, CPA by his background, And, he worked for one of the largest CPA firms for years and then decided to change careers and went into the mortgage industry. And he started out doing okay, and then poof, he hit a slump and couldn't get out of it. And what made the slump worse is every day he came to work expecting to be fired. Every day, he was like, god. At the end of the day, they didn't fire me today. I made it.

Right? I survived another day, but tomorrow, god, they're gonna get me. I'm I'm not performing. He knew it. So, I'll tell you the the end story, the result first, and then I'll tell you what the blind spot was. So the end result was, in the first three months of him working with me, he doubled his productivity. In the next three months, he doubled that. And he went from worrying about being fired every day to them calling him in the office and saying, what do you need? Whatever you need, we'll give it to you. You need more you need, an an assistant? You need more support? What do you need? And three of his competitors were interviewing him, and he actually changed companies and went to a competitor.

They gave him a much better offer. So that's a long way to go from expecting to be a fighter. So what was hurting this guy was he could get a meeting with heavy hitters, And this guy was the master of the icebreaker. He could like, out of nothing, this guy would pull out of thin air. He'd say something and have everyone laughing and comfortable, and it's like, hey. Wow. You know, I like you. People like you just liked him.

He knew how to do that. He had that magic, but he couldn't stop breaking the ice. And people would leave the he'd be at the table with heavy hitters, and they'd leave, and they'd be like, hey. Nice meeting you. We should have a beer. Goodbye. And he had no deals. So what we found was, I think he was 13, and he was hanging out with a bunch of guys who were, like, between 15 and 17.

And one of the guys was driving. And someone said, why is this kid with us? Like, 13? What is this dude doing with us? And he cracked the joke and everyone laughed. They put his arm they put their arm around him and said, no. Now I know why you're with us. This guy is cool. So now he was acceptable. Before that, there was a moment he didn't belong. And the way he survived and was able to belong was to be a funny guy, to break the ice and make everyone comfortable, and they liked him.

That became his superpower, except that was his only gear. Like, he was a car with first gear. And the way I get people to like me is break the ice. I'll say something funny, but he never had a second gear. So he would talk him to him he would talk himself out of a deal because he only he never could shift up. So, he and I were able to uncover that's it was like he was reliving that. You put him at a table with heavy hitters, and he didn't think he belonged with these guys because he didn't see himself as one. So he did what he did at 13, which was which was to make everyone comfortable with him, but he didn't he didn't have anything else.

So is I I think Spider man said it. My blessing is my curse. Right. So so once he could distinguish that's what he was doing, we were able to then get him to map out a strategy for what he was really commit like, committed to. Like, why am I creating these these meetings with the heavy hitters? What are my commitments here, and how do I map out? And we had to do some sales strategies. One of the things that I had him read a book called SPIN Selling, and SPIN is an acronym. I forget, what the acronym is for. What, we were able to map get him clear about his commitments.

So in other words, he before he met me, his conversation was, I I can do deals with just the average person, but when you put me in a room with heavy hitters, I don't belong there. So I have to make extra effort to get them to like me, which is to be an icebreaker. Once we got so that was his conversation. Once we created a new conversation for what he was committed to accomplishing with everyone, including heavy hitters, he now had a new strategy to go with this new commitment. So if and and which then gave him a choice. So in the past, all he had was one year. Break the ice. Be a funny guy.

Now he had a second year. What am I committed to here? And what's what's the map, for navigating these people through that? Now I might I might still have the conversation about do I belong here, but I also have a plan for how to manage this. And that's that's how he was able to increase his productivity so much.

So interesting how these things shape our entire life. Things that happen.

Unbelievable. And and so that was an example of something he didn't know he didn't know that the 13 year old in him was and here's this guy, 62 years old, you know, almost fifty years later, 49 later, and still the 13 year old in him was running his life. And so it's it's shaping every aspect of your life. So there's so much of that happening. It's not part of our education system to uncover those things. So for him, back to neuroplasticity, he would have to grow new neuro pathways that supported a new commitment for engaging heavy hitters in a way that he had never done. So now and at least he had second gear, and then we look at creating a third gear. And and so now he can be much more nimble and deal with people.

You don't wanna lose your great icebreaker. We don't wanna throw that away because it's not bad. You just don't wanna be stuck with that.

What are some, techniques, maybe books or something that people can use to identify these mental barriers and these blind spots and then, you know, start to overcome them.

That's like asking what book can I read to be a navy seal? None. Right. Yeah. You become a Navy Seal by training to be a Navy Seal. Mhmm. So, one of the challenges so I, you know, I've written a book, and I I wrote the book. I know exactly what I wrote, and it's interesting to hear someone's interpretation of what I wrote and how they will tell me what I meant when I That's one of the challenges I have is that we read books and we can only we only understand the book through that which we already understand. So if the book is taking us into a new paradigm and it's a paradigm for which we have not been exposed, the most we can do is give our interpretation of that book or what's the content in it based on our own understanding, and often it's going to be off.

So just like when Louis Pasteur said, wash your hands, they're they're like, you're not a medical doctor. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're an idiot in fact. So their interpretation of what he was saying, like, was off. So they ridiculed him. So they could only understand what he was saying through that which they already understood, which is I'm a medical doctor. I know what I'm doing. I'm not germs, things that you can't see.

Like, I don't even wanna have the conversation. So their interpretation of what he was saying, they were not comprehending it. They just couldn't get these germs, these micros microscopic organisms that you cannot see are being passed from my hands to my patient. They couldn't see it. Neuroplasticity. So that that neuroplasticity is, like, a big part of my job.

So this is just one of those things where you need the reps. You need a coach, like, in basketball or whatever. You need somebody to get to get in there and say, listen. We gotta get the reps. We gotta talk about things, figure out where you're at, figure out what's holding you back.

Usain Bolt broke the record because he had a great coach. Right. So, and I've read about Usain vomiting during practice because practice was that intense. Another guy, which name is almost like yours, Tyson Gaye.

Right.

I remember hearing him say, my coach and I filmed me running, and my coach said my feet were when I was running, they were spending too much time behind me, so I had to do exercises and drills to shorten the the length of time my feet stayed behind me. Like, that sounds, like, ridiculous for someone to say, like, I've I've been a sprinter. I've I've, you know, I competed in track and field. I I understand what he's saying, but his coach saw that. He probably would not have seen that. So, his coach was able to see things that so that's what a a good coach that same with becoming a Navy Seal. Right? So we know that to be a Navy SEAL, we're going to train you in this. And part of what we're training is you to be able to be the master of chaos and uncertainty in the face of anything.

And we are going to give you simulations of absolute breakdowns, chaos, disruption. In fact, some of you are going to die. Like like like, some people drown during some of the exercise, and they have to resuscitate them. In some ways, that's my training. Like, the person you were given to be in this human paradigm, maybe you who you think you have to be to accomplish things. Just like the guy who was in the mortgage industry, he had an entire identity based around being the funny guy, the icebreaker. Mhmm. For him to accomplish something greater than he's ever done, that identity was inappropriate.

So it's almost like it died.

Mhmm. Yeah. It's interesting. So I mean, it's like so many things in life. Right? You wanna you you wanna get in better shape. You wanna, you know, do this thing or accomplish these things. There's only so much you can do on your own. Right? You we all need coaches and probably more areas in our lives than we think about.

Maybe a financial coach, maybe a trainer, whatever it is.

Right. I mean, you're an Olympic athlete. You probably have a coach for running. You probably have a weight training coach. You probably have a diet or nutrition coach. So that's at least three coaches, and and maybe you even have a coach for mindset. Because even as as an athlete, like, we look at a guy like LeBron James, he's, you know, he's the king in the basketball court, but there's a next level for him. There's a paradigm.

There's a possibility beyond what he's doing now. And as as good as he is, there there are some blind spots that he wouldn't see. And so as you uncover those blind spots the way I did with a guy in the mortgage industry, you see possibilities beyond what you've always done. No matter how good you are, there's some possibility beyond that. Because all you have to do is look at basketball in the nineteen fifties, and who was the master of basketball in the fifties? That guy wouldn't survive on the court right now.

Yeah. I I don't think he would even recognize the game.

Right. He wouldn't he just wouldn't survive. He wouldn't belong there.

Yeah. I know as, I believe it was Kareem Abdul Jabbar. They outlawed dunking in college because of him.

I I I have this conversation with my brother often. And my my my brother is he's bigger than I am. He's six two, like, two thirty, like, benching four hundred something pounds, you know, plate linebacker. But I said, the first guy to dump, they must have said, what is that? That's illegal. Like, they must have, like, just said, no. That's that that makes no sense. That's not a shot.

Breaking that paradigm like we're talking about. Right?

Exactly.

These unknown unknowns. You didn't know I could take the ball, and I could put it down in that hole.

Exactly. Right? So at some point, it'd be interesting to see how long it took for them to say, it's permissible.

Even like, it took me a while for modern basketball when Stefan Curry and stuff and it it's just threes and threes. I'm like, that's not basketball.

But it

took so long to say, you know, this is an element of basketball because, yes, these are maybe lower percentage shots, but enough of them will create a larger total score. And that took a long time for my brain to wrap around. I'm like, no. You drive down the hole, you feed it to Shaq, and he dunks it. Like, that's how you play basketball.

Right. Right. When you get three points, you know, so and and the guy who masters the three pointer, he he has a higher percentage of successful three point shots. You can win games like that.

That's interesting.

Edge. That little edge. One extra point.

Right. And and then in most things in life, especially at elite levels, 1% difference is winning and

losing. And and and, conversely, if you're flying from New York to Los Angeles and you're off by one degree, you will not end up in Los Angeles.

You'll never get there. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.

No. Not finished, please. No.

That's the thing. Right? It goes I I just reminds me. This goes back to coaches. Because if somebody's not watching you from the external or somebody's not viewing you from the other from from that that 30,000 foot view, you've got your blinders on. Right? You've got your thing. You're like, I'm doing this. I'm killing it. And somebody's watching you going, hey.

Listen. You you keep walking to the left a little too much every day.

Right.

You're going the wrong way, buddy.

So so this comes full circle. We go back to the corporation and leadership. We're doing well. Right. We're doing really well. Well, someone in your industry has taken it 10 degrees this way, and you're about to become obsolete.

But there's so many cautionary tales. Blockbuster didn't buy Netflix. Microsoft didn't take care of app. I have so many of these cautionary tales. Why do we keep going down this road?

Well, why didn't Blockbuster do it themselves? They didn't

They tried. It was they were too late, and then they didn't understand streaming.

No. I I understand. But it there's there's no reason Blockbuster didn't do it. There's no reason Sony didn't do it with the iPod. Technically, when when you look at the resources on the planet to make the iPhone, they were there two thousand years ago. Why didn't they have an iPhone two thousand years ago?

Mhmm.

All the natural resources to make it were there. It was the thinking. So, you know, some people know that in 1983, Steve Jobs introduced something called the Newton. It failed. And it's like, why would a guy want to put a computer in the palm of everyone's hand when most people didn't even have a computer on their desk at work? And surely, most people didn't have a computer at home. Mhmm. So now you're talking about putting it in the palm of everyone's hands that come on. This makes no sense.

So I would I would assert that even his vendors didn't give him, let's say, the computer chips miniaturized enough to support what he wanted because they thought it was a ridiculous idea. Who's going to buy this?

Mhmm.

But yet that's our iPad. The the Newton turns into our today is the iPad. So if it was such a bad idea in 1983, why is it so successful now?

It's like culture gotta catch up? Is it, something along those lines? Or, you know, or is it like like, with Henry Ford's, like, if I ask people what they wanted, they just want faster horses.

Yeah. That's yeah. That's a brilliant yeah. Exactly. Yeah. What do you want? Well, the conversations are of horses or transportation. Plus, the average automobile was about $1,500 and the average person in The US made about $750 a year back then. So the only people purchasing cars were the top 2%.

But that's always a a lagging indicator or maybe a leading indicator, I should say. Watch what the rich are doing. That's the trends. That's where things are going.

Yeah. Well, back then, everyone had a horse, and only the rich had a car. Now everyone has a car, and only the rich have a horse.

Maybe. Yeah. But there's so many trends like that in in life. But I it just it brings me back to you need somebody it sounds like you need somebody from the outside looking down at your organization, looking down at your team, looking down at whatever saying there's there's there's mental barriers. There's blind spots here.

Yes. And I I would think so a lot of people think, Steve Jobs did something special. Like, he was different from everyone else. I'm going to assert what Steve Jobs had was training to be able to navigate himself and others through chaos. So there's there's this there's nothing that happens magically. There's no you know, we chemically come together and it's like this, you don't romanticize it because going through chaos and and disruption and uncertainty is it's messy. And and so you can accept that it's messy, and their messiness can create conflict in a person, and then that conflict is going to be, you know, manifest in the team. How do you navigate yourself through that messiness and conflict? And I I'm asserting that Steve Jobs had that kind of training.

You know, a lot of people know he went off to India to find his, guru. Mhmm. And I'm asserting that Steve Jobs had the kind of training that allowed him to quiet his mind and not get not be thrown off by the chaos and the messiness. So he was able to do what CEOs are paid to do, which to was which was to create and invent new possibilities and be with the the messiness. So he could walk off the edge and be out here in nothingness when people say that looks ridiculous. And he had managers who said, well, you know, we trust this guy. There's a real story, and I saw it on YouTube. And the guy said he was in charge of, development developing new products.

And he said one day, Steve Jobs came into the office and said, look. I want you to create a device. It should be about this size. It should have this functionality. It should do this, this, and this, and that's what I need. So he just walked off the edge into nothingness, just told you abstractly what I want you to make. And the guy said his first thought was, what drug was he doing today? Like, he must be high to ask for this. And then he said once he finished having those conversations, he says, now I have a job to do because I'm paid to do what he just asked me to do.

So he went he he said it had to be about the size of a, you know, a matchbox, and so he goes to the drugstore looking for certain things, and he creates a product. Do you know what what that, product was that he created?

My guess would be like the iPod nano. Oh, the mouse.

Yep. That's how the first mouse was created. Steve Jobs walks into his office and says, abstractly create this, and he had to create it. So so Yeah. You see that enough times from someone. You will say, even though I'm having conversations about he must be high or, you know, he took some good mushrooms today, Mhmm. You do your job and you get that that's what he's going to do and a good CEO is going to do that. I mean, just think.

I mean, John f Kennedy saying we'll fly a man to the moon. Like, we had no blueprint for that. The same with creating the first mouse. There was no blueprint for that. He just abstractly laid it out, flying a man to the moon. That's that's just this possibility, and we can visualize it, but how what kind of apparatus do we build to do that? Like, how do we do that? And if you go back in time, if you look at automobiles made in the early nineteen hundreds, the top speed was 40 miles an hour. Do you know why?

They thought people were, like, gonna disintegrate or something like that in the car or even, like, the trains too. They had the same thought.

Yeah. Exactly. Right. And they and they believe the woman's uterus would explode if it goes Yeah. Eight faster than 40 miles an hour. So imagine you know, here we are in 1960, and we're talking about going to the moon. And just sixty years ago, they believed that you would explode going 40 faster than 40. And to get out of the Earth's atmosphere, you have to go over 17,000 miles an hour.

So that was an impossibility. And there was a guy, Robert Goddard. He was an aeronautics engineer in the nineteen twenties. He said, one day we'll fly a man to the moon. The New York Times wrote an article, saying how much of an idiot he was for saying that, and it will never happen. And then in 1969, they wrote an apology article. So that's, you know, this is just another example how people say things that sound ridiculous and we condemn them for it because we have nowhere to put there's nowhere in our brain, our neuro pathways, to put this new possibility, so we just say it's ridiculous. And and and I would just wonder if that's almost like a defense that people have.

So instead of me saying I'm stupid and I don't understand, I'll just say you're ridiculous Or you've been doing drugs. You had some really good mushrooms, man, or had whatever you had, I want you hear this. People say, whatever you had, I want some of that. Mhmm.

Is it it sounds like a soothing coping mechanism so you maybe don't feel bad about yourself. You don't bruise your own ego.

Yeah. The so human beings are are in our paradigm, one of our motivating forces is looking good and avoiding to look bad. So, you know, we take it back to the corporation. Here's this breakthrough initiative. We don't know how to do it, and we're all going to look bad because none of us know what we're doing. And if if if my drive is to avoid looking bad, then I'm going to find a way to trash this project.

Is there mental training we can do to to help with these things?

Sure. Sure. That I mean, that's that's exactly what I I do do is is is mindset training. So, you know, we've all heard of the basketball camps and football camp Mhmm. Hockey camps. We don't really have a mindset camp to train and uncover a blind spot. And that's so when you when you when you live in a culture or you're immersed in conversations that it's normal to say, that makes no sense what you're saying because I've never heard of that. And if that was any good, someone would have already thought of that and figured it out.

You hear that so many times.

Yeah. I think that's ridiculous.

If if washing my hands would have helped, someone would have thought of that a long time ago. You're ridiculous. Right? We you can just go through this. If man were meant to have if man were meant to fly, he would have wings. Right, brothers? Go back to your day job of building bicycles. Right? And a man was not meant to fly. So this is how we engage the world. Right? We have knowledge.

We're smart. And it's it's how we look good or avoid looking bad. So when you're in a company and you say we are going to do x y z, I'm better off to maintain my identity as being an expert in this as opposed to being, a novice who knows nothing over here because I'm paid for doing this. And I paid a lot of money for this education, and now you're telling me what I learned is obsolete? No.

I I think that's okay, though. I we gotta I think we gotta get past that. Is there some techniques or something? Like, I know you're saying maybe this is more of a a long term thing, but for the people listening and watching today, is there, like, one or two things they can do to start this mental training and try and get out of these patterns and try and get past some of these things? To me, sounds just absolutely crazy. Like, why would you think like this? I don't understand it.

So, disagreement is a poor strategy for having conversations. And and people it's almost like we fall into this trap of disagreeing when I've never heard it or it doesn't make sense. So I'm gonna say this in an abstract way. You can only disagree to the extent you were given to disagree.

K.

So outside of what you were given, you can't disagree because you may be speaking to someone who knows way more than you know, and you're disagreeing with someone who knows more than you know.

So you're You don't have that base knowledge.

Your disagreement is based on what you know. And what you know is what you were given to know. Just like with Copernicus, they disagreed with him when he said the Earth was not the center of the universe. They disagreed based on what they already knew. So their interpretation of what he was saying was based on the limited knowledge that they had. So you asked for two things that could help people. One is is to catch yourself when you are disagreeing. Right.

Instead of disagreeing, ask questions and catch yourself because often people will ask questions to prove their disagreement is correct. But people

Confirmation bias in a way?

That's what I was gonna say. Exactly. So so ask questions to understand because and and so sometimes because certain things can be too far out of what you know, you may not even know what questions to ask. So the best question is tell me more. Can you explain this? I'm not really be be comfortable being uncomfortable, right, when you have to say, I don't understand what you're saying. Can you help me? So that that may be the best question. And then you may once they start explaining, you may then find there are other questions. But you'd have to have more of a, curiosity mindset.

You know, some people say more of a childlike mindset. Like, why is the sky blue, mom? Like, I really wanna know. I'm not trying to invalidate the sky. Why is it blue? So, when we listen to people, we generally are not listening to the person. We're listening for what we agree with and what we disagree with. So if you could throw away agreement and disagreement, just imagine if our if we never had the words agree or disagree, we would have to have discourse and really engage people. So if I can only be with or engage a person that I I agree with them, my world becomes very small. So so catch yourself when you disagree and engage the person so that you have a greater understanding is very helpful.

The other thing is make friends with people you either don't like or don't understand. And and put in an effort. Now that could be someone from a different culture. They're from a from a country, and they they practice things that seem absurd to you. Engage those people. They'll have a perspective about your life that you don't have, and and you can ask to better understand their life. So be open to meeting people from other countries, cultures, you know, very, very beneficial to engage. It's easier than learning a language.

Learning a new language is also good. It helps you better understand communication because when you're learning another language, you have to be clear on what you're saying. And sometimes doing a direct translation from English to the other language may not work. Or or there are words in another language that could have three different meanings, and you have to make sure you're using that word correctly to get understanding. So but an easier way is to just befriend, engage people who come from completely different backgrounds. That man or woman you don't like because they're always saying crazy things, and and you don't understand them, befriend them with with a beginner's mind and and understand. So I I said to you before, a guy, Don Marquis, I think he's the one who said, if you make people think they are thinking, they will love you. If you make people really think, they'll hate you.

So go make friends with people who make you really think, and and you'll see there's no reason to hate them or dislike them.

Amen to that. I I grew up in Hawaii, so there's so many different cultures there. I I I definitely can understand. I I know so much about so many different cultures growing up there.

Right. There is a

lot of power to hide. Especially, I think, as Americans, we we we've had such a lot of peace and stability for so many years. Most of us most of our lives, we don't know. When you talk to people from other countries, you do learn a lot about why they do things, you know, the hardships and different things and how lucky we kinda are to be here and and have the things we do here.

Right. Right. I spent a number of years living abroad. So I went to, all of Central America and Mexico, and I spent time living in Belize. I lived with Mayan Indians in the jungle. No electricity or running water. The hut made with sticks tied together, the palm leaves for the roof, and the floor is just dirt. I took a bath in a lake every day.

Agricultural society, you you everyone gets a machete. You chop down the jungle with your machete, come back with a stick, make a hole in the ground, and drop the seeds in it. And then you come back to harvest, and the jungle has already grown back back, so you have to chop through a little bit of jungle just to harvest, you know, one year of corn. But that's a lifestyle I would have never had and, you know, I lived in born in New Jersey, lived in DC, just not a lifestyle I would have had. So, aside from waking up and clean air and, you know, beautiful environment in the jungle, I had to see myself or live a lifestyle that was completely unknown and unfamiliar. And and the Mayans were experts. I was physically stronger than them, you know, because I had weight training, you know, before, and and I still worked out, you know, push ups, sit ups, all that stuff when I was there. But those guys, the way they swung a machete, I was I was the weakest link when we because we'd be lined up like five guys, and we're all chopping down the jungle, and I was always behind even though physically I was stronger than that.

Wow.

Something you wrote about, I like to talk about I I I was reading as I was researching this. Personal struggles sabotaging business growth. Can you get into into that?

Maybe I should just have a little clarity. What you're saying? Personal struggles, sabotaging business growth? What what Right.

You were talking about, I think it was $350,000,000,000 of lost productivity because of personal struggles and and things that affect businesses. I'm sorry.

Corporate America is losing $330,000,000,000 in workplace productivity every year. Do you know why?

No. But, I mean, I guess from the personal struggles is what I I kinda glean from that.

One word.

Depression? Divorce. Divorce. Okay.

Yes. There's an organization, Life Innovation. They pulled out the, you know, mathematicians and CPAs and engineers, and they looked at any people in the workplace. And they they added up the numbers, and they came up 300,000,000,000 being lost in workplace productivity because of divorce. And divorce, people dealing with divorce, their productivity drops by 50 to 75%. That's a lot.

Wow. Especially when the average person barely does any work to begin with. I think the average worker oh, not not in a slight, but I I believe the statistics are the average worker only works about two hours a day even though you're there for eight plus hours.

So imagine that productivity drops 50 to 75%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You need fifteen minutes of work done a day.

So and because you're preoccupied with this situation that you didn't want. Mhmm. Even if you did get married saying, well, it it could fail, but now I'm going through it, you know, it's acrimonious. It's not comfortable. So it's it's it's distracting. You know, I I had a buddy who took off a year after his divorce because he could afford it, and he recalibrated his life. So imagine if instead of taking off a year, he went to work and he just punches into the clock and he's unproductive and yet still getting paid. So imagine if a percentage of your workforce is dealing with that.

That's an unproductive company because divorce rate is over fifty percent. So that's a lot of that's a percentage of our population being impacted. And it's this invisible hand that's that's stealing money from businesses. We don't see it. We don't address it. You know, at, maybe fifteen years ago, people were saying, why are you so obsessed? Why are you all stuck? I'm like, because it's impact it's affecting us, and we're pretending it doesn't. And so that's for corporate America. For the average taxpayer, it's another 30,000,000,000 because, when you talk about it it creates divorce can create poverty, it create you have crime, social programs, all these other things that the taxpayer, we put that bill, that's another 30,000,000,000.

And we're pretending that it's not happening. And so what's the impact of even if you take away the money, what's the impact of divorce on our culture? It it really is more divorce, which Problem with children. Exactly. The children grow up. It's like, oh my god. My parents are divorced, and, I'm going to get a divorce. Yeah. That's that's the divorce becomes the solution when we don't know how to navigate.

So, you know, dealing with conflict, we've been talking about uncertainty and not having the answers. A lot of people will find themselves in conflict when when dealing with uncertainty and chaos. So I say chaos is not chaos. Chaos is something that's occurring. Our interpretation of the occurring is what makes it chaotic. It doesn't become chaotic until we start to say, this is too much. This is chaotic. This is disruptive.

Otherwise, it's something that's happening. Something showed up in your life. How you interpret that is what makes it chaotic. So he who masters self masters chaos. So having mastery over self empowers you to be able to be in in some occurring as opposed to thinking this is chaotic, you can you have a much more stable mindset to look at what's occurring for what's occurring as opposed to looking at it as being chaotic. Because once you see it as chaotic, you want to get rid of it. So when now we go back to saying, well, the CEO's job is to intentionally create problems, which creates chaos, and now you have your people in your organization trying to get rid of the game of hot potato. I wanna get rid of this pro why are you giving us a problem? We want to get rid of it.

So, you know, in school, I just gave the right answer. The solution to get rid of this product is this. But no. Like, imagine Steve Jobs saying 1,000 songs on a listening device. You just created a problem. Let's get rid of it. Hey. It can't be done.

That's the solution. It's impossible. Yeah. We got rid of that problem. Like, yeah. We get rid of that one. We'll never have to deal with that.

You're optimizing for the wrong thing.

Say that again?

I said you're optimizing for the wrong thing. You're solving these problems instead of addressing the underlying opportunity or the underlying problem maybe maybe.

Right. So so it looks like it's chaotic. It's impossible. We can't do it. You know? Even going back to the four minute mile, you just buy into the conversation. It's humanly impossible. There's nothing you can do. So just keep running four minutes, and I'm the world class guy.

Now you go into any competition running the mile at at four minutes, man, you won't even qualify.

Yeah.

You won't even we've got 15 year olds that will beat you now. So so people become distracted by the chaos. So I'm I'm I'm pulling a lot of things together. Divorce can be chaotic. Mhmm. Once you get rid of it. So people don't develop the conflict resolution skills, which is to resolve your own internal conflict when something's happening. So you're in a marriage, and there's a misunderstanding.

Right? And and the misunderstanding may be as simple as in my family, we did it this way. In your family, you did it that way. Now we're arguing over it. And then we have another, my family did it this way. My family did it the right way. Your family did it the wrong way. So now we're having another conflict. Right? And we have no way of navigating.

That that same mindset happens at work. At work, I just introduced the problem. We've never done it. I'm in conflict. I don't deal with problems. I'm just here to create solutions, and you're giving me problems, man. Like, why? I don't wanna do that. I'm calling in sick tomorrow for the whole week.

Or I'll I'll do research to figure out why it can't happen. And I've actually seen that in companies, like, well known companies.

I can imagine.

Yeah. So so the the problem you know, you were asking before, is there a way of training? And I you know, reading a book, you train out of that. You you unlearn this. You reverse engineer. So the guy who was in the mortgage industry and only had one year, which was to break the ice, he had to unlearn. He he reverse engineered. We were able to see. We backed into how he got there, and we reverse engineered that only to see that, well, he also had an interpretation of what happened back then.

His interpretation was he failed he failed himself by not belonging to that group of guys. And the only way to avoid that failure was to make a joke. And now his interpretation is that's how he shows up in the world. You put him in in a a room with certain people. It's like being in that car with those guys who are older than me. You know, he made the joke and they liked him, but in reality, he belonged in that group because he was there. And even without the jokes, he was there, but just he he took away the pressure by making a joke. And that was the only way he had of taking away the pressure.

So he was immediately in conflict, and the way to get rid of the conflict was to make a joke. So when people want conflict with themselves, they have no way of of navigating self to be able to address what's happening. So, you know, your honey, your your family did things this way, my family did that way. Instead of us talking, maybe there's an amalgamation. Maybe we put the two together. So, you know, a marriage is like a a corporate merger and acquisition. Yeah. Cultures corporate cultures coming together, what do we do? We say our way or the highway because we acquired you? Or do we create a new culture? You know, it's what are the things that you guys do that we can learn from? Well, we need to do that.

You you guys do that really well. But, you know, what's the overall culture of the organization? And we we develop that together. Now it's really good if you have someone on the outside, and I I've actually done that with a client that had very aggressive acquisition strategy, and it was to integrate. You know, it was amazing how even the sales team wouldn't talk to one another. They were selling to the same, decision maker in companies, but they wouldn't share leads. Like, they were looking at one another as the enemy. So, you know, we had to disintegrate those barriers to one another. But what are the other things that we all do? Whether it's an IT system, you know, how do we, how do we introduce innovative products in the organization? How how do we do this? How do we reward people? How do we move people up into management? There are lots of lots of things.

So when a marriage, it's really dealing with the same things. You know, my family did things this way. My maybe we're not going to do it like either family. Maybe we're going to create our own way of doing things. Right? Because we see the good, bad, and ugly of our family and, you know, and so we want to create our own way. We want to be our own people. But how do you do that? Because that could still you're going to face some uncertainty.

Is there, you know, if you're if people are struggling with personal things at work, whether it's divorce or whether it's other, you know, personal things going on you know, I know I know it maybe sounds simple or easier. This is probably even the wrong thing. Like, oh, well, keep working personal separate. That's gotta be just incredibly ridiculous and difficult. But if somebody's going through one of these things, how do you keep that from maybe creeping up as much as possible at work?

Yeah. So the way we're taught is to just suppress it. So, you know Right. The the fact of the matter, no one is a banana where they peel off the peeling and go to work and then put it back on when they go home. You're the same person at home that you are at work. What what triggers you at home triggers you at work. The difference at work, they've taught you proper business and professional etiquette. So you may be triggered at work, and what people do is they're still triggered, and they find a way to get back at that person.

But it's like, you know, they'll they'll keep something away from them. So, I I don't think I don't think people do not bring it to work. They do. It's just it's just hidden. It becomes that undercurrent. You know, I find a way that the boss yells at me, and I don't like being yelled at. So I sabotage things, or I just say, oh, I forgot, or, or I just or I I spend the week making up a lie about why I didn't do something. But it's it's because you yelled at me, and I got you back, buddy.

So I I don't think people separate themselves. They they we we the most you do is suppress it, and that that can be unhealthy. Yeah. So untriggering people's triggers, like, unlearning the things that trigger you. So, you know, this well, if we go back to the guy in the mortgage industry, right, his trigger was being at the table with people where he didn't think he belonged. So he's now triggered. That's a personal trigger. In fact, it's from when he was 13.

That's how personal that was. And he never removed it from his personal, professional life.

That is keeps it it's like the theme keeps coming back to to to the same things. Right? You know, getting the training, getting the coaching, getting the whatever therapy, whatever it is to find these barriers and blind spots

Right.

So that you can you can work through these things and not be the drag on the economy and or the drag on the company or whatever it be. Right?

Right. Right. There there's, an interesting one they find that, around the age of three years old is where our work ethic, is developed. Have you heard about that? No. So you watch a three year old child, you know, if dad's out fixing the car, or mom is cooking and, you know, the so the son comes to dad and picks up a screwdriver and he he wants to help. That father's response will will shape that child's life forever unless there's intervention. And I'll I'll the easiest way is I'll tell you a real story. A woman I know, she was a strange adoption.

She lived in born in born in South America. At the age of four, she was brought here to The US. And at four years old, living in her country, she helped her mother. And one of the things at four she would do is she would wash dishes. So now here she is with this family that's pretty well off, and they have, they have no children. And the four year old is happy to be with this family. They treat her well. She pulls a chair up to the sink, and she starts washing dishes.

Mhmm.

Her adopted mother said, no, honey. You're going to get hurt. You can't do that. And she was like, okay. Even though she had done it before, but now so the child's interpretation is I can't work. I have nothing to contribute for work. So they accept that. And maybe around eight or nine, you start to ask your child to start doing chores.

Now they are in conflict because from four until eight, I've lived with the notion I can't work and I have nothing to contribute. Now you're asking me to do work. I this sucks. I hate this. And when you are 21 and 30 and third and you that's one of those things you don't know you don't know that your idea of work comes from when you were, like, around three. In her case, four years old. And for her, work sucked. She hated it, even attempting to start her own business because she was told she had nothing to contribute.

What helps is to be able to see that, to for it's a a crude way to say this, almost like an addiction. If you don't know you drink alcohol too much, if you're saying if you're just aware, yeah, I drink. I I can handle. I can hold my alcohol. It's not a big deal. Yeah. But it was seven in the morning, and you were already drunk on scotch. Right? Dang.

Right. So until you can distinguish what you're doing and the impact it's having, you'll keep drinking. And until you can distinguish that at three or four, I was told I couldn't work, and I I bought into that. Until you distinguish that, you'll just think this is the this is just the way I am. It is what it is, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's the way we live. This is who I am just like the guy in the mortgage industry. I break the ice that I don't belong at the table with heavy hitters.

That's just who I am. It is what it is. But he didn't know it happened from 13. For this woman, she didn't know it happened at the age of four. And when you can distinguish it, you literally now have to create a new conversation. The old one was, at four, I discovered I have nothing to offer. I can't work, and I'm okay with that. Just don't ask me to do any work.

Don't ask me to get a job because I'm in conflict with that. Like, I thought, but you it's like, what are you doing? What do you what do you mean I have to get a job? That you we established. Remember? We we we had that all figured out. I was four. We told me nothing.

That's interesting because my son, I can I'm thinking back when he was that age, and he always wanted to help me. And it it's it's like a juxtapose kinda thing where you're like, you're gonna slow me down. This is gonna take longer.

Right.

And it's gonna be way harder. But for me, luckily, I just kinda knew for whatever reason, I don't know, that that's okay. Like, slowing it down, making it worse is better because he's helping. And then now I think about what you're saying, and I can I can see the difference in doing that when he was little, and somebody else I can think of similar upbringing doesn't do anything or it's pull like, pulling teeth to do something because they were always told, no? Go sit down. It's okay. Stay away. That's so interesting. Wow.

And and imagine it starts around the age of three.

Something so simple. Exactly. No. No. No. I'll just get it done. It'd take me five minutes. It'd take us an hour to do it.

Right. So, you know, I I started out saying imagine the three o comes to dad and, you know, he picks up screwdriver and dad's fixing the car. And he's like, sure, son. Come. Come. You're gonna it it Yeah. Help. Now I want you to do this and do that.

And it's like, now he's val he knows he's valuable when it comes to work. But if he said no, you're gonna slow me down Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. Well, glad we got that straight. I'm never gonna work.

But that's it's so weird because my son used to love. Like, I'm just like, I gotta put the screws in. He's like, yeah. You're having the time. And okay. Now screw it down. And he would do it a little bit,

and he couldn't get it. I was

like, daddy will finish it. But he he loved doing even, like, back in me in chores. I mean, I made I made them do chores since they were very young. They washed their own clothes.

Right.

Before kindergarten. Like, you know what I mean? It wasn't gonna I agree the greatest idea. You know? Or washing them Tyler's shoes, it's just like it'll take me three seconds. It's taking you five minutes. But wow. Like, having that patience and fortitude, you talking about this, you know, this guy that can't get sales done. How much maybe millions of dollars you left on the table because of a joke you made at 13? Right. Like, what are you doing to to children? Not even necessarily your own.

It could be anybody's children by not allowing them to help or not embracing these things and not having the patience and the fortitude to say this is gonna take longer. But in the long run, in the the the longer view, you are gonna be a better human.

So now if you take that, you understand it takes a little longer. If you're a leader and if you're a CEO or, in a leader ship position, delegation is extremely important, especially if you want to drive breakthrough initiative because you're going to delegate something to someone and they've never done it or maybe they've done it a little. They're not good. What you just took something off your plate, which frees you up to go develop yourself to do something you've never done, and you're going to have to take time to show this person, and they may screw up the first couple of times. That's okay. They're freeing you up, and they are developing so that as the company grows, they're developing new skills and competencies that allow them to grow with the company. If you don't delegate and you do everything yourself, the company will outgrow them, and you'll have to fire them and hire new people who already have the skills and competencies. And that actually happens especially with people who are really smart.

I've seen it. Mhmm.

It reminds me of that phrase, which I think is the dumbest thing I've ever heard is, if you want something do right, do it yourself. That makes no sense.

We we make up lots of phrases. Bird in a hand is worth two in a bush. It's like, yeah. Really?

I I figured out a better way to get to two birds. I don't know. No. Like, there's gotta be something else to this. It's so interesting. And and I'm sure, like, probably goes back to something that happened in this person's childhood where somebody in their life said, never mind. I'll just do it. And you're like, oh.

So if you want something done correctly, my model is you do it yourself. You don't delegate this. You don't let whoever do it because you know it's not gonna get done correctly, at least to with in your interpretation of that.

Well well so I I learned about delegation at, I'd say, a fairly young age. So at 21, I lost both parents, and I'm the oldest four. So I'm 21. My brother's 19, and my sisters were 12 and 16. I think my brother had a full ride football scholarship, take him off to college. And even though my sisters, I had them live with, with an aunt, I still needed them to do things for me. So and I I knew I needed to take some things off my plate, And I also knew I needed to develop them so that I could have them do other things later when I would start with small wins. Right.

So I

would ask them to do something, and I knew they didn't know how I knew they were gonna fail, like, you know, and they did. So when they came back, instead of me telling them what to do, and and I I set it up that way from the beginning. I asked them to do something, and I never told them how to do it. I sent them on a mission to fail, and they did. And they came back. Instead of me telling them, I asked questions, and they were like, and they went and they failed again. They came back and they failed again, and they came back until they finally worked it out. Eventually, what happened is I could ask them to do something, and they would ask less questions.

Because neuroplasticity, they started developing a new way of thinking about problem solving. And eventually, I could just ask them to do something, and they didn't they didn't even come back with a failure. And they started volunteering for things. And I was like, you sure you sure you wanna do that? Oh, yeah. And and if they failed at it, they knew they could come back. Like, it's even though it takes a little longer to ask them questions, what it does is it frees me up eventually for them to do it on their own. So, you know, you lose both your parents at a young age. You learn to lead in chaos.

You learn to coach people up. You learn to delegate. And, you know, I I've had someone say, well, those were children. Anyone can do that. But I transferred all of that to my professional life, and I was a chief operating officer for a transportation logistics company that was growing so fast. It was kind of falling apart. It was unsustainable, our organizational structures. And the problem was that the CEO of the company, he knew his industry really well, so he ended up stepping into operations to solve the big problems.

And eventually, he was in operations every day. So there was no longer anyone at the helm of the ship. He's in operations. First thing I did was said, you're out. Get out. Mhmm. Stay out of operations. And so he made it clear to everyone that you now go to Ted.

So they come to me and say, Ted, I have a problem today. Okay? What is what what would you do if I wasn't here? Why go to Mike? Well, you can't go to Mike anymore. So what would you do? I do this. Well, if you did that, what about this, this, and this? Didn't think of that. Okay. But, and maybe that solved it, but or maybe they went back and kinda like my sisters and said, well, I thought of you know, I did what I dealt with the questions you asked me, and I'm still stuck. Okay. What would you do now? And so that went from that way of doing it to, Ted, I have a problem.

I know you're gonna ask me these questions already. I already thought of them. I already thought it through, and here's where I'm stuck. Ah, cool. So I asked another question. Took a little bit more time, but, eventually, they didn't come to me anymore. I was obsolete. And I remember a guy saying, oh, by the way, we had a huge problem two weeks ago.

Here's how I handled it. Partly our fault, partly the client's fault. Coulda lost the client because we screwed up. And I solved it this way. The client loved the way we solved the problem. They loved it so much that they called one of their clients and sent us, not a referral. Their client called and said, sign me up. No questions.

I'm so confused you. Now my operations team is a competitive edge. And my Salesforce, they're like, we have that kind of operations team? They're now going out and selling the operations team to clients and saying, this is how good we are. We're masters of the universe. There's no one better than us. And that happened partly because asking questions. Right? And and the other is, this is what our culture was in the past. So one example is when we make a mistake, we don't tell the client.

We make up a lie, and we're no longer doing that. We are now telling the client we screwed up, and whoever made the error, you call them and tell them the error and what we're doing to correct it. And one woman said, And then you woke up because if we do that, we're gonna be out of business. That's it. Nope. And so they started asking me, well, what if this happens? What if that? So I've role played with them, and they were like, you know what? You want me to do it your way? Fine. I'll do it. But if it doesn't work, it's on you.

I I'm I'm 100% responsible. I'm fine with that. So they did it. It worked. They said, well, it worked this time. That was luck. What about next time that this happens? Right? So so, you know, I would ask questions, but there's still there's role playing. So I'm dealing with they are anticipating conflict based on what they act actually do.

So I I, you know, I have to address that, so let's role play. And so they they would say, okay. Alright. The other one was luck, and you want me to do this new thing. I'll do it because you said it, but then it worked. So then after a while, there was there were no questions. Right? So they would just say, look. I'm having this problem, and it made it easier for me to just ask questions or in some cases, it would the the customer only wanted to speak to management, but I I always did it in front of them because I wanted them to see how I handled it so that they wouldn't call me anymore.

So, eventually, I was so obsolete that the CEO and I so now we had this tumultuous company that was, like, violently growing, and there was chaos all day to it was just this calm lake, and we were growing even faster because they were solving problems and they were mitigating. They set up an organizational structure that didn't create problems in the first place, and they were now accustomed to solving big problems on their own instead of looking for me or or the CEO. So the CEO and I are just talking. And we walked into the Operations Room, when the manager in operations turned around and saw us, jumped out of his seat, grabbed both of us by the arm, escorted us out of operations, and said, stay out. We don't need you guys anymore. Go do the other things. You guys are good at other things. Leave us alone.

Like, literally. And I'm looking at the CEO. He's looking at me like this is my company, and I'm getting kicked out of a room. But you could say I disrupted myself. I made myself obsolete and made the CEO obsolete. So that means we were able to now put new things on our plate. You know, I was out looking for a different kind of business that put us on a map in a different way, and he went and found, he moved us out of 3,500 square feet into 50,000 square feet. So, it it allowed for us to grow in a way that would have never happened if he was mired in in operations.

And that that's the corny thing of don't work in your business, work on your business.

Absolutely. Can we talk real quick about the book you wrote?

Sure. Can you

just give us a kinda little rundown, maybe why you wrote it? What what kind of is it about?

Sure. I wrote it because when people kept saying you're so obsessed about divorce, why do you care? The book is called here's why you can't find love. I wrote it because not only are most marriages failing, most relationships. So if you if you can get 300,000,000,000 loss because of divorce, imagine all the relationships that never met met it to marriage and they had they had bad breakups. That's going to impact also. So, I I say that to create the punchline of the book. I'll I'll give it that way, and it's not explicitly in the book. The punchline is love does not create a great relationship.

Love is a byproduct of a great relationship. So if you lack the skills and competencies in relationships to build a great relationship, you probably ain't gonna find love, and looking for it is backwards. What most people do is go into a relationship looking for the feeling of love and think love say you know, love saves the day. You know, all you need is love where everyone wants to be in The Beatles. Right? All you need is love. That's all you need, and it works. And divorce courts are filled with couples that had lots of love, but they didn't have what it took to make the relationship work. So having the skills and competencies to make the relationship work will have you will will automatically bring an affinity.

You'll have an affinity for that person who knows how to conduct, comport, comport, they treat you well, they know how to conduct themselves in a relationship. You'll have an affinity for them, and you're and it's the more compatible you are, so we have compatibility when it comes to how we manage money, whether it's investing, spending. We have compatibility in health, our physical, our body, our mental, compatibility about how we raise our children, how we discipline them, compatibility around sex, compatibility around, conflict, how we manage conflict. Right? That's a that's a huge one. We're we're compatible with how we manage and talk things through. You're automatically going to have an affinity for that person, and your love will grow out of that. But if you're looking for the love to solve all those things, you're in trouble. So the book takes the reader on a journey of transformation.

And instead of me just writing these things down the way I'm talking now, the book is written from a real situation with five women. I I I was invited to a party. I was the only guy of about thirty, thirty five women, and everyone leaves, and it's just myself and five women. And we just, you know, we get into kind of a deep conversation about life and relationships and and, you know, one guy, and they're like, Ted, you're a guy. You're yeah. That's the way men think. And he's like, well, no. Let's think about this, and let's look at it this way.

And, and I talk about how there are things that, just like the guy who thought he had to make jokes to sit at the table with heavy hitters, there are beliefs and there are, you know, there's this culture of conversation. So we don't believe we need to develop the conflict resolution skills to be in a relationship. We think love magically makes it happen. Right? We don't think we have to effectively communicate what we need from the person because, well, if you really care about me, you would know. Like, things just magically happen. It just doesn't work that way. So whether you are in a company or in a in an intimate relationship, being able to effectively communicate your needs and what you want to accomplish and how people can support you becomes essential.

That's that's a that's a really fun book. I like the premise of that. I'll link that to you guys in the show notes if you're interested in picking up a copy.

Thank you.

Yeah. And, also, we have, your disruptive leadership model. Your website, I'll link for everybody as well. Turn around ip.com. We'll link all that. We'll link all the, you know, socials, LinkedIn, YouTube, and everything for everybody. Is there anything else you wanna touch on before we kinda wrap here?

Sure. So we're taught to want to get rid of problems, get rid of disruptions, breakdowns, chaos. But those things often bring out the best of us. So, you know, when my parents died, I I watched my brother and sisters and and even myself become someone that we normally didn't have to be. And, you know, even at you know, I I had my at some point, my youngest sister came to live with me. I lived in DC, a different state for my family, and, you know, I had to do all the parental things. But that's something that at 24 or 25, you you wouldn't have to do. So that disruptive thing in my life, developed me in ways that normally perhaps I wouldn't have.

Right? Because you don't really teach leadership in in the face of chaos, especially extreme chaos. And it also helped me with being able to to manage my own internal conflict and be clear about what is it I want to accomplish. There's conflict, chaos going on around me, even within me, but what's most important now? And when you can understand that, these are things that you need to work in your corporate life. And this is what supports businesses that want to drive breakthrough initiatives because new initiative is disruptive, but disruption is not is not the enemy that people think it is. It it disruption can often force you to develop new perspectives that you never would have had had. So instead of waiting for your competitors or the economy to disrupt you, if you have disruption built into your corporate culture, your company becomes much more nimble and fast on being able to innovate, and being able to respond to economic changes, COVID, or competitive changes. And you want that in a company because if all you have is we're successful, we're good, you're in trouble because you're going to keep doing things the way you've always done until you are disrupted. So the same thing in your intimate life, you know, you have children.

Children become sick. Someone loses a job. You know, interest rates went up more than you thought. You know, there there are the business goes out, you know, disappears, you know, because we were not ready for the changes that happened. Right? So, this kind of mindset training really supports you to be able to more effectively navigate chaos, breakdowns, disruption so that you can more effectively accomplish the things you want in your personal or professional life. These are these are things that are transferable. You know, the conflicts you have at home are the ones that you're going to have at work. Unfortunately, you are you you are a human being, but that doesn't mean you're limited to just what you know.

Just because you only speak English doesn't mean you're limited to only learning English. You can learn other languages just as you can learn other ways of doing things at work or at home. So I I the disruptive leadership model was really you know, I'm sort of summarizing why I created the disruptive leadership model so so that companies can be much more nimble and agile in driving innovation, and even cost efficiency. What's more cost efficient? You know, it takes 20 steps to accomplish this one thing, and, wow, we just figured out we could do it in seven. And those other people, we can use them for something more valuable. So disruption is not the enemy, is actually your your friend. And, you know, I wouldn't wish someone losing their parents, but oftentimes, there are seeds of opportunity in some of some some disruptive misfortunes. And it's often our perspectives in learning to manage what triggers you.

The grammatically incorrect way is untriggering your triggers, so that you're not stuck to be like the examples I gave, like, where people had childhood, incidents that shaped their adult life. And I've I've seen that with, CEOs in their fifties with Ivy League education who are still triggered by an event that happened at at five years old, but they don't know that's what is happening. They just think this is just normal, and then they're stuck with that. And so no one is stuck with anything. Nothing is what it is. There are possibilities beyond where you are.

That's great. I love it. I love this whole concept. I love everything you're doing. I think it's very valuable and important to have these different ways of thinking, challenging things, getting past roadblocks, getting past all these different hurdles. Some we've created, some we've created for us. I love it.

Thank you. Yeah. It's it's not it's not always on someone's list of at the top of the list. I I like some disruption and chaos, please. Not always there.

I embrace it. I love it. I jump in the ice bath. I look for chaos. I create chaos. It it

just so, you know, I know we're closing. What just think when you go to the gym and workout, what if you want to be stronger and bigger or just stronger and more cut, what you are doing is breaking down the muscle. You're creating intentional breakdowns for your muscle to build them up to be stronger. And breakdowns really can give you access to what we call neuroplasticity where you grow new neuropathways and you have, you have a richer view of yourself in life. And so you're you're not stuck with that. The brain is plastic. Not literally made of plastic, but it has that plasticity where it can be it can mold. It's more malleable than what we think in life itself is much more malleable than people realize.

Abs yeah. That's absolutely true. And on the social community show, I like to do a weekly challenge. And what I'd like to do is I'd like you to issue this week's challenge. It could be something we talked about or something we didn't talk about at all. What do you think this week's challenge should be?

Go befriend someone you don't like, And you may find some things out about yourself. What often what you didn't like about the person is is an interpretation, or they remind you of that uncle who always teased you or some they you know, and and maybe they never tease this this person you don't like never tease you, but you they they look like them or they talk like they dress like they wear a bow tie like them. There's something that they do for their voice that reminds you of someone that you didn't like and you associate them with that. So go out, befriend someone you you you believe you don't like, really get to know them. Take the time to get to know that person, and you will find that they are human just like you. And they have they have that experience of, wanting to help a parent, and they either said, yes. You can help or no or, you know, they didn't belong. Like, they're gonna find that you all have way more in common than you can imagine, and they may enrich your life more than, your what you call your closest friend.

So the challenge is is go befriend. Intentionally befriend someone that you claim you don't like.

That's beautiful. We are all more likely, but, you know, are led to believe. We're humans. We all want the same things. We all have the same basic needs. That's beautiful. Thank you for that.

No. Absolutely. And I and I mentioned live in the Mayan with the Mayan Indians, and what I found is they lived in the jungle. No electricity, no running water, and still they were humans. They still had the same human like, you still saw the human paradigm there. I I, you know, I've been to Greenland. I I've been in other jungles, Costa Rica. I've been to plenty of places, and I've never been to a place where I didn't see the human paradigm where they still they ate, they slept, they went to the bathroom, they were upset, they were happy, sad, they wanted to love someone, they were angry about certain things.

I saw all of those things. They wanted better lives, They wanted to they care for their children. I I saw everything that I saw in New York City. I saw it in the jungle. I saw it amongst the icebergs in Greenland. I saw it everywhere.

Yes. That's beautiful. I I just love that. So much we create so many problem. We create so much animosity. We create so much division

Right.

Over silly ideas when we're all humans. You know, we we all want the same things. I mean, we have a different idea how to get there.

Right.

all after the same things.

Absolutely.

Ted, this has been a absolute blast. I've got a ton of notes. I love all your knowledge. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really do truly appreciate it.

It's been my pleasure. And, your your questions, I I love engaging. I love having conversations with people who are engaging and and ask really good questions. So it's it's more of a dynamic back and forth as opposed to me just talking. So thank you for being a great host and asking really good questions. Thank you.

Wow. What an amazing episode. Ted was so much fun. And, you know, I was thinking about it after we've done recording. I I wouldn't doubt. I think this personal problem, the divorce, and all these repercussions that come up from this, I wonder if it really is tipping right on around a trillion dollars. If you think about all the ancillary things, the therapy, the apps, and all all the things, all all the economics, the social networks, and all these things that are, you know, out from the fray that necessarily haven't been studied, where it's just a divorce. He's talking about maybe they're not talking about boyfriend and girlfriend.

They're not talking about the children. I don't have all these things. I wonder if that's up to the that could be close to a trillion dollars in economic loss. So interesting. So many notes. I hope you guys got a lot of fun out of that. Hope you guys got a lot of great notes, and I hope you guys are thinking about starting to embrace the chaos. It's not about solving the problems by getting rid of them.

Maybe let's take down. I love what Ted was talking about. Finding things you disagree with and being okay with this disagreement. When you see that disagreement, taking a pause, listening. Listen to understand. I love that concept. Just absolutely. And as you guys know, the social community, there's no paywall.

There's no premium content. There's no social community plus or bundle to subscribe to. We give you everything upfront. Only thing we ask is if you got any value from this episode, you share it with at least two other people. Maybe some people in your office, get a conversation going, get things going on. You have maybe a friend or family member that has these personal problems that could be affecting productivity. You know, share share this with them. This could be something to help them really get beyond that and have a beautiful community, a beautiful family of people that are all thriving.

As always, you guys can connect with us all week long in between episodes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, your favorite podcast player. For episodes and links to everything we talk about here today, you can visit socialchameleon.show. Until next time, keep learning, growing, and transforming the person you

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