How to Master Your Mind for Business Growth in the Age of AI [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 57]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Alex Winter
0:00:00
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Alex Winter
0:00:33
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Alex Winter
0:00:58
Welcome back to Endless Customers,

Alex Winter
0:00:59
the show that teaches you how to win trust and earn more business during this age of AI. I'm Alex Winter, your host, and today we are joined by James Robert Ley. He's a world-leading digital marketer, an author, a speaker, an advisor.

Alex Winter
0:01:11
James, welcome to the show. Well, thanks so much for having me on today. Yeah, no, I'm really excited to talk to you. This is our first time meeting other than through email, so I'm really pumped to be talking with you. I did some background, I got a chance to watch your show.

Alex Winter
0:01:27
I got a chance to take a sneak peek at your book. There's a lot to talk about, but I think for our audience and for everybody watching and listening out there, a good place to start, can you just tell people what's up, who you are, a little bit about yourself and your background,

Alex Winter
0:01:40
just to kind of set the stage for everyone?

James Robert Lay
0:01:42
So the best way to describe what I do is I'm a digital anthropologist who's been studying the intersection of marketing, sales, technology, and human behavior over the last 21 years. So when the internet was really in its infancy.

James Robert Lay
0:01:55
And I would say the most interesting variable of all of that is the human behavior piece. And if we niche down even further, I'm focused in financial services. So we help financial brands stop losing loans and deposits because of unseen gaps in their marketing and sell strategies.

Alex Winter
0:02:11
Wow, that's fascinating. There's a lot to unpack there. And you said 21 years doing this. That's a, that's quite a journey.

James Robert Lay
0:02:16
It has been a journey. And when you look back, it's interesting to see what has changed and also what hasn't changed. And I think right now we are, you know, this age of AI as you're talking, we are in a whole new inflection point where it's not just change anymore, it's really exponential change at a speed that we,

James Robert Lay
0:02:44
it's hard for our linear human minds to perceive.

Alex Winter
0:02:47
Absolutely, no, we talk about this a lot here internally at impact and honestly I'm just personally fascinated by it too because it seems like there are cycles As we progress as a civilization as we progress as an economy and if you look back 30 years ago So we're 2024 if you look back to 1994 It's like right at that 30 year mark of like when the internet was coming out and calm was becoming a thing and people weren't Sure what that was gonna look like.

Alex Winter
0:03:13
And I feel like we're on the exact same trajectory with AI these days, or at least it feels that way. Is that, do you feel the same way, is that true?

James Robert Lay
0:03:21
I would agree, the same thing, and it's not even, I think it's interesting just to surface the words that you're using, I feel, I feel this way, I feel that way.

Alex Winter
0:03:31
Yeah.

James Robert Lay
0:03:31
Feeling is such a big, important part of the progress that we make on a journey. And it's something that I see leaders often not really thinking about when it comes to transformation, whether that's digital transformation or marketing sales transformation.

James Robert Lay
0:03:48
We have to continue to tap back into the emotive piece of this, but you're right. If we go back to 1994, the internet was reaching the mass consciousness of humanity. And I've been working with leaders, and when I ask them, how old were you in 1994?

James Robert Lay
0:04:05
And this is about five minutes within doing a workshop. You can start to see them squirm in their chairs a little bit. I said, listen, we're going to put your mind at ease. This is not about ageism. This is a matter of perspective and perspective, as I write about in Banking on Change, is the sum of context and framing. And so how old one was in 1994 is going to directly influence their perspective if they were even alive

Alex Winter
0:04:31
Back in 1994. That's a great. That's a really great point. It's so true and that perspective directly plays into your emotional response, right? does it does and

James Robert Lay
0:04:40
Because perspective once again context and framing it's how we see things and there are four steps when it comes to human transformation that then transpires in the other type of transformation. Once again, marketing sales, digital cultural brand. Step number one is just to simply see things from a

Alex Winter
0:05:05
different perspective. Okay, so for business owners and for people that want to grow their business, for business leaders out there for leaders in general. How do, how does one go about doing that? Um,

James Robert Lay
0:05:17
become a curious kindergartner. Once again, I love that. Um,

James Robert Lay
0:05:22
you know, when, when we look at,

James Robert Lay
0:05:24
and we can go back to some of the ancient thinkers on this, Socrates, for example, he was discussing the idea of wisdom. Um, Socrates defined wisdom as I know I know nothing. And if we make this a little bit more modern we can look at even the teachings of Yoda. And one of the

James Robert Lay
0:05:58
lessons that Yoda taught Luke in Star Wars was you must unlearn what you have learned. And so to see things from a different perspective means that we must become a curious kindergartner once but exponential change,

James Robert Lay
0:06:04
because we're going to have to learn, unlearn, relearn, and just continuously repeat this cycle over and over and over again. There's a futurist from the 1970s who was thinking about this, and he said in the 21st century,

James Robert Lay
0:06:18
the illiterate will not be those who cannot read and write. It'll be those specifically who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alex Winter
0:06:28
That's fascinating. Wow, that's really fascinating, for me especially, because it just makes me reflect back on all the learned behaviors that you may not even realize that you've had, or these habits that you've built because of conditioning, or because of your environment, or whatever the case may be.

Alex Winter
0:06:43
And yeah, you have to break out of those. And that idea of always being open to learning, I think is huge. And that's something that takes time to get into the right mindset for that so that's a that's definitely a huge piece.

James Robert Lay
0:06:55
Well you're tapping into this idea of behavior and what I think is fascinating from a leadership perspective especially if we're thinking about integrating change within an organization is we have to be mindful that 95% of that behavior is running at a subconscious level, meaning that we're not consciously aware of why we're even doing what we're doing to begin with in the first place, yet alone we go outside of ourselves and we think about our teams.

James Robert Lay
0:07:32
Well then what about our teams? What's driving that? And so for wanting to transform behavior, well then we have to transform all the way back. We have to transform belief.

Alex Winter
0:07:42
Wow. Well said. I couldn't agree with that anymore. All right, so that's number one out of the four. What are the other three?

James Robert Lay
0:07:51
So when you begin to see things differently, and this is a great example of how to see things different. Just a conversation like this, tuning into this podcast, keep tuning in by the way, because you will continue to learn and see things different. Yes. But when you start to see things different, the second step in human transformation is you're going to begin to think different.

James Robert Lay
0:08:11
So your thought patterns start to transform. And that is where I think people get maybe a little scared because they're now having to challenge their own belief system. So belief systems, belief structures are beginning to change, and belief is really what drives those thought patterns. And oftentimes what holds individuals and teams

James Robert Lay
0:08:35
and leaders back is there are four fears. There's fear of the unknown, there is fear of change, there is fear of failure, and then there's sometimes there is fear of success.

Alex Winter
0:08:50
Really?

Alex Winter
0:08:51
Okay, I've heard the first three, but fear of success, too, interesting.

James Robert Lay
0:08:56
Yeah, because sometimes if you're looking to grow, whether that's personally or professionally, and one of the things that I'm really encouraging leaders to think about in this age of AI is a framing that I have called exponential growth is where one perceives that they are growing personally and professionally at the same time. But to grow means that you're going to have to get into sometimes an uncomfortable situation and you realize that, oh my gosh, I could be successful with this, or our team or our

James Robert Lay
0:09:30
organization could be successful with this initiative. Well, that's going to require change and transformation. And when we feel that feel, once again, when we feel that uncomfortable feeling that we haven't felt before, we're just gonna go back to what we've always done,

James Robert Lay
0:09:46
which is the dangerous place to be that I call the cave of complacency.

Alex Winter
0:09:49
Complacency, yeah, it's true. And I've even done that. You tend to, in those moments where you're being tested and you might be afraid or you might be feeling some of these overwhelming feelings, you tend to fall back on comfortability and on what's easier versus taking the harder step

Alex Winter
0:10:05
of trying to take some of these things head on and face your fears, which can be very difficult. So what can people do in order to face those fears and to try to overcome some of those feelings of fear?

James Robert Lay
0:10:18
Well, you're driving right into the third step of human transformation, which is often the overlooked step out of the four. When I ask leaders, let's just unpack this logically. So step one is you're going to see things from a different perspective. Yes, I agree. And when you see things differently, you're going to begin to think differently. I agree as well. Fantastic. So we're on the same path. Yes. Well, what about what happens next? When you see different, you think different. Then what? 98, 99% of times leaders will instinctively respond

James Robert Lay
0:10:58
and they get a little annoyed because they feel like I'm asking a rhetorical question. They're like, well of course James Robert I'm going to act different or I'm going to be different or I'm going to do different. And we just sit there for a moment and just let that ponder. And I go, that's interesting. Because are there things that you're thinking about

James Robert Lay
0:11:18
right now, as a person, professionally, that you need to do different in your life? You have the knowledge, you have the perspective, you have the awareness, but you're not taking any action. And you can start to see them shift around a little bit. Yeah.

James Robert Lay
0:11:38
Get a little uncomfortable.

Alex Winter
0:11:39
Well, it's got me thinking too, just to interject here that like, I do feel like most people, especially if you're a business owner or a CEO or a business leader, you most likely have the characteristic

Alex Winter
0:11:48
of being of self-awareness and awareness in general. So like, identifying the problem is one thing. You might know some of these things about yourself that you're self-aware that like, I could be better at this, I could be stronger with this,

Alex Winter
0:11:59
I need more discipline with X, Y, and Z. But knowing it and doing something about it are two very different things. And I feel like that happens with me too, where I know some of the things I want to improve upon, but then actually putting a plan together

Alex Winter
0:12:12
and executing that plan so I make those changes in real time is a completely different story than just knowing about it.

James Robert Lay
0:12:20
Yeah, I want to put a pin in the knowing and the doing or the knowing that leads to growing. We're gonna loop back to that here and just a bit, it's a bit more practical and not so meta. But this is a good philosophical framework

James Robert Lay
0:12:33
that we can build behavior on, that we can then take action from, specifically if we miss this third step here. And the third step in the four steps of human transformation, it is the feeling. So you're gonna see different,

James Robert Lay
0:12:48
you're gonna think different. The question is, are you feeling different about what you need to do next? And what are the feelings that you are feeling? And that's because the desire, the emotive state to take action, to do different, to be different has to be greater, and in some cases exponentially greater than the desire to feel stuck in the status quo to stay the same. And that's where the four fires of fear come back into play.

James Robert Lay
0:13:17
Unknown change, failure, and success. And so to bridge the gap between thought and action, it does come down to feeling. And that's where things like inspiration comes into play, motivation. But we have to be very careful with inspiration and motivation because inspiration is like a light. It's like a candle.

James Robert Lay
0:13:39
It will eventually burn out and then we'll find ourselves back to where we were before. Motivation is like a muscle. It's going to eventually tire. It's going to fatigue. And so to answer the question, how do we navigate the emotive pace of change, the

Alex Winter
0:13:58
emotive piece of change?

James Robert Lay
0:13:59
This is where coaching comes into play because it is the coach, the empathetic, the helpful guide, the Yoda's of the world, the Mr. Miyagi's of the world, who are guiding a hero along a hero's journey, can help to hold up the

James Robert Lay
0:14:38
mirror, to not just have the self-awareness anymore, but to really do the actions align, does the behavior align with the coach the progress begins to move at an accelerated and exponential rate.

Alex Winter
0:14:57
Yeah, very well said. I couldn't agree more and that's what we believe here at Impact as well. Our core mission is to create heroes, to grow businesses and to change lives and we do that through coaching and training and I think to your point accountability is a big piece. If you set goals and you want to be the hero and you're on your hero's journey and you have these dreams, goals, whatever you want to define it as, you need somebody to help

Alex Winter
0:15:20
keep you accountable and to help coach you through the emotions, the strategy, all the pieces that go with that journey to get you ultimately where you want to go. So I love what you're saying. I think that couldn't be more true.

James Robert Lay
0:15:32
Well the accountability is so critical because you can gain the awareness from seeing different and thinking different. That's where you begin to accept the new reality, the new perspective. Then you're going to have to take some sort of action, but it's that fourth A in this mental model. It's the accountability that ensures that the behavior is then continuously reinforced, which then leads to the fourth step, which is to do different, to be different, to act different.

James Robert Lay
0:16:07
I want to loop back to something that you mentioned before about the knowing and the doing or how I frame this in Banking on Change, the knowing and the growing, the knowing that leads to growing, because let's make this a little bit more practical. We can take these four steps of human transformation and we can put them into an operational model. We call it the 90-day growth method.

James Robert Lay
0:16:33
And the question I get oftentimes is, why 90 days? What's the secret of 90 days? Well, when we look at just human behavior, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry around the 90-day period.

James Robert Lay
0:16:46
It's so true. And that's where we can get back on track. And so every 90 days there are four seasons or there are four patterns that follow the seasons that we can cycle through that we can journey through.

James Robert Lay
0:17:23
There is a season of learning, there's a season of thinking, and when you learn and the awareness. But then on the other side of the equation, there is the doing, which is great, that's where we make progress.

James Robert Lay
0:17:23
But unless we create space and time to pause, to review and reflect on what we've done, it's very hard to measure the progress that we've made. And I know a lot of leaders are very driven by functioning. They wanna keep going, they want to keep growing, but they often end up tired and burned out

James Robert Lay
0:17:43
because they're missing the last step. They're missing the review and the reflection to measure the progress. They're always looking at what's the next mountain that I have to climb.

Alex Winter
0:17:55
Right, it's always go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, that's so true.

James Robert Lay
0:17:58
Yeah, I think of, there was a financial brand that I was working with and they were doing some work with Clifton and StrengthsFinders and the entire executive team, they were all achieving as their strength, which is great. The challenge was this particular group was just feeling tired. They were feeling burned out and I said, well, when was the last time that you paused to review of the progress that you've made over the last 90 days.

James Robert Lay
0:18:28
Everyone looked at each other, never done that. They always go from one to the next, to the next, to the next, to check, check, check, check, check. And they end up, you know, in this state of feeling tired and burned out and frustrated. But we started to just and another tool that I use is in this particular point of reflection, of review, is just to simply ask the question at the end of every day, the end of every week, every month, end

James Robert Lay
0:19:01
of every quarter, every year. It's almost like a Swiss Army knife of a thinking tool. And that question is, what's been going well for you? And well is an acronym for winning, exciting, learning, and looking. And it asks four specific questions. Where have you been winning?

James Robert Lay
0:19:20
What are you excited about? What have you learned? And what are you looking forward to? So for example, at the end of the day, what were my three big wins for the day? What am I excited about right now? What did I learn today?

James Robert Lay
0:19:29
What am I looking forward to tomorrow? And by just going through that inventory of questions, you really can never have a bad day again. And if you're a leader, it is a great question to even open up a weekly meeting with. What went well for you? What's been going well for you? And there are four questions, so there are four weeks in the month.

James Robert Lay
0:19:52
Open up one week, what were your big wins? What are you excited about right now? What did you learn last week? What are you looking forward to this week? And you really can help to manage the energy in a room where you never have a bad meeting again because you're, as a leader, you're guiding the energy of the conversation, you're ensuring that the conversation

James Robert Lay
0:20:13
is starting off on a high note because we know where energy focus attention goes, that's, or where energy flows, that's where attention goes. And so we want to be very mindful of how we as leaders are guiding the energy, even in a room where we're facilitating a conversation.

Alex Winter
0:20:29
Absolutely. As a leader, you really have to set the conditions and how you set those conditions directly affects the energy in that meeting and the response you get from the people in that meeting. So it's critical to do that correctly. And I love that acronym, WELL. I'm going to steal

James Robert Lay
0:20:43
that if that's all right. I really like that. Please do. And once again, let's get real practical here because you can steal that. Do you have kids by any chance?

Alex Winter
0:20:52
I don't.

James Robert Lay
0:20:54
You don't have kids. Well, if you know someone who has kids, this is something that you can teach them to teach their kids. Okay. Because this is a tool that I've been using at home

James Robert Lay
0:21:06
with the four lay kids who are now 14, 12, 10, and eight. And it's gotten to the point to where if I don't ask them what went well or what was good for them that day during dinner, they're very quick to now call me out because that has been their

James Robert Lay
0:21:35
conditioning, that has been their environment. Every dinner we're going to talk about what were the wins of the day, what did you learn today, and so now they're building this into their own mental model so that they are measuring progress at the end of the day.

James Robert Lay
0:22:06
A lot of this thinking is inspired by and influenced by some of the work of, say, Carol DeWick with Growth Mindset because I know that in periods of extreme change, like we're undergoing right now, it can be very easy to start to feel confused, to feel frustrated. It's that confusion, if we don't address it, if we don't gain clarity, we're going to end up in a state of continuous conflict within the team. And if we don't address that conflict, that conflict is going to lead to a state of continuous

James Robert Lay
0:22:46
chaos. know the technology that we need to master in the age of AI and I ask these teams and leaders well what do you need to master? What do you think the most important technology is? And a lot of them

James Robert Lay
0:22:59
look back and they think oh a bit of rhetorical question once again they Mm-hmm, but as a leader specifically I believe that the most important technology that we can master in the age of AI Specifically for ourselves and then help our teams do the same is the technology that sits between our ears. It is our mind I believe that our mind is the software running on that system, that

James Robert Lay
0:23:20
OS basically. And if you are wanting to level up and achieve exponential growth where you're growing personally and professionally at the same time, you're going to, just like we update iOS on our phone, we're going to have to also upgrade our operating system within our minds. And a lot of that is just seeing things from a different perspective.

James Robert Lay
0:23:41
And so if you're feeling frustrated right now, just taking time to do a little mental inventory. Write it down, it takes less than five minutes. What went well for you today? Teach your kids the same and you'll see that family dynamic level up.

James Robert Lay
0:23:55
Teach your team this, you'll see the team dynamic level up as well.

Alex Winter
0:23:59
I love that, I think that's a great point and I think for business leaders to you know when you when you're pushing for people to reflect on a daily basis and to To reassess what went well what they could have done better what they learned all those pieces that you laid out I think it just really almost helps your your computer in between your ears as you said Put everything into like the right files and put everything Organizationally into the right like filing cabinets or whatever you whatever you want to use there

Alex Winter
0:24:22
But like it just helps you really take all the information that you're constantly digesting and put it into perspective so you can use it to your advantage and every day continue to improve. And I think I want to use this as a segue, because I think this is a great segue.

Alex Winter
0:24:39
I did some research on you, and a lot of what you talk about, too, is about caring. And I think when we talk about leaders in business, and just in general, as a parent with your kids, like you're asking those questions and that acronym WELL comes from a place of caring because you want to know what was great in someone's day. You want to know what they learned.

Alex Winter
0:24:57
You want to show them that you're interested in not just the transaction of growing the business but also their personal growth, their professional growth, like everything that plays into that and it's almost like the rising tide that lifts all boats. So I'd love to talk a little bit about caring and what that means and how for business leaders that can really make some serious change within their organizations.

James Robert Lay
0:25:18
I'm curious if you're listening, how well do you know, really, how well do you know your team? Not even yourself, let's just talk about your team.

Alex Winter
0:25:29
That's a great question because I do think a lot of business owners and leaders think they know and have their finger on the pulse, but that's not necessarily true or they may not be as fully plugged in as they may

James Robert Lay
0:25:40
as they may perceive them to be. Because this idea of care it is it's another acronym and it's it's funny you know someone has called out a lot of the acronyms in the book and that's a personal hack you know ADD you create these mental models for yourself of how you can remember things, but it also makes it easy to start teaching other people. And CARE is, the C is, you commit to a cause. You commit to a cause greater than yourself.

James Robert Lay
0:26:18
Commit to a cause bigger than the present moment. And one of the best ways to commit to a cause bigger than yourself or bigger than the present moment and involve your team with that is to identify a villain. Who's the villain in the narrative that we as an organization are looking to overcome or we as a team more than identifying a villain that's causing people pain. And that's where care comes back into play.

Alex Winter
0:26:58
Totally. And every hero's journey needs to have a villain, right? That's like the age-old storytelling 101. You need to have the villain or something to combat, to help that hero's journey.

James Robert Lay
0:27:10
Yeah.

James Robert Lay
0:27:11
lot of organizations they have they have missions, visions, they have values but just another way to reframe that is what we call the VMVPV model. So villain? Who of financial stress, takes a toll on people's health, relationships, and overall well-being. So we're looking for other organizations and financial brands who are also looking to defeat

James Robert Lay
0:27:56
that similar villain. When we're working together, that creates a multiplying effect. So you've got villain, you've got mission, you've got the vision, but then there's the purpose. And once again the purpose transcends the internal perspective, it's more of an external facing perspective, and then there's the values. So caring is to commit to a cause greater than yourself or something bigger than the present moment. The A is to adapt, to adapt behavior.

James Robert Lay
0:28:34
But as we talked about before, if we want to adapt behavior, we're going to have to adapt our beliefs. In fact, the idea of adaptability, AQ, it is like EQ and like IQ so intelligence and the emotional intelligence emotional quotient AQ is the adaptability quotient and it can now be Benchmarked measured and most importantly it can be coached You want to know the fastest way to increase your AQ heck yeah, I do

James Robert Lay
0:29:05
Okay, I'm not and I would I would say promise me, but it's a big ask. And there's science that is backing this up now.

Alex Winter
0:29:19
Okay.

James Robert Lay
0:29:20
The fastest way to increase your AQ

Alex Winter
0:29:23
is to take a cold shower.

James Robert Lay
0:29:24
No kidding. Yep.

Alex Winter
0:29:26
No kidding.

Alex Winter
0:29:26
Because you are entering into an uncomfortable environment,

James Robert Lay
0:29:31
it's controlled, but you're moving out of a feeling comfortable to a state of uncomfortability. Yeah. And so you're going to have to adapt because what's going to happen when you're when you enter into the cold

James Robert Lay
0:29:51
your heart rate's going to go up you're going to start breathing. What are you going to use to control that? It's your

Alex Winter
0:30:00
mind. Your mind, you have to. Yeah, there's no other way.

James Robert Lay
0:30:03
Because the A, that leads to the R in care. It's resiliency. So, for example, when you enter into the cold, you are building resilience. And this has been a personal journey for me, this idea of resiliency. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition back in January of 2010. And when I Googled my condition,

James Robert Lay
0:30:32
which I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, okay, I went through two years of just dark night of the soul. Really some deep depression. Um, some, some struggles with addiction. It's the resiliency that will get you to the other side, but I continue to explore and look for ways

James Robert Lay
0:30:57
to manage this condition. And in hindsight, I'm so grateful for the diagnosis because it really forced me to transform my behaviors, which was really transforming my beliefs. And I'm healthier now at 42, almost 43, with an autoimmune condition than when I was diagnosed. And one of the…

Alex Winter
0:31:27
That's incredible.

Alex Winter
0:31:28
That's really incredible. Good for you.

Alex Winter
0:31:30
That's unbelievable.

James Robert Lay
0:31:31
was finding the cold therapy because it's been about 20 months since I took my last autoimmune blocking shot because I said, you know what, I really believe that I can manage this. It's the idea of resiliency. And resiliency, once again, it's like a muscle. time and that directly relates to the last character of care which is energy. How are you managing your energy? Because once again where your attention goes energy is going to flow and the mind can only

James Robert Lay
0:32:14
hold a positive or a negative thought. So for example it's like when you look out, think about the future. Think about the future at a macro level, global level. Are you looking at that through a lens of hope and optimism and abundance?

James Robert Lay
0:32:36
Or might you be looking at through a lens of maybe fear, scarcity, uncertainty, doubt? And it's not a right or wrong. We use a tool called the Future Growth Index that measures this. And it's very interesting what you find when you take this into teams and

James Robert Lay
0:32:49
specifically into organizations because their perspective of the future is going to directly influence their decisions that they're making now in the present moment. And then you go from the macro level, you ask the same question about the organization, when you think about the future of the organization.

James Robert Lay
0:33:02
Are you feeling hopeful, optimistic, abundant, or are you feeling fear, scarcity, doubt, uncertainty? Right, right. And the organization, you move into the team, and when you look at the team, you ask the same question. And it's the idea of energy too.

James Robert Lay
0:33:22
We need to ask actually specifically, because we're talking about care and how care translates into the team. We really need to ask who is on our team. Team is time, energy, attention, and money. Because there are four questions that we have to ask when it comes to managing this. It's how are we, or really, how are we investing our time?

James Robert Lay
0:33:44
Because in the age of AI, time can become a multiplier. Like this podcast is a multiplier of time. We're doing something once that's going to continue to create value beyond this moment in time. So that is a time multiplier, that is an investment right there.

Alex Winter
0:34:02
Absolutely. Yeah.

James Robert Lay
0:34:04
Then it's the follow-up, because a lot of times when we talk about time, it's how are you spending your time? And I think that's the incorrect question. How are you investing your time? How are you spending your energy? The E of team.

James Robert Lay
0:34:19
That's the next question we need to ask. Interesting. Because how we because

Alex Winter
0:34:25
If you think about it

James Robert Lay
0:34:27
What it would do at the end of every every day we plug our phones in like our laptops in they have to recharge We have to recharge, too So that's where the questions like what's been going well comes into play But what's going to impact how we spend our energy is the follow-up to that? So it's time energy. It's what are you paying attention to? And that right there, what are you paying attention to? Is it increasing your energy? Is it decreasing?

James Robert Lay
0:35:00
What mental state is it putting you in? And be very mindful now of your team too. How, who's on their team? How are they investing their time? How are they spending their energy? What are they paying attention to? Because it's going to directly influence the progress and the growth of the team.

Alex Winter
0:35:22
That energy can be shared too when you get into the team setting because one person's energy can literally shift the energy of the rest of the team. So it's very important to be mindful of that, especially as a leader because it can really influence the room?

James Robert Lay
0:35:38
It can and more specifically, more practically even, one of the tools that we use here is a method called Colby, the Colby Index. And Kathy Colby has been setting the mind for probably 50 years at this point. Her father developed the Wunderlich test. So this family has been setting the mind for a very long time and one of the things that Kathy Colby identified

James Robert Lay
0:36:06
was there's the conative part of the mind and not many people are familiar with the conative part of the mind and the conative part of the mind is how one naturally takes action

James Robert Lay
0:36:26
or solves a problem. It's basically the built-in operating system. So this has nothing to do with personality. This is just pure innate action modes and being very mindful spend their energy for that matter.

James Robert Lay
0:36:35
And we're not going to go too deep into this, but I just wanted to bridge this as another practicality of if you're curious about, hmm, how am I spending my energy? And more specifically, how is my team spending their energy? Because if you're finding that your team is drained all the time It could be because they're working outside of their natural initiating Strengths or they're solving problems outside of their natural initiating

James Robert Lay
0:37:05
strengths and Then all of that how you answer the questions of time, energy and attention, it's going to come down to the relationship with money.

Alex Winter
0:37:19
Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's interesting too because you have me thinking, I talk about this with my wife and offline with some of my friends too, but we talk about manifesting things, right, and the power of manifestation and just off of this conversation, you put some things into perspective for me that like your brain is a powerful tool, right, and when you manifest things, what's happening is you're using that energy to either be positive or negative and that directly

Alex Winter
0:37:43
affects what you manifest. So like if you keep telling yourself in the future that you want to be positive and you're going to achieve these things and you keep setting yourself up mentally to do those things, you will eventually do those things because you're setting yourself up for that. The same way, reversely, if you're being negative, it could go the other direction. So like that power of manifestation, I think, comes back to exactly what you're saying

Alex Winter
0:38:05
about the energy that you carry in

James Robert Lay
0:38:09
and the discipline you bring to trying to stay positive with that energy. Oh absolutely, 100% because once again it's it's really about mastering the most important technology which is

James Robert Lay
0:38:36
it's the mind because I think right now specifically as we're moving to the age of AI Social media is an amplifier and it's it's my relationship with just digital tools over the years has really Transformed in banking on change. I have chapter 6 is about philosophy digital stoicism

James Robert Lay
0:38:43
and it's just It's asking the question You know, what is the relationship that you have? with your digital devices Once again, I talked about some struggles with the addiction I got to the point to where I

James Robert Lay
0:39:01
Ended up having to uninstall email off my phone uninstall social media off my phone And this is the most I would say shocking for people when they hear this, particularly as a digital anthropologist, I uninstalled my internet browser and my wife has the password to where I can't install it ever again.

James Robert Lay
0:39:22
Because I love to learn, I really, really do. And one of the things that was happening was I can never be fully present in a conversation. It's like someone would say something, Google it, Google it, Google it. And it was just this like continuous dopamine hit of just like knowledge, learning,

James Robert Lay
0:39:41
but it was just all surface level. There wasn't anything of substance. It was almost like, you know, going to a, it's like a candy shop and you're getting all the sugar, but you're not getting of value of worthwhile.

Alex Winter
0:39:54
Um, no, and the dopamine thing, the dopamine kick is real. And I mean, I know, I know for a fact, uh, that like most of the social media platforms when you go to the startup of Facebook and Instagram, the whole idea behind it is the psychology of how to continue to kick that dopamine to keep people constantly using the app

Alex Winter
0:40:10
and what we call now doom scrolling, but that's how people get caught in that loop. So it is important to try to find a balance so that you're not getting stuck in those places.

James Robert Lay
0:40:21
Well, practically speaking, I mean, it's the accountability. Like my wife had to create accountability to truly transform my behavior there.

Alex Winter
0:40:29
Right.

James Robert Lay
0:40:30
Otherwise, I mean, it was taking such a toll on my relationship with her. And as a father of four kids, you want to model good behavior. I was like the worst thing when it came to the relationship that I had with a digital device. But these are the deeper questions that I think we need to be asking specifically as leaders because before we can lead other people, we have to really work on leading ourselves because it is a,

James Robert Lay
0:40:57
it's an honor to, to be able to lead and to guide others. But then what are we doing to first and foremost, leading guide ourselves and sometimes the leading guide ourselves, we actually need our own guide. We need our own coach. We need someone to hold us accountable as well.

Alex Winter
0:41:15
Very well said. No, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's been an awesome conversation. I hate to say that we have to wrap things up, but we're getting towards the end of time here. And I want to make sure with a few minutes we have left, we give you a chance to plug your book and everything you got going on.

Alex Winter
0:41:27
So before we do wrap, do you want to just let everybody know what's going on in your world and about what's coming down the pipeline for you?

James Robert Lay
0:41:33
Absolutely. So the book, Banking on Change, you can grab a copy www.bankingonchange.com. But more importantly, you can guide your team through this. We have a team book club document that you can download and guide your team through these conversations. You can take the three-day Banking on Change challenge that teaches a lot of the core principles, the core tools that first and foremost you can guide yourself to then guide your team. Because this is really all about transformation.

James Robert Lay
0:42:10
You transform yourself to transform your team, transform your team to transform your organization. You transform your organization to continue to transform the lives of the people that you're helping as a leader.

Alex Winter
0:42:22
Very well said. I love that. And I am excited to read your book. We're definitely going to have to have you back on the show too. It's been amazing talking with you. So thank you so much for taking the time

Alex Winter
0:42:30
and for expanding our audience's minds with all this great information. Really appreciate it.

James Robert Lay
0:42:36
It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute honor.

Alex Winter
0:42:40
All right, James Robert Lay, everybody, and I'm Alex Winter. This is Endless Customers. We'll see you on the next episode. We'll see you on the next episode.

Alex Winter
0:42:46
Bye!