Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: As the world changes, so does leadership.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Carlos Martin, host of Leadership Evolving on NOW Media Television.
On Leadership Evolving, we bring you real talk about mindset, resilience, culture, influence and purpose.
Every episode features thought leaders, innovators and everyday visionaries sharing insights, experience and strategies you can use.
Let's explore how your voice can help others evolve their leadership.
Watch Leadership Evolving on NOW Media Television and step into the leader you are becoming.
And today we explore what it takes to lead with purpose and impact.
Leadership today evolving tomorrow.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: All right, today I am joined by Jan Gode. She's an entrepreneur, investor and AI strategist who works with leaders, executives and founders to scale smarter, operate more efficiently and compete at higher level and rapidly changing business environment.
What makes Jen different is that she doesn't separate business performance from human performance. She builds what she calls business athletes. I love that. Leaders who operate with precision, resilience and clear competitive edge. She's also at the forefront of AI integration, helping companies move beyond theory into real execution where AI actually improves profit, decision making and speed. This conversation is not only about. It's not, it's not about working harder. Excuse me. But it's about working better. Jen, welcome to the show.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: No, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for being here. I think I called you the AI guru. You're like, no, what did you say it was?
[00:01:52] Speaker C: I'm like the anti guru or expert. Because I'm going to be real, Carlos. Like AI is evolving so rapidly, even those of us who are living and breathing it and have been for the last five or six years or even longer, it's evolving so fast that we're continuing learning too. So I don't believe there is such a thing as an AI expert in business at this particular moment in time simply because the tech keeps changing.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. So I'm going to call you the AI Condo sewer.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: If it's okay.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: Whatever you want to call me, fine with me.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Fantastic. We'll go right into it. You know, you, you talk about the building business athletes, which I love that term. I've never heard that. What does that mean in today's environment?
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Right, so if you think about it, athletes, they have to deal with real time, game time decisions. Let's just use American football for an example. Right? And you're in an outdoor field, it might be snowing, it might be raining, the conditions could be changing. You might all of a sudden have a cross field. So we have to continually adjust and adapt and, and not only how we're, if we're the quarterback, how we're throwing the football or what we're having to overcome. We also have to be resilient enough to not let it phase us in the face of everything else. We have to be able to adapt and roll with the punches and changes of this business. Athletes are the same.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: Right?
[00:03:16] Speaker C: A business athlete trains for performance, not just the output.
In sports medicine, elite athletes don't guess. They optimize everything that impacts their performance and they train and they train and they practice and they have great coaching to make sure they're there. Business isn't any different. The business athlete manages energy like it's an asset. Trans decision making under pressure practices business and leverages tools, including AI to increase their precision.
While most other leaders are grinding the business, athletes are training and building that competitive edge and that truly changes everything.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, as you say that, you reminded me of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant of the world. Right. They're always working on the background. When you don't see them, you see their, you used to see their, their performance and they make it seem so easy, but there's so much work in the background. So I love that analogy. So what would that look like in real life for a business entrepreneur? A solopreneur of grinding away, doing all that work behind the scenes.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Right. So if we think about business, the course of business, the fundamentals don't change no matter what industry you're in. You know, we have the lead generation, we have sales, so we have sales and marketing, so we get that inflow and we drive consumers. We have the operational side of business which is how we're delivering, how we're wowing our clients and customers, what does that look like? Are there any places where we're unwowing them and at risk? How do we continue to build trust through that relationship? And then there's the off boarding and how we have our customers so excited that they become our business biggest asset, if you will. And so when we think about that and we break it down into the different aspects of business, where is the biggest bottleneck for me? Where are my weak spots? And I know this is an unpopular position to take because everybody just make your strength, focus on your strengths, make them better.
I believe business athletes make every step better because even if we're going to delegate or we're going to build teams or we're going to ultimately exit ourselves from the business, if we get really
[00:05:34] Speaker D: honed in to where we have our
[00:05:36] Speaker C: own bottlenecks and we Practice and practice and practice. For example, sales. Right. A lot of people, especially when they're first in business, they are excellent at what they do. Maybe you're an attorney and you're, you're working at a firm and you decide
[00:05:48] Speaker D: to go into business.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Well, they didn't learn the business side, so they have to super dive into.
[00:05:53] Speaker D: What does it mean to run a business? What are the things that I'm used to having fed?
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Maybe I never had to do marketing
[00:05:58] Speaker D: before and I've never had to sell myself. So now I need to practice selling myself because that's a part of the process that I haven't ever had to do before. So you dive in and every day take five or seven minutes and just practice and practice and practice so that when you're in front of potential clients, you're able to close that conversation even more.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: So, you know, the moral of the
[00:06:17] Speaker D: story is it's not about increasing and grinding more. It's about practicing and improving so that our efforts are delivering higher results.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: It's not work more, push harder, stay busy.
[00:06:32] Speaker D: That's broken.
[00:06:33] Speaker C: It's practice, perform, find that 0.1% edge
[00:06:39] Speaker D: that is going to get me a little bit better so that I can do more, move faster, taking less time.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: You, you struck a chord, a personal cord for me because I come from the sales background and as I went into my solopreneur, whoa. Before I had to be hyper focused on sales only and I was good at it. But all of a sudden I have my own business. Like, oh, now I have to be the marketing, the operations of this and that and it is so difficult.
So, so what you're saying is instead of, you know, being put out there, practice before, you have to be there and be able to be good at all these different parts of the business.
[00:07:22] Speaker D: Yeah, basically. So if you think about precision, precision is about how do I fine tune each piece. And so in that instance, you're great at sales, but you maybe didn't have the strategy, the tactics, the operational efficiency side. So you would pick one thing that is the biggest bottleneck in your business, like maybe you're closing clients, but then the onboarding process is terrible. Right. So I would fix that first and I would practice it and I would dial it in and I would test and get it to where it's perfect and focus to finish and then go to the next bottleneck and the next. So what we're talking about is, we're talking about precision training.
And in and of that you're, you're in Sales. So I'm going to use sales because a lot of entrepreneurs are not good at sales and they don't like rejection. So you have to practice getting no's. So, you know, one of the easiest things to do, I'm going to just find something that's here, Here's a scrunchie. Like it's, it's used to put my hair up, right. I'm going to go and try to sell this used scrunchie, and maybe I'm going to find one that's really stretched out and isn't really working anywhere anymore. And I'm going to attempt to sell it to 100 people. And everybody's going to say no, because I'm going to say, hey, I want to sell you this one used scrunchie that's not even elastic anymore, and you're going to pay $20 for it, and you're going to get no. Why would you do that? You're going to get the price. Objection. You're going to get the. It doesn't look like this other version that's cheaper or prettier like. And you practice getting those no. So you build your resilience. Then all of a sudden, when you have to sell yourself in business, getting a no is not such a big deal.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you reminded me of the Wolf of Wall street when it's like, sell me this pen. You know, I think it's, it's undervalued because we all, we're always selling ourselves, either selling a service or product or sell.
So I agree with you. And that takes me into something else that I read that I wanted to ask you. You often reference the.1% edge. What is that and how does that matter more than ever now?
[00:09:18] Speaker D: Yeah. So at a high level, we're not missing the big things.
An entrepreneur, we know we need revenue into our business. We know we need marketing. We know these things. We're not really missing those big things, but we're missing the small little things that add up and compound. So when we think about that 0.1% edge, think about your Olympic sprinters. It's that 0.1 or 0.01 microsecond, that microseconds that makes the difference in whether they get the gold or maybe they're not even on the, on the podium. Right. So in business, we have to ask ourselves, okay, I'm in this industry, what would give me that 0.1% edge?
And so it's easy. Sometimes it's the personal side, because if we are not high level performing a decision maker.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: If I'm not sleeping, for example, and getting that recovery in, I'm not clear on my decision making. I don't have the resilience and the stronger mindset.
I'm hesitating more or maybe I'm making poor decisions.
And so the one point, the 0.1% edge for that individual is simple, it's foundational, it's get more sleep so I can be focused and have better decision making processes. But for some people it's, they're always putting out fires like it seems, it
[00:10:43] Speaker D: seems like they're very reactive in business.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Well, guess what, that's a systems problem. You need a sprinkler system if you're
[00:10:49] Speaker D: always putting out fires.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: So for that person, that point 1% to look at their systems and say,
[00:10:54] Speaker D: okay, what upgrade is going to keep
[00:10:56] Speaker C: this fire from keep coming back? And so like right now in today's
[00:11:00] Speaker D: climate, it's I, I'm just going to
[00:11:01] Speaker C: say strategic AI use that speed, your
[00:11:04] Speaker D: execution, that removes friction, that takes over
[00:11:07] Speaker C: some of the routine tasks that are low value work that we're doing, that fixes our bottlenecks and gives us that shift, gives us that, that little bit of edge that brings us to that top 1% in our industry.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I really like that. You reminded me of Michael Phelps. Right. Where just that little fraction of a second that's going to really make a make a difference.
And the other thing that you mentioned that I say quite a bit with my audience as an executive coach, with my clients, all those little things make a difference because like you said, they have compounding interest. But the thing is when we separate them by themselves, they might not look all that valuable. Was like, oh, but when you start to, you know, to add those up, it really makes a make, makes a difference. So I'm glad that you brought that up. And then the other thing that kind of comes to mind is the soft skills versus hard skills. And I think a lot of people hard have the hard skills already.
But I think now with the world of AI and things are changing so quickly, agility is key and also the soft skills. So. All right, as we wrap up our first segment, Jen mentioned AI won't replace leaders, it will expose weak ones. And I love that. So leadership is no longer about doing more. It's about becoming more precise, more aware, more strategic in how you operate. We'll be right back with leadership evolving.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: We'll be right back with more insights, stories and transformative leadership conversations. Stay with us. Leadership Today Evolving tomorrow.
I'm Carlos Martin, and this is Leadership Evolving on NOW Media Television. Let's continue the journey. And we are back. Leadership Today Evolving tomorrow.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: All right, we are back with Jen Godet. And we were talking about our last segment about the, about the athlete, right, with the business athlete.
And I think it's, there's a lot of value in there. And at the same time, how do we, if I look at my clients, I look at myself, sometimes we get too caught up and we, we begin to burn out. So I want to talk a little bit about the burnout. So you've said the burnout is often a systems problem, not a stamina problem. Explain a little bit to, to, to us in our audience, please.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: Yeah, so most leaders don't really have a burnout problem per se, because they don't have the motivation or the energy to do this. They really have a structural problem.
So they're in too many decisions, they're in too many meetings, they're in too many low value tasks. And what happens is that creates a lot of friction.
[00:13:58] Speaker D: And every time we switch gears to
[00:14:01] Speaker C: another type of task, and this is neurophysiology, every time we shift our focus, we're less efficient. It starts to add out, add up, right? So that friction is real and the burnout is feeling. That's the result.
So when we think about that at a high level, we think about, okay, I'm doing too many decisions. Decision fatigue is a very big cause of burnout. Because what's happening is when we don't make that decision right away, it's sitting there on our mental, in our mental bandwidth. And so it's in the back of our mind. So we've always got that little, like, focus issue where we're needing to shift attention and we know we need to make this decision, but we're kind of procrastinating it and it just sort of snowballs, right?
So that's what I mean by a system problem. If we have a decision matrix that already we have an algorithm to how we make these decisions, especially if we've got team and we empower them from that matrix, that's the system.
And when we have a system now, instead of 36,000 decisions every day, maybe we only have to make the hundred that really counter that are outliers that don't really fit into the matrix that we've built. So that's why I say fix the system and the energy is going to return.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Okay, so as a solopreneur, how can we fix the System to have that structure the strategy.
Because you said most of the time
[00:15:25] Speaker B: it's a structural problem.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: How can we begin to use AI as a tool to be able to help us do that? Because sometimes I could be that person where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and next thing you know, just to come back, okay, what was I working on? And like you said that there's a lot of decision fatigue, so. Guilty as charged. So using AI, what tools have you seen to help us, especially as solopreneurs,
[00:15:50] Speaker B: to, to build some, some structure.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of tools out there. And I'm gonna shift your, shift your perspective right off the bat. It's not about the tool at first.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: About what are the functions that I want AI to do and what do I not want AI to do in my business?
So when we think about AI reducing that cognitive load we were talking about, when we leverage AI correctly, what we should initially start with as executive CEOs and founders is we want AI to
[00:16:20] Speaker D: organize the information to bring us the
[00:16:22] Speaker C: real time data and summarize it in a high level way. That's the first step. That's one of the best uses of AI. No matter what tool you're in, that's what they do really well. Now if you're using like an open
[00:16:35] Speaker D: source tool or a public tool and
[00:16:37] Speaker C: you've got the free or freemium version and you're paying less than $20 a
[00:16:41] Speaker D: month for it, just know that what
[00:16:43] Speaker C: it pulls up is not going to be great.
[00:16:44] Speaker D: You have to literally feed it and
[00:16:47] Speaker C: command like command it well and say,
[00:16:49] Speaker D: listen, here is, here is exactly what's going on.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: I want you to pull all of
[00:16:54] Speaker D: this data, upload what you need to upload. Never anything that's private or that you
[00:16:58] Speaker C: wouldn't want on a billboard because like, let's be real, they're training on our staff.
[00:17:02] Speaker D: If you're in the free version, it's not free.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: You're giving up your data.
So don't put anything in, you know,
[00:17:08] Speaker D: chat or Claude that you wouldn't be comfortable being portrayed on a billboard. But you put in the details that
[00:17:14] Speaker C: you're having to consider or like all
[00:17:16] Speaker D: of the things in a basket to
[00:17:19] Speaker C: pressure test your decision to summarize your
[00:17:21] Speaker D: options after you've fed it and say, only pull from this data.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:26] Speaker D: Highlight the risks and then you go and say, you know what, what am I not seeing?
For example, I'm a female, I am a 50. Ish female. I am a grandmother and like the reality is, is I'm not a man.
And you know, there's a lot about that demographic that I don't intrinsically have in my lived experience. So I can go to AI and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking about from, from the like 50 ish year old Caucasian female experience who went to the like. This is my background, this is how I make decisions. But I'm selling to a 25 year old male who has this kind of demographic and this kind of lived experience.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: What am I missing in his perspective
[00:18:12] Speaker D: so that I can be more effective. Right. So what does that do? It gives you better sharper focus perspective so you can make a better decision. This is expert in sales, like I'm
[00:18:24] Speaker C: talking in sales is one of the
[00:18:26] Speaker D: best ways to do it. Everybody says AI and bias is a bad thing. Wrong answer. Bias is excellent because it tells you how they think, how they, what matters to them. It's different than what matters to me. And that's for any age difference, demographic, et cetera. Because the world is changing. So when we leverage it to help us up level our strategic thinking, I think that's the first layer that we want to do so we can let go of all of that. I need to organize the information, I need to pull it all together. Let it do it for you and let it pressure test.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I love that. Let it, let it do it for you. One thing that you mentioned, you said you're 50ish years old, the grandmother. Now I want to go down the rabbit hole. Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin Button. I feel like, are you just getting younger as you go? I know that's not the topic of today's but holy crap.
[00:19:17] Speaker D: I practice what I preach, I sleep,
[00:19:20] Speaker C: I fuel my body appropriately, I move my body.
[00:19:24] Speaker D: I am big in longevity and peak human performance. So I am a peak performing human. And actually with the wearables we have today, if, if you do everything you need to do and you're maintaining you can actually physiologically like your biological age. Like your, your chronological age doesn't change, but your biological age can reverse.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: So my biological age is currently 36 years old, significantly less than what I, my chronological age is.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Wow, that is impressive. I have no, I have no idea what, what I am, but I going back to like you said, the compounding interest, the sleep, the drinking water.
I don't think we put enough value into that. Why? Because going back to the burnout, you know, we always want to go, go, go, go, go. I've been guilty of that, A lot of my clients are guilty of that. But it's hard to say how am I going to be productive if I'm sleeping, if I'm, you know, out there running or exercising, I have to be in front of the computer and getting things done. But then it starts to have a. What do you call it?
[00:20:30] Speaker C: A diminishing returns.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So it's. It's something that we don't put enough value.
So going back into the leaders, what do you think?
Those leaders are leaking most of their energy right now.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: Yeah. So when we think about where are they leaking their energy, it really is a couple of things we've already mentioned.
[00:20:52] Speaker D: It's.
[00:20:52] Speaker C: They're not focused, they're not prioritizing their recovery.
And so I'm going to give you an example. We all know what happens to an athlete if they don't recover, if they don't take recovery seriously. If an athlete doesn't sleep, they show up tired, if they don't feel their body right, and they're not taking enough time. And basketball is an excellent example because it's a very long season with a lot of games. And those who didn't take enough recovery time during gameplay and practice, they're the ones who get injured the first week of postseason. Right.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Oh, so not only lack of performance, but could also get injured.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: So what does that look like in our business?
Well, if we're constantly grinding and we're. We have decision fatigue and we haven't got the systems in place and we haven't upgraded what we're doing, what that looks like in a business?
Yeah, it looks like things bottleneck and break down, but what it really looks like is overwhelm.
And folks like, I'm going to just put this as simply as I know how to do it. Overwhelm is simply attempting to solve too many problems simultaneously.
And the way that we fix overwhelm is very simple.
We prioritize and we focus on one thing at a time, only one thing at a time. Because when we do that, every time we stay focused, we have maximum efficiency.
[00:22:17] Speaker D: But if we're switching tasks and thinking
[00:22:19] Speaker C: about all the things we're losing, efficiency and effectiveness. And so when we focus, what we're able to do is solve the one problem.
And then the next thing that I would say is we have to create a stop doing list. We have to stop doing the low value tasks. So I have a. I have a action set for everybody in here. And I'm going to give you. Give you what it looks like so
[00:22:41] Speaker D: I want you to list every single
[00:22:43] Speaker C: thing you do during the day, maybe for a week and use this filter. Is this something that I can automate? Because it's repetitive, it's predictable and it happens frequently. That's an automation, Repetitive, frequently done. Not really a trust point. That's an automate.
[00:23:03] Speaker D: Is it something that I've been doing
[00:23:04] Speaker C: but I'm not seeing any return on my business?
[00:23:07] Speaker D: Everybody knows that one networking meeting that
[00:23:09] Speaker C: we've gone to and we haven't seen any ROI on stop, stop doing it eliminate. So you have automate, eliminate. Or maybe we have some tasks that
[00:23:18] Speaker D: are not really always predictable and how
[00:23:21] Speaker C: that system goes or how that task plays out.
[00:23:24] Speaker D: That's a delegate.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: If it's a low value work, it's a delegate. And then the final is decide, decide.
[00:23:29] Speaker D: Am I going to take this?
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Is this important, impactful? Is it my zone of genius? Is it my highest value work?
And so all the low value stuff you either automate, delegate or delete and
[00:23:39] Speaker D: the rest is what you focus on. And I'm going to give you a real time example. I have a client that we did
[00:23:44] Speaker C: this December, we did this in December. And so we looked at everything that
[00:23:49] Speaker D: he was doing and he has an executive team, right?
[00:23:53] Speaker C: This is a, this is a sizable
[00:23:55] Speaker D: business in the 30 million dollar revenue range.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: And he had his executive team in place, but he was still the decision maker. He hadn't empowered his CFO to make
[00:24:05] Speaker D: the financial decisions, he hadn't empowered the
[00:24:08] Speaker C: CMO to make the high level marketing decisions. Everybody had to pass every decision through him.
[00:24:13] Speaker D: So we looked at it and we went, well, this is silly. There's a lot of little decisions that
[00:24:18] Speaker C: are being made simply because we haven't
[00:24:19] Speaker D: put a structure that says, oh hey, if it's $25,000 or less and this,
[00:24:23] Speaker C: these are the parameters, then go forth and conquer.
[00:24:26] Speaker D: But if it's above that, you need approval from me.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: Like so we put that simple filter
[00:24:31] Speaker D: in and all of a sudden he
[00:24:33] Speaker C: reclaimed over 30% of his time because
[00:24:35] Speaker D: he no longer had all of his team interrupting him all the time to
[00:24:38] Speaker C: unstop their decision process.
[00:24:40] Speaker D: We didn't, we didn't do anything except create a decision matrix and delegate that to his team and it freed up 30% of his time. Well then we were able to focus on what's the next product line that we're going to develop and increase the revenue generating activities.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: I love that you're talking about that personal automation.
So thank you for that. We'll dig in a Little bit more. Our next segment, another one that you mentioned that I read somewhere that the burnout is often the symptom. Efficiency burnout is often the symptom. Deficiency is a disease. I love that.
So if your business requires for you to be exhausted to succeed, it's not built right. We'll be right back to Leadership Evolving.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: We'll be right back with more insights, stories and transformative leadership conversations. Stay with us. Leadership Today Evolving tomorrow.
I'm Carlos Martin and this is Leadership Evolving on NOW Media Television. Let's continue the journey. And we are back. Leadership Today Evolving tomorrow.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: All right, we're back with Joe with Jen Godet. I'm super excited. A lot of great information in our conversation. We talked about in our last segment the automation, the personal automation, which I love, and also the high performance. And now I want to get into again, the performers.
Why do high performers struggle with boundaries even when they, even when they know better?
[00:26:15] Speaker C: Yeah. So, like, this is the easy answer. It's because we're being rewarded for being accessible. We live in a culture that has conditioned us that when we say yes to everything, we're being productive. And when we're available to everybody, that's valuable. But the problem is it creates dependency and we become the bottleneck in our own business. So we've got that Dobermanning hit every time we say yes and somebody says, oh, great, thank you. But if we're saying yes to low value meetings, to opportunities that are not in alignment with our business strategic goals, or to reactive work, what we're really saying no to is our strategy, our growth and our high impact decisions.
So I would like to suggest that boundaries are what protects our margin.
Time is not the only asset we're talking about here. It's attention focus. And attention is the greatest gift that we could give. And when we say no, it's not a rejection to other people. We can do that in a way. And I actually wrote a book on how to set boundaries in a way that builds relationships. We can still add value to them without it having to come off of our plate.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that just because previous to this, to our recording or showing, a friend of mine reached out like, hey, can you give me a hand? I would love to get your, your thoughts.
And I started feeling a little guilty. I'm like, oh, I have time. But then I added more pressure for myself. I still was able to do it. But the funny thing is I'm really good at telling that to my clients, but I'm horrible Doing that to myself of creating those healthy boundaries because we're people pleasers.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: And I'm just going to give you the formula that I use for saying no. It's thank you.
[00:28:01] Speaker D: Thank you, Carlos, for asking me and
[00:28:03] Speaker C: trusting me to help you with this. I understand you need me to come to your house and change your light bulb because you can't reach it. I totally making this up, folks.
[00:28:11] Speaker D: So this is.
And then you insert the boundary.
[00:28:15] Speaker C: Unfortunately, I have other priorities right now,
[00:28:17] Speaker D: and I can't drive three hours to Austin to change your light bulb.
[00:28:21] Speaker C: However, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a couple
[00:28:24] Speaker D: of phone numbers to handyman in your
[00:28:25] Speaker C: area that they can do this for you.
[00:28:28] Speaker D: So you've added value. So it's thank you validation.
[00:28:31] Speaker C: I hear that this is the problem.
Setting the boundary and then adding value.
[00:28:36] Speaker D: And that value looks different. It might be a resource, it might be a referral.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: It might be.
You deserve 100% of my focused attention.
[00:28:44] Speaker D: And unfortunately, I can't give that to you right now with what I have going on. Like, that's the best gift we can
[00:28:49] Speaker C: give to our clients.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I really like that because a lot of things for me is I want to make sure my friends, my colleagues, my. You know, everyone is feeling heard and seen.
Right. And that's because that's something that I practice.
So if somebody's asking me for, you know, it doesn't. A favor or whatever it is, I feel compelled. But the pressure is not necessarily coming from them. It's coming from me. So I'm learning to. Okay, I have to create those. Those healthy, healthy boundaries. So I also wanted to. I want to ask you, like, what changes when leader.
When leaders start to make decisions like an operator, not a firefighter.
Hopefully that makes sense.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: What.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: What comes to mind for you?
[00:29:34] Speaker D: Yeah. So, I mean, earlier in. I think it was the first part of our conversation, I said, if you're always putting out fires, you.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: You have a.
[00:29:43] Speaker D: You have a systems problem. You need a sprinkler system and that.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:29:47] Speaker D: Put that out. Right. So what does that mean? What does that analogy mean? It means you're moving from reactive to intentional.
So operators plan decisions in advance. They use data and numbers, not emotion. And this is a soapbox for me. So I'm sorry for going down this road. But if you're not. If you don't know your numbers, whether it's your financials, whether it's your marketing, your sales conversion, if you don't know your numbers, you are always guessing in business. And you will make a decision based off of a gut feeling or an emotion instead of knowing what's actually working. And let me, let me give you a really concrete example.
Say you sell hamburgers. It costs you $2 and 50 cents to make that hamburger, but you're selling it at $2, but you don't know that you're losing 50 cents on every hamburger. You think you need more leads. This is, this is the common problem in business. You don't know your cost of goods sold. You don't know your unit level economics. Most entrepreneurs who I work with don't have that dialed in. And so you think you have a 10 or 12 or 13% profit margin and you even have a negative margin on a product or service.
So that's why we need to use data, not emotion. Oh, but I love making hamburgers and I love that everybody can afford it. Yes, but you can't afford it because you know, if you keep multiplying that, you dig a big, a bigger hole. And then the other thing that operators do is they think in systems.
But if you're a firefighter, which is most entrepreneurs, when they get started, and, and really a lot of people get to a point where they plateau, you're reacting to urgency, you're solving the same problems over and over and over again. So you stay stuck in the weeds.
So an operator builds a business.
If you're just, if you're not an operator and you're just a firefighter, all you're doing is maintaining the chaos. And so that is really what changes. It's moving from that reactive all the time to intentional with a plan.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess the, the big word here is reactive. And reactive also sounds exhausting, right? It really is because you're always just like, okay, and you said sales. And I remember my old VP saying, you can't improve something unless you can measure it. Right. It's like, how do we quantify that? And I think it's. You mentioned also the emotional versus the data.
And for me that's a little bit of a struggle because with my clients, I do talk about emotions and feelings a little bit on the, of the soft skills.
But I think you, most of the time you need both, right. To be able, the emotions to connect with other people, but also the data, the analytics. So when I work with leaders is how effective of a leader can you be?
And a lot of the times that you need to be logical, to think numbers, to think data, and also maybe the emotional. But it's really hard to quantify, to quantify this. So I really, really like that.
So where does AI support better decision making versus replacing it?
[00:32:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker D: So one of the things, one of
[00:32:55] Speaker C: the companies that I'm part of, I'm a senior managing partner of AI agencies and we built a tool that is basically an advisory in your pocket. And one of the things that we do, it has the whole boardroom, CEO, cfo, et cetera. We run scenarios.
So if I want, if I'm thinking, okay, my sales are now down, my leads are not converting as well, I'm going to run all the possible scenarios for why those metrics are going in the wrong direction. I literally will talk. And if you're using, it doesn't matter what tool you're using, stop typing, like use the microphone button on your tool and just talk about the problem. Hey, this is the decision I need to make. This is what I've been doing, this is what the results are and I'm stuck. I've plateaued.
Can you identify patterns and bring me some insights? So it's all about giving the tool that you're using what you need. So we can help you.
Crisis management, scenario planning, identify the patterns, get more insights. Like we talked about the bias earlier in the sales, but ultimately you do not ever let AI make the call because that's where your lived experience, your customer interaction, the emotional soft skill side of things comes to play. You are the leader, you make the decision. AI informs leaders decide. If you think about it from that
[00:34:20] Speaker D: standpoint, you can get all of the
[00:34:22] Speaker C: information, you know, like we talked about earlier in a, I think in the second or first segment. But we, we always maintain making that call.
So I want to just leave anybody. If you don't, if you don't learn anything else from me today, if you outsource your decisions completely, you're no longer a leader.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that now when I use, you know, ChatGPT Cloud, I, that they're kind of like my board of advisors. But I, what I, what I've seen is, and I'll use ChatGPT for example, and say, hey, I want to become the next trillionaire. How do I do it? And the response, oh my God, fantastic. Yeah, you could totally do it. I mean, it is completely delirious. So like you said, sometimes we say, okay, it's great to have whatever LLM you're working with, but somehow they're delirious and I feel like they're sometimes misguiding us.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: You're absolutely right. And so I've I've done, I've had multiple AI startups and I'm going to start by those are open source, those are trained on the Internet. You're going to have, you don't really have an anchor to reality in those. That's why we built Core Brain as a platform. It's a closed system and it's anchored
[00:35:35] Speaker D: to our data sets.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: We have literally trained every single person with high level board advisory with data.
[00:35:43] Speaker D: We have a knowledge base and we
[00:35:45] Speaker C: also have decision algorithms that we've been able to emulate. And so it's not searching the web, it's a closed system that's trained with experts and in the areas.
[00:35:56] Speaker D: And so you have it anchored and what it does instead of is it anchors down into the data and if it doesn't have the data, it says, I don't have enough information for this.
I'm lacking these three things and I'll ask you the questions and then you have to answer the question. So you really kind of drill down to what matters most.
[00:36:15] Speaker C: So the tool you use matters.
[00:36:17] Speaker D: Open source is never going to be something that's super reliable. I mean like it is going to hallucinate. But the way you can mitigate it is by saying, hey, look, only give me things that are factually based. And if you're interested in learning how to do this, I do trainings on this all the time because it, it really matters how you interact and you have to ask because all the open source ones want to make you happy. So when you say listen, don't just, you know, be, don't just like shake my hand and say, this is great, tell me what I'm missing, take this to pieces, break me apart, like ask it those kind of things so that it'll then bring more solutions, not just noise.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: I, I mean, well said the hallucination because I think it's so real. And like you said, every yes has a cost more leaders and most leaders don't measure it. We'll be right back with Leadership Evolving with Jen. Good day.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: We'll be right back with more insights, stories and transformative leadership conversations. Stay with us. Leadership Today Evolving tomorrow.
I'm Carlos Martin and this is Leadership Evolving on NOW Media Television. Let's continue the journey. And we are back. Leadership Today evolving tomorrow.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Hello folks. Back with Jen. Go day.
And we talked in our last segment about hallucination because I asked ChatGPT how can I become a trillionaire? And he said, oh my God, fantastic idea. This is what you need to do.
So now we're going to go into a little bit on AI empower leadership. So Jen, what does an AI empowered leader actually look like in practice?
[00:37:59] Speaker C: In practice they're not guessing anymore. They're pretty much validating their teams and they're moving forward powerfully. So an AI empowered leader is leveraging AI to test ideas before they execute them.
So I talk about pressure testing and running scenarios so that you can kind of make the best educated decision.
So it also looks like shorter decision cycles and they're able to move faster with more confidence. You're no longer working harder, you're working with better data. And so when we do that, we're doing the highest value work and we're looking at what's actually moving the needle on our business and doubling down on what's working and letting go of that which isn't so. You know, the other thing that I really wanted to kind of focus on here is leaders have to kind of throw out the window what, how we led in the past several decades because we now have virtual teammates.
So all of our team members are now, for all intents and purposes, they're managing virtual teams. If you've done AI integrations and that's not natural for our front end workers.
So part of this is giving our teams the people side of AI and this is what I do day in, day out. How do we empower our teams so that they can become the leaders and know what they need to be looking for to manage not only people, but also the machine version of our teammates. And finally, like if you're empowered and you're leveraging the tool, you don't need to know everything, you don't need to do everything, you don't need to approve everything. We've already talked about that in every segment today. But what you do have to do as an AI in an age of AI is you have to lead directly, you need to decide and do so confidently. And I am a huge fan of radical transparency with your team every step of the way so that they know they're not being replaced, they're being amplified
[00:39:54] Speaker D: and it's what's in it for them.
[00:39:56] Speaker C: It's a sales, it's a sales job really for you to sell your team on why they should leverage the tool because it benefits them in what ways that looks like.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: I really like that, that radical transparency. I couldn't agree with you more.
So you mentioned just like our show, leadership evolving.
What do leaders do? You feel that they need to really work on learning.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: So the thing that they're not as great at. A lot of leaders are not as great at the coaching component and that's essential. So when we think about, when we think about the world today, soft skills are important now more than ever. And so if you're going to enter the AI, what you really have to
[00:40:39] Speaker D: understand is what are the trust points
[00:40:41] Speaker C: in your business that you will never automate and how do you elevate your human team so that coach them up
[00:40:48] Speaker D: basically so that they have that impactful
[00:40:51] Speaker C: human experience and that's where the trust
[00:40:54] Speaker D: stayed tied up in a bow so
[00:40:57] Speaker C: that you have that seamless, amazing, frictionless experience for your client journey.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Okay, so you're speaking my language as a coach and that's something that I talk a lot about.
You know, in one of the things that I see, there's a lot of resistance because I feel like the soft skills or human touch as you call it, the impactful human experience, I love that.
I feel like they don't put a value because, oh, you can't really, you know, put an roi. Can you tell us a little bit more unnecessarily tangibles but you know, things that you see out there of.
Let me give you an example, coaches. Right, Go ahead.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: Let me give you an example of going the too far on automation because
[00:41:37] Speaker D: I think that's going to answer your question.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:39] Speaker C: I had this experience a couple weeks ago.
I took my car in like I have a lease vehicle.
[00:41:44] Speaker D: I took my car in to be serviced.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: I.
[00:41:47] Speaker D: When we scheduled it, it was obviously AI. It didn't say it was AI. It was voice AI on the phone to schedule. Hey, is it the vehicle? Yes. Is this, this what Date? Yes. Can I send you a confirmation? Yes, send me the confirmation.
So I show up for my appointment time that I have a confirmation in text and email for and the circus desk is like, you don't have an appointment. We're totally full today.
Oh my goodness.
[00:42:12] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:42:13] Speaker D: Major lack of trust on the client side. Furthermore, the eye roll that happens. You booked with AI, didn't you? Well, I didn't really have a choice. When I called the number, it immediately went to AI. Right, so.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: So like now they're blaming you. Like you're the problem. You're the one that booked with the AI.
[00:42:32] Speaker D: Yes, but. But the eye roll happened and the you. The psy. Like that's soft skills that our team needs to understand instead of that.
Where we as a leader come in is, hey, sometimes the technology is glitching or it doesn't necessarily translate through. You want to take a deep Breath and say, I see that you have. You're showing me your confirmation. I don't see it in my system, but we're going to make this happen for you. That's a simple training tool, but it also goes to how do we, like, how do we bring crisis management to our front line and how do we coach them through that? That's all soft skills. So I'm the customer going, well, shoot, if the only way that I can make an appointment is through AI that doesn't show up on your book. And I drive an hour, because I drove an hour to get there and I'm not going to be seen or it's a. I feel like now I'm an inconvenience. I'm never doing business with this person again. So your ROI in the soft skills and in the handling this and in integrating with technology is directly in the loss of clients. You're no longer going to have me as a client. I'm no longer going to utilize your services.
[00:43:43] Speaker C: So that is a great example.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that is a great example. A real life that things that do happen. But again, I feel like a lot of companies don't really put a lot of emphasis because it's really difficult to, to quantify, but it's so impactful that it happens to me all the time. And now is it because you and I are a little bit more aware or even hyper aware of this soft skill that it's, you know, it's. We're so attuned and other people are not. And then we. There's such a huge chasm there.
[00:44:21] Speaker C: I would actually say it's not necessarily that. I think the problem is that we have shiny object syndrome and we don't understand AI and what it is. And AI is continually learning. So when this happens, part of the AI integration is to train the people. And when that instance occurs, it's up to them to go in to the AI and say, hey, this happened, this cannot happen again. How can we mitigate this? Because it's learning from its interactions with your tool that was missed. And that's a lot of integrations. I know you've seen the MIT study. 95% of integrations fail. It's because they ignored the planning, the proper workflow, keeping the trust points in, and the training of their team.
They just skipped all of that and went straight to the shiny object tool because the sales pitch is this is going to just do it for you and it's effortless bs.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: So is that, is that, do you feel that that's where they're underestimate, you know, where companies underestimate, underestimate the power of the, the impact of AI and how either impact them in a positive and also in a negative way.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: Yes, but I, I would, I would say it's more because they are looking at AI as like the newest version of a spreadshee. That's not what it is. These are virtual employees and it was our problem if we didn't train the workflow properly it means we trained them on an SOP that was missing steps or that didn't have a fail safe. And so this is why people like me who are AI strategists and who come in and work on the people side of the tech integrations are so incredibly important because we've lived this for years. For half a decade I've been doing this on the people side and I'm kind of like the bridge between the tech and the business that we can make sure you're putting in the thing that's going to matter most is not going to be detrimental to your, to your business. But also we look at fully planning it out in alliance in alignment with your business initiatives so that we're having something that's going to quantifiable, be positive for your business as well as training your team and making sure that we have the best bang for our buck instead of an expensive paper rate.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: You're like the perfect combination of technology and like you said, business and the AI condo seuration. So speaking of that, if one of our audiences is hearing us and say I want to work with Jen, I want to see her services, how can they learn more about you and what you the amazing work that you're doing.
[00:46:41] Speaker C: Yeah. So I mean if you're a founder, an executive or an investor and your business is growing but you're starting to feel heavy, slow, overly dependent on you, that's where I come in. I help leaders operate like business athletes. We optimize how you are. You're a peak performer, how you think, how you decide, how you execute so you can scale without burning out. That's everything from strategic coaching consulting to AI integration that actually improves your profitability and an AI advisory level for that executive support.
If you really want to go deeper, connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Send me a message. Watch my show here on Now Media Television Power CEOs, the Truth behind the business and also vital signs. And if you're ready to scale smarter or integrate that next AI in a way that makes sense Reach out to me.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: All right, fantastic. As we begin to start to wrap up our last segment here, what is something that I haven't asked? And do you really want to get to our audience to. To. To know, to hear again? In the world of AI, Things are moving so rapidly. There's always a new tool.
I feel like everyone I talk to, we're. We're coming from a place of lack. I need to learn, otherwise, I'm obsolete. Can you tell us a little bit more about that or anything that comes to mind?
[00:47:52] Speaker C: Well, I mean, I think I would like to leave everybody with an action step. I'm a coach, right?
[00:47:56] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I like it. Let me take some notes here.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Yeah. If you want to find your 0.1% edge today, start by finding what your constraint is. Here are the questions to ask yourself. Is it my energy?
[00:48:09] Speaker D: Is it mindset?
Is it strategy?
[00:48:13] Speaker C: Is it a lack of leveraging tools such as AI?
Whatever the answer is, you pick one
[00:48:18] Speaker D: thing, not all of them, because you're going to have a laundry list when
[00:48:21] Speaker C: you ask yourself these questions.
[00:48:22] Speaker D: Fix the one thing, and that's what you get. You get that small edge, that consistent action, and it's going to compound over time. That's how you win. So no matter who you are, that's what I would love for you to take away from today. What is your bottleneck? What is it that you're overwhelmed?
[00:48:39] Speaker C: To pick up the one thing, fix one thing, and then once you've completed
[00:48:43] Speaker D: that, then go to the next.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: So those. Those baby steps. Tell me a little bit. You mentioned that. The mindset, what does that look like for someone?
[00:48:53] Speaker D: Yeah, so it looks like I'm doing
[00:48:54] Speaker C: all the things I can't let go.
[00:48:57] Speaker D: I can't delegate this to my team because they don't do it as fast as me or one of my favorites. And this is very classic. They've delegated something, but it's taking longer or it doesn't come out exactly as they want, so they take it back. You're not empowering your team, folks. You're enabling them and making it more dependent on you. So if those things sound like you, reach out.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Jen, thank you so much. There's so much gold here in our conversations.
I, again, you are such a threat. Combination of energy, great personality, and the AI world, All. Everything combined. Thank you so much. And like you said, the future leaders are not replaced by AI. There are amplified by it. Thank you again, Jen, for being on our show on leadership evolving. And again, this is not about keeping up with change. It's about learning how to lead it. This has been leadership evolving with Jen Godei. Hope to see you back next week
[00:49:58] Speaker B: and thank you, Jen.
