One Big Idea 5 - Driving Institutional Growth: From Inner Leadership Healing and Career Reinvention to AI-Driven Search Authority

0:03Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. You asked for it so we made it happen. Every Friday, we're doing something a little different. Instead of one long conversation, we're packing in four of them, four experts, four big ideas, all in about the same time it takes to drink your morning coffee. We call it One Big Idea Friday, and the format is simple. I ask each guest one question, and they bring their single best idea for business leaders who want to grow without the noise. No fluff, no rambling, just the thing they actually want you to remember. I'm Josh Helledge. Let's get into it. With our next one big idea, we've got Hannah Dalby.

0:46Hannah, you are the founder of Integrated AF. You are a, I'm sorry, let me say that again.

0:55With us right now, Hannah Dalby. Hannah, you are the founder of The Jungle. You're found on the web at integratedaf.com. It's so great to have you. Hannah, we would love to hear your one big idea. Thank you so much. My one big idea is that we don't have an addiction problem, a health problem, or an addiction crisis. Neither of those things are the crisis. It is a leadership crisis. And what I mean by that is everything comes from the top. and I work with these people day in day out and whether it's a CEO who can't put down work or someone who can't stop drinking or the mother who over functions and can't actually take time to stop underneath all of that is the same unmet needs and this happens through we're going to work for how many hours a week for most of our life and in these environments is where we develop our nervous systems where we develop everything that's going on in our lives and we take that home and when that's not it's when we're not getting those needs of being seen heard understood met in those places it comes back into home it comes back into our relationships it comes back into how we raise our children into how we take care of ourselves and this starts at the very very top so as a leader if we've got what I would call so I think the most important thing is actually understanding transference and counter-transference, which should be a really big part of general understanding.

2:28It's not even done very well in the mental health industry. And what this means is we're projecting our unresolved emotional stuff onto the people around us, onto our team, onto our partners. And when we don't understand this, we start pushing this out into our culture, into our policy, into how we treat our teams. And if we were to understand this, we would treat people differently. We would treat ourselves differently. We would get our own needs met first. So it's not getting leaked out in shadowy ways all through our companies, which then leaks back into home environments of our entire employees and our entire culture.

3:08And so an example of this is like in my early career, I was the number one salesperson in the country in this job. and I was also an athlete and I was doing this double life and I was working really early, leaving early and getting all of my own needs met and I was punished for it by my manager and I was, you know, you can't have autonomy, you can't do this and there was so much volatility inside of that that I ended up leaving and I didn't, like they didn't lose someone that was emotional and, you know, doing bad, they lost their top performer in the company because the manager couldn't deal with his own control needs for his own life that transference of what i was triggering in him ended up making him treat me terribly and they lost their absolute best performer had he understood what was happening inside of him and was able to cultivate that within himself a very different situation would have happened now i've experienced it in my own company where i had abandonment wounds that i hadn't dealt with and so i would allow people to walk all over me.

4:11I wouldn't set boundaries. And so that caused so much stress in my own system that my entire team felt that stress. So I wasn't getting what I needed met. They weren't getting what they needed met. Everyone was at high stress. All the addictive behaviors, you could see them coming online. How do we avoid all of this high stress? Once I dealt with that fundamental abandonment wounding, I was able to set boundaries really strongly, which gave me more respect inside of the business, the stress came down because I was getting what I needed met, the company was getting what it needed met, and then I was able to see, hear, and understand my team, stress comes down, everyone feels that they're getting their needs met, and then performance increases, the way they go home increases, my personal life gets better, their personal life gets better, just by me undoing the wounding inside of myself.

5:03I've seen it with clients that have high-level jobs as leaders inside of executives, when they start doing this fundamental work, they stop reacting and projecting all of this stuff onto the people around them. And then everyone's going home in a better place. They can start putting more energy back into their health, back into their families, back into their partners. So the invitation inside of this is as a leader, if you're in charge of other human beings, what you can do is start taking care of yourself first. What are you projecting out into the world? What are you getting triggered by, by your team?

5:41What decisions are you making to have some unconscious need met that could be met in some other way from a conscious place without it leaking into your entire environment, into your entire culture? well Hannah this is oh I'm sorry one final thought yes please yes yeah well I guess I guess I think the the point is right here is um if you could do anything this week is when you start to notice that someone's triggering you about something if someone really really really upsets you have a look at is this about them or does this keep happening over and over and over again in your life with different people because if that's the thing it's not information about that person it's information about you.

6:27And if you take some time to actually sit with that and don't respond until you have a look at what is it triggering here? What need am I not being met? This is the work that leaders need to do. I love that. This is honestly one of the best, one big ideas that we've had so far. And it's one that, Hannah, I know that I've had to do so much work on. And And, you know, what you said there at the end, I think, is just so key is when you feel yourself having maybe a disproportionate reaction. Now, it takes a little bit of introspection to even recognize that you might be having a disproportionate reaction.

7:08But if you find yourself ruminating over something, is that necessary? or, you know, the two words I like, or I have to, you know, I'll refrain to myself is get curious what's going on there. And, um, I understand Hannah, that this is the work that you do. Would you mind sharing just a little bit about the work that you do with the jungle? And I think some of this is kind of funny because I was actually thinking, I don't know if this is connected in any way. Some of this is kind of Jungian that you're talking about, you know, Carl Jungian. I don't know if that's intentional, but the jungle, the Jungian.

7:47So anyway, I absolutely cannot emphasize how important this work is so you can get good. And it really is, it's like developing a muscle so that you can figure out, you know, why are you reacting in that way? And heaven forbid you're taking it out on other people, but a lot of us do. All right. I'm sorry, Hannah, tell us about the work that you do with the jungle. And by the way, I love your website. Integrated. What was the URL? It was integrated AF. AF.com. Yes. Integrated AF.com. Hannah, share with us what you do. So rather than dealing with all of this stuff from the mind, we actually deal with it from the body.

8:29So when you talk about this, like, okay, well, what's happening here, we go into those sensations into the body and resolve it from a somatic point of view, resolve it from a where did this first come from point of view, get these sensations inside of the body to speak, to be rewritten, to be resolved for parts to like fragmented parts to come back together, where when these triggers happen, you no longer getting a physical reaction. And when you do get a physical reaction, you've actually got the capacity to sit with it and be with it and figure out what it wants to figure out what need is not being met.

9:06And so it's actually permanently undoing all of this old emotional stuck triggers and energy in the system so that you can now operate from a fully integrated human and lead from a place of alignment and integration as a whole human. Hannah Dalby, again, you're the founder of The Jungle. You're found on the web at integratedaf.com. Hannah, thank you so much for your one big idea. Thank you so much, Josh.

9:41With our next one big idea, it's Charles McLaughlin. Charles, you are the founder and CEO of the Portfolio Executives Growth Academy. You are also a podcast host of the Portfolio Executive Community. Charles, it's great to have you. I'm so excited to hear your one big idea. Thank you, Josh. I want to introduce you to the idea of the Scrap Heap Challenge. So if you look out there, there's this dirty little secret in the corporate world, which is for more and more people, even though they're senior, even they're a VP, at 40, sorry, at 50, they're likely to end up on the Scrap Heap. What does that really look like?

10:29it looks like the situation where suddenly your job comes to an end. Suddenly, you have no opportunity to find a new one. And even though you've done 100 job applications, even though you have been out there rattling cages in your network, you've ended up on the scrap heap. Now, what does that truly mean? Well, surprisingly, some of the people I'm talking to, 12, 18, 24 months into this job search process, they've run out of money. Their partners left them, cleared out the bank accounts, they're on their own, and sooner or later, they can't afford where they're living, and they're sofa surfing with friends.

11:17But these are people who've worked for big brands, they've got careers that you'd love, and yet, suddenly, they've hit that grey ceiling where actually corporate is unable to engage with them successfully. And they feel that our lives have come to an end. Their identity, which was working 60 hours a week in a prestigious organization, getting a high six-figure salary, all come to an end. The clubs they were part of, they no longer couldn't afford to be members. And anyway, what would you say if you turned up and they said, what are you doing, Charles? Well, I'm on the scrap heap. so people hide this they keep it secret they don't want other people to know it's not just a myth that in the uk you have people who've got an annual train ticket to get into work in the city of london they're made redundant they carry on with their spouse taking them to the train station every morning get on the train go into the city until their annual season ticket runs out and then suddenly they have to bring home to their family they're out of work they're out of money and all of their self-esteem is destroyed so the scrap heap challenge is not only how to survive when you're on the scrap heap how to get off the scrap heap but also the things you can do now so you never on end up on the scrap heap and for so many of the people I talk to it's too late they are on the scrap heap they've run out resources they no longer believe in themselves in fact nobody believes in them either they've downsized their home they've spent their money on lots of expensive consultants who are meant to transform their lives and now they're at the end of the road tragic waste of some of the greatest talent we've built over the last 30 or 40 years suddenly they're in a situation where they're living hand to mouth and on a bad day they can't even afford a burrito so if you feel that you are part of this scrap heap challenge what are you going to do about it are you brave enough to put your hand up and say yes i need help too yes i want to work with other people who are going to defeat this scrap heap challenge because the The Scrap Heap Challenge is about people coming together, supporting one another to transform their lives and restarting from sometimes the depths of despair.

13:46Yeah. Hey, Charles, I'm sorry. Let's let's do it. Would you mind if we did it one more time? I'm so sorry to ask this, but so that was if I could. So it was doom and gloom. But what I'd like to do is offer some ray of hope. If we could, if that'd be all right. So, so, so that it's a little bit more than just identifying the problem, but that we also generally get, we want to just give some, okay, here's the situation. Here's why it happens. It's very common. If this is happening to you, you're not alone. And guess what? There are some things you could do. Now, this is what I do professionally, but let me give you a few general ideas.

14:32If you feel yourself. Would you, could we do that? Yeah, sure. Okay, great, great, great. I just, I feel like that's going to be a lot better because otherwise it just feels like a giant wind up for a pitch. You know what I mean? So I just want to make sure that folks feel like they got something out of that. Okay, here we go. Let me, let me redo this real quick. I'll do the intro. Thank you, by the way. Sorry. It's you know, it's, it's, it's a kind of a tight formula that that we're looking to try to make sure that the three and a half minutes is kind of complete by itself. Okay, here we go. Just one second.

15:10Here we go. With our next one big idea, it's Charles McLaughlin. Charles, you are the founder and CEO of the Portfolio Executive Growth Academy. You were found on the web at portfolioexecutive.biz. Well, Charles, it's great to have you. please share with us your one big idea. Yeah, I want to talk about the Scrap Heap Challenge. I want to talk about the fact that there's this dirty secret in corporate life where too many people, even if they're very senior professionals, post-50 end up on the Scrap Heap. And what can that really look like? It means that when you've lost your job, you're never going to get another one.

15:55I've spoken to people who've applied literally for hundreds of jobs and 12, 18, 24 months later, they've run out of hope. They've run out of opportunity. They've run out of money. In fact, some of the people I'm talking to are sofa surfing with friends because they can't even afford to pay rent. But what is the way that you can change that situation? Well, the first thing is be prepared. You can avoid getting on the scrap heap by doing some very simple things like ensuring that you have enough money to survive an extended period of unemployment, to make sure you have a network which is not just the people you work with in your company, but are the people you'd love to work with when you leave the company.

16:44by ensuring that you have a brand that is more than just, I used to work for X, that you are seen as an authority in a particular way of thinking. You have a particular approach to your life. You are distinctive. So that's how you can avoid it. But if you're on it, if you feel you're on the scrap heap, then there are three things I would say you need to do. You need to start rebuilding your self-esteem. And the most powerful way of doing that is actually to volunteer. If you go out and give things to other people, then you will start to be valued for who you are and not just the big job you used to have.

17:22Then think about gratitude. If you find things you can be grateful for every single day, bit by bit, the perspective you have on the world will change. Bit by bit, you'll start to see the hope that's out there. Bit by bit, you'll realise however dire your situation, it could be worse because there's at least something you can be grateful for each day. And finally, don't allow this to be a secret. Join up with other people who are facing this challenge. We can break this together, but on your own, you'll think you're the only one because those who around you may also be pretending they've still got that big job or that big opportunity or they're about to launch their big company, but actually deep down they know they're on the scrap heap.

18:08So together we can break this, but alone we would just end up only on the scrap heap the great joy of things on the scrap heap is they can be recycled and built into something new and exciting but while you're sitting on the scrap heap just rust away so join with others and break out of the scrap heap join the scrap heap challenge and make a new future yeah so how can someone do a kind of a scrap heap challenge just locally by themselves. And I want to ask you about what you do, but it sounds like you laid out some great tips there of just connecting with others. I love that owning your brand, that's quite brilliant.

18:52I agree with you, independent of your role or position, but to actually be a leader within the industry is kind of the vibe I get from that. Yeah, well, one of the things I think before you get on the scrap heap is your potential clients, when you step away to create your own future are probably going to be your suppliers or the clients that you've got or the professional services firms that you are engaged with. So think beyond your current role in your current position. Build that wider network and then reskill yourself. You know, some people have been in roles where they've never had a business development or client facing function.

19:32There's a guy I used to work with and he was a finance director. He never, ever spoken to a client. And he was a train spotter. That was his hobby. So an introverted, solitary kind of soul. And over the time we worked together, he's now stepping out and building a vibrant future for himself by engaging with people. And he starts to realize that actually he loves helping and working with people. And being an accountant was just what his parents wanted him to do. So he had a proper profession. Well, Charles, your website, portfolioexecutive.biz, I see that you've got a booklet that you give or workbook that you give away.

20:13It looks great. It's called Your Pathway to a Successful Second Half Career. Again, your website, portfolioexecutive.biz. How do you help folks? Just real quick in about 30 seconds here, you know, what is it that you do? And for a friend that's listening to our conversation right now, what would you recommend their next steps be? Well, I'm passionate about helping individuals, but I've also got a group. And within the website, you'll see there's a community. So the first thing is just to get in touch. And let's talk about how you can start to deal with the Scrap Heap Challenge. If you send an email to this email address, then Scrap Heap Challenge at PortfolioExecutive.biz.

20:53I know what you want to talk about. And nobody else needs to know until you're ready to share it with somebody else. I love it. Charles McLaughlin, again, you are the founder and CEO of the Portfolio Executives Academy. Your website is portfolioexecutive.biz. Thank you so much for sharing your one big idea, Charles. Thank you.

21:17With our next one big idea, we've got Dr. Axel Meyerhofer. Dr. Meyerhofer, you are the founder of Ideal Wealth Grower. You're found on the web at idealwealthgrower.com. Well, Dr. Axel, it's great to have you. Please share with us your one big idea. Hey, Josh. Yeah, nice to be with you again. So what I want to talk to you about and to your audience today is that people come to me and say, hey, you know, I would really like to invest in real estate, but where I left, it's really expensive and I don't want to have another job. Well, I don't want to really get too deep into it, but I also don't want to do this kind of mutual stuff uh mutual fund stuff where i'm putting money in and i don't know what happens to it and so i looked at that and found a way that's basically the big idea is how can you invest where the properties perform the best you get most for your money without having to be close to it and most places are like in the midwest in in the south you know like in in some of those states where the ratio between price and rent that you can get is really really good and so i call that turnkey investing and the big idea is you find a company that has a construction division a real estate agency and proper property management professional property management under one roof and then you can be kind of like the benevolent owner they do all the work they give you the property, they maintain it, they find the tenants, and all you do is basically owning it and collecting the cash flow.

22:56And that's what I do. And that's what we found to be a really good idea, because it gives you the best of both worlds. You're an owner, and you're having really good investments in the place where the performance is good. And so why do you think that this is a good strategy, particularly, you know, here we are in the middle of 2026. Are there any trends that you believe that this maybe reduces risks or, you know, increases opportunity for gains? Well, the thing is, we are all on the path, even though we may not necessarily realize it, to what I call the age of abundance that is very closely related to AI.

23:41And nobody can really say exactly how it's going to look like but it's going to come very quickly and the big differentiator in my opinion is the ones who have assets versus the ones who don't have assets but jobs. Those who have jobs they can't really very well predict what's going to happen to them but those who have assets will be in an advantageous position and what assets can you have? You have obviously real estate assets. You can have gold and silver. You can own parts of companies through stock. So any of those assets will put you ahead of people who basically live paycheck to paycheck.

24:21Yeah, certainly. So, you know, for someone that, you know, maybe they haven't dabbled in real, like in real estate, what do you recommend is kind of the best way to get started? well to me the thing that most people forget is most other things and it doesn't even have to be an investment asset but most other things that you want to get into you want to buy it you have to put the money up put it on the table you want to buy a stock for 100 bucks you put 100 bucks on the table you want to buy gold for five thousand dollars an ounce you have to pay that real estate is really the only thing where you can say i have 30 40 000 and i get 150 200 000 asset because the rest is financed by the bank and to pay off that financing you get the money from your tenants so the leverage effect that you can generate through real estate is pretty much unmatched in my opinion because nowhere else can you get assets with a four or five x leverage and over time you know when you say okay i can put some money aside every month and you build a portfolio, you can put$100 ,000 into something and own$500 ,000 of assets.

25:36I'm not aware of any other thing that can do that. And that also applies basically to your money, right? If you put$50 ,000 into a$250 ,000 house, and it increases by 3%, that's basically 15 % on your money. And 3 % is not a huge increase. It's not like a rocket ship or anything like we were talking earlier. It's a relatively modest increase in value. But because of the leverage, it really makes a huge difference. That's why I always say, you know, we don't have to be afraid to compare with our stock market. We're just as good. Well, Dr. Axel, I neglected to mention that you are also the host of the Ideal Investor podcast.

26:20So to our friend that's listening, I recommend a really great thing to do is to search for the Ideal Investor Show. But of course, they can also just visit you on the web, either at IdealInvestorShows.com or IdealWealthGrower.com. Axel, anything else that someone who wants to be in touch with you, you'd recommend they do? No, you said it all. Thank you so much. Dr. Axel Meyerhofer, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

26:52with our next one big idea. It is none other than Bill Quateman. Bill, I had you back on the show pretty quick because you and I got to talk and I'm like, man, that sounds like a really great one big idea. Well, Bill, just before I kind of give you the stage here, you are the founder of Advanced BioCell. You're found on the web at advancedbiocell.com. Bill, please share with us your one big idea. Thanks, Josh. It's a pleasure to be with you as always. You know, everybody's talking about what we call self-care. Self-care is a very important thing. There's no question about it. I think the real focus, as you dial that in, is focusing on what I'm calling mind care.

27:33The reason we're talking about that is because you ask yourself a question. Are you able to allow yourself to focus on what lights you up? What really gets you going in the morning will get you out of bed? This is an ability that, you know, everybody needs to focus on what's going on in your life that really makes a difference to you. Truth is, most people are focusing on what they don't have and what they don't like. And that's what you get in your life. But the point of the story is to be able to understand that focusing equals how you feel. And how you feel is what goes on in your life. You want to find out, first of all, what are you focusing on?

28:15Are you focusing on what's wrong or what's right, what you have or what you don't have? Then you want to focus on what does it mean? What is my focus meaning to me? And then you've got to tune in to what am I going to do about it? Am I going to stay in the negative? Am I going to bring out the positive? We all have problems. We all have trouble. You've got a business. You're going to have problems. That's just the way it goes. The point of the story is, are you in control of what you think or are you not? Most of us are walking around with a driverless carriage and this carriage is going anywhere and everywhere.

28:50And, you know, things don't go from point A to point B. It's like a stock thing. Go up or go down. Go up or go down. The point isn't that. The point is how are you responding instead of reacting to what's happening and understanding that all the things that are happening are happening for you, not happening to you. And so this is a point that we talk about. So the point of living and performing at your best isn't luck. It's a consistent mindset and action plan. And most of the good people in your audience, I'm sure, are aware of that to a real degree. One of the simplest things, like we were talking about just a minute ago, that anybody could do is to sit in silence and be still.

29:37We talked previously about going and doing and going and doing and going and doing. When you've got a business, when you're dealing with employees, when you're dealing with clients, when you're dealing with vendors, you have to. You've got to do emails. You've got to do phone calls. You've got to do follow-ups. You've got to find out what's going on with the inventory. All of that is true. When we are able to allow ourselves to settle and stop going and stop doing, what we're doing is we're recharging our beautiful miracle mechanism so that we can go and do and go and do and go and do more. And that's kind of the idea of how we can be productive and effective and efficient with the lives that we have and the lives that we want to have more of and create more momentum to.

30:25So the point of our story here is simply be the one who repairs and supports, even when there's failures or problems or you fall down, you skin your knee. You know, the best things in life aren't things. We want to take a moment and have what we call self-observation which is the highest form of IQ. The highest form of IQ is what they call metacognition. Metacognition means we can do as humans what no other animals can do. We can sit here and self-observe ourselves. We can investigate ourselves. Are we getting the best results? If we're not getting the best results, what can we do to get better results?

31:11And it's always an idea that comes to life when you sit and listen to yourself, ask yourself better questions. That's where the truth comes out in ways that are very productive and very informative. So I would say, let's focus on mind care. Let's take a moment to find out what it is we're thinking and why it is we're thinking, how it makes us feel, where these thoughts came from. Because so many of us get ideas that came when we were in the womb or we were until we were seven years old, we didn't have a choice about what it is that got into our subconscious. So the truth of it all gets to be bringing that information into consciousness so it can then make a good choice, make better choices.