One Big Idea 6 - Driving Purpose-Driven Growth: From Identity Alignment and Cellular Health to Executive Resiliency

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.

0:44With our next One Big Idea, it's Carol Pike. Carol, you're a keynote speaker, you're a personal brand strategist, and you were found on the web at wordsthatdeliver.com. Carol, please share with us your one big idea. Identity is everything. If tomorrow everything that you held dear, your history, your frameworks, your accolades were stripped from you, what would you have left?

1:16Leaders, businesses and brands are standing on a question that they probably haven't thought about yet. Who am I? We are living in a world that is visual. So we are always looking at the outside. So there are things that we need to develop. You know, we need to have frameworks. We need to have better communication skills. We need to develop our skill set. All of that is really important. But if you're not building it on a solid foundation, what are you actually doing? because effective leadership is built on effective self-leadership, which is built on identity. So how can you possibly lead someone that you don't know?

2:02Well, actually, sometimes we lead people that we don't know, but how effective is that actually? And you're probably wondering, well, you know, why does any of this matter? Well, in this age, the age of AI, when AI can do a whole host of different things, it can replicate almost everything. We talk about content. We talk about strategy. We talk about structure. But let me tell you the one thing that AI cannot replicate. That is who you are. And when I say that, I'm actually not talking about the titles and the roles you play. I brought my friend, Mrs. Potato Head, to show you what I mean. The whole concept of the potato head family is that it is a potato and you put things on it.

2:48So if you think about the titles, the roles, your position, all of those things, those are the things that we put on ourselves. And we say that that's who we are. But in very real terms, you are actually the potato. And until you know what the potato is actually like, you're missing a trick. you're constantly going to be looking externally for the answers and so many people are concerned about ai right now that they will be losing their jobs and all of these things are going to be taken away i'm going to say to you that the biggest risk that you have is not about ai taking your jobs it's about you not knowing who it is that you are because when you know who it is that you are, you can stand firm in any change and any challenge that comes your way.

3:40But if you don't know who it is that you are and all of these things are going on, where do you stand? And I'm saying this from a position of certainty because in 2019, I looked in the mirror and I knew the features, but I didn't know the person looking back. I'd had a stroke and I now live with retrograde amnesia. So quite literally, everything has been stripped away from me, everything before 2019. So I have no frameworks. I don't know who that person was, what it was I did, how it was that I did it. So I couldn't rely on the traditional anchors to make it happen. I had to make a decision about who it was that I was based on the experiences that I was having and what was going on on the inside.

4:28So what I've recognized is that your identity is not caught up with your memory. When that is taken away, you have to decide who it is that you are, not your situation, your circumstances or other people. You have to decide. So the question is, who are you? literally who are you at your core who are you because I'm convinced that that is the underlying challenge across the globe because if I know who I am and I know that I am powerful that I know that I am a winner I do not have to pull you down to prove it I just need to show up as me and actually being you is the easiest gig in the world because there are no lines to learn and nothing to remember there is no imposter syndrome because how can you be an imposter if you know who you are there's a question and you're not comparing yourself to other people because you're not them you're you so the foundational principle is you know who you are not the inherited narratives that we have that other people have told us society has told us mistakes and failures have told us who are you saying that you are because we move in the direction of our strongest thoughts So if you don't think you are a winner, you're never going to win.

5:50Yeah. And if elements are not in alignment, it's never going to work. Yeah. Well, Carol, some may, I'm just going to ask you a quick follow-up here. Some may hear what you're saying and they say, well, easier said than done. My brain doesn't agree with my assessment. I still worry about this. I still think about this. My identity is still shaped by, you know, some kind of trauma that I had as a kid or something like that. And I wish I could just shake it. intellectually, I'm with you, you know, behaviorally or, you know, kind of my shadow self. That's a little bit different. So how can we work on that to change that underlying program?

6:26Because I love what you're saying and imagine a world, you know, where everybody, you know, really got intimate with like who they are, you know, who they really deserve to be as well. well actually one of the things that we have been very good at doing is that we almost believe that events come pre-packaged with emotions so that event shows up and i feel like that and they are together when in very real terms there is an event and there is emotion that you have chosen for whatever reason is that you've chosen that emotion and so when something has happened it's to look for what it is that you have learned from that what is the takeaway that you can take from that even if that takeaway is i am never doing that again i'm never going there i'm never never doing that again because there is always something for us to learn and the opportunity for us to grow the more it is that we stay in that thing that that happened that happened to me that's really terrible that's all it is that we're ever going to see it's that whole element of what you focus on is what it is that you see.

7:37If something happens, I've worked out you have two choices. You either give up or you give it all you've got. And that could be a little bit or a huge amount. But it's always looking at, okay, am I comfortable in this place? Is this working for me? No, it's not. Okay, what can I do? Where can I get help to see it in a different way so that I can learn and grow. Excellent. Carol, your website is wordsthatdeliver.com. You're a keynote speaker, you're a TEDx speaker, in fact. And so if somebody goes to visit you, what would you recommend they do? I would recommend that they engage with me. In fact, I want to have conversations with people Because I think that we are spending so much time in an AI driven world and in a computer driven world where we're sitting in front of screens to actually have physical conversations with people.

8:35Because there is more to you than you have settled for. And oftentimes is having a conversation with somebody else that's able to see something that you have missed. Here's an action that you can take right now. Go to LinkedIn or wherever it is that you've got biographical information and take a red pen, delete everything that is about your job title and your job role and see what is left behind. Wow. You may find that that's it's blank. There isn't anything that's left behind. But that's great. A great place to start of recognizing that how it is that you've been identifying yourself is based on what it is that you do.

9:15and what where we need to get to is to be before you do so who are you being before you do because that is the thing that's going to set you apart from anybody else in the entire world excellent all right again words that deliverer.com carol pike your keynote speaker your founder uh it's been a delight to have you thank you so much uh for for joining us carol

9:46with our next one big idea it's dr paul baratero dr paul you are the founder and owner of echo water and luma nova it's great to have you please share with us your one big idea awesome my one big idea starts with the desire for me to help you accomplish your potential Now, talking from a business perspective, I've had 14 companies in my life. So I understand how you can burn both ends of the candle, cut the candle and burn the other two ends that appear. We all work hard every day to build our empire, to accomplish what we want. That comes at a cost of our health many times. And so years ago, 20 years ago, my wife was sick.

10:35And as a medical professional, I had to figure out how to help her. As a result of helping her, I created Echo Water, which is the largest and original hydrogen water company. Now, I didn't wake up one day and say, I want to start a hydrogen water company. That never happened. What I wanted to do was heal my wife. As a result of healing her, we've now helped millions of people who have issues like being tired in the afternoon, not getting proper sleep, having low immune function, ADHD, not being focused in the office like you want to be so you can accomplish everything that you need to do. Well, we have to understand that our bodies are designed to produce hydrogen gas in our colon.

11:23When we have gut disruption, which it's estimated 90 % of the population have, we lose the ability to produce hydrogen gas naturally. And so we have to get it back into our body so that we have the proper mitochondrial function. So we have energy, the proper ghrelin secretions going to our brain to help us think more clearly. Every disease model comes from the combination of oxidative stress and inflammation. Hydrogen is supposed to be in the body to stop oxidation, turning into oxidative stress and inflammation becoming chronic. And so hydrogen is there to prevent you and I from having disease and sickness.

12:09So here it is today, 16 years later, we're providing a delivery of hydrogen back to your body through drinking water. At the same time, we can heal the gut in two weeks. Those that have gluten and dairy intolerance, don't worry about that anymore. But we currently have 2 ,250 studies, over 200 disease models that hydrogen is therapeutic with. So I invite you to try hydrogen water. Get it into your body. And once you have hydrogen back in your body, everything begins to work properly. beginning with stomach acid. You can't even make stomach acid without free and available hydrogen gas in your body.

12:55It is really critical and important to understand why our bodies would produce hydrogen. Now, we would produce hydrogen in the colon. And guess what that's going to be? Flatulence. So now you can understand that farting could be therapeutic. So understand that we want and should have hydrogen because it's a huge modulator in our body. It actually accomplishes improvement of immune function, lowering inflammation so you don't have joint pain and other issues. For those that are weekend warriors like a lot of us, we don't want to run out of gas or run out of energy. Hydrogen is going to reduce fatigue and allow you to continue to do what you want to do without wearing out.

13:40I love it. So, so obviously at your website, you, you sell, which is essentially like if, you know, I'm holding up my big drink cup, you know, which we, we all have and you essentially produce hydrogen water bottles and, and cups now that will hydrogenate your water. And again, that's at echo water.com. Now, Now, in addition to that, Dr. Paul, just real briefly, what are some things that we could do on top of drinking hydrogenated water that might help us get more hydrogen in our bodies? Exercise movement? That help? No, not at all. We would have to repair the gut. What's critical is that our gut is functioning properly.

14:26Well, most people have no idea how to do that because the problem with the gut is electrical. you need to have anaerobic microflora and to get that you need to have a negative 300 to a negative 400 millivolts of electrical potential in the intestinal tract that's what echo water does the water itself like when you use this bottle right here you would produce hydrogen in the bottle the water property would not only have hydrogen but it would have a negative 300 to negative 400 millivolts of electrical potential, when that gets into your colon, it creates the terrain and the biome within an hour and you start having bacteria coming back.

15:07So your gut is healing from the inside out. Yeah. Well, very cool. Dr. Paul, your website, echowater.com. And then of course, also luminova.com to our friend that's been listening to your one big idea. And by the way, thank you so much for sharing. It's a great reminder. And you're absolutely right, man. Gut health, woof, especially as you get older, man, you just like, you just start, hopefully you're paying attention to it because it can affect a whole lot of other stuff in your life. But what would you recommend to our friend that's been listening to your one big idea? Where do they go? What do they, what should they do next?

15:43So if they're eggheaded and they want to read the studies, go to hydrogenstudies.com. We've got all 2 ,257 studies there for you to search by disease model by Oregon, by whatever you want. If you have an issue yourself, you can type it in and see if hydrogen will help you. Really from, I would recommend getting this. This is our inexpensive product. This is for two types of people, skeptical people and those that travel. This is going to create the hydrogen water that you need. And I would recommend three to six of these a day. And you're going to feel like a new human being. We also do have a drink mix that is wonderful apple flavor.

16:20It has three prebiotics and makes the hydrogen water. If you like drinks that taste good, those would be the two products that I'd recommend people start with because it's going to change their life and it's a very low cost. Yeah. Love it. Echo water.com and, uh, Luma Nova as well, which we all have linked up. Dr. Paul Baratero. It's been a great conversation. Thank Thank you so much for sharing your one big idea. Thanks.

16:49With our next one big idea, it's Emily Lyman. Emily, you are the founder and CEO of Branch & Bramble. You're found on the web at branchandbramble.com. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. And please share your one big idea. Thanks for having me, Josh. So empathy is not a soft skill. It is a growth strategy. In an AI accelerated world, it's the biggest competitive edge available to any brand. So AI has made content faster and cheaper to produce than ever, and almost none of it stands out. Everyone's emails open the same way, everyone's LinkedIn posts hit the same beats, so when everything sounds the same, nothing lands.

17:34The mainstream treats empathy as a personality trait, something you either have or you don't. It's nice to have, it's hard to measure, and the first thing that gets cut when budgets get tightened. So then that's wrong on both counts, right? The neuroscience is very, very clear here. Antonio Damasio put it this way. We are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think. Every buying decision starts with emotion, and logic is what justifies it afterward. So most marketing is actually built backwards. features, specs, value props. We write about the product instead of the person.

18:18And then we wonder why conversions are low. So here's what I see that others miss, right? Empathy is not a feeling, it's a discipline. It can be researched, scored, and scaled. And AI makes that more possible, not less, because AI is a fabulous researcher and a terrible author. It can surface emotional patterns across 5 ,000 customer reviews in an hour. What it can't do is understand what a yes actually feels like for your customer. That part stays human. So yeah, go ahead. I love it. Love it. Love it. let's make it real right we worked with patagonia's book division their original post for an author event read like logistics like join this author he'll be signing copies of his new memoir it was accurate it was clear but it's completely flat so our research showed that this audience consumers for patagonia they buy for thrill and experience so the rewrite opened with one question is climbing worth dying for.

19:31Same event, same author, same audience. Applying that lens across their full program produced a 59 % increase in engagement and 104 % increase in clicks. And the only variable was empathy. So here's one thing that your audience can do today is spend 30 minutes where their audience, their consumers talk when they're not talking to the brand. Reddit threads, reviews, comment sections. Don't look for what they say they want. Write down the emotional words they use, the emotions that you're seeing come across, what they're afraid of, what they hoped for, why they were disappointed. Then hold that language up against your homepage, your marketing copy, and if the words don't match, if the sentiments don't match, you just found your growth strategy.

20:25Emily, that is just absolutely spot on. Perfect. I think that, you know, what you're sharing as well, you know, in all of my interviews that I've done with leaders over this past year, I'm hearing this more and more. I think after the initial sugar rush around AI, I think a lot of leaders are seeing the consequences in real time, not necessarily themselves, but they're seeing it, you know, an over reliance on AI caliber communication as acceptable as the spokesperson for our brands. And I think that when, you know, when experienced leaders see this so poorly executed in other people, we're like, whoa, okay, now we know what not to do.

21:14And you're right. So, you know, because I know that you work with some larger brands. Can you maybe just share another example of how maybe a larger, you know, larger company, you know, you've worked with Random House, Paramount, Patagonia, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster. Like, how are they, how are, you know, what would be another example of like how we could convey authentic empathy? I mean, it truly needs to be in our core value, of course. Otherwise, it just comes across as fake. But then, you know, I guess there's, you know, my thinking is like, well, I don't want to come across as, you know, I don't want to come across as fake.

21:55Like, I genuinely, this is like, I truly love and care for, you know, the folks I serve, et cetera. of my audiences, that sort of thing. So I just want to hit that right note of not being performative. Right. That's a great question, Josh, and a lot of brands struggle with that. And I think that the difference becomes, it's not necessarily that you are trying to tap into your audience's problems in a way that doesn't align with your authenticity already. You're still talking about your brand, you're just putting your brand in a, you're formatting it in a way that they are going to better understand.

22:34So for example, let's do another example, Volvo, right? Volvo talks about the safety performances of their vehicles. They're safe, they're award-winning, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so a brand first product first marketing comm is going to be like five-time award winner of the most safe car on the road. But what your consumers want to hear, they value family safety in that manner. So you're going to switch those marketing comms to keep your family safe this summer on your road trip or spend more time with your family without having to worry about their safety as you travel, you know, to and from school, et cetera.

23:18So it is really just you're still authentic because you're still talking about your brand and your product. You just are looking at where to put your consumer's values first in that narrative rather than the brand story first. I love it. Okay. Branch and Bramble. Emily, please share with us what you do, your website, branchandbramble.com. Yeah. So we are a marketing agency for direct to consumer lifestyle brands. And our whole shtick, right, is turning off audience interest into consumer obsession. And we do that through behavioral psychology and empathetic marketing to create those marketing campaigns that are human and just work like crazy.

24:09So that's what we do in a nutshell. Yeah. And if someone, like, if I just wanted to learn more about what you're talking about, I don't know if you have any resources or if there's a favorite book you recommend, because I love this topic other than, you know, obviously work with you. But if someone's maybe not quite ready for that. Sure. Yes. Well, we do have a free empathetic marketing ebook on our website. Well, there we go. We did not plan that, by the way. No. Branchandbramble.com forward slash empathetic hyphen marketing. So that will get you to our free ebook. And then I would actually check out the company called Value Graphics, which I highly, highly love and is a great starting point to really see how values drive buying motivators, what we call buying motivators, and what are those things that drive your consumers' decisions, not just demographics and psychographics.

25:04That's getting into a whole deep thing. I love it. Emily Lyman, founder and CEO of Branch and Bramble, found on the web at branchandbramble.com. Emily, thank you for sharing your one big idea. Thanks, Josh.

25:19With our next one big idea, it's Stuart Heath. Stuart, you are the CEO of Harvard Grace Capital. You're found on the web at harvardgracecapital.com. You are also a speaker and author and real estate entrepreneur. Well, Stuart, please share with us your one big idea. Well, my one big idea is not original to me. But it is a big idea. And that is you can, through careful investing, replace all of your income with passive sources of income and pay very little taxes. If it's real estate, you can have tax advantaged passive income that supplement and you can do as many of those as that you can afford to invest in.

26:11It replaces working income and can generally, ultimately, replace all of your income. So that's my big idea. All right. Well, how does one do that? That sounds like a great position to be in. Yeah. To be able to do that, take some work on the investor side. I always say that if you're investing passively, you may not need to manage the property or anything like that, but you do need to investigate your manager, your sponsor, and do that work on the front end. We do have a guide to help you do that, questions that you should be asking your sponsor. So over a period of time and be patient and deliberate and learn which kinds of properties throw off the right type of cash and are less susceptible to be susceptible to AI.

27:08You know, we have to have a conversation and mention AI very early on because it impacts everything. You want to see what kind of properties are the most stable and you want to know the track record of the sponsor. So after you've done that kind of homework, then you can allocate your investment portfolio to multiple different properties or even different funds that have multiple properties. And then you just start receiving the passive income. Those sponsors ought to be reporting you on a monthly basis, sometimes quarterly, but monthly is more appropriate. so that you can keep up with how they're doing.

27:52And don't hesitate to ask that sponsor questions along the way. Send them an email. Give them a phone call. And talk about how the different investments are performing. The other advantage with doing real estate is once you've held it for a few years and if it's being properly managed, the net operating income should be increasing. So that's an opportunity for the sponsor to go in, refinance that property, pull some cash out, send that cash to the investors. That's a tax-free transaction, by the way. But it's a way for you to get your investment principal back, but still own the property and still continue to get some income.

28:35Then you can take that cash out and invest it into another cash flow generating property, if you like. So that is essentially our business plan and our big idea. And that's how investors can get involved in it on a passive basis. Last quick question on this. For someone who has not invested in real estate before, maybe they have their own home. What are some of the more accessible ways that someone could get started? Like they might just be intimidated by this or they feel like, you know, it's going to be risky or they might feel like they don't have access to funds to invest. And, you know, and again, I'm not suggesting that someone's not who's not, you know, qualified to do this, you know, should be.

29:27But, you know, who would be an example of someone that might be qualified and can actually get can actually get involved if they may have thought that they wouldn't they weren't able to be. Well, to do most passive deals, one does need to be what the SEC calls an accredited investor. So that's a net worth requirement and or an income requirement, which generally means that they've got the wherewithal to do that. You can also qualify for that, but all your funds are tied up in an IRA or a 401k. You can do private deals from that pool of money as well, which is a tremendous opportunity. And many sponsors will give retirement plan investors a little bit different deal because you can't use the depreciation benefits.

30:22And then they can sell the depreciation to another investor who needs all they can get. But they should be a little bit intimidated if they've never done this before. There are resources out there to teach you. We have one on our website called The Anatomy of a Syndication. that walks you through step by step. Here's what this means. Here's how this happens. You should never not be asking your sponsor questions. But generally, the structure is a syndication, just a big fancy word for a group of people coming together to make an investment. So you're not the only investor. You'll be in there with anywhere from five to 50 others, likely.